Calm down, now shut up.

Not much to say
No alibi
For my selfish fear
And my foolish pride

The past few days have been an interesting ride of almost-drama, certain-drama and nearly-missed drama. There is no dearly-missed drama, thank heavens. Lochlan is home, far far away from here, reunited with his daughter after a month apart and now happily ensconced in a city that's just about as cold as this one. Caleb consented to a third day off based on the weather, the difficult week and because he couldn't answer when I asked him what he might possibly need me to do that I didn't take care of already or couldn't take care of on Monday. And Seth left a couple of hours ago, relieved to get on a plane that will take him back home to California where he will live in his bland seasonless sunshi-okay, fine, I'm jealous of that right this moment.

Ben and I are on our own once again and it's nice but a little scary too. The lack of sleep this week coupled with our spectacular, consistent track record means that inevitably, we will find some drama to make.

Eventually.

But for now, it's cold and I have a sunny window seat to lounge on, a fully-charged laptop, a boatload of editing to get done so I can catch up to where I need to be and a huge bowl of red pistachios to eat for lunch.

Bliss, for the moment.

There will be no drama today, because it's one of those days where we are oh so aware that it lurks in the shadows waiting to pounce, and we went around and turned on all the lights today. There are no shadows.

Not today.

Countess von Backwards and her howling wolves.

I'm going to run some numbers for you this morning.

Yesterday was 2 minutes and 9 seconds longer than the day before.

I have had 4 hours of sleep, bringing me to a total of 10 for the week.

The windchill right now is -50 and once again I'm keeping myself and the children home. The school buses are not running, it would be an academic throwaway day for them anyway so we may as well be home and indoors. Even though by 2 pm they will be insane. By 4pm I will be.

Oh, wait. Nevermind.

Lochlan's flight leaves in 35 minutes. Last night he stayed here, since I live closest to the runway and he wanted extra time. I wanted extra time. We won't see each other again until April and so it had to end on good terms at least but it isn't anymore because we can't seem to agree on anything save for the fact that we want to remain close, probably for different reasons, so yeah, I won't attempt to explain it to the world at large.

Seth leaves tomorrow at 12. Hopefully second time is the charm for Ben. Cross your fingers.

My house will hold 4 people once again instead of 6.

I'm up to 17 on my apocalypse list for 2009. I need to get to 100 and then I'll post it. Notice you've never heard about it before, since I've never gotten to 100. It's the list of all the things you want to accomplish before the apocalypse and each year that the apocalypse fails to occur, you must make a new list. Some people call them '100 things to do before I die' lists. Everything has an apocalypse-spin here instead (even the cupcakes). But with regard to the list, PJ was at 100 in less than 15 minutes flat. I believe it's a list of 99 celebrities he wants to sleep with, and me.

Finally, I am 1 cup of coffee short of a full attention span and working on changing that as we speak.

Tomorrow I'll be writing from work because unfortunately the world does not stop for cold snaps. Not like in my universe, anyway. The one with yearly almost-apocalypses, sleepless nights, frozen intentions and revolving doors.

And Sesame Street. Because if you're home and it's early, you may as well catch up on vintage muppet goodness.

Like a yeti. You know they exist but you've probably never seen one.

I've now been banned from writing about Ben's semi-mentalities here.

Dammit.

He would much prefer the world fear him for the monster that he thinks he is. Feel free to roll your eyes with me, okay, here we go, one....two....and roll. He doesn't care if you like him. He would prefer if I didn't talk about him much at all, and frankly the artist formerly known as Tucker Max is as anti-social as one can get these days, with his head down, grinding away at his obligations both professionally and personally, hoping no one notices the effort and just continues to appreciate the man without making things so complicated.

That's my Ben, the big romantic wall of total mush.

In other news, it appears that today is our annual stay-home-because-it's-too-fucking-cold-to-go-outside day, the day in which we let the cabin fever warm our brows and broil our brains, the day where we catch up on lots of housework and odd, long-ignored chores and watch the temperature sit at the bottom of the glass, mercury long drained away, muttering about godforsaken lands and tropical holidays. I talked to Nolan and he said even the horses didn't want to stay outside today, that's how cold it is, I think minus forty-five with the wind and the sun has already come up.

When is spring again?

I'm not complaining though. A surprise day home, some chores I can tick off the list, a nice dinner to cook for tonight (Tandoori chicken and basmati) before heading to the pool for swimming, the entire day riding on the sweet, sweet memories of the early hours of this morning, woken up by the (not) romantic so he could (not) do sweet things to me that I'm (not) supposed to share with the world.

So shhhhhh already.

Stay warm.

Today never happened before.

I wish you'd come and see me
I'd like to hold you
I want to set my mind all free
You understand me woman,
You give me time
But I don't need no sympathy
Still I wonder what it's like to be loved
Instead of hiding in myself
Nobody will change me anyway

I could tell you about the neighborhood river hockey finals, the banquet and then being out at clubs until two in the morning pretending I'm still twenty years old.

I could tell you that Ben and Henry had a pact to win one for their girls, and they did and there is a trophy sitting in my son's bedroom that is taller than he is.

I could write about Ruth's disappointment that her egg yolk "melted" before she had a chance to eat it on Saturday. She expected hard boiled and mom had delivered soft ones, because mother + cooking = mostly fail with the occasional total winner.

Or I could tell you that a year ago today I gave Ben back the engagement ring he gave me, because I didn't want him to feel obligated, I didn't want to rush and while I had feelings for him, I wasn't clear enough on anything to be making any sort of heart-led decisions at the time.

A week later I changed my mind. The fog lifted and I took the biggest risk of my life. I said yes the second time he asked and as difficult as it is being married to the biggest pain in the ass that ever lived, well, Ben says he doesn't regret it for a moment.

Haha. Gotcha.

That day he made a bet with each one of our friends that a year from then, he and I would be together and happily so, and that it would all turn out okay. I'm not sure I shouldn't banish them all for that kind of support, gee, thanks. Are you ever lucky that I didn't hear about this before today.

Because Ben took his winnings to the jewelry store this morning and bought me a ring.

A gigantic diamond ring. A beautiful Canadian diamond because the guys told him that he would never land a real princess with a pretty purple amethyst like the one that served as my engagement ring.

He proved them wrong but I still got a diamond out of the deal. A gorgeous icy-blue sharp and very incredibly heavy diamond ring that makes my head spin.

I would show you a picture or even just link it but then you would come and kill me in my sleep and saw off my finger. Plus I have been expressly forbidden to share a photo because Ben has no intentions of letting the world know that yes, he is indeed the biggest. most sentimental sap that ever lived.

(He would say semi-mental? right about now and make me laugh.)

He would much rather have you think that he rips the heads off of Ruth's barbie dolls with his teeth, draws porn when he isn't smashing guitars, and intentionally played the net yesterday without his helmet on, in front of a rink full of impressionable seven-to-twelve year olds and causing a small altercation with some of the parents, who pointed out the poor impression, all of them completely forgetting that this is the same man who showed up to Henry's kindergarten graduation a few years ago in mascara and a kilt, and habitually lights up cigarettes in the vestibule at the church.

Yes, that's the man who buys his wife pretty, sparkly things. That's my Ben, who knows that negative conditioning is totally the way to go, proving that he knows me best.

I might be wrong of course, I'm just too distracted by the sweetness right now to make any kind of sense whatsoever. Everyone is threatening to take my new ring away tomorrow if I can't get my head on straight by then. And now if you'll excuse, I need to find out what other bets are in play right now, at my expense, and make some money off these jerks.

Or maybe I should just go and get some sleep.

Faded black.

I'm hungry.

When Ben says that he doesn't mean what most people mean.

As if I never said the words
I want, I want you first
Only thing that can quench my thirst
I want you first, I want you first

Friday evening I was standing by the bureau, making notes when the lights went out. He came up behind me, kissed the back of my neck and put my headphones over my ears. With music blasting through my skull I went into instant sensory irony as he muscled me onto the bed, face down. Overloaded and deprived all at once as he pulled my hands up over my head and held them there while he stripped me bare. I was not permitted to help. Not at all.

Striptease for me, baby
Striptease for me, baby
Striptease for me, baby

It was hours later when he reluctantly let me go, ripping the headphones from my ears and standing the empty bottles on the floor. We turned on the light and laughed at each other, for I was now a ghostly, glittery shade of white, sticky and sweet from all the whipped cream and he was smeared with chocolate and streaks of white fingertip prints from where I tried to talk him into letting me make a whipped cream bikini for him.

It was fun. It was cathartic. It was epic make-up dessert sex in high definition.

It was repeated in full last night with the music but without the condiments and without the laughter, because sometimes we are very serious, all-business. That's when Ben slows to a crawl, making me agonize over every breath, every push, every touch. Turning seconds into hours and delighting in seeing precisely how long the goosebumps will remain raised on my flesh and how many times I stop breathing, pinned underneath him, waiting in anticipation of his next move, the night fading into one of those mornings when I wake up upside-down with wild bird's nest hair and aching limbs and he wakes up with a smile, appetite sated for a very short while.

At least the next time he asks me if I want a banana split I'll know up front what I'm really in for.

Itchy and Scratchy.

It's your turn to give me advice. Haven't you been dying to? Just admit it.

Every year I write a post about how poorly my skin stands up to winter and every year I get hundreds of welcomed tips and tricks and hints and products that I should try that work well for my readers. Every year I spend a lot of time and effort researching and then trying most of your suggestions. I do pay attention and there have been some really standout ideas, most notably those folks who recommended urea creams, those who said my hot bath fetish was doing more harm than good, and the lovely kind soul from Colorado who reminded me of paraffin dips for my hands.

Oddly, or maybe because of that, my hands are just about the best part of my body, currently.

I am aware that you came here this morning looking for tales of chocolate syrup and whipped cream and bedsheets that are now going to have to be burned, but that will have to wait, because I am...

...one giant dried-up itch. To the point where Ben said I felt like 400-grit sandpaper last evening as he ran his hands up my ribcage, and to the point where I actually reached down and scratched my ankle right in the middle of intimate things that did not include THAT kind of scratching. I'm crawling and just about about of my mind from the ever-present, all-over itch. Clothes are the Antichrist.

That bad.

One medically-sought suggestion was Benadryl. Have you seen Bridget on Benadryl? It shoots my nerves completely and makes me sickly-drowsy. Several other supposed 'experts' have suggested various brand-new lotions on the market that 'might' work, most of which don't have trial sizes and before I knew it I had a whole collection of bottles of stuff that didn't help, and sometimes hurt. I'm looking at you Oil of Olay Body Quench.

So yes. I am scratching until I bleed these days. All over. But my fingertips are holding. If you'll recall last time this year I could hardly even type. Having to get my hands wet made me cry. Oh, the good old days, indeed.

I need a full-body paraffin bath.

I need help. I need more whipped cream, too. We're all out and I woke up with a stomach ache.

The Revisionaries.

Updates today include the semi-annual knight-shuffle in the kingdom of Bridget, an assistant job well-done as I am just about to wrap up the accounting for 2008 proper for Caleb and so I'm home early, the discoveries of both my black umbrella and my unlucky rabbit's foot, and Sam's miraculously long reach, something I was not aware of until yesterday, when I watched from the front row as he saved two individuals with his bare hands. Four good things to cancel out everything else.

Updates today will not include details, unless it is of great importance for me to share that both the umbrella and the rabbit keychain were in the pocket of Jacob's yellow rain slicker which was in a closet, in the basement and does not actually fit anyone else so I was packing it up to be sent out when the pockets seemed a little full. Also in a pocket was a MacIntosh toffee bar that had petrified and my camping compass from the early nineties, a kind of casual talisman Jake carried at one time.

I had been looking for the compass for Henry and was about to put it on the list for the next visit to the outfitters when Jacob told me where I could find it. He also told me a myriad of other things yesterday and I probably could have used the umbrella to facilitate my step off the roof of Caleb's building but instead I was caught by Sam before I left solid footing and caught by Sam again before I could leave reason behind and it appears that I will spend the spring among familiar visions instead of locked away somewhere despairing and incontrovertible.

And Ben is fine. He had an almost-wobble and then a horrific set of meetings during his trip and came back shaky but okay and he only has two weeks left of Seth so he's cautious right now. Everyone is tending to him beautifully, leaving me alone in the bitter cold to stamp my feet and shake my fists and toss my spoiled blonde curls and throw all the stuff I'm holding down to the ground in a silent tantrum that will go ignored but not unnoticed.

Ben walked over to me last night, reached down and picked up everything and handed it back to me, studying the rabbit's foot for just a moment, to the point where I thought he might take a bite out of it but he did not. He just looked at me and put the keychain in my hand and then wrapped his fingers around my wrist and reminded me that I'm not as alone as I feel sometimes. He said I make him smile with my superstitions and my lucky charms and my wishes to burn and bury the memories that make the ache come back.

Everyone says we're both doing so much better but sometimes I wonder.

And now I think I would really like a cookie. Ben just said he would like a striptease. Seriously, life is very strange and we're just trying to live it the best way we know how.

Naked and covered with chocolate.

Okay, shhhh.

Mmmm, a pick-me-up.

New videos are lovely. Especially wonderful, happy ones like this one.

Album on January 20. Go buy it.

He would have isolated the damaged part with an alpine butterfly.

cold, but I'm still here,
blind, cause I'm so blind,
say never
we're far from comfortable this time

Destroyed by your own design. Didn't you see that it wasn't going to work? You said it yourself, you couldn't let go of me for even a moment. I could see the fire in your eyes when you would test them, daring them to reveal that their desires were greater than their fears. They saw it too, and would retreat from you to remain in the shadow of your good graces while you were seeking to find an outlet for your own darkness, through me.

I was never allowed more than an arm's reach from you, and when I could construct an alibi I would jump for it with both hands, the brass ring of freedom and stringless adoration right in front of me. The potential for any of them to be him, to be the one, the one to make everything better.

I do know that I failed as well.

They can't do this and I could if I didn't feel pulled in ten different directions, knowing that it hurts every last one of us and maybe then that was your end goal, for all of us to destruct. It wouldn't surprise me in the least. Is it fair? Is it fair to tell you now that it does work to some extent until someone wants more and then the fractures begin to spread over the surface in a web of deceit and agony. We see we're standing on the cracks, one foot on each side, a tenuous position but oh don't you move or you'll lose your place in line.

You wanted to raise us up without futures or pasts. Without morals or regrets. Without attitude instruments so that we could check for the horizon, to see which way is up. You've given us a plane that is destined to crash, and there are no life vests and no controls and I don't think you ever intended for there to be a way out. To complete the equation is the nightmare that ensures that in the event that we do find a way out, it can be quickly closed off, shut down and removed as a choice. A gatekeeper disguised in your image.

Is this what you really wanted for me? I thought so.

But there is one thing you didn't count on.

Their loyalty to me. Above all else. It wasn't you who was in charge. I may lead with my heart but I've collected followers since day one and they listen to every last word that it speaks, in the language that you never seemed to understand.

And therein lies the problem. I have the control but I don't know how it works because I don't speak in those tongues either. So you must be so amused by now, save for the fact that you expected a slightly different outcome and I aligned with the fringe and I know you would have bet the farm that I would have gone a different way but neither of those directions had your rules to play by, they had their own.

That leaves me here.

Alone but not alone.

Coveted but whether or not I am wanted is anyone's guess. There is a difference.

I'm playing the game but they're changing the rules all the time and I couldn't win if I tried. I could lie, cheat or steal and I wouldn't be any closer to understanding any more clearly that without you here to provide the control, there simply isn't any. What's left is confusion and pain and an inability to move forward in case no one else does.

You wouldn't set out across the open prairie in a blizzard and you don't move on with your life without a safety line in case you don't make it back.

I know that when Jacob stepped onto that ledge you built a brick wall behind him and he had no choice but to step forward. And I blame you.

And now if you'll excuse me, I have work to do. I didn't show up yesterday because I couldn't look anyone in the eye, but I was talked out of that and forgiven by the only one of us who gets by simply because he believes that pedestrian morals have no place in reality and because he knows if the knot is loose it will hold and so I was bundled in my coat and sent to the car and then when I arrived here I was whisked up to the top floor, greeted with a kiss and a smile and then my gloves were removed gently and my hands inspected for a trace of warmth or injury. Finding neither, they were enveloped into other hands, large and capable, until the warmth spread from his to mine. So I can type. So I can work.

So I can function as close to human as I can get. So I can fulfill your plan for me, and I still don't even fully understand what it is. Who in their right mind would let go when there is this much to lose?

Bridget would, that's who.

Reverse consecration.

Ben and Seth's flight arrives at noon. And no, Ben hasn't called. He reads (maybe), he does not call. I left near-constant messages, voicemails. He doesn't even understand that he left in the middle of a meltdown because he was too busy having his own. Travesties abound. And I believe sometimes words are wasted. No one sees or hears them any better than I do.

Well, one person does, as our routine was observed carefully last evening.

I was watched, always. I threw in a load of laundry so the children would have clean pajamas, and then began to cook, making a chicken casserole, throwing in pasta and asparagus and then baking some rolls alongside it. Enough for four, because even the devil needs to eat. I don't like to cook, but I can and I do because I've been hungry. I put a premium on a warm belly.

After the meal the children were doing a puzzle by the window. I sat on the couch and watched them while he watched me, cognac in hand, tie loosened, jacket off. Arm stretched out across the back of the couch almost touching me but not quite. A hint of a smile as he finally took his eyes off me long enough to see the progress his niece and nephew had made. He shifted closer to me, making contact with my ear. Stroking it, for lack of a better description.

This is close to the best evening, days even, I've ever spent, Bridget.

My brain lurched in two different directions (ohmyGoddon'ttouchmyheadpleasedon'tdothat) and I picked one. I leaned forward, the hair on my neck standing on end.

Hey, kids? Get your things. It's time for us to go.

I can't play these games anymore and I am supposed to be there in fifteen minutes to begin work but I haven't even made a move to get ready yet. I feel paralyzed but by what I don't even know.

Monday night I knew exactly what I wanted (still searching for regrets and absolution from myself as the monster that I am) and today I don't seem to have the first clue.