Note to self: appreciate daughter

Just got a great idea for the title of my next memoir: "Note to Self." Went immediately to Amazon, looked it up and found a whole page of books called "Note to Self."

Back to the drawing board. This is how writers spend time - doodling, dreaming, thinking of brilliant titles. In earlier times I wanted to found a girls' group called the Moist Towelettes. But that did not happen, and neither will "Note to Self."

It's over! Woo hoo! That's how much I love Christmas - to everyone, I'm saying, "It's over!" I stripped the tree today, took down the stockings and the lights from around the windows, put away the farm/creche. Hooray! Not that it wasn't fine, it was. But it's hard work and time-consuming, fun while it lasts but then it's time to move right along.

And there's collateral damage - at the Y today, I discovered I've gained 5 pounds. And we didn't even eat turkey or Christmas cake! Everyone there was saying, "How was your Christmas? Did you have power?" A woman changing in my row told of freezing in the dark for 4 days, and then when power finally returned they switched on their dishwasher, which broke and overflowed. Many stories of misery, many still without power. Anna hopes the only upside of this is that perhaps, at last, "Mayor" Ford's supporters will be fed up with him. Don't count on it, though. They're always willing to blame someone else and cheer for him. Whoever they are.

So - a week to get back on track, and then I'm off to Florida for ten days, back the night before the Ryerson term starts. I know, it's a hard life but someone's got to live it. My brother and I are selling Mum's little condo on Anna Maria Island this year - do you know someone who wants to buy in Florida? So this is my last visit to her sanctuary, four blissful days on my own, quiet time for work and thought, and then Anna and Eli come to stay for a week.

After Anna went home Xmas day, I found a piece of paper she'd dropped. It was her Christmas to-do list, a scrupulously neat and organized day by day chronicle of what she had to do when - when to wrap the gifts, when make the quiche for me, the cookies for others. On the back, her shopping list for No Frills and Dollarama. This almost penniless single mother managed to buy and wrap gifts for eight children plus friends and family and make huge batches of cookies and other culinary gifts while sheltering four people who had no power.

She's my hero.