615 days, 20 hours, 49 minutes, 53 seconds

Lynda – with a Y. She's only known one Lynda. But an interesting enough name that she chose it for the main character in a novel. Lynda. Slightly affected, a bit pretentious, but it fit. That novel sitting in the drawer, a newer manuscript on top of it. She'd been thinking of her mother when she started and finished it, five years ago. And now she's met another Lynda. The doctor who told her about the brain lesions. Who said these lesions can't cause headaches. Who worked with brain cancer patients. Who prescribed a steroid. Who sat with her earnestly, trying to keep her calm. Who also lives in an apartment on the 17th floor, but with windows too small to climb out of. Who returned the call to her cell phone within the hour. Who, she learns now, is a nurse-practitioner.

616 days, 5 hours, 53 minutes, 45 seconds

Ponging Bush again, she thinks of dodge ball. The pre-kickball school recess days, when everyone had a fair advantage, when it wasn't teamwork, no one had to choose her first or last. Beating her head against a brick wall. Those Trick or Treat Halloweens of her childhood where she used to spin on her head, no arms, and still she never got the candy apples.

616 days, 6 hours, 55 minutes, 40 seconds

She uploads the new pink Hairy photos from her camera, realizes there's one photo from a few days ago. Part of her Leaves series. A filter cigarette butt on the sidewalk, surrounded by some soft petals, and a few hot pink buds.

This is getting ridiculous. She started this series last fall, capturing the butts, trying to set them apart as objects of beauty, remembering tobacco is a leaf as well. A close smoker photographer friend can't bear to look.

She never thought it would go this far.

616 days, 7 hours, 26 minutes, 38 seconds

Meet Hairy's younger brother.
He lights up, as on an ex-ray.

616 days, 9 hours, 54 minutes, 39 seconds

She says lesions. He says legions. She thinks of Legionnaires' disease. The first outbreak was at a historic Philadelphia hotel in Center City right near the Medical Towers Building where, years before, she'd been getting her head shrunk.

616 days, 9 hours, 59 minutes, 25.7 seconds

A blue brain and a grey brain. But nothing to squeeze today. The botox is working. Even these little lesions could be causing the headache. But that's the least of her worries. Walking up to E.A.T. for lunch, they stop in the gift shop, where her husband buys her two large white marbles, one with blue veins, one with red and orange. He'll keep them in his desk, in case she needs them.

616 days, 13 hours, 21 minutes, 47 seconds

A friend writes that three weeks ago she had something called a pelvic reconstruction operation. Lovely, huh??! Sounds like a maneuver in Iraq!

616 days, 13 hours, 35 minutes, 29 seconds

The widow of her husband's best friend recently finished sewing a quilt for her first grandchild, all the wonderful storybook animals, using pieces of her husband's shirts within the pattern. She remembers those shirts. Remembers him walking out for a cigarette. Remembers him trying one patch or another. Remembers her husband's voice on the phone when he got the call that his friend had a heart attack a Yankee Stadium. These memories are what hold her fast and far from seventeenth floor windows.

616 days, 13 hours, 52 minutes, 19 seconds

A strange-sounding voice on the boob tube talks about being born on an island where swimming was a way of life. He used to love to swim. Then he got throat cancer from smoking. He breathes through a hole in his throat. If he swam the water would drown him.

Big deal. She detested swimming.

Little children, in another public service announcement, say "we" smoke two packs a day, a pack a day, we've smoked ten cigarettes since we got up this morning. "We" is me and mommy. Me and daddy.

Children think they're the center of the universe.

For a limited time, New York City is offering smokers a free patch to help them quit. Quilts, blouses, skirts, blouses, carryalls, vests, even a clock now. She used to love patchwork.

616 days, 23 hours, 29 minutes, 43 seconds

So Bush walks up to the bandstand, stands behind the female conductor silently for a moment. No, not to give her a backrub. At last she realizes the president's standing there, waiting for her to pass the torch, or the baton which he thinks of as a torch. Stars and Stripes Forever. Just like Daddy taught him to play on the little multicolored xylophone he used to adore. Bang bang bang, bang bang bang, right, left, right, left. He picks up his pace and the musicians follow smoothly. Speech done. This was supposed to be his exit music. He gestures more wildly. This is Jamestown, 400 years ago today the first real Americans camped out here. Bang bang bang, left, right, left, there's no Cheney head to hold him in check, no Daddy to hold him back and, off steroids tonight, she's too tired.

617 days, 12 hours, 47 minutes, 35 seconds

Wonder Woman, she called herself. Daughter Dynamo, a friend called her. But that was years ago. She was alone then. She had a sense of her own strengths, felt she could do it all alone. Wonder Woman. Sitting with that friend, discussing another friend, and how his being alone meant he was too reliant on everyone. Driving his friends away when he suspected they didn't love him enough. Is that what I'll be twenty years from now? she asked. And he assured her she wouldn't. And she didn't believe him. That's when she started thinking maybe she could love just one person who could love her back. That's when she met her husband. Superman. Wonder Woman. Daughter Dynamo. She hasn't heard from that friend in over two years now, and his health was failing even then.

617 days, 12 hours, 56 minutes, 7.8 seconds

A mother is not a dust rag, Shalom Alechim wrote. She has a poem about it in her last book. And she gave the assignment to her students this week before Mothers Day. Memories of her mother showing her how to dust the blinds at a point when she had to stand on a chair to reach them. Her friends loving to help out. What friends? A student who she knows has a daughter writes about not letting dust in her childless house, dust motes being like naughty children. Why didn't she think of that? She turns on her computer. She dusts her computer screen. It's going to be a long Mothers Day this year. She woke with a headache and slight palpitations. But at least her blood's down. And at least she's writing.

617 days, 20 hours, 33.7 minutes, 17.2 seconds

She says okay, another twenty years, but she has her fingers crossed behind her back so he won't see. Twenty years was as long as she lived in her parents' house, and she vows never to go through that hell again. Not one more night there. By fifteen: I'm nothing, I'm nobody, I have no right to live. The good shrink: yes, you do, you're a writer. And she had to write from then on. You have no idea how heartbroken I was when you quit school, her father says. It's the best thing that ever happened to me, she tries to tell him. And he lowers his head, shaking off her words. Even fifteen years she can't promise him. Not like this.

618 days, 0 hours, 38 minutes, 33 seconds

A three-alarm fire in a Bronx post office this afternoon, around three o'clock. The post office closed to the public at two. It's Saturday. Last day to mail before the rates go up. Two workers were in the back room sorting mail. They suffered minor injuries, along with seventeen firemen. No mail was damaged. Years ago she reminded him that if he didn't like stopping at the mailbox, he never should have married a mailbox dwarf. After years of complaining, he's trying to make up for it now.

618 days, 1 hours, 28 minutes, 36 seconds

It's about time. Five different clocks he gave her over the years. The Backwards Bush clock – one on her computer, one on this blog, four key chains. She was thinking of buying a desk clock as well. But time's running out. If she's going to be spending a fortune on doctors, all that time with doctors , the last thing she wants to be reminded of is that Bush might outlive her. Besides, there's the craft fair this weekend down by the museum. And she remembers the Fantasy Clocks there – clocks she's looked at longingly every spring and fall, as possible gifts. Plenty of distractions. A melange of gears. A slide viewer modeled on those old stereo opticon viewers (he throws in three slides), a wind-up music box ("We're Off To See the Wizard"). She replaces a biplane with Wonder Woman. Replaces a Tarot Card with a postcard sent from the Amityville Beach in 1935. Before the horrors. Before her parents met. Before lungs ever thought to fill with water.

618 days, 1 hours, 45 minutes, 18 seconds

She's smoked maybe ten cigarettes. Never inhaled. The first time she smoked dope, out at her cousin's in California, she got incredibly paranoid. They were growing some plants out back, and a deer had been eating them. They talked about what they'd do if they caught that deer, and she took it as a metaphor for what they'd do to her if she told her uncle they'd let her smoke with them. She remembers Engelbert Humperdinck on the stereo, and how slow the music seemed. She remembers sitting at the table, lifting food to her mouth. Her mother smoked the first twelve years of her life. Her husband smoked the first four years they were together, quitting the year before they married. It was when the restaurants started smoking sections. They went someplace new, she said the smoking section, he said non-smoking. He'd run out of cigarettes two weeks ago. She hadn't noticed. Cold turkey. Second hand. Her mother bringing home selected items from when she worked the charity rummage sales.

618 days, 21 hours, 3 minutes, 49,5 seconds

Two days ago her husband insisted she owes him another twenty years. And he's started his own countdown clock.

619 days, 4 hours, 34 minutes, 30 seconds

A tumor on hr right lung. Breast doctor, oncologist, CT scan. Next week: neurologist, endocrinologist, biopsy, pet scan (if her glucose is under control). This is all happening so fast she can't catch her breath.

619 days, 20 hours, 3 minutes, 41 seconds

April 3, 2007: A woman suffering from a debilitating migraine headache who was mistakenly arrested for drunken driving has agreed to accept $1,500 to drop her lawsuit against the Portland police. She was driving home from Thanksgiving dinner with friends in 2004 when she suffered a migraine so severe it forced her to pull over and vomit.

619 days, 20 hours, 28 minutes, 49 seconds

He's getting too old for this, she recalls him saying. Every six months or so she'd get in the car and head for New York on a book-buying trip. She'd been high on Ritalin, some tranquillizers from the night before still in her system. And three times out of four she'd have an accident driving home, and her father would have to drive out late at night to rescue her. Too old for this. And indeed he seemed old. He turned 52 a week after she moved to the city.

619 days, 20 hours, 30 minutes, 25 seconds

Last Sunday, over dinner, her father talked about how awful it was leaving her in that hotel in New York. And then how he had to drive back up the next day to move her to a different hotel because the first was full of prostitutes. She tells him he's got it wrong. He took her to one hotel. And it was three or four months later when the prostitute was murdered in the room next door to hers. She'd been in Atlantic City for the weekend, and they'd driven her back. The little old woman on the other side of the hall, the one she shared a bath with, came out to give her the news. And she stayed in that hotel another month before finding an apartment.

619 days, 20 hours, 45 minutes, 32 seconds

Peru, Indiana: April 23, 2007: An 11-year-old girl stopped a van that went out of control when her diabetic mother became ill, police said. Besides stopping the van, Abigail kept her mother and 8-year-old brother calm and informed paramedics about her mother's condition. Deborah Parker, 36, of Muncie, who had been driving, was unaware of her surroundings. She was treated for low blood sugar. Abigail told police her mother had started driving erratically at about 80 mph. The girl said she climbed from the rear seat of the van onto the woman's lap and managed to stop the vehicle before calling 911.

619 days, 21 hours, 11 minutes, 21.4 seconds

It was 11 nights ago, driving home from Brooklyn. She'd had a bad headache all day. Her husband was beside her in the car. Up 6th St., left on Flatbush, over the Manhattan Bridge, somehow up to Houston St., then Bedford, then what she thought was Hudson, what she thought was 8th, the meat market, some torn up street (her husband ask where she's going ), what she thought was 8th, over on 14th St., east which she thought was west, the cops' lights behind her. One cop approaching each side of the car. Did she do something wrong? No, they pulled her over because she was weaving in and out of lanes. Is she okay? She's fine, she says. It was just that blinding headache, she didn't say, pulling out more slowly, heading up 6th Ave., trying to concentrate. She thought it was nothing more than a simple, if constant, headache. Later she'd admit she was in denial. Or weaving in and out.

619 days, 23 hours, 33 minutes, 54 seconds

Her husband imagines there will be another day-to-day photo sequence, much like the one she shot when the second cancer was diagnosed, when she realized all her writing would be maudlin. Day after day, from the diagnosis until she opted against blowing all the radiation on one minuscule area, she walked the streets every day, taking sometimes as many as 200 pictures. From which she selected only one a day. To get outside herself. Seeing more of her neighborhood than she'd ever imagined. But no, she says. No photo sequence this time. Her head's splitting. Even seeing some photo she needs as she walks along, it's all she can do to squint through that little hole. Whole.

619 days, 23 hours, 55 minutes, 21,7 seconds

Another picture, this from today's news. It's a hair dress that model's' wearing. A Croatian company has made it from 165 feet of blonde human hair. She modeled the dress at a fashion show in Zagreb, stunning crowds when she appeared on the catwalk.

But she's a long way from Croatia.

It reminds her of those medieval Catholic penitents going about in their hair shirts. For God's glory, Praised-be-His-Name. Blessed be He who created me according to His will.

She's thinking of getting in touch with a Buddhist shrink. Someone a balding friend knows.

621 days, 0 hours, 13 minutes, 36 seconds

Meet Hairy, the hot pink headache ball. Squishy, cooling sometimes, fun to pillow her head and let it roll out from under her. Now meet Hairy's flowers, a gift that same day, losing shape and color now. If she ever enters another contest on migraine art, she thinks to use this picture. The drooping, heavy head. The funny Hairy the Headache ball. Two gifts the same day from her Yoga teacher. It was, of course, when they just assumed the Botox wasn't working. Or the sinus infection. She bends down and picks a small pink rubber strip off her grandmother's soothing rug. Hairy's going to lose all his hair, she says.

620 days, 11 hours, 20 minutes, 10.9 seconds

This is so good you could die, he says, waxing poetic over a Blimpie this time, probably from a rat-infested back room. She tells him that's not a good comparison right now. He says he realized that as he was saying it.

620 days, 11 hours, 56 minutes, 53 seconds

Walking into the neurologist's office yesterday, she detected a faint sweet smell, as of flowers or air freshener (she didn't see any flowers). And she almost said how this often triggered headaches, and how surprised she was to find it there. But by that time she was seated in the low recliner and the doctor had started talking.

620 days, 12 hours, 48 minutes, 20.2 seconds

1995. A formerly close friend, living in Wyoming, developed cancer that quickly spread throughout his body. He left his wife. As he put it, he'd been caring for her (she had MS) for years, not out of love but out of duty. And before that, his marriage at a standstill, he couldn't bear being away from his children. He always thought at some later point there'd be time for himself. But the cancer pushed that point. Another two or three years, they said. He lasted more like eight years. He married his lover, spent their honeymoon at the Casper Hospital. But what sticks out most in her mind is an email he wrote about his mother coming to visit, and how distraught she was at the prospect that her son would die before she did.

620 days, 12 hours, 49 minutes, 43 seconds

At this moment she'd sell her soul for Bush's brain.

620 days, 22 hours, 19 minutes, 21.5 seconds

She takes her wedding ring off before going to bed. She puts her ring back on.

620 days, 23 hours, 11 minutes, 6.7 seconds

First it was: will this computer last until there's a new president? Then it was: will either or both of their fathers die while she's writing this blog? At the moment none of that matters.

620 days, 23 hours, 54 minutes, 32 seconds

Yesterday's news: Misdiagnosed man seeks compensation. John Brandrick, 62, was told two years ago that he had terminal pancreatic cancer. He decided to spend his remaining time in style, quitting his job and spending his savings on hotels, restaurants and holidays. A year later doctors reversed their diagnosis. He was suffering from pancreatitis, a non-fatal ailment. Meanwhile he'd spent everything.

621 days, 0 hours, 3 minutes, 6 seconds

The question is who to tell, who not to tell. And who the hell reads this blog. Because the political IS personal, she said at the start. She just had no idea how personal it might become less than six months later. Her husband insists she owes him another twenty years. Her husband buys her dinner. Her husband asks if she can see any reason why she's gotten cancer three times now, and she gives the answer she gave before: all those chemicals in the back of her father's trucks, then her father's car. Sure, he was exposed to them much more than she was, but she was an infant, they were in her system before she had defenses. And this time he doesn't contradict her. Try not to blame your father, he says instead.

621 days, 0 hours, 13 minutes, 36 seconds

Lesions. Metastatic. Cancer. Two lesions, both small, one swollen. It's taken her ten hours to write these words. But writing doesn't make it true. It's early yet. More doctors. More tests. Her neurologist's out of the country until Monday, this was his assistant who got the report, a woman who's worked with brain cancer patients. A very young, warm doctor, but she might have come to this through what she knows already. She starts a steroid to lessen the headaches, and maybe shrink the swelling. She goes back on Glucophage to counteract the steroid. Chances are the Botox wasn't enough this time, lesions this small shouldn't have caused this sort of pain. So, once again, she lucked out. But the headache's still there. And even the newest Tylenol's sugar-coated.

621 days, 23 hours, 15 minutes, 29 seconds

I might have a brain tumor, you know, she says, home from her MRI, as he crawls into bed behind her. No, he says, you'd need to have a brain. How did he know? Tonight she rediscovered the "Give Bush a Brain" game. One time she managed to drop in seven brains, but most games only two or three. Even Dubyah wouldn't have any trouble matching that score, the final screen taunts. Bully! Still, it was fun for awhile.

622 days, 13 hours, 6 minutes, 2.4 seconds

She tries out the Day of Death clock for her father. Born September 7, 1916. Neither optimistic or pessimistic: Normal. Body mass index below normal. Never smoked. His time has already expired. He should have died Tuesday, June 19, 1990. Less than three months after they married. When her mother was still alive. When his mind was still sharp. She could go through a hundred Whens. They mean nothing.

622 days, 13 hours, 28 minutes, 32 seconds

A red letter day. Not only one intelligent person at Duane Reade, but three: the clerk who didn't try to argue, just passed it over to the pharmacist; the first pharmacist who saw sixty pills wouldn't fit in that small bottle but turned it over to her supervisor; the supervisor who didn't ask any questions, just gave her another thirty pills. And here she'd brought her husband along to defend her. He's sorry now he yelled at the repairman. Mostly, he says, it was a language problem.

622 days, 14 hours, 19 minutes, 58 seconds

There's nothing wrong. Except the refrigerator repairman comes at 8:45, not at 10:00, and her husband (the one who wanted him) is out getting breakfast while she sleeps. There's nothing wrong. Except that she's had a horrendous night: every time her eyes were almost completely shut she went through a slight panic attack, then the top of her head started hurting, then when she finally slept she had a nightmare. There's nothing wrong. The repairman moves the refrigerator out, turns it off, hears the sound. Nothing's wrong with it. She's back in bed by this time, unable to get back to sleep. When her husband challenges he says it's the water pipe that dropped down and is hitting against the coils. It's not his job to fix the water pipe. And there's nothing wrong. Nothing $100 won't fix. And he has to call the super to adjust the pipe or hose or whatever. Another $20, or $40, or $50. Which he should have done in the first place. There's nothing wrong except her blood's high (to be expected now that she's off the medication). She has to go downstairs and argue with the drugstore. Despite what some stupid clerk said last night, she knows it's been only two weeks, that the insurance won't process the refill yet. That bottle those pills came in won't even hold sixty pills, she knows they only gave her thirty. But try to prove that? There's nothing wrong. Her MRI's this afternoon, she has the workshop tonight, there's nothing to let go.

623 days, 10 hours, 38 minutes, 22 seconds

Well, they came and got me out of Texas, and I can tell you it's a privilege to be back, Roger Clemens said as the 45 year-old pitcher announced he would rejoin the Yankees, even agreeing to start off in the minor leagues. And 52,533 fans at the stadium got to their feet and went wild. Which proves New Yorkers actually welcome men from Texas. So long as they're winners. So long as they understand teamwork.

623 days, 11 hours, 20 minutes, 33 seconds

And yesterday he showed her all the books in the den, thinking maybe there were some she'd want. Books on finance and butterflies. He knew she liked to read. And she said, perhaps too quickly, that she'd take them to a used book store. Strand, probably. She didn't think to ask where his old Readers Digest condensed novels were. She'd read some of those. She thought for a moment of the old Time/Life photography books he had, still on those shelves, then realized they'd be of little use in this digital age. She'd given him most of those. Bought for half price or less, at Strand.

They'd been together in Middlebury, Vermont, about ten years ago, when his camera stopped working. He and his lady friend, she and her husband. For his birthday a month or so later they gave him a new digital camera – a Sony that stored pictures right on disk, so he wouldn't have to learn the quirks of transferring photos. As she showed him how to use it, she thought perhaps this was something else they might share. But they took entirely different sorts of photos. And he could never remember how to turn it on, how to snap a photo. And it pained her to see this intelligent man who suddenly coudn't keep things straight, couldn't manage even the things that, for her, were child's play.

623 days, 22 hours, 2 minutes, 3.4 seconds

Sitting on her father's sofa this afternoon, the computer on so she could take notes as he led her from room to room, seeing all he wanted her to see, she paused and copied the blog entries from a few hours earlier. He was on the phone. He hung up. She put the computer into standby. He got another call. She had just a few words left to type, and finished. She tore the pages out of her notebook, started to throw them in the trash, then shoved them in her pocket on the off chance he'd try to decipher her handwriting. What was is she afraid of? That he'd lecture her once again on how awful Bush is? That there'd be a connection between father and daughter surpassing following the Phillies together 43 years ago? That he'd be worried she'd be jailed for writing this? She could have at least shown him the Backwards Bush countdown clock.

623 days, 22 hours, 9 minutes, 5 seconds

He doesn't see any point in living this way, he says. Her husband would rattle off all the good times he's had in the past year, all the people who care about him. But she admits to feeling the same way. Once her mind goes, once she can no longer think and write, she wants out. She might have spent this past month with the worst headaches in over two years, felt the absolute terror of going back there, but she'd forgotten how good she is at writing through the pain, almost writing with more power because of it.

623 days, 22 hours, 12 minutes, 15.9 seconds

Her father admits he's feeling fairly well of late, physically, though he can't walk and slips a nitroglycerin pill under his tongue while they're talking – the first in months, he says. She doesn't know how he remembers. Over dinner he tells the story of going to Link Trainer school ten times within five minutes, backing up a sentence or two, so that it seems he'll never finish. And he knows it. He says he's near the end.

624 days, 10 hours, 58 minutes, 40.4 seconds

She stops at the Atlantic City rest area to grab a quick lunch. The only service area on the Parkway between here and New York that doesn't have a Starbucks. In the gift shop there's a white tee-shirt with New Jersey written on the front in blue, already faded.

624 days, 11 hours, 6 minutes, 42 seconds

Their refrigerator's dying, a loud crash every time it shuts off, as if the compressor's falling out. Big deal, you say. So what, you say. But you don't understand. Their old refrigerator died Valentine's Day, 1990. The day he'd planned to propose to her.

624 days, 11 hours, 12 minutes, 15 seconds

Yesterday, walking the craft fair, one eye poised for possible Christmas gifts, they tried to count the number of wedding gifts they'd given to couples who later divorced. Then the number of weddings they attended. Silently, later, at home, she counted the number of funerals.

624 days, 20 hours, 20 minutes, 9.8 seconds

Maybe by tomorrow he'll remember her name.

624 days, 20 hours, 31 minutes, 49 seconds

There's one in every family. Easy enough to say when it's a large family. But she's an only child. Just her and her father left. One in every family? Her father at this point is shaking her head, wondering what he did wrong. She's shaking her head no, no, no, she doesn't want to visit. Doesn't want to spend a day, a night, an hour in that house alone. Or she might as well be alone. Or wishes she was alone. But maybe she can get a hotel room saying she needs high speed Internet. And maybe by tomorrow he'll remember his lawyer's name. But it's not likely.

624 days, 20 hours, 51 minutes, 50.5 seconds

The queen is coming, the queen is coming, the queen is coming! Bring out the white ties. Whitewash the White House. It's only the fourth time Elizabeth's been to visit. He must remember to switch his knife and fork between hands, regardless what the queen does. He must remember not to talk with food in his mouth, and not to drink water straight from the bottle. Black Colin won't be at his side to pour for him. He must not offer a shoulder rub to anyone. ANYONE. He must not even shake Her Majesty's hand unless she offers hers first. And, he reminds himself again and again, don't bring up Prince Charles, don't tell her he, too, has wet dreams about Camilla. The White House staff shakes its collective head. There's one in every family.

626 days, 20 hours, 59 minutes, 20 seconds

She wonders if this is what women feel once they've given birth. That weight suddenly lifted, having to learn how to walk again. Well, these headaches are the closest she'll ever come to that. And no, they're not menstrual headaches, this is not gestational diabetes. Thank God.

626 days, 21 hours, 3 minutes, 53 seconds

She has to cancel class next Tuesday. Because of the possible sinus infection. Because of an MRI. And she recalls, in the weeks just after Botox, how off balance she felt, that head not weighing her down.

626 days, 21 hours, 10 minutes, 16 seconds

When she lost track of center the other day, she was in the middle of Yoga. And it was Tuesday. And the maid had just left. It's not until tonight that she notices pictures on the walls are off center. Yet this happens every other Tuesday, every time the maid's in. She wants to be sure you know she dusted, the yoga teacher says.

626 days, 21 hours, 21 minutes, 36 seconds

There was something else she wanted to write here. Something about headaches and how now they're exploring a possible sinus infection. Then she looked at the time left: 21, 21, 36. She was not quite 21 when she moved to New York, she was 36 when she met him. That's all that matters.

626 days, 21 hours, 57 minutes, 13 seconds

The cabs are taking over her life these days. Tonight, after an 11 o'clock movie, they got one of those minivan cabs that she had trouble climbing up in. Then he sped off. Then the rattle started. Not rattle, more like knocking. As if he had metal rods somewhere right behind her head that batted against the sides of the car each time he went over even the slightest bump. An we're talking about a guy who raced lights and hit every pothole. Remember Sidewalker's? she whispers.

628 days, 10 hours, 29 minutes, 30 seconds

You didn't come out on top, you know, her husband says. His father recently totaled a car, his brother doing $4000 worth of damage. And her a measly $1400. Plus a repair shop she trusts, sort of, right around the corner from Toyota. Lucky accident.

628 days, 13 hours, 18 minutes, 19 seconds

But God knows how many minutes and hours were really left. It was the middle of the night. It felt like she had a caffeine withdrawal headache, her entire head throbbing. Maybe woken up. She lay in bed, facing the window. 17 floors down. It would be so easy...

His phone number's one digit away from that of the Hemlock Society. The first time someone dialed the wrong number he thought a friend was playing a joke on him. The second time it happened he actually tried to talk to the caller, starting with what do you want to do that for? It happened again a few weeks ago, and he thought to spend some time talking but got another call.

Seventeen years ago, right before they married, they thought she might have a brain tumor and he was trying to hold her back from the window with: Don't you want to die a wife? And a year after that someone either jumped or was pushed from a window on the other side of the building.

13 hours, 18 minutes, 19 seconds. That could be her age, those years when thoughts of suicide predominated. But really it was the middle of the night.

629 days, 5 hours, 13 minutes, 49 seconds

Lying on her back, on Grandma's carpet, she brings her left knee up to her chest, hugs it, bats it back and forth, back and forth, left hand, right hand. This is an exercise. This will loosen the muscles in her leg and back. Back and forth. She loses track of center, starts feeling dizzy, thinks of Bush, then of Cheney. Back and forth. Hitting harder now. By the time the class ends she's a basket case.

629 days, 9 hours, 25 minutes, 39 seconds

She thinks of those FEMA trailers around New Orleans, still lined up there after two years. And how people in New York and New Jersey, hard hit by the N'oreaster two weeks ago, are already getting aid.

629 days, 9 hours, 48 minutes, 28.3 seconds

Actually, people already live in those storage units. There was an article in the Times a few years ago. A man whose wife hates air conditioning spends hot summer days working or reading there. Another man who just wants peace and quiet moved in with his father's recliner. But she heard they cracked down on people spending time there after that article appeared.

629 days, 10 hours, 8 minutes, 25 seconds

Claremont Stables closed over the weekend. They'll no longer hear horses walking home from Central Park along 89th St. She thinks of the individual stalls on the upper floors. Empty now.

629 days, 10 hours, 15 minutes, 50 seconds

Manhattan Mini Storage has the best ads. When her husband's friend moved back to the city twenty years ago, they helped her get her belongings out of a storage place in Harlem. They walked through the corridors, lights coming on as they neared, found her place, and slipped inside. They decided, if they ever married, that's where they'd like to have the wedding.

Too late now. They married at City Hall. Word is all these storage places, in Manhattan at least, are going to be turned into condos over the next few years.

629 days, 10 hours, 20 minutes, 57 seconds

( Bus Stop, 81st & Broadway)

God, closets! When they first moved in together they wanted a workspace built for her. And someone told them about a company that did work in her aunt's apartment: California Colsets. And they thought what a good name for a company that works in small apartments. Only it turned out they only did work in closets. And it turned out they hired them to transform a walk-in closet. After that was done they searched for someone else to build her workspace.

630 days, 0 hours, 18 minutes, 37.6 seconds

Hurry up and wait. Hurry up and wait an hour. Hurry up and wait in line. Seven movies in eleven days, plus one reading, one party, one play, one concert, and teaching four classes. She's out of her mind. Her father says so. Then the iced cappuccino she had with lunch, she realized after she drank it, was from a machine and probably already sugared. Up up up the blood goes. Ten bad headaches in eleven days. She thought, with this an independent festival, it would be different than just going to a movie any time, in any suburb. The whole festival's spread out now, only two of their movies are in Tribeca, the air quality's bad everywhere.

633 days, 8 hours, 40 minutes, 30.1 seconds

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

633 days, 8 hours, 49 minutes, 18 seconds

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

633 days, 9 hours, 25 minutes, 27 seconds

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

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

633 days, 12 hours, 22 minutes, 16 seconds

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

633 days, 20 hours, 42 minutes, 16.7 seconds

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

633 days, 20 hours, 46 minutes, 19 seconds

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

633 days, 20 hours, 50 minutes, 19 seconds

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

633 days, 20 hours, 54 minutes, 29 seconds

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

634 days, 12 hours, 26 minutes, 25 seconds

Her head's back to where it was four years ago pre-botox. Headaches every single day. For 16 unremitting days now. Tylenol not helping. The neurologist asks first if she can wrinkle her forehead, then if she's on any new medications. But she'd already figured that one out. The headaches unbearable within a few days of her splitting the glucophage tablets, one in the morning, one at night. Two at night she seemed able to tolerate. At the moment she couldn't care less about diabetes, she just wants to die. Don't tolerate, exterminate. Please.

634 days, 13 hours, 22 minutes, 15.6 seconds

She drops the car off. She wants to say she took a bus home because of what the cab did. Her husband even gave her one of his transit cards. But the fact is she only walked to the bus stop because she didn't think she could get a cab. She didn't get a receipt for the car, either. Avi wasn't there.

635 days, 0 hours, 9 minutes, 10.5 seconds

Claritin. Tylenol. A muscle relaxant. And still her head's killing her. It's been the same for over a week now. All she can think of is Awakenings. Especially at bedtime.

636 days, 11 hours, 48 minutes, 39 seconds

And 9,337 miles on the car, not quite eight years old. Blink, oops, bang, stop. She's become the master of little accidents like this. Never anyone hurt. Probably her fault, she tried to turn left past a cab sitting at the curb. Forget insurance, it would cost her more in premiums. Probably someone can hammer out the bumper, get a new light, a few hundred dollars. She gets the super to tape it up for her. Gets her husband to go find an auto body place with her. Any body.

638 days, 11 hours, 53 minutes, 22 seconds

First she lectured her husband on the benefits of Echinacea. Then she gave him one of the two bottles she had. Then she finished her bottle. Then she bought a new bottle in Sacramento. Then she came home and took the bottle she gave him from the kitchen up to the bathroom where he can't find it. She hasn't unpacked yet.

638 days, 12 hours, 21 minutes, 35 seconds

That's the Particle museum she could have sworn Mary said, pointing to a round building visible from a park at the top of Marin Dr., overlooking the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate. This is where the Manhattan Project started, where they split the first particles. It's part of UC Berkeley's astrophysics department now. And maybe not a museum, or at least not open to the public. That was nine days ago now, hard to remember the description exactly. Her head splitting.

638 days, 12 hours, 32 minutes, 46 seconds

A bomb is a bomb is a bomb. There are so many bombs. Last night, for example. Her head splitting. She took Percocet for the first time in three years, and it was nearly midnight. Resting awhile, working awhile. She read old email, then two migraine articles, an article on the homeless, an article on a Long Island man who collects Pinocchio figurines . Finally the pain almost gone. The nausea set in then. God knows how out of date those pills might have been. Can't sit here worrying.

638 days, 12 hours, 53 minutes, 12.9 seconds

Baghdad Police
Station Hit By Car
Bomb
The headline says. Read it as poetry, a pause t the end of each line, bomb on a line by itself. So many interruptions. A car hits the police station and bombs. The car hits the station and the bomb goes off. Or bombs, fails to go off. The Baghdad police stage, station, or plan the hit. Break a leg actors are told before a performance. 52 minutes, 0.3 seconds now. The clock's ticking. Can't sit here worrying about what or where the next bomb might be, especially when they seem to have brought this on themselves.

639 days, 11 hours, 43 minutes, 29.6 seconds

Her brother-in-law's modular home arrived in Mississippi two days ago. To be erected on his Katrina-leveled lot. 100,000 pounds of house. $3.50 a pound that it ends up costing. And how much does steak cost these days? How much for those gourmet vegetable dishes she buys at Zabars? Every time her blood's high they vow to eat at home more.

641 days, 9 hours, 55 minutes, 19.3 seconds

Meeting a friend for lunch, she thinks of sugar-free chocolates at Godiva. She recalls, years ago, dieting, she stopped in Fanny Farmer at the mall and bought sugar-free. Just as many calories as the others, the clerk told her. So why the hell make them? Why bother? Callous. Uppity. It's as if she brought all this on herself.

641 days, 12 hours, 11 minutes, 19 seconds

Those poor girls. Three days ago she explained to a friend that she doesn't like to teach high school or college because she can't get away from herself as a teenager. Not wanting to help kids as she needed help, but herself as still the outcast, students as tormentors. Now all she can do is feel sorry for those girls on the Rutgers basketball team. They thought they were winners. Then along came Don Imus.Then along came the Governor. Actually, the Governor never got there.

641 days, 12 hours, 14 minutes, 32.6 seconds

Corzine's crash happened on Thursday, while she was in Sacramento giving two readings. California. Always her refuge.

641 days, 12 hours, 27 minutes, 20.5 seconds

Ruffles have ridges. Politicians have privileges. And if the governor of New Jersey wants to sit in the front seat of the Suburban while his State Trooper driver goes 91 miles an hour, and he doesn't want the constraint of the seatbelt, that's his choice. Eleven broken ribs. On a ventilator. On morphine. Corzine was the only one without a seatbelt. The only one in hospital. In intensive care, unable to breathe on his own. But that's because of pain, mostly. No brain damage, no paralysis. He had a right to speed. He had to get to Camden. He just wanted to get out of Atlantic City. Her father, on a similar ventilator three years ago, just wanted to stay there.

642 days, 4 hours, 11 minutes, 59 seconds

An article from last year's news says Tony Blair spent over $3000 of the government's money on makeup during his first six years in office. And Marcia Clark claims she lost the Simpson case because she couldn't afford the fancy tv wardrobe. Six years ago, when Hillary won the senate race, she spoke of six black pants suits. But now, running for president, she seems to have given up on black.

642 days, 4 hours, 27 minutes, 49 seconds

7:23 in Manhattan. Most of the women she knows are probably retouching their lipstick before or after dinner. (She fell today). The women she's closest to wear soft shades. Barely visible on their lips. Not like the magenta she wore in high school. She was a sorority pledge, she had to wear it. (She fell this afternoon crossing Columbus Ave.). Even on her wedding day she never thought of makeup. Though she owes her life to Botox. Not for wrinkles, for migraine. All those vain women have their uses. And, she admits, she's put on light powder for photographs. Never lipstick. Never eye shadow to weigh down already-tired eyes. And no plucked eyebrows. (She fell tonight just after picking up clothes from the cleaners).

642 days, 9 hours, 46 minutes, 25 seconds

Two nosebleeds in two days. She doesn't have time for this. But she picks at her nose when she's nervous, the way her mother smoked or Connie sucks on straws. Smoking was bad for her husband's health as well. Better than these nosebleeds, she supposes, when she's already slightly anemic. Blood on the keyboard now.

642 days, 23 hours, 5 minutes, 17 seconds

642 – It's an address. Or a zip code. An area code? Actually it's the first three digits of her summer phone number. Numbers no one can complete unless she wants to talk to them. We're focusing on vacations here. Houses with lawns and hammocks and barns. 642, the numbers humming like insects bedded down for the night, while frogs coak from one side of the road to the other and she lies in total darkness on the screened-in porch. 642. No peace last summer. And here she'd been waiting for this day, planning for it, stocking up on words as if they were earthquake provisions.

642 days, 23 hours, 55 minutes, 40 seconds

Headached, jetlagged, coming down with a cold – or maybe all three, she tries the Bush Cheney game to regain focus. Scores so low it's ridiculous, the head right in perfect position then she doesn't have strength to shoot. The two of them could get away with torture when she's in this state. And how many senators are there now campaigning every weekend? Iowa, New Hampshire, New Jersey... George and Laura, meanwhile, visited Virginia Tech today, thirty-three dead, others critical, the worst shooting in American history. One freshman, from New Jersey, was on an ROTC scholarship.

643 days, 9 hours, 1 minutes, 26 seconds

Once upon a time, worried about repacking her computer, she left her pocketbook back at Security. Her father-in-law spotted it and tried to get it for her, but they wouldn't hand it over. Not even the same name.

643 days, 10 hours, 32 minutes, 45 seconds

Her first day back, the maid cleaning, just wanting to escape for awhile, she heads over to Popover for lunch, sits in a window seat with an ancient teddy bear on the shelf behind her. Mary said she's careful, in Berkeley, never to hang a picture over the bed. There must be twenty earthquakes a day in the Bay area. Not those that make headlines, certainly, but enough to knock paintings off the walls. Instead, she keeps two teddy bears above her bead, almost hoping they'll fall on her. That nice, soft landing. As their flight back was not, though the pilot, bless his heart, apologized – a strong tailwind, wet ground, and he had to brake hard so as not to skid.

643 days, 11 hours, 16 minutes, 38 seconds

She reaches for the golden ring. Or is it the brass ring? After tales about Goldrush California, she has gold on her mind. Mary pointed to old buildings in San Francisco with gilded roofs and said that, originally, that would have been real gold. She reaches higher.

643 days, 11 hours, 27 minutes, 40 seconds

Remember Easter. That Monday flight that was supposed to be a Sunday flight. What she didn't mention earlier was that their bags were checked on to Kennedy, while the flight they finally caught arrived in Newark. At her insistence, they took a cab to Kennedy that night, despite how late it was, only to find maybe 500 unclaimed suitcases lined up against the wall. And no one was checking baggage tags. Anyway, that's what it looked like at LaGuardia last night, on a smaller scale, maybe 300 bags, holdovers from Sunday's nor'easter. As they waited for the new bags to arrive a skycap was, for the sake of appearances, putting some back on a carousel.

643 days, 11 hours, 47 minutes, 20 seconds

It's so good to be back in normal time. Even if she feels like she's sleepwalking. Even if the trip home was grueling, the plane leaving Texas 45 minutes late, then sitting on the ground for a half hour before a gate was free. Her own bed last night aomewhere between dream and nightmare. There wasn't supposed to be jetlag in this direction, was there? When she was growing up, with parents who never traveled, she thought she'd want a job traveling around the world. But three trips this year will be enough for her. She recalls London, maybe fifteen years ago, her husband's first time out of the US and Canada, a three-night stay in a hotel one step up from flea bag, and how they arrived before noon and crashed for the better part of the day. Such a waste.

645 days, 10 hours, 5 minutes, 42 seconds

She chokes on phlegm or post nasal drip. She doesn't think it's blood. Like something gone down the wrong track. Coughing, trying to suppress a cough. Her throat raw. She thinks maybe climb down the ladder, get a drink, but she doesn't trust that to help. Doesn't trust the ladder. Doesn't trust her friend not to wake. This has been going on for what seems an hour. She doesn't think it's blood. She thinks of Bill, getting cheap theater tickets, then complaining they were seated up in the nosebleed section. Bill dead nearly three years now, a heart attack at a World Series game, most likely choking on his own blood, not quite high enough for the nosebleed section.

645 days, 21 hours, 3 minutes, 2.3seconds

Oh, and by the way, there's a Nor'easter headed for New York, the winds already picking up. It should be over by the time they fly home on Monday, her husband says. They're flying toward Texas first, and the storm will have passed there as well, her friend says. And even if the planes are backed up at the airports, they let the regularly scheduled flights leave as close to on time as possible. Yes, of course, she remembers that flight to Atlanta, when she was the one left behind. But she's not convinced.

645 days, 21 hours, 13 minutes, 49 seconds

It was when they were renting out this space where they're sleeping. Several years ago. A woman sleeping alone in the loft heard snoring. No, she hadn't taken a man home with her, she wasn't that drunk. She descended the ladder, searched, climbed back up. That's when she saw the raccoon sprawled over the skylight, sound asleep. Just the little masked face, like they saw last night peering in their window as they talked. Like they saw on the street tonight. Strange to find animals this close to homes built this close to each other. Strange to sit here typing with someone other than her husband asleep a few feet away. Not masked. Not balding. Not snoring.

646 days, 7 hours, 25 minutes, 21 seconds

Air mattress. Air head. Maybe she and her friend should change places. She wants to say it's all the pressure. Weather. Readings. Friendship. Mattress. Her friend shows her the air in the mattress can be pumped up, but she's almost enjoying floating around like this. The closest to weightless she can get, and up a steep ladder. She's not afraid of heights, she's afraid of crashing.

646 days, 7 hours, 49 minutes, 12 seconds

She wakes to rain pounding the skylight over her air mattress in the loft. No boat. No Internet. She calls her friend, and they agree to just meet for lunch. The rain lets up. She calls her husband. She finds a way to make her wireless work. At least from the guest house. At least from the study. It almost seems as if nothing else matters.