Morningstar Manor

Bridget went back to work, but only to tell her boss that there was a family emergency and she had to leave. She picked up the kids from the daycare, much to their delight, and brought them home. She wouldn't have been able to concentrate at work so this was a wise decision.

She kept busy once she got home, changing into some lounging clothes and going overboard playing with the kids. She took them for a walk, she chased them around in the garden, she put together puzzles, and tickled them until they were totally exhausted. It would have been a nice afternoon if, in the back of her mind, Bridget wasn't thinking nonstop about what Phin may have -- probably -- did.

( More setup )

Cally was late to lunch. She'd been a little surprised when Bridget had invited her to go out to lunch but had readily agreed, forgetting that she'd had a rather important doctor's appointment this morning. They were meeting at Dingo's Burger Hut on the Riverwalk. It was an awesome burger pub/grille type restaurant but it was highly out of place, which may have been due to its owner. Raefe Ainslie was born and raised on the Australian Gold Coast. He was definitely out of place in The City, but marriage had brought him here and he'd done the best he could after buying this old pizza place on the Riverwalk, to fix it up like home. It was better to eat there in the summer out on the deck but it was a nice, different, place to eat in the cooler months too.

( Bridget finds out some things about her husband. )

Early in their relationship Bridget used to stop by Phin's construction sites a lot for surprise lunches and fooling around and things like that. She liked seeing him in his work element and thought he could really wear the hell out of a hard hat. But since the kids were born, she'd stopped coming by so much. She didn't really know why. It just happened.

But on Wednesday afternoon she had the urge to see him, so she decided to forgo lunch with her work friends and stop by Phin's site. He'd given her some pleasant surprises lately, so she figured she should pay him back. Plus she wanted to see the job that was taking up so damn much of his free time, partly out of pure curiosity and partly to see if it really was the reason why he was never home anymore.

She parked on the side of the street and walked over to the site. She said hello to a few of the employees she recognized and found out Phin was in the trailer. She located it and picked up her step as she headed to the closed door, hoping he hadn't gotten his lunch yet. She opened the door right away and when she looked inside, she stopped in her tracks and arched her eyebrows.

Phin had worked on a Valentine's Day present since the week before the New Year. It was rather elaborate and with his shitty memory it had taken great effort to keep on top of it and still keep it secret. He'd managed to wrangle Billie into babysitting over night and on Valentine's Day no less. He'd woken Bridget up around eight-thirty after making pancakes for everyone for breakfast. The kids had given Bridget her Valentine's Day present - some very sappy ceramic hearts complete with one toddler hand print each with their name etched around the edge of the hear and the year and each painted by its respective toddler - and then he'd told her the plan. Part of the plan anyway. He'd gone to clean up and get the kids set up in the living room and left Bridget to pack for a two day, one night trip. He told her it was to New York City and they were leave at eleven to catch a 12:25pm flight to Newark.

After Billie showed up, they cabbed it to the airport to catch their flight. Less than an hour after take off they'd touched down, retrieved their bags and went outside, where a limo driver was waiting with a little card that had their last name printed on it. The limo drove them to the Marriott Marquis in Times Square. After checking in, they were shown to their room. Phin tipped the bellhop - were they still called bellhops? - after their luggage was left in the bedroom and he shut the door behind the guy. Then he turned around, rested his hands on his waist and arched his eyebrows.

"How am I doin' so far?" He asked

The Panda Super Bowl Twin Birthday celebration was in full swing. Both of Bridget's parents came down from New York to visit, as did her brother Brad (from a few towns over) and her brother Neil (and his girlfriend; they lived about twenty minutes away here in the City). On Phin's side of the family they had his dad, his brother Dante, and his sister Billie, and her boyfriend. Not to mention Phin's partner Carter and his wife.

So it was a full house at the Pandapartment. The game wasn't starting for another couple of hours, so the twins were getting plenty of attention from various family members who hardly got to see them.

Bridget had been running around for a while, making sure everyone was accommodated, but once things were settled she chilled out. She was sure that the beer she was pulling out of the refrigerator would help that out further.

The kids' birthday was coming up soon, on February second. The Pandigeashiks usually had a Super Bowl party with their families, so for the past two years they had been combining the two events to save everyone some trips. This year was no exception, and Bridget was currently deep into planning mode. There were still some things that needed to be taken care of, and she hoped to do that before the weekend hit. One of these things involved calling her husband during her lunch break.

She tapped her pen impatiently on her desk as she waited for him to (hopefully) pick up.

The week before Christmas, the twins had gotten their very own brand new toddler beds complete with bedrails that could be flipped up into position after the kids were asleep to keep them from rolling out of bed. It had taken a few days to get the kids used to them but they'd been learning how to climb out of their cribs already, which Penny was apt to do in the morning and Jeth at night so they'd figured beds were in order. Bridget had been the one who wanted them ordered by Christmas though. The kids seemed to like them and they even had little stools to help climb in and out of bed with.

That was a pre-Christmas, Christmas present apparently, but the kids didn't understand that. Anyway, after a long day, the kids were finally asleep in their new beds, it was past midnight and Phin and Bridget were wrapping presents. The previous Christmas had been a test run. The kids hadn't even been a year old and had been more into the boxes and wrapping paper then their presents. This year, Bridget had gone even more overboard with present buying. Phin wondered what their credit card statements were going to look like. They were spread out in the living room and hall, trying to be quiet and trying to keep an ear out for whether or not the kids were awake as they assembled and wrapped all kinds of toys from,Baseball tees, to a wagon, to a teeter totter, to chairs for their rooms, and tricycles, stuffed animals, choo-choo toys and soccer stuff for Jeth, baseball stuff and dolls for Penny, new clothes and pajamas, tables and chairs for both the kids rooms and lots of building-blocks and crazy electronic toys. It was a mad house. Oh and Bridget had also deemed that they needed bigger toy boxes too for all this stuff. Oy.

Phin yawned and stretched after finishing one box and moving on to the next. "...Next year can you get some of this pre-wrapped?" He asked as he peeled various messed up pieces of tape he'd discarded to his t-shirt while gathering scraps of cut wrapping paper and moved to throw that in one of the trash bags open on the floor for just suck things. It seemed like a never ending torrent of presents to wrap.

He stood up to stretch and grabbed his empty glass from nearby on the floor. "Do you want anything to drink?" He couldn't wait until the portion of the night when they got to eat the cookies left for Santa, definitely a highlight of the night.

The phone was ringing. And ringing. And ringing.

Bridget cracked her eyes open with a frown, the first thing she saw being the bottle of wine on her nightstand. The ringing wasn't coming from there. She turned over with a sigh and gave Phin a nudge.

"Answer yer phone," she mumbled. "Tell them to go away." Didn't whoever was calling know that this day was designated as Panda Sleep-In Day, the follow up to The Best Panda Night Since Either Of Them Could Remember Day? Come on.

((Placeholder to check things over.))

Grocery shopping had been delayed about three times due to Phin's work schedule, but finally on Sunday afternoon the Pandigaeshiks were able to go. Bridget would have made the trip herself, but she was no longer allowed to drive for fear she'd have another blackout.

So she wasn't in the best of moods as she and Phin and the kids finally navigated the aisles of the grocery store, but it wasn't like that was much different from usual.

"We need milk," she read off the list she held in one hand. She was holding Penny up with the other. "Can you go and get it?" She wondered if Phin was going to make her put Penny down while they parted ways.

Bridget had been right in the middle of making dinner when Phin had called to tell her that he was going to be home much later than he'd planned, and that she and the kids should eat without him. So much for that huge lasagna she'd been making, the one she'd been planning on preparing for the past few days. She even made the sauce from scratch! The two of them had argued on the phone for a few minutes -- seriously, he couldn't have called earlier to let her know? -- and eventually Bridget hung up on him out of frustration. She was tempted to ditch the food entirely and leave everything half-finished right where it was, but that would have been too much of a waste, even for an act of passive aggression.

( Finally finished! )

Emily was getting restless. Sure, the Manor was an unusually scary place, but being locked in for the fourth day already was making her anxious. She was still staying with Frank Baker's family - she had made a trip upstairs to get more clothes, but had been spooked again on the way. She decided that she still would not want to stay alone. Besides, she enjoyed the Bakers's company a lot.

On Tuesday evening she appeared out of the apartment again and pestered Frank by the security desk. Was the place still in lockdown? Yes. When will we get out? Can't say. Can't you break the doors? Tried, didn't work.

She sighed deeply and wandered in to the Mocha. At least the cappuccino was as good as ever, so she sat down with a cup trying not to worry about work, or missing yet another dance class.

The lobby was totally deserted when Bridget came down on Monday night. It made her feel uneasy, but she wasn't going to let that keep her from getting the help she sought. She walked up to the empty security desk and hit the little desk bell on top of it. Hard. A number of times.

It was the third day of lockdown and Pandigaeshiks were still dangerously low on diapers. She'd tried to see if she could borrow any from her neighbors, but had so far come up with nothing. So she'd gone to the security desk. If the Manor staff was going to keep them cooped up in the building, they had better provide for the tenants' needs while they were inside.

Bridget's priority on the day after Halloween was to hit up various stores in town to see what kinds of post-holiday clearance items she could pick up. But on this particular Saturday, she ran into a few problems on the way out. The elevator refused to take her to the garage, the stairwells seemed to be blocked off below the lobby, and the lobby doors themselves were locked.

After speaking with the security guard downstairs, Bridget headed back up to the sixth floor. Her forehead was firmly wrinkled as she re-entered the apartment and shut the door behind her.

"Phin?"

'Losing time'. That's what Ed Norton's character had called it in Primal Fear. He told Richard Gere's character that sometimes he just blacked out and did things without consciously realizing he was doing them. Of course that didn't really happen, but it seemed to be going on with Bridget.

Once she'd returned to the laundry room, she spent the rest of her time down there researching random blackouts instead of working on her writing. Her research continued even after she went back upstairs and helped Phin put the kids in bed. She got changed and propped herself up by some pillows in her own bed, set the computer on her lap, and continued looking. It seemed like random blackouts could happen as a result of all sorts of physical and mental issues, some easy to fix and others not so much. This wasn't helpful.

( Bridget tells Phin about her blackout moment. )

Laundry. Bridget hadn't gotten any writing done Sunday night thanks to all that singing outside, so she figured she might as well try doing it down in the laundry room as she worked on the seemingly massive pile of Panda-related clothing. She had two loads running in some washers, one load in the dryer, and half a page of a Word document open on her computer. It took a long time to focus thanks to all the rumbling from the machines, but she really felt like she was on the verge of something. Her typing had been coming more and more steadily in the past ten minutes or so, and she smiled a little to herself as she worked. It was good to enjoy a burst of creativity, no matter how small it was.

Girgori was roaming. He was bored, already, of roaming the basement and that damned library. The thirteenth floor, however, was interesting. He'd been ghosting around the game room, not in his armor today, in a long ornate jacket covering the rest of his clothing. He moved into the hall and stopped a moment, a familiar feeling coming over him. Full moons were special. He could possess someone of his lineage on a full moon, and it seemed that this very building contained one one such person. He could feel it, because of the full moon he was sure. It was stronger than any he'd experienced before. Perhaps there were more related to this person. Grigori had to investigate. He coasted toward the feeling, passing the laundry door swiftly before he realized that was where it was coming from. He stopped and turned in the hall, but didn't pass the door again just yet. He should not be seen for this. He took a moment to prepare himself for possibly taken this person over, no mater how vile they may be.

( Grigori possesses Bridget for a little bit. )

There was a coffee shop near Rutherford that had comfy chairs, warm lighting, and classical music always playing at a nice, unobtrusive volume. That was the place Bridget had done most of her writing in college and immediately after. Unfortunately, the place closed in early 2005 to be replaced by a Starbucks, leaving Bridget without a writing haven. And now it was late 2008, and she had yet to find somewhere to replace it. The closest she had been able to find was the balcony on the Pandigaeshik apartment. Completely different atmosphere than the coffee shop, but it felt nice and isolated. It would have been better if she didn't have to hear the cars driving around, though.

The weather was nice on Sunday night, so Bridget brought her laptop out there to try and get some actual work done. But it wasn't happening. Every time she'd attempt to start, she'd get distracted by the sounds she could hear outside. Not the cars this time, though. No, she could swear she heard someone singing. She checked the time in the corner of her laptop screen. Wasn't it a little late to be singing like that?

Bridget was tired. Penny had trouble sleeping on Saturday night, which meant both Panda parents suffered the same fate. At least it had happened during the weekend and not a work night. As tired as Bridget was, dinner still had to be made, so she trudged off to Agrarian to get some food for the family.

She grabbed a cart and wandered the aisles of the grocery store section, trying to concentrate on her grocery list instead of how much she wanted to go home and lie down. It was difficult.

Fall was finally here, meaning there were only a finite number of pleasant days left in the year. Bridget had decided to take advantage of this while she could, so after work she got dressed in some more casual clothes and took the kids to play at the park.

By the time the outing was over and Bridget brought them back to the Manor, both Penny and Jeth were all tuckered out and dozing in their double stroller. This was yet another opportunity that needed to be milked, so she stopped in the Mocha for a latte. She wasn't planning on being down there too long (there was still dinner that needed to be prepared), but a little break in the cafe while the kids were asleep wasn't a bad thing at all. She picked a table away from the main walking area so the stroller didn't get in the way and sat back to watch the customers as she sipped her drink.

Gilly was working. She should have been putting finishing touches on her documentary, but she'd had a long day already between school, practice, work and homework. She needed to do laundry, so she was in the process of doing that. And it turned out that the laundry room was more relaxing then the Madsen apartment which was full of a very fussy baby Max who just did not want to go to sleep and, in fact, only wanted to wail for thirty to forty minutes at a time before he tired himself out, passed out for twenty and then started wailing again despite being changed, fed, burped, rocked, sung to, etc, etc.

So she had her laptop, playing an itunes playlist. She'd started out editing STS concert videos before she'd turned that off, turned on her playlist and had gotten down to research on camel spiders. Oh yes, consider her next movie idea forming - from zombies, to alien musicals, to important documentaries, to monster movie. God forbid she see a spider in the laundry room, she was totally going to freak out since she was looking up monster-sized camel spiders, gah!