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.

This is the plan: In each of the year's 12 months, I'll do something I've never before done. Ideally, with friends in tow.

What these 12 acts are remains undetermined. Suggestions are welcome. Votes even may be taken. Veto power rests with me.

Skydiving? I think very probably not. I've bungee jumped. That, and the thing-at-the-carnival-where-the-bottom-falls-out-when-you're-spinning add up to more than enough gravity-related stunts for a lifetime. So no skydiving. No riding a bull named Fu Manchu either.

Two of my fellow auburn-haired friends are anxious to join me in the only idea that so far has gained unanimous approval. The book's suggestion: "Dye your hair blonde and see if they really do have more fun." Since each of us deals with the public daily, that seems a bit extreme. Wigs, however, will do just fine. Blonde for a day it is.

Most of the other ideas are not from the book. Once things got rolling, it seemed a shame to limit them. But they are still flitting about in my mental air, waiting for a commitment from me. Unassisted, this could take a while; commitment is not my specialty.

Attend an Evangelical Christian service, suggested the most conservative and Christian friend I have. I like this one because I've heard that not only do these folks do some magnificent cartwheels, the music - and the sound system that carries it - is rumored to be stellar.

I'll come clean: I like church music -- but in a church only. As long as I'm confessing, "Amazing Grace," and a whole host of other, extremely traditional hymns, moves me to tears. But I keep quiet about all this to protect my sacrilegious reputation as a recovering and bitter ex-Catholic.

The Catholics, however, have the best music in town. It's what kept me going long after I stopped believing the theology. But in keeping with my commitment issues, I am now an Unitarian. I'm content with the messages, appalled by the music. Lyrics, melodies and singing -- the whole kit and kaboodle is lackluster. Unitarians readily admit this is true; it is the one thing we know for sure.

Digression again. Sorry.

Among the other ideas: Work at a construction site for a day, fix and deliver a meal to someone who lives in a tent, rent a really hot car, head to the airport and fly anywhere, create a holiday and plan a celebration around it, eat something featured in "Fear Factor", pay ahead for half a dozen McDonald's orders and quietly watch reactions, try snowboarding, wear a mini skirt, stiletto heels and a feather boa to the grocery store, sing solo at a karaoke bar, kiss a guy from every state - in a year, not a month - peruse and make a purchase at a sex shop, put coke in my eyes and speed down a rural highway. OK, that one's a joke, but I know someone who did it -- someone who likely is reading this. Go a month without a drink. OK, that one's a joke, too.

A Starbucks, a police officer, and a super Wal-Mart somehow must be included in this year's misdaventures as well. Just how I don't yet know. But I bet someone in my wee readerland does.

Now that you have the idea, I think I should tell you something about me. It may help you understand why I feel compelled to potentially and publicly embarrass or maim myself. It may even help me understand.

But that is for another day. Night has fallen and I can't get "Amazing Grace" out of my head. Retribution, I suspect, for a wretch like me.

My friend handed me the book with an apology.

"My mom sent it to me," she said. "I don't know what she was thinking. Maybe you'll get a laugh out of it. Then please, just throw it out. Or do whatever you want."

What was her mom thinking indeed. It was one of these 3-inch-by-3-inch impulse booklets you stare at while waiting in line at Borders. The title, "What Every Woman Should Do Once," roller-coasted across the cover in playful cursive letters. A blonde cartoon woman in a red sequined dress and red heels perched on a love seat, a cat at her side, manicured nails holding a paper so long it curled to the floor. Her lips were pursed in a knowing grin.

I set the book aside, and didn't pick it up for three days. It sat on my kitchen counter, an incredible annoyance to a neat freak. I couldn't throw it out; it was, after all, a gift. Finally, I opened the thing and read it through. Once. It took about 90 seconds.

On each stiff page were no more than a dozen words, accented by drawings in the same cartoony style as the cover. A pair of pink-tinted sunglasses, a lime-green purse, black stiletto heels, an orange perfume bottle. All of them annoyed me; one disturbed me: a purple lipstick tube, its red contents cranked to maximum height.

"Smoke a cigar," the book urged. Done that, I thought. Swisher Sweets in college surely counted as cigars. "Make snow angels." I snorted. "Invent an interesting past." Why tweak with perfection? "Tell a man you love him first." I paused here, this was considered unusual?

I had done 10 out of 52. Not a bad percentage really, particularly when taken from such a stupid book.

I put the booklet aside. Two hours later, I picked it up again. Flipped a couple more pages. Tossed it into the garbage can. Snatched it out 20 minutes later.

"Kiss a guy from ever state." "Dye your hair blonde and see if they really do have more fun." "Head to the airport and fly - anywhere." "Have a three-martini lunch and go back to work refreshed."

It was ridiculous. Of course.

I looked at my "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" calendar and saw that it was mid-December, the end of a very twisted year. I needed a straight shot of something new, an infusion of fun, a sidestep from a largely looming mid-life crisis.

Perhaps I needed to do a few more of the things every woman should do once. I brushed the coffee grounds off the little book and looked at it with growing affection. This, I decided, was my ridiculously perky pocket guide to 2006.

Awkward Pose

"Awkward" is a yoga pose, an elevated squat in which your arms are held rigid in front of you, and your derriere stretches back, searching for a chair that never materializes. Even nice rear ends look bizarre, hovering in such an aggressive thrust.

In my class, the instructor always urges us to search even harder for the chair, to sink the hips deeper.

"You'll feel like you're going to lose your balance and fall backward," she says, "but trust me, you won't." She reminds us not to be quite so grim about it all. "Relax your face," she says in a soothing tone. And occasionally, "Smile. See what a difference it makes."

It's hard to smile when your thighs shake and burn. But if you can manage it, you forget for a second the torturous position in which you've voluntarily put yourself.

If you haven't seen it, you get the picture -- awkward pose is not among the graceful postures they select for the cover of the yoga video box. But viewed from certain angles, there's beauty to it, a grace in the arch of the back, and the V it creates between thighs and chest.

There's also a hint of desperation in the reach of the arms -- at least my arms. They're saying, "Give me a rope. Something, anything, to keep this body from falling." But I get through it every time, some days with ease and pride, some days with gratitude that it's over.

Awkward pose is, in short, my life.

In my 41 years, I have lost my balance and fallen backward more times than I can recall. Often, the effort to stay balanced makes my head spin and leaves every part hurting. From the outside, it looks kind of strange sometimes, even uncomfortable to sustain. But there are moments of beauty and grace amid the wobbly, repeated attempts to stay in the right posture.

Month by month, year by year, trauma by trauma, I'm gaining strength. And do I imagine it, or does my butt look better through it all?

Here, with you, on this new blog, I'll try to regain the sense of humor that once was so fine and lately seems dulled by complicated poses I should never have tried, and tough decisions that knocked some wind out of me. I'm reminding myself to breathe deep. Relax my face, and smile. See what a difference it makes.

With that mantra in mind, this year hopefully will be is a successful experiment in serious amusement. For further details on this haphazard plan, turn an e-page to the as-yet-unwritten Entry #2. Must admit, I'm curious myself.