I found the missing book at the eleventh hour. It was right where I thought I had left it, only it had slipped behind another book in such a way that I hadn�t noticed it when I stuck my hand behind the shelf. I hate losing things. In part because I almost never do. I am a fairly orderly person by nature. And while my desk appears to be in a minor state of chaos when I�m working, it is more organized than it looks.

The drive down to the south side was about as aggravating as I had expected. There were the usual quotas of accidents, cell-phone talkers, and cars held together with duct tape that slowed us down. Well, it slowed us down on the Kennedy. On the tollway, however, even in heavy traffic, there is an unwritten rule that if you are not going at least 15 mph over the speed limit, than you have no business being on the road. Normally this is not a problem for me, but when the air conditioning is running, the 14-year-old mommobile can barely make it to 70. We shimmied and shook in the slow lane until we came to a screeching halt before the Kennedy merge, whereupon we crawled along at 20 mph all the way there. Why they feel the need to post speed limit signs on the Kennedy reading 55 mph, I will never know. In most places you can rarely get past 30.

My university seems to have acquired Wi-Fi, which means that I can now sit outside in the quad on this beautiful day to look up my library books (or type unnecessary diary entries) instead of sitting inside the library. I hear reports that I can actually have the books paged to circulation so that I don�t even have to go into the stacks, but that seems unspeakably lazy, even after toting more than fifty pounds of books around on my shoulder all afternoon. The carrying of large loads is perhaps the only way in which my graduate career has prepared me for motherhood.

I have run my campus errands. My advisor is not on campus today, which allows me to avoid the uncomfortable groveling that would occur, seeing as my chapter is a month late. I feel like a ghost on campus now. There are so few people who know me now, that I can almost always count on anonymity unless I choose to run into someone on purpose. It is reminiscent of my first few days here years ago, when I simply wandered around the neighborhood and the university like a tourist. There was no stress or emotional trauma attached to any of the buildings. A glance at the library did not make me feel guilty for not working. Today there are scores of small children running through the quad chasing squirrels and hunting for gargoyles in the ivy. I keep thinking of AJ, home with his father, who would love to go exploring here. I�m going to have to bring him down here one of these days, when I�m feeling up to two hours of �Are we there yet?� and �Go faster, Mommy!� in the car.

[second entry today]

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