Stocks were falling and so was the rain, though they continually report on the news that it won't help us in California with the drought. I finished the painting I'd started a year ago, and which had languished since then on my drawing board while I toiled away at the magazine factory. It's the story of a childhood spill I took from a sled on the hill where we all used to go on the rare occasions when snow covered the ground and we were joyously let off from school. My best friend Kelly Keffer, who I believed to be a careless daredevil, was steering the sled and I was on the back. When she careened toward a mailbox, off I leapt to avoid the crash, but alas, I flew face-first into the mailbox while Kelly and the sled veered safely away.