Hold Me

There’s just something about cold weather that affects me emotionally in a negative way. I’m not sure what it is, or why precisely this happens, but it does and I really don’t like it. I’ve been in kind of a funk now for several days–health insurance issues aren’t helping either (Blue Cross/Blue Shield Louisiana is a garbage company, in case any of you were wondering; they haven’t gotten any better since I was able to stop using them for health care back in 2011; now I am stuck with them again and they are the same pieces of shit they’ve always been)–and I know that the anniversary of Mom’s death is coming up and having an effect on me. The holidays were tough, indeed, but the distraction of the surgery and the recovery helped get me through that somehow; I was already miserable, so being emotionally miserable on top of that seemed more manageable than just dealing with my first holidays without her by itself with no other distractions. I didn’t have a very good day yesterday, overall. I slept decently, got up and went to work, but felt sort of out of it all day, like I’d never completely woken up, and just wasn’t in the mood to deal with anything much yesterday. I couldn’t find my wallet before I left the house, and so that was bothering me all day (I did find it later in the day in my backpack, but the day was already wrecked by then); I had to leave the office early for PT, which was fine, but …more disruption of my normal routine, which always makes me feel out of sorts. I forgot my hearing aids, too, which wasn’t much of a help either. Heavy heaving sigh. But at least I wasn’t client facing with my sourness, and I did get caught up on all of my work duties yesterday. The schedule looks pretty easy for the rest of the week as well, so maybe I can coast into this weekend relatively safely and recuperate, or at least get some respite for my soul.

PT was hard (and getting harder with every visit), but at least now I feel like I’m doing something, if that makes sense? The dexterity stuff was pretty easy and thus felt like I wasn’t really doing anything to improve my arm. The scars are becoming even less noticeable the more time passes as well; Dr. O’Brien was clearly a miracle worker in the operating room. I also don’t feel sore from the PT yet, either, despite the struggle some of those exercises were yesterday. I was worn out when I finally got home–I also ran errands and made groceries afterwards–and essentially I wasted the evening cuddling with Sparky in my easy chair. I know I watched some things–Paul didn’t get home until after I went to bed–but this morning I couldn’t tell you what any of it was. My brain was a little too fried to do any reading, and the whole day just really felt off so I just kind of sat in my chair with background noise going while I let my mind wander creatively. I got groggy/sleepy around eight thirty, but stayed up for a little while longer hoping Paul would come home…to no avail. So, Sparky and I went to bed pretty early last night, and I fell asleep almost immediately.

I slept well last night and I feel good this morning–not sleepy or groggy or tired–which is a good thing. It’s not as cold as it has been–high fifties!–this morning so there’s none of that to deal with, and hopefully it’ll be a nice day hovering around the high fifties low sixties all day. I suspect there will be rain today–there was a little yesterday slightly on my way home from the errands–and that will probably make things cold again, but that’s fine. I still can’t believe parades start a week from Friday, which is going to make life challenging again as it does every year when you live inside the box. I did do some thinking about the next Scotty last night, which was nice–it’s always nice to engage your brain a little, which is also why I don’t remember much of what I was watching last night since it was working primarily as background noise for me while my mind wandered. I did get some more ideas on how to work out these two stories (“When I Die” and “Parlor Tricks”) and get drafts finished. I really need to focus on putting words down on the page. I don’t think I’ve managed to write more than 500 words of fiction at a time since the surgery? Not good, right? But now that all feels right with the world again, I think I can get back to work again.

The funny thing is I have gotten so used to my hearing aids that forgetting them makes me feel disconnected from reality. It’s nice being able to hear properly–or at least better than I was hearing before–although I generally don’t wear them around the house on the weekends so it always feels strange when I put them back in again and have to get used to listening to how my voice actually sounds rather than how I think it sounds. (And singing along to the music in the car really makes me wince. I cannot sing. At. All. Which sucks, because I love to sing and always have.) But I am happy to be heading into this new year with some of these things finally handled. My teeth have been taken care of, I have my hearing aids, and I got the needed surgery for my arm. I’ve dropped twenty pounds or so since October, I am rediscovering my joy in exercise (even if it is just PT), I am sleeping well, and I have a darling cat who loves to sit on my shoulders. Life is pretty good, really. The only thing that I need to make me feel even better about things this morning is to get some writing done tonight, you know?

The insurance stuff will work itself out somehow; things inevitably do in one way or the other. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than not having insurance and at least now I can get the meds I need and so on. I don’t know why I let things get to me the way I did over the weekend and yesterday, but it was more of a combination of things, really. Not remembering my hearing aids and not being able to put my hands on my wallet before leaving the house (I had put it in my backpack to make sure Sparky didn’t do something with it and so I would remember it; of course I immediately forgot that I did that so…yeah) didn’t help matters any, compounding the imminent anniversary of my mom’s death as well as the insurance issues…I shouldn’t let those things get to me in the future, but it was all just a bit much yesterday morning and I also didn’t feel so rested yesterday morning either.

So, here’s to a new day dawning with me in a better space emotionally and spiritually than I was yesterday, and I am going to just keep my head up and try to stay focused, happy and positive today. Wish me luck, okay?

And now I shall head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and you never know–I may be back later.

Hurts So Good

Ah, Monday morning back to work blog today. I have to leave early as I have a PT appointment at four today, but that’s okay. I also have to run errands, and I will already be uptown, which is terrific. (Mail and make a little groceries, for those who are unsure what I mean by errands.) I’m usually in a good mood when I finish PT (it’s the endorphins), so hopefully that will make running the errands in the cold a little easier. It should get up to the sixties by the time I leave the office today. Parades begin next weekend (not this coming one, but the next) and I am not even remotely in the slightest prepared to deal with all the aggravation, exhaustion and fun that comes from living inside the box1, as we call it here. While it does mean having easy access to parades and catching throws, it also makes navigating every day life incredibly difficult.

Sigh.

I feel very rested this morning, after a weekend spent feeling tired most of the time. I managed to do very little this weekend other than rest and cleaning and chores. Maybe the strength PT on Friday wore me out far more than I had originally suspected; after all, it’s the first taxing kind of exercise I’ve done in over a year. (I also have to leave work a little early today as well for a session later this afternoon.) I didn’t get much done this weekend, sadly, but I consider progress on the house to be progress of a kind at any rate. I also started reading Lina Chern’s Play the Fool, which I am enjoying; the voice is quite original and delightful. We also watched another episode of Lupin last night, which is also quite good.

I was struggling there for a moment to remember what precisely I did yesterday while Paul took calls and worked upstairs; I just remembered that I spent most of the day finishing the original BBC series of Brideshead Revisited. I can see why the show was so popular back when it originally aired and why it own so many Emmys–Americans have always thought British productions of anything to be vastly superior to anything produced here–and it did remind me a lot of Downtown Abbey, which also led me to wonder why Americans are so fascinated by the British upper class. I know I certainly used to be, but my lack of knowledge regarding Brideshead seemed like a missing cultural touchstone for me, and now that I’ve seen it–yes, I can see how influential it was. There would be no Downton without Brideshead, but the original is far less soapy than the later show….and of course, Upstairs Downstairs was truly the original Downton, a soapy show about a wealthy family’s ups and downs as well as their servants. I don’t imagine the occasional thoughts I would have while watching–deep criticisms of the class system and the disproportionate division of wealth in British society of the time; how it would have sucked to have been one of their servants–would have occurred to me had I watched when I was younger. I also felt that there was more to the relationship between Charles and Sebastian than mere friendship; which is another thing it has in common with Saltburn; an ambiguous love relationship between two men. I was also rather disappointed that Sebastian disappeared from the show about halfway through so it could focus on Charles and Julia, which I felt was giving Sebastian, whom the show really centered at first, very short shrift indeed. I will go ahead and read the book–my education in Evelyn Waugh was sorely neglected–but I feel that watching the series has given me enough grounding to explore Saltburn again through that experience.

It’s chilly again this morning but nothing terribly unbearable, thank the Lord. I do feel rather good this morning, and hope I can ride that feeling through the work day, into PT and making groceries again after work tonight. This is an actual full work week, of which there have been few for quite some time for me, so we’ll see how I feel when Friday rolls around again, shall we?

It’s been an interesting and slightly uneven January so far, bit of an up and down month, in all honesty. Life is always a rollercoaster, isn’t it? Ups and downs and never certain when the next curve or sudden drop is coming, all at great speeds that sometimes never give you a chance to catch your breath. There’s nothing life can give us that we can’t handle, as Scotty always says, it’s how you handle it that matters. I’ve always found that emotional responses or reactions are often counterproductive and exhausting, and if you can somehow switch the emotional component down or off or mute it so you can engage your logical brain and figure out how to handle it and what you need to do next to start the getting through it process might not be the absolute healthiest way to handle anything, but it has always worked for me and is why people always think I am so good in a crisis–I am very good at ignoring the macro while focusing on the micro. The problem with that, of course, is that you never go back and process the feelings and emotions; they’ve been securely buried for the moment and inevitably, that results in me thinking oh I don’t need to process that after all!

When in fact I really do need to.

That’s been happening a lot for me since the concurrent COVID pandemic/shutdown coupled with me turning sixty and eventually losing my mom. I’ve been thinking about things from my past a lot more than I ever allowed myself to, identifying the lessons I’ve taken from bad experiences and how I turned that into I don’t ever want to feel like this again s so I will never do that again which may not have been exactly healthy. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over that sense of not belonging anywhere when I was a kid, which was partly being a gay kid (I didn’t know that specifically, but I also knew I was different from the other kids) as well as having some chemical issues in my brain (ADHD, anxiety, etc.), added to the sense of not belonging because I was from Alabama and living in Chicago. New Orleans was, in fact, the first place I’ve ever felt like I belonged, and that’s part of the reason I love it here so much. There wasn’t any single one thing to blame; I always thought it was this or that or the other, but rather the combination of everything that made my childhood so incredibly difficult for me (and pretty much my life until about thirty-three or so).

I think the real reason–I was asked this on the young adult panel this weekend–I write about teenagers is I am still trying to make sense of my own experiences. I also think that my past is also filled with very rich material for my writing. I learned that with both Bury Me in Shadows and #shedeservedit–writing about things that I have had trouble understanding in my own life fictionally has not only made my work better but also has helped me process things in a healthier way than I ever have before.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader.

  1. “The box” means inside the parade route for Carnival; the box being formed by Canal, Napoleon, St. Charles and Tchoupitoulas. Once parades have started you cannot cross any of those streets, and yes, I live just inside the box on the St. Charles side of the rectangle. ↩︎

Rosanna

As a general rule, it’s safe to say I shouldn’t speak publicly at any time of any day before noon. That said, I had to moderate a panel about satisfying endings yesterday morning at ten a.m. my time, and Constant Reader, I didn’t stress out before hand like I usually do; the anxiety making the experience unpleasant and the lead-up to it really awful, with upset stomach, sweating, racing heart and nervous energy. However, I was calm this morning and went into the panel with a relatively stress-free mentality, with no physical reaction and no anxiety, and you know what? It was kind of marvelous. (It does help to have marvelous panelists, which I did have.) I had also slept well the night before, which helped, and I managed to get up and eat and have plenty of coffee and got some things finished around here before I had to sign into my first ZOOM session (there were two others later on, but I was merely a panelist and therefore no pressure even if I wasn’t properly medicated now). It was cold, of course, for New Orleans–I could feel that chill right through the floor and through the windows of my workspace–but nothing unbearable for sure.

I was exhausted yesterday once I was finished with the Book-a-thon; I sat in my chair and streamed Brideshead Revisited–which really didn’t need to be a mini-series, I am thinking, because it eventually gets a bit tired and boring–but I certainly can see why Saltburn reminded people of it. I’ll probably watch some more episodes this morning before Paul gets up, but the homoeroticism is definitely there, and I also see the similarities between Sebastian and Felix, although Charles and Ollie are very little alike. I did keep falling asleep in my chair, and finally went to bed, feeling tired and exhausted, around eight (!). But I feel very rested and good this morning–I did feel a little wrung out to start the day yesterday–and so this chilly morning in New Orleans I am up early and trying to get things done around here.

I did enjoy the Book-a-thon, but I am unused to doing things like that on Saturdays and I also had to get up early so I could be lucid for the panel I had to moderate. I met some awesome new-to-me authors whose books I am now looking forward to checking out–I actually bought some of them during the panels by using my phone, which the camera couldn’t pick up–and I also think I may spend some time reading this morning as well. I think my next book is going to be Lina Chern’s Playing the Fool. Lina was one of my panelists for that humor panel at Bouchercon I had to fill in on at the last minute (seriously, one of the best panels I’ve ever been on), and she has recently been nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and a Lefty! I’ve been wanting to read everyone on that panel’s books ever since that panel, and I’ve already gotten to J. D. O’Brien’s marvelous Zig Zag.

I also want to do some writing today, and to answer some emails to send tomorrow (I try not to ever send emails on the weekend; emails beget emails, and I don’t like spending my time on the weekends answering emails and then answering replies and it becomes an endless Sisyphean task). There’s also filing to do (always) and I still need to do some more clean-up around here as well. But I think most of the big chores (laundry, dishes) are done other than the floors, and I really need to stop being so reluctant to do the floors. I actually used to like doing the floors–it really makes a difference as to how clean the apartment looks; likewise, clean windows also make the house look cleaner–but for some reason I don’t really enjoy it the way I used to. I really need to move furniture in order to do it right, and I’ve not really been able to move furniture since injuring my arm last January.

And maybe moving furniture will help me find my sleeping pills.

Sigh.

Okay, I think I am going to rustle up some breakfast and head into the spice mines this morning. Have a lovely Sunday wherever you are, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.

What’s Forever For

It’s cold again this morning in New Orleans, with it around thirty-one this morning as I swill my coffee and shiver a bit here in the workspace. There’s always cold air coming in from somewhere–the windows, the frames, somewhere–so it’s always a bit colder when I’m at my desk than it is elsewhere inside the apartment. I slept really well again last night–still don’t know where the sleeping pill bottle got to, thanks again, Sparky–but I do have a stopgap until I can get that prescription refilled again at the end of the month, and it worked last night. Fingers crossed that it continues to do so until I either find the original bottle or get the refill at the end of the month…

Yesterday was a good day around here. I had my strength PT yesterday morning, which is getting more difficult by the appointment. It really kicked up into gear yesterday, and while I was very happy to make it through the workout without begging for mercy or having to take too many breaks–it was harder than I imagined, but I also refused to get concerned, anxious or worried about the fact I was using only four pound dumbbells for some and a six pounder for others. But the burning of lactic acid in my muscles, while startling at first, eventually reminded me of how good it feels when you do work out, and the rest of my body was screaming to be stretched, exercised and used. I ran a couple of errands afterwards before returning home to my work-at-home chores. I finished watching the first episode of the 1982 BBC Brideshead Revisited, which I’d never seen before and am now watching (and eventually reading the original source material), inspired by Saltburn, and that’s partly so I can write more intelligently about the film, which still haunts me. I cannot remember the last time I was so interested and intrigued by and with a film, which means it’s a good one. It even has me thinking about revisiting The Talented Mr. Ripley, and reading more of the Ripley novels, which I have steadfastly ignored for the most part despite my abiding love for Highsmith’s work (the woman herself not so much…although it is interesting that two of my favorite women authors of all time, Highsmith and du Maurier, were lesbians or had lesbian tendencies).

We also watch Friday Night Heights, as ESPN calls the Friday night SEC gymnastics meets, to see LSU take down Kentucky and become the first team this season to break the overall 198 score mark, which is incredibly impressive. LSU has everything they need to win their first national title this year, but they’re going to have to be mentally tough and keep improving, which they already seem to be doing quite well.

After that, we watched the season finale of Reacher, which was fun if inexplicable; the ability to do all kinds of crazy stunts and so forth thanks to CGI does tend the make things a bit ridiculous as crews are always trying to outdo everything that came before. The helicopter scene was a bit preposterous, but no more preposterous than some of the aerial feats performed in whatever that Tom Holland/Mark Wahlberg treasure hunt movie was last year. (Those scenes always remind me that I wouldn’t survive as I would be so absolutely terrified I would either have a heart attack or a stroke on the spot, if not both simultaneously–you don’t see Scotty ever getting into a plane or a helicopter or anything; the biggest heights thing I ever did with Scotty was in Jackson Square Jazz and there’s been nothing since.)

I also think I am getting to the point where I am going to be ready to really start writing again. There was a lot of inspiration and creative thinking done yesterday while doing some tedious work-at-home chores; which really felt good. I think I may even be able to sit down tomorrow morning after i get up and actually go to town with writing. I am in the process of starting a new Scotty, so the opening is playing in my head; I know the boys will be living in the Garden District while Cooper Construction1 turns the townhouse on Decatur Street into a single family home again with a personal gym on the first floor. I had been thinking it needs to be set in either July or August (Mississippi River Mischief was set in May) and I definitely think it should be Hurricane Party Hustle, the accursed title and story I had to abandon in the wake of Katrina. It’s still a good story, and it could work, even with the difference in time (2005 was a different world than 2019, which is when this will be), then I can do the Mardi Gras book, and then the quarantine book….which will bring Scotty to twelve adventures and then maybe–just maybe–I can think about retiring the character and the series. I am not saying I am going to, but that’s as far out as I have him planned and when I run out of plans is usually when I reevaluate.

I also have some things to do today for the Bold Strokes Book-a-Thon today. At eleven am eastern I am moderating a panel on strong finishes; then I have a young adult panel and a “you’ve written an insane amount of books” panel. That’s probably going to take most of my brain bandwidth today, and when that’s all done I can probably do some chores and maybe do some reading–or watch more Brideshead Revisited.

And on that note, I think I am going to head into the spice mines for the rest of the day. Have a lovely Saturday, stay warm, and who knows? I might be back later.

  1. Yes, this is a shout out to A Streetcar Named Murder, in case you missed it. ↩︎

I Need You

Friday morning and I am up way early for PT this morning. It feels warmer this morning–it’s in the fifties–but it’s not cold in the Lost Apartment, which is nice. I haven’t slept well now for about two nights running. My sleeping pills are missing–I couldn’t find them last night–which means they were probably left out on a counter and Sparky the Demon thought “toy!” and now I have to really spend some time trying to find them. I’ll make it through today relatively okay, I suppose, since it’s a work at home day, but after PT I have a couple of errands and after that I’ll be home for the day. I did chores last night when I got home, so the kitchen isn’t messy this morning and once I get back. here, it’ll be relatively easy to get the downstairs back under control and launch into the weekend. I have events all day tomorrow on ZOOM for the Bold Strokes Book-a-thon, too. Paul didn’t get home until after I went to bed last night, so I spent most of the evening (after doing some cleaning, which was wise and I am very grateful that I didn’t blow it off) playing with Sparky and watching some television. I watched the new episode of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, which I enjoyed, and then watched some documentaries on Youtube about history–mostly Byzantine, with some French and Austrian thrown in for good measure before going to bed relatively early. I did rest–my body feels very relaxed–but my mind never really shut off completely or for long.

The Lefty and Edgar nominations came out this week, and I have so many friends nominated on either or both lists! It’s always such a pleasure to see friends nominated for awards. It’s also a great opportunity to pick out some more great books to add to the list. I am also delighted to see Rob Osler nominated for Best Short Story (a queer nominee with a queer story!) and there’s another queer story nominated for the Lillian Jackson Braun Award, a book I actually blurbed: The Body in the Back Garden by Mark Waddell from Crooked Lane, so yay for a gay cozy being nominated! It always does my heart good to see queer writers being recognized by the mainstream, which is the kind of progress we’ve been wanting to see for decades. The categories for both the Leftys and the Edgars are stacked this year, which just goes to show how deep the bench actually is in crime fiction–and so many great books that weren’t nominated for either.

I blurbed several books this past year that are coming out now, so I want to go back and reread those so I can blog about them–not only Mark’s book but the new Rob Osler, Cirque du Slay and the new Margot Douaihy, Blessed Water. I also haven’t started reading another book quite yet–I was dragging too hard every night when I got home, really, to do any reading or engage my brain as much as I would like.

I think I may need to read out of my genre next, perhaps some horror? Paul Tremblay? Elizabeth Hand? I have so many great books in my pile, which is a delightful problem to complain about, but the struggle is real. How do I decide what to read when there are so many great books waiting for me to escape into? Maybe I should try to read just the books currently nominated for awards? Heavy sigh. Decisions, decisions.

It looks like we are having yet another hard freeze this evening, so hurray for not leaving the house for the rest of the day once I get home this morning. Sheesh.

And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and head to PT. Have a great Friday, Constant Reader!

I Get Excited

It’s Thursday morning and it’s not as cold as it’s been; it’s barely below fifty degrees, which feels like a heat wave after the last few days. I didn’t sleep deeply last night, but I do feel rested today. I suspect I will hit a wall this afternoon and crash really hard, too. I have to get up early tomorrow for PT before my work-at-home duties, and after that I am hoping to dive headfirst into some writing. Parades are literally around the corner, and that’s going to be ridiculously stressful for me…although it may be interesting to see how my new meds affect parade stress. This weekend is more of the Bold Strokes Book-a-thon, which means I won’t have as much free time as I ordinarily would, either. But I’ve been feeling very clear-headed these days, which is lovely after all that time with my brain clouded and clenched into a fist of anxiety. I’m still not as much on the writing horse as I want to be and need to be, but I am hopeful this weekend I’ll kick back into gear.

I was tired after I made groceries in the cold after work yesterday, so once again spent most of the evening ensconced in my chair with Sparky sprawled across my lap. I watched this week’s dose of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, which was one of their most entertaining episodes in a very long time, and then Paul came down and we watched an episode of Lupin, which I am really enjoying, and now I kind of want to read about Arsené Lupin, too. Le sigh. So much to read and so little time.

Remember yesterday when I talked about how Tuesday I had kind of spiraled, despite the new medications? I just figured that sometimes it just might not be strong enough to do the trick or something. Anyway, so yesterday morning I didn’t have time to take my daily morning meds so I put them in a little plastic container and brought them to work with me. Around noon I went into my backpack and saw the little plastic container, and thought oh, I forgot to take them I’ll do that now but just as I swallowed them I saw another plastic container on my desk and realized I had taken the pills for the day already, but clearly had forgotten them in my bag on Tuesday…and it all clicked into place. So yes, I took a double dose of everything yesterday and I was in a great mood by the time I left the office to make groceries in Mid-city. But by the time I got home and unloaded the car and put everything away while also being out in the cold? Ugh, exhausting. I did finish folding a load of laundry and started doing another load I’ll have to finish tonight–along with the dishes; I want to clean the kitchen as much as possible so I don’t have to do any of it tomorrow or over the weekend. I also will have to swing by the postal service on the way home tonight, but that’s my only errand so I should be home relatively early and thus able to get those other chores done, possibly some reading, and even some writing in addition to quality kitty time. I’ve become quite attached to Sparky since he came home with us a few months ago. My arms and legs and chest and back are covered in scabs thanks to his Freddy Kruger-like claws, but that’s fine. I used to call Skittle Satan’s Kitty for much the same reason. I do love that he likes to sit on my shoulders, which is very cute. It’s also kind of fun to wonder what kind of havoc he hath wrought in the apartment every day when I come home–and it’s getting better every day. I think maybe that has more to do with me being better about leaving things out on counters and surfaces instead of him learning anything–he really doesn’t–but I’ll take it. The apartment is also slowly starting to come back together, too.

Last year was a bit of a whirlwind. Lots of ups and downs and a lot of brain frying, to be completely honest. It’s difficult sometimes to remember when you’re going through tough times that–hard as it is to see while you’re dealing with it–that eventually you’ll see what you learned from it. Sometimes I do need to be hit in the head with a sledgehammer, but eventually I do see it. What does 2024 hold in store for me? I don’t know. I don’t even want to hazard a guess!

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I’ll see you again later.

I Ran

It’s cold again this morning, and I really didn’t want to get out of bed this morning. The cold is unpleasant, and it does kind of effect my mood. Yesterday was most emphatically not a good one; nothing worth complaining about for any one single thing, but any number of little things going wrong that snowball until by the end of the day I didn’t want to be around people or even be on-line or do anything other than sit in my chair, doom-scroll, and watch Youtube. The evening was essentially wasted, but I feel like I did manage to be functional around the office yesterday and get my job done. It was so cold! I had ice on my windshield yesterday morning and no scraper, but once the defroster warmed up it made short work of that wretched ice and I headed for work. Several of the bridges around the metro area were closed–the causeway and the Boggs Bridge over the river in St. James or Charles or Jean le Baptiste (I like how that sounds in French better than in English). Schools were closed, and there was no traffic, either in the morning or in the afternoon. I drove all the way uptown on Claiborne from the office to get the mail, and managed to get there and back to the house in less than half an hour–and I wasn’t speeding. Paul wisely worked at home yesterday, not venturing out into the cold at all. I also watched the second part of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City reunion, which is kind of interesting.

I also wasn’t in the mood to read last night. I hate when I have days like that, and I was also spiraling by the time I got home. It was deeply unpleasant, and it’s been a very long time since that’s happened. I don’t know why my new meds decided to stop working, but that’s the kind of thing it’s supposed to not allow to happen. I really don’t like spiraling, and the worst part of it is that I’m aware that it’s happening but there’s nothing I can do to make it stop. But it remains a good reminder of how much better I’ve been doing and how much happier and more relaxed and less anxious I’ve been since changing medications. I also hardly ate anything yesterday, which is always an indication that I am really stressed out, too. My eating and stress are inevitably tied together; I’m not sure why that is but it has a lot to do with a lifetime of body image problems. One would think that by age sixty-two I would know better and wouldn’t fall back so easily into bad habits and bad behaviors, but here we are.

It’s also Pay-the-Bills Wednesday, and due to the vagaries of how pay periods fall when there are more than two in a month, this is kind of like an extra paycheck; a few bills to pay but otherwise a little flush. I’m going to try to be wise and save some of it for upcoming medical bills–dealing with my wonderful new insurance plan was part of yesterday’s idiocy; suffice it to say Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana is still the same piece of shit health insurance company they were when I gladly said farewell to them fourteen years ago, only to have them show up again like a fucking herpes chancre on the tip of your penis. Humana wasn’t great by any means, but when I think about how I would have had to fight Blue Cross/Blue Shield for every penny for my surgery and recovery time, I thank the Lord they were still my carrier last year. I have also now found myself in the same boat so many others have found themselves in: having to work for the health insurance, and the day job gradually taking so much time and energy that my other sources of income suffered, to the point where I now also can’t afford to quit my job. Yes, that’s my American freedom: unable to leave a job because I need the insurance, no matter how shitty and useless it actually is.

I don’t want this for the younger generations, either. They deserve better than what my generation had, not worse. That was the American dream I was raised on–where each generation is better off than the one before. That really isn’t true anymore. I honestly don’t know who the people are who can afford the rents in New Orleans, let alone buy property. Owning your own home was the cornerstone of American prosperity, because that was the seed from which all generational wealth grew for the middle class. How can you buy a house when your student loan debt payment is more than a mortgage? Why is college so expensive, and why are administrative expenses rising while academic expenses in univerity budgets are being cut regularly? So kids are spending far more for an education that isn’t as fully rounded as it used to be, and plunging deeply into debt for careers that won’t allow them to ever see daylight. I mean, you can pay off a mortgage, but student loans? Good fucking luck. I thank the universe every day that I never had student loans. Isn’t it malpractice to charge more in college fees and tuition and other associated expenses than the student will ever make in that field in a year? Shouldn’t someone be telling students this so they can actually make an informed decision about their future?

Capitalism has been exposed over the last forty or so years as a fool’s game, and it’s destroying our country in the process. Greed and selfishness is the real American way, and I really don’t think our Constitution gives people the freedom to exploit and scam others. Capitalism and Christianity do not go hand in hand, either; capitalism should be the antithesis of Christianity, and anyone preaching the so-called “prosperity gospel” is teaching heresy.

Le sigh. And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Stay warm, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.

The Only Way Out

Tuesday and back to the office. It’s only twenty-nine degrees outside, which of course means it feels abominably cold at my desk between the windows–but the apartment is bearable overall. The shower is going to be difficult this morning, as will getting outside to walk to the car and then into the building once I get to work, which means walking very fast. The bed felt incredibly comfy and warm and snug this morning, too. Ah, well, it’s a short work week and we should be out of this insane cold snap (for New Orleans) by the weekend.

Yesterday I started the strength PT, which was tiring and exhausting but felt good at the same time, in the way that using your muscles feels good after a long period of inertia. I thought I might be a bit sore this morning, but I’m not. It is amazing also how tiring the light weights I am now using are, but it’s done and it’s not something I need to fear. I didn’t have anxiety about it, either, which is a lovely outcome. I did spend a lot more time yesterday thinking about this year and what I want to get done, writing-wise, so yesterday was also productive in that way. I also mapped out some other projects that are in progress, and then treated Paul to pizza from the new place that has replaced Slice, U Pizza. It was good, but not as good as Midway on Freret–but much more convenient, since I can just walk there to pick it up. It’s lovely being able to eat pizza again.

We also started watching Lupin last night, which we both are really enjoying. I know the character is basing what he does and how he does it on the book adventures of Arsene Lupin, but it also reminds me a lot of an old Sidney Sheldon book in which a young woman was framed for something, her father was ruined, and she went to jail–only to get out and become a master international criminal after getting revenge on the people who killed her dad and framed her–I want to say it was If Tomorrow Comes and my spotty memory is telling me her name was Tracy Whitney; and if you know anything about me you know how much I love a good get-even revenge story, so that was one of my favorite Sheldon books (revenge was always a motivating factor in Sheldon novels, although remembering some things about The Other Side of Midnight has me questioning my love and appreciation of Sheldon; and yes, I do remember reading that as a teenager and not liking the way it turned out, although I recognized that final act of the book was necessary and really subscribed to Sheldon’s overarching theme that life sucks for women, even if he showed it in a misogynist way). I don’t have the time or the bandwidth to revisit any Sidney Sheldon novels and I would imagine they wouldn’t hold up to modern scrutiny, and probably shouldn’t have back in the day, either.

So, today I am going to make some to-do lists; one for the week, one for the month, and one for the first quarter of the year, bearing in mind for me that things are always subject to change. After work tonight I am going to swing by uptown to get the mail, dependent on how insane driving in the city is during this cold snap and hard freeze warning. People here are the shittiest drivers bar none of anywhere I’ve ever lived, primarily because driving here isn’t like driving anywhere else, and so you can imagine what they are like in cold weather, when there may be ice on the road or if it’s, God forbid, snowing outside. New Orleans comes to a screeching halt when it snows here, and it’s been a while since the last time we had cold weather. I had the Honda the last time; I remember because I had to give a co-worker a ride to work and I took pictures of my car in the snow, maybe even video? So it was either the winter of 2017 or 2018; but we’d just moved into the new building in December 2018 so it must have been 2017. I’ve not seen any snow forecast for this hard freeze warning, which won’t be lifted until ten a.m. tomorrow morning. Le sigh.

But it means I will sleep really well tonight.

So I am dressing in layers to go outside to get to the car–T-shirt, sweater, jacket, but no tights under my pants since the problem with layers is you still have to spend a lot of time inside, so you eventually get too hot and have to remove some of the layers, which would be a pain at work with removing tights, so I am skipping that. I am about to brave the cold, Constant Reader, so wish me luck and I will maybe see you later. Have a lovely warm Tuesday, wherever you are.

Close Enough to Perfect

I don’t remember when and where I first met Tara Laskowski; my memory has become a sieve over the years and the bout of long COVID in the summer of 2022 didn’t help much, nor did any of the things that have gone on for the last three or four years. But I’ve liked her from the very first–I love that she loves Halloween and centered one of her books arounnd it–and when I read her debut novel, I became a big fan. She, along with Carol Goodman, are killing the Gothic suspense novel genre, which has always been one of my favorites ever since I was a kid and discovered Mary Stewart and Victoria Holt and that Phyllis A. Whitney also wrote books for adults. She followed up her sensational debut One Night Gone with the Halloween book, The Mother Next Door, and it was also magnificent.

So I really was looking forward to her third novel, and Constant Reader, it did not disappoint.

Ever since Zack told me about The Weekend, it’s all I’ve been able to focus on. Most people would naturally be at least a little nervous to meet their significant other’s family for the first time.

But most people aren’t dating a Van Ness.

“Earth to Lauren.” Zach snaps his fingers, grinning over at me. He left work early to get on the road sooner and didn’t have time to change, so he’s still wearing his suit, purple tie slightly askew but knotted even after hours of driving.

“Sorry,” I say, tugging the ends of my hair. “Zoning out.”

“You look like I’m driving you to your death,” he says, then grabs my hand and squeezes. “Don’t worry. I promises it’ll be fun. Even if my family’s there.”

This is a great opening, and it sets up the story perfectly. Our sympathies are immediately with Lauren. Laskoswki has put her into a situation we can all relate to: the terror of meeting your partner’s family and the discomfort that comes with it, the self-doubt, the need to be liked and accepted. Zach is a Van Ness, too, and while we aren’t really certain what that means yet, it’s important and stressful enough so that Lauren, in communicating her thoughts and feelings, thinks it bears mentioning and we should understand how she feels. It works, and that outsider feeling (and haven’t we all felt like an outsider at some time? See Saltburn) keeps the reader’s sympathies with Lauren completely.

But there are three more point of view characters–two other women, one a Van Ness by blood and the other by marriage–which is always a difficult feat for an author to pull off, but making those voices distinct and clearly different from each other is what makes the book work. Harper, Zack’s sister, is harsh, tough, cold and vindictive. She runs her own beauty company and blog, VNity, which is struggling. Elle is married to Harper’s twin brother Richard, who oversees the vast Van Ness holdings, and like Lauren, has some serious “pick me” energy too; she joined the Van Ness family and has wiggled her way into the family by asserting herself as well as trying to take over the role of family matriarch, as their mother is dead. Their mother, Katrina, was a tough woman who was hard on her children, but babied the youngest, Zack–which the twins have always resented. The retreat, this Weekend, is a celebration of the twins’ birthdays, with a huge party being thrown the Saturday night of that weekend, spent up at the Van Ness Winery, in the Finger Lakes section of New York.

So yes, that Gothic feeling is there almost from the start. The wide-eyed young innocent, coming to the big family estate in a remote part of the country (see also, Beware the Woman by Megan Abbott) into a situation where she’s not sure she can entirely trust her boyfriend. The house is filled with secrets, too–hidden rooms, secret staircases and passage ways–and a lot of sibling resentment, bitterness, and anger begins bubbling up to the surface almost immediately.

There’s also a fourth POV character, known only as the Weekend Guest, who hates the Van Ness siblings and is trying to bring the entire family down as a brutal winter storm bears down on Van Ness Winery…

What a terrific read! Get a copy–you can thank me later.

Shakin’

Holiday Monday, and I slept deeply and well again last night. I’d set the alarm, thinking it was probably better to start getting up early again, since it’s back to the office with me tomorrow but Sparky was being super cuddly and sweet in the bed this morning, and it was cold, and so I stayed in bed for another hour or so. I finished reading Tara Laskowski’s The Weekend Retreat, which I greatly enjoyed (more on that later). I made jambalaya, and did some dishes and started a load of laundry. I also reread some of my own unfinished work, trying to decide what to focus on next. I have to say I am regularly pleased with my work now when I go back and reread it; what can I say? I don’t know if that means I am getting rid of the self-deprecation and “not good enough” mentality I’ve struggled with my entire life, but it’s a welcome change to read some of my work and think this is pretty good.

I also worked on the house some more and it’s starting to look like it did before the acquisition of High Energy Kitten and my surgery–cluttered but at least neat. It’s almost there, you know, and maybe putting some finishing touches on it today before I go to my first STRENGTH PT appointment this afternoon. (I’ll be making groceries after that, I might add.) I’ve also decided that my next read with be R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface; I do enjoy a writer-behaving-badly story. I’ve written my own, too–“Quiet Desperation”, which was included in my collection Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories, as well as a Kindle single–but I don’t think I ever want to write an entire novel about a writer behaving badly. I may write an entire novel with a writer as the main character–I keep circling back to my true crime writer, who’s now appeared in several of the Scotty books, as well as The Orion Mask–but I don’t think I’m quite there yet.

It is interesting to revisit unfinished projects and decide which of them to focus on and finish. I know that my next short story collection will be finished if I finish a novella and throw it in; but I’d kind of wanted to do a novella collection. One of the novellas–the longest one–will be rather easily turned into a novel, which I think is what I may do with it; there are three or four more that I can finish and turn in as a solitary book. “Festival of the Redeemer” is completed in first draft form, and rereading it yesterday made me realize that it’s next draft can be longer, of course, but I don’t think there’s enough story there to turn it into a novel; same with “Fireflies” and “Never Kiss a Stranger,” so maybe those three can be the novella collection (Festival of the Redeemer and Two More Tales–which I am choosing to call it so I can have a Venetian cover, a la du Maurier). “A Holler Full of Kudzu” might be the one I finish to complete the short story collection. There are also a lot of short stories I’d like to rework and/or finish for some calls that I’ve seen, which could always be fun. But the exciting thing here is I am feeling excited about writing again for the first time in I don’t know how long.

It’s also weird to think that the Scotty series is turning twenty-one this year; on May 1st, to be exact. I definitely should write another Scotty this year, and it does look like Hurricane Party Hustle is the one to do–it’ll also give me the opportunity to write about what it’s like to ride out a big storm and live without power, all the while having Katrina flashbacks. I also have the story for that already fleshed out, and yesterday I even figured out how the book opens, and how the mystery comes to Scotty’s attention in the first place, which is more than I usually have when I start, LOL. That one will be followed by the cursed Mardi Gras of 2019, French Quarter Flambeaux, which will be another fun story to write, and then Quarter Quarantine Quadrille, which will cover the shutdown and COVID madness. So, there are at least three more Scotty books for me to write, which will take the series to twelve books, and then I’ll think about it some more. Scotty’s family–parents and grandparents–are getting older, and will soon have to start dying off, which I really don’t want to deal with.

But it’s nice to feel excited about everything again, isn’t it? And normal, after so many years of abnormality?

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely holiday, everyone, and I’ll probably be back later.