Sunday 28 February 2010

Not jinxing, just saying.

(Firstly, Lochlan didn't come home. He meant to. Things happen.)

It's been a busy couple of days. A busy couple of months, really, and I know I haven't given much to this place but no worries, my head is full. There just aren't enough hours in the day. I haven't stopped. It's been eight weeks. I have not stopped.

Just know that my hard work is paying off, and the luck of the boys is holding.

The feedback on the house is promising. I need some luck this time around.

The castle has had thirty-one showings so far, and we have DAYS left. DAYS. This is unreal. Keep your fingers and toes crossed.

We won the hockey game, the kids and I crashing through doors and collapsing on the living room couch in time to see the final period and all of the overtime. We cried when they played the anthem, just like the rest of the country.

Go Canada, indeed. We've set records in what we do best, conquering winter.

I have been here chipping ice away from my garage door, cleaning up vomit from a puppy that is surprisingly carsick and vomit from a child who just had enough yesterday and couldn't do anymore. I've been mopping floors and dusting like mad almost around the clock and have been living out of a tiny sportscar that I really don't like driving at all, let alone in winter. I don't even know how to drive through whole large sections of this city, you know that? It's not my thing.

And now we're going to make a pizza and eat on the couch and see if we can see the boys on the television, because they are at the closing ceremonies tonight (!) and they have snowglobes to bring home for us and funny things because when you go there is an audience participation kit that you are given. I am excited for them, and they feel guilty because of me.

And it's okay. Because you know what? I'm excited for me. I am trying to think positive and I'm getting really close to getting out of here for good. This week will tell me more and in the meantime, I will keep cleaning and hoping.

And maybe even writing a bit. If I am lucky.

Which...well, things can change, right?

Pretty-boy Floyd to the rescue.

Can you stand up?
I do believe it's working, good.
That'll keep you going through the show
Come on it's time to go.

Friday 26 February 2010

Find a penny...and realize it's the one from your pocket from yesterday, came through the wash.

Jesus Christ.

Hi.

Remember me? I'm Bridget. And I could come in here and wipe my wet boots on the doormat and weave you a wonderfully funny stupid story about how five minutes into the very first showing of my first house I realized I couldn't do this repeatedly and so I signed the two cats up for a weekend sleepover with the vet.

On the way there the puppy barfed all over the front seat of the car.

On the upside? One down, and quite a few more to go.

The dog is going to hate my guts by the end of the weekend. I will hate his too. We'll be even!

(I still love him but he is way more work than a child so next time someone tells you that, know that they lie.)

Meh, and we're off again. But my house looks DAMN good and I'm even sick. So there! This is that moment where you stare into the face of adversity and scream,

IS THAT ALL YOU'VE GOT?

Indeed. It's enough. Fuck off now, bad luck.

Thursday 25 February 2010

It's that time again.

Dance, internet! (here, PJ, one for you!)

And little ones, sleepytime now.

Goodnight.

A beard and a macbook pro.

Ben has gone again, and my brief vacation from the anxiety of being without him has returned with a jolt of electricity so prolific I heard the snap when the doors closed behind him at Departures.

Fuck all of this.

Someone buy this house so we can leave.

I know I'm jumping the gun. Everything is ticking along nicely and such and it's far too early to worry but if you know Bridget you know she'll pick and choose her worries until they are gone and then move on to the next ones. So right now the worries are "sell house" and "ohmyfuck, you've gotten sick", since Ben brought a west-coast cold with him and left it for me to enjoy. I couldn't speak this morning and still I managed to dissolve into the helpless cries that probably make him feel like the biggest jerk in the universe for leaving and yet we are both fully aware that there isn't any better way we could have done this and now we just have to be patient. With any luck at all the longest stretch is past and now comes the rush. Soon, anyway. Eventually.

I have no date for the next trip home. I don't like that one bit. Again, there is no point in booking him home again until we see how the next week or two plays out.

The silver lining in this is perhaps I don't have to work so hard anymore. I can keep chipping away at cleaning, and buy healthy groceries and easy meals for the kids and I and continue to chase after the Himalayan cat with the scissors because she will be less work with less fur and walk the dog more because it will be warmer and hope and pray and fret and miss and cry and fear everything and okay...yeah, it will be like the last three times he was away.

On a hilarious and not even uniquely surprising note, he inspected my little sports car and found that my sort-of functioning block heater WASN'T WORKING AT ALL. There's character building for you. I spent the winter here in Extremecoldville plugging my car in dutifully and it wasn't doing a damned thing. Oh my FUCK!

It works now.

What a difference, too.

That will become part of the big story years from now when this is funny instead of a huge fucking tragedy of biblical proportions. I'm sorry, I call them as I see them and this blows from coast to coast. And I was a total shrew. I told Ben I would be spoiled when I get to the coast. That I'm never shoveling or painting again. That I'm going to sleep in on the weekends and have my nails painted by someone else and I won't lift things or put myself out for any reason at all.

He laughed and said yeah right, princess.

Because I was never the kind of girl to be able to understand how people can pay forty dollars to have someone else file their nails or how they could simply refuse to do things they can damn well do themselves and if they just would put out a little effort they could accomplish so much and now I see it's so much easier and lazier just to say no and for some reason they aren't judged for that.

I just do it. I get it done and then I am sort of amazed that I pulled it off and looking for a break that when it comes, I probably won't take it, although I am finding a lovely gift in reaching out with one finger and stopping the world every single day at three-thirty or four o'clock and pouring myself a cup of coffee to enjoy. Then I lift my finger off the world and it spools up to resume the previous speed of ohmyfuckgetonwiththings.

And yet, Ben promised me that I will be spoiled. He is keeping a list of places he will take us when we get out there. First sights and first meals, first evenings out, first day trips and first overnight trips away from the city. This from a man who can't remember to buy shampoo. It touches me that he wants us there so badly and it gives me hope that he misses me just as terribly and heartbreakingly as I miss him.

I've white-knuckled life through the better part of the last two months without him, and it's the one thing that I never wanted to experience. I've had enough. There's been enough misery and worry and stress and difficulties. There's been enough sad. I want to be excited about moving but currently I am held prisoner by the real estate market and until a shining angel of mercy signs on an offer I will wait, not all that patiently, for things to change. I will wait for him to come back and I will daydream and night-dream about him until that time.

Had I known how this would feel I wouldn't have entered into it at all but since I'm here what else can I do? Make lemonade. Whatever. I hate lemonade in the wintertime.

I miss him already. You really won't ever understand how much.

Wednesday 24 February 2010

Seven.

That's how many hours are left.
~via BlackBerry.

Tuesday 23 February 2010

Waking up bitten.

He's gone again. Thank God.

No, not Ben. Ben is still here. I mean Caleb.

He thought it fine to fly in and ruin all the fun of the toxic twins, casting his customary cold grey edge to everything that was formerly warm and/or safe. He thought I seemed to be descending back towards the low end of the metronome and I was. The ticking stopped. I rested with no beat and I think it's more like a mild undercurrent of white-knuckle hysteria and he thinks it meant it was time for a lesson from Satan, reminders of how the behavior of tiny blonde wisps of panic should play out.

Or else.

Ben and I would have been perfectly fine not to have hell recreated in the night but when do I ever get a say? I will never be given a chance to refund iniquity and vice as they pay dividends that allow us to live like kings and princesses and paupers in gold-lined paper houses. The light is artificial, the warmth contrived.

What Satan doesn't know is there's an army forming to the south of my future love paradise and it's as heavily-subsidized as his reprobation against Bridget. Because people who actually love me without conditions are running out of patience for his extravagant display of obsession for me. Once again I'll just put my head down and they can all fight it out above me. Eventually someone with a cooler head (Lochlan) will step in and ensure that the children and I are returned to the collective focus but not before everyone has re-staked their constantly shifting property lines in what seems to be a fairly fluid neighborhood.

Who am I kidding? I'm sure he knows. I'm sure he feels the pressure. Maybe time is running out and that's why he felt he had to interrupt our reunion with the ugly reminders of the way things are. Maybe he did indeed want to spend a day with the children and Bridget is just a lovely x-rated side benefit who struggles just enough to be fun but still flinches enough to make things difficult.

I won't change and I doubt he will either. All signs point to the army being both a blessing and a whole new kind of curse. A kind of curse where you go from eyes wide shut to eyes wide open and you jump and hope for the best.

Ben won't let me fall. If there is one thing he has always done, it's hang on, no matter what. This story isn't over yet. Not by a long shot. Paper houses don't hold up and eventually all luck has to change.

Monday 22 February 2010

Struggling just to get enough words to arrange at all.

Somewhere around my bony shoulders and tired soul, anticipation is singeing the edges of the fear-paper that coats the walls of my life presently. It's such a tiny surge I'm not even sure I'm ready to acknowledge it just in case my mind is playing tricks on me. I will wait patiently for it to bloom and continue my slow pace, one foot in front of the other, out of this place. Slowly and with a heavy heart because I am so conflicted.

Spring is coming. Right?

Right? Please?

I love having Ben home. The past two days he declared to be no-work days. Tomorrow we'll finish off the little things I couldn't manage on my own but otherwise driving, eating, working, sleeping, all of it so much easier with him here at home. Even though it's less home right now. Keeping the children calm and reassured and informed and healthy. Keeping everything running smoothly in the face of chaos.

I have two days of him left and then he's gone again and I will fall down the darker well and stay there and contemplate horrible thoughts in my usual horrifyingly bemused fashion. However, I have found a comfort looking up toward daylight, scratching the days into the cement walls in the part where the water doesn't drip down and I know rescue is eventual (ha, prove it). Sometimes panic supersedes logic and sometimes it doesn't. I'm working on it but really I'm not having any luck writing, relaxing or being reasonable anymore.

I just wish Ben could stay because I really don't think I can do this much longer. The well is cold and it's dark and it's just not a happy place for Bridget. Ben's arms are my happy. He is my breath.

Bridget is not a happy girl otherwise.

Cross your fingers and say a prayer if you will. Sure there are worse things in the world and oh, dear, the problems of the rich. I'm not rich and I've never been rich. I know people who are and I talk about them too much. What I do know is that I have never sold a house before and I really really need this to go well. Smooth and quick, gone on the first try, don't let the sale fall through. That much, please, and in return I will pray for you.

Because sometimes I do.

Friday 19 February 2010

Post two, because I don't have enough to do.

Every now and then I see you dreaming
Every now and then I see you cry
Every now and then I see you reaching,
Reaching for the other side
What are you waiting for?
Six and a half hours left until Ben-time and my brain just wants to continue to sabotage me and as usual my luck isn't holding at all.

On the upside, the house is presentable at last. Or as much as I can do anyway, if you could have witnessed the immense frustration this afternoon as the dirt-sucker thing I can't spell EXPLODED on the staircase. Right, the one I had just spent three hours polishing because it has three feet of wood trim on the walls around it.

Exactly.

I don't know what happened but I got the mess cleaned up and then I drug out the ladder once again and tried valiantly to do a couple of up-high things I'm afraid I'll forget to ask Ben to do because when I see him (this will be the third time since Christmas) everything kind of goes right out the piano window anyway. I couldn't do them so I wrote it down. We'll be up early anyway, so we'll get it done in the morning. Tonight I just have to put away the laundry, make dinner and then wait. I could also be doing some touch up things but really, I know how loverly my old OCD issues can flare up and thankfully I can override them now.

If only I could do that with all the other bad feelings that ricochet around inside my head. Ah well, I suppose it's nice to keep some dreams on hand, isn't it?

Light bright.

Every time the radio plays Pour some sugar on me I envision the pole dance I would perform if...my beautiful house had come equipped with a pole.

(Well, I had the strobe light..)

Ben comes home IN! TEN! HOURS!

Yay!

Sunday? Don't phone, I plan to barricade myself in his arms and sleep all damn day long. Why not tomorrow? Tomorrow sucks. They're coming to take the pictures for the listing. No, I will not be posting the link. Seriously you people.

Go think about Bridget pole dancing instead. You know you want to.