Category: shopping

You’ve Got Your Troubles

Ah, Alabama.

I spent the day with Dad, going around to cemeteries and visiting graves and getting family history lessons. We went to the oldest known grave1 in Alabama–which is in the county, and Dad’s sister-in-law is descended from the Revolutionary War veteran buried there. We had lunch in a little diner in Carbon Hill which was phenomenal–old-style home Southern cooking (didn’t care for the cornbread, but no one could make cornbread as good as my mom, and you could tell it wasn’t baked in cast iron). It’s weird being here, a bit melancholy and always a bit sad–most of the older folks from when I spent summers here as a kid are all gone. I’m sixty-three, so that’s really not a surprise but I generally don’t think about that a lot when I’m not here; being here reminds me of things and people. I remembered one of my dad’s uncles, which shocked him because that uncle died when I was about seven. (I also remember my mother’s younger brother, who also died when I was seven, less than two weeks after he turned eighteen.) I even have a single memory of our first apartment in Chicago, when I just over two years old. It’s very faint, but I remember it–it was my first time hearing the air raid sirens (which used to be tested every day back then) and it scared me, so Mom picked me up and carried me out to the back porch and told me it wasn’t anything to be scared of, and it never bothered me again.2

I’m also glad to spend this time with Dad, and also get a break from every day life and the world burning to the ground3 for a brief respite. I was listening to Nick Cutter’s The Troop in the car yesterday (yes, I picked a book that wasn’t on my list of choices, but in fairness to me I’d forgotten I’d downloaded it), and really enjoying it. I’m looking forward to listening to the rest of it on the way home tomorrow. It’s surprised me; I don’t know what I was thinking the book was about other than knowing a Scout troop was having a camp out on a remote island, and it was horror. It is that, but I thought the threat, the big bad, was going to be a psycho killer; it’s such a slasher story set-up that my brain defaulted to that trope. But it’s not that at all–and it is so much worse than that. So much worse. It did get a slow start and I had to acclimate to driving from being at the office, so my mind was also wandering a bit…but once it gets going, it really gets going. I hope my mind is receptive enough to pick up on it again right away. There had been a big twist and shift to the story right as I got here and stopped listening, too. DAMN YOU CLIFFHANGERS!!!

Okay, I didn’t finish this on Friday night because I got sleepy–I was very tired–and then this morning I got up, packed, got cleaned up, packed the car, and had breakfast with Dad before I departed for my drive home. It’s always amazing how much faster and easier driving home to New Orleans always is than driving anywhere else. I love when I first spot the Laurel New Orleans exit sign as 20 veers off east and 59 continues heading south. It was a lovely day for a drive, really. I got home around three–really good time–and collapsed into my chair, cuddled with Sparky, watched the LSU-Oklahoma gymnastics meet (it was a replay on Youtube; I knew they’d won but wasn’t able to watch Friday night. The Tigers won and broke 198.00 again, which is the kind of score you need to win at nationals), and then settled in for a lovely binge of Arrested Development. I finished listening to The Troop on the drive–finishing just as I pulled up in front of the house (more on that later, I promise) and I really enjoyed it.The Bell in the Fog is definitely going to be my next read. I was really tired, so I figured I was going to sleep well last night, and I did. So, here I am on Sunday morning in the Lost Apartment, slipping back out of my little bubble back into the real world. I am sure the world continued burning and more fuel was added to the fire…there are measles outbreaks popping up all over the country just in time for an anti-vaxxer to be in charge of health and human services. The dismantling of the CDC has already started, apparently. It was kind of odd to be visiting cemeteries with Dad on the same day, so I started taking pictures of children’s graves–and there were a lot of them. That will be a newsletter post, methinks. I wonder how many of their children have to die before the anti-vaxxer bloodlust ends?

We certainly live in the stupidest timeline–one where anti-vaxxers see themselves as pro-life somehow but want their kids to die instead of “catching autism” from them? It’s amazing how much damage an idiot D-list celebrity (Jenny McCarthy) can do to a country, isn’t it?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I recommend taking the day off from the world so you can take care of yourself, your own business, and prepare yourself for the fight.

Don’t let the bastards win.

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  1. According to my dad, who was told this by a high school friend he saw Friday. So, proverbial grain of salt involved, but…it’s also a great story. ↩︎
  2. Maybe not a good thing to get so used to air raid sirens that you don’t notice them? ↩︎
  3. Typical American arrogance; the world isn’t burning, but the government is collapsing and the Constitution becoming nothing more than a scrap of paper to be ignored. Yes, our country collapsing into a nightmare Christian National Socialist country will eventually set the world ablaze, and that meteor cannot get here fast enough. ↩︎

I Was Made for Lovin’ You

Super Bowl Sunday, for those who celebrate (we will not be) and for those who do not, Happy Sunday otherwise. I slept in this morning, and am not entirely sure why. Yesterday was a decent and easy day around here (I was terribly lazy, despite all my pronouncements to the contrary in yesterday’s morning’s post), but I didn’t get my errands ran because…Super Bowl. Traffic in Uptown was horrendous–turns out I was trying to run my errands during the Super Bowl faux-Carnival parade–and so after successfully completing one errands, I called off the rest and came back home. I did finish reading She Who Was No More (more on that later) and we started watching Arrested Development finally, and we are absolutely loving it–and it should keep us entertained for a while. I’m glad we never got to it before, because these times need comedies, and more of them, frankly.

I am not leaving the house today because of the Super Bowl, and I hope to make it down my to-do list this morning so I can, you know, get some of that shit done. It’s going to be a hectic week; I am only working a half-day on Thursday so I can drive up to Alabama for Valentine’s to meet Dad (a short trip; up Thursday afternoon and back Saturday morning), which of course means I won’t get much done next weekend–although I reckon I could take my grocery list with me and stop to make groceries on the way back into town Saturday. At least there are no parades this coming weekend to negotiate on my way home. Sigh. It’s about that time of year, too, and complicated even further with my goddamned jury duty the last week of the month. Hurray!

Ah, well, no sense in getting overwhelmed and off-track. That is not going to help me get everything done that I need to get done today, now is it? I’ve picked Lev AC Rosen’s The Bell in the Fog as my next read, and when I get this finished and some other tasks here in the kitchen this morning, I am going to go read it for a while. I really enjoyed Lavender House, the first book in this series, and I love that he and John Copenhaver are exploring what it was like to be queer in the 1950s. Since one of my future projects is also set in that time period, reading their work is not only intimidating but also a bit inspired; they’re so good it will push me to really make mine the best I possibly can–and it will still not hold up against theirs. (You never can write enough books to get over Imposter Syndrome; I think it even affects the bigger names from time to time. I guess I won’t know since I’ll never have that kind of career–which is fine. Yes, huge financial success would be lovely, but it’s not necessary. I am satisfied with my career and the work I’ve done so far…which really has all come about because I’ve just refused to stop doing it. Smarter people would have quit by now, I am sure.)

But I also need to stop being so hard on myself. My job changed, too, during the time of the surgery and the aftermath, and it’s actually become more intensive, too. Dealing with clients is draining, and so it’s not really surprising that my batteries are so often depleted after I get off work, and there’s always an errand or something to run on my way home, too. Plus, it’s not my natural body clock to get up at six in the morning every day I have to go to work, either. (I really miss the days of not going in until eleven.) I’m older, have been through some things physically these last five or so years, and so it’s not surprising that some nights I just don’t have the energy to do anything other than cuddle with Sparky and sit in my chair watching the latest in our mad dash to the end times. I really miss the days when the news wasn’t always a dumpster fire…but on the other hand, I can’t actually remember a time when it wasn’t. I just didn’t pay attention because I was a child.

And I think there’s my hint to jump over to the spice mines, so have a lovely Sunday, best of luck to those of you watching the Super Bowl (I will not be), and I’ll be back later on, I would imagine.

Time Passages

Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment, and it’s Super Bowl Eve; aka a mere forty-eight hours or so before New Orleans gets back to what usually passes for normal around here. Sparky got me up early this morning, but after a sluggish start I did get up and now, after my first cup of coffee, am starting to wake up. I did sleep well again last night, which was lovely–it’s always lovely to sleep on freshly laundered bedding–and after I finished my remote work duties yesterday, spent the rest of the doing more cleaning and organizing and did some writing. This morning I have some things to do around here as far as cleaning and organizing are concerned, and a couple of errands to do this afternoon, and then it’s back to the safety of the Lost Apartment for the rest of this Super Bowl weekend. I have literally zero interest in the Super Bowl; the removal of the end racism from the end zones by the NFL–an organization that makes the majority of its money off the bodies of Black athletes–is the kind of capitulation to tyranny one can expect from the ultra-rich. They’re getting their tax cuts, and their money is more important to them than anything else. I think that an oligarchy was always a danger to a capitalist system; the great irony is that was the preachings of false prophet and disgusting hypocrite Ayn Rand; it is impossible for ethical conduct in a country that prioritizes the dollar above all else. Capitalism has even infected Christianity, but that religion has been a rotting hulk for centuries already by prioritizing political and earthly power over spiritual.

It really is lovely having a working garbage disposal and a clean apartment; Paul and I even talked about how weird it is that such a little thing makes such a difference. The plumber also fixed the sinks so they drain properly and repaired the bathtub faucet so it no longer leaks, and just those little changes make such a huge difference. My kitchen is galley style, so counter space can be pretty limited, with the Keurig, the microwave, and my computer printer on the counters. The garbage disposal not working also meant the dishwasher didn’t drain, so I couldn’t use it–nor could I let anything go down the drain with the disposal because it would wind up backing up into the dishwasher. So, I needed counter space for the dishes to dry, and I needed to fill a stockpot with hot water to rinse the soap off them when I washed the dishes, cutting down on counter space because I had to put a beach towel down for them to dry on. This snowballed, made me feel like the apartment was getting smaller and closing in, and that it was pointless to even try to keep the house neat because it didn’t take very much for it to look like a disaster.

But finally–we’re getting it back together and it feels quite marvelous, in all honesty, to come downstairs to a clean, empty sink and nothing on the counters.

It’s been in the upper seventies/low eighties this entire week–which says everything about New Orleans weather; just a few weeks ago we had a blizzard and the city shut down for like three days–but here we are, having great weather for all the tourists here for the Super Bowl, which I am not going to watch. We did watch LSU Gymnastics defeat Alabama last night, and after that we watched this week’s Prime Target, which we are really enjoying–but we should have waited until we could binge it, as my short term memory problems mean I easily lose the plot thread from week to week. I hate losing my short term memory like this, but what else am I going to do but deal with it and come up with work-arounds? (LOL, I am realizing now that I have anxiety medications that my life has always been about finding work-arounds!) But I am feeling better these days, and here’s hoping that will continue as we move forward and despite the dumpster fire the country is gradually turning into. Thanks again, MAGA voters! But today I am going to clean and write and run my errands and try to finish reading my book and get things checked off my to-do list. I’m hoping for a good day, like yesterday was, and I don’t think that’s a whole lot to ask, you know?

And now I am taking my coffee and my peanut butter toast to the easy chair to read for a couple of hours. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back, either later or tomorrow.

Born to Be Alive

Tuesday and somehow the power’s still on and life continues in this hideous new reality when the horrible news comes and just… keeps on coming to the point that my shoulders slump every morning when I get up and sign into my computer, wondering what the hell happened while I was asleep. (This morning it was the news that the Gail Benson and the New Orleans Saints advised the Archdiocese on PR during the most recent child-rape1 . It was bad enough when Drew Brees worked with a homophobic organization to violate the separation of church and state in Louisiana, but helping the Archdiocese look better in their horrific cover up? Seriously, Mrs. Benson? I mean, most Saints fans won’t care, but I am terribly disappointed in her.)

Speaking of the Archdiocese, Catholics also gave me a good laugh yesterday on social media. You see, the Super Bowl committee worked with some local group to do projection art on St. Louis Cathedral and the the museums on other sides. It’s very cool, and changes the looks of the buildings completely. People have been sharing pictures and videos of the light show changes…so of course here come some ignorant Catholics claiming it was “sacrilege” and “how very dare they do this to a Catholic cathedral”! (You know, all caps, lots of exclamation points, bad grammar and spelling errors and specious logic.) You mean the historic landmark of the city that the Archdiocese thinks the city and its citizens should pay for upkeep and renovations and repairs? How is it sacrilege to beam imagery on the outside? And don’t think for one second the Archdiocese didn’t ask for money for this. If you’re mad at anyone, be mad at your church leadership for selling indulgences like a Medici pope.

And try being mad at the administration manipulating the stock market so he and his buddies can buy low.

Speaking of idiots, some (white) people were big mad Beyonce won some Grammys for country music, big mad, and spewing their bile on social media because of course they (butt hurt white people) are the great arbiters of what is and what isn’t great music rather than the members of the national organization of recording arts and sciences. One, awards are lovely things bHow dare this big international superstar and living legend DARE to perform and win awards for country music? If you think that sounds about white, you’d be right. (You really can never go wrong assuming it’s bigotry when it comes to white people because it almost always is) First of all, no one owns country music or gets to decide what it is or isn’t. Music evolves. Country music was originally “country and western” as a category at the Grammys, but it was the western aspect of country music that had the hats and boots and so forth, not country. So country singers and fans thinking they “own” cowboys, boots, and hats is a bald-faced lie and makes them poseurs and pretenders, too. How many of your stars grew up on a ranch or actually worked with cattle? If they didn’t but wear hats and boots, that’s drag. A costume. Nothing more and certainly not authenticity. When I was a kid in Kansas guys who wore hats and boots but didn’t work with cattle were called “goat-ropers” (I don’t know why, but it wasn’t a term of affection). I also seem to remember the term dime-store cowboy as derogatory. It was so anathema that I would never wear a cowboy hat or boots to this very day–and I have always had the kind of legs that boots show off nicely, too. Jason Aldean is a goat-roper, for example. I grew up listening to C&W when I was a kid, and if you’re going to say Cowboy Carter isn’t “authentic country”…I got some bad news for you about a lot of the today’s racist country stars. I walked away from country after 9/11 and what that industry did to the Chicks (THAT was cancel culture, for the record, and THEY WERE RIGHT.) when the genre turned into the “Amurika” music genre. You were wrong about the wars, you were wrong about Bush, and you’re wrong again now, country fans.

You really don’t deserve to enjoy music at all.

The day job situation is still up in the air (thanks again, MAGA voting trash) but it’s going to be a day by day and week by week thing. Yay! I think I may need stronger anxiety medication. Heavy heaving sigh. We’re not sure, obviously, what the future holds but my day job is funded by the federal government through the CDC, so yes, ever since I woke up the morning after the election I’ve been able to add worry about my job still existing to the every day drama of life and all the other existential dread from everything else the administration is inflicting on us. Yay! Woo-hoo!

Maybe I should start drinking again.

I did get to work on the book a bit yesterday. It was painful and excruciating to pull those words out of me–only about three or four hundred, so a pathetic effort–last evening, and I am hoping that won’t be the case today. Sigh. And so, without any further ado I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back at some point.

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  1. I believe in calling things what they are. Priests raped children. Period. Got a problem with that? Take it up with the Archbishop and the Pope. ↩︎

Take Me Back

Saturday morning and I feel rather well rested this morning. I wound up, of all things, sleeping on my left arm weirdly (on my stomach with arm across my chest) and this morning, it doesn’t feel either sore or tight. I knew it needed to be stretched, but this is very good news, meaning I can go back to the gym again tomorrow. I was very tired all day yesterday, too. I got my remote work done, ran some errands, and came home to write for a bit, but my brain was too cloudy for me to get anything done, really. I eventually gave up and sat down in my chair with Sparky to watch the LSU Gymnastics meet (they scored 198.00, which is a GREAT team score and something they didn’t do last year until towards the end of the season), and then we got caught up on Abbott Elementary before catching up on the news (always a mistake these days) and going to bed. I managed to get my chores done, and still haven’t made that to-do list yet–but hope springs eternal and hopefully I’ll get that done today, too. We shall see, but right now I feel pretty good. I hope it lasts.

Man, the kitchen is a mess this morning…well, the entire downstairs at any rate. But I will get that done as I write today. I do have to run a couple of errands today, so that will probably slow my progress down today, like it always does, but at least there’s nothing on television for me to get sucked into today, like tennis or gymnastics or figure skating or anything of that nature. So I have no excuse to not get things done today, right? That’s what I think, too. But it’s easy to get distracted and it’s even easier to get lazy and distracted. SO the key today is to not read the news or let our slide into fascism, aided and abetted by a legacy media that is not up to their jobs–or onboard with it all, like Fox, Newsmax, and OANN–not to mention a wimpy Democratic party that has essentially betrayed its donors and its voters and are now on-board with appeasement and sycophancy–so we’re basically on our own. The Democrats have been essentially spineless (with a few exceptions) my entire adult life, and now the party leadership can’t read the room and refuses to move aside for the bright young crop of future leaders; I’d rather fail fighting than fail rolling over playing dead. I have seen this, over and over, my entire life and yes, they have failed the country. Most of my ire is directed at the Far Reich, of course, but that doesn’t mean I have to accept the ineffectual leadership of the party anymore–and I sure as FUCK aren’t giving them another cent of my money. At this point, it’s simply throwing more good money down the drain for nothing. I’ve been waiting for results since I was twenty and have been disappointed repeatedly. If living as a gay American has taught me anything, it’s that being polite and being nice while working for change doesn’t work. It takes action, protests, and people willing to put their bodies on the line for it. ACT UP didn’t place nice, and they got results, didn’t they?

We need more Ted Kennedys and AOCs, not more Amy Klobuchars or John Fettermans (neither of whom will ever be president). Instead of fighting with policy, they are always playing defense, and badly at that. I honestly think their approach to opposition now is to cave on everything and let everyone suffer, while hoping things will get so bad we’ll win the midterms and 2028, in a repeat of 2006 and 2008. That isn’t leadership, for the record–although I am past the point of letting it all burn to the ground quickly so we can rebuild our new country out of the ashes of the old. Enough of this slow strangulation of freedom already.

And if anyone thinks I will ever mention Sean Duffy without making a reference to The Real World-Boston or Real World/Road Rules Challenges, they are very much mistaken.1

But somehow, I’ve managed to make it to sixty-three, which I never thought would happen. That should count for something, right? I’m kind of like Cher, I think–somehow I manage to keep going on. That’s the thing I suppose I cling to, my cockroach-like survival techniques. I never think bad things can’t happen to me–they certainly do enough times, and one thing I have learned over the course of hurricanes and hate crimes and death threats is that you can’t imagine bad things happening until they do, and so far I’ve managed to keep my few shreds of sanity intact, and knowing that I have somehow managed to get through it all somehow. I guess I’m a survivor? I certainly do have survivor’s guilt, for sure. I can never reconcile the randomness of my survival, either. I don’t think I did because I have some important role to play in the world, either–it’s literally one of those random things that happen people always try to find meaning in, when the truth is our lives, for the most part, are meaningless, but our egos are too fragile for any of us to consider we’re unimportant in the overall scheme of human and world history. I have no expectations of being remembered for long after I die, either. People will think it’s sad and then move on and forget me.

And I’m okay with that. My ego doesn’t require me to “live forever,” although I guess the books will, maybe.

And on that cheery note, I will head into the spice mines. I am going to read for a bit after I clean up in here, after which I will write, run my errands, and come home to read or write some more. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow or even later today; it depends, does it not?

  1. And for the record, I don’t think I’ll be flying anywhere for a long time. ↩︎

I Want Candy

Work at home Friday, and I don’t want candy, at least not yet. Let me swill down my coffee first before I head for the jelly beans I bought this week as a treat. I‘m hoping that today will be a good day, and I’ll get a lot done. I was very tired yesterday; I hit the wall around noon, and even eating lunch didn’t really help at all. I did run some errands on the way home, but once I was home I was completely a frazzle so I simply collapsed into my easy chair and caught up on my reality television. Reality television really fulfills a need for television that doesn’t require you to think much other than to be judgmental of the behavior you’re seeing on the screen; and I do kind of enjoy the childish antics. I wouldn’t want to be friends with any of these women–not sure that I would even want to know them, in all honesty–which is interesting; but the nonsense is kind of addicting, but I do hate when they just scream over each other. I know this is why we watch, but for me the worst part is there’s rarely any karmic payback for rotten behavior–and as long as we keep watching, they encourage it. One of the more tasteless aspects of the Real Housewives franchises is how regularly they resort to homophobia for story-lines; this has been happening far too regularly on programs overseen by an actual gay man (my loathing for Andy Cohen runs very deep), and yet I still watch. Not sure what that says about me, but in these interesting times the last thing I need or want to do is take away anything that can distract me from the collapse of the American experiment.

Today I only have to work about a half-day from my desk here in the Lost Apartment; I have a meeting, some forms to go over, and some trainings to get done. After that, I’m probably going to run to the post office, pick up a prescription, and potentially swing by the grocery for a few things. I also need to write and I also need to clean. My shoulder feels tight this morning, too–not sure what that’s about, but I’m going to use the massage gun on it when I finish this and see if that loosens it up a bit; but I don’t think the gym is wise until I have a better read on what’s going on with that muscle. Ugh. I really dislike feeling feeble, but I also have to cope with not being who I was physically five years ago. Part and parcel of getting older, of course, and I need to resist feeling bad about not being able to do what I could when I was in my thirties or forties or even my fifties anymore. That’s how life works, after all, and since I have already lived far longer than I ever thought I would–I thought I wouldn’t make it to forty, honestly–I need to stop regretting new limitations and make them work for me rather than against me. My focus isn’t quite as sharp as it was before I had COVID–I still don’t know if it was long or short, but the effects I felt while testing positive–low energy, no short-term memory, feeling fatigue like never before–are still there. Was it from the COVID, or was it turning sixty? Who knows? I just know that was when my life first changed for the worst.

I still haven’t made that to-do list yet, either. But I did manage to get caught up on everything at work yesterday, which is always a relief; so I don’t have to play catch-up at all on Monday, which is great. January ends today, but I am not grateful that this hellish month is finally ending; because experience has taught me that things can always get worse. This administration has hung a target on the back of anyone who isn’t a straight white cisgender man–as some white women are finding out; you and your special needs children? DEI. You fucked around and found out, didn’t you? And think how happy and smug and proud you were when you pulled the lever for that fucking bastard, and how you were sticking it to “the fags and the transgenders and the dirty Mexicans and the Blacks”…yeah, no one’s a winner when it comes to fascism other than the straight white cisgender male, but I’ve given up trying to convince people to vote intelligently for the candidates that will work the hardest for them and do the most for them, rather than the emotionally stunted vote to punish other people gleefully. White people would rather fuck themselves over completely if it means fucking over people they don’t like or fear because they’re tribal morons who haven’t evolved into decency.

I think the biggest disadvantage we are at in this ongoing struggle is there is no real queer national media. Our so-called national news magazines long ago sold their sold their souls and consciences and commitments to the community; I used to joke how Out and The Advocate went from being our Time and Newsweek to our People and Us Weekly. When this happened about twenty-five or so years ago, I despaired. During the Bush administration wasn’t the time for the two queer publications with the biggest circulation in the country to go from news to lifestyle and celebrity culture–because we definitely needed more of those. Every day I get emails from queer websites promising me “thirst traps” of celebrities or hot guys from Instagram which is always a pleasant diversion, but…oh, maybe try to do a better job rallying the community and making them aware of their rights and what we can do to protect ourselves and so forth? But yes, pics of celebrities wearing gray sweatpants without underwear is what we need to “parch our thirst.” Can’t imagine where the stereotype that gay men are vapid and shallow and think with their dicks comes from.1

There’s definitely a need for that sort of thing, but it really can’t be everything, you know? And there’s no greater act of protest against this regime than finding joy in our sexuality and our exploits. Every time you have queer sex, it’s a protest–but we also can’t have sex twenty-four hours per day (no matter how much we try, and believe me, I have), and there’s more going on that we should be paying attention to?

The decline of the media was foreshadowed by the decline of queer media, almost like it was the canary in the coal mine. But it happened, and here we are.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday and I will be back on the morrow, most like.

  1. Not that there’s anything wrong with that–but hot guys and dick shots and so forth aren’t all we do and think about and hey, we’re capable of holding more than one thought in our brains. Who knew? ↩︎

Treat Her Right

Thursday and my last day in the office for the week, thank the Lord. It has been a week. Yesterday was yet another one of those days, and by the time I ran my errands and got home, it was almost six thirty and I was exhausted, too exhausted to do more than put the groceries away and do a little writing before my brain went fuzzy and had to stop doing anything. We watched this week’s Prime Target, and shortly after that was over I was way too tired to do anything else other than tumble into bed; so tired that I in fact forgot to set my alarm. I got up when I always do, and without the ability to hit snooze just went ahead and got up. So, again, today is an out-of-sorts day because I am off my usual routine. It should be relatively simple today–an easy sort of catch-up between clients day–because almost all of yesterday’s fires (save one) burned themselves out before I fled the office at the end of the day and never looked back.

But hope springs ever eternal in my heart, mind and soul, and here’s me hoping that today will be the easy Thursday to glide elegantly into my remote work day and the weekend. I’ve still not made the to-do list I keep threatening to make, and I do think if I ever am able to do that (maybe over lunch today?) I might be able to get back on track. My memory is shit and mostly worthless anymore; I forget far more than I remember. Truth be told, I started doing that in my thirties, and it did help me a lot. It always did. So why do I not make them anymore? Self-sabotage1? Maybe.

Probably.

Le sigh.

And last night we had the first of probably many air collisions that killed everyone on board both craft. Thank GOD we have a professional bigot and former reality show ‘star’ in charge over the Department of Transportation than that DEI hire, Pete Buttigieg, right? (we really need a sarcasm font.) Nothing like cutting back on essential services for the general population, right? Who needs air traffic controllers? That’s some WOKE bullshit right there! By the way, racist assholes–how much are eggs today? Why is it okay for them to be expensive under one president when the previous one was blamed for the price? I am so fucking sick of hypocrisy…I didn’t vote for this shit show, and don’t think I am ever going to forgive anyone who voted for this, let alone letting anyone forget it. If I was going to have a tombstone, I’d want it to read I VOTED AGAINST IT ALL!

Sigh. It is so easy to allow the depression and negativity to take over and wallow in it, isn’t it? But that doesn’t get the work done, and it doesn’t make me feel any better about anything. The constant barrage of insanity and stupidity, reported breathlessly by the legacy media like it’s completely normal, pundits and influencers and everyone everywhere all at once with their (usually toxic) thoughts and opinions…it’s a lot and it’s also exhausting. That’s always their game plan–throw so much shit that you get worn out trying to avoid it and get overwhelmed and give in out of sheer exhaustion and hopelessness. Rage and anger are also exhausting, so getting on the outrage carousel makes it worse. I know, I know; I don’t just block anymore I will sometimes say shit, which I shouldn’t because why? Scoring points off a moron isn’t an accomplishment–and not one to be proud of if it is. I don’t like when some ignorant stranger pops off on social media and rather than scrolling past or blocking, I respond instead of blocking. Now that the trolls from Twitter are making their way over to the newer sites and bringing their shittiness with them, I’ve allowed myself to snap at their smug stupidity and cruelty. I don’t care about being shitty to them–they deserve far worse than what I might say to them on social media–but I don’t like having my mind go so negative. I guess that’s what happens after a lifetime of people trying to bully you on the reg. I also don’t see sinking to their level as particularly negative–and trust me, I do hold back because I can go so low I would come out on the other side of the planet–but I don’t like even giving them a moment of my energy, energy that could be used for positivity.

And on that pensive note, I am going to head into the spice mines and avoid social media for the rest of the day to preserve my peace. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I’ll most likely not be back before tomorrow!

  1. The marvelous Benjamin Dreyer was talking on social media the other day about the etymology of the words sabotage and saboteur–and now I will always say them with a French accent–sab-o-TAHJ! ↩︎

The Race Is On

Wednesday Pay-the-Bills Day blog, with the country ablaze and the current regime throwing on more lighter fluid every few hours, and who knows what fresh horrors the new day will bring? Yesterday was an exhausting slog. We were busy all day in the clinic, we were using a new testing protocol for the first time, and there were all kinds of glitches in the computer matrix, it seemed. I also had ZOOM calls last night when I got home, one right after another, and when that was all over and done with I was worn to a frazzle. Once all was said and done, I collapsed into my easy chair (Paul was at a board meeting, I think; he was at his office late) and tried to get caught up on the news without becoming enraged. He got home shortly before I went to bed, and tonight I am going to have to make some groceries on the way home before I get back to work on my writing. I feel neither groggy nor completely awake yet this morning, so who knows how the day is going to play out? It’s always funny to me to see how I felt the previous morning vs. how the rest of the day went. I didn’t want to get up this morning–the bed was so comfy and warm–so I’m not sure how this day will go. We aren’t going to be as busy–but there are different challenges to today’s workday. We’ll see how it all goes, I guess.

I really do need to get my shit together. I’ve kind of been drifting for too long. And deadlines are looming. One thing that never changes–you always have to work no matter what the fuck is going on in the world.

Today I need to pay the bills, make a new to-do list (and follow it), and answer my way overdue emails and put on my big boy pants to face this cruel, crazy world of rising fascism. One of my clients told me yesterday that he thinks everything just needs to burn to the ground and then rebuild something better from the ashes…but even that seems idealistic to me; we can’t be certain what the lesson learned would be, can we? But our systems and institutions have been so stripped down, corrupted, and weakened that I don’t see how any of them can be fixed, especially when no one can agree on how things need to be fixed. The rot in our government, and the failure of our elected officials, is too engrained and simply runs too deep to be cut out, repaired, and papered over. Changing health insurance to a single-payer system would result in the loss of thousands of jobs (and as much as I loathe health insurance employees, I have to recognize how that would affect the economy), and what do you do with those people? And what about the shareholders’ money they’ve invested? Again, I personally don’t give two shits–any shareholder in health insurance corporations has just as much blood (if not more) on their hands as the employees do–but that is something that would have to be taken into consideration. You see what I mean? Our country is a Gordian knot of problems, and I am not sure that cutting through it would be as effective as setting it on fire.

And even I–with my deep cynicism about the awfulness of humans as a collective group my entire adult gay life (all it takes to lose all hope and faith in humanity is working for a few years at an airport, trust me)–have been caught off guard by some masks coming off. It shouldn’t surprise me, but it still does. The crime fiction community is filled with these horrific people. As the O’Jays sang in the early 1970s, “they smile in your face, all the time they want to take your place, the backstabbers…” There was another one of those trolls with a humiliation fetish on one of the platforms yesterday telling people not to be political in your books or publicly because “you don’t want to lose half your audience.” Oh, do you mean the trolls who post one-star reviews of every queer book on every review website possible? Bitch, homophobic misogynist racists aren’t reading queer mysteries set in New Orleans and written by a gay man. She was dragged for the filth she was, and I have to say I responded to her several times–ignoring my own advice to simply block and move on–and didn’t want to block her. She blocked me, and I have to say I do kind of revel in making MAGA trash block me–which is intoxicating and addictive and what made Twitter so vile. So, I am going to need to limit my time on social media even more, and I need to stick to my guns and just blockity block block. The mission is to protect my mental health and walk away from abusive conduct; this is counter to my entire methodology after coming out–in which I’m not taking abuse from anyone ever again became my mantra…but social media isn’t the same. In most cases I don’t know these people and I wouldn’t know them if I passed them on the street; so in ignoring and blocking I am making space for myself and not giving strangers my emotional labor anymore. I am not a teacher, and it’s not my job to educate you as to why bigotry and prejudice isn’t the way to go; I can’t make anyone develop empathy for others. I am just glad I never preserved my brain in amber as it was anytime in my life.

At least I can admit I’m wrong, and look at things from a new perspective once I’ve opened myself up to it. I’ve never claimed to be perfect.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely pay-the-bills day, Constant Reader, and I probably won’t return until tomorrow.

Keep Searchin’ (We’ll Follow the Sun)

It feels weird to be up this early this morning, with it dark outside and Sparky whining for breakfast. But it’s a return to normality, after a planned three day holiday weekend turned into a bizarre week of working at home for about eight hours total. I feel very disoriented, too. I’ve lost track of days and dates and so forth, and am running very short on time for a lot of things I could have either gotten done or made more progress on than I did over the last week. Ah, well, c’est la vie. It’s warm this morning–in the sixties!–and it looks like our weather is returning to normal, for now. Good, because I don’t want to deal with any more snow this year. Last week was fun and novel; it would get old and tired very quickly. I didn’t have trouble getting up this morning, either. My shoulder still feels a bit weird this morning, so I think I may let it have another day of rest. I also think I might need to rest more between sets; I still try to go as quickly as I can (a mindset I need to break, everything takes time, alas, but at least I am identifying old behaviors that need breaking) but need to stop doing that because it’s overtaxing the arm a bit at the shoulder joint, which isn’t much fun. Still adapting to the aftermath of that injury, I guess, which is annoying as fuck. But it’s also another reminder than I’m older and my body doesn’t react to exercise the way it used to, so everything must go slowly.

I am finally being forced to learn patience, and it is very difficult for an old dog to learn new tricks.

And I am sure that being at work today is going to be more than a little challenging.

But I don’t feel tired the way I usually do, and I feel like I’m going to be able to get quite a bit done today, once I get to the office and remember where we are on everything. Yay. This unexpected week away from the office really was kind of a reset in a way; I feel more rested and ready to deal with everything that I personally need to get back to work on. I have gotten so behind, and even this weekend I was still in a bit of snow stupor and didn’t get as much done as I would have liked this weekend, as usual. But…maybe now I can get my act together? Stranger things have happened. I also started reading She Who Was No More, and I have to say, I fucking love this French style of writing that was so heavily influenced by film noir and writers like James M. Cain. It may even work for another book idea I have, which is even more exciting–but I really do need to finish this Scotty before I even should be thinking in terms of future work.

Heavy heaving sigh. I’ll probably finish this later. Clearly, I’ve not taken my pills yet today because I am already feeling anxious, and the coffee isn’t helping. Yes, I will finish when I get home from work tonight.

Well, here we are on Tuesday morning, and I think I was a little overly optimistic about how I felt yesterday morning. It wasn’t like I was fatigued or anything, but I was very unfocused all day, and easily distracted–so my ADHD was kicking into gear yesterday. I didn’t remember to take my medications until well into the day, and I think that had a lot to do with it. I just could not finish a task once I’d started it without being interrupted, and then after the interruption I’d forget what I was originally doing in the first place. It was…challenging, to say the least, and I was very tired when I got home. We ended up starting Murder in a Small Town, which had some moments, but I wasn’t too terribly interested in continuing with it again…I was under the impression it was one of those series where the case took up the entire season, but no–it’s murder of the week, and again–the crime rate in the town is about to go up exponentially. And while the season-long stories sometimes feel a bit padded, they’re more involving. Producers/writers: watch Harlan Coben’s series adapted from his books; these stand alone episodic crime stories are so great. Now send me a thousand dollars for the excellent advice on how to improve your shows.

Since the swearing-in of President Greg Stillson last week, the dismantling of our country for spare parts to sell off has been incredibly overwhelming, and I don’t blame people for shutting down and not knowing what to do. It’s also been shocking to see how many theoretically decent people have decided to throw away said decency (which was clearly always a facade; anyone who could ally themselves with this criminal administration, for whatever reason, is a quisling and a collaborationist at best, and pure evil at worst) and suck up to power. It’s always disappointing when people you may have been a fan of turn out to be enormous disappointments; which is one of the many reasons I don’t think anyone should idolize anyone…because no matter what, they will always disappoint you. I was never a particular fan of Jewel, but I didn’t hate her or have much of an opinion about her. She never crossed my mind. But she chose to dance before the corrupt court, showing everyone in the country who she was, what she stood for, and what her values and beliefs are. I guess she had a big queer fanbase and didn’t like the backlash she was getting for cosplaying Leni Reifenstahl and decided to release a video apologizing to the “people she hurt, especially the LGBTQ+ community”–you know, the non-apology garbage people when a really bad decision blows up in their face, because they are so egotistical they think they can explain why they committed the offense in the first place, and pat them on the back for their noble sacrifice.

I mean, seriously. I can’t with people like that, you know?

So when a friend on a social media account reposted the Jewel “not apology” bullshit, I commented. I only did so because she specifically mentioned MY community in with her bullshit faux-ally shit, and I am sorry, I will not let this pass without comment. I replied with well, this gay man wants nothing to do with either her or her apology or her fake-ass straight white woman tears. You showed us who you are and we believe you. Live with it.

I did this in, of all place, the parking lot of the grocery store–I’d gotten some mention-alerts, so I was looking through them and then went back to the home page, where I saw the Jewel post. While I was in the checkout line, waiting my turn, I pulled out my phone and did what I always do–check my email, look at the mentions, scroll if there’s nothing else to do. I had an alert that I had been tagged or replied to on the social media platform, but when I tried to see the response to my Jewel comment, there was nothing available to see. That’s odd, I thought, and put my phone back away because it was my turn.

When I got home and put the groceries away was when I saw that someone had screen-capped it and shared it with me….because the woman had posted it, turned off replies, and hid it from me.

What the actual hell?

I didn’t think trolling could possibly get more pathetic and sad than it already was; but now I know there’s an even lower level for them to take an escalator down to. I mean, all trolling is performative, but imagine being so performative and then hiding it all from the person you’re going after? What a fucking coward, seriously.

I also spent about twenty-four hours wondering why she called me a “gay back man,” because I am really oblivious and very literal. I honestly thought it was some kind of “bottom-shaming” you-take-it-up-the-ass douche-bagger homophobic way, and didn’t put it together until the next day when I was telling Paul about it. (In my defense, he did also say “what the hell is a gay back man?” at first.) He figured it out: I said straight white woman, so the troll said gay black man but made a typo, and since “back” is a word, autocorrect didn’t alert her.

I mean, I’m not offended when someone thinks I’m Black. I really don’t; but this also sent my mind wandering down another path. I mean, I want to be prepared the next time it happens. It did make me start wondering–I’ve always wondered if the way people have treated me over the years has been homophobic when they aren’t nice or friendly or bare-bones professional. I’ve long accepted that my gayness can be seen from space. But was there something else at play, too?

I really am tired of living in interesting times.

Ooh Baby Baby

Sunday morning and it feels cold here in the workspace again. I slept later than I’d intended (getting up at my usual time for work is going to be horrific tomorrow), but we’re still getting back to normal around here. I drove uptown yesterday to get the mail, and most of the snow is gone (bits here and there that haven’t melted yet). I made groceries, too, but I was right about the store being picked over; no deliveries had been made yet, but I didn’t need to get much in the first place, which was great. I was still exhausted when I got back home, so I settled in and watched the US Figure Skating Championships with Paul before we moved on to season 2 of The Night Agent, which is fun enough (I remember loving the first season, but am not loving the second as much as the first. but the main character, played by Gabriel Basso, is very sexy). I didn’t write anything yesterday because I was so tired, and my brain was a bit too fried to read anything. My shoulder was also very sore, and it feels tight and uncomfortable this morning, so I might push today’s gym visit to either later on today or later in the week. I’ll probably try to read some more this morning, and I’ve pretty much zeroed in on She Who Was No More as my next read because it’s French, so completely different (most likely) than most crime novels, especially those of its time. And my next read, methinks, won’t be in the crime family; I have books by Celeste Ng, Jami Attenberg, Valerie Martin, and Ann Hood in the stack, so general fiction next rather than genre.

I also read this marvelous thread about Huckleberry Finn that reminded me that 1) I’ve never read it, and 2) I really should. I was never really interested in Mark Twain as a writer when I was growing up; we were force-fed The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in junior high, and I absolutely hated that book; Tom was an asshole and thoroughly unlikable (I’ve always read books and watched film/TV with this perspective: would I like them in real life? I hated Tom, and the only character in the book I actually cared about was Huck, because he seemed decent–certainly more so than Tom, which was an interesting early lesson in how there’s no reward in life for virtue; Tom was acceptable to people as an orphan being raised by his aunt–whereas Huck was “trash”, despite his bad circumstances of having a criminal father and very poor and from the outside of “society.” The only thing I really took away from reading Tom Sawyer was that society, and it’s thoughts and opinions, were really stupid and required behaving towards people based on a caste system that did not tell whether someone was actually a good or bad person, and how wrong castes in a civilized society are–and really, how unAmerican society can actually be (I’ve always hated snobs, mainly because I am usually the one on the receiving end of their scorn)…which, fifty years later, can concede was a pretty good lesson. But I couldn’t get over how the teacher was trying to push Tom on us as a comic hero–which seemed to encourage that kind of behavior–and never liked Tom and have had no desire to revisit the book, and it also kept me from reading more Twain (we also had to read the jumping frog story, which I also hated) for well over a decade–and it’s why I also have never read Huckleberry Finn.1 When I did come back to Twain in my mid-twenties, I read the lesser known books–Pudd’nhead Wilson, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and the essay collection Life on the Mississippi2—but never got around to Huck; maybe because it was praised so highly? I should probably correct that this year, and I should probably finally read A Confederacy of Dunces, too. Sigh. I know, I know, I’ve never read the great American novel or the great New Orleans novel. Maybe this year.

The NFL conference championship games are today, and I only care because I’d really enjoy seeing Jayden Daniels go to the Super Bowl and make history as a rookie; one of the great pleasures of this past football season is seeing the Washington fans–and the NFL, really–fall in love with LSU’s Heisman Trophy winner. I don’t know if they’ll beat the Eagles today or not, but hey, when was the last time the Commanders3 made it this far? I won’t watch another team in the play-offs–feels too much like cheating on the Saints–but I look forward to hearing the scores later on today.

I’m actually looking forward to going back to work this week, believe it or not. This unexpected weather-related week at home was a lovely and pleasant surprise, but at the same time I like having structure to my life. Yeah, it’s very easy to not be motivated when you’re at home and have things to do, but if it was a permanent condition I’d do better with it.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Cleaning to do, coffee to drink, and lots of writing and reading to get caught up on, so I am going to bid you adieu this morning and…may be back later. One never can be sure, after all. Have a lovely Sunday!

  1. When books are overhyped to me, I end up being disappointed by them. ↩︎
  2. The essays are actually kind of brilliant. ↩︎
  3. I’m also really tired of the racist fans who won’t let go of the old team name. You lost, get over it. ↩︎