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?