I feel like things took an abrupt shift as of late and we have changed. We haven't given up, per se, but maybe we shoulder a heavy acceptance of life now that we previously fought so hard against. An acceptance that weighs less with affection, music, distraction, a deep breath. A fresh hot cup of coffee. A well-built fire or a light snowfall. 

It's as if silence has replaced the noise and you look around wondering what happened, or maybe what stopped and then you realize it's fine. It's better. It's over now.

Leaving the house (noise) now requires masks and lineups and instruction barked unsurely but we're all patient and dutiful. We wish each other well and safe, even strangers. Staying home (the silence) brings a wonder and then a familiarity for the scars we bring now, part of our outward appearances, part of our lives. Those deep breaths only seem to come with effort, patience and reminders. The snow doesn't come at all and the dark pushes in around us like hungry wolves, cloying for a nip, a scrap, anything they can get. 

If you blink too slowly suddenly you have grown old, suddenly the fight isn't as important as getting everyone out alive, suddenly that breath is everything you ever needed and you feel stupid for having wasted so much time to take it.

Everything looks different. Especially the stars.

I could post about Ben wanting to spend some time in the studio today, first time in four months save for a twenty minute tuning and fuck around session or I could post about the absolutely crazy amount of rain we're having or I could just show you my beach haul. Usually it's tiny bits of glass, garbage and empty crab shells, so this is something.

Rafter.

(You all like my food logistics posts. We have tried to sanction off meals and just cook for ourselves but it never lasts because a table with less than twelve people at any given meal just feels too empty and everyone wants to be together.)

I need a farm, gosh, my talents are wasted here. I grew up feeding cows, goats and rabbits, leading the cows to the milking machines and sometimes unknowingly to slaughter, being too small (and too traumatized) to hoist the chickens off the ground to hang them up, scraping bees off honeycomb, counting queens and then being sent to the river (full of leeches) or to the sea (full of monsters) to cleanup from being sweaty and covered with pollen and honey and milk. The irony is that I grew up lactose-intolerant. The agony is that I don't let that stop me. 

We went and did the big Christmas shop today. Because chocolate and cheese keep, the turkeys will remain frozen and because Bridget needed her brie and eggnog. We got some light fruitcake and shortbread cookies. We got extra veggies that can be frozen up until Christmas week too. I found halloumi (!!!) in the deli and we got enough stuff to do our faux 'pub-crawl' (house to house, with a course at each kitchen) appetizer night on Christmas eve. There is too much food on the point now and I don't have to grocery shop until after Christmas now. 

Perfect. 

I called the market back and asked them the size of the young farm turkeys they had and the biggest was twelve pounds and I didn't want to dicker around with trying to roast eight or nine turkeys that were lean or free-range or grass-fed, read to every night by the light of a full moon. I want Butterball stuffing-stuffed turkeys that are all jacked up and FAT and we found a fresh cache of them at the decadent grocery store way down on the other side of Caulfield and that's fine. It's a special event, a mega-righteous holiday and who doesn't need to buy one hundred pounds of turkey for Christmas? 

I took three boys with me. We got five twenty-pound turkeys after asking if it was okay to take that many without calling ahead (narrator: It was). These boys will lick the bones clean and be looking for more within hours. There are sixteen to twenty people so that's enough for two full meals, I reckon and I already checked my privilege on the way home, thank you, if you are about to ask. I tied it to the back of the truck so it bumps and smashes along behind us, making one hell of a racket just so I don't forget. 

We are blessed. And maybe it seems like I complain about the sheer mountain of effort required to feed and care for a commune of this size but I don't think I really do. I wouldn't change it, anyway and if it means only a few of us leave the point for provisions at any one time to protect the rest, then I will do it without complaint forever.

Schrodinger's monster (if you don't look behind you to see how close it is, is it even there?)

Come
I'll show every ghost in me
Take my pain into you

Not this Friday. Not next Friday but the Friday after that. That's all the time you have left because Santa is coming on that Friday whether we are ready or not. 

Someone replenished my liquor cabinet. It's now a cabinet plus a small corner of the counter itself and I don't know if I'm really happy, suspicious or disappointed. Jesus. I'll be a pickled princess by New Years and maybe it is for the best. It's easier to control and procure than the horse tranquilizers they usually find for me, and everyone knows the weight limits and upper maximums and in the event that I change my mind it's never too late to hand it off or pour it out. 

There's a brandy and two whiskeys, two vodkas, three rums, a tiny kahlua for Christmas-day coffee, or maybe Christmas eve and boxing day too, five bottles of mead and two red wines. 

And a twelve-pack of hard lemonade already in the fridge because I'm not the only drinker, of course. 

There are two gifts left to leave the house. Ruth's boyfriend's present and then a gift that must be mailed express to California for one of Henry's dearest friends and he always waits until the last minute and so he is chipping away at making a thing and hopefully it will be ready by Friday and I will pay thirty bucks so his recipient can open it on Christmas and hopefully not after. 

I don't have the turkeys (the market ALREADY CALLED US. WOW. SUCH SERVICE. MANY APPRECIATE but I don't know how many pounds of turkey I want. Yet. Soon. Today or tomorrow we will do the math. PJ does it, I check it.) or the dessert (who needs dessert? These guys. That's who. I'll pour another glass of wine, they will put back seven pounds of stuffing and four pounds of turkey (each) and then want something sweet to finish it off. 

Sometimes that's me. 

Ha. 

God. Starset's Everglow is playing and it's a weak song for the first three minutes and ten seconds and then it becomes something absolutely incredible and I've had it on repeat in my head all day now so far. Hope it stays. I wish I could play a soft melody on the piano followed by twenty-seconds of dirty-vocal screaming because I doubt there is anything better out there musically than this, right now. 

I am feeling better, thank you. Thank you to new and old readers alike who reach out to say hello whether I can respond or not. Sometimes I don't respond to every message (too many, too hard) but I see every word, eventually and I saw them last evening and I really appreciate it. I can be so deliriously envious of your ability to be pulled together and I can try to do the same and that's all I can promise. Holidays, logistics and overreaching schedules are easy for me, not so easy is keeping my emotions in check, getting any sleep at all and watching out for the holes that swallow me up so easily because I run without looking. Always have, probably always will. 

Much to their dismay.

Having a thing for tragic endings (he runs, wishing he could fly).

Stupidly what drove me out of euphoria there between Daniel and Schuyler was when a certain song came on their stereo. I was too touched out, too tired, too fragile at that point to get through it. We always make jokes about how long a human being can withstand torture. Tickling is long. Spoon percussion about ten minutes. Waterboarding at least a few minutes, but that song is almost two and a half minutes long and I can't do it most of the time, although a few times I made it but it's not consistent.

The one form of torture I can't manage is heartbreak, after all. That's why I'm with them here in the first place. 

Time for me to turn back into a little bird and fly away, Sky. 

Stay for the week.

Ruth has finals and I have to start wrapping presents. 

Okay, finish out the weekend th-

I gotta go. 

Ah FUCK. Schuyler smashes the button on the stereo and the swells of heartbreak are replaced by a crushing, claustrophobic silence and I can't move suddenly. 

Call Ben for me. 

Bridge, I-

PLEASE. I can't breathe. 

Daniel jumps up and wraps me in his arms, holding me hard. Daniel is the king of kangaroo care and I close my eyes. FUCK. FUCK. FUUUUUUUUCK. Not the way I want to end such a lovely mini vacation but it's like sometimes the wine wears off and the pleasure ebbs and the lights go up and you realize you weren't in a fairy tale after all. Just a nightmare.

Shhhhhh. His breath is against the top of my head as he sways gently, somewhere between a baby-rock and a slow-dance. 

Schuy joins Daniel, wrapping his hands around my head. Out through your nose, Peanut. He whispers it and I follow his instructions, trying to get my breathing back under control from the gulping, panicked breaths that take over before the sobs begin. Jacob is tearing through my mind in the dark, looking for me, tearing doors off their hinges, turning over furniture, leaving the carnage of our love everywhere for someone else to clean up, and it's taking years. It isn't fair. 

***

Back to reality, back to my glitter star tree-topper and the ornaments that I love like glass donuts and cotton-cotton candy and tiny big tops made of wood and paper, so fragile they join my heart in being unable to withstand surprise, momentary torture. Lochlan gives me the once-over and apologizes again for not joining us. He chose sleep, he chose to honour his schedule as Ben's watcher for the day and they napped on and off all day which he said was sorely needed. 

I don't sleep in the day and so I was absolved anyway. 

My hands still shake when I stop doing anything, a dead giveaway and Lochlan finally stops asking me if I'm actually fine and calls Schuyler. He just says Yeah and then listens for a long time, alternating between glaring at me and staring out the window. He looks so tired. His hair is tied back in a loose braid and his shirt and pants are rumpled. He sleeps fully clothed in triage-mode, whether it's me or Ben, and always will, I think. 

He ends the call, looks at his phone for a minute (old habits die hard, just like old friends. Or maybe that's enemies. Look at the mess you made, Jake.) and then nods. He stares at me for so long that I get uncomfortable, his face expressionless, focused. He's waiting for something and I don't fucking know what it is so after an eternity I narrow my eyes in outright annoyance, staring back and he abruptly laughs. 

You're okay?

Define 'okay'.

Better than ten years ago?

Yup. 

Better than ten minutes ago?

Yes, Locket.

Okay then. Off we go. 

 I would post but I can't post from my phone and Schuyler won't let me out of bed ahaahahahahahah happy Saturday.

SAMCAM.

 Oh GREAT. Sam got his hand slapped by...Big Church and has to go to Zoom Advent now, and for the rest of the year. They don't want him to get a fine, even though instructions were clear and exceedingly cautious and ten feet between twenty people OUTDOORS doesn't exactly meet the criteria of a 'religious service', it's more like weaponized hippiedom with a sprinkling of Jesus thrown in.

He's playing Freddie Mercury's In My Defence at top volume to protest. In between complaints about how he had it right. 

(I'm just a singer in a soooooong How can I try to right the wroooooong)

Matt says he's forever famous now on the small screen, and that it will be amazing. He can do greenscreen backgrounds and we can have communion in SPACE or still on the beach or even on the beach IN space but Sam says no one wants to tune in and watch him light virtual candles and it doesn't have the same effect. 

Right. 

Not sure he has looked in the mirror. He's freaking handsome. I told him it can be his OnlyFans account and he can have a button to click to make it rain. 

PERFECT. 

He still does not like this. Freddie swells, high emotion right through my kitchen. Lord. Sam's pulling a me. 

We're going to put it on in the theatre, I assure him. You'll be taller than ever.

Matt winks at me and pulls Sam in close. It's not forever, Babe. 

Excuse. 

me. 

what

BABE? 

I would write more but I just died of adorableness. I'm almost glad we figured out how to keep our hands off each other so I can admire all of this from afar.

(Spoiler alert: We actually didn't/don't/can't.)

A preteen Bridget and a distinctly FORTY year old man who should know better.

So much for the unplugged remainder of the week because noise. Construction noise. I'm super-adverse to loud sounds unless it's MUSIC, of course and so I was up out of bed like a rocket when I heard the trucks and I instantly turned to Ben with very wide, quavering eyes and he promised me that we will reschedule our break for when it's done but it's going to be very awesome and it won't take forever, Bumblebee so don't worry. 

About the title: Before the noise began, I was singing Hard Habit to Break to Benjamin, who was patiently correcting my lyrics, which I magnificently GUESSED at the age of thirteen, when the song came out, and have never bothered to correct since and I keep stopping and shrieking Oh my GOD Peter Cetera (lead singer of Chicago, I don't know if he's also the songwriter, why would FACT-CHECKING get in the way of a good yarn) was such an asshole! Hahahahaha and Ben has never laughed so hard since his accident I was afraid he would get a headache but he's fine. He's so happy. Knock wood. This is rare.

They're starting the pool enclosure today. It's like this glass barn that fits on top of the pool. Also under construction is a partial structure to give a little permanence to the hot tub/sauna/poolhouse with a pedway (covered) in between, so you can technically now duck out of the sauna and walk straight to the pool indoors but still see the outside because the whole thing is glass. Point Perdition is now a snowglobe and I like it so much (I saw a mock-up thing of it on Lochlan's computer), mostly because I didn't have to pay for it and mostly because Ransom isn't in charge of it at all. This is a team of other people and they have promised me they will be finished by Tuesday next week or maybe he meant the week after (oh no) and that's good because I don't like strangers in my environment even though they are outside. Apparently this is the largest one they've ever done. 

The poolhouse is heated, and well-stocked with a tiny kitchen with a fridge, bathrooms and cupboards so the men working have a break room and at least a warm place to eat their lunch and the boys took out the fence section so the trucks could drive straight to the pool part of the yard, which always astounds me that the grass doesn't get destroyed but they might put in a chipseal access driveway for that too, we shall see. Not the same people who are doing the pool thing. 

(Schuyler has promised this will definitely mean we can see the property from space now. When you look at Google earth it's a really old top view and half the buildings are missing.) 

Gah. Kill me now. I hate noise. I hate coming up for air. I (we?) haven't slept for a few days now. We were busy celebrating.  Now we have to stop and put on clothes. CHRIST.

The man in the burning building.

Ben is fifty-two years old today. Benjamin is a semi-feral cat with nine lives and he's run through at least fifteen of them but here he is still alive, still moving forward, still creative, crazy and cracked. Literally now, as he tells anyone who will listen how his skull broke open because his brain wanted to be larger and more prominent, as it should be.

He'll laugh and they'll give a sympathetic grin (because they're afraid of him, technically).

He is still in recovery. Still freshly minted, still taking inventory and still causing as much shit as he possibly can.

But here we are (a far cry from the now infamous pub crawl when he turned twenty-nine) and I am making prime rib for dinner and garlic mashed potatoes and not-whiskey but ginger ale that he likes suddenly and a chocolate cake with a set of silvery number-candles because I can't physically fit that many actual individual birthday candles on one of the cakes that I bake. Not on the top anyway and if you put them on the sides the wax drips all over my vintage tablecloth and that's not a thing to celebrate.

(We tried it once. It looked like a porcupine that melted. A day-glo one.)

Ben doesn't like it when I talk about his birthday. He never has so lets just say the whole rest of the week we'll be celebrating and so I'll be back in a few days. We aren't travelling, just unplugging for a few days, upon his (always granted) request. He deserves the world on a fucking spoon and we will give it to him no matter what.

Happy birthday big Ben. I love you to Pluto and beyond.

Audi, vide, tace.

He surprises me, pushing me onto my back, climbing up over me, my lips sliding down his marble shoulder before he pushes me down, following me all the way. He's taking his time, giving me a million chances to step back, to get away, or to return his efforts. The pause extends for so long goosebumps take over my flesh and he traces along my throat with his lips, entranced.

I thread my fingers into his hair, tightening them into a fist as his arms tighten around me, and the reward is a kiss, deployed slowly, softly at first before evolving into a crushing need as he pins me to the night, his weight keeping me right where he wants me. He moves in a crawl, and I keep my arms around his neck, breathing evenly against his chest as kisses hail down against the top of my head. My head is cool again as he moves away, thrusting hard, faster, reaching up to hold the top of the headboard with one hand and I stretch up both hands over my head, where he catches them easily with his other hands, a move that forces his entire weight down onto me, driving deep. My legs anchor against his hips as he tucks his head down against my ear.

Jesus, Neamhchiontach. His hand leaves the headboard to come down and wrap around the side of my head and I feel so tall and powerful suddenly, stretched out full-length underneath the devil. He switches gears suddenly, away completely, up on his knees, pulling my hands back down, threading his fingers through mine, palms together. Eyes meeting in the dark and yet I am still pinned to the eventide, scared I'll be left behind as he makes his way into the dawn. 

I love you, Bridget, and he is back, warmth taking over from sudden thrills, and I squeeze my arms, holding his shoulders as best I can as he picks up speed now, reaching down to pull my hips up against him. I tuck my head down against his chest again, afraid suddenly as his power takes over the sunrise, keeping it from me, forcing me back into the shadows with him between us. 

He bends his head back down, angling his hips and sets the perfect harsh rhythm that will see us through, allow us to catch a glimpse of a heaven we will never be rewarded with, all the while suffering the spoils of a good war nonetheless. He pulls me up against him just as I start to see that sunrise and I bite down against the bone in his shoulder just as he feasts on mine, breath held, limbs locked, euphoria washing over us like new rain and when I open my eyes, the sky is a murky grey light heralding the day but I can still see the stars.