I am looking at properties in Sweden so I can be a hermit by the water and never talk to anyone again. It's easy enough to get, but if I hate it the capital gains taxes when you sell are very high, though they can be offset to some extent and can help mitigate that hit to the wallet.
The boys are reluctant.
Who said you're all going too? I yell in response.
It's a perfect afternoon. Twenty degrees and clouds are rolling in with the rain set to start after supper. Lochlan just brought me a gin and tonic and last week he bought me a pink pen with a huge pink pompom on it. I am starting to think about making chicken sandwiches and salad for the actual meal and then I want to put on a scary movie to start and watch some each day until it's done. This is the calm between storms? Had to go out late last night and run errands. Have to get up scarily early tomorrow for an appointment so instead of helping to mow the lawn I'm just enjoying this small window of peace before dinner prep with Dalton and Duncan begins.
I know we persist in doing family meals at least five nights a week because why not? We're all family and people eat better and are happier when they can sit around a table en masse and share the weights and burdens, maybe share a laugh too. It works. Or I'm drunk. Not sure how much gin is in this drink. I didn't even think we had any left, frankly so it's a nice surprise.
Hope the rain starts soon. Hope I start remembering I'm supposed to post too. These pills are the lobotomy I wanted and now hate, but it's so much better than everything else so far. And that's a lot to admit.
Pride weekend is wrapping up here. Holy cow. So hot. So tired. A little heat exhaustion, a lot of glitter, mostly in parts I am surprised to still find any, and a lot of colourful moments that I will remember forever. Nice to be there, nice to be here, though here on the point every weekend is Pride weekend and the glitter is always plentiful.
And food grade, as always, because we are not monsters.
Well, we are but not in the way you would think.
I'm going to spend the next few days rehydrating, resting up and probably testing positive for Covid or Monkey Pox, I haven't decided which, and deal with the sunburn I got. I might fill the hottub with aloe gel and just stay there.
It was so fun though. A lot different this year as we didn't go so hard, mostly because Ben is different now. He's not big on the heat and he gets overstimulated in crowds which is a far cry from how he used to be but we figured it out and mostly stayed on the fringe. Which in itself is ironic.
I'm glad the heatwave ends tonight though. I'm melted to a puddle of fairy dust at this point and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Burning man might possibly be next. I need a do--over on that anyway.
Pure decadence today, my friends. Coffee and a early swim in the pool and then did a few light chores against the coming heat before making screamers. Screamers are slush puppies with ice cream on top and they're not bad, though I was happiest when the ice cream was gone and I just had slushie ice. Mine was vanilla ice cream with lemon lime slush. We made them in our snoopy sno-cone machine and then used the soft ice cream machine at Daniel and Schuyler's to finish them off. So good. Then we had a long nap in the camper. Me and Lochlan, with all the doors wide open but a stick of Indian Temple incense lit on the counter to ward off any sun-loving mosquitos. Now we have to figure out dinner but I think someone's going to Dairy Queen to get it so maybe I don't have to think too hard.
Perfect.
Let me just...
Ugh.
The most expensive house in Canada was just listed for a cool thirty-nine million dollars in Whistler. Whistler is a little over an hour north of Point Perdition here, and we spend a lot of time there. The boys love the mountains, and since the trade off is that we live next to the ocean I indulge them and go with them whenever they are so moved.
But this fucking house. (Not ours, the one for sale.)
The one thing I hate about rich people is that almost every last one of them hands off the major design elements to an architect and they all end up with a wacky minimalist midcentury modern stark-ass nightmare of a home in the end.
It's a freaking abomination. Especially the write up. The part that first grabbed my attention, after an article in the Vancouver Sun quoted from the listing agent who said "Some wealthy people have seen the house and understand what this is."
The fuck, dude. The pretension. In the next sentence he breathlessly compares Whistler to Aspen.
And then there are the word-dump thesaurus adjectives. Everything is impressive or stunning. They go on and on about this forty-foot granite fireplace that I was expecting to be a stunner, but it looks like that backsplash false half-brick adhesive you get from home depot to pretend you own an exposed brick wall (I love that shit). This looks like the end side of a drugstore. The 'light cannons' (I know, WTF, they're the most ugliest skylights ever) are in the way of the damn view and honestly the whole thing looks like a generic West Coast resort for small groups or clubs that don't want a ton of privacy or anything that might distract from their bonding exercises. The infinity pool looks like the walkway Magneto rolled out on in X-Men.
It's TERRIBLE. And like so many things out here, completely overrated, both in design and execution.
LIGHT. CANNONS.
Also that floating staircase is going to kill someone.
***
On the upside, Stonebridge is a quiet neighbourhood ten months out of the year, and the kitchen is lovely.
I hate the heat. HATE IT. I'm melting before my own eyes, now limpid opal pools of pale green and blunted pastel turquoise.
Want to go for ice cream? The Devil craves the heat of the asphalt, and the roar of his car.
No, it's too hot. I refuse to put on additional clothing or stick to the warm leather seats. Not today, Satan. I have a freezer full of ice cream in the garage anyway. At least I think I do. PJ and I compete for who has the biggest sweet tooth of the Collective, and so I usually go looking and find the shelves empty.
Things I did this week included swimming (a lot), jumping off the cliff to supplement the pills (a lot-they work really well but then ten percent of the time they don't work and I panic and revert), watching true crime documentaries by the handful, and for the crowning achievement I stood in a dusty parking lot under a tree eating my first ever shawarma and guarding a found shattered cell phone until I was finished, after which I scooped up the phone and took it to a makeshift lost and found where they threw it in a box with ten others and I left, contemplating just offering to buy the shawarma truck and bring it to my driveway, where I could get one whenever I like. Don't even laugh. It gave me massive amounts of deja vu from the midway and I loved every second of it.
What's up? Caleb's head pops up next to my huge inflatable watermelon slice, where I float and burn, float and cry. Float and count my blessings, float and wish for food.
I'm thinking we need a food truck festival in the driveway.
When would you like it to be? (God, he's better than Santa Claus)
Every day!
He laughs and pushes off, leaving me bumping against the side. I'll consider it.
The pool isn't big enough to get away from him, sadly. They've retracted the whole end of the glass birdcage for the rest of the summer and will enclose again in September, I think. It's not a small operation and so we had to have a referendum on it but the boys won out even with the mosquitos and I do agree now, the fresh air is better than the weird chlorinated humid air trapped in a dome.
For a brief time I relished the snowglobe effect, I admit. I like to tilt-shift everything and then it matches me better.
Want to grab a late brunch?
Maybe. Do I have to get dressed?
Yes. I don't do drive-throughs.
Give me an hour?
I can give you whatever you want.
Of course. Of Course.
I still cry because I'm bitter and angry. I can't accept that he promised me the moon and stars and then left me in a night so black it swallowed my soul. Because he removed any chance of ever trying again or starting over. Of changing his mind, you know? Realizing he made a mistake.
Do you think he made a mistake in leaving you first? Making sure you hated him so it was easier for you to go?
It doesn't matter what I think. I didn't have any input.
The lack of control-
Psychoanalyzing me fifteen years on isn't going to change the fact that he's never coming back. He's a pile of dust now. It was a waste of a life. A waste of potential. He threw away every happiness and he took mine with it for so long.
That's new.
I'm happier now.
Why is that?
Because I know now that he took the easy way out, even if it wasn't easy. I'm here. I took the hard road and I'm proud of myself and even when things are wrong and difficult I still want to be here because sometimes things are easy, things are right and it's worth it and I also have so much love here to get and to give and even the parts that are fully unfixable aren't as bad as nothingness. As fading all of it to black.
August nods and then stares appreciatively as I adjust the strap on my bikini top. I've got a cute sarong to cover my bottoms and the top is so spare but nice for healing my tattoo work and I can swim for a bit tomorrow because I heal way faster physically than I ever do mentally.
Mentally I am coding orange all the fucking time. Physically I am a war machine.
Take it off if it's uncomfortable.
Sexually harassing my counsellors has never done me any favours.
Oh, are we formal again?
Only if you're inside my head.
Then it's time I closed that door for now, unless you wanted to talk more on the subject.
Where are you with it all, Augie? I ask because he always makes it about me and so rarely about himself.
More or less the same (Ah. Closed book). Want to swim?
I'm not allowed until tomorrow. Tattoo. I gesture. I get them at the stupidest times of year, I think.
Well then come and float on a big watermelon floatie or the swan while I do some laps to cool off?
Yes. I'm never going to say no.
I didn't think you would since you showed up in your swimsuit.
Oh. Right. But also it's really hot and it's the smallest outfit I have.
Well, it's on my gratitude list now for the day. August smiles so wide I match it.
Twenty more bug bites or so, and a wicked wood splinter under my middle fingernail from where I grabbed a sawhorse without looking to make a makeshift kiln cover when it started to rain this afternoon. Yes I have the kiln under the eaves but only barely and the rain and wind picked up all at once and I'm not taking chances, thanks.
The rest of the day was spent wrapping gifts, decorating and baking a cake for Henry's birthday this weekend. He'll be twenty-one and I am stunned by how fast it all happened, how he was four and asking for more goldfish crackers an hour ago and a minute ago he was nine and having outbursts of frustration and we learned how to help fix them, together.
We read a lot of Robert Munsch (Love you Forever was a staple but our favourites were We Share Everything and A Promise is a Promise) and cooked a lot of dinners together. We read Harry Potter and fell asleep on the couch and rode bikes down the sidewalk in the sunshine. We pet llamas and cuddled cats. We learned math. We had deep conversations about what it means to be emotional and how it's not a bad thing. He makes short jokes. I make tall ones. He asks for help when he needs it and reassures me when I need it, and vice versa. He is the best son a mom could have, frankly and it's very hard to let him go. But as the saying goes, you teach them how to leave you.
He is independent and almost ready for that job that's waiting for him. He hates the heat and loves chocolate, just like mom. He is the rose at the centre of the compass of this Collective. He is Ruth's easy accomplice, and Ben's gullible shadow. He is Lochlan's verbal spar and Caleb's foil. He is a prince among men. He is bunny and I love him forever, my baby he'll be, as the book goes.
Sixty-seven bites. I'm going to lose it. I look like I have big juicy measles on every exposed ounce of flesh. You would think in the wind, in the sun that it would be better but I did a little gardening and I took the dog around the yard this morning for his flower inspection time (he adores smelling flowers) and so I have more mosquito bites.
Emmett is here fixing something and there's so much goddamned noise I want to cry. I'm not great with loud, prolonged noise unless it's music. This is prolonged. He has yelled SORRY multiple times. It's not helping either.
I want to watch Netflix but I can't sit still. I want to take out all my money and stuff it into a backpack and move to a deserted but shady island with a freshwater lake surrounded by beaches and a saltwater ocean and have a chocolate tree and one that dispenses Vietnamese food too and I want unlimited high speed data and a kitten and a whole host of puppies and some painting supplies and I'm going to nap in the sun and not lift a finger.
Emmett says I must have sunstroke. I don't. I have daydreamitis. It's when all you do is wish you were someone/where else.