652 days, 12 hours, 1 minutes, 49 seconds

We're going to the chapel and we're gonna get married... They couldn't have been together more than a few months. They'd driven somewhere in the city, came home, parked (she thinks on 91st St.), they kept the car on the street back in those safe days. They had the oldies station on, and this song came on just as they were about to get out of the car. She started singing along with it. He looked up, surprised, commenting that for the first time since they'd been together she was right on beat and right on key.

652 days, 12 hours, 22 minutes, 8 seconds

Whenever I want you all I have to do is dream... (Everly Brothers), I want a dream lover, so I don't have to dream alone... (Bobby Darin, or Bobby Rydell, though for some reason she thought it was Johnny Tillotson). Probably she'd have heard the Rydell, he the Darin. She plays the thirty second sample of Rydell, and her feet go into a cha-cha. She does that because she's alone. She'd never dance in public, not since Mrs. Dalbreth's. With her husband, alone, she even sometimes sings snatches of these songs. Whenever he's teasing, wanting her to buy him a piano, a Lexus, a home theater, new $10,000 speakers. Song after song. He claims she's destroying his love of them. Some day she plans to put them all on a cd. Maybe for their anniversary.

652 days, 12 hours, 30 minutes, 51 seconds

She's dreaming again. Or remembering her dreams again. Six dreams in the past two weeks. Usually she only dreams this much in the summer, when she's quiet enough to pay attention, and this past summer was a disaster – her printer breaking, her computer breaking, her father turning 90, planning a surprise party for her father. She felt as if she had no summer, as if she never calmed down. And there were only five dreams the entire summer. Now here she is, harried, frantic, driving upstate and back in two days, and she's dreaming.

652 days, 22 hours, 59 minutes, 47 seconds

Portrait of the happy couple: in a motel in Mystic, fireplace, furnished with antiques. The bed's so high he has to lift her up. The two of them sprawl amidst a dozen pillows, laptops buffered by a down comforter, surfing the Internet. It's their first experience with wi-fi. One of those Kodak moments.

652 days, 23 hours, 2 minutes, 32 seconds

They met by computer. No, not the dating sites so many others used, but in a computer users group, long before the Internet. They both had Kaypros, the old cp/m machines, luggable, the only one that could comfortably fit in her small apartment. Then she went away for the summer, wanted to call him but was afraid she'd be rejected. She knew if she called with a computer problem he'd be more than happy to talk with her. But she had to learn enough to have a real problem, so he wouldn't see through her ruse. Then she returned to the city, all but moved in with him, had her computer upgraded at his urging. It never worked after that.

652 days, 23 hours, 25 minutes, 3 seconds

Set it back to ground zero? Strange choice of words.

She remembers, the morning the towers fell, she'd just gotten up, turned on the computer, got a news alert saying second tower hit. Her husband called, asked her to call her father and his father, assure them they were alright. She said she'd do it in awhile. He said do it now, while there are still working phone lines. Then his friend from England called, didn't recognize her voice, hung up, called back.

She remembered this woman from years ago. The first time she ever felt competitive. Regarding him, at least. She was getting very mixed signals.

652 days, 23 hours, 46 minutes, 15 seconds

Twice in the past month she's thought, not about getting a new computer, but about setting this one back to ground zero and rebuilding it, without the port replicator this time. But, as her husband said more than once, she'd probably only screw it up with all that software she loads. Then the past few days it's seemed especially slow. Possibly due to her my pictures screen saver, which loads big files. So she sets one of the pre-loaded savers, hates it, sets a my pictures directory of smaller files, then takes it out altogether so she can run disk optimizer. She didn't think to put it back until tonight, then decided to download the Backwards Bush screen saver. Which, again, isn't set for daylight savings time. It's gotten so she doesn't know what to believe. Or who to trust. Love. Trust. She's still alone, up in the country, just for the one night. She wants to be home when her husband gets there. He's apologized for that computer comment, by the way. Calls her one of the best users. But she no longer believes him.

654 days, 1 hours, 56 minutes, 11 seconds

Bush can't take the stress, it seems. Thirty-six hours after she's bought the stress ball, and all the writing's worn off, the face reduced to a few lines here and there. Unrecognizable. Probably he planned to disappear like this, some sort of quick-change act that will have friends and family laughing the next morning. Still, it gives her hope.

655 days, 6 hours, 32 minutes, 17 seconds

She's been shopping. Isn't that what wives do when their husbands are away? She looks at shoes, buys takeout dinner for herself, stops in the neighborhood gift shop where she saw Bush Countdown keychains to get a different one. This is a Bush's Last Day clock, without his picture on it, only: earth, water, air. Once again made in China. She also buys a Bush's Last Day tee-shirt, though God knows where she'll wear it, and a pale yellow stress ball with Bush's face on one side, a quote on the other side: It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it. GWB. Part of the face and some of the letters have worn down. It's the last one they had (good to think of other hands using this). She comes home to find Office Depot double-delivered the cups and batteries due here yesterday, takes everything upstairs in a cart from the laundry room (no one's in there doing laundry, not at nearly dinnertime). She had lunch very late, even for her.

655 days, 8 hours, 12 minutes, 53 seconds

Armed with her camera, she pushes her way to a window seat at the Starbucks on 81st & Broadway. A homeless woman with a huge assortment of bags is sitting on the median bench. She watches a woman stop and hand her a dollar, bending close to say something. She watches the bag lady pack up with great care, placing garbage bags over everything, including two of her three carts. Then she takes them apart and packs up again. And again. And again. She takes picture after picture, but no camera could capture this.

655 days, 12 hours, 27 minutes, 29.2 seconds

An editorial by a British woman speaks of Barbara Boxer's comment that Condoleeza Rice doesn't have to worry about her sons being killed in Iraq. A comment picked up by blogs everywhere. She follows the leads, ending up at an Amazon.com list of books and music by famous childless women, twenty-four in all: Emily Dickenson, Jane Austen, Dolly Parton, Marilyn Monroe, Virginia Woolf, Angela Davis, Bessie Smith, Gertrude Stein, Liza Minnelli, Mary Cassatt, Zora Neale Hurston... She wonders if her name will ever be among them.

655 days, 12 hours, 39 minutes, 50 seconds

Some Hospitals Call 911 To Save Their Patients, the New York Times headline reads. Hospitals specializing in only one or two procedures. Hospitals without a doctor always in attendance. Doctor-owned hospitals. A 44-year-old man just died, and an 88-year-old woman. The man lived in Texas. She can't help thinking of the president. And the little red phone beside his desk, for use in emergency. This headline lay on her virtual desk three days before she even looked at it.

655 days, 13 hours, 8 minutes, 2.6 seconds

She sits at the kitchen table with a low-carb breakfast bar. She teaches tomorrow, then plans to drive upstate. Good Friday, and the traffic should be hell. Then she'll drive back on Easter. What she really wants is a few days just by herself in the city. But she has to get up there. She wets a finger and picks a crumb of chocolate off the table, puts it in her mouth. It's nice to reach for a little black spot like that, not in the least bit worried it might be mouse turd.

655 days, 13 hours, 14 minutes, 26 seconds

She wakes to snow flurries. He's leaving for Florida in forty minutes. She supposes she should get up and see him off. She wants to tell him now that's the wrong shirt to wear, too bright for those slacks, but she doesn't. On the plane he'll look like some Queens or Brooklyn version of a Floridian. She goes downstairs for breakfast early, to spend a bit more time with him. He gets a call from work. He packs up his computer. The car service calls from downstairs. He's off.

656 days, 13 hours, 19 minutes, 56 seconds

Last night her husband yelled at her. Or this morning, really. It was 2:00 a.m. When he got in bed she just wanted to finish sending off some poems, pasting them into an e-mail, recording the submission. Then she went to back up the computer. But back up a step: she checked her email. Then she backed up the computer (just files from her document directory, just the changed files). It doesn't take long. Her husband put the radio on. She was halfway into the bathroom, ready to wash up and go to bed, when she had another idea. So she came back into the room and sat down with it. The radio shut itself off. He wasn't asleep yet. That's when he yelled that her typing was keeping him awake. She should go into the living room. And she was half tempted. But by the time she shut down, unplugged the port replicator, then turned the computer on again, she'd lose her train of thought. As if she hadn't already.

656 days, 22 hours, 8 minutes, 37 seconds or 656 days, 23 hours, 8 minutes, 37 seconds

Depending which clock you believe. The first is on the Backwards Bush site (from which she set her keychain). The second is on this very blog (using code from the Backwards Bush site) as well as the National Nightmare site. It has to do with the change in Daylight Savings Time. It has to do with the webmaster paying someone else to create the clock for him. It took her two weeks to notice this. More than likely the president never will.

657 days, 13 hours, 59 minutes, 38 seconds

The distinct sound of the woodpecker hitting his beak against a tree by her pond upstate. How she used to love to sit and watch and listen. Then she grew afraid about Lyme disease. Then his father got Babesiosis, spread by a tick native to Rhode Island, and almost died, and almost destroyed his recent second marriage. Then he, her husband, understood her fears.

657 days, 21 hours, 32 minutes, 15 seconds

Opening Day all over again. But if Congress won't give him money to send more troops to Iraq, and if they insist upon questioning his staff under oath, and if they keep calling for Gonzalez's Hispanic testicles on a platter, then he'll be damned if he'll play ball. He sits behind that great big desk, hand hovering above the red button, sulking. And her? She's left batting his head around, wracking up more countries than she can name. Except she's not very focused today.

660 days, 9 hours, 27 minutes, 19 seconds

660. All morning that number's been haunting her. Area code? Zip code? At last she looks it up, sees it's the area code for central Missouri. Central Missouri State University. Where a friend taught was until this year. An associate professor with tenure and his two children were born at home with a midwife because the school didn't pay enough toward medical insurance. Not to mention the paltry salary. He gave up tenure to get the hell out of their. Look at his wife's family – the number of amputated limbs that could be chalked up to poor medical care. They'd had custody of her daughter but had to leave her with the father when they moved. Missouri makes it all but impossible to take a child out of state. The personal. The political.

660 days, 10 hours, 29 minutes, 10.7 seconds

In line at the coffee shop. The two youngest children wander farther into the dining room. Then the youngest pulls away. His sister tries to lure him back, calls to someone, then leaves him alone to drag an older sister over. The mother smiles. In all, there are four children. They get a table. The mother carries the youngest now.