Heavy sleep.

I've lost all that I wanted to leave
I've lost all that I wanted to be
Don't believe that there's nothing that's true
Don't believe in this modern machine

This morning I followed Lochlan into the kitchen. I can't seem to open my eyes, sleep clings to me like a shroud, reluctant to burn away with the sun. I move past him and head straight for the brew button on the coffeemaker when I hear him swear. He walks over to me and pulls back the neck on my t-shirt and looks at my skin. Another curse and he turns me around to face him and lifts up the front of my shirt. It's then that I realize what he sees.

I am covered.

Head to toe.

In Benjamin's words.

The only things he didn't write on were my arms from the elbows down and my face and neck. He wrote in black sharpie over tattoos and over blank places alike. When the black ran dry he switched to purple and kept on writing until he was finished. It took me all morning to read it, to the point where I was standing on the counter in the bathroom to see the hard to reach places.

On my toes it says BENLU VSBEE.

And here I said I was a light sleeper.

The late shrift.

Take a breath
Hold it in
Start a fight
You won't win
Had enough
Let's begin

I know how he thinks, how his mind has twisted the present into a blend of the past and the future, a dreamworld in which he doesn't have to be absent in the moonlight or center stage in the circus instead of watching from the back, fingers laced with mine, or arms tightly wrapped around me while I stand tucked into his coat, clapping my hands, jumping up and down, banging the top of my head against his chin, making him swear like a gentleman pirate or just a highly irritated teenage boy. Ow. Owowow.

This was in the days before beard growth seemed very successful at all, something that doesn't seem to happen until one's late twenties, it seems. It's okay though, he was always chewing gum on top of my head, grinding his chin against my skull gently but endlessly so if I jumped up and he bit his tongue then it was what he deserved. His chin is softer now. Did I mention I love beards? Because I do and that is partly why. They hurt a hell of a lot less.

The nickname Lochlan gave me was the very first. Had I started this journal before 1997 it would have had a vastly different name. Hell, I'd have a whole different identity, perhaps.

I've never shared it with anyone because it evaporated suddenly along with my dreams of living my life out on the road with the show. Lochlan stopped using it the day he broke up with me when I was still too young to fully understand heartbreak and I haven't heard it since. Apparently it was something he continued to use under his breath or in his head, much like I'll walk around calling Ben a shithead but never OUT LOUD because that isn't nice, right?

Right. So out of the blue Sunday night Lochlan said it, and I'm not sure if he slipped (but he doesn't slip, for he is perfect) or if it was a calculated attempt to undermine Benjamin (which he does, we're just not bright enough to catch him) but he came into the dining room last night long after dinner was finished, dressed in his armor, ready for battle with the road, jacket not zipped up yet but two helmets threaded up his forearm. One was mine.

Want to go for a quick ride, peanut?

Ben's fist hit the table and the dishes jumped six inches, causing Ruth to call down the stairs to see if we were finally having an earthquake and was she missing it? And PJ put his hand on Ben's shoulder as in, get up and I'll step in if I have to.

Because the children had already gone to bed for the night and the last thing they need is to bear audible witness to any more violence or sadness or anger, ever. I'm dreaming when I say I want to shield them from all of it and sadly they understand how emotions can get the best of people but they also know that we all need to work harder to keep ours under control, and to control our outbursts and impulses. Being human, this is hard. Being in a complicated environment such as this, harder still.

Lochlan didn't move a muscle, he just kept staring at me, waiting for my answer, waiting for nostalgia to kick in and point out to me that he had just called me something he called me every ten minutes for six years straight and something I may have missed dearly but had filed away for all eternity up until that moment last night. Ben saw my face. I was horrified by how I felt, hearing it after so long.

Ben didn't let me say anything though. Instead all my efforts were focused on getting out of the way as he upended the dining room table, dishes and all but only half of it came away because the leaf is out and I couldn't get the two halves to click back together properly last week. He was in Lochlan's face in two seconds flat, PJ holding him back but barely. You can't hold Ben back. He's a locomotive with a chip on his shoulder, anger-management classes be damned, all this damage over one little insignificant circus peanut.

Only I am not insignificant, nor am I exclusive. Anymore, anyway.

PJ's grip on Ben put him at a disadvantage and Lochlan clocked him with the helmets. Reflex? Opportunity? I'll never ask. I'm not sure Ben even felt it as badly as everyone else heard it, since he is singularly focused in his jealousy and impervious to pain besides. Lochlan isn't strong enough to hurt him but for that awful moment I doubted that fact and I thought he had hurt Ben and I kind of zoned out and Daniel was there by then and he took me out of the room, upstairs and we told the kids the table fell and the boys were arguing over the best way to put it back, shucks, you know how loud they are, sorry, and I pushed away from him and ran back downstairs to the dining room and Schuyler had invited Lochlan to get his sweet face out of Ben's universe and he put the helmets aside and PJ was standing while Ben was sitting with his elbows on the table. Working to keep control.

It's just a name, Benny. I said it quietly but I don't think he heard me.

PJ shook his head in warning. I ignored it. Ben exploded up out of his chair once again and this time he didn't get a pat on the shoulder from PJ, he got tackled from behind. My poor Ben. Everyone is hurting him, he just wants to be happy.

PJ put him on the floor and Ben flipped over and stood back up and asked him if he was fucking insane, that he wasn't going to hurt me or anyone else and what the fuck, who decided whether or not he could touch me when Lochlan seemed to get a free pass from everyone under the sun. To do whatever he wants, all the time, with no one second-guessing him or evaluating him or telling him to back off/cool down/step back/give up.

Exactly.

So PJ took a step back and Lochlan threw another one of those stupid unpredictable punches and Ben grabbed the front of his shirt and it was on. They brawled for a good minute on the floor as if it were the rink and I think they both came out of it hurting, judging by the amount of blood I spent the morning washing out of clothing and the pile of buttons here to be sewn back on their shirts.

I did not find any teeth this time. Huh. They must have gone easy on each other after all.

They made up under threat of being sent to live in the garage, together. Forever. Because I can't have this in the house. I can't have this near the children, asleep or awake. I can't deal with this and I can't really deal with Lochlan choosing to space out his attacks on my heart like this. I think I like it better when they just throw everything they have at me and I can reject it and things return to a quiet simmer.

Lochlan used my nickname again last night and I'm not really sure if he has a deathwish but Ben's fingers tightened around his fork and he just kept on listening to the idle chatter around the table. Later in the dark he held on to me as I gave myself up to the night. Dreamless sleep. No circus, no music, no nightmares and no ghosts. As long as he's touching me I can fall hard, like a peanut onto the hard-packed dirt of a circus tent floor. I'm certain I'm not deserving of the amount of attention I get from either of them, but they seem convinced that I am.

Peanut. What the fuck.

Found a distraction in my inbox. You're welcome.

(You can click to make this bigger, I think.)

Here. Someone wanted to know what I carry in my purse. The now-infamous Maggie Bag from Coach, joined by the Poppy Groovy wallet, both in a strange sparkly black leather that gets softer and more fluid every week that I bash them around, because I'm hard on things. I don't mean to be, maybe I just finally have things of quality that can stand up to a little enthusiastic use.

So...inside the bag? A map of metro Vancouver. Because I get lost a lot. Covergirl pressed powder (I am so NOT a makeup snob) in vampire-pale. Clinique Mascara in blacker-than-night, Covergirl eyeliner. I forget what color, either green or black. A brush to separate my lashes in case I actually use the mascara, because I am messy.

Lanolin hand cream because nothing feels better than innersheep-grease (says Duncan). Sexy Motherpucker lipgloss (which is painful, holy shit), two Peaceful cause-metics balms (one chocolate, one rose), Tokidoki lipgloss, 2 Loreal and a Kat Von D gloss (AKA snacks for Ben), a pill bottle containing a bunch of Advils for grownups, a couple of children's Advils and a few Lactaids. Bandaids.

My apple noise-canceling headphones. A pen. Too Cute mints that have a slide-out mirror. Bach's rescue remedy. Various bobby pins, hair ties and a ouchless clip for my perpetual twist. Cough drops, my vampire picnic cosmetic bag from Kukubee and my key ring. If you look to the far right you can see the baby blue glittery enamel Princess charm that Jacob bought for me seven billion years ago on a lark.

There, one mystery solved. I bet you were hoping that the contents of my purse were far more sinister than they are. Actually you would be right. Missing from this photo at my lawyer's request are the condoms and sex toys, lit fireworks, monogrammed guitar picks, pocket fire extinguisher, dozens of stolen still-warm human hearts I have begun to collect, and a live goat. Just in case.

I wonder if you are sorry you asked?

(This boy does not care what's in the bag, unless I'm carrying his feed bag, in which case he knows I have apples and sugar in my pockets and he gets right down against the fence and gives me the eye. )

Baudelaire Sundays

Because nothing says a darker, sunny Sunday like very good French poetry.

Je suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre,
Et mon sein, où chacun s'est meurtri tour à tour,
Est fait pour inspirer au poète un amour
Eternel et muet ainsi que la matière.

Je trône dans l'azur comme un sphinx incompris;
J'unis un coeur de neige à la blancheur des cygnes;
Je hais le mouvement qui déplace les lignes,
Et jamais je ne pleure et jamais je ne ris.

Les poètes, devant mes grandes attitudes,
Que j'ai l'air d'emprunter aux plus fiers monuments,
Consumeront leurs jours en d'austères études;

Car j'ai, pour fasciner ces dociles amants,
De purs miroirs qui font toutes choses plus belles:
Mes yeux, mes larges yeux aux clartés éternelles!

Joining millions of bloggers everywhere by taking a picture of my lunch.

The snow trimmed the neighborhood in white but we went out in force anyway. Dry pavement, full sun, the promise of a round of chowder for lunch and people-watching, turning the tables on those who think just because they've seen someone in a magazine they have earned the right to eavesdrop on their existence. Cold wind on the motorcycles, my face was red under my helmet, hair making a halo around my collar where curls would escape from where they were left tucked in. Ben did a last minute inspection of me and told me to signal him if I was too cold. I believe he still thinks I am made of glass by day and opaque indestructable marble at night.

I did not signal. I should have signalled. Okay I had one truck ride with Schuyler when the traffic crawled to a virtual standstill when a nearby neighborhood was cleared of traffic and inhabitants due to an IED found in a park (Hurt Lockerish photos from the news) so our plans were actually truncated by the ridiculous wait times on the highway but still, it was enough over a break from ducking under rainclouds that I feel somewhat sated and less wanderlustish tonight.

Until the morning, anyway.

Lochlan did not pull rank when I did not join him. He took his fast bike anyway and I'm generally nowhere near it because he's a bit of a maniac on it but I still think he was hoping for a little time. He doesn't need time, he is home all week, working from his little home office off his bedroom, close by to have all the time in the world so this day was about time with Ben. Scrunched in beside him in the booth. I had given up my crackers to the kids when the waiter lost our order (I think he was a little overwhelmed by the boys) and Ben shared his crackers with me to crumble into my chowder.
It was good (and OMG I am so messy). The whole day was good. Except for the IED part. That was completely unnecessary and a little over the top.

Even for us.

Sentimental circus (no sideshow).

And if you think real beauty's on the outside
Well that's a far cry
From the truth

Maybe all the information you received
Well you should not believe
There's no proof

PJ returns to the house after a brief holiday and the house returns to a completely comical version of its unbridled self. PJ runs a tight ship. PJ lives in my boathouse, so no surprise there.

But he is never down there. Instead he stands behind me as I navigate my days, giving Caleb these looks that just stun him into total silence or incredibly obvious subject replacements because for some reason PJ's word is gospel where no one else has ever set their hands on such a scripture before. Maybe it's because I do so well when he is around. Maybe it's because of the full moon/impending spring. Even Lochlan follows PJ's directions like a spoiled but compliant little boy and Benjamin wouldn't question PJ even if PJ told him to go naked bungee jumping for a good cause.

For the record..we're not going. We do give a lot to causes we believe in, and we keep the organizations and the donations closely guarded for obvious reasons. It makes it easier to deflect those who flat-out ask for money (don't).

Besides, Bridget (at almost forty) versus gravity? Are you out of your mind? There's a risk I won't take and I won't even get started on the whole leaping willfully off a high place because it's just not the way today is and so let's close the flap on that tent and move along to the larger, more colorful, bustling hard-floored tent that you've been watching us raise up in the dust for days.

Which is that I've been taking a lot of supplements lately.

Not a lot, just a few. But many days have since passed and I've been noticing something amazing that sort of surprised me and pleased me at the same time.

Mental clarity.

(Oh, God. There's PJ, reading over my shoulder like a nosy transit rider, chortling to himself over precisely how much mental clarity I could possibly have left when my head is so freakishly small and I stumble over the children's names fourteen times a day usually and I write every single thing down so I don't forget and really at this point he is becoming a thug, like a volunteer bouncer/well-compensated security guard looming behind my shoulders snarling at everything in sight so what exactly would he know about mental acrobatics and really, you want to see something amazing, PJ? Come over here and hold this rope and I'll show you the trick where I slide down to the knot with one leg locked on it and then turn myself around in mid-air, supporting my own weight, while it swings at fifty miles an hour. Dizzying, hey? Now shut the fuck up.)

No, really! It's uncanny. I haven't missed anyone's name in three days. I have remembered to take my vitamins/put the laundry in the dryer/walk the dog/send a thank you card/call the dentist without writing down a single thing.

That doesn't happen, but it's happening. Now. To me.

I can't imagine the fun of being able to retain the pages I read or the continued success in having random conversations without fluttering, stuttering, pausing to conjure up the right words or that thought I had right before I heard Ruth/the helicopter in the sky/the windchimes/doorbell/ringing phone.

I also feel happy without a specific reason. Stupidly so.

So it's definitely either spring fever or the thought of a full-frontal before-and-after shot of any naked bungee jumpers in my vicinity, with their newly stretched-out limbs and distorted naughty parts.

I'll figure it out eventually. I'm off to infect the big lunk with a little 'clarity'. Because he's walking around singing that stupid Britney Spears song. The new one. Because he knows I don't appreciate popular music in the way most people do.

I'm fine with that, too. (<--Not Britney Spears but also a new video on the scene this week. It's awesome).

Jacob would tell me, Just say the day was challenging, Bridget.

The day was challenging, Bridget.

Kiss principles.

The resistance to dishwashers ran long. Not only due to living in the hundred-year old castle with the sketchy wiring and sporadic successful plumbing but because they represent the final hurdle into full urban routine and domestic complacency. Now that we have set up in a new location and the house is new and the dishwasher is RIGHT THERE, I have had to make peace with the thing, and still wash fully half our stuff (thermal coffee mugs, PJ's eyeglasses) by hand, thank you very much.

I am so feral and uncontainable and the circus still runs through my bloodstream painfully so, to the point where it was really quite a brutal moment last week when Lochlan's mother saw the dishwasher flung open and pulled apart so that the fresh clean dishes could DRY already and mentioned that I could buy rinse agents to speed that along exponentially.

Oh.

Really?

Must I?

I bought the little bottle of 'jet-dry' when I was buying apples and carrots and coffee and birthday cards and I brought it home and regarded it suspiciously for several days and this morning I had to search 'adding rinse agents to dishwasher' online in order to see where exactly I had to put it and how much and what is that dial for with the numbers on the inside and let's go halfsies and see what happens and I wish someone would hold the flashlight and really...

You know what?

Life was not so hard living in a camper without a clean dish and hanging off the bar in the lights by my knees, being passed a chocolate chip cookie from a well-meaning rigger and calling it supper and really I would have balked quite magnificently at paying $7.99 for a bottle of something that makes my dishes pretty, unless I could have used to to wash down the random meals I was given as well.

So there.

If time was never on our side
then before I die I want to burn out bright

I had my head against the plaster, facing the wall. Away from the windows and the doors. I would have been smack in the corner if only the big plant stand wasn't already there. I don't rearrange furniture in order to find escape, I simply turn away from the light so you can't see my face. I close my eyes and wish myself into oblivion.

And yet I am still right there and his eyes are burning holes into my back. I can feel the cotton of my shirt burning away. Dammit all anyway, Jake. I really liked this shirt.

Why don't you just wait and see before you panic, pigalet? He asks. He is not taking me seriously, which is a good counterstance for the fact that I take myself too seriously and I am always full of expectations and abilities I don't have a hope in hell of fulfilling but then when I stop expecting so much everyone else starts and it's frustrating that when I am sick I should stop but when I am afraid I must keep going. Who made those rules and why do they need to apply to me anyway? If they work for you, great. I'm not interested. We've come to the point in the lecture of life that doesn't apply to me so I will excuse myself now and go and wait facing the black wall in the dining room with my head pressed against the cold cracked plaster and my brain screaming at me to get a grip.

Sometime during the night things were removed and replaced. Cast changes when the show isn't going well.Don't think your admonitions don't reverberate from inside my brain as well and I'm afraid the noise is never ever going to go away, drowning everything else out and the only thing that quiets it is the music and even that seems more difficult than it should be sometimes.

You don't speak so much as condemn, stacking your words against the top of my skull until I can no longer take a step and I am frozen in place by your disappointment but I know it's your own fear reflected in my eyes and you don't want to see that, ever because then you'll have nothing to hold over me.

Regret comes slowly, like the sunrise. And I only ever wanted a chair but I'll warn you, I'm still going to turn it to face this wall too because I'm not sure about you. You don't seem to have earned the right to judge my expressions and I'm incredibly angry that you think you have the right to evaluate my fears and discard the ones that shame us all. I didn't intend for that to happen, hell, I would just give them all away if I could and be like everybody else and instead I can't stand up to you in case you respond poorly so it's easier to find the disappointment in the pores of the wall and give my wishes to the stars, who will in turn absorb them until I have forgotten what they were and the noise and the dark will continue forever and ever, amen.

My patience is wearing thin, like the paint on these floorboards. I should fix this but I really don't care.

Queen of Hearts.

I feel like a giddy fool today, and not because Ben and I forgot to wish each other a Happy Valentine's Day. Give us some credit. At 4:45 am I'm lucky if I can remember to put my underpants on BEFORE my jeans, so really the extent of my skills are not social at that hour. Besides, he brought home flowers last Thursday night because he didn't want to forget the holiday and I gave him a card last night after we indulged in our favorite Chinese take-out. The sexual favors were traded all damned weekend and really, we are not lacking for romance in this house so don't worry about me. Besides. I can always go mack on my boyfriends. (Since you persist in being so awful, I'll join you. My, the water is warm in the gutter here, isn't it?)

In other news, I have eight hundred billion things to do today, I just noticed the floors are a DISASTER after rain all weekend and I am so not awake yet and really I don't care about the Radiohead album but I am patiently waiting for the Switchfoot one (GRAMMY winners now, DID YOU SEE?) and in the meantime I am...

...birdwatching.

Okay, headphones, dog that doesn't say much, absent bears, deers and cougars aside, the only interesting creatures we keep running across on the four or five long dog walks I take with the dog each day are yellow-breasted chats. Cute little fat yellow birds that live in the woods of my neighborhood. They are obnoxious, loud and adorable (now I know why the boys love me) and they're a little shy but not all that much. The dog doesn't care to eat them the way he seems to want to with hummingbirds, sparrows and finches (hawks, crows, owls, cats, bugs, please name anything else that breathes here) and I'm really proud of myself for looking up their proper names, past Oh my God, Duncan! There's one of those fat little yellow birds again! Look! Fuck! You missed it! Argh!

So there.

I will see Benjamin at supper time and the rest of the boys over the course of the day so I hope you have a lovely day. I am off to attempt to duck under, outrun and generally stay out of reach of Satan today. Because Satan can do a holiday like no one else and really he needs something else to focus his attention on, so if you have a recently-infected zombie or spare mushroom cloud or a giant man-eating bird I can distract him with, please hook me up ASAP.