Small victory: four of us were standing outside the kitchen this midmorning, in the sunny area by the back door, when the answering machine suddenly picked up. It's been doing that for the past couple of days—and no one seems to have touched anything that would make it suddenly stop. We try a bunch of things... I even turn the thing on its side and see a switch labeled "2/4/TS" and jiggle that around, but all of these anticlimactic attempts are ineffective. Then, Ian turns it over onto its back and finds something labeled "ringer: on/off". Hot. Jessie calls from her cell phone, and the phone rings. Score! Sean emerges from his room, no doubt after another ridiculously late night at the office, looking very confused.

I've been reading. Voraciously, dodging my own burdens and briefly donning those of someone else's for a night, then slipping back out with the turn of the last page, to the exclusion of real life.