While making potato salad:

Bridget, are you going to acknowledge the fact that Cole has been gone for eight years this month?

I did (even here!). Maybe it just wasn't as poetic or Cole-centric as you had hoped? 

Are you going to continue to be this disrespectful? 

Sure, if you're going to keep up your attempts at full control, Caleb.

We'll talk about it later. We have a lot to discuss at this point. Don't delay much longer.

Forgot about the telescopes, oh my Lord. Wait, I think they've all seen everything already and if they hadn't well, those days are over now.

Loch overruled me, deciding on my behalf (something he's always done, if that matters) that anything Caleb has to share that he has kept to himself thus far is of no consequence at present. What will it change? Who would it benefit? Hell, how we do even know if he's telling the truth or lying? He continued to talk over me, talk me into it, talk himself out of it while I sat on the counter and he does the same thing he does every other month. Comb my bangs straight down and then hold them and cut careful along the open edge. Then he lets go and nods like I am some sort of work of art (I was, once) and then he dismisses me but he doesn't let me go and he says,

Hey. What would you rather do instead? Today, I mean. For the whole day. 

The whole day? 

All of it until bedtime. 

Let's take a picnic to the nude beach and then watch the sunset.

What? No, Bridge. You want to have a nude picnic we should stay on our own beach. 

Really?

Well, yeah.

Awesome! I'll go pull the food together. 

What did I just get myself into?

You mean what did you just get yourself out of! Which would be your clothes. Take 'em off. We don't need them where we're going!

I lasted until threeish. I'm just not a 'sit on the beach and do nothing' person. I swam a little bit and I looked for shells and Caleb texted me asking if naked everything was my bucket list and I laughed and Loch frowned and texted him back Yes, just not with you.

He turned off both our phones and smiled and said he thinks he burned his arse. He's kind of uptight. While I was looking for glass and shells, much as usual, he was facedown on his towel 'sunbathing'.

Right. He was hiding his junk is what he was doing. I don't know why he would do that. I've never complained.  Tomorrow he said he gets to pick the activity. He'll probably make me help wax the trucks. Maybe we can do that naked too.

(I still plan to talk to Caleb. Just because I'm so curious I'll die if I don't.)

Momentary weakness.

PJ came home with a big bag of bottles and we cheered and he proudly displayed...

Dish soap, iced tea and some more of that pineapple coconut water. I promptly switched to that and was sober before Loch made it back, which is a feat in itself.

No fear, he yelled at me for an hour anyway.

We're a little on edge the days that Caleb takes the kids for his all-day spoilage jaunts. He takes them out shopping, lunching, for a show and then dinner and brings them home with stars in their eyes and then I promptly have to stuff them back into the box with all the rules and limits and denials and hard lessons and they say those things are sharp and they're getting too big to fit and maybe I should just take a few things out, but no. Once Caleb gets his lifestyle in there under their skin in the hole left by the sharp inside edge of Lights Off by Eleven, then what will I do?

Ben came home and yelled at Loch for yelling at me and then we all sort of retreated to our corners for the evening. I finished the coconut water and my book and Sam found me a little after eleven, still stuffed into the little chair in the library and he sat cross-legged on the floor in front of me and talked a little about good escapes and not so good escapes and how Mondays should maybe become something else to make them go a little faster and eventually he stretched out on the rug, shirtless with only old jeans and a cross on a black cord, caramel waves all over the damn place, neat beard covering his chin, endless smile brought to you by Jesus, hotness brought by God and I wondered what the fuck is wrong with me that I'm sizing him up instead of taking his advice and so I closed my eyes and when I opened them next, Ben was picking me up out of the chair, not saying a word.

Today I get to go ask the Devil questions. Wish me luck.

It's well-known how much I despise Mondays (PRINCESS FAIL).

You better watch your step when you're coming back down
From the city on out to the sea
And if your brothers come after me
With their horses so wild and so free
I'll be waiting at the gate in a terrible state
With the man who holds the key
And he'll treat you quite carelessly
For he knows my face from a previous place
From a country in a foreign land
Throwing dice in a game of chance on the sand
But I lost my cool and fate loves a fool
Now I'm standing on the edge of the pack
In my spacesuit hoping that this women will call me at last
Cuz' I'm an astronaut on the shores of this grand illusion
and I'm falling down at the sound of this beating heart

Today has been cancelled due to the overwhelmingly brilliant Monday-morning decision to get drunk with Teflon Jesus and his Lizard King of an older brother and listen to Blitzen Trapper's American Goldwing on repeat until I throw up.

Astronaut. The song is fucking called Astronaut. I die.

Hey, fuck off, sometimes it's better than being a grownup. LK isn't drinking, he's just sitting here smiling, crushing hard, enjoying the moment. We recruited PJ to come home and join us shortly with better alcohol (oh Dalton can hold so much more than I) and Sam has tried to physically remove me twice to no avail. Ha. He said wait until your husband comes home but I didn't know which one he meant so I don't think I should be worried exactly.

Stalling? Yes, very much. You?I don't want truth. I don't want anything today except oblivion, franklish.

Fun today, truth tomorrow.

This is the third best view in the known universe, right up there behind the eyes of all those that I love and then the Atlantic ocean with it's razor sharp seaweed, relentless wind, and unspoiled horizon.

The Ferris wheel was ridden multiple times, as I shrieked over the first few rotations before settling in and realizing my fingers were all stuck together from cotton candy and I should probably put away my phone.

I got kisses at the top. Every single time, just like always. Summer is complete now. Bring on whatever comes next.

Stop ganging up on him.

Oh, sneaky. This morning Ben woke with a start, which means I woke with a start though I didn't really open my eyes or anything, and he very gently rolled me away from him and into Loch. Loch did not wake up. I stuck my face in against his neck and fell back asleep. Ben got up and got ready for his early meeting. I wonder how many nights he's been repositioning me just to keep the peace. I wonder why he feels he has to? He wants to make things easy for Lochlan. I love that but I don't love enabling control.

That's why breakfast was so ridiculous. I went outside and Caleb is describing one of the restaurants we visited in the most hilarious terms possible. Dalton seemed mildly interested while PJ was losing his shit, laughing out loud.

How can bread be 'esoteric'? You're fucking serious, that's the worst part of this. You know she prefers french fries made by a clown, right? He gestures to me.

And Caleb took that and ran with it. Oh, Loch get a new job?

I was smart and lifted my coffee mug into my hand and pushed my chair back. If the table's going over on him I refuse to give up my Saturday morning coffee.

Good thing I did, because there it goes.

No one's enabling control around here. We don't seem to have any.

Wizard mode.

Back into Lochlan's arms this morning, his hands closing around my head tightly. One of these days it's going to squish and burst and then they'll find the embroidery scissors I lost in the last move, a few pens with colored ink I am forbidden to use in public and what's left of my brain, most likely the stem and the black part that was inedible to the brain tumor that never gets full. My head hurts so badly and my mouth is dry and he asks quietly if I'm okay.

No one bit me, if that's what everyone is wondering. Caleb and I stayed out way too late last night eating dessert and drinking coffee after the proper meetings were dispensed with and then we found a pinball machine in a convenience store and cashed in twenty after twenty for tokens, failing to beat the high score. Not even coming close.

He can be fun when he chooses to be. His tie was stuffed in his pocket, trailing out behind him, his eyes bright and the grin fixed to his face. We started laughing hysterically somewhere around eleven and didn't stop until close to one in the morning, when he finally grew more serious as we walked back to the hotel and he said,

How much truth do you want and where am I supposed to start? 

All of it and don't start tonight, whatever you do. I'm tired. 

Let's find an airplane and go home to our son then. 

Does it start with him?

Bridget, we'll talk about it tomorrow.

What else will we talk about?

I figured I would just let you start with questions and once those are answered, we'll reconcile whatever is left. 

An open book?

An open book, Neamhchiontach. 

Why now?

You asked. You asked and I'm not going to live forever and I'm probably never going to get what I want so why the hell not?

Why aren't you like this all the time?

I told you. Truth tomorrow. Tonight I'll lie and say that I am. 

I was falling asleep on the plane before I was fully settled and he fastened my seat belt and told me to get some rest. I nodded and he said he loved me.

But do you or is that a lie too?

That's never been a lie. It never will be a lie as long as I'm breathing. 

Too bad. Your life would be so much easier if it was.

He just wants to be buff for dinner.

Also I've been forbidden to liveblog this trip any further. Starting last post. Oops. Haha.

Hey, not only did our little plane not disappear but I've graduated to watching Caleb do exercise ball rollouts or whateverthefuck they're called in the hotel gym!

My life, I tell you. Tinged with greatness.

I can go home now? Please?

Well, that settles it. I'm officially the only person in the developed world who doesn't hate the trailer for Fifty Shades of Grey.

I did have a few criticisms but kept them to noting Jamie Dornan's prop (cheap) watch, too-perfect hair and smooth face for a middle of the night piano practice and the fact that virtually every scene is lit with the same fake Seattle overcast mode, including the night scenes. I hope that will be fixed by February when the actually movie comes out but we're not going to be able to do anything about that watch, now, are we?

At least Dakota's bangs have probably already grown back by now.

(Please excuse the quick and dirty (not very) post. Packing for Toronto. Business. Big Epic Hates.)