I've decided this might be the week for me to run away from home. It's too hot. I have too much work to do, I'm pretty sure no one loves me, and I hate summer. How's that for self-pity? Can you hear the violins in the background, just over the drone of my air conditioner that doesn't work past two in the afternoon because the sun gets too strong for it? I don't have any appointments or meetings this week. I can tell my students I'm sick. The cats will miss me for a while but then they'll fall in love with whoever's feeding them — that's how cats are.

I'm thinking Alaska is the place to go, now that Sarah Palin doesn't run things any more. It's colder. There aren't as many people there so the traffic's light, and I could probably find a taciturn mountain man to live with. I can get used to caribou stew if I have to, and learn to gut a fish. I'm good on X-country skis. If I run into Sarah Palin I'm planning to punch her in the nose. No more Mrs. Nice Woman for me, no sir. I've had it with her selfishness and bad syntax.

I just want another life. Does that ever happen to you? This whole racket of being grown-up and responsible is completely over-rated. My life feels so heavy, I can't carry it any more. In the past six weeks two of my friends have died and one had open-heart surgery, I've been in the hospital myself, losing way too much blood — and all around me people are hanging on by a financial thread. Nothing's any fun any more and I can't fix it.

I'm not kidding, I'm out of here. I don't want to own a driveway or a septic tank. It's gonna be the hobo life for me. I'll make one of those vagabond contraptions with a bandana and a stick — put in my toothbrush, some clean socks, maybe a few tuna sandwiches, and light out for the territories like Huck Finn. Speaking of Huck, I'd better take a book. And a flashlight in case the open road is dark. I'm going to sing all the Pete Seeger songs I can remember and recite Walt Whitman as I trudge along.

I did actually run away once, when I was five — not from home, from kindergarten. A friend and I got fed up with Playdoh or whatever we were supposed to be doing and decided to run away. We knew we weren't allowed to cross the street, so we didn't, but we went around the block to get as far from the school as we could. One of our friends lived over there, we recognized the house, so we rang the bell but no one was home. We sat on the front steps for about an hour and then got hungry and went back, where we were met with incredible rage and relief, as you might imagine, and my mother, who had been called. I never got such a scolding in my life.

This time there's no one to scold me. All the old grown-ups are dead. It'll be a week before anyone even notices, and by that time I'll be half-way up the Al-Can Highway singing "Big Rock Candy Mountain."