Daniella:
I live in good old Brooklyn, NY. And what is a jids storybook??

I rarely eat fruit. I "very once in a while", will eat a small can of one of those low-carb canned pears or peaches that have splenda.

I will pour out all the juice, rinse the fruit and put some in a little bowl. Haven't done that in a while.

If I'm going to go fresh, I'd rather have a pear or a peach. but honestly, I don't eat fruit. I'm a vegetable and fish person.

I have been doing good on the "no tomato" diet.

I didn't cut them out because of sugar, but because of the supposed inflammation and I do have arthritis so this fall the weather greatly affects this.

This morning (it was VERY cold outside). I had my winter coat (with the hood) on and I ran into my landlord (who lives next door and owns both houses).

I said very respectfully "do you know when you might turn on the heat". He just said "I don't know". Then he said "you know it's not really cold, it's the wind".

GIVE ME A BREAK. It's freezing, and he people upstairs are freezing and the two 82 year olds downstairs are freezing.

Every year, around this time, my landlord will come in and say "put the thermostat on 70, and don't touch it'.

Then he goes in the basement and flips the switch and the heat will come on.

So this morning I politely said: "would you like me to put the thermostat on 70 so WHEN YOU ARE READY, THEN THE THERMOSTAT WILL ALREADY BE ON THE CORRECT DEGREE".

He thought on it for a moment and said: "Oh, that's a good idea, that way I don't have to ring your bell and come in and tell you to put it on 70".

Then I said "good idea".

I know how to talk to landlords.

So until the heat is on, I have closed off the living room french doors, I have been cooking, roasting chickens, putting on big pots of water to simmer and my kitchen and the back of the house is nice and toasty.

I don't go into the front part of the house because it's like Alaska.

but soon, he will eventually flip on that switch downstairs and we shall have heat.

I now know that years ago I should have bought my own home. I wasn't ready to do this financially or emotionally. I raised a child and I had to choose "working", or staying at home to raise him". His behavior prevented me from keeping my job anyway so the choice was made for me.

So here I am at my age boiling pots of water, and closing the french doors to keep the back of the house warm.

Hey, we do what we do, we pay the price down the road.

But at least I have a roof over m head and I'm alive and kicking. That's how I look at life.

It really is the only way to look at it.

You see the glass as half empty or half full.

I see it as half full.

That's how I like to look at life.

I may even get my heat turned on today.

Melody