Category: New Orleans

Cars

This morning I get to go pick up my temporary teeth before heading into the office. It’s no longer a clinic day; I’d be covering Mondays for a colleague who’d had major surgery and he’s back now. I am also a little tired this morning. I slept really well last night but could have slept much longer, the physical and mental hangover from having driven so much this weekend. I left for Panama City Beach during half-time of the LSU-Missouri game; and given how LSU had been playing, you can imagine my delight when I checked the score when I stopped for gas to see that the Tigers had rallied to beat the other Tigers 49-39. The Saints destroyed the Patriots 34-0 while I was driving back yesterday; again, imagine my delight when I checked the score when I stopped for gas past Mobile (I try not to ever spend money in Mississippi, for any number of reasons. The same with Tennessee). So my teams apparently do better when I’m not able to watch, which is something I’ve suspected for quite some time.

This is a week of medical stuff–the teeth this morning, a heart sonogram on Wednesday morning, and something else entirely on Friday that I can’t think of. The MRI of my shoulder, I think? There are so many appointments and things going on while I am getting ready for this surgery that I am not even entirely sure I can keep track of them all–the anxiety roiling up from the depths again–but I am pretty sure I put everything on my calendar and I am resisting the urge to give into the anxiety and better check compulsively numerous times to be sure stage. I know I wrote everything down on my calendar; I will double-check that tonight when I get home from work, and that will be the end of it as far as that kind of anxiety and stress and pressure are concerned. I think I am doing a great job of controlling the anxiety by recognizing it and refusing to allow it to take control, but some days are definitely harder than others. I only got irritated several times on the drives this weekend–and I would say that those situations would have irritated any driver, even those without anxiety as a mental disorder.

I did get to listen to The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones, which I greatly enjoyed (more on that later) and Saturday before I left I read some more of Final Girls, which is starting to get rolling now–although it occurred to me in the car that I should have listened to the rest of Final Girls in the car and thus been able to move on to something else to read this week, but ah well, sometimes that’s how life goes. I was very tired when I got back to New Orleans last night–the drive was very smooth, with a few exceptions of stupidity along the way (I’m looking at you, Mobile tunnel) but I didn’t sleep great Saturday night after that drive, and so that’s why I’m dragging and a little the worse for lack of sleep. I also have a bit of a sore spot in my neck from sleeping wrong at some point over the last two nights, my guess being it was last night’s, combined with poor posture while driving. Tug also missed me; he spent most of last evening sleeping in my lap, but once he woke up he turned back into the terror Paul had described when I got home–knocking everything off every surface he climbed up onto; attacking my feet; chasing pens around the room–definitely some big kitten energy going on. Yeah, it’s a bit annoying, but at the same time it means he’s acclimated and knows he’s at home enough to feel safe to play and have fun and be a kitten, which is great. Maybe not when he’s walking all over my keyboard confidently like there’s nothing there, or when he’s trying to get whatever I am eating, but it’s great that he’s so comfortable in the house that he can be himself, and that’s always a good thing.

And now I get to spend the day trying to acclimate back to my every day existence, which isn’t always easy. Going away always is unsettling for me, and then I have to figure out how where I am at and what all else I have to get done and do and plan and so forth; which is another reason why having a to-do list is so vitally important; it helps me to re-acclimate to my reality after a break /interruption. I also can’t remember where I am with things at the office, either. Yay? But I need to get to the office and get some things done today–and as my coffee is kicking in and clearing the cobwebs out of my dusty brain, I am starting to feel more motivated than I was before I left; I think maybe knowing that the weekend was causing me some anxiety subconsciously which undermined (self-sabotaged) my attempts last week to get things handled and done and under control.

One of the lovely things about driving long trips like this weekend is that my mind wanders and I think about things; the ability to keep up with an audiobook while my mind sifts through problems and unties the Gordian knots of confusion and self-delusion in my mind has been truly wonderful. While in the car this weekend I was thinking back to what all I had gotten done and accomplished since the start of the pandemic disruption (and yes, I know I am not unique and it has happened to everyone), the general sense of “I am not getting anything done” and “when I am writing I’m not enjoying it” which has been unsettling me and keeping me off-balance since March 2020 (hard to believe it’s been almost four years, isn’t it?), but on the other hand, professionally the pandemic was actually very good to me. I got a substantial raise and promotion at my day job; I got nominated for a shit ton of awards over the last couple of years, and sure, I think there was a significant gap in publishing–from Royal Street Reveillon in the fall of 2018 until Bury Me in Shadows was about a three year gap now, wasn’t it? That in and of itself is the longest gap in my publishing career, but then I came on like gangbusters in 2022 with #shedeservedit, A Streetcar Named Murder, and Land of 10000 Thrills (Bouchercon anthology), and of course have two back-to-back releases this fall with Mississippi River Mischief and Death Drop. I was also publishing short stories during the 2018-2021 interregnum, and I was working on a multitude of other writing projects during that time in addition to the books that wound up being released in fits and spurts since 2021; I still find it hard to believe I went that long between books–maybe I’m forgetting something? But I don’t think I actually am; I am terrible about remembering everything I’ve written and published, and always forget things. But at first I was disappointed in myself to think I’d gone that long between books before silencing that negativity, and then I nipped that in the bud. There’s no disgrace in admitting that the pandemic knocked me for a loop and off-balance; I’m not the only person this happened to, and it takes a massive life disruption to slow down my writing–which is pretty impressive.

It’s hard to stay positive as it goes against my brain’s wiring, but I am getting better.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. May your Monday be just as lovely as you are, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back later.

Funky Town

Up early to head over to the West Bank to get my oil changed before heading to the panhandle this afternoon. My life is really a non-stop thrill ride, isn’t it?

I was grumpy yesterday, partly because I knew I wouldn’t be able to be productive over the course of this weekend which is of course silly on its face; why be irritated about something you have no control over? It is what it is, and I promised to do this and I want to see my dad, so I don’t know why I was feeling grumpy about the whole thing. I’m trying not to let things I cannot control hold sway over my emotions, my mood and my life anymore; as you can see, it’s not going 100% better–but I have to say overall I feel better about everything on a daily basis a lot more. I’ve not really been writing–using the excuse of this weekend’s trip to justify not doing so, but …there were two options. Try to write, knowing I’d have to take a break this weekend and get something done; or just blow it off and let my brain rest. Since the writing was not coming easily and felt like pulling teeth, it probably was just as well I wasn’t feeling motivated because that feeling turns into disgust and depression if the writing doesn’t go well, so I have to be careful with that sort of thing. But I was able to read some more of the Riley Sager, which I am enjoying, and of course I’ll get to listen to Stephen Graham Jones in the car on the way over there and back. My mind also wanders when I drive, even as I am listening, and I come up with ideas and things while i am behind the wheel of the car. I-10 east isn’t a fun drive, but at least I don’t have to go all the way to Lake City in eastern Florida in order to catch a highway south, thank you baby Jesus.

Clearly, the best day and time of the week to get my car serviced is Saturday mornings at seven. I left the house just before seven this morning, drove over there, got the car serviced and paid for it, then made a quick grocery making run on Manhattan Boulevard and walked back into the house with the grocery bags at about eight thirty this morning. There was little to no traffic, and since I can’t eat anything solid yet, there was no reason to stop at either Sonic or Five Guys on the way home (not that they were open yet, and if they were, they’d be serving breakfast, shudder). That went so smoothly–and yes, believe you me, I was feeling some anxiety as I walked out to the car this morning–that I am now beginning to wonder if letting myself sleep in on the weekends rather than setting the alarm for six to get up like I do every day of the week….I mean, I am awake and feeling functional right now, which is more than I can usually say at this time when I’ve allowed myself to sleep in a bit. (Tug also is used to being fed when I get up at six, so needless to say, he was having some Big Kitten Energy this morning as I kept hitting snooze.) It was also a lovely morning out–it was only sixty-nine degrees outside, which felt amazing; we’re obviously having a cold snap–and I also took a different exit since there was so little traffic; I stayed on 90 and got off at Camp Street instead of Tchoupitoulas, which brought me up Magazine–which I’ve not really drive up in a very long time–at least not since the office moved in 2018. It’s also very different down there, so I am going to need to walk around and explore that part of the neighborhood at some point.

LSU is playing at Missouri today; Missouri is undefeated but not ranked very highly, but there’s no telling how the game will turn out. It depends on which LSU teams shows up, I reckon. I think I’m going to be leaving around noon, so I can catch the beginning of the game and have an idea of how it’s going to go before Dad texts me and I depart on my four and a half hour journey into the heart of the panhandle; the belly of the beast, as it were. I read some more of the Sager novel in the waiting room of the dealership this morning; I’m enjoying it, for sure, but it has a bit of a slow start because of the necessary exposition and back story; I’ve gotten to the place where the present-day narrative is really starting to take off, so I imagine it will read like a brush fire now. Alabama is also at Texas A&M; I think Alabama has found its groove now and is most likely going to win out the season. Plus, I really hate Jimbo Fisher–I’ve hated him since he was at Florida State, and let’s not forget what he did to that program before getting his big payday at A&M (which he has yet to earn).

We finished off this season of Only Murders in the Building, which wrapped up the case of the Broadway show murder and ended with yet another murder in the building which is the set-up for the next season. I doubt Meryl Streep will return for another season, but hey, you never know. We also watched this week’s Ahsoka, but my mind was drifting a lot. I’m not sure if that was the season finale; I thought last week’s could have served as the finale, to be honest. But Our Flag Means Death is back, so we can watch that tomorrow when I get back (yay!) and something else has also dropped a new season for us to watch, but I’m not sure what it is at the moment.

And on that note, I am going to pack and start doing the last minute things I need to get done before I depart. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader–I may not be back here until Monday, so try to go on without me.

Biggest Part of Me

Well, I am not going to get my dentures until Monday; they just called and the dentist isn’t in today, so I can’t get them until Monday morning, which makes this weekend a bit more difficult–sigh, eating will be a bit of a challenge for me this weekend in Panama City Beach, but at least I get them Monday morning–which means I can get groceries and start eating normally again on Monday; which is fantastic and makes me incredibly happy. I think I can probably chew if I take the uppers out, but I hardly would want to be doing that in public. But Monday I can eat normally again, although I still have a lot of the softer food to get rid of without wasting. I’ve actually liked some of these options I’ve adapted to–who knew hot and spicy ramen would be so fucking good?–and I will miss the ice cream of course, but I didn’t really lose a lot of weight while on this diet (my body always adjusts very quickly) but I am hopeful that will become more of a reality for me (actual weight loss) once the teeth are done and the surgeries are over and I’ve recovered. The weather has become cool enough for me to take walks when I get home from work; I’ve just been so focused on bonding with li’l Tug that I’ve not really made use of the time as productively as perhaps I should have.

Tug is becoming more and more at home, and showing more and more Big Kitten Energy every day. When I got home from work there was a trail of…well, I won’t say destruction because that wasn’t what I found; but there was a lot more stuff on the floor when I got home than was there when I had left. Last night he slept a lot in my lap, but then would get the “wanna play!” zoomies, where he was running around knocking things off and playing with everything and chasing things. I read some more of Riley Sager’s Final Girls, which is quite interesting and holding my attention, and then switched over to some Youtube videos. I watched another old episode of Friday the 13th the Series, which is fun, as always; it also occurred to me that I’ve basically given a sort of the same set-up backstory to A Streetcar Named Murder that the show had; my main character inherited an antique shop from an old uncle of her husband’s she didn’t know, the first case involved an item from the store, etc. etc. etc. (I just last night put that together–there truly are no new stories under the sun, are there? This is what I mean when I say things like I have so many influences I can’t possibly list or remember them all–pretty much anything I’ve ever read and any movie/television show I’ve seen has influenced me in some way.) Paul had a meeting last night so he wasn’t home before I started falling asleep in my easy chair; Tug and I repaired to bed before Paul got home around ten and I slept until eight this morning; ten hours! That never happens, Constant Reader, and it felt great. I feel very rested and relaxed this morning before I dive into my work-at-home duties, of which there are quite a bit today. I also have some errands to run late this afternoon after work, and of course tomorrow mornign I have to get up early and get the oil changed–which means more of the Riley Sager. I’m also a little excited to listen to Stephen Graham Jones’ The Only Good Indians on the way over and back, and I want to finish the Sager this weekend so I can reread The Haunting of Hill House and The Dead Zone before moving on to Elizabeth Hand’s A Hanunting on the Hill–although I’ll reread the King before the Jackson, because it just makes more sense to pair the Jackson with Hand’s retelling of the same tale, doesn’t it?

The switch from blast-furnace summer heat to the coolness (relatively speaking) of fall has been wonderful, and I hope my Entergy bill reflects the cooling of the weather. The kitchen is a mess, as always on Friday mornings, so of course I have some things to do around here before I get started on my work-at-home chores or do some writing or reading or whatever I need to get done here around the house. The new season of Our Flag Means Death dropped last night, as well as other new episodes of our shows (Ahsoka, Only Murders in the Building, among others) and we also want to start The Changeling, based on Victor Lavalle’s superb novel.

So I am hoping for nice productive day at home. I feel rested and relaxed–always a plus–and maybe not as motivated as I would like, but hey, that’s on me and the coffee I have yet to finish consuming. I’m going to finish off my morning with a cup of cacao, because I am trying to get used to it and it would be great to wean myself entirely off coffee, but the cacao is taking some getting used to–it doesn’t really have the bitter bite of coffee, which is the part of the taste I prefer. Cacao is more like unsweetened hot chocolate–and it’s probably the real chocolate taste, as opposed to the insanely sweetened version Americans are used to. I’ll have to get up early tomorrow to get the oil changed in the car–since I’ll be on the West Bank, I should probably go ahead and grocery shop while I’m over there, and then I won’t have to worry about it when I get back on Sunday night, which does make the most sense.

And so, on a more cheery note than usual lately, I am going to take this chance to head into the spice mines. I may be back before tomorrow morning’s before the oil change at the crack of dawn, but one never can be sure. At any rate, have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll talk to you again soon.

NOLier Than Thou

(NOTE: I started writing this post back in January, after I’d returned to New Orleans from my last Mystery Writers of America board meeting–this is to give context to the opening paragraph– as you are no doubt well aware, Constant Reader, that I’ve not been back to New York since January; so this is that same trip where this happened and I started thinking about these things, which have never been far out of the forefront of my mind since then.)

While I was in New York recently, walking around to and fro, here and there, hither and yon, I was always checking my phone (and yes, I hate that I’ve become one of those people) and then shoving it back into my pants pocket without putting it to sleep first or closing the app that was open. As I walked around, of course this led to my phone doing all kinds of weird things –closing an app and opening another, etc.; but at least there were no butt dials, right? At one point, when I pulled out my phone as I took a seat on the subway, somehow what was open on the screen was a google search for my book A Streetcar Named Murder–and when I went to close that screen I touched one of the images by mistake, which took me to the Goodreads page for the book. Bear in mind, I never look at Goodreads for any of my books, let alone Amazon–the temptations to start reading the bad reviews is too great, and while I can usually laugh them off, occasionally–and it depends entirely on my mood, of course–one will get under my skin and it will annoy me, and that’s not good for anyone.

This particular day on the subway the Goodreads page opened to the bad reviews first–its average is four stars, which I will always take because I am not Lauren Hough–and the very first one made me laugh out loud on the subway. Paraphrased, it was basically someone taking umbrage at “someone who doesn’t live here or know the first thing about New Orleans” writing a book about New Orleans. The reason they had come to this conclusion was because Valerie referred to Mardi Gras as “Fat Tuesday”, and according to this one-star reviewer, no one from New Orleans would ever say Fat Tuesday instead of Mardi Gras.

Well, I’ve lived here for twenty-seven years and I have heard any number of locals say Fat Tuesday rather than Mardi Gras, and so of course I had to click on the reviewer’s profile…and grinned to myself when I saw that they actually live in Metairie, not New Orleans…which to locals is a bigger crime than getting something wrong about New Orleans: claiming to be from New Orleans when you actually live in Metairie. (the rejoinder is usually along the lines of “bitch, you live in Metairie.”)

It was also kind of fun to be accused of inauthenticity when it comes to writing about New Orleans, because I personally have never claimed to be an expert on anything New Orleans (others have said that about me, and I always am very quick to reply not even close); the more I learn about the city the more I realize how little I actually know about the city. There’s an extremely rich (and often incredibly dark) history here; it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that the New Basin canal was there as long as it was, or that there were several train stations around the French Quarter (including one that essentially was in Storyville–rather convenient for the whores and pimps, right?), or that where UNO is now used to be the lake shore resort of Milneburg, or that the only way across the river or the lake was by ferry until Huey Long built a bridge at the Rigolets (the narrow inlet between lakes Pontchartrain and Borgne).

I was on a panel once at the Tennessee Williams Festival with Bill Loefhelm (if you’re not reading Bill’s books, shame on you and correct that immediately) and the question of New Orleans authenticity came up, and Bill’s response (paraphrasing) was that New Orleanians have a tendency to play a game called “NOLier than Thou,” in which they try to one-up each other to see who the true New Orleanian actually is–which is, of course, gatekeeping. (And yes, I immediately turned to him and said, “I like that and am going to steal it” SO CONSIDER IT STOLEN.)

It does bother me somewhat when I read books set in New Orleans written by people who have never lived here; you can tell, but I also get over it pretty quickly; who is to say who can and can’t write about a place? There’s a significant difference between visiting and living here, which I realized almost immediately after we moved here, and that also becomes very apparent in fiction. I had started writing the book that would become Murder in the Rue Dauphine before I moved here, and I realized, once I did live here, that everything I’d written about New Orleans was completely wrong. I didn’t work on the book for another two years; and even then I wasn’t entirely sure I’d lived here long enough to write about the city. So…I kind of cheated by making Chanse MacLeod not a native either; he’d moved to New Orleans after getting his degree in Criminology from LSU, and had been here about six or seven years when the story opened. So he was an outsider, too; so his views on the city and how things work around here were from an outsider’s perspective, like mine; that was easier. With Bourbon Street Blues, I decided that Scotty was not only a native but came from two old-line society families, from the Garden District and Uptown. One of the greatest joys of my publishing career was having the Times-Picayune’s mystery reviewer, as well as the Books Editor, both say repeatedly that I got New Orleans right in my books. (Thanks again as always for all of your support, Diana Pinckley and Susan Larson!)

And I never really worried about it too much from then on. I wrote about New Orleans as I saw it–the potholes, the cracked sidewalks, the leaning houses, flooding streets, oppressive weather and hurricanes. As the years passed, I became more and more aware that my New Orleans writing was primarily confined to the Quarter, the Marigny, the CBD, the Lower Garden District, the Garden District, and Uptown–a very narrow slice of the city, but those were also my slices of the city, so that’s I wrote about. Sometimes I’d venture into another neighborhood–Lakeview, the Irish Channel, English Turn–and sometimes the story would take the characters to another part of Louisiana–the bayou and river parishes, the Maurepas swamp, the Atchafalaya Swamp, Baton Rouge–which, oddly enough, I had no qualms about fictionalizing. I’ve created numerous fictional towns and parishes surrounding New Orleans; I’ve even invented a sleazy gay bar in the Quarter (the Brass Rail).

So, was I doing New Orleans (and Louisiana) right by making stuff up, inventing places like the Royal Aquitaine Hotel, the Brass Rail, Bodytech Health Club, Riverview Fitness, etc.? Sometimes you have to fictionalize things, even if they are based on something that really exists. I never really thought much about it; I felt like I was getting the feel of New Orleans right, that my characters talked the way people in New Orleans do and react the way people here do, and that I was putting enough reality into the books for them to ring true to locals, natives, and tourists. Sometimes the cases are based on, in or around something that actually happened or exist; like the Cabildo Fire, the Fire at the Upstairs Lounge, Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing flood; termite swarms; Huey Long’s deduct box; and even the court case in, I think, Murder in the Irish Channel that triggered the murders was actually based on a civil trial I served as a juror on.

When I started writing A Streetcar Named Murder, I realized a lot of things I was writing about had to be fictionalized; I couldn’t set a murder at a Mardi Gras krewe ball and use an actual krewe that exists in real life, for one thing (like I had to invent a French Quarter hotel for a couple of murders to occur in) and while I didn’t want to use the cheat that Valerie had moved here again, like I did with Chanse, I wanted her to be of New Orleans but not be of New Orleans…so her parents are from Georgia and moved here after college and marriage, so Valerie was born here, went to school here, met and fell in love with and married her husband here–but her roots aren’t very deep, so she is both insider and outsider at the same time. I liked that idea; like how I am of the South but not of the South, she was of New Orleans but not of New Orleans at the same time. When creating Jem Richard in Death Drop, again, he’s a recent transplant to the city but his father is from New Orleans but relocated to Dallas, where Jem was born and raised. Jem spent a lot of his summers in New Orleans when he was growing up with his paternal grandmother, so he too is of New Orleans but not of New Orleans; which I am really liking as a method of storytelling about the city. I also moved Jem to a different part of the city; he lives in the 7th ward, on St. Roch Avenue in what is known as the St. Roch neighborhood (aka what realtors are trying to redefine and rename as the “new Marigny”, in order to raise prices) which is also very close to my office. Part of this was to move the action out of the neighborhoods I usually write about (although he does wind up in both Uptown and the Quarter) and so I could explore another neighborhood/part of the city than what I usually write about.

I also had recently–prior to the pandemic–started feeling more disconnected from the city than I ever had before. Primarily I think this was due to my office moving; we had been on Frenchmen Street in the Marigny, one block from the Quarter and where Scotty lives, so whenever I needed some Scotty inspiration I could walk a block, stand under the balconies of his building and just look around, drinking in the sights and sounds and smells of the block. To get past this, I started joining New Orleans history pages on Facebook, like Ain’t Dere No Mo New Orleans or the HNOC page and various others–you do occasionally run into Confederate apologists and racists there (they usually cry about the “crime” in New Orleans–you know, the usual dog-whistles from the white flight racists who fled to Jefferson Parish or the North Shore to escape desegregation of the public schools) and reading more histories of the city, state, and region–which are incredibly fascinating. That reading/research helped me write my historical Sherlock in New Orleans short story, “The Affair of the Purloined Rentboy”–but I have also since realized I got some things wrong in the story too, but there is just so much to know. I set the story in 1916 for example….without knowing New Orleans was hit by a MAJOR hurricane in 1915 that wiped out any number of settlements and villages around the lakes and the bay shores (that will turn up in a story sometime; the destruction of the lake front village of Freniere is just begging to be fictionalized and written about). When I mentioned this to another writer, who primarily does historicals, she snorted. “It’s impossible to know everything, and would people in 1916 still be talking about a hurricane from 1915?”

Probably, but if it doesn’t have anything to do with the story being told, why would I mention it?

A very valuable lesson, to be sure.

So, yes, lady from Metairie: you caught me. I’m not from New Orleans, you’re correct. But I’ve also published over twenty novels and umpteen short stories set here, and have even won awards for doing it.

And I’ll call it Fat Tuesday if I fucking want to.

The Huey P. Long Bridge at sunset, photo credit Marco Rasi

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.

Hands

It’s hard to believe that it’s October already; but this year has also seemed to last forever, which is bizarre and weird. I slept really well last night, and had a pretty relaxing day overall yesterday. I ran my errands yesterday morning and got them all done, which was lovely and then came home to watch some football games. It was an odd day, and my primary takeaways were that LSU needs a new defensive coordinator because they’re defense is getting worse rather than better; Georgia looked surprisingly vulnerable; Florida looked terrible; and I think Alabama–even in an off year–is going to wind up winning the conference because they’re the only team with an elite defense. Paul went to the gym during the Auburn-Georgia game, and Tug slept on me the entire time he was gone, which was lovely and relaxing. I’ve missed that. There really is nothing quite as calming as having a cat sleeping on you.

It’s so lovely having a cat in the house again, and I’d forgotten what it was like to have a kitten. Scooter was supposedly two years old when we got him, but Skittle was a six month old kitten. Tug isn’t quite five (still not sure about that name) months yet, but he’s definitely got BIG KITTEN energy, He’s absolutely fearless and not shy at all. It’s also nice hearing his paws on the stairs as he comes down them. I’ve missed the sound of a cat coming down the steps. He’s not heavy enough for me to hear him jump down from the bed yet, but I’m sure he’s going to grow into a nice size. It’s always fun getting to know your new pet’s personality–and like I said, he can make a toy out of anything. Scooter also wasn’t the kind of cat who would knock things off surfaces just to see what happens–Tug appears to be both the kind who will accidentally knock things off but also will do it on purpose. He also wanted my ice cream yesterday! Like I said, he’s completely fearless–will explore anywhere, and he is also fascinated by the windows. He also can jump pretty high, and I think we don’t need to worry about bugs in the house anymore.

I’m trying out cacao instead of coffee again this morning; it doesn’t have the bitter bite of coffee that I really like, but the real test of cacao will be tomorrow morning. I have been having one cup before switching to coffee–and yes, I do wonder if it’s the caffeine addiction that makes me switch over after the one cup–but tomorrow I think I’ll have a cup of coffee when I wake up and then take cacao in my go cup for the office. I don’t think I will ever give up coffee entirely, but I think I need to bring down my dependence on it, and I should probably never have more than three cups a day anyway (the most I have when I go into the office; I drink more when i am home).

Today I have a lot to get done. I was lazy yesterday after the errands and just watched games all day. The Saints play at noon today, but I doubt I’ll have the game on today. My kitchen/work space is a disaster area, and there’s things to do–dishwasher to unload, more dishes to wash, things to file and put away–and I’d like to do some writing today if i can. I didn’t finish Shawn’s book yesterday as I’d planned, so I will finish it this morning and then move on to reading horror for the month for Halloween and do some writing this afternoon. I want to get some of these short stories edited and/or finished, and there’s some other writing clean-up that needs to be done. I also need to make a to-do list. So, I am guessing the cacao certainly wakes up my mind in the mornings, as mine is now racing. I feel a little asleep still physically, if that makes any sense, so I’ve moved on to coffee and there’s that bitter bite I like. But I am definitely going to be productive today, and the first step of that is to finish Shawn’s book. After that I’ll come back into the kitchen and clean up in here–as well as write about Shawn’s book–and do some organizing before some writing. I have so many projects in progress right now that I need to be better organized, and definitely better motivated. I know the organization thing is a by-product of the anxiety (if I stay organized I won’t get anxious worrying about things I’m forgetting to do; if I stay motivated I won’t get stressed by deadlines, and on and on and on), but coping mechanisms work and exist because they work; and anything that brings down my anxiety is okay with me.

And on that note, Shawn’s book is calling to me, and so it’s off to my easy chair with me. I’ll probably check in with you again later. And if not, have a great day, Constant Reader!

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?

Padam Padam

And here we are at a manic Monday yet again, and shortly I will be heading into the office for yet another exciting week of the day job. Hurray and huzzah? I slept really well on Saturday night, getting up just after seven yesterday despite not going to bed until almost midnight; I found myself reading some things Saturday during the games that I shouldn’t have started–one of them being Queen Margot by Alexandre Dumas; I have the ebook–and I was also reading legends and stories about Louisiana’s past as well as Alabama’s; I have an ebook called Warrior Mountains Folklore: An Oral History by Rickey Butch Walker (which is an Alabama name if I’ve ever heard one); which isn’t necessarily about the Alabama county I’m from, but the ones directly north, including notorious Winston County, which contains the Bankhead National Forest. It also tells stories of the indigenous people of the area, and reminded me that Tuscaloosa actually is the Creek words for “black warrior,” meaning the Black Warrior River is actually the Tuscaloosa (tusca loosa); this will all go into the construction of my fictional Alabama county, which is ongoing. (And yes, the irony that one of the greatest–if not the greatest–college football programs is in a town named Black Warrior in the native tongue is hilarious.)

(It has occurred to me that I don’t necessarily have to connect all of my Alabama stories just as I don’t need to connect all my Kansas stories–which I realized while writing #shedeservedit–which was kind of freeing. I need to think in terms of multiverses rather than one single interconnected universe with my writing, don’t I? It certainly makes things easier than trying to keep the continuity and so forth going.)

Anyway, I am sure my Alabama just-for-fun research will undoubtedly pay dividends in future writing, no doubt. I also have been having ideas for more stories set there; I may give Jake’s boyfriend Beau his own story at some point; I keep going back to the legend of the Blackwood witch from antebellum/early statehood days, because the witch story is one I’ve always wanted to tell. Beau, being an archaeology major with a minor in Alabama History, is just the perfect person to tell the story of the witch I’ve always wanted to tell. But is it weird to have another vengeful spirit in the woods behind the Blackwood place, and the Civil War ruins? Or could it be tied to the lost family cemetery, still out there in the woods somewhere? As you can tell, I’ve been thinking about it lately.

I managed about a little more than twenty-five hundred words on the new Valerie yesterday, which felt great to do, really. I wanted to write some more on the Jem sequel, too, but after finishing the Valerie chapter I just felt mentally fatigued. I’m not used to writing this much in a short period of time anymore (just over an hour or so) and it’s going to take me a while to get back up to the proper writing speed I cannot maintain year-round. But it felt great to be creating again, and I do love the plot of this book. I also spent some quality time with Shawn Cosby’s marvelous All the Sinners Bleed, which is going in a direction I did not see coming and one that I am really enjoying. Shawn is such a master story-teller! I can’t wait to finish this so I can write about it–and I hope I finish it in time to read Lou Berney’s new one before I switch to October Halloween Horror Month. I think I may try out a Grady Hendrix novel for one of my horror reads and of course, I am terribly behind on Stephen King, and there are also some other lovely horror novels and collections in my piles of books to be read that could make for a fun reading month: Stephen Graham Jones, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Paul Tremblay, Christopher Golden, Sarah Pearse, and Katrina Monroe, among so many others–I need to get back into the habit of reading for at least an hour every day. The only way to get through all the books i want to read is to make a daily time allowance for reading and stick to it.

After the abysmally disappointing Saints game, I went back to my easy chair and rather than delving back into Shawn’s book, I decided to start reading Jackson Square Jazz, the finished and published edition, to get a better handle on the story again. It’s been a long time, and I knew it had to do with a young figure skater, the Napoleon death mask, and the Cabildo fire, but not really much beyond that–although I think it’s actually the book where Scotty is in his first canonical car accident. Again, I am distant enough from it now not to immediate go into editing mode as I read it–ironic, since I need to re-edit it–and just read it. I really need to stop being so hard on myself. I know I’ve already made great strides in that direction, and I like my new positive attitude toward writing and publishing. I think analyzing why I am so hard on myself, recognizing the mentality I defaulted to when reading my work meant needing to flip a switch in my brain and going into a different mode other than editorial and doing it consciously makes a lot of difference. I was pleased rereading my short story collection, and was pretty pleased with rereading Jackson Square Jazz, particularly since it’s an early book in my canon and it’s been over twenty years since I wrote it.

(It’s kind of awe-inspiring and terrifying at the same time to realize just how long I’ve been doing this. Bill Clinton was president when I signed my first book contract.)

Well, that made me feel rather elderly.

I slept super-well last night, too. I was very tired and falling asleep in my chair, so I went to bed around nine and only woke up once, around two, and then woke up again half an hour before the alarm (as usual). Hopefully, I will not be too tired to function later today.

And on those two rather sad trombone notes, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will be back before you know it.

Green Light

One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is how we don’t really have a Louisiana crime writer who explores and illuminates the damage we are doing to the ecosystem and environmentalism of the state the way John D. Macdonald infused many of his Florida novels with so frequently. Condominium, published in the 1980’s, is a stinging indictment of crooked developers and corrupt politicians putting up massive condominium buildings along the coastline of Florida, despite the damage they do to the environment, all in the name of a quick buck. I have been thinking about this because I spent a lot of time in the panhandle in the 1970s, back before Panama City Beach developed into what it is now. I’ve not been back there since 1980, at the latest; but just looking at Google Earth images it’s horrifying how different and over-developed that whole area has become. (I was looking at the images because I was thinking about setting a book along the Redneck Riviera/Baja Alabama/Emerald Coast/Miracle Strip, whichever name you use for the region.) Louisiana, nicknamed “Sportsmen’s Paradise” because of the abundant fish and game and the stunning natural beauty of the state, has pretty much spent the last hundred or so years (at least) destroying and despoiling the natural resources of the state of Louisiana, killing off wildlife species while introducing new invasive ones–and don’t even get me started on Cancer Alley, that stretch of the river between New Orleans and Baton Rouge lined with petrochemical plants parked next to poor, mostly Black communities that have, surprisingly enough, large instances of cancers in the residents. Now the level of the river is so low that it can’t keep the Gulf water pushed down, and the salty water is making its way up the river and intruding into our drinking water supply here in southeastern Louisiana. I’m sure the loss of so much of the wetlands to ensure oil company profits hasn’t affected this in any way, shape or form. There’s a really good environmental thriller to be written about Louisiana (if not more), and I think maybe part of the problem in writing about the destruction of Louisiana in the name of unfettered greed is that I don’t feel knowledgeable enough on the subject to tackle it, nor do I have the time to spend on the research necessary.

It’s really disappointing to me that James Michener never wrote one of his two thousand page plus books about Louisiana. Louisiana history, no offense, is a lot more interesting than Texas’.

And Sportsmen’s Paradise is a great title for a book about Louisiana’s environmental disasters.

I suppose I should just go ahead and do it, regardless of how difficult and long and tedious the process may be. I also think part of the reason I’ve resisted this aspect of writing about Louisiana is because no matter how dark my books may get, I always want justice to be done in some way and to end the book with some sort of hope; there literally is no hope for the future of Louisiana because our politicians are all too greedy and corrupt and only focused on the now rather than the future, no matter how much they beat the “but the children!” drum publicly to fool those incapable of deeper thought. There have been so many environmental disasters in Louisiana over the nearly three decades I’ve lived here I can’t remember them all; and yes, I definitely count boil water advisories in that, too. There was the sinkhole at Bayou Corne (anyone remember that?) and of course Deepwater Horizon, whose true impact and the damage it wrought on the Gulf and the coastline will not be fully known for generations.

The one consistent thing throughout Louisiana’s history has been the entrenched systemic political corruption. I have written about that.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about Jackson Square Jazz, as I get into this revision, and remembering why I wrote it and what I was trying to say within the book; there was a thread in it that ties directly into the new one, and there are also some thematic commonalities with S. A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed, which I am really enjoying reading. Shawn is such an extraordinary writer, with a gift not only for language but character, dialogue, setting and story; the complete deal, as it were, and definitely is going to be considered one of the definitive crime writers of this new generation of exceptional talent that has risen over the last few years. I am going to spend some more time with Shawn’s book this morning, too; I am really enjoying it and wanting to see where it goes and how it all ends. I also have the new Lou Berney on deck, and Lou’s books are always high-quality, clever, and engaging.

College football was interesting yesterday. My Tigers prevailed in a three-point nail-biter against Arkansas in Tiger Stadium 34-31, running the clock out and kicking the winning field goal on the last play of the game. Paul and I were stunned, as was the crowd in the stadium..,and then I laughed. “LSU fans aren’t used to smart clock management in tight games,” I observed, and Paul started laughing with me because the crowd in the stadium didn’t know how to react to the end of the game either. It almost seemed ant-climactic rather than exciting…how many games have we lost this century because of poor clock management skills displayed by the coaching staff? So it was lovely, for once, to see the Tigers play smart at the end of a game for a change. Alabama finally looked like Alabama for the first time this season–but only in the second half as they iced Mississippi. LSU now has to play Mississippi in Oxford next weekend; it’ll be interesting to see how LSU stacks up against our old Magnolia Bowl foe. Colorado finally lost, which brought out all the racist college football fans on social media. The Texas A&M-Auburn game was just sloppy, ugly and unimpressive, while Mississippi State fell to South Carolina. But the big game of the day lived up to its billing–Ohio State v. Notre Dame in South Bend, with the Buckeyes scoring the winning touchdown on the literal last play of the game, 17-14. I literally only saw the closing minutes of the game, switching over once the LSU game concluded. The Saints play at noon today at Green Bay, so the grocery run I need to make will happen around that time–no fool me; everyone knows the best time to make groceries is during a Saints game here.

Yesterday was pretty relaxing, over all; a lovely day for the weekend and a restful and nice one, despite the stress of the LSU game. I’ll probably have the Saints game on in the background because it’s too anxiety-making to watch the games. (I have yet to learn how to control the anxiety during a game; it was certainly there last night and while I tried very hard not to get negative during the game, I could feel the adrenaline spiking and my heart rate going up, but I managed to keep my mind from spiraling and going super-dark as well not getting overly emotional It is, after all, just a football game and LSU football success isn’t necessary for my mental well-being.)

My goals for today are to read Shawn’s book for a few hours, get cleaned up and make a grocery run; while finishing the first chapters of the new Valerie and Jem books (tentatively titled, thus far, The House of the Seven Grables and You Gone, Girl) and also wanting to do some short story work as well, which is always fun. This Friday I am getting fitted for my new teeth (hurray!) and I have also reached the point where I can eat and enjoy noodles, so yesterday I made box mac’n’cheese (not Kraft, but one that came from the refrigerated section and simply needed microwaving and stirring; it wasn’t bad, either). Tonight I am going to make ravioli for dinner; we’ll see how that goes, although I am sure I won’t be able to eat any garlic bread. (I am able to eat Cheese Puffs, though.) I really want a burger, more than anything else. We are also making a trip to the SPCA to adopt a cat this coming Friday, which is perhaps the most exciting thing of all! I’ve really missed having a cat; they are such darling animals, and of course we want to get another ginger boy.

And on that note, I think I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back–if not later, than tomorrow.