It IS Monday, after all.

The best way to begin a new week, a day off, a hope for progress and peace is not to walk in on your significant other counting your pills to make sure you're taking them.

I would do the same thing.

I saw that and turned and walked back out and Jake chased after me. He spun me around and told me he just wants this to go smoothly. I nodded. Sort of miffed about the whole trust issue. I think I trust him with absolutely everything except walking out and he trusts me with everything except getting better. So we're even.

Sunday night wrapup.

Sunday nights are interestingly quiet now. Jake is working. Oh I know he's only three blocks away, seconds by cellphone, and I'm perfectly safe. What's hard is the homesickness, the unfamiliarity that creeps back in around the edges.

It's 8 pm, the kids are in bed, the cat is asleep, the dishes are put away, laundry is in the dryer and I even managed to finally file my nails because they were ragged. I have new printer ink. I made cinnamon rolls again and chucked my nine-year-old breadmaker out because it wouldn't heat up enough to make the bread rise anymore. I hemmed some of Henry's pants. I fixed a torn sleeve on Jake's workshirt. I painted a chip on the bathroom baseboard. I printed a bunch of pictures out for Cole's parents to have. I went through his tools in the workshop and organized them. He never put anything away. I used to ask him why he never hung the hammer up again and he said if I fucked up he wanted it handy to bash my head in.

I hung it up. Probably should have thrown it away out of spite. But instead I came upstairs and locked the door and took my pills and ate an apple. That is progress.

Things Bridget cannot live without

   1. Love
   2. Touch
   3. Cake
   4. Bobby pins
   5. love songs
   6. the atlantic ocean
   7. Light
   8. A soft place to rest her head
   9. security
  10. Jacob, Ruth and Henry


Ta-da. Therapy homework. Check.

The bobby pins wouldn't have ended up there. Jake suggested that. So technically I cheated and got help with my answers. I always have a couple of bobby pins stuck in my hair. To keep the whispies at bay fruitlessly, in case I have to pick a lock, or just because it's very retro. No idea. I wrote a blog entry once about one of my favorite memories of my mom being looking at her little Japanese lacquered box full of bobby pins and equating that with being a woman, with being beautiful. The entry is no longer on the web, when I started fresh in April, wiping off all the entries about daily life with Cole and the kids. I didn't want to see that anymore. Now it feels like none of it ever happened. I don't regret erasing him. I just don't. But alas, I am still heavily in the denial phase of grief. I hesitate to call it grief. I'm being honest. I sound like a monster.

I have so many bobby pins. hundreds maybe. I buy them by the sheet. I lose them everywhere. They have a tendency to slide out of my hair and down Jacob's collars and at the end of each day he finds them and returns them to the little metal box on my dresser.

There has to be a metaphor in there somewhere but I can't find it. Something about using pins to hold myself together or at least give that appearance but usually it fails to work and we're picking up the pieces every day.

Sometimes we do.
Sometimes we don't.

On less than confident days like today I'm just hoping the pins will hold. Because I want this. Jacob is confident they will and he says when they fall out we just put them back in. He says there is a metaphor. You can put the pins in, and eventually they loosen on their own, through movement, gravity, whathaveyou and periodically you push them back in tight. A metaphor for life. Keeping it tight, keeping it together, weaving in loose ends and restoring the pinned back order. Keeping watch for the parts that will eventually work their way loose once more, because it happens.

Oh he's so smart. I have lots of pins. This will work.

Must go get ready for church. Have a wonderful day.

Maybe God IS listening.

I've got nothing today for you except an empty coffeepot and a plate of crumbs because I just ate two chocolate chip muffins. I never even eat a whole one and I had two. Love these pills. Soon I'll be posting as the elephant princess. I haven't stopped eating all week.

No seriously. I have nothing to say. Why? Oh I dunno. Life is good. Life is very sweet and very wonderfully mediocre today and I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm going out to do some gardening and then we'll go pick strawberries and maybe drive up to the lake. The light of my life is sitting here rubbing the back of my neck and reading a book and the kids are playing games on the floor and the cat is playing in the sun and seriously, if you pinch me right now I'll knock you flat.

This.

This is what I wished for.

How are you feeling?

Fine, Dr. Reverend.

Very funny. You're so quiet today.

I know. I miss myself even. Don't you?

Of course. I miss the lap dances.

Jake, all you have to do is ask.

Naw, I'm afraid you'll fall asleep on me.

That's okay. You can finish without me. Just lie me down backwards.

Oh god. That's so bad.

Or fun. Go for it.

Bridge...

I know. And yes, everything has to be perverted. I thought we covered this already?

Oh there you are. Welcome back.

Angels losing sleep.

(Welcome to Bridget's brain 2.0. Now with footnotes! Because I love to spoil you.)

I am now the proud co-owner of a california king-sized bed. Possibly the Biggest Bed in the World.

Oh, the luxury. Say it with me folks, ooooooh.

Well, maybe save it until next week, when it's actually delivered and Jake takes his life into his hands trying to get that giant bed up the 100 year old staircase. If I knew when king sized beds were invented, well, the house was most likely built before then.

But it's wonderful to know most of our sleeping issues will soon be over.* We're not doing so hot in that department. The queen-sized bed is too small. It was okay for him by himself but not both of us. Everytime Jacob moves he wakes himself up and then I wake up and well, it takes hours to get back to sleep because sometimes when we wake up we're lucid enough to remember that we're together. In bed. The only clothing between us consisting of my pink camisole. Kids are asleep. And Christmas never ends in this house anymore. Or something.

He's a free climber in his sleep. I half expect him to show up to bedtime with his nalgene bottle and a chaulk bag. Spiderman. Tormented. Something. Not like I had a lot of experience in this area but do people really move around this much while they're asleep? I don't move at all. Well, sometimes I have one of those giant just-about-asleep twitches in which you feel like you're falling off something, but otherwise I don't move. Not an inch. A statue.

Jake? Never. stops. moving. He throws himself around like he's scaling rock faces. He takes me with him. I think God maybe put us together so we could touch each other all the time and leave everyone else the hell alone. Because when he moves, he moves me.

We start off with Jake flat on his back, his arms pulling me close. I usually lie on my side and attempt to put my head somewhere besides his armpit. He lies on the diagonal. I squish my arms in between us. Within about an hour he turns on his side to face me. An hour later he shoves me up toward the corner of the bed and kicks his legs out across the middle. Then he wakes up and kisses me like he hasn't seen me in weeks. Oh lord. Okay now skip forward an hour (shhhh) he still has his arms around me and he's got the entire bed to himself and I'm hanging off the edge, the only thing keeping me off the floor is his embrace and his hand is tangled in my hair and oh shit if I fall this is going to hurt like hell. Eventually I get pulled back in close and he does a timed choreography in which he shifts from breathing on my head to facing the other way to face down in the mattress with his legs splayed out scaling that imaginary building, me tucked under him in his arms like he's running away with the treasure of a lifetime.

I'm surprised we haven't had a horrific Bridget-squishing incident yet.

In his dreams he is taking me away from the monsters. God bless him. Jacob may be the most laid-back person you will ever meet but he is not relaxed, even in his sleep. He insists it's been going on for years and he does sleep through most of it, not a big deal.

Riiiight.

Wait a minute. In his dreams he's been saving me for years? Oh my dear god someone bronze this man.

The reality is that no one is sleeping. I wake up while he's in the middle of rearranging where I was sleeping just fine and it's very disconcerting.

I'm moving! Fuck! What the hell is going on?! And then I realize I'm in the bedroom and the quilt is the same and the clock says whatever time is more than an hour ago and I look and Co...I mean Jake, phew okay yes it's Jake and I can relax and I am safe and great now I feel weird and I need to snuggle in closer because his strong tanned arms represent my life and ahh now I can get back to sleep no wait he's awake and we're just going to reaffirm everything and taste possibly every happiness we can make right here in the dark long hours of this night. Every night.

So the plan is to hope and pray that the extra 48-square-inches of real estate on the new bed will fix all this. No, not the sex part you idiot. The being able to sleep at all.

*Now that I've written it out I have my doubts.

The crunchy ones, not the wet ones.

Henry came running this morning to tell me that there was a goldfish cracker fairy too. I would say he lives on goldfish crackers but he eats everything. Everything and asks for more. He outweighs Ruth by almost 10 pounds. And he loves to carry around a snack cup full of goldfish crackers that must be regularly refilled so that he can continue to play and snack his way through the day.

Goldfish crackers are the crack of the snack world. You're hooked from the first one. The other night we were watching music videos and I grabbed a handful of them, Henry had abandoned the bowl at last, and they were so yummy I went and got the box and ate the rest.

Oops.

Jake told Henry the fairy was yellow and she was tired from squeezing her big goldfish cracker-padded butt through the screen to get to more fishies.

Nice. He picked up more when he got the cake. Not sure if they're for me (oops I mean the goldfish cracker fairy) or for Henry. Since I do not have a big butt. I have no butt at all.

I'll be out of here around four, after I pick you up I want to stop in at the furniture store.

How come?

To look for a bed.

What's wrong with our bed?

It doesn't fit us.

It's your bed. What do you mean?

It's not long enough for both of us. I think we need a bigger mattress. Maybe one of the long kings.

For the long king? (snort)

Does everything have to be perverted, Bridge?

Yes, Jacob. It really does.

When you're happy and you know it.

The world's prettiest zombie. Night of the living Bridget. A pissed-off little baby bumblebee. A totally buzzing, vibrating, half-dead, almost perpetually asleep stinging ball of total mellow. Ahahaha. Mellow peeps. New for Easter. They only come in blonde.

These are all the descriptions of me that man is flinging across the room. I'm glad someone's laughing. I'm squinting one eye shut and just trying not to plant my face in the laptop while I write. At least he made some coffee. Maybe I'll actually be awake after I finish it. Oh and the cake. He went and got a black forest cake and warmed up a piece for me. Because cake for breakfast isn't just in the movies. It's for the liquid Bridget-type aliens who took over my house. I looked in the mirror this morning and I laughed. Like a fucking maniac. The very first side effect of all these pills is the deep dark circles under my eyes. So fucking beautiful now.

My god, he really should run far far away. And take the kids with him so they get half a chance. I'm kidding. They went off with their little lunchpacks to playgroup today like they do every Wednesday. Clean, neat, color-coordinated and fiercely loved by both of us. I've got my shit together enough so that I can parent well and just fall apart on the side. It's a gift.

I'm just rattling around the house today amazed that life goes on, as it always does while I bounce from one round of knockouts to the next. There are few sure things in this life and for me we've gone well past death and taxes. The things that keep cropping up to keep us going: cake, hugs, laughter, coffee, normalcy, oxygen, love that we live on. New memories. Blessed new ones. Quick, fill me up and then the old ones will fade away forever.

Memories like cake for breakfast. Cake for the bee. Peep peep.

This is your brain on drugs. I could get used to this. oh and get this: up to six WEEKS to build up a tolerance with this. Lord. And I'm going to just let it all out so be prepared to be entertained. Or something.

Bridget the wayback machine.

I was going to write another big post but I got a link instead and I can't tear myself away.

So this post is brought to you by Nik Kershaw. Apparently I liked guys with big hair when I was 12. What's your favorite?

    near a tree by a river
    there's a hole in the ground
    where an old man of aran
    goes around and around
    and his mind is a beacon
    in the veil of the night
    for a strange kind of fashion
    there's a wrong and a right