633 days, 8 hours, 40 minutes, 30.1 seconds

She can't help wondering if it was a red Ford Escort. She almost bought a red car once, when the Datsun dealer claimed to have the car then claimed he'd get the car then said a maroon car which she knew was just a fancy tag for red. She can't stand red, the gaudiest vehicle on the road. She did have a pink car once, the Dodge Shadow. Slowest moving car she's ever driven. She can't even remember its name now.

633 days, 8 hours, 49 minutes, 18 seconds

So: An 81 year-old woman pulls into her driveway and notices a bull in her garage. The angry bull rams its horns into her Ford Escort. She blows her horn. The bull chases her car as she drives to a relative's home to call the cops. This happened yesterday in Hebron. Rural Washington County, the paper says. About fifteen miles from her own home. She doesn't know what to say except to record this here just as it happened. And to note she has no family in the area. She drove to a neighbor's once when the gas didn't work and the phone didn't work. No bull.

633 days, 9 hours, 25 minutes, 27 seconds

She got up. She turned on the computer. She went downstairs for breakfast. The usual routine. She took her pills, ate wasabi peas instead of a breakfast bar, since her head still hurt a bit. Then she realized she'd just aimed a bullet directly into her skull. She'd never changed her pill compartments. She'd just taken Glucophage. An innocent enough mistake.

In the news last January, there was a piece about the Tigger character at Walt Disney World supposedly hitting a child "on or about the head" while posing for photos. It's not the first time. In 2004 a different Tigger was accused of groping a thirteen year-old girl, but later found innocent.

633 days, 12 hours, 22 minutes, 16 seconds

Mickey Mickey Mickey Mickey Mickey. The little boy runs up and Mickey Mouse reaches down to hug him. Just the person I've waited my whole life to meet. Then the tv goes back to Law and Order.

633 days, 20 hours, 42 minutes, 16.7 seconds

What she's not writing here is that her father's sick. Or thinks he's sick. Angry that she's traveling all over the country and hasn't made time to see him,to go over all the possessions in the house, when he just gave her all that money. When he's sick. When she says they've been over all this already. When she says she doesn't want anything.

633 days, 20 hours, 46 minutes, 19 seconds

The last thing she wanted was yet another sickness journal. Then again, the last thi ng she wanted was this much pain. Oh, she can make excuses, can say her state mirrors the state her country's in. Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman exposed as military feel-good myths. The Dow Jones higher than ever.

633 days, 20 hours, 50 minutes, 19 seconds

She thought she had it down pat: one Glucophage in the morning, one at bedtime = some of the worst migraines she's had. One day off, and just a little headache, easily overlooked. But then, just as her husband suggests maybe only one pill tonight, she gulps two pills and ten minutes later that sharp pain running down the right side of her head again, as if it never left.

633 days, 20 hours, 54 minutes, 29 seconds

Mouskop. Mouse cap. To have a doctor with the head of a rodent her father has hunted down. A neurologist, no less. Except he's Russian, not German. Given the magic he's worked these past three years, she prefers to imagine him pulling Cinderella's carriage. The lead mouse.