If life was fair and there was true equality for the sexes, men would be screened for testicular cancer in the same way that women are screened for breast cancer. I had my annual mammogram today, which is never a pleasant experience, but was particularly brutal due to the brusque and Nazi-like efficiency of the technician. "Stick it there, stand with your feet together, NO!, TOGETHER FACING FRONT!, relax your arm, chin up, UP!" At this point you should imagine the sound of a gigantic, menacing machine, as the two cold glass plates that start out about 12 inches apart are squeezed together, until they are mere millimeters apart. "Now hold your breath." As if you could do anything but hold your breath while a sensitive area of your anatomy is being held in a vice-like grip, splayed out in a way that is just wrong. Two views on each side ("Put the hard, sharp, pointed edge of the machine in your armpit," was the command on the second view"), then a wait to hear that the films are readable, but no results for a few weeks. At least its only once a year.

It rains and it rains and it rains some more. Not the gentle, soothing, warm rains we had last spring, but the last cold tentacles of winter. Rains that are bitterly chilling, bringing greasy fog and biting winds with them. Rains that prevent me from opening the windows, which are surely all stuck closed from the new paint. We are, however, still in a rain deficit for the year, according to my husband. Some people know baseball statistics, he always knows where we are in terms of the amount of rainfall we've received for the year. Which is a silly measurement anyway, because the rainfall clock gets reset every January. We could have had a surplus of 40 feet last year (in which case we'd all be living in one town in the middle of Kansas), but that doesn't roll over to the next year and we have to start again from scratch. As if a big plug beneath the water table is pulled on New Year's Eve and the water all drains out. That big sucking sound you hear is no longer NAFTA, but the ground water gushing away to Mexico.

Books: Peril, by Thomas H. Cook. Better-than-average thriller/mystery type novel. Short chapters, each devoted to the intertwining stories of character who are all rushing toward each other by some relentless gravitational force.