Cabin fever.

Q: What do you get when you put a bee in front of an owl?

A: A Bowl.

You all know what the owl jokes mean. A trip to the cabin! Yes! In the snow, with hot chocolate and the wood stove and the crackly AM-only radio which means Jacob gets a captive audience for his acoustic loves ongs. But a Sunday night trip means we get up really early and will be back in the city by about 8 am, in time for school.

It's worth it, it will be the last night away for the year. We're not going away for Christmas because of so many reasons. I must go pack, the kids are so excited and the temperatures are almost bearable outside so this is a good night to head out.

See you tomorrow.

300 and a permanent eclipse.

125 days married was marked quite sleepily with Bridget closing her eyes and letting her head slip to one side and then jolting awake when it hit Jacob's shoulder. I did this so many times in the dark overly-warm movie theatre while watching The Fountain that we're going to have to try to see it again because my only recollection involves a bittersweet scene that involved kissing in a clawfoot tub. That's it. That's all I've got. And Jacob laughed sheepishly and admitted he didn't pay much attention to the film because he was having much more fun watching me nod off repeatedly.

Instead I'll point out that this is my 300th entry. And that it's really not so much a relationship blog as it is a blog about Jake. Poor guy, he never had a chance to escape my attention. He's been a very good sport nonetheless, while I alternately build him up and tear him down here because although he isn't perfect, he is as close to it as any man will ever get, in my eyes. And he puts up with his Bridget without ever demoralizing me, disrespecting me or hurting me all the while with the clear expression in his eyes of love and longing for me that knocks people flat.

One of these days I'm going to build a pinhole camera so I can look directly at him without imploding when he does that. If I did it without some sort of shield I would be a perpetual puddle of mush. He's an amazing man and I can't believe he's all mine.

It's even harder to believe when he's running around the house this morning with his hair standing on end and an axe, spouting lines from The Shining and making me laugh while we get ready to go to the Christmas tree farm. Because yes, as freaking adorable as he is, the thought of him out in the woods chopping down a nine-foot tree by himself scares me even without all the Jack Torrance references.

Battle braids.

Bridget's rocking to Eulogy this morning.

    No way to recall
    What it was that you had said to me,
    Like I care at all.
    But it was so loud.
    You sure could yell.
    You took a stand on every little thing
    And so loud.

I can't take credit for coining today's title phrase, Jacob came up with it many years ago to describe my method of operation for getting things done. I put my hair in two long braids and over the course of the day little wisps and waves escape but I don't have to take time to tie it back and put it up when I'm trying to get a lot accomplished. And jeans. I hardly ever wear jeans anymore but they're on today with one of Jacob's big long-sleeved t-shirts that has a jolly roger on the front.

Battle indeed.

I wrote two short stories this morning for a publication, called in a few favors for a little extra work while I'm on a creative (read: medicated and loopy) bender and planned to finish wrapping and packaging the away gifts that I'd like to mail this weekend. I'm trying to get some things out of the way so we can go and get our Christmas tree this weekend and maybe bake cookies for the kids' classrooms.

I've been pulling out the rubbermaid totes full of ornaments and lights and stockings and trying not to cringe at all the hard moments. The First Married Christmas one from 1993, Cole's stocking that has his name on it, we had a set of four that my mom made, though she's hurriedly knitting one for Jacob now.

But it's Friday and I'm alive and I'm happy and I have rosy cheeks and 6 new pounds of flesh to carry on my frame since my last weight check and I've asked Christian not to tell me any more insults that find their way to him regarding me because I can't listen. Ben said I was just a typical whoredinary girl and it stung, even though I'm well aware it's sour grapes. I just can't do it right now.

I need to ride this high while it's here. In front of me.

I'm so excited about getting a real tree. With a real truck. We went for a very long drive last night. The kids fell asleep on the way home, which meant that Jacob had to carry them into the house and straight up to bed, where I managed to get them into their jammies and tucked in tightly and cozily for the night. They like the big red truck.

I pointed out to Jake that it seemed a little flashy for him and he explained that he was trying to find some sort of happy medium between my old car and his older truck and it seemed like a real pretty truck was a good choice. You should hear what Ben said about Jacob having a shiny new truck and a shiny new wife and a new job and a whole litany of bullshit about selling out his ideals and Jacob laughed and said that Ben could go fuck himself, which wasn't generous or empathetic at all but somehow entirely appropriate.

But yes, a few hiccups a long the way but I can manage them because I'm wearing my battle braids.

    Don't you step out of line.
    Don't you fucking lie.
    You've claimed all this time that you would die for me.
    Why then are you so surprised when you hear your own eulogy?
    You had a lot to say.
    You had a lot of nothing to say.

Birth of an urban cowboy.

Hey, Bridge? Come outside for a sec.

Huh? No, fuck that. It's freezing.

Just for a moment. Get your coat on.

What in the heck is that?

Your new ride, princess.

Well, that...that's really big, Jake.

Sitting out front blocking the sunlight was a candy-apple dark red Dodge Ram 3500 quad cab behemoth of a pickup truck. I have to admit, she is awfully pretty and I'm slightly jealous of Jacob's attentions being shifted off me to this new toy. The one with running lights and dual wheels in the back.

I didn't think we needed a truck that big. It's a far cry from the old beloved vintage Suburban, which finally went to the junkyard in the sky, the same one he's been driving since he was 16 years old. But at least this one comes without worries, it's brand new. He's earned it. He really has.

It has heated seats. For my perpetually cold bony little ass. Oh, terrific, honey!

What's funny is I can just see over the hood. On tip-toes. It fits him, though and he's like a kid in a candy store looking at it. Like consumerism just skidded into our house and bit him in the ass. He had to have her. And he looks like a cowboy now with his new truck, having completed the last vestiges of the western male myth to a tee. I asked him if he was going to wear his cowboy hat now to complete the package.

What, you think I should?

Why, yes. Yes I do. Hot damn.

Drive-by folk music lessons.

While I ride the disco biscuit wave of anti-depressant goodness, you're going to be treated to an awful lot of head-clearing drive-by snippets. Just so you know.

I don't think I have ever heard a folk song build and sway and then positively explode quite the way this one does. I love it. Hang on, it's quietly goofy until the last quarter, and then this from Elephant, by Damien Rice.


    What's the point of this song? Or even singing?
    You've already gone, why am I clinging?
    Well I could throw it out, and I could live without
    And I could do it all for you
    I could be strong
    Tell me if you want me to lie
    'Cause this has got to die
Epic.

Midnight turkeys.

(The title today is borrowed from one of Henry's favorite books)

I'm an idiot.

This morning at 1:37 am I woke up coughing so hard I was afraid I would break something in my chest. Old habits die hard, and I immediately quietly slid out of bed and headed for the couch downstairs, having grown accustomed over the years to Cole yelling at me if I woke him up (even when it was fine for him to wake me up at strange hours to rip off my underthings and do whatever he wanted). I had a glass of juice, checked out a few blogs and then settled on the couch with a blanket and the couch cushions and a big swallow of cough medicine.

Around 4 am Jacob called for me,

Get'cher little ass in bed where it belongs before you freeze to death.

I went back upstairs and it was so dark now with the heavy winter curtains up that I was feeling my way along and I made it to the upstairs hallway and then I went to cross to our room and flipped over the portable oil-filled heater we run in the hall when it's really really cold outside. The heater crashed onto it's side and I think I broke two of my toes and I was half-delirious from the lack of sleep and all the medication.

Bridge? Are you okay?

No, fuck. I'm so tired, Jake.
I found the light switch and flicked it long enough to righten the heater and move it out of my way and then I turned the light off again and ran and jumped into bed. Jacob snuggled me down into his arms and then out of habit I reached down, yanked the quilt up to my ears and elbowed him in the eye.

Jesus, Bridge!

Sorry!
This morning he was looking at the hint of a bruise under his right eye and listening to me yelp as I tried to pull wool socks on over my wounded toes and he laughed and told me that charm school failed me because I have the grace of a yeti in snowshoes.

It was payback for teasing the tooth fairy, of that I'm sure.

I will say I'm doing pretty well for someone who's had around three hours of sleep. Please no jokes about narcoleptic nymphomaniacs today because I will hurt you. And I promise they won't be superficial wounds like the ones we're both sporting today.

Tagged.

Smarts has tagged me to stay warm to tell you five things you may not know about me. She warned that it's harder than it looks. She's right!

1. When I was ten years old one of the boys ran into me with a pencil and stabbed me in the ribcage. The lead broke off and even though it happened twenty-five years ago I still have a dark dot under my skin.

2. I don't know the words in the correct order to Oh Canada. I can get through it using a mixture of English and French lyrics so all is not lost. I stay now and sing with Henry's class in the morning so that I can learn it again.

3. Growing up I had a huge crush on Jack Lemmon. My friends were mooning over Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer and I was off mooning over Jack.

4. I can do a perfect impression of Andrea Brooke Ownbey. I like to use it in public and drive Jacob crazy with laughter.

5. I cry when I hear Auld Lang Syne. It doesn't matter if I'm happy or sad or if it's on a movie on TV, there's just something about that song. Thirty-five years into this life you would think I would have a handle on that by now but I don't.

Yes, Smarts, that was tougher than I thought it would be.

Tooth fairy.

In this big old creaky Victorian resplendent with carved woodwork and ancient plaster walls, where the light shines warm through leaded glass windows and laughter echoes off the high ceilings, lies a most ominous secret.

Oh yes.

In this house the tooth fairy is said to be a tiny bell-ringing, sparkling milky-way shadowed creature with a beautiful smile and papery butterfly wings.

It's all a hideous lie.

In reality the tooth fairy is 6'4", blonde, generally unshaven and wearing only pajama bottoms and he scratches his chin in bewilderment, fishes a five dollar bill out of his wallet and attempts to navigate a floor strewn with Polly Pocket wardrobe implements. Once the toy minefield is successfully navigated, our giant cumbersome fairy will then knock the clock radio off the nightstand thereby waking up Ruth, who confronts our fairy still holding the tooth box.

Oh shit.

His excuse?

I was just clearing a path so the tooth fairy won't have any problems finding you tonight. Go back to sleep, sweetheart.

The fairy was dispatched once again around midnight and I'm pleased to say he made much less of a ruckus the second time around and this morning Ruthie was a very wealthy young lady indeed.

Pocketful.

    Like the coldest winter chill
    Heaven beside you... Hell within
    Like the coldest winter will
    Heaven beside you... Hell within
    And you think you have it still, heaven inside you
    So there's problems in your life
    That's fucked up, and I'm not blind
    I'm just see through faded, super jaded
    And out of my mind
    Do what you wanna do
    Go out and seek your truth
    When I'm down and blue
    Rather be me than you

This song is too high for Jacob's baritone but he's singing it anyway, because it's the only AIC song I like and it's fitting for this remarkably freezing cold day. This day in which even my zen player wouldn't play because it was -35 (windchill) when I went out to shovel the sidewalk.

Because forks and automobiles are off-limits but I can still wield the mighty blade of snow removal. I was gifted new silk longjohns this weekend and I'm only feeling pain in my fingertips and toes when I go outside.

Oh and yes, he's very impressed that I have once again written down everything that's going wrong. I got called by my entire name this morning, something he usually saves for the kids when they do something they aren't supposed to on purpose. Yes, I wrote those entries on purpose. But he will live because he says my very bad is pretty darn good and he'll take it.

Good, because I need to look forward to being warm again, someday. That warms me. He still wants me even when I'm a mess.

And when she was bad she was horrid.

And when she was bad she was horrid

    You slid away from me
    Crept away from me
    I tried to keep you down
    And there was nothing I could say.
    So what you're trying to say
    is you don't wanna play.
    But what you want and what you need
    doesn't mean that much to me.

It lurks in the dark and comes out to strip us of our thick skins and contented hearts just when we need them the most. The allowance made for the depression to hang around, even with all the pinching going on around here.

The issues with our sex life remain. I wrote about it back in June, and little has changed. You'll never meet a more dedicated couple in love bound to self-destruct over issues that scream of a history together that's too long. It went on too damned long.

See? Aargh. I can't even figure out how to explain it without exposing myself, us to everyone in a terribly invasive way. Worse that I usually do. Surprise!

Loch's prediction of Very Good Things to come when Bridget recovered from the onslaught of Very Bad Things that took place was ignorant of one of the biggest points of note. Jake and I did sleep together once before, although oh so briefly back in 2000. He's had me with far less baggage than I carry now. He knows what it can be like. He knows and he wants that. He wants it now.

But it isn't like that anymore and he's feeling ripped off, frustrated, impatient. And it shows in everything he does. He's tense. Not with me, with everything else. He'll blame the whole world while he stands there and refuses to blame me for the way I am.

Nights are bad. In the morning when I have no control and I'm hardly awake, it works, somehow. It's much easier to write about.

At night with me, Jacob has taken to doing whatever he can to get me to shut up, help me relax, stop fighting him, and stop asking him to do things that he will not do. Ever. And in my head and my heart I know none of this is fair and I wouldn't dream of throwing it in his face but then in the heat of the moment everything changes and Bridget turns into some sort of little sex maniac. His words, not mine. He has called me challenging, combative (when feeling generous) and fucking messed up (when not).

So when I write about him holding me down or pushing me down, it isn't the same as it used to be. He's doing it to make me stop. Stop trying to do things he doesn't want me to do. To stop me from being a freak.

When I'm so excited I cannot breathe I ask him for things that I wouldn't ask for any other time. It happens. It flies out and I can't put it back in fast enough. He loses his desire for me when I do this and I know that. Well, maybe not, he's perpetually into me. It doesn't matter if it's quiet or if it's loud, with music or without, following a lapdance or a round of stoli or a mug of hot chocolate. Everything. Nothing. It works up to a point. Everything works up to a point and hell, more than once I have begged him to use me in some sick fashion and Jacob got up and left the room, punching the doorframe on the way out. But then he is back moments later, trying to bundle me into his warm, strong arms, kissing my eyelashes, my ears, my mouth, my skin all over because in spite of this bitter pain he still wants me all of the time. Like an addiction to something you are certain will kill you.

I can't even figure him out. He's fighting me, fighting himself. Unable to resist even when he seems to hate us both for our actions and reactions. And me? I'm fighting history, a way of life I've been accustomed to for so long I can't figure out any other way short of becoming a doll, without moving or speaking, and honestly?

What sort of fun would that be?

I may be fucked up but I don't want to be a dead fuck. Because please. Life is too short for bad sex. Even fucked up crazy painful (emotionally) miserable fighting-through-it sex is better than just Bridget lying there and taking it.

Or so I've been taught.

Yes, that's a supremely painful admission too. Or is it shameful? Jacob will tell you different. He would take me unconscious. I swear it. So has very little actually changed for me?

And Jacob would have you believe that everything, that his life with Bridget is perfect. And it would be except that he refuses still to venture to new far away places in the dark. Those same dark places that I am somehow refusing to crawl out of, thereby making his life equally imperfect. Not in some misguided attempt to remain the tiny little bad girl that I want to be but because the dark is a familiar comfort and sometimes, as I have said before, I liked it. Some of it. Jacob doesn't have to follow in Cole's footsteps nor does he need to reflect the terrible level of depravity that Cole had reached with me, but there's a limit I have that I like to push regularly and I want Jake to meet me in the middle.

I'm not a bread and butter girl, there is nothing pedestrian about sleeping with Bridget and as intriguing as it once was to Jacob, now it's an embarrassment that he wishes would just go away. He likes his lap dances and he likes me riding his lap or spread out on the table or the floor and dipped in something sweet but everything else is completely off limits. With no room to negotiate.

Off limits would be fine for most people but when you've done it all there's pretty much a list of things you enjoyed to some extent and I'd like Jacob to take me to those places. Because with him it would be a million times better, a million times greater. Oh my God, I cannot fathom the highs that those experiences would achieve with him. It would be fun and not scary with Jake.

And he won't and I feel like a goddamn freak some nights. Like last night when he propped himself onto his elbows and clamped his hands over my ears and told me just to focus on his face and not think, just focus and take it. And he fucked me for a long while and everything was good and okay and wonderful then.

I would do anything for him, because it's Jake.

He proclaims me still completely fucked up. He's right. I am. I know all this.

And still I fight for something that was never mine, and we both fight for something that is still just out of reach, for now.

I just hope we get there. Because after all this time it hurts. It hurts to know that the most intimate part of our love is a confirmed disaster. Any progress here is going to be hard-won and it's own reward.

Why can't I fix this?