Tonight Michael admitted to me that a few years ago he and Jolene decided to become alcoholics, thinking it would somehow improve their art.

I told him how not only did I once decide the very same thing, but was, at that very moment, mixing the two beers my refrigerator with a half-finished short story open on my PC.

Kismet!

I panicked.

Completely panicked.

But wouldn't you if your landlord called you at work at 4pm on a Friday to announce that he was turning your apartment into a condo and you had one week to tell him you wanted to buy it, otherwise he would expect you to move out in 60 days.

60 days.

90 if I *work* with him.

I called Erika. She was practical. I cried. I didn't want to be practical.

I called Todd. He empathized. He offered to buy me lunch, help me look for an apartment, and move my books and cds and postcards and big bucket of sidewalk chalk.

I perked up. A little.

While I was shutting down my PC, I thought about those charming little brownstones that Erika and I saw in Charlestown a few weeks back.

Walking out to my car, I began to think about moving somewhere where the lord of the land would let me paint the walls majestic purple and periwinkle blue and bottle green and burnt orange.

And on the entrance ramp to the MassPike, I imagined what life would be like when I had a bathtub again.

In under an hour, I turned it around. And now my tragedy is an adventure.

Under an hour.

Wow.

Beat that.

The poke of the thermometer under my tongue.

Tingly antihistamines coursing through my veins.

Being sick mixes this draggy feeling with a childhood familiarity. Comforting in a weird, cloudy way.