Borderline

Friday morning and here we go.

You will be pleased to know that I am yet again certified for CPR, for the thirty-first time or so. This is more of an intense version–the clinic thing–and some things have changed, so I am glad I had to do it again this year. I’ve never had to use it–we have an emergency response team that responds to a code call–and some of the people in my department are on that team (I’ve seen them save multiple lives over the years) but it’s nice to know I can help if necessary.

I am about to get a second cup of coffee and start getting ready to take the car to the body shop. I’ll just grab a Lyft home. I have an on-line meeting at nine, and plenty of work to keep my busy this work at home Friday. It’s also supposed to rain this afternoon, and it’s under eighty degrees this morning–under eighty in New Orleans in August? Madness. I wasn’t tired after work yesterday, but didn’t do a whole lot when I got home other than pick up some things and catch up on the news. (Always a pleasure to do…) We did watch the season finale of The Vampire Lestat, which was different from the ending of the book but definitely ended on a cliff-hanger, which was an interesting choice. I also slept really well again, which was lovely. I am hoping for a good weekend again, but don’t really have any plans for the weekend other than reading, writing, some errands, and cleaning. I did finish reading Love in the Afternoon and Evening (more on that later), and hope to make some progress on The Last House on Needless Street as well.

Okay, the car has been dropped off at the body shop I use on the Earhart¹, and I was sweating in buckets by the time the Lyft came–which was deliciously cold when I climbed into the back seat. Ah, this is what it’s supposed to feel like inside a car in the summer. The way New Orleanians forget every year how hot it gets in the summer needs to be studied–along with the comment “I don’t remember it getting this hot before” which is part of that protective amnesia I suppose. I said that on social media to a friend–who’d had dinner with someone earlier in the week who’d said the same thing. We do tend to talk about the weather here a lot, even if it’s just “whew, shore is hot this mornin’/afternoon/evenin’.” (Which is why Elmore Leonard’s writing advice to never start with the weather doesn’t work here. It affects everything.)

But “how to write” manuals are merely authors (or professors) telling others who are interested in writing and getting better. Nothing is tried or true in writing; one of the reason I turn off the spell/grammar check in word is because sometimes I want to use a sentence that may not be grammatically correct–and don’t even get me started on what that shit does to a stream-of-consciousness run-on sentence inside a character’s head. We don’t think in grammatically correct sentences and paragraphs; we also don’t speak that way. I certainly don’t, but that’s also me extrapolating my experience to everyone’s experience, which is a fallacy–yet something everyone does. A few years ago I read something and knit my brows together, thinking no gay would ever–and had to stop and remind myself that actually, some probably would. Our community, after all, is no freer from quislings than any other marginalized group. Sad, but a fact. That’s the mote in our collective eyes; the default that our own experience is the default and everyone thinks like we do….like how racists assume every other white person is also a bigot. (I’ve shocked a few, which is fun.)

And on that note, I am going to make some breakfast and get ready for my meeting. Have a lovely and great day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow.

1. I also asked for estimates for the damage acquired from other New Orleans drivers while parked. Thanks again, trash! ↩︎