It's now after the Fourth of July and my first entry for 2011 is: "April 25th Mysore raspberries." I usually plod along till mid March with the daily "orchid house," the weekly, "Netflix, Open Sat."and then even that fades away. Well, V. S. Pritchett did say that the secret of happiness was "a pleasing monotony." Obviously the Mysore raspberries this year were a total disruption.
Every December when I buy calendars for Christmas I choose a diary for the New Year. Should I go for a real leather one with all the maps and international time zones? The one with the daisy on the front and This Diary Belongs To..? But of course you don't want your name there if you are actually going to write Dear Diary stuff. And being the trad English type, I don't go in for expressing deep thoughts though looking in the mirror, I think about old age and death quite a bit. That should remind me to keep a diary as memory fails because as Donald Rumsfeld said: stuff happens.
If we do something really big like going to India or North Carolina, then I take along an exercise book and it all goes in there right from the airport:"Buy NYT." But day by day? Well, until 2011, dear diary started on January 1st, with all the other resolutions; tea, skim milk, half grapefruit. That diet one was on its way out by Jan 2nd because of New Year's Day football: (wine, popcorn, chips.)
People coming and dogs needing shots go on the calendar with tax deadlines and Recycling days. Really big things get engulfed in their bigness. I don't remember sitting with my diary on the night Andrew or any other hurricane arrived. I do have one other entry for this year when our son got engaged and we all had dinner. Not even an exclamation mark but next to it, "fish and broccoli."
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