I missed being thoughtful (about remembering) yesterday. I meant to do it last night but my picky, favourite dinner guest called and asked to share dinner with me and we talked till 11 o’clock. I always clean up before I go to bed; it makes the morning easier to leap (crawl?) into. So here we are: I emptied the dishwasher and I’m checking in before I swim at 6. You don’t have to know all that but I have to settle myself .

When did the habit begin of writing a letter to accompany a Christmas card? I’m not sure whether it continues in such large proportions now as it used to. What with email and a dearth of time, communications are not as generous as they used to be. I wonder if in the future there will be entire books devoted to an e-correspondence between two articulate people. I wonder if people will be as articulate.

That’s another discussion. Right now I bring up Christmas letters because I have to figure out what to do about them. I had extended my seasonal group letters to other times of the year. I called them generic letters because they were aimed (rather than focused) at a number of people and were neither gender nor seasonal specific. Then I began to send my generic letters online, although I had to print and mail some to friends who were not computer-friendly or literate - computer-literate, that is.

Now I write daily (almost) blogs and I have just added Twitter and I still keep a diary, though I fear it has descended to a Nag Book. So what happens to my generic letters ? Should I mail copies of a relevant blog to people who enjoy receiving something other than a fund-raising pitch? Should I revert to writing a summary of The Year That Was? Or should I quit?

I have to swim now....

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.