It's a sad day in Mudville. My little number finally came up and I have to report in person for jury duty bright and early Monday morning. Yes, that's right; I made it to the final week of January and I was thinking I was free and clear, but au contraire. The world of rules & regulations had another idea in mind.

If you thought I talked like a sailor on regular days, you should have heard the blue streak of foul words that I let loose when I got the official summons on Friday -- and I have been in a sort of quasi- foul mood ever since. I am so fucking pissed off. Not just because I have so much work to do, work that I was finally making some significant progress on, but the worst part of all of this is that I really, really, really don't enjoy being out among people. I can't stand it, frankly. (And it's not the reason I moved away from NYC -- to get away from people. In NYC, there is this strange anonymity you can still have while being in a city of millions, so there is no real urgency to get away unless you seriously want to see a tree or something. I moved back to Ohio b/c my mom has a number of health challenges now.)

With Jay here, I've been doing okay about going out among people again. In fact, the last 3 nights, we have been out in public doing stuff -- meeting total strangers; having dinner in faraway villages; listening to music. I survived it, I even had a little fun, but nothing beats getting back in the truck and heading for home ASAP. Jay is a sort of buffer between me and the rest of the world. He really enjoys people. He loves talking to strangers and they love talking to him. I, on the other hand, sit quietly next to him while trying not to appear rude; I look the other way when at all possible and silently pray: "Please don't talk to me; please don't talk to me." Isn't that terrible? It's just another one of my many little phobias. (And then when strangers find out I'm a writer, it's like, "Oh god, get me away from here." Everyone on earth seems to want to know what a writer writes. "You mean you're published?" "Yes." "Well, what do you write?" At that point, I seriously want people to stop talking so that I can just go away. "Oh, fiction," I usually reply. Just get as vague as I can possibly get. It takes a very long time for me to trust people. When I do, it's like they're my family, but until then, I'm not going to tell them what I do.)

Anyway. Jay and I were actually way the heck out in the country on Friday afternoon, taking my car to a mechanic. It was so incredibly great where we were even though it was bleak b/c it's still, you know, the dead of winter. But way out there in the country it is still like the Ohio I grew up in. Okay, well, not like Cleveland, which is where I spent my childhood. But in my teens, we moved down around here and back then there was still a lot of rural Ohio all over the place. Now the rural stuff is a lot farther away and everything is overdeveloped and I really, really don't like leaving my little house. But we were out in the country and we were looking forward to going to this little village to have dinner and then to this little church to hear a friend play some music. I was really feeling very upbeat. We'd had such a great day.  We'd spent two and a half hours that morning, just hanging out in bed together brainstorming on all the marketing plans for Freak Parade and I was just in this incredibly happy place about all of it. I did my yoga, my meditation, etc. And then off we went for our drive in the country, and then when we came back home, the summons to report for jury duty was here and then that was that. I was spitting vinegar. Naturally, I toyed with the idea of simply ignoring it and of course they have that little bold-faced disclaimer at the bottom of the summons: DO NOT IGNORE THIS. IGNORING THIS SUMMONS CAN LEAD TO FINES AND IMPRISONMENT.  I'm guessing that in prison, I'd have to deal with a heck of a lot more strangers getting into my business, right, gang?

Oh well, onward. Jury duty can't go on forever.