It's not like I have anything better to do...
Two words: Jury duty. Might be there all week. Not happy about it. I don't handle boredom well.

On a positive note, at least I work for a company who will give me the time off and not dock my salary. There were people selected whose employers are not paying them while they are serving. Jurors get $10 a day plus mileage. If I lost a week's salary, I'd be f*cked. And I don't have kids to feed. No wonder so many people try to get out of it.

I can't say anything about the case while serving, not even if it is civil, criminal, or otherwise. What I can say: (1) Local government would save a sh*tload of money if they would keep their auto heat & air set lower than SEVENTY-FOUR DEGREES, (2) people are gross...if I saw one person hack something into a tissue, I saw ten of them do it (note to self: bring protective face mask next time), and (3) bailiffs, for the most part, are a happy bunch of workers. I think they're all retired security or police, but they must love the crap out of their jobs because they're the most cheerful government employees I've ever met.

Guess who rode her new bicycle to work today?
That would be ME. And if you know me, you should be proud because I am (1) extraordinarily lazy and (2) not up for morning activity EVER. But there I was, cruising on down the street, doing the beauty queen wave (wrist wrist hand, wrist wrist hand...) to the sanitation workers as I passed the garbage truck, pedaling like a pro on the street next to cars that were moving. This is a big step for me. Also:

* My bike basket is the perfect size for my work bag and a bottle of water.
* I can't smoke and ride the bike at the same time.
* It wasn't as scary as I thought it would be.
* No one honked their horn at me.
* It didn't take as long as I thought it would.
* I didn't get run over.
* I need a rearview mirror. And streamers for the handlebars.

and

* A little exercise in the morning didn't kill me after all. I'm actually in a better mood than usual.

Chuck Norris drives an ice cream truck covered in human skulls...
Someday, I am going to create a web site full of facts about myself modeled after Chuck Norris Facts. The first fact will be "Kelly Love gets fan mail from Chuck Norris." Followed by:

* Kelly Love goes where angels fear to tread.
* Kelly Love can shoot out the eye of a small rodent with deadly accuracy.
* It is rumored that Kelly Love's real biological father is Elvis Presley.
* A photo of Kelly Love's legs is on file at the International Museum of The Most Beautiful Body Parts Ever.
* So many men have dumped their girlfriends for Kelly Love that, in the medical community, heartsickness is referred to as "The Kelly Love Disease."
* Kelly Love is the subject of numerous documentaries, both authorized and unauthorized.
* It doesn't matter who the woman next to you is or what she looks like. Kelly Love is prettier, smarter, and a thousand times more interesting.
* Kelly Love has x-ray vision.
* When people have a difficult decision to make, they ask themselves, "what would Kelly Love do?"
* Kelly Love's breasts are so perky, she has to have her bras custom-made.
* Some people believe that Kelly Love is a mythological creature.

When your muse is MIA, drastic action may be required...
I write approximately 5,000 words a month for work (including one essay) and edit about four times that. When you spend your days reading and writing, and your "hobbies" include reading and writing, it can be difficult to come up with bright ideas. Instead of hunting the muse down and clipping her wings, I try to coax her back in a benevolent fashion. Where I'm going for inspiration these days:

For writing, the Poynter Institute always has good ideas. Today I like the collected 50 Tools for Writing on LifeHack.org.

For altered art, Karen Michel's Altered Imagery blog inspires me. I love her art journals.

When I'm feeling crafty, ThriftDeluxe always has something good. I'm thinking knitted leg warmers might be my next big project.

I'm not a graphic designer, but I love design magazines like How Design. More designer ideas here (I particularly like the idea about creating an inspiration board. I think everyone should make one.).

And for the online equivalent of a creative kick in the pants, MusetoMuse, Creativity Portal, and Soapbox Girls.

"I would especially like to recourt the Muse of Poetry, who ran off with the mailman four years ago, and drops me only a scribbled postcard from time to time."
~John Updike

Expecting the obligatory bitter I'm-single-therefore-I-hate-Valentine's Day post?
You won't get that here. Not from me. Not today.


I have the same shoes as my one-year-old nephew.
I have them on right now.
We are matching.
My heart is full.

Monday Minutiae: cheese food, Cyndi Lauper, and Republicans with guns...
There has been a half a cheese sandwich in the gravel parking lot going on four days now. The cheese is bright orange. Ants haven't even touched it. It makes me wonder what processed cheese does in your body if it doesn't decompose outdoors.

Cyndi Lauper is still totally rad. "When You Were Mine" is meant to be belted out at the top of your lungs.

Big Dick Cheney shot someone while hunting. Am I going to hell for being so amused? Couldn't they have been hunting for something scarier than QUAIL? Give me a sharp pencil and I could bring home a few fat little birds. It might sound better if they were tracking a wildebeest. Or something else with teeth.

I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride it where I like...
The bicycle I ordered online arrived this week. It's pretty, but I haven't been able to ride it yet because it is still in pieces. To be fair, the product description did say "Minor assembly is required before the bike can be used." However, it did not say "Arrives in 20 separate parts, does not include tools for oddly-sized allen wrench screws, and comes with an instruction book for a different bike."

On Wednesday, I spent two hours trying to decipher the instructions, another hour screwing the back fender on with my fingers and a pair of pliers, and gave up when I gave myself a forehead contusion after the frame fell on me for the 10th time. Last night, Erin came over because she owns more than one screwdriver (actually, she owns a POWER DRILL) and she's smart with the puttin' stuff together. I ordered pizza (thin crust grilled chicken) and she got to work on my wheels. In brief, it went something like this:

Me: Here, let me hold that while you...
Erin: Get away.
Me: I think that part goes there.
Erin: Get away from the f*cking bike.

Once she knew I would stay put on the couch, she power drilled, wrenched, cursed, chanted, and beat it into submission until it more closely resembled the bike in the photo. But without handlebars.

Erin: Is the seat the right height? Try it out.
Me: Um, there are no handlebars.
Erin: You don't need handlebars. Please shut up and sit on your damn trikey for JUST A MINUTE so I can tighten the seat bolt-y things.

As I attempt to sit astride the bike, the seat flips up and violates me in a very personal way.

Me: I need an adult! I need an adult!
Erin: Get away from the f*cking bike.

And then Dancing With the Stars came on and Erin said we all had to shut up because George Hamilton was all "blah blah blah I dance like a corpse" and Lisa Rinna was all "blah blahdebah my giant lips." Michael demonstrated his very satisfactory Paso Doble and Erin reminded us that a Pan Pacific Champion becomes a hero, a guiding light to all dancers, and that we should shut up because the commercial is over.

So my new trikey is ALMOST ready to be outfitted with a basket, bell, and handlebar streamers for added riding thrills. It just needs a visit to a bike shop where people who have special tools for that sort of thing live. Unless YOU want to come over and try.

The llama is my spirit animal...
I've always had a thing for llamas. When I started playing guitar and singing in public (I did it a lot in my early 20s; I only play at home now) it was at a coffee shop called Eleven Llamas. A friend gave me a toy llama as a congratulatory gift for making it through a set without throwing up. Then my sister Katie gave me a brass llama herd. Now I have two dozen or so llamas, stuffed, clay, metal, and photographed.

If you've ever met someone whose house looks like an owl or pig invasion, it probably began with a single owl or pig. I'm glad my thing is llamas, as they're too hard to find for me to get them as gifts very often. My last llama gift came from Michael, who got it at a zoo somewhere in the midwest. It looked a lot like this one before the Dog That Went to Live on a Farm decided to make it his friend.

I am like the llama in the following ways:
* I can easily carry 20 to 30% of my body weight.
* I enjoy a good dust pile.
* One should never verbally threaten a llama.
* If I lay my ears back and make a high pitched rhythmic sound, you should run.
* I can spit with amazing accuracy and won't hesitate to do so if threatened.
* I will use spitting to settle an argument if necessary.
* I have a natural guarding instinct and require no training to guard sheep.
* I am instinctively wary of any animal in the dog family.
* I hum when I am happy.

There are many llama characteristics I do not have - such as producing useful wool, using a dung pile instead of a toilet, or feet with only two toes. I think one day, when I am very old, I will live on a farm with a few sheep, some chickens, and a guard llama named Guillermo.

I rock so hard I almost can't stand myself...
My new Sailor Jerry t-shirt arrived via UPS last week and I wore it on Friday with my vintage Levis and studded leather belt. No one in this city looked as cool as I did. No one had to say it. I could tell by the way they averted their eyes from my cool-ness.

Vintage tattoo art is one of my favorite things. I can't wait to get some new ink on my wrist (and all the way up my arm, if I have my way). I'm even considering studying to be a tattoo artist (part-time, of course, as a second career). I could spend the next 20 years as an apprentice and when I'm too addled to string two sentences together anymore, I can spend my days permanently marking the bodies of others. I must clarify by saying I would specialize in classic tattoo design and never would I ever (EVER!) put one of the following on someone's body: (a) Tweety Bird, (b) a dolphin, (c) a man's name (or a woman's...it goes both ways), or (d) any beer company logo. But if you want a pinup girl, skull and crossbones, hearts, flames, snakes, eagles, Harley-Davidson, or "death before dishonor," I'm all over it. Just give me some time to practice on citrus fruit, cadavers, and gullible friends (in that order).

With apologies to James Brown, UPS Brown, and Downtown Julie Brown...
I keep a jar of colored pens on my desk. When I am happy, I write with the pink one, the red one, the purple one...actually, every color except for brown. When I am sad, I use brown.

The color brown just feels wrong to me. In elementary school, before I was old enough to assert my fashion independence, my mother used to make me wear a lot of brown (because children aren't supposed to wear black?). Picture it: Brown corduroys, a brown turtleneck, and brown leather clogs. In between heaving sobs, I protested, "but...I....look....like....(dramatic sigh-sob)...A TURD." Besides, chubby little girls should never be forced to wear corduroy, lest their thighs catch fire during recess. Hear that, Mom?

As far back as I can remember, I've associated things like colors (and days of the week, and pretty much any noun) with other things that didn't make sense. Like: Green is smooth (it should be jealous, right?). Wednesday is blue. Blue is cold. Pork is pointy. I could go on indefinitely. I found out a few years ago that it, the weird association thing I never knew had a name, has a name: Synesthesia. In the simplest terms, it means that you associate one sense with another, like seeing sounds or hearing colors. Most of the research is fairly recent. I discovered it while flipping through an old issue of Utne Reader at a friend's house. The perceptions are involuntary, they aren't shared between people who do this, nor are they interchangeable (the number four is maroon, but maroon doesn't evoke the number four). Some synesthetics can taste words. I can't. I've met one person who does it, but I suspect there are many more out there with synesthesia who aren't aware that not everyone thinks chartreuse is shrill or that chicken is smooth.

It's not really a "condition" and hasn't affected me negatively (as far as I know, though I understand it could explain my deficient math and foreign language skills, but so could laziness). What's really interesting to me is that the synesthetic perceptions are consistent throughout your life. They begin when you're a child and never change. So the number five will always be orange to me, the letter "R" always bitter, and brown will always be desperate.

So I wasn't a difficult child. I was just wearing the wrong colors. And now I wear a lot of black because black is calm. I rarely wear white, even just to bed, because white is very, very loud. I can adjust my personal space, for the most part, so that I'm surrounded by colors that don't shout and objects that don't make me want to cry.

But there's always a brown marker, isn't there?

Playing with the Queen of Hearts...
A couple of weeks ago, I was trying to figure out if my heart is better or worse off now than I was 10 years ago.

I still can't decide, but at least my most recent crisis arrived just in time for my deadline.