These even colder skies.

This morning I woke up with my favourite Christmas song in my head, which isn't actually Where Are You, Christmas? to everyone's surprise. It's In Like a Lion (Always Winter) which I love to sing and Lochlan says it's like going back in time and he doesn't really want to hear it but singing is better than silence and frankly I need all the help I can get. The third favourite is I Celebrate the Day but it's a little bit crushingly Jesus, even for me. Then Walking in the Air. I could go on but no one cares.

And the rumours are false. I'm not a great singer, especially without the in-ear monitors because I can't hear myself. Maybe good if I push for compliments but only with Ben's endless coaching over the past twenty years can I even get the courage at all to feel as though anyone would want to hear it. 

I'm not going to go up under the viaduct and belt out anything from Titanic, though I desperately, absolutely want to, with all my heart. 

Instead I am the secret-starlet, content in my postage-stamp fame on a zoom screen or in someone's memories from twenty-five years removed, hazy and sped-up ever so slightly, a moment captured with a series of photographs using a flip flash on a drugstore camera, half buried in the sand and forgotten at the end of a twentieth century summer.

***

People want me to say things. I don't know what you want me to say? We've hunkered down quite nicely. I have a cold but truly it's been a runny nose and a dry-air slight cough for almost two weeks now and it's one-hundred-percent dependant on the humidity in the house, going away completely when it's good or I've had a long hot shower. When it gets super-dry it's worse. I need to drink more tea, find a way to sleep without being taken down at three hundred yards, a moving target with a sight on my back for their tranquilizing, killer dreams. I need to learn how to relax. Maybe that's why I love singing so much. It's a time, like when I treasure-hunt on the beach, where I stop thinking at all and just focus on the task at hand. 

I hope everyone enjoyed the service today. Fourth candle, bitches. I'm afraid to look.

Two minutes of terror (like seven minutes in heaven without the closet).

Sam made a last minute addition to tomorrow's podcast/zoom in that he's opted to insert a hymn by some special guests (snort) and he decided I would sing it and Ben would play his acoustic and...not sing at all which wasn't entirely fair. Instead of Ben doing everything because Ben is a trained professional and I'm a decided stage-frighty hack suddenly. 

We put on our Christmas best, lit a hundred candles in the big booth and strung tiny green lights everywhere. Christian filmed it. We took eleven tries to get through it this morning because Ben assured me we could one-take it, almost clearing it in eight but then Ben decided to burst out laughing at my hand gestures and then for the next two takes we kept cracking up in the same spot. 

We performed Oh Come Oh Come Emmanuel. Thank God it's short. And then I was actually ready to sing so we also recorded a lovely and fun version of Baby It's Cold Outside (which we've done many, many times live, if you can even but now it's committed to all eternity) which I don't know what we're going to do with. Perhaps there's an album in the works and in the future everyone will have a faded green record in the stack by the hi-fi that looks dated as fuck. Holiday Classics by The Collective. And when you play it-surprise! It's half doom metal. 

I mean, it could work. 

And now it's seven already and I'm still in my Valentino and stilettos (and false lashes shhhhHHHHH) because I have a theory that I'm louder when I'm tall. Lochlan points out it's actually the opposite and since he started picking on me for zero reason Sam has tagged him to do his own number later today and wants to stream a church variety show now. We're fucking doomed. This is awesome. His congregation is never going to appreciate the sheer amount of talent he has around him, but frankly that's okay.

God, I hope Lochlan picks something Elvis. We're already calling him the Red King, a term I haven't heard for a really long time.

Laundry lists and sleepy men.

 I have to start from scratch. Probably locally. I'll have to call around and he can figure it out if he wants to go around and get his things, for when I went to pull the trigger the shipping was only FedEx and it was $85 Canadian and that's freaking bullshit for what I ordered, which amounted to half a shoebox sizewise and would have cost me $30 to ship with tracking and insurance. And I emailed and they can't do any other shipping methods so oh well. 

It's fine. I don't care if he gets his pen, he has others and he has a whole pack of field notes in the drawer but he likes the Yamamoto ones so much better. Stuff it, I tell him. Use what you have! 

I'll do it myself. Is the cart still there.

No. I emptied it in protest. 

Cale sighs for a long time and then doesn't say anymore and I go back to going through receipts. Silence reigns for the better part of the afternoon and I finally stand up to leave and he startles so hard I am shaken. 

Sorry, was daydreaming, I guess. 

You know what they say about disassociati-

Neamhchiontach, don't. I just haven't slept. 

Ooh, come join my club. We meet every day behind the treehouse. Though you'll have to learn the secret handshake and we have badges to pin on your shirt and-

He pinches the bridge of his nose with one hand. There's a fix for this. Stay tonight. 

What's in it for me? 

He stares at me. It was a joke and he took it as a challenge. Anything, everything. Name it. 

I want things to cost less and get here faster. 

I know you're minding not being able to shop properly. 

It's tactile-

I know, Bridget. And no one can help that right now. So what can we do to help that? 

I have no idea. 

I do. How about a sleeping pill for two and we tuck in at eight and watch shows until we can't keep our eyes open? 

Each other's or our own? 

He was out like a lightbulb at ten and I read long into the night, travelling through brief sleepiness into wakefulness, then homesickness, followed by the inevitable strange contentment. I finally turned the light off in the single-digit morning hours and got about three hours of rest, his arms a vise around my back, breathing so soundly I knew he was really out and not just hoping I would think he was asleep so I would fall asleep too (both he and Lochlan do that independently) and when I woke up again I untangled myself from him and he woke up. 

What time is it? 

Five. 

You going home?

Yes. 

Dammit. 

Sleep. 

Kay. Go straight up. 

I will. 

And I did as promised. Lochlan was still asleep, spooning against Ben, and I ducked into the shower and slept with my face against the wall for another fifteen minutes, dreaming of stationery before getting my morning sea legs and rinsing myself clean. Fresh and blowdried and perfumed, I come out and they are both awake. 

Sleep? 

Yeah, I lie. Caleb's really tired so we watched some dumb crime show and he was out almost instantly. 

Lochlan nods. I do a few twirls on purpose as I put on my underthings, just so he can be sure I am fine. No bites. No scratches. No mental distress. I'm good. Just unsettled, as always. 

Come back for a snooze and we'll get up later?

I'm almost dressed. Come with me, let's have a picnic. 

It's still pouring, Bridge. 

We can take umbrellas to the gazebo.

What if we had breakfast in bed? 

Okay. 

Seriously?

Who's cooking?

I will. Take off your stuff and crawl in. I'll be back in twenty minutes. 

Loch jumps up, pulling on pajama pants and a green t-shirt. I get a hard kiss on the forehead that almost knocks me over and he is gone, down to find the coffee and the eggs, not nearly as tired as he seemed a minute ago. I think the rain is heavy. I think it weighs us down. 

I tell this to Ben and he nods. I think you're right. 

(I ended up making breakfast and we ate in by the stove Lochlan cut his finger not insignificantly and so Ben nursed him through getting sufficient bandaids and antibiotic ointment while I made the eggs. He's okay though. It doesn't require stitches but I was able to convince him to use one of the butterfly bandages I keep on hand just to keep everything together while it heals.)

(And yet Lochlan's been using the same chewed-on stub of a wooden yellow Dixon pencil I believe since I was fourteen.)

(If anyone has any insight into the weird gene that makes one adore stationery supplies to this extent please remove it from me, I waste a lot of time on it, thank you.)

 I ran downstairs to give the loaves of bread a knead in order to facilitate their second rise and now I'm back upstairs in Caleb's wing trying to knock off an end-of-year stationery order from an online shop that has far too much neat stuff including shimmering ink with glitter and so many beautiful pens and notebooks I've been working on this for days and am no closer to deciding because Caleb, in his infinite, generous wisdom, told me to order whatever I wanted for myself and now I'm paralyzed with too many choices and so this is probably never going to happen. I even tried to narrow it down to just getting what I need but then I think fuck it, I'll get what I want and then they add even more nice things and I keep filling a cart and then unfilling it again. 

Of course I know exactly what I want. I like shimming inks and broad-tipped fountain pens with inlays and retractable medium ballpoints too but not the slimline metal ones. I love copper and brass housings but not translucent plastics. I have mechanical pencils by the dozen so I don't need any of those and already have paperclips on order from another place so I won't get those and I did a notebook inventory so no more paper and my planners arrived even after I balked at the cost of the hobonichis and decided on a couple of good Leuchtturms instead (one yearly planner, one bullet unlabelled) and if I stick it through then I will get a Hobonichi for 2022 (and probably a Midori 1 day 1 page to accompany) and I'm fairly certain my custom planner won't be here until February but it's a For Life kind of purchase so that's okay too. Planner starts on the 28th of December and I will muddle along for the first month or two just fine. 

If only I could figure out what to get because honestly I actually want a whole heaping load of stuff.

Get all of it. Please, Neamhchiontach. Just buy the pens already. He needs ink and wants a new Visconti pen and a couple of Japanese notebooks for his EDC and goddamn, why he waits until he is out of everything to do this, as always but he pointed out he depends on his assistant to think ahead and keep everything well-stocked and read his goddamned mind.

If only, I think to myself. 

Indeed, he says out loud.

Crazy stupid early.

The best part about Wednesdays are that we're all up at such an early hour it promotes a loose kind of insanity and so Ben and Lochlan have adopted their best falsettos and are trading off on Emotion. I swear to God this is my guilty pleasure song, I've written about it before, one of many, hilariously. I wore out the Samantha Sang original when I was seven, literally wearing the song off the vinyl 45 and then got hella confused in my twenties when the Bee Gees released their own cover and I'm never one percent sure I got it right. Of course on that playlist it's followed by a raft of Belinda Carlisle's greatest hits and I make no excuses and I plan to spend Christmas torturing PJ with the help of these two and their high cracking notes and inevitable bursts of laughter. 

I'm a broken record, truth be told but I maintain it's so nice to see Ben laugh. It's nice to see him able to remember songs we pull out of thin air and it's amazing that he has very little lasting damage here. Maybe I can't stress enough how much of the day is taken up with rehabilitation, with an all hands on deck kind of participation only this Collective could pull off. It's like this is why we're here, together. If ever we were looking for reason or purpose or answers maybe it was this and not me, specifically and I'll insist on that for the rest of my life now. 

You know, when I'm not being teased for my ludicrous taste in music as of late. Jesus. I hit all my marks all fall. When something that comes out that is super heavy tugs my listening ears I'll let you know and in the meantime this is the way. 

 

Nevermind.

It's National Cupcake Day and I sit here and wait. Where is my cupcake? Are they hand-delivered? Is it a virtual email thing? Will someone show up and hand one to me, sitting beside me to devour their own? What nation are we talking about specifically? Does this mean there is a Cake Day too? (Oh, there is! But not in my nation but I still missed it, or did I? I eat cake a lot so I don't remember, exactly. It's my favourite thing. A cake means a celebration or an event. I don't think there's anything much better on earth than a forkful of chocolate cake. I don't even care if there's icing but frankly every day should be cake day. In every nation. 

What are you doing? Lochlan comes in and I am just sitting. Hands on either side of my coffee cup, waiting for my pretty-muffin.

It's National Cupcake Day. 

Which nation? He asks. God, we share a brain. I should go rewire a compute while I'm on the inside. 

Not sure. Probably America. 

Oh. I don't think he has anything else to say, and so he heads to the Keurig. Did I tell you I discovered Sumatra beans for the thing and now I like it again? Yes. I am ridiculously picky and not at all picky with coffee. Literally the greatest coffees in the world are the ones in tiny white styrofoam cups that people hand you when you're cold. Don't ask me why and I've had coffee in France AND Italy. But yes, my standards are low. But not so low that I will get coffee from a chain from a window or anything. That's not coffee, I don't know what that is, but you go ahead if you like it. 

I need a cupcake window, that's what I need. 

No, not muffins. Pretty-muffins is just another way to describe them. Muffins with hats is another thing we say sometimes. Does it matter?

Are you cranky?

Maybe. 

Not enough sugar?

Never enough sugar. 

Are we being literal? 

I don't know, I've lost track of the conversation. 

Want some toast?

Yes. 

I can put cinnamon sugar on it-

Oh, lord no. Cheese will be fine. 

We can go get cupcakes later. 

This house is full of fancy Christmas desserts and baked goods. I think the cupcakes can wait. 

But what about the day? 

It's not Cupcake day in Canada. 

What is it?

It's Tuesday.

Not zombies because I'm so zombied-out.

 I'm really struggling with blogger. Holy. Every time I start a post I have to go out and remove all of the weird formatting that's already in place when I start. My header is now a decade old and I don't know how to change it anymore. I'm so sorry. I'm not a web person. I'm not a tech person nor am I a smart person and I feel like any attempt to change anything breaks everything so I may as well leave it alone. 

That's a metaphor for life right there. 

The dog and the cat are laying together at my feet. There's a huge fire crackling in the woodstove and it's still dark, now ten to nine and this blows my mind. The rain's pouring in sheets down the glass outside. I wanted to have my coffee and do my writing in the gazebo but truly it's terrible out there. 

It's December fourteenth. Holy. I snapped my fingers and two weeks flew by. It feels as if Ben's birthday was a thousand years ago. It feels like ages. I've been baking and wrapping and organizing too, something I like to do before Christmas, clearing out stuff that just sits, stuff we haven't touched, old clothes, ill-fitting things, surplus bedding and dishes, coats and boots and tools and I get a truckload and donate it to one of the charities that actually puts it into the hands of people who need it without them having to pay for it. And then I still feel bad. Not sure about the guilt. I guess it comes from being exceedingly poor and hungry too and I will never ever get used to this. 

Maybe it was the raincoat finally wearing-through that triggered this. Maybe it was something else. Maybe it was because this weekend we finished To The Lake/Epidemiya (after a gap where we just couldn't seem to get through the last three episodes, because we had to watch other things)

And wow.

Honestly. It's sort of somewhat hilarious. We went into knowing it was a Cannes selection, and that it was a Russian zombie series. Well, yes but no it isn't. Aside from the hilarity and the absolute horror (CHRIST) it's a great piece on the human condition, human psychology when everything is stripped away. Just, damn, it was fucking weird and I loved it and there better be a second season though I don't know if I can get up the nerve to watch it. 

Then we caught up on The Mandalorian. Then we started Alice in Borderland. We also have to finish The Expanse and I still want to go watch the last episode of Salvation because we abandoned it and I hate doing that. 

I tried to read a Kurt Vonnegut book and failed miserably. The one I started in JULY and absolutely HATE so I'll read the last page and stick it on the shelf and pick up the second in that now-years-old detective series from Stephen King so I can clear those maybe over Christmas. 

I also promised myself I would paint more and sing more and draw way more so I'm going to do that too. 

Gosh, in that case, I definitely have a busy day ahead. I'm glad it's raining though. Makes it more magical somehow altogether. I used to live for sunny days but that's a fools errand here on the coast.

My heart was glass, you dropped it/Zero Jesus.

The sun won't come up. We needed lights (headlamps, actually. You need both hands on the still-exceedingly-icy stairs in spite of all the money we threw at them) to navigate the trip to the beach well after seven this morning. I guess the days will get shorter and shorter for another week still and it sucks, for I have resorted to lifting up my skirts and running flat out after the sun, which hasn't shown itself through the rain. I will chase it, hair flying, desperate tears leaking from my lashes, and fail to succeed, being pulled back, swallowed up in the cool embrace of the long darkness. 

Once on the beach I turn off my lamp, pulling it from my head, threading it up over my elbow so it stays safe for the trip home. Lochlan turns his off but shoves it up on top of his head. It can hold his hair back while he helps me search for treasures in the rain. 

He has a backpack with him. In it is a blanket, a thermos of hot coffee, an empty paper bag for the glass and shells we find,  and a flask of irish cream to add a little sweetness and a little evil to the coffee (everything tastes better outside) Also, he says he has breakfast in there but I don't know what it is.

 We wave enthusiastically at a couple of kayakers from down the village way, who paddle close to shore because in this weather I'd hate to see them very far offshore, frankly. You get to know the colors of the boats after a while and then see them on top of people's cars or racked up on fences and behind garages and boat houses as you take your own kayak trip along the waterside. 

Lochlan spreads the blanket on the log furthest from the encroaching tide. He pours two cups of steaming black coffee, lacing each one with a strong pour of the liqueur and handing mine to me, handle towards me. I take it and take a sip. He's right. It's better. I settle back against his shoulder and watch the waves. The sea is calm this morning. The rain makes lazy dots on the roiling surface and he says ten minutes. That's so I don't squander my chance to actually drink my coffee, usually daydreaming to the point where I must pour it out, wasting it all. I notice he has set up his lamp, hanging it from a branch stuck in the rocks, making a sort of lantern, adding an exceedingly touching, cozy atmosphere to our breakfast picnic. He pulls out a container of orange slices and one of hot cross buns, already split and buttered. 

He laughs. Do your remember this? 

He forgets I brought it up when I saw the bag of buns drop into one of our grocery carts last week. Of course I remember. 

Second or third summer we went out, it was a different route and there were hardly any shops around, the sites were so far out of the towns we had a hard time keeping fed. You can't exist on candy apples. We tried.

Lochlan walked all the way into one town and back in the sun early one morning, having had enough, returning only to have his efforts feed us for almost a week straight. A bag of hot cross buns and a bag of oranges. You would think we would never eat those things again, let alone seek them out to have together but simpler times and deja views are always welcome in our world, a world lit by a stormy sea and a gently swinging lamp, a day forsaken even by the sun.

If this is the long haul, how did we get here so soon?

I didn't find a raincoat. Surprise. I looked online briefly but I'd like to touch it first. I have issues with scratchy things, hence my love of flannel, velvet and sherpa. It has to feel soft to the touch and soft against my skin with no scratchy finishing on the inside (hence the fully reversible one I had before-all seams were covered) and needs that cute pointy hood and I'm actually thinking something in a color might be nice instead of black. Black is hard to see in the dark and when is it not dark and raining in Vancouver?

The good thing is Caleb didn't push too hard, simply asking the sales people in each shop if they had something like that but they of course did not because I always want the unicorn and they'll always show me the llama with a horn hat. 

And then this morning I broke a mirror. 

The last time I did that so many bad things happened it was seven lifetimes worth of the wrong kind of luck and I am not anxious to repeat it. And I should have known. It was a cheap mirror with a flimsy handle and it broke off the handle and smashed to the ground. I threw salt over my shoulder, crawled under the dining room table and out the other side and spun around three times counter-clockwise. I'm going to blacken the shards later and bury them in the yard at twilight. 

I already dug out my rabbits foot and I never stopped carrying my St. Patrick coin. 

I'm the most superstitious person you will ever meet and the very last thing I need right now is seven years of bad luck. I was even patting myself on the back for driving into town alone last night in the rain to pick up our Friday night take out (Canadian Chinese SO GOOD) but no one could go and then I couldn't find parking and ended up four blocks away (in the dark, whole strip closed JEEZ) and then had to wait half an hour past my pick up time in the shop itself while two men almost came to blows over masks and I moved to stand right beside the door with very wide eyes and they finally cooled it, one leaving to wait outside and I wonder now if I've been exposed because the restaurant is tiny and I was in there so long but I got home safely and everyone was mad that I didn't take someone and I simply pointed out that I'm a big girl. 

Sigh.

Oh and I bought Taylor Swift's new album, Evermore, since it's a companion to Folklore and now PJ says I have to definitely give up my metal cred, that I don't fit the mold anymore. 

Did I ever? Too tired now to care. Just going to listen to what I feel like listening to and Jesus Christ, Padraig, I have a hundred gigs of eighties love songs on my phone, did I ever hold any cred with you for real?

Sorry, Bridge. I was only teasing. He looks crushed but I can't deal with that right now. The album has a song on it called Coney Island and I wasn't about to pass it up. But really every song is good and I support good music. PJ should know that.

Rain

Stop tell me where you going

Maybe the one you love isn't there
You're going under
But you're over it all so you don't care about all that I had to see
Watch you wait until you come around

 

 Ay, fuuuuck. This song slid right into Les Friction's String Theory and I was singing along quite pathetically anyway and now it's a mess (I'm a mess, I mean) and I had to stop halfway through a WORD because I could no longer breathe. Lochlan says I have a way of singing some of the sadder songs that would make a man's heart break from eight hundred miles away and I think he's full of shit but then again, I can't hear myself sing without the monitors in my ears so I have to take his word even though I don't want it. 

 

I'm at work this morning. Opening Christmas cards to the Devil as he left quite a stack of mail for me to deal with and I'll be earning my dollars today which is good because I have Christmas bills to pay and I also took three of my rings in to the jeweller this week to have them resized and repaired from where they squish out of shape when Caleb squeezes my hand way too hard and that isn't free (the repair or the squeezes). I'm heading out to pick them up today when I run Caleb's errands so it all works and I can do it on the boss's dime.

 

Jesus, Bridge. 

What?

 

Nothing. Please stop singing. I love to hear you but not like this. Caleb gestures to the stereo. I guess Lochlan was right. Good. It's better to have the upper hand when it comes to being this close to the Devil anyway, a man who puts on one drop of his favourite aftershave and I'm a puddle on the floor. 

 

I mean I was a puddle but anyway, now I'm back to business. I finished paying the bills for him for this week, including the one for the snowglobe and I am more than a little surprised that it cost as much as it did, but also not at all surprised. He needs me to pick up a leather flight bag he had repaired (thankfully on same block as my goldsmith) and a book he wants to read, as well as pick up some specialty grocery items that aren't available in any of our usual haunts because he loves his Christmas traditions as much as anyone else.

I go to put on my raincoat only to realize it is wet on the inside too. Did it finally wear right through? I've been wearing the same long black reversible raincoat since I started university. It always looks good and has huge pockets and a pixie hood and wow, suddenly it's dead and I guess that's it since it takes forever for me to buy clothes because I hate shopping for clothing and it has to have every feature I want or forget it. I am awful with buying clothes. Jesus, just give me something to wear, I am the least picky person you will ever meet.

I'll have a shop send some over for you to try on? Or we can go and fetch one today. 

I have a lot to do, I'm not coming back and going out again.

I'll come with you then and we'll just stop in somewhere along the way.

 

I'm still getting paid, right? Even if you're running your own errands? 

 

Maybe. We'll see.