The lesser.

I really wish you'd stop interfering. Lochlan scowls at Caleb, who actually came over to feast on some crow after being told in no uncertain terms by Joel that for PJ to be banished (even temporarily) right now at this perfect juncture between Ben's birthday and New Years would be detrimental and probably highly destructive to my well-being.

(I'm guessing Joel finally picked a side and is going to be looking for his brownie points from me from now on.)

I got to tell Caleb this morning and invited him over for his bird-meal. I may film it and put it on Youtube. 'Millionaire's latest attempt at scorched-earth campaign goes bust.'

But for some reason he is still full of fire. Fire and feathers, now.

If it weren't for my interference, you two would be bickering over a nickel in a run-down trailer park somewhere. You'd be drunk and she'd be scared and hungry. Bridget wasn't meant to live like that. I know you're hellbent to, though, so there's the door. 

Diabhal. You aren't allowed to speak to him like that. 

I am, actually. I pay his bills. 

No, I do. 

With the money I give you. 

I'm not here for your money, Caleb.

I forgot. Those with means are in a lineup behind me. See, Pyro? You're never going to have what you want. You should just get out while you still can before you end up like the others. Save yourself. 

And leave her for you? Never. 

Am I in a movie? I spin around looking for the cameras but they're well-hidden, I guess. I can't see them. Both men stop and look at me without words. Loch finally says What are you doing? 

Nothing. Thinking. 

About? 

How to fix this so you two don't kill each other. You have four years left. You're more than halfway through this forced arrangement. 

Going to be a long four years. Loch says it almost under his breath just as Caleb starts to laugh.

You won't leave here once the custody arrangement ends. I know you better than you think I do, Bridget. 

Maybe you'll leave. Maybe I'll lock the point down and everyone will have to move.

You would miss this too much. Miss having all of your boys around. Miss having them watch you, touch you, give you whatever it is you don't get from him. 

Definitely a movie. Right on cue Loch dives at Caleb and Duncan and Dalton rush in to pull them apart. I give up. What's my role again? Oh yes, I go out and stand on the edge of the cliff and look out to sea while the camera does a slow pan away from me until I'm but a speck of black on the screen while the credits roll.

Really I just didn't want PJ to feel like he was being shoved out and I don't want Lochlan to feel like he's a charity case. But I worried prematurely. Both things fixed themselves. Lochlan brought me a quarterly rent cheque and told me I'm not to cover it anymore but he would like receipts from Caleb himself, and PJ assured me that he didn't feel pressured to go and really he's happy to remain but he is taking his next long weekend and going to visit some family. I sat looking at the cheque for a while, doing the math in my head and I finally went back to Loch and asked where it came from.

I have a sugar daddy too these days. Thought you would have noticed by now. 

I just stood there with my eyes wide because I wasn't putting two and two together. I'm so bad at math.

Batman. I got a Christmas bonus. Early, he said, so I'd have it to use for Christmas. Oh, and the rest of the year off. He's not a bad boss actually. 

So this is the bonus?And you're giving it to me? 

No, that's just this week's paycheque. The bonus is in the bank. More money than I've ever seen. And it's ours, Peanut. No strings. 

From Batman. 

Yes. 

Oh, there will be strings, Loch. 

Still twelve and seventeen, apparently.

I got annoyed at iTunes this morning for not taking the playlists I have made on my phone and populating them over onto my macbook. Is this even a thing?

As usual Lochlan won't help with anything because he expects me to be technologically independent so I threatened to go back to using a Blackberry. Drag and drop. No problems. If Ruth burns through any more iphones I may have to go back to Blackberry anyway because they're less than half the price of a new iphone so I would just give her mine and revert. We shall see.

I'm not independent in any way, frankly and I don't know why he persists except that he is hurting today and lashing out because the Cirque show brought up feelings in him that he has no place to put anymore. I tied him down. I took him out of his comfort zone and stuck him rigidly into Happily Ever After right smack up against the Devil even though I knew when I fell in love with Lochlan that he would rather die than sit still, ever.

Oh, good choice of words, Loch. Excellent. Now please excuse me while I run upstairs and cry my eyes out for ruining your life. 

That's not what I meant. 

It seems pretty clear to me. 

I miss it, Bridget. Don't you miss it? Life was simpler. Everything was simpler. There was so much magic. 

You have to find the magic in other ways now. It's still simple if you keep it that way. 

This isn't simple, Bridget. 

So your fix for it is to hurt me? 

No, I just want to make you see the things you seem to have forgotten. 

I didn't forget. 

Maybe you were just too young to remember.

Maybe it was just too hard to live like that. 

I can see that. It's much nicer and cushier here with the Devil emptying his wallet on you.

That's not what I meant. 

Then what did you mean? 

It's safer here. 

Why? He's right in your face so he can't sneak up on you any more?

Pretty much. 

Well, I wanted more for you. For us. 

And I GAVE IT TO YOU. Even though it's cost me most of your trust in the process. 

I wonder if this was worth it, Bridget. Do you really think it is?

I don't see any other way. 

Well, you would, but you've grown too use to this gilded life to consider anything else. You sat there complaining about your phone this morning. We used to walk to the payphone, a mile there and a mile back. Did you forget already?

That was in the eighties! Before cellphones. You're not seriously going to use that as an argument are you?

I was but I'm sure you've bought all your answers in order to be sure you'd win. Or he did for you.

This is exactly why I ran away and joined the circus.

Sorry I didn't post yesterday. I nearly imploded from the impending excitement of attending Kooza, the Cirque Du Soleil show that arrived in town last month and didn't really get my shit together again until I fell asleep on Ben watching Rogue Nation in our theater last night.

(The movie was boring. Wasn't it? I didn't really find it interesting enough to stay awake.)

But Kooza.

Well, Oh My God.

I watched it with tears in my ears. I saw things I've done. Things I couldn't do. Things I wished I could still do. Things that made me laugh, made me cry. It was positively full of heart. I loved the historical costumes and I loved the skeletons too. I actually considered re-applying to work for them.

I bought a lot of souvenirs. Christmas ornaments, t-shirts. I bought six-dollar water.

Things have changed when you can charge six dollars for water and people buy it without blinking but it's also Vancouver.

Heh.

I think my favorite big part was the two athletes on the wheels. And my favorite small part was when,  both during the pre-show and the actual show, they would bring an audience member onstage for a moment and when they escorted them off one of the clowns would reach into his pocket and throw a handful of confetti into the air at their back.

I don't know why but that always seems touching to me.

I might have spent some time again wondering why it all turned out so differently for me, but eventually everyone leaves the road and moves on. It isn't an easy life, all told, though it's more magical than most.

Lochlan's eyes watered the whole time too. When we got home he went to our room and didn't come out again. I know he feels it. It hurts because it's so beautiful and because we can't go back again. I mean, we could but it wouldn't be the same.

Lost at last.

I found my latest happy place this morning, sitting on the wet sand at the edge of the water on my beach, (because the rocks and logs were all slippery-frosted over and wet seemed better than slick and I made a mistake, okay?)  headphones in and David Gilmour's song In Any Tongue on repeat, Cole's big grey sweater wrapped tightly around me.

This is the best. The sand is ice-cold, the music is glorious (the album is hit and miss, though Faces of Stone, A Boat Lies Waiting and the leads in the intro and outro are glorious. Also The Girl in the Yellow Dress is amazingly smooth and jazzy, a surprise. I wish Gilmour's voice was stronger. I wish he wouldn't age. Eventually there won't be any new music and we will still listen closely and hear things we never heard before. I will, anyway. I miss a lot.

In the meantime, I'll be here. Winter has finally arrived at my beach and once you survive the trip down here, it's the perfect place to be alone.

Not that I need to be alone or anything. I don't actually like to be alone but I also don't like to be anywhere but here.

This house is made of cards and they're old and flimsy and don't hold up at ALL.

I'm not sure why everyone is harping on her Majesty the Queen for carrying her purse in her own home.

I do that.

Mostly because I bring it down in the morning and put it on the table in the foyer. If there's people around the property that I don't know I leave it on the desk in the kitchen. At night I bring it back upstairs and put it on the dresser in my closet.

If I go out I make Ben carry it.

See? Simple.

Thought right now there's too much stuff in it but I vetted everything and it all passed muster so I think I really need something bigger. I always loved carrying diaper bags. You could bring damned near everything you own. Case in point, I pare down my bag and then instantly need something I have left behind.

Also don't disparage the Queen. Thank you.

Speaking of queens royalty, PJ is considering a trip for Christmas after all. The Devil is such an asshole. I asked PJ what he was going to do because he's about to start his chocolate advent calendar so he can't leave now.

I could bring it with me. 

No. Sorry. They aren't portable. 

What are you talking about? It would fit in my bag.

I said no. 

Oh, I get it. You just don't want me to go. 

Of course I don't. I don't care if you travel but not because he wants to call the shots. 

Don't worry. I've been kind of restless lately anyway. I won't give him credit. 

Why can't you go in the spring instead?

Bridget, people need to be with their families at Christmas. 

I am your family!  I might have stomped my foot with that sentiment to drive home my point but I was holding my purse and it was heavy.

The Devil you don't.

Caleb suggested that PJ take a few weeks off and come back at New Years, refreshed and refocused. He is worried that PJ can't do a good job what with all the distractions around here. I told Caleb he could stuff his opinions into the cold marble house on the hill and also what is he doing with that place anyway?

Establishing my role as King of the Mountain. But he laughs when he says it. He worries. About me. About PJ. About the children, though he doesn't have to worry about them. PJ puts them first and is the best nanny a mom could dream of, honestly and I'm not going to send him away unless he wants to go.

He already said we're all making a mountain out of a molehill and he doesn't want to go anywhere.

Good, then that's settled and I can get back to dancing to Dark Side of the Sun. Because something something Modeselektor and no metal cred anymore anywhere.

It's fine. Really. I just wish I could figure out the words. Besides Bitch motherfucker, because that part is obvious. LOL.

***

Other weird things about today:

~Pinterest has a shitload of 'one-pot wonder' meal recipes that are amazing. We just do five stock pots on the stove instead of one. And it reduces the need for an hour of slavery over the stove. I finally found a use for that website.

~Fingerless gloves look really good on everybody.

~ Hanukkah starts in less than two weeks!

~Christmas is THIRTY days away. I asked for beards. Razor burn works very well as a....macrodemabrasion feature but I fear in places I don't have much skin left. What happened to Vikings and Highlanders and..and MOVEMBER, people??

~OH. The last two episodes of American Horror Story: Hotel have brought me back around. It's good now, finally. The serial-killer dinner party was by far the worst thing I've ever seen so really they had to work hard to keep me interested. Otherwise I'll just continue with Sons of Anarchy. I just started it and it's really good, save for the cheesy intro. Ben and I keep making jokes about our tattoos flying off our bodies and doing other things while we stand stoically behind them.

It's good though. I want to binge-watch it but there's just too much other stuff to do. Namely dance.

I still love you.

In my defence what is there to say
All the mistakes we made must be faced today
It's not easy now knowing where to start
While the world we love tears itself apart
I'm just a singer with a song
How can I try to right the wrong
For just a singer with a melody
I'm caught in between
With a fading dream

I wake up alone this morning. PJ is back in full force and has the kids off to school on time, affording me an extra hour of sleep. He sent Ben off to his meeting, taking Duncan with him (they are inseparable sometimes) and runs interference for me with Caleb.

Caleb can be very bossy.

When I come downstairs, Lochlan is sitting at the piano playing and singing. In My Defence. Freddie Mercury. He shares his birth date and his love of showmanship but there's no audience today. Just me with my teacup in the doorway watching his shoulders move with his hands, the sunlight hitting the sleepy curls on the back of his neck and the fuzziness of a soft t-shirt and pajama pants. He was waiting for me to get up and didn't go far, I guess.

He tilts his head sideways indicating a place for me to sit beside him on the bench so he can finish the song and I do. He smiles sideways and pulls out all the stops. A performance just for me. It kind of makes me cry except I'm not awake and I'm always more anxious about him hitting a high note when he sings than I ever have been when he's lighting me or himself on fire.

Oh here he goes.

Yup. Got it. My insides turn all mushy and my eyes threaten to overspill. He smiles when he sings the last part which changes it completely and then he ends with a sweet little flourish on the keys. He taught himself to play piano in the first circus we worked for, in the kitchen on Sunday mornings while everyone else was at church under the big top because he said he only worshipped me and the almighty dollar but he was just being a shit back then.

Wait, he's still a shit now so never mind that but he can be romantic when he wants to be, even at ten a.m. on a Tuesday in pajamas.

(Si me ven, si me ven, voy camino de Belen.)

Today I sit in the Doctor's office for an extra, unnecessary hour after my appointment time has passed, trapped by endless commercial-free Christmas music, texting with both Batman and Caleb while I wait. While my brain screams from the unwelcome assault of tinny, crappily-recorded questionably-Christmasy songs.

Half of them are in Spanish.

All of them are too soon.

Caleb wants to know if there is going to be any recidivism on PJ's part. I reminded him there's been no punishment, only swift disapproval and that this whole matter is none of Caleb's business.

Batman wants to know if Caleb is minding his own business and if I need anything. Anything at all.

I need my appointments to be on time. I need to blare the Christmas music to everyone else so that I don't have to listen to it anymore. I need Monday to be over. I need to learn to be a better parker. I just lost my grocery shopping time sitting here listening to El Burrito Sabanero and I vow to put my headphones in my purse so that I never have to do this again.

I text Ben and ask if he will save me. He texts back that that is Sam's job and he is merely an angel of the lord Samuel.

They made up and he's being cheeky. That's good.

Oh God. Rodolfo El Reno. This one makes my ears bleed. I text Lochlan and ask if he will save me. He doesn't reply. He's building a network for Batman somewhere. I hate computers. I don't know how to use them much save for someone planting me in front of a game of Half Life 2:  Deathmatch over the weekend, where I won a game and then got learned hard. It's like Quake 3: Arena only you can throw objects and set trip mines and the maps are more detailed.

Otherwise it's precisely the same and I love it.

Wish I had a gravity gun right now, I'd pick up Christmas and move it back to after American Thanksgiving, instead of before, at the very least. To buy myself a few extra weeks of Christmas-free existence instead of having it shove right in after Halloween disappears, leaving a space behind in the calendar that Christmas is determined to fill, Latin donkeys and all.

Oh, they just called my name. Bye.

Closures.

Ben and PJ had it out on the lawn this morning while Sam (on his final Sunday off for the year because advent begins next week) stood there supervising them from the safety of the patio steps.

With paintball guns and day-glow orange paintballs.

Oh, and PJ wasn't armed and may have been running away. Because cold paintballs hurt like fuck and PJ may have made the mistake of losing his patience with the endless comments about how he was just like every other man here except possibly more desperate and he told the wrong person to fuck right off already and Ben looked at him quite crossly and put down his coffee and said,

Run. 

Padraig isn't actually stupid so he did. It took Ben a couple minutes to load up and then he was off after PJ, faster than you would think for someone so big and now I have another outfit to soak in the set tub in the laundry room for a few days. Pointlessly, as the paint never comes out completely.

Once PJ made it to the pool Sam suggested to Ben that he give up and maybe try using words instead of paintballs so Ben turned around and shot him in the chest.

(Another outfit to soak. Christ, boys.)

Sam swore at him and Ben cut him off, saying it would be no different had it been Sam in the hotseat and Sam said something about wishing he could be so lucky so Ben shot him in the mouth.

Oh, stop it. He was far enough away. I've eaten many a paintball in my life. Granted, through a mask. With a lot of scared-sounding apologies afterward (Sorry, Bridget! Oh my God! Are you okay? That was supposed to go over your head!)

Sam swore again and turned and went inside. I passed him and went outside to take the gun from Ben (Give me that and maybe you should run before I shoot you too.) and then put the gun in a place they won't find for a bit (no one looks down low) and messaged PJ with an apology for Ben's attack and Sam's apparent initial blindness that morphed into regret.

PJ said it was okay, that he already told Ben he was sorry even though he isn't actually sorry.

I laughed. In spite of myself, I laughed. PJ is human. I'm flattered but also highly aware of the balance of our closeness and the distance that necessitates to succeed. As is he. Now more than ever. Sam? Well, he's a different story. He said some uncharacteristic, inflammatory things, but I'll have to deal with him later when he's in a better mood. Maybe at the end of the paintball gun again, though I prefer the pressure washer. It's messier and sends a message that holds no ambiguity whatsoever. It screams I'm drowning and out of control, instead of Ha, I left a neato color on you! It demands to be dealt with rather than being diffused by moving out of the line of sight. 3000 psi trumps 300 any day of the week.

Sam will agree with me once he is soaked to the skin.

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHH.

A little over a month after the acrylic nail tips experiment and my nails are still peeling, thin and weak. My fingertips itch and my hands look like those of a child. Sigh. Daniel said no more nail polish so I dug out the cuticle oil and am religiously using it two or three times a day. This is akin to winters in the prairies when my fingertips would crack and bleed as they dried out in the cold, no matter what I did. Lesson learned. You can try to be perfect looking but if you're Bridget, it's never going to work.

I can distract with cuteness because I am clearly never going to be one of those tall leggy sexy super model type women.

I need to be okay with this and every time I think I am I get waylaid by some weird beauty trend that they all seem to pull off that I can't even remotely navigate, let alone maintain long term.

Like eyelash extensions. Fake nails. Stilettos. Waxing. Running. Very long hair. Diets. Bras. Hosiery. Lace. Body conscious clothing. I don't know. Pick something. I was raised by wolves. I don't know how to be a girl. The only reason I know I'm a girl is that I have an undying love of handbags and everyone always wants to get into my pants.