It's Tuesday. Sorry you haven't had anything to read since Friday or whenever I was here last. I threw a punch and was sent to purgatory circa 1633. No devices. No access. No light. I contemplated turning into Black Philip but then decided I could tackle my book pile instead. The boys all felt bad and figured I learned my lesson and also got tired of incessantly relaying replies to Ruth who is always connected to me and refuses to play along (it is a game, isn't it. It gets harder when suddenly the children are now adults and you have to explain yourselves, isn't it?) so I got my services back yesterday and I outclassed them by saying it no longer mattered anyway and I reached out and pulled the chain to turn the lights back off and I refused to engage or exgage for that matter, and they came crawling back one at a time to do a sort of virtual penance while I ignored it all in my dark corner of the world and I came out when I damn well felt like it, which isn't even now, technically because it's still too warm so I'm only here for a minute. The second someone decides I have died or been killed and will never write again is usually the moment I will gesture absently from the back that they are probably wrong, and that I am indeed here.
So hi. (Gestures absently)
I am reading a lot. I turned on the air conditioning today before I even needed it. I only cried twice so far and I don't think I am having a good summer overall. Maybe a little but certainly not a lot. I remember being nine, when my biggest worries were whether or not I would run out of freezies or when my lip balm would melt. I remember tanning because I was never inside. I remember the endless patch of eczema on the outer corner of my right eye and my nose which is back again and that's how I know I've hardly moved past the daydreamer dissociation that keeps me going, keeps me from focusing too keenly on all the bad parts of the world and has honestly saved my life more than once.
I am ignoring Lochlan, who pulled me against him, wrapping one hand around my back so I was pressed against his heartbeat and the other hand was around the back of my head so I could hear that beat while I felt it, too and then he kissed the top of my head and took a step back but then put his hands around my hips and pushed me up against the door and my dress hiked up to my waist and he let out the longest breath I have witnessed from him as the air got sucked from the room and our lungs and then he yanked my dress back down on his way out after putting me down while I swore a blue streak and then, the irony here, oh are you ready for this one is that not fifteen minutes later I was making tea to take out to the gazebo with my sketching supplies when Caleb made a comment about a girl and a door and a moment and a double standard and I had enough and tried to slap him but I couldn't unclench my hand (oops. Well, maybe not oops but oops is my official response) and popped him a good one and the bigger irony is that the all-seeing PJ saw it and grounded me and then Lochlan levelled the punishment because what's good for the gander is good for the Bridget too and yeah.
Yeah. Exactly.
Life is a big run on sentence and it's up to you to make sense of it, I guess. Or maybe it's up to me. In which case we are most certainly doomed.