381 days, 12 hours, 2 minutes, 25 seconds

Hillary came in third in the Iowa caucus. A woman who knows her place. Behind Obama. Behind John Edwards, whose real wife has cancer. For the second time. It’s treatable but not curable. It’s spread to the bones now, very painful. Hillary limps.

381 days, 13 hours, 30 minutes, 26 seconds

New York City window washer who fell 47 floors is awake and talking to family. She finds this news depressing.

382 days, 22 hours, 35 minutes, 13 seconds

Klutz. He steps on her shoelace. Four times.

384 days, 5 hours, 35 minutes, 36.4 seconds

Bush, two years ago today: I can't think of a better way to start 2006 then here at this fantastic hospital -- a hospital that's full of healers and compassionate people who care deeply about our men and women in uniform… As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself -- not here at the hospital, but in combat with a Cedar. I eventually won. The cedar’s a Christmas tree. And she’s home.

385 days, 6 hours, 33 minutes, 46.7seconds

Actually she thinks she probably did hurt her back. Backwards Bush. Watch your back. Back to the future. Back to business. With their favorite flower shop closed till Wednesday.

385 days, 6 hours, 54 minutes, 4 seconds

Had she been smart she wouldn’t have leaned to the left like that.

385 days, 7 hours, 6 minutes, 54 seconds

Last New Years Eve, after the fireworks, they sat around munching coldcuts and talking about Social Security.

385 days, 7 hours, 17 minutes, 11 seconds

It’s going to be a strange new years eve celebration. He and friends from college, like every year. One died three years ago. One has the flu. One’s just home after his second pacemaker and a collapsed heart valve. And she’s stuck here.

385 days, 7 hours, 45 minutes, 46 seconds

All she does is reach down for her pocketbook, to look at the Backwards Bush clock (she hasn’t gotten on the Internet yet today). She wanted to write the above lines, praising the bed. And the bed traps her. Or the siderail traps her. Or is it a guardrail? Whatever, it presses straight across at about the level of her underarms. Really digs in. She imagines a huge bruise she’ll never see. At least it’s not the neck breaking. At least it’s not the heart.

385 days, 7 hours, 51 minutes, 54 seconds

She laughs and the world laughs with her. Turns in bed and the bed realigns itself. But mostly she cries in bed.

386 days, 0 hours, 31 minutes, 50 seconds

The confetti in Times Square will carry messages this year. Wishes will float down like in Cinderella. Anyone can wish over the Internet. It will be mixed in with more than a ton of real confetti though. She’d never get a wish. Or if she did it would be something stupid like bring my husband home from Iraq or let a Democrat win the election.

Make a wish foundation.

Her parents bussed her to Times Square as an eight-year-old. She doesn’t remember confetti. She remembers the cold and the crowd and being pushed and not being able to see over the people in front of her.

Confetti was high school. Saving seats for football games. Making bowling pin dolls. Cutting newspaper into confetti for the older girls. Until she just stomped her feet to get rid of the gum wrappers that landed on them and took off head first along the dark road. Head down, she means. She wished a car would run over her. She wished for a boarding school. Or a hospital.

386 days, 2 hours, 4 minutes, 37 seconds

She’s been here nearly three weeks now. She no longer knows or cares what day it is. Still, they write the date on the board at the front of the room each morning, along with the names of the nurse and aides. Like name tags for Alzheimer's patients. At a rally in Iowa, Hillary hands out pledge cards urging people to vote for her in the caucus on January 14. Only problem is that the caucus is January 3. Shooting herself in the foot, as the paper describes it. If that’s true then she’ll have to use a cane also. Not for support, just for balance.

387 days, 6 hours, 16 minutes, 31 seconds

So if she falls, she falls, she wants to tell the therapist. Always someone around to help. Thinking of that last fall, 82nd and Broadway, trying to hail a cab. Ten people gathered around helping her, fending off traffic. The cab must have driven around her.

A news story she also remembers. A woman walking in the East Village falls. Two teenage girls run over, ostensibly to help, then rob her. But she was old. And a tourist.

387 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, 20 seconds

Speaking of oranges: children with diabetes as young as 10 years old learn to give themselves injections by practicing injecting water into an orange. So now she can’t even do what’s expected of a normal 10-year-old.

387 days, 6 hours, 47 minutes, 19 seconds

Tonight’s orange is better than last night’s orange.

387 days, 8 hours, 19 minutes, 2 seconds

Here is the man who owes her a dollar. But he is in the hospital. She is in the hospital. She is getting better. She sits at the computer hitting three keys at once, making up for lost time. Time is always lost. There’s no such thing as time, it’s a magic trick. Now you have it, now you don’t. Long long ago, there was time, but the teachers (except for third grade) had no time for her. Other kids had no time for her. She was the smallest. Making up for lost time. Holding her head up. Holding her new hat on. Weighing it down with the cane. This is what it’s comes down to: $40 cane, $ 200 hat. Which will he see first?

391 days, 12 hours, 29 minutes, 3.6 seconds

Sometimes she just wants to be a stray again.

391 days, 12hours, 32 minutes, 22 seconds

For the first time in what seems like months she has a strong enough Internet connection to browse the weird news sites. One of the first stories she reads is about a Jack Russell terrier who heard a 91-year-old woman crying for help at the end of a driveway. She’d fallen in a snowbank. No one else could hear her. Thes dog was a stray just three months ago.

Yes, she calls for help, despite herself.

Now, if she can just keep her eyes open.

391 days, 14 hours, 32 minutes, 11 seconds

Leon Fleisher, the revered pianist who for decades battled, and eventually overcame, a neurological disorder that crippled his right hand, was presented with the 2007 Kennedy Center Honors in ceremonies yesterday in Washington, D.C.

391 days, 23 hours, 14 minutes, 53 seconds

Christmas eve. They try to recall where they were the first time they watched a porn movie.