Category: television

Cupid/I’ve Loved You For a Long Time

My, what a gorgeous day it was yesterday–the kind that reminds me why I love it here so much and helps me forget the horror that is July-August (although I believe the summer horror began in late May this year). I made groceries in the morning and also retrieved everything from the carriage house to put in the new refrigerator; it’s lovely. I hadn’t realized what a pain in the ass it was making do with the shitty old one. I didn’t get all that filing worked on, but I did make some material progress that will help get me started working on it all again this week. I have more appointments this week–primary care doctor on Wednesday afternoon, and I have to actually go into the office on Friday for a benefits meeting. Our insurance is changing to a new carrier in the new year, which is why it was so important for me to get all this medical shit out of the way while I still have insurance that will take care of everything, or at least I understand how it operates. I absolutely hate the idea that I will have to relearn all my insurance stuff again in the new year.

It makes me tired.

I slept well today, and don’t have to go into the office at all. We’re having a “professional development day”, which starts at City Park at ten this morning and goes all day, from place to place–we go to Dillard University and later to Ralph’s on the Park–before coming home at six pm. Tomorrow goes back to normal. I didn’t want to get up this morning–Tug also wanted me to stay in bed; he followed me downstairs and is sleeping in my lap while I am typing this (Paul has started calling him Sparky, which kinds of fits…) but is also very sweet. He spent most of yesterday either chasing the laser light, playing with an old catnip toy of Scooter’s (catnip didn’t affect Scooter; Tug/Sparky is an entirely different story), or sleeping in my lap. I spent most of the day in my chair finishing Elizabeth Hand’s marvelous A Haunting on the Hill, which I will talk about in more detail in another entry. I also started reading Rival Queens as my new non-fiction read; it’s about Catherine de Medici and her daughter Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre (aka Queen Margot) and of course, this is one of my favorite periods of history and two of my favorite, most interesting sixteenth century queens; Catherine de Medici is fascinating. A version of Game of Thrones played out in France between 1559 and 1594, and I’m always kind of amazed that it’s not written about more–but Americans are always more interested in English history, if they have any interest in history at all.

It’s a pity, because I’ve always found French history more interesting.

While I was reading A Haunting on the Hill yesterday an old idea of mine–a sort of sideways sequel to Bury Me in Shadows started developing in my mind; another Corinth County novel, only this time with Beau, Jake’s boyfriend from the University of Alabama and an archaeology/Alabama history major, as the main character. I’ve had this idea for a short story for a very long time–set in Corinth County–called “Children of the Stone Circle”, which I think I may have even written an entire first draft a long time ago; just could never tell how to make it work and make it real. It came to me while reading the Elizabeth Hand–I always get inspired when I read books that are well-written that I enjoy–and I made copious notes in my journal. That felt good–it felt good to power down my brain for most of the weekend and kind of relax. I am delighted to have finished the Hand–and for reasons that I will explain when I write about the book, I decided the reread of The Haunting of Hill House–which I still want to do–wasn’t a necessary follow up to the Hand. I am going to read Angel Luis Colon’s Infested next, and perhaps some more y/a middle-grade horror. I do want to reread King’s The Dead Zone, too; it’s been quite a while.

I also watched another episode of Moonlighting last night, which I am really enjoying the rewatch of. There were some cultural references to the time that don’t work–last night’s episode had Addison make a reference to a highly popular ad campaign that was already over but still very much a part of the zeitgeist when the show started–but overall, it’s still a great show. Cybill Shepherd was just stunningly beautiful, and she made a great straight man character for Willis to bounce his antics and humor off, and the chemistry between the two of them was simply off the charts. I had also forgotten how utterly charming the character of Miss DiPesto (“My name’s Agnes, but my friends call me Miss DiPesto”) as played by Allyce Beasley was; I was already a fan of hers when the show started because of her turn in one of the best episodes of Cheers, where she played Coach’s daughter.

“But Gregalicious, I thought you were rewatching Friday the 13th the Series this month in honor of Halloween?” I was, but the episodes are on Youtube, the quality of some are terrible (they were clearly uploaded and digitized from old VCR recordings, and for those of us who remember using VCR’s, we also still remember how bad some of those recordings were–especially when you were re-using cassettes) and it became annoying, and then Moonlighting dropped. So yes, I am not devoting myself to all things horror this month the way I had intended to, and no, I’ve not been taking the walks every night like I wanted to when the weather turned. Partly because I am tired when I get home every night from work, and partly because Tug/Sparky needs attention when I walk through the door and I am more than willing to give the adorable little kitty whatever he wants. He fell asleep in my lap yesterday once while still sitting up–his head was still up, not resting on anything, and he was sound asleep, which I’ve never seen anyone or anything do before.

And when he gets comfortable and is deep in dreamland, he sprawls in the most adorable ways. He also was happy in his sleep at one point, too–he started making biscuits on the arm of my easy chair while purring, but was sound asleep.

Yes, he’s adorable and yes, he is now master of the apartment.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will see you later.

Little Jeannie

We have a new refrigerator, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

The delivery was actually two hours early and went incredibly smoothly. I did have to take the kitchen apart and rearrange a lot of things, which triggered the old your filing system is completely out of control and has been for quite time, and the duplicates, dear God, the duplicates. But having a new, working refrigerator (we really put up with the malfunctioning old one, which was never the same after whatever evacuation that was in 2008–Ike? Isaac? who knows. So, this kind of was the impetus for me to reorganize the cabinets, throw out a lot of stuff I didn’t even know I had (forcing me to recognize that I still have food hoarding issues), and do something constructive with the filing. This morning I am going to move the rest of the food over from the carriage house refrigerator, and make notes on what I need to get at the grocery store. My hope is to get that all done this morning, spend some time reading the Elizabeth Hand (which I am greatly enjoying), and then tackle the filing and get this under control once and for all.

And this is just a small step forward in a big journey I am taking–in which I need to organize and/or discard things I no longer need. I have more ideas than I will ever write about, or have the time to write; I get more ideas every fricking day. Do I really need to hold onto old file folders crammed full of ideas I don’t even remember that I have? And if I do remember it, and it turns into something–I will just create a new file rather than go look for the old. I should scan old contracts, shred tax returns, and who knows what kinds of treasures I may find in the files as they come together at long last? I’m still unsure of the system I am going to use, but I need to get all the things that are like each other together–files about Alabama, files about New Orleans and Louisiana, files about Kansas and California and Chicago and its suburbs and Houston and Florida and crime stories and all kinds of things; research versus actual fiction–book ideas v, short story ideas; fiction vs nonfiction–and so forth.

I also worked on the laundry room some, and also managed to watch a lot of football games–Alabama against Arkansas, Tennessee-Texas A&M, and finally Auburn-LSU. I still don’t know what to think about the conference race this year, other than both divisions go through Georgia and Alabama again this year, and I don’t see anyone beating Georgia during the regular season. Texas A&M’s loss at Tennessee is their second in conference and third overall; no division title or shot at the play-offs for them; yet they are a good team and can still play spoiler. Tennessee still has Alabama and Georgia and Kentucky. The West is pretty much still up for grabs, with Alabama in the catbird seat; still tied for first even if they somehow lose to LSU. I don’t know what happened to Auburn after the Georgia game–which they had a shot at winning–because that team didn’t show up in Tiger Stadium last night. LSU’s defense, which finally started playing at a higher level in the second half of last week’s Missouri game, looked really good…or was Auburn’s offense really that bad? I thought their defense was for real–but how good were they really, because they didn’t look like an elite SEC West defense last night. LSU does have an incredible offense, no mistake or question, but are they really forty-eight points on Auburn good? After Georgia escaped them with a 27-20 win on the plains? That’s why you play the games, people–anyone can win on any given Saturday.

I slept very well last night, which was awesome. I feel quite well rested this morning, and so today’s chores do not sound either ominous or terrible. The filing is indeed going to be a chore, as is moving the food back over and making two grocery runs, but better to get it all over with today, wouldn’t you think, so I can go home straight from work tomorrow? We’re having a “professional development day” that starts at City Park at ten in the morning, after which we go to Dillard for a presentation and then back to Ralph’s on the Park for another. Lunch and dinner are being provided, which means I am not going to be able to eat anything, most likely, which will be very unpleasant for me, I think, but I’ll deal with it. Tug is also settling in more–it’s very obvious that he knows he is home, and this is where he belongs. So bold, so curious, so playful, so adorable. He sleeps completely relaxed and sprawled out on whichever laps he chooses, and he’s started doing to Scooter thing where he’ll go back and forth between us for naps, which is adorable.

And he does love chasing the red dot.

He’s having particularly big kitten energy this morning, too.

And on that note, I am going to go start moving the food back over and making the grocery list. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later; if not, then tomorrow.

Sexy Eyes

Well, we survived a Friday the 13th in October–terrifying!

It was actually a rather beautiful day in New Orleans, in all honesty. I had a bit of a morning–there’s been some anxiety building inside my head since I got home from work on Wednesday to discover a jury duty summons in the mail. (For the record, I am not one of the majority of Americans who hate doing this little part of their responsibilities as a citizen; I always think, these are probably the same people who bitch constantly about our flawed criminal justice system–which is not incorrect–but you don’t get to complain about juries and the system when you resent serving on juries or try to get out of doing it. The system is only as good as the jurors selected, after all. Anyway, I digress. I got the summons on Wednesday afternoon, and I was supposed to report this morning. Obviously, it was delayed or went out late or something, but the last thing I need to do is deal with jury duty between now and my surgery; all those tests and appointments and so forth that i have to do before the surgery, etc. etc. I decided to fill out the form on-line and ask for a deferment; alas, it wasn’t until I finished registering that I found out if I wanted to be excused, I needed to go to the courthouse and ask in person as well as provide a note from my doctor. Wow, I thought, kind of like being back in high school. I had an MRI scheduled Friday morning, so I figured I’d ask them then. Well, my surgeon wasn’t in the office and no one else wanted to do it, suggesting I check with my primary care. As my primary care office is near the courthouse and I had to pick up a prescription there anyway, I went by. Primary care wans’t in, and was advised to try my surgeon. Jesus fucking Christ, apparently I woke up in a Kafka novel. So, I decided to go to the courthouse and see what happened….and they literally told me to have my doctor email it to the court clerk, gave me a card with her name and email address, and sent me home.

Who knew the Orleans Parish Courthouse would be the easiest, “no big deal” part of this? Certainly not one Gregalicious, that’s for sure.

I came home and did my work-at-home chores, as well as my laundry chores, and then Tug settled in for a nap in my lap while I finished reading the Riley Sager (which I enjoyed; more on that later) and started Elizabeth Hand’s A Haunting on the Hill and am quite liking it as well. Paul and I watched a horror film from 2007 called Trick r Treat, which was kind of clever yet neither of us had heard of it before. That was in honor of both Friday the 13th and it being spooky season and all. I do love fall in New Orleans. It was lovely running around this morning doing all that stuff with lovely sunny but cool weather; the kind where you can wear sleeves and jeans outside comfortably.

The refrigerator is being delivered today, so I have to make room for the delivery guys and hope that they come earlier rather than later. I have no control over this whatsoever, so I am just going to roll with it and see where things wind up. While I wait for the refrigerator I am going to try to get this done as well as some other things; trying not to get anxious or worry about things that cannot be controlled. They have my cell phone number, after all, and if I keep it with me…it’s really irrational to get anxious about things like this, isn’t it? Just like it was irrational to get so worked up and tense over the jury duty thing this morning. It’s just wasted energy and it just leaves me tired, and I really don’t need anything else in my life to make me tired; I can do that quite well and need no further assistance with that, thank you very much. UPDATE: it is out for delivery and expected between 3:30 and 7:30, which means most likely groceries will have to wait until tomorrow and I can actually spend the morning cleaning up down here and making it not quite the disaster area it currently appears to be. A quick glance at Twitter shows that Tulane won at Memphis last night, and apparently Colorado blew a big lead and lost to Stanford.

I slept really well last night–and woke up at five, like always. I fell back asleep until Tug (Paul has started calling him Sparky because he gets the zoomies–but the next time he does I’m getting the laser light out–nothing like the red dot to wear your kitten out of his BIg Kitten Energy.) wanted his breakfast at six–can’t blame him, and I’m kind of awake already anyway. I stayed in bed until about seven before rising, thinking that was a lot m rore rational than trying to stay in bed–especially since I knew the delivery window was between eight and eight; hope springs eternal that it was going to be a morning delivery. DENIED. Tug now is completely at home and curious about everything; there are bottle caps everywhere from him chasing them around, and of course I always have to be careful with what I leave on surfaces. It’s also election day here in Louisiana, and I must go vote so I can vote against our evil attorney general’s bid for governor, which would be a disaster so great people would start remembering Bobby Jindal’s disgraceful tenure in Baton Rouge with nostalgia.

The salt intrusion has been slowed significantly–the last I heard the salt water wouldn’t be here until around Thanksgiving–a month later than projected, and there was a chance it would dissipate before then, too. I should probably pay more attention, but I have a flat of water and a two-gallon jug (which I will save for hurricane season in the attic, if the salt doesn’t get up here after all, and I should always be prepared for hurricane season anyway), but probably won’t have to buy any more of that.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. There’s a lot I can get done this morning, and I intend to do it before curling up with my book with whatever game is on at eleven in the background. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader; I’ll probably be back later.

Stomp

And here we are at work-at-home Friday again today. I have an MRI scheduled at Tulane Institute of Sports Medicine this morning, but other than that I will be here at home, getting prepared for the refrigerator to arrive and doing other chores around my work-at-home duties. It was an exhausting week, both for me personally and for the world politically. I generally don’t comment on world events, primarily because I am at best a distant observer who depends on news reports and because I don’t feel informed enough to have an opinion. I do know that I abhor brutality and think all death is unnecessary, especially in the name of politics, religion, and racism. The situation in the Middle East–volatile for my entire life–is one without answer, I fear. I also remember how foolishly we all were for thinking the Camp David Accords would bring peace to the region. The only peace it brought was between Israel and Egypt–and that has lasted. I don’t have any answers, and I feel making comments that are uninformed without solutions does not add to the discourse nor move anything forward in a positive manner, so I just keep my mouth shut and hope for an end to the death and slaughter and trauma.

Yesterday was an exhausting day overall. Everything at the office was some kind of haywire in an almost “Mercury must be in retrograde” kind of way, and most of it went on while I was the only person there–which was kind of unsettling. It was also Mom’s birthday so my subconscious was already raw and on edge. But I worked through it, there wasn’t a body count, and I stopped to get the mail on my way home–where I picked up the Box O’Books for Death Drop (yay!) and my Ben Pierce Photography calendar “Beneath the Waters: Images of the Atchafalaya Basin Drawdown”. Ben Pierce is an extraordinary photographer of the natural beauty of Louisiana. I follow him on Facebook and often share his work because it’s so breathtakingly beautiful and evocative; and doesn’t Atchafalaya Basin Drawdown sound like a Scotty title? I’ve been meaning to look into what precisely that means and why they are draining the basin since he started sharing images from it earlier this year; I should perhaps put that on the to-do list? While I was waiting for Paul and playing with Tug (trying to wear him out, in all honesty; he was wired like a circuit party queen last night), who met the laser light/magical red dot for the first time last night. He soon figured out where it was coming from, but still chased it none the less, and eventually when I set it down it also became a toy so there’s no telling where it is this morning. I watched another episode of Moonlighting last night which didn’t seem to hold up as well as previous ones–too much speculation about Maddie’s sex life, which was completely untoward and bothered me–and I also got caught up on Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, which I’ve never really watched very much but started this season at the urging of friends. I’ve yet to watch the reboot of New York, either. I think there’s a blog entry I need to write about reality television shows like these, which I had already started after the completion of the most recent season of Beverly Hills. The out-of-touch narcissism of the SLC women still seems fun and funny to me, while the other franchises have kind of gone off the rails with repugnant behavior (looking at you, Lisa Rinna)–but I’ll save that for the blog post about reality television; which is why I don’t really talk about these shows much on here.

I also read some more of Riley Sager’s Final Girls, which I am enjoying–even if it doesn’t seem like it. One of the casualties of the pandemic was my ability to read quickly; I don’t know what happened, but it’s entirely due to my attention span and not the quality of the books I’m reading; look at how long it took me to read Shawn’s book, which was fucking brilliant. It’s going with me to Tulane this morning so I can read more of it, and then I am coming home to work for the rest of the afternoon. I slept really well again last night. I woke up at six (I do that every morning now, regardless) but the alarm was set for seven so I stayed in bed for another hour, which felt marvelous, really. I feel very rested and centered this morning–which is lovely after the chaotic yesterday I had–and am looking forward to the weekend. I have my to-do list, which is necessary; the refrigerator is being delivered tomorrow, so there’s no point in making groceries until after it arrives (so probably Sunday morning, most like); and of course there’s always, always, always housework to do. Boxes started accumulating again in the living room in front of where the bead chest sits (and the floor’s not terribly stable), so those have to go, and I can do some cleaning before the refrigerator is delivered (we currently have an 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. window, which I assume will change tomorrow morning). The LSU game isn’t until Saturday night, and I am not certain there are any other games of interest this weekend…which doesn’t mean I won’t have a game on all day from eleven a.m. on, of course; I most likely will. (Of course, I just looked, and yes, several games of interest–Notre Dame-USC, Alabama-Arkansas, Texas A&M-Tennessee, and of course Auburn-LSU.)

And on that note, sorry to be so brief but I think I am needing to get headed into the spice mines this morning. I may be back later, I don’t know; but stranger things have indeed happened, so one can never rule anything out. If not, for sure tomorrow morning. Have a terrific Friday, Constant Reader!

Hurt So Bad

It does bother me sometimes that I become such a creature of habit, falling easily into ruts and the same-old same-old sort of routines all the time. “But Gregalicious,” Constant Reader might well reply, with at least eyebrow aloft, “you’re an author. A creative! How can such a person fall into a rut?”

It’s incredibly easy, just so you know, especially when you have all kinds of wiring issues in your brain–the kind that make completing tasks satisfying, for one example–and so there’s serenity and peace and safety in routine, in doing the same thing repeatedly, every day, that finds bliss and peace and an almost nirvana-like state while doing repetitive tasks, like making condom packs, filing, and so on. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, per se, but it also makes those ruts easier to get stuck in and that much harder to get out of. Take yesterday. I had my echo cardiogram (sonogram) yesterday morning, so I didn’t get to the office until later in the day than usual and thus felt off all day. It was fine; work was fine and I love my clients–I always have lovely experiences for the most part dealing with them and my co-workers–but because I didn’t get there until later, I felt off all day; not off the rails maybe, but like I was wobbling on those rails but staying on them. I thought about that a lot last night; but I did manage to get some things done. I edited a short story for a dear friend, so I felt like I did accomplish something in a cold, rainy, rather dreary day.

ANd it was a cold, dreary, rainy day. The rain started up around noon, and the temperature–already low–began dropping. I wore wear my office hoodie home–didn’t need the umbrella as it was just sprinkling when I left the office–but the wind had picked up by the time Paul went to the gym and came back. Our weather alert for yesterday was coastal flooding and dangerously high winds (gusts of up to 47 miles per hour) but once I was home I was fine. I did chores when I got home yesterday; laundry and dishes, oh my, and then basically wasted the evening scrolling through social media while watching Moonlighting on Hulu.

Sigh, Moonlighting. I loved this show when it aired originally, even if it did eventually jump the shark and the quality declined; it also had a big influence on me as a writer and is one of my influences that I rarely, if ever, acknowledge. I had already watched the pilot on Youtube over the summer, so now that it is finally streaming on Hulu, I decided to watch the second episode, “Gunfight at the So-So Corral,” and it holds up. The chemistry between Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis is absolutely off-the-charts, and David Addison was absolutely a star-making role for Willis. And the writing! So smart and witty and clever! I still love this show. I always loved how the show’s structure was basically very simple: each episode always began with David and Maddie arguing about something–a moral or ethical point–and absolutely refusing to see the other’s point. Then a case would land in their laps that illustrated the point they were arguing about–and by the end of the episode they were having the same discussion, only now they were arguing the other side but not quite as vigorously. I can’t wait to keep watching–I also want to reevaluate the episodes of the later seasons, which seemed lesser at the time but may not seem so now nearly forty years (!) later. I also had to giggle a little bit because this second episode was so much a part of the zeitgeist at the time–oh yes, I remember this show revived interest in some old music classics as well–I remember everyone was singing “She looked so good just a-walking down the street singing doo-wah-diddy-diddy-dum-diddy-doo” after it aired, and I also remember everyone watched and talked about the show. It was absolutely appointment television, and I am so glad I finally get the chance to rewatch one of the best crime shows every aired. Those of you who were too young to watch it the first time around, really need to watch it; I think you’ll be charmed as well as amazed at how far ahead of its time it was.

Today is also the four year anniversary of the collapse of the Hard Rock Hotel construction site on Canal and Rampart streets. Four workers were killed, and the nightmare of the disaster lived with us in New Orleans for months afterwards as they tried to figure out a way to not only recover the dead bodies (which is horrible to contemplate) but also closed both streets at the intersection because the site was dangerous. That final Carnival before the COVID shut down (and also a super-spreader event) seemed cursed; the parades had to be rerouted around the site and several people were killed at parades by floats that year. It seems like that happened to a different world, doesn’t it? That was also the year LSU fielded one of the greatest college football teams of all time–I remember thinking, after LSU won the national championship and the world shut down, jokingly but also a bit serious, “LSU fielded one of the greatest college teams of all time–so much so that it broke the world.”

We also watched this week’s episode of The Morning Show once Paul got home from the gym. I’m really enjoying this show, and the addition of Jon Hamm to the cast as an Elon Musk-type (only good-looking and sexy and charming) was really smart. We also binged the first three episodes of the second season of Our Flag Means Death this week, which is just genius. Sigh, I do love me some pirates.

I also ordered our new refrigerator yesterday morning, it will be delivered on Saturday and so on Friday I get to start moving the contents of the refrigerator into the carriage house refrigerator and will need to move shit out of the way Saturday morning. I’m hoping it comes relatively early so I’m not just sitting around all day waiting for them to come; LSU plays Auburn at night, so hopefully it will be in the apartment up and running by the time the sun finds its home in the western sky and it becomes SATURDAY NIGHT IN DEATH VALLEY. I don’t think we’ll be going to any games this year, but that’s fine. With all this medical stuff going on, it’s best that I spend my weekends at home resting and trying to get things done. I started making the list yesterday of what I need to get done and when it needs to be done by–I really need to finish revising that short story and writing the other one that’s due by the end of the month–and I want to finish the Sager this week so I can move on to my next Halloween Horror Month read.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I will chat with you again tomorrow before my MRI.

Call Me

Wednesday morning pay-the-bills day blog, and how are y’all this morning?

Yesterday was ever so much better than Monday (low bar) but I slept really well Monday night and felt very rested and centered yesterday as I went to work. Hilariously, as I walked out to the car in my Prevention T-shirt, I felt a bit chilly. When I got into the car it felt downright cold, and once I started the car the a/c started blowing and YIKES! So I quickly switched it over to heat…and as the lovely warm air began blowing through the vents, I saw the thermostat on my dashboard reading 70–it was seventy degrees and I felt cold. But…for well over a month–an endless summer–of temperatures that felt like 110-120; 70 degrees is a forty to fifty degree drop. That is actually a significant drop in temperature, and one that would certainly be felt as cold anywhere.

I have to go uptown to get a sonogram this morning (and no, I am not pregnant). This has to do with the genetic heart defect Mom had; they want to see if I have the same problem (technical term: Arterial tortuosity syndrome) so if things start going haywire with my blood pressure and so forth, they’ll know where to start (it took weeks for them to figure out what was wrong with Mom after her initial stroke). I think part of the reasons I feel so off this week, while exacerbated by the lack of sleep and driving this weekend, has been subconsciously felt anxiety about all these medical tests and things I am having done; plus Dad’s birthday was yesterday and Mom’s is tomorrow; these are their first birthdays with her gone, so it’s going to kick a little harder, which is only natural, I think. I was also productive in that I ordered our new refrigerator this morning to be deliverer on Saturday (yay!) and I registered for jury duty. Of course this is the perfect time to be called for jury duty–when I have a million doctors’ appointments and a surgery scheduled–and of course, you have to show up in person to try to get out of it, which means getting a doctor’s note and showing up at the courthouse on Friday. I can do that, of course–but it’s just more pain in the ass shit to do on a day when I already have a doctor’s appointment. I suppose I could just go there after the appointment. I don’t know. It’s just more irritation on a week where I’d rather not have more irritations. (The MRI is scheduled for Friday morning, that’s what it is.)

Heavy heaving sigh.

I wasn’t terribly tired when I got home yesterday from work, but I didn’t seem to get very much done. I did spend some time reading more of the Sager novel; I’d like to get that finished this weekend at the latest so I can move on to the Elizabeth Hand, the reread of Shirley Jackson, and Infested by Angel Luis Colon. I should, I think, be able to get them all read by the end of the month; I may even have the time to revisit The Dead Zone by Stephen King, which I’ve been meaning to do since the 2016 election. I’m still trying to get a grip and handle on everything, but it’s hard to do with all of these tests and appointments and everything to stress about, even if I try to let it all go it’s still there working away at my subconscious. I also don’t understand why I am so reluctant to face the fact that I am still grieving my mom, seven months later, and her birthday is tomorrow; something else I need to unpack, I suppose. But progress is being made on everything, and of course I am delighted to be getting a functional refrigerator at long last.

Which means I get to spend Friday partly getting the apartment ready for a refrigerator delivery and installation and removal of the old one; which means moving all the food over to the carriage house Friday evening.

I was also thinking back to precisely when I lost the reins of my life and when I started being discombobulated and losing control of my own narrative. I think the stress truly began taking off after buying the car in 2016; the car payments wreaked havoc on my finances and put me even further into debt, which was something I was very concerned about for several years, obviously (still am, but am paying it all down and feel a lot better on that score). Then came the Great Data Disaster of 2018, when I lost all the back-ups and my desk top computer stopped functioning properly; I wasn’t able to afford a new one (thanks to the car payment wreaking havoc on my finances) which also didn’t help–a computer that was super slow, crashed and/or froze up all the time, and was barely functional for what I needed didn’t help–and of course by the time I paid off the car and was able to buy a new computer we were deep into a pandemic and I was doing all that volunteer work while barely holding onto my own sanity by my fingernails. That was also the period of time (2016 on) when the filing got out of control as did my computer files; so now trying to climb out of the wreckage is a Sisyphean task, apparently; I never feel like I am caught up on anything because there’s so much fucking mess to straighten up and organize, and I can never just take a few days to even try to dig out from under the mess because there’s always something else going on that needs attention right now.

These are the things I was pondering as I sat in my easy chair last night watching videos on Youtube–documentaries about the Hapsburgs again–and waiting for Paul to come home. I find that I’ve become a lot more introspective about my past lately (since turning sixty, really) as well as working on unpacking things and understanding why I am the way I am a lot better. I’ve spent most of my life trying to work on myself and become a better person–reading, thinking, watching, etc.–and admittedly, not always succeeding; but a lot of that is because I’ve not looked back and unpacked things I’ve experienced or went through. I’ll give you a case in point: one night during Boucheron I was sitting with my friend Teresa at the pool bar during happy hour enjoying their amazing nachos when Lou Berney joined us. As we talked, he asked us both if we’ve ever come close to death before–close calls. I’d never been asked that before and I really had to think. And while Teresa was answering about a car accident situation where she was almost killed, I remembered an experience I had when I was twenty. I related the story and they both looked at me, eyes open wide, and were like “Jesus fucking Christ, Greg!” I hadn’t really thought about that incident in a really long time; I had started writing a blog entry sometime in the last ten years (it’s still in drafts) where I talked about that experience–it is one of the reasons I am so anti-gun–but other than that…no. But having that brought up into the forefront of my mind, I realized something.

I had never expected to live this long, and I’ve always had the feeling that I would die young. I don’t know if this is a common thing for people or not, but I have just always had that thought in the back of my mind for most of my life–when I’d think about the future, I would always stop because why think about it when you’re going to die young? I gradually began to believe that was because I lived through the 1980’s; the HIV/AIDS thing. But after remembering and talking about that incident back in 1982, I realized that after going through that was when I began thinking I wouldn’t live very long; the arrival of the “gay plague” right around the same time didn’t help much in that regard either. I’m not being coy in calling it the incident–tl;dr: the husband of one of the managers at the Burger King I worked at went over the edge and came into the place and shot her multiple times (today he would have had an automatic weapon and I would have died that day, or been wounded–because that’s not what this post is about and I do want to finish my draft post where I go into more detail.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow, if not later.

Don’t Fall in Love With A Dreamer

Yesterday was a little frustrating, I am not going to lie. The day went off the rails early and just never seemed to get back on track. Frustrating news, irritation, depression, and high anxiety all combined to make yesterday a challenge for me to stay on track and balanced, so much so that I just felt overwhelmed and didn’t even try to cope or stay centered because I felt tired all day on top of everything else that was going so irritatingly wrong yesterday.

I did sleep well Sunday night, but I was still worn out from the driving and so forth from the weekend.

So yeah, I was channeling some Major Bitch Energy yesterday, but managed to keep it all inside and not inflict it on anyone else. This was the big win of the day–because I used to just give rein to it and everyone else would just need to get out of my way or else. But I didn’t snap at anyone, I didn’t swear at anyone when I was driving home after work–but I did drive straight home after work, despite needing to run errands. I was smart enough to realize how close I was to snapping at someone or just being a dick in general, so I went home to spare the world and some unsuspecting person my foul mood.

Sigh.

And then I got home to find out that they’d started working on the house today–not really sure what they are doing but it’s an old house in New Orleans so it literally could be anything–and didn’t give any warning–as evidenced by the kitchen wall clock lying in pieces on the kitchen floor (it’s easy to put back together), and then I noticed a lot of the framed pictures in the laundry room were on the floor. The workers didn’t give any warning nor did our landlady; but Sam the handyman knew there were things on the walls so he called Paul. He got five minutes notice, but didn’t think about the clock in the kitchen–and why would he? It’s a whole different room, even if it is connected to the laundry room and one wall is also the back wall of the house.

I also slept wrong or something either Saturday or Sunday night so my neck was sore yesterday (still is this morning, in fact)–turning my head to the left hurt, which of course made driving an absolute joy. I do remember taking good health and not always hurting for granted for way too long. Sigh, I guess there is some truth to that saying you really don’t know how much you’ll miss something until it’s gone; it never even crossed my mind to be grateful I was in good physical condition. I didn’t even know how lucky I was; but I certainly am very well aware that I am a physical wreck at sixty two. Heavy heaving sigh. My neck is still sore this morning, but Ben-Gay has been doing the trick and it’s not quite as bad this morning as it was yesterday.

So, by the time I finally got the laundry started last night, I was already in a mood and said fuck it and repaired to the living room with Tug for some lap time. A purring sleeping kitten in your lap is the best thing for anxiety and stress after a bad day.

Hopefully today will be a good day. I am going to attempt to start eating more “not soft” foods this week at some point. I do still have a lot of that soft food stuff to get rid of anyway, so its just as well I was wrong about how long it would take to get my dentures (I don’t think I ever really told a timeline, which was why I got confused) because all this remaining soft food I’ve not gotten to yet will get used and it won’t just sit in the cabinet for months (years) waiting for me to get fed up at last and start pitching things, right? And I don’t need to have the expensive ice cream–it just has a high calorie count and is very filling and I like it, so I can probably start doing without that; maybe switch to something less expensive and with chunks of stuff in it. I don’t know that I can’t chew so much as I can’t bite into things, which is why I am going to start practicing with other foods. Most of this soft stuff is just carbohydrates, which my body is turning into sugar which is making me pre-diabetic which is also building up my uric acid which is manifesting as gout (everything is connected in your body–everything). I did make it into work, only had to use two hours of my sick time (I get to use two more on Wednesday when I get my sonogram), and managed to get some things done both there and on the home front.

As I was driving both to and back from Panama City Beach over the weekend, I also went down memory lane back to my childhood again. I hadn’t been back to Panama City Beach since the summer I graduated from high school, back in 1978; we went on a trip to visit the relatives and the beach and all for about three weeks that summer, right after I graduated. We never used I-10 back then–was there an I-10 then? Probably–but once I took the exit for 331 south, I knew exactly where I was; Defuniak Springs, and 331 was the road to my grandmother’s old place on Choctawhatchee Bay. And sure enough, 331 took me to the bridge over the bay–no longer a draw bridge or a two lane bridge; now it’s two separate bridges with two lanes crossing in either direction–and the gas station at the corner where you’d turn to go to my grandmother’s is now a park, which I didn’t catch until I was past it. I was going to turn and drive down there on the way home, just to take a look, but by the time I got across the bridge I was deep into The Only Good Indians and I was tired and just wanted to go home. But these old sites–and the incredible beauty of the beach at Panama City Beach–brought back a lot of memories and thoughts about me, my life, and my writing; as did spending time with my aunts and uncle on my father’s side of the family–none of whom I’d seen outside of weddings or funerals since that last trip down there before we moved to California in the the first months of 1981, and that made me go down that road. We spent most of Saturday after I arrived watching football games–Alabama-Texas A&M, and then Notre Dame-Louisville–which reminded me again of how deeply rooted football is as a family thing; we bond over watching football games, pretty much rooting for the same teams while hating the same ones. (They all overlook my LSU fandom, but they’re all Auburn fans who hate Alabama with a passion–my dad and mom and our little branch were the exceptions; rooting for Alabama unless they were playing Auburn. For me, the SEC is now LSU–with Auburn a distant second and Alabama just behind them in third. We all hate Tennessee and Florida–but they hate Georgia; I don’t. Even Dad hates Georgia.) But it made me think more about the panhandle books and the Alabama books I still want to write–and I was also laughing at myself for trying to make the books set there (like the ones in Kansas) so based in fictionalized reality that I feel tied to making the towns almost exactly the same; it’s fiction, lunkhead, so you can change things; it’s okay. (This also kind of dovetails with my “NOLier than Thou” post; because I realized I’ve always created fictional places in New Orleans while still trying to get the city right…it’s really about the mentality than the actual geography.)

But I would like to go back and explore; perhaps Paul and I can find a place over there to rent for a few days–a condo or something so we can eat at home and so forth; Paul would be more than happy to just be given beach access 24/7–and then I could think about the two or three books I want to set there. (I also want to set some books and more stories in the fictional town of Tuscadega, which I invented and based on Freeport, where my grandmother lived. “Cold Beer No Flies” was set there, for example. And driving through Mobile made me think of Dark Tide, too.) It was also interested because the Google Earth views I’d looked at made Panama City Beach look a lot different. It is a lot different than it used to be–more built up, no vacant lots, and yes, there are condos and massive resort hotels built on the beach side of Lower Beach Road (there was only a Beach Road back in the day–now there’s Lower, Middle, and Upper Beach Roads), but there are still public beaches where you can drive up and park right by the dunes and walk a very short distance to the beach, and those tourist-serving little shops that sell gimcracks and souvenirs and beach towels and inflatable rafts and suntan lotion are still there–not as many, but there are some, bearing names like Surfin’ Safari and so forth. I also took some pictures to help me remember things if and when I write about the area again. (It’s where I want to set my Where the Boys Are/slasher novel mash-up that I am calling Where the Boys Die. )

And another story–another one of the ones from back in the day when I was still in college and trying to figure out how to become a writer (which is what I thought those classes were for; they were not) I had written another one that I had turned in with “Whim of the Wind” (the first semester with a good teacher, I had started to feel like I could be a writer again, and by the second semester when I took the class a second time–you were allowed to take it twice–I decided to write a lot of stories to turn in….which was when I first started writing fast, I suppose. Anyway, when I turned in “Whim of the Wind” I turned in another story called “Thunder Island,” which was also set in the panhandle. It was also well received by the class, but not as well as the other, and so I’ve never really thought much about the second. I tried rewriting it once, but to no avail, and since then it’s just kind of been languishing in the files. Ironically, the story was about someone who was returning, after a long time, to the area after a funeral and was remembering a summer when he was a kid, staying on the bay with his grandmother…but while the story was good and worked, now it’s problematic. I’d have to update the story and change some things, and it’s not a crime story at all–although technically in its original problematic form it was an inadvertent crime story. Funny that I completely had forgotten writing a story set in the panhandle almost forty years ago that actually predicted the drive I just took. Maybe I should look it over again? May not be a bad idea.

But the most important thing for me to do today is assess my situations and figure out where I am at with everything, and what I need to get done. I am still in the midst of medical processes–part of yesterday’s problems stemmed from me either never being told or misunderstanding the denture process, which is much longer than I thought and I won’t be getting the final ones for another four to five weeks–and tomorrow morning I am having a sonogram on my heart and Friday an MRI on my shoulder. I need to get a handle on things because all the medical stuff keeps pushing everything else out of my brain; how do people prepare for surgery when they have a gazillion other things to do on top of that? I guess you just endure. I have no control over the situation–which is probably part of my problem with the whole thing–and just have to put my fate in the hands of others, which is something I never like doing and always chafe at; it’s part of the reason why flying is such an issue for me (one of the many reasons, all of which have to do with my faulty brain wiring)–I have no control over anything. You have to surrender control of your fate to the airline once you walk into the airport until you walk out of the airport at your destination and that really chafes at me. Anxiety, of course–on the one hand I know what the general disorder is and that everything else I thought was wrong with my brain’s wiring is just a symptom of the macro disorder, and I am better about controlling it now that I know what it is…but yesterday was one of those days where I felt no control at all over my life and situation and so that started the spiraling and it just got out of control.

But I am happy that I’m better and more balanced (and better rested ) this morning–the neck is still stiff and sore–and on that note, will head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I will be back later, probably.

Now That The Buffalo’s Gone

I know very little about the culture, history, values, and faith of the native American population of this continent. Most of what I do know isn’t reliable; being gleaned from books and histories and television shows and movies and other media, most of which were steeped in racism and white supremacy, and cannot really be depended upon for any kind of accuracy whatsoever.

If anything, it should be looked at with a highly jaundiced and very critical eye.

I’ve been trying to educate myself more about the indigenous natives of Alabama, for example; as I delve more deeply into writing about my fictional Corinth County, I need to learn more about the area and the natives who originally lived there–and what they believed and their spirituality. I do not want to write–or even imagine– anything rooted in white supremacy and racism. I never played “cowboys and Indians” when I was a child–I was never into little boy things, ever–and was never terribly interested in Westerns, but was aware that white people wore thick make-up to play Native-Americans on film and television…which even as a child made me wonder why they didn’t just find Native-Americans who wanted to be in show business (because I found it incredibly hard to believe there weren’t any). I always assumed Cher was at least part Native because of “Half-Breed,” so you can imagine my shock and surprised to find out she’s actually of Armenian descent. The Village People had a non-native in native garb as part of their nod to gay masculine archetypes (probably this came from the book and movie Song of the Loon, plus decades of Hollywood’s sexualization of the loin-clothed Native warrior).

And as you get older, and do more reading and studying on the subject, you begin to see things that were plainly obvious all along, but somehow you never really connected the dots.

The first time I ever read anything that treated the native population with dignity, respect and understanding was James Michener’s Centennial*, which remains my favorite of his works and one of my favorite books of all time. The hit movie Billy Jack, which came out while I was in junior high school, was also about mistreatment of modern-day Natives by bigoted white people and their government, but I think the social message of the movie got lost in white tween boys’ fascination with Billy Jack’s fighting skills, because that was all they talked about. I don’t think I ever heard anyone ever say “It’s terrible how we treat the natives.” The late 1960s and 1970s began to see a change in how we see the native population, as well as the history of the European conquest of the continent–not everyone, of course, but at least with those who were trying to be better about racism and racial issues and the long history of oppression of the native populations.

I had heard a lot of great things about Stephen Graham Jones, a native American horror writer who has taken the genre by storm. I’ve been wanting to read him for quite some time, and so I decided to listen to The Only Good Indians on my drive to Panama City Beach and back this past weekend.

And it did not disappoint.

The headline for Richard Boss Rivs would be INDIAN MAN KILLED IN DISPUTE OUTSIDE BAR.

That’s one way to say it.

Ricky had hired on with a drilling crew over in North Dakota. Because he was the only Indian, he was Chief. Because he was new and probably temporary, he was always the one being sent down to guide the chain. Each time he came back with all his fingers he would flash thumbs-up all around the platform to show how he was lucky, how none of this was ever going to touch him.

Ricky Boss Ribs.

He’d split from the reservation all at once, when his little brother Cheeto had overdosed in someone’s living room, the television, Ricky was told, tuned to that camera thay just looks down on the IGA parking lot all the time. That was the part Ricky couldn’t keep cycling through his head: that’s the channel only the serious-old of the elders watched. It was just a running reminder of how shit the reservation was, how boring, how nothing. And his little brother didn’t even watch normal television much, couldn’t sit still for it, would have been reading comic books if anything.

First of all, I want to address what a terrific writer Jones is–although this is hardly ground-breaking news. For me, the strongest part of the story was the authorial voice and the tone set by it. I can’t say whether something like this–like anything written by people outside of my own experience–is authentic or not, but it was completely believable. I truly got a sense of what it is like to be a Native-American living in North America in the present day; the mind-numbing poverty and dealing with the incessant racism from white people. His characters were three-dimensional and fully realized; the dialogue sounded right, the rhythm of the words he used to create a melody of syllables and sounds sang from the page. I felt like I was there in every scene, in the room with the characters and bearing mute witness to what they were experiencing, and what they were going through and experiencing, with the fully-realized life experiences coming into play with every word they said and every action, every thought, every movement. The deceptive simplicity of the prose was powerful and resonated; it sounded like poetry coming through my speakers.

I also found myself really interested in basketball–which is very unusual.

I also realized, as I was listening, spellbound behind the wheel of my car, that there was also commonality of human experience here; the poverty, the worries about money and the future and the bleakness of the helpless acceptance of despair–this is definitely a horror novel, but it’s also a stinging indictment of poverty and societal inaction in the face of it; their resigned acceptance of their fate mirrors the more callous resignation most people feel when thinking about poverty in these United States–“nothing I can do about it.”

While telling a strong story that is almost impossible to step away from, Jones also educates us cleverly with a sentence here and there–I’d never thought about where the term buck naked came from, and there are so many of these sprinkled throughout the book; terms and phrases that white people use without a second thought but come from a long history of racism and prejudice; the title itself is taken from the horrific saying “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” I myself am always careful not to refer to the native population by the colonizing name assigned to them by the lost Spaniards looking for spices; it was jarring hearing it over and over again, and made me a bit uncomfortable–but I suspect that was the entire point. (I think the worst was when the junior high school basketball prodigy Denora was thinking about playing a game against white schools, and the horrible signs and things their students yelled at her and her teammates–the one that was particularly offensive was Massacre the Indians!, which reminded of the trash Chicago Bears fans holding up signs when playing the Saints in the NFC title game after the 2006 season: “FINISH WHAT KATRINA STARTED!”, which turned me from someone with a nostalgic affection for the NFL team in the city where I spent most of my childhood into someone who wants them to lose every fucking game they play.

Massacre the Indians.

There’s no doubt in my mind reservation kids have to deal with this kind of bullshit all the time, and its embarrassing and infuriating at the same time. The cruelty is always the point.

But I digress.

I really enjoyed this book. I felt like reading it somehow helped me reach a better understanding of a situation I was already aware of, while being incredibly entertaining at the same time. I cannot state that enough: what a great experience this book was from beginning to end. The tension and suspense were ratcheted up with every chapter and sentence; the monster was terrifying and horrifyingly relentless, and the characters were all strongly rendered in both their strengths and their flaws.

When I finished the book, I couldn’t help but wonder if this book, and others by Jones, were being pulled from library shelves because reading them might make white people feel bad. The book made me remember again why controlling access to what anyone can read is about control more than anything; we can’t let people read diverse points of view or see opposing opinion is the underlying message of the banners, and quite frankly, grow a fucking pair already! Seriously, who is calling who a snowflake?

Read this book! You can thank me later. And now I want to read more of Jones’ work.

*Centennial may not have been historically accurate in its depiction of the Arapahoe tribe, but I feel that it showed how the US government broke promise after promise to them, and the depiction of their systemic extermination was not done in a “manifest destiny” way. The ugliness of the US and its racism was right there on full display.

Cars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Funky Town

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

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

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

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

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

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