Tag: achilles tendon

Every Day

Monday and back to the office with me this morning. The weekend was lovely, if not particularly productive in terms of getting things done, but I do need to rest from time to time. Yesterday I had to do some work for Paul–nothing really, just didn’t want to do it, you know how that goes. I slept later than I’d wanted, but it rained overnight and was still raining in the early morning, which is why I was so asleep and didn’t want to get up. The rest of the day was damp and chill, if humid and gray, but I did manage to get some things done. I didn’t find the time change particularly grueling this year; I just went to bed early on Saturday and slept in a bit. I did have some trouble sleeping last night, and got up to yet another boil water advisory and low water pressure. Heavy sigh. I hope I can shower and have a normal Monday this week–but the fates do seem to be conspiring against me. Oh, well; there are always worse things.

Yesterday was restful which was very nice. I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked on the house yesterday, but that’s okay. I spent time icing my calves to try to help the Achilles tendons stop being sore–they are very much better than they were, it’s barely noticeable now–and made dinner and did do some things before we watched LSU Gymnastics at Florida, and then went to The Traitors-UK again. (I’m hoping there’s enough of it to get me through the Festivals, at any rate. Overall, I had a lovely, relaxing and restful weekend, which was necessary and lovely. I got all errands done that were necessary, did some clean up around here, and got the rest I needed in order to face down this week. I think we’re busy in the clinic this week, too–and I’m a bit behind on my work, so I need to use today to get everything caught up before I am back in the clinic tomorrow (Monday is my administrative day where I try to get everything caught up from the week before). No pressure there, right? I’ll manage somehow. I always do.

I’m dreading looking at the news; over the weekend I don’t pay attention much because I can only take so much, so I limit my exposure to it as much as I can. It isn’t that I don’t want to be informed or know what’s going on in the world around me, but the reality is “24 news” doesn’t mean reporting on news for twenty-four hours, it means regurgitating the same news over and over again while everyone you can get on camera to discuss, argue and debate the same news until you really want to throw something sharp and hard through the television screen. Who have we bombed and/or invaded today? What rights are being curtailed by either Congress, executive order, or the most corrupt and lawless Supreme Court since the Dred Scott decision (which hounded Roger B. Taney for the rest of his life, as it should have)? What other allies are now refusing to share intelligence with us because our president and his court are all Russian assets? (I remember the days when not a single Republican dared support anything Russian; their entire party was grounded in anti-Russia sentiment, only to do a complete 180? The North remembers.) I remember still all the Vietnam news reports when I was a child…

As I mentioned, I didn’t sleep that great last night; I had a fever during the night and woke up to a damp pillow and a damp spot in the bed where I’d sweated. Obviously, I flipped the pillow over and rearranged things so there was a layer of blanket between me and the damp spot in the sheets, and I didn’t feel that great. I woke up several more times during the night–love waking up to a boil water advisory, but at least there was enough pressure for a shower this morning, praise Jesus. I have something going on with my stomach again, but I am hoping it’s not a relapse, and not entirely sure what I would have to do to ward that off. I think maybe I ate too much yesterday–always a possibility–and that’s what the issue is this morning (and was overnight). I also forgot to take my pills yesterday, which also could be a part of this stomach annoyance.

And on that pleasant note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.

The Colossi of Memnon, during the Nile flood

Blue Eyes

Its the morning of Ash Wednesday and I am up at my normal time, trying to get back to normal and back into my normal day-to-day life now that Carnival is over for another year. The city is probably still in ruins, because there’s only so much they can clean up overnight, you know? The trees of St. Charles are dripping with beads and crepe paper and, of course, toilet paper from racist Tucks, er, Sucks1. I am so tired of the insidious nature of racism in incredibly stupid and small-minded white people. I can’t imagine how exhausted racialized communities feel. The closest thing I can think of would be how tired I am of homophobia and homophobes.

You haters are fucking tedious, you know? Get a fucking life already.

Readjusting back to normality after Deep Gras is always tricky. It’s Fat Tuesday that always winds up throwing me off–I am always aware that it’s Monday during Lundi Gras, but it felt like Sunday yesterday and I keep thinking today is Monday, and it’s not. That will take some mental adjusting, as will that tomorrow is my last day in the office again. But I feel very rested this morning, too. I spent a. great deal of time yesterday icing my ankles, so the Achilles tendons aren’t very tender this morning, but I am sure that will change as the day gets longer. I’ll ice them again tonight, of course, and I have some errands to do after work on the way home, too. I made potato leek soup in the slow cooker yesterday–it was sublime, probably the best I’ve ever made, and I added shallots this time, too–and that was quite lovely for dinner. I did chores and picked up a lot around the house, but never got around to the floors, which I hope to get to this weekend. I also managed to read some, which was very lovely, and I had a very strong burst of creativity yesterday that resulted in me making significant headway on an essay for the newsletter after sending a promotional one out over the course of the lengthy weekend, while getting an idea for another one–and I thought I was finished with the promotional Scotty newsletters; so that is a very good thing.

I also need to pack up more beads to donate to ArcGNO this weekend, and should also probably drop off a box of books at the library sale. I made some other reorganization decisions about the apartment this weekend, too–I need to clear out a shelf in the pantry so I can take some boxes down from the tops of the cabinets–and I really need to get the floors done. The house always looks so much better when I’ve done the floors, and maybe this weekend I can get the workspace windows cleaned, depending on the weather; I’ve not bothered to look ahead just yet. If it rains or is too cold, the windows can certainly wait.

While I did things yesterday, I was bingeing Celebrity Traitors from the UK, and even with a majority of the cast being people I had NO idea who they were, it was an excellent cast and an even more enjoyable game. I primarily wanted to see how the game ends, since I’ve never seen a season finale, and now that I know, I am pretty pleased, as I was afraid the way they wrap it all up might be a let down, but it’s not. And there was someone I’d actually met and had dinner/drinks with years and years ago in the cast! Yes, I am going to humblebrag, but the British actress Celia Imrie and I have mutual friends in common–and I had dinner with her and our mutual friend when they came through New Orleans a while back, which was marvelous. Naturally, I was rooting for her, but she was one of the last murder victims, alas. Stephen Fry was also on, and he was the first person I’ve seen note how badly the game is stacked in favor of the Traitors; I also observed to Paul “they really shouldn’t feel bad for banishing people who aren’t Traitors; the Faithful outnumber the Traitors by a 19 to 3 ratio, so of course they are going to banish incorrectly more often than not. I suspect I would be terrible at this game unless I was a Traitor.

If you’re a politics junkie2 and love watching MAGA eating themselves, pay attention to the Louisiana Republican primary for Senator Bill Cassidy (the pro-life OB-GYN who looks like a Muppet gone wrong) for some hilarity. Cassidy, as you may remember, committed the egregious sin of voting for Trump’s impeachment after January 6–hoping the person with no long-term memory would forget that six years later. About a month or so ago, Orange Foolius handpicked congresswoman Julia Letlow to endorse for the race. I’m not entirely certain she’d even announced? Cassidy’s dark money PACs are now going after Letlow, tying her to DEI and Nancy Pelosi and President Biden as a “dangerous liberal” (it took me a while to type that while laughing hysterically); does OF still have pull in Louisiana now? After a couple of weeks of silence, Letlow has finally released her own attack ads on Cassidy and seriously, this primary race can easily be called A Confederacy of Dunces.

I was sorry to hear that both Jesse Jackson and Robert Duvall died over Deep Gras. Both contributed significantly to society in their own ways, and giants cannot be replaced. I mean, look at this iteration of the current Democratic Party–where are all the great Democrats I grew up watching legislate? I mean, even the Kennedy in the forefront of public policy today is a very poor imitation of his father and uncles, pissing and shitting all over the family name. I also find it interesting that Hunter Biden was targeted and hounded for having addiction issues, while MAGA celebrates the brain worm guy who had addiction issues and clearly has something wrong with him.

After finishing reading The Secret of Hangman’s Inn, I started writing a newsletter essay about the Ken Holt series and this book in general, with a particular look at the series’ homo-eroticism–based on my recent reread of the book itself. The series, expertly written by Sam and Beryl Epstein under the name Bruce Campbell, is very much of it’s time–and you could easily see how things had changed since they were written. I remember there was a clue in one book that had to do with the cotter pin holding automobile tires on–they don’t have those anymore–and of course, no television, no automatic transmissions on cars, having to depend on phone calls and being home to take them, newspapers and syndicates with journalistic ethics, and so on. But this particular reread made me realize something about the juvenile series that I hadn’t ever caught on to before–and that will also be a strong piece of the newsletter essay.

I also decided yesterday what my next Scotty book will be and when it will be set. I wanted to jump ahead–the most recent, this new one, is set in August of 2019, and I am going to skip ahead to Mardi Gras 2022, when the parades rolled again after the canceled parade season of 2021–and I even know what it’s going to be about. Huzzah!

So yes, I had a very productive and good day yesterday. I feel rested, my right Achilles tendon has a bit of a twinge but the left feels good, and I feel rested and relaxed and motivated to get things done. And as always, we’ll see how long this feeling lasts. I am going to head into the spice mines now, and hope to have a great day post-Carnival.

Have a great Ash Wednesday if you “celebrate”, and if you don’t, have a lovely Wednesday–the rest of the work week is the downhill slide into the weekend, which will be here before I know it or am ready for it!

American swimmer Caeleb Dressel is an Olympic champion. And has pretty blue eyes.

Photographed at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Mandatory Credit: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY ORG XMIT: USATODAY-451287 [Via MerlinFTP Drop]
  1. I saw yesterday that the racist assholes who hung black dolls by the neck with beads from their float have been kicked out of Tucks. Good. They also should be named and shamed, but I doubt that will happen. ↩︎
  2. This is an example of a time when I really miss Victoria. ↩︎

Something About You

‘Tis Tuesday morning and all is well; at least so far, at any rate. It was very cold at the office yesterday, which didn’t make a lot of sense. The temperature did drop overnight Saturday, as I may have mentioned yesterday, but man, it was so cold in the office yesterday it made me sleepy and my knee joints ache–which is a new ache, I might add. I was also experiencing some pain from my left Achilles tendon yesterday, that I noticed particularly as I pushed the cart around the grocery store last night. I did make good on my plan to stop and make a little groceries last night on the way home, but was very tired from the cold and once I was home, collapsed into my chair with Sparky. The apartment was very warm and comfortable when I got home, but I also realized yesterday that I didn’t dress appropriately for the cold, either. It’s 39 right now outside, so yes–layers and a jacket for the day (and a sweater and a T-shirt). Did I mention that it was insanely cold in the office yesterday? Feel free to mock me, people from the frozen tundra up north, as y’all are wont to do. I don’t care.

I also decided yesterday that one thing I definitely need to do this year is get the ebook of Jackson Square Jazz put up at long last. I just need to revise and copy edit it, and I may even do a bit more polishing on it than was originally done. I don’t know why I was so determined that the ebook be exactly like the (long) out of print hard copies, but there you have it, you know? My insistence that it be exactly the same and not changed or revisited at all was came from the obsessive part of my brain and now that I’m medicated, that’s no longer a thing. There’s no point in setting a personal deadline, because I always blow those in any case (kind of like the publisher ones), but I can add it to the long list of things to do (I still need to update my to-do list, don’t I?) and can at least try to get it done by spring. I do have a three-day weekend coming up this weekend, too….and no Costco trip, either, so that won’t wear me out. Huzzah? I guess the national championship in football game is this week, too? That should tell you something–that I don’t even know when the game is being played. Anyway, I need to reread the book first at any rate, and since my mind seems unable to focus enough to read something, anything, else…maybe this will kick-start my brain back into reading some more.

You know what straight women who consume queer content but try to exclude queer people from said content are? Homophobes. I saw over the weekend a horrible post in which a gay man in Utah went to an advertised watch-party for Heated Rivalry, and long story short, the straight women kicked him out because “he made them uncomfortable.” Seriously? I’ve seen a lot of this sort of “gatekeeping” on this show, but also on gay romance. Almost twenty years ago, I was attacked and lied on and smeared and slandered because I dared to say that there was clearly homophobia in the “m/m community”–which there was, always has been, and there still is obviously1; and I certainly do not need any cisgender straight woman to tell me what is and isn’t homophobic, thank you very much. If you’re MAGA and read/write gay romance, you probably shouldn’t be–because you aren’t allies, you don’t care about us or our rights, and how fucking dare you appropriate our lives and stories (and spaces) to make money? I have always said anyone can write anything they want whenever they want; I am not in the habit of telling any artist how to express themselves creatively. It isn’t a matter of can you, but more a should you. No one has a right to be published–and no one has a right to book sales and an audience, either. I don’t want anyone telling me what I can and can’t write; and I am not going to tell anyone else what they should write or read or watch or anything like that.

And as the watch-party story spread across social media, one of the terrific things I’ve seen is actual straight women allies calling that behavior out as exclusionary and homophobic, which is a lovely change from the way they all used to pile on anyone with the mildest question or concern about said writings and writers, particularly those who thought making jokes about queer identity when not being actually queer wasn’t homophobic.2

And for the record, I know any number of straight women who write excellent fiction about gay men.

It really is amazing how Heated Rivalry is driving so much discourse, isn’t it? I’ve also taken to occasionally watching reaction videos of straight guys watching and loving the show; my favorite are the Empty Netters, who’ve gone kind of viral. It is really, really nice seeing straight guys getting vested in the show–they tuned in for the hockey but got caught up in the story. I tend to think those men probably weren’t actively homophobic, or really were, deep down; I’m sure they’ve made gay jokes and used gay slurs to be funny with other straight men. But being open to watching a gay romance show, getting vested in it, and spreading the word about the show to get more viewers? That’s awesome, and the sort of thing we need more of in the future, despite the country burning to the ground.

And on that grim note, I am heading into the spice mines.

I’m very pleased with how this picture, from the Iris parade a few years back, turned out.
  1. The attacks on me were incredibly homophobic–and I will never forgive nor forget those bitches. ↩︎
  2. I also loved how some of them were horrified at how queer fiction is marginalized in the industry. I mean, duh. ↩︎