ice claw

ice claw

It's a balmy 10 degrees outside this morning, up 30 from what it's been all week.  (About minus 23.)

Brr-ouch.

Hard to believe that one week ago, TODAY, we were wandering Tuscon Arizona in shorts.

The good thing about super-cold weather is the writing time -- my husband builds a fire, I drink tea all day and hibernate.  My husband and daughter just left to battle the elements, but I'm staying home with our well-packed wood box, cozy in my jammies.

Whoo-hoo!

I'm working on my little self-help book (which I'm so very tempted to name SELFIE, though I'm sure I'll go with something more dignified.  Maybe, 'Fix your Selfie').  I wrote this book when I was going through a particularly bleak time of life.  It was my way out--the tactics I stumbled across during said bleakness actually work.  The book is a short and sweet 24-page pep-talk that I read whenever my thoughts start heading south, turning me, in moments, happy again.  I've found what I discovered so effective and life-changing that I decided to share my little secret with the world.

My book will be out by January, but more about that in a few weeks.  My daughter just chucked Stealth Panda at me, which must mean he's feeling left out of my blogging loop.  I realize Stealth believes its his world and we all live in it but he should be grateful I ignored him this morning, not annoyed.  Had he gotten his lazy panda-butt out of bed earlier, I would have photographed him clinging to the dagger-ish icicle currently dripping from our front porch.  No doubt he would have stuck to it like a tongue to a cold pole.  That kind of negative publicity would have set-back his quest for world domination by weeks.  Maybe months.

Which is nothing like the set-back he'll experience once Xavier, the French Bulldog, joins our family.