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.

647 days, 21 hours, 3 minutes, 59 seconds

So okay: last night she understands why her blood was high. When you walk into a home in California and the first thing you see is an orange tree, there's no way you can resist fresh-squeezed juice. But then it was down this morning, and okay before dinner, then a dinner of sole, asparagus, and salad, and bedtime when she took it just to see if it was better, just to feel good about herself, it was high. Disgusted, she turns to solitaire. Plays out the second game, then insists she has to play out three games. Takes her blood again, finds it's still high. She gives up. She gives in to the headache that never quite left today, even with Tylenol.

648 days, 4 hours, 35 minutes, 39 seconds

So her reading wasn't till noon and she went to the library thinking she could get on the Internet, only she needed ID to get on the Internet so she sat down and finished a review and then tried to call him at work and got his home machine. At work? She checked the number on her cell. Then she thought it's Friday, he's working at home, he had the calls transferred, except it's Thursday not Friday. And when she reaches him later, at work, he said she obviously dialed wrong.

648 days, 4 hours, 46 minutes, 38 seconds

She got out of the car last night and the first thing she heard was the train whistle, which she hears again now. Freight trains, mostly, though Amtrack runs by here. Her husband, who asked this morning why she didn't call when she got in last night, forgetting the time difference, would have adored these trains, yet this morning she forgot to even mention them. She left her cell phone charger on her desk when she ran out yesterday morning, spent $40 for a new one at the airport. $40 for what would probably be $15 elsewhere. $40. That's how much she loves him.

648 days, 5 hours, 0 minutes, 26 seconds

Ridiculous. It's only four o'clock. It's bright sun out, and she's sitting on the screened-in porch. Everything's skewed in California. A twelve-hour flight yesterday that should have been no more than six, all the way south to north Texas before heading further west. And it will be the same going home, another two or three-hour layover. All because she didn't want to spring for the direct flight. All because she worried about missing connections. Then, after a plane ride that didn't even offer snacks and a meal at TGI Friday's, she arrived in Sacramento at nine o'clock, midnight by her watch, lugging her suitcase down an endless jetway straight into the arms of what seemed like a section of rowdy high school cheerleaders there to welcome home a Mormon missionary. And his family. Probably his family.

650 days, 11 hours, 12 minutes, 5 seconds

She reads that four scientists at Leeds University have spent more than 1000 hours testing 700 variations of traditional bacon to discover what people respond to most. So what? She thinks. Except that her grandmother spent her first 23 years in Leeds. It was rumored to be the most anti-semitic area of England. She saw that for herself when she traveled there twenty-five years ago. It's not smell and taste, they discovered, but texture and the sound one makes while eating. Yes, she agrees, the texture. Text and subtext.

651 days, 12 hours, 1 minutes, 43 seconds

She thinks of the National Debt Clock that used to be near Bryant Park (actually, right near the first Staples store she'd ever seen, back in 1989). In September 2000, it read National Debt: $5,676,989,904,887, Your family's share: $73,733. But this wasn't right. As the millennium neared, it had begun counting backwards. Or maybe the government began back-pedaling. Or lying. Most likely lying. And the computer glitch everyone was concerned about. Then the clock was covered over. Then the clock was gone. Then a flashy new clock appeared above the Virgin Records Store in Union Square. She has a picture of it somewhere that she can't find now. Taking that photo, she thought it was the National Debt Clock resurrected. Now she's not so sure. She saw it from the doctor's office.

651 days, 14 hours, 0 minutes, 39 seconds

She has a cold sore on the edge of her lip. Just great. She's going to California in two days and today she develops a cold sore on her lip. It's too close to her mouth for Neosporin or Cortisone cream, so she rubs on Anbesol. Nearly seventeen years ago, when they were first together, she applied Anbesol to some cold sores just before bed. He commented on the fragrance.

651 days, 14 hours, 26 minutes, 52 seconds

She has diabetes. His mother had diabetes. It turns out his flight was delayed last night because one of the flight attendants went into a diabetic coma. They had to stop in Atlanta, and Spirit doesn't fly to Atlanta. Then they had to find a replacement crew member who happened to be in the area on Easter Sunday.

One Easter when they went to Florida it turned out their Monday tickets home were actually Sunday tickets. And the flight was full. And the next flight was full. And the next flight was full, and so on, and so forth. They ended up taking a flight to Atlanta, where they were told there was a better chance of getting a flight to New York.

His mother was alive then.

651 days, 21 hours, 59 minutes, 37 seconds

He called about ten minutes ago to say his plane landed. Now he has to wait for his bags, find a taxi (at this hour they probably won't be prevalent, especially if the flight's full). It will be another hour at least before he gets home. She takes a shower. She wishes, for the first time in years, that she wasn't on all the headache medications, hadn't become so sensitive to even the perfumes one finds in many soaps. Wishes she could smell sweet for him.

652 days, 1 hours, 28 minutes, 45 seconds

She stopped on the thruway to e-mail him she'd stopped on the thruway. They now have Wi-Fi available, free, at all the rest stops. He e-mailed her from the airport in Lauderdale to say his flight's delayed nearly three hours, something about the plane being detoured to San Juan, but he has free Wi-Fi as well. And please don't wait up for him.

652 days, 10 hours, 36 minutes, 31 seconds

Not all those ones back there, but a virtual parade of ones, in pairs. If she didn't have that sort of marriage, where they're together but sacrifice nothing of themselves, she wouldn't be here. No, that sounds so selfish. She means they can be together, share everything, yet hold onto the parts of themselves they value most. Not to mention friends they had before knowing each other. In so many other relationships she saw the women changing, playing games, pretending to be what a partner wanted so long that they actually became that. If that's what was needed, she'd prefer to be alone. She's upstate. He's in Florida.

652 days, 10 hours, 54 minutes, 13 seconds

More trash.

652 days, 11 hours, 11 minutes, 11 seconds

Easter Sunday upstate. Brown grass, white snow patches, and the red breasts of four robins she sees out her kitchen window make her think of Global Warming. It's starting to snow again. She has to drive home today. 11, 11, 11 – all the ones in there. She's alone.

652 days, 11 hours, 41 minutes, 3.1 seconds

"Each image must lead, directly or indirectly, to the next image," she's been telling students for years, quoting Charles Olson. That's how she sees this blog shaping up. Once she makes the first entry, others follow in a mad rush. Or she must be mad. She feels as if she's opening a can of worms – another cliché she pontificates to students, showing them how each memory sparks the next memory, or how what someone else writes sparks their memories. Keep it short and focused, she tells them, and reminds herself now. Each entry of this blog to be just the one image, if there's more go to a new post. One perception must immediately and directly lead to a further perception – that's what Olson really said. She Googled it.

652 days, 11 hours, 56 minutes, 29 seconds

We're going to the country and we're gonna get happy, going to the country and we're gonna get ha-a-a-appy, going to the country we love... She used to sing that in the car, while the cat was whining in her carrier. Two years before she even knew him. The cat was all she had. He despised that cat.