#uncoffeed...

Ali Azmat and Junoon - photo by débora Ewing My brain's tangly. I'm working over a short story which isn't a story, and my writing compatriots have requested I interject synaesthetic impressions throughout. I'm angry that they're so nosy, and yet I can - should - do this. I have to first pin down what synaesthesia means to me and then clean up those little bits of writing so they can be seen for what they are. I honestly didn't know synaesthesia is a thing until a friend explained to me exactly how my brain works. For one, a certain color may trigger a taste in my mouth. Words are tangible in my mind, like I can touch them. I recently learned the word pareidolia and it makes sense to me, too: I find patterns. I can recognize the same pattern visually, aurally, texturally, and apply a music pattern to art, or cooking, or gardening. You know, conceptual skeletons.  People get confused if I tell them the soup needs to be more blue, but if I just make it...

I met Beardo during my days of working hotel front desk. He was a co-shenanigator once, when I found myself in possession of tickets to see ZZ Top at the 9:30 Club . Details are fuzzy, but I needed someone to take 2 of 4 tickets I was getting from a shady back-alley Craigslist transaction with a guy who looked like a federal whistle-blower. Don't ask me what a federal whistle-blower looks like; use your imagination and do your own casting. The man had pain in his eyes and darkness under them. He used few words, and he disappeared like smoke down the alley between graffiti and garbage bins after taking my cash. I got away unharmed. Beardo is also known as Steve Cunningham of @BoomChang Records , and he records this excellent ...what is this? A show? A podcast? High-quality entertainment, that's what it is. He sets up a band in his kitchen, interviews at the counter, and I assume he serves everyone coffee and biscuits. I plan to show up one day and there had better be ...

Oh. Em. GEE. Waiting has been like going into labor. The post office finally got the third package to me today - the Test Hat which Michell  made using extra-heavy, potentially ugly, yarn she found especially for me.   It's still not ugly, but it's super-heavy and thick with character. It's got a White Hat good guy side, and a Black Hat bad guy side. It's so very me. I'll take Michell's advice and wear it rolled up a bit, so my Yin and Yang show like a warning flag. Or a warming flag. I AM SO HAPPERY! I may never take it off, ever. Thank you again, Michell of CrochetAndThingsCo.   Please support Small Businesses and Handcrafters. Your grandparents would never have survived without them.

Me: :::sauntering into the office wearing the Loud Hat::: BRB: I can do it on Friday! Me: We're doing it TODAY! Three of them came last night. BRB: TODAY? Okey-dokey!  Me: :::sauntering to my cube wearing the Loud Hat::: Emilyyyy...Look what I got.... Emily:  :::frozen stare::: We're doing it TODAY? Me: TODAY! Emily: Okay...Can we do it outside? Me: :::proudly laying the Loud Hat on my desk::: Anne: COOL HAT! I am so stealing this! :::grabs hat and bounces off::: Me: :::icy death stare::: Anne: :::lays the Loud Hat back on my desk::: During lunch, we got it together - BRB, Emily, and I all in the bathroom fixing our makeup for the photo shoot. We decided to pose in front of the Christmas tree in the office instead of going outside. HR kindly agreed to take pictures with my phone; they were all out of focus but two. In one of those I'm rolling my eyes up in my head.  Thank you, HR - my phone was the problem, I promise.  We hied us to the breakro...

It's cold in my cube. Doods. I lost my famously ugly winter hat. Yeah, the one I got at Salvation Army in Kalamazoo, hand-knit by somebody's granny. The one John saved for me when I lost it at the pool hall. The one I expected to signal my existence if the creepy clown wants to find me . This hat. I've been having a hard time working without it. I hit all the thrift stores in a 5-mile radius and went home disheartened. I tried eBay, struggling with keywords that would find me the ugly bucket of my dreams: double thickness reversible hand knit winter hat eBay was unable to help me at all. So I went to our favorite search engine which starts with a  colorful letter G , and I was helpfully redirected to Etsy . I should have known. But these hats were cute, and expensive (read: more than $5.00; more than $10.00.) And I wasn't finding any that were two-sided....oh.  I forgot to search "reversible." Boom. Michell of CrochetAndThingsCo is my Kni...