Two months ago, I thought I had breast cancer. For three or four days, I felt a deep pain at the bottom of my right breast. I could not detect anything, but felt a surge of blind panic, particularly since the sensation was getting worse every day.

Before I called the doctor, I decided I should take a look. It's hard for anything to hide under my small set, but this managed it. Just out of my view on the right underside was a angry red curve, left there by the wire of my $10, two-year-old Target underwire bra.

Ladies, you know which bra this is. Yours might be a better brand than mine, but it's almost certainly beige.

The cups are smooth, with no pretty lace to bulge up from underneath close-fitting shirts. It's boring as hell, absent even a pretense of sexiness. Even worse, although most women wear beige bras more than any other color, underwear designers must surely be men because beige panties are almost nonexistent. So not only is the bra dull, it's unenlivened even a smidge by matching panties.

Nevertheless, we wear this unremarkable but depressingly practical underthing to bits. As I had done to mine. It had served its purpose nobly, but it was cheap, wearing thin, and telling me so in very direct terms.

Had I not just read "What Not to Wear," I'd have gone straight to Target for a newer version of my weary original.

Once in my life, I'd worn nothing but Victoria's Secret, but those were in the days when I had boyfriends. When the underthings were part of the package, a vital and appreciated component of the relationships.

If one of those currently were in my life, my drawers would be overflowing with lace, delicate straps and pastel-colored ribbons. But until I got to the fourth date - hopefully the fourth - with someone I really liked, the underwear needed no frills. Since I hadn't gotten past one in many moons, there seemed no need for such things.

But "What Not to Wear" advised a woman to "invest" in good lingerie. It is, they say, the foundation for every other piece of clothing that follows.

So, off I went to Victoria's Secret.

And out I came with a $49 plain beige bra.

But don't let the visual description fool you. This is not the Target bra with a different label.

It's an IPEX.

Victoria's Secret has been blasting the IPEX across its glossy catalogue pages for at least a year now. The model is on a stage, her body backlit, long hair flying in the fans tucked just out of the camera frame's sight. The shot is taken up, so her legs are eternal, her stomach flat and defined, her entire body tanned and shining with some subtle oil.

It's a very sexy shot, until you look at the bra. Which is boring. Apparently a whole lotta hoopla for nothing.

I was never tempted to buy, or even look at, an IPEX.

But then I tried it on.

I felt myself get taller, my hair grow longer, the wind began blowing through the dressing room. OK, well not quite, but there was a bit of a draft, that I know.

What I did notice was the fit, which was perfect. And the seams, which were all but gone. And that it lifted, enough to enhance but not enough to outright lie. I put my shirt on over it, and it looked ... different. The shirt was still form fitting as it was meant to be, but with no signs of strain across my chest.

A few months ago, my son had stood behind me as I sat on the floor and asked what were the two bumps on the back of my shirt. They were, I told him, part of my bra. "Oh," he said, "I always thought those were two really bit zits."

Those bumps were gone.

The "What Not to Wear" women were spot on.

I wanted one in every color. But at $49, I decided to buy one for now and wait for a sale.

Since then, I've worn my IPEX almost every day. Even more often than its predecessor. Some days, I leave it in the drawer only because I think it deserves a break, and I feel a little bothered by my unwillingness to give it up. But most days, I give in, with a secret delight I wish I could quell.

So where before I was uncomfortably bored with my lingerie, now I am bored in delicious comfort.

I can endure ho-hum beige for six more weeks, however, when Victoria's Secret launches its semi-annual sale. Maybe by then, they'll take their revolutionary line one more bold step and introduce IPEX panties. In beige.

Checkers, the second gerbil, died tonight, almost a month to the day after her buddy.

I don't think it was coincidence that they died so close together. I think she died of loneliness, of tiny gerbil heartbreak.

After her partner died, I thought Checkers, no longer competing for food, would grow fat. Instead, she wasted away.

About a week ago, I reached in to pick her up and grasped a body more bones and fur than substance. I could see a deep indentation between her hip bone and stomach. She was more warm than cool, but just barely, sort of like I'd removed her from the refrigerator. I set her on the floor to stretch her little legs - the two of them had always gone wild at this burst of freedom - and though she explored, her gait was dramatically altered. There was no leaping about, dashing behind the dresser, clever evasion when my hand neared to return her to the cage. Her gait was wobbly and though not exactly slow, remarkably less brisk than before.

While Robby had always preferred Romante, named after a superhero on some storybook CD we'd rented, I'd always liked Checkers a bit more. She was the worker, the industrious little homebody who attacked the frequent toilet paper rolls we'd throw in and gnaw them to nothingness. She never ceased digging more and deeper tunnels in their glass aquarium. And obviously, she either didn't eat much or burned it all off during her endless housekeeping.

Romante did his share of scurrying as well, but I could never that she made any sort of, you know, contribution. Although they were both females, I thought of him as the male. Pleasant - and with a bit of a paunch - but leaving the tedious work up to his mate.

Now, two toilet paper rolls lay inside the cage, one intact, one only partially nibbled on by her little teeth.

Checkers was dying. I wanted to put her out of her misery, but I could not bring myself to do it.

Growing up on a farm, my father killed critters with a fair amount of regularity, something I didn't learn until I was into my double digits. Too many cats breeds distemper, so my dad controlled the population. Farm cats weren't put to sleep. Vets were expensive, and reserved for the money making cattle, if at all. Kittens were dispensed of by methods far more primitive than most of my friends can understand. In my dad's case, he threw them quickly against a hard surface, usually the silo.

An ugly visual, I know, but it's not that my dad was heartless. Warding off disease was part of the business of farming, and trust me, farmers far and wide did this - and probably still do today. It took me more than two decades of my life to understand this, and still, the memory of the kittens who mysteriously went missing and the fate I later knew befell them, lingers.

I only recently found a co-worker whose father did the same. She stared at me incredulously when I shared my story. "Oh my God!," she said. "I've finally found someone else. No one understands." We're thinking of forming a support group.

At any rate, I knew how to do it. Swiftly and with minimal pain. I knew it would be a mercy killing. But I hoped instead she would simply expire on her own.

Last night, I peered in the cage and saw no Checkers. The entrances to the tunnels she'd created were all blocked with hay. I was certain she had crawled into a dark spot, pulled the hay down around the entrance, and died. I even thought the symbolism of the closed doors, the small gerbil thought she'd put into it, was kind of poetic.

Feeling a sense of relief, I gently raked a stick through the bedding, expecting to unbury her body. Instead, a head poked up through the hay and a pink nose twitched. She burrowed out, made an ambitious circle of the cage and took a long drink of water. That she was interested in the water made me hesitate, yet again, about expediting her death. If she still yearned for water, she still must feel some thirst for life, I thought.

Tonight, I opened the cage and searched for her again. I picked up the fake tree root and her curled body rolled out from under it.

I felt a shock run through to my toes. It was exactly what I'd expected to find for days, yet I was stunned by the sight. I picked her up. Her body was not stiff, but limp. It was not cold, but cool. Her eyes were tighly shut, her mouth hung slightly open. She was dead. Recently dead, but dead, I thought.

I carried her outside to the Dumpster, looked at her tiny face, and stroked her brown-and-white head. It lollled to one side. Unexpectedly, tears fell. I told her I was sorry, and before I lifted the lid, touched her riibs one last time to make sure she wasn't breathing. Ever so slightly, her body moved.

It was clear now what I had to do. The tears making the whole scene blurry, I threw her to the pavement as hard as I could. When I picked her little body up, it felt - if possible - heavier. I let her fall gently from my hand into the Dumpster.

When Romante died, Robby said he was done with gerbils, and that after Checkers died, he wanted no more. Still, I have to tell him. Still his face will crumple again and his own little heart will break just a bit.

I will tell him what may sound to those far from childhood like a fairy tale. Though some might say gerbils and other animals have no emotions, I believe Checkers and Romante loved one another. So much so, they left the world on one another's delicate heels.

Some days surprise you. Yesterday was one of those. Any day holds the potential to be life changing, but I would not have hedged my bets on Saturday turning into one of them.

I woke with a hangover more emotional than physical and wished immediately for the sun to set.

Bu the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance was sponsoring a speaker at the college downtown. It was written in ink in my brand spanking-new Stephen Covey weekly planner to attend. So I forced myself to comply with my own plans and go.

Andy Behrman is the author of "Electroboy," the somehow humorous story of an East Coast man who suffered 14 years of skyrocketing mania and depression on a headline-making scale. In the early 2000s, he was arrested and imprisoned for selling counterfeit art. The trial was heavily covered in New York City. Before that, he had pimped, prostituted himself, squandered millions and attempted suicide. After the trial and his diagnosis, he was imprisoned, abandoned by all but his parents and tried 38 medications with no lasting results. Electro-shock therapy saved his life.

Shooting on a movie (I believe it's HBO) about his memoirs begins in a few months. Tobey Maguire, the man with the most expressive eyes I've ever seen, stars.

Andy Behrman does not resemble Tobey Maguire. But face-to-face, he speaks succinctly, listens well and has a charming smile.

He was a crappy speaker. Ill prepared, off the cuff, the story rife with "ums," and eternally long. But his manner is positive and he finds the humor in his story. He was inspiring not only in his wellness but in his success. Despite the public and private horrors of his past, his story has a happy ending. Since the book was published, he met and married a script writer working on the movie whose bipolar mother took her life when she was a child. They have a 1-year-old girl, named Kate after her dead grandmother.

A few of us were invited to dinner with him after the talk, and I was seated next to him, which pleased me inordinately. It also pleased me to realize I was sitting at a large table of bleeding-heart liberals. We all talked about stigma, about the popularization of mental illness, about the lack of interest the issue still inspires in people with the money to make a difference. I talked with Andy about royalties and the business of becoming a published author, about the weight of e-mails from people who tell him their loves ones lost the battle with their disorder.

Certain he heard it every day, I told him I had a half-finished book of my own. He asked what made it different. He listened intently. He told me my single excerpt painted an incredible visual. He told me to finish it.

There is room and demand, he said, for more such books. Most of them are badly written celebrity tales that inspire little respect, he said, and precious few women have written about it. (At that point, I couldn't bear to tell him I have fuzzy memories of his book, and did not own a copy for him to sign.)

I was certain his interest was situational and passing, but he gave me his card as we stood to go, and asked that I keep him posted on my project.

Now, I feel I owe him. And maybe that's precisely the kind of pressure I need.

What do you do when the man you love is first, foremost and in his mind no more than, a friend? When for you, the roots of both friendship and love are hopelessly entangled, connected in a thick knot at the base of your relationship? The lines blurred so completely in your mind that you can't tell one from the other? When he tells you he loves you, trusts you, needs you as a friend? When he seeks your counsel, values you as a source of advice, find comfort in your ever-constant shoulder?

What do you do when the person who holds your heart in his hands turns to you and asks your advice about dating?

Do you turn your back? Do you walk away for good? Or do you accept and try to find a way to disentangle the friendship from the deeper emotion? Do you protect yourself or preserve the friendship? Is it possible to do both?

How is it that in the middle of such chaos, hearing words that should break you apart, you feel a deep sense of calm? And that you see beyond your disappointment to your friendship? How is it that you already know that this will endure no matter which route you choose?

For the moment, you set him straight, you tell him this is not a topic on which you can offer advice. But the bare facts remain unchanged, and you stand there in the parking lot, staring at them as you stare at each other. You hug the breath out of one another, and drive away in your separate, sensible sedans to your separate, not-so-sensible lives. And in the rear view mirror it unfurls, a gossamer thread of connection with a core of steel. You drive fast, date other men, and search for an exit. And finally, you wait. For the magical cure that is time.

I realize this entry has a flavor like none before it. Maybe it reveals more than you want to know, or than I even think I should share. But I write it because the blog is my relief valve, in a way, and part of the reason I have been absent is because I fear revealing too much, have told myself some topics just aren't suitable for this type of venue. And believe my entries here must be polished to near perfection, and generally entertaining. The blog so far has been a tightrope I walk between pride in my writing and fear of opening the door to myself. But this is also a form of therapy and when I could reach no one on the phone tonight, I came here.

I remind myself that this year is about doing things I've never done before. Things that frighten me. So I'm opening the door wider still, wobbling on that line as I do so. If reading this makes you uncomfortable, then welcome. You're on board with me in my 2006 adventure.

And just so you don't think I've forgotten my original intent, I'm about to complete Feat #11: I'm quitting a job I hate.

And I'm holding fast to this friend I love.

I had a date last weekend. No, that does not count among my new feats for the year; I have a tension-filled social outing with an unknown male every other month or so. But it's been a long time since I said "yes" to a second outing, and this time was no different.

We met via a free Internet dating Web site that a crosscountry friend suggested I check out. I posted a photo-free profile, changed my mind and deleted it. Meanwhile, Dan showed up as a match for me, and on a whim, I e-mailed him a compliment on his smile. From there, we struck up a conversation.

He was 32. Close to my lowest-possible-acceptable-date age limit, but not out of the ball park. I think it's just a series of coincidences, but I can't recall the last time I dated an older man. Oh wait, yes I can. That's my ex-husband. Then again, I can also scarcely recall the last time I dated anyone long enough to get a look at their toothbrush.

You might say I'm picky. My friends do. You might say I'm ambivalent about relationships, perhaps even scared. My therapist does. You might say I'm all these things. Plus, busy. I do. Too busy, in fact, to think about it. Which the therapist suggests is entirely intentional. Unfortunately, I'm too busy to visit him anymore.

But I took time out on this sunny Sunday to meet Dan at a local hiking park because he sounded fun. He sounded cute. He sounded interested.

We strolled for about an hour and then stopped by a neighborhood restaurant for bad margaritas and artichoke dip. The conversation flowed pleasantly. He reached out occasionally to touch my arm. He leaned close. He sent all the signals a girl could hope to receive.

But my reception was fuzzy.

He was indeed cute, with a ready smile and an easily coaxed laugh. He wore his baseball cap backward, which I found boyish and endearing. In an effort to regrow his goatee, he had recently stopped shaving. I like stubble. I'm AOK with goatees. Physically, he was more than fine.

But he didn't make me laugh, my only absolute must-have. He had no real goals, career or otherwise, expressing content in his eight-year post as an insurance company telemarketer. And he wanted something serious, or so it appeared. Within 10 minutes of meeting, he asked if I wanted to remarry. My answer was short, if not sweet. "Someday."

He also asked what my favorite color was.

"Red," I said.

"Me, too!" he said. "What's your second favorite?"

"Blue."

"Me, too!" he said in an incredulous tone.

My guess is that perhaps 40 percent of the population would respond the same, and most of the rest would instead say blue first, then red. In either case, I did not think our shared passion for the color red would hold us together when times were tough. But by this time, I was already looking for reasons to justify my disinterest.

Worst of all, he owned a Shitzu that was the apple of his eye. Guys with small dogs -- is it just me, or is there something weird about that? And even if it's not, I knew our relationship would be sullied when my dog ate his for lunch.

I hoped the dog thing was fixable. As we strolled through the park, I tried repeatedly to draw his attention to the medium and large-sized dogs. But he ignored them, and complimented almost every small canine that passed by us, once in baby talk.

Compassion for animals aside, I was disturbed.

My friend April agreed. "Eew, a Shitzu," she said. "And he's really into it? Oh Jane, I'm sorry." My friend Tom, also single and so far dogless, was shocked. "But I thought small dogs were chick magnets!" "No, Tom," I said. "Your daughter's guinea pig is more of a chick magnet than a Shitzu." I could hear pencil scratching paper; Tom was taking notes.

My afternoon with Dan ended with a nice, firm hug. It also ended with me telling the #1 date lie, by nodding happily and agreeing that I, too, would like us to see one another again.

A few days later, I sent an e-mail saying I just wasn't ready for a relationship and that I wished him well.

He e-mailed to ask if we could be friends, and to tell me to call him anytime. I committed dating lie #2 and e-mailed "sure," and "of course." I deleted the dating Web site from my bookmarks.

Since then, I've been busy -- really, really busy -- trying to find Tom a leash sized for guinea pig.

Sweetie, Part II

And so I set off on my deceptive quest, one you can probably already guess was destined to fail.

Finding a brown female gerbil sounds easy, but in fact, it was a bit of a challenge. PetsMart north, nearest my house, stocks males only; PetsMart south has the females. Are gerbils really so prolific that they must be separated by not just glass, but 8 miles of interstate? Or is this practice really more about the confidence PetsMart has in its employees' ability to see the subtle differences in rodent genitalia?

Whatever the reason, let it be a tip for you future gerbil owners. Coed gerbil housing is prohibited at PetsMart. (I suspect the same is true of those sexually insatiable hamsters.)

I trekked down south and discovered there were no brown female gerbils. A new shipment was expected Wednesday. My son returned on Thursday.

Wednesday, I hurried back on my lunch hour and found a regular smorgasbord of brown female gerbils. One of them was the exact same shade as Sweetie. The look was perfect, but temperament was equally critical. Sweetie had been, well, sweet. Unusually so.

I held my potential new housemate in my hands. She snuggled down into them, and when I closed them over her, bumped against my fingers with her nose. Just as Sweetie had done. When I opened my fingers, she stayed still. Calm, just like Sweetie.

"I'll take this one," I said, and breathed a sigh of relief. This was going to work exactly as I'd planned.

Back home, I slipped the little critter into her cage. She sat perfectly still for a moment, then started jumping around the cage like a creature possessed, leaping for the top, desperate to be free. This was bad; Sweetie had displayed no such restlessness. I reached in to touch her, certain this would calm her down. Instead, she freaked. She ran from my hand, plunging into a colorful plastic pipe through which the creatures were supposed to crawl. She stayed inside it, breathing hard, eyes wild. When I curled a finger inside to touch her, she streaked out of the pipe and began again running wildly around the cage. I recognized the symptoms. Clearly, she was manic.

I told myself she was just nervous about her new surroundings and called it a night. But she was unchanged when the sun rose, and I realized Robby would never be fooled by this jittery excuse for a substitute.

I had only a few hours left now, but there was still time to return her and get another one, I thought. PetsMart had a two-day return policy designed for just such animal personality quirks. I reached in to retrieve her, the pet store box at the ready.

She ran, dodged, twisted and repeatedly slipped out of my grasp. I grew exasperated. She wedged herself into the pipe again, breathing hard, and I saw my chance. Her tail was sticking out. I grabbed it and pulled. She did not come out. Instead, the hair on her tail shucked off cleanly, leaving a long, thin, bloody bone protruding from her behind.

I stood there in shock, holding the bit of fluff in my hand. I couldn't tell if the gerbil was hurt; she looked every bit as freaked out as she had 30 seconds ago. But I knew it had to have caused her pain, and freak or not, she didn't deserve it.

The tail, however, was not going back on. After a short round of chase, I finally caught her, and closed her into the box. I stared at the furry sheath for a second, wondering if I should take it back, too, but threw it into Robby's trash can instead.

The PetsMart people took her back, but I did not imagine the cold stare the clerk gave me. "Never pick a gerbil up by its tail," she said. "That's in all the books."

I didn't ask to see another gerbil. The gig was up. My plan to spare Robby early heartache had failed miserably.

I met his dad for our weekly pickup at yet another PetsMart that evening. This was only partially planned; we often met there since it was almost exactly halfway between our homes.

Robby jumped into the car beaming. "I can't wait to see Sweetie," he said. "Let's go."

Instead, I broke the news to him. It was a sharply edited version, minus George, minus the toilet, minus the frantic search, minus the crazed clone and minus the bloody tail. I told him only that she had died, but I didn't know how. His small face fell, and he turned away from me for a minute.

"Listen," I said. "I had an idea. If you want to, we can go right in to PetsMart and get you a new one. In fact, I think we should get two. I've read that they get lonely."

I'd read a lot about gerbils that afternoon.

Finally, Robby turned to me and nodded sadly. By the time we got to the gerbil display, he was smiling in anticipation of his two new pets.

Later that weekend, Robby came downstairs holding something tightly in his fist.

"Mom," he said, opening his hand, "I think I know why Sweetie died."

In his palm was the furry tail fragment.

"It looks like her tail came off somehow," he said. "I think that's what killed her."

I nodded solemnly. "You might be right," I said.

He placed it gently into my hand. "Can you find a place for this and save it? I want to remember Sweetie forever."

The tail has since been lost, or perhaps Robby agreed to throw it away; I can't recall. But I don't need it to remember her. The tale of Sweetie is etched forever in my mind.