No one's going to build a monument to love here.

Last minute instructions as he's beginning to pull his things together for a three week round the world odyssey to diversify, reaching out to some untapped desperate markets and have a trickle of European profits to round out what is shaping up to be a surprisingly solid and easy to oversee selection of projects. I reassure him if I have any problems I can easily reach him by phone. If that fails I can always go to Batman for help. Caleb frowns and says he'll check in daily and nothing can go wrong that can't wait.

I nod. This is a technicality. He didn't have to put me in charge of anything. It could have sat with a short note on his voicemail to relay his return date and an automatic reply on his email to say the same. He just likes to put me in the hot seat. He is always testing me and I always remind him that I do business using logic and common senses because that's the way life works. He always frowns and says I sound like Lochlan.

He tells me he is going to miss me while I count out pills and more pills for him to take along. Some are dailies. Some are just-in-cases. Some is spray nitroglycerin in triplicate and it's all neatly labelled now and in clear bags ready to be pulled out of his carry-on bag for inspection at airports. This part makes me a little nervous and so his daily check-ins are five deep. Batman in the morning. John at lunch. Ben at dinner. Henry at bedtime. Me at night. This is so over-engineered I want to Caleb to wait, that he can get Luke or even Batman or maybe possibly me to go at a later date but he wants to get this done and onto the books before year end.

I tell him to avoid the women. And the Russians. He laughs and tells me he's too old to get in any trouble these days.

Any advice for the really hard parts, Babydoll? 

Late in the night when you can't sleep, you mean?

Precisely. 

Call me. It'll be early here. I'll talk you through it. 

Or you can just come with me. 

I shake my head. I'm trying so hard to avoid this part of the present.

Take care of our son and if anything happens, Bridge-

I nod. I know what to do. I know where all the papers are. 

Not what I mean. I mean if I'm gone, don't let them vilify me to Henry. I want him to be proud of me. I don't want him to have to hear the things I have done.

My nose gets all stingy and my eyes start to leak but I nod. I didn't let anyone do it with Cole. I won't let them do it for you. 

And if I go, Bridget-

Just.. Just shut up. The odds aren't there that you won't come back so let's not do this. 

Well you don't read the letters anyone has left for you so I made a video. I emailed it to you already. Watch it now or if I don't come back or later but watch it eventually, okay? It's important. 

I nod and he kisses the tears off my eyelashes. Diabhal? I can't talk about this.

Hey. I know. And this goes both ways. If you need me to get through the really hard parts, call me. 

You're never going to get any work done. You realize this, don't you?

That's fine. I'm at a point in my life where I set up the pieces and the puzzle solves itself. 

You're so humble about how hard you work. Stop it. You need to take it easier like you promised. 

I need to actually be busier because then I get into less trouble concerning matters of the heart. Did I tell you one of my side excursions is to the Taj Mahal?

I have always wanted to see it with my own eyes and it's hard not to turn jaded green at his news.

Send me a selfie when you get there. I'll put it on my blog. 

You'll do nothing of the kind, Bridget. 

It would be nice for people to see that you're human, Cale. 

Why would I want to be human when I can be a God instead? And he leans down to kiss me hard because I'm finished. There's nothing left to pack.

Gods don't need luggage, Diabhal. 

This is not my final form, of course. I like to travel in disguise. He winks and lets me go. His charm. I could drown in it if it didn't dissolve my bones the moment it touches me.

Even at my ugliest.

You always say I am beautiful
As you tear me to pieces

Matt came home early this morning. Early like 3:47 this morning and of course everyone is now asleep and I'm all Hiii? Someone come play with me? But no one answers except the furnace and the odd random cat meowing for attention and winding around my legs.

He walked in with his customary clear call, Honey, I'm home! I thought Sam might burst but he didn't because that would have been messy and ironic and so instead he only grinned huge and glassy and rushed into the front hall and we all followed and Matt was greeted as if we hadn't seen him for years. It made my chest hurt because Ben would go out for six, eight, thirteen months and we would stay up and greet him the same way. Hugs. Smiles. Tired relief like okay, everyone is here now, home safe.

We can actually sleep now except sleep is still waiting for when Duncan is home too. At least for me. The rest of them can sleep but me, I always wait.

But Caleb leaves before Duncan will be home and  my chest hurts every time I think about that too.

Bridge. Come back to bed. 

Yeah. Okay, Locket.

Comets are a girl's best friend.

All 142 frames of this are amazingly touching. You can click through them all here.

***

Take me all the way to the end
Show me how you want it to end
Keep dancing with the dead
Go ahead
Keep dancing with the dead

The devil's in your head
Filling in the stance
God is playing dead
So save your breath

I declined Caleb's offer again this morning. He leaves in a few days for Dubai and will be gone for weeks. He thinks I should go with him and has managed to make the pot so sweet if I dove into it I wouldn't even sink for all the sugar. Dublin. The Canaries. A whirlwind trip to see everything I've ever missed. With him. The original benefactor who brought the world to me. He thinks I'm throwing my life away once again in order to follow Lochlan around. Baby duck, he calls me. Imprinted. This is wrong, Bridget. I went out and made a life for us and while I was ensuring your future you ran off with the Joker.

He is mad about that and also because he actually thinks I'm about to order plastic cufflinks for him for Christmas and he insists I am more than that, that I should strive harder to be what he wanted me to be instead of what I have become.

We come bearing our baggage, hauling the weight up on our shoulders, braced in a rigid stance facing each other. He is never going to put his weight down, while I would drop mine in a heartbeat except for the fact that my hands are fused around it, melted together and I can't seem to let go.

Everyone sees a different facet and I blind them all when the sun hits me. A miserable diamond, a shattered visage, a valuable and yet worthless trinket set by a market rate but fetching whatever number is called on any given day. Some days I am surprised. Some days no numbers go up at all.

I'm not sad that he's going, honestly. I'm looking forward to the break from his intensity. I'm looking forward to debriefing Henry and not being criticized because I can't crawl out of my own way here. I'm looking forward to being in charge and being deluded about that as well. I'm not actually in charge. I never will be but the North American side of business falls to me in Caleb's absence and I'm anxious to prove myself worthy. A diamond in the rough, or something. I can be in charge of his high-stakes ventures with his full confidence but not of my own household. How telling.

Like playing Barbies but giant oversized Barbies with beards!

This morning I painted Ben's nails for him and helped PJ do a mask on his face. I asked Ben if he wanted a mask as well, for exfoliation and he asked what the mask tasted like. He's looking at the front of the container. Cucumbers and coconuts? I ventured. But probably like chemicals. 

He declined. For once.

Lochlan came in and did his Oh ho ho Santa-Claus laugh. He saves it for his happy/incredulous moods. I chased him around the house trying to get him to submit to some treatments too but his idea of effort is not brushing wet curls. Then once they're dry he rakes his hand through them and has perfect glossy red loops.

I swear to God in my next life I want that hair.

Ben's nails are black. There's no other color ever. Well, once when Ruth was four he let her paint them pink. They were still pink when he came home from tour and if you look at pictures online from that summer you can see the pink polish on every set of horns he throws.

It's great.

PJ asked how to get the mask out of his beard after about fifteen minutes of waiting for it to harden. Rather, he whined for a good ten minutes while I guessed at solutions.

Have a hot shower. Or stick your whole face in a sink full of really hot water?

Oh come on, Bridget! Seriously? There's no easier way to get this out of my beard?

I don't know. I don't have a beard so I'm not the expert here.

Wait. Loch, how do I, oh nevermind. Not like you can grow an actual beard. (Oh. Burn.)

Naw but at least I can grow a set of balls and not let her play beauty parlour with my face, asshole. 

Checkout is 3pm.

Had an epiphany! A diamond headband with a pixie cut would be hella cute. Just need to find one now. God forbid I mention it or I'll be taken over to DeBeers and held there until I pick something. I don't want something from there. I mean like a Goody Rhinestone one from the drugstore.

In other news, I woke up long enough to page through my favorite Christmas catalogue today and every model made me think of Drunk J Crew.

(I never laughed so hard lately as I did at this website.)

But then I found Caleb's Christmas present for this year. No, not the Maserati. He doesn't love those cars in the same way I don't 'love' DeBeers. I'm getting him THESE.

JESUS CHRIST.

I've been rattling around the house mostly since 5 am (I don't sleep anymore. Why don't I sleep?) and I looked out the window and abruptly it was like someone flipped a switch and the sun rose. Like it was dark as I walked toward the window and I blinked and it was light out.

I wish I could do that at will. I hate the short days so badly

More later. I might be hallucinating and should probably go back to bed.

Small but not quiet.

I can't believe I let myself break down

Every morning now at four I get up, turn on the fireplace and bring my phone and headphones back to the middle of the big bed. I burrow back down between the sleepers and put on music. Mostly I just play Run Free/Moving On/The Road on repeat until I fall asleep again and then when Loch's alarm goes off at six he will quietly lament the need to tether me to him so I'm not wandering around in the dark. It was so easy once with a tiny fifty-six-square-foot space. Not so easy now. Fifty-six hundred feet and then some.

He'll wrap his hand around the back of my head and pull me back in. So warm. Perfect. He'll promise me we'll get new headphones because these ones are broken from waking up lying on them and after snoozing for twenty minutes or so he'll leave me here and go get ready for the day.

I put the headphones back in and press my forehead against Ben's arm until he shifts and spoons with me. He says turn it down and I ignore the request because I can pretend I'm asleep and he doesn't know what a lifetime of sleeping with music on has done to soothe my brain and how much I missed it recently.

He is back to full sleep in seconds anyway. I press repeat another fifty times until my batteries run out and then I get up too.

I used to love the sound of rain when I could hear it finally.

The only thing I'm needing is for you to be bleeding
From my homicidal kiss

It'll be five years this early spring since we moved here. I should be packing. Anything over four years and I start to live on time borrowed from someone else's future. A nice present (and a bad pun) but I always wonder if the cabin fever is some sort of escapist technique I just haven't figured out how to wield properly.

Caleb laughs at this suggestion and provides one of his own, saying he thinks Lochlan managed to impart to me a fairly serious notion that humans don't need roots or stability or familiarity at all and that it was profoundly damaging in adulthood, proper.

I remind him not to be disparaging and he dismisses his words as normal thoughts, unchecked. No filter, as he promised to be as forthright as I always am. I walk in the door, unload my anxiety all over you and then wear your mental picture of my transparency as a frame around my fragile bones. I don't do it on purpose, this is just what has become of me.

He asks how we, all together, would start over yet again, somewhere else and I tell him,

Leave that to me. Just pick some place where it never rains but I'm still on the beach. Okay?

The lady who pinned my poppy on me this year is a genius. It's still on there. She threaded the tip back up through the poppy itself. It's not going anywhere, and my hand is all poked to bits from trying to adjust my seatbelt strap under my coat collar. I'm not complaining though. Usually I lose them within minutes.

Sam had someone else pin his and as such, lost it within minutes.

He's getting so excited. Matt comes home next Saturday for good. The work thing is done. Matt was on Skype with us and August and Duncan (home in less than three weeks) and everyone else too and it was amazing yesterday.

Til I ruined it by crying and asking August to come back.

But you know. I cry every time I see him. It's not him though. It's me.

Good morning (my archives, they're up now. Go read all about Jake while I lie here and die.)

Life goes on here. I'm not quite up to a big birthday dinner tonight for Jake but maybe later this weekend.

I had a massive change of heart. I reuploaded all of the missing archives. All of Jacob, from the day I left Cole right through to marrying Ben and then walking away from my blog. Two year's worth of entries, April 2006 through April 2008 (when I left for four months and then was convinced to come back) is up now and available for your reading pleasure.

I'll apologize in advance for the liberal amounts of romantic cheese at the start. Jake was like that.

But he's gone now and it serves no purpose to shove his memories in some dark corner. If they were in direct sunlight, perhaps they might fade a little faster so I can thrive a little here too. He wasn't magic and it took seeing it all again to understand that.

Maybe Sam was right.

I'm not going to die though. I feel a little braver than I expected to at this point. It's been seven years today. Happy forty-fourth, Pooh.