Everything is gone.

Wtf. This house is huge. Don't know how I feel right now.
~via BlackBerry.

Progress

Three-fifths done. Everyone has tattoos and they're singing musicals. It's a bit surreal.
~via BlackBerry.

Moving day!

It's Monday. Truck is here. Busy bees!! One whole hour sleep. Place your bets to see when I crash. :) xox b
~via BlackBerry.

Still packing!

Odds are I'm updating via Twitter. Be nice and follow me please. In 12hrs this is all a memory.
~via BlackBerry.

Saturday update, the boxed chaos edition.

Garage and workshop are all cleaned out. The last of three loads of laundry are in the dryer and then I can fold all of it. I am on my second giant cup of coffee and I have a pounding headache. On the upside? NINE HOURS OF SOLID SLEEP last night, something I haven't seen since around last Halloween.

I packed more dishes, more clothes and more guitars today. Ben did the outdoor, freezing cold and heavy things. The children walked the dog and went to the store for me for bread. For chocolate bars too.

Do you think the headache is from too much sleep? If so, I will embrace the pain. I wish every night was that effective.

No music today. There hasn't been time. Up until now I've been alone and I packed the stereo and I couldn't reach the network (and the music from my computer) because it just wouldn't work properly (Lochlan has since fixed it) so I figured out how to drag the tiny(forty songs) music folder on my laptop into VLC and it would play a loop and then I would have some soothing company for a bit but it's okay now because I have Ben home and he has open arms for me and very long hugs and even longer kisses and he's taking over the hard parts and keeping everyone super calm and instead of rushing around he is pacing us and reminding me to sit down and finish my coffee. To go to sleep already. Not to worry. You don't have to do everything, Bridget. Not anymore.

He's like a giant, bearded Xanax.

It's awesome.

But I am out of coffee now. I ate a granola bar. Now I have to go and fold laundry, put it all away and then start pulling it out again. We're almost through here.

Also awesome.

More than you realize.

Hallo, Ben.

Show your face
Living in the shadows like you got no name
Enough to make a little girl go insane
Be my guest to let it out tonight
It's okay
I know all about the little games you play

He's here.

Thank fucking God. I swear I was ready to just curl up and die. Three months was three lifetimes, I'm a cat. I believe I have around two lives left.

That isn't quite right.

I'm actually a book on a shelf and some days I'm a biography and other days horror and sometimes a Harlequin romance. Sometimes I'm an instruction manual in a language you don't understand and other times I'm a page ripped out of the back of a minigolf score book.

Ben says I should say I'm a porkchop sandwich. Boys are weird. That's okay though. This princess is pretty weird too.

Today we ran around like headless chickens. Well, first I woke up and smacked the snooze alarm and then turned over and saw Ben sleeping there. It wasn't a dream. He is real. He's home, even though home is temporary because we move in mere days and home seems to be all boxes and bare walls.

We went and looked all of the important things that required both our presences and we went to McDonald's too. We walked the dog and stopped for coffee and Ben drove and so I didn't have to and I talked and he signed for things and then he lifted things and I told him where to put them down. I made a schedule for the rest of the week and he only added a couple of things.

He is very sad to be leaving this house and I'm being protective of his feelings because he didn't have the past three months here like I did to make his peace with leaving it. If I had any faith that it would hold together I would have had it picked up and moved with us, or rather, we would have still flown out and the house could have traveled slowly down the highway, bookended by signs proclaiming 'caution: wide load'.

But it wouldn't. I could see it shift slightly and crumple onto itself, windows blowing out and porches collapsing.

That cannot happen. Instead we sold someone a lot of colored glass and wood and character and we're going to go look for a new castle and hell, yes, I will write about it because Ben listened and since he is my number one fan I will tell it as it happens because he listened, I said. Are you listening? I asked to leave here. I said I was done. Done with the memories in fingerprints long faded against paint I could never change. Done with walking into rooms and seeing Jacob sitting in chairs we don't even have anymore. Done with very high tiny windows that can't be sufficiently cleaned and done with the endless sparrows that sit on the branches outside my bedroom windows and make so much damn wonderful noise.

Done. Bridget's done. Time to run, plan escape and have some fun.

I can't do it anymore. I'm not a Prairie girl but I gave it eight years and frankly though I love the big open sky and endless flat fields of sunflowers and canola I need that ocean bookend to help me find my way.

Whatever that is.

No, I know what is is. It's having the water to navigate by. It's smelling the salt air constantly to keep alert and awake. It's healing. It's fucking Bridget, baby. All the way.

Things may get sporadic posting-wise, though we have wi-fi the whole way to the west coast, we probably won't have time or energy left to think, let alone post. I said we, didn't I?

I have a helper now. He's home. He's big and he's silly and he's funny and he's hot as a five-alarm fire and he's going to throw in some suggestions and maybe I'll follow them and maybe I'll rebel but maybe we'll share the page every now and then. Maybe we'll start having fun now.

You get to come too. As usual, just don't ask so many questions.

Awake on my airplane.

This is seriously not a day to have Filter songs stuck in my head but as usual I have no choice in the matter. It can always be worse.

The neighborhood looks like hell. This city is second to none in clawing back to a decent summer from a spring that is all mud and garbage. I want to wash my face because my skin feels awful. I want to powerwash the entire property top to bottom but instead I'm going to walk away from it in less than a week, with the rotten leaves still protecting the gardens and mud all over everything.

I still remember the week we moved in and heading outside to dig up the begonias to keep indoors in pots over the winter because I didn't know they were a hardy variety that would survive this zone. I had a ball. Playing in my own garden was cathartic. I could rip out all the plants if I wanted, because it was mine now. While I did that Cole was exploring and he found a stack of glass inserts that go in the screen doors in cold weather. We put them all up and suddenly we were warm.

We learned this house the hard way and I'm leaving one single skeleton key and no instructions whatsoever, because it's fun.

Oh pish tosh. I left the alarm manual. We didn't even get that much. Oh and new appliances, since I'm still a little bitter that the stove stopped working Thanksgiving weekend. It's a chance you take and I'm still glad we took it.

And I had high hopes of coming in here and regaling you with more Jacob-stories because the emails from yesterday show me you're still in love with him too and you like the stories I share about him and frankly, there are millions I never told, but might someday soon. Only not today because today I am hit and miss with tears and over sixty boxes in and today we crossed the threshold of packing around living to living around packing, because I am no longer comfortable with the lack of space and everything being taped shut. It's just not great but in thirty hours the biggest longest nightmare is over, because Ben will be home. And he won't be going back alone this time.

And boy oh boy does Bridget need a hug.

All that you can't leave behind.

When the doorbell rang I remember feeling that little undercurrent thrill that jolted through me every time Jacob was within reach.

Cole threw open the front door and Jacob was standing there in the porch, smiling. He looked around and then ducked through the doorway and smiled at me.

This your castle, princess?

All teeth, he was. All big smiles and hands and unruly blonde waves and the beard that only served to picture-frame his whole presence in blonde.

Cole laughed in a forced way and offered to show him around. He nodded and they disappeared down the hall to the basement steps first, because all proper men in this house have to verify the existence of the workshop before they'll spend a moment here otherwise. This one had shelves and places drilled to stand rows of screwdrivers and a huge worktable built right in.

I waited outside in the backyard, watching the kids run on their grass, enjoying the fenced-in safety of the yard.

Soon a hand touched my back, completing the circuit of electricity, making me jump. I turned and smiled in the cold sun, for it was October and it seemed warm until you realized you were slowly freezing solid.

Teeth again and those pale blue eyes. Jacob approved.

You going to be happy here?

He said it in a low voice and frowned suddenly.

Yes, like you said, it's my castle. I love this house.

What if nothing changes?

Then it will become my prison.

Cole came outside then, and I watched Jacob's face transform into forced joviality, his expression hard. I'm sure Cole never missed a thing. He would tell me about it later and he did.

Jacob's hand went away but he covered it by rubbing my shoulder. Cole smiled with his wicked cold eyes.

I think she'll be happier here, don't you think, preacherman?

If we all make an effort, yes.

(Oh, tension. Bring me a knife and I'll slice enough for each of us.)

Nothing changed and Cole didn't have much time here after all. He died less than a year after we moved in. And then Jacob moved in and eighteen months later Bridget's unhappy drove him to disappear too and finally Bridget's unhappy led the universe to alter course in order to protect everybody and that's why we are moving west again.

Surprisingly Ben, the dark horse finisher and outside longshot (or longshit, as PJ so lovingly calls him) has lived here the longest.

That's good, don't you think? I think it's good. I think it says a lot for us. I think maybe we'll be okay. Instead of being imprisoned by memories and held captive by long hard winters, extreme weather and total darkness we'll be made lighter. We'll have a chance to live instead of living around and through the memories when given tiny, brief chances to do so.

I remember also the day that I told Ben that Jacob was moving in. That I was moving on with my life because I deserved to be happy, didn't he think?

You're not going to be happier, Bridge. Somehow I just see things getting worse before they get better.

Instead of seeing that as prophetic I instead chose to chalk it up to Ben's jealousy and I dismissed the comment, letting it hang between us, a privacy curtain that would serve to drive a wedge we left in place until years had passed.

I won't make that mistake again.

Ben comes home in two more sleeps and he is nervous about the move, while I become more and more excited. He's a funny guy in that he's moved enough in his life that it triggers a sadness that he works hard to cover with being brusque and difficult but I'm sure it's bringing up everything he's ever felt that makes Ben who he is.

He's mine, that's who he is. And soon we'll be living life on our own terms with the mountains and the sea as a backdrop and the warmth to insulate us from the past. We have all the character we'll ever need to build, we're going to live.

Chapter three. It begins now.

Careful, Scarlett.

Off in the night, while you live it up, I'm off to sleep
Waging wars to shape the poet and the beat
I hope it's gonna make you notice
I hope it's gonna make you notice
Someone like me

Duncan (non-resident beat poet) sent me his Kings Of Leon CD late last week and told me to give it a chance. I was hooked from the get-go and have had it on the stereo on heavy rotation all weekend as I pack. Now I have stopped for the day, since I'm up to forty boxes done and really have progressed to the large scary wardrobe boxes which is funny, we don't have nearly the amount of clothes needed to fill five of them but I plan to throw in skis, scooters and possibly bicycles and see what happens.

I'm still concerned that some of these boxes are incredibly heavy thanks to all of the hardcover books but really I think maybe that is an issue more to do with tired princesses and hazardous curved wooden staircases than anything else. I now carry stacks of books down to the main level, rather than trying to fill the boxes upstairs and bring them down.

Tonight I'll put the hot water bottle on that spot inside my back where the pain just tears me a new scream if I lie funny and then tomorrow I'll do it all again. I think I'm good at this. I also think when we buy a house in Vancouver I'll just buy paper plates and all new clothes and call it a life and unpack nothing.

Right now I've got turkey and potatoes in the oven because I need some comfort food and this was from some plan to cook a big dinner and not doing it. I have no idea but it smells good.

I just wish someone else would have made it so I can sleep.

So I walk upon high
And I step to the edge to see my world below.
And I laugh at myself while the tears roll down.
'Cause it's the world I know.
It's the world I know.

Today it's taken me the better part of the day to pack Cole's paintings and photographs, and Jacob's letters and journals. It's a beautiful day to be wrapping memories in clean packing paper and tucking them securely into cartons so I can bring them with me.