I know you’ve heard this plaintive cry before but … swamped. Overwhelmed. So much to do, now that the garden has opened up as another large area to nurture — I haven’t begun planting — not to mention the rest of the house, not to mention my own work. And so I drop everything and scroll. Because I’m a flawed human being.

However. It’ll get done or it won’t. There are many dilemmas facing me right now. For my work, I’ve started, barely, on an epistolary book about my parents and am already drowning in resource material. Bought Scrivener, the app that’s supposed to help with complex writing projects, but it requires video tutorials, and after the first one I was completely lost.

Please ignore this woman’s mewls. It’s lovely outside at last — as usual in Ontario, it jumped from chilly to 25 degrees in ten minutes. Today it’ll be 29. I’ve just put away my winter boots.

Last Saturday, a day both very sad and joyful: Anna and I drove to Woodstock for the memorial of beloved couple Maurice and Lani, who died of cancer and COPD a month apart last year. Lani’s sister-in-law Lila did a beautiful job assembling friends and decorating the Legion with photos, video, and artefacts. I and others spoke. They were both one-of-a-kind, deeply eccentric and passionately interested in the world. Lani was the soul of generosity; I have many gifts from her, including a vintage-looking portable record player that arrived one day out of the blue. She thought I’d like it. I do.

I’m glad I visited them last October; Lani could hardly breathe and said she’d had enough. I tried cheerily to convince her otherwise, to no avail. When Maurice died in November, I knew she would not be far behind. Much missed, dear friends.

Watching: I’ve been taping Stephen Colbert for the first time, since he’s off the air next week, so watched him welcome David Letterman. Phenomenal. Letterman, who’s openly furious about Colbert being cancelled by the network, asked him about the furniture on the set, if it belonged to CBS, and Colbert assured him it was and that it was very expensive. Men arrived and, bizarrely, carried it all away, forcing the two comedians to sit in the audience.

And then they went up to the roof and proceeded, gleefully, to throw that expensive CBS furniture off the roof; it landed and exploded on the logo of the network on the ground. At the end, Letterman said on camera to CBS executives, “In the words of the immortal Edmund R. Murrow, good night and good luck, motherfuckers.”

You tell ’em, Dave!

PBS showed a performance of the musical Suffs, about the suffragette movement. Fabulous and very rousing for us feminists. Last night, on TCM (thanks, Ted Turner!), To Sir With Love, stopped to watch a bit and ended up watching the whole thing for the first time, very enjoyable if a bit dated. Treating the rude, angry, hopeless kids in his class like adults, showing them dignity and care — a beautiful performance by Sidney Poitier.

And … my new crush, not to rival Heated Rivalry, but still … Inspector George Gently, a British series on PBS. Gently is played by actor Martin Shaw, showing us how compelling an actor can be; he reveals little and yet we want to know more. Very attractive. A bit older than Huddy and Connor.

And yesterday, to a matinee of The Division, which is what I call “theatre verité.” Playwright Andrew Kushnir undertook a journey to Ukraine and other places to try to find out more about his grandfather’s life before his emigration to Canada. And what he found took the play into dark territory, as he learned of Ukrainian collusion with the Nazis during WWII. Moving and compelling, with a main actor playing Kushnir and four others playing multiple roles in the small, sold-out space. Terrific theatre.

So as I bitch about too much to do, I am also enjoying a great many things.

One more thing: my New York grandmother had this portrait of me painted when I was about eleven. Although it hangs in my kitchen, I’ve always disliked it — not only that my young self looks solemn and middle-aged, and my eyes are actually greenish not brown, but that he made my left eye considerably higher than the right. I’ve always thought the left side of the painting is me, the other side is someone completely different — what a lousy artist. But recently I took a rare selfie at the Y and made a startling discovery at the age of 75: ONE EYE ACTUALLY IS HIGHER THAN THE OTHER! Yikes.

Current fantasy: if I do the renovation here to turn the second and third floors of my house into a big apartment and the ground floor for me, which I think is the only way I can stay in this house, I will lose my office. So maybe a little house at the end of the garden can turn into a replacement office. The question is: in January, will I actually stumble through the snow to get there?

Stay tuned.