It takes a lot of discipline to be disciplined. It isn't as if it were automatic; it's not, at least, not for me. Just because I know something is good for me, or I have a deadline, or I made a promise, when my action, in other words, is mandatory and unavoidable, I still have trouble getting down to it. Or up, as the case may be. Of course, right now I'm referring to my blog, my inexorable daily blog that I have missed for two days. What was I thinking? What was I doing? It wasn't only that I was tired or busy. I am, like most people, always tired or busy. I think it was timing. The ideal time for me to write my blog is first thing in the morning, before I swim. If I sleep too late, like 5 o'clock, there's not enough time to write a decent blog before I hit the pool. (Hit the pool sounds unnecessarily energetic. Actually, I wade softly in and gently slide into swimming position, thinking all the while, usually about my menu for the day, but this morning it was about my blank blog.) Well, then, by the time I get upstairs and have breakfast, tidy and fiddle a bit, and attack the day, it's too late to blog. Later, I say. Then later, I say later. And later. Pretty soon the day is over, the date has changed but I haven't. Oh dear. I am not disciplined enough. The way to do almost anything I have to do is simply not to think about it, just do it. LIke "just say no" only it's "just say yes." The hitch is that that simple rule does not apply to a blog. To write a blog (believe it or not), I have to think, and I do, a lot. I find notes scribbled to myself all over the place with ideas or triggers for a blog. Unfortunately, I don't run into them until it's too late. Something else pops up, if I'm lucky. This morning I had no pop-up; it was late; I swam. It took a long time to be disciplined enough to get up and swim without thinking. I used to think about swimming the way I thought about sex: it was great once you got into it but it was such a nuisance taking off your clothes (it's obvious I have a fading memory). That's why it's so nice to swim first thing in the morning; you don't have many clothes to take off, if any. Well, I ramble on. Tomorrow I will be so disciplined you won't even know me. Anon, anon.

A reporter announcing the latest news from the Philippines said, voice over the ruins of a street, "The ruined buildings lay in the street and prevent the passage of traffic." He thought he was using the present tense. Not. Lay is the past tense of lie. Doesn't anyone know that any more? LIe, lay, laid. If you use lay in the present tense it has to take an object because it's a transitive verb. People have gotten confused, that is, those who were taught to pray when little, "Now I lay me down to sleep." Me is the object of lay. If he or she wasn't taught to pray he/she could have said, "Now I lie down to sleep," because it's not a tetrameter line.

Hey, my blog is not supposed to be a grammar lesson. But it is a safe outlet for a pet peeve. No one is going to pay any attention to it or me. I have noticed that when I correct people verbally, out loud, to their face, they tend to get annoyed and defensive. When someone corrects me, I thank them. Mind you, I usually go home and check, to make sure they're right. I can tell you things I've learned from corrections, for example, the correct pronunciation of disparate, amenable, rationale and caffeine. I will not use the latter two words because I don't like their correct pronunciation. Another century ago I dropped a boy I was dating because he corrected me inaccurately. I had said something was stultifying and he told me no, the word was stullifying. There's no talking to someone like that. (SpelChek knew better than he; it just tried to correct him.) Fast forward a lot of years and you see me withdrawing a piece I had written for a magazine when an editor (they had editors in those days) put incorrect words in my copy. I sound didactic now so I'll lie low.