Saturday morning

For the first time in 2006, I didn't wake up in Manhattan.

At 5 a.m., Canada geese flew over the lake outside, and the honking woke me through the open window. I got up at 8:30, put on my bathing suit, and swam for a half hour. Poached eggs and black coffee for breakfast, followed by a row around the circumference of the lake. By noon, my hair was blonder and my freckles were coming out. I opened the first Bell's Oberon of the day and sat on the deck, reading this week's New Yorker and listening to Sleater-Kinney. A man and his two kids fished from a boat slowly motoring down the lake.

An entire day was in front of me, and in a brief moment of self reflection, I wondered if I had somehow gone crazy in the preceding months.