A few rooms from earlier this year, and a few from 1996 through 1998 that readers still write to me about, which I suppose makes them the greatest hits. Where my second husband's name used to appear, I've changed it to R. It's the least I can do, and he would say it's also the most.

The decree came today, in an envelope much too thin for eleven years. My lawyer, who bills in tenths of an hour, called to say congratulations, which I suspect she billed. I read it standing up by the mailboxes. Then I went upstairs and did the thing I'd promised myself: I moved the desk under the skylight, where R. never wanted it because he said the glare would ruin my eyes. The glare is glorious. My eyes are fine.

I don't know what comes next. I've typed "The End" twenty-some times for other women, and every time I knew exactly what came next, because it was the epilogue, and in the epilogue everyone is either pregnant or in Tuscany. I am not in Tuscany. I am not pregnant, either (not me, anyway; more on that when I'm allowed). I'm in my chair, and the chair is under the skylight. That's all I've got tonight, and it's more than I had yesterday.

R. came for the rest of his books today. We agreed on Easter because neither of us goes to church anymore and it seemed a shame to waste a holy day on nothing. He brought boxes from the liquor store. I made coffee. We divided the shelves the way you'd divide a garden: he took the history, I kept the poetry, and we had a short, polite, awful argument over a Collected Yeats with both our names written in it. He let me keep it.

When he left, the shelves had gaps like missing teeth. I spent the afternoon moving books around to close them up, which is what I do instead of crying, and then I cried anyway, over one of my own paperbacks that he'd kept for eleven years and left behind. He had written in the margin on page 212, This part is you. I'm not going to tell you which part.

New Year's Day, and the city is so quiet you can hear the radiators think. My resolutions, in public, so you can hold me to them:

1. Finish the Cornwall book by October first.
2. Stop reading my own journal back at two in the morning to see how I sound.
3. Write about my own life, not my version of other people's.
4. Learn the names of the people in my building. I've lived here nine years and I know three of them, one of whom is the super and one of whom is the super's cat.
5. Be kind. Especially here.

Sixteen hours into 1999 and I've kept all five. Personal best.

R. moved to his brother's in Montclair tonight. We did it like grown-ups, which is to say nobody threw anything, and afterward I sat on the kitchen floor for an hour with the refrigerator humming at me.

I'm not going to write about why. Some of you have written to ask, kindly, and I'm grateful, but the why belongs to two people and only one of them keeps a journal. What I will tell you is what I noticed. His toothbrush was the last thing he packed, and he stood in the bathroom doorway holding it like a man holding his hat at a funeral. The loft is bigger than I thought. I set out two cups this morning, out of eleven years of habit, and I'll probably keep doing it for a while, and that's all right.

Be gentle with me in e-mail this week.

On Sunday I wrote about Nina's breakup. I thought I wrote it lovingly. I made her funny and brave and I made him a fool, which he is, and I put it up at midnight feeling like a good mother.

Nina called yesterday from her office, crying, which she does not do. A friend had found it. "It's my life, Mom," she said. "You don't get to put it in the window." I took it down while she was still on the phone. She could hear me clicking.

Here's what I've worked out since, and I'll keep it short because I'm still ashamed. When I write about myself, I'm the one in the glass house. When I write about Nina, I've moved her in without asking. She never chose a house with no curtains. She chose to be my daughter, and I'm not even sure she chose that.

So, a new rule, starting now: Nina's news is Nina's. I'll write how I feel. The rest, she tells, or nobody does.

She hasn't called back yet. I'm keeping the phone on the pillow.

My first entry, so I suppose I ought to say who I am. I'm forty-eight. I write love stories for a living. I've been married twice and am still married to the second one. My daughter is twenty-four, lives in Brooklyn, and thinks this is a terrible idea.

A friend showed me these online journals last month, people putting their real days on the Internet for strangers, and I stayed up until three reading one by a woman in Oregon whose husband was dying. I have never read anything like it. No plot. No guaranteed happy ending. Just a woman telling the truth on a Tuesday.

I've spent twenty years making things up, and I'm good at it. I'd like to find out if I'm any good at the other thing.

My grandmother used to say that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. I've decided to live in one anyway, and to try very hard not to throw anything. We'll see how long I last.