I highly recommend this book, which I have just finished reading. Every woman should read it, and I can think of a few men who would benefit from reading it as well, but it’s unlikely they would get the same message out of this that women will. Gilbert describes a year in her life trying to recover from a messy divorce and the break-up of another relationship. She decides to travel to Italy, India, and Indonesia, spending four months in each country, in an attempt to rediscover pleasure, devotion, and a balance to her life. Gilbert is funny, wise, enlightening, insightful, and uplifting, with writing that it witty as well as very good indeed. There were so many passages that I wanted to read out aloud to someone, they were so poignant. So just go out and buy or borrow a copy and see for yourself how good it is. Every woman I’ve spoken with who has read this book agrees with me that it is among the best they’ve ever read.

Here we are, limping into a New Year (quite literally for Dennis who hyper-extended the ligaments on his right knee and has been wearing a splint since Christmas Eve, replaced by a knee brace last week), almost two weeks have passed and what do I have to show? I mean, I ask you! Has there ever been anyone who has appeared to be so lazy? One lame (so to speak) post on this blog and no book re-views at all on You really must read…

But in all fairness, and in self-defence, I have been busy with friends who were visiting over the holiday, and tending to Dennis’ needs (on top of the leg problem he also came down with a cold, and you know how difficult a Man Cold can be, as seen here in this Nick Frost video). So it’s been difficult to find the time, or the enthusiasm, to put fingers to keys and produce a post.

Plus I’m in the throws of deciding what to do with this blog. My niece gave me some good suggestions (ahem! the only suggestions…), but I’m tending towards the talking-about-books-writing-and-food side of things, and moving away from talking about Bequia. So, what to do? What to do?

In the meantime, while I ponder the fate of my blog, I have been reading and will soon be recommending a couple of excellent books brought to me by my friend, Christine. I love it when people arrive from Canada bearing books - and DVDs. We’ve also been watching the original series of The Outer Limits Season One that I ordered. Excellent stories! Not too hokey special effects! We’ve only seen wires once. And I can understand why it was difficult to stay up to watch it when it first aired in 1963. This would have scared the bejeesus out of anyone, let alone a 10-year-old impressionable girl. I remember trying to talk my mother into sitting with me, so I’d be protected, but she’d inevitably fall asleep and start snoring, scaring me even more! If I woke her up, she’d send me off to bed - before the show had ended. So it’s great now that I’m older and can stay up late, on my own if necessary, to watch this programme, and not be as scared, but more impressed with the storytelling. And last night I was transported back to being a ten-year-old, once again, when Dennis began snoring on the couch beside me. This time though I got to watch the end of the show. I let him sleep.

I begin a new Ryerson course tomorrow, this time on editing and publishing fiction. I’m looking forward to getting back to school again, so to speak, even if it is only for 7 weeks. I’ve also been busy preparing several short stories and my first novel for entering in several contests.

So maybe I do have good excuses for not regularly posting to my blog. Any day now, I should be up to speed again and posting daily, following the perfect example of my niece at Knitting Under Water who has recently been writing circles around her old auntie. But, no fair! She’s an engineer, extremely organized, and she loves spreadsheets. She even has her knitting projects organized, fer cryin’ out loud!! How can I compete with that?

A little behind in my greetings, but they are heartfelt just the same. It’s been busy around here this past month. Plus I have just not felt like writing about anything at all, truth be told. I think it’s time for a total revamp of this blog in any case, and what better time to do that than the beginning of a New Year… So you’ll be seeing some changes in the next little while - if I can actually get around to figuring out what it is that I want to change.

Any suggestions?