614 days, 5 hours, 33 minutes, 39 seconds

And his brother called everyone together in the living room, congratulated his daughter on her graduation, and then went into a story about a dog he'd seen on the road the other day. Hit by a car, he thought. He looked dead, but still he lifted it into the back of his truck and took it to the vet. The vet pt it up on the table and brought a tabby cat in and placed it by the dog's head. The cat walked all around the table and the dog didn't move and the vet wanted to charge him $200 for the cat scan.

It's not a cat scan, it's a CT Scan. She knows that now.

And tomorrow she's going for a pet scan. Radioactive, they tell her. She thinks of the vet two blocks away, with a puppy play group held there Tuesday and Thursday evenings, a bereavement group every Wednesday.

615 days, 7 hours, 27 minutes, 40 seconds

She tries not to think of her father's lungs. This is another Mt. Sinai doctor, the waiting room (small as it is) filled with women in wigs and men in yamalkas. She hears a cheerleader encouraging someone to breathe, breathe, breathe. She hears a Brooklyn accent. Her father doesn't even know she's here.

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.