Today is one of those days in which I’ll be running around all day and feeling scattered before I finally can come home and relax at last. I have an eye appointment out in Metairie–I really need new glasses; my eyes have gotten so bad that the ones I have now just do not work as well as they should, which makes me terribly uncomfortable about driving and so forth–and then errands all over the place. I also have boxes and boxes of condom packs to take by the office, so I can get them out of the house; I was really productive yesterday and may have broken my condom-packing record while watching In the Heat of the Night (the Oscar winning film, not the television series based on it) and then catching up on The Real Housewives franchises that I still watch. (I have some ambivalent feelings about these shows, but will discuss that at greater length when I have more time to spend on writing an entry then I do this morning.) The movie was interesting to watch, and I have some very deep thoughts about that as well; but I will say for now that they did a really excellent job of capturing small town/rural Southern areas of the time and what they were like…and they could have just as easily filmed that movie in the area of Alabama where I am from.
If you are a film fan, I do highly recommend Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris, in which he examines the five films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar in 1967–the year In the Heat of the Night won–and how those five vastly different films were representative of the enormous cultural and societal shifts going on in the country at the time. It’s fascinating. (The other nominees were Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Bonnie and Clyde,Dr. Dolittle, and The Graduate.)
I still haven’t made my to-do list yet; that’s one of the things I want to get done today; at least one for the weekend that I can revise for next week, and then I want to get back into the habit of doing one every week, knowing that there will be some weeks where I get it all done, weeks where I only get some of it done, and weeks when I won’t get any of it done. I am trying to stay focused and I am also trying to be easier on myself going forward; no more feeling like a failure when I don’t get as much done as I need or want to, no more Imposter Syndrome, no more allowing myself to be easily tripped into dark places that I really need to not go to anymore. It’s strange to be almost sixty and still trying to grow and rewire myself; I would have thought years ago that by now I would have everything figured out. But I don’t–and I don’t think anyone ever really does, to be honest. I also need to remember that I am not perfect, I am human, and humans will always make mistakes…and the thing is to not let the mistakes take you somewhere dark and self-abusive, but to correct them the best way you can and learn from them and not repeat them–which is part of the issue I am having with the Real Housewives shows, I think (but more on that at a later date, like tomorrow).
It’s gray outside this morning–it rained off and on yesterday, mostly from the late afternoon on–and I will probably get soaked at some point while I run my errands; it’s inevitable, really–but hopefully traffic won’t be too bad.
And on that note–as you can tell, I still haven’t quite figured out what I want this blog to be going forward–I am going to call it quits this morning and head back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader.
Thursday and a work-at-home day for me, which is nice. I slept really well last night–deeply, only woke up a time or two (once was because Scooter was purring and making bread on me)–and it’s been lovely feeling rested lately, really lovely. I’ve been doing a lot of contemplation lately; thinking about my life, ways to get things under control, and what I should be prioritizing as opposed to what ultimately doesn’t really matter in my life; funny how the unimportant stuff always tends to wind up causing the most stress and eating up the most time and energy, isn’t it? It’s also amazing to me that my identity; how I see myself, is almost entirely wrapped up in being a writer, and yet it is inevitably the thing I devote the least amount of my time and attention to, which probably has a lot to do with why I always feels so off-center and disoriented and discontented; really, the only time in my life where I actually do feel content (okay, that’s an exaggeration, but roll with it) is when I am actually writing. I love the act of creation, of putting words and sentences and paragraphs together in order to bring characters and their story to life on the page–and the dichotomy of my always having to force myself to do something that brings me enormous joy and satisfaction (much like going to the gym and working out) is something I’ve never been able to get to the root of, even with the assistance of a therapist asking probing questions coming from things I’ve said while riffing on why I have such a tendency to be so self-defeating.
Case in point: I still haven’t made that to-do list I’ve been needing to make all week.
I guess my old standard for to-do lists holds, and the first thing I need to put on it is make a to-do list.
We’ve been watching a lot of terrific crime shows lately that we’re really enjoying/enjoyed: Mare of Easttown, Cruel Summer, the latest season of Line of Duty (I love this show and hate that this is the final season), and we’ve been bingeing our way through all the seasons of The Sinner, going backwards since each season is relatively self-contained; the character of the detective, Harry Ambrose (not sure if it is Harry), played brilliantly by Bill Pullman–his narrative arc as a person is so secondary to the primary crime story he is investigating that it doesn’t matter if you watch the seasons in the proper order. We watched the third first (because MATT BOMER), then the second (Carrie Coon was brilliant), and now are watching the original with Jessica Biel, and we’ve greatly enjoyed them all. (I will say that in this first season we are in the midst of, there’s more emphasis on Harry’s personal story, and it’s not as interesting as it could be and really pulls away focus from the crime investigation, which becomes more complicated and complex with each episode.)
I’ve also not been reading much lately, other than the occasional non-fiction (I am nearing the end of Barbara Tuchman’s The Zimmermann Telegram, which I am enjoying) and have also taken to just opening up her A Distant Mirror to a random spot and immersing myself in the calamitous fourteenth century.
I’ve also been trying to figure out the point of this blog, and if there ever has been one. When I first started keeping one years ago–December 2004, to be exact–it was because I needed to do something, anything, to start writing again. I also was very naive; I never really thought of it as being something other people would find or read–this was before even MySpace, for God’s sake–and I do recall, back in those heady day on Livejournal, that it was a way for me to write about things I felt passionate about; the things I wanted to write about that no one would ever pay me to write about, to be completely honest. In the first entries I was trying to find my way, trying to figure out what this blog’s other purpose, besides just making myself sit down and do some writing every day again, after a lengthy fallow period following a personal trauma…and it really took off, somehow, after Hurricane Katrina–as I wrote out and processed the darkness and emotional trauma (on top of all the others from the period I’ve always referred to as the Time of Troubles) I was experiencing, the highs and lows of every day, the grim and gritty determination to hunker down and get on with life, somehow keep going. As social media became more and more popular in the years that followed and writing a blog became almost passé (I remember someone mocking me–kindly, or so I thought at the time–for having a blog on 2009 by saying something like “Oh, how 2002 of you”–yet here I am, twelve years later, going on with it), I kept plugging away, in my ADHD way of scattershot “I read the book or movie or TV show” or “why am I struggling with this book” or the utter mendaneness of my daily existence; whether slept well or the house is a mess or I have a lot to do and errands to run and on and on with barely a thought as to whether I was providing content that would draw people here every day or so; and whether or not I wanted this to be that sort of thing. I don’t want to now–never have–turn this into a thing where I feel stress or anxiety about whether people read it or not; I’ve never cared about that, nor have I ever cared about whether things I post here will get people to buy my books or turn them away from my books. (It really is a wonder I have a career….)
And now back to the spice mines. Happy Thursday, everyone.
I am always a bit disconnected from my life whenever I return from a trip, and the older I get, the harder it seems to settle back into my usual reality. The lack of sleep for weeks before hand (and during) certainly didn’t help much, but I was very pleased to finally have the prescription refilled last week and I have had some absolutely marvelous nights of sleep ever since. I also feel somewhat more centered, and more in control of myself than I have in weeks. I decided to take some time for myself as well once I got back, and focus on cleaning the house and staying off social media as much as possible, and it’s really been lovely; I think that going forward, I may continue doing that. Over the three day holiday weekend I found myself with so much more time than I usually have, and not feeling rushed about anything–and the feeling of being behind on everything, of needing to rush and hurry through everything, inevitably leads to stress and anxiety and that inevitably leads to insomnia and…yeah. Self-care is something that I really need to focus on, and stay focused on, going forward for what little may be left of my life.
I spent a lot of the holiday weekend cleaning and organizing–always cathartic–and getting the Lost Apartment back into some sense of order. It was rather horrifying to see and realize how out of control everything around here had gotten; I started with the laundry room and made my way into the kitchen (we really need to get a new vacuum cleaner, and a good one; these cheap ones I’ve been getting cease operating well even with maintaining them the way the instructional manuals say I should, which is enormously frustrating). I cleaned out and reorganized drawers in the laundry room and in the kitchen, and the counters were so filthy I literally cannot remember the last time I actually took the time to wipe them down (obviously, it was before the trip, but still-what the fuck was I doing on the weekends before I left for Kentucky?). My printer also died over the weekend and needed to be replaced; while I was annoyed at the suddenness of an unexpected new expense, I then realized the printer was at least five years old and hey at least it happened at a time when you could absorb the cost without it seriously hurting. The new one is cheap, but it’s also a Canon like the last one and I don’t really use it all that much; so even if it proverbially shits the bed in a short period of time, at least I’m not out that much and it served its purpose briefly.
See what a difference that prescription makes in my life? Had this happened before, I probably would have had a meltdown of some sort.
Better living through chemistry indeed.
I am still not really back completely on track with my life as yet; I was thinking yesterday between clients that I don’t really remember what I was working on before I went away to Kentucky, and of course, my memory is still shit–the self-care and relaxation hasn’t changed that at all–but I really need to make a to-do list and start going through everything on my desk and in my inbox to figure out what needs to be done and what else I need to get a handle on. I know I need to start getting back to the gym–which is now open it’s old, normal, non-pandemic working hours again, which makes it more accessible for me and lessens the pressure about needing to rush off to the gym–because my muscles can tell they haven’t been worked and stretched properly in weeks, and I also got the martini glasses and the cocktail shaker I ordered in the mail finally; so tonight perhaps I will experiment with my first dirty vodka martinis with extra olives. I also need to do some more work on the apartment–it’s ridiculous how quickly it gets disheveled looking around here–but perhaps tonight when I get home from the office I can finish the laundry and put the dishes away and start filing and emptying out the inbox and so forth.
I know I had started a story in Kentucky called “Beauty Sleep,” which has a wonderful opening (there’s a part where a Goth girl reads a poem at a salon in the Quarter, and she unironically calls herself Joan of Dark) but I wasn’t really sure where to take the story from there; one of the problems I have with stories when I have an interesting opening is that I inevitably always try to force them into the crime story box, and maybe, just maybe, that isn’t what the story is actually supposed to be. I’ve decided, more or less, to open June working on short stories and novellas, rewriting the first chapter of Chlorine, and rethinking the work I need to do on the Kansas book; I really need to make my writing more of a priority in my life these days.
So, on that note, I am heading to get ready to work and will start pulling together a to-do list. Have a great day, Constant Reader.
It has been seventeen years, more or less, give and take, since it happened and my life–and my worldview–went through a significant change.
It’s weird how it sneaks up on you when you aren’t expecting it, isn’t it? In the weeks leading up to Memorial Day I am vaguely aware of a sense of unease and discomfort, a feeling like some sort of impending doom is waiting for me just over the horizon. I’ve noticed in recent years that times and date have little meaning to me; at my day job every form I fill out requires a date–month, day, year–over and over again, and this constant use of dates makes them seem to lose their meaning as I write them down, recording them by rote; sometimes glancing up at the display on the telephone mounted on the wall above my working table to remember when my brain seizes up–as it is wont to do from time to time–and the date slips out from my short-term memory and cannot be retrieved by the processor. These meaningless days continue passing, recorded on form after form after form, until one day a date I am recording catches me off guard and I am startled by the rapid passage of time and think something like my God, next week is Paul’s birthday or next week is our anniversary and so forth.
And yet every May, without fail, as I go through the motions of my day to day life and run my errands and put gas in the car and make meals and clean up and work with my clients and try to make it to the gym, I forget about Memorial Day looming in the future, just around the corner, up ahead, waiting to land like a sucker punch in the solar plexus when I am least expecting it to happen. Is it a protective thing, I wonder, my subconscious pushing the memories deep into the darkest corners of my brain, to keep me from reliving some of the darkest hours and days of my life? I’m not sure–and the weird thing is that somehow I am vaguely aware. The memories don’t get pushed back into the cobwebby recesses completely, because I always, inevitably, feel unsettled every May, vaguely off-center, knowing there’s something back there I don’t want to remember, and it makes me tense, stressed, anxious.
And then, between episodes of a show we were streaming (The Drowning, on Acorn or Britbox, I cannot remember which) I got up to make garlic bread as a snack. As I sliced the loaf of French bread to spread the garlic butter paste on to broil in the oven, Paul was telling me about how crowded the Quarter had been on Friday afternoon when he’d gone down there to get his haircut. “It was more crowded than it would usually be before the shutdown,” he said with a shudder, “and all I could think was how awful it seemed.” I agreed with him, expressing that I had little to no desire to ever go out in the Quarter again–while thinking ah yes, you have become the tired old man you always feared you would–when Paul laughed and said, “Well, it’s not like Memorial Day is my favorite time to go out and do anything” and I laughed and kept spreading the paste on the bread as the memories and realizations all came flooding back to me; why I have been so tense and anxious lately; why I was so desperate to get my Xanax prescription refilled (telling myself it was because I needed them to sleep) and WHY I had been unable to sleep in the first place; why there was so much tension and so many knots in my neck, shoulder and back; why I have been unable to focus and why it has felt like I’ve been living under a dark cloud of looming depression for so long.
Memorial Day weekend, 2004, and that horrible phone call that Sunday morning, that Paul was at the emergency room at Charity Hospital and all that ensued from there.
I’ve only written about what happened that weekend once; in the wake of the Pulse massacre, that horrible morning in 2016 when I woke up to the horrible news and sat, glued to my computer screen, refreshing social media and new sites and worrying about my friends and acquaintances in Orlando to check in, so that I would know they were alive. Pulse was horrifying in and of itself, without it being a triggering event for me personally; watching those friends and family outside the bar in the morning hours in Orlando, terrified and wondering if someone they loved, someone they knew had been inside Pulse that night and hadn’t yet heard from, was alive or dead. I’ve never felt that the story of Memorial Day weekend 2004 was mine to tell; as I said to a friend recently, as we talked about the HBO show It’s a Sin and how deeply it affected me, “I’ve never written about my own experiences during that time because I was a survivor and a witness, and to me, writing about it and making money from it seemed wrong to me somehow.” Part of this mentality–which is probably wrong, but I can make a rational case for it from either point of view–comes from being raised to keep personal pain private; I’ve always called it ‘bleeding in public.’ I’ve never wanted to be seen as a victim; I’ve never wanted to publicly dissect my pain for others to see, comment on–especially to belittle or demean.
We survived it, and isn’t that the most important thing?
I’m not sure that I’ve ever really processed it all; dealt with it properly and adequately. I saw a therapist for a few years, and obviously we discussed all of my traumas, all the PTSD from everything I had experienced, but I’m not sure that I’ve ever faced it, dealt with it, handled it. I wrote a short story about it once–“A Streetcar Named Death”–and of course I wrote that blog entry after the Pulse massacre.
But now as I approach sixty–only a few more months–I find myself wondering, about all of the pain and trauma of the past, and whether I have dealt with it in a healthy manner, and if writing about it, which is how I inevitably deal with almost everything, is the way to go with it?
I don’t know. But…I can’t help but feel that I need to; that somehow, despite whatever blowback and snark might come from doing so, that it will finally help me to deal with it and maybe–just maybe–Memorial Day weekend can go back to being what it used to be for me, and I can finally be free from it all.
Man, was I tired yesterday. The insomnia had continued, but I was finally able to get my prescription filled yesterday, so last night I slept slept slept. In fact, I’m still a little groggy this morning–but it’s so much nicer to feel rested, have my emotions feeling level, and a bit groggy from getting up before I wanted to, rather than groggy from lack of sleep, with my eyes burning from being tired and my muscles tired and my brain exhausted. I had to speak to the director of patient care at the practice I go to to get this resolved (I may have been testy and rude with him) but it finally got taken care of, and the problem–as frustrating as it was–finally was explained to me so I understood the problem…which had someone simply explained it to me in the first place, would have been fine and I would have figured out what to do much sooner and how to resolve it all.
But it’s also nice to know there IS someone at that practice who can resolve issues patients are having–something I didn’t know before.
The martini glasses I ordered arrived yesterday, so I also stopped at the grocery store on my way home and got dry vermouth and Spanish olives (I looked them up on line; they are the best kind of olives, apparently, for martinis on the home front) and so tonight I am going to try to make my first martini–this is going to take practice, obviously, and I am kind of looking forward to a nightly martini, to be honest. I do need to get a cocktail shaker, but can make do with some of the things I have on hand to begin with. I put the vodka into the freezer last night, too. Yay!
I am starting to dig out from under after the trip–sleeping well last night will certainly go a long way on that score to getting more of a handle on my life and what all I need to get done and so forth. I folded the laundry in the dryer; put away the load of dishes in the dishwasher, and did another load. I also took out the recycling last night, and now tonight, before Paul gets home, I will probably work on this filing/organizing mess here in my workspace to get it under control again. I need to get back to work on my writing again, which I should be able to do tonight, and of course I want to get back to Alison Gaylin’s The Collective, which is fucking fantastic.
We got caught up on last week’s episode of Cruel Summer–we still aren’t completely sure what the truth is there, but I suspect that both girls are lying and the truth is somewhere in between their own contradictory stories; it may not make for a satisfying ending, but it certainly would be a more realistic one. I am also looking forward to the series finale of Mare of Easttown that will be airing this weekend–it’s Memorial Day, a lovely three day weekend which will help me catch up on my rest and help recenter me and get me back into the groove of everything. I really do want to get moving on Chlorine again, and there’s the stories and the novellas as well that need to get working again.
And the gym! I really need to get back to the gym! I am going to head back over there tomorrow after I finish my work-at-home duties; I suspect that I won’t be in the mood after work tonight, but Thursday/Saturday/Monday will put me back on schedule for three days weekly next week, and I can hang with that. I’d like to continue to drop some weight–the twenty pounds I’ve lost so far has been nice, but I am probably going to have to start adding cardio on some level to my workout schedule to kick me past this plateau, which hasn’t seen me lose another pound since the twenty trimmed off earlier this year.
And on that note, I should head back into the spice mines this morning. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader. I certainly intend to!
It’s so lovely to be home again. There’s just something about your own bed, isn’t there? I mean, I still have insomnia, but my own bed just feels so better and more relaxing and so forth.
My flight home, with the change of planes in Tampa, went completely smoothly, which was nice. I didn’t think I could handle delays and changes in schedule on the scale of what happened on my trip up there. I’ve pretty much decided not to fly up there anymore; it’s always a weird routing, it’s rarely inexpensive, and most of the times I’ve flown it’s not gone well, either coming or going and sometimes both. Yes, it sucks to spend almost eleven hours on the road driving, but at least then I have control over the trip and if I need to stop, I can. There’s something about that powerlessness when you fly somewhere…and it’s a lovely, if long, drive. I can also listen to books on tape, which is what I did the last time I drove there and back, and that, much more so than music, makes the time go by much more easily and faster, or seem to, at any rate.
I did read some more Purdy short stories on the flights back, and I also read ebooks on my iPad: I had galleys of both Laura Lippman’s Dream Girl (dropping this summer) and Alison Gaylin’s The Collective (dropping this fall) and wow, both are incredible works. I’ve not finished the Gaylin yet–will probably dive back into it this evening after work and writing duties–but I was rather resentful when my flight landed and I had to put the iPad away. The drive home wasn’t bad, and of course the new airport here in New Orleans is pretty amazing; the old one was fine, but it really pales in comparison to the new one. Of course, it’s weird getting there and all–they haven’t done all the off-ramps and on-ramps and so forth for I-10 yet, so there’s congestion and so forth…but the trip home was so much easier than the trip out, and if one had to be fucked up, I would rather it be the trip up.
I feel completely disconnected from my life now–I’ve got to pick up the strands of what I was doing last week before i left and remember what I need to get done in the meantime. The house is in disarray, and that needs to be handled. I’ve also got other things to get taken care of that I need to remember, and I need to decide what I am going to be writing/working on for the moment. (I was thinking while traveling yesterday about several stories in progress I want to get back to, as well as one of the novellas that is stalled for the moment; there were some tweaks that could be made to “Festival of the Redeemer” that came to me yesterday on the plane, as well as some more thoughts about my story “Please Die Soon” that would make finishing it a little easier; this is what happens when I read great writers like Lippman and Gaylin–it inspires me and also unlocks creativity in my own brain, and since the door has been rather firmly shut on my creativity for a while, it’s nice to have the door opened again)
We also got caught up on Mare of Easttown last night–Jesus, what a great show; give Kate WInslet all the Emmys already–and then Hacks (Jean Smart is heading for potentially winning Emmys for each show) which we are also enjoying. Tonight we’ll get to season two of Who Killed Sara? and I also have errands to run after work tonight. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll get back to the gym and get back into the swing of my workouts.
Baby steps back into my life…
And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader.
And I am at Louisville Airport ready to fly home to New Orleans. I have to change planes in Tampa–the very airport I used to work in; even the same airside where I used to work–and should be landing at Armstrong around five thirty. I need to make a couple of stops on the way home; I need to put air in a tire and get some things at the store and also need to possibly pick up dinner–the jury has yet to come in on that one. I am going to be pretty tired by the time I get to New Orleans, and having to deal with rush hour traffic isn’t exactly something I am looking forward to, frankly.
But it is what it is. I am a little tired already. I never sleep terribly well when I travel under the best of circumstances, and the insomnia lately has been incredibly brutal at home–so I didn’t have very high expectations for while I was here. I think I got maybe one good night of sleep on Friday–I was so completely exhausted at that point the surprise would have been had I not lapsed into a coma.
Well, my travel day Thursday turned into quite the nightmare, but overall, I handled it as best I could; rolled with it, and just finally had to laugh about it all. I had trouble getting up in the morning and then had even more trouble being awake–the cannabis oil might not have knocked me out, but it really relaxed me–and of course, it was pouring rain as I headed to the airport. I also forgot a mask, but remembered before I got on the highway and was able to get back home quickly, grab two of them, and dash back out in the rain to the car and head for the airport. The parking lot for the airport is now two exits past where we used to get off the highway; which felt weird, but I was able to find the lot in the pouring rain, get the car parked, and head to the airport. I checked my bag, got my boarding passes….and just as I reached the gate I got a text from Southwest that my flight was going to be two hours delayed–and I only had an hour and a half to change planes in Dallas to begin with. I wound up being routed from Dallas to Louisville via Chicago Midway–and arriving almost five hours after originally scheduled. The rerouting also cost me my priority boarding, and I wound up in the C boarding group on the last two flights. Yay. So I was stuck in a middle seat on both of my last two flights…the greatest irony was I had originally booked my ticket to leave on Wednesday with the same itinerary; only to be notified that Southwest had changed it to a 12:30 departure arriving in Louisville at 9:20, with two changes of plane. I didn’t want that, so I changed it to Thursday…yet wound up leaving New Orleans at 12:30 and changing planes twice and not getting to Louisville until 9:20–and the last flight was about twenty minutes late; it took forever to get my bags…we ended up leaving the airport for the ninety mile drive around 10:15 and not getting to my parents’ until almost midnight.
So far so good for the flight home today, though. Fingers crossed that will hold.
I read From Here to Eternity on my travel day down, but wasn’t terribly vested in it. I was about 250 pages into it when I arrived at Louisville, and while it is entirely possible the horrors of the travel day may have influenced how I felt about the book, I wasn’t into it, didn’t like any of the characters–the most likable was Maggio, and he’s barely in the first quarter of the book–and so put it aside. I may try it again another time, but I am not sure I will like it any better the next time around. I then started The Complete Stories of James Purdy–an almost forgotten writer of the 20th century, and the stories are interesting and well written; he reminds me of a hybrid of Shirley Jackson with a dash of Flannery O’Connor filtered through a John Waters sensibility. I read half of the stories, but last night before bed I wanted something else, so I got out the iPad and my ARC of Laura Lippman’s new one, Dream Girl, and the next thing I knew it was past time to go to bed and I regretfully had to put it aside. I will read it on the plane today; hopefully finishing before I land in New Orleans. It’s quite good and interesting and absorbing…but I won’t review it on here until it’s closer to the release date.
I also started writing a short story, “Beauty Sleep,” Saturday night. I got about 700 or 800 words into it–not sure how far–before realizing that I wasn’t sure where the story was going. I hate when that happens; my short story writing methodology clearly needs work. I never really know where the story is going when I start writing them–very rarely do I know how the story will end, or what it is really about–and they inevitably wind up in a computer folder and languishing in the electronic drawer, as it were. It can be annoying and frustrating, sure–I probably should try to work through what the story is about and how it is going to end before starting to write it, even though I inevitably start writing because the opening and the characters are interesting and I want to get that down before I forget them in the mists of my mind–but it’s also a good writing exercise. And sometimes I get lucky and the story starts coming to me as I write. That doesn’t happen as often as they stall out, of course, but often enough that I keep doing this.
Okay, I think I am going to go try to find something to eat. Talk to you tomorrow, Constant Reader!
Up early to head to the airport and fly up to visit my parents. I never did get the damned prescription refill situation resolved (who knew that something as simple as a prescription refill–which simply needs to be called in or sent to a pharmacy–is beyond the capabilities of a nurse practitioner? I think it’s time for me to find a new doctor, frankly), so that will have to wait till I get back from the trip–and trust me, I am going to go all Julia Sugarbaker on that bitch’s ass when I get back; I may not even do it over the phone and might just go to the doctor’s office in person…I have not slept now since Saturday. A co-worked suggested a cannabis tincture, so last night on the way home from work I stopped at a CBD store and bought some. It really really relaxed me, but it didn’t turn my brain off, so while I was incredibly relaxed and comfortable in bed all night, I never really slept.
I am actually beginning to think this is some kind of insane endurance contest at this point.
Anyway since I’ll be gone, I may not be posting here as much. I did get all packed last night, checked in for my flight, and all of that day-before-you-leave stuff was handled, and then I went to bed early (for all the good it did) and now am up swilling coffee; I’ve got From Here to Eternity and a short story collection by James Purdy in my carry-on bag, as well as my iPad and the MacBook Air…but again, don’t know how much I’ll be on-line, if at all, while I am there. I’ve not seen my family in well over a year and a half–I didn’t go home to visit during the 2019 football season, so it was definitely before that–but my memory is so shot I can’t remember when exactly I did go up there. I’m hoping to do some writing and reading and relaxing, but even WITH my helpful prescription I have trouble sleeping while I am there, so…I don’t imagine it’s going to get any easier. (I may have to up the CBD dosage; I’ll try that tonight.)
I did order martini glasses yesterday; they should be here by the time I get back on Monday…so next up is learning how to make dirty vodka martinis. Maybe a martini and some CBD before bed will do the trick. Who knows? It’s certainly worth a try, and I was certainly relaxed the other night after I had two, even if I didn’t sleep that night.
I got the final edits on a short story I wrote for an anthology being done by the Chessies chapter of Sisters in Crime (that’s the chapter I elected to join; I have an insane amount of friends in that chapter–writers and editors I admire deeply and am so thrilled to call friends). I don’t remember the name of the anthology at the moment, nor do I remember the theme, but I finally found a home for the story “The Snow Globe”, and I have to say, after the input from the editors, it really is a story I am proud of, and am proud to have in a Sisters chapter anthology. Naturally, I will be posting more about the story when the anthology is closer to being released, which is next spring.
I hope the thrill of selling a short story is something I never lose.
I have been feeling disconnected from writing again lately–and need to get my shit together and start writing again. I have lots of short stories to finish, I need to get back to Chlorine, and I am going to get edits on other manuscripts at some point soon–so I need to get back into my good writing habits. It’s hard, though, to be creative when your brain isn’t centered or rested and you haven’t been sleeping…although I always can find an excuse not to write, can’t I?
The weather looks pretty nasty out there this morning–I hope my flight isn’t delayed. I don’t have much time at my change of planes destination (Dallas Love)…but I also don’t have any texts from Southwest, so I am assuming all systems are still go. I do worry that if I misconnect in Dallas it could turn into an all-day ordeal trying to get up there.
But I will cross that bridge when I come to it.
So, have a great day, and I’ll check in again when I have the chance or time.
Hello and good morning to you, Wednesday. We’re still in a severe weather warning or watch or something–a wind advisory and coastal flooding and so forth–but I don’t think it rained overnight and it’s not raining now. it is still grayish outside, though, as I sip at my cappuccino and try to come back to full consciousness–not that I actually went below it at any point over the last three nights.
Yesterday was not one of the better days at the day job; it quite literally was like Mercury went into retrograde for me and my program at the office. Everything that could possibly go wrong and usually never does actually did; plus I was dealing with trying to figure out why my pharmacy and my doctor were not communicating about my prescription refill, with each blaming the other and me stuck between them basically almost to the point of begging them to recognize that *I* was the one who was being mishandled and who was at fault didn’t matter; the important thing was fixing the issue rather than figuring out who was at fault. Somehow through it all I managed to never lose my temper and around two in the afternoon all I could do was laugh about everything. Everything at work managed to be worked out, and almost all of my clients handled the mishaps with good grace (I would like to point out that none of these things at my job were my fault; and usually having to clean up messes made by other people makes me angry but yesterday I somehow managed to keep my cool…which was also why I managed to keep my cool with the nurse at my doctor’s office and the pharmacy; remembering hey your clients handled being mishandled today gracefully, so don’t get mad because that won’t fix anything), so that was nice.
After work I met a friend in from out of town for dinner and drinks; she too had been having a really shitty day and so we were able to sit down at Fat Harry’s and have some liquor–dirty vodka martinis for me, white wine for her–and soon we started laughing about everything and talking and it was marvelous…marvelous to be out in public, marvelous to be hanging out with a friend and eating bar food and drinking, and we were both in really great moods as we bid each other good evening and returned to our domiciles. I’m still feeling the glow of that this morning, and I’ve decided to let things go as far as the prescription is concerned. If they don’t work it out themselves today–I kind of had the impression they were going to get it resolved yesterday, but they didn’t–I can deal with it when I get back from my trip. I’m not calling anyone today or trying to follow up with anyone or anything; I need to get into the proper headspace for the day before a trip and I have to pack and everything tonight too; there’s absolutely no need for me to add any additional stressors to my day today.
I actually don’t feel too bad for not having slept since Saturday night, really. I feel much more relaxed this morning and I do feel rested, even if I never actually went into a deep sleep last night. I think when I get home from my trip I am going to buy some vermouth and good vodka and olives and martini glasses and maybe I’ll have a drink every day when I get home from work just to relax a little bit. I don’t really drink much any more–since the start of the pandemic the only time I have had alcohol was when this same friend has been in town and we’ve had dinner together; and once when another friend was in from out of town. Considering how much I used to drink, that’s pretty amazing–and if anything, I’ve certainly proved to myself that I do not have an alcohol problem in the traditional sense, at least. (I often worry about developing an addiction.) So, having the occasional drink at home shouldn’t really be an issue.
And I really do like martinis–both vodka and gin.
I also really like Bloody Marys, now that I think about it.
I guess I just like liquor….which is why I worry about addiction, now that I think about it.
And on THAT note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader.
Tuesday and I have survived yet another Monday, which I am putting in the “win” column.
It was a grim, gray, rainy Monday yesterday in New Orleans, and all I wanted to do was curl up under a blanket and nap. But I managed to get quite a bit done yesterday, which is always a joy–I actually had my email inbox down to almost completely empty at one point–and didn’t start getting sleepy until after lunch, when the caffeine from my morning cappuccinos wore off.
Meh, it happens.
It’s raining again–it started last night while I was sort of sleeping (yes, another one of those nights again)–and parts of the city are in a flood warning; eastern New Orleans, which I assume means the East (but then again, compass directions are so completely useless here) and frankly I’m really not looking forward to going out to the car this morning, or the drive to work; rain makes the horrible New Orleans drivers even worse than they normally are…which is pretty fucking bad. I’m also having dinner with a friend in from out of town tonight after work–hoping it doesn’t get canceled because of this weather–but on the bright side, my car will look pretty clean thanks to this non-stop downpour.
We got caught up on Mare of Easttown last night, and my, what an intense and twisty episode this was! Certain shifts and twists we certainly didn’t see coming; and then it was over, all too soon. Kate Winslet and Jean Smart are killing it in this (Smart is also killing it in Hacks, I don’t think it’s going too far out on a limb to predict two Emmy nominations for Smart, one for each show; she could quite easily win both as well–although the actress who played Liza in Halston is going to be hard to beat), and the writing is quite extraordinary. It’s the best crime show I’ve seen in quite some time that isn’t based on a novel.
Speaking of writing, I’ve not been doing any lately of note. I think I’ve started a couple of short stories, as well as a personal essay about being a sixty-year-old Swiftie; but there’s simply no motivation there. It’s entirely possible I’ve fried my writing machine by writing two books back to back; I also know there are more revisions to come on Bury Me in Shadows as well as the initial ones for the Kansas book, so perhaps my subconscious knows better than for me to get going or involved in writing something else before those are completely out of the way. But it’s frustrating as well as worrisome; although I did at least get the outline of the first act of Chlorine written last week. I know I won’t get any writing done while on my trip this week–hopefully From Here to Eternity will engage my mind and keep me entertained; I think I am going to take the iPad with me as well so I have access to all the ebooks I own in case I either hate the book so much I stop reading, or it engages me so much that I tear through it till the end. I’d rather not take another hard copy with me on the trip, but I’ll probably end up doing so because I always need options for reading when I travel. The question is what to take? I certainly don’t want to be at the mercy of the airport bookshops.
Oh yes–Stephen King’s Fever, his latest work for Hard Case Crime. That should do nicely; and I’ve not read any King since I finished the Hodges Trilogy, which is kind of strange for someone who is such a big fan of King’s. I’ve somehow managed to fall way behind on his books–still buying copies, of course–but they are so big and long and daunting I’ve not been able to face one of his big books with my addled, short attention span brain lately–and most of his books are extremely long these days. Perhaps I should make getting caught up on King a project for the summer; after all,. reading King is always inspiring to me; I love how he creates characters and relationships; I don’t think I have ever been bored reading a King book–because he just draws me into the world he creates so easily and effortlessly.
Last night as I was lying in bed with my eyes closed in the dark listening to the rain, my brain dredged up yet another memory of a horrible writing experience I had in college–it really is astonishing how little I was encouraged, and how hard my writing professors tried to extinguish the desire to write in me. I took the basic English course all incoming students take my first semester; it was an hour and a half every Tuesday and Thursday. On the first day, we had to do one of those incredibly tedious writing assignments: if you had to spend the rest of your life on a desert island, what three things would you take with you? or something along those lines. I don’t remember what three things I took; but I can assume they included music and books–because quite frankly I could easily go the rest of my life without human contact if I had both of those and a computer (there were no computers in 1978, obviously, so that wasn’t one of my three things). When I went back to class on Thursday, the professor pulled me aside and told me the assignment was really for him to assess our writing abilities, our grasp of grammar and paragraph construction, etc. etc. etc., and that my skills were too advanced (at sixteen!) for his class and he feared it wouldn’t challenge me enough; he had talked to an Honors English professor, showed her my essay, and she agreed to allow me to enroll in her class late. So after class, he and I walked to the Admin building and effected the shifting of classes, and you can imagine how thrilled I was at this turn of events–a college professor thought I was a good writer!
Unfortunately for me, I was not to experience that feeling again for many years–at least, that was the way I remembered it….
The Honors English class wasn’t hard, but the professor was horrible, absolutely horrible. There were only ten of us in the class, and we all bonded over how awful we thought she was. She had no sense of humor, and we had to construct our essays only in the way she believed essays must be written; she was constantly assigning us to read boring, uninteresting essays “so (we) could learn how to properly write one.” She never gave me higher than a C on anything I wrote for her, and she seemed to take particular relish in ripping my essays apart in class as an example of what not to do for the others. Lord, I despised that woman. The other students would often grab me after class for a soda or coffee or something and try to make me feel better; that is how awful she was. I was just grateful to get out of that class alive with a passing grade, but alas…the second semester of Freshman Honors English wasn’t much better. The professor was much nicer than the first, but she had absolutely no qualms with letting me know how bad of a writer I was–and clearly felt there was nothing to be done about it. Towards the end of the semester, as we had one final paper to do for the class, she called me into her office and told me she was regretfully going to have to fail me. “The only way you can pass this course is if you get an A on your final paper, and frankly, I don’t believe you can do that. But if you retake the class in the fall, it will erase your F for this semester–or I will sign off on you dropping the class.” I had already selected Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes as the subject for my paper, so I told her I was willing to take my chances and write the paper anyway. She was clearly not happy–I will give her credit, she clearly hated failing people and didn’t want to fail me–but I was determined.
I wish I still had a copy of that paper. It was brilliant, if I do say so myself. I had reada biography of Bette Davis (Mother Goddam), and the author actually used her films as a way to write her biography and even gave her the opportunity to comment on her performances. It was a great biography–I’ve always thought that was the best way to do one of a film star, if the star was still alive and able and willing to participate–and Davis had played Regina in the film version of the play (and was nominated for an Oscar). I had never seen the film, but I had read the play and the biography, and Davis’ insights into who Regina was served as the launching pad for my essay.
I got an A on the paper, and the professor actually wrote on it, “Well, I’ll be damned if you didn’t pull this off. Congratulations.”
But given this past history, and my psyche’s uncanny ability to keep the negative and not remember the positive, is it any wonder I have little to no confidence about writing essays? But now I do remember that I finished Honors English with an impressive triumph–the highest grade in the class on the final paper–and with that knowledge, perhaps I will be a little less hard on myself when it comes to writing essays in the future.
And on that note, I need to take a shower and head for the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader!
Queer and Loathing in America 