I'll pour one out later for the Duke.

I am not getting out of bed. Prince Philip died. The Queen is a widow now too. And Ransom has precisely twelve hours left to finish the work with his team. Not sure if he's going to do it. He and I had a lovely professional exchange by text last night. He is assured that there are no problems. I over-anticipate and fret every last possibility. It's my specialty.

BEST NEWS EVER.

 I know Canada is a laughing stock with our inability to vaccinate, the whole seventh-wave fun of living in BC or whatever the hell it is that we're doing here but I'll have you know Ticketmaster just sent me the rescheduled dates for the Roger Waters concert that was supposed to take place last fall and I am SO EXCITED. It's eighteen months away but WHO CARES? We have plans!!!!! Also that means pub dinner because we always grab food on the way to a show. It's tradition. It's been a long fucking pandemic. I am THRILLED TO SEE THIS. I GET TO DRESS UP AND GO OUT. 

WHAT THE FUCK. 

*cries*

Had you in my coat pocket.

 Sippin' on straight chlorine, let the vibe slide over me

This beat is a chemical, beat is a chemical
When I leave don't save my seat, I'll be back when it's all complete
The moment is medical, moment is medical
Sippin' on straight chlorine

 

The best part of singing this with the piano is that Lochlan will burst in and do a wonderful theatrical first bridge for me, and then supply the harmony on the final verse. It's just magical. There's an acoustic version you can hit up to get the idea here, though the original is orchard-danceable in a way I didn't notice until today.

(Everyone likes the music I bring so I share the links when I remember to. The soundtrack for the movie of my life now stands at fourteen thousand hours or something. Anyway Twenty One pilots dropped a new single yesterday and the new album comes in May. Ruthie is losing it. She's seen them twice and can't get enough and sent me an ALL CAPS message yesterday from work after the band's email went out. I could hear the squeals from here.)

Lochlan is trying to distract me from now camping the pool build from the side window of our room. I can hardly see a thing from there except for the one corner but it was enough until I got caught. 

Want to go for a walk?

Sure I tell him. I leave the keys and grab my airpods (BEST. INVENTION. EVER) and the song barely misses a beat.

I will be free.

 Prisoned am I to this shell of the dust

It speaks of only fiction that I could never trust
Captured alive in this sinful estate
Vexed am I to see I do the things that I hate
Rip out the framework leave no stone unturned
Until my heart forgets all that my flesh ever learned
Tear down the structure till nothing is left
God deliver me from this body of death

I can play most instruments enough to be passable. Except guitar, honestly. That one is tough. Bass is more my thing. I can drum but if I think about it too much I lose my rhythm. French horn, trumpet, saxophone? Check. Bagpipes? Yes. Accordion? Easy. Uilleann pipes, of course. Violin, Piano, very well thank you. 

And yet all I want to do is sing. 

This morning I took the good monitors out into the rain and the cliff so I could belt it out over the sea. Lowly is this morning's efforts. Wolves at the Gate. We're coming back around here. First is the main vocal track and then I layer in minor harmony. Three of those in different keys and then the background screaming harmony. 

Well, I can't do it in the house. The studio is ninety-eight percent soundproof but if I'm going to practice my growls I can't have an audience and half the time I zone out on the guitar scale and forget I am supposed to be providing the words. Besides, Ben woke up with another headache and so I'm not going to bother him. Instead he is sleeping late to try and shake the pain this morning while I wear mine as a badge of foolishness and bravery in the face of nothing more than my own tiny shadow.

Oh Blessed man that I am Lowly man who can save such a wretch that I am?

I feel like it all just makes it rain harder. 

Love it.

I can't tell you about the ghosts if I don't write about them.

I am not in charge of the pool project any longer and Caleb uncharacteristically told me to watch myself which was interesting but later I found out that he wants me to keep the upper hand and be professional. I'm not worried. The work has to be inspected to pass usage and Ransom will be well-paid so why wouldn't he do the best job he can? This will be an absolute showpiece for his portfolio. Again. Like the last few projects he did for us. 

(I remain fully unapologetic about the punch though.)

In better news, the entire point (Batman's house included because our motto is Leave no one behind or something like that) is registered to be vaccinated. Those of us who are young enough to not have had any shots yet, I mean. 

I feel excited, finally. This is just registration. We'll get emails when they are ready for our age groups to make appointments to get the actual needle but this feels like progress to me and even though I bought completely unnecessary toilet paper today expecting a more stringent health order, I feel like the end is in sight at last. 

Played the spoons to Civilian after dinner. Sang harmony. Sewed a pair of shorts and half a dozen new masks. Helped Ruth with a project and kept her company while she ran errands. Sat outside on the swing and listened to French radio. Made dinner. Watched a Youtube video with PJ in which someone broke their windshield with a loud subwoofer. Did the laundry. Walked the dog. Threw a punch. 

The usual. 

It's going to be a long week.

Happy Easter.

What a beautiful day. The last load of laundry is finally in the dryer, REO Speedwagon is in my headphones, and the coffee flows like a hot river of blood straight into my soul, melting anyone it comes across with an unforgiving roast that is so good. 

I've been told my version of a 'lazy Sunday' isn't like everyone else's. I get up exceedingly late (seven or eight to be exact), do a bunch of chores (all of them) and then sit with my coffee and PJ's knucklebone fidget thing.

(I AM LEARNING IT, LEAVE ME ALONE. One of my dreams is to pay enough attention to flip a coin across my knuckles and back. Both hands. PJ can do a coin now but he said it's easier to start with the bone. 

I did not snort laugh to myself when he said this but I did look him dead in the eye and told him that it's a good thing I can handle a bone already. 

He did not laugh. He may have whimpered slightly but we both ignored it. 

Then he said if I wake him up to listen to Sam tell his goofy bunny stories he would also commit murder this Easter and there would be no resurrections. 

Wow. Crabby boy. But now I have this torch-fired blue-coppery steel knobby thing that looks more like a sex toy than a fidget spinner and I've dropped it on the hardwood floor so many times Lochlan sent me a text and asked why I was FUCKING BOWLING AT 8 IN THE MORNING JEEEEEEEEEEEEESUSS.

So I put it in my pocket, which means tomorrow it will probably go through the wash.)

We're having hot turkey sandwiches tonight, at Henry's request, with gravy and stuffing. He hates plain turkey sliced breast and adores gravy-soaked bread and that's honestly somehow easier and then we get right to the good part of rare leftovers without having to wait a day. The boys are going to set up the long table in the orchard later this morning and we'll have dinner and watch the sunset as a family.

Otherwise I think I will listen to Sam's goofy bunny stories once he puts up his Easter podcast.

(You want to see someone go from thirty to zero in one blink you should have seen Sam's face when the government slammed the door closed on everything last week after just letting him fire up again. It was a Looney-Tunes comical shift but it broke all of our hearts because Sam loves to preach and he loves to touch people and hug people and look them in the eyes as he listens so well it's just beyond and we assured him we all needed him so much he do concentrated reverending and we would soak him up gratefully and he has not disappointed. At all.)

But I've already had my sermon for the day. Got it at four this morning. I didn't realize how much I missed Sam in our dark little universe upstairs until he brought the light into it and blew up my crushed spirit again like a mylar balloon.

And if I see a sign in the sky tonight (See it coming)
No one's gonna tell me it's a trick of the light (Feel it coming)
May never come but I'm willing to wait
What can I say? I'm a man of the faith
And there's an ocean in my body
And there's a river in my soul
And I'm crying

 

Early coffee alone in the kitchen today. Airpods are cemented directly to my skull now. My homemade playlist (I don't use Sp*tify) flows from The Villagers Trick of the Light right into Veruca Salt's Loneliness is Worse and it's the absolute best combination because today iTunes has chosen alphabetical order for my songs. Sometimes it goes by most played or least played, sometimes by length or year. I never know but I love it. 

 

I already took lilac and rosemary cuttings. The laundry is almost done. I fixed the toilet and I put the dog out. I woke up Ruth for work and Lochlan for errands, shortly here, and Ben snoozes on and on. We measured a whole big part of the yard last night and replanted a host of perennials for a potential new fence and then I decided I would just do a raised bed and plant a bunch of forgiving things in it and that would be nicer than anything else and since my tiny rosemary sprig that I bought for ninety-nine cents on a whim six years ago is now a huge shrub the size of me and I cut and harvest and dry and give away huge bunches and one year I made WREATHS from it and it just keeps coming, well, it smells so good I may as well just plant it everywhere.

That one trick.

He's standing over me while I load in another sheet of thick, fibrous paper. The ribbon is cued up perfectly. Red on the bottom, black on top. The carrier tension feeds the ribbon across the centre and the letter keys strike the paper causing meaning, getting it out. One after another. Staccato literary gunshots and I am dead, my red blood colouring the ink for the next story, if not the next life. 

I begin to make a list. If I ignore him and begin to count he fades, dissolving in the crush of the things my brain chooses to surround him with, burying him alive. Drowning him out. 

I can't hit the keys with my left index finger though. I've bled through all the bandages. I need a stitch or two, maybe a break. Maybe a transcriptionist, like Violet Evergarden, someone to wish for the ghosts of the past instead of the breathing, living men of the present. An auto memory doll able to craft a better letter than I could if only for the right training. Since that won't happen I will persevere, forgetting about my injury and letting my finger push and bloom against the keys until the entire ribbon is blood red instead of just the lower edge and as I pick up speed the paper begins to spread scarlet from white. Day to night. A pool, no, a lake of me.

Princess-

Be quiet and let me think, I order him.

You know damn well every second day I'll look up and be like OMG GUYS LOOK AN OWL!

Ransom is finally good for something besides managing projects. 

This morning I made him a coffee and then heard the familiar noise. The water heater, no matter what I do, and the fact that it's newish makes noises randomly and you can hear it all over the house. It's a perfect storm of someone showering while someone else is flushing or something but it will start up and sporadically go for a few minutes and running the hot tap in the master bathtub seems to clear it. 

I made a comment that I needed to go fix that and he offered to put a decoy owl up on the roof for me. 

It is April Fools Day after all. I'm sorry? What will an owl do? 

It will make the Flicker think this territory is already occupied so he'll find somewhere else to drum. 

And then it dawned on me. The Northern Flicker birds I feed, and watch drum on other people's vent stacks every time we go for a walk or run are doing the same things here and my mysterious water heater issues that ONLY happen in spring and only for a few minutes and half a dozen plumbers have checked the heater and can't find any problems with it are just birds looking for mates. 

(And when I filmed the noise aiming the camera directly at the water tank, of course it was loud. That's where the vent stack terminates. Oh my God.)

Huh. 

Decade-old mystery solved right there.