I forgot to say yesterday, one of the reasons I was so motivated to start the gym thing is that I�ve been sleeping like crap lately, for about the past two or three weeks. It�s as if I�ve forgotten how to do it. I�m sleeping more than I used to and I have more trouble waking up and then it takes me hours to wake up completely; if you make a joke before noon, chances are I�m not going to get it. I feel something like the weight of myself, and I do not like it. I honestly don�t think this is an existential situation (though I continue to weigh the possibility) and it may be seasonal but I�ve never been seasonally clobbered like this before � though, like the onset of October gloom, is that another instance of forgetting as survival strategy? � so I�m operating under the assumption that it�s just one of those things and that eventually it will go away. Though sooner than later would be nicer.

Poker last night. Host Julian was an ace magnet, I was neither the big winner nor the big loser. The Yankees, in my opinion, are both of these things at the same time. Then Steve and Stephen and Dave and I went out to hoist a few in honor of Steve�s birthday: happy birthday to Steve, if he is reading this which not that it matters I don�t think he is. There is a minor social brouhaha going on, one that simmered for a while and has now escalated, in which I figure prominently. It is too silly for me to waste time describing it here. By the time you read this, I will be on my way to pick up Steve at work en route to Vancouver, where we will spend a weekend among the inhabitants of exotic Canadia and I am going to go running in the company of a boyfriend for the first time in my life. I am liking British Sea Power.

When I got set to move back here three summers ago, I gave myself the assignment of turning disgrace into reprieve, so suffering must become love, and the opportunity for a new beginning in a place that I could call home. This involved what amounted to a state of constant self-hypnosis, and since back then I had not yet been bent over by the IRS and still had a chunk of money to my name, it also involved a lot of shopping. I came out here on an apartment-hunting mission and while I was in town I went to an outlet mall with a friend of mine who�d just gotten an enormous bonus or sold some stock or something, I forget, and with glee we spent many many hundreds on an obscene amount of stuff. It was one of those magical shopping days where everything fits and everything is on sale. I found a pair of four-hundred-dollar boots marked down to thirty, an eggplant-colored silk wrap blouse that was the most perfect shirt I�ve ever owned, a super slutty bronze Lurex halter top, and an elegant brown suit. I had never spent time alone with this particular friend � I knew her through a girl I worked with at TankedStock.com, whom she�d known for years � and in this sense too the day was a revelation, because she was terrific, opinionated and funny and independent, a no-bullshit kind of gal with whom I bonded instantly, and we made plans for things we�d do and ass we�d kick together when I got back for real. That evening I had to go to the apartment I�d agreed to rent and sign the lease papers. I had liked my landlady immediately and adored the apartment as soon as I saw it. She seemed fond of the rental property too, rather than merely custodial, and also happy that it was I who would be living in it. After our business was done we sat on the porch and chatted for a little while and I told her what I�d done that day. I was all bubbly about the gorgeous clothes I�d bought, and she asked to see and then admired my taste in having chosen them, adding that she was excited for me and the incipient new life I�d wear them in. You know, she said, this apartment is officially yours now, so if you like you can leave your new things in the closet here, and that way when you come back here with the van you�ll be coming home to your own beautiful stuff. What a great landlady I�m getting, I thought. I had an overwhelming and irresistible sense that things were starting to be fine, the broken pieces of me were coming together into something that couldn�t be anything but good. I flew back to PA on a plane and drove back here in a van and moved in, and I was so excited about everything, still flying high on that optimism, that I didn�t notice for a few days that my bags of clothes weren�t in the bedroom closet where I�d left them. I called the landlady and asked her where they were, and she said, Oh, my husband was in there doing some painting and I told him not to get any on your bags, let me talk to him and find out where he put them and I�ll call you back. She didn�t call back, and she didn�t call the next day, and she didn�t call the day after that, so I tried again. She seemed less friendly towards me, maybe even flustered, and said she�d forgotten to ask him and would call me the next day. No, I said, I will call you. When I did, she was not home, and she didn�t return the voice mail messages I left. I am too trusting and slow to catch on, but by this time I knew something was up. Finally � and actually this took a few months of lame excuses and non-callbacks and a tentatively floated theory about a break-in that was ridiculous even to me (I called her bluff by saying I wanted to report the theft to the police), not to mention a nauseous withering of respect for someone who�d been so kind to me � she admitted that her husband had forgotten what she�d said about my bags. When he saw them, he thought they were some old junk that the previous tenant had left behind, so he threw them away.

It�s strange, the random things that it�s so hard to get over. And embarrassing. There�s a part of my brain that�s still in denial about the missing clothes and the auspicious day that was repossessed from me; every so often I open my closet what-should-I-wear-today and I think, Ooh, purple shirt, I want to wear my purple shirt and the remembering, after the heady millisecond of anticipation, never stings any less. I have had dreams in which I�m wearing the luscious boots, and once I had a heartbreaker one in which my landlady got in touch to say that her burnout boytoy husband hadn�t thrown the bags away after all, she�d just found them behind some boxes in her basement and when did I want her to drop them by. In real life, on Queen Anne, she was obviously embarrassed by what had happened, her feeling bad felt genuine to me even though I was angry and disgusted that she hadn�t been up front with me, and she had me recreate as best I could the list of what I�d bought and how much it had cost. But it wasn�t the same, I�d never be able to buy any of the same things at the same prices again, and since I�d left the receipts in the bags I couldn�t even be sure that I�d itemized accurately. At first I had the idea that I�d make myself feel better by taking the check she would give me and spending another carefree day shopping and blowing it all � I couldn�t get the same things at the same prices, OK, but maybe I could get equally pretty things at equally good prices. Or even close! Close would have been fine, because truly four-hundred-dollar boots for thirty are a once-in-a-lifetime event, I did acknowledge that. But there wasn�t even a check. Instead my landlady had me split the loss in half � and that affected me too, the fact of having to quantify that day that had been so marvelous and such a gift � and subtract it from two consecutive months of rent checks. And shortly after I moved back, the friend I�d gone shopping with had a falling-out with her friend who�d been my work pal, it was messy but my loyalties were unquestionable, and then my shopping friend started dating someone new and hanging out with a different and avidly coupled-up crowd and I never talked to her again except at parties. And of course you know it turned out not to be a happy healthy homecoming after all.

(What is the story of my life? What is the story of my life here?)

A few days ago I got e-mail from the shopping friend�s boyfriend, the same guy, who is another former colleague of mine from the Tank. It was a mass mailing to the effect that the previous morning � he described the setting � while they were on vacation, he�d proposed and she�d accepted. There was a single digital picture attached and a promise in the note of more to come. Though I have no idea why this was, I flashed back to the day of shopping in a satisfying bittersweet way that felt almost like this was its transfigured final resolution. I wanted to see what they looked like, I wanted to see what giddy expectation and a future full of happy looked like on the faces of my friends, I wanted to see them standing together against the sunrise he�d written about � I wanted someone to have something � and I have to tell you I think of myself as an intransigent cynic, but when I clicked the picture open and it was an extreme close-up of an extremely large engagement ring, I was overcome by a sense, strange but true, of shame and superfluity, of fuck-it-what�s-the-use. Sometimes I feel like I don�t know anything.