Category: childhood

Ruin the Friendship

Monday morning and I am back at home, getting ready to face another day at the office. I am very tired this morning. I drove home yesterday and was exhausted once I did get home. I managed to unpack and get some things done, but not a lot. One thing that was rather blissful while I was gone was being almost completely out of the loop as far as the country and world are concerned–and it was kind of nice, actually. I started writing an entry while I was up there that I never finished and posted, either; I will try to get that finished at some point today. I have to leave early to see my GI specialist, and then I need to run some errands before I get to come home. Gah, I am tired. It’s going to not be an easy week, methinks. I also committed to going to Kentucky for Thanksgiving, which seriously won’t kill me, will mean a lot to my sister and father, and probably will get me over the Mom’s holiday thing. It’ll be three years on Valentine’s Day next year. Sigh.

I listened to Adam Cesare’s Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives! on the ride to and from this past weekend, which I really enjoyed; a perfect choice for Halloween Horror Month. I don’t know that I’ll do a review of it or not; I haven’t decided and I have a lot that I need to get done over the next few days–we’re having a site visit this week, so I definitely am behind on getting things ready for that and I have all kinds of catching up to do. Daunting, yes, but nothing I cannot handle once I’ve made a to-do list, which I’ll have to do later on this morning–one for the office, one for me personally–so I can make sure I am not forgetting anything that I need to get done. My coffee tastes good this morning (must put ‘clean coffee machine’ on said to-do list) and I am taking that as a good sign that, despite feeling a bit run down and tired this morning, I will have a terrific day.

I am SURE of it!

Last night, after getting sort of caught up on the news a bit (I still feel very out of touch this morning), we started getting caught up on shows, and we also started watching Boots, the new Netflix show about a gay kid who somehow joins the Marines before “don’t ask don’t tell”; when being gay was an automatic dishonorable discharge and perhaps even some time in a military prison. (IT WASN’T THAT LONG AGO KIDS!) We’re really enjoying it thus far, and the actors are all pretty to look at. I didn’t think I’d enjoy a show about marine boot camp (at least not after seeing Full Metal Jacket), but I actually did. I also got caught up on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, which was fun, and really the only one I pay attention to anymore. I also read Chris Grabenstein’s The Hanging Hill, which I enjoyed as some light reading. It’s a middle-grade book, I’d say, and the kind of thing I would have loved when I was the right age for it. I can see why he’s so popular with kids–and he’s a lovely person to boot; I’d bought two of his books when we met and were on a panel together at Sleuthfest about ten years ago. (I do recommend Sleuthfest, writer friends and aspiring writers; it’s a marvelous crime conference put on by the Florida chapter of MWA.)

And now I get to settle back into the real world and my real life again. After my doctor’s appointment I am going to run pick up the mail and stop to get some fresh berries for my breakfasts at the Fresh Mart before coming home and doing some chores before cat-bonding and getting caught up on the news (sigh) and what’s going on in the world. I very deliberately disconnected from my phone and didn’t use it for anything other than deleting spam email for five days. I highly recommend this process for everyone from time to time; we do need to remain informed about what’s going on in this horrifyingly enflamed world. It helped my mental state dramatically.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I’ll try to get that trip blog post finished this week, and I even started a newsletter essay I would like to get done. Have a great Monday, and I will be back at some point soon.

You Belong with Me

Thursday morning and my last day in the office for the week–and until a week from Monday, at that! Huzzah! The dark is pressing up against my windows this morning, which means the time change is coming. I still get to come home from work in the daylight, though. I slept pretty decently last night, and my legs are tired this morning but they don’t ache, which is much, much better than earlier this week. The bed also felt warm and comfortable this morning. Sparky was a cuddle puddle, too, which wasn’t exactly motivating me to get up, you know? Ah, well.

I was very tired when I got home from work last night, but did my chores so the house isn’t a disaster area this morning. I worked on the book first, caught up on the news (which is truly grim every day), and then cleaned out the sink and ran the dishwasher. I also finished two loads of laundry and folded everything before I started dozing off in my chair. I started my reread of The Haunting of Hill House, and it always, on every reread, just blows me away. Shirley Jackson was such a master.

What a bizarre week this has been, and it’s only Thursday. It hasn’t been bizarre for me, per se, but more along the lines of “I’m not enjoying this final season of United States.” We have Senator Rafael Cruz insisting that we need to “stop attacking pedophiles” (for which I have rechristened him Tedophile), to the government shutting down, to the cowardice of the House Speaker in not swearing in a duly elected congressperson to protect the Epstein files from coming out, to whatever the fuck that was with the top military brass the other day. (Someone posted on social media that the generals were calling them “Fat Man and Little Boy” because they bombed so hard, which made me howl with laughter.)

I do love how President Canks1 seems to think destroying the major cities in this country–which also are the primary economic engines of the country–won’t bankrupt the nation, not to mention a president threatening US cities with military reprisals because they don’t like him is a kind of a terrifying new wrinkle (gee, if only someone could have said something about this before the election…), but not a surprise. MAGA has been running this country as a fascist state since at least 1/20/25, and anyone who doesn’t see that is too stupid to engage with other than a simple “hello” in passing. Is it any wonder everything is fraying and decaying, including everyone’s emotional and mental states? Prices certainly are out of control and getting worse every time I go to the grocery store or order groceries for delivery; how’s that cost of eggs no one on the Right seems to care about anymore? Fortunately I only use eggs for cooking (rarely), and while Paul loves them, he doesn’t eat them very often–thank the Lord. And who would have ever thought the so-called “answer” to illegal immigration was to make the country such a hellhole that no one would want to come here for opportunity anymore? I always thought illegal immigration was the ultimate compliment to our country–that whole “land of opportunity” thing I was brainwashed into believing when I was a kid. My generation was completely gaslighted into the dual mythology of American exceptionalism and white supremacy; talk about a miseducation! I’ve spent most of my adulthood unlearning those lessons.

But I do feel good this morning–I know I’ll be tired tonight, but the only chore left is folding that last load of laundry, so I can probably do a spot of writing before collapsing into my easy chair for the evening. I do hope Paul gets home early enough before I fall asleep/go to bed, so we can watch some shows and get caught up with each other. I think they’re finished moving the office to their new, temporary space.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and don’t let the news get to you too much; I need to follow my own advice, don’t I? See you tomorrow morning!

Only You

And here it is Wednesday again; halfway through the week, but this time I am heading into vacation time and not just the weekend. Huzzah! I feel pretty good this morning; no fatigue or aches detected, so let’s hope that lasts through the day. I was pretty fucking exhausted last night when I got home from the clinic; we weren’t super-super busy, but I was the only person counseling, so it was draining on top of being tired. I did hit a wall in the afternoon after my last patient, so came home and crashed out in my easy chair, intermittently dozing off and waking up again for a couple of hours before Paul got home. We watched the season finale of Platonic (which really is a lot of fun) and the latest Peacemaker, which had some big twists and a special guest star, too. I then went to bed early and slept deeply and well, or so it feels as I sit here swilling coffee and scarfing down coffee cake.

But that feels like a major win at this point.

I did get some work done on the book, but I was so damned tired I didn’t get very far with it before my brain shut down. And it’s October already! Where the hell did September go? This is what comes from wishing it were the weekend already and counting down the days; time goes by much faster, doesn’t it? I guess that’s what Mom meant by “wishing your life away,” wasn’t it? But I didn’t finish The Hunting Wives and it’s already Halloween Horror Month, so I am going to begin my reread of The Haunting of Hill House tonight. I also downloaded Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives to listen to in the car while driving this weekend, and am taking a couple of books with me to read before bed every night in Alabama next weekend. I should read horror more throughout the year, of course, but the inability to focus and read something as quickly as I used to really bugs me. I also want to watch some new-to-me horror films, and probably rewatch some, like Halloween (always seasonally appropriate for October) and The Haunting–I may even rewatch Sinners so I can pick up on more things I missed the first time through.

I also need to finish writing this book so I can write some newsletters. It’s been a very hot minute; the last one was my Katrina anniversary essay, and that was now over a month ago. But Bouchercon exhausted me, and it took me a while to get over that issue, only to have the reaction to my vaccine from this past weekend. It feels almost like I spent all of September fatigued and tired. But I also learned how to give myself my bi-monthly injection this month, so that’s a win, and I also reconnected with my writing brain, which was a HUGE win. That has also improved my mood and outlook dramatically; I hate when I fear that the writing part of my brain has dried up or atrophied. I doubt that I will ever get to be as prolific as I used to be, and not certain that I would even want that, to be honest–at least not while I still am working full time. I just don’t have the energy or the bandwidth to produce between three and five books in a year anymore…or the desire. I know I have a lot of book and story ideas I may never get around to writing, but whereas that thought used to fill me with panic…I’ve resigned myself to that reality and no longer get anxious about that inevitable truth.

Of course, that could be a side effect of the anxiety medication, too. I did also worry that the medication had sapped my will to write…but that is clearly not the case.

I have lots of things to get done around the office this morning, too…but I don’t think the clinic is very busy today, and it’s not just me this morning. I need to do some chores tonight in addition to writing–I was too tired last night and the kitchen is a disaster area, literally, again–but am feeling good about things and getting back on top of everything.

And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and head into the spice mines. Have a great Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll say hello again tomorrow morning.

Jacob Elordi in Saltburn, looking like a snack despite the poor choice in reading materials.

Ride Captain Ride

Saturday! Sparky let me sleep late again, bless his little heart, and so I feel rested and good this morning. I have to run the errands I didn’t run yesterday (when I finished working I wasn’t in the mood to leave the house, other than a walk to Walgreens) and other than that, I am staying inside and working today on my own stuff. There are some games today I might watch (or have on in the background while I clean or write or read) besides LSU’s game tonight against SLU; Auburn-Oklahoma comes to mind for this afternoon, and Tulane plays Mississippi at the same time (GO WAVE!). Miami also plays Florida tonight, and I also haven’t looked to see what non-SEC games might be interesting to have on at some point.

I did get some things done yesterday around the house which pleased me enormously; I have some final touches to be done today around writing and reading. I need to redo my workspace because the last reorganization seemed like a good idea but…it’s not, and the workspace feels more cramped than it ever has, and I just can’t with that, you know? The apartment always feels cramped when it’s not in order, which I dislike intensely, and it feels pretty wide open this morning. I still need to vacuum the rugs and put dishes away, but other than that the house is pretty in order. Huzzah!

The Trey Reed story continues, and the official autopsy ruled it a “suicide,” although I’m not precisely sure how you can make that distinction between murder and suicide when the death is by hanging. From a tree. In Mississippi. Pardon me for not trusting anything official coming out of Mississippi regarding the strange death by hanging of a young Black man. I was also glad to see Colin Kaepernick’s foundation is paying for an independent autopsy on behalf of the family. (Speaking of Kaepernick, does anyone else see the NFL’s hypocrisy on drumming him out of the League for taking a knee when so many of them had a memorial moment pre-game for Charlie Kirk? Side-eye at you, Gail Benson–and I’ve not forgotten you and the Saints’ role in the New Orleans priest/pedophile cover-up, either….making it really hard for me to root for the Saints, you know? Also remember, she got all of Tom Benson’s money by cutting off his blood relatives…)

While I was doing my quality assurance work yesterday, I sat in my chair with Sparky sleeping around my feet and put Superman on to rewatch while I was working, and I have to say, it’s just as excellent the second viewing as it was the first…and I generally tend to not rewatch a film I’ve seen recently, so rewatching was saying something to begin with. Honestly, I’ve really not stopped thinking about this film since we saw it, and have watched numerous reviews and critiques (almost all positive) on Youtube ever since. I also had a lot more thoughts while watching the second time. The first time I watched it was as a viewer; and I am very glad we saw it on the wide screen, and I just wanted the experience. This time, I was able to pay closer attention to details and the plot, and so forth. The magic holds up on a second watch, and it also reminded me of why Superman is so wildly beloved. I also was able to pick out “the hero’s journey” out of the story this time, and I also realized that the Kents work because they were always supposed to be old for parents; they were already past any hope of having a child of their own when they found the baby and the rocket in their corn field, so almost every iteration of the Kents has been canonically wrong every time–the former Bo Duke and Lana Lang casting of the Kents in Smallville was particularly wrong, too. (He’s also a “found orphaned boy,” too.) Wendell Pierce was perfect casting as Perry White (and really, can’t we have Pierce in almost everything? He elevates everything he’s in, seriously.)–the entire film was expertly cast.

And I also realized I want to write more about Superman and revisit my love of the character from childhood, as well as writing about both Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen, because I finally remembered that the reason I wanted to be a journalist when I went to college was primarily because the idea took root from the Superman comics, and my affinity for Clark, Lois and Jimmy.

I also realized yesterday why I was having so much trouble with this book before I got sick; I am covering some unfortunate events in this story for Scotty and the boys and while the final third of the book is absolutely necessary, it’s not going to be easy to get done because it’s troubling. There’s a lot of work to do on this manuscript, but I feel like I can do it now.

And on that note, it isn’t getting done with me sitting here writing this, so I am going to bring this to a close and head into the spice mines. Have a great Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.

Screenshot

Beach Baby

I love this song still to this very day. It came out during a time where nostalgia was big–especially the 1950s–and the Beach Boys had just made another comeback and their album Endless Summer was a huge hit. The song is very reminiscent of the Beach Boys–all that California sun and surf and cheerfulness and high school hops–but there was a melancholy under all that cheerful nostalgia, especially with the background refrain, oft-repeated through it, of do you remember? do you remember? (The song also come out around the same time as a book called What Really Happened to the Class of 65? and I always associated the song with the book.)

It is Tuesday morning and I am up early, as always, swilling coffee and eating coffee cake, care of Costco. I did finish editing that story, and got it turned in. I hope the editor likes it. I had the idea for it many years ago–not that long, but it seems like it now–and started writing it, getting a draft done before wondering where to try to sell it. I was going to submit it to the Minneapolis Bouchercon anthology I edited, putting it through the anonymous read process as I did for the New Orleans and St. Petersburg ones because it would look like “insider pool” if I was accepted. (I have not submitted to a Bouchercon anthology since being told this, by the way. If their board thinks I would just automatically put my own story in there instead of following the same procedure as everyone else? I don’t need to be in any of their anthologies in the future.) I’ve had the idea for a long time–going back to when I actually lived in Minneapolis, which is where I also came up with the title, which is one of my favorites of all my titles. I did try selling some other places, but the story was still…not quite right, and was rejected, as it should have been. I think I was able to fix it, but…we’ll have to see. But it felt good to work on it, and I also realized that just because it doesn’t “feel” the same to write and edit as it used to, doesn’t mean I’m not doing good work. I’ve changed, both physically and mentally, and that’s going to make things seem different to me than how they used to work, you know?

Yesterday wasn’t a bad day, you know. We weren’t as busy at work as I had expected, primarily from no-shows and last minute reschedules, so I wasn’t exhausted when I got home from work and worked on the story. I didn’t do any chores–the kitchen somehow exploded again, I don’t know how all this happens, honestly–so when I get home tonight I can’t write or read or even catch up on the news until those chores are completed. I hate when the downstairs is a mess, and the whole apartment, when it’s out of order, feels very cramped and small and claustrophobic. Because I am all about the claustrophobia? Apparently so. I slept well again last night and don’t feel terribly sleepy or tired this morning, which is a good thing. Sparky was a combination cuddle-bug/attack kitty this morning before I got up, and went into attack mode again while I was putting my shoes on. I think Paul will be working late at the office tonight, if I am not mistaken, and so it’ll be time for some bonding time after I write (or while I read and edit). I doubt I’ll be catching up on the news; the current story dominating the legacy “media” doesn’t interest me, nor am I interested in being shamed for not mourning someone who advocated me being stoned to death, either. (Miss me with the “he didn’t say that!” Okay, then, tell me one positive thing he ever said about queer rights and equality. I’ll wait.)

The story not getting this fawning, wall-to-wall coverage from the legacy media? How about the two men lynched on consecutive days in Mississippi? The Mississippi “police” already determined the Black college student’s death had “no evidence of foul play.” Really? The other victim was a white homeless man, and their names were, respectively, Trey Reed of Delta State University and Cory Zukatis. After all, it’s not like the Mississippi police have a history of covering up hate crimes or anything. (eye roll to infinity)

We are living in dark times, indeed.

And on that grim note, I am heading into the spice mines. Stay safe, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back in the morning.

Abraham, Martin and John

Wednesday and Pay-the-Bills Day has rolled around for the first time in September. I didn’t sleep all that great, but don’t feel groggy at all this morning. However, if I had to I could easily go back to bed and fall asleep all over again. I am slowly starting to lift myself out of the abyss and pull my life back together. Yesterday was a pretty good day, actually. I felt great all day, not tired at all, and was able to get a lot done at the office. I wasn’t even tired when I got home after work, either! Huzzah and hurray! I spent some time getting caught up on the news when I got home, and then read for a while before Paul got home and I went to bed. I don’t know if this is all because of the injection on Monday, but whatever caused it, I am delighted and thrilled it happened. I suspect I’ll be a bit more tired this evening than I was yesterday, but I will happily take it, you know? The fatigue over the weekend was so intense and brutal–I’ve never been so tired it hurt, you know?–and I hope I never experience that again.

I am a bit tired this morning (mostly because of restless sleep and waking up several times during the night), but it’s not that horrible fatigue, which I fucking despise. I feel a little off, but nothing terrible that I can’t deal with, but no promises for this afternoon, you know? I was thinking about ordering groceries to be delivered this evening, but am not sure I shouldn’t just wait until Saturday. I am going to barbecue for the LSU-Florida game–burgers and cheese dogs, the regular tailgating action–and there are an awful lot of great games Saturday–Georgia-Tennessee, Wisconsin-Alabama, and two other games at the same time as LSU, Vanderbilt-South Carolina and Texas A&M-Notre Dame. I do love football season, even as it takes away from my productivity.

At least I enjoy cleaning while the games are on.

The world and country continue to burn to the ground, and social media continues to be filled with bots, grifters, rage baiters, and sad, broken people lashing out in a pathetic attempt to somehow feel better about themselves as American mediocrities and failures. I have very little hope for the future of this country, now that the small-minded hateful bigots who don’t understand the first thing about freedom and liberty are in control. It’s also interesting to see how many Americans are into the whole fascism thing. Sinclair Lewis was very prescient with It Can’t Happen Here, wasn’t he? I also saw some insane shit-posting about To Kill a Mockingbird being racist1, but not for the reasons most people do. No, this empty-minded moron was bitching about the book being racist because it showed an all-white jury wrongfully convicting a Black man for a crime they knew he didn’t commit thus making white people look bad.

Excuse the fuck out of me?

As I replied, you’re right–it would have never gotten to trial. He would have been lynched the same night he was accused.

Because that was how it was done in Alabama in the 1930s, and to suggest anything else is a blatant lie.

I also love the MAGA bitch from Georgia who got the proposed Hyundai plant shut down completely, dealing a harsh blow to her own state’s economy and that of the district she is running to represent. If this were an episode of Law & Order, her body would be found and they’d work their way back around to her ignorance and stupidity. I am so tired of the rampant stupidity as the American empire crumbles and dies…this is going to be one of those times future history students will look back on and think but why were they so stupid? Couldn’t they SEE?

I was once that child reading history.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely, lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow.

Artist’s rendering of the Temple at Edfu, Egypt
  1. My feelings about To Kill a Mockingbird are very conflicted, as I don’t see it as a great American novel about race the way most white people see it, and that may become an essay at some point. ↩︎

When I’m Sixty-four

For the first time in decades, I am not taking my birthday off.

That’s why I am up at this ungodly hour, swilling down coffee and consuming coffee cake like it’s going out of style. I need to conserve my PTO, because I am going to the panhandle (barring unforeseen circumstances) for a week with my dad in October after a weekend in Alabama for Dad’s and Mom’s birthdays. I also have to take some time off during Bouchercon–there’s no way I can work all day and then host Noir at the Bar that Thursday, and probably not going to be able to do much work that Friday, either. I think I’ve managed to get it all planned out so that I will have just enough vacation time left to do the family thing in October, and then let things start building back up again for the new year. It’s going to be weird going to work on my birthday–I generally take the day off because I don’t need or want the attention that comes with it–but I will survive, I am sure.

Sixty. Four.

Christ on the cross.

I never planned for my future because I never thought I would have one. When I was a kid, I was certain I wasn’t going to have much of an adult life; I always had nightmares about not only dying but how I would die; either in a car accident, or a fall from a high place. This is why I am always, to this day, a little bit tense when I’m in a car and a LOT tense when I am the passenger. In my early twenties, I thought I was going to seroconvert and die from AIDS–why would I ever think that I would survive that pandemic? The next thing I knew I had somehow made it to fifty, then sixty–and now I am sixty-four, with another milestone birthday just a year in my future, should I make it till then. I am woefully unprepared for retirement, so most likely will continue to work for another few years to at least try to get my debt down to a manageable place. Ha ha ha ha, I’m so adorable, aren’t I?

I guess the ship has sailed on me dying young, hasn’t it?

But it’s been a pretty good life thus far, I have to say. I’ve written and published a shit ton of work, which can never be taken away from me, and neither can the awards I’ve either won or made the shortlist for…how many authors never make a shortlist of any kind? But the childhood conditioning that celebrating myself and things I’ve accomplished is a hubristic tempting of fate; how many stories and myths and fables are there about hubristic humans who anger a god? Like I often say, I live in the city I love with the man I love doing work that I love. All of my dreams came true, no matter what happens in the future.

My sixties haven’t been easy on me, and I don’t have the energy I used to have so recovery from physical, emotional, and professional blows doesn’t happen as fast as it used to; but I’m still pretty pleased and happy with my life. I try not to worry about future outcomes that I can’t control, and can only prepare for the things I can. If my thirties were about getting myself mentally healthy so I could have the life I wanted, and the forties were about getting started in my career and the fifties were about getting further along and getting better as a writer, my sixties have been a time of revisiting and rethinking my past, finally getting to understand myself and where a lot of my neuroses stem from. The anxiety medication has helped me enormously in that regard, too. Realizing how emotionally crippling my anxiety was when I was a minor also has enabled me to remember, and those memories aren’t painful anymore because so much of my misery was directly attributable to said anxiety.

So now I am sixty-four. I am older than my grandparents were throughout my childhood, which is also a staggering realization. It’s also weird to think that I was born sixteen years after the end of World War II, the country was sinking into the depths of the Cold War, and President Kennedy hadn’t even been in office for a full year yet. I never imagined what it would be like to be this age, mainly because I, as stated earlier, never thought I would live this long. I’m trying not to be that old person–you know, “When I was your age” or “We used to call it” and that sort of thing, because no one really wants to hear it. I’ve seen a lot in my life, witnessed all kinds of events (the Challenger explosion, 9/11, Watergate hearings, on and on), and lived through all kinds of things. I’ve lived in Alabama, Chicago, Kansas, California, Houston, Tampa, Minneapolis, and New Orleans. I went to two high schools in different states, and two colleges in different states. I went to Italy for a week over ten years ago. I’ve had so many jobs, but being a writer/sexual health counselor were the only things that took with me.

Life’s been good to me so far.

After work, I am going to head home and just hang out with Sparky. If I had to hazard a guess, Paul will probably get us Hoshun for dinner tonight. But I got my vacuum cleaner last week, and that’s all I really cared about.

Happy birthday to me! And may my next year be a lovely one!

The only picture of my face as a baby, my first day home from the hospital.

Shoo Be Doo

Thursday morning, and I am awake with my mind alert for a change–but my body is still fatigued. Hopefully getting to sleep a little later tomorrow will make a difference in the degree of fatigue I’ve been experiencing this week. This is actually the worst it’s been after an infusion, so hallelujah that this was the last one! I’ve not been able to get much of anything done around here after work–I fell asleep just after eight again in my chair, only to go up to bed around nine thirty. I did sleep well, but probably needed to stay in bed a few more hours, methinks.

We were also busy in the clinic yesterday, which didn’t help the fatigue, but I made it through the day unscathed. I did get a lot done there, too. I think we’re busy again today, but the morning is pretty slow and easy, so I can get caught up on my paperwork. I think tonight after work I’ll come straight home. I skipped the grocery store last night, but picked up the mail and my prescriptions, so that was a plus. I’ll probably have some groceries delivered over the weekend, as I am out of some things. I also don’t think I am imagining how much prices have gone up lately. Wasn’t that yet another broken campaign promise? I mean, I thought inflation was all Biden’s fault, wasn’t it? Here’s hoping we’ll have a robust mid-term election next year…although I suspect we’re never going to have another one. I would be delighted to be proven wrong, for the record, but nothing the Fascists do anymore surprises me. What surprises me is when they do something decent without an ulterior motive…and I am still waiting to be surprised.

Despite the mental fatigue I was experiencing when I got home last night, I did manage to park myself in my chair and catch on the news. Christ on the cross, what the fuck is wrong with this country (rhetorical)? I heartily enjoyed reports on Gavin Newsom’s tweets yesterday, and the utter insanity of Laura Loomer’s deposition in her defamation suit against Bill Maher. Future generations will (hopefully) look back at this time and ask, in all seriousness, what the fuck was wrong with everyone? Which leads me around to an essay I am writing about Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, and how that history has always been distorted to blacken Anne’s reputation as well as who she was; imagine if the only reports for future historians about you were your absolute worst enemies…even those who admired her were too afraid to say anything positive about her after her fall. I also saw somewhere on-line recently a comparison between Henry VIII and our own unspeakably vile president.

This is why studying history is, in my opinion, so vitally important–but it’s equally important to keep an open mind as well. Context also matters.

I probably should have been a historian. The problem, though, was all of it interests me; I don’t know that I would have been able to decide on a particular period to focus on. The smart thing for me to have done would have been to double major in history and creative writing, with a minor in either French or German. Although I probably would have focused on the sixteenth century, which has always fascinated me…French would have been the wiser course because it was the diplomatic language of that period, so a lot of the source material would have been in French.

Is it just me, or has there been a lot of flooding all over the country this year? I haven’t paid as much attention to it all as perhaps I should have, but at least I’ve made note of it. The Guadalupe River floods in Texas were kind of hard to escape, as everyone seemed to be covering that story. But it seems like every day, or at least every other day, whenever I log into my browser I see pictures of devastating flooding somewhere in the US. Flooding is so awful and it’s never fun to lose your car and/or your home and most of your belongings.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I will be back in the morning.

The Temple of Abu Simbel, statues of Ramses II

Don’t Cha Stop

It was supposed to rain this morning, but the sun is shining and the sky is bright blue. I slept well again last night until Sparky got me up this morning, wanting his breakfast. (He is such a sweet boy.) I had a lovely day yesterday, actually. I ran my errands in the morning, ordered groceries to be delivered last evening, and had a pretty nice day overall. I finished rereading my Jay Bennett and Barbara Michaels novels1, and hope to finish reading the Megan Abbott today. I also watched a lot of television while doing chores and reading before falling asleep in my chair last night after a nice, relaxing day. Here’s to having another today, right?

Netflix has a new show about the 2024 SEC football season called Any Given Saturday, and so I watched about four episodes of that while Paul slept on the couch. It’s very well done, and while I don’t feel it pays enough attention to LSU–and what there is focuses on games they lost (really? No coverage of the amazing upset of Top Ten-ranked Mississippi?)–it is nice to see the stories on the other teams and get a recap of the season. The show, of course, is hype for the upcoming season; the pro pre-season is already under way. I think LSU can be really good this year, but LSU always manages to find a way to LSU. There are only two episodes of the show left–we switched it off to watch Wednesday, which we also didn’t finish last night–that I may have on in the background this morning while I read.

I think I am going to go ahead and spend some time with the news and my coffee this morning before finishing this. I’ll be back momentarily, Constant Reader. (According to the weather, we should be having a thunderstorm in five minutes, which I don’t think is going to happen, given how it currently looks out there.)

It’s now noon, and it never rained here. It does look like the calm before a storm outside my windows at the moment, but I’ve already closed up my wagon and put it away (I’d left it out last night after the delivery) just in case. I got cleaned up–even shaving–and that woke me up and made me feel being productive for a while. I put Any Given Saturday back on to stream, getting through the last two episodes while reading more of El Dorado Drive and marveling at what a fucking MASTER Megan Abbott is; she may be the best writer publishing today, and is definitely in the top tier without question. I also picked out my next reads: the reread will be Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson2 and the juvenile/young adult will be The Secret of the Red Scarf, which belongs to a close-to-forgotten girls’ series featuring Nancy Drew rip-off Kay Tracey, and I won’t decide on the new new-to-me read until I finish the Abbott–I’m currently torn between Mia Manansala’s latest or Disco Witches of Fire Island or Lev AC Rosen’s Rough Pages; all queer authors, I might add.

But The Hunting Wives might win the race in a photo-finish.

As I finished off Any Given Saturday, I found myself very curious about the lack of coverage for Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Auburn, among others…and LSU and Alabama were only covered in reference to their games with South Carolina and Vanderbilt, period. Was it about getting some of these lesser-known programs more coverage? And it’s definitely difficult to cover 16 teams with any degree of depth and certainly every team had a story to tell this past year. But it definitely whetted my appetite for the return of college football, which was its intent, so mission accomplished, Netflix.

I’d forgotten we’d watched Towards Zero in between the SEC show and Wednesday; I’d seen bad reviews of it so was curious as to what we would think of it. I remembered the story as soon as I saw the geography of the setting, which is crucial to the crime, and yes, I was proven correct in the third episode. It was fine, if perhaps not really needing a third episode? It did feel like it was dragged out more than it needed to be, which is not a good sign for a murder mystery.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I need to do some picking up and organizing and cleaning, and I am also going to write for a while before probably returning to the Abbott. I doubt I will be back later; I may finish a newsletter today and I may not. If not, I will be here again in the morning before the infusion. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader!

  1. I will write newsletters about both authors at some point. ↩︎
  2. I’ve always wanted to write about this unique Jackson book; I usually reread The Haunting of Hill House every October. ↩︎

Just What I Needed

Monday and back to the office with me today. Yesterday was nice and relaxing; I worked on writing for a while, didn’t do as many chores as I should have, and watched a couple of shows. I didn’t want to get out of bed again this morning–no surprise there–and am a little bummed to not have another day off as of yet. But I’ll survive, as I always do, which is no more than I should expect, one supposes. It’s hard to believe that it’s August and my birthday is looming, as is football season and Bouchercon is also coming to New Orleans the first week of next month. I’ve got a lot to get done in the month of August, and I really need to buckle down and apply my nose to said grindstone. It’s just tough when you have to battle fatigue and exhaustion all the time.

We watched the Netflix documentary series Amy Bradley Is Missing, which was interesting and terribly sad at the same time. I cannot imagine the pain of having a family member disappear without a trace the way Amy Bradley did off that cruise ship. As a disappearance of a family member is the crucial plot element of a book I am researching to write at some point in the future (The Summer of Lost Boys), watching this kind of counted as research for that, as it gave me insight as to how a working class family would react to such an occurrence and how the family would be permanently damaged….which also got me thinking about aftermaths to crime and horror stories. How do you go on with your life after fighting supernatural threats? Or after being a murder suspect? Or having someone close to you commit a serious and most heinous crime?

After dinner, we started watching a new Mexican erotic thriller series on Netflix, whose title translates to Unspeakable Sins. Like all Spanish-language erotic thriller series, there’s plenty of sex and nudity; we only watched three episodes (there’s two seasons of nine episodes each) but even trying to summarize the plot thus far–but the primary plot concerns Helena, a wealthy woman in a very controlling marriage to an older man, who starts having an affair with a very hot young escort, whom she convinces to flirt with her bisexual husband so they can get video of the two of them together and she can use the video as leverage to divorce him. Ivan pretends to be a journalist doing a story on Claudio, Claudio is attracted to him, but things go south–they fight and Ivan’s story is he ran away. But there’s blood all over the house and Claudio is now missing…can Ivan trust Helena or is she playing him for a fool, setting him up to take the fall for his murder?

That’s the primary story, but there are subplots as well that are just as intense.

Ivan is played by gorgeous Andres Baida. I mean…

Sexy Andres Baida
He was also in Control Z and Who Killed Amy?

Gorgeous, just gorgeous.

I also spent some time processing seeing friends from high school that I hadn’t seen in almost fifty years. (The fact that it’s been almost fifty years since I graduated from high school also needs processing, but that will have to wait until I am done with this initial processing.) Every time I’ve had a conversation with someone from high school in the last thirty years–it’s not often and it’s not many–how they remember me, and high school, are vastly different from how I remember things, but they also never knew how miserable and unhappy I was. I always put on a good face; I always try to make the best out of every situation I find myself dealing with as they come up, especially when it’s not something you can change or alter in any meaningful way. As I’ve stated before, I’ve always thought I was odd-looking and never really had a fit body until I was in my thirties. But…seeing pictures from back then…I was wrong about how I looked (I’ve always been wrong about that, frankly) and my impact on other people. Both women remember me as having a really muscular fit body and being handsome and very kind and considerate and thoughtful–and funny; I’ve always been funny.

And I did work on writing yesterday. I edited another piece and wrote out what changes need to be made to it to make it stronger. I also did some laundry and a load of dishes, but didn’t pick up too much of the mess in the apartment. I do enjoy spending down time with Paul and Sparky, and really wish we were both retired and just hanging out around the apartment all day. Paul likes to be busy, though, so I do think he will take some adjusting if and when he finally does retire. I won’t be retiring for another few years yet; not going at 65, much as I would like to, so I have to get my shit together leading up to when I finally do.

After work today, I have to make groceries on the way home, and I’m hoping to do some writing tonight before we jump back into Unspeakable Sins.

So on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be checking in with you again in the morning.