The part where she lives.

I might be getter better. The cold seems to have loosened it's grip on me. My voice hasn't cut out today, my headache left after being chased off the premises by the mighty Advil Liquigel I took after waking up and the energy I can credit to a little fresh air and a big bottle of Mega C Vitamin water, something the dorky one swears by when he's on the road. All I need is a little extra sleep, which I should be able to pull off tonight, and I'm maybe home-free.

Until the next cold, that is. Henry still coughs a little at night. If he wakes up for whatever other reason, I pop out of bed, get his inhaler and a glass of water and bring them to him and then take them back and it usually takes him five or ten minutes to settle back down and fall asleep again. One of these days he'll be responsible enough to have the inhaler on his nightside table and maybe I won't have to get up at all but we're not there yet. Soon, just not quite yet.

In other news, I'm a mess. I looked at my reflection while we were out this morning and almost screamed. I had my hair twisted up into a little ponytail and my bangs are down to my chin again and the blonde is brassy and winterburned. I had no makeup on so my eyes were dark hollows. Pale lips. No jewelry. Jeans that are too loose again. Burgundy parka that washes me out. Mittens. I asked Ben if I was losing it and he said I only get this sick once or twice a year and not to worry. GEEZ, darling are you looking at me?

You know I must be feeling better when that actually bothers me. Remember Naomi Watts in Eastern Promises? No, no, after she would get off her bike. In the cold, with the red nose. Yes, that's exactly right.

We came home after getting all of our things done and I did not change my clothes or do much more than brush my hair, add jewelry and put on some mascara and some lipgloss but what a difference a little sparkle makes.

Maybe I'll just vomit glitter all over you. I feel like it actually, I think I had a little too much water and used up a little too much energy this morning.

Rotary girl.

It's a good day for double-toasted bagels and a few rounds of Exquisite Corpse (which is unfortunately named). A good day to play outside in the snow since it's a free day from school, and a good day finalize the grocery list for tomorrow as we batten down our hatches and attempt to ride out February as painlessly as possibly.

A good day to start packing because the extended winter break is over for Ben, a little earlier than scheduled and he has mustered his numbish enthusiasm to tell me it will be okay.

I know it will be okay, though.

Once it ends. Once I try and remember all the rules and mechanisms we put in to place to ensure that each trip out won't end in complete and utter disaster like last year. Once I remember that I married Ben and I married his other life too, since it's such a huge part of who he is and him going away to work is just something I am going to have to learn to get used to.

The whole thing gives me a goal for February. I don't really enjoy goals (or disappointment or pressure, for that matter). I don't enjoy living in this big house all alone either with some harried late night or early morning staticky phone calls to stand in for Ben's epic, irreplaceable hugs and presence. I don't enjoy living a life behind glass where everyone sets the charge and then retreats to the safety of the shelter to watch the explosion and subsequent shockwave from a safe distance and then runs back over to assess the destruction.

I don't want to be the damage.

(Change the things you can, princess).

Here's the thing, Jacob. I can't change Ben's vocation. This is his calling as much as yours was the church. It makes him who he is. What I can change is my reaction to it, how I deal with it or how I fuck it up for both of us, over and over again.

You're totally right, Jakey. I need to do this. I can do this. Everyone else seems to be able to manage it, and as a bonus, I get Ben back in the end. Safe and sound. One-piece man. No more puzzles, no more fragment-girl, left to founder at home.

No more fragile. No more spinning around the dial looking for a number to fall into. No more ancient, tested and true methods of riding out the fear unsuccessfully. All new for the new year. I do believe I have finally grown tired of myself and the way I think and it's time to make things better. I wasn't aware one could suffer that much grief and then proceed to lose several entire years but it can't go on.

It can't go on, Jake. You need to go. You need to let me go.

Oh, wait. I need to let you go.

Beautiful.

There is a video for that song. I knew that already, I just didn't bother linking it but here, since some of you wanted to know. Oh, and if your work does not approve of bikinis, save it til you get home, okay? (I'm talking to you, Duncan.)

It's not until you go to look at newly updated copyright notices and the like and you discover you've been putting the words down for just about five years now and there's no more trust in yourself than you had the day you started this stupid thing.

Yes, it's probably cabin fever, or maybe it's the fact that everytime I take a deep breath everything hurts like hell and I can't seem to stop coughing and I shouldn't have gone for a run and hell, I shouldn't have done a lot of things but really, the only gift I seem to have is the ability to write without stopping. It may not be good but it's goddamned plentiful. I daresay words are the one thing I never seem to run out of as long as they flow from my fingertips and not from my mouth.

I may just post all day. It's called being unsettled.

Short run.

...expressions are cast to confuse and impress, eroding the resilience that serves to be not quite good enough. I try to bring the words with honesty, instead of persisting in the shade of daydreams...

...inevitably, more tragedies wait in the wings while we linger under the hot lights, reluctant to take our bows and exit stage left to face the music of the pressing darkness. Pride and ego standing in for courage...

Beautiful, fragile. Beautiful, fragile. Beautiful, fragile.

Oh, I love this part!

visually you're stimulating to my eyes
your Cinderella syndrome's full of lies
your insecurities are concealed by your pride
pretty soon your ego will kill what's left inside

just as beautiful as you are
It's so pitiful what you are
you should have seen this coming all along
It's so pitiful what you are
as beautiful as you are
you should have seen this coming all along

you're everything that's so typical
maybe you're alone for a reason, you're the reason

it's so pitiful what you are, you should have seen this coming all along

God I love that song.

My time is up, where should I turn?

Maybe just one more block.

It would have been nice to run long enough to leave the uncategorized thoughts behind. Perhaps tomorrow.

Peas, pod.

I was in my usual haunt being my usual self. Hair piled up behind my neck with a myriad of Victorian pins and a spare black pencil because I break my hairsticks so easily and have gone back to the old standard. Fingers laden down with rings rolling loose around my knuckles, bones shrugged into a thin black sweater over a dark dress, dark stockings and three-mile high platform shoes. Holding another black pencil with my thumb while I rattled off a pile of words on the keyboard, ones to be sorted later.

Humming along while the stereo roared in my ears , oblivious to every last potential nuclear holocaust that might or might not be occurring outside of my non-peripheral, complete and utter tunneled vision.

I surprised myself when I felt a presence, a perceived attention and I looked around and found Ben standing in the doorway, regarding me with a fascinated look, not daring to break the spell I can put myself under any old time.

I bit my lip, adding the snarly, toothy look of concentration that he positively adores.

There's a word for this.

For what?

You, with your hair up and the all-black dresses and shoes inside the house, the whole doll thing, the formal mourning clothes on bad days. It makes you who you are, right from the top of your beautiful head to those thin little spindle-ankles of yours.

Ah, so I should change?

Into?

Less scary clothes? Normal shoes? Jeans more often?

He came into the room and sat down in the spare chair and began to play with the contents of my bag, separating the Happy Meal toys out and testing out an errant sharpie pen, reading some scraps of paper, holding up a hearing aid that should have been in my ear but wasn't.

No. No, don't change a thing. This is who you are.

Maybe good people change for their loves.

When have you ever done that?

Never.

Exactly. No, they change for you. They want to become part of you.

No one has ever changed for me, if they did they would have become perfect. Instead of being perfectly flawed.

You think?

I know.

What about me?

You don't change, Ben.

That's encouraging.

No. You improve but you're not jumping through hoops to please me or to fit in.

I never needed to do that. You wanted to be like me. All hardcore and stuff.

Oh is that it?

Yes, that's exactly right.

I must be so transparent.

Admit it.

What happens if I admit it?

Nothing.

His face broke into a huge smile when I nodded, and then he bit the top off my chapstick for good measure. I've taken to buying the fruit-flavored organic lip balms just so the boy gets a nutrient or two.

You want to come to the rink with me?

Sure, just let me change.

You look beautiful, Bridget. Leave everything as it is.

I don't want to be cold.

I won't let you be cold, baby. You can wear my coat.

Sorry, it's not hardcore enough for me.

Hey, I can change.

Don't touch a thing, Benjamin. Just leave it all like this.

He's got the sweetest smile, you know. If I only had the words to share it with you.

Good grief (the Snoopy kind, not the Sam kind).

Choose your words
Choose them wise

Not surprisingly, I'm plotting extra tattoos this morning. I like words, okay? Give me the perfect combination and I will wear them for all eternity.

I'm still magnificently sick today but instead of throwing the proverbial kitchen sink of cold medicines at myself and hoping for the best, this morning I'm chewing aspirins and drinking green tea with honey, taking my vitamin C and my iron pills and just digging my fingers into this day so I don't get flung off like I did yesterday, hitting the couch facedown before six and then giving up on even that and going to bed at eight where I cried myself to sleep and raged in and out of an uneasy Nyquil coma uneasily until the alarm went off at five and I swore at Gord Downey once again.

I just have to make it through ten more hours and I can do it all again, even though in an effort to stay healthy so that he can continue to make the most delicious BLT sandwiches I have ever eaten and wash dishes with Henry and surpervise the children at circus (bed) time and all the other things I normally do plus his usual night-but-suddenly-day job for just a little while longer, Ben is reduced to giving me forehead kisses and oddly-removed squeezes from above with his face turned away as if I am a plague in pajamas. A cute little drippy blonde pariah. I hate that.

I can't blame him though. He has to be healthy right now.

I'd like to be healthy right now but I can't complain. By this time over each of the past three years we would have already weathered five or six major colds and rounds of antibiotics and dozens of days lost to the stupor of sickness and dismay.

So this is peaches and cream because it's the first bad one and really, there's only six weeks left of winter thanks to the groundhogs. I can make it, really, I can.

Oh, and God bless Ben too.

Song of the week for you, since I can't get the playlist-thingie to function in all of your browsers and the words must always come first. Lochlan took it off for me and we shall muddle through, alright?

That beautiful song woke me up this morning, for Ben sings and plays a mean acoustic version of it, and because I've been complaining about my favorite radio station waking me up with Tragically Hip eleven mornings out of twelve. So he woke me up instead. With that.

It was nice, because I went to bed last night nursing the end of a bad headache and woke up with a painfully sore throat and space-cadet head. And while it would be nice to spend the day in flannel, reading under the blankets in front of the fire, we had to get up, instead, wash every dish in the house because I think every last one of them was used for the Superbowl party last night and then do three loads of laundry, which I'm just about done, and then I'm going back to bed.

Before I fall asleep I promise I'll say my prayers though. God bless Advil Extra-strength Liquigels, God bless Dayquil and God bless Bounce dryer sheets for making everything I can't smell smell good anyway.

(P.S. Since Youtube seems to be on a video removal binge lately, the song is Flicker by Submersed.)

Plus three.

The kids and I are on our own today, since it's a work day and since tomorrow is Boy-Sunday, in which boys who never put down their hockey sticks or guitars or tools actually stop and watch the Superbowl, you know, in case other boys bring it up later in the year. It screams masculine. It screams something about stereotypes too, I dunno, I don't hear very well, PJ.

There, there. It's only one day and then you can go back to sweet, precious hockey. I love hockey. I do not love football.

We've already grocery-shopped, done the house chores, eaten breakfast and lunch and gotten the laundry started. Everyone is clean, the beds are made and the cats are lazing in the sun coming through the living room window, enjoying the view of the melting snow in the backyard.

It's a heat wave. My favorite kind of wave.

I've even oiled my countertops and butcher blocks. Something I swear I'll do once a month but seem to do every three. I talked to my mother on the phone and I stocked up on rockets and skittles because if the groundhog doesn't see his shadow on Monday I think I might throw a party.

And now, if you'll excuse me, in between the marathon of running up and down the stairs doing laundry, since the bedrooms are on the third floor but the washer and dryer are in the basement, I'm going to curl up in the window seat with my new copy of Rolling Stone with a haggard-looking Bruce Springsteen on the cover and eat some of these skittles before they melt in this heat.

Not like me.

To you
I'm all I've left undone
I'm all I haven't won
Lift me up my soul's so hollow
Lift me up

You take
The breath you didn't make
What's left you did forsake
Lift me up my soul's so hollow
Lift me up my soul's so hollow

Here's the point where we grab the wheel and spin it back, undoing the past year and going back to the days where the kids and I are protected (on paper) from Caleb because life is safer that way. Where most people would give one strike, I always seem to give three before I declare someone out. His game is officially over now.

For the past three months Caleb has been threatening me and I didn't tell anyone because I wouldn't and he knew that, thanks to Cole. Years of violence can leave people without the tools they need to scream out loud and because if anyone has ever made good on a threat, it is Caleb. I have seen and experienced firsthand what he is capable of and I don't want to be on the receiving end of it ever again. I went to work for him, I continued to put up with his charming malevolence and his depravities because I thought he was capable of taking Ben away from me and I don't ever want to be faced with that. My physical safety was irrelevant compared to that. My safety is always irrelevant. Play with her until she stops moving, that's Caleb's tried and true business model. It's his way.

I'll admit as well that in a sick and twisted fashion (because that is how we roll) I was also attracted to Caleb. He's handsome, rich, powerful and dangerous. He reminds me of Cole and no one will ever understand how hard it is to let go of that.

No one, except maybe Ben. But Ben isn't given to fixing things, he isn't given to picking up where Jacob left off, he isn't given to dictating my actions because he doesn't feel that has any place in the relationship we have forged.

Until yesterday, that is.

I didn't want to go on the trip with Caleb. I think Caleb knew his game was falling apart and he wanted whatever chance he could get to be alone with me. He's a very lonely person and I think he thought I was going to fill the space within, but he doesn't know how to make that happen because you can't buy that. He tried. He saw something pretty and sparkly in the window and he had to have it. Even Cole knew, for Cole spent a lot of our life together keeping his brother away from me.

I'm ashamed to say how much alike we are.

Ben didn't want me to go either and yet the others pushed on, because we don't make good decisions, because we're both so messed up. They think routine is terrific. Bridget being busy is such practical therapy. Caleb was behaving, right? All seemed well. They let their own logic override plain good sense (did I say Caleb charmed only me?), but we found it and dusted it off and to our surprise, good sense can still prevail.

When I was zipping up my travel case and it wouldn't zip and I started to cry because I was so afraid, Ben said enough.

Enough of this goddamn game, Bridget. What in the hell are you doing?

Keeping you safe from him.

What?

He said he would hurt you if I didn't stay close to him.

He can't hurt me, princess. He's got nothing.

He told me he knew things.

I've been around long enough to know not to tell people like him anything I wouldn't want everyone to know. You think I wanted you to be with him? I thought I was making things as easy as I could for you. It killed me when you were with him.

I just stared at him. What in the fuck have I been torturing myself for? Oh, right. My memories.

(This is why making her own decisions is bad, bad, bad news for Bridget. Now do you see? Now do you understand why she shouldn't be in charge of any damn thing past choosing breakfast? Good. Just so we're clear. Bad, bad news, baby.)

Yesterday Ben took me by the hand and we went to court and we reinstated the order of protection and we notified the school and we sat down with our friends and told them and we did all the things we needed to do to ensure that Caleb can't get back into my head or my heart. I am safe. I don't work for Satan any more and I don't need him to enhance the memories of Cole that I keep in my heart.

No more secrets, Bridget. I'm not as fragile as you are.