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.

Sweetie, Part I

What follows is a modern-day Aesop's fable, the story of what happens to one who attempts to deceive. The characters are me, the deceiver, my son, the almost deceived, and two identical gerbils, the unwilling and witless foils around which the story revolves.

We lost a member of our little family last week. One of my son's two gerbils died. At 2, he'd lived a long gerbil life and died fat - enormously fat - and hopefully happy.

Robby was getting ready for bed last night when he peered into the aquarium that houses the two gerbils.

"What's Checkers doing to Romante?" he asked me, a tremble of fear in his voice.

Checkers, the skinny brown-and-white gerbil, was bent low over Romante, the fat black one. He lay, unmoving, on his back. Checkers was hovering over his mouth, nibbling. Cannablizing her dead roommate, I quickly realized.

"Oh honey, I think Romante's dead," I said.

Robby reached into the aquarium and pulled out Romante's stiff body. "He's cold. Really cold," he said, his face twisting in the first spasm of grief.

I peered anxiously at Romante's face. His chin was a bit red from Checkers' teeth, but she hadn't yet pierced the skin and exposed any flesh. That much was a relief, but my mind raced, searching for the words to explain Checkers' actions.

Personally, I didn't blame Checkers for wanted to extract her pound of flesh. From all that I could see, Romante repeatedly had pushed her head out of the feeding trough over the years, reducing her to a very slight rodent while he ballooned so much it appeared he'd swallowed a golf ball whole. This for her was poetic justice, but not a facet of the circle of life with which I thought my son could yet deal.

I suggested we put Romante's body in a box and bury him the next day. Robby nodded, handing me the body and then reaching into the aquarium for Checkers. He held her close.

"Checkers was trying to breath life back into him," he said.

"Yes," I said. "She was."

The urge to laugh was at war with another to cry. I'd been spared explaining the ugly side of nature by a child's blindingly pure conviction that respect for life extended even to the littlest of creatures.

So it was with his first gerbil. He believes she died of strange, unnatural causes. I hadn't the heart to tell him she was killed by George, the cat he loves so much.

You could say we've had a bad run of luck with gerbils, although these last two have lived to ripe old ages. Checkers, I fear, may now die of loneliness, and Robby says he wants no more after they're both gone.

Perhaps that's because none of them can replace his first gerbil, Sweetie.

Sweetie was a gift for his 8th birthday. She was solid brown, physically unremarkable. I wrapped the elaborate, plastic, multi-colored cage for his party, and we both went to PetsMart to choose its occupant.

Initially, he wanted a hamster. But then, an oh-so-cuddly-looking Teddy bear hamster chomped down on his thumb during a visit to the pet store. The bite was so hard both the PetsMart clerk and I could hear teeth rending flesh. Robby's face was a heartbreaking mix of disbelief, pain and sorrow. At that very moment, a cockatiel peering in from his condo-sized cage gave a piercing shriek. Robby burst into tears.

The Teddy bear hamster, and all his kin, were out. The gerbils, extremely mouselike but amazingly social little rodents, were in.

Robby chose Sweetie, whom even I will admit had a softer, more gentle personality than any gerbil I've since met.

For Robby, it was love at first cuddle. That weekend, he was never without her. He held her while he watched TV, encouraging her to watch with him, sometimes just stroking her head and looking at her face. He taught her to climb stairs and race through a chain of toilet paper rolls. He let her crawl underneath his shirt, laughing hysterically as her tiny claws tickled his belly. Later, he put her down his pants and laughed even harder - but this memory is disturbing so we'll quickly move past it. We took pictures of them together, Robby holding her just under his chin in two firm hands. His grin was ear to ear.

When he left Sunday night to go back to his dad's, he reluctantly placed her in her cage. "Take care of her, Mom," he said.

"Don't worry," I said, disguisng my amusement at his concern. "I will."

Monday evening, I came home to find Sweetie dead in the middle of the living room floor. From all I could reconstruct, George had knocked over the surprisingly flimsy plastic cage. Sweetie's body was whole. There was no blood, no open wounds, no evidence of trauma. George, a domestic cat who had no need to hunt for food, had played with her until she died, I surmised. Likely a slow, painful death.

I flushed Sweetie down the toilet as panic set in. Less than 24 hours after my son had left, his gerbil was dead. How on earth could I tell him? And even worse, how could I tell him that George - in a fit of domestic kitty boredom - had done it?

The phone interrupted my thoughts.

"Mom?"

I froze. My son rarely called me during the week.

"I just called to see how Sweetie's doing," he said.

"Oh, she's just fine, honey," I said.

From the bathroom, I heard the toilet tank refilling. Sweetie was already swirling through the sewer lines, starting a miles-long journey downtown to the wastewater treatment plant.

I hung up filled with utter contempt for myself. Not only had my son's pet died on my watch, I had bald-faced lied to him about it.

I was backed into a corner. There was only one thing to do - I had to find a Sweetie lookalike.

Now I hate to do this to you all, but like the Joel story, this will be told in two parts. It's late. I'm tired. There's a cold, rodent body in my storage unit awaiting a proper burial and likely rotting in this unseasonably warm spring weather. All in all, it's been a difficult couple of days in our small household.

Besides which, this is a rather lengthy story, and out of respect for Sweetie, it needs to be properly told.

Every office has its bright lights. Mine includes a precious few, which makes the departure of each one bittersweet indeed.

In this case, as with almost every one before her, a much-loved co-worker is moving on to something better.

Like prisoners watching a fellow inmate make parole, we share her joy. All of us are waiting our turn to take that exit interview, gather the meager belongings and handful of change with which we arrived and let that heavy, steel side door clang shut behind us one last time. We're all on good behavior until that day arrives, knowing we need the good references, the benefits and the paycheck so we can smoothly transition into a brave, new world.

Watching a coworker leave gives us all hope and restores our confidence that it can indeed be done. But like Ellis in Shawshank Redemption, those of us who remain feel the loss.

The parolee, Molly, is a staff photographer with whom I've worked for three years. She isn't hanging around and risking the hellish recidivism of a rehire. She's crossing several state lines and getting far the hell away from Dodge.

Yeah, yeah, I know – she's moving someplace cool to visit. But really, why can't she just conduct her graduate school studies here in Colorado? Just what kind of sicko comes up with a scholarship that requires you move to California to cash in on it? Besides an overabundance of beautiful people, beautiful beaches and a fading but once-beautiful governor, where's the appeal?

Molly is more than 10 years my junior but one of those people who attracts friends of all ages and types and with whom age is irrelevant. I consider her a good friend. So does everyone else.

Like me, she tested as an ESFJ Meyers-Briggs personality, but is far more true to type than I. The description that accompanies this personality type is Molly: "Warm, friendly and affirming by nature, generally upbeat and popular, people are drawn to them. They are the guardians of birthdays, holidays and celebrations."

I can think of few people into whose category I'd rather be lumped. But she is the ESFJ Classic. I am ESFJ Dark, a far moodier version who manages to be a party-throwing, spotlight-hogging, hostess-with-the-mostest in some situations, a completely withdrawn - and often sullen - misfit in others.

Whatever. Molly tolerates my occasional social challenges well. She has ridden with me through some choppy waters in the last year, taking my side without question when even I didn't know if my decisions were for the best.

She is quick with a quip, a shoulder or a shot.

You could enter the office a stranger and find Molly. Follow the laughter to her desk. It's a too-rare sound in our office, an alarming and no-doubt annoying reminder to many there that work and fun really can go hand in hand. And it most often radiates from her desk, around which one or two people, often a small knot of them, gather.

Molly always takes the time to smile, banter, share fashion observations, hangover remedies and unvarnished gossip.

She's also situated en route to the bathroom, which gives me an easy and frequent excuse to take a social break.

I know that for a while after she leaves, my throat will ache a bit every time I pass her desk, and I will baselessly resent whomever next takes that seat.

Ideally, we'll get a new and equally fascinating inmate soon, but such creatures rarely are sucked into our strange little vortex. When they are, they're spat back to the normal world in short order. For us, the left behind, the only course is to follow the rules, be model employees and wait for the day when we can follow Molly's footsteps into the staggering brightness of the free world.

And just like in Shawshank, I'll start that new life with the fat wad of cash Molly's leaving under a rock for me. Hey, we all need our little fantasies.

Meanwhile, the bright lights that remain will keep one another amused, and our solemn co-workers annoyed.

And if we listen carefully, I bet we'll soon hear the faint echo of her new friends' laughter emanating from the West Coast.

Blondes do not have more fun. Neither do brunettes.

The happiest times come, of course, to those who are confident and content with themselves, something none of us felt Saturday as flaxen-haired females.

Blonde night was, in many ways, a bust. We were cuter as blondes than we'd anticipated. We nailed the scantily dressed part of the equation. We were a bit high, and a bit more intoxicated. But we were not comfortable in our modified skins.

The three of us spent days searching for our wigs. April and I found ours at a costume shop during a weekday lunch hour. After considerable giggling and wig swapping, April settled on a platinum blonde number designed for a man called The Mullet. Name aside, she looked cute as a button in it, eerily like Loni Anderson. Mine was the Tina Turner, a long, strawberry blonde wig with a most unnatural bump on top. I reminded the wig shop owner of Elvira's sister, she said, laughing. She did not say that was a good thing.

Joani spent hours searching for hers, finally finding one 20 minutes before the wig shop closed on the night of our mission. Hers, a silvery, black-streaked wig that mimicked her natural style uncannily, was the most natural looking of all. She will, as another friend noted, be an extremely hot senior citizen.

We met at April's house Saturday night and helped one another tuck resistant strands into wig caps, brush our fake tresses into some semblance of reality and practice hair tosses. We drank wine, took vampy pictures and ramped up for an evening of high flirtation.

All that ended when we walked into the bar. We became, instead of the participants we usually are, wallflowers. Bright, yellow, hard-to-ignore wallflowers, but wallflowers nonetheless.

This was a twist I think none of us anticipated. I did not expect to see a stranger in the mirror, a woman so foreign I felt removed from myself and uncertain how to act. With a wig on my head so long and bright it demanded attention, I shrunk inwardly, certain from a couple of sidelong glances that my disguise fooled no one. For those few hours, I lost most of the confidence it's taken me years to find.

Complicating matters, we had walked into a bar birthday party attended, for the most part, by people young enough to be our children.

And Eden (for where else could we go?) had somehow become even more sexually daring than last time we'd visited. This time, instead of short dresses with plunging necklines, boy shorts or bikini tops, the waitresses were wearing underwear. Push-up bras and underpants so lacy the tags shown through them. In the space of three weeks, it had sequed from a place that seemed cutting edge sexy to borderline strip club.

The three of us, in tight jeans, a see-through blouse and lacy camisole and short black velvet dress felt conservative. It is not a place to which we shall soon return.

April tried repeatedly to liven the atmosphere. She made a few random, intentionally obnoxious comments to passing men, encouraged me to dance on a low table and shake my strawberry blonde tresses in wild abandon. But in the end, she threw up her hands, giving up not only on me but on her own attempts to attract some sort of attention.

"I feel like it's so obvious. I think everyone knows," she said.

Joani shrugged the evening off as an interesting experience. "Your expectations were too high," she said.

I had hoped for at least one phone number, but at that point would have settled for a hello. Even eye contact. But since I kept my eyes mostly downcast, that was an unlikley occurrence at best.

I've never thought of myself as particularly confident. Like most of us, the picture the world sees is somewhat different from the image I have o f myself. But I realized that night that I have better self esteem than I realized, and feel a nice sense of satisfaction with the familiar face that daily greets me in the mirror. Challenging hair and all, I like my brunette self.

So, we agreed, do we all. It's that comfort level - some days stronger than others - that lends us a confident walk, the ability to look someone square in the eye, to offer a smile that's friendly, and sometimes a touch more.

While we failed to score phone numbers, we came away with something much better for our egos: a new-found appreciation for ourselves, just the way we were made.

The wigs have not been packed away in mothballs just yet. April wants to try it again, in a different venue, a different town entirely. The Blonde Brigade must ride again, she says, this time in a city with a slightly more mature demographic, where the men have an appreciation for blonde women in their 40s.

We're saving our pennies for tickets to Florida.

Act 2: "Dye your hair blonde and see if they really do have more fun."

To my shame, I accomplished no new feat in February. I felt as though I'd broken a promise to myself, which, of course, I had. But February's a short month, I reason, and I'll make up for it in March.

Indeed, it appears I may.

#22 in "What Every Woman Should Do Once" - the above - happens Saturday night. It's undergone a bit of a metamorphisis from the original suggestion, but I think this version may be even better. There will be no hair dying, which may disappoint some, but I also will not be doing this solo. What's better than one brunette going blonde than three?

Two of my friends, the raven-haired April and auburn-tressed Joani, have agreed to join me in temporary blondeness. We've opted for wigs, instead of color, and likely will go full-bore and wear somewhat sleazy attire to complete the look.

Before my blonde friends (and sister) pepper me with angry comments, this is not because we believe all blondes are sleazy.

Rather, the consensus is that if you're going to take a walk on the other side of the fence, don't just straddle it. Pole vault on over there and experience it to the max.

Besides which, it appears we have a growing audience, a fan base of sorts that expects a good show. My deskmate Tom, neighbor Tom, neighbor Tom's cadre of mostly Italian friends who are known far and wide as the Colorado Springs Mafia, current co-workers, former co-workers and most of my high school class are coming by bus, plane and train to witness this event.

The three of us are practicing a dance routine, a Rockettes-variety show during which we hope our cheesy wigs will stay firmly put. Joani is riding in on an elephant and April and I are negotiating to borrow the American Furniture Warehouse tigers. We will carry the tigers' leashes in one hand, whips in the other.

OK, so the last two, three or four lines may not be true. But it does seem word has gotten out and the pressure is on.

None of us believe we will be attractive blondes. Joani's skin is olive toned, and April and I are milky-complected Wisconsin girls. Nice-looking women in our own skin who still turn a few heads.

The question is, would we turn more as blondes? Have we, all these 40-plus years, been missing out on a plethora of male attention? Would we really have had more fun?

My son pointed this evening to a crayon drawing he'd done of me several years ago. It was a Mother's Day gift that hangs on the refrigerator to this day, and as he noted, likely needs to step out of the spotlight. "Your hair doesn't even look like that anymore," he said. It's longer and not so big, and that, he says, is better.

In his mind, it seems, hair is key in creating the image one projects to the world. "Really Mom," he said, "hair is what it's about."

He's a small male, but a male nontheless. And with two girlfriends in his corner, perhaps his comment merits serious consideration.

In six days, we'll put this legendary theory to the test and discover for ourselves: Do blondes really get more giggles out of life? Or is it just as we brunettes have long thought -- the only thing they actually get more of are really bad jokes?

It started so romantically. He was a handsome, nattily attired stranger who said he had seen me from across a crowded room, lost sight of me and searched until he found me again. Even more poetically, we met in Eden.

Lest you think I'm in a fantasy world created by illegal substances, let me assure you this is a true story. The Eden of this tale, however, is not even close to the peaceful jungle that, as I recall, is depicted in a book called the Bible. For one thing, we were both clothed. Snakes and apples were nowhere in sight, and nary a fig leaf could be found. Temptation, however, hung thick in the air between us. And the nightclub Eden is all about that.

It's a place my friends and I visit infrequently because it requires a specific style of dress, and the right frame of mind. Eden is housed in a converted church. Aside from the stained glass windows and beautifully angled ceilings, little remains to suggest its original use. It is still a place of worship, but of the human form, sexuality and pleasure. The walls in the main bar are painted in shades of deep red, some covered with purple velvet. Lighting is low. Downstairs, the seating choices are limited to barstools and beds. On video monitors behind them, the silhouette of an obviously naked woman's body writhes in an endless dance. Entering the women's bathroom at Eden (named best in the Springs by some newspaper or another) is like stepping into a Victoria's Secret catalogue. It is a blur of pink and gold, over which sparkling chandeliers hang. White leather couches and floor-to-ceilng mirrors line the walls.

The employees are almost all women with strong resemblances to Playboy bunnies. The owner, we're told, buys their outfits and by the looks of them, he shot his wad on Eden's decor, leaving him with only enough to buy child-sized shreds of clothing for his waitresses.

Now you see why we don't come here often. For women in their 40s, this place can be wicked in more ways than one. But we had planned for it, and on this night, the three of us were well turned out.

I had reached into the blackest depths of my closet to find the only dress I own that has never been touched by the sun's rays. It's also the only dress I own that has a name. The Second Husband Dress is electric blue, with vertical stripes racing down each side, and a third zipping straight down the front. It is short. It is sleeveless. It is polyester/rayon with 3 percent Spandex.

The Second Husband Dress has never failed to attract men. Unfortunately, it has never yet attracted men of husband quality. Perhaps because it does not make me look much like Carol Brady.

Our goals for the evening were to dance and flirt. We checked out the club's various rooms, having a cocktail in the Syn Lounge and testing the mattresses on a downstairs bed. Well-rested and well-buzzed, we found our way to the dance floor. The three of us merged onto it together, and were quickly paired off with men.

I danced like I had not since college, when dancing was my favorite past-time and one I engaged in two or three times a week.

We took a break, sitting on the broad windowsill of the tall church windows. And then he approached, walking across the dance floor, hands tucked casually into loose-fitting black dress pants. He was wearing a pale pink, open-collared dress shirt. He looked to me like Don Johnson in his Miami Vice days. Casual, confident and cocky.

"I saw you downstairs," he said, moving in close so I could hear him. "When I turned around, you were gone. I've been looking for you ever since."

That was the first of a few dozen perfect lines he threw my way. He waxed poetic about my face and figure, touching a light hand to my waist to illustrate how small it was. He brushed a hand over my stomach, too quickly for me to stop him, and said, "I love this. Do you work out?" Warning sirens sounded somewhere in the back of my head, but the music was loud. I pretended I couldn't hear them. Somewhere along the line he introduced himself, but I don't recall his name. I do remember his profession: car salesman. The sirens wailed. Again, the music squelched them.

He asked if we could move somewhere quieter where we could talk and he could buy me a beer, and escorted me back to the bed level of the bar. We leaned against a footboard to talk. And that is where my rosy glow began to dim.

"Listen," he said. "I'm looking for someone to go on Sunday drives with, maybe go to dinner with sometimes, a movie or something. You know, nothing serious."

He paused, then plunged ahead. "What I really want is a fuck buddy."

The words were so crude and unanticipated, they landed like a mini slap in the face. I backed up a step, prepared to make my exit. But he kept talking, and refused to give me the verbal space to say goodbye.

"I know what you're thinking," he said. "But that's not all I want to do. I want a companion. Just not a serious relationship. I want someone beautiful to hang out with."

He looked me dead in the eye. "I want you."

I said nothing. I was disconcerted by his physical closeness, but I was thinking. Maybe this was not such a bad idea. Most of my friends had had so-called fuck buddies at one point or another in their lives, friends or casual acquaintainces who'd agreed to a temporary, purely physical relationship. They talked about it in playful, affectionate, sometimes even wistful tones.

It worked for them. Maybe, I thought, it could work for me, too. And frankly, it had been a long time between relationships. What did I have to lose, besides maybe a smidgen of self respect?

He was watching my face, moving closer to it as he did.

"Kiss me," he said.

It had at this point been about six months since I'd kissed a man. This one was cute, close and wearing pink - a daring deviation from the male fashion norm that for me, ratcheted his attractiveness level into the extreme range.

So yes, I kissed him. And yes, it was good. And not short.

He pulled away slowy, and grinned.

"See?" he said. "This would be fabulous."

I was standing on the edge, ready to swan dive into something new and take the chance that it might later land on my long list of male-related regrettables. Life, at that moment, seemed short. My stars had seemingly aligned. And I was buzzed.

He looked just below my neck, and I prepared myself for another head-spinning compliment.

"Small titties? We'll buy those," he said, smiling lightly.

This is where my friends say I was too polite. Because I did not slap him. Much less inform him that I am a B cup - surely nothing to sneeze at.

Instead, I smiled easily and said, "Didn't you say earlier you had to go to the bathroom?"

"Oh yeah, thanks. Do you know where they are?"

I pointed down a nearby hall, and the instant he turned his back to me, I was gone. This time, he did not come looking for me.

I almost posted this blog entry Saturday, but somehow, the ending seemed, well, flat. Instead, I set it aside and met my friend Joani out for drinks. I got to Old Chicago before she did, sat down at the bar to wait for her, ordered a Laughing Lab and glanced down the bar. A man in a pink shirt sat there, next to a loudly laughing blonde woman. He was looking at me.

Two thoughts flashed through my mind: I was wearing a push-up bra, and he needed more shirts.

I returned his look with a long, cold stare of which I am quite proud. Firstly, long, cold stares aren't my specialty. Secondly, I desperately wanted to laugh.

When Joani arrived, she took a quick study of the blonde woman and happily told me her breasts were smaller than mine. "And that," she said, "is not an insult.

"Plus, she's at least 10 years older than you are."

But I didn't much care. His words had saved me from what would have been an emotionally untenable situation with a man whose maturity level will never match his age.

Meeting him was, however, more good than bad. I got a nice kiss, and a needed reminder that I am desirable. Better yet, I got a helluva story.

My son has two girlfriends. He is 10.

Two of the girls in his fourth grade class asked him to be their Valentine. He is proud of this, but he doesn't want me to know he's proud. He wants me to know about the girlfriends, but he doesn't want that to be obvious either.

He was in the car with me Friday, sitting in his booster seat, when I asked him about his Valentine's Day. He stared straight ahead, silent, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

"Did you get any Valentines?" I asked.

He nodded, and looked out the window, away from me.

"From who?"

"Maggie." He paused. "And Kara."

He was looking forward again, holding back a grin.

"Did they both ask you to be their Valentines?"

He nodded. "And one of them said it straight up."

"Said what?" I asked.

"You know."

"What? That she loves you?"

The grin broke free. He put his head in his hands to stifle a laugh, looked back up and tried again to close his lips over his teeth -- to no avail. His face was flushed. My son was blushing.

He would not tell me what he said in response. But he owned up to the fact that he now has two girlfriends. Kara, he said, has been hanging around him more since Valentine's Day. Maggie hasn't been around as much, he said. I suggested that perhaps Maggie was a woman scorned who had retreated to lick her wounds. I asked - with a deeply buried grain of seriousness - how he planned to avoid hurting one of them.

He tried to look annoyed with me, but grinned again. "Mom! Stop!"

Of course, I did not stop entirely. Just momentarily. After all, I had an entire three-day weekend ahead during which to spread out the teasing.

I also needed time to figure out how I felt about it. I was, and am, a jumble. Part of me is proud - after all, he's the fruit of my loins and a cute little fruit at that. Part of me is happy that he's popular. That he won't suffer the pain of being an unattractive child and an almost too-late bloomer. Hopefully, if he gets an early handle on relationships, he'll make fewer mistakes in that area of life than I have.

Another part of me is alarmed, and a bit sad, as though he's turned some corner and is standing at the starting point of a road down which I cannot follow.

The logical part of me dismisses it as a fourth grade crush. Or two. They start these experiments of the heart earlier, I remind myself, than we did.

But later that night, when he fell asleep, I studied him with different eyes. Looking down on him, I saw the rounded forehead, long, dark eyelashes, freckled nose and flawless skin. Asleep, his face softens back into that of a toddler. His cheeks are soft, round, without definition.

His body is slight, and likely to remain so. The only hair he has is on his head. Shirtless, his shoulders jut out from his back like two featherless bird's wings. I can count almost every rib.

He uses a booster seat, though he's long since past the age at which the law deems it necessary. He can see better, he tells me, with the extra few inches it gives him. I don't argue.

He still sits on my lap. He likes to lay beside me, spoon style, to watch TV. He falls asleep with his blonde head in my lap. Sometimes, in public places, he still reaches for my hand.

He is, to me, only a larger version of the diaper-wearing boy who, after I put him to bed and returned downstairs, pulled himself up and out of his crib in a nightly quest to find me. I would find him on those nights asleep in the hallway where he had wearily surrendered.

But he's changing, as he should, evolving away from the dependent child to a young person with opinions, interests and yes, secrets. Fond as I am of the days of young childhood, he becomes more interesting with every year.

He has initiated conversations with me about evolution, slavery, solar power and the value of friendships.

He's gaining his own taste in music. Green Day, Tom Petty, Bowling for Soup, Eminem. He rejects, with increasing frequency, the clothes I choose for him.

He's funny, and loyal. Recently, he made an observations about one of his friends' occasional bouts with exaggeration. He overlooked it, he said, because "he needs me" as a friend. The statement both touched and concerned me, but they now seem to have passed safely through those rough waters, back to almost nonstop laughter and in-depth discussions about PSP games.

I believe his compassion extends to me, something I have not yet figured out how best to handle. He laughs at my jokes, but last week, shook his head after a particularly lousy one.

"Mom, sometimes I worry about you," he said.

"Why?" I asked. "Because my jokes are bad or do you just worry about me generally?"

He paused for a split second. "Both," he said.

Like any mom, I think my child is a wonder. I am awed by my good fortune.

But he's in some sense on loan to me, I know. Already more than halfway to legal adulthood. Already looking excitedly toward college, which he is convinced - based on my censored accounts - will be the best years of his life. I hope they are instead just the beginning, an extension of what he remembers was a happy childhood.

I hope these two girls are just the beginning of a long string of friends and admirers he'll find along his way.

Irrationally, I hope that he breaks no hearts. Even more so, that his heart is never broken.

Joel, Part II

I threw back the covers, put on my bunny slippers, grabbed my car keys and stepped out into the night with Joel. So weary of his endless cries that I didn't care if my neighbors - certainly by this time awake and writing hacked-off letters to the HOA about my over-the-limit pet ownership, saw me in my oversized sleep shirt.

Joel hopped into the back seat and I slammed the door, started the engine and roared out of the parking lot. I drove deep into our neighborhood, up long, curving streets to the very highest point. Houses there are mini-mansions whose back decks overlook vast swaths of the city. (The views are beautiful at night, not so nice by day when you can see the twinkling lights are part of the security systems for the industrial warehouses below.)

Here, I stopped, reached back and opened the back door for Joel. He jumped out without hesitation and I hit the gas hard. I saw him in the rear-view mirror, giving chase, tongue lolling happily at what he seemed to think was a jolly game. Then he disappeared into the dark night as I zipped around the corner and down the hill, not going back the way I'd come but completing a circle that plunged me deep into the valley, past the neighborhood park and up a steep hill back to my door.

I was not proud of myself. But I was too tired, at that moment, to care. He was a friendly dog. Someone would find him. And it was a cool, but not freezing, night. If he had to stay outside for the few hours that remained until dawn, he'd be just fine, I told myself.

I rolled into bed, tried to put aside the image of his white body hurtling down the street after my car and closed my eyes. I began to drift.

There was a scratch at the front door.

I stiffened. It was a dream, I thought.

Four more scratches, in quick succession.

A pause.

Three more, accompanied by a soft cry.

I felt like a character in a Stephen King book as I stumbled to the door and opened it. Joel came running in, dancing across the tile and smiling up at me with eyes that clearly said, "I'm home!"

I was completely defeated. And soundly freaked out. If I believed in a Higher Power that directs every moment of our lives, I would have simply accepted that this dog was meant to be mine. It was almost enough to make a believer out of me. But not quite.

I invited Joel into my bedroom and closed the door. He sat down facing it and began to whine. I squatted next to him, swatted him hard on his spotted behind and said, "We will not be doing this! We will lay down and sleep!"

Joel did not utter another peep the entire night.

The next morning, I was awakened by the sense that I was not alone. I cracked one eye. Joel sat on the floor next to my bed, staring at me, looking as though he'd been waiting there for hours. He wagged his tail. I closed my eyes. Gently, he placed his front paws on the bed rail and licked my nose.

My heart softened. But I thought of George, and realized the four of us could never be a happy family.

I dropped Joel off at the animal shelter on my way to work. He pranced happily away with the attendant, and never looked back.

Disloyal, I thought. Just as well.

I jotted down his identification number in my checkbook and went to work.

Two days later, I called the shelter and inquired about #729026.

"Oh yes!" the attendant said. "He just went home this morning."

I thanked her, and as an afterthought asked, "Just out of curiosity, can you tell me the name of the street his owners live on?"

"Sure," she said. "It's Bluffside Circle East."

It was the very street upon which I had turned him loose.

I felt a pang of guilt, thinking that if he fled from his own house he must have been entrapped in a very bad domestic situation. Perhaps he had sensed my rescuer complex and come to me for protection. Maybe he had looked out the window one night and seen me walking by his house with Ally and George in tow. Maybe he'd thought, "My family is bad. That little family looks nice. The dog is unleashed. The lady is singing. The cat is fat and would be fun to chase. I will find them, and make them love me."

So he had. And I had yelled at him, turned him out into the night, pushed him out of my car and sped away, thwacked his bottom, yelled some more, then left him at the shelter. Maybe I'd shattered his faith in humankind entirely.

But I later unleashed those shameful thoughts. Because in retrospect, Joel seemed a little spoiled, a little overly certain of his appeal. He seemed like a dog well loved.

I search for Joel during my night-time walks around the neighborhood. I look into windows upon which the shades have not yet been drawn, hoping to see his blocky white head framed there, small brown eyes peering out at me. Most likely, however, I'll never see him again, since I had never seen him before that night anyway.

But maybe some day, he'll escape again and come scratching at my door. This time, I'll have no choice but to keep him.

Joel, Part I

I'm distraught at my absence from this site, which makes me realize I'm a blog addict. Be that good or bad, I'm resenting my primary employer for sucking the life out of me this last week. I've had no time to grocery shop, clean house or watch "Friends" reruns. In short, I'm a mess.

My first issue of Yoga Journal sits on the table where I threw it five nights ago, silently admonishing me to read it. The woman on the cover, standing with her back arched in a reverse C, head dangling to butt level and hands in prayer position is, I think, following me with her one visible eye. "Breathe deep," her eye says. "You've allowed your life to overtake your spirit. You've lost your Dristhi (a spirtual sounding way of saying 'focus'). Come back to center."

I silently tell her and her wandering eye to fuck off, that I don't have time to find my Dristhi. But I realize she's right, and that part of my Dristhi comes through this blog.

Nevertheless, the hour is late. An employee evaluation that I do not expect to be all wine and roses is set for tomorrow. A weekend story is due. So I'll post as best I can for the moment, by telling you half of the following story. It's a good one, so come back in a few days.

But I wonder, if I think hard and find my focus, can I write it upside down, in the throes of a backward bend like the Yoga Journal model? And if so, the bigger question: Will it make my boobs look bigger?

Joel

Joel didn't just come into my life. He slammed into it with all the force of a fire hydrant on legs. He made his entrance on a cool November night, a shivering bundle of white charging confusedly into the pool of light cast by my car’s headlights.

Joel - real name unknown - is a small, white terrier. He was running down the middle of my neighborhood's main drag. He ran straight and desperately at my car, as though it were a life ring.

I stopped and opened the door, and he leapt onto my lap, a solid body of about 30 pounds. He was mine, and I was his. I heard this in the unspoken determination he projected toward me.

From the backseat, my black Belgian Shepherd Ally leaned forward and sniffed loudly at the surprise passenger. She wagged her tail excitedly and did not growl as she normally did with strange dogs. The shaking young terrier, she quickly surmised, was no alpha.

He had a sturdy body, white with a couple caramel-orange Jack Russell-variety spots plopped randomly on his back, a block-shaped head, face covered in tight, white curls from which earnest, brown eyes peered.

His smooth white neck was collarless.

I would take him home for the night, I decided, and drop him by the shelter on my way to work.

Cute as he first appeared, I knew I could not keep him. I lived in a townhouse with a two-pet limit that sheltered my smelly shepherd, cat-dog George and two gerbils. Maybe the gerbils didn’t count, but another dog would definitely put me over the limit.

Naming him was dangerous, of course. But I couldn't block the thought that he looked like a Joel.

Joel, one of the assistant city editors at my office, is short, tightly wound, hyperactive and often brusque. His appeal emerges in unintentional flashes. Dog Joel was likewise compactly built, tightly wound and hyperactive. But he was determined to appeal. You would like him, damnit, no matter how much you resisted.

He walked into my house liked he owned it, the fear gone. I’d liked him initially out of sympathy. Now I liked him for his pluck.

Maybe I could find a way. He was, after all, a smallish dog.

But Joel squashed his chances in a nanosecond. He saw George, paws curled underneath his body, eyes slit in kitty bliss, relaxing on the doorside bench. Terriers are bred to hunt and chase small animals. George, who slaughtered full-sized rabbits and left me their entrails as morning back-door prizes, was decidedly not anyone’s prey.

He also did not offer a chase. He stared at Joel, eyes growing wide, but moved not a hair. Joel would have nothing to do with George's peacefulness. He jumped onto the bench, and George, with equal parts annoyance and alarm, ran across the room and onto the back of the couch - a place big dogs like Ally wouldn't venture. Joel did, leaping onto the cushions without pause.

I ran to the back door, opened it and set George free.

No one messed with George. Joel had sealed his fate. To the shelter he would go.

It was already late when we arrived home, past my usual bed time. I started my night time skin care routine, with Joel whining unceasingly at the back door. I asked him to be silent. He accommodated me for about 15 seconds.

I crawled into bed. He continued to whine. I read for a while, turned out the light, all the while accompanied by Joel's whines.

I was throughly annoyed. He now had not only upset my cat, but threatened to do the same to my sleep. Clearly, the gratitude he'd first shown when I'd saved him from the mean streets of our neighborhood had vanished.

He whined, whined, and whined some more.

I got up and opened the back door. Joel flew out into the night.

Problem solved, I thought. Some other neighbor would take him in. Lacking a cat, he would peacefully sleep in their warm home.

I began to drift toward la-la land. Joel yapped from outside. Once, then three times, then in rapidfire succession. They were the sharp, excited sounds that only small dogs can make.

Still, I waited. I live in a townhouse complex. At least a dozen people live and sleep within yards of me. Surely, one of them would awaken, step outside to tell the dog to hush, see his sweet face and invite him into their abode. In the next few minutes, I could wash my hands of him.

Ten minutes passed. My neighbors surely were all awake by now, but apparently no one thought the dog was homeless. Instead, they likely were lying there, fuming either to themselves or their bed mate about whomever had let their verbose dog out so late on a weeknight.

I got up, opened the door and let Joel back in.

I went back to bed. He resumed his post by the back door, and also resumed whining.

I tossed. I turned. And then I did something for which I am still ashamed.

Warning: This is an R-rated posting. If you are offended by words like "cock," "dong," "pecker" and "sheep," read no further. Frankly, I don't like these words much myself. But there's no getting around them in describing this inaugural mission.

As acts of bravery and adventure go, this one was anticlimatic.

Last night, I spent about an hour in a sex shop, walking out with two items - one for a friend (I swear) and another for whomever in my circle next celebrates a birthday.

Technically, I accomplished my goal. Unfortunately, I did not feel a moment of embarrassment, a twinge of titillation or even the urge to giggle.

Here is where I likely went wrong:

I chose the store with the biggest ad in the Yellow Pages. But it's in the most well-heeled part of town, and a conservative one at that. A north-end sex shop can only get so bold. I should have expected what I got - an artfully decorated boutique-style shoppe with pretty lingerie displayed in the windows, and a small "18 and over" room properly placed in the back of the store.

I should have headed south to the obviously seedy First Amendment, a store that proudly identifies its offerings with a sign displaying a vampy woman and a big, dark, triple X.

The clerk at the north end boutique said kids commonly accompany their parents into the front room - a fantasy area of high, feathered heels, translucent pajamas, curious costumes and edible treats that look and smell like candy. By contrast, I suspect taking a child to First Amendment would be grounds for a child abuse arrest.

Alas, a bad choice I realized as soon as I pulled into the parking lot. Nevertheless, I did the best I could with it.

There were two people in the store when I arrived: a customer - a curvy 40'ish blonde woman - and an incredibly young-looking, make-up-free clerk whose glowing skin and shiny, long red hair said nothing more sexual than wholesome, All American Girl.

I looked at the costumes, none of which seemed original or much different than those on Wal-Mart's Halloween racks. These came only with different price tags. $72 for a Catholic school girl get-up. I could buy knee socks, a short plaid skirt and round-collared white blouse at Goodwill for less than $10. The want-to-be-bad-but-I-fear-I'm-doomed-to-hell-if-I-do-it look was something only an ex-Catholic could carry off; that, for me, came free with my past.

I checked out the heels, ideal for the upcoming brunettes-go-blonde day, taking a particular shine to the five-inch, glittery-pink stilettos with a Playboy bunny stamped into the heel. Much as I like heels, I knew these babies would toss me to the floor in five seconds or less. A flat-on-her-ass 41-year-old woman in a short skirt is pitiful, not sexy.

I stepped into the back room, and smiled. I had entered Silicone Valley. Vibrators in shades of pink, blue, red and flesh tones hung from two of the three walls. Each had a name: Butch, Cosmo and Hank. One let's-get-down-to-business model called itself simply: "Eight-inch Dong!" (Can "dong" really be trademarked?)

X-rated DVDs took the remaining wall. In the middle were rotating stands of toys that baffled, amused and intrigued. I stared for some time at The Pecker Leash, which included a small, black leather collar attached to a chain. The photo demonstrated its use. I shall not describe it. I found a Do-It-Yourself Adult Movie Kit next to a Horny Little Devil Kit, tucked beside the Idiot's Guide to Tantric Sex and several penis pumps, one of which instructed it was "for when you just want to pump it up!"

Fortunately, I had a semi-legitimate reason to be there. An out-of-town friend with no access to such stores asked if I could find vibrating "eggs" during my expedition. Her penniless boyfriend wanted her to have them but, she confessed, she had no idea what they were. Nothing in the back room looked much like an egg to me. I would have to ask.

In cowardly fashion, I waited until the sole customer left before approaching the clerk I was certain carried a fake I.D. She nodded at my request for "eggs," and led me back to the 18-plus room. She crouched next to a display of the most un-egg-like items in the store. They appeared to be small vibrators, designed to work in concert with other erotic toys or solo.

"They all have slightly different features," she said, examining the packages.

"What does your friend do in the mountains?" Before I could answer, she drew my attention to a mid-priced model. "Now this one has an extra device that can be used as a cock ring."

I nodded knowingly, but in truth, am still uncertain what that is.

"She sells real estate," I said.

"I just love it up there. Does she ski all the time?" she askd, plucking another item off the carousel.

"Here's a travel size." She held up a vibrator disguised as a lipstick tube. "I think this is just the cutest."

I shook my head. "That shade just doesn't work for me.

"She doesn't ski much anymore. Once you live up there a while, skiing loses it appeal. And the winters .. brutal," I said.

"Oh, I bet they are," she said. "And there aren't any adult stores up there. That would suck.

"Smell these! They just arrived the other day. Finally, they make them flavored for women. They smell like candy. Pocket sized, and resealable! You can get a good five, 10 uses out of these little guys."

I smelled each color. The strawberry smelled like strawberry. The rest, not so good.

Back at the cash register, she opened the "egg."

"We battery test all our items before they leave the store because, obviously, we don't take returns."

I heard a low hum and saw the package shudder. "This one's just fine," she said.

I took a final look around the store. Something for Laura was one thing. To make this assignment legit, I felt obligated to buy something for myself, too. My eyes brushed by the Inflatable Party Sheep, the testicle-shaped cake molds and rubber-tipped nipple clamps. I chose, finally, the Pecker Cake Toppers, 12 flesh-toned decorations including a heart and the numbers 1 through 10, all depicted with penises bent into shapes that would make the manliest of men sob in pain.

The clerk wrapped them in gold-and-silver tissue paper, and sealed it with a gold store sticker. She placed them just-so in a gold bag with stiff ropey handles.

I felt cheated. Where was the crinkled grocery bag about which I'd fantasized? The hand-written sign stating "Cash only!" Where-oh-where was the pierced, tattoed, wife-beater-wearing male clerk with gravelly voice and eyes that undressed? And why did I leave feeling like I'd just completed an everyday business transaction? Striding away with head held high instead of slinking out with my collar pulled tight around my face?

I admit, I've fallen short. Disappointed myself and stepped through this first month of 2006 without sweaty palms or a scandalous story.

I swear I will do better in the months to follow. Meanwhile, I think the fact that I've at least completed one quest is reason enough for a cake - topped, of course, with an assortment of pliable, plastic penises.

They say confession is good for the soul. This then, is a heavy dose of spiritual enrichment.

I threw the word "bipolar" in a few entries back to see if you were listening, and I knew by the dramatic, collective, yet oh-so-silent intake of breath that you probably were not.

So I draw your attention back to it.

I have bipolar disorder, but I consider myself blessed. Not only for the person it's made me but because I have long stretches free from the depths of this illness. I know that some people are nearly incapacitated by it, unable to work, unable some days even to get out of bed. I'm fortunate because I can work fulltime, and usually am aware of my mood swings and when my medication needs tweaking.

I've been to the dark edges of both sides. On the blackest days - the most recent bout four years behind me - even the simplest tasks made no sense. Last time around, had it not been for a previous employer's kindness and loyalty, I would surely have lost a job. Caught in mania's highest grip, I moved at warp speed. In college, I was for months a full-time student with seven part-time jobs and an almost nightly alcohol-infused social life. And like Willy Wonka's elevator, I once blasted through mania's glass top into a world beyond logical description.

I've come to realize I should avoid high-stress situations. A sticky wicket indeed because I am easily bored and sometimes welcome drama with open arms. I like life to be nonstop. But when it spins out of control, I fall apart. This makes it a balancing act. Strangely enough, the balancing yoga poses remain my greatest challenge.

While I ran from my diagnosis most of my adult life, the first clue that it was part of me was difficult to ignore. It started in my junior year of college - a long bout with an unfamiliar feeling from which there was no escape. Life was gray. Numb. Hopeless. Nine months later, I shot from that into euphoria, and almost immediately to psychosis.

My parents hospitalized me. I only now vaguely understand how difficult a decision that must have been. Then again, the day before the hospitalization, I took their car and tried to flee to Colorado where I was sure a college crush was waiting to marry me. My sense of urgency about this was all-consuming, and I don't know what made me stop when my dad stepped in front of the car. So perhaps their decision wasn't so difficult after all.

I landed on the sixth floor of St. Francis Hospital in my Wisconsin college town. The sixth floor had been nothing to me before but the subject of jokes among my college friends and I as we cruised by the hospital on the way to the bar.

I stayed on the sixth floor for two months, uncontrollable for a few days, and later, packed with drugs and incoherent. Doctors told my parents I likely would always be that way.

I thought I was Farrah Fawcett Majors for a while - my least favorite Charlie's Angel. But most of the time, I thought I was the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary delusion, I've since learned, is common among psychotic female bipolars. All that and I wasn't even original.

The details of that fall - written about in a half-finished book that likely never will see daylight - probably seem horrific to many. But to me, almost 20 years later, they're just part of my history. Something I cannot and would not change. After all, how many people get the chance to be God's right-hand girl?

I went back to college the next spring, graduated and moved to Colorado. I threw the lithium out my car window on the way, determined no doctor would squelch my emotions.

Four years ago, in the midst of a second major depression, I was once again diagnosed bipolar. A second diagnosis from a different doctor in a different state. The Colorado doctor really pissed me off. The first one, after all, could just have been wrong. This one made me face it.

Every day since, I've taken a fistful of pills each morning - vitamins, fish oil for brain-balancing Omega 3, an antidepressant, and a mood stabilizer. And a couple at night - both sleep aids. I fiercely dislike the sleep aids, a fairly new addition to the regimen that I blame on that cursed 40th year.

I've accepted the reality of the hated meds. The dilemma I now face is much harder. Truthfully, I like to think of bipolar disorder as just a little excess on both sides of the spectrum. Conversely, I like to bitch about the stigma, and how it needs to be shattered. I bitch about this to a select few. That makes me a hypocrite.

Further proof: I volunteer a few hours a month with the local Bipolar/Depression Support Alliance, leading a support group, answering phones, and serving on a committee. But when someone who knows nothing of my disorder asks me what I'm doing on those days, I say only that I have an appointment.

I'm proud of my volunteerism. But too ashamed to say where it is I volunteer.

If everyone moved at this rate, the stigma would come toppling down in two or three centuries.

I have miles to go on this journey to full-scale acceptance. But I have learned deeper compassion, I think, through this disorder. I have learned, too, to spot a fellow bipolar - admitted or otherwise - in the space of a few conversations.

Even though most of you reading this already know about my condition, this post makes me nervous. My heart is hammering as my hand moves toward the "Publish Post" icon. But it's a start, perhaps, toward telling others. Toward speaking out about it, ideally someday in a public forum. Maybe even toward finishing that book.

My dog, cat and I went for a walk in the falling snow tonight.

Yes, that's right -- my cat goes, too.

George walks with Ally and I in rain and sun, dark and bitterly cold.

I used to shorten my walks when George first began accompanying Ally and me, conscious of his very short legs and a lung capacity I foolishly thought was compromised by size. Then, after several attempts to carry him in which he kicked and struggled to be free, I realized he likes our evening strolls. He follows Ally and me up and down the streets of our hilly neighborhood on walks that sometimes last 90 minutes.

Passers-by sometimes pull over, peering out of their car window to ask, "Is that your cat?" Yes indeed, I say, that's my cat. "He thinks he's a dog," I say this part in a loud whisper, so they understand how delicate is his image, and how deeply entrenched this conviction is in his wee kitty head. They laugh uproariously and pull away, shaking their heads.

Tonight's weather seemed to suit him especially well. I think it suited all three of us well.

We walked on sidewalks deep with snow, snow so fresh that almost no one had yet shoveled it. George alternated between lagging behind, sometimes crying piteously for us to wait, and sprinting past us, his tail fat as a bottle brush with excitement. He ran repeatedly off the sidewalk into the deepest snow -- more than knee deep on a cat. He chirped when I bent to pet him, so happy he didn't just bump his head against my hand but stood on his hind legs and arched his orange neck grandly to do so.

He's a strange little fellow, with an admirable and comedic spirit. I already know he's the best cat I'll ever have.

Ally loped ahead of us for the most part, sometimes giving short chase to nervous rabbits, sometimes dragging her snout through the fresh snow and snorting as it went up her nose. She dropped and rolled in it on her back, turning for a moment from black to white, two coal black eyes looking out from her snow-packed face.

She's a fine pet, too, with a serious and gentle soul. A dog trainer who met her told me she would kill to protect my son Robby and me. But I realize, with some measure of guilt, that she hasn't crawled under my heart like her quirky little brother.

Their antics were the highlight of the walk. But the snow gave its own strong showing. It fell lightly, undisturbed for this night by wind. It swirled in quickly passing clouds as overburdened tree branches let loose their load. It turned bare trees into works of art, and evergreens back into Christmas-card models.

We live in a dry climate with warm winters, a mere two hours from the mountains in which I lived for 13 years. I hated those 8-month mountain winters with a passion. But these winters, with their balmy December and January days, don't seem right either.

Yesterday, the temperature was above 60. My friend e-mailed, "What a stellar day for January!" I agreed for the most part - it was a stellar day. But not for January. January should be snowy, the air nippy, the roads a little dicey - if for no other reason than to make me feel extra-special smart for having studded snow tires. It should also be cold enough for me to wear the really cool, but oh-so heavy, sweaters I accumulated during those many years of mountain living.

But most of all, it should be winter because without it, the change of seasons is too subtle. It lacks drama, something I cannot abide. We pass from one beautiful day to another, days slowly growing longer, temperatures rising slightly. Summer is precious, and my favorite season. But it's precious because it feels fleeting. It's special because I just can't get enough of it. Without winter, it loses some of its golden glow.

George is curled up on the floor near my computer now, comfortably weary from our snowy trek. Ally is loudly worrying a rawhide bone downstairs. I'm snug in my bathrobe, looking out at streetlights turned pink by low-hanging clouds.

It promises to snow all night. I can only hope.

It's mid-January and the clock is ticking for me to complete this first month's exploit. It's ticking even more loudly on a decision as to what the deed may be.

Ideas continue to trickle in from a variety of what I believe are friendly sources: "Buy a round of drinks for the bar!," said a woman on a barstool next to me last week. "Have sex in a public place," e-mailed a married friend. "Have sex, period," she added snidely. "Quit a job you hate," said an equally embittered co-worker who knows that this is a 2006 mandate for us both, not a feat of whimsy.

I was too hungover Sunday to deal with an Evangelical Christian service. But still, I hoped to accomplish some sort of derring-do. It was an ideal weekend. My son was with his father; a good time to do something that would otherwise embarrass and potentially scar him.

So I suggested to a Sunday shopping compadre that perhaps we could visit a sex shop and knock that one off the list. However, I realized that in order for it to be considered something new and daring, I need to do that one alone. Further, I think I need to ask the clerk a question, such as: "I'm allergic to latex. Do you make this in any other material?" or "Is this one-size-fits-all?" The thought alone makes me distinctly uncomfortable, but that's sort of the point of all this - testing my own boundaries and all. Together, she and I would just be two grown women giggling over dildos. And leaving her sitting in the car alone in front of a seedy business seemed cruel, to say the least.

Sadly, I squandered the weekend drooling over men in sports bars and shopping the spring sales. My most ribald experience was passive; watching "Brokeback Mountain" at the independent downtown theater seated next to two gay men. All most fun, but definitely nothing new. And the drooling, nice in its juvenile way, did not extend to speaking to a single one of the men. Kissing a guy from all 50 states appears unlikely. At this rate, I'll be lucky to kiss a guy from an adjacent zip code.

Every once in a while, I'm going to throw a monkey wrench into this blog and post something serious, like this. As much as this site is dedicated to making 2006 more fun, life is not always a party. Sometimes, it's a poem.

The words of this poem are sad and sweet.

Tuesday, I had lunch with a woman I'd last seen 18 years ago. Sylvia and her son Ryan, then 10, our landlady Ginny, and I shared a house in the late '80s. Ginny, a divorced woman in her 60s, owned the cabin in the town in which I held my second job. I leased a small bedroom from her. Sylvia and Ryan leased the basement efficiency apartment.

Sylvia was freshly divorced then, almost 10 years my senior, working hard to support herself and her son, dealing with a difficult ex-husband who castigated her relentlessly. I was fresh out of college, excited by my career, drinking to frequent excess and still perfecting the art of flirtation. Children were not on my agenda. Neither was divorce. Her life seemed worlds apart from mine, tinged with a sadness I did not want to touch me.

Nevertheless, we liked one another. I remember little of our conversations, only that Ginny, Sylvia, Ryan and I shared some nice moments in that 1920s cabin. Four generations under one small roof. Three compact cars vying for space in the short, narrow driveway, the last one home for the night (inevitably mine), typically parked on the shoulder of narrow, winding Shady Lane.

I lived there less than a year before moving two hours away to a ski resort community, invited there by the man who is now my ex-husband and son's father.

Sylvia and Ginny took me to dinner at the area's finest restaurant before I left. I remember only because I have a photograph of the three of us, nicely dressed, clinking wine glasses and grinning wildly for the camera. My mind, no doubt, was already forging ahead to the life that awaited me with my then-boyfriend.

I forgot Sylvia for years, remembering her only for a few seconds at a time when I flipped through the photo album and glanced at the picture.

Almost three years ago, I moved back down the mountain.

A week ago, as I was leaving the county office building, a woman called my name. She was stooped, with short, curly hair that was more gray than the brown it obviously once had been. "Do you remember me?" she asked, peering up into my face.

Instantly, miraculously, I remembered Sylvia and saw her in this aging woman's face. She was now a county employee, working in the assessor's office. Ryan was 28, and a mortgage broker. She asked about my son and my divorce; I had no idea she knew about either of these developments in my life.

Sylvia and I had lunch Tuesday. She lives, she said, in a small apartment with "no personality." She loves her job and recently was promoted.

"I never met or married," she told me. "I just look like an old lady, but really, I'm only 50."

She's had five back surgeries since last I knew her, one in which doctors mistakenly cut an artery in her leg. They inserted a tube they later realized was made of material harmful to human bone. She is, as a result of all this, permanently disabled, forever stooped.

"The doctors are sorry," she said, rolling her eyes and smiling. "They told me they're sorry."

Her share of the settlement from a class-action lawsuit was minimal.

At one point, she lost the use of her arms and legs. For a year, she moved only with a walker.

"But I got my arms and legs back," she said. "It could have been so much worse."

Ryan, she said, had gone through several years of drug addiction, years in which she woke daily not knowing if he were stilll alive. He survived.

Her sister did not. She died of breast cancer, and Sylvia - still working to regain her own mobility - cared for her round-the-clock for the last three years of her sister's life. Ryan, meanwhile, slowly climbed back into sobriety and society.

"I had some dark years," she said, her expression serene. "But these are happy years. Things are good now."

Another sister lives nearby. The two take a walk every evening. She sees Ryan regularly.

"He's so excited to see you," she said. "He always thought you were cool, too."

"You were always in my thoughts; I want you to know that. I've wondered about you so often. I'm just not good about keeping in touch."

I offered the appropriate response, but flushed with guilt, thinking how - with almost absolute completeness - I had forgotten Sylvia and Ryan all those years.

We parted on the sidewalk. "Don't worry," she said. "I'm happy now. Believe me." I looked at her relaxed face and smiling eyes, and I believed.

She walked back to the county building as I headed for the city parking garage. I watched her go, her back bent, head cocked up, arms clasped behind her back. She would never stand straight again. She likely would stay single, content to walk nightly walks with her sister and talk with her son, and work a job in which she felt needed and productive.

She does not move with grace anymore, but there is no one I currently know more graceful in spirit than Sylvia. She is a living lesson in peace and acceptance that I, a strong and able-bodied woman who is almost never completly content, am only beginning to learn.

Before this goes any further, I think you should know a little bit about me.

I am a 41-year-old single, bipolar, shopaholic, overly analytical, clutter-phobic, insomniac mother of one with a relationship rescuing complex. Meyers Briggs says I'm an ESFJ personality: The Caretaker. A people person with a strong need for approval. The "need for approval" part is my Achilles' heel.

Physically: I have great legs. Nice eyes, a nice smile, my father's nose (not a good thing), challenging hair and a small chest. Really, if you start from the toes and pan up, it's all downhill beyond the legs. Or if you just put me on my head, it's a direct downhill, and not nearly so difficult to explain. Not a dramatic, avalanche-inducing downhill, but my legs are as good as it gets for me and I accept that. I also know how to work it, and feign innocence about doing so.

My belly button is pierced, the victim of a 40th Vegas birthday celebration.

I have a fulltime job that includes required, daily, formula-variety writing.

I have an amazingly perceptive, smart, good-humored and cute 10-year-old son. I know every mom says these things about her child, but if you continue reading these posts, I'll convince you it's true.

We have a dog with an unrelenting funk, a cat who thinks he's a dog and two gerbils.

I drive a gold Saturn sedan with a spoiler and a sunroof that I thought was a pretty sharp car until we began meeting its identical twin at every stoplight in the city. I feel embarrassed, and frankly a bit angry, every time this happens.

I do yoga, which I think makes me sound spiritual and wise until I admit that I've never achieved the vast emotional benefits everyone talks about. Just taking slow, deep breaths is an enormous challenge.

I'm blessed - a word I never say aloud - with a wide and varied circle of friends.

My last serious relationship is four years in the grave.

I hate the words "blogging" and "blog."

Details on some of this stuff to follow. But that's plenty enough about me for now.

Back to the plan.