So break yourself against my stones
And spit your pity in my soul
You never needed any help
You sold me out to save yourself
And I won't listen to your shame
You ran away, you're all the same
Angels lie to keep control
My love was punished long ago
If you still care don't ever let me know
If you still care don't ever let me know

This morning is Slipknot and chili lime pistachios while I write emails and pay some bills and wrap up Caleb's week in business here at the loft. I'm headed out Christmas shopping shortly and then to the school for parent-teacher meetings and then with a little luck by dinner time we will be in the truck to join the caravan for the trip to the farm for 'Merican Thanksgiving. Nolan is waiting with open arms and we really really need a lot of that right now.

Happy thanksgiving! Again. because we get two. Think we can try for two Christmases too?

I know. Always worth a shot though.

Ben is doing better. Thank you for your kind thoughts.

Flakes, snow and otherwise.

Show me where it hurts
And I will make it worse.

I have been a busy little bee this morning. I went and bought wrapping paper and stocking stuffers. I found magic drip candles in a store and bought three boxes because I love those almost as much as magic rocks and fire, too. I made my list and tomorrow I plan to go back out and finish shopping for the children and for the out of province family and then I'll come home and finish packing for the farm.

We'd like to be out of here tomorrow evening. I have parent-teacher interviews tomorrow afternoon and then we're good to go. Might even have dinner on the road. Which kind of excites me, because really, Caleb's caliber of restaurant may be just lovely and easy to get used to, but nothing beats truckstop coffee.

And Bridget loves her coffee. I fell asleep in a cup of coffee yesterday afternoon which was a whole new narcoleptic low for me. I will blame the dog. He wakes up at five and so we put him up on the bed and he'll curl up against Ben's legs and sleep for the rest of the morning. But then hallo, Bridget's awake. Ben is awake too but he'll pretend he's asleep until the radio goes off an hour later.

I will sleep this weekend at Nolan's. Next week I will finish up shopping for the boys. Shhh.

I'm trying the Keeping Busy routine and hopefully I can recruit Ben into this plan and maybe we'll squeak through winter without any more upsets. Yesterday we laid low. Ben went to meetings with the boys. I stayed home with the other boys and wrote a little and tried to rest and got spoiled rotten and then Ben came home and rested too and I got a hell of a lot of cuddles and snuggles and a fire lit and kept and I went to sleep in tears anyway because I was worn out and overtired and not feeling so hot and totally frustrated. Ben put his arms around me and pulled me in tight against his chest.

While we slept the snow came, bringing with it a fresh start and a &#^@$* freezing cold morning. We do well when it snows. It's magic of a different sort.

Hold harmless.

There is a sideshow school (!!) at Coney Island and I'm drowning in sleeplessness today. Ben and I each seem to average about three or four hours a night, less when we are being dramatic, more when we are tired of ourselves and each other and give up the ghosts in favor of healing rest.

It's the way it is.

I still harbor the great escape in my head. For times when I am sitting at the bottom of the pantry in the kitchen and everyone wants me out but no one wants to come in, I run away to join the sideshow freaks and they welcome me home and it's glorious and it's simple. They want bacon and cars from the seventies, they want to find some fun on a cool autumn evening and they want to be love. They want to get some mail and fresh wildflowers and a pretty ring. They want to entertain you for their dollars and they know how to boil life down on the rusted ring burner of an old electric stove in the back of a booth on the edge of the pier and they know how to eat what remains and thrive on it.

We, on the other hand, are just pretending.

Ben opened the pantry door, via the gorilla goalie method because I was already on the island and failed to hear his final warning and I was launched out of the park and back into his arms and he smelled like whiskey and love and cigarettes and sad. He yelled at Lochlan to back away and he put his hand over my ear so I couldn't hear him anymore. He is growing to be attached to my hair. Like the others.

Touch=safe.

He would do well to come back to the carnival with me. There are no devils in New York and no complications and no history of anything. Just grindstones and mermaids and cheap Louis Vuitton fakes and Production. Also there is the Aquarium but I haven't made it there yet, I fell in love with the gritty boardwalk and the lights and I can't be torn away from them, I must be physically carried until I can't see them anymore and then I'll walk under my own power.

I would love, oddly enough, to see that in snow.

I would love to be in the mermaid parade too.

I found miracles there.

I'm at work. I feel like shit. I don't sleep or eat. I just runrunrun and try to stay upright as long as possible and when I get sixteen or eighteen hours into a day I can stop and sit for a bit and sometimes maybe I get a couple hours of sleep.

Right now I'm busy trying to scan in the kid's school pictures. Caleb has the past four years here too so I'm going to make a slide show that shows how much they have grown. Ben should be here any minute to collect me from my day in hell and we're going to go have coffee with Nolan and discuss the weekend. I want to go to the farm for our 'merican turkey day. I want to escape for a few days. I want to go back to where it was when Ben and I were the only two people on earth and it was dark and snowing and we broke the surface of life together and took a really deep breath.

That's what I want.

He's here. See you later.

(Getaway in) Stockholm syndrome.

I say hell it is love
You say I must suffer
She's a motherfucker
Resurrect me

Sleep well in your killing bed
Give a jig and show some life
Favor for a favor
Don't separate the
Pain from the knife
All the doctors sing
You got to suffer for the cure
As the world fades away
You wonder where you were

I can be bought for the price of a few pretty little things shipped from Agent Provocateur, so says Caleb yesterday as we were preparing to leave his loft. He laughed as if he was kidding only that's when you know he is not, just like he always smiles when he lies.

The tightrope is worn rather thin over that part of the city.

And he is right, for I came away from the weekend with some gorgeous new sets of black ribbons and ruffled pink satin, a favorite combination. Dress up the doll and put her on display. Use your timeshare wisely. All girls like to be spoiled rotten and treated well and not the other way around.

Ben's eyes grew dark as he fought to honor his agreements and quell his own appetites and I let the excuses of history serve as our joint confession. He goes with me into hell. I won't be made to choose between Ben's continued success and my intactness. It's a no-brainer. It's a wash. So I kept my apologies to myself and I took my husband by the hand, box under his arm and we took the car that was sent across town and fulfilled obligations that sometimes seem never-ending and decadent and possibly undeserving and sometimes seem as if they were scraped out of the gutter and presented in a silver teacup.

Kind of like how you can scrape a girl out of the gutter and dress her up in pretty pink satin and tell her she's beautiful when it's all a mistake and a miscommunication. An error in being. A flaw in time.

An aberration in humanity. Like a half-formed future reject off the assembly line that makes people, I appeared with broken ears and a broken mind and a heart that loses whole big pieces and a total lack of judgement that makes everyone who loves me want to alternately scream and line up for whatever sort of enkindled torture it is that I can produce for them.

None of this is true, mind you. I don't think I'm flawed, actually. Not all that much, anyway. Ruined for sure, but I can harbour enough of a reasonable facsimile of myself to make Benjamin so incredibly happy he married me if only for claiming ownership of a visual that is tactile for him. Everyone else must be content to entertain it in their dreams save for for a handful of others who have passes but they are only good for certain times and the only way I can rectify that inside the brokenness of my head is to embrace some other part of my personality that remembers these boys don't remark on beauty that isn't remarkable. That I am worthy or they wouldn't want me. And that no one rocks the pink and black satin like Bridget rocks it. Like she rocks everything.

There will be no remorse until tomorrow.

Here where the tightrope is thicker and I have better balance, the pink satin is tucked away in a drawer that sees less of a confident reflection and more than a little doubt, thinner skin with which to be stung by judgement and hurt by glances carelessly stripped of their intended ignorance and doubt bubbling up from a well that should see the most confidence in all.

It isn't a sport, it's an obligation. Hunting princesses in order to leave the knights alone, I have a real life monster who thrives on making me afraid but also knows how I thrive on the attention it gives me.

I am not one to apologize and I know it will be dismissed as Bridget being crazy in the first few years after Jacob..well whatever it is that they say and I pretend not to hear because I am too busy being Shocking and Difficult and Impossible. Too busy making sure everyone loves me.

Just in case.

Just in case something else happens and a little more of my heart gets crushed into glass. In case you fail to understand that there are actual rules of engagement, something I am not required to share. It's a rare and precious occasion for him to actually touch the satin, don't you see? He much prefers to view me like a movie, burning me into his brain. Trying to erase Benjamin out of the picture, maybe. I don't know. I don't ask.

You think I care that you don't understand?

I do not.

Not tonight.

Black clouds with silver linings.

Very long day, bear with me. I need a vacation and not like the mini-Vegas one I just had. That didn't count. What will count is the fact that the children brought home their school picture orders and as soon as Ben gets home we are headed back out for Thai food. The fridge is restocked (so you can come back now, PJ) and neither Lochlan nor Caleb gave me a hard time today. August is a prince among thieves and I finally had a whole cup of coffee like ten minutes ago and plan to sleep the sleep of the dead tonight no matter what. Tomorrow has been canceled due to lack of interest and we're going to make fried potatoes, coffee and bacon and build a fire to keep all day long and watch movies. And it ain't even snowin' yet!

See I can be an optimist, I just need something to work with.

But damn, the day was long and difficult. So damned difficult. I'm done with that. No more please.

ARGHHHHHHH.

Benjamin is watching Hangry & Angry videos right now.

That is all.

(Snort.)

Presenting Miss Bridget Doolittle (oh, but doesn't Eliza Reilly sound more romantic?)

I’m becoming a monster just like you
After it all you’ll try to break me too
Falling forever chasing dreams
I brought you to life
So I can hear you scream

Because I don't know what else to do.

I'm not presentable. I'm not good in high society. I have a small town, south shore-girl accent and under my pretty dress I have dirty bare feet, and a chip on my shoulder that makes my dress hang funny. Awkwardly off my bony white shoulders and it lifts it up a little more and shows that much more thigh which is fine, they're one of my best features.

But no one is looking at my legs, they're always looking at my head because it's mayhem from ear to ear and beautiful chaos from my fivehead to the bottom of my overly pointy chin and Jesus H. Christ on a pancake, don't even get them started on my big quavery green eyes that appear to leak. Steadily. Drip drip drip. The plumber's been in, there is nothing that can be fixed.

How goddamned embarrassing it is and yet I want to yell fuck you into a crowd of people I'm supposed to live to impress and walk out. I don't want to be famous. I've seen what famous does. I've seen what infamous does as well. I want to be quiet and arrange my words and go for hugs when I need them and not talk for days if it suits me lest I open my mouth and all these unrefined and inappropriate emotions fly out and people wonder where you found me. She's wild, perhaps, they whisper as if I am their curiosity, even though ironically these are the same people who, for the price of a ticket, will come and bring their families and sit safely under the big top and watch the show in a controlled environment.

Reilly because I kept it. Couldn't do it, lost my nerve. Poor Benjamin, she doesn't trust him enough to take his name.

(Cover my bills, Mr. Higgins and I'll show you what talents 'high society' can learn from me.)

No, actually there were other reasons involved. Very significant and well-thought out reasons that led me to keep my last name and no one here had any issues with it whatsoever, especially Ben.

But you know what's great? He is so much like Cole. So much like him. Save for one thing. That quiet confidence. Ben only has that confidence in certain places and it's rather obvious. He's fallible. Forgivable. Unsure, even. Which is a far cry from Jake's unsure, because Jacob dealt with his weaknesses by hiding behind God and hiding behind rules that would Keep Bridget Safe and we all know how that went down. Thanks, asshole. You left me unable to trust the only guy who gave enough of a shit right through everything to stick around and pick up the pieces of me no one else appeared to want.

So now without Jacob's guidance and Cole's quiet violence we're left to do damage control while we're still busy wrecking shit and at this rate Eliza or Bridget or whoever the heck she wants to be today will never be presentable to your public, for your approval.

If you want her she and the big guy are busy putting on their tights and their makeup, there's a show tonight. We're billing it Pygmalion. For all the heartless guttersnipes like me who like that kind of thing.

I just know when you marry a girl from the circus your life becomes one. And it isn't always shiny happy exciting, is it?

Goodness, I've left dirty footprints on your silly marble floor.

My favorite is the Creelman Blickensderfer.

For anyone who thought I was harsh on Lochlan the past little while, please remember this is the curly golden boy who says whatever will make him look best. Of course he'll finally have my best interests at heart. Of course he won't try to come between Ben and I.

Pigs. Flying. Look how pretty.

None of it matters because nothing can come between us. Ben and I are nothing apart and everything together and I have yet to be distracted from that. Okay, I was mightily distracted from it this morning as Ben wandered around the house with his coffee and his tattoos and his pajama bottom pants yanked down just perfectly and the hair all tousled and sexy and his Movember beard and moustache now at ridiculous lengths and we were the only ones home and took full advantage and now he has gone to some meetings and Daniel is home sick and sleeping, having gone to work and returned with perfect timing and so I am shut in the library hall with the tiny desk at the end of the room in front of the window with my pleats arranged just so on this black dress that shows too many tattoos in itself and black stockings, black shoes and a dainty little silver evil eye necklace. Hair in the customary disconnected, cascading chignon and black glasses halfway down my nose. I always make an effort to sit up very straight while I type and apart from lunch, which is soon, I have the remains of the day in which to arrange the words so that I like them.

It's been a while.

Sometimes we go off the tracks and weeks go by and something rocks me and I lose my focus and then suddenly it's there again and I can block out everything else and the windowsill corners get dusty and papers pile up on the table and I begin to forget to do things like buy groceries and follow Ben around unplugging his instruments and amplifiers because if I didn't sometimes we get a loud surprise from a trespassing cat or a curious Henry.

I don't actually forget to buy groceries, it's more like I put it off until we've done a pantry challenge and use up some meal ideas that have been waiting for a bit. That's all. If you think I could ever go a day without pouring hundreds of dollars worth of food into these growing boys, you would make me laugh. These are the three-cheeseburgers-in-one-sitting type of eaters and then I am given ample opportunity to curse their male metabolisms as I try and zip up my dress after half a burger, no cheese.

I'm relishing today with the cold winter sun hitting at just the right angles to avoid needing lights in here, the books lining the shelves all the way around have a tendency to darken this room and the rickety glass chandelier that I can't reach to change the bulbs does little to help one to read. That's why I removed the window seat in this room and Cole made a built-in desk instead and lower shelves for my collection of antique typewriters. Only it's so narrow it borders on unusable, except by me and sometimes Ruth when she is moved to come in here. There are whole areas of the house they just don't bother with and others you will always find them in.

They prefer the sunny back of the house to the gloomy front and I can see why. It's been a challenge to find a balance between warm family-friendly rooms and my penchant for medieval chill and gothic revulsion in decorating. The urge to paint every room black gets bitten back in favor of the weird warm shades, like the pumpkin guts color that wound up in my kitchen.

The urge to leave the words in a tangle on the table is gone as well. I've put it off, let it go, ignored it in favor of letting the low grade fear run through me, incapacitating my brain again, letting the boys call the shots, fight over me and run the show.

Sometimes it's necessary. Voluntary even, as my head checks out and I live on auto-pilot, breathing quick and shallow, pulling the ribbons on my dress tighter so I don't notice and sabotaging the moments of levity with the greater future threats and past weight that precludes just being who ever in the hell it is that I am.

Whoever she is has enough charisma to secure the means to figure the rest out. Everything else I will just blame on words.