12:23 a.m. Ah! A toasty heater by my toes and a big mug of steaming tea at my nose. The subtle joys of winter.

But I'm just jesting with you. I am living a dream. The picture is about twenty years old, back when we actually needed such a stack of wood. In reality, it's been blazingly sunny all day and almost too warm to sleep in the direct sun.

So, in order to join my fellow Americans and write about the snow, I have had to go into my handy index card file and look under the letter S -- and here we are: four separate cards, each with some snow description on it that I thought I might use one day.

That day is today.

One card describes knocking on a polished front door in the middle of a snowstorm. A second card describes an ice storm turning the power lines into leaden crystal and snapping them in two just as I was going down to a moldy basement to get another scuttle of coal.

The third card is just a description of frozen lawn furniture left out too long. It's oddly unfamiliar now, but it might come in handy some time soon. The fourth card talks about the reflected brilliant whiteness of the snow, a first communion of pureness.

If you could have told me twenty years ago, back when I bundled up and went out to the side yard and took this picture with my big old Minolta, that I would be: a) remembering snow from index cards instead of shivering in it; b) pulling fragments from four different unsubmitted, unpublished novels; and c) writing my words electronically for instant transmission ... well, I would have never believed you.

About the four novels, that is.

Are the rescued bits any good? Were they worth saving? Were the novels they were once part of good and strong or were they rotten at the core? And even if I did chop and hack it all apart, isn't it nice to know that I have a big stack of words all neatly trimmed and waiting?

Waiting. It seems as if I'm always waiting for something. For ideas. For money. For time. I've plenty of the former; I'm always running out of the last two.

How much time do you need to get a thought off the ground? How much runway to achieve lift? I can tell you that I used to be just hopeless about this. I was the tortured artist, frustrated and trapped in the worker's 9 by 5 cell. I was the mom. The neighbor. The wife. The friend. The acquaintance. The sisterdaughtercousincolleaguebosspalcoworker and yes, even the professor.

I thought I needed time to unwind, time to collect my thoughts, time to wait for blessed inspiration, and then time to try to get something down on paper before it was lost. Forever. As if.

Now, finally, I've learned that there is no right time. Now's not the best time. There's actually no point in unwinding or collecting. If you're angry that you don't have enough time, you'll be just as angry when all you have left ... is time.

Pay attention! That's what they always say. All my life I've paid attention. Has it been too costly?

Time is the most expensive commodity in the world, I've come to realize. Thank you for spending some of yours with me tonight.