I don�t know what the problem is today. I can�t settle in. This, my friends, is the fourth entry I have started this morning.

First there was the one about Jimmy Carter. I scrapped it.

Then there was the one about my puzzle-solving brilliance. Scrapped that one for obvious reasons (self-aggrandizement is never a pretty sight).

And then I started one about the first time I visited New York City with a boy named Justin Chase and how we had an affair and how grown-up we thought we were but how young and inexperienced we really were. Sweet sweet memory.

Maybe I�ll return to that entry some other time. But for now, there�s nothing for it but to let the momentum of loss carry me forward.

It�s gorgeous out, you know. Tentative and frail and warm and light. Lovely.

I�m leaving work early because I have to GRADE MY BRAINS OUT.

But I�m also going to the lake because dear old Bash deserves something for his trouble. I wonder if I remembered to shut the back door this morning? I woke up and found it standing open and I think I may have crawled to it in the middle of the night and let the pup out and damn. I have been so tired lately and in my fog of exhaustion I keep fucking everything up.

So I am lake bound and I remembered something sweet and innocent from my life�from the worst year I can remember in fact, the year I lost all my innocence, but that came after, after Justin Chase and New York and I will not tell that story.

Right. Let the mountain of papers rain down on me. The next 24 hours will be a trick. Wish me luck.