Snow in summer.

Cerastium tomentosum.

Invasive flowers, gorgeous perennials in the form of tiny white flowers with frosted foliage, and every time I see them I stop and take a picture. I took the picture to the ladies at the garden nursery and followed them all the way to the back where I was introduced to some tiny little boxes full of dirt with yellowy-green bits of moss in them.

They've been cut back. No worries, they grow quickly.

Ironic. We move to the rainforest and I find the neatest flowering shrubs that remind me of the beach because there used to be a half-barrel by the steps just full of this stuff and it was always windblown and beautiful and to this day reminds me of weathered boards and eyelet lace, two requirements for Bridget's beach, along with that famous pale turquoise string bikini that I still have somewhere because it remains Jacob's Favorite Outfit.

He had these flowers, by the driveway just off the road, we just never knew they had a name. Pretty wildflowers. That was it.

Snow in Summer, they're called. Snort. What the fuck. I came here to get away from the snow and now I'm going to plant it all over the place! A carpet of white to cover the green. I don't care if it's invasive either until it chokes off the roses. I have more roses, by the way. These ones are a vintage pink, the shade of the Avon lipstick my mom wore in the early seventies, that coral-pink that looks good with a tan. The lilacs are lilac-colored, of course and really, Ben doesn't seem to mind if all the flowers are pink and purple and white. He chose a cherry tree (for more pink, I guess) and an orange tree (with actual oranges!) and some begonias because he said they remind him of me, and they're an ivory with pale pink inside. Oh please. That isn't what he meant. He said they were breathtakingly, so maybe I get it though they could still die because I'll be so slow to turn this ground but oh, I do love flowers so much and this is the perfect place for endless wild gardens made impossible by the wind.

There's your common thread.

The wind brings everything and then whips it away again. It breathes through my hair and causes you to turn back. It carries the seeds of these flowers and dreams of Jacob who is gone but who resorted to cut flowers because things that are forgotten can't grow, princess and so just enjoy these and let someone else worry about all of that. And Ben took me for so many long walks to see the ones down the street that I carried lilacs the day we got married, even though there was no church, no aisle and no formalities and everyone was horrified because they were ruined the moment they were cut, and dripped their strange little petals everywhere, in our drinks, in my hair, ground into the carpet and yet they are all I want to smell forever and ever because I don't want to smell the roses, I just want to see them. Because roses smell like funerals and Bridget doesn't like those, oh no. Not one little bit and that's sad but they've been ruined that way.

Perhaps someday someone will make me a hybrid of sorts, a rose-lilac combination that looks beautiful, like a rose, but smells of the lilacs. We can call it a Lilose or a Rilac. I don't really care. I just hope it all works out. I'll plant them everywhere, instead of all this snow.

Strange and usual.

Sunday afternoon saw me ducking through the dusty second levels of an antique store in Chinatown. Yes, I found many things and I didn't buy anything, but I know exactly where to go when I'm ready to buy an oversized, hand-carved armoire. I just need to figure out where to put it first. I had one of those What am I doing here? moments when I realized my phone was still muted from the night before and none of the boys knew where I was.

I'm just here, I thought. In a strange city, in a strange neighborhood, upstairs in a strange little cramped store full of red lanterns and golden candles. Surrounded by people who don't speak English and without a dollar in my handbag, just my mastercard and my silent Blackberry.

I returned downstairs swiftly, making my way to the front of the shop, to the street outside where I ran into Ben before I noticed I wasn't actually outside yet. He had followed me and was waiting patiently at the bottom of the stairs, because going up is for small people, and he is like a bull in a china shop in most of these places, a huge beast of a man trying to navigate aisles full of delicate imports piled floor to ceiling, with signs everywhere saying if you break it, you buy it.

Familiarity in a face I have studied for years and in it I see the mirrored expression of wonderment at how we ended up here where everything is strange and new and we have to adjust and change and bend and adapt, almost like a miniature geographical evolution in gentle surroundings, as change hopefully should be but isn't.

Usually it's quick and painful and dark and sudden, like a rollercoaster that dips into a tunnel before shooting out into the sunlight and you swear you'll never ever ever go on it again. Then someone forces you to ride it until you vomit into the grass behind the lineup and they admit they pushed you too hard.

Yes, usually it's like that.

Today we went up into the mountains again. We're trying to fit in tiny afternoons of exploring so we can get to know the area, get to know what there is to do and to find fun and a break from unpacking and putting things away and because we are used to embracing t-shirt weather because we spent too long on the prairies and we're used to having a few weeks only to be outdoors in the sun without seventeen layers of wool and thinsulate between our flesh and certain death.

Habitual, ridiculous.

That doesn't happen here but we were out anyway, in spite of the cool cloudy weather. I have a bit of color in my face. The children are turning brown. Ben even got a little pink to make him less pale and he won't be rocking his vampire completion into this summer and is going to have to plan for something different, perhaps rockstar farmer or tan-pire. I'm not sure which but it makes me laugh.

The boys have gold fever suddenly, a thirst for vacation and a yearning for a huge block of time off just to keep going, keep exploring what's around the next corner or the next bend in the road. Maybe it's a symptom of wanderlust or the hallmark of true nomadism. Maybe it's just to make the strange familiar now.

Maybe I'm crazy and nothing will ever be familiar again.

Maybe I'm just good at playing along and finding neat things in dark places.

Sunday morning and Bridget's brain is still asleep.

Moody boy has his baseball cap on pulled down low over his eyes. Glasses on to read. Band hoodie. Band t-shirt. Jeans from yesterday because he was up first to walk the pup because once Bridget finally went to bed with her sugar-fueled dreams, it was pitch-black-lights-out, didn't move until I heard Ben talking softly to the dog on his way out this morning.

Then he was walking quietly through the room in his bare feet to check me a half hour later. I could hear Henry crashing plates around making toast and watching cartoons and I figured I may as well get up since really, the laundry has to be caught up and I could use coffee and I wanted another wonderful doughnut before the boys manage to eat them all. Though Ben has good restraint. These doughnuts don't provoke the excitement they do for me, since once he was American.

A kiss on mouth brought me fully awake and so I pulled on my robe and ventured downstairs to life.

Okay, here I am. Now what?

A list, a dare and a half-assed plan, or, Days that End in Y.

I have Alice in Chains tickets. And Deftones. And Tool. And Mastodon. My musical bucket list is being crossed off so quickly I get paper cuts trying to hang on to the page while life flings me from one show to the next. Quick, hand me that pen so I can cross these bands off, oh, and this one, and these guys too, okay? Right there, third from the top.

I'm grateful for the pace, frankly. My list revolves around my ever-worsening hearing. I'm playing beat the clock against permanent silence which scares me more than you will ever now. In the meantime, I'm going to continue in my role as the world's greatest music fan. I can claim that, you know. If not, I'll simply go with world's cutest music fan.

That's what brings all these talented boys and their instruments to my neck of the woods anyway, I won't deny it.

Snort.

Not to say I won't travel to finish off my list. Wacken is coming up soon, is it not? I can see myself now, in a field somewhere in Germany in a sea of mosh.

Probably not a good idea, Lochlan says.

Whenever someone says that I have a tendency to go do it, just to be difficult. I mean, think about it, all the speed metal one princess can handle and a trip to Europe besides. See some old friends, make some new ones.

It gets no better than that.

Posted before and you probably missed it like I did. And I posted it.

I know. Progressive metal, alternative rock, blah blah blah, as long as the lyrics are poignant I don't care if it's music made blowing across the top of a bottle of soda. Granted I tend toward the heavier because it's mad and Bridget needs music that feels for her. But every now and then something out of left field just gets jammed in my head and I'm stuck on it for months. Remember REM? Right. Like that but not annoying.

This.

(this band has a Ben involved and also (formerly) a Chris and a Rob. Assume nothing. But beards! Assume beards, they have good beards. Snort.)

Notes for a long weekend.

Close your eyes, so many days go by
Easy to find what's wrong, harder to find what's right
I believe in you, I can show you that
I can see right through all your empty lies
I won't stay long in this world so wrong
Say goodbye, as we dance with the devil tonight
Don't you dare look at him in the eye
As we dance with the devil tonight

We had a family meeting last night and Ben is going to have the support he needs just like he always has. He calls his own shots, and we will back him no matter what they are. We're family, all of us and that means something you don't even need to understand.

He's sitting outside on the patio, watching the ocean, smoking cigarette after cigarette after cigarette. He's been out there since five-something this morning.

When I ask him if he wants to make a round-trip Krispy Kreme-fetching excursion on the weekend, he smiles briefly and nods once and then his eyes go back to the water.

I didn't expect him to drop first. I'm supposed to be the crazy one and yet I'm still running on adrenaline and I can't seem to get off this. I'm still doing everything, not a wobble, not an inability to leave the house or a attempt to give it to anything, I've found a way to keep choking the panic back and it seems to keep staying down. Not sure if that will fail or fade any time soon but for now we are still steamrolling along, Bridget having spread out her blanket, straight at all corners, and into the middle I have heaped my favorite books, toys and boys and I gathered it all up and I'm dragging it along like a six-year-old who has decided to run away from home, only this is home now and I still don't recognize anything save for my old pink camouflage converse all-stars, because they are sitting inside the back door because I wear them to walk the dog because that's all they are good for.

This blanket is heavy. Boys keep falling out of the folds in the blanket when I lose my vigilance and I'm wondering if I grew up a little or if, like Ben, I'm a ticking time bomb doomed to go off sooner or later.

It's so tiring going back to load them back in again. But I'm still doing it. If you ask me, I'll tell you I don't have a choice. But honestly?

I haven't checked in a while.

(if you are keeping score, Batman leads Satan by a huge margin. Huge. I'm sure Satan was considering going to the Russians for backing and I don't even want to think about that.)

Hiding keys and secret words.

I'm not making any more drama. Ben finally came down off his high horse to have an entire conversation with me with no one else present for once and I understand him a whole lot better when he isn't engulfed in the Jesus beams that shoot out of his guitar or marinated in the forgetful juice. Sometimes he can be so completely normal and charming it's difficult to remember why I'm angry with him in the first place.

Difficult but not impossible. He has work to do. Again, always.

It doesn't mean I'm not still entertaining counter-offers, if only for their amusement value, because no one likes amusement like the circus girl. I have been forwarding the emails from batman and Satan to each other, so they're well aware they are upbidding each other and they can continue to do so until they get bored and leave the game. At which point I'll do what I planned to do in the first place.

Nothing.

Except maybe have another ride on the back of someone's motorcycle. It takes the world away and replaces it with wind and speed and I like that. I like it a lot.

The bridge is always the best part of a song.

The next tattoo:

Every now and then I see you dreaming
Every now and then I see you cry
Every now and then I see you reaching
Reaching for the other side
What are you waiting for?

from Switchfoot's Hello Hurricane. That's my album. Mine.

Gravity is overrated.

I think it was Gore Vidal who said "It's not enough for me to win, you have to lose.

That's just stellar, isn't it? I would laugh but it's just so mean. Twenty bucks says Caleb has it engraved into his bathroom mirror, repeating it every day while he shaves. It wouldn't surprise me one bit.

He offered me the moon and I have forwarded it along for counter-offers. The moon is not something I would want, I'm much more partial to Pluto anyway. Highest bidder wins and I will strap on a big tank of oxygen, pull a mask down over my nose and mouth and breath in earth-air in my new outer space home. Someone will have to come and build me a closet for my dresses and put in a plug somewhere for my curling iron so I will be astro-cute and then from there I'll detonate this planet remotely and blow you all to kingdom come.

But aha! Please. I already took a bunch of the cutest earthlings, specifically the ones with beards and flannel shirts and carpentry skills and musician hands and I stuffed them into the backs of the rockets so they could tag along.

Because I don't want to ever be lonely.

A lie come true.

Fine, everything is just fine. Seriously. He'll be okay. Apparently people who know a lot more than I do are working behind the scenes and everything is perfectly normal and this is to be expected.

Well, thank you for clearing that up, once again.

Look. I'm not good at this. Hell, I'm not good at the whole 'wife' thing anyway. My track record is that by being a wife I managed to kill two other men, and now I seem to be hellbent on going for a hat trick. Apparently I kill via stress. Because like Lochlan always tells me, I'm impossible.

They just keep trying anyway. Most people would run screaming the other way. Ben will hold me out to the wolves with one hand and the other hand is wrapped around the neck of a bottle and every now and then he laughs and takes a long drink and staggers where he stands and then he drops the bottle to the ground and it smashes and he rakes his hand through his dark hair in frustration and shakes me, feet off the ground.

Why do you do this to me?

I close my eyes. If I go somewhere else, maybe to the roses with Jake, maybe to the empty tunnel to wait for Cole, I'll disappear and Ben won't see me. But then he won't see me, you see? And there is that small matter of the promise I made once upon a late winter night on a farm far removed from civilization in that place where the land is flat but the sky is forever. The promise was that even when he couldn't control things he ought to be able to, even when everything is broken and we can't get anything to go back or stay together that we would. Stay together.

No matter what.

I'll take my place in front of him while he rages. Fay Wray protection King Kong from those who want to parade him around for show, to live off his talents and his marketability and I'll keep them back as long as I can, and somewhere in the darkness of his mind he understands that I am on his side and maybe that's what the promise meant to him.

Only he wasn't supposed to just give up like this again. That's the part I don't really understand and so I'm just going to hold onto my promise while I hold onto him, and maybe it will be enough. I'll wrap my arms around his neck and press myself into his flannel shirt and hold on as tight as I can, standing in a pool of broken glass.

I'm not going to be the poster child for people who are married to people in recovery. I don't know a damned thing about it. I just give you the words I have in my heart and hope you don't misunderstand them too badly.