Bait.

Today I stood on the freezing cold dock in the pouring rain and watched Ben and the kids catch rainbow trout. I even uh...casted? a few times but nothing bit my hook because the fish just have this sense when the person fishing is just going to scream and run around in circles once they hit daylight and be unable to calmly detach the hook and throw them back.

She's a killer, don't bite.

Har. Stupid fish. I had a plan in place. Catch the fish and then pass the rod to Ben.

See? I'm not dumb.

You'll be pleased to know I even wore jeans and sneakers and a sweater and no, the current Coach handbag stayed home where it was dry and warm and comfortable. I'm well aware that you were picturing me in my stilettos and a little ruffly black dress with mascara running in the rain holding up a lure by one hand and possibly considering it as an earring or a pendant.

You obviously missed the former part of 2010 where I singlehandedly conquered the plaster, a blizzard, and the second cross-country move on my own, didn't you? Go back and read. I'll wait. Also in there are some terrific gems about failed block heaters, leaky tires and real estate deals suitable for Nurburgring for their speed and handling.

See, the princess is required to be efficient. Because otherwise she wouldn't be able to floss her own teeth or buy groceries for the seven hundred boys she feeds because seriously that would be my preference. I have always said, why do it yourself when you can have a butler who does it for you?

Fine, I say it under my breath, when I'm alone in a room with the door closed, in an empty house on a street devoid of neighbors home during the day and I said it in French. Just once. But the thought is so nice, I sometimes daydream that I do have a butler and I finish a glass of juice and put it on the coffee table and I...I....

I leave the room (instead of taking it to the kitchen! Which I just passed! Efficiency is next to godliness!)

I am so hardcore.

I was fully prepared to shriek and howl and gut the fish if need be and then I was going to use the internet to figure out how to scale it and de-bone it and make it look like the fish at the market and maybe tinfoil? and lemons? could be good or something if the boys really did plan to make good on their refusals to help me.

I didn't have to fret for long. The fish was caught, the hook removed, and it took one look at me, shocked to see that its welcoming committee onto dry land was not wearing mascara or stilettos and it demanded to be thrown back, to be hopefully re-introduced to the shore by people in more appropriate attire next time.

If the butler had caught it, it would have been thrilled.

Told you.

OH. My goodness.

Ben is on his knees lip-syncing Chicago's Hard to Say I'm Sorry. I'm not quite sure whether to laugh or film this for posterity.

Yeah, film it.

He is so awesome.

Date night.

Candlelight. A cool breeze from the water. Near darkness tangled with soft voices from other tables.

Five hours of Ben-time, my favorite in the whole wide world. His attention, his presence, his focus. His love and his devotion to making sure I had an evening to remember. Everything I wanted. I'm sure had I asked for a bunny to lay us eggs made of rubies he would have found one. I'm not sure how I got this lucky. For the record, I don't need a bunny, I just firmly believe sometimes that he does things on purpose because he can see the outcome long before the realization hits me in the head. He's good with me like that. He just pries my tiny white knuckles from whatever fears I have latched onto and lets me float gravity-free until I find a safe purchase and then he says, simply,

See?

Camembert, wine, bread, halibut. Roasted vegetables. Tenderloin, chocolate, coffee. Endless plates and glasses balanced on a tiny secluded table in the garden of a hole-in-the-wall bistro.

Perfect.

Every bite was a trip to heaven, every time that I caught Ben's eye a nod and a smile because sometimes it seems that life speeds up and we need to just jump off at a soft place and spend five hours doing nothing but talking and eating dinner and then he'll take my hand and we'll run and catch up and jump back on life and find out it's once again moving at the pace we can breathe within.

My knuckles are pink today, the circulation burbling along at a Sunday-morning pace on a Saturday, the skull ring precariously balanced just under the knuckle on my middle finger, my belly still so full I think I may need some sort of good-food intervention. I feel like I swallowed a bunnyful of rubies. Or at least far more Camembert than I am used to.

Huh. Some princess I am.

Fifty yards from my life.

If Deer has gently nudged its way into your cards today, you are being asked to find the gentleness of spirit that heals all wounds. Stop pushing so hard to get others to change, and love them as they are. Apply gentleness to your present situation and become like the summer breeze: warm and caring. This is your tool for solving the present dilemma you are facing. If you use it, you will connect with Sacred Mountain, your centering place of serenity, and Great Spirit will guide you.
~Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams and David Carson

Double standards and ghostiversaries.

This morning it's coffee and honey toast at the island. Bare feet. A fresh jar of honey to open. A handful of blackberries on the side. Cartoon noise softly from the living room, where Henry has taken over the entire couch when he should be on the floor at the coffee table with his grapefruit juice and cinnamon-sugar toast. We're the only ones up this morning, after a glorious sleep last night. It was so hot I thought I would melt or be sick. PJ fired up a rare round of teasing me that everyone jumped in on because I'm positively golden as of late, and three hours in the sun yesterday baked me to a brown glow. I don't usually tan (I never stop moving!) and so they were saying I was just dirty, and getting filthier as life here goes on.

Har.

I got in some really good comments about precisely how filthy I am, and the subject was respectfully changed once again. I live with a group of men frat boys, I can handle my share of teasing, but I also know when I am too hot or too tired to attempt to stretch my patience and I took that cue and Ben and I went to bed, where I could mercifully strip naked and lie on top of the sheets with the fan blowing directly on my skin.

Of course, with Ben, lying there not doing anything lasts about twelve whole seconds. My point, however, is that once we did finally go to sleep I fell down the well into dreamland and didn't come back until eight this morning, when Bonham wandered in to do his usual nose-poke into the side of my hand/arm/leg to let me know it's morning and he needs to go out.

I looked at the clock. Eight whole hours. I looked in the mirror. Oh! Dirty face -wait tanned but the endless black holes under my eyes seem less horrifying than usual. Yay.

I didn't have to fight to pry my eyes open the whole way down the road with the dog.

(An aside for a lot of people who ask why I don't just leave him out overnight or tie him in the backyard in the morning? I love my dog AND my grass. I don't believe letting a dog out is doing much more than ruining the lawn. So I walk him. He gets exercise and time with me and I don't get a polkadot lawn. Your mileage may vary.)

I am awake. Awake and alive and ready for another day of fun. I think we may do more fishing today because yesterday was an endless game of dumping the children off their air mattresses out in chest-deep water and they would scream and fly off and climb back on for hours. I swam twice.

I lay on my beach towel and closed my eyes to the sun and almost fell asleep and Ben kept watch over the children without blinking because he's a better swimmer anyway and when he wasn't, Lochlan would.

We also might head downtown today for some delicious meals and some more exploring and then spend a little more time just doing little things at home. Ben has to install a peep-hole for the back door and I'm campaigning heavily to have it installed slightly lower than the others, which I need to stand on tip-toe to see through and boy, what a pain that is at my front door, even though the boys have the gate-code to get their trucks/motorcycles/egos down the driveway but not keys to my house because I'm keeping those to the people that live here this time because all emergencies are covered.

He'll put it low for me. I know he will.

I must go now and stand in the shower and marvel at precisely how brown my skin is and I know it's bad and I know I have the crinkle-lines around my eyes and a face full of freckles and once winter comes back and I am pale again I will curse the sun in all its glory but this has been the longest stretch of mild weather I have witnessed firsthand in almost a decade and I plan to milk it, wring it out and soak it up for as long as it lasts. Someone said this area averages five degrees in the winter and I laughed and then they reminded me it's a bitter damp cold and I laughed again, having been raised on the edge of the continent already, thank you, just on the other side. I know bad weather. This isn't it. This is home-weather.

I'm also going to go stand in the shower and marvel at the fact that had Jacob not ruined everything, today would have been our fourth wedding anniversary. Only, you know what? For the first time in a marriage I don't feel like I'm the child.

Oh, well, Ben just walked in and made a terribly pornographic comment about the filthiness of my skin again. I'm definitely not the child.

Snort.

(He can do that but he's the ONLY one who can, okay?)

Plans for the best-laid.

Morning.

My carpets have been cleaned, the siding, walkway, porch and stonework has been pressure-washed, the laundry is caught up, the litterbox is clean, the dog has been walked, I made a grocery list, updated my calendar, sobered up, renewed permissions to my wing of the house and now I'm going to the beach to teach my kids to fish.

Yes, that's right.

No, I have no idea what I'm doing but there's a pier and we have rods and wiggly things and really the mechanics of it aren't important when you're nine.

Or when you're twelve, for that matter.

Just listen for one little minute, kay?

Lochlan and I have great plans to sit outside on the verandah tonight as the sun sets and drink sasparilla and talk.

Talk. Huh. hahaha.

Yes, I've already arrived in the village of Sassafras and have set up my chair for the duration, in case you are wondering. I don't do well with new and different kinds of drinks but this stuff is really good and rootbeerish and not at all sinister so whatever, I'll listen to what Lochlan has to say, which I'm sure will be a well-rehearsed litany of things he didn't mean to say or do, tangled up with how we wear our secrets and a need to plan for the future and Jesus Christ, already, can't I just marry him and then we can leave all of this painful stuff behind?

Well, no, we can't, because I'm in love and it's not with him and revenge and grudges run so deep you would be stunned and really who the hell has ever kept me from Caleb the way Jacob did? None of you, that's who. You guys couldn't protect me from him with baseball bats and homing lasers, locked in a steel cage and that's what's so fucking dumb about all this.

Dumb.

Where were you all when he came to the fair when I was twelve? Where were you when he came back when I was in my early twenties and I married his brother and Cole promised the same things Lochlan did and then lied too, only he was worse but he's dead so that's not important right now, is it?

Heck with this. I need another.

Okay. Damned bottle caps. Lochlan would open it but he is still in the backyard talking with Dylan and Corey and really they need to go home because I feel one of those mess-things coming on. You know the kind where everything spills out and we look at it and dissect it and then pave over it and drive as if there's nothing buried there until some part of it begins to stick out again as time erodes the asphalt and suddenly you're forced to confront things better left buried.

It's not going to be pretty but then again I'm not either anymore. At least not in the mirror. To them I am. I know that. I know I have to be careful not to distract them when there are issues at hand. It's just easier, kinder and the lesser of all evils. I don't mean any harm. I'm just so tired of reliving everything every time the wind blows.

That's all. I'm just tired.

No ultimatomatoes though. I've made those before. They don't work. He stays. I'm keeping him. I just don't know in what format he gets to be anymore. Hell at this rate I'll be done for before he even gets inside.

And spellcheck is good, isn't it? Just for you, ethernet.

I would have posted something, aside from my indignant rant on the crazy drivers here, but I have a better offer from Ben to go and sleep on him while he watches some mindless television. Goodnight.

Sea to sky.

Here's the thing.

You are not special.

You have no reason and no right to drive faster than everyone else, cut in and out of lanes with so little room I gasp, talk on the phone while operating your moving vehicle, travel without wearing a seatbelt or drive after drinking.

But here's the thing.

You are special.

You're special to the children you have at home and to your wife or husband and your friends. To your brothers and your neighbors too.

You're special to the EMTs who are now trying to save your life and to the attendants at the funeral home who are going to try and make you presentable for your own service. Your name will never be forgotten by those who love you or by those whose loved ones you killed because you were too hurried/distracted/drunk to fulfill the privilege of operating a motor vehicle safely and with due dilligence.

Yeah, you're special all right.

Loch, stock and barrel.

Why don't you ask him if he's going to stay?
Why don't you ask him if he's going away?

Even most of the boys have switched to jeans and flannel shirts tonight.

It's cool, cold almost. A good night for a bonfire but we're not permitted bonfires due to being in the fourth week of a summer dry spell from the rain. Everyone seems to have dressed appropriately, however. Everyone is having fun. The dinner part is winding down now, latecomers milling around the barbecue while PJ serves up steaks and grilled cobs of corn and assorted goodies, my portobello mushroom caps that were a big hit as veggie burgers for the non-meat lovers. I know Schuyler can handle dessert and refilling coffees and lemonades and Chris will look after the beer and wine crowd.

Ben has taken centre stage with his acoustic down on the lawn with some of the older neighbors, all closet guitar players, it seems. I can hear them playing Tusk through the open window. My neighbor with the hydrangea (her garden makes me green with envy) is singing, God bless her heart.

I think the neighbors are all relieved, frankly.

We are nice people.

Not goat-sacrificers nor drug peddlers. Folks who worry about their dahlias and run out of propane and make kickass blackberry coffee cake just like they do, simply with unconventional jobs. And now they can also get the tour and understand the amount of space we have, that Lochlan has his own wing, distinct and apart from ours, as does August, and that Schuy and Daniel's apartment downstairs is darling, and possibly already better decorated than most of the expensive homes that circle the bay. That we all pitch in and look after the house and the garden, the vineyard and the orchard too, that we obey the speed limits and that the house is spotless. Oh, they looked, trust me. They see that my children are coddled and loved but also given limits, and have better manners than any of us. That we are well-read and cultured and travelled and not scary or gossipy in the least.

At least I hope so. The rumblings got back to me quickly when we moved in. The people who live up here are as protective of their neighborhood, of their peace and quiet, beautiful landscape and their way of life as are we, and so it was easy for us to choose this area. Even the bikes have been well-received, considering how loud they can be. The neighbors are discreet, in other words. We keep our privacy as long as we keep our decorum. That's so easy it's dumb.

They are sympathetic as well, upon hearing of some of what we have gone through, and I am protective of my reactions and so that's why right now I'm not so much hiding out as I'm taking a moment to breathe, away from everyone, because I can't deal with an endless parade of people exclaiming in hushed whispers that I seem to be doing well when they don't know me at all, and that I'm so young to have been through so much, when they don't know the half of it.

I don't want to hear that. A little understanding is fine, a wet blanket of pity and respect is more than I can bear. I'm permitted to hide for five more minutes and then I know August will knock gently on his door, since I commandeered his den, and I'll head back out into the night to have some more wine and maybe some strawberries if there are any left. I'll watch Caleb dance with Ruth and watch Lochlan watch me watching them while he pretends to be interested in the girl he brought tonight (because just ARRRRRRRRRGHHHHH) and watch Ben watch all of us with his usual casual interest that misses nothing while he seems to miss everything.

None of this has gotten past him, I assure you, and while he's content to bring down his hammer on affection that I traded freely once for security, his patience has worn thin. He is also anxious for life to begin, we have been stuck in limbo too long thus far.

I've stayed here too long as well, there's my knock now. Time to bring out the goats and drugs and freak the fuck out of everyone, I guess.

I'm kidding.

We don't do drugs.

I still want a goat, though.