Never. gets. old.

Yes, I made the dishwasher go again! Because firstly we were out of dishes after dinner and secondly because the magic box that it is makes things CLEAN while I get to go shopping and drink coffee.

Uh huh.

Awesome.

(P.S. I am having a hell of a fun time milking the whole My Fair Lady angle, mostly because it pisses off Caleb to no end.)

Doolittle redux.

Seriously? The dishwasher took over an hour and it even dried the dishes but I can't touch them because they're weirdly hot.

Huh.

Next up? Graceful navigation with two small kids, two umbrellas, one tiny wet white puppy and the pouring rain. I won't even bother sharing, just know that we were entertainment for the masses.

No wonder Caleb is so embarrassed by me sometimes. Really I can sit up and look pretty but I'm thinking that about now that seems to be the scope of my talents.

Sitting up, I said.

Snort.

Let me tell you about this day.

I'm sitting here tonight with bare feet dangling in front of a wide open window, enjoying the lights. Watching people work and make dinner and watch tv. No one seems to close their blinds here. It's entertainment for urban dwellers maybe. It is akin to apartment living for me, since in a strange way you are never alone and suddenly I find myself seeking crowds and strangers to talk to and I'm stopping for conversations with people because it's nice to have the company. The children are much the same way, shouldering a new kind of mature confidence, making their way without a hint of shyness or uncertainty. I wish they could be the sort of naive barefoot hooligan that I was as a child, without the sophistication that they seem to possess now to the point where I find myself chasing after them, reaching out to grab Henry's hood so that he doesn't get so far ahead of me that he'll end up on the wrong side of the skytrain/seabus/elevator doors.

Phew. That's an all-day job.

And...who am I kidding? These are our children. It stands to reason they will not miss a moment, and are introspective and alert and clever to the point of astonishment from those around them who stand seven times as worldly. What am I supposed to do? I can't turn back time. I can't change the life they have led thus far. We just keep going.

Today was the mother of all days off, that's for sure.

When I opened my eyes the city was already coming to life. We left the blinds open the night before. All white bed. So luxurious. A slow morning. No alarms, no concrete plans, just some ideas bantered around in the weeks before. This was the first no work day with no horrendous pressure since possibly last fall. We managed to see and do so much my legs ache like the dickens and I'm just now making us our late afternoon coffee (it's after nine) because once we did get going it was tough to stop.

I found the sky train interesting, as well as the sea bus. Louis Vuitton and the yacht club were quite amazing too. Boats. Incredibly luxurious boats. I could live there quite easily. I sometimes feel like I was two different mixes poured into one princess mold and shaken up so hard every now and then when I find a hard little ball of unblended mix I like to savour the sheer purity of it.

Sometimes those little bits taste like French designers and American yachts. (I'm sorry, I can't help it. The other bits all taste like dust bunnies and bent bobby pins and homemade chicken soup.)

They argue something awful these days too, those two princess-mixes and I can't seem to make peace for everyone. I can't seem to figure out who to side with. I can continue on this path, and the kids grow up city-friendly and capable and worldly and somewhat spoiled but without abandon, or I can choose the other path and raise two perfect humans with wonderful childhood memories and happy animals and a life that defines washing a car as turning on your hose and working for the next hour and getting wet instead of passing someone your keys and a crisp handful of bills and reading the newspaper while they do it instead of you.

Yeah. It is a choose-your-own-adventure novel, princess edition and I'm too tired to read the last part so I'm purposefully going in circles, trying out different actions and alternate endings. It's going to be a big surprise and frankly, Bridget only likes the good surprises and I'm rambling, am I rambling? I have no idea.

I just know that when I was walking along the path this afternoon, a voice very close to my ear (but on the inside of my head, not the outside) said, breathe deeply, princess. You know that smell. That's seaweed and you are home.

I know that voice.

He came with me.

And Ben noticed before I did.

Sea level.

We're here.

At last.

Way up high in the sky in a place that is floor to ceiling windows. All windows everywhere and if I walk in a circle I can look at the ocean and the mountains at the same time and then I can peek out the other way, towards the Coach store, L'Occitane and Tiffany's. I plan to visit all of them tomorrow.

It wasn't as smooth a trip as I had hoped, with more than a few heartbreak-generating bumps in the road and some very close near misses and a whole lot of Oh-my-fuck-what-are-we-doings but we're here and we brought the sun and you can buy milk in glass bottles and I walked through a bamboo forest and Ben already took me to the gigantic Tom Lee music store. Figures.

It's pretty amazing. Here I can dress how I want, as long as I have a sweater for the ocean breeze and an umbrella for the freaking two-minute giant raindrop-carrying rainstorms. Here I can laugh at the weather where we used to live, because it's twenty degrees warmer today.

I've been here before, and still as we were walking this afternoon, I said to Ben, why the heck did we live where we lived when there are places like this out there?

He just smiled.

I think he's happy now that we're here and I know we're happy that we're here and right now my list of things to do just tomorrow is as long as my arm plus my leg plus my other leg and then continued in the memo app on my Blackberry and I'm sure tonight will bring some sort of epic sleep that will revisit the dead and then everything will be complete.

I'm totally wired.

And Ben is a prince, an honest to goodness, card-carrying prince.

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.