Dischord is such a pretty word, though.

The night is gone and all we get
A picture for a poem, and we lose her

There's something about a late-morning run that throws off my entire day. I don't know why it is, but it is what it is and this is what it is. Thrown, but in a good way.

Go rake some leaves and drink some mulled cider and find a good scary movie and a big warm blanket. I'll see you tomorrow.

Reeling and dealing.

I have a headache. A blisteringly painful stabbing noise that cuts my vision in half and makes me wince every time the car door is closed and the driver (Mike..I think) is doing a damn fine job doing it gently because he knows how I feel, having been chauffeuring me around for over an hour now, stopping at the pharmacy so I could pick up a bottle of ibuprophen to go with the Evian water Caleb has stocked wherever I'm going to be.

I didn't know I could post on the go but apparently I can.

I'm playing assistant again today.

I've already gone to the loft to inspect the work that was done over the last few days, I've gone to pick out a dishwasher because Caleb can't be expected to do dishes any more than he'll be able to do his own laundry (which will be sent out) even though I can't see him cooking either, I've arranged to have his movers on the right day via phone and now he wants me to go pick out linens for him to be delivered the day before his move. I've arranged cleaning services to come and clean his old condo, which he will be giving up and also to clean the new loft before he arrives.

I still can't believe he is seriously moving here but in his state of present mind he has decided that he needs to 'retire' close to family and since his folks have each other and he wouldn't dream of moving back to Nova Scotia anyway with it's rustic charm and unsophistication he chose to come and be closer to us. And since he's only technically retiring from his CFO position at his law firm, he'll still have all his other business interests to keep him busy so I hope that means he'll have precious little time to devote to his 'family', which is the children and I.

I won't say I'm thrilled about any of this, honestly. But Ben just tells me not to worry about it, and he strums another chord on his guitar and picks up the words to a song, singing them quietly to calm me. I'm trying to hang on to that memory of last night while I get through my morning, but really, I think I'm going to try to check off the next three items on the list and then pack it in and go home and lie down. The rest can wait.

The reading tree.

During dinner this evening, Ruth and I crafted a story about a tree that ate paper. It ate scraps of notepads and phone books and cardboard tubes and paper towels with pizza sauce and old forgotten Westerns and the books that fall down behind the tables in the waiting rooms at hospitals. It ate opened envelopes, coffee filters, concert ticket stubs and love letters too.

It grew to be many different colors, high above the other trees in the forest, in shades of green and brown but also in the pale pink of Aunt Merriweather's favorite stationery and the pretty blue of city water bills. It shone in the sun because so much paper is plain white, but there was nothing plain about this tree, oh no.

If you look very closely when the leaves begin to fall from it you'll see the faint etchings on them, discarded poems, grocery lists and abandoned stories too, a little math homework and a rough sketch of the very pretty girl you sat across from at the coffee shop, and smiled at so bashfully. Poem was her name, but you did not know that. You did not ask. Her name was Tuesday and Lyrica too. She invents all kinds of names, as many names as there are leaves on the reading tree. She will never tell you her name is Bridget. She doesn't want to be the last leaf still holding to the pretty pink bark of merriweather elm.

Do not collect the leaves and try to make your own story, just read them into the wind. This is iambic recycling and you are the collector.

Mmmmm. Phish and porn, all in one day. You are so lucky, internet.

Not my youtube, but good youtube nonetheless. Today's theme, if you will. And a really good jam.

Pantomime mixtures of heaven and earth
Jumbled events that have less than no worth
Time in the forest to dig under rocks
Or float in the ocean asleep in a box

Or sink just below all the churning and froth
And swim to the light source or fly like a moth
So toss away stuff you don't need in the end
But keep what's important and know who's your friend.

My beautiful husband rescued the disaster that was yesterday. When I couldn't put the words together anymore and nothing went right and everything fell apart in the most epic fashion ever, he took a moment and then refused to buy into the ruin after the initial exchange of words.

He rescued most of the evening and then all of the night in a wonderful, physical match of wills as his hands slid over my legs just before I fell asleep. He brought me back to earth with his hand holding down my head and his lips everywhere and then took me away again and it wasn't until I was writhing against him that I realized the little things don't matter and history doesn't matter and nothing matters once the mistakes of the day get sorted out. What matters is that we're here, we're together and that with the touch of his hands I can forget everything, which makes him half porn king and half mad scientist.

Snort.

Thank you, Benjamin, for saving the no good very bad awful miserable fucked up day. I love you.

Better in the end.

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?

And though it may cost my soul
I'll sing for free

Jacob, you're hilarious.

Really. This whole saving-Ben thing as a way for me to save myself is...well, it's genius. Fine line between love and hate, indeed. It's the exact same way I feel about you. Loving you desperately and hating your guts at the same time for breaking every last promise you ever made to me.

I kept mine to you. I'm still here. Still fighting my way uphill. Still making so much progress, finding footholds and grabbing weeds to pull myself along and then hitting a soft part and sliding halfway back down, screaming and cursing the whole way.

I've been hot and cold, cold cold cold, hot, cold and never in-between. I've been face-down in my own agony and floating on clouds I think I self-generated. I've known love and loss and more pain than death and still I have your stupid unrealistic, unwarranted hope.

Why is that?

Why, indeed.

I don't know. Say God if you will, if that works for you. Days like this where I can wake up and nothing much is different and the inside of my head is still a shambles and a shame too and yet I'm smiling.

It's got to be the mark of true insanity.

Barn none.

Turn me inside out and upside down
And try to see things my way
Turn a new page, tear the old one out
And I'll try to see things your way

Please come here
Please come on over
There is no line that you can't step right over
Without you well I'm left hollow
So can we decide to try a little joy tomorrow
Because baby tonight I'll follow

Yesterday Ben endured no small amount of loving ribbing from the guys, everything from welcoming him into the kitchen for breakfast from congratulating him on his clear and precise enunciation. He got hugs and slaps on the back that would have knocked me down. He got smiles from the guys, they're happy to have him back and relaxed and no angry and defensive anymore. Encouragement, in boy-form.

it was nice, you know? He says it will hold. He got the mother of all scares Thursday night when he said something to me that was something Cole had said, word for word, and I pointed that out and he hasn't touched a drink since that moment.

So maybe it will hold.

It's another beautiful sunny day here on the farm and we're going for another ride. An early one, only Nolan is up so far, he's already done the chores with Ben's help and he's going to field breakfast for the kids while Ben and I take our favorite horses to picnic rock for a picnic breakfast. With jackets on and thermoses of hot coffee. And two big blankets, one to sit on, one to snuggle in.

For some more...encouragement. Yeah, we'll call it that. Have a great day.

Stealing one last breath of summer.

Maybe it isn't quite summer anymore, since it's fall already and last night saw us arrive at Nolan's farm in a caravan of trucks and smiles in the 0-degree midnight sky.

But it sure feels like it, being here.

Ben and I brought the kids and August brought the lobster, Chris brought Erin, Daniel and Schuyler brought each other, and John came too because eventually August will run out of lobster and John would like to have a hand in that event. And something about even numbers, too. I've never seen Nolan so thrilled to come out on his veranda and see us all piling out with our weekend gear, Ben and John with sleeping children in their arms, since we got the kids ready for bed and drove out at bedtime.

Ben and I crashed hard in our room, the one with all the antlers and the Mexican blankets that I love so much, so tired, such a long week behind us. Ben has stopped again, and whether it's for the moment or for the rest of his life, I like him without the liquid courage, I like him without the liquid mean and out here at the farm I don't hold my breath, he will attend meetings all weekend and soak up the strength of men who are stronger than he is and we'll just plain bask in this place where we fell in love, where he proposed and where we got married.

But isn't life always easier on a farm? Maybe we should move here.

When I woke up this morning I slid out from under Ben's arms and pulled on my jeans and Ben's sweater and went out to make coffee. There were dishes everywhere, and the fire was already made. Nolan gets up very early and the note on the table said he had gone for an early ride to get the last of the apples, if maybe I would make a pie for dessert tonight, to help ourselves, to enjoy the time, and he would be back in time to see to the kids' breakfast, since the kids have a tendency to sleep in here as well. Everyone does, and that's why I'm sitting alone here by the fire with my laptop at the breakfast bar enjoying some serious quiet of my own.

Maybe we should move here.

It's a far cry from yesterday morning, standing in luxury warehouse lofts with Caleb, lamenting wearing my black wool gabardine coat and my five-inch spiked-heel boots because I was hot and uncomfortable and worried and tired and Caleb did wind up buying the last loft we looked at before he tried to pull a trick on me, needing to stop at his hotel, and I wasn't buying it and came home early to be with Ben and was so glad I did because he had his head on so straight yesterday you could have used it as a level.

No, today is like being on a different planet. A planet where the object of my heart's desire has black-tinged circles under his eyes and shaking hands, but those eyes look at me with love and those hands are cool and gentle and his own heart beats for me so loud most of the time I don't hear anything else anymore anyway, even though I know that out here the leaves are louder in their easy rustle from the wind, and the horses neigh gently in their paddock and the creek threads itself between the stones and under the little bridge and that one breath I've been holding for a week straight comes out in a rush, air filling my lungs, clearing my head and slowing my own heartbeat down enough so I can be calm, and still, and...

...happy.

Happy.

I like that.

Idle hands, devil's work, blah blah blah.

Yesterday was difficult but it's done now and we woke up early together like ninjas in the forest, back to back, fighting the ghosts off as they came at us, one at a time. The way it happens on Henry's Saturday morning television shows. For the moment, we seem to have emerged victorious, and I'm going to get the heck on with the day, which may or may not include accompanying Satan on his short tour of converted-warehouse lofts downtown as he chooses a place to live here. I don't know what I did to get that honor. He said he needed a woman's opinion. I told him to take Daniel with him but he didn't find that funny. He wants to get me alone and see how I'm doing while he throws his money around in an attempt to impress me.

There's thirty dollars in my wallet, which leaves me already impressed. It's a good day.

It will be a good day.

Ben has a very structured day ahead which he sorely needs, because hanging out around the house with the bottle of whiskey, playing guitar, well it's all fine and romantic and something that should only happen in the movies. In real life the hero must go to a meeting with his AA sponsor, and then go see his doctor, and then come home and feed his children (I wrote stepchildren three times and then opted not to) their lunch and walk them back to school and then he has a quick meeting because I sounded the alarm and now people are worried who never seem to worry any other time, and then if he's still in one piece I'll send him to the airport to pick up August, coming home from Newfoundland, hopefully armed with a box of lobster and a lot of patience.

If he isn't up for that I'll have to go myself, in which case August had better have more than just an armload of patience for me.

A good day. Need a good day. Really, really badly. Going to make it happen.

Isn't that how it works? Jesus, throw me a bone here.

Thinking out loud.

In sleep and in waking I have discovered that our back and forth, up and down, give and take, covet and reject, love and hate exchanges were pretty much the way we've always done things, and pretty much the way things are going to be. And you can have a preference, but that won't really matter because in half a day you'll be faced with the polar opposite.

So Ben goes back and forth between warm and cold, between Jacob and Cole, between being completely sober and mildly drunk and I go back and forth between strong and weak, between determined and hopeless. Full of shit and full of stubborn, beleaguered hope. Dog-eared and tattered hope, goddamn you, you're mine.

But...wait. Go back.

Jacob and Cole.

After snarling through most of yesterday (because he hates that word and so I must use it AGAIN) Ben found some peace in our talk after dinner with Lochlan and then as Loch was leaving he overstepped a simple friendly hug, staying a little too long, holding Bridget just a little too close. He put his head down on mine and kissed my hair and wow, Ben got over here really fast and he didn't talk very loud or act very mad he just very gently pulled me out of Loch's arms and wrapped me in his own and he started rocking. Rocking back and forth while we stood there and eventually I saw Lochlan's shoes turn and walk quietly out the front door and we stayed in the front hall locked in this awkward...dance, for lack of better description, and my head was pressed to Ben's chest and his hands were shaking, everything was shaking but he was strong on his feet and his arms were tight and eventually his hand moved from my ear and I could hear what he was whispering over and over again.

You're mine now.

It's a strange and frightening feeling to know someone so well and come to find out you didn't know them at all in the way you thought you did. He looked at me like he could read my mind because he can and he told me not to ever be afraid of him, that he would deal with this. That we'd be okay because we're always okay, even when we're not okay at all. He's right but what in the hell do I do to help keep him safe in the meantime?

That's a rhetorical question, in case you thought you had to answer it. I know what I have to do. Be here. Wait him out. Protect him. Not freak out. Just stay wound up tight and keep doing what I'm doing and wow, it's just like Cole. But then, the words coming out of his mouth, that's Jacob and...

Oh, I'm so fucked.