Category: revising

Summer Days

So summer is officially over for the year, and now it’s fall, with the onset of bipolar weather here in New Orleans. It’s still hurricane season–and we’ve had late season ones before, never forget–but we sort of are able to breathe a little bit easier now than through the horrors of July and August. Doesn’t mean we are out of the woods yet–Rita and Zeta and others, oh my!–but there’s something about getting past Labor Day that makes it seem slightly less worrisome. (Almost all the bad hits New Orleans has taken since we’ve lived here are around Labor Day…I can’t remember the names of them all, but Katrina, Ike, Isaac and now Ida?) The city is still kind of a mess; they picked up our trash but not the bags of debris from the yard and the sidewalk (those fucking crepe myrtles!), and of course there are still branches and browning leaves piled up everywhere throughout the city.

When I got home from work yesterday it was quite a beautiful day, and I decided you know, it’s a beautiful day and the doctor’s office is at Touro, which isn’t really a huge walk, so why not? If you get tired or can’t face walking home, go up to the corner at St. Charles and take the streetcar home, and so, I walked. It was an absolutely beautiful day, so I walked up Prytania to get there and walked home down St. Charles, taking pictures for Instagram all the way there and all the way home. I didn’t get tired, really, until I got to my own corner on St. Charles; going to the gym was definitely out of the cards–but now that the weather has changed/turned/ whatever you want to call it, I should probably go take long walks more often. It’s good for my legs, it’s good for my overall health, and it’s another step to getting myself back into physical condition. The good news is none of my leg joints are achy or sore this morning, which I am taking as a very good sign, and whether I will actually go take a walk anywhere besides the gym after work today remains to be seen…but I really enjoyed the walk yesterday. It was an absolutely stellar day; in the mid-seventies and no humidity; the sun shining but not terribly hot (I never broke a sweat the entire time, thanks to the coolness of the day), and it enabled me to feel a bit more….connected to the city again. I was having all kinds of creative thoughts and ideas were flashing through my head the entire time I was walking–about this new series, about other stories I am working on or want to work on, for the next Scotty, for another stand alone mystery–so I am going to say it was a definitely smart thing to do, something I should do fairly regularly, and I am kind of excited about this new phase of exercise being added to the program. What’s really amazing to me is my ankles and feet do not hurt today at all–which was always the issue when I had to take long walks, like to the office on Frenchmen Street or the St. Ann/Bourbon Street corner for outreach during Carnival–so I am taking that as a win.

And I also got all my steps in for the first time since I started tracking them again.

The readjustment to normal again this week seems to be going well. I’m not getting as much done as I would like (and yes, am aware that not worrying about that and laying it at the door of “return to normal” may be a cop out or an excuse–I think there’s probably still some depression going on, but I am not feeling overwhelmed for once, which is a very lovely change, frankly) but this is the first “normal” week I’ve had Since The Power Went Out (I really like that), which has been almost an entire month now, and so I refuse to punish myself for still feeling a bit disoriented and off-balance still. Things are getting done, if slowly; and part of the goal for this year was to not be so hard on myself about everything, wasn’t it? Not being hard on myself certainly doesn’t mean I am not going to get anything done going forward; it just means I need to be more gentle with myself and stop beating myself up over shit.

It looks like it’s another gorgeous day outside; seriously, I always forget how fucking beautiful it is here in the fall and spring–which is why we live here and put up with the summers, which aren’t that bad (as I always say, “hey, I don’t have to scrape humidity off my windshield nor do I have to shovel it off my sidewalk”) and of course, the new book series I am writing–hopefully, a series and not a one-off–takes place in the fall; late September/early October–so I can also riff on the beautiful sunny days and cooler evenings/nights; the shortening of the days and how it gets so dark around five every day; you know, all the stuff I love to write about because I get to talk, really, about how much I love it here.

And I really, really, REALLY need to get back to writing (and reading). That’s what it is going to take to make me feel centered and recovered from all of this from the past month; nothing else works like writing–and I am always unsettled and unhappy when I am not writing. So, after work tonight and after i get home from the gym, I am going to write. And then I am going to read for a while.

That should firmly hit the reset Gregalicious button, methinks.

We finished watching Sex Education last night, which is really quite good and charming, and we also got caught up on The Other Two, which also has some excellent queer characters and representation on it and isn’t nearly getting the press other, lesser shows are; it’s very good, well acted and written, and clever as all hell–although the character of the younger brother, whose Youtube singing stardom is what triggered the opening of the show to begin with, isn’t being utilized nearly enough, I think; there is still a lot of hay and humor to be mined in social media/influencer stardom. We also probably have some other episodes of shows we are watching to get caught up on–Titans, Nine Perfect Strangers–and certainly others to begin and watch; there really are an insane amount of options now. We also want to watch that movie about the young kid who wants to grow up to be a drag queen (Everybody’s Talking About Jamie) which looks absolutely charming, and there are other things. I think I may finally watch The Postman Always Rings Twice (the Lana Turner version) today while I am doing my work from home, because I have never actually seen it, much as it shames me to admit. (As I have always said, my education in both reading novel classics as well as watching cinema classics is sadly lacking.)

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I will let you know how today turned out.

Twenty-Four Hours a Day

Wednesday and the mid-week point. I only have to work this morning–I have a doctor’s appointment at one this afternoon, so I’ll be leaving the office around twelve to head uptown–and then to home, probably the gym and hopefully to get some writing done. One can dream, cannot one?

The doctor’s appointment is the pre-colonoscopy preparation visit; today I will get the procedure scheduled–can’t wait–but while I am not thrilled at the prospective, potential scary diagnoses that could come from it, it’s better to know rather than not. Whether there’s a genetic predisposition to cancer or not, both sides of my family have seemed to have had an excess of cancer diagnoses, which makes me tend to think I am relatively high risk (although neither parent has ever had it). There’s also all the other genetic predispositions–high blood pressure, heart disease, all those lovely things that do tend to run in families–and of course, I get all of it from both sides, which isn’t terrific. But there’s also little I can do about genetic predispositions–other than eating better (which is always a problem for me) and healthier and of course, going to the gym regularly–which has completely fallen off since the power went out. Today I need to climb back onto the horse and work my ass out.

Last night I was very tired. My last two appointments canceled on me, so I came home early and did some on-line trainings, and still have several more to do (hello, two days working at home!). And I didn’t have either the energy to read or write last night after I was finished with bloodborne pathogen training (try not to envy me too much, okay?) The LSU game is at eleven on Saturday, which means any and all errands will be delayed until Sunday; my mood for the rest of Saturday is entirely dependent on how well LSU fares in its first SEC game. A loss here means a potential season of no-wins in the conference; the division just keeps getting better–even Arkansas and Mississippi look vastly improved this year–and Mississippi State (Saturday’s game) was one of our inexplicable losses from last year…and that’s not taking into consideration the murderer’s row of Auburn, Florida, Texas A&M, and Alabama. Heavy sigh. It’s going to be a long, ugly football season I fear, and the Saints didn’t look too great last weekend, either.

Yay.

But I had some excellent book mail this week: These Toxic Things by Rachel Howzell Hall (it was supposed to be delivered the week after Ida; it took a bit longer, needless to say); Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead; and Bitterroot Lake by Alicia Beckman (a pseudonym of the fabulous Leslie Budewitz). So, if I can ever finish reading Velvet Was the Night, I have some other excellent reading in store–but October is rapidly approaching, and I want to spend October reading horror, beginning with my annual reread of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I also have so much writing to do–Christ, I haven’t written much of anything since before the power went out (a phrase I am using so regularly I am beginning to think I should start referring to it as Before The Power Went Out), although yesterday I did spend some brainstorming time on my next book and I did try to work on an essay. Progress? But it was something, at any rate, and something is better than nothing at this point, quite frankly.

And yet…

Maybe–and this is a big maybe–this week is a period of readjustment, as life returns to normality (or what at least passed for it Before The Power Went Out–oooh, I do like that) I need to get used to my normal schedule again before I can settle into it and get my shit together again–or I’ve just gotten incredibly good at justifying laziness and procrastination after a lifetime of practice. But today is the first day of autumn officially (I rather jumped the gun on Twitter yesterday, getting a resultant scolding from my friend Alafair), and tonight the low is dipping into the sixties, and it will do that very thing every night through the weekend. It wasn’t horribly humid yesterday–at least it didn’t feel like it; it felt much cooler yesterday despite my car telling me it was 92 degrees when I left the office yesterday–and even this morning, the air was a bit thick (it rained a bit overnight) but there was a bit of a nip in the thickness, which indicates the ignominy of the summer heat is finally past. There were still occasionally be days where it gets up into the high eighties/low nineties, but the humidity is pretty much finished for the year (please please please don’t prove me wrong) so it’s actually lovely; rather southern California-ish outside.

So, here’s hoping to a nice little visit with the doctor this afternoon, a lovely workout at the gym, and some quality reading/writing time this evening. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow morning.

Love Is All That I Ever Needed

And now it’s Tuesday and the world keeps turning.

Hilariously, Facebook flagged yesterday’s hunk as being against their “community standards” and removed the posts from both my main page AND my author page. I protested this ruling and won–yet despite not doing anything wrong, they left the 24 hour ban on me in place. Um, why am I banned when you admitted you were wrong about my posts? Ah, Zuckerberg. You make me want to believe hell is real…and while it is highly irritating to have to protest a suspension and get the “yeah you right our bad” while the suspension remains in place, it’s kind of amusing as well.

I really do miss a world without Facebook. Seriously. And honestly–those four or five days without Internet would have been lovely if we’d had air conditioning and power.

Getting up early is beginning to already become tiresome–so that means things are getting back to sort of normal for one Gregalicious here. I was also relatively tired when I got home last night, so didn’t get much of anything accomplished after getting home from work last evening. I’d intended to get some things done, and made a good start, but once I parked myself into the easy chair the day was essentially over, really. I don’t feel sleepy this morning, or like I had to force myself up and out of bed this morning or anything; I actually feel more awake than I usually do, and the coffee is quite tasty this morning as well. I also keep forgetting that I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow at one, and therefore only have to work in the morning. I also need to take my car in the have a tire repaired; it’s always had a bit of a slow leak, which has only gradually gotten worse….in the beginning I needed to air it up maybe once every few month, if that often, but it’s becoming a much more regular thing, and so…might as well get it fixed and/or replaced now before it becomes an actual issue somewhere along the line. Heavy heaving sigh. I hate having to get these things taken care of myself, you know–I’d much rather let someone else come along and handle it all for me, or to be able to simply toss the car keys to someone and say, yes, can you get this handled for me today?

Then again, I’d probably not enjoy having someone work for me.

I don’t think I would make a good boss.

I did try to write last night, so don’t get me wrong on this. I just couldn’t think of anything to say, really, which isn’t good. I guess that means the depression is still there, insidiously working on my brain subconsciously. Outside of this blog I’ve not really been able to write anything other than emails for quite some time, and that doesn’t exactly made me thrilled in the least, you know. I am always worried about losing the ability to write–it’s always there, in the back of my mind–but I inevitably can get through it, you know, and eventually will force myself to write something, anything, and the words will start coming and I am over it and the fears recede for a while. But it was really sad last night; I just stared at the words on the essay I had already started quite some time ago and maybe added one sentence to it…if that…and still wasn’t entirely certain it was even much of a sentence, let alone a good one. I know I need to push myself as I go–part of the reason I am so worried about how the next two books are going to be received is because I pushed myself for one and I took on difficult subjects that I generally try to avoid as a rule (or at least that’s what I think, at any rate)…so I am not really sure how the books will be received, which makes me nervous. Working on something new also always makes me nervous, and so this newly contracted book has me a little terrified to work on it, too.

I don’t know why I allow these things to prey on my mind, I really don’t. I really wish I could get past the fear that I am eventually going to dry up; that the next time I go to the well of creativity the bucket will come up empty. It hasn’t yet–although there have been plenty of misfires over the years (just look inside the “short stories in progress” folder in my computer sometime, if you want to see how often it does happen)–but the fear is always there that one day, it will just go away. I can’t imagine ever retiring from writing, or stopping doing it ever (unless the aforementioned fear comes true) until I die, but stranger things have happened and one truly never can say never about anything, really (other than eggs; I will never eat an egg again); I shall certainly, per the filing cabinets and stacked-up notebooks, never run out of ideas before I die, at any rate. There’s always that wealth of ideas to pull from, after all….and of course, there’s always the news, which never fails. I read a news report this morning about the sexual abuse of a bullied teenage boy at a private school in a small town in Louisiana; and as I read it my mind filled with how to present that as a novel; which characters to use for pov, what the point of the story would be, etc etc etc.

I suppose I will only ever stop writing on the day when I no longer want to type anymore.

Tonight after work I am hoping to get the kitchen cleaned, finish the laundry I started last night, and read and/or write for a little while before Paul comes home. I will also probably make dinner while I am doing all of these things; it’s weird knowing tomorrow I only have to work half-a-day, and that I can go to the gym in the afternoon after my doctor’s appointment; and then I will have the rest of the day. I did make a to-do list yesterday, but am not really certain that I have everything on it that needs to be on it, frankly; always a problem and always a possibility.

We also watched some more episodes of Sex Education last night, which is actually an incredibly good show that isn’t getting near the attention it deserves. I can’t remember ever seeing a show addressing teenage sexuality so frankly (Paul and I both wondered if everyone we went to high school with was having this much sex in high school, since neither one of us was having any); and the romance between Maeve and her disabled neighbor Isaac, including a love scene last night where they explored each other and he was telling her what he could feel, what he could experience, and what he was capable of doing, was so sweet and tender and honest; I don’t think I’ve ever seen the sexuality of people with disabilities ever talked about before, let alone so honestly and frankly and intimately. Seriously, check it out–plus there’s amazing gay representation on the show, and the romance between Eric and Adam (while slightly problematic in how it all began) is actually incredibly sweet and charming.

Honestly, there’s so much wonderful queer representation happening in film and on television these days I cannot possibly list them all, let alone watch them all. To be sure, there is still problematic representation, of course; but I also cannot help but think what a difference watching something like this Sex Education would have made for me as a teenager….likewise, I love seeing how men are changing it up and taking risks for their red carpet/awards show looks, as evidenced in part at the Emmys the other night. I’ve always hated that men were always stuck in suits or tuxedos, with very little creativity in anything other than color combinations. I loved that the actor who plays Coach Beard wore a top hat and a walking stick; it was really very cool (I had already decided that should I ever need to dress up again, I wanted a top hat, a walking stick, and tails).

It really is such a completely different world from when I was a kid, seriously.

And on that note, tis time for me to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader.

Echo Valley 2-6809

Monday morning and the day job grind begins yet again, but I don’t really mind, to be honest. At this point, anything that feels like a sort of normal routine again is quite welcome, to be completely honest. I didn’t want to get up–I never do, really–and with extreme dark going on outside right now, it does rather feel like I should still be in bed, quite frankly. But normality is normality, and I am choosing to look at the misery of being up this early as another step on the road to returning to normal. I am awake and not groggy, so that has to mean something, right?

The weather forecast also shows that fall might be on its way at long last as well; there are nights later this week where the temperatures are going to drop into the sixties! #madness

So perhaps the dog days of summer–with the brutal heat and humidity–are finally over. One can hope, at any rate. It is mid-September, which is right around when this happens every year, after all. Within a few weeks after Labor Day is when the weather breaks and we have our fall–perhaps not as chilly as every where else, but nevertheless, it does signal the change of season (such as it is in New Orleans, after all) and shorter days, which means coming home from work in the dark soon enough. I hate that–it means leaving for work in the dark and coming home in the dark, which makes it feel like you’ve lost the entire day, even though it’s merely an allusion of light vs. dark. Winters always seem grim to me because of the lack of light, frankly.

The Saints played terribly and got their butts beaten pretty badly by Carolina yesterday afternoon, which made things a bit easier for me: I didn’t need to do more than check in on the game every once in a while. I am not sure why it’s so difficult for me to watch the Saints than it is LSU–I can watch LSU play terribly and never miss a minute of the game, yet the Saints somehow feel, have always felt, a little more personal. Maybe because the Saints are New Orleans and LSU is Louisiana? I’m not entirely sure why it is, but the Saints sometimes I just can’t bear to watch them sometimes, and yesterday was one of those times. It just really hurts more when they lose than when LSU does (although an LSU loss is always a heartbreak); plus I grew up with an entirely different mentality about college football than pro. I never paid a lot of attention to the NFL before moving here and taking up the mantle of the Saints; plus the fact that their stadium is actually about a fifteen to twenty minute walk from our house makes the fandom seem a bit more real.

Ah, well, it’s not looking to be a great year for higher-level football in the state of Louisiana this year. Yay?

I have two goals for today: to get through my emails (sob) and to revise “The Sound of Snow Falling.” I have some notes on the new cozy series I’d also like to get typed up; the story and background are all starting to fall into place for me, and I am very excited about this, to say the least. I want to spend the rest of what’s left of September preparing to start writing this book come October 1, as well as getting some more of my other work revised; and maybe even get some short stories out there for submission–it’s been a hot minute since I’ve sold a short story, and I need to get back to work on that; one of the great pleasures of my career is selling/placing short stories; and perhaps it’s time to go back to the Ellery Queen well; I’ve not sold anything to that market in almost ten years. (Alfred Hitchcock is still on my list, FYI.) But I have to have something that’s actually ready, and I don’t really think I have any such thing on hand, to be honest….but then again, the short story file folder with its INSANE amount of sub-folders is also rather intimidating whenever I try to look into it…but I need to get back on the horse and I need to get back to writing again. The tock is clicking…

We watched the Amazon Prime docuseries LuLaRich yesterday, and it was…something. The thing I’ve always wondered with multi-level marketing has always been don’t you eventually run out of people to sell to? If everyone is buying to resale, won’t someone at some point eventually need to find actual customers who just want the product? It’s kind of like how I’ve always seen the economy, really–which is the ultimate MLM scheme–at some point people need to be able to buy products and services for the economy to work, so why is overtaxing the vast majority of people, and underpaying them for their work, the right way to handle the economy? Doesn’t it make more sense, economically, to broaden the amount of spending money the vast majority of people in the economy have, rather than letting it all go to the upper level? I am not an economist, obviously, but I have never been able to get anyone to answer that for me, and for the record, the voodoo economics of “the trickle-down theory” never works; it didn’t in the 1920’s, it didn’t in the 1980’s, and it sure as fuck is not working now. It’s just MATH, and it’s not that fucking hard. But the married couple who created this company aren’t evil people, really; I don’t think they actually understand anything about business and law and how to properly run a company…but they certainly did stoop to some seriously evil practices the deeper they got into the area where they didn’t know what they were doing. But I suspect they will wind up very rich at the expense of a lot of people who were sold a bill of goods about being entrepreneurs.

Which is sad, and makes me feel bad for the victims. (I always feel sorry for the victims, and try really hard not to be judgmental. It’s very easy to fall into the what were you thinking? Don’t you know there’s no such thing as easy success and easy riches in this world? But they already feel bad enough as it is–marriages ruined, financial bankruptcies, uncertain futures–and that mentality really feels like kicking an injured dog.)

Although it would make for an interesting Liane Moriarty novel, wouldn’t it?

And on that note, tis off the spice mines for me. Have a lovely Monday, everyone, and I will speak with you again tomorrow morning.

Rainmaker

I overslept yet again this morning–for whatever reason my body continues to demand extra sleep and extra rest–but I also woke up to a sunshine day this morning, and that’s simply marvelous. I slept very well, too–I actually fell asleep in my easy chair last night watching college football highlights, so there was that–and of course, now I have to readjust to getting up at six every morning beginning tomorrow again, which is actually fine, really. I made some progress on some things while sitting in my easy chair watching LSU play like LSU again last night against Central Michigan–final score 49-21, could have been much higher, as the started sat down after we went up 42-7 early in the third quarter–and it was quite lovely watching LSU play up to their potential for the first time this season. I feel a little bit better about starting SEC play now; I still don’t think we have the wherewithal to compete with Alabama, but I am not so worried as I was about some of the other teams in the league. I was also impressed by how close Florida came to knocking off Alabama yesterday as well…and I don’t think Florida is the best team in the East, either; that’s Georgia, methinks. So, it could be an interesting year for the SEC; not sure what the Auburn loss to Penn State means either, other than maybe Auburn may not be on track for a run this year, either.

The Saints are playing at noon today, which means I’ll probably have to watch part of the game at the gym; which is fine. I am not as rabid about watching every second of a Saints game the way I am with LSU; the Saints cause me too much stress sometimes to watch. I was impressed with how they played last week against Green Bay; we’ll see if they can keep that momentum alive this week, won’t we?

We also watched some Sex Education, which continues to be an absolutely charming little show, and the season premiere of The Morning Show, which doesn’t get near the attention it should, really. I tried to read a little bit yesterday to little or no avail; my mind still can’t focus on reading yet. The creative side of my brain is really starting to kick into gear again after the sort of short-circuiting the Ida situation caused; now i have to remember how to focus the creativity so I can get all this stuff done that I need to get done. I also need to start promoting my new book coming out in less than a month, but I am not quite there yet emotionally and mentally yet. I am hoping seeing clients again for three consecutive mornings will be the final return to normality that I so desperately need, that I so desperately hope will clear the cobwebs and dust from my brain and get me to sit at the keyboard and write again.

God, there’s so much to do. I cannot allow myself to let the depression to sneak its tendrils into my brain and give me that sense of being so overwhelmed that my subconscious thinks there’s so much to do I will never get it done so why bother trying which is the death knell, really; the surrender to my brain chemistry I’ve been fighting for well over twenty years. But I know I can do it all, I just need to get started and go until my energy (or interest) flags. And to do that I need a very thorough, very detailed, probably extremely lengthy to-do list, and to make that to-do list I need to get through all these piles of everything stacked up on my desk and on every surface around it. Getting organized is always the key, and it’s never easy, especially since I inevitably will always want to goof off and do nothing–which is my preference at all times, really. But I’ve been allowing the depression to control me too much over these last few weeks, so today it ends. I am going to clean this goddamned kitchen if it kills me, and I am going to file all this shit, and tomorrow night when I get off work I am going to go to the gym because I am not going to make it there today because getting this shit all under control is more important. I know I won’t want to go tomorrow night either when I get off work, but I am not going to let my laziness continue to control my life. Did you hear that, laziness and depression? YOU’RE NOT THE FUCKING BOSS OF ME ANYMORE.

We’ll see how long that lasts.

The other night at Costco we bought some new throw rugs for the kitchen, and I must say the kitchen looks a lot nicer now than it did. I decided to go with all black and white rugs this time, rather than multiple colors, and it’s a vast improvement. I need to get a few more to completely cover the floor, but it’s already made a terrific difference in how the kitchen looks. Now to get the dishwasher repaired again, and the kitchen will be a bit more functional (the dishwasher sprang a leak before the power went out). I made groceries yesterday so the house feels a bit more stocked (I always have this thing about not having enough food in the house; a left over from being poor, I suppose) and I also bought some bleach, which I’ve been meaning to get for some time, as I only had a little bit on hand when the power went out and I went through it rather rapidly after we returned to the Lost Apartment.

It’s also a bit hard to relate to and understand that it’s late September already; I feel like this past month has passed in a very strange fog and have lost all track of dates–I have a handle on the days now–which only is going to increase pressure for me to get everything done on time that I need to get done on time.

And on that note, I need another cup of coffee. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader!

One Night Stand

Saturday morning and I slept late again. I am feeling better this morning–I actually think recognizing what was going on inside my brain and calling it by its true name yesterday morning (in the blog post I forgot to post yesterday) helped me get past it in some way; like finally knowing what it is assists in getting past it in some way. I also know that it’s insidious and sneaky, and comes in waves, so will probably go back and forth between waves of depression and possibly manic bursts of energy and creativity; I need to really get focused on channel the energy as productively as I can because of the time I’ll lose when depression’s cold fingers wrap around my subconscious again. Ugh, it’s so awful, really; but I also know from cold hard experience that anti-depressants inevitably always make me feel numb all the time…which can be in some ways equally as bad as the depression itself as far as living my life and being productive is concerned.

I am hoping to get some writing done today, as well as running some errands before today’s college football games start airing. I’ll clean while the games are on, and possibly get some reading done if I can–I really want to finish Velvet Was the Night, in no small part because the new Rachel Howzell Hall, These Toxic Things, finally arrived yesterday. We made a late Costco run last night after work, and it was sad to see how understocked even Costco was (I don’t know why I was thinking Costco would be immune to the delivery issues affecting the city’s grocery stories) but we still managed to spend a ridiculous amount of money there; part of it was buying new throw rugs for the kitchen because the old ones are kind of gross now. But we were able to get almost everything on the list (there were a few things they didn’t have that we wanted, alas) and of course, we went off-list big time in order to spend the amount of money that we did…and we still didn’t replace everything completely. I had to clean the refrigerator out again last night–I either missed some spots on the initial clean or mold spontaneously reappeared somehow–but I am hoping that I simply wasn’t as thorough with the cleaning as I thought I had been–another side effect of the depression is doing something half-assed and then giving up, thinking meh it’s good enough.

It’s literally the worst.

Today I have some errands to run–yet again to make groceries, pick up the mail, that sort of thing–and then I am going to probably park in my easy chair with my journal while the games play on television. I am primarily interested in Auburn-Penn State and Alabama-Florida, with tonight’s LSU-Central Michigan game on deck; but we are also a bit behind on our shows that we watch; everyone dropped a new episode in the last few days, and we also started the new season of Sex Education on Netflix, which hasn’t dropped it’s delightful teen gay romance (huzzah!) and seems to be just as delightful, since the characters have actually grown some emotionally since the end of the last season, which is very cool and something I all too often complain about with shows; usually if characters don’t experience some degree of growth I lose interest.

I also have a book I need to write. YIKES! (Two, actually.) The Saints play early tomorrow, which is kind of a drag–I prefer them to play later in the day than noon, which means I will need to go to the gym earlier than I would prefer tomorrow–but it’s workable. I really really really need to get through everything today and make a complete and incredibly thorough to-do list; I am still so disoriented and disconnected from the pre-Ida life that I can’t remember everything I needed to get done, get going on, and of course the insidious depression at work inside my fevered brain keeps whispering you were supposed to finish a draft of Chlorine this month, remember? Honestly, depression is such a son of a bitch! Like I need any help undermining myself?

I also need to sign books and ship them off to people to whom I owe copies of the next one. I had hoped to get that done this morning so I can mail them today when I pick up the mail, and perhaps there will be time for that before I get up from my desk and get a move-on for the day.

Heavy heaving sigh.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me.

There’s No Doubt in My Mind

Wednesday and Pay-the-Bills Day again. It seems like it’s been about a million years since the last time I got paid, but at the same time I am also very well aware of how weird the flow of time can be after a disruption–and let’s face it, I wasn’t the best with the passing of time before the disruption. August was indeed a bizarre month for one Gregalicious; one in which I turned sixty right before a New Orleans was hit by a Category 4 hurricane…and life, for that brief period between the birthday and the hurricane, really seemed to speed up ridiculously. A lot happened in that eight day or so span, which is part of the reason why I am still feeling a bit discombobulated and really need to focus to get my shit back together–and get it together in a fucking hurry at that.

I did find the old to-do list; the last one I made before Ida, and ironically…not a thing was scratched off from it, and yes, everything on it remains things I need to do and get done. It was weird, in a way; glad I was able to put my hands directly onto it, of course, but at the same time, it was still a little odd to come across something I did before and see that nothing really changed in the course of the two or three weeks that have passed since. I literally forgot yesterday that Labor Day had been last week, for example; and had to remind myself that oh yeah I was on vacation when Ida hit, wasn’t I?

Seems like it was all so long ago that sometimes it’s hard to believe it hasn’t even been a month yet since I turned sixty.

I am still a little disoriented, and trying to get a hold on things, regain my grip on things as it were, but I do think going into the office (being able to) was an enormous help, and getting up ridiculously early today and being back on my usual work-at-the-office time schedule should help even more, methinks.

The weather looks weird outside the windows this morning, and probably has something to do with Nicholas. We are in a flash flood watch for most of today through tomorrow morning, so yay? According to the weather, it’s apparently going to rain every day for ten days…again, yay? It could be worse, of course–it can always be worse, never forget that lovely part of it–but hopefully in spite of everything the grocery store supply chain can get back into place and the stores here can get stocked again. But since everyone had to empty their refrigerators, everyone needs to restock and so it can be a Sisyphean task to get the grocery stores back to pre-Ida stock levels. Of course, comparatively speaking, our grocery stores probably always look like an overabundance to foreigners.

I really didn’t want to get up early this morning, but I eventually did. It’s going to take some getting used to for me getting up early three days a week again, but much as I loathe having to go to bed early and even more so loathe getting up before dawn, it’s also a part of the routine I need to get back into. I’ve not written hardly a word since Ida’s bands starting coming ashore several weeks ago (now); other than “Parlor Tricks”, which I wrote in my journal and have since transcribed…I need to go through my calls for submissions folder and pick out stories to submit; I can start revising and reworking stories and novellas, which is an entirely different thing than writing from scratch…but I am hoping to get back to Chlorine at some point this weekend. I am not going to get the draft finished before the end of the month and having to start writing my newly contracted cozy mystery–more on that later, of course; we finally have settled on a title which I really like and have always wanted to use, even if its not the one I wanted to use–and so I think I should use the rest of the month to try to wrap up some other loose ends–like that novellas and some of these short stories.

It was raining pretty hard when I came home from work yesterday afternoon, and as such I had little to no desire to walk to the gym and back in what threatened to be a steadily drenching downpour at any moment, so instead I stayed home and didn’t really do a whole hell of a lot of anything. I started reading Velvet Was the Night again, but unfortunately my focus and attention were not having any of it, alas. I am endlessly hopeful that my focus will come back together soon. I suspect this is a transitional week and next will feel more normal–seeing clients the first three days of the week will help me feel like my life is back on track again; and am hoping that seeing clients today will help in that regard as well.

We did get caught up on Only Murders in the Building, which I am really enjoying–although I don’t see how there can be another season, unless the building in question is going to turn into a Cabot’s Cove of sorts, where someone gets murdered every season.

So, today should be an interesting one at the office, I’m not sure how many of our clients will show up; some may not even be back in town as of yet–one never knows, even though it seems as though most of Orleans Parish has power, I don’t think it’s all back in Jefferson Parish yet and of course, the outlying areas suffered even more from that skanky bitch Ida than the city itself did. I don’t think Nicholas is going to be nasty enough to require evacuation again, but there’s also the possibility of the power going out again, which would absolutely be beyond suckage, but at least it’s cooled off; there’s always a slight, barely perceptible break in the heat and humidity after Labor Day, but it does happen–even if the big change to autumn doesn’t come until later in the month/early next month.

It’s weird, but the summer–the brutal dog days, at any rate–are pretty much over at this point.

Something to be grateful for, at any rate.

And now for the spice mines. Have a lovely middle of the week Wednesday, Constant Reader.

Umbrella Man

And just like that, it’s once again Friday. I think over the course of this weekend, things will start to readjust to some semblance of normality again; I will probably, most likely, go into the office on Monday in an effort to readjust and reestablish some sense of being normal–or whatever passes for that–again. I am going to swing over there this morning to drop some things off that I’ve been working on, and just check things out in general. I also have to swing by and get the mail today as well, and I am going to go to the gym for a resurrection of Leg Day after I am finished doing my work today. Yay?

There still has been no trash pick-up in my neighborhood since before Ida, and our cans, with all that ruined food rotting in the early September heat, are beginning to smell quite ripe. There’s still a lot of debris on our sidewalks and along the gutters. Over all, not really much to complain about, and given so many people have lost everything, or have nowhere to live, or are still suffering without power in the heat…it seems like parsing and pinching things in order to find something to complain about. I’d forgotten that aspect of hurricane recovery–that sense of you can’t complain because other people have it far worse than you do rings in your ears every time you start to even slightly feel bad for yourself about your situation, or start the downward spiral of stress and aggravation and frustration. It makes adjusting and mental health integrity that much harder; one of the lessons from Katrina, really–knowing that it’s okay to complain and be frustrated and aggravated at the situation, while still recognizing your own good fortune (even if it seems like it’s a backhanded gift of a sort).

Last night, Paul and I got caught up on The Other Two, Archer, and Titans. I’m still enjoying the shows–even if the latter two aren’t quite as good as they were earlier in their run–and I think The Other Two is probably one of the better, most undervalued comedies airing on streaming right now. It’s certainly fun watching the gay brother–and the show is touching on comedic aspects of being gay I’ve really not seen covered anywhere else. As I was stripping condoms out of condom packs and doing other, various, “busy work” (it still needs to be done–these things would need to be done if the clinic was open and I was seeing clients three days a week, like pre-Ida) yesterday and watching television (I did watch this week’s Real Housewives of Beverly Hills–I am going to have to devote an entire entry to my reality shows at some point, particularly about how they are slowly starting to lose their appeal to me); although I cannot really remember what else I watched yesterday? Oh yes, some documentaries from the Smithsonian Channel, even if I cannot remember which particular ones, and I also rewatched the Brendan Fraser The Mummy–the original, which I realized I’d never actually seen; I’ve seen the sequel, but never all the way through from start to finish, which I may rectify today.

I am hearing noises from the street that sound like a garbage truck–the only inconvenience we are really experiencing at the moment is the stench of the cans when I walk out to the car–so the return of garbage pick-up would certainly serve as another indication that New Orleans is slowly coming back to what passes for normal around here.

I’m also finding it difficult to want to read again, which is weird. I’ve not written anything since Ida, and I’ve not read anything since we left town to find relief from the heat in Greenville, Alabama. I’m hoping this will change over the course of this weekend, but then…you never know. Maybe I read too much while we didn’t have power and I sprained the reading muscle in my brain. Stranger things have happened, after all. I don’t want to give the impression that I wasn’t enjoying Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s book, because I most definitely was; there’s just something off with the creative side of my brain–reading and writing both have been struck down by whatever this malaise is; but it’s more along the lines of being unsettled and not feeling like I have a strong foundation under my feet–this weird not knowing the day/date thing was very disorienting; and of course, there was all that tightness and tension built up in the muscles of neck, shoulder and back (which, oddly, going to the gym cleared up completely; obviously I am hoping going over there today after work will also be a great experience physically for me). I also still have two blog entries to write about books I read during the outage (Dead Dead Girls, A Letter of Mary) which I hope to get around to this weekend, and maybe–just maybe– I may do some writing. I know, I know, stranger things have happened, but I really need to figure out where I am with things and how much time is left in this year and when the deadlines for things are.

And on that note, tis time for me to head back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I will talk to you soon.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

Ah, Venice.

I’ve always loved Venice: the idea of a city that exists in a place where no city really should but does anyway (like New Orleans); a city with a long and remarkable history that at one time was one of the major powers of the world, despite not really having much population yet somehow carving out an empire; and always dreamed of visiting there. When Paul and I lucked into our marvelous trip to Italy back in 2014 (I think it was 2014? I could be wrong, it may have been 2015 but it really doesn’t matter) I definitely wanted to include Venice in our itinerary. We wound up only being there for twenty-four hours, but I was enchanted (I was enchanted by all of Italy, really), and have always wanted to go back and spend more time there. We were incredibly lucky when we were there; it was the week before Labor Day weekend, and there were no real crowds there (I have since seen horrible pictures of crowds so thick you can barely move), and we just wandered around looking at beautiful buildings and crossing canals and going into churches and eating gelato–lots and lots of gelato (which was every day, everywhere, while we were in Italy–we even got some at the airport when we flew back out).

Venice is also the setting for my all-time favorite novella and movie based on it (Daphne du Maurier’s “Don’t Look Now”). I love the Katharine Hepburn film Summertime, in which a lonely unmarried teacher comes to Venice and is also enchanted by how gorgeous the city is, and also finds a bittersweet romance with a handsome Italian man. One of my favorite parts of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is set there. I finally read Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice” as part of my “plague days” reading last year when COVID-19 shut down the country; as well as Daphne du Maurier’s take on the tale, “Ganymede.” John Berendt’s City of Falling Angels, about the La Fenice fire and the insanity in rebuilding the fabled opera house, was a remarkably insightful look at how things work in Venice, as well as the restoration works on the city and its gnarled bureaucracy, as well as the blasé attitudes of the locals about how corrupt and insane everything is there.

It goes without saying that the similarities between Venice and New Orleans are striking, and run much deeper than the constant threat of water and Carnival.

I started writing a novella this year set in Venice–which I’ve wanted to write about ever since I visited–and at some point I will revise it to get it ready for publication; it’s on my to-do list–and so naturally, Christopher Bollen’s A Beautiful Crime was added to my TBR pile as soon as I knew of it.

And what a delight it turned out to be.

Down below the cry of gulls, below floors of tourists undressing and dressing for dinner, below even the shrinking figure of his killer. a man lies crumpled and bleeding. He’s been dead for only a few seconds. He’s sprawled on his stomach, his body twisted at the hips, his left arm hooked in a U above his head. From a distance, from high above, he looks almost as if he were sleeping. It’s the blood leaking through his pink shirt that gives the crime away.

Outside, the sun is setting on what is unarguably the most beautiful city on the planet. There are a lot of dead bodies in this town. Upstairs in the man’s room, an English guidebook recommends taking a boat out to San Michele to visit an entire island of them. Among the legions buried there are the composer Igor Stravinsky, the ballet director Sergei Diaghilev, and the poet Ezra Pound.

The city is sinking and has been for centuries. Enjoy it while you can. The blood is pooling around the body. Screams are blaring from all directions. The killer is making a run for the exit.

But none of this has happened yet.

I don’t think I’d heard of Christopher Bollen before I heard about this book; I may have read some of his work (he writes for both Vanity Fair and Interview magazines), but I was not prepared for how good this book would be.

And the really good news is its his fourth; he has three more books for me to read and cherish and enjoy. Huzzah! (It’s always delightful to discover a new-to-you writer you love, isn’t it?)

The premise behind this book is pretty genius: a young gay couple who have fallen quickly and madly in love with each other, come up with a “foolproof” plan to con a wealthy douchebag out of enough money for the two to ride off into the sunset together after paying off their unsurmountable debt…and Venice is where the action happens. Bollen spent time in Venice interning at the Peggy Guggenheim museum, which pays off in this complex and riveting noirish thriller. Bollen brings Venice to life in a way that few other writers have; you can smell the canals, taste the food, enjoy the bite of the liquor and savor the wine and the spellbinding beauty of the city through the eyes of his characters.

Our young, intrepid gay couple are Nick Brink and Clay Guillory. Nick came to New York to escape his sterile and stale childhood home in the Midwest, and soon has a very well-to-do older man in love with him; Ari, who is an expert in antique silver and runs one of the few silver businesses left in the country. Nick loves Ari, but it’s not a deep passionate love; it seems more like gratitude and appreciation more than anything else. Ari does love Nick, but his plans for their future (he also employs Nick at the silver shop, which is pivotal to the plot of the book) are making Nick claustrophobic and feeling trapped. Nick looks at the years ahead with Ari (and possibly a child) and is terrified of what his life will become; while this is stable and nice and everything he could have possibly wanted…now that he has it, he’s not sure it is what he wanted after all.

Clay is the surviving companion of an older gay man, Freddy van der Haar, last scion of one of the first families of New York (going back to the days of New Amsterdam and the Dutch settlement); Freddy was one of the last surviving colorful characters of the wild and crazy Bohemian artist scene in New York, and had the wealth to really pursue the kind of life and lifestyle that no longer seems possible or to exist anymore. Everyone, of course, believes Clay is a gold digging conniver who may have even murdered Freddy for the inheritance. But the truth is not how it appears on the surface; there was no money left, and Clay has even gone deeply into debt taking care of Freddy as he declines slowly into death. Clay owes hundreds of thousands of dollars to student loans and medical bills, and doesn’t see any way out of his situation.

The two meet by chance at Freddy’s memorial service; Ari knew Freddy, of course, and Nick doesn’t want to be there. He slips out for air and meets Clay on the steps–Clay isn’t attending (he knows very well what Freddy’s friends think of him) but just wants to make sure that the flowers he ordered arrived. They encounter each other again shortly thereafter, when Clay brings in the last of the van der Haar silver collection for appraisal and possible sale; unfortunately it’s all worthless junk. But the mutual attraction is there, and soon Nick is slipping away from work and his shared apartment with Ari for afternoon trysts at Clay’s inherited brownstone in Brooklyn, which he is selling to help pay down the debts of Freddy’s estate as well as his own.

And the two lovers come up with a plan: part of Clay’s inheritance is a small piece of a palazzo in Venice which the van der Haars once owned completely. The rest of the palazzo is now owned by a wealthy investor named Richard West (whom Freddy despised), who has an obsession with the van der Haar family and wants to possess some of their silver. Why not have Clay try to sell the junk to West, and have Nick–who works for an antique silver firm, after all–falsely authenticate it so they can pay off all that debt and live happily ever after? West is a major scumbag, after all, who fucked Clay over once already; and is it really a crime to fuck over someone who is so awful? Not only will their debts be paid but Clay will finally have vengeance against the man who cheated him out of his dream job…and so begins the game of cat-and-mouse.

And what a delight it is. Bollen is a terrific writer–his gift for sentences and paragraph construction is amazing–and his characters all seem quite real. He peoples the book with a terrific supporting cast, all of whom are actualized; from Daniela the transwoman (who is old school; refuses the term “trans”) with whom Nick stays in Venice, to Freddy himself to West and his entourage. As the deception goes deeper, the pacing also begins to pick up, as well as the sense of dread as they change and adapt their plan and decide to go for even more money…and like the best Hitchcock films and all great noirs, the deeper they get into the deception, the more dangerous the game becomes.

Venice itself is a character; Bollen writes about the city with such love and affection that it becomes impossible to imagine the book being set anywhere else–and he also addresses the primary issue in Venice: the crowds of tourists and the outsiders buying apartments to rent out as Air BnB’s, thus driving up the cost of real estate and living in the city that is forcing the locals out (just like New Orleans! Something else the two have in common!)–and this also plays an integral part in the story.

I loved this book, and even though for a while it was making me think I need to scrap my Venice novella…I soon realized I don’t have to. My novella is in the perspective of a tourist falling in love with the city, whereas Bollen’s is written from the POV of someone with intimate, personal knowledge of the city that comes from living there and truly experiencing what it is to be a Venetian.

Highly recommended; it’s a great read.

I’m on the Road

We tried to stick it out, ever hopeful that Entergy would pull off a miracle, but today we cracked and couldn’t take it anymore. We were also out of food, and while some stores are indeed open (without power), it was incredibly ridiculously hot today; I’ve not really slept since the power went out Sunday morning; and we decided to go today. With it being the Thursday before Labor Day weekend, I knew–between Louisiana evacuees and “last holiday weekend at the beach” people, there was no point in following I-10 East and trying to find anywhere to stay. I only had a half-tank of gas, and wasn’t sure we’d be able to get any if we went north or west, so we headed east on I-10. We got gas near Biloxi (yay!) and once we hit Mobile we turned north. I knew we’d be able to find a pet friendly room somewhere between Mobile and Montgomery, and I was correct. Paul, Scooter and I are now checked into a motel in Greenville, Alabama. We’ve both taken our first hot showers since before the power went out, and are relaxing in the air conditioning (on high and full blast) while the US Open plays on the television. Everything is currently charging. Scooter isn’t sure what to make of this, as he has never stayed anywhere besides our house or the Cat Practice in the last eleven years, but he was great in the car and just slept…which is his usual state. I am looking forward to tonight’s sleep–you have no idea, Constant Reader, how much I am looking forward to finally getting some sleep. We have the room until Sunday–we’ll either go back to New Orleans or decide what to do next then. I’ll worry about it tomorrow.

It was very weird how quickly this storm came together–we barely had space to breathe or even think, and then it was already too late to go. I had to turn in my edits on #shedeservedit by the first; there were rumblings Friday morning that we were in trouble, and I had to power through the edits to get them done just in case (a wise decision, for once). I had to have my teeth cleaned Friday morning, and after I got home from that I just worked on the edits, finally finished about half an hour before I was due to meet my friend Ellen Byron for dinner at Red Gravy on Magazine Street. (The dinner and the conversation was marvelous.) Saturday morning I got up and by the time I was coherent–I overslept a bit, as did Paul–it was too late, really. I-10 in both directions a parking lot; I-55 and I-59 north both the same. We left very late for Katrina–and the crawl across the twin spans with the beginnings of the system starting to come in was not something I ever wanted to live through again. We just kind of looked at each other, and decided to ride it out and hope for the best–figuring if we made it through, we could leave afterwards. We watched a lot of television Saturday night, went to bed relatively early, and then of course, Sunday morning the power went out around eleven. I grabbed a book–I had started Megan Abbott’s The Turnout last week, and so I read for the rest of the day.

The storm was terrifying. The entire house rattled and shook, and there were times when I thought–I would swear to God this is true–I felt the house shifting before settling back to where it was once the gust had finished. I kept waiting for the windows to blow out–I moved my computer away from the windows–and finally, it was over. I never want to ride out a storm like that again, frankly; once was more than enough. And then we settled in to wait for the power to come back on, with no Internet and very very VERY spotty (did I say VERY) cell phone service, we were essentially cut off from the rest of the world. My friend Alafair texted me at some point and I asked her if the levees held; we literally had no idea what was going on, not only in the rest of the world, but in our own city–let alone our neighborhood. The weather was hot and humid but bearable–it was miserable, but it could have been much worse; had Monday been like today we would have left then.

I did manage to read a lot–I finished The Turnout and moved on to Yes, Daddy by Jonathan Parks-Ramage (loved it!), Dead Dead Girls by Nekesa Afia (also recommend); A Beautiful Crime by Christopher Bollen; Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng; and A Letter of Mary by Laurie R. King. I started rereading Paul Monette’s The Gold Diggers, and also started Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Velvet Was the Night, which came with me to Alabama. I am going to do blog posts on all of these books at some point–it was a week of amazing reading, frankly–and I also thought a lot about things I am working on and things I want to be working on, so it wasn’t a total loss of a week. I cleaned and organized in the kitchen some, and of course today I had to throw away everything in the refrigerator and the freezer, which was sad–all that money into the trash–but better to clean it out now rather than let it sit in there rotting and then come home to it. (A valuable lesson from Katrina.)

I thought about bringing manuscripts to edit with me, but then decided not to–I have the electronic files, after all, and I have enough paper around as it is. I started purging books again too–and I spent a lot of time, as I mentioned, thinking about things and life in general and what my priorities should be going forward–there’s nothing like a catastrophe to make you sit down and think about what is and isn’t important–and I am going to probably make some changes going forward. I hate that this disruption came when I was on a roll–with my writing, with the gym, with the reorganization of the apartment–but I am glad that it did happen in some ways; I was kind of letting myself drown again and a reset was kind of necessary. I also don’t know how long this particular disruption is going to last, either.

So, I am going to relax, enjoy hot showers and air conditioning and having access to the Internet again–and read and write and try to dig out from under.

And now I am going to take a doll and go to sleep.

Til tomorrow, then.