The Time Traveler's Wife.

Beautiful Bridget torture.

I wonder if I'll make it through this movie. Hell, I wonder if I'll be allowed to go see it.

(I didn't do so well with Up so I doubt I'll get to go.)

Hmmph.

Let's just say I overslept. Please ignore the pajamas.

Because I put them back on when I came home.

I'm turning the page for something new
I'm finding my way through life in bloom

This morning the Veer Union and Revolution Mother took turns pounding through my head, replacing the pain of last week as I ran through the pollen and the new leaves on the elm trees that line the streets of my city neighborhood. The air is clear and warm, the conditions PERFECT for running and still I had to turn back long before my knee-cracking endorphin marathon, so far out of reach I couldn't even say I got close to it, because the guillotine has come down and cut off the need to overachieve in my daily routine.

Every single plan I had for the weekend was dashed in a welcome bid for some easy times. Concerts were ignored and rescheduled, we didn't go to the fair, we didn't have a picnic or fly remote control things in the park, we didn't get many errands run or get to the butcher or baker. We didn't run or work really hard, though Ben installed the rain barrel and even set up the planter in the top part so I have flowers there now and we rearranged the stone patio and then yesterday we went outside with everyone right after lunch and we sat out there and talked and hung out right through until bedtime.

This morning? No anxiety. None. Not a trace. I slept through the night again. I came to some sort of unspoken perspective. Or maybe it's just that I rested enough to feel better. I laughed. Especially Saturday when I was leaning over to grab the watering can from behind the chair and Ben stuck the hose up my skirt and sprayed it. Half an hour later, still in the wet skirt, I was cornered by him in the garage and we felt like two teenagers taking advantage of five minutes of privacy. I'm always struck by what an incredible kisser he is with me. He used to say he hated kissing girls because they read too much into it but sometimes now I get a forever kiss which is more like exchanging precious breaths until every last one has been traded but it sends a ripple up my spine, activates my goosebumps and makes my head spin.

He likes kissing ME, that's all.

Which is why I kept walking around slowly watering plants and helping with cleaning out the truck in that wet skirt for half the afternoon, only venturing inside out of the sun to change when Henry came home from down the street and asked me if I had an accident. He thought Ben doing that was funny and wanted to see it again. Had I hung around outside I'm sure I would have been soaked, my only saving grace being the plea to not spray me because I'm holding my phone and if you ruin my BlackBerry you're going to be in SO much trouble, Benjamin.

He stopped then, not because of the phone, which he is hellbent on replacing anyway, but because he didn't want to push his luck since I hadn't been feeling well and the goal was to relax Bridget, not wear her out entirely.

Even the children were content to stick around the neighborhood and do next to nothing. The groove of the first truly hot and summery weekend has spilled over into Monday too, bringing a relaxed and vaguely still unfocused attitude that helps deflect the routine and the stresses of every-day life.

I hope it sticks around. It's pretty nice. And I did get worn out eventually. This morning. We were ungodly late getting out of bed this morning, and I loved every second of it.

And it almost makes up for not being at Bonnaroo.

They should change the name of the MuchMore music channel.

Today things are much better. Things were actually much better by last night. And I learn hard lessons once again about the difference between slowing down when I don't feel well or I'm overwhelmed and actually slowing down. I don't, I tend to just keep muddling through until I drop and then I figure after sleeping a little overnight that I should be back to rights and I can pick up the slack.

Not so.

Slowing down is actually stopping moving. Yesterday I wound up lying down with ice and pills and tears and I didn't do a damn thing all day. Okay, a little bit of laundry and I made an easy lunch for the kids and otherwise I lay down with the ice pack and the TV on low and I tried to just rest. I tried to slow down. I watched music videos from artists I don't enjoy and I drifted in and out of a pain-fueled hysteria and it was one of those times when I just gave up.

I'm not sure if it was the tail end of this flu that's been shadowing me since early May or if I just burned the candle at both ends until it ran out of wax but I needed that time and I got it. By five o'clock I could crack a smile and by the time Lochlan walked through the door to check on me all of the tension had evaporated. Ben felt better too. I really think now that a lot of it stemmed from his trip and maybe that's how stress comes out-days later. I think for me stress now exists under a magnifying glass and I can't put it in perspective anymore and I'd like to get back to where I could do that, on my own, without one of my knights stepping in and doing it for me.

In any case I felt well enough to go and run some errands last evening after canceling our larger plans and then I forced myself to go to sleep long before I wanted to and I didn't wake up until eight this morning and there is no pain today in my head for the first time in a week and I feel alert and calm. Which is good because we have a really busy weekend ahead.

Busy meaning fun.

Oh and mainstream popular music? Never again. Ever. Seriously. DO NOT LIKE. Even August wandered through the living room at one point, stopped to watch a few minutes of Lady Gaga, and said What the hell is that? A disco stick, is that what she said? I reminded him that music tastes are subjective and he doubted me. I'm buying him all of her CDs for his birthday now. I won't be listening to them though. And this goes down in history as one of those moments in which they gauge how sick I was by the music I was listening to. It must have been pretty bad.

My prescription is to listen to Tool all day today and call the doctor in the morning. And to learn what I never seem to learn: that it's okay for Bridget to stop moving every once in a while.

I'm not Mary and he's not Scott.

(Tattoos and now-defunct-but-once-much-lauded cover bands aside.)

SCOTT WEILAND'S ESTRANGED WIFE PUBLISHING MEMOIR
• Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland's estranged wife, Mary, will publish a memoir called Fall To Pieces on October 27th. A press release describes the book as "a visceral rollercoaster ride inside bipolar disorder, rock 'n' roll, celebrity culture, and the competitive world of modeling from a rock star wife and recovering drug addict," adding, "On the surface, Mary Weiland had a fairy-tale life. She was a highly paid fashion model married to successful rock star Scott Weiland, the notorious frontman for Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver. Then came the rampage in a Burbank hotel room and the resulting media frenzy that revealed to the world her bipolar disorder and drug abuse."
• Although Scott’s previously reported memoir has yet to materialize, he told us that the recent disintegration of his marriage was the subject of most of his latest solo album, Happy In Galoshes. "Every time I'd be out of the house and I'd be living in a hotel or renting a house or at a friend's house, that's when I would just basically be living in the studio, and writing a song a day. Sometimes two. There were some periods of time when the pain created most of the prolific stuff that I've ever done, I think."
• Scott Weiland will hit the road for a short run of dates with Stone Temple Pilots this summer, with the band also preparing to make its first studio album in eight years. Weiland also continues to tour behind Happy In Galoshes.

My love of all things Scott Weiland is well documented but those of you emailing me their Gotcha! lists for this month can rest easy. I'm so obviously not bipolar (snort, if only), and Ben is not small enough to be Scott anyway. I mean, have you seen Scott? He's the only person in the world shorter than I am. (And Jake was not Scott either, because as you can plainly see, Scott is still touring. Still breathing even.)

Packs a lot of talent into that head of his though, everyone can happily agree on that one.

Find you in the dark
Read you like a cheap surprise
Without shame
Sell me out, and frame your name

Deftones, headphones, six oh three.

I took you home
Set you on the glass
I pulled off your wings
Then I laughed
I watched a change in you
It's like you never had wings
Now you feel so alive

She came to the door selling invitations to a safe place from which to witness the end of the world, and Ben stood there in the screen porch in nothing but a pair of jeans and his tattoos, glasses on, half-eaten slice of toast in hand and he told her he wasn't interested because he already caught that show, more than once. I watched from behind the door and tried to remain expressionless. She was obviously afraid of his cynicism and so he watched to make sure she made it safely back down the front steps and then he shook his head and came back inside and I'm sure she moved on to our neighbors where odds are she'll get much the same reaction, probably with more clothes and less misanthropy.

Ben said (as if he even cared) that he hoped he was polite enough and then locked the door and took his shirt that I had on and pulled it toward him, bringing me with it into his arms. I got a final bruising airplane-fuel kiss and a long exhausted hug and then we had to retreat to the shower to wash the sweet and dangerous homecoming of the previous night from our flesh.

He's home now and we can resume our collective derangement, like those really creepy couples that terrorize the good people in horror movies? The ones who can finish each other's sentences and he seems to be in charge, since she follows every command he gives her but then all of the sudden she's alone with you and you realize she's the one you should really be afraid of, because she doesn't have any sense at all?

Yeah, that's us. And it makes me laugh.

I look at the cross
Then I look away
Give you the gun
Blow me away
I've watched a change in you

Because the hunkles said, "Enough with the whining, princess".

I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things.
~Dorothy Parker

Both of the children passed their swimming levels tonight and got to walk on water (Jacob would have been so proud. Cole too, without the righteous angle though. Perhaps for the physics involved). No, really. It's a weird thing like a Slip n' Slide tied to each end of the pool and the kids run down the length of it, one at a time. They love it. I might post the video but it's Blackberry quality and probably only the sort of thing a mother and a dozen hunkles would love, so maybe let's just say yay for swimming badges!

That and Ben is at the airport, boarding a plane as we speak! Do I hear a yay for husbands in transit?

Ah.

Yay!

That's music to my broken little ears. Music indeed.

Yay.

(yay!)

Okay, goodnight.

It's raining men again.

It's not Monday anymore, I don't have a headache anymore, and save for a foggyish Himalayan hairball incident at three o'clock this morning, I have slept a little bit. I didn't think I would but I did, and this just reiterates for me how incredibly damaging it is that I don't get more sleep and I will. After tonight, that is, because Ben comes home in around twelve hours and so there's no way in hell I'm going to manage more than four or five hours of sleep tonight tops (shhhh) but it's okay, I'll try to get some at the end of the week and we'll see where we are then.

I had chocolate cake for breakfast which always seems to make me feel better about all kinds of things. I had a run this morning. All the way down the street and then home because yeah...I'm not feeling well enough to pull it off today. Not by a longshot.

In other longshots, last night I watched The Bachelorette on television (which is that big glossy black slab in the living room that the boys play the Xbox on, I think). A long time ago I watched two shows from the first season. There was a man looking for love and at the end he proposed to a woman and they broke up three weeks later. The women on the show all looked the same. Tall and tanned with straightened hair and overly-whitened teeth and false eyelashes and far too much makeup and few, if any of them, exhibited any class whatsoever. They all gushed about their search for their very own fairytale ending and then proceeded to answer questions posed by the Bachelor that they thought perhaps might be the right answer, instead of their own answer.

He seemed to pick the one who appealed to him most and when her composure slipped a little at the end when the contest was over, she seemed human, almost. Two weeks later she resumed her facade and they were over because they didn't have any depth as a couple, they hadn't developed a relationship, you can't do that on television and you won't find your fairytale by giving what you think are the right answers to someone who wants to get to know you.

But the Bachelorette seems different. Maybe it's because it's the first one I have seen with the role-reversals. Maybe it's because the Bachelorette, Jillian, I believe her name is, is scared and cries a lot. Maybe it's because some of the men are adorable and actually are willing to be viewed in an honest light. I remember seeing the promo on TV and thinking, oh look, perfectly coiffed men with their fauxhawks and attitudes hoping to get publicity/laid or whatever and why would someone go through that?

They didn't turn out that way last night, but mostly because ninety-nine percent of the guys that I have ever met don't give answers they think you want, they just say whatever comes to mind and then later on they beat themselves to a pulp internally for possibly fucking up something good.

Maybe I just identified with Jillian because I'm usually the only woman in a room full of men and I'm the center of attention and they compete for my attention while I give out roses disguised as affection and in recognition of points scored. Sometimes someone goes home or maybe it's the group dates. I really don't know for sure. I just know that Monday nights are now going to be a whole lot different, because I'll be watching to see how this one turns out (I do realize that she'll pick the wrong guy, they'll proclaim it to be happily ever after and a month afterward she'll be back on the talk-show circuit telling the world how it just didn't work out.)

Because fairytales aren't real.

Don't you people know that by now? Especially the ones on 'reality' television and in all the stupid bride movies we've all watched. It's not reality any more than I'm a REAL princess. We just believe in what we want to and hope for the best. Jillian's doing it in front of the cameras and I'm doing it in front of my keyboard. Everyone tunes in for a glimpse of a fairytale, because you know that's all there will ever be, that glimpse.

It's an interesting blend of faith, hope and perseverance, isn't it? It's worth tuning in to, just in case I'm wrong. That's why I keep going.

Because I might be wrong.

Charades, while we wait.

And all her friends tell her she's so pretty
But she'd be a whole lot prettier
If she smiled once in a while
Because even her smile looks like a frown
She's seen her share of devils in this angel town

Today's tally so far is three phone calls, two emails including two pictures, one of the wing of the plane and the other an upnose shot from Benjamin, and sixty-eight text messages.

So far. Snort.

He's being really sweet and massively accommodating to my incredible, debilitating fears of abandonment, let me tell you.

I told her I ain't so sure
about this place
It's hard to play a gig in this town
And keep a straight face

In return, I am projecting my bravery onto the meek little girl who would rather scowl from the corner and throw dishes and bricks at all who approach. I'm wearing my courage like a superhero suit, hiding behind it with the sure knowledge that if anyone asked me in just the wrong way I might rip your face right off and eat it. Luckily so far everyone has asked in just the right way and been greeted with Bridget's half-bitten pout and big green quavery eyes obviously attempting to make it sound like everything is just fine. Going through the motions, as Sam instructs and Lochlan insists on. Ben travels. A lot. This is what he does, princess. Fuckfuckfuck.

Everything will be fine, just give me thirty-six more hours, okay?

Everything's gonna be all right

Tough as a wet noodle, I am.

In trying to remain positive about tomorrow evening and beyond I'm noticing I get more and more tense as we get closer to Ben leaving. There's something about him, I don't know but the second he takes one step out of the front door I'm already waiting for him to come home. Even when he goes for the day or for an hour or for a minute I begin to anticipate his return. Trading hearts was never such an obvious choice as it has been with him and I don't regret it, it's just difficult. Difficult to never be independent of my thoughts of him and difficult to deal with short or long term separations, regardless of how necessary they may be.

We locked the weekend down, mindful of the busy week to come. We've spent every waking and sleeping moment together like we can't get enough, as if it couldn't possibly make up for time apart and all it seems to do is make things harder.

He holds my hand as we walk, kisses my forehead every time he turns to me, squeezes me up tight into his arms as I stand in front of him and it's not enough. I want to grab him and pull him down the hill and into the shed and push him inside, barring the door with a heavy board and then I'll run around the shed until I am out of breath, chains in hand, wrapping the tin walls in links of iron that I'll then affix a huge and heavy rusted padlock to and then I'll sink to the grass with a laugh because no one can take him from me then.

I somehow don't think he would mind, sometimes. But maybe sometimes he would and maybe sometimes I have wished that I didn't love him so goddamned much because then I could go about my life selfishly and independent but I can't because I do and he knows and it's alright because sometimes life hands you your other half and says here, try this one on, I think this is it and it is and then you can't see the seams or the beginning or end and you just feel like you're a single entity instead of a million fragments anymore and that's what the hard pill to swallow is. It's supposed to make life easier but it just means the sweet parts give you cavities and the hard parts, well, they give you bruises.

Kung Fu Kisses.

There was nothing in sight, the memories left abandoned
There was nowhere to hide, the ashes fell like snow
And the ground gave in between where we were standing
And your voice was all I heard, and I get what I deserve

The thunder rumbled and the wind blew through the trees last night, lashing rain against the windows with a fury once again, rattling the glass looking for a way in. Inside I was locked in Ben's arms, my arms pinned against his chest, our skin slick in the flickering light. I felt feverish, exhausted and he held me out and then pulled me back when he saw that I had no strength left so he became the strength for both of us. I remember kissing his earlobe and underneath his chin and he sighed harshly against the top of my head and held me that much harder, increasing pressure until I flinched away from him and then he smiled and eased back into the rhythm that I adore, pressed there against his beating heart, not being able to get any closer than I was right at that moment. The next time I didn't flinch at all. The last thing I remember is my heavy eyelids closing as Ben pulled me in against his chest one again, spoons this time. He was so warm. So warm.

We woke up to a freezing cold, cloudy morning, raindrops still making their way down the panes of glass, clearing quickly to sun but remaining cold. He wrapped me in yesterday's flannel shirt, felt my forehead and then headed downstairs to make a fire. He was back up in a flash and went to the shower while I found some pajama pants and buttoned his shirt, rolling the sleeves up over my hands as I headed down to start the coffee and feed the cats and to evaluate if I was actually feeling better. I am, I had sleep last night and yesterday I took so slowly I think I managed to evade the worst of this.

When Ben came out of the shower he laughed to find me still in his shirt with my pants with Pucca all over them, coffee cup in hand. We have extensive plans for more nights of the same, right through the weekend, because after the weekend he heads off for a couple of days of meetings far away from here and we're just going to duck our heads and distract, predict, comply until at least Wednesday. Under the radar we'll fly, you won't even know we're here.

Like the cartoon ninjas on my tv screen.