I am just muddling through, marching with my eyes at half mast. Trying to get through to the end of 2008. Working, working, working. I am a robot, a robot in skin still peeling. Still in the midst of unpacking and doing laundry and sorting through my bills and getting my new computer up and running... the wrapping paper still on my desk, the clothes in heaps, the suitcases still in the hallway, the mail still not sent, the boxes still not put away. I am filling out police reports and trying to find a carpenter to repair our doorjamb and hunting like an animal every morning in our cupboards for food I don't remember storing there. I am constantly thirsty and exhausted and my head feels heavy. I am content, I am slow moving, I am just on the verge of being consumed by responsibility. I dream of the color blue and of the beach every night. I hear the ocean, the birds in my sleep. I wake with the sunrise now, something I haven't done in years and years. I want to go away again. I want to finish reading my book. I want to tell you everything in one sitting. I want to stretch out the telling to last for days. I want to be back on vacation.

The heat coming out of the vents feels odd to me, almost too hot. I am slowly, slowly acclimating.

Something did not come back with me. Something hurried. I do not want it to find me again.