It's been 328 days, 37 to go and I'm lying if I tell you I'm not counting.
But I'm also living. Trying to choose paint colors and swim lesson times and distractions and words. Choosing words is the easiest and the hardest thing of all but here I am, the one saving grace in my life being this journal because nothing else is constant except maybe the sun or the moon but maybe they're total bullshit, special effects meant to make us feel less alone somehow. I'm not sure how that works but we'll leave it for another day to explore. I refuse to go down a tangent because I have things to discuss.
Ben didn't come back with us on Sunday evening, instead choosing to stay on with Nolan for a few more days and soak up the simplicity of life on the farm and maybe give himself a chance to get over the worst of his rage and his shakes and his cravings in private, because he got progressively worse as the weekend went on and he tried so hard but I still found myself flinching when he spoke too loud or got too close or shook too hard. He should be back tomorrow or Thursday and we are being babysat by Uncle Daniel in the meantime.
And I had dinner with the devil last night, which was interesting in that he was behaving again and that's almost more frightening than when he doesn't. He bought the last loft we looked at last Friday and then threw me a curveball when he announced that he planned to move in as soon as possible. They have about ten days to finish it, closing is on the seventeenth of October.
I'm noticing everyone is sort of doing that. PJ has booked his vacation for the first two weeks of November. Schuyler moved up his dental surgery. Ben isn't hitting the road until early December again. And Duncan hasn't made any plans at all. Loch took a six week work term here to start in two weeks and I'm so incredibly touched by what I see them doing it makes a huge lump in my throat and my eyes are swimming and I can't even focus.
I was going to attempt to ask for a medically-induced coma for November but I think I'm going to be okay.
Caleb asked me formally at dinner if I would be his assistant here. He hired me to work for him part-time this week, helping to arrange the move, oversee the builders and the inspectors and the financial aspect of everything and he kept hinting at wanting me to come work for him full-time because I'm good at it, or so he said, but I wouldn't be allowed in a million years and so I turned him down.
And please, before the feminists start the email campaign about what I am and am not allowed to do, let's remember we're talking about Satan here. And Bridget.
I would have turned him down anyway. I have no interest in being with him on a daily basis. I have no interest or plans to see him on a weekly basis. I'm snorting my face off picturing him trying to live here through the winter with our blisteringly frigid temperatures and endless ice and wind. A cold day in hell indeed. He wants me to pick out a truck for him.
A what?
Can you picture him driving a truck?
Cold. Hell. Yeah.
But dinner was nice and he didn't do anything stupid. I didn't either. For once. He did comment that my hair suited me at last, being shorter and much darker and he spent far too long staring at my legs whenever he could but otherwise, yes, I know. He's still up to something. When is he ever not?
