Jake.

His singing voice kicks into my head every time I stop moving. I've washed all the curtains, radically trimmed the huge tea-rose bushes around the back side of the backyard gate and pet the dog so hard I might have worn a hole in his fur, if not for PJ whisking him out of my arms and telling me I was in need of a good drink or maybe something even better. 

I tried that too. I went to Duncan. Then a night at August's. Then I kept Lochlan and Ben up all night the next night and then I ended up with Caleb because Lochlan and I are going away later this week and he won't see me for a few days so he wanted time. 

It doesn't work, PJ. Pour the drink. 

Get a grip on it, Bridge. It's just the time of year. 

Yes. I know it is. The weather turns cold and dark and rainy. The trees blow hard against their roots, surrendering their leaves the sky and to the earth. The pavement is slick and reflective. The heater comes on. The dog burrows in closer to the abandoned blanket someone left on the couch and my mind instantly flicks a switch on a mechanism slowed by rust from a million oceans of tears. 

The hard part is I don't know what he's singing, and so I catch myself listening. That's always how he ropes me in and one of the reasons I can never get too far from him. Time is not distance, it's just time. Space is meaningless because he follows. Trips are good for fun restaurants and distractions and I think I'll be okay but he'll still be singing, just out of earshot.

Herds and herds of grass-fed bread.

It's raining and cool and I get to have a forbidden glass of red while I make dinner, which tonight is two large down-home turkey, broccoli and pasta casseroles, with a healthy serving of garlic bread. I should just start a garlic bread farm. We go through a lot of it. Like loaves and loaves a week. It goes with everything. It fills up the boys in a season where groceries now cost a third more, which means we're spending close to a thousand dollars a week on food. 

I know that sounds weird. There's a lot of boys in my army. There's a lot of mouths to feed in this Collective. There are a lot of fancy things to be made. 

Like you know, turkey and rotini casserole. With cans of mushroom soup to make gravy and copious sprinklings of salt and pepper. But didn't everyone save for Henry absolutely love it and come back for seconds. It tasted like growing up in the seventies. 

Tonight we're watching the rain roil the sea, enjoying the calm between storms, Ben is off on a tangent, playing Yes' Starship Troopers on a loop, and Lochlan is practicing braiding PJ's hair for Halloween. Caleb has already retired to his rooms as he did not sleep last night, and I am going to watch a few videos on my Youtube feed and then turn in early, I think. It's the most lazy, laid-back Halloween weekend I have ever spent and I am really looking forward to doing absolutely jack-shit. 

I might offer to help Lochlan. It's been a long time since he's done braids. He used to braid my hair for me and then weave them up over my head like a milkmaid. It made him worry less, somehow. 

Getting your hair caught in a ride is the worst thing that can happen at a fair, he said, forgetting it isn't.

No actual spoilers..

We watched Halloween Ends. Or rather, I did. 

Ben gave up and wandered away somewhere in the middle, just when major characters were starting to call each other, and the plot holes of Halloween Kills out on screen. I almost expected a fourth wall moment from Jamie Lee Curtis but instead got what I thought was going to be knitting-needle redemption arc but aw shoot, no such luck. 

And then the credits spooled up and I was profoundly sad, suddenly. Sure it was campy and poetic and existential and downright masturbatory in places but it's also one of my all-time favourite franchises, right down to knowing the difference in movement between James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle. 

(I prefer Nick Castle but I do not prefer to hear the stupid heavy breathing sounds. He shouldn't grunt when he fights, he had almost a supernatural immortality thus far and this is dumb.)

Let's see who pulls out the new direction card next. Gosh I hope it's some insane director like Bernard Rose or Todd Phillips or hell, give it back to Rob Zombie. Or don't and call it a day. Either way the Blue Oyster Cult was a nice touch and it's the first time I managed to see one of these before Halloween instead of after!

If you bought a Camp Crystal Lake sign for your house I already hate you.

It's Sunday and I had hot chocolate and a banana for breakfast but then PJ brought us coffee and muffins so second breakfasts all around. I caught up on my chores and then some, and now I've moved on to things that are regularly ignored. One of the best ways to spend a Sunday is with an ipad with a good movie on it or a book, or both, time-permitting. I might bake some bread but then it will just vanish. Plus my hands and arms are so sore. So, so sore. 

The rain stopped but is due to come back right after dinner tonight so I am debating whether anything needs to be done or brought in outside. I think we're good, honestly and the leaves aren't going to stop for the next six weeks so no rush there. 

I will rake them up before Halloween to minimize slipping, however. Our sidewalk up by the end of the driveway gets very slick though it is supposed to pour rain so we may not even do Halloween. I used to love Halloween but it's exhausting now. It's also that I am sick and tired of bones and black and fire. I'm sick of death. I want earth tones and soft cleansing rains and Hygge. I want cheap decorations to disappear. I want things that are different. 

But like Halloween, it's a stage and it will end and on to the next one. 

Lochlan is plotting a little getaway for us, for fall. He won't tell me much, but said to pack in layers but pack light so I am doing my very best. It's almost two weeks away but it's exciting still. 

Off to finish watching Imitation. Wish it had at least five seasons instead of just one. So good.

Elitist, ignorant, ivory-towered. You pick. I'll wait.

The internet has become my forgotten child, I'm afraid. It's full of such...trash and also the place where all my entertainment comes from. Does that make me trashy? 

Oh, probably. Especially if you ask my readers. Does that include you, specifically? I don't know. I don't look at email these days. My ego is fragile and asleep, woken only if startled, eyes wide in the darkness before pulling the blanket closer and nodding off again. 

I did see that Jacob Hoggard got five years in prison for sexually assaulting women. I read every article that came across the news out loud in the room so that Caleb could pin and then also count his lucky stars. He would get far more than five years and there's no statute on that crime anymore here. 

But I also would have ratted him out years before if I was ever going to at all. The news just reminds him to be grateful and relieved. 

In other news I spent the night with Duncan. We were watching movies and I couldn't stay awake and so he tucked me in and left and slept on the couch in their living room. So I guess I should say I spent the night at his place (downstairs in my house) and not with/with him. Lochlan came down in the morning and was pleasantly surprised, since at the very least if I'm not going to get a black mark for the week on my Good Bridget chart I will be used as a human body pillow and snuggled to pieces. This time it was neither. 

It's raining this morning. Finally. I regret everything. It's dark and miserable but also infinitely cozy. This is what Pacific northwest dreams are made of. No more wildfire fears. No more brown grass and wilted plants. No more thirsty trees. 

Of course, now the floods will come because the ground is bone-dry, compacted and unable to absorb anything. This should be interesting. It doesn't flood where we are, just seemingly everywhere else. 

Sea lions on the beach this morning and so we couldn't go down. Sad. They are the size of my Jeep sometimes and so I don't bother them. Also animals are faster than you think if you are too close. Google a video of a bear chasing someone and you'll see. Fucking fast.

But the BEST news this morning? They're going to open the vehicle lanes back up in Stanley Park, since the park board is ABC-led now (the slate that got elected and have the mayorship, council and park board) and that is amazing (Note: I don't live in Vancouver, proper). Bicycle riders have the whole seawall and they can ride on the road as well, not sure why they pushed to have yet another lane. There's a very weird vibe in Vancouver where super-rich people who live right downtown in skyrise condominiums and bike everywhere or walk want to gatekeep the city by keeping out vehicles. I guess they want rickshaws delivering goods and supplies or something. They were trying to toll downtown, hospitals and all, and the park was a huge polarizing fight over the past few years. 

It was those people versus everyone else and I guess majority rules. But I will be glad to see the park open and less traffic getting in and faster to get around and then zip, over the Lions Gate bridge toward home. Yay!

A house around the sea.

Yes, I know I have to vote. As soon as Henry is up and dressed so around noon or one or something. He promised to go with me today but said he wouldn't get up early to do it. Ruth said she'll do it after work. I am trying to raise civic-minded people who make an effort to at least elect the people who align with their own thoughts on infrastructure, development, recreation, trails and property taxes. It will be important later. For now it is learning. 

Also the boys. They are being taught as well. They are not as civic-minded but they also bitch and winge about traffic and development and trails and taxes so BOOM. VOTE, MOTHERFUCKERS.

In the meantime, I did all of the winterizing, or as much of it as I could do over the past week. Cutting back plants, taking down hoses and covering the spouts. I'll turn off the inside valves before it gets really cold. I will leave the one hose out by the side door due to it being where I clean my tools and buckets from throwing clay. The clay goes into the garden and I get clean tools and I don't have to worry about the plumbing. 

I brought in cushions off the patio and took down some of the more delicate globe lights. I put the cut plants in the mulch pile. I raked up the garden beds and flattened them out. I covered the little baby cement fountain that lives in the orchard and Lochlan has already put another coat of clear stain on the swing to protect it from the eventual rains. I pulled up the big stepping stones and stacked them in a pile at the edge of where the grass turns to soil and I harvested the remaining rosemary that I want with a plan to plant holy basil all along the path next year and leave the path in forever. We change the pattern in order to maximize nutrients and grow things in different places. It's a weird habit but if you've ever grown corn you know that some things suck the life out of the soil, and some things suck the life out of the soil around everything else too so I try to rotate crops, as it were. 

I will watch the temperatures and do the remaining things just before it all gets really cold. They are covering the pool today and by that I mean the motorized walls that slide back are being slid closed today and the pool becomes a snowglobe for the next six or seven months. We can still use it but it's not half-outside any more. They are also servicing the outside gas oven and the sauna and the hot tub and everything will be spickity-span for winter. We want it all done so we don't have to do it later, drought be damned. 

The rain is out there. I know it. Climate change doesn't happen this fast. We just had a period of strange record-breaking weather and then it will return to the previous way it was. Wet and dim and mossy and gorgeous. 

We also are moving slowly. Recovering from the headache and stomach-ails of eating questionable Thai food last night. I made Pad Kra Pao from scratch and I probably shouldn't have. Haha. It tasted almost as good as the real thing but also nothing like the real thing. At least I tried.

Whoops.

I grabbed a bunch of the non-civic-minded boys from here and walked up the hill this morning in the endless dry heat to vote at the local school in our advance polls and sure enough, advance voting ended last night at 8pm. 

Now we have to do it all again tomorrow. 

Remind me next election to go vote on the first day early voting is up. What a pain in the arse.

Also it is supposed to be 25 degrees this weekend. No rain, records being broken all over the place. I hate this weather. I am always sweaty. Also if you throw your cigarettes out the car window fuck you. There's a fire up the hill from me. Everything is tinder-dry. Sirens all damn day.

Fighting.

They found Jaqui McDermott's remains and we are left to speculate on whether she gave up and ended her own life or fell off a cliff or got eaten by a bear or what, since there was no 'criminality' involved. They used to say 'foul play' but maybe that's out of fashion now, or someone got offended by the use of the word 'play' to describe monstrous things. Either way I know her family is hurting and life sucks so badly sometimes but then you see a beautiful sunset or hear a great new song and three minutes go by and you forget you're hurting but then you remember again. Eventually three minutes becomes three hours becomes three days becomes three weeks becomes three months..

And that's where it stops, I think. I don't go three months without thinking of Jacob or Cole, even as I launch into this season of misery, grifting happiness from anyone who doesn't have their nailed down. Less than four weeks and we would have been planning a birthday party. Less than four weeks and we would have been marvelling at seventeen years together and wondering where the time went. 

The time is quicksand and I am up to my neck, as ever. You can still save yourself if you're only in it up to your chest, because you can use your arms. I am shorter and my arms are as mired as my legs. I am a statue made of grief, the hardest substance known to man, but also the most brittle. If the wind blows the wrong way I will shatter and dissolve into this mud, never to be seen again. 

That's what grief does and I hope it never finds you. 

I'm really having a hard time being online. I'm having a hard time with everything. I am so drugged out of my mind here it's hard to decide on a juice when I open the fridge and so I just default to grapefruit, every single day. Every day is a mindless float on an air mattress in a pool of my own nightmares and I don't know when it's time to go. 

That's all. I don't know how to respectfully decline. I don't know how to convince the ghosts to leave, that the dinner party is over and I want to go to bed. I don't know how to stop it. I just don't know.

Blademommer.

It's definitely a full moon around here. 

Everyone drives like a maniac on the highways. Everything just feels sinister and off today somehow.

I got sucked down a rabbit hole reading about all the missing people in the BC triangle, especially in light of the missing woman in Merritt. She's Ruth's age. I'm watching for any news like a hawk. I want everyone under forty to just swallow an air tag and be done with it. We need to know where you all are. At least with Ruth and with Henry they check in when they arrive where they were going and they let me know when they're leaving and Ruth lets me know she made it home as well, since I don't actually see her arrive home. Maybe it's helicoptery but I'd rather see them safe than missing. I don't think my heart could take it. My heart goes out to Jaqui McDermott's family, I hope she is found safe and sound, and soon. 

Back to reading about scary things. It's easy to do when I am locked in my house with an army. I consider myself incredibly lucky for that, as I know so many people don't have a place that is safe.

If you haven't read about Jaqui, go and find the news articles, find the social media posts and share share share, especially if you are here in BC. If you are not, then just pray for her. Thank you.

Amuse-bouche (and intact).

The Devil decided to take his due while I was down for the count. I felt awful all week and so Caleb took it upon himself to fix that, and I was installed in his bed, air conditioning on full blast, blankets piled high. I had drugged sleep for most of my week, waking to eat Thai food and drink mimosas (which don't go together, unless you're sick, frankly) and text with Lochlan. Caleb sent for the doctor who brought vitamin shots and an iv of fluids for a couple of hours, and then I slept some more. In the evenings we watched every Texas Chainsaw Massacre film we could conjure from streaming sites and then I dreamt sporadically. No nightmares. Just Lochlan in my head.

When I was returned yesterday, still not feeling super-great but not willing to spend any more time away, Lochlan was happy to see me, though you'd never know it, as he was silent right up until I pointed out that I had had my fill of Leatherface and he started laughing and did not stop for an inappropriate amount of time. I thought it was relief at first.

I figured that would happen eventually. I like the new nickname. 

And then I realized I hadn't told him what movies we watched.