Now Is The Winter Of Our Content

This has been the easiest, and therefore most pleasant, winter I can remember.

Of course much of that is weather based. We've had a grand total of one snowstorm, and that was in October. Now I like snow (a lot actually, since it always reminds me of snowdays and I loved snowdays), but it's a real pleasure not to have to crawl over mounds of dirty frozen deadsnow, to get to my dirty frozen deadsnow car.

My parking lot is black ice capital, but not this winter. No snow and also no sleet, and above freezing temperatures practically every day. I've worn my winter coat and gloves four times (I'm giving the winter jacket I bought for Buxtehude a lot of wear), and I've scraped ice off my windshield maybe twice.

Now I know this easy weather isn't going to last, but neither will winter. Last winter, which was a long nasty one, started freezing over in December and didn't melt until March. So even if the snows start falling (and nothing serious is expected in the ten day forecast), the messy part will be over in six weeks or less.

I love this winter. I really do.

Everything else is going smooth and easy as well. I'm reteaching myself the joys of living on a budget, with the help of websites like Hot Flash Financial. I'm reading a lot (I started The Secret Life Of Houdini yesterday, and as part of my joys of budget, took it out of the library). I'm plowing my way through my backlog of DVDs (last night, Philadelphia, tonight The History Boys),weaning myself off my beloved sleeping pills, and I've even lost a couple of pounds. Friday evenings I write down five things I'm grateful for, and so far it hasn't been a struggle to find things to write down.

Oh, and thanks to owning a new computer, I've won 100% of my FreeCell games. How's that for an ego boost.

When I wrote Kid Power , my extremely good editor, Jeanne Vestal, taught me several things, one of which is characters can't have things completely easy. They have to have problems to solve, woes to feel. So I don't want you to think everything in my life is jim dandy. I have serious vacuum cleaner and toilet issues. One won't start and the other won't stop.

But I'll take that over sleet and freezing rain any day!