Cold, cold, cold.

How cold is it? Cold enough to stay inside the house. But not as cold as it must have been in the Hudson River when that plane went down yesterday. Thank heavens for an experienced pilot who stayed calm and made a split-second decision which saved all those people. Honestly, there must be something that can be done about all the birds hanging around the airports. To think that people's lives are at stake because of birds getting caught in plane engines...

It's been so cold again that I haven't gone out much. The house is already decorated for our Valentine's party; I've gone through all of last year's receipts and everything is ready for tax-time; I've been cleaning out my closet again, donating sweaters and shoes that I haven't been wearing. Instead of taking tops from the front of the closet, I've been reaching towards the back for things that haven't seen the light of day in months and months. My new rule is if I don't keep it on after I've put it on, then into the donation box it goes. There's got to be a reason why it doesn't come out of the closet too often, so that's reason alone to pass it on to someone who needs it.

The cats haven't spent too much time out on the screen-porch, except for a little time each afternoon when it warms up a little bit in the sunlight. I think they're getting bored in the house because they're picking on one another (actually, Mickey Kitty and ShadowBaby are picking on AngelBoy). Mickey Kitty's favorite playthings this week are the Valentine decorations-- he has rearranged several things for me each day. Considering that the cats never touch anything in this house (not even the Christmas decorations which are all over the house in November and December), I have to believe that the cold-weather boredom has led Mickey to take an interest in every red heart that he sees around this house. A red heart that is on the piano when the living room lights are turned off at night will mysteriously find its way to the foyer by morning.

AngelBoy starts every night in the laundry room, in his private little bed on top of the washing machine. He wakes me up between three and four o'clock, banging his fluffy paw against the laundry room door because he has used his litter box in there and heaven forbid he should stay in that room with a soiled box. Up I get, walking with a flashlight from our bedroom to the laundry room so I don't trip over the other two cats or the dog. In the few minutes it takes me to clean out that litter box, AngelBoy has walked into our bedroom and curled himself up next to my pillow, where he will stay until I get up later on that morning. AngelBoy thanks me for all of that by leaving his play-mice in my shoes. Every morning, when I go into my closet to get a pair of shoes, I will find his little mice in one of my shoe-boxes. (I know it's AngelBoy because ShadowBaby never goes into any of the closets, and Mickey Kitty will only go into my husband's closet.)

I've also gone through my basket of books to-be-read, and the pile has dwindled down and down. All the books in there came from either yard sales (50 cents or less) or the dollar-shelf at Half Price Books. Since last week, I've decided I didn't want to read the life story of Lillie Langtry. Ditto for Gloria Vanderbilt. Nor did I find a novel about The Alamo all that interesting. And even though I loved "The Secret Life of Bees," I found the author's second novel ("The Mermaid Chair") to be just another novel, one that I could do without.

The one book I continued to read, and one I will keep, is "The Kite Runner," by Khaled Hosseini. It's a novel about a young boy growing up in Afghanistan. Reading this wonderful and heart-wrenching story, I have to wonder how much of this novel is really a novel.

So that's been my cold-weather story. As I said-- it's cold for here but it's been a piece of cake when you compare this to the frigid horrors in the Hudson.