It is 34 with a wind chill factor in the 20's and I am freezing! It is going to be 25 degrees tonight! Send all your long underware to me now!

My husband is a heat machine, too. Toasty toes!

When I moved to Missouri for a year, I did some VERY California girl things. First, when the windshield was frozen and people were scaping away at 7 in the a.m. I wondered why they didn't do what we do in California. So I threw a pitcher of warm Water on my windshield. Had to drive home with a half inch of ice on it!

I used to stomp on the mud puddles and couldn't believe the icy sheet on top wouldn't crack off. They were frozen all the way through -- just like the creek we walked on.

We always got a new hat, mittens and scarf for Christmas, but rarely used them unless we went to the mountains to play in the snow, which we did every year. In Missouri my nostils got icicles -- REALLY! -- and I realized what scarves were for. I know this is all old hat to you snow dwellers, but it was all amazing to me!

It's freezing here too! It's got to be at least 68 degrees!

One day the world is grey, the sky an ashen hue. It takes all you can muster to suck the damp air into your lungs, and put one foot in front of the other.

Then a morning comes when the world has changed while you dreamed of sunlit lands. It is fluffy and white, and drifts down the corridors of the sky like frozen feathers lost by some mythical bird soaring in the stratosphere.

No matter where you stand and look up you see you're in a funnel of magic, and whatever your age you are transformed, and that place inside, where the children live, is closer now to the surface than ever.

The world is virginal. No foot has marked the plains of your front yard. The silence is real, and tangible. No matter how hard you try, you feel a magic, coming from all around you. You hate the cold, and you hate the snow.

It crunches and groans beneath your step, it complains of your passing. Yes, you drag the shovel, and you grumble under your cloudy breath, and when each neighbor waves, you wave back. Your smile is a little broader today, and so is everyone else's, your wave a little more exhuberant. You hate the snow, you hate the cold, but you cannot, absolutely cannot, hate this day.

So you grin as you grumble, you hum as you shovel. Such is the magic of a snowy day.

My favorite childhood memory is iceskating on my grandmother's pond with my sister. Their horse got so jealous that we weren't playing with him. He sniffed, snorted, and stamped his front hoof on the bank. When that didn't do any good, he ventured out a good way on the frozen pond. Then he promptly locked up all four legs and wouldn't budge. My stepgrandfather, who was pretty chubby, had to get on the ice and push that stiff-legged horse off the pond. Their combined weight was too much! Crazy, jagged, LOUD cracks started running through out the ice all around them. Fortunately, they managed to get off safely.

It is SNOWING in Houston! Not much yet, but it's a start. Got to take the dogs out and watch their reaction -- too funny! Becky, I'm sending some your way, o.k.?

Thanks, Marie. My feet are freezing. Is that the snow you sent??? Have a lovely white Christmas!