I am sitting in my kitchen, watching it snow.

This, in a place where it was almost seventy degrees, three days ago, and where the weather gnomes tell us that it will be, again, tomorrow. They speak glibly of Canadian weather fronts, and masses of cold air, but all I know is that the buds I had seen on a couple of the trees, yesterday, are now being covered with snow. They're probably thinking "Oh, this can't be good."

My mother is in a 'rehabilitation hospital', recovering from a heart bypass operation. When I first heard of a heart bypass, I thought it meant that the heart was actually being bypassed, and wondered what was doing the blood pumping. Now I know a little more about it, thanks to the Web. . Doctors like to complain about people looking things up on the Internet, and then coming in with this information, but based on my mother's experience, it's a good thing, and they're just going to have to live with it. No one in this process, since the operation, has been very forthcoming with information. I suspect its because to them, my mother is just another heart, just another elderly person. They don't mean her ill, but they're not particularly warm and compassionate, either. It will be good to get her home.

I'm amazed how inept our government has been in the battle for minds that has to correspond with the physical battle going on in Iraq. Whenever I heard official pronouncements, they sound as if they were crafted for John Wayne in a cowboy movie. I expect to heard Colin Powell say to Irag 'Aw, you made a bad move, pilgrim'. I'm particularly fascinated by the woman who's the Department of Defense briefer. She sounds smart and brisk, also impatient and weary of lesser minds. I'm also taken by her clothes. I think she's dressed by the Joker.