It’s not that I’m not doing things, I am doing things, I am doing a lot of things, I’m taking trains into the city and ripping my skirt on the arm rest so that my underwear shows and I have to run into a store and buy a new skirt, I’m meeting my youngest sister for dinner and getting schmackled on a bubbly red, I’m walking home from the train station at 11 under a full moon, I’m reading the entire New Yorker in bed in the morning while the men hammer and bang things somewhere else on my house. The house! I’m driving to Stamford to look for wood flooring, I’m agreeing to expensive additional procedures for the renovation, I’m calling the tree man in for a consultation, I’m talking to our contractor about our progress and handing him an enormous check, I am in pursuit of the perfect front door.

I'm reserving a room at a midtown hotel, where I'm planning to meet my husband tonight, I'm holding an appointment for a haircut on Wednesday, before I head to the Open with my father. I’m slowly making my way through Saturday, although it’s overdue, I’m going through the children’s papers for the first day of school, I’m following Gonzales’ resignation, and the arrest of Larry Craig. I'm eating breakfast, and I'm even doing the dishes.

The children are gone, is the dramatic way of saying that they are at their grandparents’, and happy, and that they slept through the night. I had so many things to do in their absence, but I didn’t understand how I would feel, doing them.