I kept forgetting to go to bed last night, even though I was yawning by ten. As it got later and later I turned on the television and found MASH on, and who can resist the Trapper John years? They were clearly the best ones. Anyhow, the television and I will be parting ways for the rest of the week. Everything in the world and I will be parting ways for the rest of the week, because this is the week that I have to get my life in order. It's been out of order for too long. I wish I could pause the whole world while I get sorted out, but I wish a lot of things. The Captain keeps asking me the same question over and over, "Are we going to? Are we?" Her face is so hopeful, and I keep saying, "I don't know, I don't," but today I'll tell her that we won't, not this week anyway. I just want to feel by the time Friday arrives that there's no looming danger, and it should be fine, so long as I get to it.

I overslept this morning, unsettlingly. I've been forgetting to go to bed all my life, but I never forget to wake up. I slept through the alarm, though I suppose it was a quiet one. Volume never seemed to matter because I've always woken up just before the alarm, just in time to shut it off before it sounds. I slept through the scaffolders doing what sounded to me later like stapling the building together. It's not as though I was late for anything, but I still don't like it. I have to practice routines, my head and I will have to implement a system.

The boys are leaving Queens for good at the start of next week, leaving me alone here, alone in the world. Just a bit ago I got an official invitation to the last party they'll have in that apartment. That apartment's been with us for eight years. Michael wrote the world's longest invitation. There were brief paragraphs on everyone he invited, all of my favorite people, and they were funny and horrible and sharp and sweet. It made me too sentimental. It made me feel like I'd miss everyone, like it would be a going away party for everyone on that list, even though no one's really going anywhere, even though it's only Michael and the Egg going from one borough to the other.

You know, I had other things, but I've lost them in my sleepy head and the list I keep there of what needs to be done.

p.s. When I finally remembered to go to bed I turned on the radio and there was a man on reading from Don Quixote. I don't know what the show was or why, and I was too practically asleep to really hear any of the story, but the sound of his voice was nice.