We had a dust of snow at least twice, but it was just that. Last night we had about an inch and a half of very wet snow. So it’s winter wonderland all right. It coats every branch, every object in white, like a Currier & Ives New England winter scene. We’re getting another storm tonight, when we are expecting company, but it should start as rain and wash all this away. Toward the end, it will dump more snow. Little or much, I have no idea. I went over the new story “What is the meaning of this?” a couple more times and sent it off to Ramsey at PM Press. I also sent him another new story that was published this winter. He liked both of them, so they’ll be in the paperback of my short story collection, THE COST OF LUNCH, ETC. I have a 3^rd story I wrote during the summer, “Trajectories,” but the anthology of Jewish Noir stories isn’t out yet, so it can’t go into COST. I have three books in production at once. I swore I’d never let that happen, but no writer has control of the production process unless they self-publish. It means that almost every day there are queries and I’m going a little crazy. We had two snows this week, both light but sticking, and are awaiting two more, one tonight and a potentially bigger one Saturday night.It has not been a snowy winter so far but I suspect we’ll get plenty as soon as the jet stream or whatever it is up there starts delivering moisture into cold air. I’m hoping to get out and walk today before the weather changes. Now it’s sunny and dry, little wind, perfect for walking. Still negotiating details of my three Michigan reading the first week of March. Actually, the first reading is at Buffalo State U in New York of course and not Michigan. 7:30 on a Tuesday night. Details of all of the readings and others will be on my website soon – as soon as Woody gets our taxes done and can get to it. Wednesday is at Michigan State and Thursday is at Eastern Michigan U. It’ll take us a day and a half to get home. I was invited to open the Massachusetts Poetry Festrival in Salem, MA on the first of May. The night before, I’ll be reading at Porter Square bookstore in Cambridge. Things are beginning to fill in but the fall is still clear. We lugged three of our four cats to the vet’s yesterday. It’s always a war to get them into the carrycases, and then they sing all the way there. Puck has to have a dental appointment in two weeks. Everybody else is fine but Xena, our youngest and largest cat, has put on a pound since last January and we must stop that weight gain. Much of the time, I couldn’t play with her as with my operated knees, I just wasn’t mobile enough. Now I am and do but she needs more exercise than she’s getting. I enjoyed the championship game on Sunday but not the fuss about slightly deflated balls that is spoiling everyone’s pleasure since then.I’ve been writing poems. Tonight we have company, three friends. I’m making a leg of lamb with new potatoes and oranges and tomatoes, a pineapple upsidedown cake and salad. The lamb has plenty of veggies and starch in it already. Woody will pick up a good bagette from the French bakery. He did that for the friends we had over last weekend. I made great French toast for breakfast this morning from the slices of bread left over. Gradually the seeds I ordered are arriving and I’m sorting them into four containers: start inside; start outside while there’s still danger of frost; still outside after no more frost; and succession plantings in the late summer or fall. Going on tour the first week of March will disrupt my usual planting inside schedule, but once the seedlings are moved to the greenhouse, they develop fast and can probably catch up to where they would have gone. Still, ordering seeds always feels like the first tiny step toward spring.