I was out of it yesterday, not only with the Sunday NYT but also with a wrenched arm and shoulder. Couldn't swim, though I tried but it hurt too much. Never got dressed. I did do some work. Have to justify my existence each day, after all. But no blog. You don't have to know all this, nor do you care. Writers are so arrogant. They think what they do each day matters. In addition to being a marvellous poet and arguably the best metricist of the 20th century, W.H. Auden was a witty, often profound, essayist. In one piece he was considering social workers and he wrote a great line I've never forgotten. "Social workers," Auden said, " say, 'We are put here on earth to help others. What others are here for, we don't know." I think that's true of writers' attitudes, too. I know what I'm here for - which is why I feel it so strongly when I don't do as much as I should do each day. That way of thinking, I fear, makes me very hard to live with, so I guess it's a good thing I don't live with anyone. I have to keep reminding myself that other people need recognition, too. That's why I keep taking soup and goodies to neighbours and try to remember birthdays and give jollies. Jollies was my father's word for little prezzies. A jolly is not really a present, it's just a little something to jolly life along. We all need jollies. Me too. I'm running low on power now. A bientôt.

Here's a couple more words I bet you don't pronounce correctly: patina and flaccid. And that's all I have to say about that.

I have a sore arm (I was doing wall push-ups and pushed too hard), so I'm giving it a rest from swimming because it hurt. My father was a doctor and when people came to him and said "Doc, I can't lift my arm higher than this," he'd say," Well, don't." Excellent advice. Pain, he explained, is a limiting factor and by limiting your movements it enables you to heal. It's a nice excuse to scunge. That was a verb my father used to describe the inactivity of a person who lounged around in bed too long, in his estimation. I looked it up; it's a noun, referring to a not-very-nice person. I like the verb better. While I'm at it, here's another verb I like: guddle (I had to persuade SpelChek to accept it). It's what bears do fishing with their paws. I used it when I had 5/8 of my stomach removed. I said the surgeon guddled in my insides. There goes SpelChek again. And then there's hurple. As I understand it, it's the kind of movement an arthritic old woman makes when she's in a hurry. The poor old dictionary in my computer can't cope with words like that. I have Mrs. Byrne's dictionary of obsolete words. I think they're in there. But I'm scunging in bed right now and I don't feel like getting up to guddle in a dictionary. And that's all I have to say about that.