And I guess I have a lot to explain and a lot to say.

I left it at that while I made and ate my dinner, and I received one "like" in my absence. Maybe I should quit while I'm ahead?

Anyway, things happened over the weekend. First, I should explain why I was sort of down in my last blog (November 5). I had just received a second rejection of my book, ENDINGS, telling me in effect, that I'm too old to write a book about aging! I have no media presence. It's true: I've been around too long to be around any more. I've said it before: I've lost my family, friends, furniture, doctors and agents. Most of them have retired or died. I've also said it before, that I feel like a duck in a shooting gallery with all the ducks around me being shot down. So , yes, I was discouraged. Well, then, the reason I was too busy to blog: my daughter and her oldest daughter came for a visit and I was very (happily) busy with them.

And they with me. My granddaughter listened to the story of my invisibility and set about to set me up with TWITTER. I find it ironic, actually, that I have to try to establish a presence with people who I am sure are so much younger than I am that they do not comprise an audience for my aging memoir. Well, thank you, Janice, we'll see how it goes. Even with your help, I had to get my computer guru to help me get established. My son used to say I was computer illiterate and I still am. But I get along with a little help from my friends.

Down and up. What next? It's called being tired. I cleaned up and tidied and changed and washed the sheets and towels and made soup and caught up with email. Lots of thing to follow up on. So this morning I made a master list of things I have to do, and when I finished that, I had a nap. Only thing to do. You have to allow for my age and my laziness.

But I'm here.

Actually, in Wordsworth's day, maybe the world was with him, skating alongside, maybe,and crowding him. Now, here, well, not here but soon, I hope, the world will be with me, not too much. Right now it's way ahead of me and I'm running like mad trying to catch up.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon.

-- And then he gets all classical on us, with references to mythology and Greek stuff ("old ?Triton"), but I like one line: "For this, for everything, we are out of tune". Yup, out of tune all right. Remember Ophelia's lament about Hamlet's noble mind, "like sweet bells jangled and out of tune.". Trouble is, I don't have a noble mind to start with, just a pedestrian psyche struggling to get along, or to catch up. Have I given my heart away? It depends on how you look at it:

1) What part of my heart have I given away?

2) How much heart do I have left to give away?

And 3) What kind of a sordid boon is a give-away heart?

Boon is supposed to be a gift, a blessing, I get that, and sordid isn't nice. Like, we were maybe forced into giving it away? I guess. Well, whatever. My powers are wasted, that's for sure, and it's my fault, my choice. Remember that parable about the man who put his ladder against the wall of a very large house and started climbing? He climbed and he climbed (getting and spending, laying waste his powers?) and when he was almost at the top, he paused and looked around and realized that he had set his ladder against the wrong house. Ay, there's the rub.

I look back now, from the dizzy height of my advanced age, and wonder if I have set my ladder against the wrong house. Too late. I haven't quite made my bed yet so I'm not quite ready to lie in it, but it's too late to move it now, or any other furniture.

Oops, I have to go and swim.