A reassurance post.

Okay, that's enough. I'm going to bury it with nonsense. Since a bunch of you have tagged me as bipolar, which I'm not and I know people who are and my doctors have all confirmed that I am not, thank you oh so very much. There's not a whole lot of mania around here. We've just got the depression and the PTSD/baggage and everything else is a mirage. He's dead, the only way through is up.

Let's be happy, please?

Here's where I point out if you Google Stoli and blow, I'm the fifth hit. Which is funny, because life doesn't get that exciting around here. Thank goodness (or is that My god, I'm dull?).

Here's where I point out that Jacob has become obsessed with my hands. He can cover my whole fist with one of his. He can put my whole hand in his mouth, which wasn't funny, it was scary and I threatened to take out his wisdom teeth with my bare hands while I was captive.

He walks past me and stops to warm my fingers in his hands. My fingertips are cracked and split from the cold and the dry air. It's his way of finding something to be fussy over so he can keep an eye on me. The sweetness.

We're okay. I swear. We still love each other beyond words, nothing there has changed, even though our relationship appears to have an obstacle course that makes the one that the army uses the nursery-school run.

Loch sent me flowers. Pink roses. Just as touching was the thirty four emails (and counting) with sweet support inside from readers. Only 2 icky ones (so far). Thank you, I'll be responding soon.

And lastly, marmalade and butter. Why? Just because.

Because I watched Last Tango in Paris and butter has been a favorite word ever since.

Because you can knock me down but you won't make me any less perverted.

Hugs all around. Hugs all round.

Brigetum Thiopental.

Hi, fresh out of therapy, maybe you want to skip today.

I don't think life affords much time for the most important aspects of itself, ironically. My own is a perfect example. In between running the kids to school and skating and hockey and doctors' appointments and getting new glasses and groceries and vet visits and work and phone calls and endless meal-making and laundry lies a few precious hours in which to write, sleep and visit my therapist. Fuck, if you want to boil the days down into their fundamentals, there remains very little time to simply sit and think, to heal and to steal precious bountiful remnants of affection from the one you love.

Don't you think?

So this is it. My healing time, here on this page. And when read it paints a picture of the girl in the corner who appears to be incredibly self-centered and egotistical. As if everyone stands on those eggshells and waits for me to decide how the day is going to be.

And that's not how it works. Gee, wouldn't it be nice. No, instead I made a sword out of hopes and a paper shield and I don't know how to use either one but I made a stab at creating a defense in order to protect these three and it finally crumbled right in front of me.

Stop reading, okay, please?

They're alright, no worries. The kids won't really get it until they're grown up. Last Wednesday I would have written a whole bunch more but I'm still finding my way around how I would like to be presented now that everything has changed again, and we're fighting again because he is disappointed in me and angry at himself and Claus is possibly a bigger miracle worker than ever and it would have been the one and only day in my life where it was the worst time ever for Caleb to show up.

And yesterday even. We fought, bitterly and loudly. My voice is hoarse from this sickness. Jacob's is hoarse from talking, yelling and crying too. He ripped a door right off the hinges and now he has something that is easier to fix than his wife.

He took off last night and went down to the church and sat on the steps at the front of the sanctuary in the dark with only the moon coming through the windows and I finally went down very late after getting someone to come to the house for the kids and I found Jacob there and we held each other and didn't talk. He prayed, I listened.

I think God was out.

But it's only the beginning because once again I tried to pretend that everything was fine and I tried to keep going with my secrets intact and once again I failed.

I should know better but I'm not learning. I lied. Again. Surprise.

I said Cole didn't hurt me. I lied. And I'm sorry.

Jacob has saved my life more than once and for some reason this whole experience is one that I can't hide from. Into truths that I can't hide from, and into the expectations of a man who has given up everything so that I don't hide from him. So that he can hold me. And love me.

He knew, he suspected, he had already decided that something else was there but the longer I let it go, the easier it became for all of us to hide it. And last week with Claus' help I managed to tell Jacob of so many burdens I never wanted him to bear and then suddenly before I could help it I was spilling secrets I never planned to tell and it was all out at last and Claus was satisfied and he actually said to me,

And now we can begin.

Didn't I say that before?

And Jacob sat there clutching my hand and staring at me like a stranger until I swore at him and then he yelled at me. All of his fears came out, all of his promises over the years that I had pushed aside.

The broken dishes. Christ, I knew I should have found him and killed him then.

I'm sorry.

Don't you ever apologize to me. My God, Bridge. Why? What were you protecting him for?

I wasn't protecting him, I was protecting you.

I don't need protection. What were you saving me from?

This.

What is this, Bridget? TELL ME WHAT THIS IS!

Me.

We went back today, together, and Claus and Jake are confident now that the truth is on the table at last and we can work at this. That now we finally might get through this. Me.

I hope so. I feel lighter. I also feel stripped and exposed and just...lighter somehow. And yet there are still layers buried so far underground, someday someone will find oil.

    You said, 'Jesus, please forgive me of my crimes
    Sanctify this withered heart of mine'.


*(This post has been edited slightly for privacy since first being posted. Thank you for your understanding.)

A halo made of antimony.

Watch her fly, Jacob. And be ready with your arms wide to catch her.

I once talked myself into a corner and I decided I liked it there and so I never left it again. He has stayed patiently close to anchor my crooked halo over my horns while I stirred him with my delightful stories and my adoration.

I don't know why he does that.

I don't know if he'll return. His princess added an unexpected tale of repugnance to her repertoire and when you suspect something but its never confirmed it's easy to forget that it might be true after all.

Reverse psychology.

It's getting long again.

Yeah, I suppose I should shave it.

Keep it, it'll look great when you meet David Suzuki.

Yeah or I could shave it off and look younger.

You and Ed Genochio*. You both look hot with beards and yet you both keep shaving them off.

You think Ed Genochio is hot?

Of course. Don't you?

Not so much, Bridge.

Well, you should, because he is.

What about David Suzuki?

That depends.

I see.

He's no Ed.

Stop with the Ed nonsense.

Are you jealous?

I've walked more than he's biked.

I don't doubt it.

I've been to more places, too.

Are you playing a one-sided game of my-cock-is-bigger-than-yours?

Possibly.

Why on earth do you need to do that?

Because you said he was cute.

Well, he is. He's got a great accent, too.

I don't need to know this, Bridge!

(*For the record, I've had a crush on Ed Genochio for a few years now.)

Nocturne.

Today's barometer is that we're all sick again. Last night I took Nyquil to quiet the raging sinus pressure and pain and had a restless sleep. Henry suffered the worst, coughing most of the night, tossing, turning and at one point calling out for..Daddy.

The kids don't call Jacob Daddy, they call him Jake.

The hardest parts of life are not my own, they are the children's, too young to fully understand life as it is now, their dreams bring back their memories in full bloom, as if they could reach out and touch in their sleep what no longer exists in their waking hours. Henry is no exception. On nights when he couldn't sleep Cole would rub his back and sing Harry Chapin to him, Cats in the Cradle, sort of an inevitable confession because Cole knew he worked too damned much and he felt guilty constantly but he never changed. I hate that song. Hate it.

Last night Henry asked Jacob to sing him to sleep and rub his back like daddy used to do when he had time. And Jacob couldn't dare bring himself to sing that fucking song and yet he wasn't about to refuse Henry any request for comfort that he could ever ask of Jake. And so Jake settled blissfully on a song that Henry now calls Jacob's lullaby, even though Henry is well aware that it rests on one of Mommy's favorite CDs of all time, the final track of U2's Unforgettable Fire, and he's heard it a million times before, but never a cappella, in Jacob's baritone, at three o'clock in the morning in the dark, which lent it a haunting simplicity that left me with no words at all.

    Sleep
    Sleep tonight
    And may your dreams
    Be realized
    If the thundercloud
    Passes rain
    So let it rain
    Let it rain
    Rain on him

A polaroid from 1976.

    Sing with me,
    Sing for the year,
    Sing for the laughter and sing for the tears.
    Sing it with me
    Just for today,
    Maybe tomorrow the good Lord will take you away.

Oh, don't roll your eyes. I heard it live in 1994 at an Aerosmith concert and it still sounds just as epic to me as it did when I first heard it when I was five years old and my dad took a momentary breather from his beloved collection of Eagles, Elton John, Gordon Lightfoot, Beach Boys and Creedence Clearwater Revival 8-track tapes and put on the radio.

I was hooked.

If only I can infuse my children with this eclectic, psychotic love of music I'll have done a good job. You do realize someday these little kids of mine are going to grow up and make their own marks on this planet, don't you?

I know.

I don't think anyone is ready for that. Hopefully they won't be the least bit shy about stepping out of the shadows of their infamous mother, all flesh, ocean-obsessed and headphones permanently fused to her skull.

Hard to believe they are such well-adjusted people. When I am not the least-bit well-adjusted, and am prone to pulling songs up over my head like favorite quilts and hiding in their comforts until people pull out the searchlights and come looking for me.

Why?

Narcissism. Plain and simple. The dark and seedy underbelly of some of my highest days. The inevitable exposure of all of me. Because I'm here, dammit and I'm going to leave my mark, even if it's only the smallest of bruises.

Nien and thirty, sleep, pretty girl.

Jacob woke me up this morning by whispering that there are thirty days remaining until March first, and that I have survived the dark ages, and graduated to over nine hours of daylight at last.

    Once there was a way to get back homeward
    Once there was a way to get back home
    Sleep pretty darling do not cry
    And I will sing a lullaby

    Golden slumbers fill your eyes
    Smiles awake you when you rise
    Sleep pretty darling do not cry
    And I will sing a lullaby

I find winters here very difficult, and that's a general observation not borne out of any other reason besides a horrific disdain for more dark than light of a day. Something I can't explain but I talk of often. The summers are glorious here, with the sun baking our little corner of the planet from the middle of the night to late in the next night, it's beams piercing the bubbled glass at 5 in the morning and providing a relentless glow until long after 10 pm. We get little time to hang upside down in the dark..like bats. I'm not a bat. I would do well in Denali, says Jake.

One of my disdains is for these room-darkening, insulated curtains. The kind we quickly discovered we needed, and we spent hundreds of dollars on them and then a few hundred more on better curtain rods and hardware with which to anchor these twenty-pound panels.

But they work, and around this time of year they choke off my enthusiasm and I begin to resent the hell out of the shroudlike weight of these protective fabrics that prevented the light.

And the cold, let's not forget the cold on a morning that saw the hinges on the screen door just about refuse to budge and I couldn't get back in for a few moments. The cold that makes me appear to puff down the road like Henry's favorite TV train character. Even though no one can see me, they're all safely nestled behind their own insulated drapes.

This week also heralds in a full moon on Thursday and so the children will be wild and we will be slightly moody and wondering why and it will all culminate into a surreal existence in which we have epiphanies that spark a new understanding, of how we can exist as skeptics and then fall back on something as simple as the hours of daylight or the phases of the moon or the dates of an ancient calendar that we cross off to find our place and gauge our moods. How I scrape the snow away from the sundial in the yard and peer at it as if I'll be able to wish it into service.

Jacob is trying to help me keep my faith through what might prove to be a difficult week but I'm going to focus on small, insignificant things and glide through it like I'm on a rail so that I don't linger too long and take those dreaded two steps back once again.

So far so good.

Low light.

We're home. Jacob wanted to come back early and do some work, and so you get a post.

He isn't doing a lot of preaching anymore. He's still the congregational minister but there has been a long line of guest ministers and his partner doing the bulk of services and he has appropriately shifted his presence to the background, in preparations for the transitions to come.

I miss it. I miss his sermons. I never thought I would say that but it's true.

We did had fun with his sister. I love her to pieces. She's happy I'm part of the family. And I'm happy we're sisters now, having been friends for about 15 years. She was the one who wanted to party and begged her brother to drive her everywhere and if it hadn't been for what used to be a maddening subject between them, I never would have met Jake.

She painted our nails-hers, mine and Ruth's. She tried to get Jacob and Henry too but they resisted. She took me out for long drawn out virgin martinis (apple juice and olives-they were awful) and put low lights from a box in my hair in her tiny cluttered bathroom. We laughed until we cried and she hugged me hard and often and told me she was happy that I made her brother so happy. More than once I would point out that we've got our problems but every time she would stop me and reiterate how happy he is.

They are a lot a like, those two.

And now I've got a Sunday afternoon alone with the kids to catch up on laundry and story times and Jake will be home by 9 pm or so for a late romantic supper and maybe some snuggles. No skating tonight, since it'll be too late when he's finished at church.

Hope you had a nice weekend too.

Light bright.

Oh yes, the hair cut.

I would have forgotten that I did it other than the fact that my head is five pounds lighter and my back gets a little cold but that's all imaginary, issues that are inside my head. I have heard more stories about people cutting their hair to signify change in the past year than I care to admit and maybe they finally got to me and so I had a moment of clarity and I did it.

My hair had reached past my waist. It was getting to the point where I had to either lighten the load or I was going to shave it off completely and join the Hare Krishnas at the airport. I look very good in orange, you know.

So I lightened my load, by fourteen inches. It's now..er...nipple-length or thereabouts. And I look like I'm fourteen years old.

And now it's in my mouth when I brush my teeth again and there's so much less for the battle braids, but it also means I don't have to check the kids' necks and fingers after they are asleep to make sure they aren't going to be suffocated, it takes me half the time to wash and to comb it out afterwards and...

..he loves it. When I came out he smiled so broadly I thought his mouth was going to spill right off his face in order to infringe on the scenery behind his head. He made a crack about sleeping with the new pretty girl and how we couldn't tell his wife, which is probably the oldest haircut joke in the world. And a miserable backhanded compliment but I let it slide.

And no one missed my hair until Henry went to grab it to do our elephant walk to bed, until I went to make sure I didn't sit on it when we sat down to dinner, until Jacob went to wind his fists three times into it when he kissed me, because he does that. But even though it's gone and it was one of the biggest hidden psychological crutches I ever had, I am reminded that it is simple vanity, and it's still really fucking long, considering how much was cut off.

My ponytail is on it's way to Locks of love, and I'm on my way to enjoy an extended brunch with Jacob's little sister Erin, who invited us to come out at the last minute for a weekend visit and we jumped at it so I am posting from her speedy little laptop today. The kids love Auntie Erin, possibly because sometimes, like Jacob, they can't understand a word she says. But she believes in cake for breakfast, and that's all that matters. So no post tomorrow, we'll be soaking up the Erin-love and making our way home again.

See you on Monday!

Morelasses and follies.

I'm just going to post with my heavy eyelids somewhere around my knees so I'm not going to make any sense at all.

Why he pronounces Molasses with an 'r' I will never understand. But it's funny. When he's in a rush or exasperated the accent just flies out all over the place and my heart melts right down through my body and pours out of my belly button in response, where I collect it in a teacup and put it up on a high shelf for safekeeping. That happens an awful lot.

And he sounds like this (ignore the ad, just listen to the salesman for an idea of how 'tick this accent is). When Jake gets going the rest of us are left uproariously in the dark.

I've run out of coffee. I have possibly forty drafts of semi-coherent posts sitting here that I never seem to finish. Caleb is stalking me, or so I have been told, and by an objective third party no less, but I don't know what this means. Jacob is working all day but planning to pop home for pancakes and his morelasses and kisses as he finds short breaks here and there, one of the joys of living close to work, close to his church.

I'm still tired and still trying to finish two more stories for my actual workday and then I'm going to beg off and watch movies for the remainder of the afternoon, one of the joys of working at home, though I'm supposed to say I'm so busy all the time and I do sometimes and then it gives me permission to do whatever the fuck I want to, and right now I want to sleep. As soon as the laundry and work and pancakes are done.

Bye.

Oh and yes, I got rid of the REM song from my head. When I woke up at three I had Relient K's Deathbed stuck there instead. Which is way more morbid and cute and funny and beautiful. It's 11 minutes long and a rollercoaster of a song but it's worth it for the voice of Jesus in the end, sung by the ever-plaintive Jon Foreman which is so freaking cool. His voice also makes my heart pour out of my bellybutton. He's a beautiful singer.

My friends are going to flip out and mourn the loss of the metal girl at this point, I'm sure. No worries, she's expanding her horizons!

And even more things I have to share, the owls, the icicles, Saw III, cutting my hair (because I did) and more but right now I'm feeling as slow as...morelasses.

Snort.