I should be thrilled to see the return of my periods. But really, if you're a girl,  it's just ick.

Can't take me anywhere.

A word of advice: If you're going to take your wife to a patio/outdoor living boutique where they have windchimes, including windchimes taller than she is, so tall that they require their own stand, then please don't be embarrassed when she proceeds to vigorously trigger each and every single set of chimes for sale in her effort to find the one that sounds the prettiest to her nearly-hearing ears.

Don't pretend you don't know her when she claps her hands and decides she's buying the ones with the stand because they were the loudest.

Please don't spend twenty-six minutes pointing out how loud they will be in the yard and how the neighbors will come to despise her, sweet as she is.

And whatever you do, don't turn the windchimes into any bizarre metaphors or examples that will serve to kill time and frustrate her to pieces.

And lastly please buy them and bring them home and promptly set them up in the backyard and apologize to the neighbors in advance, because your wife likes the sound of the big chimes and if she's happy, you're happy because yes, that's exactly how life should be today.

Yay!

Bridget's good things.

I have a kitchen full of strawberries, peaches and peas to snap now and some salmon to grill tonight too that I'll make with a salad. August makes a killer oil & vinegar. I'm rather surprised by his backpacker-meets-upscale restaurant cooking skills but I don't want to puncture the ego of Mr. Grilled Cheese (Jake) so I've been appropriately understated but appreciative. Mr. Grilled Cheese is well aware that his bachelor cooking skills are solid but rarely risky. Which is fine because my cooking skills? Nonexistent.

Thankfully it's hard to mess up salads or anything grilled so between the three of us we'll make a dinner fit for royalty.

In other interesting food news, Joel called last night to invite me out to lunch next week. Just me, no one else. No Jacob, no Claus, no bullshit, just a lunch between friends. So either he's lying and he's really checking up on my wellbeing, so hired by Jacob or I was right when I said I thought he was attracted to me in the way a psychoanalyst should never be interested in their patient. Coincidentally, I am not his patient anymore. I agreed because a) I love food that is brought to me, and 2) Joel is very very cute.

Shh.

No worries, Jacob knows I think Joel is cute but Jacob also has zero jealousy issues right now. As long as Caleb and Loch stay on their side of the border, that is, and not that I'd..okay, just nevermind.

Oh and I've been making lists of projects to do with the kids this summer since they're going to need playdates and field trips and activities up the wazoo because their days were suddenly so structured! The first thing we're going to do is find a old desk we can make into craft station central. Then we'll stock it with all sorts of paper and supplies and it will be our creative corner. I'm going to do three movies a week on the TV, a few playdates each week, walks every day, they're going to help with cooking and cleaning and chores. Hopefully I'll get them into swimming lessons shortly and also we're going to embark on a big project to paint new big-kid murals on their walls. And possibly a mural on the garage door if I can talk Jacob into it.

The first project is UV detector bracelets. Then cork picture frames. Then windchimes. Oh, trust me, the summer is mapped out because I didn't want to settle into an apathetic doldrum as we have tended to do in the past when summer rolled around, homeschooled or not. And Jacob still has the better part of eight weeks left to enjoy before he starts work in earnest so it will be a much different summer than years past. On all counts.

And lastly I have new yoga pants! Which is great because this summer is the summer of holes in the ass! Not those holes, the ones that come from clothes being worn to smithereens! So I have black yoga pants now with white piping down the legs that are so comfortable I wish it was colder outside I would wear them everywhere, even though my season of ballet flats and short dresses has arrived and I was never the type of girl to spend my days in sweats or 'comfy' clothes. I would change my rules for these pants. These pants are awesome.

And one more tiny thing. Sam offered me a job to begin this fall. Not a huge deal but a huge deal. Church secretary. Full-time. Basically I would answer the phone, do the paperwork, maintain the database and calendars, bulletins and help with cleaning and basically keep things running smoothly operations-wise.

The salary he offered was a heck of a lot more than Jacob ever paid me, interestingly enough. And Sam swears he's not been asked nor is he looking to head off or create trouble, he needs a secretary, and he does, so I'm less suspicious but still suspicious. Jacob even pointed out he wishes he had been smart enough to hire me permanently, which is sweet and I always helped in emergencies but it would have been a conflict of interest otherwise. So I'm thinking about it. It might be fun. It might be a good way to keep busy. It might bring some piece of mind to everyone else in my little corner of the world.

Because sometimes I think they worry.

Quiet times.

Today isn't going to be nearly as exciting as yesterday. No, this morning we're staying home, Jacob has some writing he wants to finish and I'm going to spin up the Wensleydale top fiber I have sitting here taking up space before it gets any warmer outside. I've got banana bread in the oven already. August is off to do his own thing, which is nice, since this is our last morning at home alone before the kids are finished school for the summer, and come fall I'm not going to have Jacob around in the mornings because he'll be at school too. And Henry will go to full days.

And I have no idea what I'm going to do with myself and I'm trying not to think about the alone-time which was something I briefly embraced and now it's with ambivalence that I stare it down, not sure if it's friend or foe.

I guess time, as always, will tell me which side it's on. It usually does.

Later today we're going to zip over to the farmer's market and beat the weekend crowds to get our fruit and vegetables and then tonight I want to barbecue some chicken and make some salad and plug in the tiny white lights and enjoy a much cooler evening listening to mellow acoustic love songs and drinking green tea. I'm not feeling the green tea love. Maybe I always was a coffee person but the tea seems weak and barely flavorful even after steeping it forever. Jacob said today he would hunt down some authentic chai for me to try, that I might enjoy it more since chai has a spicy kick to it.

I'm not picky really, as long as I have something warm to sip or hold.

Today's barometer was surprisingly calm. We slept last night. We talked quietly, long after everyone went to sleep and long after Loch reached through the phone and tore a strip off me, as he has always done every time I crossed any lines. We've been each other's consciences for many many years. Even as I tried to hurt him back by pointing out the state his life was in at present he lobbed it back easily and asked me if I had a plan yet to fix my head without an instruction manual. He swore gently when I cried and eventually Jacob pried the phone out of my hand and asked Loch just to back off a bit.

I can't even explain it and I won't because I share too much as it is and I know that. In any event, it's going to be a low-key day. All the high-keys are spent.

Glass.

Loch called me with a comeuppance and a few cautions besides. He told me to slow down, for Jacob and I to take our time, the forever clause invoked with a bent toward being healthy instead of crazy, turning inward to each other instead of spreading so thin, being more protective of what we fought so hard for in the first place.

It was better advice than we have had in the past fifteen months, it was fatherly without being disapproving, a gentle nod from someone who's had a ringside seat for so long he created my circus as well as the participating audience.

He is absolutely right.

Maybe in our rush to be a part of each other we have failed to keep in check all the things that make us individuals. I've got my crazy and beautiful, Jacob has his logical and steadfast. He brings that handsome smile and I melt, visibly and without warning and it causes me to forget all sorts of wonderful things.

Like my common sense.

I never had any common sense with Jacob. I could never do anything right. I could never fail to make mistakes and topple balanced worlds and spin fixed objects. He could never see anything except for Bridget and biding his time until Bridget.

Yes, we probably will kill each other with the intensity that burns so hot everything around us turns to glass. Glass is so brittle, so transparent and so incredibly fragile.

We, however, are not.

Off with my head.

Holy TMI.

In all seriousness, I didn't get to spend a dime. Jacob heard me on the phone with Mark making some plans and he preempted them with an offer to take me out and get me a new swimsuit, since mine was worn to pieces on the camping trip. And even though we spent the last week or so bickering constantly and needling each other, I knew it might be a fun way to break the ice between us.

Jacob has always loved watching me try on swimsuits, I have taken him with me for years as an impartial judge and he makes jokes about the sticker inserts and asks me if I've always had those weirdly-shaped knees and perhaps I would have better luck in my size in the girls' department. I would put on the barest of string bikinis and watch him try to keep his composure. He rarely could. I know, I was a total attention whore back then.

Little has changed.

Yesterday was no exception. We pretty much had the store to ourselves, and he knows the owners, it's a large sporting goods store where he gets his climbing and running gear, so he came back and sat outside the dressing room and I would peek out and show him a shoulder or a leg. Then I got stuck in the cutest bikini, I tied the neck string in a knot and couldn't get out of it and I asked him to come in and untie it because I couldn't see to do it. He came in and closed the door and untied it and I turned around to say thanks and he kissed me, backing me into the corner and sliding me up the wall, because we can slide up as easily as we seem to slide down. He pulled off the rest of that bikini and flashed his dimples. The flash I know well that says he's done being difficult and wants forgiveness and forgives everything besides.

Sold.

I put my arms around his neck and he had my head in one hand and my hips in the other and we defiled their dressing room. He put his thumb on my lips so I wouldn't make any noise and he smiled like he was up to no good, because he was, and we made short work of a stolen opportunity and came out of the room fully dressed (and completely forgiven) about eight minutes later.

Of course I bought the green bikini he peeled off me mid-ravage because he proclaimed it the hottest one.

When we walked back to the truck he wove his fingers into mine, kissing the top of my head and sighing a contented sigh. Make-up sex is the best in the world, even if it took place in possibly the very last place I would ever have imagined.

So don 't tell anybody. Geez.

We came home with our packages and had a snack with the kids and then they wanted to beat August at Guitar Hero so we took off again, Jacob wanting to be present because my plans with my friend Mark were fast approaching.

Mark is a tattoo artist at a shop here in the city, and I was making an appointment to have my nipples pierced (oh hush, you). Because mostly, that's the kind of thing that happens when you tell Bridget to go "do something for herself". I don't head for the spa or the hair salon first, I head for the tattoo parlour.

Mark's face plummeted when he saw Jacob enter the shop behind me but they both sucked it up and shook hands and Mark asked Jacob if he wanted anything done today too. Jacob laughed and said no thanks.

The actual piercing was nerve-wracking. Mark doesn't do it, there's a professional piercer there and so we went to a back room and I took off my shirt and we were off and running. I wasn't nervous but after the first one was through I tried to chicken out. Mark came in, which shocked Jacob, who was there sitting in a room with me with my shirt off carrying on a nervous-chattery conversation with two other men. But they were professional and kind, Mark has always been a very good friend, even if I don't have all my ink from him, and finally he left again after I agreed to do the second one with a bribe from Jacob. If I finished and had both done, he'd get a piercing too, today.

Oh, it's on.

It's so on.

I held up my end. It wasn't so bad after all, adrenaline kicked in and finished off the nerves for me and I barely felt the needle the second time. I left with two very snug and cute barbells, horizontally embedded in my nipples. I love being decorated. Especially subtly, as most of my mods can be easily covered with any outfit. That's half the fun for me.

Now it was Jacob's turn and the piercer left to get another round of supplies. Jacob looked at me with a barely nervous smile.

You know, I've often thought I should do this. (Even though it took him 35 years to get his first tattoo.)

He has the courage of twenty men, the only time I have ever seen him truly nervous was just as he proposed to me because he had somehow convinced himself I would say no. Then I was told to leave the room. Huh? Grand central station as I'm there shirtless and now I have to leave while he gets his ears pierced? What the fuck?

I went out and talked with the receptionist for about ten minutes and then Mark called me back to see Jacob and told me our piercings today were on him. I thanked Mark and followed him into the room where Jacob was lying on the table. I looked at his ears and saw nothing and then I realized his pants were on the chair.

He got an...ahem...an apadravya.

A freaking apadravya.

And this time the smile was all mine. We went back to the car and Jacob seemed to need reassurance. He asked me to confirm that the make-up sex was good, that I had enjoyed myself. I said I did. It was exactly what we needed, some hushed, desperate love exactly when we wanted it. He said good, because it might be a while before we have sex again.

He spent the rest of the day with an ice pack on his lap. I'm so proud of him. The boys now call him Reverend Hardcore.

No quarter.

This morning Jacob handed the cranky princess a fistful of cash and told her to go and do something fun for herself.

Translation: oh just take your unpredictable emotions and give me a break, already.

And for some reason I can't even fathom, she's still sitting here with absolutely no idea what to do.

If you had two hundred dollars and several hours to yourself, what would you do?

Burning wings.

Thank you for the kind thoughts, but really, it's a small remembrance, one of many I've made so that the kids will always remember they've got two dads, and both love them unconditionally and forever, in spite of any circumstances that have ever been in place.

I'm going to make less than the usual sense today. I was up all night with the thunderstorms raging in my ears, sweat dripping off my chin, blowing off steam and heartache in Jacob's arms, Jacob who didn't drive to Mexico like I feared he might, instead returning after dinner to hear all about 'Daddy's bench' and see the pictures and hear about the slightly creepy black butterfly that wouldn't leave us alone the whole time we were there.

Christ. Cole is going to reincarnate himself as different giant scary insects. It figures. Oh my God I am so afraid of bugs.

Jacob's issue wasn't with a fixture-type memorial, it was more with the sad notion that this is the first Father's Day that Cole wasn't here, and now that Jacob is all officially a dad now he feels the pain of that. He's sad for Cole. Sometimes he realizes the gravity of what has happened so much more deeply than it is usually felt around here and he can step outside of his own feelings and..

And oh my God, be objective about something.

Otherwise, he made sure all the butterflies in the neighborhood, along with the bees and the spiders and any other creepy-crawlies were left outside in the rain on the other side of the locked doors of his house and that his children and his guest were long asleep and then he made love to his wife all night, an athletic, belligerent, half-angry rail because sometimes he's not objective when it comes to Bridget and he won and stuck it to Cole worse than any two friends could ever hurt each other and he did it on purpose because he wanted me and not because Cole was hurting me, oh no, and he took all of the dark hours to confirm that, in my eyes and in his own I am his so that there would be no mistake.

There is no mistake.

And I'm sure the rain poured down on that bench last night and somewhere Cole was screaming at Jacob to give him back his family. Jacob would have smiled in his dreams and said no, that I was safe now and I would be safe forever because he always liked to hide his selfishness, wrapping it in a disguise of rescue, so that he would always be my hero, saving me from bugs and from dead husbands. Saving me from everything dark and scary.

Everything except for Jacob and his intense need for me. For that, I am on my own.

A functional graveyard.

Today the kids and I are on our own.

I got a call last night from the city, the park bench has been designated and there is a bronze plaque affixed at last, stemming from a request I put in and paid for last fall in anticipation of honoring father's day for Cole, who missed his first one since Ruth was born in 1999.

I'm going to take the kids to see it today. It's in the park we used to visit, where Cole started taking pictures and ended drawing, sitting on a bench with someone else's name inscribed on it, telling me someday he hoped I would do that for him.

I remembered, Sweetheart. I remember everything and not all of it is bad, I promise.
Jacob and August are driving to the border to explore on the bike so I get the truck. After I think I'll take the kids for ice cream sundaes if they're up for it.

I don't think I'm up for it, Jacob is definitely not up for it, but it isn't about us.

Caustic kiss.

    Sheets of empty canvas, untouched sheets of clay
    Were laid spread out before me as her body once did.
    All five horizons revolved around her soul
    As the earth to the sun
    Now the air I tasted and breathed has taken a turn

    And all I taught her was everything
    I know she gave me all that she wore
    And now my bitter hands chafe beneath the clouds
    Of what was everything.
    the pictures have all been washed in black, tattooed everything

This morning I rolled over sleepily to snuggle into Jacob's chest and received my usual good morning kiss: a soft muzzle just under my ear. He kissed me and then I sensed that he was making a face in the dark.

Bug spray, honey.

Yes. And lots of it, Bridget.