Busy B.

Okay so I disappeared again but I'm here, I'm just trying to do a life reset, as it's a new season of life for me and since I had a birthday I get to change things up as I see fit. I've been doing more hardscaping and landscaping and less gardening. We opted out of a full veggie garden this year in favour of spoiling the fruit trees and the lilacs and maybe the roses too. The veggie garden out on the end of the point behind the little boathouse has been levelled and we took all of the spare patio stones and rocks out there and made a new Victorian patio like the one we had in the Prairies and I love it. Lochlan built a big bench for extra seating and an arbour over the top and Ben likes to sit out there on nice evenings and play his guitar. It's closer to the sea, further from the house but somehow removed from the noise of the house, pool, life, neighbors, traffic, planes. I don't know. It's literally forty feet away from the pool but somehow it's become a designated quiet spot. Like a library or a hospital ICU. No loud voices allowed. 

Yes, he could have gone to the little grotto out front but we redid that too as a larger perennial space and made it so it's more secure-a higher wooden fence now surrounds the whole property so if you are a bear or a person with ill intent you have your work cut out for you. Motion lights and cameras too. Caleb isn't happy with the bears even though I swore up and down that their intent wasn't malicious, just curious. 

He didn't believe me, and no, I did not build the fence. But maybe I do appreciate it just enough that I do feel safer. I feel like Ben will be safer and August too. August never tells anyone when he's coming or going. The rest of us always check in with someone. This way everyone is accounted for and no one can be eaten by a bear. This morning I did see one malicious squirrel though. A large brown one who has been planting peach pits all over the property and we have little trees popping up here and there. It would be funny save for the fact that in the Prairies in the castle we had to pull the soffits down because a squirrel family made a nest and made a mess and it was expensive to fix and then I felt bad because it gets so cold there in the winters. But what do I do? Allow holes in my house? Crank the heat and hope the furnace doesn't break? Ha. No. Bye squirrel. Go build a home in the garage or the treehouse, or at the neighbors. 

So I did not welcome this little brown squirrel. 

I also learned that if I stay up late watching movies and shows or knitting I actually sleep better. I've learned I can skip my chores and they are only 15% worse the next schedule. I've learned that we don't need military precision for meals and I don't need to be treated like a child. I've got my ability to feel back, as witnessed this morning while I was reading my weekly chapter of Yarn Harlot (I'm a very slow reader okay? This book is only read while I wait for the washer to stop so I average 10 minutes a week if that on it) and the chapter on being a doula and knitting the tiny sock had me crushed to a pulp before the last paragraph. 

I did some exploring and broke my phone, which let to a quick panic to replace it on the fly because the battery life went from alright and kinda sucky to Hope You Get Home as the GPS was necessary and so I have an new phone and no good cases again. I had just amassed a perfect collection and declared my iphone 12 my ride or die until a folding phone comes out from Apple. Lochlan laughed and probably cursed my phone and it promptly decided it was done holding charges. And bless their hearts at Apple, we walked in, they saw this tiny little woman with white hair and began to inquire kindly what I use my phone for and I laughed and said everything and listed what I needed them to bring out for me to buy and they did. 

I found a few different routes which quell the strange confusion around some busier areas and I feel more capable with navigation of some spots I have had trouble with for the better part of the fourteen years I have been here. 

Things I have been wanting to do I am doing, and no one is telling me no and no one is trying to stop me and I'm shoving that in their faces with as much grace and gratitude as I can.

Wildcard.

Thank Schuyler this time for usurping the power-hungry one and out-cooling everyone else, pointing out how juvenile it is to deny a grown woman internet at will, for any and all perceived or imagined or even concrete-proofed slights. 

Schuyler is such a king. If only he could shoot his cuffs like Caleb I would be such a goner. Actually never mind, I am a goner most of the time. 

I had a birthday and declined all activities. It was one of those things. Maybe one of these years. I still miss the life I thought I had and it went by so fast and I was so busy and now the life is new and the years are different and the light is different and I don't know if I took a wrong turn somewhere back along the path and am close by but not quite or if this is where I'm supposed to be but it feels strange and different and new somehow. 

Schuyler said I felt different. Like the joy has been sucked out of the room again. He said some normalcy will help and then he found out I had no outlets suddenly save for him and that's when he swept house, pretty much. Everyone got a lecture with their piece of cake. 

Bridget, of course, has had cake for breakfast every damn day this week. It was delicious.

I just wanted to be yours.

Acceptance and affection are my currencies. I don't do any exchange, it's all at par and it's freaking expensive for you. Worse for me still as I can't put a price on the absolute value. It wanes like the sunbeams across the wooden floor, unpredictable new cats lounging in the warmth left behind. 

It's sweet, for sure but difficult too. Like that first time you make a calculated decision to change something because he likes it better and you want to please him. It makes him happy and the thrill you feel down between your shoulder blades when he smiles at you with unchecked delight is the reward for selling yourself out. That's a long race to the bottom and it's a race you should never put yourself in. You're not qualified, you haven't trained, and yet you know in the moment you're going to spend the remainder of your life chasing the high of that thrill like the best drug you never wanted but were given anyway. 

Oh, but his face when he smiles.  

***

The reason the pills went away wasn't because I was a zombie, even though I was. They would have left me locked in that cage forever. It was safer. It was easier. It was convenient and peaceful and stupid, that Bridget being a yes-man when she's been an obstinate nine-year old for her entire existence, all fifty-some odd years of it now. 

They went away for other reasons and I'll never let them do that again. 

Even if it means the smile fades like those sunbeams.

It won't. 

What if we just wait and see, Lochlan?

It won't. I told you and I mean it.

Chipmunks in the willows.

This little corner of the internet turned twenty on Friday. I would have posted but I keep opening my yapping trap and losing my internet privileges. The blog might be an adult now, but I don't think I ever will be, at least not to Caleb, who controls the flow of information out of the Collective most days, or to Lochlan, who can't be bothered to die on that hill, frankly and I don't blame either one of them. It's a blog, not a big deal really. A place where I overshare and foist my tiny frustrated opinions on everyone and you just take it. You read it and then you probably shake your head and get on with your day. 

Yes, imagine me in real life. This is why the boys need naps. 

Eighteen years ago I started writing my tiny, stupid opinions on things and telling you about my tiny stupid life from a tiny, stupid brick apartment building, in a crumbling-paint lead-lined fifth-floor walkup a park away from the main thoroughfare through the city. 

I took that all down. Then it became After Jake. 

Then it really became After Jake because he died and it took me (it's taking me, I mean) the better part of sixteen years to come to terms with the weight of that and how to walk and drag it along with me without becoming out of breath. 

That was three addresses ago that I started it. I just remember people kept hitting our car in the parking lot and that's how I met my neighbours, all decent people who would pitch in and help me with the kids on fire-alarm days, anyway. Then we bought the castle, and Trey (Cole) lost his shit and then he lost me and then he lost his life and I started writing like a joyful little maniac, thinking I had all the time in the world, never once turning around to see the freight train coming at me. Of course I never heard it either. I'm functionally deaf and the biggest faker you will ever meet, pretending all the time.

But there is never enough time. Twenty years goes by in the blink of an eye and I am trying and failing to ease myself back into the every day here but it's tough going because I had the wind knocked out of my sails and I don't fight with Caleb much anymore, I just let him shoulder the guilt as I turn away, tucking my shoulders in, putting my head down and going and finding something (or someone) else to do. 

I never said I was an angel. That was Lochlan's nickname for me. One of thousands. He still looks at me with rose-coloured pupils and for that I am eternally grateful. They all do. The zookeepers with their little monkey. The wolves with their feral forest girl. I never said I gave up any bad habits I just took a break from writing about them because with the inclusion of possibly two years of the worst medication I have ever been on, you would have thought it was a major Red Flag. Like last time. I get stoned and everyone shrieks that I am being taken advantage of so it's better not to say anything at all. 

It isn't them. It never was. It's me. All the time. I take the blame. I am the blame here, every day of my life. Brick by brick, letter by letter, pill by pill. 

Happy birthday, blog.

***

I am 1/4 into Yarn Harlot and it's...well? Upsetting. I have trouble reading about people who are wilfully irresponsible. Ironic, isn't it? I guess I hate reading about people who shove their kids aside and maniacally laugh about psychological issues. I have all sorts of those and I still gave my kids my all. I always will. I'm going to stick with it and then maybe burn it in the bonfire later this week. It's a weird navel-gaze, anyway. Maybe it will get better?

***

I finished Gypsy on Netflix. Thank God I watch these things on one and half speed, sometimes two, so as not to waste my own time. Everyone says the actors sound like chipmunks when I do that, but I'm just gleefully content not to have wasted over ten hours. I LOVE LOVE Naomi Watts. I want her to play me in the movie of my life but this was a terrible thing. She was bad, it was bad. Billy Crudup was amazing. It should have been a two hour movie with a murder. Then it would have been okay. Maybe. Maybe I shouldn't have watched it after Penguin Bloom, which was a full-on masterpiece. Doing the lord's work here, as always. 

***

Jacob would have loved the way Caleb uses the internet as a reward-based system to keep me in line. He would have laughed in that hoarse, incredulous Newfie twang that rang through the halls when something was that Oh-My-Fucking-God. He and Caleb would have probably killed each other by now if Jacob had been stronger. But he wasn't and so there's that. And I'm sorry this has been eighteen years of strife and misery but like I said, at least it's going along at a rapid clip. Just read it all in a chipmunk voice. It's what I hear when I picture you reading it out loud.

Radium paint and Closed for Lunch.

I'm having fun today with the Geiger counter (long story which I WILL TELL if you really want) and measuring everything from the WWI antiques with radium accents (to glow in the dark, like me now, I bet), drunk on exhaustion from staying up past midnight because Coachella. 

Coachella was amazing. But only from 10:45 to midnight and only on the Sahara stage. Then we switched to the mainstage and Lana Del Rey was singing, looking pissed off as ever. Is it shyness? Is she a snob? Lizzie never tells. Her voice is solid like a freight train, so that's that. Of course, it's easy to be steady on your notes if you don't move when you sing. 

That's never happened at an Ateez show. They ate. They danced. They had a blast and so did the audience. So did all of us tuning in from home. Even the boys, who got all excited when Bouncy and Crazy Form were performed. It was awesome. Turning all my metalheads into kpop stans because it's HAPPY. It's FUN. 

Don't get me wrong, metal is fun as fuck but this is a weird eternal-spring/first-love sort of happy feeling and what kind of music does that these days?

So I slept until nine this morning and then we did an inventory of groceries and supplies and made the Big List (this is done weekly to make sure we don't miss anything when we go out. The grocery and hardware stores and shopping in general is way down the highway. Gas is $2.20 a litre and rising and time is money, friend) and then I set to work figuring out if the Geiger counter actually works or if it's a novelty or a false sense of security, or worse, if it works perfectly and we are being irradiated incessantly out of our minds on a daily basis. 

We tried to go antiquing but in British Columbia nothing is actually old because *gestures* reasons and so we came home and for a Saturday everyone has scattered to the wind (like nuclear fallout) and that rarely happens.

Yeah, so we're watching Fallout. How about you?

Sam's lists.

Things I am sick of: "No worries" comments, solar eclipses, gas-powered outdoor landscaping equipment noise, waiting for paint to dry and the infuriating instant-cry that happens when I think about death. 

Things I am grateful for: sunshine and dandelions, pear blossoms (even if they do smell bad), handsewn patchwork, sleepy cats, and Ben's easy hands fixing the coffee grinder which otherwise sounds as loud as one of my nemesis outdoor equipment noises. I believe a bean fell down and got stuck in the sharp parts and it sounds like some kind of electric voodoo blender these days, and so he's having a look. 

This is of  no consequence to me, since I refuse to make fancy coffee and if no one is free these days I'll make instant but a scoop of instant mixed with a scoop of hot chocolate for a de facto mocha which is equal parts awful and delicious. 

So there. 

There's a house near us for sale for four million bucks. It is smaller than most, has two bedrooms and probably will be flattened to make room for a huge mcMansion right to the edges of their property line, which is three cliffs instead of one and not a good plan at ALL. I like the house but I don't want to own it. I am working hard to uncomplicate my life in the extreme and doing really good at it, frankly, including my finances. It was sort of the last hurdle as I do a refresh of sorts. A digital cleanse and organize to follow all of the physical ones that have taken place. 

It's bright enough today to work on the dark green socks I am knitting for Lochlan so off I go to drink some tea and remember that the world is beautiful and all of this is the important parts. The thoughts, dreams, sunny breezes and hot tea. The act of mindful work for a loved one. The gratitude list, playing like a mantra over the squiggly line that makes up my own unalome. The faded patio pillows against the fresh dark green grass and the noises ebbing at last as people hang up their tools, trading them for dinner utensils and quiet pursuits at sunset. 

I'll still burst into tears randomly but maybe I'm grateful for that too.

"Now that the lilacs are in bloom, she has a bowl of lilacs in her room." -T.S. Eliot

We were poking around thrift stores out in the valley on the weekend (Dalton and PJ are always on the hunt for what I lovingly call 'musical electronics' (old amps, guitars, heads, etc.) while Lochlan looks for vintage hand tools and I just look at everything, but I have my sights set on a 'nice' vintage Cowichan sweater for cold nights by the fire when a blanket and five men don't cut it but finding one in reverse colours (dark body, light colorwork) is a unicorn) and I found a copy of a book called Yarn Harlot. 

It seemed vaguely familiar. 

Stephanie's was one of the first blogs I ever read, and probably one of the reasons I started writing about my daily life. Something about a peek into someone else's home/day/routine/mindset is comforting, instructional and entertaining all at once. Sometimes we covet what someone else has. Sometimes we feel better about our own relationships, cleaning routine or feelings after reading about someone else's. It's invasive and voyeuristic and delicious, and I've never been one to demure about any of it, while all the while retaining my privacy to a degree that surpasses any level of reason. 

Anyway, I am one page in and I love it already. It was $4 on a shelf of otherwise terrible knitting pattern books and maybe the reason it called to me was to remind me that I have this outlet and I am not using it to the fullest? Or maybe to remind me of who I used to be? Excited to sit down, tell you everything, delete the worst parts (sometimes the best parts) and then hit publish as if I had completed my magnum opus, every single day. 

Sometimes it's been the only reason I got up in the morning and sometimes I used it to punish myself, the reminder that I haven't done anything to make myself famous or noteworthy, that those who do have a whole team of people lifting them up in the background and I definitely fall squarely into that category, believe it or not. 

I recently picked up my knitting again, probably a year ago now, a way to keep my hands engaged. I'm absolutely compulsive about my hands moving. If they're moving, they may as well be writing, drawing, painting, spinning, knitting, sewing, writing or forming clay. You can't always be touching someone, though that will forever and always be my first choice. 

I am now almost a couple of months out from the very last pill and physically things are starting to calm down. Emotionally I am the Pacific National Exhibition though, all thrills, chills, delight and horror all at once. That will calm down eventually, maybe now even, since the physical issues are ebbing. 

(I am also a couple months out from the heavy-handed and punitive internet embargo that infantilized me right back to the eighties, when the internet wasn't around but the boys' rules were just as miserable.)

So all that is to say thank you for sticking around. Somehow I think it was easier when I had that full-blown psychotic break and went to stay at the hospital with the locks on every door.  It was like speed dating. They pumped you full of drugs, asked a lot of questions, then immediately withdrew the drugs, asked many more questions and then suddenly I was home again. This was a years-long drawn-out ridiculous fugue state where I couldn't be anxious no matter how hard I tired but everything else went to shit. I laughed inappropriately at sad things. I got in fights because I couldn't empathize with the things that were important to others. I gained a lot of weight. I wasn't me anymore. 

I need to be me, or else who am I? 

And spring is a time of renewal and change and reassurance. The lilacs have their tiny buds bursting to come out, the nights are cool but warmer than before and it was light out last even until past seven-thirty, which I exclaimed with great delight in the moment, knitting in hand. I will always have my hands busy. I took my sewing box (it's a Turkish cookie tin) to bed last night and sat up in the middle between Lochlan and Ben with a cat and a flashlight in my lap and pieced together a patchwork cloth that I will then cut into to make a book cover for my paperbacks to live in as I read them (it keeps them nicer in my bag) and to remind me that physical books are as important to care for as my beloved kindle, and I did that until midnight and then I finally turned off my flashlight at midnight and slept until six-thirty. 

So normal. So invasive to tell you this. So looking forward to the lilacs this year.

Stop it.

I am continuing to struggle here and no, I'm not that Princess. And no, there are no good guesses when people think I'm writing under a pseudonym. I only did that professionally. This is just me and so you're reading about a regular princess here. One soaked in brine and regret and sometimes full on sillyness. I had another death to deal with, another realization that life is slipping by. I finished a book, missed a show I would have loved to have seen (Jon Foreman opened for someone here a week ago and I had no idea-this on the eve of the release of his latest solo effort, no less and WHY didn't someone tell me??) and am playing Catch Up and (sometimes to their alarm) am playing Don't Care too. Why? Trying to withdraw from some seriously serious medications have kicked me off the cliff. Doing it while dealing with death? Harder still. Do I want to talk about it? No. Do I need to? 

Maybe. 

I got four weird emails guessing I was the Princess of Wales. HA. Because easy enough to fake and especially since Canada is a country with a King. Right? Right? 

No? I'm sorry but that's dumb and I am me and you all know that. I cringe a bit when someone discovers y little corner of the internet and skips the whole middle part. I might know a lot of musicians, but as I said constantly, I am not famous. Are there Getty images of me? Nope. Are there press photos of me? Not recently. 

Is it cold and raining today? Yes, it is. Henry is home from California. He went with Caleb on a business trip. He had a great time and we're all sick now because he caught a cold on the plane even with a mask. So I am wrapped in a sweater with the heat up and the bag of Jalapeno Cheetos on the table while I knit and Netflix. Ha. Some princess I am.

They brought you up (by holding you down).

 Littlest wild wolf loves the big snowflakes. 

PJ snorts. I am back downstairs for the first time in days. Silk cami, wool sweater falling off my shoulders, worn jeans and thick socks, necklaces twisted at my throat, my hair tucked behind my ears. Guitar pick that I found on the stairs now safely stowed in my back pocket with my phone, seven rings on my fingers, four on one finger. One for each husband with no ire whatsoever on the part of the first/current/final soulmate to this busted heart.

PJ sent me a text that pulled me out of my post-Christmas pre-spring long grief at the hands of the devil and suggested I make an appearance, that the wolves were restless. That a pack is more fearsome than a loner, that elder wolves have no patience and will eat their young without hesitation. That fur is cold and ruffled, unsettled and fierce. That no amount of charm is going to be able to pave over the holes in the road I have travelled as of late. 

And also to not ignore his message or he'd come up and haul me out by my hair. 

(It takes a lot to get PJ to advance to the second level of the house, as his suite is on the main floor and he goes out of his way to avoid surprise interactions with Caleb.)

Give me fifteen minutes. I send the text and turn my phone back face down. Caleb never needs the ego bite of confirmation that he is under their skin, instead better left to his darkness.

I am here now. Watching the huge flakes fall like feathers from the heavy clouds, keeping a cool grey hue over our lives, quieter now than ever. 

Lochlan is outside, shoulders rounded, head down. I can burn holes in his back with my eyes but he doesn't sense my presence. 

How long? I ask PJ. 

Sunrise, PJ says. I'm not shitting you, Bridget.You are our very own Helen of Troy. 

I ignore him and grab Duncan's sweater off the closet chair, heading outside.

Dotaine. 

He ignores me as I hurry to the edge of the world. 

Do-TAINE (Doe-chain. It comes out breathless, strangled). 

He turns, head ducked, now rising to meet my eyes. 

She returns. The prodigal daughter. 

Jesus. Can we stop with the new nicknames? I called you. 

What was I going to do, Neamhchiontach? Answer you?

YES. 

Fuck that. I'm not giving him any grace. 

You mean me. 

That too. 

I stare at him. Huge snowflakes cover our heads. Ice crowns, freeze each other out. Whiteout, snowblind. Ultimatums carved in ice. Love on ice. Regrets after he told me I was exhausting and Caleb could take a shift and finally do some of the heavy lifting. Always the same song with Lochlan. 

Did you say your goodbyes, Bridget?

I did. 

Did he weep for the loss?

Don't, Locket. 

At least tell me he was crushed with the sudden recall of his favourite plaything. 

I say nothing, setting my jaw, turning to look out at the blackened waves. After a beat: He can tell you himself. 

I'm speaking with you. 

I left, so I don't know. 

He must have said something-

Let's go inside.You must be so cold. 

I am fire, Bridget. And I can burn him to the ground. 

You told him to do some of the work. 

It was a bluff. A commentary on his lack of participation. And in return I got a week of threats. 

Saying what?

That you weren't coming back to me. 

And you believed him. 

Always. 

I'm not leaving you, Locket. Stop testing me. 

It's the only thing I know how to do. 

I thought you wanted a break from me. You said-

Stop listening to me, goddamit, Peanut-

I pull his face down to mine for a kiss. I don't want to hear it. I don't want him to feel like this. I don't want to be away from him. 

I'm sorry, Bridget. I let you down. I let the wolves in. I-

I am the wolf and I ate your heart and I should be the one saying I'm sorry. 

Why would you ever think any of this is your fault?

Delusional older men and the women who tolerate them.

The snow has started, Neamhchiontach. Come to bed. 

I shake my head. I'm sitting wrapped in a blanket in the big wing chair by the fireplace. It's warm here. It got a lot colder at night in the past few nights and I wasn't ready for it. I practically tried to crawl underneath Lochlan and put my face in Ben's hair to keep my nose warm the other night and both kind of pushed me off so I thought I would give them both a break last night and stay with Caleb. Caleb who had the candles light, the fire burning bright and the whiskey in two tumblers before I got the request completely out. 

Anytime you need me, I am here. 

I'm just cold. You're burning so I figured you would be warm. Don't be flattered. 

Hard not to be. You're here and I don't have to wait for my dreams to visit me in my sleep when they're right in front of me. 

He's so good at this. I feel my icy heart melting just enough to create a sizzle around the edges and then I slept like the dead for hours. Until I couldn't anymore which is always in the early darkened hours of the day, the inky black silent morning before sunrise. 

Give me another night. You need a full night of rest before I send you back. 

I don't get any rest here.

It's a polite euphemism, he snaps, frustrated by my casual rejection. As always we both benefit from your late night wandering. 

I like to watch the snow. I'll come back when I'm tired. 

You always come back to me.