The holidays have snuck up on me, the year is gone, the party we will give Dec. 18th is too soon, the house needs major cleaning, I don’t know how much food to make, I don’t know how many people are coming. Ed keeps asking people.

I want a live-in maid and cook. I want someone to do the baseboards and change the kitty litter and deep clean the rugs. The bathrooms need cleaning, don’t they always. Ed’s is a disaster, but then, you know, he’s a guy. The spare bedroom needs dumped in stuff to be re-stored anywhere else. Our friend, Joan, is coming for a week in mid-December and will be here for the boat parade. Ed’s friends, Dennis and Henne, will come for three days after Christmas and before New Year’s. This is a more social than usual time for us. I usually like that.

I was hoping to get a couple of my friends here after the 1st of the year, dangling mild weather in their northern faces, but they are notoriously sluggish about traveling. One friend, dating from the late 40s when I was engaged to her brother (yes I was very young and, anyway, he died), is sort of flirting with the idea but she hasn’t been too well. The perennially inconvenienced Penny is on the forever fence because of poor finances and dysfunctional obligations. Some of this may still happen.

I finally walked today, going over and over in my mind my ultimate story to tell Stan, the art teacher. It is utterly true so why do I feel so guilty? I am overwhelmed with musts and don’t need another obligation, particularly since I have just enough energy to walk and bike and do stretches and ballet stuff and work on my piano pieces, and clean the house and cater to Sweet Ed. Now, you may say, it’s a choice. No. If I don’t do the exercise, I don’t function AT ALL.

The last time I was this upset about undoing an obligation was back when I was at Harper & Row and a co-worker with whom I often lunched made blintzes for Jay and me. I was in the middle of major job stress, being tapped to present my boss’s list to 500 salesmen at the annual meeting because my boss was in the hospital. I forgot to take the blintzes home. Cele, the friend, insisted they were ruined. She hung on to her pique for weeks and weeks, absorbing all my apologies and they were not enough and I just “didn’t understand” the depth of my betrayal of our friendship . Something in my brain snapped and I dropped her.

This snap business doesn't happen often but once it does, a relationship is over with no going back. I am suddenly immune to the person. And I endure a lot before I get to that point. Now weeks and weeks isn't a long time when you consider that sometimes it takes years, but the nature of her abuse triggered something more. So, goodbye Cele. This is an aspect of my character that I don't control so I find it fascinating. Once it takes place, I think, wow, I'm free.

P.S. My presentation was not a howling success. My boss died. My dimly lit star sunk below the horizon. I took a job offer from a petty tyrant who was heading the hardcover book subsidiary of the New York Times. H&R gave me a really big party, mainly out of guilt because I had taken care of Virginia at the office/at home/at the hospital. I didn’t think it was such a big deal. It’s a Greek thing. After enduring the tyrant’s humiliations for two years, I transferred to the NYT Syndicate and my star got a reprieve.

xx, Teal