My mum called at 3 in the morning to tell me that my sister has a new son. Bill, her lover/partner/husband/father of said baby called a few minutes ago to tell me that "Cameron" is the most beautiful baby in the universe but a noisy little fellow who is already making his presence known.

This baby business is exhausting. I waited and waited and waited to hear yesterday. As I had dropped Bev and Bill at the hospital at 9:30 a.m., I expected to hear the news sometime late afternoon. When I didn't hear by evening, I began to worry. But all is well - MOTHER and child are both beautiful swears alleged father.


Gill didn't want a traditional Christmas tree. Mike said the trimmings are not what are important. Rob wasn't around to ask his opinion so Gill and I went to the flourist and chose an ivy bush shaped like a tree that sits on the living room table. It's quite lovely.

This morning I braved the stores and bought a few Christmas gifts - I'm bending a little says the willow and this afternoon, I'm making small gifts. So the spirit of Christmas is descending. And I am enjoying myself. But tired.

My mum called at 3 in the morning to tell me that my sister has a new son. Bill, her lover/partner/husband/father of said baby called a few minutes ago to tell me that "Cameron" is the most beautiful baby in the universe and a noisy little fellow who is already making his presence known.

This baby business is exhausting. I waited and waited and waited to hear yesterday. As I had dropped Bev and Bill off at the hospital at 9:30 a.m., I expected to hear the news sometime late afternoon. When I didn't hear by evening, I began to worry. But all is well -MOTHER and child are beautiful says alleged father.


Gill didn't want a traditional Christmas tree. Mike said the trimmings are not what are important. Rob wasn't around to ask his opinion so Gill and I went to the flourist and chose an ivy bush shaped like a tree that sits on the living room table. It's quite lovely.

This morning I braved the stores and bought a few Christmas gifts - I'm bending a little says the willow and this afternoon, I'm making small gifts. So the spirit of Christmas is descending. And I am enjoying myself.

I woke early - 3:30 a.m. but as I fell asleep early - watching a movie with Mike - I'm feeling good and happy to have hours before I head over to my sister Bev's to have breakfast with my mum and dad and wish Bev luck - she goes into the hospital sometime during this day and the small being roaming in her belly will be brought into this world. As she has a boy and a girl, she will be happy with a pair of either sex.

I continue to think of gender differences. There's a lovely woman who works in the store who told me a story yesterday about her four daughters. Recently when she was away, her daughters visited their father, on their own accord, and told him that they didn't think he was showing his partner/wife/their mother the respect she deserved. They illustrated this statement with samples of his unkindness over the years. They gave him time to defend himself. Since this conversation, the woman says that her relationship has turned around. She's happy to go home in the evening.

I heard another story once about children who came to their mother and listed all the grievances from childhood onwards. She too listened hard and their relationship changed.

I'm thinking that such dialogue is a true gift - that we all keep so much inside because we are afraid to injure those we love - oh we have a dozen excuses - they're simply too small and petty to say aloud - or our behaviour provoked the unsavoury response - or the person doing the hurting was tired - or it was an off day - still these little or big bruises live within our flesh - and if they could be released - we could be so much lighter.

I'm thinking about the emotionalism of women - the need of the feminine for wholeness - and the courage it takes to speak our truths. The woman in the store told me that before her daughters intervened, her partner often lost patience and ridiculed her when she was emotional. He told his daughters that the phrase he used on them "deal with it" had been hammered into him.

Again the definition of love - "rapt attention" - comes to mind.

I'm thinking that without emotion - the perfection of the masculine - the world would be a dull place.

So I am feeling virtuous this morning. Already I have designed and written and printed a Christmas card for Rob's mum and a Birthday card for my sister, Gael.
This is a crazy time of year for my family. Gael's birthday is the 23rd of December, my father's the 24th, my mother's the 26th, and my older sister's the 27th. I'm wondering if this, in some small way, makes me want to avoid Christmas gifts as I always celebrate birthdays with presents.

It is now 5:30 in the morning. I will shower and leave soon.

It's Tuesday and Rob has three more get-ups - that's the way he counts the days until a three week hiatus.

Today was proving too crazy for my head so I cancelled an early morning meeting with Maureen on Granville Island and went to the store and worked, left at noon to pick up my dad, dropped him at my sister Bev's, had tea and hot scones with my parents, felt my sister's belly, and then went back to store where I initiated a sale starting tomorrow. People aren't even coming in let alone buying.

I have just arrived home and haven't a thought in my head beyond finding something to eat and soaking in a hot bath.

If I'm inspired later, I'll return.

I'm a computer junkie. I know it now. I have been trying to get on to the internet all day, check my email, do my blog, but no luck until now. And what I was going to say earlier has dissipated. I wanted to speak of the Dialogue yesterday that was about, for the most part, gender differences. I arrived late, quite unlike my usual puncutual self, and walked into an emotional minefield. Forgive my emotionalism. I can't help it. Reminds me of somes line from "Poppy" by Drusilla Modjeska:
"I am filled with pain and pleasure. I am all that...
[my father and my husband] hated in me and...[my lover] fears:
emotional, fluid, intemperate, melodramatic, female."

Thank goodness for the feminine is all I have to say.

Today exhausted me. My mother was coming for dinner. I cleaned, scrubbed, bought groceries, cooked, and served. I thought Gill would be home to help but she was consumed by her own fires - mostly school based as she worked on the film Thursday and Friday and now has to catch up.

My boys/men joined us. My sister Donna/Maggie came with her son Eric. Bev came with her beautiful belly and her two young ones - Hannah and Liam. I set a table, lit over two dozen candles, lit a log in the fireplace, turned on the CD player to Van Morrison, and tried to create a cosy homefront.

Now, I'm exhausted, melodramatic, female... and I've just received a dozen emails. I can't think straight but hopefully tomorrow will prove easier. But I have to work and pick my father up from the airport - I just offered - shouldn't have but did - couldn't let my very pregnant sister carry all the load. Still, those of you who know me, know that I'm no saint.

Yesterday was a blur as I awoke too early but I did fall asleep early, when Rob and Bren were settling down to watch a movie.

This morning I rose at 4:30 played on my computer, went down to the water in the drizzle, and then took myself to breakfast and finished reading "The Lost Notebook" by John Montague who writes mostly in prose of a hot torrid affair he had with a young American in Florence when he was twenty one. His language fluctuates between beautiful and crude - like this sex affair. Here's one of the nicer passages:

"That afternoon was her richest gift to me, a glimpse of near ecstasy, of the sensuous fulfilment I longed for in my damp, distant island. And like all such moments it had a scent of permanence, a small addition to the sweetness in the world. Finally she fell asleep, her blonde head resting on my numbed arm, in total ease.

In the crook of my arm
my love's head rests;
in each breath
I taste her trust."

I don't know Montague's poetry well and I intend to research him further but, for some reason, this book reminded me of a young poet I met in Dublin at the workshop called Tony Curtis (hard to forget his name) and I've been roaming the internet searching for him which proved a little confusing as there is another poet by the same name in Wales. But I finally found a site with photo - still totally gorgeous - and, wonder of wonder, he has published another book of poetry. I've sent a query to the publisher to find out how I can order it.

Interesting, this book was reviewed by another Irish poet, Paula Meehan, who I met at the same time, who came to UBC a few years ago to teach at Booming Ground, whose words I trust. She's a wild woman, a strong woman, whose verse reminds me of Sharon Olds. I'll give you a short poem to illustrate this:

"I'm not your muse, not that creature
in the painting, with the beautiful body,
Venus on the half-shell. Can
you not see I'm an ordinary woman
tied to the moon's phases, bloody
six days in twenty-eight? Sure

I'd like to leave you in love's blindness,
cherish the comfort of your art, the way
it makes me whole and shining,
smooths the kinks of my habitual distress,
never mentions how I stumble into the day,
fucked up, penniless, on the verge of whining

at my lot. You'd have got away with it
once. In my twenties I often traded a bit
of sex for immortality. That's a joke,
Another line I swallowed, hook
and sinker. Look at you --
rapt, besottted. Not a gesture that's true

on that canvas, not a droopy breast,
wrinkle or stretchmark in sight.
But if it keeps you happy who am I
to charge in battledressed to force you test
your painted doll against the harsh light
I live by, against a brutal merciless sky."

I just checked my watch. I've been playing for six and a half hours. I don't know if age has slowed me down or if I'm more willing as time goes by to read and savour. If I had more days like this I might even write. I know. I have to create the time.

The rain is falling hard again. I have to shower soon (should perhaps just stand outside with a bar of soap,) visit my mother, and then go to Dialogue. A rich day.

It's Saturday afternoon and I have just climbed out of bed. I am so sleepy. I woke when Mike came in
at three this morning and then couldn't return to sleep. Gill and Rob returned home at four more than exhausted and once again I tried to sleep but it was a lost cause so I crept from the bed and came out to my little house in the garden and played on my computer until it was time to drive to Wenda's for our last plum meeting before Christmas.

On the way, I picked up some coffee and a box of mandarins. Vaughan brought some Christmas stollen, and Wenda made a batch of her famous cheese scones. (I doubt we could function without these warm biscuits and hot coffee.) Vaughan and Shirley also brought Christmas gifts for everyone. Ah, they are so bad. They know that I don't like Christmas shopping and Vaughan was kind enough to say that she thought my idea of coffee and telling a secret, a good gift idea.

So we sat around our writing table and talked a little and then all wrote a twenty minute short story (a contest Kate had sent me by email this morning.) Why is it not surprising that each one of us thought that the other three had written something worthy but we, ourselves, had failed? (I could be wrong here. I don't think Shirley is as self-depreciating as the rest of us.) We continued to write another story in three ten-minute segments, read, hugged, and parted.

I was so sleepy by the end that I knew I had to drive carefully and return to bed. As you can probably tell by this entry, I am simply too stunned to think, let alone write.

I feel like the mad hare in Alice in Wonderland: "I'm late, I'm late..." signing into my blog. "I'm tired, I'm tired... but I have to write or otherwise, I'm... what?"

If I am not making any sense, I've been running all day. No time to be. But I'm not unhappy. I went to work at 8, left at 10 to drive Gill to her acting job and returned to work. I rearranged the whole store. I'm worried about it. People aren't buying and there is such beautiful stuff but it costs. Difficult. I don't mind the people who come in and admire and say they can't afford but I do mind the people who come in and bitch about the prices. They think we're trying to take them. If they only knew the profit is next to nil, often under. But it does provide income - not extravagant (now that's an understatement) - for seven households.

But I am pleased with myself. The window is lovely - one of my best - and the entire store makes much more sense.

I was standing outside the store window, looking in, as if I were a passerby, and Rob was stopped in a stream of traffic. He honked his horn, opened his window and I ran into the road to hear that Mike had got his apartment in an artist's co-op. He is thrilled and laying out plans for his future. I think this is a step in the right direction for him. Oh my god, I'm pleased, I'm thrilled. This is one of those moments that every parent savours. I am so in awe of my children. And I pray, "Dear god, don't let me have fucked them up too much. Let them gain in the good things I've given them." And when it comes to pass, I sigh with relief.

So I'm home after a long day and have poured myself a glass of wine and thinking that I should be preparing for tomorrow, for my plum meeting. But, as I said before, I'm tired. Of course, my three fellow writers will forgive me but I want to find at least one writing exercise to bring - something that will provoke something.

I had better close.

I should know to write early in the day. I am in a much better mood. Already, I feel anxious about what I want to accomplish and my stomach is doing somersaults.

I awoke early - at 4:40 a.m. and was pleased. I have been in the doldrums too long and have accomplished little. My only excuse is that I'm Irish and Irish folk have a history of melancholia.

Yesterday afternoon at four, I headed downtown as I had a free pass to see "Something's Gotta Give" and I wanted to avoid rush hour traffic. I parked in Chinatown, went into a few shops, but felt too listless to even look so I found a cafe, sat outside, and watched people pass.

When I feel like this I am poor company and wondered why I had called Shirley in the morning and invited her to watch the show with me. How dare I inflict myself on a friend when I am so pathetic? How dare I be so ungrateful for my rich life? Oh, I was wallowing. I admit it.

Finally I reached into my bag and pulled out a book I'd thrown in at the last moment. And I read and read and then, miracle of miracles, I took out a pen and paper and began to write:

"I will tell a story of myself sitting, as I sit, reading "The Lost Notebook" by John Montague. 'Who am I?' Marian Woodman's big question. And why is the person I think is me, such a fool? Oh, I know that Shakespeare's fool is wise but not me.

"I have been meaning to read Montague's book forever or, at least, since 1994 when I went to Dublin for my first writer's workshop. I was so naive and scared and though my writing attracted attention, even praise (I was shocked), I remained shaky, out of my element (or was I?) Every night, after a day of workshops, the participants would gather at a pub for readings by famous Irish writers.

"One night, one of these writers came and sat at my table. After a glass of wine, my tongue loosened and I was braver in conversation. I actually told him something to the effect that I wanted to write feminist stuff, with an erotic edge, hopelessly true on the lines of Evelyn Conlan. The conversation ignited. I have seldom felt such an attraction for a stranger - but it was innocent. His young girlfriend clung to him. At the end of the evening, he asked 'Where were you when I needed you?' And I wondered the same thing.

"Why am I thinking about this now?"

By the time, I met Shirley I was feeling a little more up and we grabbed a quick bite, and joined the lineup at the cinema.

The film starred Jack Nicolson and Diane Keaton. It's the story of a 63 year old man who is a rich playboy and only dates women under thirty until he meets Keaton who plays a famous playwright and ?, her sister, a professor of women's studies at Berkeley. The dialogue, for the most part, was good although it did slip into a few Hollywoodisms but I forgive the writer these, because there was much wit that had me laughing out loud. One of the last scenes is in Paris. Again and again, I realize how I love that city and want to live there for a while.

When I returned home, nobody was there but Mike arrived home soon after, and cooked up some spicy Chorizo sausage. He is so happy. He finished his cafe job and is now working at Inform. When the owner of the cafe called one day, she told me that everyone loves Mike. The other day, I had an email from Inform, and the owner/friend told me the same thing. I questioned Mike. "What do you do that makes everyone love you?" And he smiled and said it was a curse.

Today, Gill went to work with Rob. She is ecstatic because she is playing an extra in a nightclub scene with Halle Berry. (I should really tell Marlene that they are shooting at UBC, Chan Centre, so she can go and deliver her message to Berry that Rob is too embarrassed to give.)

I have an appointment at eleven so I must run.

Fifteen days till Christmas and I'm not inspired. If I am truthful, nothing inspires me at the moment. Perhaps I have been doing too much and need to let myself be.

I received an email from Vaughan this morning in which she calls me, amongst other things, "expansive" and "giving". I told her I wasn't today, that I wanted to jump off the edge of the earth. This reminds me of a poem by Dorianne Laux:

FOR THE SAKE OF STRANGERS

"No matter what the grief, its weight,
we are obliged to carry it.
We rise and gather momentum, the dull strength
that pushes us through crowds.
And then the young boy gives me directions
so avidly. A woman holds the glass door open,
waits patiently for my empty body to pass through.
All day it continues, each kindness
reaching toward another--a stranger
singing to no one as I pass on the path, trees
offering their blossoms...

Somehow they always find me, seem even
to be waiting, determined to keep me
from myself, from the thing that calls to me
as it must have once called to them--
this temptation to step off the edge
and fall weightless, away from the world."

Perhaps I need to go for a walk and see if I can shake this lethargy.

I went to visit my mother last night. She's just arrived from Toronto and staying at my baby sister's. (My baby sister is 40 and just about to give birth to her third child. I held her rounded belly in my hands and felt the child roaming around inside her. It still amazes me that a human being is created inside a woman.) My mom will be 75 the day after Christmas and looks good. I think she is happy to get away from my father for a while and play with her youngest grandchildren. She doesn't like my "no gift" idea but admitted it was crazy going out and buying all kinds of stuff that would be half price on her birthday. Oh dear, I think I will probably break down to please her. (There's little voices in my head saying "She's an old woman. You can't break a habit of a lifetime.")

I'm not much in the mood for writing as I've just come back from the dental specialist. He was quite charming, looked a lot like Rob, except he's still has his Irish brogue (born and bred in Monaghan.) He spent well over an hour with me and said my mouth was in good shape and (sigh of relief) he really didn't think I had a grinding problem and the mouth guard really wasn't an issue. I have two choices: 1. implants - by far the best - at a cost of $16,000 (I did not add an extra 0) or 2. a partial denture at around $2000 that may or may not work. Unless I start making big money fast, the first option isn't feasible.

I could swear for half an hour but what good would it do?

Gill wants a ride to the gym and I have to work at the store for around an hour. If I think of anything more inspiring than my wee mouth, I might return.

I appear to be thinking lots and writing little. I drove Gill to school for her 7 a.m. class, went to the dentist for a panorama xray of my mouth that I'm to hand-carry to the specialist tomorrow, and then went to work where there was so little to do, I ended up walking down to the water to dream and read. (Why is it that when one isn't writing, thoughts flow and the minute a pen is in hand, the thoughts dissolve? Like dreams.)

I finished The Da Vinci Code. I liked the book, liked the idea that secret societies exist that believe in the sacred feminine, and that some still celebrate Hieros Gamos (Greek for sacred marriage.) Dan Brown, the author, swears that all his detail about the Holy Grail and sacred feminine are fact - based on five years of research. I wish he had included a bibliography. Although I hated the violence, I loved the riddles and cryptic messages. I also thought his argument about sex - the churches' reasons for sabotaging it and turning it into sin; and hence people's conflicted attitudes toward it - plausible. The ancients believed that it was the one way men and women could experience God. I must admit I especially love the idea that women are sacred and men incomplete until they have carnal knowledge of the sacred feminine. "Since the days of Isis, sex rites had been considered man's only bridge from earth to heaven."

The day has almost disappeared. I must return to the store for a hour or two and then... I'm not sure.

It's Sunday and I'm moving slowly - rather pensive - after a day and night on Keats Island. There is something vastly romantic, in my mind, about islands and this one - wild and silent - reminded me of Mayne in the old days with its great trees, dirt roads, and sparse population.

Six of us approached by water taxi, stomachs lurching after a rough ride. Bett had just arrived from Langdale. Maureen, in gum boots and yellow rain jacket, looking like a true islander, was waiting smiling. (Maureen is nearly always smiling. She is one of the cheeriest people I know.)

We trudged along a winding uphill road, whining in the rain (or was that just me), until finally we arrived at her llama farm. Maureen and her partner Doug own seventeen of these beasts plus two donkeys and all turned their heads when we entered the gate and looked us over.

Roz, Shirley, Bett, Maureen, Venay, Marlene, and I were the French workshop women. Roz' daughter, Marianne was invited as a substitute for joining us in France. (Even though the day was lovely, I think it a poor alternative to a week in the south of France, sweating and writing.) (I was going to add swearing but these wild women were doing a lot of that here and there.)

Once inside, wet gear off, we gathered around the fire, and ate and then we ate some more. We started with apple cake, cheeses, French bread, grapes, pomegranate, and chocolate. We moved on to baby quiche, barbecued salmon, wild rice, coleslaw, potato salad, and chocolate. We finished with a Notte Bon Ton chocolate cake, cookies, mandarins, and yes, more chocolate. (I think Marlene and Roz thought they were in heaven.)

In between mouthfuls, we talked about womanly things - great mysteries that I can't tell as men read this journal. (We may have even shocked Marianne, at her tender age of twenty.)

The day disappeared and I decided to stay and rest by the fire for the night with Maureen (although heroically, we walked the others to the ferry.)

I am full of tales - there is so much more I could say - but must finish as I am meeting Gill at IGA for dinner items.

This first part of my blog is for my family.

Rob's Christmas Wishes -
Rough Guide to Big Island of Hawaii
Yoga Zone: Power Yoga
Very Best of the Eagles
Citizen Kane (Special Edition)
Annie Hall (Widescreen/Full Screen)
An American Werewolf in London
Shutter Island
Dude, Where's My Country?
The Vanished Man
Mind Games
Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington...

Brendan's Christmas Wishes -
A Technique for Producing Ideas
The Typographic Grid
Josef Muller-Brockmann: Pioneer of Swiss...
Quirky Qwerty: A Biography of the Typewriter
Gestaltungsprobleme Des Grafikers

Mike and Gill's lists coming soon.

No time to write this morning. I still have to shower, run to Capers for bread, stop at a hole-in-the-wall (N.I. for bank machine), pick up Gill, and be standing on the curb at 8:45 when Shirley drives by on her way to Horseshoe Bay to catch a water taxi to Keats Island.

Yesterday was a delight. I met Donna, now Maggie, at Serenity Cottage for a manicure and pedicure. I was wild. Green on my fingers. Purple on my toes. If I dance on tables today with my French writing women, I will definitely take my shoes and socks off.

The rain is pouring down at this early hour. I woke from a dream when Rob came to bed. I think it was around 4 a.m. He is trying to fight a cold, counting the days until he has three weeks off. He says he is too old for the film industry but then he admits that even the young on set are sick and tired of the ungodly hours. People think that working on a film with movie stars is exciting. They ask him questions. "Have you talked to Halle Berry?" "What is Jack Nicholson really like?" "Is it true Sharon Stone never wears underwear?" Rob is tolerant but he is not impressed by the stars. He likes some, dislikes others. When somebody is rigged with a radio mike, he sometimes hears private conversations but he never tells.

When he is working, we have little time to tell each other anything. Yesterday morning, for instance, we had around fifteen minutes together. I tried to remember all the things that I had to ask him. I had left out papers that he had to sign. I relayed a message from England.

This morning I will probably not see him at all. And tomorrow morning, I am heading out early to go to Keats Island for a French reunion - the women from Vancouver who did the workshop last summer are getting together for the first time to talk and feast - so I may not see him until Sunday.

When he is working, there is little time for a relationship. I miss him.

I miss Gill. And now that Mike is working all day, I miss him. When I'd come in and out of the big house on my way to my garden house, he'd be playing his guitar. The house is empty. And instead of dancing on tables and enjoying the silence, I'm finding myself at loose ends. I suppose one needs time to adjust to aloneness. I once read an essay by Susan Sontag who took a break from her family and went into the woods to do some creative work. She lay for three days doing nothing. She couldn't stand the silence. And then she laughed at herself, got up, and began to work.

I'm hoping this will happen to me. But not today. Soon, I will go to work and change the window and do some displaying. At 11:30 I am meeting my sister Donna who is now Maggie at Serenity Cottage for a manicure and pedicure - a gift I gave her several years ago for her birthday that she enjoyed so much, we have tried to make it a tradition. (We missed last year as I was away.) After this frivolity, we will go to the Swiss Chalet for lunch. This is a bit of a family joke but we always enjoy the "family atmosphere."

If there is time later in the day, I will do a little writing. Hopefully the spirit will move me.

I'm finding myself at a loss for words but, no matter how I try to avoid writing this journal, I can't rest until I've added my daily spiel. If nothing else, I am consistent and conscientious. Or "stubborn" might be a better adjective.

Last night, I attended the last in the series of Jungian meetings at Marlene's. Everyone brought a passage from The Pregnant Virgin that spoke to her. I'll list a few:

"'Where love reigns, there is no will to power,' wrote Jung, 'and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking.' The opposite to love is not hate but power."

"The chrysalis is essential if we are to find ourselves. Yet very little in our extroverted society supports inverted withdrawal. We are supposed to be doers... But the truth is I can't do anything useful if there's no I to do it. I can't love anyone else, if there's no I to do the loving...."

"The mature feminine will not tolerate the demands and projections of the patriarchy.... If, for the first time, a woman is experiencing her feminine ego well grounded in her own body, her husband may be delighted, surprised and shocked by her sexual abandonment. However, opening the body can open a crevice in the heart that becomes an abyss containing the pain of a lifetime...."

There were many more. Unfortunately, I did not mark each quote as it was being read. I listened...

Gill just dropped in for some food and booze for a birthday party for her friend tomorrow evening. As there wasn't much in the house, I drove her down to the store and then back to her borrowed home for a week. She said that I have taught her to like change. She also said that I was too good. I said that if you love someone, you put yourself out for them.

This is something that my parents never did in any conscious way for me. But then again, their parents never did it for them - because they didn't have the money or the time. My mother's parents were farmers. My father's father was a poor dentist. (They actually existed before National Health.) There were eight children in my father's family, seven in my mothers. Children were loved as belongings but not as individuals. I wonder, in mid-life, what our children, will think of Rob and me.

The writing is just not happening today. I think I'll go up to the big house, pour myself a glass of wine, and read. Last night, I started reading The Da Vinci Code - good reading for a quiet rainy night.

I'm in an anxious frame of mind. I suppose it could be because I had to see the dentist this morning. She reglued my bridge, told me only to eat soft foods out of the side of my mouth, and made an appointment for me to see a specialist who happens to be an Irishman and a UBC professor. This visit is termed "consultation" and I'm to bring a cheque for $160. I wonder how many hours he will give me for this kind of money.

Although my smile is still in tact, I'm grimacing.

After, I ran errands for the business and home. More money. But necessary and completing chores offers a little satisfaction.

I did spend some time this morning researching query letters and writing.

This evening I will attend my last Jungian meeting of this session. We're to begin with readings - those who didn't read last week and I'm one of them and I'm feeling bad as Marlene said she would like every one to read. I read over what I wrote and I simply can't expose my miserable self. Ah well... I thought I would have time to answer another question where I feel on firmer ground but so far, I have not alit. After this, we will have a discussion group which I am looking forward to.

It would be so easy to push aside all the turmoil that Marion Woodman's book stirs up but I think this a chicken's way out and any woman who dances on tables is no chicken.

"You see, I want a lot.
Perhaps I want everything:
the darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shivering blaze of every step up."

God, I love Rilke. I love all writers who give me a hint on how to approach this world.

I started the day at 9 a.m. I mean I actually left my bed at this time. All was quiet. Everyone had left. I mean Rob and Mike who starts a full time job today. Gill and one other friend are staying with a third. She tells me that they are going to have a "health week" - lots of good food and exercise.

I am not lazy. I drove Helen to the airport last night at 11 p.m. to catch a flight to Hong Kong and then on to Australia and arrived home near two.

I called my dentist friend as I have yet another tooth that is starting to throb. My mouth continues to be a problem. I wonder what that means in the whole scheme of things.

I also called my friend Susan who is at present residing in Scotland. She will leave for France around the 16th of December but then again she may leave the 18th. Some friends are coming for Christmas around this date and she figures if they get there first, the house will be warm. No feeble thinker this 76 year old friend of mine. She also said that her eldest son has impregnated his Japanese girlfriend who Susan quite likes. (David thinks her a shrew but then, he thinks Susan one, too.) Her son (almost fifty), she says, is happy now that he has made a commitment. She thinks commitments are an aid to happiness.

I think anywhere that we find pockets of happiness, we should dip in and savour.

Now I will play a little with writing and then head downtown to tap. (Maureen and I changed our day.)

Last night I sent out an email to my mother and Rob and my children. I asked that they give me no gifts this Christmas. I am quite content with my material lot. I ask that they take me out for coffee and tell me something that they've never told me before or some deep, dark, secret. Or, if they have the time and inclination, they can give me something they make themselves that doesn't involve money.

I thought this a good solution to the material side of Christmas and might reap something much more precious than an object. I also know that this gift I am asking for, could prove more difficult than shopping for a present.

Thus far I have only heard from Rob. He asked me why I didn't like Christmas. He loves the gift giving and receiving. He has fond memories of his childhood Christmas'. He likes the challenge of buying something special for me and the children.

I see his point. I do love giving gifts that I know will delight - not gifts for gifts' sake.

The house feels empty today. Yesterday, Gill packed her bags and left for a week to stay with a friend whose mother is out of town. When she asked permission and my face fell, she told me that it would be good practice for both of us. She will be leaving at the end of the school year.

When Brendan left to live in London for a year, he told me that he was more afraid to stay than go and I endorsed his plan. I was shocked at the void he left. I wouldn't allow anyone to touch his room until he had been gone three months - the date of his return ticket if things didn't work out.

When Mike left, it was a little easier, as I knew what to expect, but not much.

And soon Gill will do the same. Oh dear, I have a feeling that the last child is the most difficult to say goodbye to.

I know this leaving is a necessary part of growing up but still my heart aches.