695 days, 9 hours, 59 minutes, 39 seconds

It's two o'clock and, if you believe her pedometer, she's taken 695 steps so far today. Not a very auspicious start to weight loss. There have been days when she doesn't even hit the 2,000 mark, and she's never yet made it to 10,000. Sort of a lame duck poet.

697 days, 6 hours, 34 minutes, 33 seconds

No matter what, no matter where, no matter when. It seems like her major computer problems begin after midnight. Long after her father's in bed. He said he was looking forward to retirement so that he could sleep late, but after a month or two he realized the whole day was gone by the time he got up. The whole day, by his standards. She needed to work late and sleep late, to prove her life wasn't his life.

Her husband's usually up until one or two. When she has problems like that he shoves toothpicks in his eyes and tries to help her. The last thing she wants is his help.

697 days, 7 hours, 0 minutes, 51 seconds

She pauses from work for a few minutes to watch her computer disk finish backing up, which still seems the most interesting thing she's done today.

697 days, 7 hours, 15 minutes, 52 seconds

George Bush even punched his father once, her father says. No way he could vote for a man like that.

697 days, 7 hours, 28 minutes, 36 seconds

Four years ago. December, 2002, to be exact. Or maybe November. Just before or just after her birthday (there was a blizzard on the day of that welcome party). She came home to find a message from her father on the machine. Upset not at what she'd written, but what a critic friend wrote about her poems. Most sensitive essay she's read, she told him. She has no right to write about his life, he told her. And she said it was her life, not his. But let's face it, they needed each other. Especially now, with his lady-friend dead also. Him in and out of the hospital. He still reminds her that reviewer should be shot. She still keeps him uninformed about her new work. It doesn't win his praise, anyway, he only knows success in terms of money. He clings to life hoping her novel's made into a blockbuster movie, like The Firm. Which reminds her that Billy Collins is Bush's favorite poet.

697 days, 7 hours, 38 minutes, 46 seconds

Some things are just naturally a waste of time. This new flash computer disk, for instance. Slowest damn write speed she's ever seen. She was up until 6:00 a.m. trying to cope with it, then lay in bed unsleeping. So okay, plan revised: use this for unchanging backup files, keep the old flash disk (too small for all her files) as her main daily backup. Over four years old now. She remembers the day he bought it for her – teaching, then meeting to plan a party for the arrival of a friend's adopted daughter, five or six now. Denting the car on the way. Then this disk wasn't the one she'd planned on buying. But it's served her, perhaps, better than the friend has. People's needs change. People's interests change. We have to set priorities. Sleep, for her, has never been one of them. Cursing every minute of work time sacrificed.

700 days, 22 hours, 50 minutes, 42 seconds

Seven hundred. That's what her blood sugar readings seem like tonight. Two hundred or seven hundred, one's as bad as the next. Before dinner and again at bedtime. The lowest possible dose, her husband reminds her. The lowest common denominator. Sometimes she feels there's just no use in counting.

703 days, 8 hours, 16 minutes, 6 seconds

The mayor decided alternate side of the street parking was in effect yesterday. After all, there were only two inches of snow. And the streets had to be cleaned. No room for wimps in this city.

703 days, 10 hours, 10 minutes, 40 seconds

She's determined to tolerate Glucophage, despite everything seemingly stacked against her – the pharmacy requiring special permissions (from insurance, of course), the doctor insisting he doesn't want generic, the abdominal pains, the possible nausea, the huge snow mounds, the uncut corners, the possible loss of appetite. Other meds might make her gain weight, she's told. And this is only at bedtime. Two weeks and most of the side effects should vanish. There were none at all the first night, though she lay there imagining her stomach coiling into fists. She's got to tolerate Glucophage, has to make its lowest dose work for her, has to prove she cares enough, loves enough, trusts enough, is trustworthy, is worthy of love. Don't tolerate, exterminate – her father's words.

704 days, 12 hours, 42 minutes, 58 seconds

Maybe twelve minutes away from seeing the doctor. Diabetes medications start today. Or tomorrow. This is the day she's been dreading for the past five years. But she's past controlling. Three inches of snow on the ground, and it's crippled the city more than a foot normally does. It's insane. Leaving the apartment this morning, she saw a penny on the hall carpet, got as far as the elevator before going back for it. Maybe everyone's luck will change.

705 days, 6 hours, 2 minutes, 20 seconds

A man comes in with a large bouquet of flowers. With coat, scarf, and computer case, it's hard to know what to do with them. She recalls another man she saw with flowers. It was in October 2000, at the airport, in Minneapolis, and they'd missed the connecting flight. These were for the lady back home, a single rose. They chatted on the van to the hotel -- he, she, her husband, and two Arab pilots they picked up at the Mall of America.

705 days, 6 hours, 15 minutes, 40 seconds

As Hamlet would say, the play's the thing. Still, they like to eat well. She orders wine, gets the bread, waits for him. A Valentine's Day menu, then the regular menu. Steak, she supposes. Sirloin or rib eye. Outside, on Central Park South, a man delivers flowers. It's early yet. Tulips, not roses, on the table, but at least red tulips. Filet mignon is only on the specials menu. And no chateaubriand. She remembers, forty years ago, the country restaurant and the boy-man who tried to teach her this steak for two was what love is.

705 days, 23 hours, 20 minutes, 41 seconds

Valentine's Day. And off to another roaring start. Remember the Tylenol murders? That's all she can think of. The first person killed was a woman at her fiancé's mother's house. It took months for people to believe that he (or his mother) hadn't been trying to kill her. And she doesn't know what to believe. That he was out of vitamins, yes. That she ran out of the Tylenol in her purse, yes, but that was because he kept taking them. Then she saw the bottle on the kitchen counter. A pale brown capsule, not the expected red and yellow, but it said something about a new, quick-dissolving formula. It certainly wasn't quick yesterday. Unstoppable headaches sucking out all her energy, she could barely hold her head up. How easily the body remembers. And if, as he insists, these were the vitamins he'd kept in his suitcase, why didn't they at least give her energy? Ultra Man vitamins. At midnight he hands her sugar-free Godiva chocolates. Her voice sticks in her throat as she tries to say I love you.

706 days, 8 hours, 41 minutes, 15.2 seconds

This pedometer screws up. If it's not placed exactly on the hip, it might not count the steps. Thus a walk to the mailbox on Broadway, stopping in the bagel shop for a low-carb muffin, doesn't count. And sometimes longer walks, such as yesterday morning. She can't be checking and rechecking it every minute, especially when she has her coat on. But she walks fifteen steps in the apartment, watches it count eight or nine. Other times it seems to count more steps than she realized. Going to the bathroom, pulling down her pants then pulling them up again, counts as two steps. Standing up from her typing chair then sitting down again doesn't count, then counts two steps the second time, one step the third time. So she supposes she has to accept it all as just an average. And she looks again at the Backwards Bush clock.

707 days, 4 hours, 35 minutes, 17 seconds

Four hours, thirty-five minutes until VD Day. The countdown begins. All the large pink and red animals have disappeared from the window of Duane Reade downstairs. Computer sites warn not to open any email that even hints at love.

707 days, 4 hours, 55 minutes, 9 seconds

She thinks she's okay, with both hardware and software firewalls, plus the antivirus updated every other day. Today she feels like shit. She takes Tylenol. She runs all three spyware checks.

709 days, 22 hours, 42 minutes, 41 seconds

And, live on the Internet, the cheddar cheese has been aging for 50 days, 1 hour, 16 minutes, 25 seconds, 784 milliseconds. If she drops by the website at ten o'clock any morning she can watch as the 55 pound block of cheese is turned.

711 days, 8 hours, 47 minutes, 39 seconds

Stopping for lunch in Saratoga, she's lured by a clothing store with a huge sale sign, buys a top way too expensive that she can't resist, discovers her favorite restaurant is reopening soon in another location, grabs a bagel with lox, returns to find her car parked behind a minivan from Alaska with ELF 585 for its license plate. She supposes this is what life is like where we drill for oil.

711 days, 21 hours, 32 minutes, 42 seconds

Did you hear the story about the man who used to walk his dog past the White House every day? Every day he'd pause at the gate and ask if Mr. Bush was home, and every day the guard would tell him that Mr. Bush no longer resides here, Mr. Bush is no longer president. Finally one day the guard got angry and asked why he keeps coming back and asking to see Mr. Bush, when he tells him all the time that Mr. Bush no longer resides here, Mr. Bush is no longer president. And the man responds that he knows, he just enjoys hearing the guard say that over and over. And the guard snaps to attention and says yes, sir, see you tomorrow, sir.

711 days, 22 hours, 8 minutes, 39 seconds

711 days left until Bush is out of office. She can't even write that here without thinking of 9-Eleven. 911 used to be a call for help, but these days they ask people to call 311 if it's not a matter of life and death. 711. Iraq. Afghanistan. It's life and death, Mr. President. Convenience. Every Stewarts, Cumberland Farms, and 7-Eleven with at least two gas tanks out front.

711 days, 22 hours, 11 minutes, 43 seconds

Sick. Eating little. Out drinking with friends. She had friends then, thirty-eight years ago, some of whom she's still close to. But she was coming home sick night after night. The body she'd abused for years getting back at her.

711 days, 22 hours, 24 minutes, 43 seconds

Oh Thank Heaven for 7-Eleven. Don't make her sick. That jingle was introduced in 1969, the year she moved to New York. She didn't own a tv, she didn't listen to radio, she didn't have a car. God knows where or when she heard it. There was a Grand Union (willing to cash checks) and bodegas on every other corner. Those first months, living in a residential hotel, she bought a quarter pound of shrink-wrapped ham or salami, two rolls, and made that lunch and dinner. Once in awhile there was Tad's Steaks, $1.99 for a greasy steak and sensible baked potato. Edible then, as she doesn't think it would be now. Sick. But she was in New York. She was thankful. Don't tolerate, exterminate. That was her father's slogan.

711 days, 22 hours, 46 minutes, 51 seconds

7-Eleven. Convenience. Quick in and out. Open 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. back in 1946, that's how they got the name. But most are open 24 hours now. She would have said they're what she knew growing up in the 50s, but there were no New Jersey franchises until after she left. She knows there was Cumberland Farms, and possibly Stewarts, though Stewarts was only a hot dog stand, with root beer. Now, even in Granville, NY (population less than 7000) there's a 24-hour Price Chopper, with a 24-hour Super K-Mart less than 20 miles away. She stopped there tonight for batteries and garbage bags. Convenience.

712 days, 19 hours, 8 minutes, 38 seconds

Nineteen hours and nineteen degrees out her kitchen window. Once again she's watching frozen soup spin in the microwave. This is all she has to do for the next nine minutes. No red phone on her desk, no red Staples easy button, no Internet, no newspaper, no radio, no war. Make that ten minutes. Still not quite unfrozen, then too hot to eat.

719 days, 10 hours, 15 minutes, 52 seconds

She writes in the cab, headed downtown, the cabbie complaining about patches of ice, and how he can't brake. She writes mostly when they're stopped for lights, so as not to get nauseous. Two things she's always (and often vociferously) hated – political poetry and the day-to-day chatter called Art by the New York School poets. This blog is both.

719 days, 10 hours, 36 minutes, 38 seconds

Bush is in town. His advisors wanted a Wall St. setting for him to talk about the economy and blast the huge bonuses paid on Wall St., the discrepancies between rich and poor. Then, since he's right in the area, he'll drop by Ground Zero. Meanwhile, she has to take a cab down to 12th St., all the way east, and with traffic tied up because of the presidential motorcade, God knows how long it will take, the meter running.

719 days, 22 hours, 49 minutes, 19.2 seconds

This is getting ridiculous, but it's getting later and later, she's sitting reading news stories, absently fingering the anemic ball in her hands, fascinated by its pliability, its overall softness. And she thinks about silicon breast implants: if maybe some men like those better than the real thing, if they might burst and give out a dye like this. Food coloring. Baby's milk. What the hell would a baby do with silicon? In other news today, a farmer's cows suddenly started producing pink milk – traced to the fact that he'd been feeding them a lot of carrots. Those cows went wild for carrots.

719 days, 23 hours, 22 minutes, 17.8 seconds

The gel ball's losing weight. She hadn't quite expected this, thought with that tiny capsule gone it might still retain its thickness if not its color. She's losing weight as well, with nearly ten thousand steps today. She squeezes the ball again, hard, watching the red squirt up almost snake-like, curling around itself. Nothing but food coloring, and way too bright for blood. Years ago, her husband's finger sliced open in a deli, they went to the St. Vincent's emergency room, had to wait and wait (like last night with the computer). Finally a resident came in to stitch it up, and he saw her jump back. Hours later, and still the blood could squirt out and hit her right near the eye. She'd gone to the lobby to get a soda, so she missed the scene. But today she ordered ten more. Balls, not husbands. Don't get her started. It's nearly one a.m. Her defenses are down. Bad puns at this hour are falling as fast as snowflakes. The tv news says it won't amount to much.

720 days, 10 hours, 23 minutes, 26 seconds

Baby Einstein, indeed! It doesn't take a genius to realize that if you've got a small hand exercise ball, and it has dye inside, and you squeeze it hard enough, twist it every which way, eventually that capsule's going to burst, getting red ink all over your fingers. There's a news story she saved years ago, about a robber who realized the bills were marked with a red dye, and that they'd stained his pants. He didn't want to be branded as a robber, so he took his pants off. This was in 1995, when the whole world was more innocent. She finds the article instantly. So parts of this computer still work. She shouldn't trash it. And that ball, once all its dye's run out, might still be pliable. She holds it under warm water, recalling how that eases the blood flow.

720 days, 10 hours, 52 minutes, 29 seconds

Thieves race car through store, the headline reads. Swear to God, and this is CBS News, not some tabloid. A car with two masked men crashed the main entrance, tried to ram through the sliding security grill at the jewelry counter, failed twice, then drove out through an exit on the other side of the building. All she can think is that it must have been an armored car. Probably government surplus. Probably Florida. But no, this happened in Denmark.

720 days, 11 hours, 56 minutes, 21 seconds

And 144 days, 16 hours before the one-year warranty on her computer expires. On the phone yesterday with a Microsoft technician for an hour, him getting her to try installing Explorer again and again and again and again. Then, later, two hours on hold waiting for another tech, she on one phone line, her husband on the other, racing to see which one picked up first. Their two speaker phones blared music in sync. Sometimes even jazz. And her timing's a little better this morning, though she doesn't think minutes and seconds count.

721 days, 10 hours, 49 minutes, 35 seconds

Also on yesterday's AP wire: Military Trash Becomes Florida Agencies' Treasures. Everything the U.S. Military deems no longer useful is shipped off there: helicopter parts, Vietnam-era helicopters, boats, dive platforms. An armored personnel carrier purchased for $1500 will provide extreme cover for police if they have to ram a building or whatever. Also prisoner-transport airplanes, don't leave them out of the picture. Florida has immigration problems too, you know.

721 days, 11 hours, 13 minutes, 18 seconds

One-third of the students in Texas don't graduate high school. In Houston or Dallas more than half of the kids drop out. This from education experts. This from yesterday's Houston Chronicle. More than two-and-a-half million Texans have dropped out of high school over the past twenty years. Experts warn, if this trend continues, there will be huge economic and social problems. Duh... Maybe she wouldn't have even noticed this were it not for the fact that it's Texas. She's been thinking about it all night.

723 days, 23 hours, 24 minutes, 42 seconds

It's takes awhile, sometimes, for the news to hit home. But on January 23rd, the same day as Bush's State of the Union address, beggar children in Nairobi invade a five-star hotel's food tent and grab what they can. Food is selling for $7 a plate. Most people there, the ones who work, are lucky to earn $2 a day. This is at the World Social Forum where leaders from around the world are gathered. Bush is busy writing his speech. Half a world away, in Switzerland, other leaders attend the World Economic Forum, discussing the problem of poverty. Bush is cooped up in his oval office, reading over his speech again, practicing reading out loud, hoping not to flub too many words this time. And, lest he be called a man who only cares about the rich, he decides to introduce basketball player Dikembe Mutombo, from somewhere in Africa he thinks, who recently had a hospital built, again somewhere in Africa. Underlining this, so he can double-check the town, he breaks the tip of yet another pencil.

724 days, 11 hours, 39 minutes, 55 seconds

At least the Globe hasn't warmed completely yet. Those zoo bears, coaxed into hibernation a few weeks ago, could have managed on their own now.

724 days, 23 hours, 18 minutes, 11.2 seconds

She's not the only one who's crazy here – even her husband suggested it might be fun to bundle up and stay out watching the temperature drop. It's down to fourteen degrees. And don't think she's not tempted. They could sit in the courtyard, maybe blocked from the gusting wind. But The Five Pennies pops into her head again. What she remembers most is the little girl sitting out in the rain waiting for her parents to visit. And ending up with polio, the camera zooming in on the iron lung. She would have been ten or eleven, in Atlantic City, which had two of the major polio hospitals of the time. She has no idea what her parents might have been thinking when they took her to that movie, and she's right in the middle of trying to put everything in place when her husband undresses and crawls into the bed behind her.

725 days, 7 hours, 10 minutes, 18 seconds

4:50 p.m., and twenty-nine degrees out. When she woke this morning it was thirty-four. For the rest of the night, it's supposed to go down a degree or two an hour, bottoming out at sixteen from 5:00-8:00 a.m., then slowly starting up again. She doesn't understand what all the fuss is about, can remember nights here when it got down to two degrees. Except it's been so warm this year, the world's spoiled. She thinks about staying up to watch the degrees drop. Given her sleeping patterns of late, that would be child's play.

725 days, 16 hours, 9 minutes, 37 seconds

1 day, 13 hours, 9 minutes, 37 seconds since Bush's State of the Union speech. Nothing much worth remembering, though. Her husband comments it's the first time in their twenty-two years together that he's seen her sit through the whole speech. And she supposes it is. They sprawled on opposite ends of a gold sofa bought last year, she watching tv, he with a radio and headset on. Their tv has been problematic for months now, cutting out briefly every five or ten minutes. And he didn't want to miss a word. She, on the other hand, really enjoyed those frozen, distorted faces. State of the Union.

729 days, 5 hours, 53 minutes, 1 seconds

Snowing hard in Chicago during the second half. She can see it on the screen. And she thinks of the tv snow she saw as a child. Interference, it used to be called. Another sports term. Another political concept.

729 days, 8 hours, 26 minutes, 4 seconds

Chicago and New Orleans. Blue and Gold. She's trying to be adult here. Having hated football as a child, she's trying to watch with him. She roots for New Orleans, the city after Katrina, trying to pull itself up in spite of our government. They've spent some wonderful time there, listening to music, just walking Bourbon St. She watches two tackles and one interception. But all she sees is blue and gold, gold and blue, those dreaded summer camp color-war divisions. Turnover, punt, turnover, punt. It was never fair.

730 days, 11 hours, 4 minutes, 19 seconds

She did dream last night, one of the few lately she remembers, and it was of her computer being hijacked. Something called Road Warrior, an animated white screen in the center of the desktop, indexing all her files. Then, trying to record it this morning, Dragon crashed. On reboot her desktop icons were raised almost off the screen, and Dragon wanted to come up with a C+ runtime screen but never got that far. He tells her Hillary's now officially running for President. He says this election promises to be a battle. She reboots again, everything back in position, re-records her dream. It's shorter now.

730 days, 11 hours, 6 minutes, 34 seconds

He says she's dreaming.

730 days, 11 hours, 18 minutes, 13 seconds

She was awake at 3:15 a.m., unsure whether she'd been asleep for awhile or not. She got up. It looked as if there was fog outside the window. She went to the bathroom, then downstairs to take a muscle relaxant, which she supposes she should have taken before she went to bed. That fog is really snow. She sees it coming down fast outside the kitchen window, maybe a quarter inch accumulation on the ground, even on the sidewalk. There would have been reasons to get dressed, go out and enjoy it, but he was sleeping beside her. She assumed it would still be there in the morning. She assumed a lot of things.

731 days, 10 hours, 30 minutes, 7 seconds

Alone in the exam room waiting for results. With no one here to look at, she picks up Family Circle. "Can This Marriage Be Saved;" a three-page ad with mothers telling how proud they are of their enlisted daughters; a Topomax ad which shows a woman with her fists clenched, wedding band clearly visible on her finger: "Do you worry about migraines even when you're not having one?" No. No, no, no, no, no.

731 days, 11 hours, 0 minutes, 29 seconds

Of all the folders here, hers is one of the thickest. Mammograms once a year, sonograms twice a year since that last cancer, biopsies, wires inserted to mark the spot. The surgeon wouldn't have even been suspicious yet, that's how good this lab is. The technician takes four pictures, picks up all the records, leaves her alone with the machine. She'll be back.

731 days, 11 hours, 20 minutes, 34 seconds

If she wasn't here today she'd be teaching at a senior center. When she started these workshops, over thirty years ago, it was almost but not quite her grandmother's generation, then her mother's. Now they're more or less her contemporaries. Mostly women. Mostly in good health. One man with diabetes. Another man left when he was hit by a car crossing Queens Blvd., came back for awhile, then left again when his son died.

731 days, 11 hours, 32 minutes, 41 seconds

A woman across from her puts her PDA back in her pocketbook and pulls out a compact, pushes her hair back in place, pulls out her PDA again. And she thinks of last night in the theater. A woman beside her pulled out lipstick five minutes into the first act. The smell as bad as perfume. In a dark scene change she crawled over her husband and the friend next to him to get to an empty seat at the end of the aisle. And, actually, she could see better there.

731 days, 11 hours, 37 minutes, 38 seconds

A hot pink cashmere turtleneck with a thick gold necklace. A tailored grey pants suit with a low-cut white lace top. Thick black beads. Three coats with fur collars (one of them purple). She wears jeans and a black top. No jewelry. And she refuses to hide behind the New York Times.

731 days, 11 hours, 46 minutes, 53 seconds

She enters and takes a seat in a room full of women. And one man. This was one of the first places in the country to focus solely on breast diagnosis, her doctor told her, years ago. It took six months to get this appointment. Ten or twelve years ago she recalls sitting here, bored, staring at the women around her, trying to guess for whom this was just routine, who would be called back for further tests. Then she was called back. Today she sits close to the one man.

731 days, 12 hours, 12 minutes, 26 seconds

If she's headed for the doctor's, and she takes a taxi, and the taxi drives across 79th St. through the park, she can see patches of snow on the top of rocks, or icicles hanging down the walls of the transverse.

731 days, 22 hours, 32 minutes, 34 seconds

So okay. It's been a warm winter. But remember, there was snow today. You had to be quick to spot it, but it was snow. And probably just north of the city much of it stayed on the ground. But then she comes home at close to midnight and finds a fly in the apartment. She's not kidding – only one window cracked, and it has a tight screen, but somehow this fly got in. Large, half dead, flying back and forth between her and the computer screen. Finally she traps him against a wicker cabinet in the bathroom. He doesn't even try to get away.

732 days, 8 hours, 33 minutes, 37 seconds

January 18. At three o'clock, when she went out for lunch, the streets were damp. A little drizzle, she assumed. Then she saw rather than felt a drop. Clear. White. Barely visible. By the time she got home it had definitely turned to snow. They've been keeping records for over 150 years, and this is the latest they've ever seen snow in New York City. It won't stick, though. Much too warm out there: 37 degrees at the moment. How can this be snow? It's not rational. Last night it got down to the mid twenties, and on the tv news they were talking about concern for the homeless and volunteers from shelters going out to try and draw them in. It doesn't make sense. This would be normal temperature for any other winter here. So much else to think about: the crime rate's up even in Newark, Bush wants more troops for Iraq, her ring finger's still numb.

733 days, 8 hours, 54 minutes, 1.3 seconds

She sits in the dentist's chair. She bites down. A piece of her molar gone, a larger hole now that he's drilled it. She bites down, making an impression. If you want me to stop, raise your left hand, he'd said. Just like her childhood dentist, long ago. She refused novocaine. Raises her hand. It's not the drill it's the water building up. Water and blood, she sees now. She can see a piece of his reflection if she stares directly at the bottom of his lamp. His eyes looking intently. And how, she wonders, did he even see her hand?

733 days, 9 hours, 40 minutes, 3.6 seconds

666, her father's bank account reads. She got the first statement today. 666. The devil that you know. The Devil that you don't know.

737 days, 11 hours, 42 minutes, 51 seconds

• Jan. 1, 2007: An Indonesian Boeing 737-400 operated by budget carrier Adam Air disappeared from radar screens during a flight from Java to Sulawesi islands. Wreckage was located at sea 10 days later and it now appears that all 102 aboard were killed.
• Sept. 29, 2006: One hundred and fifty-four people are killed when a Boeing 737-800 operated by the low-cost Gol airline crashes in the Amazon rain forest in Brazil's worst plane disaster.
• Oct. 22, 2005: A Nigerian Bellview Airlines Boeing 737-200 airliner with 111 passengers and six crew crashes 20 miles (30 km) north of Lagos, shortly after takeoff. All aboard are killed.
• Sept. 5, 2005: A Mandala Airlines Boeing 737-200 crashes just after takeoff near Medan in Indonesia's northern Sumatra. Altogether 102 people on board and 47 on the ground are killed, but 15 passengers in the tail section survive.
• Aug. 14, 2005 - A Cypriot Boeing 737 operated by Helios Airways crashes about 20 miles (30 km) north of the Greek capital Athens, killing all 121 passengers and crew.

737 more days of Bush's second term in office. Not exactly what she hoped to wake up to, sleeping until almost noon again this morning. She's back in New York City. Safe.

740 days, 8 hours, 26 minutes, 50 seconds

Everything's going wrong today. First her alarm clock set wrong. And now the fire. Smoke, rather. Where there's smoke there's fire. She waits. True, she started this with a fake log, and the instructions say not to mix it with wood, but she did this the other day, and it was fine. There's smoke all over now. And the smoke alarm doesn't go off. She tries opening the damper, sits in the kitchen and watches smoke go up the chimney. She closes the damper a bit, lets more air in from the front. Still nothing but smoke. The whole house filling now. And the smoke alarm leaning back on its haunches, dozing. She adds yet another log, a small one with lots of bark on it. She kneels in front of the fire, using the bellows. Faster and faster and faster. Her husband gave her these bellows as a Christmas gift years ago. Then, all of a sudden, everything catches at once, the flames bursting forth like the fires she's seen only in movies. Right at face level. She closes the door, quick. Stands up. Turns down the damper. There's smoke all over the room now, drifting into her study, probably gunking up this computer. She ought to open a window. Two days ago she ignored the smoke alarm.

740 days, 8 hours, 48 minutes, 24 seconds

"It's putting itself on display," a friend said the first time she looked through the little glass door of the microwave, watching the food turn. Today she watches a frozen block of onion soup melting into the bowl, at first nothing, then slowly sinking in, crookedly, leaning to one edge, the cheese holding its own at the top. Hungry, she munches a cookie while she's watching. Backwards, she knows. And there are croutons she didn't expect in there.

741 days, 1 hour, 50 minutes, 12.8 seconds

and 3753 steps, not counting half a dozen times last night when she got up for a drink, or to go to the bathroom. She might be pouring sugar again. Trying to take it slow, one step at a time, and not panic. One of her teaching commitments canceled for this spring at least. She breathes easier. Lunch with Paul, then up to the Lake George Arts Council to let them see some photos. A possible show. A probable disappointment. No time to build a fire today. She gets up, walks over to turn up the furnace. 3794 steps. If only passing the next two years of Bush could be this methodical.

741 days, 21 hours, 42 minutes, 50 seconds

One more thing she did today – she set up her first pedometer. Walk 7000 steps a day and you will lose weight, Weight Watchers claims. She walks from room to room, trying to up the count. She thinks of all those nights pacing her parents' living room. But she was anorexic then anyway.

741 days, 22 hours, 12 minutes, 10 seconds

In thinking over the little she accomplished today, does it help to say she caught another mouse (the fourth since yesterday)? That she used the treadmill? That she built a fire and kept it going all day? This last is not inconsequential – when she rented, nearly 25 years ago, she spent a full night trying to get a twig to burn. Right around dinnertime, the woodstove and the smoke alarm almost came to blows. And of course her blood's through the roof again. She wants to compare that to smoke going up the chimney. The newly rebuilt chimney. The old blood. And a useless comparison.

742 days, 1 hour, 29 minutes, 1.2 seconds

She's asked students to write about New Year's resolutions, and expects a lot of poems on dieting at tomorrow's class. Meanwhile, in the headlines, she reads about two pigs so fat they can't fit in the slaughterhouse truck, have to be killed and butchered in their pens. An obese woman in South Africa was stuck in a cave for nearly twelve hours, trapping twenty-three others in front of her, including asthmatic children and a diabetic. And the FDA has just granted Pfizer approval on a drug for obese dogs. She used to own stock in Pfizer.

744 days, 1 hour, 39 minutes, 49 seconds

Even along the Thruway, green grass alternates with brown. She thinks about plants and animals forced from their natural habitats. This weather's played hell with her head the past few days. Up above Woodstock she stops for lunch, and still leaves her jacket in the car. She gets off on 787 and heads toward Troy, then takes Route 40 home, through small towns and farm roads. She looks up and sees the start of a rainbow. Then she notices puddles and what must have been a wet road. A few sprinkles on her windshield. This cloud- and sun-filled dusk is the best light for rainbows, she remembers. Miles later, still a half hour from home, she sees the start of a second rainbow. The start of a promise, most likely.

744 days, 12 hours, 56 minutes, 2 seconds

She wakes at 10:30 to have her husband tell her it's 65 degrees out. Already they've broken the record for today. By the time she checks her email and dresses it's 68. Another blizzard in Colorado. A woman there is selling snow on Ebay. She recalls once, when she was sick, her mother filling an old roasting pan with snow and bringing it inside for her. She remembers once building a fort with some neighbor kids she can't remember the names of, and lobbing snowballs at other kids. Her husband, the second month she knew him, went to her house upstate right before Thanksgiving. There was not a lot of snow, but enough for a snowball, which he threw at her. She didn't know what hit her. And this year there hasn't even been snow up there, just trash dumped in her yard. Still 68 degrees. And she's out of here.

746 days, 8 hours, 49 minutes, 43 seconds

Ring out the old, ring in the new. Fraternal twins in Boston born three minutes yet a year apart. The girl born first, but most likely the boy will be stronger (memories of her six-weeks-younger cousin here – how they played in the abandoned schoolyard, how he smiled). Thoughts of the Bush twins. The competition between all twins. Between all siblings. Between son and father. Some of the most powerful men she's known have sons that are losers.

746 days, 8 hours, 51 minutes, 9 seconds

The clock's still counting down. She thought if she didn't pay attention for a few days, it might go away, just like back in her headache days – if she was focused enough on other things the pain would vanish. The Americans dead in Iraq is up to 3000, a 96 year-old uncle dead in Rhode Island. Dead before the year changed hands, buried after it. Ring out the old … Only her ears ring.

750 Days, 8 Hours, 24 Minutes, 43 Seconds

At Edgar's there are balloons on the backs of chairs. Infants are entranced by them. A passing waitress gets caught up in the string. She's not the one in the party hat. Her Happy New Year tiara is on again off again. Starting the party a little early, but what the hell. Everyone wants the year to end.

750 Days, 11 Hours, 13 Minutes, 37 Seconds

He's on oxygen even at home now. He stopped walking five miles on the Boardwalk each morning over five years ago. No more walking stairs. She recalls, for as long as she can remember, things to go up in the attic piled on the sides of the lower stairs until one of the family was headed up. Her husband screeching about books piled up on the stairs in her country house. See, she told him last time they saw her father, this is what I was taught to do. But he's had the attic cleaned out for years now, nothing much left. And things he can no longer use are no longer stored up there. He can't quite understand why she doesn't want them, so he asks again.

750 Days, 11 Hours, 21 Minutes, 8.5 Seconds

This is her father's clutter. She thinks of four years ago, when he was in the hospital, how it took her over two hours to find two checkbooks. Papers piled up on the twin beds pushed together in his study that used to be her room. More on the desk and even more on the dining room table. The day after he turned 90 he didn't want to meet them for lunch because he still had to work on his taxes. No more extensions left. And the day before he went in the hospital this last time he was so proud that the clutter, on the beds at least, had gotten almost manageable. A week in Shore Memorial and it's all piled up again. Papers slipping through the crack between those two beds. Even if she'd wanted to stay in that house there would be no room for her. But this last time it took her less than ten minutes to find his checkbook.

750 Days, 11 Hours, 49 Minutes, 9 Seconds

The last day of the year. Were this a mayoral election year, they'd be preparing City Hall Park for tomorrow's inauguration. But Bloomberg has two more years left. The same as Bush, she wants to say. But the presidency doesn't change until January 20th. Twenty days from now, she might well give up her New Years resolutions to keep her desk neat and develop better eating habits. Hours before leaving office, Clinton pardoned 140 prisoners, commuting the sentences of another 36. Some were 70s radicals, but none were actual murders. The count of the dead in Iraq is now greater than those killed on 9/11. And it's another 2 years of Bush, not just another 21 days. Her next move should be to turn away from this computer, pick up a stack of papers, and at least look them over.

751 Days, 21 Hours, 22 Minutes, 19 Seconds

She's back in New York. Saddam's dead. At the Waldorf Astoria the 52nd Annual Debutante Ball took place just a few hours ago. Ashley Bush was among them. Another woman is making her debut for the fourth time. New York's on high terror alert. This New Years, they say, don't try to go near Times Square with a large pocketbook. She was only at Times Square for New Years once, when she was twelve years old, with her parents. But she jammed her huge pocketbook with a notebook battery, two books, and other essentials for the Christmas plane trip, coming and going, so now her neck's stiff. And she didn't even turn on the computer. A lot of catching up to do. CBS has decided not to televise the execution. Twelve years ago friends had a fight at a New Years party and he walked out, headed for Times Square, but couldn't get anywhere near it. They married anyway. She was at a friend's wedding that same day, in Chicago. He's dead now also. Just how many times can one be a debutante?

756 Days, 1 Hour, 10 Minutes, 45 Seconds

To everyone in our armed forces stationed overseas, get home safe. Know that we care about you. These words from the football broadcaster. And at that very minute a friend calls to let them know she got home safe: 62 miles in just over an hour, unheard of time for her. It's the third quarter and the Jets just kicked a field goal, the first score of the game. The New Jersey Jets, her husband says. Don't call them New Yorkers. He always roots for whoever's opposing them. Person after person wished her a safe trip home. The fourth quarter starts with a Miami touchdown. The announcer predicts a lot of action this quarter, but it's ten o'clock, so they turn Eyewitness News on.

756 Days, 1 Hour, 16 Minutes, 19 Seconds

Last year, when they drove to Houston, it was his prescription they were waiting for. Leaving a day later than planned, then another two hours, three hours, four hours. Hanging around for the pharmacist who, for all they knew, might have walked out. This was at Duane Reade, the only place in her building now, the closest non-chain pharmacy eight blocks away. The whole world gone to chains – restaurants, video stores, The Gap, K-Mart, Eddie Bauer, Toys R Us. He hates it.

756 Days, 1 Hour, 24 Minutes, 20.3 Seconds

Midrin. That's the drug she used to take for pain those days when Tylenol didn't work. A half-step before reaching for Percocet. And she remembers one Christmas years ago when there was a small drugstore in her building. The day before she left she brought the prescription in for refill, and they ran out. Her absolute state of desperation, she could not spend the holidays with his family and not have these security pills along. They ended up giving her brand rather than generic, he forking up the difference out of pocket. Back in those days she'd have sold her soul.

756 Days, 1 Hour, 32 Minutes, 29 Seconds

She takes Tylenol for the first time since she's been here. The end of Christmas Day. For the most part it's been a good day. Her husband and his brother talking about how much calmer it is in their father's absence. The toddler a delight. They call the other brother. Football on in the background. They call his father. They call her father. Just the four of them in the house now. He massages her head a bit (as he did their first Christmas here, twenty years ago). She massages his stiff shoulder. She eats cookies, pie, homemade praline ice cream, more cookies. This is probably sugar shock. One more day to go. She opens the Tylenol bottle in her purse and sees that if she takes two now there will only be two left. The old panic sets in.

757 Days, 10 Hours, 3 Minutes, 32 Seconds

Back here again, the broadcaster says as the game comes back after the commercial break. Second quarter, tie game, 14/14. When she was 14 she was relatively happy. The first half of the year, at least. This is at his brother's house. Over half the visit is over. It's the second half that's always been hard for her. Two days, four hours, one minute, and counting. But they'll board before that.

758 Days, 0 Hours, 59 Minutes, 56 Seconds

Another day, another Starbucks. This one on the Strand in Galveston. Her second shot of caffeine for the second day in a row. God help her if she has to go through withdrawal again. But the headaches are under control, she can't wrinkle her forehead, she probably wouldn't suffer at two shots a day forever. They stop for a drink at the hotel in Moody Gardens after viewing the Christmas light show in the rain. Nice lights. Nice lightning. Her husband has his hand out for Tylenol.

759 Days, 7 Hours, 4 Minutes, 37 Seconds

Here she is in Houston. Bush land. One of the red states. And she thinks back to 1992, when her husband turned 50. They'd been together about seven years at the time. All she wanted was to surprise him. Making phone calls to people she'd never talked to alone before. Including this brother in Houston. It was July and the city was about to host the Republican National Convention. He and his wife were halfway out the door. They were going to hit all the big hotels, see their displays of red, white, and blue elephants. That was almost fifteen years ago. Her husband's about to turn 65. Another landmark. His brother's retired. This will be their last Christmas in Houston.

759 Days, 7 Hours, 15 Minutes, 53 Seconds

A man from Houston plans to visit every Starbucks in the country. And her? She's probably been in fifteen different ones in Manhattan, two in Forest Hills, maybe one in Brooklyn. She's been to Starbucks in Glens Falls, Saratoga, Palm Springs, New Orleans, Fort Lauderdale, St. Paul, Amherst, Chicago, Philadelphia, and now Houston. Her husband refuses to go with her. But it's a start.

761 Days, 7 Hours, 15 Minutes, 44 Seconds

sThe blow-up Bush punching bag arrived today. A full seven inches. Except he's not blown up. She tries with the little pump for blowing up pens, which now doesn't even work on pens. She puts it in her mouth. And blows. And blows. She gets it pretty good, but by the time she puts the plug in he's lost it: stands for a minute, then knocked down, he stays down. Especially if hit from the right. Seven inches. She tries holding it closed, carefully, with a very dull scissors. This takes the skill of a mother. Or an intern. Her father in the hospital blowing in bags for the woman who called herself a respiratory therapist. Finally she searches the toolbox for a needle-nose pliers. Or any pliers. The best she can do is what looks like tweezers. But he's blown up now. A day before she leaves for Texas and the family Christmas. By the time she gets back she'll be needing this.

761 Days, 8 Hours, 49 Minutes, 11 Seconds

A little girl dressed as a dreidl walks Columbus Ave. Yesterday on 90th St. near the Catholic school she saw a boy and a girl with reindeer antlers. This year, public schools don't get off until the weekend before Christmas. Not what she remembers. She stops at Garlic Bob's for pizza. Not what she remembers. And she's left her pills home.

761 Days, 11 Hours, 36 Minutes, 30.2 Seconds

U.S. Scraps $877M Anthrax Vaccine Contract. VaxGen keeps missing deadlines. Their tests on humans would prove too risky. This company's had trouble since the start. Should have known better than to trust someone already flubbing tests on an AIDS vaccine. Besides, there's already a vaccine out there. So everyone who might be exposed to anthrax gets six shots over eighteen months. That's not too much to ask, is it? Only one more than you need for rabies. Yet people continue to love dogs and rabbits. Also in today's headlines: our new Secretary of Defense visits Iraq for the first time (at first she thought they meant Bill Gates). Bush admits that, with all the insurgencies, there's been a setback.

765 Days, 11 Hours, 4 Minutes, 6 Seconds

Whenever she thinks of War she thinks of Yom Kippur. The High Holy Days. Today they're just holidays. Thanksgiving. Hanukah. Christmas. Onward Christian Soldiers.

765 Days, 11 Hours, 31 Minutes, 50 Seconds

She wants to know how many soldiers die in summer. Last summer. The summer before that. Any summer. And how many civilians? In Iraq, in July and August, it's often over 120 degrees (that's 48 Celsius, which sounds better). The man at the senior center who was given a toupe as a gift says he lost his hair when he was fighting in Korea. Because of the heat there. Her husband loves the heat. This summer, when they're going to be in Los Angeles, he wants to take a side trip to Palm Springs. Just to be in the desert, to experience that kind of heat. And he wants her to go with him.

765 Days, 12 Hours, 16 Minutes, 4 Seconds

The Internet is everyone's back alley. And she finds several different Bush punching bags (plus one Kerry). Now it's a question of whether or not she wants to take up this much space in their apartment. Whether or not she wants her husband to see this. Whether or not she wants him to know that she's lashing out. But maybe for her house upstate. For the summer.

765 Days, 12 Hours, 23 Minutes, 32 Seconds

There's one picture in their apartment that's been driven into the concrete wall over their kitchen window: a still from White Heat that she gave her husband for Hanukah years ago. James Cagney drives the car, his mother seated next to him, the two of them beaming at each other, while his wife is pushed against the far door, pulling her fur coat tight around her. Or was she his girlfriend? Black and white. This is her husband's second favorite movie.

765 Days, 12 Hours, 42 Minutes, 43 Seconds

During the last election, the novelty store two blocks away had Bush and Kerry punching bags in its window. As a child she had a Dennis the Menace punching bag. She has nothing now. She's trying to cut back on medication. She's trying to lose weight. She wants to pound her fist against the one wall in her apartment which is concrete and so firm (though covered over with paint) she can't even drive in a picture hook. Her pictures are worthless. She thinks, maybe if she looks hard, she'll be able to find the Kerry punching bag in some store's back alley. She doubts that simplistic child's toy would aid in weight loss. Not enough effort to get the blood flowing. Better to pound her head against a wall, and she can no longer blame it on a headache. She wakes this Saturday morning to find herself alone. It's the second night of Hanukah. She has to, she knows, use this time well.

766 Days, 9 Hours, 52 Minutes, 19.8 Seconds

Leaving teaching, her arms filled with Christmas wrapping paper. She puts the bag down on a car so she can zip her jacket, then walk a few steps and see that it's not zipped properly. So she tries to put the bag on the hood of an SUV splattered with bird shit, but it falls off. There's a copy of the Holy Bible, title facing out, above the dashboard, clearly visible through the windshield, all tattered, the pages just hanging loose in it. It looks like those bibles one finds in hotel rooms.

767 Days, 9 Hours, 57 Minutes, 58 Seconds

At the first rest stop on the Parkway, a midget in red shirt and red elf cap fills her gas tank, the tip of his cap window-high. This is New Jersey. There's no self-service here. She's going to see her father, alone, for the first time in years, and not happy about it. She feels small.

768 Days, 9 Hours, 6 Minutes, 44.3 Seconds

Her father's in the hospital again. He left a message on her phone yesterday morning. She was teaching. She was helping a woman with Alzheimer's remember one particular gift she gave a childhood friend. This was in Sweden. This was on a farm. She remains in touch with that friend, but is glad they're not on the farm anymore, it was too much work. From here she moves on to help a former butcher write about the woman who wanted to buy him a toupe as a gift. He said if she loves him she'd love him as he is. Her father had a friend take him to the emergency room. When she finally gets him on the phone late that night he tells her he was in the hospital a few days ago but checked himself out because he wanted to get his will finalized. He probably shouldn't have left. He's had a stroke, a heart attack, high blood pressure. He's certain he'll be in the hospital several weeks. His doctor hasn't been to see him. She probably ought to write down these words.

769 Days, 13 Hours, 28 Minutes, 18 Seconds, Time Approximate

I want to park the car, but that's not a real parking space. I want to pull over, double-park along the curb, but I'd be late. First I think he's one of the most affluent homeless guys I've ever seen, four shopping carts filled with what looks like baskets. Then I see they're drums. Three carts are piled high with what looks like African drums, small bongos, assorted other drums. And in the middle is one cart that looks like a homeless guy's cart. This is on Fifth Ave. around 79th St., right near the museum. As I'm stopped for the light here he's counting them, using his finger to point, counting and recounting them.

769 Days, 13 Hours, 42 Minutes, 10 Seconds

There's a car driving in front of me, a red car with a US Army sticker on it, and also a Kennedy/Johnson bumper sticker just below the rear window. It looks like it's new, doesn't look weathered at all. It just seems so funny to see this, it makes me think how innocent we were then. Of course this same car, turning into 81st St. to go across the park, tries to get past some other cars and ends up blocking traffic in the other direction.

770 Days, 10 Hours, 45 Minutes, 26.7 Seconds

Osama. Obama.

770 Days, 11 Hours, 11 Minutes, 40 Seconds

A headline this morning about Obama's visit to New Hampshire. The primary's over a year away but he's begun officially exploring. As has Hillary. Hillary – do they always have to acknowledge a woman by her first name only? Posters all over the lawns upstate – Hillary. She recalls a bumper sticker from ten years ago: Impeach Clinton. And her husband. But now she's driving around the country also, just exploring, possibly even in a Ford Explorer. That bumper sticker would have deteriorated years ago, that car probably in the junk heap. Her 1990 station wagon totalled in 1999, while Clinton was still in office. She didn't exactly total her car, it saw a guard rail it liked and wandered over. And even then the engine kept purring. Hillary. Bill. Barak. Osama. Guard Rail. The world seemed safer then.

770 Days, 11 Hours, 23 Minutes, 57.1 Seconds

Almost to the end of the double sevens. Almost to the end of the bowl of nuts set out for company. Clearing the coffee table for the first time in a year. Or almost clearing it. Cheese, sopprassetta. Green cocktail napkins, since it's almost Christmas. Flat bread. Word Perfect keeps flagging sopprassetta as a misspelled word, but she can still taste it. At three a.m., her blood already soaring, she couldn't resist a few salted almonds and brazil nuts. Then a few more. Then to bed with the usual nut headache. She wakes up with another headache. Dumb luck.

773 Days, 6 Hours, 48 Minutes, 29.3 Seconds

If she ends up tossing and turning half the night, will the time go faster? It doesn't seem to. But maybe her glucose level's going down with all the exercise. Wednesday night she came home from teaching barely able to move, then ended up working (working, not writing, there's a difference) until after two. The sheep won't stand still long enough to be counted and she can't run after them, not the way her legs are feeling these days. Or nights, rather. She lies there instead going over everything she's done that day. Again. Again. Again. If she feels good about herself she's certain she'll get to sleep. How long until she feels good?

776 Days, 11 Hours, 36 Minutes, 13 Seconds

The Alzheimers writing group has name tags on today. Hand-printed cards hanging from beaded chains around their necks. And some of the men wear the most colorful beads. Like Mardi Gras, she supposes. They put the tag on Murray as soon as he's wheeled in, and even so she calls him Milton. A mistake she's made before. Her father, last year, driving home from cognitive testing in Philadelphia, pointed out that she's as confused as she is. Because of one wrong turn. Because it was raining. She crouches down to help one of the students write, gripping that pencil so hard her fingers ache. Pencil. Hand. Fingers. It's December 5, 2006. This is New York City. George Bush is president.

777 Days, 2 Hours, 46 Minutes, 44 Seconds

In 111 days it will be 666. Meanwhile, Hugo Chavez jumps the gun. Addressing the UN last September, he shot from the hip, spoke straight from the heart, off the top of his head, calling Bush the Devil. Thinks he's the boss of the world and threatens the world. Three months have passed now. Chavez easily wins reelection, waving his arms as they film him crossing the finish line. The sulfur smell overpowers.

777 Days, 22 Hours, 20 Minutes, 43.8 Seconds

Lucky sevens. At the casino he sought out the progressive slots, but you needed more than three sevens. He always bet the max. That night he lost all he'd brought with him. She, on the other hand, gravitated toward a one-armed bandit that had clown faces spinning on it. She won. And she wouldn't share her winnings. It was his birthday.

777 Days, 22 Hours, 26 Minutes, 19 Seconds

They decided, now that she was past her teenage angst (read: self-hate; read: crazy), she should have a full-length mirror in her apartment. So they drove one all the way up from Atlantic City, despite her still-juvenile protests, and knocked it against a car as they carried it up to her door. They covered the crack with tape to stop its spreading. Another seven years.

777 Days, 23 Hours, 30 Minutes, 37 Seconds

Lucky sevens? As a child, seven and three were her favorite numbers. She remembers standing with her parents before the wheels at The Million Dollar Pier, hoping to win a stuffed bear or poodle taller than the doll they'd gotten her to dance with. She always wanted them to put the dime or quarter on number seven. And one time seven hit just as they said they had wasted enough money and were walking away. A few summers later found her babysitting her cousins, stopping for ice cream at the stand just across from the Million Dollar Pier. Getting cones, and then the boy's cone dropping. He was seven years old that summer. Visiting from Florida. She'd visit them there that next Christmas. Her parents, who didn't believe in luck, were willing to pay for that.