Ahh, the week of the year that is hard to define. Kerry is back at work, having "sold" off his vacation time for this year (a topic all unto itself) for more work. The rest of us are home, and our time is both spoken for in sporadic ways (an appointment today, a piano lesson tomorrow, a hair appointment Wednesday) and too wide open. We've had some rainy days, some sick friends whose germs I don't want, and we've had too many consecutive days now where all of us are glued to our respective computers, victims of our atomized, technology-driven culture. I've spent hours and hours pushing an electronic skee-ball, without ever having a score that purports to justify that time investment--though perhaps that is merely a credential validating lost time. We've watched a disjointed cinema festival: Chipmunks, psychological thrillers, vintage horror (60s and 80s), sentimental holiday, and the Dirty Dozen. It's easy to ask, well, really, Nancy, what more do you want?

I think I'm ready for some authentic human interaction. Not with people on screens. Not with a houseful of people looking at different screens. I am limited by the lack of desire on the part of the people around me to do anything different. No one will accompany me on the dog walk. No one except Frances really wants to go out shopping or to the library. Friends are generally busy, gone, or both. Today, we finally are going out into the larger social world, which is likely just what we need to pull out of the after-Christmas week torpor. I could not be more excited.

I'm reading the book _Unless_, which is hard to put down, though I have to say that I do a lot of putting down because there are nonetheless many crises in our individualized house. The dog that peed on the floor, the squabble between two people, the hunger. I wish I could not identify so readily with the worries about a near-grown child, the questions about goodness (a big question on my mind lately), the often oppressiveness of the everyday details.

I wonder did everyone receive so few Christmas card this year, or it my lack a result of bad communication last year, some unintended bridge burning, and failure to get a card out yet this year, though I do have the cards and pictures for them. Each year we seem to get fewer, and this year I think we got six. I remember years when the cards would be taped up around our doorway and you'd be knocking them off every time you walked through. Facebook is a poor substitution, I think.