Category: documentaries

Tension

Wednesday morning and another good night’s sleep down. I didn’t want to wake up this morning–rather, didn’t want to arise from the comfort of my warm soft bed and the pile of blankets that help me sleep better–but of course there’s Big Kitten Energy in the house now, and Tug wanted breakfast. So, at around a quarter to six Big Kitten Energy launched itself at me and started cuddling and purring and wanting petting as well as feeding. He’s currently galloping around downstairs and just having a marvelous time. Yesterday was his first day at home alone with both of us out at the office; so I wasn’t sure what to expect when I got home. What mischief had the bored little kitty gotten up to on his own–what had been knocked over, knocked off counters and/or tables, what had he found to turn into a kitten toy which probably shouldn’t be a kitten toy, and so on. He didn’t come galloping down the stairs either once I got home, either. But by the time the groceries were put away I heard him coming down the stairs, and then we repaired to my easy chair where we just cuddled and I started rereading Jackson Square Jazz instead of doing chores–which I will now have to do tonight when I get home…but who could resist Tug’s insistent little face that he needed a lap to sleep in?

Yes, in case you were wondering, Tug has indeed taken his place as head of the household.

As the salt intrusion continues to make its way up the river to New Orleans, the panic is getting more realistic. I stopped to make groceries on the way home yesterday, and there was plenty of bottled water. I bought another gallon to go with the case of smaller bottles I got last week–doing what was advised, merely getting water every time I shop–so the initial panic-buying of water has at least some to an end. There’s also a cold front on its way down here, supposedly arriving around Friday–but looking at the weather forecast, all it means is it will be colder at night, dipping down into the sixties while hovering in the high seventies/low eighties during the day. That’s livable, of course.

I was tired when I got home last night, so didn’t do much of anything other than cuddling with the kitty and watching Youtube documentaries about long-forgotten Byzantine emperors (it really is amazing how little history of eastern Europe we learn in school) and the new Matt Baume (probably not new) video about Some Like It Hot, which, while now widely regarded as one of the greatest screen comedies of all time, was highly controversial at the time and went through some serious battles with the censors. (If you aren’t watching Matt Baume’s Youtube channel, you really should; he does some amazingly researched videos about queer rep in film and television throughout the history of both media, and his book Hi Honey I’m Homo is essential reading material tracing queer rep in sitcoms.) Now I want to rewatch Some Like It Hot, which I’ve not seen in decades. I don’t think I’m going to run any errands on the way home today–there’s some things coming in the mail, but they can wait for tomorrow’s drive home (or perhaps even Friday, really; nothing important coming other than maybe some copies of books I’m in or have written); Claiborne heading uptown is a mess after you pass the I-10/Highway 90 spaghetti mess, as the far right lane is closed there where it meets Martin Luther King along with an off-ramp from the highway, so everyone is trying to get over to the left lane from the right ones and of course, the far left lane is also closed, so about five lanes are trying to compress into two or three right at the intersection, which makes for aggravating, patience-challenging snarls. I did find myself losing patience while I was driving uptown yesterday and I wasn’t as able to control the rising anxiety as well as I have been doing since learning that’s what’s wrong with the wiring in my brain. I think that was another reason I was so tired when I got home; the emotional rollercoaster triggered by the rise in anxiety on the drive wore me down…and there’s nothing better for peace and calm than a purring kitten sleeping in your lap.

I am so glad we got Tug.

It was also interesting rereading Jackson Square Jazz last night for the first time in years–I rarely reread my own work from start to finish; usually I just look for information inside an old Scotty that I need for the one I am currently working, and this experience of rereading (okay, I just started rereading it last night) this old book of mine–my third novel–has been revelatory. For one thing, I am a very different writer now than I was then, and wow, has Scotty changed both in voice and character over the last twenty years! Scotty has grown up quite a bit–kind of hard for that not to happen, given everything he’s been through since I first created him–and the book is actually kind of time capsule. I remember deciding not to update any of the Chanse books when it was time to put up the ebooks; it would have been a lot of work for not much return in terms of satisfaction; the books are of their time, and changes in technology and the world happen too regularly to waste time revising and updating old books. I did feel that urge a little bit as I read through the manuscript pages (I am reading the uncorrected and unedited final draft I turned in)–Scotty had just gotten his first computer at the beginning of the book, for example, and while he had a cell phone he hated it and called it his “hell phone,” which mirrored how I felt about cell phones at the time. On-line chats and chatrooms were still a thing when I wrote the book; how would one update or revise that? Have the messaging through Grindr, instead of instant messaging? It’s actually a lovely time capsule of a time long past–showing what it was like to be an unrepentant gay slut with a healthy sexual appetite who lived in or near the Quarter in the years before Katrina…which makes it all the more important that I not only make it available again, but I also have to make sure, as I go through it, that it’s consistent with the books that came later–so I am going to have to work on that long-overdue Scotty Bible, and it’s really past time that I get that done; I certainly have a stack of Scottys with post-it notes all over them that have been waiting for me to do something with them. I’ll keep rereading it when my brain is too tired to process something new, and I think I’ll slowly make my way through all of the Scottys, to make sure the consistency is there.

Maybe I should revisit my old work?

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.

Hold On To Now

Monday and back to the office with me today. Weekends are simply not long enough, ever, and should always be at least three days, methinks. Yesterday I witnessed the dreadful Saints performance, and it was not a good weekend for Louisiana football fans; the only glimmer of light locally was Tulane’s victory. I finished reading Shawn’s book, which was marvelous, and then picked out my first Halloween Horror read: Riley Sager’s Final Girls, and it’s long past time I’ve read this book. It’s rather embarrassing that I’ve not yet gotten to it. I also downloaded the audiobook of The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones for this weekend’s drive to the Redneck Riviera, and read another Alfred Hitchcock Presents short story, from Stories for Late at Night, “The Ash Tree” by M. R. James, which was delightfully creepy and reminded me of Daphne du Maurier’s “The Apple Tree”–and that in turn made me think about creepy trees as a trope in horror, and thought perhaps I should give the trope a whirl at some point. We watched the Scouts Honor: The Secret Files of the Boy Scouts documentary–which was just as creepy and awful and horrific as I thought it would be, as well as yet another pointed reminder of how straight people have failed to protect children since, oh like forever, and then cover it up as much as possible but then have the nerve to accuse queer people of pedophilia and grooming?

Sure, Jan.

We also watched the Jennifer Garner Apple Plus series The Last Thing He Said, which wasn’t great but wasn’t terrible, either; it just kind of evolved and wasn’t very thriller-ish or suspenseful. I also predicted one of the bigger plot twists in the first episode long before it played out in the show, but it was well done and an interesting story; but it wasn’t very thrilling or suspenseful; it never really seemed like there was any danger or stakes. It ws talked about a lot, but never part of the show’s reality? It was interesting enough to hold our interest–although I think I may have approached telling the story in a different manner than they did. It’s an interesting thought, at any rate.

It’s lovely having a kitten in the house, even if it means being more alert and having to get up more regularly because there was a crashing sound from somewhere else inside the apartment–usually followed by a galloping kitten moving at high speed away from the noise and mayhem he caused. He woke me up this morning by knocking my glasses off my nightstand table and then playfully batting them around on the floor, and once I took those away from him he went for the broom. He’s incredibly sweet, though, and I love that he’s so fearless and feels comfortable and at home enough to play. He slept on me for most of the Saints debacle yesterday, through the Boy Scout movie, and then moved back and forth between me and Paul during the Jennifer Garner show.

I also started writing the opening of a short story or a novel or something at any rate while watching the Boy Scouts documentary–part of it and the scandal was in New Orleans–and had an idea for the opening scene for something so I started writing it down; mainly about a college student away from home for the first time who’s obsessed with true crime and wants to be a true crime writer but isn’t sure how to get started chasing her dream other than majoring in Journalism at Liberty State in Liberty Center, Kansas–the town from #shedeservedit, why not reuse it? I don’t know why I started writing this when there are so many other things I should be working on. But that’s also life, you know, when you’re a writer–at least for me, there are always so many other ideas and thoughts and stories banging around in my head that it’s sometimes hard to focus on what I need to get done.

Heavy heaving sigh.

I never did make that to-do list for the week, so perhaps that should be the first thing on the list (I often do this so I can cross something off the list immediately; it’s satisfying and always seems to keep off working on getting the list completed). I also think that once I finish reading the Riley Sager I am going to reread a classic Stephen King that I’ve not revisited in a long time, The Dead Zone, which used to be one of my favorites and is still one that I think about a lot–especially during the rise of the former president, who eerily reminded me of the character of Greg Stillson, written thirty or forty years or so before the rise of the reality host/failed real estate mogul. (I’d considered rereading it in the wake of the 2016 election, but didn’t have the strength; I think now would be a good time.) I liked the opening of the Sager; which was encouraging. I hope to be able to get several books read this month…I think my reading is going to start picking up again, hallelujah. I think having a cat sleeping my lap while I read was what I was missing, and why it was hard for me to read since we lost Scooter. (I promise not to turn this into a Tug stan blog, seriously.) Today is going to be his first day left at home on his own for a while; we’ll see how he handles that.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader; I’m sure I’ll be around again later on.

One More Time

I”m up earlier than usual on a Friday because I have to go to the dentist’s office this morning to get fitted for my new dentures. I don’t know when they’re going to be ready, and I know it’s too much to hope for that I would get temporary ones today so I can start eating normally again, but an old gay man can dream, can’t he? I left work yesterday to go meet with the cardiologist, to be cleared for my surgery as well as to check and see if i also have the same congenital heart issue that eventually killed Mom (her father died in his sleep in his forties; there’s a concern that it’s not only congenital but genetic); good news is my heart is strong and functioning completely the way it’s supposed to; no concerns there, with a sonogram scheduled to see if my arteries are normal or I have the same issue Mom had. He also changed my cholesterol medicine (giving me something stronger), and i need to have another blood draw done. Yay? My schedule between now and the surgery looks to be filled with appointments for tests and things. Heavy heaving sigh.

I slept really well last night. Paul was late getting home–we watched Only Murders in the Building–and I did some chores. I took the evening off from writing and tried to do chores mostly. I watched a documentary on Youtube about Charles VI of France–aka Charles the Mad, the king who lost France to Henry V of England–and the “glass delusion,” which the King suffered from as did many others during the time period; the belief that he was made of glass and would shatter. I had wanted at one point to write a story about the glass delusion (because it absolutely fascinates me), but am not sure how to do it or whether Iwant to write about the king himself or come up with someone new to have the delusion. He was an interesting person, had an interesting and tumultuous reign–whichof course indirectly led to the rise of Joan of Arc, which really is fascinating. St. Joan and her voices have always struck my curiosity–more on that at another time, anyway. So, yes, I went down a wormhole on Youtube on the Hundred Years’ War, the madness of King Charles, and the fifteenth century. The fifteenth was also a calamitous century, to use the language Barbara Tuchman used to describe the fourteenth in her book A Distant Mirror (which may be my favorite history book of all time). I don’t want to write about the fifteenth the same way I want to write about the sixteenth, because it would have to cover the Hundred Years’ War but also the Wars of the Roses, and those have been written about already endlessly so I have no desire to write about either of them.

But my sixteenth century and women ruling Europe book is something I would still like to do.

Okay, so now I am home again and irritated. I stopped to make a few groceries on the way home from the dentist, and apparently left one of my bags in the shopping cart, which is super annoying–especially since that was the bag that had the stuff I specifically stopped for; all the rest was just lagniappe I picked up because I was there already. Heavy sigh. Ah well, I can go back later on–probably will, because I do need those things–but still irritating to just throw money away like that. Ah, well. I’ll be getting my new temporaries in about a week or so; which is the best news, really, and I also have to get my checkbook register caught up and all my new follow-up appointments put onto my calendar.

And of course, this afternoon we’re going to the SPCA on the west bank to get a cat. YAY! (Maybe I can pick up the stuff I need on the West Bank before we go look at the kitties.) I am not going to stress about it, nor am I going to get anxious about it, either.

So I have some work-at-home duties to take care of this morning before we head across the river to adopt a cat (I’m a little excited but trying really hard to contain myself). I also have laundry and dishes and other tedious chores around here to get done over the weekend. Tomorrow I’m going to take the books to the library sale and see if I can get my vaccinations that I need at CVS; worst case scenario I can’t get it there and will have to wait some more. I’d like to have it before I see my elderly relative next weekend in Panama City Beach, for obvious reasons; I’d feel terrible if I gave any of them COVID at their ages. (Dad is the youngest at nearly eighty-two.) It’s just a quick trip, over on Saturday and back on Sunday, but since I won’t be able to head up north for the holidays I don’t want to miss a chance of seeing Dad when he’s that close, and I can finish Carol Goodman’s marvelous The Drowning Tree in the car.

And on that note, I should probably head into the spice mines and take care of my work-at-home duties before Paul gets up. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I am sure there will be a picture of my new kitty to post later on.

10 Out of 10

Paul went out Sunday evening to have dinner with a friend Sunday night, leaving me home to my own devices, and after he departed I pulled up Youtube and did a search I’ve not done in a very long time: for Friday the 13th, the television series. Imagine my delight when I found a playlist of almost every episode from it’s three year run in the late 1980’s in syndication! (It had been briefly up on Amazon Prime a few years ago, so I tagged it for Watch Later…so of course it was “unavailable in your area” when I went back to watch it.) I watched the pilot episode, “The Inheritance,” Sunday night. The video quality wasn’t great; it looked like someone had recorded it with a VCR off the broadcast and then digitized it for upload years later, and of course, the entire show had been done on a shoestring budget for syndication in the first place, so it didn’t hold up as well as I would have liked, but the show was terrific at the time. The premise of the show is that Lewis Vendredi had made a deal with the devil: immortality in exchange for selling cursed objects out of his antique shop. Lewis goes back on the deal and so the devil summons him to hell, and his niece Micky and nephew Ryan inherit the shop. Not knowing things are cursed, they have a big sale to clean out most of the inventory before Jack Marshack shows up, fills them in on the curse, and now they have to get all the cursed objects back before people start dying.

Great concept, isn’t it? In the first episode the object is a doll that can come to life and speak to its owner, and will kill people that harm the child. The little girl’s mother had died and her father has married a horrible second wife (the proverbial evil stepmother), and of course the doll ends up dispatching the evil stepmother before Ryan and Micky can get it back from her. The next three seasons explore the attempts to get the objects back. I know of two enormously successful writers who also loved the show, so there are some of us fans still out there–and this is a show I would love to reboot and modernize; same concept, but with different stories. I also have a book about the show somewhere I always meant to read; perhaps I should dig it out and read it for my Halloween Horror Month celebration–and I should watch the show whenever I am home alone again if I am too tired to read or write anything. Now that sounds like a good plan.

Everything is proceeding apace for my arm surgery. It is scheduled now for the week of Thanksgiving; my MRI is scheduled; and I am going through all of the pre-surgery hoops that need to be cleared. I am getting fitted for the new dentures this Friday, and I have my new glasses and my hearing aids. Not bad for someone who hates dealing with this sort of thing, wouldn’t you say?

We had a heavy rain last night–apparently in the early afternoon through the early evening–so of course, Cox Internet (piece of shit that it is) was spotty for the rest of the evening. Shocking, I know. Cox? Failing to live up to their end of the pay-for-service bargain? Who would have ever thought such a thing possible? It really galls me how bad their service had gotten over the last year. They were completely reliable for years. I never had a single complaint about Cox; when I returned to the apartment after Hurricane Katrina the cable was still working. Now? After a strong storm, it’s garbage. Garbage.

I went back to work on the sequel to Death Drop yesterday, but didn’t get much done on it, alas. Perhaps the jolt of diving back into writing so hard on Sunday strained the muscles, depleting the creative reserves or something because they were out of shape from not being used in so long. So, the evening wasn’t productive–primarily because of the spotty in-and-out internet frustration. I mostly watched another episode of Friday the 13th-the Series (“Hellowe’en”, if you want to know specifics) which kept freezing as the Internet went in and out, and then started watching a documentary I thought I’d seen before, Keep Sweet, that documentary about fundamentalist Mormons (it really is staggering how misogynist even the more modern versions of that religion are); I had seen it before, but when I pulled up Netflix…the Internet was spotty and Netflix recommended it to me like I hadn’t seen it before.

But I was sleepy-tired, and went to bed just around nine as i was nodding off again. I slept well last night–feel rested and good this morning–but am finding it more than a little hard to believe that September is about to be over and it will be October this weekend. So, I need to get Shawn’s book finished before this weekend, and I think I will put off my Halloween Horror Month reading until after finishing Lou Berney’s new one, which actually looks shortish, and Lou’s books always read fast. I should have read last night when the Internet started getting spotty, but my brain was already tired by then. I swung by the post office to get the mail yesterday–my shoes and zipper LSU hoody arrived, as well as a copy of The Adventures of Ellery Queen. I don’t think I’ve read any of the Queen short stories, but have read most of the novels, but can now correct that oversight. I think maybe if it isn’t raining when I get home from work tonight I may take a walk around the neighborhood; the exercise certainly can’t hurt me none, and I want to start looking for Halloween decorations. I also need to swing uptown and check out the skeleton house’s decorations this year. Halloween is such a marvelous season in New Orleans, and I love how we were ll talking about how much cooler it’s been–high eighties–after the brutality of this summer.

Ugh, so stupid, I should have started rereading Jackson Square Jazz last night. Lesson learned; before I leave the house this morning I’m putting a copy in my easy chair so I’ll remember tonight.

Another one of those tiresome women-penned essays about “gay” romance surfaced yesterday, but I’m not going to talk about that now; but it was the usual bullshit about straight women inventing gay romance and how gay men can’t/don’t write it–in general (per the essay), straight women don’t like gay fiction written by gay men because it usually will tackle social issues and/or how difficult it is to be gay in modern America but straight women don’t want to read about that. The essay itself mentions this…but the writer doesn’t see it as a problem? It’s more of the same bullshit it always is; gay men can’t write romance the way the straight ladies like it because it’s too real when they write it (this despite the fact that they also don’t want realistic gay sex scenes, either). There will definitely be more on this later.

And on that note, I am staggering back to the spice mines. Y’all have a great day, okay?

Sweet Music Man

Thursday and my last day in the office for the week. Yay, I think. I have to get up early and go see my new primary care physician tomorrow morning–I fired the last one for a multitude of reasons I will probably go deeper into in a future post–but I also have to fast for that because I am having blood work done, which means no coffee, no nothing other than maybe water tomorrow morning. I think as long as I sleep well, I’ll not leave a body count behind in my wake on the way to and from the appointment. I am also going to be making a go-cup of coffee that I will be taking with me and you can best bet I’ll be slugging it down once the blood has been drawn.

I slept well last night, which was lovely because I was definitely running down my batteries by the time I got home last night. By the time I’d done a load of laundry, emptied the dishwasher and reloaded it, I was more than ready to collapse into my easy chair. I did some minor writing last night–a few hundred words or so, nothing much other than to be able to say “I wrote some fiction last night”–but that’s okay. I’m getting back into the saddle again gradually, and soon I’ll be clocking three thousand word days again. We watched this week’s The Morning Show last night, and I have to say, it’s an exceptionally well done show. The ensemble itself is incredibly star-powered, beginning with Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon as the two primary leads, and the excellent job of the casting director manages to work its way down from the stars all the way down to the bit players–Shari Belafonte Harper is actually a member of the cast, but has very few lines and is rarely on camera, but it’s always nice to see her when she pops up on screen, to be honest. It’s very smart and very well-written, as are most shows on Apple Plus–let’s not forget we wouldn’t have Ted Lasso without Apple Plus.

Ironically, I was also watching shorter and longer videos on Youtube before Paul got home and went down a “Calvin and Hobbes” wormhole of videos about the greatest comic strip of all time. I always loved Calvin and Hobbes, and have all the collections, including the massive coffee-table sized one that contains every strip ever published. I was very sad when Bill Watterson ended the strip on a high note, and I’ve always loved his artistic integrity about not selling out to film or television or merchandising (I would have definitely bought a Hobbes plushy back in the day), as well as his decision to end the strip and take it out on top. (I was also a big fan of “Doonesbury”, “Bloom County”, and of course “The Far Side”.)

Anyway, watching a few documentaries on Youtube about “Calvin and Hobbes” mentioned how much emotional depth the strip had; how it could not only make you laugh but make you think as well as tear up sometimes…and I realized that Ted Lasso, like Schitt’s Creek, was also like that. Calvin and Hobbes were both so fully realized as characters in the strip–as well as his parents, and the other occasional characters that showed up, too–that you cared about them, just as you do the characters on Ted Lasso and Schitt’s Creek, which is why character is so important when it comes to story-telling. People will only care if the characters seem like actual real people to them, and once they care…well, you’ve got them, don’t you?

Maybe I should revisit my massive Calvin and Hobbes collection, too.

There are some good games this weekend in college football, but my primary concern is, as always, the LSU game; they’re hosting Arkansas in Death Valley and we’ll get yet another chance to see how good the Tigers are–but we also don’t know how good either Mississippi State (trounced last weekend) or Arkansas yet are this year; the test will always be how the Tigers do against Auburn, Alabama, and Florida–and there’s also no telling how good Mississippi is this year, either–they play Alabama this weekend, so we’ll get an idea of how the Tide is rebounding and how good the Rebels are. Everyone is writing Alabama off, and maybe it’s simply been burned into my brain throughout the course of a long lifetime of being a college football fan,…but you can never take the Tide for granted or ever completely count them out. They have that “brand” recognition that somehow manages to get them the win in close games; the luck always seems to magically appear every time they need it, only deserting them in the one game they may lose per year. They’re in the same position that LSU is in; already one loss early and therefore cannot lose again if they want to win the conference and the national title. College football is certainly more interesting this year than it has been since 2019, at any rate.

I want to be able to drop books at the library sale this weekend, wash the car and clean out the inside, and hopefully go to the SPCA and get a new cat. I also need to clean the house more–at least try to keep up with it the way I did when Paul was out of town earlier this summer–and get some writing done. I also need to do some reading. I want to finish Shawn’s book because I also just got my copy of the new Lou Berney, Dark Ride, which I am really looking forward to; I’ve been a big Lou Berney fan since we were on a panel together all those years ago at Bouchercon in Raleigh, and his work never disappoints. (That panel in Raleigh was definitely one of the highlights of my paneling career as a crime writer; Katrina Niidas Holm was the moderator; the other panelists were Lou, Lori Roy, and Liz Milliron. Nice, right?)

So, tonight when I get home from work I am going to do some more laundry, unload the dishwasher and clean the kitchen, and then I am going to either write or curl up with Shawn’s book.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.

Married, But Not To Each Other

There’s really nothing like a country adultery song, is there?

The stitches in my gums are starting to dissolve, which means healing is happening. I don’t know if and when I can eat something a little more solid–like bananas and watermelon–but trust me when I say I cannot wait to eat something I can gum a bit. That really doesn’t sound appealing, does it? But much as I love protein shakes and ice cream (please note the lack of mentioning baby food), I really want something else. I really want Five Guys, to the point where I’d buy one and puree it if I wasn’t aware enough to know that it would be disgusting and still inedible for me.

In a little bit I’ll be heading to the Tulane Institute of Sports Medicine where I am finally meeting with the kind of specialist who can potentially work on my left arm injury. It’s a very long and tragic story, how I got here at any rate, and I’ll probably go into more at another time, but it’s not something I feel like talking about at the moment. The primary problem is I don’t remember if I’ve talked about it here already or not? The joys of getting older and having a much more slippery memory than I used to have, I suppose. I slept really well last night–certainly could have slept longer, so I think this weekend will entail a lot of sleeping in, quite frankly. I don’t feel tired and worn out the way that I remember feeling before on Friday mornings, so I guess that’s a good sign. I’ll run some errands on the way home and hopefully won’t have to go out much this weekend. I also need to get back to writing something other than emails and blogs, to be honest. I was thinking about this last night, and since I’ll take Shawn’s book with me this morning to read in the waiting room, hopefully that will crack the trouble I am having reading since coming home and I think the answer to cracking the writing issue is to start the actual editing of Jackson Square Jazz. Why not? It needs to be done and it’s just been sitting there waiting for me to do it for years now. I also think I’m going to pull that short story collection I’ve been wanting to get into print, and see how close it is to being finished and what unpublished stories there are on hand that need more work on them. I think those are both valid projects for me to make some progress on this weekend around cleaning and watching football games, I think.

We got caught up on both Ahsoka and Only Murders in the Building last night, which was nice. I was tired when I got home from work last night–very tired–and was actually able to come straight home from work for once. I finished a load of laundry–still sitting in the dryer, actually–and a load of dishes that need to be unloaded once I get the kitchen back into some kind of decent shape.

As I sat in my chair last night waiting for Paul to come home while watching a documentary on Youtube about the final collapse of the Hapsburg dynasty, I wondered if my ability to now recognize anxiety for what it actually is as it starts (I just always thought everyone’s brain worked that way before) and fend it off had anything to do with with my not writing? I think I may have burned myself out a little bit with all the writing work I’ve done this year; juggling two new novels at the same time wasn’t the smartest move I’ve made in my career–but I had no way of knowing what my life situation was going to be like last fall, winter and spring either. I also think if I can get over the reading hump, the writing hump will melt away like nothing before my very eyes. It’s a lovely thing to believe (we tell ourselves lies in order to live), and it may very well be true–reading always inspires me and makes me want to get back into my chair at the keyboard and working away at something. I also just checked and my new glasses are scheduled to arrive on Monday, which is great, as my prescription has grown stronger but I am still wearing my old ones. This is, if you will recall, the year of getting things done–hence the hearing aids, the mouth surgery, and following up on getting my arm taken care of. I am looking forward to being able to see properly again, and chew again, to go along with my new ability to hear, which is lovely and something to which I’m still adapting.

So my big plans for this weekend involve cleaning the house (as always), revising and reediting Jackson Square Jazz, and reading All the Sinners Bleed, which has a very strong and powerful opening. I may do other things–I do have a hefty to-do list to take care of this weekend, but nothing I can’t really handle–and of course I’ll be watching the LSU game tomorrow morning as well; using the nervous energy LSU games always give me to clean the living room. If it weren’t for the early start time of that game, I’d take some boxes of books to donate to the library sale, but that will have to wait until next weekend, alas. (They’ve been in the living room since Labor Day, and I’ve not pruned the books again since because, well, there’s already too many boxes in the living room.)

And on that note, I’m going to get another cup of coffee and head into the spice mines to start getting ready to head uptown for the doctor’s office. Wish me luck, Constant Reader, and I will chat at you some more probably later on. Have a great Friday!

Torn Between Two Lovers

Tuesday morning and back to work tomorrow. I had thought about canceling my sick time and going back into the office today; but I got so easily tired yesterday that I changed my mind. I’m pretty sure a lot of it has to do with the starvation–liquid and/or soft food just isn’t satisfying, and I am hungry all the time (one would think a diet that includes ice cream would be awesome, but I am so sick of it all I think I may never eat it again once this is all over). Well, not all the time, but I do feel hungry here and there before it, as usual, goes away. I think the low calorie intake is also affecting my energy levels. I’m a bit sore this morning (was hoping to not get loopy from taking pain pills today, but I’m going to have to) and I’m still a few days away from chewing noodles or anything soft like that, so it’s more baby food, oatmeal, and protein shakes for me today. Woo-hoo.

One thing I absolutely need to do before going back to work tomorrow is clean out my inbox, at least for today. There’s a couple of little things I need to definitely get done, or get started, today while I have the leisure of not being at the office. It’s going to feel weird waking up at six tomorrow morning, but…no other choice. It would be great to stay out until my mouth is healed completely and no longer aches, but I don’t have that kind of sick time left from everything that went on earlier in the year and so forth–and I have a surgery to be scheduled yet. I guess I’ll worry about that when it comes to it, and when I know when the surgery is going to be. I also need to get a grip on my finances again and make sure all my due dates are on the calendar. I also have spent money with the debit card that’s not recorded so I don’t know my bank balance for sure, either. All things that can be easily remedied, of course, but tend to be a bit tedious and so I dislike doing them.

We are currently watching Painkiller, which is yet another mini-series built around the evil corrupt Sacklers and the opioid epidemic they started in order to make billions by convincing doctors that their version of heroin wasn’t addicting. The Sacklers were undoubtedly be studied by future historians as an example of the worst kind of horror capitalism and its ethos of greed is capable of creating; the paralysis of the FDA and the corruption inherent by bribing (er donating) money to politicians to advance the gutting of what little power the FDA had to monitor and control this sort of thing, and so on (looking at you, paragon of corruption and enemy of the people Marsha Blackburn!). The suffering and destruction and death and havoc wreaked on families and communities while these monsters and their agents of addiction and death made money is incalculable…and they don’t care. Even after all the lawsuits, after losing the company, all the deaths, the Sacklers are still sitting on a mountain of money. They are pariahs, rightfully shunned, but dollars-to-donuts they’re back manufacturing medicine in twenty years when most Americans have forgotten their heinous crimes.

I seem to have let yesterday slip through my fingers in a painkiller fog–super strong ibuprofen also messes with your head the way Vicodin and oxycodone do–but it’s more of a losing track of time sort of thing. I did get the sink cleaned out and did a load of laundry (waiting to be folded) and there’s all sorts of filing and organizing to get done this morning. I want to read more of Shawn’s book today, and I’d like to get prepared for going to work tomorrow with a clear conscience. The great heat wave has finally broken. It’s still humid but not as bad, and it’s not getting as hot as it had been during the course of the summer–it actually feels pleasant when I go outside.

My tests for COVID are still coming back negative so I am going to assume I missed the Bouchercon spread. I hope everyone who did catch it at (or around) the convention are on the road to recovery and all had very mild cases. I’m seeing my new primary care doctor a week from Friday, so I am hoping to get the new booster and a flu shot when I see her. I am also hoping to get some feedback from her on the big toe on my right foot situation; you probably don’t remember but it’s been sore since Mom went into hospice and was swollen so badly I had to wear house shoes to her funeral? He gave me anti-inflammatory cream and that was it. Well, it’s eight months later, it still hurts when I bend it, and it still swells up periodically–not as bad as originally, but I can’t help but think it might be something more than what he rather pointedly dismissed? He was wrong about my arm, after all. And now the other big toe is starting to do the same thing.

But I’m sure it’s nothing.

Uh huh.

Forgive me if I don’t believe anything that hack said to me about anything.

But that’s a story for another time.

I do feel more like myself than I have since the surgery on Friday, so that’s something…but then I also just took my pain meds, so I don’t know for sure how long that feeling will last. But I have to do something about this mess around here, and maybe I can even do some writing today. I have already started working on the plan for the sequel to Death Drop, and I also need to plan out the sequel to A Streetcar Named Murder. I already know what the story is behind that one; I just don’t have a title yet but I do know what the first chapter is going to be. Maybe I should just go ahead and write that, get it under way and see how it goes? I also want to start working on the edit of Jackson Square Jazz, and maybe even revise it some. I resisted the temptation to revise and re-edit the Chanse books for their ebooks, and did the same for Bourbon Street Blues, but Jackson Square Jazz is actually the book that sets the backstory for Mississippi River Mischief, so I need to be certain everything lines up the way it’s supposed to–and I can also change some things predicated on what has happened in the series since, because I know what is coming (which I didn’t know when I wrote the book originally). This might also be a good time to finally put together the Scotty Bible (I’m only nine books in now) which should make writing the next one even easier. It’s a lot of work, but with my memory getting shittier and shittier with every passing day, it’s something that really needs to be done. If I write another Chanse (it’s possible; I never say never), I would definitely have to do the same because I really don’t remember much about any of those books.

And I have some short stories that need to be finished for anthologies.

So on that note, I am calling this entry for the day and heading into the spice mines. I may be back later; there are still unfinished blog posts in my drafts (I’ve managed to get some of them out there over this past weekend, even though I don’t count blog posts as writing, it really is and I really should), and of course, laundry to fold and dishes to put away and a refrigerator to clean out. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader!

I’ve Already Loved You in My Mind

Yesterday was a great test for me when it comes to fighting my anxiety.

I slept incredibly well, finished reading Laura Lippman’s Prom Mom, wrote three blog entries, and started doing laundry. I also spent a lot of time on social media, stealing pictures from the weekend because I never remember to take any myself, and just was kind of taking it easy for the day. We had a thunderstorm blow through right after Paul left for the gym, and therein came the test. I did all the laundry, and when the sheets were finished I took that basket upstairs (Paul hates putting on the fitted sheet and I hate shoving the pillows into their cases, so I put on the sheet and he does the pillow cases, if you were wondering) and only wearing socks–which I never do because the stairs were varnished and are insanely slippery and steep, and they make two ninety degree turns on the way up–when I stepped into a puddle after the first turn. What the hell? I thought as I stepped onto another puddled step, and still another–only to get hit on the head with several drops of water. I looked up and just before the second ninety degree turn is a light fixture–the primary one for lighting the stairs–and the water was coming from the fixture! Fortunately it was off–I don’t even want to think about if it had been on–and I put on the sheet, changed my socks, grabbed my slippers, and a handful of towels. I mopped up the mess with one towel before covering the rest of the steps that had been wet with towels, going down a few more steps with the towels just in case.

Immediately, I thought oh my God we have a leak from a big thunderstorm that caused street flooding, which means that water has probably been pooling somewhere inside the house somewhere; we haven’t had a downpour that caused flooding most of the summer (its usually a weekly occurrence in the summer time), which further led to oh no what about mold and will the wall have to be ripped out again to well at least we know where the problem is to great termites love wet wood before I was able to take a breath and recognize that I was spiraling and the anxiety was starting to spread to a physical and emotional reaction. I took a deep breath, and remembered that it’s out of my control. Getting worked up and emotional will not stop the leak or repair the wall. I was borrowing trouble and letting my mind start to control my narrative and I don’t want that. I sat down at my desk and thought, “Okay. When Paul gets home I’ll tell him to call the landlady. She’ll need to come see it, then call someone. So I have to get the living room picked up and make it look better. I still need to put away the dishes and I need to make a to-do list because I have things I need to get done this week. Will this be convenient with everything I have going on this fall? No, but when has life ever been convenient?

Never. And that’s what Paul and I discussed last night: getting frustrated, irritated, and upset by things you have no control over is a waste of time and energy. Dealing with the anxiety is a big part of this with me; I can’t control the physical reaction, but I can the emotional and mental, and as long as I keep that under control and don’t spiral, I will be okay. Things have to be taken care of, and that includes what I always call “odious chores,” or what other people might call “adulting” (I hate the turning nouns into verbs that don’t need to be verbs, and so I try not to ever use that word–it’s always grated on me. When you’re not adulting, are you childing? Of course not. That’s why it grates.). I don’t like conflict, and this is also a part of my anxiety–the fear of conflict creates anxiety and keeps me from doing things that might cause conflict, even though they rarely do. At one point last night as we caught up on our shows, I said, “I wish today was Saturday because I don’t want to get up in the morning” and Paul replied, “let it go”–we’d had a conversation about all of this and stopping being negative about things we can’t control and etc.–and I said, “you’re right. I have to get up early and moaning about it won’t change it, so why bother? It just is.” So I came back downstairs and watched this week’s My Adventures with Superman (it really is a. great show) and then Paul joined me for Only Murders in the Building, Ahsoka, and then we started a MAX (that is weird to me, just like saying X instead of Twitter–but fuck Elon, that I will never do) documentary called Telemarketers which is incredibly fascinating. There will be more on that later, once we’ve finished it (and I remember getting calls from these people back in the day; I always felt sorry for the callers as I always do with any kind of telemarketer–but after watching the first episode I don’t feel as sorry for them as I used to).

Ironically, my body clock is also all screwed up somehow. I was exhausted last night and was falling asleep in my chair by nine; so I went to bed early and am up and awake at five am this morning. It was a very good night’s sleep, too. So here I am last night whining about getting up early briefly–and this morning I voluntarily got out of bed an hour earlier than normal because I was awake and clearly wasn’t going to fall back asleep at any time. So here I am at my desk, swilling coffee and blearily thinking about all the things I need to get done before Friday. Tonight I am picking up my hearing aids after work, getting the mail, and running by the grocery store. I have to finish paying the bills. I have a million emails to respond to as well as numerous to generate.

It’s also funny that, after years of not thinking about the past or revisit it, I’ve started doing that more and more, especially since Dad is now telling me things I didn’t know before. Since I turned sixty, I started looking back over the years, which I had always seen as pointless before. You can’t do anything about the past, after all, and we also have a tendency to view the past as better and rosier than it actually was the further in the past it becomes. Sure, Mom dying earlier this year and talking to Dad about the past certainly has something to do with it all–but I had already started down that path. What is it, I wonder, about that particular milestone that resonated with me so deeply that I turned philosophical and decided to start unpacking my past? I don’t know. But I saw something on Facebook the other day about someone’s first words, and that made me remember that my parents always said I didn’t start talking until I was almost three years old (Mom would always add “and you haven’t shut up since”), but I was walking at nine months; they also always said that ruefully and with regret, because they believed the issues with my leg joints–the rolling ankles, the ease with which my hips will pop out of joint–is because I started walking too young. I never really thought anything about it, really, other than well thanks a lot for those issues…but this time I thought, “that must have really been weird and scary for them as parents barely out of their teens,” and you know every other adult and parent they knew privately judged them while offering all kinds of unsound advice and old wives’ tales from the country that made no sense and had no basis in any kind of science. Such a shame about their boy, you think he’s retarded? (Yes, that word–preferably not used anymore–was in common usage when I was a child, and yes, I heard adults talking about when they thought I was out of earshot. I think that was about the time my “selective hearing” started; being able to hear clearly for the first time in my adulthood tonight after getting the hearing aids did make me wonder do I really want to be able to hear everything?)

And yes, my primary takeaway from Bouchercon this weekend was feeling something I’ve not felt in a long time, and definitely not since the pandemic: ambitious. I told Paul last night (and someone over the weekend, probably my poor friend Teresa, aka Carsen Taite) “I kind of feel like life is happening to me, rather than me living my life, and I don’t like that feeling.” So, it’s time for me to start planning and mapping things out and deciding what I want and setting goals and figuring out how to get what I want again. I also realize I have to be very careful with what I agree to do this fall–not knowing how long some of these recoveries from procedures will take, for one thing–and I need to stop having anxiety about not having books under contract and then throwing out a bunch of proposals and getting deadlines. No, I need to plan. I need to strategize. I need to get my shit together and set some goddamned goals.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines so I can make this week’s to-do list and start tackling the email inbox. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will be back later without doubt.

Saying Hello, Saying I Love You, Saying Goodbye

Tuesday and tomorrow I depart for San Diego. I am trying very hard not to get anxious about everything, but I am starting to feel it a bit. I have to decide what to pack, and I need to see what the weather is going to be like. I discovered a conflict in my schedule that I have to resolve in a way I don’t want, and there’s groceries to make and mail and prescriptions to pick up and laundry and dishes to finish and yes, I am going to be hopping all day today getting ready and/or thinking about the trip and making plans. I also have a lot of work to do in the office before I leave, because the month changes while I am gone so the things I always do over the month change have to be done–or at least I can get it as ready as I can. I think I answered all the emails I needed to get answered, and I think I can breathe a bit of a sigh of relief.

I ran errands last night on the way home circling a thunderstorm, and then once I was finished I drove directly into its beating heart as it gave us a little respite from the horrific, seemingly endless heat. The big cold drops of rain started splatting down from above like liquid shrapnel. I managed to get inside the house before it really started coming down, and there was thunder and lightning, too. A marvelous New Orleans summer tropical storm, like we haven’t had hardly any of this entire blighted summer of hellish heat. The kind where so much water comes down the streets fill, swirling around catch basins and rising closer to the bottoms of cars, while the potholes and low=lying cracks and buckles in roads and sidewalks immediately fill with clear water. The temperature drops precipitously, given tired air conditioning systems the opportunity to catch up and finally take a well-deserved break after weeks of going at full blast–and sometimes not being able to keep up. The kind where condensation finally appears on your windows for the first time this summer, or so it seems. And even though you know all that water means it’ll be muggy as a rain forest again tomorrow as it evaporates into the heated air once more, you can at least breathe for a moment and enjoy the blessed break from what has become an unfortunate norm this summer.

But in checking my email, I see that today’s severe weather alert is merely coastal flooding, and there’s no extreme heat warning for the day, which is actually kind of nice. Today will be a break, and tomorrow I leave for the coast. My car will be roasting, of course, in the long-term off-airport parking lot, but there are worse things. I’m really looking forward to the trip, pushing down all of my anxiety triggers around traveling, and I will get home Sunday night, have Monday off, and then return to the office on Tuesday. I’m hoping there won’t be an adjustment to time zones involved on this trip, but I am sure it will be. If I wake up at my usual time, it will be four in the morning on the coast. But the day of traveling home will wear me out, plus I’ll be exhausted from being “on” panels and socializing. I just have to get over my intense FOMO and repair to my room to rest and relax periodically; I don’t need to be non-stop on the go, etc. and need to remember I’m an introvert who primarily is used to dealing with people quietly, one on one, and not in group environments. There will be lots of overstimulation.

But I can’t wait to see my queer crime writer friends again! Woo-hoo! They are always a good time.

I was tired when I got home last night from errands and so forth, and the thunderstorm and the damp chill in the air didn’t help matters very much. Paul stayed upstairs watching the US Open–so I have no need to fear Paul’s boredom while I am gone, as he’ll have the tennis to watch. We’re also hoping to get a cat at last once I get back, although my oral surgery is scheduled for that Friday; depending on how I feel, we could possibly get one on Saturday if I don’t still need painkillers and thus have a clear enough mind to drive, which would be super-great. All of my fall plans are currently on hold until I find out when my arm surgery is going to be. I hate that, because I feel like I am wasting time, which brings the anxiety out again. It’s so much fun being me, Constant Reader, you have literally no idea. But therein lies the rub; life really always is a endless string of “hurry up and wait” or “can’t make any plans until I find this out.” The joys of being older.

I think for now at least there’s nothing potentially going to develop that will threaten Louisiana tropically while I am gone–traveling during hurricane season means one more thing to check off the list. I am sorry and worried about those in the path of this Idalia monster that has Florida strictly in its sights. (If I were an evangelical piece of shit, I’d say something like “God is clearly not pleased with deSantis”–but I happily leave that kind of blame-shame to the “christian” cos-players. Funny how it’s usually red states at risk but they don’t see that as God’s punishment, but let something happen to a blue state–or New Orleans–and they start thumping their Bibles again instead of reading them. I’m so glad I’m not an evangelical piece of shit cosplay christian.)

I was hoping to get some writing done last night, but I wound up not doing a whole hell of a lot of anything. I watched some history videos on Youtube, started to watch the latest episode of Foundation–which, truth be told, is extremely well done but difficult to follow because it doesn’t always hold my interest, but I am definitely here for hot Lee Pace–but gave up as the opening credits rolled and went back to Youtube. I did end up watching something but couldn’t tell you what it was to save my life this morning, so clearly it made no impact on me. I did greatly enjoy the recent episode of My Adventures with Superman, which is quickly becoming one of my all-time favorite depictions of Superman and his cast of characters, but I think tonight–after cleaning the downstairs, packing, and cleaning out the refrigerator–I am going to read some more of Kelly Ford’s marvelous The Hunt, which I am enjoying; I do not want anyone to get the idea that I am not enjoying the book–it’s just that the heat and my mind being sort of fried has made it really hard for me to focus on reading something longform. I also finished reading the proofs for Mississippi River Mischief, which I’ll be bring with me to try to get some progress made on the proofing; if I manage to do that and nothing else while in San Diego I will be very pleased.

And on that note I think I will head into the spice mines for the day. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and tomorrow I will be writing to you before I leave for the coast. Huzzah!

You Never Miss a Good Thing (Till He Says Goodbye)

Saturday morning and I slept in. I stayed in bed until eight thirty (perish the thought! What a lazy lagabed!) with the end result that I will not, in fact, be driving over to the West Bank this morning to get my oil changed and fluids checked. It’s not due, but (anxiety) the heat has been so intense, I want to make sure the engine is being looked after properly and of course, the fluids. Now it will have to wait until I get back as the dealership isn’t open on Sundays and I leave Wednesday for San Diego Bouchercon. I am starting to get some anxiety about the trip, but I am trying to ride herd on that. Whereas before it was gnaw away at me and build, now I just dismiss those thoughts as “anxiety” and move on from it. I doubt this methodology will be a long term solution–I probably should see a therapist again–but I already take an anti-anxiety medication to control my mood swings; do I need something else on top of that? Probably not. I am leery of medications to begin with–the opioid disaster always is there in the back of my head, plus the fear of addiction.

But since I didn’t get up, I will be staying in for the rest of the day and working on the apartment and writing and so forth. Tomorrow I am going to get fitted for hearing aids, so anything I might need to get by going out into the world today (I was thinking about doing a minor grocery run to get a few things) I can get tomorrow at the Rouse’s on Carrollton. I am kind of excited about being able to hear properly; I don’t think I’ve ever been able to my entire life, although I always passed hearing tests. My problem is low voices and ambient noise. I can’t hear anything in a crowded bar or restaurant. And I have my appointment about my arm in a few weeks, and of course, I am getting my teeth taken care of once I get home from San Diego. I will be a completely different person by the end of the year than I was when I started the year, won’t I? Maybe not The Six Million Dollar Man, but the surgery isn’t going to be very cheap.

We finished watching Swamp Kings last night, and I was right–it was really a puff piece, focused on making Urban Meyer as good as possible and not focusing on any of the criminal charges or how the University covered it all up because at that time, Florida football was the face of college football and everyone was watching and they were making the University a shit-ton of money. (Not to single out the Gators–although this documentary was about them, so it does raise these questions organically–these kinds of abuses and corruption happen all too often at far too many programs. LSU has had its own history of cover-ups and looking the other way to protect star players in the past, for example, and I’ve always been disappointed at how those situations were handled by my own favorite team. Hiring Joe Alleva as Athletic Director at LSU was a huge mistake, as he repeatedly showed Tiger Nation, over and over again. His replacement has done a fantastic job rebuilding LSU athletics from the ashes left by Alleva’s miserable tenure.) But I love college football, and I remember that time period particularly well. I have always stuck to the SEC mantra of “hate them in the conference, root for them in the post season” (which everyone does except Alabama fans for the most part–which I just now realized is probably a leftover remnant from the Civil War “us against them” mentality and my stomach turned a bit; but that’s also a good focus for the essay I want to write about LSU and football in the south in general, “Saturday Night In Death Valley.”) I am very excited and happy college football season is nigh. Woo-hoo!

I spent some time with Kelly J. Ford’s The Hunt, which is actually quite marvelous. I haven’t had the bandwidth lately to read novels–mostly sticking to my Alfred Hitchcock Presents project–but I was enjoying her book when I started reading it a few weeks ago and had been wanting to get back to it. But anxiety and stress and the fucking heat have sapped so much out of me every day that it was hard to focus on reading a novel. Kelly is a marvelous writer, which is terrific–there’s really nothing like a queer writer with a working class background writing about the South they grew up in, is there? Kelly is kind of a lesbian cross between Tom Franklin, Carson McCullers, and Dorothy Allison, with some Faulkner and Ace Atkins thrown in for good measure. Her debut novel Cottonmouths was a revelation (I can’t tell you how thrilling it is for this old man to see so much amazing crime writing coming from new queer writers), and her second, Real Bad Things, is nominated for an Anthony Award next week–so she joins the few queer crime writers of queer crime novels who’ve been nominated for an Anthony Award! We’re a small but growing club, which is also very exciting. GO QUEERS!

So, yes, a lovely day of preparation for going away next weekend. Today I should go ahead and make my packing list–I could even go ahead and pack the rolling briefcase, couldn’t I?–and clean and do things around the house and read and maybe even do some writing. It feels cool today in the house–but of course it’s still morning–and just checked my emails and yes–there it is; today’s heat advisory with temperatures feeling like up to 114 until eight pm tonight. It’s really going to feel like winter to me in San Diego, isn’t it?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later or tomorrow.