-- Saturday, February 12, 2000 --

12:47 a.m. Astute readers have been noticing an air of -- ennui -- wafting through my last couple of entries. And you've been correct, oh most perceptive reader(s) ... I have been ... a little bit edgy and not quite myself.

That's because my beloved Igor has been away on a business trip and I've been maintaining the brave facade and the stiff-upper-chin that all good wives must learn to erect. But the truth is that we have been together for a long while, a very long while, and we like to be together and don't particularly do as well when we're apart.

Awwwww. That's so sweet. But it's true. Best friend and all of that. Plus, he was traveling on Alaska Air, and even though I know the statistics and I know the odds, I still know that there is a terror associated with about ten minutes of corkscrewing into the concrete surface of the ocean that I don't want to think about.

Luckily, Igor falls asleep pretty much after he's jammed his stuff into the overhead. He's the fun guy who sits on the aisle seat with his huge laptop and attaché, grabs the extra cans of juice, and then snores and slobbers for the rest of the flight. I often pretend I don't know him when we travel together.

So, now he's back home in the nest and sleeping off dinner on the couch upstairs and although I'm just as alone in my office and at my machine as I was last night, I don't feel alone. He calls it "pre-sleeping" by the way. I wake him up when it's time to go to bed so that he can go to bed, too. And all's right with the world again.

I'll tell you why I don't like to write about misery in these pages: because misery, just like everything else, passes away. Changes. Aches turn dull after a while. Hurts heal. Bruises become rainbows.

And I know that joy comes and goes as well, but when you take a pulse, you can either measure systolic or the diastolic. The up or the down beats. I'm going with the ups. Might as well.

So that's why yesterday's entry was a bit muffled.

Today I finished and mailed off a big chunk of the next book in the queue, and I wrote about an interesting incident that happened in line at Kinko's for my World Year piece. I'll link to it when it's up on Monday, but meanwhile there's plenty o' fine writing there already from a wonderful group of writers for you to sample.

Yes. I wrote something before the deadline was scraping against my backbone. Yes. It's because I'm so happy again. Happy that things are back to normal around here. Good old normal. Soon, with any luck, I will start to take it for granted.