666 days, 12 hours, 54 minutes, 56 seconds

822-2666. Her aunt. Her uncle. Her cousin. She doesn't know which one it is who holds that pitchfork. Prodding her. Scaring her. The night she slept over, awakened when her uncle came home screaming. The two of them screaming for hours. She supposes her cousin is used to this. And her cousin, in the bed across the room, sleeps on as if to point up how ridiculous it is for her to be afraid, a real cry baby. No matter how well they ever played together, there would be memories of her cousin deserting her. She loved her aunt, though.

666 days, 13 hours, 23 minutes, 57 seconds

666-6666: Carmel again. The night they returned from Florida at two in the morning and had arranged to be met at Newark airport. No car. He insists they wait. No car. He calls, they say the driver was sent out. No driver. It's nearly three in the morning. Finally they end up sharing the one cab in sight with a woman who lives in Washington Heights. The cab's just about to pull out when a woman with a baby stops them. She lives right in the area. Please, can he drive her there first? They agree. She gets lost. The driver gets lost somewhere in New Jersey. The baby sleeps.

666 days, 13 hours, 30 minutes, 18 seconds

Carmel Car Service (her husband's cab of choice): 666-6666. Christmas, headed for the Newark airport, they had a driver working only his second or third day. Traffic was horrendous, over an hour just to get to the Lincoln Tunnel. Then the traffic on the Turnpike. Finally they get to the airport, with maybe a half hour to spare (and this was after 9/11). Don't worry, he assures her. Everyone else will be delayed as well. And just as he speaks these words the driver misses the turn for the terminal. He calls on his cell and learns the plane's leaving on time. They end up spending the night in an airport hotel. He has his new leather coat on and doesn't want to ruin it running through a crowd. She paid for half of it, as his Christmas present. 666. The Devil.

667 days, 9 hours, 28 minutes, 33 seconds

She gives up on the pedometer. Don't tell her friend. But first it didn't count enough steps, so the stride had to be reset. Then the weight was set wrong. Then she couldn't access anything but the steps, and the resets every day at midnight never took place. After last night's struggles with the BB clock, she thought maybe she'd give it another try. Then she saw it lying by itself on the desk, its empty face turned toward her.

667 days, 10 hours, 17 minutes, 57 seconds

Rumor has it that President Bush keeps one of these countdown key chains with him all the time, to remind him how much time he has left to accomplish all he's entitled to. Now, if he can just find his keys...

667 days, 10 hours, 31 minutes, 42 seconds

Bush to Dems: Opposition Wastes Time. They're picking fights with the White House instead of resolving monetary disputes for sending more troops to Iraq. "Members of Congress now face a choice: whether they will waste time and provoke an unnecessary confrontation, or whether they will join us in working to do the people's business," CBS News reports our president proclaiming. The clock is running. If senate doesn't approve the emergency funding by April 15 our men and women in uniform will face significant disruptions. So will their families. April 15th is a Sunday this year. Taxes aren't due until the 16th. 667 days, 10 hours, 23 minutes, 41 seconds.

668 days, 1 hours, 25 minutes, 57 seconds

On the wall of her house upstate, in the room that used to be her study, there's a cardboard Howdy Doody clock. White, red, and blue. The puppet's face, then the numbers around it, and the two moveable clock hands. She wants to say she had this from her childhood, but in truth she bought it at a street fair the third weekend she and her husband spent together. She loved Howdy Doody, though. No lie.

Children today have digital clocks and watches (when they bother to wear a watch at all). They won't have to know the big hand vs. the little hand. That's what always confused his best friend's daughter. Now, for her daughter, for Christmas, they buy a plush Hickory Hickory Dock Clock with six brightly colored mice and a pendulum that rattles. The mice go in the chimney and come out the door. In her house upstate, not far from where she's hung Howdy Doody, there are real mice.

668 days, 1 hours, 32 minutes, 34 seconds

It was wrong to have reset her clock to the instructions at BackwardsBush.com, when the keychain was actually purchased from Nationalnightmare.com. Now, looking at their site, she sees it, too, is an hour off. That's what happens when she orders from California, she supposes. But she wanted to support the Bookshop Santa Cruz. Bullshit. She wanted free shipping.

668 days, 2 hours, 10 minutes, 49 seconds

Much as she's feared – the keychain and the computer's clock don't match – only the computer got this early start to daylight savings time. A submarine might have clearer instructions. There's the current time, then January 20, 2009 as the goal (actually you could set it for any time, up to 2024). At one point it looks as if there are 2400 days left. Then she finally gets everything set, but the clock on the computer says six hours, the one in her hand now says two. She runs a cold hand over her forehead, twirls a finger in her hair, finally remembers to refresh the computer's clock. The keychain's two minutes behind. Close enough. It's been a long day.

668 days, 6 hours, 39 minutes, 5.2 seconds

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. 38 seconds, 37 seconds, 35 seconds. She's waiting for one friend and one woman she's never met before. 30 seconds. This clock will never be stolen because our employees are always watching it, above the counter in one tacky diner after another. 38 minutes. She got here early. A waitress comes over to say hello. This is where she usually eats with her husband.

668 days, 22 hours, 46 minutes, 7 seconds

Again, late at night, she looks over old mail, mostly newsletters sent to her G-mail address. Breast cancer. Diabetes. Migraine. Why she continues to subscribe to all these is beyond her. She doesn't need to give hypochondria food for thought. She's got the best doctors. The migraines are under control.

Her headaches are almost under control. She waited too long to call the doctor, now has to wait over a week before she sees him. Botox only takes a minute, she tried to convince the receptionist. He said he could fit her in. He promised... An appointment for March 30. Her 17th anniversary. A reminder of the days leading up to her wedding. She didn't want to get married with a sinus headache, she decided, spur of the moment. She had no doubt it was sinus. A doctor thought brain tumor.

She said she'd marry him and then had her head examined: quip one. She had her head examined and they found nothing: quip two. This was before the cancer, before the diabetes, before she had access to the Internet.

669 days, 8 hours, 5 minutes, 57 seconds

The villa's about to be torn down! That isolated house in the middle of a 300 foot pit whose owner was resisting developers' efforts to purchase. It turns out this battle has been going on for more than three years. It turns out the owner doesn't live there. A judge now gives them three days to clear out.

She doesn't know what's more upsetting – the fact that it's being torn down or the fact that nobody lives there. It's just the owner's selfish greed that's been at stake here.

She learns of this on the night her co-op board meets. Talk about pettiness. One owner out of two hundred causing trouble. A board election which, for the first time in the twenty-two years she's been here, doesn't have enough candidates to fill the seats. And the building's facing a huge decision in 2012, when they lose their low-income tax incentive, so who's on the board over the next few years will be crucial. Her husband was president of the board before she knew him. He ran once again, maybe fifteen years ago, and lost. And here he is running off to the meeting.

She thinks she'll stay home.

671 days, 13 hours, 16 minutes, 25 seconds

Her father, twelve years ago now, two days after her mother's funeral, driving the family out to dinner and going the wrong way around a traffic circle he'd driven most of his life.

671 days, 22 hours, 43 minutes, 55 seconds

Another friend writes of driving around half the day in an attempt to focus. And she recalls many times, uptight, frazzled by the city, she's gotten in the car headed for her home upstate. It's physical then. She feels how tightly she's gripping that steering wheel. The sun comes through the windshield and lands on finger after finger. One by one, the fingers loosen their grip. By the time she's forty minutes out of the city most of the tension's drained from her body.

671 days, 23 hours, 30 minutes, 36 seconds

Christmas after Christmas they travel to Texas. Christmas after Christmas, sitting around the dining room table, they've learned to exchange snippets of their lives. And his niece told once of the troubled teens she teaches. There was one she had to wrestle to the ground. Others are autistic. That's where the video games come in. Kids who don't know how to have a typical conversation suddenly understand the script of the game, and will interact, making it into a dialog of sorts. The usually lethargic assume the game's animation.

What happens when these kids graduate high school? she'd bit her lip and dared to ask.

Well, many can go to normal colleges. In college there isn't the social conformity of grade schools and high schools, many of them will do fine.

She remembers Diet Coke going down the wrong tract. She had no social skills growing up. She couldn't seem to have the sort of conversations her parents and teachers expected. She never made it to college. Writing, pad and pen, then later typewriter, became the equivalent of her video game.

She's just trying to put the world in focus.

671 days, 23 hours, 33 minutes, 36 seconds

Her husband, hearing the shots of the Bush game, calls up to ask what she's doing (implying why is she wasting her time), and she calls back down that she's not playing she's writing. Just trying to focus.

672 days, 0 hours, 0 minutes, 39 seconds

There's a parable she often uses in teaching, probably a bastardized version by this time. But a king's daughter was ready for marriage, and he announced he would give his daughter to the marksman who could hit the bird in the eye. He set a date for all interested men to gather. But one caveat: if they shot and missed, they'd be put to death.

The first hunter stepped up, aimed his bow. The king motioned for him to wait, then asked what he saw. "Oh," he said, "this is the most beautiful forest in the kingdom." The king refused to let him shoot. The next hunter came up and took aim, and again the king stopped him and asked what he saw. "The tree, in which that bird is, is the greenest tree in the forest," he said. And once again the king refused to let him shoot. And so on through hunter after hunter. Finally a man stepped up. When the king asked what he saw, he replied "I see only the eye of the bird." The king let him shoot, and of course he hit the bird in the eye.

So it's a question of focus.

The hand-eye coordination. Trying to predict where the head will bounce. Keeping her fingers steady. If she turns away for half a second that head bounces off the screen. If she moves her cursor a tenth of an inch off Cheney's face, that head bounces off the screen.

God, this much focus on a president.

673 days, 5 hours, 33 minutes, 56 seconds

With a now-blinding headache (possibly from staring into the computer screen, trying to meet it halfway), the new computer, and boxes all over the living room, this entire apartment has become a war zone.

673 days, 7 hours, 21 minutes, 34 seconds

She's got stomach cramps, one of the glucophage side effects she was warned about. So maybe the two pills are working, whereas one did almost nothing. She chews two Tums, just in case it's heartburn. But she's seldom been so happy to be sick. Except, of course, when she recalls those childhood migraines that manifested themselves as stomach aches. How quickly the body remembers pain. How easily she could become that child again. It'll pass in a week or two. Then she'll grow up all over, maybe this time with fonder memories. You can't relive the past, you can just rewrite it.

673 days, 7 hours, 52 minutes, 47 seconds

180 countries destroyed! Hate level 8! She's discovered, when Bush glides along that top line and the sound effects turn into machine guns, she could trap him behind Cheney's face and just keep firing.

Suddenly she has the memory of Monkey in the Middle. A game she detested. Especially when you're the shortest kid in the class and at the end of the line when the photographer takes pictures each year. She hated having her picture taken. But that lineup was just so the photographer didn't have to keep raising and lowering his tripod, her parents said. The school and the teacher made no distinction. And she was the first in line in the photograph from her ballet school. You can't have everything.

As soon as she starts thinking about all this, her aim slips. Even Bush as Monkey no longer entices her.

673 days, 9 hours, 26 minutes, 20 seconds

Downstairs, her husband's setting up his new computer, the first Vista in his office, or their household. She pongs Bush until her mouse-arm hurts. Those two Cheney heads on the sides – she remembers now, they're called Flippers. She thinks of Dolphins. Of the friendly dolphin in an area promoted as swimming with dolphins, who spooked and attacked a swimmer. She remembers her husband, when he first moved to Windows, learning mouse clicks then drag and drop by playing Monopoly with his boss as stand-in opponent. He kept winning and winning and winning. Boasting about his winning.

673 days, 10 hours, 23 minutes, 48 seconds

She knew about R2-D2 and his new stamp, knew the post office was setting up 400 R2-D2 mailboxes around the country, as a matter of fact she logged onto the post office website to see if they were selling Star Wars merchandise yet (great idea for a Christmas present, though this is only March). Then to find this animated little guy working his way around the site, covering up services, his gears squeaking (30 years is a long time). A video announces the coming attraction. Due out March 28. In the meantime, R2-D2 swallows a letter.

673 days, 11 hours, 8 minutes, 43 seconds

She wakes up, turns on the computer, checks her blood (normal for the third morning in a row), checks her mail, eats a Glucerna bar for breakfast, talks to her in-laws, racks up a score of sixty-one ponging Bush. Not a bad start to the day, although it's nearly one o'clock now. She slept late.

673 days, 22 hours, 8 minutes, 48 seconds

Back in her young, apolitical days, she loved playing pinball. These nights she follows the Backwards Bush links to arrive at a Bush Pong Game. Dominate, the first screen reads. Playing the theme from Bonanza. She madly clicks on the Bushhead bouncing about one of those flat maps like they have in schoolrooms. Sometimes it scores, sometimes not. Sometimes it racks up a score of ten or twenty with one shot. There are no instructions.

It takes her awhile to realize it's Siamese twin Cheney, one head on each side of the flat world, that has to bat against him for the guns to fire. Left to his own devices, Bush would duck behind the bobbing head and sneak off the screen.

Five heads per game, as if five heads are better than one. Bush's head gains momentum when ten countries are destroyed, then again at twenty and thirty. She's got to shoot precisely when the heads bump. Without quite knowing how she did it, she reaches a hate level of six with seventy-three countries destroyed. Most games it's only in the twenties.

We'll make no distinction between the terrorists, secretaries, business men and women, moms and dads, friends and neighbors, Bush says instead of Game Over. The words don't make sense. We' ll make no distinction between the terrorists' secretaries? She cuts his voice off quickly, but can't pull herself away. Her husband crawls into bed. Just one more game, she assures him.

674 days, 9 hours, 23 minutes, 5 seconds

Jennifer Mee's hiccups are back! This fifteen-year-old from Florida hiccuped for five weeks straight. Then a few sporadic bouts. But two days back at school, then a nosebleed, then the hiccups started as bad as ever. She can't stop reading news about this story. When she was fifteen, the best she could do to get out of school was fake a nervous breakdown.

675 days, 12 hours, 9 minutes, 30 seconds

As she rises from bed, her mind still foggy, white fog outside the window, her glasses still on the desk across the room, the tan top of one water tower on a building a few streets away appears to be a breast, with a nipple.

675 days, 12 hours, 24 minutes, 25.3 seconds

Now she's wondering if even two glucophage are going to be enough. Her blood still high. Her body still wanting. More more more more – like some toddler. It was 68 degrees out Wednesday. This is Friday and she wakes to snow. Snow and freezing rain to continue into tomorrow. More, more, more, more. She doesn't get a break.

677 days, 0 hours, 40 minutes, 24 seconds

Hearing that last entry read aloud at the workshop, Emily comments that, of course, with Bush, the odd or even numbers won't make any difference, he'd never be able to add, subtract, or divide them.

677 days, 5 hours, 39 minutes, 21 seconds

Not a number in that whole batch that can be evenly divided. Sort of like playing with marbles as a child, one for you, one for me, one for you, one for me, then the odd cat's eye standing there unblinking. Her brothers, if she'd had brothers, would probably have done the same with little lead soldiers. And she supposes some boys wanted them all for themselves, throwing a soldier with rifle on shoulder down the sink in a tantrum, clogging the whole drain, and just not caring.

677 days, 10 hours, 14 minutes, 16.2 seconds

Me moriré en París con aguacero,
un dia del cual tengo ya el recuerdo.
Me moriré en París—y no me corro—
tal vez un jueves, como es hoy, de otoño.

(Cesar Vallejo, "Piedra negra sobre una piedra blanca")

677 days, 10 hours, 53 minutes, 51 seconds

And she has 660,052,431 seconds left to live. If you believe the Death Clock, the Internet's friendly reminder that life is slipping away... second by second. She filled in her age, height, weight, said she isn't a smoker, isn't depressed, optimistic, or pessimistic. Now it tells her she'll die on February 13, 2028. The day before Valentine's Day. February's always been the bleakest month for her. Just when she's searching for a way to put this clock in her taskbar, remind her of all the time she's wasting aimlessly surfing or playing solitaire, she sees a link to delay the date of your death. It takes her to some stupid health clock, with information about cholesterol (she already takes zocor), diabetes (she's now on glucophage), breast cancer (which she's had once in each breast), HIV, lymphoma, lung cancer, etc. Now the death clock's gone from the screen. She fills it all out again. 660, 051, 700. February 13, 2028, will be a Sunday.

679 days, 8 hours, 14 minutes, 43 seconds

She wonders how many days, hours, minutes until she buys a new computer. Which is absolutely ridiculous. This 15.4" Fujitsu with such a great screen that she discarded her external monitors is precisely 251 days old, under warranty for another 114 days. There's nothing wrong with it, except for the generic port replicator that screwed up her sound system. Except for programs she's installed then discarded, leaving stray dll files around. Except for the fact that it boots but sometimes has problems loading its usual deluge of memory residents. She's scaled down her startup file. She ran disk doctor and win doctor. It's worked to perfection the past few days. If need be, she'll take this one back to ground zero, take the port replicator out of the picture, and reload the programs she needs. No reason it shouldn't last another 769 days, 8 hours, and 14 minutes. Giving her something else to look forward to.

679 days, 12 hours, 5 minutes, 29 seconds

She's found it -- the home she's always wanted. No nosey neighbors staring through their windows at her blinds always closed (this was at her parents' house), no one stopping her in the elevator to ask if she's still writing, no guard logging in every visitor and every package she receives. A developer bought up everything with plans for a mall, office buildings, high rise apartments, but she refuses to budge. It will take years before all that building gets done. In the meantime she's stocked up on food and water. Unfortunately, she doesn't own this so-called villa. Unfortunately, this is in China.

679 days, 13 hours, 23 minutes, 26 seconds

9745 steps yesterday. She came that close.

680 days, 13 hours, 43 minutes, 31 seconds

Two news stories, two or three days apart: a woman driving with her daughter in the car has ulcerative colitis and passes out from dehydration just as they're nearing a restaurant parking lot. The eleven-year-old manages to grab the wheel and steer the car into a telephone pole instead of oncoming traffic. And, in the second story, a teenager gets a migraine and passes out while driving: her eight-year-old sister grabs the wheel, her seven-year-old brother grabs the emergency brake, the car comes to a halt three feet to the left of a huge, blinding tree. She prints out both stories for her scrapbook. She has ulcerative colitis. She has migraines. She has no children. She's an only child.

680 days, 21 hours, 10 minutes, 57 seconds

It's Daylight Savings time, three weeks early. One hour closer to when Bush will leave office. She's overjoyed at writing this number down. Then she realizes it will only fall back again.

This year her computer made the change seamlessly. The little clock on the bottom showed 1:59 a.m., then 3:00 a.m. She was wondering if she'd updated the proper patch. And she thinks of how many years ago now, when she and her husband both stayed up to watch, and her computer cut in (what they'd now call instant message, she supposes), saying it was about to change the time, and asking her permission. Hell, she remembers computers where she had to manually set the date each day.

3:55 a.m. Her husband wakes in the bed two feet away from her, startled to hear her typing this much, at this hour. "Are you composing?" he asks. Composing. What a strange word. And one he's never used before. Musical. But then it turns dark, as if she's trying to compose herself.

This was supposed to be a quiet keyboard. And it's wireless. Unattached.

680 days, 21 hours, 14 minutes, 34.2 seconds

Sometimes she's slow to notice things. Like that the deck of cards she's playing solitaire with (on the computer, of course), has an astronaut on the back. Considering that she's still fascinated and frightened by the Lisa Nowak story, considering that she's written about this in two poems already, is it still fair to berate herself for wasting time playing solitaire? This is only one deck among many, though. Can't draw it every time.

681 days, 10 hours, 46 minutes, 18.2 seconds

Could it be there were two teachers – two reading specialists in the New York schools relocated to the Atlanta area who are going to court this week? This one's in Long Island. Told colleagues she belonged to a coven. That her husband was in a plane crash. That her son's fingers were caught in a VCR and severed. Taught students about the Salem witch trials. The principal, a born-again Christian, had children sing Jesus Loves All the Children of the World. She was only trying to put that in perspective. Not a word about Harry Potter. And this was only six years ago. This is totally crazy, she thinks. Then she remembers George Bush is also born-again.

685 days, 8 hours, 32 minutes, 42 seconds

Her worst nightmare: she woke up this morning to a computer that wouldn't boot. It sang out its welcome, then stopped in the middle of loading resident programs. So it's turn the button off, turn it on, off, on, off the port replicator, on (it loads one program this time), a call to her husband, off, on, off, on in safe mode (there's an "administrator" user here she never saw before), off, on, off, trying to get into safe mode again she hears a strange beep. And it boots this time. She runs a few programs, then puts it back on the replicator, holds her breath until it boots. A virus scan comes up empty. She runs one-button checkup and sees some registry problems Norton can't fix. But it boots again. She works for awhile, shuts down, takes it down to Starbucks. It's after one o'clock. She works. At three o'clock the after-school crowd comes in, teenagers who sit in the back, younger kids with their mothers. She's never seen it this crowded. The noise is deafening. She plays games.

686 days, 1 hours, 6 minutes, 46 seconds

So her husband and his brother and his brother's wife will head down to Florida over Easter, visiting their father and their other brother. Traveling a lot right now, she has the perfect excuse not to join them this year. Especially now that she realizes the airfare alone is costing him nearly $500. She tried to help. She found flights on Orbitz for nearly $200 less, but he couldn't make up his mind, wanted to check other places, and by the time he got back the cheap flights were gone (it said act quickly, only one left, but he refused to believe that). His money. Don't harp on it. Don't turn into the nagging wife. Don't turn into his father.

688 days, 3 hours, 50 minutes, 17 seconds

The woman beside her on the plane back from Atlanta doesn't seem to mind when she puts her coat then her computer on the middle seat, between them. They don't speak until the plane's landed on the tarmac (early) and has to wait before it can get to the gate. The woman asks first if she lives in New York, then says she used to live here, they moved to Atlanta a year ago. Her husband's building was destroyed in 9/11. He applied for a transfer just after that, but it took until last year. She's a reading specialist. The day she found out she'd been promoted to principal was the same day her husband's transfer came through.

She's coming back for a court case, the woman says. A student she taught in middle school seven years ago became a drug addict. Now the mother's suing her – not the school, her – because she taught the class Harry Potter and that was her son's introduction to first magic, then drugs. It was all over the papers seven years ago. The statute of limitations is about to run out. So now she has to spend a week away from her eight-year-old and her two-year-old. Six former colleagues have been called in to testify (two others have since died). And of course if she's cleared of the charges she'll counter-sue.

Stay tuned.

689 days, 13 hours, 1 minutes, 39 seconds

Slightly hurt books, the table at AWP says, selling them for $5 each, no matter what the cost. No matter what the damage, she thinks, not even walking over to take a closer look. This is in Atlanta, home of a Carter museum. But it could be Paris. It could be London. It could be Washington.

695 days, 9 hours, 52 minutes, 19 seconds

A performance artist, in town from London, is crawling Manhattan streets in a suit, knee pads, George Bush mask, and a sign saying kick my ass. Just wanting New Yorkers to feel good, he says. It calls to mind a Halloween parade over a decade ago. A man in a cart was dressed as Jesse Helms and a woman walking alongside him passed out rotten tomatoes for people to throw. It was her first Halloween parade. Clinton was president. Helms was about the worst people could imagine.

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.