Category: New Orleans

You Got Lucky

It’s a gray Friday morning here in the Lost Apartment and I might need to turn on a light–that’s how gray it is this morning. I was also a lag-a-bed and didn’t get up until after eight; not sure what that was about but the bed was incredibly comfortable. I also forgot to turn the heat off last night before I went to bed…and that kind of was a smart thing to do as I am not shivering this morning as I sit here. The brace still makes typing awkward, but I’m getting more used to it, or something.

Yesterday was my first real day of physical therapy; the first was clearly simply an assessment, and yesterday the actual therapy started. It was almost an hour, and it was all mostly dexterity movement with my hand and fingers, as well as working on squeezing and flexing, and some little forearm curls with a two pound weight. I ran errands after, including making groceries and getting the mail. I was exhausted. I wrote some emails and then did my book reports on two of the three books I read recently (I still have one more to do, on the Donna Andrews Christmas murder mystery), and when I was done with that…I was done. I was so fatigued I couldn’t even read very far into my next read (Raquel V. Reyes’ Calypso, Corpses, and Cooking, an absolutely delightful cozy series set in a small town within Miami–check the series out if you’ve not yet), and wound up watching an episode of Moonlighting and my standard go-to; documentaries about history on Youtube, and episodes of Real Housewives (I am currently watching Salt Lake City and Beverly Hills), and then Paul came home later and we started watching The Curse, an odd show with Emma Stone and Nathan Fielder; per Showtime the series explores “how an alleged curse disturbs the relationship of a newly married couple as they try to conceive a child while co-starring on their problematic new HGTV show, Flipanthropy.” I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be funny when we started watching–I did laugh a few times, but it’s also one of those “cringe comedy” shows where you’re kind of embarrassed and mortified for the characters’ behavior so you don’t feel comfortable laughing? But now that I know it’s supposed to be funny (laughing with instead of at)…I really shouldn’t go into shows blind anymore because I am too literal-minded. I’m hoping to get a lot done today around the house; I feel very rested this morning and I guess we’ll have to see how long that lasts, and how long before my energy flags. This week I’ve felt more myself than I have since the surgery–clear-headed and so forth–so I am hoping that’s a sign that I am slowly getting back to normal.

I’m also hoping to watch Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny this weekend. Hoping it ranks with the first and third movies in the series and not the second and fourth.

The construction work around the apartment seems to be finished; they reinforced the patio deck overhang (which is over our front steps) with steel and removed that horrible long wooden plank that was supporting it for like the last twelve years, which was ugly and annoying and in the way–and not particularly effective, either. The kitchen ceiling is repaired, and now all we need is to have the plasterboard painted and the ceiling fan rehung, which I’m hoping can be done after I go back to work Tuesday. I like our construction guys–super-friendly and nice, and very good at their jobs; they are also going to reinforce our living room floor, which is getting soft in places; also incredibly thoughtful and considerate of me being home while they were working on the place–apologizing for noise, checking to make sure I was okay (they asked about the arm brace and I had to explain, after which they became incredibly solicitous, which I never–no offense–expect from straight men), keeping me updated on progress and so forth. They even told me everything they’re going to be doing around the house for the next few months, which is great; I’d kind of gotten used to never being told anything by workers and having to work around them over the years.

The kitchen is also a mess and needs to be straightened up some; I need to empty the dishwasher, do another load, and get started on the bed linens (it’s FRIDAY! Laundry day!). Tomorrow I’ll run some errands; I am not going to make groceries again until Monday, since I have PT that morning and have to go uptown anyway. Tuesday I get to go back to the office, which will be interesting. I’d of course hoped I’d be able to get a lot more accomplished and done during my time out of the office, but…that proved to be overly optimistic. I am recovering quickly–everyone is amazed, at PT and the doctors–but even my recovery wasn’t as quick and easy as I had hoped. I tire easily–gee, it’s not like my body is recovering from a MASSIVE TRAUMA or anything–so I’ll be curious to see how things go when I return to work.

I also have Christmas cards to do, too, which should be interesting. I actually have the cards already and the stamps; I ordered some gorgeous Louisiana Christmas cards from a local photographer, and a box of funny ones on-line; I also ordered Mississippi River stamps, which will be super fun to use. I always put doing the cards off, then lose track of time until it’s too late, and then just think well it’s the thought that counts. This year, however, I am ahead of the game–everything was ordered and has been here since well before Thanksgiving, so if I don’t do it this year I literally have no excuse. Maybe this weekend; it’s something I can do while sitting in my easy chair.

And Sparky is really making himself at home. I am so happy we got his energetic hyperactive little fuzzy butt. He’s getting so big, and he’s so smart and determined. He now open the bathroom door (so we can’t shut him up in there anymore) and he literally climbs drawers now to get to the kitchen counters or on top of the dressers–he actually looks like he’s scaling a rock cliff as he climbs the drawers, and it’s hard to get aggravated at him for doing it because it’s so smart of him to have figured that out. He’s very determined, and he’s also starting to answer (or at least react) when we say his name. I also call him Boop sometimes; it’s hard to get out of the habit of calling the cat “Boot” (nickname for Scooter we used more than his real name) but I managed to start saying “boop” instead, and he likes that and answers to it. He still prefers boxes and bottle caps to any toys we’ve gotten him, but I would like to get one of those toys that entertains them for hours…but then I think but what if he doesn’t care about it and ignores it?

Always an issue with a cat.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, and I’ll check back in later.

Used to Be

Up earlier than I’ve been since the surgery to go to physical therapy at nine this morning. I don’t mind getting up earlier, to be honest; I’ve been sleeping so much since coming home from the hospital I was actually getting worried that I may not ever want to get up early again. Six next week for work is definitely going to be an adjustment, but in some ways I am really looking forward to going back to the office and getting back into that routine. I slept well last night–Sparky of course was looking to be fed around five, but I went right back to bed. I think Sparky will work as my first alarm, before the actual alarm starts blaring at six. It feels a bit chilly this morning in the apartment, and I do need to shower before I head uptown for my appointment.

They finished the ceiling yesterday, thank heavens. All that is left to be done is rehanging the ceiling fan and painting, and I think that’s not going to happen until I am back to work. The roofing guys (I think they are construction of all types, actually) are super nice and helpful–you never know what you’re going to get with blue collar workers, but they didn’t seem to have any issue with Obviously Homosexual Greg; they even rigged a temporary fix for the soft spot in the living room floor–and shared with me that eventually they will be getting around to reinforcing the floor with steel so we never have to be worried about falling through the floor (one of the great and many joys of old homes in New Orleans), which is kind of a relief…although we had gotten used to that soft spot in the floor, I sure as fuck won’t miss it if and when it’s gone.

While they were working, there was naught for me to do except sit in my chair and read, so I finished Donna Andrews’ Let It Crow! Let It Crow! Let It Crow! yesterday, and greatly enjoyed it. (It really doesn’t feel like Christmas until I’ve read Donna’s annual Christmas murder mystery.) Paul also worked from home yesterday, so we got all caught up on Fellow Travelers last night, which is really quite excellent, if horrifically sad and tragic–but as I said to a friend in an email yesterday, these stories still need to be told–if for no other reason than to remind people that what conservatives and right-wingers call “the good old days” weren’t so good for anyone who wasn’t white or straight. The story is built around the Lavender Scare of the 1950s–we all know about the Red Scare, but not about the full throttle purging of queer people from government employ–and it was, indeed, a horrible time of lives being ruined and people committing suicide. A lot of the things that happen in the show (and probably in the book) really happened; I think they fictionalized some people so they could easily maneuver around their story without having to stick to facts or create a potentially false narrative.

And as someone who spent longer in the closet than he needed to, and spent so much time completely terrified that someone would find out and my life would be ruined–I can understand and relate to these characters completely. The closet punished everyone–and it certainly punished the wives and children of these closeted, terrified men. I actually wrote a story set in that time period called “The Weight of a Feather”–my first ever historical fiction–about a State department employee targeted by someone working for McCarthy for blackmail, and how he handles the situation. John Copenhaver also writes marvelous novels set in the DC of the fifties with queer characters, Constant Reader, so if you haven’t checked out his work you really should, especially if you are interested in the period and even if you aren’t; these stories are important and need to be known. He’s also a marvelous writer; I do envy and admire the way he bends and twists language to create images and story.

After PT today I have errands to run–prescriptions to pick up, groceries to make, the mail–but it’s all going to depend on timing. The postal service doesn’t open until ten, but I suppose I could swing over to Midcity and get my prescriptions and groceries and swing by the mail on the way back home; after all, other than the PT appointment I don’t have to be anywhere by a certain time. And since there’s not going to be anyone doing construction work in my workspace today, I should be able to get some writing done, too. I’m behind, as always, but I feel like a strong push over the course of the next few days before I return to work can get me right back on schedule. And I haven’t yet picked out my next read–turns out my Christmas reading isn’t going to work because I don’t have a lot of Christmas books in the TBR pile; Donna’s was the only other one I had on hand. I’m thinking I should read cozies, to keep my mind in that world since that’s what I am writing–but my word, I have so many great books to get to! A delightful problem to have indeed, right?

And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and head into the spice mines. I need to make a grocery list, and I need to list everything I am going to do today, too, so I don’t forget anything. I paid the bills yesterday, so everything is caught up at least that I am aware of, and so that was quite a relief. Enjoy your Thursday, Constant Reader–I’ll be back later to write up my thoughts about Donna’s latest two mysteries at some point.

You Can’t Hurry Love

One week from today I return to the office, and in a little while I’ll be heading to my first physical therapy appointment. I’ve not been outside for a few days–seriously, this recovery has only helped play into my “I don’t want to leave the house” mentality, and it’s amazing how quickly I slide into that–and it feels cold. The roofers came by yesterday and chased me out of the kitchen so they could rip the damaged ceiling out; they will be returning to day to fix it. It was okay, though. I stayed in the living room and brainstormed and worked out the next few chapters of the book, and I also read two books. One was a reread of a book I read as a kid, Danger at Niagara by Margaret Goff Clark1, about a fifteen year old boy who lives along the river during the War of 1812, and the other was the second-to-most recent Donna Andrews, Birder She Wrote2—I couldn’t bring myself to read the books out of order so I could get to the Christmas one sooner, but at least now I can dig into this year’s Christmas mystery by Donna. (There will be more on both books later; I don’t have time to write about them before I leave for PT, and the roofers will be here when I get home. I imagine this means I’ll be reading the Christmas book and brainstorming ideas for my book while they put in the insulation and new ceiling and rehang the ceiling fan.)

I slept super well again last night–and woke up at six, so that’s still wired into my brain, which is a good thing; getting up to go back to the office next week will not be as big a challenge as I feared; I was also wide awake and it took me a while to go back to sleep, and I had a nightmare in that brief hour or so–oddly enough, it was about leaving a faucet running and the apartment flooding and having to clean up the mess while thinking I don’t have time for this. Subconscious deadline fear? Perhaps. But I do feel a lot more confident about writing the book now, and it’s just a matter of being able to sit down for a few hours every day and writing it, and I need to stop pressuring myself to get it right the first time.

We got caught up on Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, which is really well done and very interesting. I hadn’t realized that it all hadn’t aired yet, so we are now caught up through everything that is available to stream on Apple TV, and then we moved onto the Showtime mini-series based on Thomas Mallon’s novel Fellow Travelers, which I have a copy somewhere in the massive TBR stack and have wanted to get around to, if for no other reason than it’s set in the same period as Chlorine, which I have decided I am going to go. back to once I have this new drag queen cozy finished. Yes, that’s right, I’ve decided that once I finish this draft, I am going to go back to Chlorine and try to get a first draft done while alternating with Muscles, and hopefully I will finally get first drafts of each finished by Carnival–which I can easily do as long as I stay motivated. This morning I feel like I can conquer the world again, and I haven’t felt like that in years; it’s been so long I can’t remember the last time I felt so confident in myself. It feels good. I ain’t gonna lie; I’ve been down, depressed, and feeling defeated now for quite a long time–I think going back to buying my car, which, while it was exciting to actually have a new car, that thrill died as I started realizing how much that car payment was damaging my finances. I paid off the car right as the pandemic started, so I swapped out one stressful headache for the overall societal depression everyone was feeling at that time, and I never really recovered or got my equilibrium back, if that makes sense? And of course, I bought the car right around the time Mom’s health went south, so that was also always in the back of my head.

But I am going into the new year with hearing aids and my teeth fixed; and the injury to my left arm repaired. Once I finish the strengthening physical therapy for that (which can’t start till the end of February), then I can start going back to the gym. And that actually makes me excited and anticipatory; I’m not so concerned about looking great as I am about feeling good–there’s absolutely no vanity involved in my wanting to get back into a regular exercise regimen. I think I am going to start taking walks around the neighborhood, if for no other reason than to see the Christmas decorations, and New Orleans always does decorating up. I’ve also been backing up my back-up hard drive to Dropbox, which is taking quite some time, but once it’s all done, the future back-ups will be ever so much easier to do. I really need to eliminate duplicate files–there are so many of them it’s not even funny–and get my electronic storage under control. It’s really such a huge project that it scares me to think about how long it will take, and that’s mainly because of so many duplicate files, and the fact I don’t name picture files…and I am a file hoarder, which isn’t good–but is yet another symptom of my anxiety.

And on that note, I need to eat something before I go to physical therapy, so I am going to bring this to a close. I may be back later; it’s hard to say depending on how the ceiling reconstruction goes, but I will most definitely be back tomorrow morning. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you at the latest tomorrow.

  1. I have some serious thoughts about this book as pro-US propaganda, which i obviously didn’t notice as a child but were huge red flags on this reread. ↩︎
  2. I loved this book, as I do all of her books; it’s a remarkable achievement keeping a series this fresh and interesting this deep in; I think she might be at almost thirty in the series now? A master class in maintaining a long-running series, seriously. ↩︎

House of the Rising Sun

This is probably one of the most famous songs about New Orleans of all times, and of course, doing a deep dive into the history of the song–which began as an English folk song, of all things–was a pleasant way to spend a few hours. I heard the recording by the Animals when I was a kid, and honestly never cared very much about it. I always thought it was about a house of prostitution in New Orleans–Storyville, probably–but never gave it much more thought than that. But when I was looking for titles of songs about New Orleans to use for blatant self promotion for Mississippi River Mischief, it was kind of an obvious one. And when it came up on my list for this next post, I realized I didn’t really know very much about the song other than I didn’t care for it very much. It originated in the 16th century as an English folk song, and gradually evolved into an Appalachian folk song called “Rising Sun Blues” (great title, I may abscond with it, frankly) before finally becoming a folk-rock hit for The Animals in 1964 with its current name. (Musicologists suggests it’s thematically related to the old English folk song “The Unfortunate Rake,” per Wikipedia.)

I do find that kind of thing interesting, even if I don’t have any use for that information. (Although Barbara Michaels did a great job of using classic traditional folk songs and their history as the foundation for her underrated but marvelous novel Prince of Darkness–which I would love to revisit.)

If you were playing Family Feud and the question “what is New Orleans known for”, the top two answers would probably be Bourbon Street and Mardi Gras. This annoys the locals and the natives to no end; and it’s understandable. Boiling New Orleans down to those two things is incredibly reductive. But they are major facets of the city, and both are responsible for a lot of tourist revenue, which the parish, city and state desperately need because our state and local governments (all of Louisiana’s cities and parishes) are complete and utter failures. When we moved here in the mid-90s, New Orleans had a strong base of tourism, but it was nothing like now. Since Katrina the city’s primary focus has been building the city into a tourist destination, putting all of the proverbial eggs into that particular basket. The pandemic wound up killing businesses that Katrina couldn’t; the St. Charles Tavern at the corner at Martin Luther King didn’t survive COVID, as one example. (They had amazing fried mushrooms; we used to get them every once in a while as a delicious greasy breaded and deep-fried treat.)

When I first decided to start writing about New Orleans (much as I hate to say this, but New Orleans really IS my muse, and I love that I live in the neighborhood of the Muses here), one of the things I was determined not to do was use clichés about the city in my work. It wasn’t until my fifth novel that I wrote about Carnival/Mardi Gras, which is where most writers about the city inevitably start (cliché as it may be, you also cannot write about New Orleans without eventually having to write about it); I wanted to get more established as a writer before I went there. Part of the reasons the first two Scotty books were set around Southern Decadence and (to a far lesser extent) Halloween was because those were also important holidays for the gays here. I did address Bourbon Street with the first Scotty; I knew that title (Bourbon Street Blues) would tell anyone that it was a New Orleans story, so yes, I took advantage of a cliché there. But I also realize now that most of my New Orleans writings were very provincial in a way; I mostly write about the “sliver along the river”–the Marigny, the Quarter, the CBD, the lower Garden District, the Garden District, the Irish Channel, and Uptown. There’s way more to New Orleans than these neighborhoods–sometimes I send them over the bridge to the West Bank or out to Metairie; there was a very vivid post-Katrina scene where I sent Chanse out to Lakeview, but for the most part I’ve not done much about other neighborhoods here. The West Bank, City Park, the East, Gentilly; all of these rich and vibrant neighborhoods–as well as the diverse ethnic make-up of the city–are very fertile ground for someone writing about New Orleans. Generally, the neighborhoods I write about are the neighborhoods writers who don’t live here focus on because they are the better known ones.

And of course, I’ve rarely, if ever, touched the history of the city–and it is rich, compelling, and fascinating…and super dark.

That’s kind of why I wanted to move this recent Scotty out of the city and into one of the rural parishes not far from the city limits. I have fictionalized these parishes before–I try not to fictionalize New Orleans, but have no problem inventing parishes and towns in the rest of Louisiana. St. Jeanne d’Arc parish is loosely based on St. John the Baptist and St. Charles parishes, known as “river parishes” because they run along the river north of the city. Redemption, also an invention I’ve used in other books, is based on the “bayou parishes”–not along the river, but between the river and the wetlands/Gulf of Mexico; those are Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes. Louisiana is just as interesting as New Orleans, and also has an amazing and interesting history of its own. Of course, the next Scotty will be back in the city–his next few, if they go as planned, will all be within the city–but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to keep writing about Louisiana and my fictional parishes, either.

There really is so much material here I could never run out of ideas.

Shock the Monkey

Saturday morning, and feeling okay. I ran some errands yesterday–mail, prescription, grocery shopping–and instead of going to Five Guys I stopped and got a very healthy turkey-avocado sandwich for lunch instead, on wheat bread, and it was delicious. I used the wagon to bring everything back from the car to the apartment, but after putting the groceries away was very exhausted. I started reading my next book (Lisa Unger’s Christmas Presents) but didn’t get very far into it. I wound up watching the Oregon-Washington game (to see how their quarterbacks matched up against Jayden Daniels for the Heisman; I am biased but was utterly unimpressed with either of them) for a while, and then just kind of zoned out and watched documentaries on Youtube for a few hours till the game started. I am feeling better, but my energy levels still deplete quickly–probably why my surgeon didn’t want me to return to work just yet.

Last night I slept through–didn’t wake up at five like I inevitably always do and then go back to sleep–and woke up at eight, deciding to go ahead and get up rather than loll about in the bed. I figured I could write my blog entry, drink some coffee, and then head over to the easy chair to read the new book for a few hours before trying to get back into writing MY new book. I also need to do some self-promotional entries today to get back on track on promoting my two new releases, and I also kind of need to figure out where I am at with all of my in-progress projects and make a plan to proceed with everything. I think I am going to go back to trying to plan out my year and so forth, because this scattershot method I’ve been using for so long hasn’t really worked out the way I would have liked; but scattershot tends to do that. I have any number of short stories I’d like to get finished, and there are also the novellas; and I have at least two novels in progress that are up to five chapters but have gone no further than that. I also need to get better organized with everything else in my life, too–my desk area looks better than it has in years as far as clutter is concerned, but it needs to be cleaned and straightened up a bit, and there are other things in my desk–the stack of Scotty books, for example–that don’t need to be here. I rearranged the work space before the surgery specifically to free up space on the desktop, and it did work; this arrangement looks better than the way that it used to look. I want to write today–I think I am going to work on some things for the new book too, so I can really dive in headfirst; I don’t have much of a plan for the book other than I know what one of the driving forces behind the plot is going to be; who the villain is; and who is going to die. It’s all mapped out in my journal, but I need to write it all up into a word document so I can easily reference it. Plus, typing shit makes it seem more real to me, which makes no sense to anything other than my twisted brain.

Sparky has discovered the great joy of knocking over the recycling to look for bottle caps, which are his favorite toy and means I don’t need to waste any money buying him anything; why spend more money when every bottle comes with a plastic cap toy for the little darling? He’s inquisitive and he’s smart–he now scales the drawers like a ladder to get up on the counter when the drawers are closed; if he can’t get up there the usual way. He showed off this new trick to us yesterday when we were putting away the groceries; so there wasn’t a clear space for him to jump up, so instead he pulled himself up by climbing the drawers. This tells me there’s really no point to putting things out of reach because he’ll just figure out a way to get there. Scooter wasn’t especially smart, nor was he terribly interested in toys or playing or anything, but Skittle was smart–and I suspect Sparky is even smarter than Skittle, and he’s getting so big! I think he might even wind up bigger than Skittle. Do I want to have a big, incredibly smart cat? It scares me just a little bit, to be honest. But now he seems to have calmed down a bit, and is a sleeping kitten donut on my desk. He really is a beautiful cat.

We had a lot of rain overnight–flash flood warnings, tornado watches all around us in neighboring parishes, the usual–I slept through it all. I didn’t even notice it was raining last night–without my hearing aids, I can’t hear anything other than thunder–but I am sure the rain helped me sleep. I didn’t sleep for a full ten hours; it was only nine. I was thinking yesterday that I need to start getting used to getting up early again before I have to return to work on the 12th, so it won’t be as horrible as it might be. I had finally gotten used to getting up early, and now I have to start getting used to it all over again, which isn’t going to be very much fun at all. But this is a relatively easy month to ease my way back into work again, with the holidays and extra time off at the end, so there’s that. And then again, it’s Carnival shortly thereafter, which I think is late again? I haven’t looked, but I think we have a late Fat Tuesday again this next year.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for the morning. Have a fabulous Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in again later.

Whatcha Gonna Do

Friday, I think? It’s very weird to lose track of days and dates and things like that. Not that I am good with them regularly and never have to stop to think about it, but not having the structure provided by having to go into an office every day has kind of unmoored me. I don’t know that I can honestly blame it on the surgery anymore, since it’s been nine days, right? I don’t know. I slept for another ten hours last night, and feel so rested it’s marvelous. I did ask my surgeon to clear me for work earlier yesterday, and he said no. “I’m afraid you’ll overdo it and spoil all the great recovery you’ve already experienced.” Probably just as well. I’m worried (of course) about the unpaid leave and money, but I think I’ll most likely be okay because everything is going well so far. Things might be tight for a while, but that’s..well, it’s not like I’m not used to that already after the four years of car payments. (I shudder even thinking about that horrible period of juggling bills and running up credit card debt that I am still working down.)

I wrote yesterday and boy am I rusty. It was a serious struggle. I had dictated about thirteen hundred words the other day on my iPad, so yesterday I cleaned that up (I don’t speak clearly, and have always had a bit of a lisp; the dentures have exaggerated that, so voice-to-text isn’t the best method for me, but it’s an option I can use in a pinch; it’s something I could potentially even do in the car with the phone on long drives) and tried to finish the chapter. I didn’t finish it, sadly, and it took me hours to get the additional new 1200 words yesterday down on the page. I’m a little rusty– one of the primary reasons I do this blog is to write something every day so the muscles don’t need to be retrained or warmed up again–but that’s not a surprise. I’m trying not to freak out or stress about it, because that’s pointless and a waste of energy that I don’t have to spare right now. I have finally found a comfortable position to sit at my desk and rest the brace on the edge so my fingers are freed up for the keyboard, which is enormously helpful. I am hoping to get cleaned up this morning and run some errands a little later on–I have to pick up a prescription in Midcity, and thought about making a grocery run and stopping at Five Guys (yay!)–before coming home to curl up in my chair with Nurse Sparky and read. I’ve picked out Lisa Unger’s novella Christmas Presents as my next read; I’d like to kind of keep the Christmas theme going, too, which might mean reading the two latest Donna Andrews novels out of order (just typing that made my stomach clench; my brain wiring is so completely fucked up it’s not even funny), and then picking out Christmas-related titles from the TBR pile–which won’t be easy, the Unger and Andrews might even be the only ones, honestly; which is interesting. I myself have only written one Christmas season book (Royal Street Reveillon) and published one story (“The Snow Queen” from my Upon a Midnight Clear anthology from a million years ago), primarily because I was worried about the temptation to descend into cheap sentiment.

It’s gray and rainy outside today. It started raining last night and continued overnight; which was nerve-wracking. I haven’t mentioned this, or I don’t think so, but a few weeks before my surgery roofers were here working on the patio deck above my kitchen. I came home from work one day to find an enormous hole in the kitchen ceiling–I could look up and see the workers and blue sky–and ceiling debris all over the kitchen. There was rotten wood up there, potentially termite damaged as well, and it just caved in while they were working. They came into the apartment and boarded up the hole with a piece of plywood. Fine, I figured; but that’s a stopgap and not a fix. The next time it rained I could see that the plywood was wet, and then it started dripping. Not good, but not bad. Then after my surgery we had a huge New Orleans storm, and the kitchen ceiling was leaking–all around the board, and elsewhere. I got up that morning and noted there was water on the counter and the stove, and my rugs on the floor were wet. I got out a couple of buckets and went back into the living room to my easy chair to read or watch television. About an hour there was a crash from the kitchen–part of the ceiling had collapsed, and you could see soaked insulation hanging and dripping–and about another hour later more came down. They came out the other day to fix the leak–and there’s no water in my kitchen this morning, thank the Lord. They told me since we had rain forecast this weekend they weren’t going to fix my ceiling–because if the fix didn’t work, it would all just come down again anyway–so when I got up this morning Paul said, “It’s rained all night so be prepared when you go downstairs” which made my heart sink (without my hearing aids I can’t hear the rain) but I came down and checked and all good. So they’ll come back next week and fix the ceiling and that’s the end of that.

I am also very impressed with myself for not freaking out over the ceiling–but at this point, my primary and only real concern is my arm and recovery. I also made my first physical therapy appointment for next week, which is cool. It’s also taking some time for me to get used to having greater mobility and more use of my left arm, too. I tend to walk with it in the bent position it needed to be in for that first post-op week rather than just letting it hang or moving it in unison with the other when I am walking. I think I need to get up every day and go for a walk, really. (Not today–I am not walking in the rain, but if it stops later, it won’t kill me to walk down to the park.) I need to be taking walks and things anyway; at least be stretching periodically to keep my muscles active and not let them get even more flaccid and weak from inactivity. And of course, running errands will get me out of the house today and walking the aisles of the grocery store is good exercise. And I have my wagon to help bring them in from the street. (I am so pleased with myself for buying that wagon, Constant Reader, you have no idea. I need to Scotch-guard it so I can just leave it outside under the overhang so it’s not always getting wet when it rains, or maybe even get a waterproof tarp to put over it.)

I’m also thinking it’s time to get a new microwave. Ours is over ten years old, it doesn’t work as great as it used to, and the instruction manual is long gone. I am also going to get a taller ladder for the downstairs; the five foot one works fine for the fans upstairs, but I need something taller for downstairs, and again–it can be kept outside and brought in when I need to use it. It’s ridiculous that I’ve waited so long to get a ladder that I can use without paranoia and fear of falling as I fully extend to reach the blades of the downstairs fans; get a fucking taller ladder, dumbass. I think it was primarily because I worried I couldn’t fit the ladder into my car and bring it home; now I can have Lowe’s deliver it. Thanks, pandemic! At least it was good for something.

And on that note, I am bringing this to a close for today. Have a fabulous Friday and I’ll probably do some blatant self-promotion later.

destination unknown

Thursday, and I am so relieved that the recovery is going well, and that I can actually start fending for myself. The brace isn’t rigidly locked anymore, and I have a lot more freedom of movement–plus I no longer need that wretched sling, which I hated, and I am no longer attached to anything. Granted, I haven’t been since last Friday, when the pain ball1 was removed Later this morning I am calling to make my first PT appointment, and another referral to follow up on as well. I also slept in my bed last night for the first time since the surgery. I was sleeping super-well in my easy chair, and was a little worried about going back to the bed (I will worry about anything, thanks, anxiety!) because I usually sleep on my left side–which is the bad arm–but I fell asleep lying on my back and shifted to the right side and back a couple of times, but other than that, I was dead to the world. I also slept for another ten hours last night, and I am thinking that I need to get this rest. My body is demanding it, and it feels marvelous to sleep so deeply and restfully–this is what I am always longing for most of the time….but I’m not going to start going to bed at eight once I am back to work because yeah, that would be terrible.

I took it easy yesterday after getting home from my appointment and a couple of errands. The temperature has turned cold (for New Orleans, don’t @ me), which always makes the apartment feel a bit more snug. I did some straightening up, took a long hot shower (still not easy, but so much better than before), and then curled up in my chair with Sparky and J. D. O’Brien’s Zig Zag, which I enjoyed very much (more on that later). I’m still trying to figure out a way to comfortably type with the brace, which isn’t as easy as one might expect. because the brace raises the hand so it’s not flush with the keyboard. It just feels awkward and so I need to find a position to type that doesn’t feel awkward–or I need to get used to it. I don’t know that I’ll have the brace on long enough to worry about Carpal tunnel syndrome, but you know me–anxiety always on the starting line waiting for the starting gun. We also finished watching Bodies, which I also highly recommend. It’s extremely well done, and very clever. If you liked Dark, you’ll definitely enjoy Bodies. I haven’t picked out my next read yet, but I have some incredibly delightful options to choose from. Yay! I love having a massive TBR-pile filled with terrific books by great writers. I am leaning towards Christmas Presents by Lisa Unger; I do want to read some holiday themed novels this Christmas season.

Christ, it’s Christmas season already. I may have to have my annual viewing of A Charlie Brown Christmas soon. I feel more like being in the holiday spirit this year. We haven’t decorated in years (and what little decorating we did was kind of half-assed, anyway) because the one thing Scooter would–in his long, comfortable life as a lap cat–actually spring into action against was the tree. That first Scooter Christmas was the last time we decorated, and I feel pretty confident that Sparky would see the tree as an amusement park, since everything is a toy to him and all he wants to do is play. I didn’t notice until the other day–and maybe it’s a recent development–but Sparky has some orange in his coat. It’s more obvious when he’s lying on his back, but we did end up with another orange cat, even though we didn’t realize it! The string of orange babies continues!

I was also thinking some more yesterday about being a writer–and the many different ways there are to be one. What is the difference between an author and a writer? Are authors artists? What is literary art and what is not, and who decides? Can genre fiction be art (of fucking course)? This was triggered by one of those things on one of the social media platforms where you were supposed to “quote text” my favorite books by women, and right off the top of my head I rattled off five great ones…and then I started remembering more, and more, and still more. I’ve read hundreds, if not thousands, of marvelous novels and short stories and essays and columns written by women. Why were those the five that popped up into my brain at first, why are they so implanted on my brain that I would come forth with these titles; any such list from me will always include The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson and Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, and I will never apologize for that. Which left me with only four, and there were so many options. My mind immediately defaulted to four women writers I love, and then had to pick which of their canon was the best. Then I remembered a beautiful novel about friendship, love and loss that made me weep (Somewhere Off The Coast of Maine by Ann Hood) and thought, damn it, I loved that book and I want it on my list…and then started remembering all the others, the dozens if not hundreds, of other women writers whose works entertain, enlighten, and edify my life. There are so many great women writers, currently and in the past, who wrote so many amazing books that it would be hard to name them all, and I would certainly always forget scores of them. For some reason yesterday I was thinking about Taylor Caldwell–who used to write massive doorstopper books about rich people and industries, as well as interesting historical fiction. If remembered at all today, it would probably be for Captains and the Kings, but that wasn’t one of my favorites of hers–that would probably be Testimony of Two Men, which was about medicine in the late 1800’s and a courageous doctor who believed in modern breakthroughs rather than “we’ve always done it this way”–so of course the entire medical establishment was trying to ruin him as he bravely stuck to his principles and tried to modernize American medicine. I would probably hate it if I read it today for the first time–my politics, ethics, morals, and tastes have dramatically changed since I was a teenager, which was when I read Caldwell–but I do remember it fondly. And there’s Grace Metalious, who wrote Peyton Place; Jacqueline Susann and Valley of the Dolls; Jackie Collins and Hollywood Wives; any number of Agatha Christie novels–I mean, there have always been so many great women writers around. Does anyone remember Rona Jaffe? I’ve always wanted to reread The Best of Everything, and I think I have a copy of it somewhere. Then there’s the scifi/fantasy writers, too–Anne McCaffrey and The Dragonriders of Pern, Ursula LeGuin and A Wizard of Earthsea, the amazing Octavia Butler….as I said on whatever social media platform that was, I could sit here and name women writers who wrote books that I loved all day. Victoria Holt, Mary Stewart, Phyllis A. Whitney, Dorothy Eden, Susan Howatch…seriously. Maybe I should write a book of essays about women writers that aren’t remembered much today? ANYA SETON! How I loved Anya Seton back in the day–and all the crime women–Margaret Millar, Charlotte Armstrong, Dorothy L. Hughes, Mary Roberts Rhinehart, Helen MacInnes, Patricia Highsmith, and Mignon Eberhard, to start.

I bet no one else remembers Edna Ferber–and if they do, it’s for Giant and it’s because of the movie (many of her books became famous films: Cimarron, Saratoga Trunk, Show Boat, and So Big). Now that I think about it, I think she addressed race issues in both Saratoga Trunk and Show Boat….which may be worth revisiting. She was also a member of the Algonquin Round Table.

This entry sounds and feels more like me than the more recent ones have, doesn’t it? I am itching to dive back into the book this morning, after I pay some bills and do some other aggravating chores. I also have a prescription ready to pick up; so since I have to go to a Midcity pharmacy to get it, I may as well make a grocery run on Carrollton.

I didn’t realize what a difference sleeping in the bed would actually make, really.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for the day. Have a blessed Thursday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again a little later, as I really need to do a lot more promo. OH! That reminds me, here is a lovely review of Mississippi River Mischief; check it out! That absolutely made my day–and reminded me that I need to do more self-promotion.

  1. I had a contraption attached to my left shoulder that dispensed a nerve-deadener to the arm, so I wouldn’t feel pain. It lasted for 72 hours, and by the time it was empty, I didn’t have any pain, which was great. I also had to carry it around in basically a fanny pack, so it was one more thing I had to drag around those stressful first 72 hours. However, if you are going to have surgery, ask for one. It was amazing. ↩︎

What About Me

Well, here we are on Monday morning after my surgery, and I’m not really sure what I’ll be doing today. I really need to pick up a prescription in Uptown, and we need to pick up the mail at some point, but I’m not really sure how I’m going to do that. I don’t know that I should risk driving yet, because New Orleans drivers are so horrible, but it has to be done and I need the prescription. I suppose I could take a ride service, but I hate spending the money as well. I guess I don’t have a choice though, so I’ll deal with that later. I also need to make groceries.

We had had an issue a few weeks ago with the apartment. They were doing some work on the patio deck above my kitchen, and unfortunately there was rotten wood up there. The ceiling kind of gave way; they ended up nailing up a piece of plywood over the hole in the ceiling. Unfortunately the next time it rained, of course, it leaked , but they finished the work up there and never came back to repair our ceiling. We had a massive thunderstorm Saturday night, and so i woke up Sunday morning to water on the floor in the kitchen, on the stove, and on the counter. The carpets in the kitchen were also  wet; so I got out towels and a bucket for the dripping and hoped that the ceiling wouldn’t cave in. About two hours later, yeah, some of the plaster came down with a loud, startling crash, and so now there’s another hole in the ceiling. The insulation up there is soaked, so I had to leave the bucket for the dripping to continue. Needless to say, this is a really shitty time for this to happen and it spiraled me into a really bad depressive state yesterday. I have noted already that my emotions have been all over the place since the surgery — so something like this really sent me into a spiral. The anxiety really ramps up, so yeah, yesterday was just not a good day for me.

So, I repaired my easy chair with a Gatorade and Nurse Sparky and put on one of my comfort movies, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. I’ve always loved Indiana Jones, but I haven’t seen the most recent movie yet. I’ve always wanted to write an Indiana  Jones type book; I love historical treasure  hunts and have always thought that it would be fun to write those kind of stories with Colin as the main character — away from Frank and Scotty, to kind of fill in the blanks when he’s away from New Orleans. I have an idea that’s tied into the 4th crusade and the sack of Constantinople; a treasure hidden away in the Hagia Sophia since the Nicaean Council that established the dogma of Catholic Christianity. The Orthodox patriarchy had been keeping this treasure secret from the Pope and the Vatican for centuries, at least since the schism of 1052. My idea is that the Venetians and the Crusaders knew that the Pope would be furious to learn they had sacked Constantinople, but the Doge, Enrico Dandalo, not only knew about the secret but also knew presenting it to the Pope would get them forgiven. The primary problem with this is that I have never figured out what precisely was hidden in the Hagia Sophia; but I wanted to tie it into the Assassins and the Old Man of the Mountain. I thought that would make for a fun adventure, particularly setting it in a fictional Middle Eastern country. However, with everything that’s going on in the world nowadays, writing about the Middle East is probably not a good idea at this point.

I also read a lot of short stories over the weekend. I read all the stories in one of my Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies, Stories That Scared Even Me, and that was a lot of fun. The book was published originally in the 1960s or early 1970s and it is amazing how much attitudes in society and cultural attitudes have changed since that time. The contributors were almost entirely male — all of these anthologies are underrepresented with women — and there are a lot of really racist and patriarchal  tropes in some of the stories. Several, for example, are set in Mexico; I’ll let your imagination do the rest rather than quote what they said so casually. I’m also writing a story set in Central America — I was writing it to submit to a horror anthology — and it was one that I had started writing back in the 1990s, I believe. I was kind of horrified by what I wrote — I feel like by the 1980s I should have known better about these kinds of tropes  — but the story is salvageable; with some strong changes and a fictional country. But you can still get into trouble, even with that, and the last thing I ever want to do is write something problematic that will offend people. (I have already mentioned the story that I submitted to a anthology that’s not going to happen now about the South, which I recently  reread and was horrified by.)  A lot of these stories have those twisty type of endings that I always loved; that little hint of irony that really made the story sing. I always try to give my stories those kinds of endings because that’s what I grew up reading as far as short stories are concerned, and I often have to struggle to not try that with every story, because it’s not right for every story and I have a bad tendency to try to force things to work the way I want them to, instead of the way that they should work organically.

Dictating is much slower than typing, as I’ve noted before; this is taking me a lot longer to dictate then I would like. Where I actually typing this entry, I would probably already be finished by now. But you do what you have to do. I also started dictating my next book, figuring it’s better to get started on it while I’m at home recovering from the surgery, rather than waiting until such time as my left hand can be used for the keyboard. I’m still not having any pain  — my primary issue is mobility, not being able to use my left hand for  much, occasional nausea from the antibiotic, and the mood swings and depression. I wish I had already started on my anti-anxiety medication protocol before the surgery, but what can you do? Yesterday morning, I was thinking that I made a lot of bad decisions about this surgery and that I didn’t do it knowing everything that would result from it; but I was worried about not ever being able to go to the gym and workout again unless  and until this was done, and pushing it back to next year wouldn’t have changed any of these issues, I don’t think, other than possibly better planning on my part. But that’s also part of the anxiety—I always question my decisions, and never really believe that I made the right choices afterward. I guess it is just a part of that hindsight being 20/20 thing that always drives me crazy. I never really am confident in the decisions I make, so I always try to not second-guess or doubt myself afterward; there’s no point in rehashing things that you can’t change. Why obsess over something I have no control over anymore? That’s the easiest way to drive yourself crazy, I think.

We’re also really enjoying the show Bodies on Netflix. It has everything that I like; a bit of science fiction, crime, surprise twists, and gay content. You can never go wrong with me when you have gay content. (That’s not entirely true; there are some really terrible shows in movies with gay content that are basically unwatchable) I also finished watching a Jane Seymour series on Acorn called Harry Wild, which wasn’t great but was entertaining enough. I don’t know what all I’ve been watching to be honest with you, Constant Reader, but I’ve been watching  an awful lot of television.

I did watch a terrible adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d, and the less said about that the better.

I’m hoping today or tomorrow to be able to read a novel; I’m really enjoying the one that I was reading before the surgery and would like to finish it, but my mind is all over the place and has been since coming home from the surgery. I haven’t even been able to focus on the TV I’ve been watching as much as I would like. Part of it is the depression, part of it is the holiday without Mom, and of course, the surgery. You see how I am? I’m being hard on myself after a major surgery for not getting anything done or being productive. Heavy sigh. Welcome to the wonderful world of what goes on inside my head.

And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close and see if I can figure out what I’m going to do for the rest of the day, and what I can do about these errands. I hope you have a lovely Monday and as always, thank you for checking in and thank you for reading.

Blame It on the Edit

I love Alyssa Edwards. She’s the perfect reality star; a completely delusional human living in her own reality, yet also funny and witty with a highly expressive and thoroughly meme-able face, and basically harmless. I’ve always meant to catch her reality show on Netflix about her dance studio–which is so fricking cool that she does that–but have never gotten around to it. I was amused by her on her initial season, but really hated her feud with Coco Montrese, and of course that was also the season won by the marvelous Jinkx Monsoon. Alyssa was also terrific on All Stars 2, which made the rigging of the season all that much more disappointing. (We also gave up on Project Runway after one season where it was clear they’d already decided who was going to win at the start of the season. Don’t give me a rigged competition, thank you very much; if I want that, I’ll watch professional wrestling, thank you very much.)

Which makes it interesting for me to write a book about a drag pageant. I already have tons of ideas for the book, and it’s going to be very brutal in how it approaches the homophobes who have wrested control of Florida from the sane people (hey Moms4Liberty, how’d those elections turn out for you, you pathetic soulless pieces of shit? Your tears are as delicious as mimosas at a gay Sunday drag bunch, you miserable fucking bitches.) and have taken the state, once a beautiful place with scenic beaches and lovely weather, on its final steps to a complete and utter hellhole. Bravo, by the way; nicely done.

Anyway, back to drag; sorry about that sidebar. But that kind of shit will always enrage me. Nothing makes me angrier than misplaced self-righteousness. I may no longer be a practicing Christian, but I know that faith far better than many–if not most–of its most ardent public proselytizers and purveyors.

Gender-bending, of course, is nothing new. For centuries, women weren’t allowed on the stage so female roles were always played by men. This was certainly true in Shakespeare’s day, and often he wrote plays with characters pretending to be the other gender. So there’s a long, proud history of men doing drag in theater and performance art. Who decides what is masculine and what is feminine, anyway? As I have said numerous times, I love this new young generation of leading men and actors who are abandoning traditional black-tie male drag for new and inventive outfits that showcase their youth, beauty, creativity, and personal style; there’s nothing quite so stifling as toxic masculinity and it’s regular insistence that there is only one way to be a man–which is not only stultifying but incredibly limiting. Film and television (and theater, to a far lesser degree) have long influenced what is considered masculine in this country–the prototype being, of course, John Wayne. (Probably the funniest scene in both La Cage aux Folles and it’s American version The Birdcage is when the more butch of the gay couple tries to get the more feminine partner to be more masculine–telling him to walk like John Wayne…which was the first time I ever noticed how peculiarly John Wayne walked. Also amusing is that Mr. American Macho Man John Wayne–and Mr. Patriotism Ronald Reagan–didn’t serve in World Was II…but played war heroes in movies about it. Style over substance.)

But the history of the colonizing of this continent is very queer. Do we really believe those frontiersmen, trappers, hunters and explorers simply went for months and even years without having sex? There weren’t enough women to satisfy the need–and cattle drives? Pshaw. In any purely male society like that–the cattle drive, the explorations, etc.–there is always male/male sexual contact; “helping a buddy out.” This has been erased from history as effectively as if it had never happened–as though homosexuality is some modern thing that never existed before.

It’s always struck me as odd that the masculine ideal (as shown to us by Hollywood, at any rate) inevitably is depicted in all male environments–war movies, cattle drive movies, Westerns–with the occasional token female thrown in as a supporting love interest. These women are often set up to be abused–spanking was often popular in these films; how many times did John Wayne spank a woman in a movie?–and mocked and made fun of; if they had any kind of mind of their own, well, they had to be tamed.

Anyway, I digress.

I also know there are women who despise drag, see it as mocking women and misogynistic. I can actually see how they could feel that way, and far be it from me to tell a woman–any woman–how she should or shouldn’t feel about something, particularly when it comes to misogyny. (I sure don’t want anyone telling me what to think is homophobic or not.) I don’t think drag is misogynistic; if anything, it’s critiquing the misogyny of society. Dolly Parton also exaggerates femininity to the point of being a drag queen–she even says it about herself. Mae West was so good at this exaggeration that people believed she was an actual drag queen for years. Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, and Jane Russell became sex symbols (and stars) by exaggerating their bodies and the way they dressed and their make-up and hair; how is that not female-drag as the converse of over-exaggerated masculinity (John Wayne, Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood); establishing exaggerated norms of masculine and feminine that subconsciously altered what the over-all culture thought in terms of gender roles.

If I had a dollar for every time someone has told me to be more manly…

But the reason gender roles exist are because they are more comfortable for most people than thinking about it at any great length. You were born with a penis, so you should be interested in sports and guns and hunting and wear pants; your parents don’t have to think about it and neither do you. But for those of us who weren’t comfortable in those comforting boxes society so gladly constructed for us all to fit into–it’s not quite that easy. I hated having to do “boy” things and hated the expectations that since I was a boy I should like something in particular–and being incredibly stubborn, being told that I should like something was much more likely to make me disdain it. I didn’t want to play sports or even watch them when I was a kid; I just wanted to read. My struggles with wrapping my head around my gender and my sexual identity as a child were difficult, and those scars are still there–some of them are still scabbed over and not healed. All the messages I was being sent through popular culture, school, and society were telling me that something was wrong with me–and you don’t get over that overnight. I’m still unpacking a lot of that to this very day.

Writing Death Drop forced me to start thinking about these things again–gender markers, gender identities, the duality of our natures (no one is 100% one or the other, I think; I will always believe that gender and sexuality are a lot more fluid than anyone thinks)–and what makes one male and what makes one female. I hope, in writing more about Jem in the future, that it will help me understand myself better as well as society.

And what more could a writer ask for?

You and I

Sunday morning after a relaxing Saturday in the Lost Apartment. I went by to get the mail and stopped at the Fresh Market, then went back later to CVS to get my booster vaccine for COVID-19 and pick up my post-operative medications (my BASTARD insurance refused to cover the oxycodone, of all things. I hope this surgery costs them a fucking fortune). The games on television weren’t very interesting, frankly, and the only one that had any potential at all turned into a blow-out (Georgia-Tennessee). It was kind of a laid-back bland boring kind of day, which was kind of necessary. The prescription issue–I stopped by CVS on my first trip uptown, but one of my prescriptions wasn’t ready (the one I had already called to approve over the phone) but it turned out the reason they kept not filling it was because the insurance wasn’t paying for it and I had to say, “yes, I will pay out of pocket for it, thank you” which was why I had to go back later in the afternoon–so I figured I may as well make a vaccination appointment for when I do go back. You know me, always trying to be as efficient as possible and to utilize my time more effectively; seriously, I know now it’s an anxiety thing. I never quite understand my anxiety and what triggers it or causes it, or how many coping systems I have engineered over the course of my life to work around it–which turns into compulsive behavior.

I’ve yet to figure out how the obsessive part of me comes from the anxiety, but I am sure I will at some point.

My arm–the one I am having the surgery on–is sore this morning because I figured I might as well get used to that arm hurting and had the booster shot in that arm. I slept deeply and well last night; I went to bed shortly after the LSU game concluded with a 56-14 score with Jayden Daniels tying the school record for most touchdowns in a game (the other was Joe Burrow’s eight against Oklahoma in the 2019 play-offs…but Burrow scored seven in the first half and the eighth on the first drive of the second half before sitting out the rest of the game (LSU could have scored a hundred that day had they been so inclined; that game still boggles my mind that it actually happened–as well as how). If there’s any justice in the world Daniels will win the Heisman Trophy (he is clearly the best player in the country), but welcome to 2023 and college football. An impressive showing against Texas A&M won’t hurt his chances, for sure–but the fact LSU has a terrible defense this year shouldn’t overshadow what he’s accomplished with our offense. As an LSU fan, it boggles my mind that we have one of the best offenses of all-time, and yet our defense–always a point of pride in Tigerland–is one of the worst when our defense has historically always been vastly superior to our offense. We used to lose because the offense couldn’t score; now we lose because our defense is terrible. Even last night at first it looked like “same-old same-old,” with Georgia State scoring on their first two possessions before the defense clicked into gear and they never scored again.

Tulane also won again yesterday. Well done, Green Wave!

I spent some time reading Lou Berney’s Dark Ride yesterday and I am loving this book so much. Hardly, the stoner burnout loser main character, is probably one of my favorite characters I’ve read in quite some time; he resonates with me, especially with his newly awakened sense of right and wrong–which does not, I might add, change anything for his normal circumstances–he’s still a stoner burnout, still gets high as he puzzles his way into figuring out what to do next, and whether he should keep carrying about these random two kids he saw one day that might be victims of physical abuse. He reminds me in some way of a modern day American Don Quixote; I don’t know if that was what Berney was going for, but I can tell you this–he has nailed the voice of this character, and the story itself is quite good–and of course the writing, as always with Berney’s work, is spectacular…and it’s quite inspiring.

It also feels weird knowing I don’t have to go into the office tomorrow. Tomorrow is the last day I have to get everything ready in the apartment before the surgery–laying in supplies and getting everything ready to go for Tuesday. I suspect that I am going to be in some kind of drugged stupor for the first two days at least, and maybe by next weekend I’ll be lucid enough to be able to write a blog post; I don’t know. I suspect yesterday’s low energy was in some ways triggered by the knowledge of the surgery coming along with slight irritation over the prescription issue. But I made my meatballs last night (Paul astutely pointing out that I really make meatball stew rather than meatballs in gravy, and that is a very thin line) and they were very good. I also did some straightening up around here–I was expecting Paul to go work with his trainer and then go to the office for the afternoon, but his trainer canceled on him and he stayed home–moving down to lay on the couch and (hopefully) make a bed for Tug/Sparky; unlike Scooter, Tug’s a little more restless and he’s kind of gotten used to using my lap in the easy chair as his bed–and sure enough, he spent most of the day sleeping in my lap as I lazily scrolled through social media, looked things up on Google, and basically did nothing productive while watching yesterday’s (mostly boring) games. I probably should have watched Kansas-Kansas State, which the Wildcats won in a shoot out 31-24 (when was the last time both teams in the rivalry game had winning records? The futility of the college football teams in the state of Kansas is astonishing, even with KSU turning things around in the last thirty years–they’ve beaten KU fifteen straight times now). I’ll go look at what happened around the country in the sport once I finish writing this and move on to the easy chair to finish Lou’s book so I can write about it later. And I need to do some more blatant self-promotional posts before I wind up not being able to post anything at all for who knows how long?

Heavy sigh.

And on that note, I am taking my coffee and Dark Ride to my easy chair, only to emerge from it to get more coffee until I am finished reading it, and have started my next read, Zig Zag, by J. D. O’Brien. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back later on today at some point as well….and I just remembered there is no Saints game today, so I have no excuses.