Some Los Angeles moments:

• Driving thirty featureless blocks in the Valley, parking in an anomyous parking lot, shopping at Home Depot. Then driving forty featureless blocks to another anonymous parking lot, and shopping at Target. Finally, more featureless blocks and a third anonymous parking lot while shopping at a humongous Walgreens drug store. By this time, I was getting Valley feaver.
• Seeing Sandra Bullock in Starbucks, trailed by a phalanx of photographers.
• Standing next to Christopher Lloyd in our gym in the Valley; he was dressed in old, run-down clothes, looking vaguely stoned. Perhaps his character in Taxi was reality-based.
• Taking a freshly groomed Brewster and Indira, Ben's two beautiful, big dogs, for a walk along Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood. I've never seen dogs attract so much attention. Indira decided to pee in the middle of an intersection: all the cars just sat and waited patiently (Indira, who weighs at least 150 lb, refused to budge, no matter how hard I'd try to pull her to the kerb). It's hard to imagine that happening in any other major city.
• Structuring my days around appointments with various therapists. I'm trying to find both my own individual therapist as well as a couples' therapist for Ben and I (prevention is the best medicine).
• Wearing a tank-top or sleevless t-shirt every day. I could practically get rid of the rest of my wardrobe.
• Driving over the lush, beautiful Hollywood Hills every day, either up Sepulveda or Laurel Canyon.
• Experiencing the wettest LA October (it rained four days straight) in 115 years.

Over the last three days, I've finally begun to pull together some structure in my days. The first few days were very difficult, for reasons I've already talked about. It culminated in an unguarded moment on Tuesday night when Ben asked me what was wrong. As I started to tell him why my days in the Valley felt rather lonely and crushing, and that I was missing my support network in San Francisco, I suddenly chocked up. You have to understand that I can count the number of times that's happened to me in a conversation in the last ten years on two or three fingers. So on those vanishingly rare occasions where it has happened, I know that it's something really deep.

Ben's been as understanding as he's capable of. He's not the most intuitive, perceptive guy, and he's not really at all introspective, so he both finds it difficult to understand what I'm going through, and tends to assume that unless I tell him, then I'm just going along fine. He's incredibly busy at work, so he doesn't have a lot of time, in any case, to sit and think, Gee, I wonder how Keith is feeling. Despite all that, he's been kind and supportive of what I'm going through, and feels guilty that he's working so hard, despite my efforts to convince him that it's not a problem for me.

But I decided that I needed to make some changes. I couldn't continue to spend my days in the Valley like some housewife. I don't have much work to do, but enough to keep me busy for a couple of hours. So I've been driving into West Hollywood each day, working, writing and reading for a few hours at Starbucks, having a few interviews with potential therapists, and going to the gym ... a lot. One consequence of all my free time is that I'm getting into pretty incredible shape. I'm not trying to boast, but sometimes I catch myself in the mirror and I suddenly think, Lord, are all those muscles really mine?

I'm beginning to fall for Ben's dogs. I've always loved dogs, and had thought several times about getting one in San Francisco. Now, all of a sudden, I'm inheriting two rather spectacular dogs. They're a hoot, when I take them for a walk. And they're frequently in my car (since I have an SUV and Ben a sports-car convertible, my car has become the designated dog-carrying car), and it's gotten that I can't walk past my car without them both stopping expectently to climb in. Indira, the larger of the two dogs, combines a winning affection with an imperious assertiveness. When we all get in my car, I put Indira in the back (she has to take a run to gather speed to make the leep from the street), and handsome Brewster, who's a little smaller and getting a little long in the tooth, clambers nervously into the back seat. Sometimes, if I've stopped at a store, I come back and there are the two of them sitting on the back street. Indira looks at me with a twinkle in her eye, as if daring me to notice that she's moved from the back storage space to the back seat, crowding out Brewster. So I've started jamming her leash in the tailgate so that she's forced to stay where I put her.

The strangest thing just happened. As I was writing, somebody sidled up behind me and asked what I was working on. I turned on him with a very guarded, stiff expression, asking why he was asking. It's pretty much unheard of for anybody to approach me in a cafe, except for evangelists or those of unsound mind. Particularly when no eye contact had been made. But as we stumbled through a rather awkward exchange, it came out that he'd seen me working here each day, as he had been, and just decided to say hello. I still found it a rather strange thing to do, but since I am actively trying to pursue new friendships, I decided to see where our conversation went. After about twenty minutes, I came to the conclusion that he was a nice, harmless guy, but not likely to be somebody whom I'd find interesting enough to establish a satisfying friendship.

Tonight Ben and I are going to a birthday party for Albert, hosted by Bill and Stefan. Because of Albert's fondness for sheer shirts, we've all been requested to dress similarly. I didn't have anything sheer, so had to go out and buy something, and came home with something Ben described as a fishnet stocking remade as a sleeveless t-shirt. I'm not sure I'd have ever worn such an item in San Francisco.