I've missed two days because I've been too busy and I'm going to be busy today, too (last excursion to Stratford for this season), so I'll swim a little later this morning and clear my conscience. Two clays ago I encountered a perfect blog subject while shopping in the afternoon but I had an unexpected guest for dinner, the one who chooses his menu; he chose flank steak over chicken breast so I had to thaw/marinate the meat and clear some papers off the surfaces.

I've been preparing a profile for submission to Ryerson University because I have been accepted as a lecturer for the Seniors Education Program (I think that's what it's called). I'm going to be teaching Playwriting, an 8-hour/8-week course plus a foray into Character (we can all use some of that). This is one of the reasons I have been too busy to blog: I was messing around with the computer, filling out a form online and I kept bogging down. Not going into detail, just explaining my neglect.

Now: here's what I was thinking about when I was shopping. I needed new Band-Aids. (There's a brand name that has become the generic, at least for someone my age.) Does anyone remember the little orange thread that you had to pull - -always ineptly - to zip open the wrapping? It's long gone and a good thing, I guess, because it always ended on the floor below the bathroom basin, along with shreds of the (ineptly) opened bandage. You could always tell if someone in the house had broken skin (i.e. cut) because of the evidence on the floor. Why were you always the only one who knew how to aim accurately at the waste basket?

This is not what I want to say.

No. It's the proliferation of products that makes shopping, i.e. choosing, so difficult. I mean, have you looked at Band-Aids - sorry - bandages, recently? Not only are there different company brands but there are also different sizes, degrees of protection and of adhesiveness. (Is that a word? Spel-chek seems to think so.) You can choose antiseptic, waterproof, wrap-around, plastic, some sort of gauze, and coloured, funny ones for children or anyone who likes frivolous first-aid. I chose Tough, bur ti took a while, I mean, several minutes.

Nothing is simple any more. When I was living in Muskoka I really enjoyed my tiny, local grocery store because when I wanted butter, I bought butter. I didn't have to go through the range of choices: salted or unsalted, whipped, half and half with something lower fat/calorie (?), or Danish, or Canadian.

It's the same with toothpaste. It's hard to find plain ordinary toothpaste. You have to choose among a variety of services that the toothpaste presents: whitening, de-sensitizing, enamel- building, oh, and do they still fool with fluoride? Did you know that the word for toothbrush several centuries ago was "scurry-funge"? I'd love to see that on a label. Remember Gwyneth Paltrow in her Oscar-winning performance in Shakespeare in Love, thoughtfully cleaning her teeth with some sort of picky thing - a scurry-funge?

Now I'm late for swimming.

I'm going to see The Alchemist today. Anon, anon.

Remember the story of Diogenes and his begging bowl? The bowl was the philosopher's only possession that he used to hold the food he begged. One day he tripped and fell and broke the bowl and said, "At last! I'm free!"

Well, that's how I feel when I toss something I've hung onto for too long, and I wonder why it took me so long. Last week I finally threw out all the negatives of all the pictures I ever took from the very first days when I had a little Kodak box camera, my best camera. Just aiming and clicking, I took the best (black & white) photograph of Lake Louise that my brother, an amateur photographer, ever saw. I stuck it in a frame and hung it over my bed table and Jack used to come into my room and look at the picture and shake his head and say, "You couldn't do it again." He was right, of course. I didn't. I won't go into a history of my cameras now. You can fill in the blanks with your own stories, beginning with the little Brownie, if you're old enough, and ending with the Polaroid, may they all rest in landfill.

I tossed all my cameras long ago with the first of my big down-sizing moves after my husband died, and I culled the accumulation of mementoes and photographs. I had very few pictures, actually, and very few albums. I've always collected notes and letters rather than pictures; words meant more to me than images, that is, sentimental or significant words. When the University of Manitoba committed to take my files for the archives, they didn't realize what they were getting into. If I'm ever really famous, they'll have a goldmine - like the Hemingway treasure trove. In the meantime, the archives give me a place to send my detritus. Except those negatives. They had to go. And I don't have any bullfight tickets.

I did have, however, a bulging file of my dog Tag's life, his medical records and licenses and so on. He survived a bite from a Massassauga rattle snake and I have the bills to prove it. So here's a switch for me: I just tossed his files and kept his pictures.

Next.