I rode my bicicle past your window last night...

Let me make perfectly clear to you my opinion on bicycles.

They're wonderful! What a clever invention! Except that some idiot had to go and invent the car. That spells imminent doom for some fraction of the bicycle riding population.

And then there's this: I live in a desert. Won't tell you which one, but there's sun, sand and cactus galore.

You think riding into a palm tree hurts? At least palm trees don't have spines. And once you actually hit the tree, you can pick yourself up and try again. Not so with cactus. With the cactus you're stuck till someone decides to brave the spines and untangle you.

And then there's that sun. In the summer it can get up to and even well over 110 degrees during the day. Oh it burns. Oh you sweat. Oh I hope you aren't going to school or work or anywhere else practical, because if you are you may have to tote a fresh change of clothes and some deodorant along with your briefcase or backpack.

And good luck with your hair. What nutcase invented bike helmets? Are those pathetic little slots supposed to keep your head cool and your hair dry? Because if so, EPIC FAIL!!!! And there is NO chicken for you.

Now then, have I explained for you the nasty and unpleasant bit about bicycles? Are you satisfied in knowing that I hate them? Because you would be wrong.

I have a sweet retro ladies street bike with shiny butterfly handles and a glistening red paint job. I have several conditions about riding it, however.

First of all, I mustn't plan on going anywhere. A bicycle is for fun and recreation ONLY! No practical uses!

However, I may violate that first one there if anyone goes about inventing a bicycle helmet that doesn't plaster your hair to your head with sweat. I could stand to tote clothes and deodorant, but I'm not bringing a collapsable shower to wash my hair in too. That's where I draw the line. There must be ventilated bike helmets!

Second, which may be ignored if the above clause is put into action, I hate helmets. Like I said, sweat. Gross. I will not wear a helmet whist riding a bicycle. Not until they invent a decent helmet.

Third and most important is this: I like to ride my bike at night and on rainy or overcast days. There's no better day or time to wander about on your be-wheeled beast of burden than at night, when the smells of evening like orange blossoms and summer barbecues permeate the air. Nor is there a better time than when you can smell the mud of the coming rain and the air is clean for once.

How perfect a time it can be, to fly over the streets and past the trees, and to let your mind wander as widely and freely as you can.

Breakfast for my Midnight Feast: A Memoir (not really, but that'd be the best title ever)

When did we get into this fantastic food feng shui (fung shway)? In a strange and magical land where certain things are best for breakfast, while others are more dinner items, what is fresh and new, and what is taboo? What can I say? It's food feng shui!

I love a good bowl of cold cereal for breakfast. Maybe it's cinnamon delicioso crunch or chocolate frosted sugar bombs. Whole milk or two percent, skim perhaps, or even soy milk will be my cereal's cool companion.

Remember when the more expensive, sugary cereals came with a prize in the box? The lucky kid remembered to keep the awesome spoon they got out of a cereal box a long time ago in a galaxy far away, that one that changes colors when they put it in milk? Yeah, we all had one. Don't deny it. If you didn't have it, you envied someone who did.

But can such a delightful dish be kept to only the early hours?

No! I will not make it so, Captain!! I will not let it be! Those aren't words of wisdom! Set it free!

Cereal is a meal for any time, and the guidelines are simple:

• If it's morning, you're good, no matter what. That first wake up meal of the day, no matter when YOUR morning starts, is breakfast, and so clearly a good time for cereal.
• If it's afternoon, you had BETTER be wearing PAJAMAS! This is the PAJAMA CLAUSE! It only works if you're in pjs, folks. Else your breakfast cereal rights may be suspended.
• Dinner? Of COURSE cereal is acceptable for dinner! But not a run-of-the-mill right on time dinner. It must be later than you usually would take dinner, OR after seven pm in your specific time zone.
• Breakfast cereal is a great snack even with out the milk. You can have THAT anytime, and in any condition. Except for at breakfast. If you're having it for breakfast, don't be cheap with the milk.
• Midnight snack. Ladies and Gentlemen, there is no greater midnight snack than this: That a man or a woman might lay down their Mac book for a bowl of cereal.

Amen.

The Time/Money paradox

Time is the most valuable thing there can be, in this world or any other. It's the most exhaustible resource that exists. It is priceless. You can never buy more time.

Time is the only thing we come into this world with. We can waste it, barter it, or use it to build and grow. It's the thing of great value that we can offer in this world before we have anything else. I'll trade my time for knowledge, and then, when I've added that knowledge to some more time, I can get a job out of the deal.

Then I can add that job and my knowledge to yet more time, and get money out of it. Then that money, with some more time, may someday buy me a home.

You'd think that by this point, I'd be exhausted. It's surprising how much of our time we like to keep for ourselves, to hoard away. It is, after all, our most precious resource.

What is the best was to spend this precious, priceless thing? Some must be given to get an education, to make money, to eat and to live. Where might the precious left-overs be spent, that they might not be wasted? Should we get more sleep, or while the time away in fantasy, or invest it in our television?

Perhaps. Enjoying something brought to you by someone else's well spent time is a worthy expenditure, is it not? I'm fairly certain that Van Gogh's Starry Night took much time. Just as I'm certain that Joss Wheden took time when he came up with his brilliant shows, and every great author took hours and days and months, and sometimes years to give us their glorious fantasies.

We could enjoy theirs, or do the same with our own. Of course, one of the best ways to spend something so valuable is with someone we value. I will give my time to my family, a significant other someday, my children, in the far future.

Take the time to create, to grow, to love. Surely it's worth it.

It's the Tapo Man!! (Get it? Like Repo, but made of tape? Eh? Eh?)

Yeah, I know. No one gets my reference. You'll all have to wonder, what is Repo? I made him at work today. Yup. You now know that A: I have a boring job and B: I have access to tape. It's true.

Some days it's just not worth chewing through the restraints

Ever notice how no one has a moderately bad day? There are good days, nice days, okay days, boring days, and really, REALLY bad days.

If your day starts out moderately bad, say, you get awoken a couple hours too early by your neighbor's car alarm, then really it can only get worse from there. Likely you'll slip in the shower, trip down your stairs, burn your breakfast, be late to work for trying to make a second breakfast only to under-cook it anyway, get shouted at by your boss for being late, snuffed by the attractive coworker and humiliated in the lunch room. You'll then proceed to get in a fender bender on your way home because you spilled the cold coffee you forgot to drink this morning all over your leather seats, and manage to run over your own dog once you make it into the driveway.

My prescription? If it starts bad, GO BACK TO BED!! Trust me, it's worth the sick day.

Of course that's the pleasant, avoidable type of bad day. There is Another Bad Day. (yeah, those capitals are intentional) A Bad Day so bad that whatever particular day of the week upon which it occurred will forever in your mind only be referred to as "The Day that Must Not be Named".

That day for me would be Tuesday The Day That Must Not Be Named.

This day could start out okay, boring, or even good. But it'll have its blood in the end. You'll see. Instead of being consistently and predictably terrible, it will just have one or two truly horrifying episodes. For a day like this with more than one terrible thing coming together to make the worst day of your life, the episodes will be at or above a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10. Your dog will die, you'll lose your job.

I personally think that the "One hit Wonder" (yeah, I made that up) is the Dark Queen Mother of all Bad Days. That day where everything is fine until one terrible thing happens. It tends to be that your whole day, somehow, without your knowledge, is plotting against you. You're a little tired, picking up a shift you might not have planned to work. Nothing is going wrong, it's an okay day.

Maybe it's not even the worst thing that could happen, but it's just bad enough, and because you're tired, because you're working on the weekend, it just hits you the wrong way, at the wrong time, in the wrong place. From there on out fate will let you make your own day worse. (and don't we always?)

Then again, maybe something terrible happens. Just one terrible thing. You get in a car accident. Your house burns down. A loved one dies. Pick a card, any card. At least on most bad days you get dealt more than just the one card. This kind of Bad Day is like playing high-stakes poker only you end up with just one card, and somebody forgot to take the joker out of the deck.

That's my science of bad days. Never a moderately bad one, and they're always competing with each other for the top spot in our top five worst days ever list. Has your calendar suddenly lost all of its Tuesdays Days That Must Not Be Named?

Is Love fair? And if so, how does it relate to war?

Anyone who's ever read my Valentine's day post knows my opinion on love. I find it maddening and ridiculous because most people who say they're in love aren't, and actual cases of true love are few and far between.

However love is a common topic when it comes to my dreams. Day dreams, night dreams, the warm lethargic fantasies of the cozy, woozy place between waking and sleeping, half of all of my time is spent in dreams of love. I'm a romantic. I simply can't help it. Love is my spited lover, the man of my dreams that drives me nuts, but always leaves me wanting more.

It's a love hate relationship.

Yet I haven't even the cold comfort of past love and loss. No reason to cry. So I must get by on sad and/or romantic movies. What to watch when I dream of love? What to watch when I've got no reason to cry? My personal happy medium is Australia, right now.

It had all the right romance and tears in all the right places.

It's a cruel world, this world that says alls fair in love and war. Is it? Is it really? I know that as a citizen of the U.S., all is not fair in war. We have to fight by the rules, while our enemies claim that all is fair. Then again I suppose that in this land all really is kind of fair in love.

Not fair in the sense of everyone coming out happy in the end, though. I think that's just what we wish it would be. Quite honestly, all is fair just means that somebody can get away with anything if they put it under the name of Love. This is a cruel defilement of Romance.

No man who would violate every boundary for his own gain and call it love is a true lover. And no woman that would play on every insecurity in the all powerful name of Love is a lady worth courting.

I said it once, I'll say it again. All you need is love. But I beg you, do not use its name in vain, nor cover evil intentions with its innocent blood.




Link of the day! A genius that I happen to on occasion (when it suits me) call a friend of mine has begun a blog. We've been exchanging/critiquing manuscripts (and she'd better send me something new soon or she'll find out why I call myself The Vengeance) and she's absolutely brilliant. Check out CaityMarie's blog 'Say Anything' at http://plaguesongs.blogspot.com