I won an auction on ebay in mid-October, and it wasn't until this week I received the item. I almost never bid on anything (this was number three), so the chances of me landing a uncommunicative seller were quite slim. Of course that's what happend; I had to write the seller three times before I heard from her at all (two weeks after the auction), and, a month after the auction, when I still hadn't received my lens, I tried to call the number she'd given ebay, which of course had been disconnected. The seller finally wrote back (after I wrote a mildly threatening e-mail, so mild that the threat probably wasn't even detected) and said she'd sent the lens the week before, and don't I know the US Postal Service is slow these days?

Days later, still no lens, and no slip of paper at my door. Then on Sunday night, while Martin was digging underneath couch cushions for the remote, he found a slip from the postal office, dated a week earlier, that said I have a package waiting. Oops. I still can't figure out how that happened, but now I feel ridiculous giving negative feedback, even if she does deserve it.

In other mail-related news, I received the December issue of The Sun yesterday. When I walked in from work, Martin said, "You're on the cover of the Sun" and tossed the magazine toward me. On the cover is a fuzzy, high-contrast black and white picture of a girl with a faint halo over her head, and, he's right—it does look a lot like me. Creepy.

My office smells remarkably like nothing. I only notice the absence of smell because of the presence of smell elsewhere—the smell of freshly sharpened pencils in the hallway, bleach, hovering like a cloud around the bathrooms, and, just this week, the smell of Christmas in the lobby, emanating from a tackily-decorated tree. Just past the swish of the doors, the fragrance of fir bleeds into the faint scent of fallen leaves, unless it's just at the time of day when the city's tobacco is being processed, in which case, Durham smells like a giant unlit cigarette. Then it's highway, diesel exhaust and wind, and home, which smells like nothing either, but for an entirely different reason.

Dear driver-side door,

Please refrain from jamming, so that I am no longer forced to climb over the gear shift, getting the strap of my bag caught on the emergency brake while bumping my head and knee and filling the air with curses.

Thank you.

***

For the last few weeks, I've noticed two white bunnies hanging out along my street, predominately congregating in a certain corner of the Y parking lot. I'm not sure who they belong to, but they're certainly not wild. Their fur is bright and dangerous, their ears especially long, and their build, big. Perhaps their owner feels they need time outside of the cage, or perhaps they escaped when the owner opened the cage at mealtime. Although I've enjoyed watching their strange movements, I've been a little concerned that one would dart out in front of me as I drove by, or that Leeches would bring one home, dragging the poor creature up the back steps with her teeth.

But neither of those things has happened. No, instead, someone else hit one of the bunnies, smacking it with rubber and throwing it to the side, and someone else laid it—stretched out—over a stump just by that corner of the Y parking lot. And, the next day, instead of a bunny, Leeches delivered a dead sparrow to my back door.

I meant to go over to Jay's yesterday to play two songs for him, but we ended up listening to them on the road instead. He wanted to drive away from lights and traffic, and to get lost, to explore a road he'd always wanted to go down but never had, except he didn't know of a road that fit those requirements.

And so Greg and I climbed in Jay's car to help him out, to suggest a destination, a direction, or merely a (belated) left or right, like aimless and wasteful 16-year-olds in a borrowed car. We jaggedly went south, talking and listening and turning around and eventually we found ourselves at Daddy Rabbits, a biker bar just north of the thriving town of Angier.

It's a small place, with just enough room for two quarter-eating pool tables, a bar, and a row of stools. The atmosphere is enormous, despite the building's size. The ceiling is covered with Harley Davidson t-shirts, hefty white bras scrawled over with markers, and Confederate flags held up by thumbtacks; on the walls are newspaper clippings and pictures, handwritten signs and buzzing, electric beer signs, and in the sink, a sign that says, "Don't sit in the sink."

When we walked in, a friendly man with a limp approached us and introduced himself. Then he jokingly said to Jay, "You're standin' in a bad place, 'tween me and my beer." Or at least we think it was a joke. We moved to the bar to get a drink from the near voiceless bartender, who, when asked what happened to her voice, gave the explanation, "I got really drunk last night, and when I scream, I lose my voice."

We stayed long enough to play a few games of cut-throat and drove directly back home, no longer taking winding detours or exploring.

It's Friday, almost 1:30, and I'm still in my pajamas. I haven't eaten anything at all, but eggs sound perfect and warm. Wait. A glance at the outdoor thermometer tells me it's 70 degrees outside; I wonder if it's broken? Maybe cereal is more appropriate today, sitting on the back steps with an intruding cat face nearby. Then I will clean the house and make a mixed tape and break to see an old friend and do everything I can do on this stolen watch. Stolen, because it's neither weekday nor weekend, and because my obligations and plans are liquid and have thinly spilled all over this giant four-day weekend, filling only corners and crevices. The rest of the time is mine, and unaccounted for.

Just in time for Thanksgiving, my friend Jay posted a story about Turkey.

Sometimes I wish I would've had a different childhood. Not that mine was bad; it wasn't. It was just safe, and rural, and uniform. I hated my high school. I had friends, some of them good friends, but none of whom I think felt displaced in the same way I did. There was virtually no counterculture (ok, there was a metalhead or two, but that was all); it wasn't cool to be misunderstood or confused or to think acid washed jeans, chunky gold nuggets and chains, mullets, and tightly rolled up jeans were ugly; in fact, nobody seemed to be rebelling in any way at all.

I knew I didn't like what the girls were wearing—bright baggy shirts with gems glued on them, gold chain-link belts, flat dress shoes with little bows, stirrups, big, fluffy hair, and layers of pink and purple make-up, something like the fashion popular with evangelist wives. So, instead, I wore boys' clothes, the only real alternative I saw at that time. Now, the clothes I wore weren't especially cool, either; in fact, I think the outfits I came up with weren't attractive to anybody at all—not boys, not other girls, not parents, not even me. But at the time, I only knew about two choices: pink, pleated rayon shorts, or this sort of preppy boy look I eventually achieved. Once, I even had a girl ask me if she could give me a make-over. You know, the kind you see in the movies, when the plain, fashion-impaired girl is suddenly recognized as a vixen once you put some sparkly clothes on her? (I refused. I mean, this girl had the largest helmet of blonde curls in the entire school.)

So anyway, I eventually figured things out as far as who I am and how I fit in the larger puzzle, though I think my self-perception might still be a little screwy. Perhaps that's why I drink in new experience so readily, to make up for the years of going to school in the middle of a tobacco field.

On my way home from work tonight, I stopped in at the grocery store to pick up a couple things for dinner (now that I pretend to cook). I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible and was pleased with how efficient I'd been, how quickly and with few detours I walked from the front door to the cashier. After eyeing people's baskets to see who had the least items, I stepped into the shortest line and found myself standing directly behind a guy I know from high school but probably haven't seen since then. I'm not sure why, but without thinking, I jumped out of line and hid behind a shelf, making a pitiful attempt at nonchalance while peeking around bags of chips to see if it was really him. (It was.) So I waited there awkwardly, pretending to read labels but really just waiting for him to leave, and finally I grew impatient just started doing more shopping, turning my 3-minute errand into one that lasted fifteen.

The weird thing is that I like that guy, and it probably would've been nice talking to him...I'd recently heard he's living in Raleigh and have wondered if I would run into him somewhere. There's just something so loaded about meeting someone whom you haven't seen in years. You size each other up, you try to sum up your life in two impossible sentences, and you break it off with a false "see you around" that makes both parties uncomfortable. Or, alternatively, you find a spot to hide or pretend not to see, and then, when the opportunity has passed, you wonder why you didn't take it.

I felt a gentle shove at about 4:40 a.m., my dad standing in the dim glow of the living room, telling me it's time. I pulled on sweaters over my pajamas, wrapped a scarf around, put on my jacket and glasses and stumbled out of my grandparents' house into the cold West Virginia night. I found my dad standing by his car, his neck craned and eyes pointed upward. Earlier he'd mapped out a place for us to go, a clearing on top of a hill where the light pollution was modest and the sky open. We drove to the spot, the engine cutting through the quiet, sleeping town, and watched as meteors scratched the sky in all directions. No sound except for a distant rooster and our muted whispers...there's one...did you see that? As the sky lightened, we headed back to the car, crept back in the house, and continued dreams and snores, as if the night hadn't been interrupted at all.

We left early Friday morning, stopping in Pittsboro to put antiques on photo paper, my dad anxious to be my camera bag caddy and photo advisor. Another day of deep blue skies, early enough that the sun still cast sharp shadows. If you count in hours, the trip to West Virginia took a long time. Oddly enough, it didn't take long at all in terms of how the time passed in my head. In fact, time is moving differently altogether. It's slower here—I'm not able to overfeed my days with work and social activities and creating and cooking and planning—my life doesn't live here. Eating times are earlier. Bedtime and breakfast, earlier. And most of the time, I'm not even paying attention to what the clock says.

Today my grandmother turned 80 years old, so relatives from North Carolina, New Jersey, and West Virginia convened to mark the occasion and to stand in rows in front of fireplaces posing for the Whiteman paparazzi. Of course there's lots of food and always the suggestion of more…what more can we feed you? Is there anything you can think of that you'd want to eat? Can I get you another serving? Just one more spoonful?

At dinner tonight, after putting down my utensils in defiance, my new cousin-in-law began enlightening me about the rules she was subjected to during a semester she attended a fundamentalist Christian college in Florida. I don't even remember quite how it came up, but soon all of my cousins were recounting ordinances and guidelines and reasons for demerits and expulsion from their various Christian colleges, probably encouraged by my obvious shock at what they were saying. I felt sort of helpless with the information; where do I store that in my head? What do I do with that piece of knowledge? It's strange, moving from vague ideas to concrete examples far worse than you ever imagined. The only thing I knew to do was to make a list, as if that made it official or digestible, so that I could share it with someone who'd be equally incredulous. (To my relatives' credit, they find these rules much too extreme.) Anyway, here it is. The list.

***

In less than four hours, someone is going to get me out of bed to watch streaks of white travel in arcs across the sky and fade to black. And I am going to crawl back onto my mattress on the living room floor, where I will, in turn, fade to black.

I've thought about this picture a few times since September 11th, but for some reason I hadn't looked at it until putting it in a photo album a couple days ago. It's just a picture taken from my hotel room in New York last March, a colorless picture with a glare, one that I barely remember taking. The only thing that makes it significant is that I was staying at the World Trade Center Marriott, something I haven't heard mention of since the 11th, but something I'm certain no longer exists. I had gone there on a business trip (which sounds much more official than it actually was) and spent three days in different hotel conference rooms, listening to people speak Spanish (I don't speak Spanish), spending time with my laptop, eating tasty, overpriced food, and, evenings, heading up to East Village to hang out with my old friend Natasha.

I don't claim to be directly affected by what happened on the 11th, but it is strange to think about the room where I slept and made phone calls and brushed my teeth, the square where I eyed kitschy stands full of busy postcards and oil paintings, the conference room where I burned my thumb by sticking it in my near-boiling coffee, the conference room where I soaked my thumb in a mug of crushed ice for two hours—it's strange to think that those places simply no longer exist. They only remain as pieces of my memory and as one colorless picture with a glare.

My last day there, I chatted with a humorous porter on the outside steps while I waited for my ride. I wonder if he's okay.

***

Tomorrow morning I'm leaving for West Virginia, but I'll be bringing my computer.

I stayed home sick today, slept, catalogued negatives, chewed pasty vitamin C tablets, and sat with Amtrak as she galloped around me. She's gone now, Amtrak, after only one short week. Some friends of mine wanted a kitten before I even advertised her, and, abruptly as she came, she left again. I miss her, of course, but there's good news: I won't be the old woman with 100 cats that I've half-worried about becoming. I can give them away; I'm just a foster parent.

So, anyway, I've put up a few pictures of her (they'll be the last), along with some pictures from the bowling alley on my birthday and from this past weekend in D.C. Enjoy.

I don't want to forget the details of yesterday. Of course I can write down events and those events can spark memories, but I don't want to forget the glue that holds those events together—what the warm sun felt like, the drop in temperature on the shady side of the street, the smell of the leaves that I crunched through when I stepped out of my car, how the chicken curry made my lips tingle, the tattooed arm of the cashier, the way people danced in the club, the sound of the scissors as they snipped off chunks of hair that then floated to the floor.

Yesterday morning we walked through old town Alexandria (trying to stay on the sunny sides of streets) and found brunch, freshly squeezed orange juice, Washington's free weekly, and blisters. In the afternoon, we climbed a hill that overlooked the destruction of the Pentagon, which resembled a giant sheet cake that had had a slice jaggedly and violently removed. Later we strolled through Georgetown underneath a pink sky, ducking in shops and trying things on, eating spicy Indian food and drinking mango lassis. Finally we stood in line at the Black Cat, and stood in line, and stood in line, and went inside. It was Brit Pop night and I danced until my legs were sore, forgetting, momentarily, where I was and that I wasn't alone. After we got back sometime around 3 a.m., Ingo got a homemade haircut and I fell into bed.

(I do, however, want to forget the details of today.)

So I'm staying in a tall hotel in Alexandria with broken elevators, scientists, and aging, decorated military (none of which I am, by the way). I guess I am sort of part of the scientists, though only by association. A couple hours ago I found myself at a banquet for the American Society for Gravitational and Space Biology, though Ingo and I didn't stay for the entire event. On our way to dinner, we waited ten minutes for the elevator (which never came) next to a pacing woman wearing a noisy turquoise prom dress who was singing la-la-la to herself the whole time we waited. Finally we bolted for the stairs, followed by the trilling and swish swish of the shifting taffeta from behind. Before we could make it to the lobby, the stairs abruptly stopped, and a pack of us (including the turquoise lady) were stuck in a tiny space surrounded by doors that seemed to go nowhere. After opening various doors and walking in circles, we managed to maneuver our way down and through a crowd of stiff-backed military. As dinner ended, the singing woman reappeared and...oh my, she sang opera for us in front of an entirely unnecessary microphone. I had to tilt my head and press my ear to my shoulder to block out some of the high notes.

***

Twenty-seven yesterday, the age rock stars tend to die. So I guess it's good I'm not a rock star.

I'm spending the weekend in the D.C., so my next post will be from there. I haven't packed and I'm late and my room and head are chaotic, but the weather is perfect and my car is running mysteriously well.

Approximately 6:15. Hear the NPR blaring in my right ear. See Leeches standing on top of my alarm clock, her paw on top of the radio ON button. Close her out of my room and go back to sleep. 7:17. The first wave of alarms goes off. Hit snooze. Give the other cat a sleepy pet and go back to sleep. 7:34. Second wave of alarms. Repeat: snooze, pet Jane, sleep. 7:45. Roll out of bed and make my way through the blurry house to the bathroom. Put in my contacts, and follow a trilling Jane to her bowl. Feed Jane, and get her fresh water. Feed Leeches, and get her fresh water. Feed Amtrak, and get her fresh water and a saucer of warm milk. Toast waffles. Damn. It's almost 8:00.

7:55. Sift through the pile of clothes on my floor, but abandon the project to check out the outdoor thermometer. Resume sifting. Wonder if anyone at work has noticed that I wear the same black pants every other day. Decide no one has, and put them on. 8:05. Brush my teeth, pack my lunch, fill a water bottle, and rescue my waffles from the toaster. Ignore Jane, who's already asking for more food. Let Leeches outside. Sit with Amtrak and let her chew on my hair and bury her tiny face in my neck. 8:13. Grab the eighty-two bags I take to work (and never need) and slowly scan my room to look for things I might be forgetting. 8:15. Leave the house. Notice that Leeches wants to come back inside via the room where the kitten is, guide her back in, and stand over her while she eats two more bites. Practice burning patience as Leeches stands in the doorway, indecisive. 8:18. Put a tape in, take the usual route, chew on dry waffles, and hope for better traffic.

Every weekday, the same slice of minutes, the same pattern. Do you have one too?

Today isn't my birthday, even though I have a birth certificate that says it is. Actually I have two birth certificates, an oddity that wasn't discovered until I prepared to get my driving permit just before I turned 15. At the time, my mom couldn't find my original birth certificate (which was needed for the permit), so she contacted the hospital where I was born and had a copy sent. The copy had all the information correct on it, except that it claimed I was born on November 6th rather than November 8th. Not a big deal—I mean, it's only two days—but I was a little concerned that I had been celebrating my birthday on the wrong day all my life (though my mother assured me I hadn't been).

So of course I took advantage of the two-day grace period (it suited my impatience), and for years, November 6th was printed on my license, long after my mom found my original certificate and confirmed that I had, indeed, been born on the 8th. There were awkward moments…I never knew what date to fill in on official documents (I didn't want to lie or be inconsistent, though I had to do one or the other), and occasionally I had to explain my situation to someone behind those official documents, only to get a blank stare in return. Finally, (sometime after I turned 21), I had my license changed, and November 6th instantly became just another day of the year. All that's happened is that my old friends are permanently confused as to when my birthday really is.

Uh-oh. I didn't mean for this to happen.

It was just a random series of events and decisions and it could've happened differently or not at all (I've retraced my steps and wondered what if I had done this instead), but, in any case, there's a one-pound gray kitten curled up in my living room at the moment, probably peeing on the couch and launching fleas, but I don't care. It was hiding beneath some railroad ties and might've gotten flattened, or, at the very least, had batches of kittens of its own one day, so I did the right thing (...right?). Intermittent yelps that sounded like a crow (or was that a cat?) and the next thing I know, I'm standing in red mud far past a No Trespassing sign, and Martin is running after a wobbly gray ball of fur. By now she's had a proper bath, received a name (Amtrak), eaten turkey, drunk milk, fallen asleep, and woken back up again. I'm not going to get attached. Really.

Morning. I rolled out of bed without an alarm, ate cereal with fruit (a weekend luxury), and lazed around until the thermometer glared at me, a digital 80 written on its face. Martin talked me into a bike ride that ended up lasting all afternoon, running errands and weaving through empty squares by the government buildings downtown, my pants rolled high to keep them out of reach of the chain. We rode through parts of Raleigh I don't remember having seen before, and it felt like being in another town altogether, the town I know hiding just a few streets away. There were a few hills, one in particular, that were deserted enough and sloped enough to fly without pedaling, and for a moment I felt completely alone, as I sailed past houses and parked cars and trees still full of red and yellow.

We ducked into the Natural Sciences Museum shortly before it closed, punching buttons that delivered frog noises, reading depressing accounts of now-extinct animals, staring at salamanders and snakes that stared back. Then there was a smell, somewhere, of food cooking, and Martin and I crossed pavement and sidewalks and grass to get to the grocery store. We stuffed his backpack full and devoured a large chunk of the baguette before heading home.

Evening. It still seems too early to be getting dark. Right now I'm pouring wine on the grilled chicken in my stomach and trying to figure out whether I should go to a promising party or the Death Cab for Cutie show. Pros and cons, and I've got three CDs playing on shuffle (all DCFC), and I think I should probably call someone who's going to the party to make the debate fair.

Last night I went out in my Medusa costume for the third time in less than a week, and though lots of other people were in costume as well, it felt like any other day of the year—not like Halloween—but like Halloween observed. Although the people at each party were entirely different, and though I modified the costume slightly each night, by the third night I almost felt like I wasn't in costume at all, but that the rubber snakes and wires were just a piece of awkward jewelry, like big, dangly earrings that happened to brush the roof of the car when I sat inside. Part of it, I'm sure, is that at last night's party, I knew few people and talked to even fewer. Somehow, if no one seems to notice you've got snakes springing off your head and a little stone doll tucked under your arm, you forget that you look out-of-place. Well, at least until you leave the party.