Imaginary vacations.

I suck at emailing. Text message me or ICQ and I'm there, perpetually available. So if you left me a recommendation for something to try related to this post, you're in luck, I have an update.

Because I know I leave things dangling too and you're never really sure what's going on and then I drop it altogether. I'm an annoying blogger, I think. I could probably help it but then I'd have to round it out by telling you things I don't think I should be telling you. But then you know what's going on and then I'll get shut down and let's just..well, let's play nicely and see where we get. I will try to be better at email.

Oh, look, there go the pigs again. They look so pretty against the blue.

The update is, it isn't just dry. It's eczema. Something I have fought with since I was a little kid and something that only surfaces in times of stress. So the solution? Try to keep the stress to a minimum.

I'll wait while you laugh.

So I'm covered with a lovely case of eczema, which is fine if I just let myself itch to death and I don't touch it. And my fingertips, especially my thumbs cracked open so the physical pain returns with a vengeance and if I ever had an inkling that my entire body was going to revolt against the issues faced by my mind I think I would....

Be right where I am right now, obviously. Battling stress, both real and nonexistent, which is my very favorite kind of stress. You know, spill some milk, fall apart. Be oddly removed and distant from actual stress but find the perceived and potential small stresses completely overwhelming.

Oh, what's that? You didn't want that kind of update and were looking for better news about what's going on with everything else?

Me too.

Here, I saved you a place in line. Let's listen to some vintage Motorhead while we wait.

Stricken dumb, cut and run, someone is screaming and the sky is dark

All dressed up and no place to go.

Hypnotize the desperate
Slow motion light
Wash away into the rain
Blood, milk and sky
Hollow moons illuminate
And beauty never dies

The best thing about the internet today. (<--x games goodness on youtube)

The music today is White Zombie, a pace set in the car when Mike turned before pulling away from the curb in front of my house and asked me if I had any preference today. He called me Ms. C____ and I corrected him, again, still pissed at Caleb's insistence on using my maiden name or his last name instead of the other two. I know it's confusing for you but it isn't confusing for him, he just likes to claim me as his or revert me back to pre-Cole.

I'm at work now, at my beautiful little desk pretending to work on revised trip plans since Caleb didn't go away over the Christmas holidays and has decided he still wants a break. It gets cold up here for hell, you know. In reality I am writing and messaging a blue streak with Lochlan, who is really thrilled that I'm not quitting which is interesting because I was PRETTY SURE I DID but the collective powers that be have decided that not only is it very healthy for me to have a routine but it's also incredibly unhealthy and against all of the rules for Ben and I to be home alone all day together isolating ourselves from the world.

So Lochlan cashed in his chips and aligned with Satan finally, who was able to exact undue influence and just to show how serious this is, they made sure to squeeze Ben just hard enough to bump him off the wagon and he promptly climbed back on and raised his finger at them in a glorious Fuck You gesture but for the sake of all that is good and holy, I'm totally trapped in this nightmare of big insolent brothers who would much prefer to leave me dangling out in harm's way lest anyone pull anything over their eyes ever again. I have to stay or they hurt Ben.

Thanks, Cole. This is all your fault.

That said, do you think Caleb would be pissed if I booked him tickets to Novosibirsk instead of the BVIs? I'm considering it.

Twenty-four hour reprieve.

Around lunchtime at the farm today, a knock on the door interrupted Grace, and Nolan went to see who was outside. It was a courier with a small box tied with a pink ribbon. For Miss Bridget Lund.

There's only one person in the world who uses my maiden name anymore. I'm on my fourth last name, I doubt anyone else remembers it. My mom, maybe.

In the box was the Blackberry Bold I had reluctantly returned to Caleb. And a notecard that said simply,

See you tomorrow, princess.

On not getting out in time.

False start.

We're actually leaving in a few hours for the farm. We'll do a bedtime run so that the kids can sleep in the truck the whole way. Now that Caleb has left, now that Ben is okay again. You know, the usual. I wasn't going to drive in the blizzard, by myself with the kids last night. I much prefer to sit and not pass unspoken judgement and listen as Ben drives and tries all kinds of different angles, first for indignation, then justification, then for forgiveness. As if saying a certain number of words changes a thing.

Does it?

Would it, I mean?

It's not up to me to justify or forgive. It's not up to me to be angry with him just like it's not up to him to be angry with me for trying to sidle out of a decision that was reached on my behalf so that all interested parties would retain their unrestricted access to me and the rest would be absolved as long as that access was maintained. I wasn't aware of such an agreement and thought I might have a say in whether or not I keep my job. The 'job' description so loosely defined at this point I'm just about ashamed of myself, and I haven't done anything that wasn't (isn't) fully sanctioned.

The only thing I was aware of was that everything was beginning to fall apart and I was trying to head that off.

So I don't know what I've done but it's gotten very complicated and so I'm glad we're going away. We can sort it all out with the horses and the snowmobiles and some pond hockey and be all Kinkade-Christmas-card about it and if we can make it pretty enough maybe it will taste better.

Or maybe it will poison us for good.

Leaving well enough alone.

I'm taking a half-dozen of my slednecks and the two wee ones and we're going to the farm for the weekend. Daniel is going to stay in the house and oversee the menagerie and on Monday I will be back. It's been a long week. Too long, maybe, and it's the danger time of year. You thought that would be November? Fuck you, February came pre-programmed. I HATE February with the passion of a thousand vestal virgins confronting a ship full of recently released gladiators. Yes, THAT much.

Wait, I'm not even sure that makes any sense. I don't care, my head hurts.

Here's to rested adults and children and calming influences. Here's to a quiet few days with nothing but fire and snow. Here's to learning something new.

Here's to quitting my job, effective at noon today. I'm such a chicken. I waited until I knew Caleb would be gone for a lunch meeting and I put my letter of resignation on his desk. Along with that pretty brand-new Blackberry Bold.

It's okay, this is a good thing.

(Except for giving back that phone...I really liked the phone.)

Mother****ing GPS.

When push comes to shove, and shove isn't happy, she goes to her new hideout. An out of the way theater high above street level where they show subtitled foreign films twenty-four hours a day. It smells like spilled martinis and burned coffee but it's warm and the old Italian couple who run it are friendly and the seats are so comfortable you can fall asleep sitting up. Which is what I did. This morning. Because when you can't run then you must hide.

Next time you hide you might want to leave the Blackberry Bold at home so that your boss won't find you so easily and show up beside your seat. And then join you for the remainder of the film that you didn't care for in the first place or you wouldn't have fallen asleep, now, would you?

For the record, I was not watching Tokyo Gore Police. I did not get fired, either.

Why I never listen to the radio.

This is my life
Its not what it was before
All these feelings I've shared
And these are my dreams
That I'd never lived before
Somebody shake me
Cause I must be sleeping

Now that we're here,
It's so far away
All the struggle we thought was in vain
All the mistakes one life contained
They all finally start to go away

If you could understand how incredibly exposed I feel most of the time, wide-open to the thoughtless comments, unintended love songs and unpredictable memories that most people would not give a second thought to, you might see me differently.

In other words, look left. I got a whole playlist up, which will change as often as the weather. This should get about two hundred of you off my back. Finally. I only wish I was kidding.

Now, congratulations to all you American readers. It looks like you finally have the change you've waited so patiently for. Could you please stop hosing my internet now? Thank you. See you tomorrow.

This is actually less about the computer than I am about to lead you to believe.

You see
The things I cannot change
The things that make me plain
Lift me up my soul's so hollow
Lift me up

In site news, if you are rightside up and navigate toward the left side of your screen, there's a new widget there that will feature whatever song is embedded in my skull presently. When said song leaves my head I will update with whatever replaces it. If and when I figure out how to present an entire Bridget-playlist (you know you want the lap dance list) I'll let you know.

Might be a while. For a prime example of how technologically impaired I can be, please feast your eyes on these words of mine typed on a a brand new Aspire notebook, because it only took me sixteen months to murder the Presario I had previously. I used it too much and burned it right out by leaving it on twenty-four hours a day.

Whoops.

Luckily there was a knight nearby and he rode in on his horse and swept me right off my feet, to Futureshop, where he presented a gift to me, a new box full of beautiful new squee-rrific (Hmmmmm, that word contains both queer and queef. FASCINATING.) laptop. And said princess swooned and kissed the knight and dammit if they didn't go back to the castle post-haste and set up the new technology and the tears of the princess dried and all was well in the kingdom once again.

I am not all that high maintenance most of the time, and while Ben is not prone to indulging in princess-complexes and much prefers that I just deal with it and oh my God please don't cry and anything else he can do to pretend there is no crisis, he's awfully good at being the knight in shining armor, don't you agree?

I thought you might. Because I can be shallow and he can be sweet, even though neither one of us would ordinarily cop to such pedestrian labels.

And so this morning I ran down past the river in the newly melting snow and warmer temperatures to clean the snow off the benches and visit with the ghosts of laptops past. I sat down for a minute to say hello, because sometimes that's what I do, and then to my surprise hello didn't come out of my mouth. Instead it was something else entirely, something I didn't really understand until much later this morning. I said two words to them, and two words only, and then I turned around and ran home.

He's perfect.

Embedded footnotes and a whole bunch of proof that I do listen to PJ's suggestions.

Today's favorite quote: Creepy: Weird with romantic intent.

Today's music includes but is not limited to Chevelle, Trapt, Rev Theory, Deepfield, Crossfade and Allele. More Submersed. Feel better now, PJ?

Today's menu includes hot applesauce and crumpets for breakfast, grilled cheese and fruit salad for lunch and homemade vegetarian pizza and salad for dinner with generous handfuls of pistachios in between.

Today's activities include but will not be limited to sleigh ride sermons, long honest talks, playing in the snow in the backyard, baking brownies, watching movies on Ben (the movies will not be played on Ben because I don't do human projection. I will lie on him and watch them because he is comfortable) and surfing new skate prices because Henry is growing by the day, possibly by the hour and any tattoo budget I had allotted for the spring will now be re-allocated for a entire new wardrobe for this gigantic kid. The huncles* have proclaimed that Henry will be as big as they are soon enough. I find that funny, seeing as how Cole was under 5'11". My children belong to all of them too.

*Today's new word is HUNCLES. Since I get tired of writing honorary uncles, and if I just use uncles, everyone assumes I have over a dozen brothers and I actually don't have any. The boys, my friends, all serve as uncles for the kids because they've always gone above and beyond, filling in as babysitter, friend, dad, uncle, brother, whatever we've ever needed, so huncles it is. (Maybe hunkles would be even better.)

Mmmm...hunkles.

Today's mindset is silly, as you can plainly see. A hell of a far cry from yesterday. Thank goodness. I may change my mind after I meet with Sam, so that's why I'm posting before lunch!

Byes for now.

Aptly Named.

I can love you I can love you, I can love you a lot,
I can love you, I can love you, I can love you a lot,

I'm here and I wonder if I'm lost
because I can't seem to understand the way I feel.
I'm not here to be a creep.
I'm just feeling incomplete.
Take me home.

There are worse things than having the Crush (or Submersed, for that matter) lodged in one's head.

The purpose of the bridge is to build the tension leading up to the climax of the song or to lead a song to its conclusion.

There are worse things than that girl with the cake fetish at the market holding the strawberry profiteroles, that one who held on to them too long with no intentions of ever eating them again and finally was persuaded to put them down even though she was thinking because in the real world it doesn't take three hours to pick up some things for the coming week.

It doesn't overwhelm others to have a few things go wrong. Drop a glass, break a key, forget some paperwork, drive in snow. It doesn't occur to them that 'personal assistant' means nothing of the kind and maybe personal doll would be a better job description. It doesn't occur to any of them that when life goes on after they break their key and get a new one that hopefully it will be the last bad thing that happens for a while because they have no concept of what it means to take years to find your way back to a place where the little things don't cause you to have a total breakdown at six in the morning on a snowy Saturday.

It was the perfect, sheltered chance for some self-rescue. I grabbed the H CD (long story but I made a whole pile of mixtapes for the car, with songs from each letter of the alphab-nevermind, that would only appeal to the music geeks, and according to PJ I am not hardcore enough for any of them to read here) and we set off, listening to Hollow and by the time we got to Home, I had checked off a whole bunch of things on a list that didn't even exist three days ago and I was secretly planning a reward or two in my head and soon enough I was pulling up in front of my house and Hell had just started playing.

I think my stereo is trying to tell me something.

Somewhere out there is a wicked thrashing song about broken glass, keys and decapitated dolls that has a simple chorus about learning to calm the fuck down, with an epic bridge. They always have a good bridge. And it's always my favorite part.

Surprise surprise.