I am putting stamps on envelopes at the dining room table when I feel sweat sliding down the back of my leg. I don't realize that I can look up the weather until it's 5pm already, and now only 99 degrees. He says it's not uncommon for writers to stop when they are happy. Happy is a state I can express, it is satisfaction that is more dangerous, more torpid. That, and getting entangled in the petty thievery of dignity, the daily jockeying for worth that seems to be an entire current or currency here. People who tell you everything they think of you, or that they refuse to think of you at all, in the way they park their car, the placement of their yoga mat in a crowded classroom, the position of their feet in the line at the gourmet food counter. It could make me mean and intolerant, and I know I have to keep reaching back to moments over the winter, when I felt gratitude and joy in the simple, relieving act of caring.