Sunday, 21 July 2002 | Five parts

1. At the chiropractor's office, they hammered my shoulders and neck with a drill-like machine while I put my face through a hole in the table and stared at the floor. They seemed unusually patient, for doctors. I left with some packets of gel that make your skin feel like it's simultaneously cold and on fire, a sensation that preoccupies you to the point that you forget about any pain you were feeling.

2. Thirty minutes at home, I threw sections of my closet into a suitcase then sat on a plane next to a man who wouldn't stop talking. He talked about his SUV, his country club, his church, his political beliefs, and sports, connecting his sentences without periods; fortunately he wasn't talking to me but to the man to his right. I think I sensed the right-hand man getting overwhelmed, but the talker apparently didn't get the same message.

3. Number three, I will tell you about tomorrow. (I have to tell my boss first.)

4. My flight home on Friday was supposed to leave at 4:15 p.m. By 11:15 p.m., I had stood in seven different lines, eaten in two different restaurants, read one magazine, sat in eight different chairs, talked to five different people on the phone, and had seven "adjustments" to my flight, all while in the same airport. In the end, my flight was canceled and I returned to start.

5. Saturday, delayed again, this time on the runway. I sat in front of a row of three howling little boys, one of whom kept kicking the back of my seat.

6. Thirty minutes at home, I threw different sections of my closet into the same suitcase and drove to Virginia to a lake house, where a group of my friends was waiting. I shared a ridiculous raft that had a built-in floating drink holder in its center. A rope stretched from my raft to the dock like an umbilical cord; I dangled my feet in the water, accumulating hydrilla around my ankles. It was the first that I'd relaxed in days.