I�m hip happy today. I�m two hours late for work, I�m wearing my second favorite dress, I�m drinking iced coffee, and it�s cool and people seem glad to see me this morning. Inexplicably glad to see me. Perhaps I am glad to see me too.

The woman who sold me coffee this morning complimented me on my dress and I told her how I�ve had this dress since I was 12 years old and she loved that�she said �it was probably down to your ankles then� and I said �yeah� even though that is patently untrue. The dress fits me now exactly as it did then. True fact about me: I�ve not grown an inch since I was 10 years old. At 9 I was the size of your average 9-year-old kid. I grew at least a foot in less than a year. The growing pains were excruciating�my bones ached, my skin felt like it was being stretched beyond capacity. Awful. But I don�t like to disillusion anyone about my dress. They seem to like the image of me as a little 12-year-old wearing it. I do, too.

Last night I took the cure. When I got home I was so very cranky and growly. All I was capable of doing was sitting in front of the TV, watching what? The Drew Carey show or Andy Griffith or something. And cutting out pictures from the hundreds of book jackets I�ve collected here at work. Around 7 or so I forced myself to go to the lake with Bash. I haven�t been in weeks, it seems. I ran as fast as I could over the rough trail. I was laughing and so was Basho. He�d stop and wait for me to catch up with him and then race out in front, just to be beating me. He was positively leaping, like a rabbit or a jungle cat, straight up in the air, running straight for all the obstacles he could find, just to be leaping up. Laughing and running and sweating and feeling my body work, that�s the ticket. After about 40 minutes of this I stripped off my shirt and dived into the lake water, which was the exact same temperature as the air, liquid air, so soft and maternal. I believe I could literally feel my self, whatever my self is, reattaching to my body, returning home, re-inhabiting my own physical space. Bash and I swam slow circles around each other and I confused him by going under water and popping up beside him a few times. I squelched my way back through the woods and we rode home and I felt GOOD.