"There were moments bristling with deadness, when she looked out at her life and went 'What?' Or worse, feeling interrupted and tired, 'Wha—?' It had taken on the shape of a terrible mistake. She hadn't been given the proper tools to make a real life with, she decided, that was it. She'd been given a can of gravy and a hairbrush and told, 'There you go.' She'd stood there for years, blinking and befuddled, brushing the can with the brush."—"Willing", Lorrie Moore

The clocks going forward has thrown me off. I feel disordered and maybe a wee bit deranged. It doesn't help that the office has been quiet lately: no emails, clients, or solicitors to distract me. My schedule goes off-kilter: no yoga or morning pages, late dog walks, sleepless nights. While recalling this or that disaster, I listen to the husband snoring, and when he doesn't, poke him to make sure he's alive.

If you told me I was actually stuck in a boat on my own in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, I'd believe you.

In an attempt to get a hold of myself, I survey my domestic realm of peeling wallpaper and smudged mirrors, roll up my sleeves, and dust and hoover. Carpets are a bugbear. Why not a handsome wood floor that you can sweep quietly in minutes? The inventor of carpets did not account for hair: the amount shed by a dog or person, the way it finds those nooks unreachable by hoover, how it webs over space. You have to get on your knees and pick at these webs, wresting each filament from the carpet's grubby, much-trodden fibres. Cursing, I consider shaving myself bald. Somehow I scrape enough hair the size of a wee creature, half human, half dog, a second, very queer pet. What should I name it?

Oh mercy. What have I become? A person too sensitive to time, hair, husbands, etc.

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