I said I wasn't going to blog. I said, "I write children's books, novels, short stories, and magazine articles, plus a ridiculous number of emails, isn't that enough?" I said, "Who reads these things anyway? Who has time?"

But, then the squirrel tried to steal my sheet.

What on earth does a squirrel have to do with writing? It's a stretch, but I'm a demon with the transition sentence, so here goes. I write about the environment for places like Sierra and the New York Times Magazine. All day, I read and write about global warming and toxic chemicals and the destruction of beautiful places and cultures and at the end of the day I tell my husband and child that from now on we can never -- insert verb here. Sample nevers: drink bottled water, buy non-stick cookware, use the dryer.

It's the last prohibition that brings us to the squirrel. I don't have the kind of level backyard that's conducive to a clothesline, so I use a drying rack. Sheets are too big for the drying rack, so I hang them over the railing of my deck. Two days ago, a squirrel came onto the deck, and decided she needed the sheet more than I did. But sheet big, squirrel small. A struggle ensued. And being a writer with nothing to do but meet the five or six deadlines urgently awaiting completion, I filmed the struggle, and set it to music, and then posted it on YouTube.

And because I have a new picture book coming out, The Sea Serpent and Me, on May 19, I ended the squirrel movie with the totally irrelevent URL of my web page (www.dashkaslater.com). Because, who knows, some squirrel lover might just be motivated to buy my book. And then I thought, perhaps some explanation is in order.

 So here it is: an explanation. And my first blog entry. Let's see what happens next.