Smash Um forget Um cookies.

 It's cool today. Jeans and no shirts for some, simple linen sundresses for others. I'll let you figure out who's wearing what. The pool and the air seem to be the same temperature, the skies are a pale blue that remind me of Jacob's eyes. The clouds persist, but just a little. There's a blanket folded on the back of the swinging bench on the porch and one on my favourite egg-chaise by the pool, just for me, just in case I get cold and want to wrap myself up like a burrito. 

I've been strolling the neighborhood picking blackberries and picking up litter, petting everyone's cats, dogs and children, talking to Ruth on the phone half the time and my dad the other half. My dad has gotten old suddenly. Gone is the stubborn, unfeeling mean giant of a man and in his place is someone shorter, frailer and more understanding, somehow, as if the wind has been taken completely out of his sails. He's almost fun to talk to now, and I almost want to go back on my vow to feel nothing when it comes to my folks, as they never felt anything about me, other than some sort of smug satisfaction that they could just lie about my life instead of being horrified by it. 

But as I said, I have made the choice not to care.

At all. 

Cole's anniversary came and went. The clouds came and went. The rain came in briefly and then went. I watched like seven dozen movies and documentaries and true crime dramas on Netflix and I don't think I liked any of them. I loved the mom in Run Rabbit Run but not the story. I'm watching American Psycho now just to remind myself that Patrick Bateman is a construct of a construct and Caleb took some stupid cues back in the day, though I feel like men like Caleb are more then inspiration for the writers instead of the result, especially since this movie is only twenty years old. 

I haven't 'done' anything. A little gardening. I stalked a very big beetle yesterday. I cleaned out one of the Jeeps since it was downright filthy and I scrubbed the inside of the pantry (shelves too). I hung more lanterns. I cleaned some baseboards and windowsills and I painted an old set of bookends that my grandfather made and I have carted around ever since and they're holding the cookbooks. I found a copy of Kim's Cookbook for Young People, a treasured first cookbook that Bailey and I studied and copied and cooked before I was one of the boys. I bought it and am waiting for it to arrive. I'm going to send it on to her for her birthday. 

 I haven't made much progress in my own reading. I want to do a lot of sewing and painting and reading and resting but the dog is dying and he needs me. I can't leave a room without him anymore and it's breaking my heart. Fifteen years of having an ever-present shadow and when I don't have a shadow anymore I don't know what I will do. This dog is my constant and my comfort, even sleeping up close to my head when the boys moved here and I was left behind and I watched 30 days of night and got weirdly scared.

I needed him and now he needs me so if he needs me to sleep up by his face I will do it. It's the least I can do for him. His spine is sharp and his eyes are cloudy. He has no idea what his name is anymore and he rarely eats. But it's okay. He can live out his days on love.

I didn't mean for this to be sad. I meant to sit down and tell you how reluctant I have become to be reasonable. I'm back to living in my own head and maybe it's the pills, maybe it's the dog, but it just feels like someone dropped a concrete block between me and life and only Lochlan and the children can get around it. 

That's not a bad thing. Just a thing that I see. But my eyes are cloudy too. Cloudy and rainy, more often than not.

Dumb bitch.

Cole (Trey to me and the boys) died seventeen years ago today. 

Huh.

It seems like it was a movie. It seems like another lifetime. Maybe it was just a lifetime movie that I caught at the end on a fuzzy cable channel back in the day when we had channels on the television instead of apps. On the upside, I don't miss anything I want to see now because I can start it when I please.

Seventeen years, and this weekend Henry turns twenty-two. And he's finished university and already working away in his chosen field and his bosses are very proud of him. 

Cole would have been proud of him too. 

Everyone is. 

Would he be proud of me? I don't know. Maybe. Probably not. He always had this disdain for me, as I deferred to Lochlan forever (and will forever) and Cole felt as though I was marked. That he would always be second place. 

So tonight I raise my glass and pour it out in the grass for another year gone by and say things out loud I never would have dared to say with him present. 

Third. You were third place. Ha.

I still say it quietly. He's probably around here somewhere.

The food trucks in my hood tonight are ice cream and shawarmas. Perfect.

It's a beautiful Friday afternoon and I am soaked to the bone with chlorine, save for George, who is wrapped in a fiberglass sleeve. Wet hair plastered to my skull and my bathing suit is almost dry at least thanks to the eight minutes of Vitamin D allowance I was given in order to thrive without burning. 

In between swims I am emailing around, getting things done, tossing around terms like subrogation and probability. My primroses are about to bloom again. My potatoes are growing up everywhere. The cucumbers and pumpkins are flowering and a squirrel stole all of my radishes before they could fully start. The grapes are green pearls in the shade, protected from the heat and Dalton and Duncan are brown already, in high contrast to Lochlan, who is mildly pink, like me, but has hair the color of recently polished copper. 

It's my favourite time of year.

I'll get a fat cheque from the subrogation nonsense. I am trying not to be hasty. I'll get it all organized. I'm thinking of getting Lasik or PRK or at the very least contacts, and I'm thinking that there are enough festivals with food trucks and live music that I could go all summer without having a single sad thought or at least less of them and every year I say that all I'm going to do is lie on my back under the stars and eat Twizzlers and sing at the top of my lungs. Every year I do it maybe four nights tops. This year I am going for a record. 

The songs are whatever is playing on eighties radio. I don't know anything else, lyrically, I mean. 

PJ made me a large ice with water and grapefruit juice. Dinner is FFY (Fend for yourself) since every Friday night Henry goes out with friends and plays pool and drinks diet pepsi because the pub doesn't have diet coke and so we get takeout lunch on Fridays. Today was A&W but I only had a chicken BLT and I am stuffed. I might have a coconut pineapple popsicle later. I might sit outside on the porch and look at my flowers or out back on the patio and look at my sea. 

Maybe I'll do both. 

This weekend we need to do some yard work if it's not too hot and birthday-shop for Henry. Nothing like leaving it til the last minute. We also need to sleep.

A record.

 Unless I am seriously indisposed, AKA injuried/committed/kidnapped, even in my semi-lucid state I have never gone this long between writings. No, I'm not gone. I'm just busy. I go up to Cows for ice cream. Messie Bessie is this year's favourite. The cones aren't stale yet. Hilarious because it's a busy place. It has some weird affiliation with Anne of Green Gables now, not sure if they are just capitalizing on the island's most popular export or what but I found it strange. 

I finished the second season of Yellowjackets and I made two whole cardigans while doing so. Nice ones. For me and for Ruth. Hers is fall-hued, mine is the colours of the sea. As always. 

I let Daniel cut my hair so short everyone has been saluting when I walk past. PJ keeps asking who the little boy is that he keeps seeing. It wasn't even funny the first time. 

I convinced the boys that we no longer needed the half-broken meteorological station anymore, that we can simply look outside and know what's up, like they did in the old days. 

That did it and I bagged up the pieces from the outdoor sensors, ripped the digital readout panel off the wall and breathed a sigh of relief. That thing was an albatross that we stared at too much, gauging the heat by numbers instead of by feel. Using half-functional technology to decide for us if we were hot or if it was hot enough to turn on the fan or the A/C or whatever. 

One of my fondest bucket-list items in life is to become a serial minimalist but convenience holds me back. Also I am a magpie and collect shiny things so it's tough anyway but now I think very hard before I add to my collections or buy on a whim. 

Not like that isn't hard with the economy the piece of shit that it is.

I finished a defacto bucket list because I had never made one. I had a lot of plans floating around my head mentally but nothing concrete. It's good to have one. Though what happens when you complete all the things on the list? Do you make a new list? Kill yourself? Remember the little things? Become a grumpy oldtimer? Someone tell me please, before the list becomes a catalyst. 

I need to buy some shorts. Mine are all worn out. I need to drink less. I want to sit outside in the evening all summer and watch the flames and read my book and watch the waves and eat cheese and grapes and not talk and not worry about heat or Coleiversaries or the fact that Henry turns twenty-two this month or the damage being fixed on the Jeep this week (not my fault, covered by insurance) and I need to sleep better, more often and just do nothing. I need a lot of things. Been saying this for decades.

I'll try and come back sooner. Probably tomorrow. Spent a lot of time away but I'm home now. Also I learned I refuse to drink liquids that come in containers I can't see through. Who knew?