Bears and Pears.

 6:09/8:18

Sunrise and sunset times have had a notable shift. The pears are done. The strawberries never end. The bears have brought their babies and have gently snorted through the night in the orchard while Lochlan bars the door so I don't go out and pet them. 

I wouldn't. 

(I promise, cross my heart, Locket.) 

 He's smart enough not to believe me. 

We ring Batman to warn him, and August too.  

The ocean smashes a relentless cadence against the cliff and I can't hear myself think so hearing the gentle pig-snorts of mama bear are a comfort to this deaf girl in a way she's never had before. 

We have constellation ice cream in the fridge and a new season of Outer Banks to watch at long last. We're all Pogues at heart, gold and death included and it's still one of the best shows I've ever seen. 

I'm still watching the BC Wildfire dashboard, holding my breath. Caleb still teases evil and mayhem every chance he gets. PJ still promises that if he lost thirty pounds I would leave the others and we could run away together. Ben just laughs and laughs and we take long walks in the evening where we map out being old together and place significant wagers on who will lose their memory first, or their ability to safely be independent. 

I will. 

Pretty sure, anyway. 

(Wait, what was the question, Locket?)

Summer is ending in a hurry. There's some rain in the forecast and it better not be lies. McDonalds Canada didn't get the Hello Kitty X Godzilla crossover and we are PISSED. The Halloween displays are competing with Back to School and I'm skipping over it all now. I don't go out, except to the corner store (20 km down the highway). I don't think about Halloween. Been there done that. Probably didn't do enough school but that's okay too, I learned on the road.  

 The leaves are curling in from the heat and the garden is perpetually wilted. Yellow leaves are already falling all around and the teal of the sea is a beautiful contrast. It was the shortest summer that ever was, that's for sure but it's too hot for a do-over.

We are getting American liquor back on the shelves, apparently but that's an easy no because nobody drinks anymore and nobody cares anymore and why check out when you can drop in and anyway, I'm not going anywhere with this so nevermind, back to my show.

 

 

Not Girl Summer (I'm coming, wait for me).

Got my hands on all sorts of popular media this summer in between melting sessions in the pool and refreshing the BC Wildfire dashboard on my laptop to make sure the fires don't make it down here or anywhere else that I love. I could exist on a strip of grey and black bedrock as long as I had a little shade and some carnival french fries with malt vinegar easily enough anyway so I'm not worried. I'm not big on stuff. I'm not big on nostalgia in the current sense. My memories are in the darkest parts of my brain and I spend a lot of time just sitting in there talking to myself and I'm my own best and worst company so it doesn't exactly matter, now, does it? 

I want a S'mores drink from Starbucks knowing I won't like it. I like their chocolate chip frappucinos with chocolate whipped cream but they don't make them like that any more and my glucose levels (just checked) were just on the upper end of still-perfect, as we know I subsist on a permanent diet of refined sugar and raw sugar alike. 

We have new neighbours. A young dysfunctional but incredibly sweet and growing family in over their heads in this neighbourhood but they are renting and so won't be here long anyway. They are nice and normal at least and that's all I could ask for. As a non-normie I get to be the weirdo again and that's great.

(Oy, my nails are too long to type today. This is taking forever.) 

Onto the obsessions of the summer.

I had a slow start. I was lent a Frieda McFadden book. All the rage. I hated it. Back to working my way through The Lighthouse Witches. A book I started in November and forgot to pick up again forever. 

I looked forward to Project Hail Mary and Disclosure Day. Thought the 'aliens' would be shadowy all-knowing entities. Hate it when they aren't. Most impressed by the knitwear and Emily Blunt's flawless Russian conversation, as someone who loves to practice every chance I get but I actually didn't like either movie. 

What I did love? 

Hadestown. 

I didn't know about it until I saw a Tiktok with best musical numbers and I was instantly Oh, what is that? 

What is that indeed? Spurred on by a movie poster I found it on Youtube-one of the broadway shows thanks to a Reddit post that said it's listed as ...a slime tutorial to keep it up as long as possible as a cam and good enough for me, I have zero standards and..

 Just wow. It's up there with Miss Saigon handily. HANDILY. So good I haven't stopped singing the lines all week. Lochlan too. PJ endlessly. August even is humming it nonstop. So GOOD. 

What else do I love? 

Flowstars. 

Heard about these from a friend of a friend of a friend and looked them up and am so impressed. Lochlan knew about them but dismissed them as something he didn't want to add to his rep but FAILED TO SHOW ME. 

Oh wow, what a mistake. 

Now I have a full-size one and a mini and I'm terrible at it but will chip away. The learning curve is decent but doable and it's just a weirdly fun and soft activity that also makes you sweat and can be done in a smallish area, unless Lochlan's routines which need a wide berth because of the fire and spectacle of it all. 

This is quiet and gentle almost but add some LED lights and skill and it's positively hypnotic. 

Why don't people tell me things? Tired of finding everything out ten years later somewhat organically. The hype train fails to pick me up and take me anywhere and the remote train that travels all the way out to me bringing word from town hasn't been seen in years so I guess I reap what I sow, right? 

In any case I'm hoping the hot weather is done for the year. My french bob persists into a regular bob at this point (growing it back out so I can put it up next summer-going to spend the winter recollection silver pins to do so) and my tattoos were well-protected from the sun this summer as I swam with the roof on the pool without opening it up after spring was over and I gardened in a UV shirt this year. My tomato plants are 2 inches high and the pears and apples are almost ready so good enough for me. 

People want to know how the boys are doing and let me tell you they're all doing great. They are writing and swimming and sitting and talking in the shade of the front porch and helping me at every turn and gardening and reading and just settling into quiet retired life. Those who still work are consulting. They're all open and loving with each other and encouraging and sweet. Some small amounts of travelling have been done. I haven't gone to much. I've done some. 

Ben is quiet and present. Jake isn't around much at all anymore. Maybe I'm letting his light dim a little on purpose in order for the rest of us to turn our faces to the sun. Maybe it's time for that or maybe he'll be back. Who knows what ghosts want and why? It must be frustrating for them as it is for us. 

That's okay though. In the meantime we have lots to do. 

So anyway, that's why I love glitter so much (and grilled cheese).

The whole room reeks of old beer and sweat. Smoke dulls the colours and chokes the air. It's the end of the summer and we're collecting our final pay and bonus for making it to teardown. The operator jams his cigar into the side of his mouth and smiles like the creep that he is when it's my turn. He runs his finger down a filthy, crumpled sheet of paper full of names and numbers to a line scribbled in pencil.

Little Bridget. Bridget Bridget Bridget-oh, here you are. Let's see now. 

He counts out four crisp twenties, straight from the bank. That's for all of August. It's a fortune. He didn't pay weekly like the others. We were nervous but Lochlan stole a bunch of tools as collateral. Temporarily.

It's not your funny money but it's worth more. And here's your bonus. You did a lot of running and lugging water for such a little thing. Come back when you're old enough and I'll pay you a thousand a week but not to work on the midway. Keep my card. 

I frown at him and rip open the envelope.  Inside is an American fifty dollar bill. 

Bonuses are reserved for workers on paper but like I tell everyone, you shine. 

I mumble a thank you and he softens into something vaguely fatherly. 

Go back to school. This is no place for you or for your brother. Speaking of whom, tell him he's next and also you can tell him he has til sundown to bring back what he took. I'm good for my word.

I nod, chagrined, and step back through the door where I instantly smash into Lochlan, who's right outside. He isn't a fan of me being on the other side of a closed door with anyone. His shoulders are tense, fingers drawn into fists, raised up slightly on his feet. He's ready for whatever. Mostly sleep and safety. Same as always. 

He winks as he steadies me. You all squared up, 'sis'? I get a kiss on the forehead.

I nod dutifully and he tells me to wait by the truck. 

It takes longer since he's a worker on paper. He gets a form that shows the hours he has worked and the dates and he can prove he worked here but it's only for showing other operators or for coming back. It's like seniority but I'm not worried about that yet. I've got more money to my name than I've ever had in my life but the only thing I want is a root beer float and a grilled cheese sandwich without having to share.

I climb into the truck but leave the door open and I take a deep breath and close my eyes for a minute. 

As the day gets hotter by the second, the glare moving across the hood imprinting late summer on my brain it occurs to me that being told I shine might not mean I sparkle like a diamond or like the sun on a breaking wave. I think it meant I glint faintly like cheap glitter swept into the cracks on the boardwalk. I don't think it was a compliment and I suddenly feel sad and insignificant. 

Exactly like cheap glitter swept into the cracks on the boardwalk in September. 

When Lochlan comes back he takes the tools out from under the front seats of the truck and dumps them on the grass. We drive slowly out of the field and he looks at me before doing a double take. 

Why are you crying? Did you like it here? We can come back next year if you want to. Spoken with all the confidence of an eighteen-year-old boy with a clouded, uncertain future.

I don't want to come back. I'm happy we're leaving. 

He kisses the back of my hand, squeezing it against mouth. Me too, Neamchiontach. You don't know the half of it. 

But that's the problem isn't it? I know the all of it! 

What are you talking about? 

Nothing. It's just...glitter. 

Garba- 

It isn't! It's beautiful! Just like me!

He slows the truck to a stop and stares at me. We're not even all the way out of the field yet. 

I'm sorry. You're right. It's beautiful. Just like you. Are you hungry though? Should we go eat?

Starving. Let's go. I wipe my cheeks with my grimy hands and fold my money into my Hello Kitty bag, zipping it securely. I'm a rich woman, I tell my eleven year old self, and I'd better start acting like one.

Everyone here is a work of art.

 Hi there. I'm watching the Madonna album trailer on repeat. I've got green lasers shooting out my ass. I'm dancing with the gays in the bathroom. I'm loving watching Julia and Benedict and Debi and I feel like I'm a teenager again, catching MTV in laundromats all up and down the eastern seaboard, trying to mimic Madonna's moves, feeling like a sham in the shadow of a showwoman and channelling her indomitable courage as a solo artist on my way across the tightrope every night on a show that had my name on it, even though my age was a lie. 

She was there alongside me the whole time. Her ballads would break my heart. Her artistry would blow me away with every new reinvention of herself and I quickly learned that I could do that too. I could cut my hair and put on red lipstick and then I could grow it all out again and put on fake diamonds and I could wake up and be whoever I felt like being and I had this icon to teach me fashion through music videos and by the mid nineties jeans and a bustier and a pack of cigarettes was a uniform. Kitten heels and bobby pins. I made Lochlan stop and check the lipstick hue.

Is it blue red? It has to be blue-red. 

He would just lean forward in the truck and turn up the Eagles. Or Wings. Or whoever. It didn't really make a difference. I couldn't get style cues from Paul McCartney or Glenn Frey now could I? 

This album is going to be amazing. 

It was a bright spot in a terrible weekend. It's Pride Month. Fifa is on. It's supposed to be exciting and fun and summery and amazing. But it was thirty degrees and we kept blowing fuses and then Lochlan and PJ decided to dismantle and upgrade our entire internet network with new and better peripherals and easier to configure interfaces and cut the devil off at his knees when he tries to restrict my access, and it begat and nine hour odyssey of fetching phones and checking cameras and resetting every smart device in three houses and dropping coverage and realizing half the UPS backups aren't working. 

A trip to the computer store. Again.

More running around. Me rerecording all of my voice recognition as my pronunciation gets a little worse every ten years or so in the most noticeable and disheartening way. My hearing hasn't gotten that much worse but it's enough to catch the difference so they make sure I enjoy whatever music I want to listen to, whenever I want to hear it 

We're not actually going to any of the soccer games, not for a lack of invites. It's boring really. Very very boring. And we're not going to venture downtown for any pride things either, sadly. The flags are up and the neighbors are pissed but we also wave as we fail to apologize and continue to live a colourful and storied existence. You only get one trip around this ride and I want it to be one to remember. 

We also have a bear in the garden who's practically a resident at this point. It's an old one with beautiful sad eyes, a stubborn streak and and a nose for fresh berries so wish me luck being allowed out after dark. Especially with my headphones on.

Wishful kindling.

We take fire safety very seriously around here. You know this. It's been decades in the making and today was our annual brigade. Since we technically have five complete divisions (five households if you count the main house, Duncan and Dalton's apartment downstairs, August above the garage, Sam and Matt in the grey house at the edge of the cliff and Batman's monolith, six if you branch out to Ruth and her husband but we gave them the supplies and they know how it goes) it's a large operation and no one gets a pass. There's no maybe later. No opting out. You show up and you show up ready to roll. Ready to get the job done, as it were. I'm strict but Lochlan's stricter. 

Each house gets 2 fire blankets and two current fire extinguishers per floor for the larger spaces, one of each for the smaller. They are wall-mounted in easy to grab places and everyone knows where they are-not told- they must independently tell me where they are and then are confirmed to be correct. 

No one has ever failed my pop quizzes, if you wonder. 

We test the smoke detectors and the carbon monoxide detectors. We check the lights on the detectors and make sure they flash. Our phones get alerts. This is the way when one of us is deaf. 

We make sure everything charging is done and unplugged or out in the open. Batteries live in battery bags or boxes. Compromised batteries live in the driveway and are taken to the recycling depot to their special boxes within days of failure.  

We make copies of up to date insurance policies, new digital wallets and investments and put current bank statements in the safe(s) along with coins, cash, stored media on hard drives, really expensive jewellery, passports and birth certificates. The safes are fireproof and bolted to the floors in hidden locations. I would gut the contents into a bag and go. If I couldn't get to it I know I could come back later and I know where it would land if it fell through burning floors. Even so, stuff is always replaceable. 

We moved the cat carriers to the foyer to the top of the closet, with a bag that contains food and treats and litter and a spare litter box. a few toys and blankets. 

We each have a go-bag of clothes and toiletries with room for devices and shoes and a blanket. Another three bags live in the butler's pantry on a shelf with water, electrolytes, and food.  The food and water gets rotated out and replenished regularly. There are jackets for all and shoes too by the front and the back door. 

Not to mention we are semi-off-grid and full-time preppers anyway, with rain barrels, solar and wind power, a fortress of a property, truth be told, and enough supplies to live on for months here. The issue each summer is what if it all burns down? 

We cut all shrubbery away from the porches and the trees away from the roof. We're plotting to get rid of the remaining cedars and we choose rock and concrete next to the house. Any fence that touches doesn't touch and is 4-6 inches away. It will buy us time. 

The attic has been checked and is in good condition. Nothing is up there save for fireproof insulation. The gas shut offs are labelled clearly. The gas fireplaces are off for the season and so are the wood ones, inspected, cleaned and closed. The outdoor firepit has a moat now but outdoor fires of that size are banned anyhow. We're down to tiny campfires on the beach if at all. We all have the wildfire app on our phones and we have an evacuation plan that we're working on as well as a meeting place away from home should we need it.  

If it does all burn to the ground I'm taking my boys and my children and moving back to the East Coast where summers are brisk and windy and there's nothing to burn on land already destroyed by salt-air. I'm going to call all of this a wash and start over, more simply this time. Less stuff. Less headaches. Less risk. Less heat. Less expense and less worry. 

It's not supposed to happen but you should always prepare as if it's about to. Then you can sleep at night knowing you're prepared.

Favoured by the fairies.

And just like that it's ten days later, I've had three whopping hours of sleep and the lilacs are finished, orangey-burnt purple petals forming a carpet extending ten feet around the diameter of each bush. The largest one is too big for me to cut on my own. Ben will do it easily and I did the general sides and underneath. The ones that are only a few years old are smaller and easier. I lamented at chopping them but it must be done. They're already spindly and tall and I'd like them to be full and solid, but the backyard ones are full south facing and the front ones are mostly shade so it's a bit like growing apples (which we do) and oranges (which we can't) in that they grow and behave fairly differently based on the amount of sun they receive. 

Kind of like your Bridget. She grew up in darkness so she's stunted and spindly and small and weak. Someone should have hacked me back years ago and tried again. 

I'm waiting for the postman-threeish packages coming. I'm waiting for dinner, though I don't even know what to make tonight. I'm waiting for the rain to come in heavy and soaking like last night as I lay awake, eyes open, brain racing, legs restless, breathing laboured. It's been sporadic and after I cut back everything I could this morning I gave everything a little water in case the rains don't actually hit. We've got so many huge trees and a network of shade via pergolas and gazebos and roofed areas that it's difficult for rain to reach the ground now. It's fine. I'm all but allergic to the sun, as I said I'm a child of the dark and I meant it. 

I watched Thrash this week on Netflix. Some gorgeous VFX work. Some predictable plotlines, some funny twists and really clever dialogue and cheering I didn't expect. I love creature films like I love slasher films and small-set films and stop-motion films and vintage films and well, any films, honestly. This one was a good way to kill a couple of hours and hell yes it could happen in real life, especially as storms get worse. These sharks weren't supernatural or vindictive, they were just sharks being sharks, after all. 

 I wonder if sharks like lilacs. I wonder what else is on Netflix to entertain me that I don't expect to and then am pleasantly surprised by. I wonder if I'll sleep tonight. Or any night, for that matter.

I left there on purpose.

  The snapdragons and lilies are about to open. The lilacs are fully resplendent and Ben and I take long walks around the property sticking our face into everything that doesn't currently contain a bee. There's a giant house spider living in my little stable studio and we have an agreement-he goes away while I clean and then later while I work and I let him live. I'm not a fan but after almost two decades here on the coast I'm not super afraid like I once was. It's like I tell the kids growing up-once you've been through worse, or have a little perspective, the scary things don't seem so scary after all. Insects are just doing what we're all doing-just trying to live. 

 Ben and I have a long history with lilacs and I will never pass one without stopping to breathe deeply. I did attempt to bring in some big bouquets for the tables but they were quickly re-relegated to the patio due to the overwhelming perfume they brought into the house. So my love for them is contingent on an equal does of petrichor and I just realized that now. 

 Today is a day off. A respite day, a plan booked going into the long weekend in order to facilitate rest after a very long and tense winter. 

I don't much like change in place or change in routine and I found solace in the smallest of things over the darkest of months. The boys remain vigilant and understanding as always as I fling myself wildly about my own life, bumping into once-sharp corners now rounded smooth from years of blunt connection. I listen to Drag Path play through my head like a piper's lament only for modern times and it never fails to strike me how my brain will cling to a melody until it loses its white-knuckle grip at last, falling back into the void below. 

I gained weight again, the inevitable result of eating on the run. Airports and convenience shops have little in the way of fresh fruits and vegetables and everything is too much too big too costly for what you're getting. I once asked for a plate of seasonal fruit at Reign in Toronto and it was $15. Now I go to the grocery store (not the creepy one, the big one further out) and pay that much for a bag of apples. Not a berry to be seen for that price but I don't complain. I wonder how we would have done it back in the day when Cole and I couldn't pay the electric bill without parking the car for the month because we had to pick heat and lights over gasoline. We lived up the hill from our grocery store back then and walked. I budgeted eight dollars a month for food back then and he stole from the restaurant he worked in to fill in the gaps when we got too hungry. 

We lived like spiders in the dark, skittering out when it seemed safe to get done what we needed to do before retreating back into the shadows in order not to scare people with our present-day ferity. 

You think I was feral. You never got to meet Cole. 

He did grow out of it, eventually but not enough to change his fate and that's okay. I watched from my shadows and decided never to take the chance and so I remain here hiding in the lilacs and negotiating with big spiders for real estate. Paying a kings ransom for some tree fruit and remembering every time I get a hint of it that rain is the most beautiful smell on earth. I thought it was flowers. I didn't know I was wrong.

Can you can you can you

Happy Mother's Day. This song has a chokehold on me.  

Beltane arrives with a whisper amongst the ten-foot-tall lilac hedges.

 That Sunday after I wrote that I moved a little over two-thirds of the soil myself. I could bury a body, or at least I need to stay strong enough so that if push came to shove, I could do it. All by myself. I was going to leave the small amount that remained for last Monday but then I think the boys felt sorry for me and came out and all but finished it, thanking me profusely for doing the lions share. I didn't tell them as a lion I would most likely mangle them and I also didn't tell them about staying limber in order to murder anyone who gets in my way. 

It's implied though. I'm sure of it. As much as they want to keep me locked up in a little box and leave me on the shelf, they're afraid of me. It's a mild fear, much the same as the fear of the brain freeze you get from the first ice cream from Bridge Drive-In once the floodwaters recede, usually around right now, which is just before Mother's Day. 

Raise your hand if you feel like the child-

Oh, just me? Fine. But at least I'm not afraid to admit it. 

The lilacs are indeed beginning to open. We've got three whites and a purple out front and the mother of all loaded purples out back and I keep sticking my face in them and inhaling deeply. Ben and I go for strolls every twelve to twenty hours, light or dark to check progress. The rest of the neighbours have wisteria but I love the lilacs even though the rest of the year they don't look like much. If I could create some kind of ever-blooming version then that would truly be heaven, along with a little ice cream and moonlight. 

It is a flower moon tonight and its slated to be warm overnight. I planted sunflower seeds. Maybe hasty? Maybe right on time. We're going to swim after dark tonight to mark the change in seasons and I can breathe without checking myself finally. Things feel normal again and less emergent. Things feel good. It all smells like lilacs and it's my favourite time of spring. 

Spring is not my favourite time of year, though, in case you thought it changed but lilac season is so close it's almost tied for first. 

 

We gotta move on, dear.

 It's like a years-long wait for the barest hint of inspiration. It's like waiting for a 16-block high ice sculpture to melt so you can find out the release of a new Drake album. It's like waiting for spring when spring is here and as Ben pointed out yesterday all of the lilac bushes save for the one struggle bus in the center of everything that barely survived has flowers coming and I can't wait for them to all explode at once. 

(For the record, I don't think I can name a Drake song anymore. Cellphone? Something. He's still the worst Degrassi kid to me and that will never change. Also a stunt wasting that much water on the precipice of  what will surely be a terrible forest fire season is all but criminal.

He's like Avenged Sevenfold. Don't care. Not aware but somehow I run into them freaking EVERYWHERE. Seem them live multiple times without even trying. Explain it, please, because I can't. I do love Afterlife and I've seen it live so perhaps the universe has chosen for me.)

We are looking at a lovely weekend with very very precious little to do and I'm so excited I could shit my pants. The dirt is still in a giant pile in the driveway but I can chip away at it. So can the boys. It's cheaper and healthier than going to the gym and safer than running. Especially these days. I run like there's cement in my brain now. Or at least in the cavity where my brain used to be before it packed up and slithered away to follow the music it heard. Probably coming from some shady, rusted truck driving by that featured a serial killer for a driver. Or maybe that's the plot of another Jeepers Creepers. I'll watch it. Watch me watch it.

Anyway I have a terrible artist block right now and it's been going on pretty much for all of the 2020s and I'm getting fed the fuck up. I'm trying things and they're working but do I want to do it? No. Not at all.