My name is Chelle Ellis (obviously) and I am an artist and a writer, and many things in between. This is my personal site and since it was the first one I built back in 1997, I keep it around for silly, sentimental reasons and photo archiving. Occasionally I will update it with current information but I make no promises. :) My name is pronounced "SHELL"...not "SHELLY", "SHERYL" or God forbid..."CHEE-LEE". I really don't understand the confusion...you simply omit the first part of my full name "Michelle". See? I tried to make it easier for people, yet no one seems to get it right off even though it seems to me, a very simple concept. I live in North Mississippi, near Memphis, Tennessee. I was raised in Monroe, Louisiana but moved to Northern Mississippi in 1988, when my father took a government contract with the Corps of Engineers. I got married and moved back to Monroe and when nothing panned out there, back to Northern Mississippi. My ex-husband was an editorial cartoonist who couldn't be happy in one
place so I moved ALL over Mississippi (approximately 16 moves), touching down briefly in Honolulu, Hawaii and Fredericksburg, Virginia. That marriage failed around the time my father brought me back once more and finally to Mississippi, when he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1999.

I met my Kenny around then and after Dad died, moved to Southaven, Mississippi, to start my life with him in January 2000. We met on the Internet, believe it or not, and there couldn't have been a better match for me in the world. We got engaged in February of 2001 and married on June 23, 2001 and he makes me happier than I have ever been.

I'm a Scorpio, as is Kenny. How's that work, you ask? Mutual FEAR! Neither of us really wants to suffer the wrath of the other and that keeps everything nice and...well...nice. It helps that certain Scorpio couplings are the most passionate, peaceful, nail-biting, loving, lustful, dramatic, rage-inducing, orgasmic, secure yet insecure partnerships to hit the zodiac... at least ours is! I love my Kenny Wenny with all that I am and never have a minute of doubt that he feels the same about me.

I am 37 and have a very handsome 17 year old son named Clayton. Actually, he should have been named "Toby", because when I saw him for the first time, that name echoed in my mind. But...since I carried him for 9 months and went through all the morning sickness, extensive labor, etc., it only seemed appropriate to give his father all the glory by tacking his first name on him. His middle name is Michael after me...sorta. Actually I call him "Boot" because he had such a cute widdy bitty booty when he was a widdy bitty baby.

He looks more like his father than me, but I know for sure he's mine as I have painfully vivid memories of the 20½ hours that passed in labor and delivery! Also, he has my eyebrows and my sweet disposition. YES, I DO HAVE A SWEET DISPOSITION AND ANYONE WHO SAYS OTHERWISE IS FULL OF SHIT!!!

I also have a 24 year old step-son named Dustin and an 22 year old step-daughter named Ashley...or Mo, whichever you like. She was born Ashley Marie; however, Kenny started calling her Ashley MO-rie, then AshMo...then finally: Mo. Ahhh, simplicity! :)

Our pets are a psycho Siamese cat named Sophie (or Sophie Lou as dubbed by Kenny), a sweet Himilayan mix cat named Rizzo (nicknamed Rizzie Doodle by Kenny) and a very SPOILED five year old Yorkshire Terrier named Boudreaux (Kenny chose Boo Boo as the preferred moniker...are you starting to see a pattern here with his name manipulation???).

Sophie and Rizzie are just like me...lazy and low maintenance. Boo Boo is like Kenny...hyper and high maintenance! These are the only types of children we will ever have together because we are both hard-headed Scorpios and would surely create some kind of demon seed who would destroy the universe. - Let me just be very clear and quickly state that Kenny is definitely more hard-headed than me. :)

Kenny has been an air traffic controller for 20 plus years and as I said earlier, I am an artist and a writer. Before that, I owned and operated a web design/development company, that I ran on a shoe-string and high doses of stress, balancing everything between success and failure for over ten years. It was fun while it lasted.. I risked hating the craft altogether when a certain newspaper I worked for tried to suck the life-force out of me and turn me into a corporate robot. Which brings me to the question of...why do big corporations seek out creative personalities, just to turn around and attempt to destroy everything creative about them?

I don't know - but I try not to take it (or anything else) too seriously anymore. I paint pretty pictures with hidden personal messages and if people like them, they can write me a check and take them home.. same goes for my writing.

Before that... wayyy back in the early and mid nineties... I was a paralegal for six years in criminal defense, family law, personal injury and mass tort law.

And even more ancient, was my stint as a humor columnist for an independent weekly newspaper in my very early twenties... and now I find myself drawn in that direction again as I settle into my late thirties. Why do I have to make everything so hard? Imagine.. I could have just kept on going in the direction I started in to end up here.. but then I would have missed out on so much fun stuff in between.