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.