Every now and then I have this urge to tell him to stop being so loud.

You know what's really cool? When I miss Ben during the day I can just put on some of his music and then his voice is reverberating through the entire house, with feeling.

Kind of like when he's home, except with a remote control handy for volume control.

Snort.

Everyone has disappeared back to their lives today so that means I'm back to being really organized, and having six premium plus crackers for lunch every day because I do not have any lunch dates.

Well, that part kind of sucks, actually.

I think he would have chosen to be Peter Pan but that one is already taken so I made him Mr. Grin instead.

So how do you deal with it?

Simple, Dollface. I assess risk for a living. So I make sure to minimize the risk factors by living well and consciously.

But you already do all that.

Exactly. That's why no one wanted you to worry.

Do you hear ticking?

Careful, princess, or we'll change your nickname to Captain Hook.

And that was it. With Caleb, it's very easy to gauge when a subject is now closed. I will be able to look back on that moment in around sixty years, if I remember anything at all, and realize he would never bring it up again. Maybe this is just one of the things you come to know after knowing someone for thirty years. Maybe I am simply delusional and we'll do this every morning and I will fret and wring until I know he didn't just check out in the middle of the night until I hear from him each day. Maybe I won't be able to contain him in the concrete room with the others, hell, I'm always stunned to find Cole still there because Cole is virtually unstoppable. Maybe the death-part changes things like that. Maybe I can gain the upper hand with Caleb when he's dead too.

But I doubt it.

His voice cuts into my reverie. He is smiling at me and my blood freezes in my veins.

I can't see you ever NOT being the princess.

Oh. I check my expression and brush past him. We have a well-timed appointment in court this morning with our mediator for a quick check-in or I wouldn't be dressed up. Instead I could be adjusting my black cloud, terrorizing New-Jake and Dalton or out breakfasting with Lochlan, who chose to start his Monday morning at the diner in the village with the children, because if you can have an adventure on a Monday morning, then you should. (Also: Bridget hardly ever buys bacon anymore because she is becoming the cholesterol fairy.)

So is it a bone of contention that Ben chose to construct the home studio but will still be coming in town most of the time to work?

Maybe. I don't know yet.

Distractions, princess.

Right.

It's okay. You feel the same way when you're writing.

I'm well aware of that.

But you hoped differently.

Maybe. Can we please talk about something else?

What would you like to talk about this morning?

How quickly will we be finished this meeting?

All business today? I can't interest you in lunch?

Not today. The children are home, remember?

I remember, but I also figured that since they're in good hands you might be more receptive to an invitation.

I don't think so. But thank you.

Maybe next week.

Maybe. I let him have the hope.

And with that, we're off. A united front with the best interests of the children at heart. I think the court will be pleased to see this for a change. You know, while it lasts.

Expected vocations.

Here at the home for orphaned rock stars, wayward artists, those afflicted by romantic Tourettes, sideshow freaks and vaguely clingy but perfectly capable, newly-minted moguls, we have dreams too, you know.

Just because we didn't run the gamut of promising to get in shape, lose weight, spend less, live greener or eat locally or whatever is on those magical lists doesn't mean we don't already do those things, it just means we're decided the disheartening approach of beginning fresh only to abandon efforts and subsequently feeling bad about that isn't the way we want to do things anymore.

Besides, I have another new career. Well, not new, I've just decided to go pro.

Collecting beach glass, full time.

It fits in very well with my other mind-bendingly nonpareil occupations of being the company figurehead (bolted on the front like on a ship, no less), simple affection extractor, wrangler of personal black rain clouds and oh, writing.

So there you have it. Freak show indeed. I think I like the sea glass one the best, because it involves being able to hear the water and absolutely nothing else. It's permission to be silent as long as I stand on sand (Bridget's decompression platform, highly top-secret material, you see), and it's showing off, because I'm really good at it, coming home with damp, sandy pocketfuls. Weighed down.

I clink when I walk into the house now, you can hear me coming a mile away.

So far so good.

The part where I'm supposed to make restitution.

Resolutions. Absolutions. Those things we say and we promise ourselves all of it is going to be different.

Aside from a few very specific things I want to look after anyway (and will), I'm going to do something quite out of the ordinary (which I don't think I've ever been in anyway) and not make any resolutions at all.

None. Not a one. Zip. Zero. Go away, thank you.

I'm not feeling nostalgic and sentimental. I didn't hear Auld Lang Syne this year. I haven't managed to wrap my head around a new date to write on cheques and field trip forms and so I will slip into the new year gradually, quietly, when everyone is looking the other way. I'll hold my breath and slip in the back, taking the last empty seat on what will undoubtedly be another year of ups and downs, ins and outs, highs and lows. This is what life is, is it not?

Well, then, there you have it.

Besides, I have a birthday approaching in the spring and it's one of those largish ones that ends in a zero and I'm still wrapping my brain around this news, only the paper doesn't quite fit and I can get it folded over both sides but it doesn't meet in the middle and so I need to find more paper before I can do it properly.

A new year indeed.

So far so good. The changing of the guard with the company will mean little over all. As I said before, it's a t crossed, an i dotted and nothing more and I'm calmer today. I'm a little more rested today too, and it's sunny and cool outside and we have great big plans today and so I'm not going to open dark boxes or worry about shadows or fret and wring today. I'm going to go run in the sand and search for some beach glass and maybe spend the day smiling.

Like flies (Here, while I'm getting ready for my night).

The company is mine now. Well, mine technically. Outwardly (thankfully) nothing will change. And this hits just in time for year-end which is handy. Really. Get it done before 2011 and he did, a rather important step in this renewed effort to be sure that the things you plan for after you're gone are precisely what you intended.

I hate living like this, but we do.

I stared at Caleb's face for the better part of twelve hours, through the night. We had our war, waged across the marble island of his condo while he shouted and pleaded and I looked for knives to throw and heads to roll. Bowling for psychotic sister-in-laws, outrage for how good they all are at keeping secrets that should never have been kept and spilling ones that have no business seeing the light of day but it keeps leaking in around the edges and we're all fucked and now bad luck is coming to take us away.

Caleb has been trying to head that off with some just-in-case business decisions that I can agree to but on the other hand what happens when I'm not near my wits and flying by the tips of my tights instead? What happens when the sideshow rolls back in and the logic packs up and leaves, terrified of clowns, even more afraid of acrobats and jugglers and their big stupid generous hearts?

I guess we will cross that Bridget when we see her next.

In the meantime we'll do everything we can to protect our collective demons and their big stupid fully genetically defective, faulty hearts. Because sometimes more than good looks and violent romance runs in the family.

Sometimes medical advances prove to be too telling and infarctions leave behind telltale signs that they have paid you a visit and your days might be numbered and they might not and it changes absolutely everything, like it has for Caleb now, and no one wanted to tell me.

Just like death, only it's like you still have something left. Something serious and important and all of it makes the past pale in comparison with the future, which rests with an eleven-year-old girl and a nine-year-old boy now.

And God help us if any of us ever fucking forget that again.

Got it.

I can read. It's TONIGHT. Jesus. I possibly need some live-in lawyers to go with everyone else in the house. I can't get the lawyers by tonight. ARGHHHH.

Like a shepherd but with lawyers instead of sheepies.

This is getting difficult. This, in particular.

Another meeting tomorrow. Warning that this isn't over. Would someone please just tell me why he has to make taking every single breath I can so fucking DIFFICULT?

Thanks. I'll be waiting for the answer. I think I AM the answer but whatever, I'd like to hear it from him.

My last Christmas present finally made it!

*(This is not the day's post. Just give me a few hours to absorb Eastern Hymns for Western Shores. It's that awesome. Also Bro-Am tee!!! Squee!)

Musical dirt worship.

Do you know why all staircases descend to the right? So that knights could fight with their swords in their right hands, their dominant, strong hands, while coming down the steps, defending, and infiltrators would be forced to fight with their left. A decided disadvantage.

Oddly enough, both subjects today are left-handed. And hippies, not knights.

The boys are loading up trucks right now. There's a little shift going on in the household. August is moving into Dalton's place, citing a need for more mirror time (this is not even a joke, jerkfaces, August has (okay, had) his own bathroom).

Dalton is moving into my house. In a sense I am trading one friend of Jake's for another. Even though I don't have to give August up, it just won't be the same.

There are a combination of issues that led to this. Beginning with the fact that Dalton isn't used to housing prices here (with a long history of issues related to that subject, frankly) and was on the verge of giving up a six-month investment because he's in a little over his head and refuses help or basic budgeting lessons.

Throw in a little bit of stubbornness on my part and August and I have butted heads a lot lately. He is supposed to easily separate his professional and personal life and he isn't having much luck because he lives with his charges and really I can corrupt him faster than I can hang up the phone. He's as easily charmed as Jacob always was. And he's enough like Jacob that I get to remain mired in some sort of paralysis between the present and the past and that's an unhealthy place for me. When I feel fragile I can just go tuck myself under his arm as he reads and he's the closest living, breathing ringer to Jake there ever was. Right down to the Newfie accent. The mannerisms and the unintentional enthusiastic volume sometimes makes me jump right out of my skin.

But it's okay. It was sort of a surprise that he lived here at all and I have a feeling I got to him during a moment of weakness and now I have gotten to him during a moment of strength and he's standing up to me, taking an opportunity to help fix something important while gaining a little space for himself in the process.

I get to spend the late winter/early spring teaching Dalton the basics of money management, like why paying your mortgage and electric bills before you go shopping for new amps is a good thing. I really hope he's ready for this. I can be intrusive, interruptive and incorrigible.

He says he's totally ready. We shall see now, won't we?