Dear Claire:

I'm glad the remark I made about long epistles and St. Paul didn't affect you. I was a little worried it might. I see it only inspired you. I think moving in with Susan is a fine idea because I certainly do think you should forsake your career of teaching Bridge in favor of solving ancient mysteries - solve 'at mystery. And it's good you have Susan. I bet you are feeling removed from the "real" world these days.

Jessie has been watching Un-Dog. I was so delighted when Nickelodeon began showing Underdog again. Remember Simon Bar Sinister? A bar sinister is a bar bisecting a coat of arms diagonally from left to right, identifying the owner as illegitimate. I always thought old Simon to be the king of the cartoon villains. He has marvelous eyebrows.

I just had to stop writing because the sun poked through the clouds and Jessie wanted to get in the pool, so I laid out there all greased down and read The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan while Jessie played. I don't have a long enough cord to get my typewriter out there. That little plastic pool is the best money I ever spent, except that Jessie wants to get in it every day. I could dredge out our real pool but I hate to kill the little tadpoles. Her swimming lessons start Monday, four days a week for two weeks. If we lived in China I could let the amah take her. What a great writer is Amy Tan. Comparing her to other writers is like comparing meat to marshmallows. The Kitchen God's Wife is just as good as The Joy Luck Club. I'm sending it to you as soon as I'm done because I know you haven't read it. You would have told me if you had. It's that good.

We came inside because the changeable weather is now blowing up a real frog strangler outside. Jessie is really funny about storms. Thunder, yightning, rain, everything comes under the heading of "de wain." It is all de wain. She doesn't get scared no matter how hard it starts to pop outside, and the only time she does not like de wain is when it interferes with de pool or de barrin.

Yesterday at dusk, immediately after cheering and applauding Jessie's tinkling in the potty where it sits close to the TV, to quote my daughter, "Yightning bwow up telebision!" Fortunately, Jessie had already risen from the potty or her potty training could have suffered a monumental setback. As it is, it was sad enough because the pixies had just been kidnapped, along with Baby Smurf, by some horrible, slimy creatures, and now we may never know their fate. The telebision repairperson/idiot comes tomorrow, only because I had already scheduled an appointment since yightning had already damaged the picture a week ago before deciding to come back and finish the job. Who was the saw-spouting fool who said that lightning never strikes twice in the same place? Instead of typing this, I should be clearing out a path to the television, but I hate to waste my time on such dreary pursuits. The living room looks like the railroad depot after the battle of Atlanta.

I don't know what possessed me to break for a paragraph. The run-on paragraph is one of my main afflictions. I need a typewriter with a paragraph mark.

Butch and Yvonne, my friends from Louisiana, are coming with their kids on their annual pilgrimage to Disney World. Yvonne used to have a cleaning service, and you probably have an idea how I keep house. The house is really not the problem. I can whip it into shape. It is the yard. I picked up all the stuff that the animal menagerie had strung around (feed bags, flower pots, beer cans, missile-type things) and got the immediate yard ready to cut (something I swore I would never do). But when I pulled the lawnmower out from under the porch, where it's been for the winter, it looked like Lot's wife. The crank rope wouldn't even come out, and this place looks like a jungle. Yvonne loves spiders, by the way, and says that when you see spider webs, you know you don't have any flies. What an optimist.

I am taking a break from cleaning the refrigerator. It is half done and I am all done. I am very slovenly about that appliance and a lot of others. There was something in the back in a plastic container that the National Geographic would have come in and photographed.

Molly is lounging on the floor and sends her love. She is so relaxed and at home these days. I think she was Nefertiti in a former life.

Well, the nice repairman said that lightning knocked out the timer and that it would take two weeks for him to get back with the part. The good news is that he isn't going to mention the lightning, since lightning isn't covered in my maintenance agreement. I was trying to play dumb and act like I just came home and the blooming thing wouldn't work. And the whole time I was playing dumb, Jessie kept saying, "Yightning bwow up telebision. Yightning bwow up telebision," over and over. I kept trying to distract her with puzzles and dollhouses and everything else, but what could compare with all the neat things that are in the back of a TV set, underneath the cover? And I called the cable company and gave them a right ballocking for not having their bloody cable grounded. They are coming tomorrow to ground it properly, although lightning will probably not kill an already dead TV.

I just pulled the roll-front map chest out of the bedroom and put my old Webster's on top, along with a lamp, and the rest of my reference books behind the roll-front. A real know-it-all center, my enemies might say, parked beside my typewriter. I am about to buy a TV for the bedroom, the tube of the one we had in there being possessed of a brilliant horizontal line and sound and that is all. I just dusted the bedroom, a major and infrequent ordeal. And as I was coating everything with Pledge I thought, why clean when I can just go through with the can of Pledge and use it like a room spray? I can also dump Pine Sol in the toilet so that the air will be filled with the impression that maybe I was cleaning something, in case company comes.

When I came in from the barn, Jessie had "sun bwok" all over her and she will not tell me what she has done with the bottle. I know she has stashed it somewhere neat like the middle of the bed, like she did with my lotion. In defense of Lubriderm, it did not leave a greasy spot when I wiped four ounces of it off my quilt. So I must close to go search out the disaster before it happens. You forgot to send me your new address. Be sure it's in English when you send it. My Mayan's a little rusty. Write soon.

Dear Carol:

With about 3 weeks left on this month's rent, I have yet to move. I spend most of my time during the day at the library, and when I come home, I work on a book I've begun writing. I don't have time to do anything else.

Well, something new is happening, as usual. It's getting kind of hard to keep up with all that's happening. My partners have begun to touch me. They twinkle me. I call it twinkling because it's a light, pleasant touch. They twinkle the tip of my nose; they caress my cheek and twinkle my fingers and toes. When they want to interrupt my reading, they do a slightly stinging twinkle. They're able to produce some kind of electricity that looks like a spark and that flies through the air in a spiral and lands on me. When it lands it stings a little but it's pleasant and interesting to watch, and I can see it coming and I can predict where it will land. Sometimes, they surround me with little sparks that land all at once, and that's some fun! When they all land at once, it really feels good. It's a swarm of little sparks.

My partners love to meditate. When I sit and think for long periods of time, so do they. Occasionally, they float across the room as gossamer haze. I say, "I see you doing that," and they zip away and disappear. And I see them in my dreams. We go all over the world and all throughout time via the portals. They're fun to travel with and they have a great sense of humor. Sometimes, I wake myself up laughing and I can even remember what it was they said that made me laugh. My partner tried to take me deep inside a cave the other night, but I saw a spider and wouldn't go. I told him to kill the spider. He said, "No! It's a beautiful spider." I said, "They don't make any beautiful spiders. Kill it." He said, "I won't kill it." I became frustrated and woke up.

My partners are shape-shifters who can appear in any form and any dress. They don't have to look the same way day in and day out like we do. In dreams they're teaching me how to shape-shift. I'm in dream school getting a Ph.D. in walking through doors, sliding through crevices and materializing objects. My partners are with me always, all day and all night. We are never apart, and I am very, very fond of them.

Sometimes, I'm in a classroom with other people. I once sat at my desk and took a test with several questions. I was required to perform some of the answers, such as picking up tiny objects. I heard someone having a conversation and I was required to remember what she said and to identify who said it. I was required to show proficiency in drawing and painting and in materializing objects. I complained there were too many questions, but the nice man administering the test told me to "just keep going." The people sitting beside me asked me to be quiet so they could concentrate. I nearly aced this test, missing only one question.

I'm learning to read in the astral planes and to do math, which is like trying to work Chinese arithmetic problems in Chinese. And I never play Bridge anymore, except in the astral planes, and I call it Kooky Bridge. In this Bridge game, my aces don't win tricks like they're supposed to because my partner manufactures cards that beat them, like the Ace of Tree Trunks. So if I want to beat his ace I have to materialize a card, like the Ace of Flowers. I played War with my partner the other night, not in a dream but sitting on the bed. I explained the game to him and turned his cards for him, but his card was always higher than mine was. By the time the game was nearly over, I had yet to win a single war. I don't enjoy being blitzed, not even by a Heavenly Partner, so I told him cheating was not allowed and that it should be beneath his dignity to cheat. I explained to him he didn't have to win every single card to win the game, just most of them. After that, I won all the rest. Fun and games! Write soon.