My REM this morning was about writing a blog and I think it was good but I don't remember it. Perhaps it will come to me. Blogging is so specific, for most people. I just read of one this morning by a person who specializes in book lists, of which there are a plethora at this time of year. Every magazine, newspaper and self-styled critic, plus every organization with a particular angle, all of them create a best-of-the-year list. Lists are all very well in their way, and I love my lists, whether they're of groceries or tasks or thank-you letters to write - soon! (When I was a girl it was considered good luck to write your thank-yous before the new year, another indication of how OLD I am. Does anyone except a few of nature's aging gentlewomen write thank-you letters any more?.) But lists can be daunting, especially book lists, as you realize yet again how many books you have NOT read. I've said before that I will defend to the death every person's right to write. But so many of them get published these days. They are IMpossible to keep up with. Some I can easily dismiss as not for me; others are harder and, in fact, guilt-inducing. Therefore I will never read that blog listing book lists. Too much! A couple of organizations send out lists of petitions to sign, with an addendum that a donation - as little as a dollar - would be appreciated. There aren't that many dollars to give, at least not in my purse, not right now. More guilt. Oh, dear. I wish I could remember the blog I dreamed about.

Yesterday was a travelling day and it took energy away from my brain to cope with the exigencies involved in moving my body through time and space. So a day without a blog is a day without a clear thought, I guess. You have to put your mind on hold and simply deal with immediate needs, like coffee, comfort, and the WC. Do you say WC? It's short for Water Closet, if I remember. The feminist novelist, Marilyn French, titled her best-selling novel, The Women's Room, with a slash through an earlier word, "Ladies'". The nomenclature is irrelevant now because there are icons indicating the men's and the women's toilets, no words required. The icons, of course, are obsolete. The icon for the woman is a silhouette in a skirt. These days you see very few women wearing skirts in airports or anywhere else, for that matter. I'm still thinking about bathrooms, also called wash rooms. Brits used to call it the Loo, dating from perhaps Norman Conquest times when a lot of French was spoken in England and people shouted "Gardez l'eau" when they threw the contents of the night chamber pot into the street below. Watch out for the water is a euphemism. Younger people, I notice, avoid evasions like that. They usually say, "I have to pee." I have always had difficulty saying "pee" because my mother thought it was vulgar. (Her younger sister got around it by saying "piddle".) Lousy, that's another one. I mean, I wasn't allowed to say "lousy" either. Like most gently reared women of my vintage, I grew up with euphemisms. I didn't know the correct technical words for any private parts. I was surprised when my first-born and very young granddaughter referred casually to her vagina. But I wasn't shocked; pleased, rather. I was very young, maybe five years old, when I attended a birthday party of a contemporary, not a close friend but a schoolmate at private school. (I was going to a private school because I was reading and my parents didn't know what to do with me; also there was no kindergarten in those prehistoric days.) The hostess told me where the lavatory was. I didn't know that word. I knew laboratory, oddly enough, and wondered why she was suggesting I do some scientific experiments at a party. All these fragments of information most of it skewed and inaccurate, drift like jetsam (not flotsam) in the free-wheeling space in our minds. No wonder I'm tired afar a day of travelling.