Notes from the hammock, drunk.

Mark Knopfler's True Love Will Never Fade is the year-apart twin of Jon Foreman's Learning How to Die. Tell me I'm wrong.

Also, Halsey's new song Nightmare has the chorus from a Tatu song from the early nineties. Don't believe me? Go listen.

And I still can't understand what the fuck Till is saying but I can sing along with him now too. At least on Rammstein's Radio, Puppe and Halloman.

Getting there. Getting somewhere, anyway. Okay, actually getting nowhere. Scheiss drauf.

Critical darling.

Sorry, Bridge. I didn't realize. 

Ben and Schuyler had me tag along for a (brief) trip to New York. Ben is entangled in a thing he's been trying to get out of for close to a year, Schuyler's his muscle. Brain muscle, if we're being specific because Ben gets mad and flips tables and says things he can't when he gets frustrated and Schuyler understands the law and works around Ben's emotions.

I went because they promised me a couple of hours of rides at Coney if I would be their assistant, and honestly I understand the law and can read the paperwork and am able to keep Ben level with some secret code words we use.

And it's not like we were going to bring Caleb, though he offered. So we took his plane. Thanks, Diabhal.

The whole way back we dissected the new Rammstein album because my German is broken and Ben's is as fresh as the day he learnt it all. Thanks, Wacken.

I wasn't actually necessary at the meetings and apparently they had 'limited space' in their huge expanse of offices (or maybe I was distracting?) so they sent me back to the hotel where I watched strange American television for a few hours and ordered room service.

Then we went to Coney, as promised.

Except that most of it was closed.

Memorial Day weekend. That's right. Schuyler said.

I can't believe I'm standing in one of my favorite places in the world and it's the week before they flip the switch and turn it all on?

I Facetime Lochlan.

Peanut. What's up?

It opens...soon. 

No, offence, but good. It feels stupid that you're there without me. 

I've been here without you before. 

And that's stupid too (damn his revisionist history. Damn them all).

I can't change that. 

Going forward, you bet we can. 

So what do I do in the meantime? 

Fly home. 

Okay? Okay (not okay).

Wednesdays have morphed into incredibly busy days. I didn't get to see my garden, didn't get to enjoy any down time and worked all day, hustled for three hours straight when I got home to finish my chores and get dinner on the table and now I have to drive to the other side of town to pick up Ruth from her job. I could farm some of it out but then I would feel bad.

Talk tomorrow?

Sure, he says, pretending not to be disappointed. Ceart go leor, Neamhchiontach.

I quit coffee, take II.

I did. I had a weak, horrible little cup of it yesterday and this morning I joined Lochlan for his very good Irish tea. Or English or Indian or whatever, it's tea. I have favorites but I'm not that fussy overall. 

I was a little crabby but not too much.

I survived and I don't have a headache and I don't even miss it, and I wanted to be one of those people that drank tea instead and now here I am. 

I just found out about a thing called Friday Night Lights in Deep Cove where they do a two-hour guided tour of Indian Arm (a place I kayak) and you get to see the bioluminescent seas and enjoy dark, quiet kayaking. 

Can we go? I ask Lochlan after reading the whole damn article to him out loud. 

Or we could just..go take the kayaks out at night. Except that you never liked being right on the water at night and you're going to scream the whole time. 

Maybe I won't. 

Care to wager on it?

Sure! 

Let's go. It's dark. Get your life jacket.

Wait. What?

We're going night kayaking. 

But there are things-

What things? 

Sea monsters, I whisper and he laughs.

Lilac season.

If you funnel yourself down through the layers of mountain, highway and concrete you reach me at the end, a quiet, small presence just around the corner from a windswept park, just along the edge of a cliff that drops to the ocean below. Not my ocean, again, as I've reassured myself a million times, maybe more, but good enough for now.

It is there that the lilacs opened for the first time this morning, and I stuck my whole face into a bloom and was surprised by a bee just minding his own business. He kissed my lashes, bounced off my face a couple of times and moved along.

Cole is the bee. There's always one drifting around the edges of my journeys around the yard.

I planted some stray ferns that escaped the woods, some mint and some leftover sunflower seeds by the (broken) gate. The old one that separates the side yards around the front of the house and past the porch. It is decorative and hardly functional and yet with wildflowers coming up all around it it looks incredible. Some of the larkspur grows there too, and daisies and a foxglove or two.

Caleb frowns at it. We'll have it replaced this weekend. Or maybe just removed. It dates the property just a little bit. 

Leave it. 

It's rotten, Bridget. The wood is so weathered-

I love it. 

He watches me, a study in walking cognitive dissonance and I refused to meet his gaze. Instead I watch the bee and I wonder why it doesn't bother him.

You always did love those little pockets of unexpected beauty. What did you call them when you were little?

Things To Paint. 

Ah, yes. Things to paint. Are you going to get your supplies and come out to paint this?

Maybe I will. We'll see.

Therapy.

If you could find me would you even know me?

How about a garden?

Really?

Sure. We could do a raised bed with room for some tomatoes and strawberries.

It was a surprise comment from Cole at the castle on a blustery spring day that stirred a long-dormant need to put down roots. Moving addresses every four or five years. Not having time to settle in, to grow. I'm still prone to beginning to write an address I had four addresses ago because I forget.

Okay, lets!

And the garden thrived. It thrived. We were giving produce away. It was a ten by six foot rectangle hemmed in with two by sixes and a few bags of topsoil and it freaking thrived. The kids would run past it and stop for handfuls of cherry tomatoes and pull out baby carrots that weren't even close to ready and eat them without washing them first.

That was then.

This is now.

Now my garden is the size of a olympic swimming pool and I call it 'the patch'. Last night I filled it with pumpkins, tomatoes and cucumber seedlings, mint, sage and radishes. Today I will finish with seeds kept from last year and sunflowers too. I want lettuce and peas and squash and cauliflower. Potatoes! It makes me so happy. I can't work in it when the sun is doing her worst but early in the day or after dinner that's where you'll find me.

I loaded my jeep with manure and came home with a surprise chore for the boys. I drove the jeep around through the big fence gates and across the backyard and I parked her on the bluff and we (by we I mean they) shovelled out all of the manure. Then I hosed it out and put her back in the driveway.

My life is basically perfect now.

Still too hot to talk about birthdays but I like to try and give you something, if I can.

Lochlan's hair is already rose gold. Thank you, summer, for making him glow. The chlorine just hastens the reaction and yet somehow he is as pale as ever because he doesn't suffer the first half of the summer sunburns in exchange for a tan that would last until Halloween these days.

We've grown old. Or maybe we've grown smart. We've grown. Gone is the living on candy, running til dark, filled up on doubtful fierce love and in its' place a better diet, marginally more sleep and a comfortable, secure love that I don't think I'd trade for anything.

We still fight over what kind of ketchup to buy at the store. Don't get me wrong. And he insists a hot dog is best wrapped in a piece of staleish bread, burnt on a charcoal grill while I've moved on to only liking them if they're seared bratwurst in a fresh sesame-parmesan bun with raw onions, sauerkraut and a second-tier mustard.

That level of elitism means no goodnight kiss for you. 

The pompousness of it?

Naw, the onions. 

This is not about my birthday.

Fun fact: Tool's 10000 Days came out the year Henry started kindergarten. He's going to graduate with his high school diploma in June and the band's new album comes out this summer.

I love this. Or maybe it's just relief that the new album is finally close. What a long wait.

Caleb and I have sought refuge in the pool thanks to the heat and are tossing about new ideas for my employment.

I could be the gloved hands holding up items for photographing for Sotheby's. Or I could be the one who replaces the real eggs with robot ones in the northern spotted owl nests. 

Or you could go back to your old job.

Which one?

Sugar baby. He smiles slyly as his floating chair turns a lazy circle, turning him away from me.

I consider this as he continues his rotation back into view.

What do you think? 

If I come back I'll need a raise. No one ever takes an old job back at the same rate. Oh, and there need to be perks.

I think you've forgotten what the job entails. 

Oh, I haven't. 

So is it a deal? 

I'm going to sleep on it. 

Can I join you?

Maybe. 

That would make it a deal, Bridge. 

In no particular order.

I have today off but instead of telling you about my birthday shenanigans I got distracted.

I trimmed off the dog's playoff beard, as it is thirty-two degrees and I guess we'll be inside from now on. Plus he's rooting for the Hurricanes. Why? I don't know, he's a dog. I...guess I'm rooting for Boston? Uh. Yeah. Boston.

I cleaned the house, got groceries with Dalton, talked to my parents (who are old, my father just was informed he's finished driving. My mom is a nervous driver with carpal tunnel and S T R E S S. They'll most likely never leave the house again and I'll find their mummified remains, or rather Bailey will, eventually after a few days without a phone call), dropped Ruth off at the bus to go vintage shopping with friends downtown, and let Daniel cut some baby bangs for me. My hair is to my chin. My bangs are driving me crazy. I like them better now though. We shall see.

Then I tried going online to read about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's baby but the internet is consumed with some weird meta shit today about some youtuber? and his wife and his mistress and all of their personal information and how they justify continuing to keep everything public because he's a "PUBLIC FIGURE".

LOL

Who the fuck is it again? I don't know. Does it matter? Of course not but apparently these people have legions of fans enough to muck up Twitter, Reddit and every other place PJ has a login I can use.

Now, first of all.

Any arse with a youtube channel is a user. I don't care how many subscribers you have, the term 'PUBLIC FIGURE' is really overblown here.

Second? No one cares.

Thirdly? Really? Five tweets to justify that you took your cat with you when you left?

Okay.

This is why I don't go online, though I guess with my little blog, (something, like Youtube, anyone can have with a username and password) also I have followers too I just don't care for numbers, so much as quality content. Guess I'm a PUBLIC FIGURE too. Go figure. Go PUBLIC FIGURE. Go, Bridget, it's your birthday.

Which I will talk about tomorrow, as I'm so much crankier than I realized.

MAYBE I'LL TALK ABOUT IT ON YOUTUBE.

Ha. Yeah, no.

Well enough, alone.

С днем ​​рождения принцесса

PJ burned the card in the firepit on the patio but not before they saw it, just because I ostriched the whole thing like some sort of naive waif, thinking if I squeezed my eyes shut, it might not be there in real life.

The card supposedly had a very simple message, a please have a good birthday dear and enjoy your cake kind of message, according to Caleb, the only one of us who can actually read colliquial Russian. I would have sent a photo of the message to the young doctor for translation but Caleb advised me not to waste his time.

I didn't think I would be, and I'd love to know the truth. Maybe the card actually says We're going to come and kidnap you afterall. Pack your shit, it's cold here in winters muhahah. 

It could. 

He assures me it doesn't or he would have taken steps already.

What steps? I ask him as we head outside with stacks of plates and cutlery for dinner outside.

Nevermind, Neamhchiontach. 

No, tell me the steps.

There are no steps, Bridget. It was an innocuous card wishing you peace. I had Batman (he does not call Batman Batman in real life, don't worry) look at it to be certain.

He speaks Russian? What steps? 

Caleb stops abruptly, looking at the sky for guidance (or maybe that's patience). I smash right into him, dropping the bread and butter plates and all of the knives and forks. Every single plate breaks and we both look at the stoneware carnage on the floor. I look back up at him.

What steps?