I would like to be the kind of woman who loves rainy days, who skips through puddles and embraces the wind and the storms, exclaiming "Isn't it wonderful!" as freezing water trickles down the back of her neck.

Unfortunately I am more the kind of woman who cringes and winces and huddles and shivers, as I am now, up in her freezing cold room, because this house is an uninsulated barn, and my PG&E bill was $500.00 last month. And I know I know, it's seventeen degrees in Massachusetts or something and even C has taken to teasing me about my thin-blooded California wussiness, but okay, I'm a thin-blooded California wuss. With the metabolism of an elderly lizard.

Right now I'm wearing long undies underneath my sweat pants, and a t-shirt and a sweat-shirt (I know, this is almost too sexy to bear) and my hands are like blocks of ice as I type. I'm going to the gym to sit in the hot tub and after that I'll bring the computer to a coffee shop and work--any old coffee shop, just so someone else pays for the heat.

I'm going great guns on the Greeny Flower play, which is now tentatively named Eva Pearl. No word on See How We Almost Fly yet. It's out at at least a dozen other contests, so if this one doesn't come through, there's still a chance something else might.

C is back at work, where new kids with new problems have shown up at Juvenile Hall. Haven't seen Carla for a few days but my thoughts are with her constantly.