I can&#0146t begin to tell you how many times I have dreamt, in length and great detail, of being under house arrest. Well, OK. Let me make a guess. Maybe 147 times, for a total elapsed time of just under seventeen hours.

My idea of house arrest is quite a bit more harsh than the sentences imposed on Sean Nelson Goodwin, who got one year of home time for abusing a four-month-old child, or the eighteen months given to William Michael Christie for masturbating three young boys.

Their sentences include allowances for outings related to emergencies, work and appointments with corrections officers. I wouldn&#0146t be allowed to go out for anything.

No longer would I be able to enjoy going to the grocery store and facing the self-important jerks standing in the express lane with nine items, the gossips blocking the aisles with their badly parked carts or the cashiers wanting me to understand how they&#0146re destined for so much better in life and therefore cannot be bothered learning the SKU number for broccoli. Poor me. I&#0146d have to order in everything, and survive on an austere diet of Kentucky Fried Chicken, deep-dish pizza and Singapore Chow Mein. With bonus Toblerone candy bars at Christmas.

There&#0146d be no more roaming at Atlantic News, spending the Gross National Product (GNP) of a small country on design and art magazines. I&#0146d have to bite the bullet and subscribe.

Ditto newspapers. In order to treat myself, to attempt to keep myself sane in the asylum of my apartment, I&#0146d spring for the Sunday New York Times.

No going to movies, at ten bucks a pop. I&#0146d have to just make do with seventy channels of cable TV (maybe digital so I could see Six Feet Under) and then perhaps I&#0146d finally be able to write a book; people are always bugging me to do that. Something like, &#0147The Price Is Right: Calculated Incidences of Spinning One Dollar on the Big Wheel&#0148. You know, to keep myself busy, because I wouldn&#0146t be allowed to go to work.

Goodwin is permitted out of his house to work, but not me. I wouldn&#0146t be allowed to work. Work would just be an excuse to spend fun days returning dozens of phone calls and e-mails from people who want something, in between meetings, deadlines and computer crashes.

None of that for me, bad girl.

No visitors. That would just be too easy. And no phone privileges, or at least, no incoming calls (I&#0146d have to order those dinners and newspapers).

No more going to the library; only Internet for me. No more facing the crowds at the mall; I&#0146d have to dress from L.L. Bean and Land&#0146s End catalogues. No shallow, boring parties. No four-dollar cups of coffee at chi-chi cafes. No more facing up to any social unease at all. Just me and my cat.

So rough. I agree with Justice Gerald Moir about the hardship of such sentences. In explaining the sentence he said, &#0147Those who think house arrest a mild punishment might think harder about what it would be like to be under state supervision and confined to their homes &#0151 day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out.&#0148

It must just be some kind of masochistic self-loathing that makes me want to do some of that serious time myself. I need professional help.