For the record: I am not a fan of airing ones dirty launry in public. Nor do I find value in blogs that document every hangnail and heartache as though worthy of front page news. I know, I know, its the facebook phenonmena, but there is something to be said for keeping some things to yourself. See what I mean? Now you're wondering what they are....

So lets just not call this dirty laundry....I mean, its not really laundry if you fold it neatly and put in back in the drawer even if it has stains, right? So please, be my guest: examine my blouse with the coffee stains, my dirty gym socks, my skirt with the red permanent marker on the behind. I haven't sorted it into light and dark.

Why does a woman spends her Saturday ripping apart a chicken to make stock? Carrots, celery, onion, salt, bay leaf, and the bones of a dead bird. Headline: Former vegetarian retches as she listenes to sockets pop and wishbone snap.

I am running – to North Beach, from Santa Monica to Venice and back, down McCormick Ave past sculpture park, around and around the Claremont colleges, through the Cook County forest preserve where sparrow wings are smelts shimmering along the Bosphorus from Yenikoy to Tarabiya. I am moving on fast forward, or they are going in slow motion, the fisherman who raise up hooks of rows of floundering fish, their tackle boxes cluttering the walkway. They have the right of way, not power walkers, not families strolling, not the runner, me. Quick: a simit stand with fresh sesame rings to the left, a tea table to the right, a bucket with half-alive bait straight ahead, get out of my fucking way.

There are so many places I want to go: The teahouse up and around the bend, the place called Passion with cheesecakes.I stare at the plates but people think I am looking at their faces....but I won't go alone. Or I will, and then I will want to leave.

Now I am walking, in my baggy pants and bulky sweatshirt, as unattractive as possible. I plug in my ipod but I can't find a soundtrack. I can’t listen to Dixie Chicks...I can’t listen to Shakira...I can’t listen to anything I listened to in California...I start, I stop. I break into run, and there are cars parked on the sidewalk. I step off the curb, and a motorcycle comes zipping around the bend. I start running, and a family is coming. I run in front of cars because I will be waiting until next December if I expect the world to stop for me here. I run across streets, accross cobblestones, accross my students. A boy and a girl. They are sitting, sweetly, on a bench. They smile, I wave. They seem startled to see me as a person instead of a teacher. They are having a talk, but I can tell by their postures they are new at these kind of talks, the boy and girl on a bench by the water on a Sunday morning kind of talks. I want to sit behind them and tell them what to say. Will they break up when they leave for college? Are they even together? Will they think of each other fondly or grow bitter?

Now I am running again. Fast. Sweating, wearing an unsupportive sports bra, I take up as much space as I please as my arms pump back and forth an my legs keep time with the bicycle way down the road in front of me. Rollerbladers in oakley sunglasses are the only insects on the trail, and moms who just had babies inside now push them in strollers. I know every curve and when I get to the tree with the tangled roots I'm almost there. I'm almost there. Thousands of miles and amost there. There is no fear that I will get lost, or find myself in a neighborhood of headscarved women who watch. It would be presumptuous to say judge.

I know: I’ll see if they sell soy sauce and ginger at the Macro center. I know: I’ll buy a cake and invite people over to eat it. I’ll get coffee and read the paper. But not alone. I know: I will make something. Yes, that sounds like a brilliant idea.

I am tired. I may or may not do crunches. I will probably rush to water in the form of a drink or a shower. I will catch up on foreign affairs in this order: CNN, Time, Tabloid. I will admit to myself I perfer novels to news and I think fiction is more honest than the truth. I will get my book and read until I will scold myself for being unproductive.

I will eat simply because its time. I will not talk to anyone. I will grade papers. I will have an inspiration for a lesson, decide it won't work, and do it anyway. I will sit on an overcrowded bus. I will do yoga and remove all stress form my life. I will wait for a call from anyone that says they love me and miss me. I will wonder what I am doing.