476 days, 1 hours, 39 minutes, 32 seconds

No ham. No cheese. No artichokes. No meals with friends. She needs sugar. Low-fat coffee cake for lunch at a Starbucks way too crowded. Then a cab the few blocks home. For dinner she hydrates her body with Tasti-d-Lite custom flavors. Vitamins, at least. Or at least she hopes so. Pumpkin or egg nog. Fall. Fall. Fall.

476 days, 5 hours, 45 minutes, 9 seconds

Florence Nightingale calls from the liquor store. The bubble bursts.

477 days, 0 hours, 31 minutes, 23 seconds

Last day of the month. Last chance to write here. Her body shut down. She wishes the world would shut down. The news would shut down. The country would shut down. Pay rent or sleep on the breezeway, but at least she'd be able to breathe there. At night, he says, he can hear the cancer cells dying, one by one. And blue flowers, carved in a paperweight from Sweden, promise not to die.

482 days, 10 hours, 45 minutes, 3.8 seconds

Monkey in the middle. A man gets on a plane in Lima with a cute little monkey under his cap. They make it to Fort Lauderdale and wait hours for the flight to LaGuardia. The monkey extends a paw and plays with his pony tail, the same color as his fur. People nearby ask the man if he knows there’s a monkey in his cap. On the plane, attendants finally expose the monkey. It spends the rest of the flight in the man’s seat, the middle seat, the one she avoids at all costs. Messy grade school pony tails making her face ache were more than enough for her. No hair now. And she doesn’t wear baseball caps.

482 days, 13 hours, 53 minutes, 43 seconds

So it’s the middle of the night and her husband dreams he gets an emergency call from work and he tries to help but then realizes a woman he works with can handle this better so he takes the phone in the bathroom so as not to wake her and dials. Then he comes back to bed and can’t find the phone. He finds it in the bathroom, then has to double-check that he was dreaming, no one really called, and he decides to leave the phone in the bathroom, let her get as much sleep as she can. He tells her the dream when she wakes and she reminds him this is the woman who was her hat example.

484 days, 22 hours, 44 minutes, 2 seconds

She recalls a few years ago, how important those orange gates were in Central Park. Orange of her early teens. All the thoughts and plans and hopes of suicide.

485 days, 1 hours, 9 minutes, 20 seconds

Red light. Green light. Red light. Green light. She goes, already tired. Her first Yom Kippur service ever. She wants to hear the shofar. She wants her name inscribed in the Book of Life. Red light. Green light. She isn't sure what she wants. But she sits at the Javitz Center, facing sunset. Facing New Jersey as the lights fade. The Ark is opened. Stand if you are able. Her hand trembles on the prayer book, which she covers with his hand. Stand if you are able. It's been a hard week. She feels welcomed here. But maybe there is no book.

488 days, 6 hours, 52 minutes, 54 seconds

Rock smashes scissors, scissors cuts paper, paper covers rock. Moisturizer goes on first, wash your hands, green covers red, wash your hands, two shades of beige blend together, and she wonders how long until it all falls apart.

489 days, 9 hours, 52 minutes, 37 seconds

One of the worst days of her life. The new pill making her blood go the wrong direction. A migraine for two or three days now. Then she looks at the date and sees it's her cousin's birthday. Diane. Of course Diane.

489 days, 11 hours, 48 minutes, 44 seconds

Hats off to Larry,
He broke your heart,
Just like you broke mine when you
Said we must part....

This song's been going through her head for weeks, might as well write it down. And, unmusical as she is, it sounds like the same melody as Who Wants to Buy This Diamond Ring. At least around the same era. She might have played either one on her accordion, but didn't.

The ring tangled in the bed sheets. For the hysterectomy years ago, they taped it down but let her wear it. And she recalls its comfort. The woman in pre-op screaming where's my husband? And her, wheeled to her room, hearing her husband's voice on the phone, not able to locate him. That ring still taped on her finger. Fool's gold. When they worked on her brain they removed it.

489 days, 13 hours, 3 minutes, 29 seconds

Well, her father's certainly losing it. He weighs less now than he did in high school. Complains he can't get a belt small enough, and suspenders don't hold his pants up. But that's not what she's thinking about.

489 days, 22 hours, 56 minutes, 18 seconds

She window shops for hats and sees only headless manikins. Beauty. Style. Haute Couture. When did this start?

No start. No end. Her migraines continue. Her brain swells. She recalls, years ago, browsing through a headache chat room and someone asking where they could buy a guillotine. And in a news story last week, a 41-year-old Michigan man's body was found in the woods next to a guillotine he'd built. It was bolted to a tree and included a swing arm he could operate himself.

So much for Dr. Kevorkian.

489 days, 23 hours, 26 minutes, 2.3 seconds

Apparently she isn't the only one. This on Madison Ave.

The only problem was she stopped to talk. But don't mind her. It's been a long day. Very long, very tense, too tired to talk straight. And they weighed her down with pamphlets.

491 days, 5 hours, 23 minutes, 2 seconds

Was it second grade? Or fourth grade? The father of a boy in her class owned a novelty shop on the Boardwalk, and he sold all the kids big white buttons with their names in red. But of course they didn't have her name. She cried for what seemed like weeks. She cursed her parents.

Then there was the Nixon button, traded in for the Kennedy button.

The first button she ever wore seriously was during the 2004 election:

2004 No Carb Diet
No Cheney
No Ashcroft
No Rumsfeld
No Bush

Two out of four isn't bad, some people would say. But she's never been some people.

491 days, 5 hours, 29 minutes, 21 seconds

Her mother, who didn't sew except to hem her dresses, had an ornate black floral cookie or tea tin which she used to store ornate buttons. They were her third-favorite thing to play with, right behind charms and marbles.

491 days, 5 hours, 35 minutes, 47 seconds

Spend spend spend spend spend. A hat, two scarves, three pairs of long velvet gloves, two pins, two polyester cowl-neck tops for around the house. All of it just to compensate.

491 days, 5 hours, 52 minutes, 12 seconds

So she said she wanted a green hat, and this is definitely green. More hippie than retro. Someone's sewed buttons along one side in an interesting pattern, where other hats have feathers or flowers. Mostly small shirt buttons. Mostly ivory with thick green wool thread, but other colors as well. The street vendor insists the hat is new.

Her mother had no pattern for those charms.

Her hand so bad today she can barely clasp a button. And one fell off of a blouse last. It was the top button, so it barely matters.

493 days, 7 hours, 39 minutes, 52 seconds

Months ago now, when Hillary threw her hat into the ring, she called for a cap on spending in Iraq. But that's all semantics. And she's starting to look more closely at Obama now.

495 days, 1 hours, 16 minutes, 9 seconds

Back from dinner, they stop in the drugstore for Saltines – the one thing she's convinced is helping ward off the expected nausea. She tells him Saltines, warm diet Coke, and sucking on lemons is all that's ever worked for her. Then he, not she, mentions the lemon law.

495 days, 22 hours, 53 minutes, 28 seconds

Speaking of hats again – once again last night, the Mets honored those who died on 9/11 by wearing caps honoring the New York City Police Department, New York City Fire Department, New York City Fire Department Paramedics, New York State Courts, Port Authority Police Department, and the Office of Emergency Management. Each cap will be signed by the player or coach who wore it, then sold at a charity auction. They won again, at home, against the Braves.

495 days, 23 hours, 23 minutes, 14 seconds

Yesterday was 9/11. A Tuesday, as it was that first year, but hot and humid, with thunderstorms, not the crisp clear fall day it was six years ago. The next year, not even recalling the date, she'd been walking the city with her camera, realized she left her battery charger upstate, and headed down to J&R. At first she didn't understand the crowds of people. Then she wandered among them, circling the site twice, before she began to focus on half-dead flowers stuck in the fence, most with notes. The next year there was nothing to photograph. And it's all old hat now.

496 days, 0 hours, 23 minutes, 59 seconds

A St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap, a NY Yankees baseball cap, a red hunter's cap, a burnt orange Texas Longhorns baseball cap, a white ski cap, a fisherman's hat, a black beret, a bandana, a military insignia hat, a light-blue canouflge. James Madison, 50, alternately dubbed The Hat Bandit and The Mad Hatter, had a clean-shaven head. The hats protected his identity when he robbed 19 banks in ten months. But finally New Jersey police caught up to him.

496 days, 13 hours, 48 minutes, 21 seconds

Set the clock ahead. Please set the clock ahead. George Bush is no longer president. Soldiers are still being killed in Iraq, but that no longer interests him. Medicare no longer interests him. Very little interests him. He no longer goes to church. He stands in front of a mom and pop drugstore, one of the few ones left in a small Texas town, trying to guess at the number of jellybeans in a huge jar.

496 days, 20 hours, 59 minutes, 51 seconds

On www.whitehousekids.gov she finds The White House issued a math challenge for kids in elementary school:

How many Marbles?

* What is the smallest number of marbles when: grouping the marbles by fours leaves 2 extra marbles, grouping by fives leaves 1 extra, and there are more than 10 marbles in the collection?

Contest problems and answers are provided by David Rock at Columbus State College and Doug Brumbaugh at the University of Central Florida.

496 days, 21 hours, 8 minutes, 9.2 seconds

Doling out the pills once a week. She thought it would be like playing with marbles: you go here, you go here, you go here. All the different colors. But now there are too many pills to count. They all seem to look alike. A bottle falls from her hand. A tray tips. She has a mini seizure. None of the pills are working. She's down on her hands and knees on the patterned tiles of the kitchen floor, trying to salvage what she can, figure out what's missing. Might as well stay here.

497 days, 11 hours, 42 minutes, 32 seconds

Transformations. Or transformers. On his birthday weekend, while he was in Rhode Island with family, the lights in her study blew out. Lights on Transformers. Because she can't tolerate the heat. His gift to her. And so she's managed in poor light, one week, two weeks, straining at the keyboard, putting on hat after hat, expensive hats, cheap hats, hats she's transformed with pins, trying to transform herself. She thinks of those cars that transform into robots. They came out long after her childhood. And she never had need of them. It's taken her this long to be able to write about any of this. Even during the day her eyes strain. In the middle of chemo her glasses break. God knows what these new medications are doing to her. She doesn't want to know. She doesn't want to see. She wants to put a hat on her head, cover her eyes, transform sickness or shame into dignity. Fashion, she calls it. But there's never been a mirror in her bedroom.

499 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, 14 seconds

Peacock feathers. Her mother wasn't the sort to wear any feathers, but she remembers this full-feathered hat in shades of mauve and purple that someone (probably her aunt) convinced her mother to spend a lot of money for. She doesn't recall her mother ever wearing it. She thinks to ask her father where it is now, then realizes she wouldn't have nerve to wear it either.

500 days, 1 hours, 41 minutes, 1.3 seconds

She' s dreaming her hair came back. Two long thick clumps at the base of her skull, some frizzy curls on the top. Then her father calls.

500 days, 11 hours, 25 minutes, 45 seconds

The 500 mark. This used to mean something. She forgets what.

500 days, 12 hours, 4 minutes, 45.7 seconds

She remembers the regulation white camp hat, and her mother sewing those little plastic charms all over it. You could get a child's handful for a quarter from the machine at the Food Fair. She always loved charms. She never had charm.

500 days, 13 hours, 10 minutes, 27 seconds

Seventy miles south-east of Dallas. Four days. Six thousand people. An ugly butt-crack contest. A spam eating contest. A mudpit belly buster. A mattress-chunk contest where two men drink a 12-pack of beer, get into a pickup, drive, climb into the truck-bed and toss the mattress as far as they can. This disturbs the neighbors.

500 days, 13 hours, 18 minutes, 29.6 seconds

Redneck: a member of the white rural labouring class of the southern States; one whose attitudes are considered characteristic of this class; freq., a reactionary. Originally, and still often, derogatory, but now also used with more sympathy for the aspirations of the rural American.

501 days, 1 hours, 4 minutes, 57 seconds

Scarves in the hatbox. Rash.

501 days, 20 hours, 7 minutes, 41 seconds

Man leads normal life with tiny brain, the headline from July 22nd read. Forty-four years old, married with two children, an IQ of 75. As an infant he'd had fluid in his skull. There was little more than a thin sheet of brain tissue. The whole brain was like those shrunken skulls boys tormented girls with in second grade. And yet, doctors say, the brain somehow adapts. If something happens very slowly over quite some time, maybe over decades, the different parts of the brain take up functions that would normally be done by the part that is pushed to the side, said a doctor not involved in the case. The brain is very plastic.

501 days, 20 hours, 48 minutes, 22 seconds

The MRI confirms that the stereotactic lesion's shrunk, leaving swelling all around it. And here she's cutting back on steroids, her hand bad again. But she hasn't spoken to the real doctor yet.

Meanwhile, the Rings of Saturn paperweight arrived yesterday. Nowhere near as nice as others in the celestial series. It looks like a top, and seems as unstable as she's been feeling. Topsy Turvy. It needs a stand to stand. The vacant white rings on this particular piece are heavily flecked with gold, so the swelling both stands out and fills in. Silence is golden. So is Hell paved over. It all depends on the angle. She feels like she walks at an angle. Falls at an angle. She'd expected, no, wanted, just emptiness.

From the story card: Saturn's light rings are composed of ice chunks and rocks ranging in size from as small as a dust particle to as large as a car. Rocks in her head. Rocks banging together like lobster claws. Tired and seeing double. Some artist's vision. And last fall, when maybe all this was maturing in her body, she lost her three color gold wedding ring, only to find it days later tangled in the bedsheets.

501 days, 22 hours, 48 minutes, 8 seconds

She needs her head for something other than a hatrack. So she buys a hatrack. If you've got it, might as well flaunt it. Her latest work of art.

502 days, 21 hours, 59 minutes, 51 seconds

A blip on the news tonight about "popcorn lung," a disease that's been affecting factory workers since 2001, mostly in California (where that worst headache in years began, where she didn't attend her uncle's 4th of July 90th birthday party and hasn't mustered courage to call him). This isn't cancer, it goes in and destroys the lung, leaving only the hope of a transplant. $17 an hour jobs. It has to do with the chemicals in the butter flavoring of microwave popcorn. Masks don't seem to help. But only one death has been confirmed and OSHA doesn't know what to make of this. Now a consumer has been stricken down. But it's his own fault, he should have known better than to spend years microwaving popcorn several times a day. Breathing all those fumes as the bag swelled. Fun to stay and watch. Putting itself on display. And at the oncologist's this afternoon the snack basket was visibly depleted and there were no bags of cheddar-flavored popcorn. She settled for veggie chips.

503 days, 11 hours, 14 minutes, 22 seconds

A news article she can’t seem to find right now – how Bush showed up to greet troops in Iraq, or maybe it was Afghanistan, wearing his old Army Reserve uniform. It was too tight.

504 days, 22 hours, 41 minutes, 55 seconds

They had lunch in Greenwich that day, at a place called Glory Days diner. He stopped there again last weekend with his brother. His brother served in Vietnam and rose to the rank of Colonel. Two years ago, in Galveston, he took them to a military surplus store the likes of which they’d never seen before. Even WWI items. She supposes she should buy a fatigue cap, for the bad days. You can buy them new on the Internet for undder $10. But they’re only caps, so would she still be covered? Glory Days. That’s how she desscribes them.

504 days, 22 hours, 54 minutes, 4.3 seconds

He reminds her that the last time she got gas was the day they just took a drive. She was fine for about three hours, driving back roads, then all of a sudden she was maybe fifty miles from the city and this unbelievable fatigue set in. Fatigue is a hat, he tells her. No, it isn’t, she says, he’s thinking of fatigues, the military combat uniform which includes a hat. Camouflage. Like they wear in Iraq. Or are supposed to wear.

505 days, 6 hours, 28 minutes, 22 seconds

And the Toyota, Jewish American Princess that she is, confused at not being driven these past three months, turns on her check engine light at ten o’clock at night, ten miles from the country house. One more thing to panic about. Last time this happened it was the transmission fluid. But it could be anything. And she needs an oil change. Sunday of Labor Day weekend, last day of his birthday week, most of the car places closed. At last an Auto Zone that can quickly get a computer readout: evap. Meaning, and yes, they double check, she’s lost the gas cap.

509 days, 9 hours, 32 minutes 9 seconds

There’s an abstract print of big floppy hats facing her when she lies down in the E.E.G. room. But she has to take her hat off. The technician wants to know why she shaved her head. He tells of his sister who went through three rounds of chemo for lung cancer. It spread to her brain, then her liver. He scrubs her head with what feels like Ajax. Have to make good connections, or there’s no point. Wire afteer wire after wire after wire, pale, multi-colored wires. He tells her to relax, to close her eyes. Lights flash, slow then faster. If this doesn’t bring on a migraine, nothing will. He tells her to open her eyes. He asks if she’s right or left handed. He tells her to close her eyes, then to try and sleep, and she sleeps for once. She’s been up since six again. He pulls off the wires, scrubs down her head again. She has to remind him to dry it please. She doesn’t want to catch cold.

510 days, 3 hours, 5 minutes 19 seconds

"I make Tylenol and I promise, I'm not just making it for your kids, I'm making it for mine." This is about the fifth time today that this ad's popped up. Each time a different Tylenol employee. All men. Anyway, she went back and got the hat. And she ordered two nylon stocking caps made especially for under wigs. That's when the last ad popped up. So she no longer has to be afraid of vintage. Or Tylenol. But these days it's more often Vicodin or Percocet. She longs for those days when Tylenol was enough for her. Of course this makes her think of the Tylenol murders. The first person to die was a 12-year-old girl. She'd thought it had been someone's fiancé. Her memory failing again. Her father's old age.

510 days, 10 hours, 47 minutes 21 seconds

Another day, another medical test, another hat store. This one’s just a few blocks down from the other store and she thought she could walk there except it was hotter than she thought and they only had summer hats. Give it another month, they say. Things take time. Chemo takes time. Health takes time. Meanwhile she had to get out of the apartment on account of the terrorist cleaning there. So she goes around the corner on 72nd St. and stops in Tip Top Shoes where she’s been meaning to go all summer, except it’s in the middle of renovation with almost no stock. Then she stops to look at hats in the thrift shop where all the actresses, especially from soap operas, leave clothes on consignment. And the first thing she sees are magnificent jeweled turbans, and she wonders how many actresses suffered hair loss. Or were these used for putting on makeup, the old glamour image? But then of course there are also vintage felt hats and one rose hat with a feather made by Bonwit Teller that she’s absolutely mad about. Does she dare wear a used hat? With canccr? It looks immaculate. Bonwit Teller. William Tell shooting the apple off his son’s head. Jean Vollmer with a glass on her drugged head. Some women will do just about anything. With cancer?

511 days, 6 hours, 13 minutes 44 seconds

She knew a poet years ago who'd been a Bloomingdales model. Everyone joked about that. No one took her seriously as a writer.

511 days, 11 hours, 22 minutes 32 seconds

A little cooler today. His real birthday (which she keeps forgetting). After a ten minute visit to the dermatologist, she walks to Boomingdales to check out designer hats. She could have had her makeup done there. She shuddered at having her makeup done there. Along Third Ave., today, she passes stores like Sephora and Face. She looks in the windows.

514 days, 5 hours, 9 minutes 46 seconds

Even a little girl's choice of shampoo comes back to haunt her. She wonders how long her head will remain a watermelon.

514 days, 5 hours, 28 minutes 16 seconds

Two hours working alone in a café and already she's seeing things. She glances a Nemo storybook in Duane Reade and doubles back to see if it's a chemo hat. The pharmacy from hell.

514 days, 9 hours, 16 minutes 1 seconds

Jackie's pill box.

514 days, 12 hours, 18 minutes 39 seconds

This is a blog about language. This is a blog about politics. When George Bush reminds people they're working hard to put food on their family, where's the food really going? Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease, he informs us. He tells us he doesn't think we have to be subliminal about our views on prescription drugs. Subliminal --Below the threshold of conscious perception.

514 days, 12 hours, 40 minutes 22 seconds

With these new hats, with this new style, suddenly words like control and remission don't seem as bad. All her life fighting for words, rejecting anything feminine.

514 days, 13 hours, 5 minutes 15 seconds

This is crazy. After a week of nothing but sleep, all of the sudden she can't fall asleep. Up till 4 a.m., 5 a.m. then awake again before nine. She kisses her husband goodbye. She kisses his brother and sister-in-law goodbye. She packs up prescriptions to take to the drugstore. She washes her face. She puts the cream on. She runs off to buy one more hat. She doesn't have time for makeup.

514 days, 13 hours, 12 minutes 10 seconds

So it was a few days before his birthday and his brother and sister-in-law were coming into town before going to Rhode Island and staying overnight and frankly she'd been dreading this. And even though she knew she'd be alone for the next two days, it was first day it wasn't raining and she had to get out of that apartment before it killed her (and not to another doctor). So she took off at 10 o'clock and ran down to the hat store on Columbus Avenue she'd remembered looking in years ago, totally unaffordable. But the first place she thought to go now. And she bought two hats for $500. And she tried on 50 hats. And they were felt, vintage look with pins and feathers and buttons, and they were comfortable. As she tried two more stories and she got Starbucks for lunch and she got a gelato at a place where for once she didn't have to wait in line (she's within 5 pounds of what she weighed when she met him) and by the time she got home they were at the door, their car already in the lot across the street. And her sister-in-law (Southern Belle) adores hats. She'd forgotten that. She's worked with cancer patients and she said nobody ends up wearing their wigs but she modeled it anyway and she said it looks good it just doesn't look like her. She knew it. She knew it. She knew it. When they went out to dinner she decided to wear the hat. And she held her head up. And she decides she wants one more hat now, one more exotic blue hat with pins and flowers and ribbons that she can wear with denim. Not only now, but always. No more bad hair days. No more wanting to hide. No, actually, these hats have brims like that Totes hat. It's getting closer and closer to September. There are people she has to see. There are people she wants to see.

515 days, 21 hours, 52 minutes 59 seconds

Her desk is piled as high as her father's bed.

515 days, 22 hours, 58 minutes 56 seconds

1960. She wasn't quite 12 years old. It was the first year she followed politics. Kennedy and Nixon. And the first of the televised presidential debates. It was said then that one of the reasons Kennedy made such a good impression was because he understood to wear a powder blue shirt, realizing the white shirt would be greyed out against the bright TV cameras. Clothes matter.

515 days, 23 hours, 9 minutes 55 seconds

Three weeks ago, on his first visit to Texas, Bush presented the straight laced, suit and tie wearing British Prime Minister Gordon Brown with a fur lined leather bomber jacket. She remembered the media laughing, but thought it was a khaki safari hat. That's the way it's been of late, she'll remember pieces, but get some of the facts wrong. Her grandmother was like that. It's probably going to get worse.

515 days, 23 hours, 43 minutes 25.5 seconds

Downstairs her husband's asleep with a TV movie on. One in the morning, and he often does this. For the past hour she's been hearing bits and pieces of some 40s or 50s film she vaguely recognizes. She saves this file. She puts it up online. In your Easter Bonnet can be heard clearly. She hears her husband yawn, stretch, and get up. He'll be coming to bed soon.

516 days, 0 hours, 22 minutes 20.3 seconds

Use your head for something other than a hatrack. (Misspelled, for a moment there, hate rack). It's a cliché that for some reason she recalls her mother using.

For years she wore a man's Totes gray and white hat that she traded a copy of her book with another poet for. She thinks it was also a rain hat. It was way too large and she loved the way the brim fell over her forehead, hiding her face. It protected her. She has pictures. Lost somewhere years later, she thinks in a ladies room.

The first year she and her husband were together she bought an expensive funky hat at a Christmas craft fair. A woman's hat. Reversible. It covered the full head, buttoned under the chin. She's needed the buttonhole replaced several times but still adores that hat. Hard to explain how important it was, that willingness to accept herself as a woman, her desire to stand out, be noticed. (Misspelled, for a moment there, he noticed).

When she picked up the beaver she also bought four chemo caps. To protect he shaved head. Not to get cold. Not to itch. Not to bitch. Today she even wore the dressy one to the doctor's. And put earrings on for the first time in three months. And part of her feels proud, different. These past three days, her energy finally returned, surfing the Internet to see what else she can find. Instead of working.

516 days, 23 hours, 37 minutes 34 seconds

The world's starting to become a better place again. She can concentrate on solitaire.

518 days, 0 hours, 8 minutes 46 seconds

Bob Leroy Head of Maquoketa, Iowa threw out the first pitch at the Portland Beavers baseball game Saturday, the result of a months-long promotion for Bob L. Heads around the nation. His motto: No matter what the score, I am always a Head. He also said he's been pitching hay and pitching manure and thought he could pitch a ball. The first 2000 fans were given free bobble head dolls of him. The Beavers, playing Las Vegas, staged a late inning rally which left fans nodding in approval. So the beavers won.

Her mop was adjusted today. It still feels more like a dead beaver.

518 days, 15 hours, 49 minutes 18 seconds

Ben bobs in front of the books she's written. All head and no heart.

518 days, 16 hours, 18 minutes 55 seconds

Then there was the prism they tried to put in her glasses once. It was a disaster. She bounced as she walked. Her head bobbed. Ben still bobs, sitting on the shelf with her books now.

518 days, 16 hours, 41 minutes 58 seconds

Soon it will be cold enough to bob for apples, he tells her, trying to cheer her up about being in the city in August. The first time since he’s known her. Yet another horrid memory – Seventh grade? Eighth grade? Her parents decided she was too old for a birthday party so threw a Halloween party instead. Everything took place in the garage they cleaned out for her. They had to bob for apples. The only girl who made it into the house was someone whose costume tore. She was crying. There were no boys. She was small for her age. She doesn’t think she’d ever heard the term migrant worker, but her teacher was all excited about Laos, the newest country to gain independence. It was even on the Safety test.

518 days, 16 hours, 51 minutes 37 seconds

Maybe it was a year or two after they married. Things are starting to run together here.

519 days, 1 hours, 37 minutes 18 seconds

The clock fell on her foot today. The ten-ton, hand-crafted, steel Wonder Woman, Wizard of Oz music box clock. At first she thought it broke two toes. It didn't matter. She'd been reaching for the computer. At least she didn't drop the computer. They were meeting a friend for brunch. Same place as last week. Different friend. Even now she has friends. She shoves the dead animal on her head, doesn't have time to cover the rash, and limps off. Wonder Woman.

519 days, 2 hours, 30 minutes 18 seconds

Hamster Brain. It was their favorite commercial years ago. The sister calls her brother a hamster brain (or does the brother call the sister that?) while the mother soaks blissfully behind the closed bathroom door in Calgon Bath Oil Beads. And she made up a song for him:

Employee of the Month
Employee of the Year
Hi Ho Delario
The Hamster Brain is here.

He was Employee of the Month, then tied for Employee of the Year. It was before they married. They went to Tavern on the Green to celebrate. And he was given a desk clock with a little plaque which sits above her computer.

519 days, 3 hours, 26 minutes 0.2 seconds

U.S. paid $1 million to ship two 19-cent washers. Anxious to get soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan all the tools they needed, they let twin sisters, South Carolina women in their forties, dupe them. Luxury cars, boats, jewelry, vacations. One sister committed suicide in her beach house.

She knows what it's like in the Deep South. Jerry Falwell always on the lookout. Bob Jones University in Greenville. It was the first place she taught Poets in the Schools, nearly forty years ago, when there were separate Black and White teachers' lounges and the kids were paddled. Then she moved on to Oramgeburg. Warned not to walk the road at night.

Lock washers place tension against a nut after tightening, to help prevent the nut from loosening. She thinks of the single washer caught in her bra two months ago, how it had been just one more tool to keep her head straight, how a few days later she retrieved it. Her only souvenir. She keeps it with the marble-brains he gave her.

521 days, 4 hours, 44 minutes 23 seconds

Her parents would have been delighted had she gone to college. Any college.

521 days, 10 hours, 51 minutes 10.6 seconds

You're supposed to be a wreck, he tells her. This is what chemo does. My favorite wreck, he calls her. My Beautiful Laundrette, she thinks but doesn't say. She thinks of that 1,500 pound wrecking ball that broke free in Pennsylvania last week, rolling downhill, smashing cars, landing in the trunk of a Taurus, right near Allegheny College.

522 days, 9 hours, 29 minutes 53 seconds

She thinks of St. Rudy's first inauguration, eight-year-old Andrew up there on the podium, hamming it up for the cameras. That boy ought to be spanked, a friend said. Father and son no longer speak. His daughter's campaigning for Obama. Both children loyal to their mother. He announced his divorce to the media before he told his wife. And this man wants to be president. Republican. Family values. Leave my family out of this, he tells a woman in New Hampshire.

And don't we all wish we could leave our families out? Her father getting all the details confused. A stomach tumor. Five hours at the doctor every day. Calling every other night to see what the doctor said, sometimes forgetting he just spoke to her. Sheer promotion for the MCI friends and family network. Whoever is left now that he's nearly 91. She's his only daughter.

And his father 93, planning the birthday party. Knowing something's going on, but not what. Ready to announce whatever it is to the world, highlight of the evening. She'd almost prefer he tell them they're getting divorced.

522 days, 10 hours, 35 minutes 26 seconds

When he turned 50, she threw him a surprise party that's remained one of the high points of their life together. Now that he's turning 65, this is what her body does to him.

522 days, 23 hours, 56minutes 8.1 seconds

Sign of hope at Utah mine. Geophones picking up a series of noises over five minutes. Another falling rock? An animal? A miner struggling to breathe? If one of her loved ones were down there, nine-tenths dead, with little chance of a normal life again, what would she really be hoping for?

523 days, 11 hours, 27minutes 34 seconds

Penny Whistle Toys is, she thinks, open again. It had been closed by the court over a month ago, a large red and yellow sign on the window saying don't worry, kids, we'll be back. But this is what we teach the kids she doesn't have.

When she first moved in with him one of his nieces and one great nephew were still young enough that they always looked at toys for Christmas, and this was the best store around. And the most expensive. But he hated chain toy stores as much as he hated chain restaurants (except for the Toys 'R Us near Times Square with its indoor Ferris wheel that he never got to go on). That will be closing soon. Now there are other small expensive shops on the upper West side and they know about one in the village. Now that niece has two children of her own. That's how long it's been.

Meanwhile, Mattel is recalling nearly 19 million toys built in China because they didn't use the paint they were paid to use and there's possible lead here. All over suburbia mothers are digging through toy chests, checking serial numbers, throwing out toys in large red plastic Neiman Marcus bags that can't be seen through. Day care centers are replacing everything. Children in day care are being checked for lead. Children out of day care are throwing tantrums. Or she would have been, at least. Then again, even her Barbies probably weren't Mattel.

She thinks of the windows at Penny Whistle after 9/11 – some of the best in town. For Valentines Day, a red heart with stuffed Dalmatians inside and surrounding it. A white USA plane, American flag on its wing, seeming to fly into a building when we first attacked Iraq. She has the pictures to prove it. Don't worry kids, we'll be back.

523 days, 11 hours, 27minutes 34 seconds

She's angry. Of course she's angry. If Bush had done one interesting thing instead of just bidding goodbye to Karl Rove and hanging on to Gonzalez; if a straw poll in Iowa had included at least one candidate she recognizes; if Bloomberg weren't going round and round and round on his pay to drive in Manhattan scheme; if the Democrats could just get down to five or six candidates in five or six debates a week, this blog might not be so damn personal. Still, she combs the news every day. Maybe it's just her lack of energy. And not being able to comb her hair.

523 days, 12 hours, 11minutes 41.6 seconds

She dropped her camera yesterday. But she managed to take over 40 pictures, some of them butts in the flower beds, one butt in a plastic glove. She wasn't even sure she'd be able to press the shutter. She had an hour before the doctor. What was she supposed to do, walk around in the heat responding to just the heat? Anyway, the camera's okay. With all this is costing her above and beyond insurance, and in another $2000-$3000: say it's for the latest technology.

523 days, 12 hours, 23 minutes 21 seconds

Bon Pain again today. But then she expected this. She was here just nine days ago helping a friend pick out a Toshiba from J&R. Sleek, 17 inch screen, no needless trial programs loading, no need to connect to the Internet just to set it up. This is the machine she should've bought herself. This is the place she should have bought it. Needless/needles. And a glass of water. She hasn't even had water yet today.

Her face is dried from all the creams last night. Her fingernails pick up crud every time she touches it. She doesn't even want to go near a computer, so she picks at scabs.

524 days, 10 hours, 45 minutes 50 seconds

There was so much more to write yesterday. But She needed Percocet for headache, before the headache got too bad. And she needed water to take the Percocet. And of course the water was on her left side and of course her hand can't feel when it's touching something and of course the water spilled all over the left side of the keyboard. She dried it off with her T-shirt. The nurse dried off the water under the computer with a towel. So it's working and then not working, working then coming up with crazy characters, menus she hasn't pressed. She was able to surf the Internet using just the mouse. She brought it home, called 4G data, grabbed a cab down there at seven o'clock at night (they're open until 10 plus weekends). The keyboard shorted out, he said. They ordered a new keyboard. Maybe they can get this done under warranty. If not how much is this going to cost? $300? $400? The cost of two or three dinners or one medication. She could have bought the Rings of Saturn paperweight, plus the one for a Christmas gift. But she'll buy those anyway. And at least the Percocet worked.

525 days, 10 hours, 26 minutes, 30 seconds

One doctor at 10:30, an emergency, who doesn't see her until 11:40, making her late for her noon drip, and the nurse has to leave on time tonight, and the doctor's on vacation again this week.

A friend she seldom talks with on the phone thinks the purpose of waits is to be sure you understand who's in control here. She tells him about her student and how much that suddenly means to her. She tells him of her last drip. And he says he sees another Ratner anthology in the works.

525 days, 14 hours, 51 minutes, 17 seconds

Seeing the tall, thin baby, head wrapped up, in the oncologist’s office was bad enough. But to see the fat sobbing baby this morning in the neurosurgeon’s waiting room hurt even more. Water on the brain?

She knew a seven year-old with a brain tumor once. At four he couldn’t walk or talk intelligably, but they were living in rural New Hampshire and doctors there didn’t even think to look. They say that at ten or twelve you could still detect brain damage, but she was out of touch with his parents by then and only saw him once.

525 days, 14 hours, 51 minutes, 17 seconds

Despite several orthodox Jews plus one Jew for Jesus praying for her, and two Buddhists chanting on her behalf, she really doesn't think God gives a damn.

526 days, 5 hours, 51 minutes, 50 seconds

Now that she's lost most of her hair, the cranial prosthesis needs to be tightened. They said this would happen. She wears it to breakfast with a friend from out of town. It feels like a big wool hat, and too hot for this 80° day. In between bites of eggs she doesn't usually like finds good today, she's idly tipping it, turning it, adjusting it. God knows what she looks like.

526 days, 7 hours, 11 minutes, 48 seconds

She almost forgot: she can't hold things in her left hand without dropping them. So now Ben's got another chip in his skull. God damn fucking brain surgeon – how appropriate. At least it wasn't the Hummel. At least it wasn't poor Pluto.

527 days, 10 hours, 45 minutes, 58 seconds

Her father tried to interest her in the heavens once. There was a man up in Ventnor with a high-powered telescope who set it out on the street whenever anything interesting was about to happen and invited friends and neighbors to watch along. He tried to interest her tripping over sticks on some mosquito trail to look for birds. He encouraged her to get up at six in the morning to ride bikes on the Boardwalk with him. And of course there were always his flowers.

527 days, 12 hours, 17 minutes, 9.2 seconds

Pluto arrived last week. A paperweight from Glass Eye Studios in Seattle, part of their Celestial series, each piece handcrafted with ashes from when Mount Saint Helens volcano erupted in 1980. But Pluto's been demoted. He's being discontinued next year. Especially at this moment, she feels kinship with what they're now calling a dwarf planet. She saw these paperweights last year and almost bought one for a friend who's always running out to view the stars with binoculars, some of the most beautiful artwork she's seen. Even more exquisite to hold in her hand. And now, greedy child that she is, she woke up this morning anxious to buy another for herself: the Rings of Saturn. The small disk in the center. Black lines swirling around it. Last night's midnight panic. The brain swelling. Movement, her husband says. Health, he calls it. And she wants to hate him. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. She didn't even know him in 1980.

530 days, 21 hours, 22 minutes, 38 seconds

What beautiful hair you have, they told her all through childhood. And she thought of Little Red commenting on grandma’s big teeth. That curse. That fear. That mother she didn’t want to look like. Little Red. Now she sees her scalp is red. Or maybe pink. It was white, she always thought. Another illusion biting the rim of the waste basket. Curls so thin she can see through them. She feels as if she’s giving it up too soon – the hair, the anger.

531 days, 13 hours, 32 minutes, 7 seconds

A glucose reading of 88 yesterday morning and again at bedtime. Does this mean she should learn to play the piano? She hasn't written for five days, she sure as hell better do something.

536 days, 4 hours, 3 minutes, 27 seconds

Bush sneers at balding reporter, the headline reads. Nick Robinson from the BBC, who can't vote anyway. They've locked horns before. Such a silly country England is. Judges still locked in debate about whether or not to wear wigs in court.

536 days, 5 hours, 20 minutes, 50 seconds

It's been a long, hot summer. Only the start of August, and already the Madison Ave. topiary's losing its hair. Then again, she's not usually around in the summer. And most summer's it's the last thing she'd notice, but it's like he's waving her over. Or saying stop. Right now. Stop this.

537 days, 9 hours, 52 minutes, 28 seconds

Five days ago the Special Olympics stopped at the White House rose garden and, accompanied by police, had its Flame of Hope relit. The games are global now. Athletes from China were on hand to be photographed. The president and the first lady were there to welcome them (and also be photographed). The president talked about sponsoring the games when he was governor of Texas, and how these intellectually challenged athletes inspired him to forge ahead as well.

537 days, 10 hours, 29 minutes, 1.6 seconds

Everybody brings her flowers. And she's delighted by what people choose. This last bunch has long purple spikes, as if designed for the one pottery vase she has. And she only has this vase because she bought it as a Christmas gift, then chipped it. When she was in the hospital her parents bought her a huge bouquet on the street, not stopping to think there wouldn't be a vase. But that was Sinai, sixteen years ago. Her mother was alive. Her father still spent hours tending his rose bushes. Hour after hour after hour.

And here she is, a teenager yet again. Her favorite song is Bobby Darin's "Artificial Flowers." She writes rhymed poems about crying clowns and dead roses.

538 days, 13 hours, 50 minutes, 28.7 seconds

There's soap caked up under her wedding ring.

538 days, 22 hours, 24 minutes, 11 seconds

Lying in bed while she's backing up her computer, he tells her of the first time he tried to shop online. It was at a place called the Screwball Mall, and he wanted to buy her a present. He thought it would be appropriate. But he couldn't figure out how to put in his credit card. It was sort of a porn place, he says, drifting off to sleep.

539 days, 13 hours, 8 minutes, 38 seconds

She looks at a photo of Hillary Rodham in 1969: long straight brown hair (possibly dirty), striped pants, shapeless tunic, large glasses. This she can relate to. Yesterday all the Washington Post could talk about was the v-neck blouse showing her cleavage. See, she tells her husband: this is why she doesn't like to walk on Amsterdam Ave.

540 days, 5 hours, 18 minutes, 58 seconds

Maybe it's the heat. Maybe it's being in the city all summer, around more people than usual. Maybe it's her skin all broken out. But she's been thinking of summer camp. How, when she was seven or eight, she scratched mosquito bites to the point where her legs were covered in sores. Horrified, her parents dragged her to the doctor. "See that, now you won't be able to go swimming," they told her. They knew she couldn't swim. They might or might not have known about the buddy system, how always two people had to stay together, and no one wanted to stay with her in the shallow water.

That's when the scratching habit started.

Just last night she was recounting the horrors of sleep-away camp, when a message would come over the loudspeaker every morning telling the kids how to dress, and counselors would yell at her for not putting shorts on. Then today she reads of a Shanghai company asking workers to wear shorts and tee-shirts to work to help save energy. Sitting a foot from the air conditioner replaced two years ago, she breaks out in chicken bumps. This is as bad as it was in the doctor's office when they tried to show her how to give herself insulin. She couldn't. Wouldn't. Won't.

And steroids, of course, would cure the rash.

Most years, in May, when anorexic women in the city wear less clothing, she walks around feeling ugly. Then, in June, she goes upstate, sees fat women with dirty hair and baby carriages in the supermarket, and starts to feel good about herself. But she's locked in the city this year. Maybe that's what depresses her.

540 days, 9 hours, 0 minutes, 50 seconds

Isolated thunderstorms predicted. The temperature's dropped eight degrees in the last twenty minutes. Thunder and lightning seem almost on top of each other. Her husband picks up an umbrella and heads for the coffee shop. She nibbles at a block of Jarlsburg the same color as that soap.

540 days, 11 hours, 38 minutes, 45 seconds

In a fit of anger, anxious to wash off whatever might be rash, this is what she does to a perfectly normal and reasonably new cake of soap.

There was other soap once, actually two small pieces stuck together. A friend called her into the bathroom to see how the two pieces, untouched by her, had formed a perfect heart. It was the week before her anniversary, two years ago now. Maybe three. She set the soap dish against the black background of her desk, and took a picture then, too.

The heart is a muscle.

540 days, 23 hours, 6 minutes, 4.6 seconds

Cheney Has Successful Heart Surgery, the headline reads. And photos show he and his wife waving to reporters as they leave the hospital. Old news by now, but her head was hurting too much today to read the papers. Cheney's had four heart attacks, a quadruple bypass, two angioplasties, and an operation six years ago to implant the defibrillator. If it senses an abnormal heart rhythm, this little box will deliver an electronic shock to the vice president's heart. Now they've replaced the defibrillator. The battery, they say, had gotten so low he was dangerous.

540 days, 23 hours, 57 minutes, 42 seconds

Monkey see, monkey do. Come look at the monkey face.

No. They say it's a wooden toe. Found on a mummy from around 700 BC. Found on a woman mummy. Found on a woman between 50 and 60 years old. It shows signs of wear, they say. It might be more than a burial adornment.

Look at the way the wood's worn down. Notice the hollow eyes, the flattened nose, the mouth grimacing in pain, the swollen cheek. This might be the world's oldest prosthesis. The question is: can a woman walk on this? Volunteers are needed.

542 days, 23 hours, 25 minutes, 35 seconds

In a Rhode Island nursing home (he's from Rhode Island) there's a cat named Oscar (her second boss was named Oscar). Some mornings he'll walk around sniffing at people, then choose one person and curl up beside them. Within a few hours, the person's passed away. This has happened twenty-five times now. It's gotten so the staff will notify the family, even if the patient shows no change. Oscar made headlines in a medical journal, he purred on the TV news.

He asked if she wanted a cat to keep her company…

543 days, 6 hours, 15 minutes, 21 seconds

Really, she understands. When everyone else in this office is a twenty-something Upper East Side single (or thirty-something and Botoxed in this very office) with long flowing hair and a cheery smile, even the doctor with the frizzy hair and backwards baseball cap isn't anxious to look at her.