Under the rabbit sea.

We took breakfast down to the dock today. No frost on the steps, no bone-chilling morning air. Just sunlight, a brisk cool breeze and a lineup of boys with baskets and a girl with a bag over her shoulder because I need one hand for the rail and one for Lochlan's hand.

Ben even came with us.

And also Caleb, Sam, Matt, August, Dunk, Dalton, PJ and Gage because it was Good Friday service on the water. We set up my huge round tablecloth with the tiny pompoms all the way around and sat around the edge of it, laying out fruit, sticky buns and muffins, hard boiled eggs and a plate of bacon and ham. We had three thermoses of hot coffee and one of tea and we ate quietly and then lingered over saved coffee while Sam conducted a brief service, complete with a sermon and then Ben played a song on his guitar and sang along with it and Dalton joined in on harmony at the end and then we sat in relative silence, enjoying the sun and each other. No one had a phone or an ipad or a grudge. No one had somewhere better to be or was too busy at work. Everyone sat quietly enjoying their coffee, picking out the remaining fruit bites to nab and watching the waves lap quietly against the shore.

I watched the bunny head float by in the water, attached to no one and I began to laugh out loud. I'm thinking it's ruined now but it pretty much was before, and this seems like the perfect time to end that tradition and maybe start this new one.

A vicious kind of catch (Hold the stereo! I'm goin' in).

My favorite thing in the world to do when I wake up feeling weird is to blast Veruca Salt's Loneliness is Worse through the house on eleven and wait for someone to notice.

It's not so much passive-aggressive as it is a bellowing, plaintive cry for help. It's a beautiful bridge in the middle, too. The only sad part are the drums, honestly. Geez. A little more on the hi hats, would you? Christ. That's how I play drums and I can only play a little. I play bass too. And violin, piano and french horn. Harmonica. And give me a set of bagpipes or an accordion and I can hold my damn own, truth be told. I have all sorts of gifts. The problem is, none of them are useful.

Salt is always followed by Twenty One Pilots Trees song. That song reverberates through the house like a ray of God-light, shining into every corner until the beams force out everything dark. It's beautiful. But boy, do they hate these mornings, because it's a boots-on-the-ground type of day and they've atrophied into human man-sloths, content to watch fifteen hours of television or read endlessly. Everyone has a screen. Everyone is a zombie now. Maybe we do have a virus. Maybe this is the end.

May is calling. So much in that month. I really want to go shopping. I want to go to restaurants. I want to walk on the big beaches. I want to celebrate birthdays without chains and life without restrictions and every morning now I wake up bursting out of my skin and then spend the morning stuffing everything back inside just to function.

If this is the end though, I'm not afraid. I know that they're going to let go of my hands and I'm going to go flying across the rainbow bridge as fast as my legs can carry me into Jake's arms like a dog and he's going to be so happy to see me but sad that it was so soon and I didn't get to experience my full life. He's going to blame all of us and not even remember how much of a hypocrite he was, not even finishing his thirties. It's hard to believe in real life he never aged but in my dreams he continues to do it steadily and regularly.

I shouldn't listen to Trees before breakfast. Because loneliness is worse. In the end this irony is my most formidable enemy and I can't seem to win.

The devil was once an angel, too.

Fragile hearts in these fragile times often break before they ever find
That there's hope inside of this shadowland
Written in the sky and stone and printed on our hands
So why do I always measure the truth with the weight of a lie?
Nothing's broken inside of me for good I'm healing in time the way I should
I can see it if I keep my head held high
Arms open wide
Heart full, clear eyes
All the doubts all the lies are too heavy to hold so why even try?

This morning I managed to snag my favorite enamel camp mug for coffee, and it was warm when I came downstairs. Warm enough for cut-off denim shorts and my Colony House hoodie. No need for a fire this morning. The sun was already beaming down on the point and it feels like everything might be okay. Or at least as okay as it ever was, in case we hoped for some massive snowball of improvement tagging along when our routine resumes someday.

PJ usually takes my mug. It has a huge handle and so he finds it comfortable. Plus it has a stable base and isn't top-heavy like the matching ones that came with the plates when we bought four sets for the house. PJ isn't all that concerned with putting his cup down on a stable base and will absentmindedly place it on the corner of a laptop or the arm of the couch. He was used to things a certain way, and I guess today he'll have to be disappointed as he takes one of the white mugs with the tiny base and be careful with it. It's a Wednesday. Monday is done, the full moon is done, and when I went to the grocery store today, every shelf was full. It was like the good old days, when they had everything and then some. I was happy to get everything I wanted and some extras and get home with no fuss. It was a nice change.

Sigh. It's going to be a good day. A bright day. No dark, no clouds. Just sunshine and coffee and the rest of my book and yes, I'm drawing the property for you but it's going to take a while, as I have a time-sensitive project that needs my attention first.

Besides, I need a little more sleep too and I'm waiting for that to catch up with me but with a second cup of coffee, I'm wondering if it even will.

I had some brandy last night, a toast, clinked far too slowly against Caleb's glass in celebration of a better week this week after a rocky start. He took our glasses in one hand and my face in the other and kissed me until I saw the stars outside through the ceiling as if it wasn't even there.

I held my breath until I fell through the black, letting go of my breath along with everything else and in my oxygen-deprived dreams Loch made an executive decision to bring Caleb along into our private night. Whether to keep an eye on him or give him a break, maybe in light of seeing how this forced isolation is affecting us all, he's found some patience after all.

He found a lot of things. They get along so well sometimes it's as if they're sharing one mind and sometimes their heart doubles to hold me too and it's like the greatest amusement park ride you've ever been on, trust me.

And then I slept, locked in between hell and magic, secure in the holy tragedy of my past, present and probable future, perfectly content and not overly warm or even overly weird.

It was nice. We've scheduled another time. See if Caleb can remain on his best behavior. See if Lochlan doesn't turn possessive. Find a way to keep all the hearts and minds in sync and fight off the despair of this maybe becoming the way things are forever.

They won't be but what if they are?

Vaguely English.

There's a fun thing about Caleb. When he's singing along with James Blunt or even Chris Martin, Caleb's accent is almost audible again. It's a very slight heightened received-pronounciation and it's a treat to my ears because he stuffs it as far inside as he can and only sets it free when he is half-drunk or very tired indeed, and neither of those conditions have I seen in a very long time, frankly.

But last night we burned dinner, got in a bickery-fight and made up over a late glass of brandy by the fire, so I technically began and ended my day in flames under a full moon and that's okay. Mondays be like that.

He sang to me briefly, my head propped against his shoulder, drink forgotten, eyes open and fully hypnotized by the flames, white spirals into nothingness. A Bullwinkle cartoon, an inevitable end to a long stretch of not trying hard enough, I guess and so I had resolved to try harder tomorrow.

And so far I am. I'm up at a good hour. Coffee's almost gone from my cup (already reheated it once), have not seen the devil since around eleven pm last night when I bid goodnight to him, his expression one of pure naked surprise, having assumed I would follow through, and I'm finishing the laundry while I dance all around the news without reading any of it any more.

My phone just buzzed and it's Caleb, awake and ready to stuff rejection as far inside as he can, setting his needs free and cloaking his surprise in determination, but whether it be real or fake is not important right now. What matters is that he needs to feel like he wins.

Tonight we'll bring the brandy up with us. 
 XOCXC

To which I reply because full moons are for tiny wolves and devils alike:

Okay 
XOB

I'm not sure why we put our initials but we do it more often than not. It's a tiny ritual of a different kind, I guess. I usually leave it off when I'm relaying things we've written to a page. I don't know why that's important. It's probably not, really.

Coffee and corduroy.

When you reach the part where the heartaches come
The hero would be me
But heroes often fail
And you won't read that book again
Because the ending's just too hard to take

I was banned from taking my coffee down to the beach this morning, forced to drink it by the fire, where I sweat because suddenly the kitchen is so warm and I miss the beach so much. The steps get covered with a fine neck-breaker of frost, as Lochlan calls it and so the trip will be made for lunch, if anyone is actually free.

It's a very thick layer of white out there and when I let the dog out into the side garden it was really chilly indeed. Which is ironic as I want to garden so bad, since yesterday I noticed all of the larkspur and poppy I planted two years ago that failed miserably is suddenly growing like mad.

I want to plant things to grow, for when times are better. Hopefully soon but not until the earth remains warm overnight. I always try to rush things. It's barely April.

***

I may paint the property for you, since I'm not allowed to post photos and honestly you'll be hard-pressed to look at it and figure out where we live. You know the general neighborhood but the properties are pretty private so unless you approach from the water you wouldn't be able to find me at all. And I want to show you things so you can see exactly what I mean when I talk about different things.

***

I chose American Moon for our -suspicions- theme night yesterday. We made mystery foil packets of different foods and cooked them in shifts at the barbecue so no one would know what was what, played Risk and watched conspiracy movies. My foil packet was chicken and carrots, asparagus and tarragon, and I was so relieved as some of them were salmon and I would have had to trade.

No one likes to trade dinner. Boys just want to dig in so it would have gotten so ugly.

We've got a glass fishbowl on the counter and have filled it with folded slips of paper with random words and time periods on them (you add one as it comes to you) and are doing dinner-and-a-movie nights almost every night, as long as there are six or more people interested. Some nights we just disappear into our own selves so it depends.

American Moon was ridiculously informative, save for the parts about lighting on the set moon. That drove me batshit. The rest was good fun and now I'm a believer in disbelief. For today anyway. Tomorrow I will deny at gunpoint that I ever question the Apollo program because I will not debate that sort of thing in mixed company.

(But if you one hundred percent believe in things without even the tiniest seed of doubt I don't think I will ever let you in all the way. Why would I?)

(I feel the exact same way if you don't believe in magic even a little bit. Get out of my sight. Seriously.)

Today I am planning on finishing up laundry, painting a picture to send faraway, helping Sam with editing his Easter Sunday podcast, and then probably working on digital illustration for a while. I'm going to make penne with garlic and tomatoes for dinner.

And I'm listening to Gordon Lightfoot this morning, which has gotten a super-appreciative nod from every single boy to venture through the kitchen this morning. It's comforting. Like wrapping yourself in a brown corduroy and polyester couch, settling in to watch cartoons, a big bowl of Apple Jacks in your arms and a plan to go out and roller skate in the sun after real breakfast later with the boys down the street.

I guess I know what I'm really going to do today. 

*looks around, still laments the lack of a huge corduroy couch*

*shops online*

(Muhahahahahah)

Anthroposophic Collective.

Come on little lady, give us a smile
No, I ain't got nothing to smile about
I got no one to smile for
I've waited a while for
A moment to say I don't owe you a Goddamn thing

Sorry for the typographical errors if you're a reader who visits the same day I post. I usually get ten minutes alone at my tiny desk in the corner of the kitchen to whip off an entry and I rarely have time to linger over it so I usually just hit publish as someone comes in and starts talking and then the next morning when I do it all over again, I go to log in and the previous days errors will jump off the page at me. So then I can fix and republish and some of you never see what sort of terrible writer I am if I'm not paying attention (and even sometimes when I am).

***

Today is painting day. And probably sous-vide burgers (finished on the grill) and homemade french fries and it's also Henry's last day of work for two weeks as he gave up a bunch of shifts to help out a coworker hurting for cash with which to pay rent. I asked him to keep me plugged in and will pay the rent myself if necessary but I like to see the ingenuity of the young, for that's where you learn the best lessons that stick with you for life and that's how we got to this place.

I don't spend money. Never have. The greatest shopping spree that I think I've had in the past twenty years was that time that for my birthday (six or maybe even five years ago), Ben took me out shopping and told me to buy whatever I wanted. I bought a sketchbook and a pack of Copic fineliners at Colours, five pairs of pretty new underwear at La Vie En Rose, a new charm (I think it was a planet) at Pandora and two books I was wanting to read at Chapters plus a new set of lipsticks from Nudestix I think, at Sephora.There may have been a cute shirt from Forever 21 in there too but those days won't be coming back, pandemic or not.

(I miss Forever 21. So does Ruth. H&M just isn't the SAME.)

But yeah. The haul cost something like $157 and it was incredible. I got to pick out everything and I felt like a princess. Ben had no idea what was going on with me because he went prepared to spend thousands but that was back when he though All Girls Are The Same, Right? and had been used to higher-maintenance ones?

And then I think we had Vietnamese take out for lunch and it was one of the best days ever. I can't wait to do that again though my favorite art store is gone now, Forever 21 is gone. I don't think I'll need another Pandora charm as long as I live, as I have an armful of bracelets and boy are they heavy to wear. I have tons of reading material, currently slogging through The Boy in The Striped Pajamas and am full up on undies and lipstick, both of which I hardly ever wear anymore.

(Hi mom.)

I miss the mall. I haven't had chance to see if I can get Vietnamese take out by phone yet. Do we have what? Skip the dishes? I don't know. Do we? I don't have it. I don't think I want it. Can't I drive to a place? I'll look into it later.

This is the irony. If I tell Caleb that I want Vietnamese food there will be some of my favorites, a selection here inside of an hour. But that's no fun. I told you, the best lessons are the ones you learn on your own.

Rocky.

Give a girl a good cup of coffee from the thermos and a walk on a cold windy beach and I'll show you someone who can almost forget everything and be a blank, clear and wonderful slate from which to move forward.

Then she'll come inside, warm up and forget all of the moments she just blankly experienced and life will come rushing back in a tide-avalanche and we'll need to start from scratch, I think, trying again tomorrow.

The ghosts came back. All I had to do was think about one of them, and he was there in a dream. Or maybe it was a nightmare?

How did you sleep? They ask.

Fine, I lie. And you?

Sudden Intense Privacy.

I can see it if I keep my head held high
Arms open wide
Heart full, clear eyes
All the doubts all the lies are too heavy to hold so why even try?
You don't have to do this all on your own
This fragile life that you hold is too heavy to carry alone so why even try?
All of the doubts
All of the lies
All of the fears
All of the tears that you've cried
Are too heavy to carry alone
So why even try?

On a day that saw the ferries stop coming to Horseshoe Bay, the world suddenly got quiet. I can hear the waves break on the rocks. I can hear my neighbour's giant wind-chimes way up the hill. I can hear the transitions in vocals in the Colony House album I'm listening to (Leave What's Lost Behind) and I can hear Ben's exasperated breathing as he argues quietly into the phone fifteen feet back from shore, content to accompany me but only if he can get his calls done outside and far from the house, where surprisingly the wi-fi is a little better than it is inside.

I wonder when the ferries will come back. I wonder when the Man will stop telling me how many loaves of bread I can buy in one shopping trip. I wonder when gas will go back over a dollar a litre and I wonder if I should put all of my cash in the washing machine in case it's diseased like the outside world. In case you're from away, our Canadian dollar bills are flexible plastic rectangles that smell like maple syrup and are fully washable.

It's worth nothing now. Clean or not. No one will accept it, it's only worth something like sixty-five cents to every American dollar it's matched to and I'm really beginning to hate all of this. 

I still don't fear getting this virus, though my ear is feeling better and my allergies are now moving in to take centre stage. The cherry blossoms in the orchard are blooming and I wait with zero patience for the lilac buds to fill in and open up, filling the whole point with the most beautiful perfume in the world. I wait to sow my vegetable seeds in the garden so I can gather what I need for dinner without two trips down the highway. I wait for life to resume at the pace I complained so bitterly about before. I wait for Ben to finish his endless work and I wish I could help him finish sooner. I wait for Duncan to straighten back up, never expecting that he would have cracked first out of all of us.

I wait for the ghosts to come back but I haven't heard anything for ages.

Complimentary versus complementary.

Lunch is bruised apples with cinnamon-sugar in the cold sunshine and a well-weighted debate between PJ and I about how I feel we should maybe be doing more to support those of us flagging under the weight of endless quarantine, and he feels Duncan and anyone else who chooses now to start a fight should be frozen right out because we're all adults and insulting people is not the best way to go about this at all.

He wins for logic, I win for compassion. At least some things never change.

Someone to watch over (me).

It's weird how in when things are ticking along those of us who are damaged or perpetually wrecked are supported and held up by those who seemingly have their shit together and then when something catastrophic happens those of us who are damaged somehow pull together and make a herculean one-eighty and lift up those who had their shit together, until they suddenly didn't anymore.

Ben is like that.

So is Daniel.

And Batman.

But probably not me, as I am chaotic truthful on a good day, and not too great in a crisis, it turns out.What I am good at though, is sounding alarms when I see a limb flop off the edge of the wagon, it's tip dragging on the ground, be it a finger or toe. The owner of said appendage will assure me it's fine, not a problem, but my brain followed by my mouth will being to shout that there's a problem.

(Wow, that paints a glorious picture of an eight-year-old girl, sticky jam-braids and all, running around the kitchen island and out into the yard, yelling WEEEEE WOOOOO WEEEEE WOOOO like she's an ambulance.)

(And that's exactly what I did.)

Duncan said I was being foolish and alarmist, that he's fine. That everything's fine and he has it under control but that's what they all say just as everything goes to shit. He put his arms around me and gave me his best charming Lizard King smile and I didn't fall for it (WEEEE WOOOO) and he's angry at me for jumping to the inevitable conclusion and it will be followed by remorse and he will seek forgiveness and open back up soon, I hope.

In the meantime, now I'm 'always fucking in the way', 'an endless tease', and 'a spoiled brat'.

A deep shuddering breath and an attempt to remind myself that it's not my friend talking, it's his alter-ego, the Drunk Lizard, who is a flaming asshole frankly, but it's difficult because they speak the truth when liquid fire burns away their core values, leaving them craven angry souls looking for temporary comfort in permanent times.

And I hate it. But so does he and so my comfort today is in knowing there is a whole host of sponsors and support here within, and that we're no longer going to worry about the houses keeping separate anymore because we can't afford it. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, don't they?

Ironic. All this solvency and I can't buy the things I need.