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.
As Banned Books Week comes to a close, it was exponentially more important and timely this year than before–given the Right Wing’s vicious, well-organized and ultimately doomed to failure attempts to control what people are allowed to fucking read in this country (for the record, you shrewish harpy lying “Moms4Liberty”–the First Amendment exists because the Founding Fathers foresaw the rise of people like you, and amended the Constitution to stop your skank, anti-American asses).
I’ve participated in Banned Books Week in the past; I’ve certainly done readings during it (the ones I remember reading from are Annie on My Mind by the late Nancy Garden–which was not only burned but tried for obscenity--and Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis; I should have read from Peyton Place at least once). I’ve not participated in a long time–haven’t been asked, to be honest–and so I don’t know if anything is going on in New Orleans for it, or whether it’s something we no longer do here, or what; but I never get offended when I’m not included. Life’s too short for that–and yes, I am well aware that such a thing used to offend me, which was incredibly stupid. I’m really sorry I spent so much of my life and my time allowing negativity such free rein in my head.
The first time I did Banned Books Night, it was after Hurricane Katrina (at least the first one I remember) and it was at the House of Blues; Poppy Z. Brite also read, and I gave him a ride home afterwards; it was in that car and on that ride that he convinced me I could write another Scotty book despite everything that had happened to New Orleans since I’d written the last one; that’s why Vieux Carré Voodoo was dedicated to him.
He gave me Scotty back after a very difficult time, and I will always be grateful for that,
Above are the covers of my seven of my first books. They all look pretty racy, don’t they? But only two of them are actually erotica–Full Body Contact and FRATSEX. Those were the only two erotica anthologies I edited under my own name before switching to Todd Gregory.
The reason I am sharing the covers is because the covers is what the Concerned Women for America, Virginia Chapter, used to get me banned personally (not just my books!) from a high school in suburban Richmond. They used the covers to try to get the Gay-Straight Alliance at a high school shut down, and they used those covers in the House of Burgesses to try to get GSA’s banned at every state-supported school in the state of Virginia.
They came for me based on the covers, not the content–because they had not read the content.
And please, bear in mind, they did not include the erotica anthology covers in their attempts.
In other words, they called me a gay pornographer but didn’t use the actual pornography I actually had done to try to get me banned.
There’s a book in the entire experience at some point for me; I’ve always intended to write a book about the experience called Gay Porn Writer–because that was how they branded me, and the news media, in their attempts to be fair and unbiased, gladly picked up that branding without question or thought or without even looking into me and my writing career in the slightest bit. It was also my first experience with learning that the media cannot be trusted; they are not driven by a desire to print and report the truth; they’re looking for clickbait headlines that drive clicks or people to pick up the paper (print was still very much a thing back then) and which headline would you click on:
Gay author banned from local high school; First Amendment questions raised
or
Gay porn writer’s high school appearance cancelled.
The second one is a lot more enticing, as well as concerning, don’t you think?
That, to me, was the most interesting thing of the entire experience; the perceptions, smears, slanders, and how no one was even the slightest bit interested in the truth. The question that was at the heart of the entire thing is precisely what is driving the bans and book removals and so forth now: how old is old enough to know that queer people exist, that literature and art about us exists, and that we’ve always been here despite being regularly erased from history. It also begged the question we are fighting yet again today: does merely the mention of an alternate sexuality automatically make the book adult content–which really means pornography. We can’t have kids thinking about sex, can we? And we certainly can’t have kids reading a book, recognizing the struggle a character is going through as similar, and feeling less alone, now can we? We’ve got to keep those queer kid suicide rates high!
You see, even the homophobes know the truth that they cannot eradicate our existence, and they also know the truth that the only difference between queer people and straight people is who we are sexually attracted to; ergo, even if you don’t talk about what it means but you have a character who identifies as queer–the “queer” difference means kids will either know that queer people exist (THE HORROR!!!) or think about sex.
And certainly, we cannot have anyone under the age of eighteen thinking about sex, can we? Just because most people become obsessed with it after going through puberty doesn’t mean we should educate them properly. Proper education for teenagers about sex and sexuality would mean a drop in teen pregnancies, teen STI infections, and the need for teen abortions. The spurious argument against sex education for teens has always been we’re just encouraging them to have sex. But that’s stupid; their fucking hormones are encouraging them to have sex, no matter what we teach them, and the more we teach them that sex is bad and wrong will only encourage them to do it more–and once they realize it’s actually a lot of fun and nothing bad immediately happened–they will have more of it.
It’s just basic human psychology. Deny someone something and they will want it all the more even if they weren’t interested in it to begin with. Nothing is more desirable than the forbidden.
The smart thing to do is educate them properly about safety, the risks and hazards of having sex at a young age–and this kind of education will also help teach them about finding the language to get help for sexual abuse they may be experiencing.
But oh no! We don’t want them to have sex! Because not educating them about sex and sexuality has worked so well so far, right? Better they find out by looking stuff up on-line or going to porn sites, right? As a sexual health counselor, I am constantly amazed at the things my clients do not know, or how wrong what they think they know is. Every day I see how our educational system fails to prepare us for one of the most important aspects of our lives.
And learning that queer people exist, can live and love and have happy and fulfilling lives, well, that isn’t what these people want for kids. No, if you’re queer, they want you to be miserable and unhappy and suicidal. What could be more Judeo-Christian than that? The rise in people identifying outside the gender/sexuality binary doesn’t mean that prior generations didn’t have those same people existing in them; just that the world and society wasn’t as accepting and understanding then so they had more to lose by coming out, by talking realistically about who they are and what they feel–and it’s scary, very scary. People who do fall into those binaries, who don’t have to worry about what other people will think about who they are and how they identify, shouldn’t be the ones deciding what is real and what isn’t.
And the sad truth is these people are simply terrified of having a queer child, period. So, they figure if they take away anything that might tell their child it’s okay to be queer and to be yourself, their child will instead choose to live in a closet for the rest of their lives and be completely miserable.
Which tells me all I need to know about what kind of parents these people are.
Their love has conditions, which means it isn’t love at all.
I was always under the impression that parents, first and foremost, want their children to be healthy and happy….which is apparently another myth I’ve been gaslit into believing since childhood. #notallparents
Well, I am not going to get my dentures until Monday; they just called and the dentist isn’t in today, so I can’t get them until Monday morning, which makes this weekend a bit more difficult–sigh, eating will be a bit of a challenge for me this weekend in Panama City Beach, but at least I get them Monday morning–which means I can get groceries and start eating normally again on Monday; which is fantastic and makes me incredibly happy. I think I can probably chew if I take the uppers out, but I hardly would want to be doing that in public. But Monday I can eat normally again, although I still have a lot of the softer food to get rid of without wasting. I’ve actually liked some of these options I’ve adapted to–who knew hot and spicy ramen would be so fucking good?–and I will miss the ice cream of course, but I didn’t really lose a lot of weight while on this diet (my body always adjusts very quickly) but I am hopeful that will become more of a reality for me (actual weight loss) once the teeth are done and the surgeries are over and I’ve recovered. The weather has become cool enough for me to take walks when I get home from work; I’ve just been so focused on bonding with li’l Tug that I’ve not really made use of the time as productively as perhaps I should have.
Tug is becoming more and more at home, and showing more and more Big Kitten Energy every day. When I got home from work there was a trail of…well, I won’t say destruction because that wasn’t what I found; but there was a lot more stuff on the floor when I got home than was there when I had left. Last night he slept a lot in my lap, but then would get the “wanna play!” zoomies, where he was running around knocking things off and playing with everything and chasing things. I read some more of Riley Sager’s Final Girls, which is quite interesting and holding my attention, and then switched over to some Youtube videos. I watched another old episode of Friday the 13th the Series, which is fun, as always; it also occurred to me that I’ve basically given a sort of the same set-up backstory to A Streetcar Named Murder that the show had; my main character inherited an antique shop from an old uncle of her husband’s she didn’t know, the first case involved an item from the store, etc. etc. etc. (I just last night put that together–there truly are no new stories under the sun, are there? This is what I mean when I say things like I have so many influences I can’t possibly list or remember them all–pretty much anything I’ve ever read and any movie/television show I’ve seen has influenced me in some way.) Paul had a meeting last night so he wasn’t home before I started falling asleep in my easy chair; Tug and I repaired to bed before Paul got home around ten and I slept until eight this morning; ten hours! That never happens, Constant Reader, and it felt great. I feel very rested and relaxed this morning before I dive into my work-at-home duties, of which there are quite a bit today. I also have some errands to run late this afternoon after work, and of course tomorrow mornign I have to get up early and get the oil changed–which means more of the Riley Sager. I’m also a little excited to listen to Stephen Graham Jones’ The Only Good Indians on the way over and back, and I want to finish the Sager this weekend so I can reread The Haunting of Hill House and The Dead Zone before moving on to Elizabeth Hand’s A Hanunting on the Hill–although I’ll reread the King before the Jackson, because it just makes more sense to pair the Jackson with Hand’s retelling of the same tale, doesn’t it?
The switch from blast-furnace summer heat to the coolness (relatively speaking) of fall has been wonderful, and I hope my Entergy bill reflects the cooling of the weather. The kitchen is a mess, as always on Friday mornings, so of course I have some things to do around here before I get started on my work-at-home chores or do some writing or reading or whatever I need to get done here around the house. The new season of Our Flag Means Death dropped last night, as well as other new episodes of our shows (Ahsoka, Only Murders in the Building, among others) and we also want to start The Changeling, based on Victor Lavalle’s superb novel.
So I am hoping for nice productive day at home. I feel rested and relaxed–always a plus–and maybe not as motivated as I would like, but hey, that’s on me and the coffee I have yet to finish consuming. I’m going to finish off my morning with a cup of cacao, because I am trying to get used to it and it would be great to wean myself entirely off coffee, but the cacao is taking some getting used to–it doesn’t really have the bitter bite of coffee, which is the part of the taste I prefer. Cacao is more like unsweetened hot chocolate–and it’s probably the real chocolate taste, as opposed to the insanely sweetened version Americans are used to. I’ll have to get up early tomorrow to get the oil changed in the car–since I’ll be on the West Bank, I should probably go ahead and grocery shop while I’m over there, and then I won’t have to worry about it when I get back on Sunday night, which does make the most sense.
And so, on a more cheery note than usual lately, I am going to take this chance to head into the spice mines. I may be back before tomorrow morning’s before the oil change at the crack of dawn, but one never can be sure. At any rate, have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll talk to you again soon.
(NOTE: I started writing this post back in January, after I’d returned to New Orleans from my last Mystery Writers of America board meeting–this is to give context to the opening paragraph– as you are no doubt well aware, Constant Reader, that I’ve not been back to New York since January; so this is that same trip where this happened and I started thinking about these things, which have never been far out of the forefront of my mind since then.)
While I was in New York recently, walking around to and fro, here and there, hither and yon, I was always checking my phone (and yes, I hate that I’ve become one of those people) and then shoving it back into my pants pocket without putting it to sleep first or closing the app that was open. As I walked around, of course this led to my phone doing all kinds of weird things –closing an app and opening another, etc.; but at least there were no butt dials, right? At one point, when I pulled out my phone as I took a seat on the subway, somehow what was open on the screen was a google search for my book A Streetcar Named Murder–and when I went to close that screen I touched one of the images by mistake, which took me to the Goodreads page for the book. Bear in mind, I never look at Goodreads for any of my books, let alone Amazon–the temptations to start reading the bad reviews is too great, and while I can usually laugh them off, occasionally–and it depends entirely on my mood, of course–one will get under my skin and it will annoy me, and that’s not good for anyone.
This particular day on the subway the Goodreads page opened to the bad reviews first–its average is four stars, which I will always take because I am not Lauren Hough–and the very first one made me laugh out loud on the subway. Paraphrased, it was basically someone taking umbrage at “someone who doesn’t live here or know the first thing about New Orleans” writing a book about New Orleans. The reason they had come to this conclusion was because Valerie referred to Mardi Gras as “Fat Tuesday”, and according to this one-star reviewer, no one from New Orleans would ever say Fat Tuesday instead of Mardi Gras.
Well, I’ve lived here for twenty-seven years and I have heard any number of locals say Fat Tuesday rather than Mardi Gras, and so of course I had to click on the reviewer’s profile…and grinned to myself when I saw that they actually live in Metairie, not New Orleans…which to locals is a bigger crime than getting something wrong about New Orleans: claiming to be from New Orleans when you actually live in Metairie. (the rejoinder is usually along the lines of “bitch, you live in Metairie.”)
It was also kind of fun to be accused of inauthenticity when it comes to writing about New Orleans, because I personally have never claimed to be an expert on anything New Orleans (others have said that about me, and I always am very quick to reply not even close); the more I learn about the city the more I realize how little I actually know about the city. There’s an extremely rich (and often incredibly dark) history here; it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that the New Basin canal was there as long as it was, or that there were several train stations around the French Quarter (including one that essentially was in Storyville–rather convenient for the whores and pimps, right?), or that where UNO is now used to be the lake shore resort of Milneburg, or that the only way across the river or the lake was by ferry until Huey Long built a bridge at the Rigolets (the narrow inlet between lakes Pontchartrain and Borgne).
I was on a panel once at the Tennessee Williams Festival with Bill Loefhelm (if you’re not reading Bill’s books, shame on you and correct that immediately) and the question of New Orleans authenticity came up, and Bill’s response (paraphrasing) was that New Orleanians have a tendency to play a game called “NOLier than Thou,” in which they try to one-up each other to see who the true New Orleanian actually is–which is, of course, gatekeeping. (And yes, I immediately turned to him and said, “I like that and am going to steal it” SO CONSIDER IT STOLEN.)
It does bother me somewhat when I read books set in New Orleans written by people who have never lived here; you can tell, but I also get over it pretty quickly; who is to say who can and can’t write about a place? There’s a significant difference between visiting and living here, which I realized almost immediately after we moved here, and that also becomes very apparent in fiction. I had started writing the book that would become Murder in the Rue Dauphine before I moved here, and I realized, once I did live here, that everything I’d written about New Orleans was completely wrong. I didn’t work on the book for another two years; and even then I wasn’t entirely sure I’d lived here long enough to write about the city. So…I kind of cheated by making Chanse MacLeod not a native either; he’d moved to New Orleans after getting his degree in Criminology from LSU, and had been here about six or seven years when the story opened. So he was an outsider, too; so his views on the city and how things work around here were from an outsider’s perspective, like mine; that was easier. With Bourbon Street Blues, I decided that Scotty was not only a native but came from two old-line society families, from the Garden District and Uptown. One of the greatest joys of my publishing career was having the Times-Picayune’s mystery reviewer, as well as the Books Editor, both say repeatedly that I got New Orleans right in my books. (Thanks again as always for all of your support, Diana Pinckley and Susan Larson!)
And I never really worried about it too much from then on. I wrote about New Orleans as I saw it–the potholes, the cracked sidewalks, the leaning houses, flooding streets, oppressive weather and hurricanes. As the years passed, I became more and more aware that my New Orleans writing was primarily confined to the Quarter, the Marigny, the CBD, the Lower Garden District, the Garden District, and Uptown–a very narrow slice of the city, but those were also my slices of the city, so that’s I wrote about. Sometimes I’d venture into another neighborhood–Lakeview, the Irish Channel, English Turn–and sometimes the story would take the characters to another part of Louisiana–the bayou and river parishes, the Maurepas swamp, the Atchafalaya Swamp, Baton Rouge–which, oddly enough, I had no qualms about fictionalizing. I’ve created numerous fictional towns and parishes surrounding New Orleans; I’ve even invented a sleazy gay bar in the Quarter (the Brass Rail).
So, was I doing New Orleans (and Louisiana) right by making stuff up, inventing places like the Royal Aquitaine Hotel, the Brass Rail, Bodytech Health Club, Riverview Fitness, etc.? Sometimes you have to fictionalize things, even if they are based on something that really exists. I never really thought much about it; I felt like I was getting the feel of New Orleans right, that my characters talked the way people in New Orleans do and react the way people here do, and that I was putting enough reality into the books for them to ring true to locals, natives, and tourists. Sometimes the cases are based on, in or around something that actually happened or exist; like the Cabildo Fire, the Fire at the Upstairs Lounge, Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing flood; termite swarms; Huey Long’s deduct box; and even the court case in, I think, Murder in the Irish Channel that triggered the murders was actually based on a civil trial I served as a juror on.
When I started writing A Streetcar Named Murder, I realized a lot of things I was writing about had to be fictionalized; I couldn’t set a murder at a Mardi Gras krewe ball and use an actual krewe that exists in real life, for one thing (like I had to invent a French Quarter hotel for a couple of murders to occur in) and while I didn’t want to use the cheat that Valerie had moved here again, like I did with Chanse, I wanted her to be of New Orleans but not be of New Orleans…so her parents are from Georgia and moved here after college and marriage, so Valerie was born here, went to school here, met and fell in love with and married her husband here–but her roots aren’t very deep, so she is both insider and outsider at the same time. I liked that idea; like how I am of the South but not of the South, she was of New Orleans but not of New Orleans at the same time. When creating Jem Richard in Death Drop, again, he’s a recent transplant to the city but his father is from New Orleans but relocated to Dallas, where Jem was born and raised. Jem spent a lot of his summers in New Orleans when he was growing up with his paternal grandmother, so he too is of New Orleans but not of New Orleans; which I am really liking as a method of storytelling about the city. I also moved Jem to a different part of the city; he lives in the 7th ward, on St. Roch Avenue in what is known as the St. Roch neighborhood (aka what realtors are trying to redefine and rename as the “new Marigny”, in order to raise prices) which is also very close to my office. Part of this was to move the action out of the neighborhoods I usually write about (although he does wind up in both Uptown and the Quarter) and so I could explore another neighborhood/part of the city than what I usually write about.
I also had recently–prior to the pandemic–started feeling more disconnected from the city than I ever had before. Primarily I think this was due to my office moving; we had been on Frenchmen Street in the Marigny, one block from the Quarter and where Scotty lives, so whenever I needed some Scotty inspiration I could walk a block, stand under the balconies of his building and just look around, drinking in the sights and sounds and smells of the block. To get past this, I started joining New Orleans history pages on Facebook, like Ain’t Dere No Mo New Orleans or the HNOC page and various others–you do occasionally run into Confederate apologists and racists there (they usually cry about the “crime” in New Orleans–you know, the usual dog-whistles from the white flight racists who fled to Jefferson Parish or the North Shore to escape desegregation of the public schools) and reading more histories of the city, state, and region–which are incredibly fascinating. That reading/research helped me write my historical Sherlock in New Orleans short story, “The Affair of the Purloined Rentboy”–but I have also since realized I got some things wrong in the story too, but there is just so much to know. I set the story in 1916 for example….without knowing New Orleans was hit by a MAJOR hurricane in 1915 that wiped out any number of settlements and villages around the lakes and the bay shores (that will turn up in a story sometime; the destruction of the lake front village of Freniere is just begging to be fictionalized and written about). When I mentioned this to another writer, who primarily does historicals, she snorted. “It’s impossible to know everything, and would people in 1916 still be talking about a hurricane from 1915?”
Probably, but if it doesn’t have anything to do with the story being told, why would I mention it?
A very valuable lesson, to be sure.
So, yes, lady from Metairie: you caught me. I’m not from New Orleans, you’re correct. But I’ve also published over twenty novels and umpteen short stories set here, and have even won awards for doing it.
And I’ll call it Fat Tuesday if I fucking want to.
The Huey P. Long Bridge at sunset, photo credit Marco Rasi
I do, I really do. I was thinking about this the other night; I was thinking about my trip this weekend to spend time with relatives I’ve not really talked to much over the last forty or so years. Rereading Jackson Square Jazz (I finished last night) has also been revelatory. It’s a pretty good book, and rather ambitious in its scope, but there are some things I’m going to need to revise out of it–primarily words and phrases that have since become problematic. (They were always problematic, but unfortunately we weren’t as aware of these things back then as we are now.) But the purpose of the book overall in the scheme of Scotty’s growth as a person and development of his character definitely played out here, and it definitely worked, so I was rather pleased with the reread.
But it was (is?) interesting to see how I’ve changed and grown as a writer in the ensuing twenty years. I was also a little impressed at how ambitious this book was, in its scope and its story-telling; I don’t remember being that ambitious when I was writing the book. I remember where the idea came from, and how long it gestated in my head before it became Scotty #2; ironically, this was the plot I was going to use to try to write a mainstream mystery with Paige as the main character…at least, that was how I first thought of it. I will have to go back through the manuscript and start making corrections and finding the errors–with the actual finished book on the table beside me to consult for corrections and so forth–and I am also going to need to have the iPad around, so I can do searches in the other Scotty books to verify things. There were also a couple of interesting things I noted in the book as I was rereading it–I did a really good job of setting up the big twist in Mississippi River Mischief that was twenty years in the making–but there were also some things in there that I’ve not followed up on or I’m pretty sure are incorrect; the way I described the apartment on the top floor of Scotty’s building is way off; I am going to have to reread Vieux Carre Voodoo again as well and see what other continuity errors I’ve made with that building over the years. I also kind of liked Scotty’s not-totally-an-adult yet voice; he was a bit of a Peter Pan throughout his twenties, and didn’t start settling down until he was well into his thirties, which was also kind of interesting to me. This book also contains my first car chase (and my first writing about a car accident, for those who keep track of how many accidents Scotty has been in–Chanse has been in a few, too) and some of its geography was wrong; so I am going to need to clean that scene up a bit as well. I guess the best thing to do is reread the version that came out in print next, and put sticky notes in the places where I think I made mistakes in the manuscript to see if it got cleaned up in the edits.
I mean, I really tried a lot of shit in this book, and it actually worked! Good for me!
I ran errands on the way home from work yesterday (mainly so I don’t have to again today) and was a bit tired by the time I got home. I did get started on the chores before Tug decided he needed my lap, and of course, once I was in the chair and he was in my lap it was all over. I did manage to put away the dishes and do another load, as well as get started on the laundry, which I will have to finish tonight. Tomorrow is a work-at-home day, which will be nice. I do need to take the car in for an oil change and tire rotation before I leave on Saturday; whether I do that tomorrow morning or Saturday will depend on a number of things–primarily whether I hear from the dentist that my temporary plates are ready; I really would like to have those before I leave for the weekend because I’d really rather not have to remain on the soft food diet and try to figure out what to stop and eat on the way there and back.
I also picked up two books yesterday, which will come in handy for Halloween Horror Month: Elizabeth Hand’s retelling of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, A Haunting on the Hill, and the Jonathan Maberry edited Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weirdness. I also got my three Anthony nominee certificates from this past Bouchercon in the mail, which was incredibly lovely and still doesn’t quite seem real to me yet. It still feels like it happened to someone else. I never got the certificates from the previous years–I didn’t know they actually made them for us–and the first time I actually picked one up was at Malice, when they gave out the ones for the Agathas (which was the first time I found out that they make these for the nominees. Just as well–I don’t have that much wall space and boy did that ever sound arrogant!) this past spring. It’s very nice to have these, too, but I am not sure where I can put them. Like I said, I don’t have much open space left on the walls of my kitchen/office. On the other hand, it may be time to mix that all up, anyway, and rehang things or replace things that have been up forever. Do I really need the glamour shots of Joan, Bette and Kate? Probably not.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later.
Monday and back to the office with me today. Weekends are simply not long enough, ever, and should always be at least three days, methinks. Yesterday I witnessed the dreadful Saints performance, and it was not a good weekend for Louisiana football fans; the only glimmer of light locally was Tulane’s victory. I finished reading Shawn’s book, which was marvelous, and then picked out my first Halloween Horror read: Riley Sager’s Final Girls, and it’s long past time I’ve read this book. It’s rather embarrassing that I’ve not yet gotten to it. I also downloaded the audiobook of The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones for this weekend’s drive to the Redneck Riviera, and read another Alfred Hitchcock Presents short story, from Stories for Late at Night, “The Ash Tree” by M. R. James, which was delightfully creepy and reminded me of Daphne du Maurier’s “The Apple Tree”–and that in turn made me think about creepy trees as a trope in horror, and thought perhaps I should give the trope a whirl at some point. We watched the Scouts Honor: The Secret Files of the Boy Scouts documentary–which was just as creepy and awful and horrific as I thought it would be, as well as yet another pointed reminder of how straight people have failed to protect children since, oh like forever, and then cover it up as much as possible but then have the nerve to accuse queer people of pedophilia and grooming?
Sure, Jan.
We also watched the Jennifer Garner Apple Plus series The Last Thing He Said, which wasn’t great but wasn’t terrible, either; it just kind of evolved and wasn’t very thriller-ish or suspenseful. I also predicted one of the bigger plot twists in the first episode long before it played out in the show, but it was well done and an interesting story; but it wasn’t very thrilling or suspenseful; it never really seemed like there was any danger or stakes. It ws talked about a lot, but never part of the show’s reality? It was interesting enough to hold our interest–although I think I may have approached telling the story in a different manner than they did. It’s an interesting thought, at any rate.
It’s lovely having a kitten in the house, even if it means being more alert and having to get up more regularly because there was a crashing sound from somewhere else inside the apartment–usually followed by a galloping kitten moving at high speed away from the noise and mayhem he caused. He woke me up this morning by knocking my glasses off my nightstand table and then playfully batting them around on the floor, and once I took those away from him he went for the broom. He’s incredibly sweet, though, and I love that he’s so fearless and feels comfortable and at home enough to play. He slept on me for most of the Saints debacle yesterday, through the Boy Scout movie, and then moved back and forth between me and Paul during the Jennifer Garner show.
I also started writing the opening of a short story or a novel or something at any rate while watching the Boy Scouts documentary–part of it and the scandal was in New Orleans–and had an idea for the opening scene for something so I started writing it down; mainly about a college student away from home for the first time who’s obsessed with true crime and wants to be a true crime writer but isn’t sure how to get started chasing her dream other than majoring in Journalism at Liberty State in Liberty Center, Kansas–the town from #shedeservedit, why not reuse it? I don’t know why I started writing this when there are so many other things I should be working on. But that’s also life, you know, when you’re a writer–at least for me, there are always so many other ideas and thoughts and stories banging around in my head that it’s sometimes hard to focus on what I need to get done.
Heavy heaving sigh.
I never did make that to-do list for the week, so perhaps that should be the first thing on the list (I often do this so I can cross something off the list immediately; it’s satisfying and always seems to keep off working on getting the list completed). I also think that once I finish reading the Riley Sager I am going to reread a classic Stephen King that I’ve not revisited in a long time, The Dead Zone, which used to be one of my favorites and is still one that I think about a lot–especially during the rise of the former president, who eerily reminded me of the character of Greg Stillson, written thirty or forty years or so before the rise of the reality host/failed real estate mogul. (I’d considered rereading it in the wake of the 2016 election, but didn’t have the strength; I think now would be a good time.) I liked the opening of the Sager; which was encouraging. I hope to be able to get several books read this month…I think my reading is going to start picking up again, hallelujah. I think having a cat sleeping my lap while I read was what I was missing, and why it was hard for me to read since we lost Scooter. (I promise not to turn this into a Tug stan blog, seriously.) Today is going to be his first day left at home on his own for a while; we’ll see how he handles that.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader; I’m sure I’ll be around again later on.
So, we brought this little fella home yesterday from the SPCA.
His name, already given to him when we picked him, is Rum-Tum-Tugger (I announced it incorrectly on social media yesterday with a typo calling him Tigger by mistake) and that will probably change as we get to know him better; he doesn’t know the name at all. He’s almost five months old, and is completely fearless. I wanted to take all the cats home (and the dogs, too; it’s always so sad to me to see their hopeful faces and their wagging tails, thinking you might be their rescuer. All the cats we met were sweet, some a little shy (Sing out Louise!) which made me sad because they seemed to put some effort into making friends, but are apparently used to not being picked they gave up trying to win us over once we walked away from them. Tug was having none of that, and let us know he was the only cat for us. He has the cutest little meow, and there was no shyness at all once we got him home; he fearlessly explored the entire apartment, made cuddle time as well as let us both know, with head butts and purrs and exposed belly and making biscuits, that he was happy to have his Forever Home. I woke up this morning to him purring and curled up next to me on my pillow, and last night he followed Paul up to bed–and then came back down looking for me the way Scooter used to–hey, it’s bed time! He’s a kitten so he’s very playful–he made toys out of wrappers and dust and whatever he could find on the floor–he chased my highlighter around on the floor for a good half an hour or so.
Obviously, he needs some toys. Scooter didn’t care about toys, but clearly our very playful house tiger kitten needs things to play with.
I slept really well last night, despite going to bed so late–we finished off Sex Education last night. I don’t know if that was the finale for the show or just for the season, but it seemed like the perfect way to end the show if that was the intent. The season was a bit uneven, but they all learned important lessons and fractured families and friendships began healing. I also was incredibly satisfied with how the Otis/Maeve relationship was wrapped up. It seems to me that another season would undo this season, if that makes sense, and another one would feel kind of forced. The actors are getting too old for their roles, if that makes sense (much the same as the original cast of Elité), and I liked the note the season ended on.
This morning I am trying cacao instead of coffee, and just brewed my first ever cup of it. Here’s hoping it tastes as good as it smells? It’s unsweetened chocolate, really; and by itself, it’s kind of bland. But adding vanilla and sweet-n-low makes it taste more like hot chocolate. I’m trying this out as a coffee alternative; it’s supposed to give you a coffee-like energy but without caffeine, and without the caffeine there’s no crash later. I kind of like it. I don’t know that it’ll replace coffee in my daily routine, but it’s good and we’ll see how the effects play out with me. I am going to drop beads off today for the disabled kids, and books to the library sale but don’t really feel like I need to make a grocery run. I think we have everything we need, so it can wait until one night after work on my way home. I also need to get gas and air up my car tires, now that the weather has gotten milder. I’ll be taking it in for an oil change and a tire rotation this coming Friday.
LSU plays at Mississippi tonight; it’s the Magnolia Bowl rivalry game so they always, like Arkansas, play like world-beaters when they play LSU. They can make their season by beating LSU, and after last week I am not so confident the Tigers will make it out of Oxford with a win–they also got beat by Alabama last week for the seventh or eighth year in a row, so they also need the win to stay relevant in the division and the conference; it would take a miracle for them to win the West with two losses. (I refuse to call the University of Mississippi by its commonly used nickname for any number of reasons, not the least of which is that it’s a callback to plantation days. That school has been problematic for decades, but at least they no longer wave Confederate treason flags at games; how must seeing that have felt to visiting Black players? Obviously, their fans didn’t give a shit, like how Alabama’s student section was chanting homophobic and racist slurs at the Texas players several weeks ago–nothing says welcome to the SEC like homophobia and racism.) I’m not sure what other games are on today, but I think for me today I am going to clean up around the house some and finish reading Shawn’s book so I can move on to Halloween Horror Month. I feel like I slept well but have low energy this morning, and I am just going to roll with the low energy and rest and relax for the majority of the day so I can get some writing done tomorrow. Next weekend I’ll be in Panama City Beach for the night visiting Dad and my aunts and uncles, so no writing will get done that weekend. I think I will try to work on Jackson Square Jazz during the games today, too.
So, on that note i am going to head into the spice mines. The kitchen is a disaster area, as always, and I should have spent some time on it last night, but that’s what Saturday morning is for; catching up on things. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back at some point.
I”m up earlier than usual on a Friday because I have to go to the dentist’s office this morning to get fitted for my new dentures. I don’t know when they’re going to be ready, and I know it’s too much to hope for that I would get temporary ones today so I can start eating normally again, but an old gay man can dream, can’t he? I left work yesterday to go meet with the cardiologist, to be cleared for my surgery as well as to check and see if i also have the same congenital heart issue that eventually killed Mom (her father died in his sleep in his forties; there’s a concern that it’s not only congenital but genetic); good news is my heart is strong and functioning completely the way it’s supposed to; no concerns there, with a sonogram scheduled to see if my arteries are normal or I have the same issue Mom had. He also changed my cholesterol medicine (giving me something stronger), and i need to have another blood draw done. Yay? My schedule between now and the surgery looks to be filled with appointments for tests and things. Heavy heaving sigh.
I slept really well last night. Paul was late getting home–we watched Only Murders in the Building–and I did some chores. I took the evening off from writing and tried to do chores mostly. I watched a documentary on Youtube about Charles VI of France–aka Charles the Mad, the king who lost France to Henry V of England–and the “glass delusion,” which the King suffered from as did many others during the time period; the belief that he was made of glass and would shatter. I had wanted at one point to write a story about the glass delusion (because it absolutely fascinates me), but am not sure how to do it or whether Iwant to write about the king himself or come up with someone new to have the delusion. He was an interesting person, had an interesting and tumultuous reign–whichof course indirectly led to the rise of Joan of Arc, which really is fascinating. St. Joan and her voices have always struck my curiosity–more on that at another time, anyway. So, yes, I went down a wormhole on Youtube on the Hundred Years’ War, the madness of King Charles, and the fifteenth century. The fifteenth was also a calamitous century, to use the language Barbara Tuchman used to describe the fourteenth in her book A Distant Mirror (which may be my favorite history book of all time). I don’t want to write about the fifteenth the same way I want to write about the sixteenth, because it would have to cover the Hundred Years’ War but also the Wars of the Roses, and those have been written about already endlessly so I have no desire to write about either of them.
But my sixteenth century and women ruling Europe book is something I would still like to do.
Okay, so now I am home again and irritated. I stopped to make a few groceries on the way home from the dentist, and apparently left one of my bags in the shopping cart, which is super annoying–especially since that was the bag that had the stuff I specifically stopped for; all the rest was just lagniappe I picked up because I was there already. Heavy sigh. Ah well, I can go back later on–probably will, because I do need those things–but still irritating to just throw money away like that. Ah, well. I’ll be getting my new temporaries in about a week or so; which is the best news, really, and I also have to get my checkbook register caught up and all my new follow-up appointments put onto my calendar.
And of course, this afternoon we’re going to the SPCA on the west bank to get a cat. YAY! (Maybe I can pick up the stuff I need on the West Bank before we go look at the kitties.) I am not going to stress about it, nor am I going to get anxious about it, either.
So I have some work-at-home duties to take care of this morning before we head across the river to adopt a cat (I’m a little excited but trying really hard to contain myself). I also have laundry and dishes and other tedious chores around here to get done over the weekend. Tomorrow I’m going to take the books to the library sale and see if I can get my vaccinations that I need at CVS; worst case scenario I can’t get it there and will have to wait some more. I’d like to have it before I see my elderly relative next weekend in Panama City Beach, for obvious reasons; I’d feel terrible if I gave any of them COVID at their ages. (Dad is the youngest at nearly eighty-two.) It’s just a quick trip, over on Saturday and back on Sunday, but since I won’t be able to head up north for the holidays I don’t want to miss a chance of seeing Dad when he’s that close, and I can finish Carol Goodman’s marvelous The Drowning Tree in the car.
And on that note, I should probably head into the spice mines and take care of my work-at-home duties before Paul gets up. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I am sure there will be a picture of my new kitty to post later on.
Yesterday was a bit of an emotionally challenging one at work yesterday, but handling days like yesterday is the most important part of my job, and part of the primary reason I took the job in the first place. It does get to me sometimes; not as often as one might think, but that’s also having years of experience in doing the work, too. I was emotionally and mentally tired when I got off work, decided not to run any errands and just come home to have some time to myself for a little while instead. There were chores that needed doing, of course, so I put on my big boy pants and went to work. Chores are always lovely when you’re processing things, or when you’re writing something. I like how satisfying it feels to be doing something mindless with your hands while your mind works away at something.
I did manage to do some work on the sequel to Death Drop, and got about 1200 words down, so that’s something. It wasn’t as easy as the work was on Sunday, but I was also better rested then and hadn’t already worked a full day when I sat down to work on the first chapter of the new Valerie, too. Both manuscripts are starting to come together in my mind, which is nice–but I am not sure if this “work on one for a chapter and then switch to the other” is going to be productive or help me at all in getting them both done, either. And the chores helped me assess the chapter and come up with the things that need to be said and written in it, which I will do tonight. So yay for the chores again!
I’ve been toying with the idea for a blog entry for several years now that is actually turning into a longer-form essay. (It’s been sitting in my drafts for a very long time here.) It began as a response to a homophobic op/ed run in a college paper at a major Southern university that was so incredibly offensive on every possible level (there wasn’t a homophobic dog-whistle the little bigot writer didn’t blow) that it was hard to believe a college student in this day and age could write, unashamedly and with such great pleasure and glee, such incredibly bigoted rhetoric disguised as “concern” when what was actually written was nothing more than an uninformed, un-researched, and completely emotional rant, entirely based in nothing factual. All it did was merely give the author a chance to expose their anger and feelings of contempt for queer people. That person should never ever be given any kind of platform again under any fucking circumstance–unless she goes to work for the Murdochs. That post then continued growing, until it became something else entirely, eventually consuming another blog post draft I’d been toying with for a very long time about authenticity and #ownvoices and cultural appropriation. It’s a separate piece from the other essay I’ve been developing (“Are You Man Enough?” about masculinity)–apparently, I’m getting into the writing of essays now, even though no one will want to ever publish them–but it’s something I feel strongly about, especially with that recent nonsensical essay making the rounds about gay romance that erases gay writers almost completely. Yes, yes, we get it, you think straight women invented gay romance.
You can say it a million times, you can even believe it–but that still doesn’t make it true.
Erasure of queer people is an ongoing effort.
The water situation in New Orleans–always dire, no matter how you look at it really–is finally getting national attention (which means I’m hearing about it from friends and family), and this is a question/problem that is going to continue, and not just here, either. Florida seems just as determined to make a quick buck at every moment without any concern for their fresh water supply, which is being steadily poisoned by chemicals and other pollutants; I am sure the rise of the seas is going to also gradually impact the Florida aquifer, too, as well as those of cities along rivers on the coasts. Now imagine a major hurricane coming this way and sending a twenty-foot storm surge of saltwater up the river. It was never a concern before…but it is from now on. Yay! Obviously, Louisiana’s environmental issues are something I’ve always been concerned about, but the concern is definitely ratcheting up a lot lately. This brutally hot summer, the drought, the river level being so low for so long…it’s hard not to think about it. It should be our legislature’s primary concern…but they’re too busy legislating against trans people and banning books because, you know, priorities.
I also started watching, while waiting for Paul to come home from work last night, some old episodes of the original Dark Shadows, which I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. The funny thing about the show and my memories of it are that I don’t really remember a lot of the storylines or characters beyond the original; probably because the “Barnabas is a vampire” storyline was also made into a feature film (House of Dark Shadows) and when the series was rebooted in 1989, they started with that same storyline. Prime used to have the individual episodes; now they have them bunched together with titles–I was watching the episodes when Quentin (David Selby) first came on the show; the grouping is called The Haunting of Collinwood, which made it more fun because I don’t know how the storyline runs–although I know Quentin became one of the stars of the show so this evil persona he’s inhabiting here inevitably must be redeemed. I may have to rent House of Dark Shadows to watch again.
As you can see, I am starting to get into the Halloween Horror Month spirit already!
And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday (oh! It’s Pay-the-Bills day!) and I’ll talk to you again later.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is how we don’t really have a Louisiana crime writer who explores and illuminates the damage we are doing to the ecosystem and environmentalism of the state the way John D. Macdonald infused many of his Florida novels with so frequently. Condominium, published in the 1980’s, is a stinging indictment of crooked developers and corrupt politicians putting up massive condominium buildings along the coastline of Florida, despite the damage they do to the environment, all in the name of a quick buck. I have been thinking about this because I spent a lot of time in the panhandle in the 1970s, back before Panama City Beach developed into what it is now. I’ve not been back there since 1980, at the latest; but just looking at Google Earth images it’s horrifying how different and over-developed that whole area has become. (I was looking at the images because I was thinking about setting a book along the Redneck Riviera/Baja Alabama/Emerald Coast/Miracle Strip, whichever name you use for the region.) Louisiana, nicknamed “Sportsmen’s Paradise” because of the abundant fish and game and the stunning natural beauty of the state, has pretty much spent the last hundred or so years (at least) destroying and despoiling the natural resources of the state of Louisiana, killing off wildlife species while introducing new invasive ones–and don’t even get me started on Cancer Alley, that stretch of the river between New Orleans and Baton Rouge lined with petrochemical plants parked next to poor, mostly Black communities that have, surprisingly enough, large instances of cancers in the residents. Now the level of the river is so low that it can’t keep the Gulf water pushed down, and the salty water is making its way up the river and intruding into our drinking water supply here in southeastern Louisiana. I’m sure the loss of so much of the wetlands to ensure oil company profits hasn’t affected this in any way, shape or form. There’s a really good environmental thriller to be written about Louisiana (if not more), and I think maybe part of the problem in writing about the destruction of Louisiana in the name of unfettered greed is that I don’t feel knowledgeable enough on the subject to tackle it, nor do I have the time to spend on the research necessary.
It’s really disappointing to me that James Michener never wrote one of his two thousand page plus books about Louisiana. Louisiana history, no offense, is a lot more interesting than Texas’.
And Sportsmen’s Paradise is a great title for a book about Louisiana’s environmental disasters.
I suppose I should just go ahead and do it, regardless of how difficult and long and tedious the process may be. I also think part of the reason I’ve resisted this aspect of writing about Louisiana is because no matter how dark my books may get, I always want justice to be done in some way and to end the book with some sort of hope; there literally is no hope for the future of Louisiana because our politicians are all too greedy and corrupt and only focused on the now rather than the future, no matter how much they beat the “but the children!” drum publicly to fool those incapable of deeper thought. There have been so many environmental disasters in Louisiana over the nearly three decades I’ve lived here I can’t remember them all; and yes, I definitely count boil water advisories in that, too. There was the sinkhole at Bayou Corne (anyone remember that?) and of course Deepwater Horizon, whose true impact and the damage it wrought on the Gulf and the coastline will not be fully known for generations.
The one consistent thing throughout Louisiana’s history has been the entrenched systemic political corruption. I have written about that.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about Jackson Square Jazz, as I get into this revision, and remembering why I wrote it and what I was trying to say within the book; there was a thread in it that ties directly into the new one, and there are also some thematic commonalities with S. A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed, which I am really enjoying reading. Shawn is such an extraordinary writer, with a gift not only for language but character, dialogue, setting and story; the complete deal, as it were, and definitely is going to be considered one of the definitive crime writers of this new generation of exceptional talent that has risen over the last few years. I am going to spend some more time with Shawn’s book this morning, too; I am really enjoying it and wanting to see where it goes and how it all ends. I also have the new Lou Berney on deck, and Lou’s books are always high-quality, clever, and engaging.
College football was interesting yesterday. My Tigers prevailed in a three-point nail-biter against Arkansas in Tiger Stadium 34-31, running the clock out and kicking the winning field goal on the last play of the game. Paul and I were stunned, as was the crowd in the stadium..,and then I laughed. “LSU fans aren’t used to smart clock management in tight games,” I observed, and Paul started laughing with me because the crowd in the stadium didn’t know how to react to the end of the game either. It almost seemed ant-climactic rather than exciting…how many games have we lost this century because of poor clock management skills displayed by the coaching staff? So it was lovely, for once, to see the Tigers play smart at the end of a game for a change. Alabama finally looked like Alabama for the first time this season–but only in the second half as they iced Mississippi. LSU now has to play Mississippi in Oxford next weekend; it’ll be interesting to see how LSU stacks up against our old Magnolia Bowl foe. Colorado finally lost, which brought out all the racist college football fans on social media. The Texas A&M-Auburn game was just sloppy, ugly and unimpressive, while Mississippi State fell to South Carolina. But the big game of the day lived up to its billing–Ohio State v. Notre Dame in South Bend, with the Buckeyes scoring the winning touchdown on the literal last play of the game, 17-14. I literally only saw the closing minutes of the game, switching over once the LSU game concluded. The Saints play at noon today at Green Bay, so the grocery run I need to make will happen around that time–no fool me; everyone knows the best time to make groceries is during a Saints game here.
Yesterday was pretty relaxing, over all; a lovely day for the weekend and a restful and nice one, despite the stress of the LSU game. I’ll probably have the Saints game on in the background because it’s too anxiety-making to watch the games. (I have yet to learn how to control the anxiety during a game; it was certainly there last night and while I tried very hard not to get negative during the game, I could feel the adrenaline spiking and my heart rate going up, but I managed to keep my mind from spiraling and going super-dark as well not getting overly emotional It is, after all, just a football game and LSU football success isn’t necessary for my mental well-being.)
My goals for today are to read Shawn’s book for a few hours, get cleaned up and make a grocery run; while finishing the first chapters of the new Valerie and Jem books (tentatively titled, thus far, The House of the Seven Grables and You Gone, Girl) and also wanting to do some short story work as well, which is always fun. This Friday I am getting fitted for my new teeth (hurray!) and I have also reached the point where I can eat and enjoy noodles, so yesterday I made box mac’n’cheese (not Kraft, but one that came from the refrigerated section and simply needed microwaving and stirring; it wasn’t bad, either). Tonight I am going to make ravioli for dinner; we’ll see how that goes, although I am sure I won’t be able to eat any garlic bread. (I am able to eat Cheese Puffs, though.) I really want a burger, more than anything else. We are also making a trip to the SPCA to adopt a cat this coming Friday, which is perhaps the most exciting thing of all! I’ve really missed having a cat; they are such darling animals, and of course we want to get another ginger boy.
And on that note, I think I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back–if not later, than tomorrow.
