If We Make It Through December

Sunday, as we slowly transition from Yule season into Carnival, and I have to go back to the office tomorrow. Paul is coming home sometime today–I can’t find his flight schedule, but he usually comes back late in the evening; I may even go to bed before he gets home. Some greeting, right? But I have to get up at six tomorrow morning, he knows that, so I won’t worry about that now. I’ll see him after work when I get home from the office. I didn’t do a whole lot yesterday; I did some chores and ran a couple of errands (it was gorgeous yesterday) and when I got home, wasn’t terribly motivated to do much of anything. I did keep doing some cleaning and organizing and filing at various intervals throughout the day, but there’s still a lot to get done this morning/today. I feel more awake and alive this morning than I did yesterday; perhaps the drinks on Friday night and the walking did wear me out a little bit, even though I wasn’t expressly fatigued. My batteries were a little low, is all. I also have to be careful not to overdo anything because I feel better, you know? I also partly blame it on Sparky, who wanted to sleep in my lap all day, the sweet boy.

I also need to make a new to-do list.

It was surreal yesterday to check in and do my morning blog post and then check the news to see that “Donald the dove” (right, Maureen Dowd? How do you show your face in public, you tragically evil and clearly shameless hateful piece of shit?) had started a war all by himself! And people want to forgive his voters for being conned? No thank you–I’ll carry those grudges to the fucking grave. I am completely incapable of feeling empathy (and I am very empathetic) for the people who joyfully and gladly voted for every last bit of this agenda. Oh no, miss me with your “I didn’t vote for this.” Yes, you fucking did, and you mocked everyone who tried warning you before hand. Where are all those people who told me I was overreacting in 2016? In 2024? You deserve to be reminded of your gleeful ignorance and hateful disrespect every fucking day for the rest of your fucking lives. I sure as fuck didn’t vote for any of this bullshit, yet have to deal with it because YOU wanted to “own the libs.”

NO ONE IS LAUGHING NOW. HAPPY? No? Ever heard the phrase “you reap what you sow”? Well, now you’re reaping what you sowed and you don’t seem very happy with it. Live with the shame and utter humiliation of your public ignorance and stupidity, and you get no sympathy or pity from me–and there will certainly be no forgiveness ever coming from me.

Hope you kept your diapers, ear tampons, and golden shoes! Hillary was only wrong in underestimating how many of you were deplorable pieces of shit. Although, there is something almost comically ironic about the fall of the United States’ experiment in democracy coming from the small hands of an uneducated bigoted pedophile rapist. Well done, white people, well done.

And yet I still have high hopes that this will, all evidence to the contrary, be a good year. I feel weird about that, to be honest; how can I feel positive about the future in the face of all evidence to the contrary? It feels weird to be feeling good about myself and my life, making plans (tentative, as so much is out of my control) and just in general being happy and pleased with myself? I think I have one more year to stay away from conferences and so forth, to continue working on myself and my work and shaping up everything in the directions I want to take, before I return again to the wild world of mystery conferences. I think Bouchercon is in DC for 2027, and so I will probably go to that.

I did watch a lot of videos on Youtube yesterday–some historical stuff (the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt; Cleopatra’s sister1; the Valois dynasty of France), some interviews and reviews of Heated Rivalry, and sports “commentators” on the collapse of Alabama in the play-offs, or the SEC “not being what it was.” I also don’t–and have never–understood the mentality of “my conference is better than yours” arguments; they are pointless beyond any metric beyond winning the championships. The Big Ten has won two in a row, and could be winning a third in a row this year, with three different schools. That’s impressive, indeed. Of course, the SEC did that from 2007-2010 with four different schools…but that’s also the past. One of the biggest problems I have always seen with college football is the polls–because being a brand name is the most important thing with the polls. Ohio State was number one for how long, and how long was Indiana ranked behind them, only for Indiana to beat them? Indiana isn’t a brand like Ohio State or Alabama–although that may be changing now. Preseason polls are meaningless now, just like any polls before the playoff rankings and any bowl game that isn’t a part of the playoffs–which is why you cannot look at bowl results as a metric of conference strength. Many players opt out of the bowl games now because they are meaningless, so bowl teams are often not the same team from the season. Toxic fandom is just another phase of toxic masculinity–and women can be as bad, if not worse, than men.

And on that note, I am going to get another cup of coffee and a breakfast sandwich and see what all is going on in the world today, before I get back to work on cleaning.

  1. Arsinoë IV has always been of interest to me, as was Cleopatra’s older sister Berenice. ↩︎

She’s In Love With The Boy

Tuesday morning, New Year’s Eve Eve, as it were, and Paul is leaving today to visit his family. I don’t much care for it when he isn’t home; maybe the first day or two are kind of nice and quiet and peaceful, but it starts getting on my nerves after a couple of days. It’s also amazing how empty the house seems when he’s out of town. Although, I suppose one day it might be something I’ll have to get used to? I will cross that proverbial bridge when I get to it. So, I will come home to an empty house tonight, and Sparky will glue himself to me for the next six days. There are worse things, I suppose, than cat cuddles on cold nights, and having a little tortie shadow following me around and never letting me out of his sight. I’m glad I only have to work tomorrow–Friday is my work-at-home day still–because he will be very traumatized when I get home after work tomorrow. He’ll not be so bad tonight–he won’t miss Paul until he doesn’t come home tomorrow at all. He really is the sweetest boy, and I’ll have to give him a lot of attention.

Which I do not mind in the least.

I found out yesterday that one of my dearest friends (and biggest supporters) passed away a few weeks ago. She’d been ill for a long time, so I hadn’t seen her in quite some time, because she had low energy and heart issues, and I am a lot (I am). I had actually thought the other day about her and how we needed to get over there to catch up and say hello…too little too late. Heavy sigh. The worst part of getting older is losing loved ones to the angel of death. That was the part I never thought about; I guess I was assuming everyone I loved would outlive me.

Apparently, that’s not going to be the case and I’ll probably wind up living to a hundred. Which would be just my luck, you know? I just keep going on and on, shouting at clouds and forgetting what I went into the kitchen for. Hurray. But I will miss her terribly. Oh, how hard she could make me laugh! And so incredibly smart, too; I loved talking to her about books and movies and television shows we enjoyed. She was a huge mystery fan, as well as holding a PhD in History (I’d jokingly call her “Doc” every once in a while, which she hated–I don’t know why I enjoy teasing people so much; I should probably stop).

Sigh.

But with Paul gone, I can watch some things I’ve been pushing off but meaning to get around to–my re-watch of the Brendan Fraser Mummy movies comes to mind–and there’s no excuse for not being able to get back into reading extensively again. I’m enjoying the two books I’ve started, but am not making much progress. My Noirmas was a complete bust, but I did get to reread The Postman Always Rings Twice, and I have some essays to finish for the newsletter. Noirmas is technically not over until Twelfth Night, January 6th, so I have time to get some of these other choices read before starting my next reading project, whatever it might be. Maybe some non-fiction? I’ve got some awesome non-fiction books on hand; maybe I should dig into those? Nonfiction February? That could be a winner, and I can then extend Noirmas through January.

I also am not certain why I am so focused on projects, but it makes me happy, so there’s that.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely New Year’s Eve Eve, Constant Reader and I shall be back on the last day of 2025!

I really hate his bikini….but the rest is nice, isn’t it?