Happy Everything Everybody. Matt and I flew to Boston this morning and here we are, basking in the love and noise and give-and-take and friendly chat of a loving family. Heaven! I've been tired and driven and nasty and put-upon so I need this therapy.

Not very enlightening. But I brought my Little Mac with me so I could keep in touch. Little did I think that I would ever be so dependent on an electronic secretary. I just wish she wouldn't spell for me, deciding what I mean, putting words in my mouth - hard drive?

I just received another rejection for my book on aging, not a welcome Christmas present. I have to think what to do next. Short of peddling sex tips or dressing up a monkey or doing something (auto-spell just changed that to soothing) something strange with a cat, how does one go viral?

Do you have any suggestions? E-books, I guess.

Katherine Hepburn said there’s only one answer when people ask you how you are.

“Fine,” you say, “I’m fine.”

I remember telling you that, I think, and it always makes me think of the dialogue in Philip Barry’s play, “The Philadelphia Story” which he wrote for Hepburn, in the scene the morning after Tracy Lord got squiffed when she comes down with a headache (aka hangover), insisting that she’s fine, everyone’s fine, commenting on her own hearty behaviour.

Buckminster Fuller said that when people say they feel fine they really mean they don’t feel anything. Nothing hurts. That’s why people take Aleve, or whatever the current feel-good-look-I-can dance pill is, to feel no pain, to feel fine, for at least 12 hours.

I don’t feel fine. I feel tired. At this time of year, everyone feels tired. It can’t be helped. Christmas or its equivalent is the most effective deadline I know. Everyone runs like crazy to get everything done before December 25. After it has passed, it’s not like passing GO. Too late, you’re late, and you have too many loose ends and so much still to be done, but there it is, you’re too late, Stop now. After it has passed, you deflate a little, relax and let go. Maybe.

Everyone is toxic at this time of year. Everyone plans on detoxifying in January. It seems so far away and it is, eons, a whole year, in fact. I have always maintained that the seven days between 25 December and 1 January comprise the longest month of the year. I can hardly wait.

Get some rest.