Ten days ago, I left my black MacBook at LAX. I was on my way to a meeting in San Francisco. I left three things on that trip and only got one of them back, and the computer is gone. And so are the recent drafts of my novel. I did not back up often enough, or e mail the damn thing to myself, so I'm screwed. I have to believe this is a sign for me to go back in and keystroke the most recent xerox I have and live inside the text for the next week or two. To re engage. It's odd: we're renovating our house so Malcolm and Andrew and I been editing and culling and tossing and donating over these last few weeks, and I wonder if leaving these three things - computer, blue scarf, novel by Kate Christiansen I'd just finished - was a part of this process. Like a snake losing its skin?

I got flustered when the young Chinese girl next to me who was traveling alone wanted to follow me off the plane after we landed. Her father was many rows behind us and he'd only checked on her once, and she looked panicky. I think he wanted to be able to work back there, the jerk. She was, like, 7. He gave her a pink video game and a box of bright colored Chinese candies. Anyway, her distress threw me off and since Katrina I don't have much of an auto-pilot anymore, so I left with the computer under the seat in front of me and by the time I ran back to the gate, huffing and sweating, it was gone. The airlines were no help; they suck. I sat in the baggage claim in the bowels of LAX for two hours imagining that someone would walk in and lay my laptop in my arms, but, um, no. In what dream world does that scenario happen? I hope the fucking person who stole my computer at least had the decency to scrub it.

So I have a new MacBook and I've been slowly filling it with my iTunes and photographs, with bookmarks and saved articles, and I'm trying to forgive myself for leaving something so important and expensive behind. The novel? I left it on the airplane home, and the scarf? It was mailed back to me courtesy of the lovely bed & breakfast in SF, where I'd left it hanging over a chair.

I know, I know: back that thing up.