Tuesday night, the night before we were to leave, I was still vacillating—what to do? Go? Stay? What if I go and I get worse? What if I stay and get better? I had a prescription of amoxicillin just in case, but it wasn’t very strong. My sleep that night was fitful. My alarm was set for 3:00 a.m.

I woke up at 2:30 and went to the bathroom and threw up. At 3:00, my godsister called and said she was worried I shouldn’t go, was worried that the illness was a sign that I wasn’t supposed to be on this trip. I didn’t know if I agreed. But, as much as I hate it, I do have a bit of a superstitious streak, and I thought immediately of all the stories about people who should have been on the plane that crashed but overslept, that kind of thing. Stories about mining disasters, about men who survived because they just happened to be hungover that morning and stayed home.

Jesse woke up, and I just sat on the couch, half dressed and wet from the shower I’d somehow managed to take, crying, not at all sure what I should do, not wanting to stay, but not wanting to go either. I was so weak I could barely stand.

He said, well, let’s get you to the church. (Where we were meeting the rest of the team.) If you feel too bad there, I’ll bring you back home. If not, go to Raleigh. If you feel too bad there, I’ll come pick you up. If not, go to DC. If you feel too bad there, we’ll get you on a plane home. As long as you’re in the States, there’s time to turn back.

I nodded, pitifully, and he helped me put on clothes, and he put my things in his car, and he drove me to the church parking lot, where I cried some more, curled up in the front passenger seat of his car. By the time the van showed up, I was feeling a little better, the nausea not as strong as it had been, and I got in the van (front seat, so I could keep my eyes on the horizon) and went to Raleigh.

And at Raleigh I felt better, so I went to DC. And then we had a nine-hour layover. At lunch, I took a Mucinex and started to feel much better. Ah, I thought, I’m so glad I came, I’m getting better.

Then, while waiting at the gate, I started to feel very hot. I was flushed, my neck and face a brilliant shade of strawberry. I felt kind of prickly.

This whole time, I had been telling myself, well at least I don’t have a fever. If I had a fever, I’d know I should really stay.

I’d packed a thermometer, but it was in my checked luggage. No one else had one. Some of them went to hunt for one in the airport shops, but they were unsuccessful. I was right back where I’d been that morning. What to do? What was the right answer? Was this some kind of sign? Or was this something I needed to persevere through? It was agonizing.

Then Christie, who used to work at a hospital, pointed out that I didn’t feel that hot to the touch and that the flushing looked more like an allergy than a fever. I realized the Mucinex had been one of those time-released things and called my doctor’s office to get a nurse’s opinion. They called back later and said they’d had people with a similar reaction to Mucinex and that it would in all likelihood go away on its own.

That gave me a bit of relief, but I still had a decision to make. Without the Mucinex as an option, I would have all the congestion and stuffiness to deal with, and I was facing a fifteen-hour flight, an overnight stay in Ethiopia, another three-hour flight, a six-hour bus drive through Rwanda, an overnight stay in Rwanda (at a guest house I knew offered fairly rough accommodations), and then a week of go-go-go in Congo, followed by another several days of travel. But. I’d been planning and preparing for this for months, and there was all that money spent, and I really thought I was on the upswing, that if I could just sleep through the flights then I’d more than likely recover quickly, and if not I always had the antibiotics.

I was kind of a mess. I went to the bathroom and just sat in one of the stalls, the only place I could come up with where I could be alone. I just sat there and cried and prayed for the right answer. Then I realized: there was no right answer. I felt calm, almost instantly. There was no right answer. I could stay. Or I could go. It was just a choice. So, I thought, all right, I have a decision to make. Well, what’s the better story? Going is the better story. Going and being sick was a better story than staying. So, I went to the sinks and washed my face and took some deep breaths and went back to the gate. I was going.

Just before I boarded the plane (literally, I was two or three people from the door of the plane), airport security pushed their way through the line and stopped the man in front of me, pulling him out of the line and asking for his identification.

My immediate thought was: Oh, crap! A terrorist! I wasn’t supposed to go! I told myself I was being ridiculous, and boarded the plane. I sat down, started arranging my stuff, pulling out my sleep mask and earphones, getting a book within easy reach. Maybe he was a terrorist, but the security guys have him now, and he’s not on the plane. Well, then who walks right onto the plane and past me toward the back? I started texting Jesse, telling him how much I love him, just in case the plane is going to crash (I don’t mention the man in any of my texts). Then, they closed up the plane and we took off.

Well, you know the end of the story. We didn’t crash. I didn’t die. In fact, I was sick right up until we got into Congo, and the first day we were there I felt remarkably, unexplainably better. No need for the antibiotics. This is all the more amazing because of what happened on our flight to Ethiopia. See, we did have a sort-of terrorist on board, but it wasn’t the man.

It was a little girl, elementary-school-aged. Who screamed at the top of her lungs, for nearly fifteen hours straight. That sleep I wanted to get? The sleep I was sure would aid my recovery? Nope. Didn’t happen.

I could try and describe it, or I can just show you.

But, then he did something shocking and started wanting a baby, right about the time I stopped wanting one. It seems the closer I get to thirty (the magic number, it seems, for when you’re Supposed to Be Pregnant Already), the less I want kids. I inched back onto the “Maybe” side and then slid right back to “Eh, is that really necessary? I kind of like things how they are.”

I have found that the more time I spend with people who have kids, the more thankful I am that I don’t have them myself. I know how bad that sounds. I know they love their kids, and I love their kids too, and I’m absolutely sure I don’t know what it is I’m missing, all that fierce unconditional love and seeing the product of your marriage in bodily form, the mystical elements and the tangible ones, the hugs and all that.

But the pendulum has swung hard the other way and I’m trying to remember what exactly I found attractive about the whole having children thing. It seems when a woman has a baby, her world becomes said child—a vibrant and varied life becomes, on the surface at least, a long string of discussions and thoughts about poop, naps, breastfeeding, and endless debates about the ever-fascinating Cloth vs. Disposable issue. (Right about now, I’m worried the pitchforks are coming out…)

I know there’s the whole “new life” thing, but it seems more like a death to me right now, the ending of one life in order to make room for another. The eclipsing of one’s thoughts and personality with the new baby and its needs.

I see the necessity in this, the absolute biological necessity in the parents’ having tunnel vision. They need to keep an infant, something entirely helpless and fragile, alive. No small task there. They have to disappear, at least a bit, in order to do their job. Is there anything worse than a neglectful parent, or an abusive one? It seems to go against nature.

It’s just, nothing about that job seems attractive to me right now. (Also, I don’t find newborns cute. In pretty much all cases. Babies are at some times cute, but then they usually poop or vomit, making up for any momentary adorableness they may have displayed.) As soon as you make it through the baby stage, you have to potty train, and then educate, and don’t even get me started on the teen years. And if you do your job right, the best outcome you can expect is that your kids will leave you eighteen years later and you’ll just end up with empty-nest syndrome.

Cynical much? I know. Sorry. Well, I’m not really sorry. I’m sure I’ll change my mind again, probably a dozen times over, but this is where I sit now. And I know this view is going to be unpopular with probably most people I know, but oh well. Someone had to say it. I can’t be the only one who feels this way.

Two days a week, I watch A, a most adorable two-year-old boy. And I love that job, and I feel it’s important, and I throw my whole energy into it—trying to teach him shapes, reading to him, singing to him while he eats lunch. I have a great job, and I think he’s a great kid. I really wouldn’t trade it, and I think I do a good job of it, if I do say so myself. But I go home exhausted and wonder how on earth people manage it twenty-four hours a day. I get to go home and make myself lunch in silence. Then, I read or I write or I nap or I do laundry or I go to the beach or I make dinner or I do whatever the heck I want to do.

Maybe one day, I’ll be unselfish enough to want to parent another human being all the time. Maybe then I’ll see what I’m missing and I’ll write all about it, I’ll tell you just how fascinating those diapers really are, and maybe you’ll believe me or maybe not. But regardless, this is not that day, and I’ll leave the mothering to my friends, who are better people than I am and have a much, much harder job.

Is there anything better than a stack of books and a cat in the window?

Yesterday, A.’s mother was home, sick, so he and I spent most of our time outdoors, to try and let her rest. We took a forty-five minute walk, and he was remarkably good and only got restless toward the very end. The weather was perfect—just on the edge of chilly, but bright and clear. A. spent most of the walk pointing out every vehicle, along with their color. “Hello, white truck!” “Goodbye, blue truck!” (Which sound more like, “Hewwo why tuck!” and “Bye, bloooo tuck!”)

At home, he’s got a library book about heavy machinery, which he loves, and at one point in our walk we passed a big truck obliterating some tree stumps, and A. called out, “Backhoe! Loader! Backhoe! Loader!” (“Loader” is for “Front-end loader.”)

We also spent a good amount of time in their backyard, which is more garden than yard—a tangle of roses, azaleas, and camellias under a canopy of Japanese maples, loquats, and a couple giant oaks, all with stone and brick paths snaking through it. It’s idyllic, especially on a cool spring morning, all dewy and soft light, the birds singing and swooping down to the bird feeders for a morning snack.

They’ve got a couple tiny chickens and a white rabbit who live back there too. Yesterday, as A. and I inspected a set of irises, the bunny hopped up to us and stared and A. was captivated and excited but trying so hard to be quiet and still until the dog ran up, wanting to play, scaring the rabbit off. Later, the chickens came within arm’s reach of me and then wandered off under a tree to scratch for bugs. What a life, I thought, a two-year-old boy with fine blond hair and a yard with flowers and tiny spider webs and a bunny with one ear flopping over and tiny chickens clucking.

The rest of the afternoon was errands, lunch, a chat with Simona, more errands, garden stuff with Sharon, bill paying, and another Congo meeting. It was a little rushed, a little crazy, but today the weather’s good again and the garden will get more attention and I’ll get to write. And there is a stack of books that needs my attention, and I’ve got no intention of making them wait.

Until I realized, while reading about van Gogh’s life, that I now had the distinct privilege of explaining mental illness and suicide to a seven-year-old. I was kicking myself—how do you forget that van Gogh was probably schizophrenic, cut off his own ear, and later shot himself in a wheat field? I guess I figured the book (with a cartoon Vincent and Theo traipsing around France) would explain it for me or be a little more careful about the more unsavory parts of his life. Well, at least the author had the good sense to leave absinthe out of it (though I noticed a cartoon Gauguin drinking something a telltale shade of green).

I went into damage control mode as well as I could, trying to bring mental illness into the vocabulary of a (rather brilliant) first grader, assuring her that had he lived today doctors would have been able to help van Gogh, trying to use it as a teaching point (what should you do if you know someone who is very sad and never feels happy?). But I thought, and had the good sense not to say out loud, that the world might have missed out on something if he’d been healthy, if he’d been well adjusted, if he’d stayed out of trouble, if he’d had success while he was still alive. Can truly good art come without pain? Can a truly good story be told without darkness?

Needless to say, we never made it to the coffee table book. M. didn’t want to see the paintings and said she’d rather play something happy now. Later, as we were playing outside (having been transported there, by a time machine), M. turned to me and said, “Next time you bring me a story, will you bring me one that’s not so sad?” I smiled apologetically and agreed. And mentally crossed off the artists and the poets and the revolutionaries and the dreamers and the prophets. Because she’s seven, there’s the rest of her life to learn that suffering is just part of the deal, and she needs someone far smarter to explain that to her.

The reason for my early morning was a dentist appointment. I don’t dislike dentist appointments in the same way some people do, but, generally, getting my teeth cleaned, poked, scraped, and x-rayed doesn’t rank very high on my “Things to Wake Up Early For” list. But, I dutifully show up at my dentist’s office every six months because that’s the kind of person I like to believe I am. I once went three years without going to the dentist, and this was cause for some embarrassment and a general sense of dismay when I finally got an appointment and had to admit I’d not been to a dentist in three years. But then the hygienist said she couldn’t believe it had been that long since my last cleaning and pronounced my teeth in good shape, and I felt enormously better. My teeth are not particularly attractive (I was one of those kids who didn’t need braces, so now I admire the perfectly straight post-braces teeth of my peers and smile for pictures with my mouth closed), but they are clean. I don’t, however, floss. I feel you should know that, lest you think I’m someone I’m not.

Now that you know my dental history and the condition of my teeth, we can move on. I left the dentist’s office and spent the rest of the morning watching the two-year-old I babysit. We played outside, took a walk, worked on learning the shapes, talked about colors (“What color is this?” “Boo.” “Yes! Blue! Very good! Blue!”), and read a stack of library books about ducks and numbers and heavy machinery. When I came home, I poked around online looking for information about education for two-year-olds because I want to make sure I’m maximizing the time I spend with him. If I could be nanny-and-teacher, that would be a win-win for everyone—the parents would get more for their money; the little boy would learn things and become a prodigy and star in a YouTube video where he names all the states and their capitals in the order they joined the union; and I would feel productive and useful. Today I felt we did a good amount of educational play, and I do think it’s important to have times of objective-free play, but I’d like to learn more.

The rest of the day was a chiropractor appointment and a variety of errands and chores. For dinner, I made vegetable soup, cleaning out my veggie drawer. Basically, if it was in my fridge or freezer and was some variety of edible plant, it went in the soup. Oh, plus macaroni. Super easy, super tasty, and it made the house smell great. Tomorrow, my friend Beth and her mom will be in town, and that means tomorrow morning will be another early one for me. But this time, I’ll spend those pre-dawn moments cleaning my house and setting up the futon and buying a pork loin and some good balsamic vinegar for dinner. Much better—sorry, Dr. L—than a visit to the dentist.

It actually starts on Thursday night, when Jesse showed me this short film about a three-legged dog who dies. The film (“Last Minutes with Oden”) was well made, and I was fine in the beginning, before I realized that Oden was a dog. The dog who loves and accepts everyone, no matter how outcast they are. The dog who loves his tattooed owner and his balding friends, who doesn’t care who you are or what you’ve done. A dog who has cancer and is in pain. I lost it when Oden stood, revealing one front leg missing. One thing you must know about me is that I will instantly bawl upon seeing an animal of any variety that is missing a limb. You know that two-legged dog they parade around on talk shows? Yeah. I cry like a baby.

“But why?” Jesse asks. “It’s happy! It’s triumphing over adversity!”

That’s just it. I don’t think I can fully explain it, but there is something about a creature who has never hurt someone, never been obnoxious or rude, who (probably) cannot understand what is happening to it, there’s something about a creature like that, who shouldn’t even have lived, hopping around the stage of The Ellen DeGeneres Show. There’s something about it.

So you can imagine my state as the tattooed man carried the three-legged Oden to the car, as his friends said goodbye, asking the dog to tell Jesus hello for them, as they drove to the vet’s office. As a grown man covered in ink, his hands looking worn and his face gently lined, sobbed on the floor of the vet’s office, sobbed as the needle went into one of the remaining legs, sobbed as the dog closed his eyes, as his head sunk in the man’s hands.

I was a mess.

That was Thursday night, just before bed. Friday started early, because I had the Pampered Chef party to prepare for. The day was normal for about twenty minutes. The sun wasn’t up, not because it was too early for that, but because the sky was a stubborn mess of clouds. I got a phone call with some bad news and spent the rest of the morning a complete mess again. Finally I pulled it together and went to my babysitting job. At which I whimpered again, looking at a precious blond two-year-old and telling him he didn’t need to know about the sad parts of life yet, that he could wait longer for that, knowing he wasn’t understanding what I was saying.

At naptime, I took the boy upstairs and we went through the nap-rituals, and I sang “Old MacDonald” to him as I rocked him, as his head fell back onto my shoulder, heavy and tired. I sang until I ran out of barnyard animals, and then I kept singing, adding things like monkeys and, when I became really desperate, cheese. Finally, I put him in his crib and went downstairs.

The house is a lovely older home, eclectically decorated, with a large window in the kitchen that overlooks the backyard and a series of birdfeeders and squirrel feeders, which are densely populated in the mornings. The neighborhood is nice—no, more than nice. But a couple weeks ago, the boy’s father told me to keep the doors locked if we left for a walk, as there’d been some incidents of people looking for open doors, looking for easy targets for a burglary.

So, after the singing and the sleepy baby, I tiptoed downstairs, a dirty diaper in my right hand to throw into the trash can on the back porch. I walked into the kitchen. Where the back door stood open.

I instantly freaked out, spinning around, sure I would see someone standing behind me. No one was there, so I spun back toward the open door, and then stood frozen in the kitchen, the diaper raised like a weapon. If I were in my own house, I would have grabbed a kitchen knife or a broom or something. But, there, in a house that wasn’t foreign but also wasn’t my own, I just raised the diaper and turned back and forth, from the open door to the rest of the house. The sky outside was still a slate gray, the sun hidden, and the house was dark, except for the weak light from the windows. I listened for a moment, then finally became conscious of the diaper, which I quickly threw away before searching the downstairs for the intruder I thought was surely there.

But the dog was in the playroom, asleep. And I found no one in the house. I pushed the door closed, and locked it, hoping it had opened because of the wind. And for the next two hours I stayed very still and very quiet, listening, watching.

After that, the day was a shocking flurry of errands, which I performed without excitement or drive, my mind preoccupied with the news I received that morning, with the open door, which seemed like an omen. The sky never brightened, the sun having given up at some point in the afternoon, the clouds staying the meanest shade of gray, so that the whole day felt like the morning had never ended, that time was not really passing.

Little things that would normally be annoyingly amusing got under my skin. In the Wal-Mart parking lot, the trunk of my car kept slamming shut, so that by the time I turned to my cart to get another bag, it would blow shut, and I would have to open it again. I finally propped it open with one hand and loaded it with the other, which given my back injuries, the weight of the my trunk lid, and the fact that the remaining purchases were cat litter, soda, and other heavier items, meant I could add a backache to the festivities of the day. When I unloaded the groceries at home, a two-liter tore its bag and landed on my foot. When I went to move a bag of cereal to the pantry, it came open and spilled generic Golden Grahams all over my clean kitchen floor. Oliver took the opportunity to jump onto my clean kitchen counters, and when I chased him to put him into the master bedroom to keep him out of trouble, I skidded onto the carpet next to the dining room table he had run under. Only then did I remember the jeans I wore had holes in the knees. (Knees which, therefore, were rug-burned.)

The evening went on. The house was cleaned, the kitchen prepped, the carpets vacuumed. The party was fun. It wrapped up late and a few girlfriends stayed and we talked some more, and the conversation turned to child predators, and it felt fitting somehow that the day would end there, that the sun would not in fact ever show itself.

And today the sun is out, and all I want to do is go outside in a bathing suit and soak it up, all I want to do is be in warmth, to be internalizing the sun. But I know it’s far too cold for that. I know it will be months before I will warm up. But I also know that summer will come, one day when I’m not expecting it, and I will go to the beach by myself, and I will lie flat, face-up, and spread my arms and feel relief.

Also, The Great Calendar Hunt of Twenty-Ten. I thought I’d be clever and wait until after New Year’s to get my calendar. Thought I’d get a good deal. Ha. Apparently, in a recession, everyone waits until January for their new wall calendars. The selection at Barnes and Nobel consisted of Betty Boop, Playboy, and Twilight. None of which I want on my kitchen wall. So, after a day of searching in what apparently were all the wrong places, I went home calendar-less. Which, for me, means: disoriented and slightly panicked, with no idea what she’s supposed to be doing the next day.

After much lament, I decided to give my computer’s calendar program another whirl. In the past, I just haven’t warmed to the digital calendar. But this year might be different. Twenty-ten, you know, it’s the future. Right? And of course, since deciding this and taking the time to set up my recurring appointments and obligations, I found plenty of calendars, all half-off, just lying around waiting to be bought by me. But I still want to give the (free) iCal a chance, a really fair shake this time. And paying six bucks for a wall calendar when January is practically over (okay, fine, almost half over) makes me feel I just won’t be getting my money’s worth. You don’t just get those two weeks back.

And there’s the Pampered Chef party I’m having next Friday. (If you’re in town, come over. If not, order kitchen stuff here: http://www.pamperedchef.biz/amydegler — just put in “Erin Bond” and buy stuff! I want free kitchen accessories! I’m poor!) Sending postcards and setting up online invites and realizing I really have to have my house cleaned up by then. Just tonight I finally did the last load of laundry from the holidays. Said load is still in the dryer and must be put away, but I’m nearly there…

Tonight was nice—easy, calming, a late dinner of bone-in chicken breasts roasted in garlic butter, and one or our favorites, corn maque choux, a creamy, buttery, tangy mess of deliciousness. Corn maque choux is comfort food at its ideal—even making it is comforting. Chopping the onion and the red pepper, slicing the kernels off the corncobs, stirring in the cream. While the chicken roasted, I prepped everything on the enormous butcher block that came home with me over the holidays. It’s so nice and big that I could push each veggie off to the side while I chopped the next one. When it was time to make the dish, I just scooped each new ingredient into my hands and dumped it into the waiting pan. Like a cooking-show host, just without the cool glass bowls.

The slow evening was the perfect follow up to a blissfully productive day. I had a meeting with Sue, who has agreed to mentor me in leadership, and she’s just a brilliant woman. Girl knows her stuff. I’m doing this for the pod, because I want it to be incredible, because I want us all to grow, because I want twenty-ten to be transformative, to have an unstoppable momentum. And Sue was perfect; I left her place charged up and ready to go. We talked about vision, about leading with the end in mind, about scheduling, about communication, about flowers. (More on that later.) I came home and made a master task list and got to work, not allowing myself to get on Facebook until this evening. Tonight, before bed I’ll make my “six things” list for tomorrow, the six things that must get done (and no more, so I won’t get frustrated if I don’t finish the list).

Until today, twenty-ten has felt busy without being particularly productive, freezing cold with no snow, time passing both quickly and slowly. Is January not over yet? Memories of a rough January last year. But it’s supposed to be sixty-four on Friday, and tomorrow I’ll have six things that will get done, and disappointments will eventually fade into memories, and there’s a whole year of changes still in this story.

Let’s see, on four of the past five days I have taken care of one of three different babies. (And, in case you’re tempted, just know that I will punch the first person to say, “God’s preparing you for something…” Well, okay, I won’t punch you, but I will scowl at you angrily. Fear the scowl!) And on three of the five past days, I’ve had lunch or tea get-togethers with friends. Plus small group, as always, on Tuesday. A dinner party Wednesday. And I’ve had this random pain in my side that is quite preoccupying and distressing. It goes away. It comes back. It hurts to breathe or sleep on my left side. If you notice me bending awkwardly to my right, clutching my ribs, and making a funny face, don’t worry, I’m just dying from some rare and sudden Left Lung Disease.

The house has been in varying degrees of disrepair all week, and by “varying degrees” I mean “unkempt to messy to messier to even messier to no one can step foot in my house.” Yesterday, I finally slogged my way through a couple sizeable mountains of laundry and one enormous summit of dishes, and today I tackled the bathrooms (including the tub).

And on top of everything, I decided this was the week to start new writing goals. I want to finish a draft of the book by the end of January. So, I’ve got this month and the next two, plus three major holidays in between. For the rest of November, my target is five thousand words a week.

With the kind of week I’ve had, normally I would have written some terribly small number of words that I would later just delete in one fell swoop. But, determined as I was with my brand-new goals and my nearly frantic desire to have a draft of this book done soon, I actually went over my goal! Happy grunts (while clutching side)!

Now that I’ve successfully navigated this week, I’m going to grab the brownie Jesse bought me from some charity bake sale earlier in the week and curl up in front of his computer to catch up on Ugly Betty. Friday, I love you.