Tag: ADHD

End Game

Ah, Monday of Memorial Day and all is well in the Lost Apartment. I finished cleaning up the kitchen yesterday, which was amazing to walk down into this morning, and I swear I will never allow it to get that bad ever again–do it every weekend, Gregalicious, and it will get easier as it goes. I am trying to keep up with my chores throughout the week rather than pushing them to the weekend–always a recipe for disaster–and if I can keep up, life will be better and I can get other, deeper cleaning that needs to be done taken care of.

Yesterday I started getting creative again. I got up early, around six–don’t ask me why, it’s apparently a thing for me now, which is great since that’s when I have to get up for work–and had breakfast, wrote my blog and a newsletter about Victoria’s death (which reminded me I’d never eulogized Felice Picano, so I started working on that), and then read The Get Off for a while (it’s so excellent) and also more of Moonraker. I worked on the kitchen and get it taken care of–just some minor touches for my workspace tomorrow, and then I can slowly get the living room into order as well. I gathered everything I need to have handy when working on the Scotty book (the older volumes with post-its stuck throughout the pages, and yes, they are color-coded; the notebook with everything written thus far in its most recent draft; the cast list; and my thick folder of notes and research, most of which won’t be used); I should have done this months ago. I started writing the prologue, with a very short homage to Valley of the Dolls, and even started putting the tarot reading together. Not bad for a rest day where I also got the kitchen floors under control and barbecued, don’t you think? After dinner, we watched Fountain of Youth on Apple–John Krasinski and Natalie Portman and a treasure hunt, which was just a little too silly to be enjoyable–and the season finale of The Last of Us. This morning, I have to do the dishes and run the dishwasher, and then start picking up the living room while I swill coffee and listen to Taylor Swift while also taking reading breaks. I also started reading something new for non-fiction, Old Man River: The Mississippi River in North American History by Paul Schneider, which I am already loving. As you can see, my creative ADHD is exploding off the charts again so I am going to need to start writing more than just the blog and the newsletter soon, else I’ll explode.

I’m also up before seven today, with a good night’s sleep behind me and facing the last day of this holiday weekend. I do have to make a little groceries today; so I am going to try to do some things around here before I head over there. Dishes and the living room, mostly, as well as some self-care and reading. I feel pretty good this morning, only slightly physically weak, and I actually made it all the way upstairs last night without having to stop and rest on the way up. I’m eating more and more every day–and trust me, after worrying about gaining weight for 2/3rds of my life, it’s nice to eat whatever I want whenever I want without fear or self-loathing about it.

And it’s a short work week, which will be nice. I don’t think we’re booked heavily in the clinic this week, but I am pretty much caught up on everything at the office so the week should be a fairly simple and easy one to ease back into the regular routine. I’ve gotten up early every day of this holiday weekend, so getting up early to go to work isn’t going to be an issue tomorrow morning. Huzzah!

And I’m enjoying my morning coffee again. I don’t drink nearly as much as I used to before the illness, because I get shaky and jittery, but at least it is tasting good to me again. Normality seems to be slowly returning to one Gregalicious, but it is slowly happening, and I am very relieved on that score. I am also feeling ambitious again, which hasn’t happened in a long time, and I feel pretty good about that as well.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for the day. Those books aren’t going to read themselves, nor are those dishes going to wash themselves (self-cleaning dishes would be amazing), and Sparky is acting like he wants my desk chair or my lap or both, so I may as well repair to the easy chair. Have a lovely Memorial Day, and remember to toast those we lost in service to our country.

You know, the suckers and losers.

What can I say? I was hungry!

Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)

Saturday morning and I have a couple of errands to do this morning. I need to go by the bank (I haven’t made a deposit in person in eons) and I have to swing by the grocery store. Sigh. I really didn’t want to leave the house today, but here we are. It’s also a struggle these days to get through as we go through and experience the collapse of the American experiment in self-rule. I think another significant part of our history that isn’t taught the way it should be is we aren’t taught about how many Tories there were in the colonies during the lead up to and aftermath of the Revolution. We aren’t taught New England threatened to secede during the War of 1812, or that there were people on both sides of the Civil War1 that sympathized with the other side; North and South weren’t monoliths the way we are taught. We aren’t taught about how many Americans were Nazi sympathizers and isolationists before Pearl Harbor, using the slogan “America First”–so you see why I have always raised a cynical eyebrow whenever anyone uses that slogan; it was tied to Nazi sympathizers to me.

Watching the collapse of our country is challenging and more than a little bit depressing. It is terrible that just as I approach the age of retirement and the final chapter of my life…well, the retirement may turn out to be involuntary, as my clinic’s funding is definitely on the chopping block, Social Security is about to be looted and destroyed, and I don’t want to even look at the paltry 401k, which has also probably evaporated. No job and no retirement funds is going to be awesome when I turn 64. Paul got the notice from the NEH to not bother applying for grant funding, as it’s all been cut, so his job may not survive this, either–no more festivals in the spring. So, miss me with “we need to be nice to MAGA voters now finding out”–fuck them now and forever. I will never forgive them, and their suffering lightens mine. You want to embrace them, be my guess. Me? I will never stop laughing and pointing, let alone mocking them and enjoying their tears. My patience has worn out for ignorant haters, sorry not sorry– and as they so eloquently put it, “fuck your feelings.”

Yesterday was a nice day, overall. I got up, had a virtual meeting at work, and then did my Admin work before running some errands. I got that done, and then Paul and I made a Costco run and spent an insane amount of money. After getting home, lugging everything into the house and putting it all away, I was tired. I collapsed into my chair for a while as Paul went upstairs to work on the NEH grant–but got the email so didn’t have to bother for the rest of the evening and we dove further into The Residence, which I am greatly enjoying. Uzo Adoba is fantastic as Cordelia Copp, the world’s greatest detective, and it’s very well cast, high production values, and the writing is quite crisp. The chief usher at the White House (the divine Giancarlo Esposito) is murdered during a state dinner, and Cordelia is brought in to solve the murder. I think what’s most interesting is the divide between the White House domestic staff v. the White House political staff; the domestics work for the House, the political staff comes and goes. I’d never really thought much about the staff of the residence, so it’s an interesting look at how that all works, and it’s very cleverly structured. Highly recommend.

I do have some errands to do today, and a lot of straightening up to do as well. I want to get some reading and writing in this morning, so I can go to the gym tomorrow (I know, right?) and get some more done. I’ve been letting things slide a lot lately, which probably means I am depressed, which isn’t surprising, given the state of the world and everything else going on in my life. I think there’s an element of why bother with this book, to be honest, which is counter-productive and quite self-destructive, but it’s hard to be productive when your default is almost always pessimism. I always knew Republicans were working very hard to destroy everything decent about this country (unfettered capitalism is sociopathic in nature), but I never dreamed they might actually succeed. To paraphrase Game of Thrones: “Whenever I wonder why the Republicans would do something so counter-productive to democracy, I like to play a little game: what is the worst reason they would want to do this?”

Littlefinger was right, even if he did end up with his throat slit for his treachery.

Yesterday I also realized that one of the great American traditions, going back to colonial days, of evading paying duties and tariffs was smuggling. I used to love to read about Colonial smugglers (John Hancock was one), and some great fiction was built up around smuggling. I’ve always thought the years of Prohibition (and alcohol smuggling) in New Orleans would be an interesting time to write about. That decade saw the rise of Huey Long to power in Louisiana, and there are some fantastic stories about that post-Storyville time here. Jean Lafitte was a pirate, too–but he was also a very successful smuggler. But again, one of the great problems of New Orleans/Louisiana research is going down wormholes and sidebars–my ADHD does not matters at all in this regard; I do remember wanting to write about “Mrs. Officer,” the first woman cop in New Orleans, who was hired because they needed a woman to search and interrogate criminal women, which was a problem during Storyville days. I mean, what a great decade to research and write about! Imagine what “Mrs. Officer”2 endured in terms of misogyny as the only woman cop in an era where women couldn’t vote.

There’s also a protest today scheduled in New Orleans, as well as around the country. I’m hoping to make it, it just depends on how tired I am after getting things done this morning. I feel pretty good right now, but that also doesn’t mean I won’t flag later, either.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you most likely tomorrow morning.

  1. This is a classic example of why I say we don’t teach history properly (which will end up being a longer-form essay for my newsletter at some point). There were plenty of Tories during the American Revolution. There were Southern sympathizers in the North and Unionists in the South–I knew about the North, but whenever I’d come across that about the South I figured it was after-the-fact apologia, excusing Southern whites for their inhumanity. But over the least few years as I’ve done more deep dives into Alabama history, and hearing more old family stories, I’ve come to realize it was actually true. Erik Larson discusses this in more detail in his The Demons of Unrest, which I do recommend. ↩︎
  2. SHe was always referred to as “Mrs. Officer,” which also makes a great title. ↩︎

Keep Searchin’ (We’ll Follow the Sun)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What the actual hell?

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

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

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

I really am tired of living in interesting times.

Enchanted

Sunday morning! And LSU Gymnastics won the national championship yesterday! Woo-hoo! That accomplishment is worthy of its own post, so tune in later for that, okay? It was very exciting, I have to say, and the Lost Apartment was filled with excited cheers even as we held our breath as LSU clinched it all with a fantastic final rotation on balance beam. We kind of celebrated this throughout the night by watching replays and highlights before episode two of Sugar, which I am loving. Colin Ferrell, yum.

I was very tired Friday from running all those errands, and so was Paul. I was still fatigued yesterday, the physical and mental kind that I’ve not felt in a while–but sadly more evidence that my stamina is not back and needs to be worked on. The heat is also back; yesterday was pleasant, but Friday was eighty-eight degrees…in April. That doesn’t bode well for the summer, especially for one that’s going to be a more active hurricane season. But while I was so tired yesterday I managed to use what little nervous energy I had to clean and organize, and the apartment actually looks better this morning. It’s still not up to par–I need to do the floors to get there–but it’s nice to walk down to a neater first floor. I do need to run the dishwasher this morning, and finish filing before I read and write for the day. I do feel a little dragged out this morning, but hopefully getting caffeinated and cleaned up will take care of that problem.

I did do some things writing-related yesterday. I found the epigraphs for the next Scotty book, for one, and also wrote the opening of The Crooked Y in my head yesterday as I cleaned and organized. I created some working folders for projects that are forming in my head, and I did write notes down in my journal occasionally. I also did some electronic file cleaning up, which is proving to be an endless, endless process that may never be finished. But as long as I can still search for everything in a finder window, it should be okay. I also thought of how to open The Summer of Lost Boys, too. I’ve been listening to the Billboard Top 100’s for the years I am considering setting the book in, and I think I am settling into 1974, which was when I originally wanted it set in the first place, the summer (in my life) between junior high and high school. It’s kind of fun, if a little painful, to go back to that time and remember it for myself, but I think it’s going to be a really strong book once it’s underway. I also started getting the current book a bit better organized. I feel better about things, if that makes any sense? Hopefully I’ll be able to get a lot of writing done. I want to finish the rewrite of “Passenger to Franklin” and start the revision of “When I Die,” before diving into the book headfirst and trying to get the rest of it plotted.

I think I’ve been a bit overwhelmed lately, in all honesty, and I need to get calmed down and focused again. I need to remember how to harness my brain ADHD-driven creativity and focus on one thing the way I used to be able to do so. I have been very pleased with the (sparse) writing I’ve been doing, but I also think that might be partly due to the stamina issues I’ve been having since the surgery. I am trying to rush to get back to “normal” (or what passes for it around here) and getting ahead of myself, and I need to reign in my impatience and take things slower. It’s okay because it’s temporary, and this too shall pass. Take a breath, remember you had a rough go of things last year, and you have to build everything back to the point it was before the injury.

I’ve also been remiss in not congratulating award winners lately in my field; I am very pleased to report that J. M. Redmann won the Hansen Prize for queer crime fiction for Transitory, which is now also a Lambda finalist AND a two category Goldie finalist. Yay Jean! I’ve known Jean for almost twenty-five years now, she was my boss’s boss for about eighteen years, we’ve co-edited anthologies together, and now I am her book editor. Transitory is a terrific book, and being Jean’s editor is pretty easy, actually. Ivy Pochoda recently won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Best Crime Novel for Sing Her Down, and Ivy is pretty awesome, too. I am behind on her books (I’m behind on everyone’s books, really) but her Wonder Valley was fan-fucking-tastic. Way to go, Ivy! (That was a loaded category, too–other nominees were S. A. Cosby, Cheryl Head, Jordan Harper, and Lou Berney.)

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines, eat something and get cleaned up and ready to go for this glorious morning. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will chat at you again later.

Gotta Travel On

The Ides of April and Tax Day, huzzah. I’ve filed for an extension for mine because I just couldn’t deal with it before, which is kind of childish and more than a little immature; the key word here is avoidance. But I plan to get it all finished this week, God willing and the creek don’t rise. I am going into the office a little later than I usually do, because I have to swing by the Cat Practice to get Sparky’s food on the way to the office. It’s an Admin Day, so not a big deal for me to not be there as early as usual.

I feel rested and good this morning, which is a very pleasant change and surprise. I did go to bed a little early last night, but I spent most of the day writing in my journal, watching documentaries, and later on in the evening we watched more episodes of The Gentlemen. I also finally looked up the name of the star, Theo James, because it was bothering me that I recognized him and couldn’t place him. I am liking it a lot more than I would have thought, frankly; not being a big fan of producer/showrunner Guy Ritchie, but it’s actually quite fun. I also went down some rabbit holes of research yesterday, which is always a lot of fun for me. I also started reading Paul Tremblay’s The Pallbearer’s Club, which I had a little trouble getting into at first, but I remembered having this issue with A Head Full of Ghosts, too–like the latter, he’s playing with form and style and point of view in the former, which is a bit hard to get used to it, so it’s slow going (for me) at first, but as always, there’s such depth and compassion in his writing it’s easy to see why his career has taken off. I’ll try to read some more of it when I get home from work tonight, after I do the day’s writing. I am definitely planning on writing every day now, even if it’s just a little something. I made lots of notes yesterday in my journal, too, which was very cool.

I decided yesterday, when watching a lengthy documentary of LSU football highlights (I was doing this around chores, listening to the documentary while Sparky and Paul slept on the couch) that one of the problems I’ve been facing with writing lately, something I’ve talked about on here a lot, is how I’ve not really been able to focus all of my creative energies on anything that I am writing, but have any number of things in-progress that my mind keeps attention-deficiting between, skittering around between projects and ideas without really landing effectively on anything for long enough to get very far. Yesterday I decided, as I grabbed the journal and hit play on the documentary that I was going to free-form take notes and scribble out ideas as they came to me, regardless of what they were about or for, even if they were entirely new project notes. I did a lot of scribbling, and most of it focused on one project, which really needs to get done by the end of the year, as well as some others I was a bit surprised still were there and fresh in my mind. I also know now that if I rewrite at least three of these short stories drafts that I have on hand, that collection will be complete.

I also found the voice for a new project idea I’ve had in the front of my mind for a while, primarily because we watched those ‘troubled teen cure’ documentaries at the end of the previous week. I had an idea for one set in Kansas, based on a foster home where the kids went to my high school. I didn’t think much of it when I was in high school–other than how much harder those kids had it than the rest of us–and sometime in the years since high school I thought, I could write a crime novel around that story even though it would entirely be fictional and the real place was simply a starting point for my fictionalization. The title came to me this weekend–The Crooked Y–and so that’s definitely moving up the list of “what to write next.”

As you can tell, writing is becoming more important to me and it feels good for my mind to be creating again, even in this current ADHD way, which is so much better than the dry well experience I’ve been having since…well, since Mom died, really. 2023 was a lot of personal trauma; and relentless from January on, which makes it not surprising, I suppose, that my brain has been fallow for so long.

And on that note, I am going to start getting ready to head into the spice mines for the day. Have a great Monday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.

Five Ten Fiftyfold

Tuesday and back to the office with me today blog.

Yesterday was a bit of an off day for me; I didn’t feel good for most of the day. Paul’s been sick since Thursday–coughing, lots of congestion and post nasal drip–to how crappy I felt yesterday was at least not as bad as he was at his worst; and this morning I feel fine. Not sure if it was some twenty-four hour thing, but hope that feeling better lasts through the rest of the day. We had some amazing thunderstorms last night while I was sleeping; it’s kind of gray and icky looking outside right now. The forecast is the usual–hot, humid, chance of thunderstorm–so I’m hoping my sinuses remain under control for the rest of the day as well.

Yesterday morning I finished reading Chris Clarkson’s delightful That Summer Night on Frenchmen Street, which I really enjoyed, and have selected Megan Abbott’s Beware the Woman as my next read. I’m not sure when I’m going to have the time to actually spend reading it thoroughly and enjoying it–probably will go with me to Kentucky as my “before I go to sleep” read. LSU lost a heartbreaker to Wake Forest yesterday 3-2, so now have to fight their way back out of the losers’ bracket if they want to win the College World Series. Hope springs eternal for an LSU fan–we did break the Jello Shot Record at Rocco’s yesterday–but I’m just delighted they made it to the World Series this year. GEAUX TIGERS!

I have some more work to do on this manuscript before I turn it in. This is the revising/fixing phase of the edits; where I have to do the more macro things. I had hoped to get this done yesterday but I wasn’t feeling well, and as such couldn’t really focus the way I needed to–I did try, of course–so tonight after I run my errands on the way home from work (there’s always something, really) I hope to sit down and bang out the rest of this to get it finished and out of my hair and out of my way. We started watching a documentary series about the history of Warner Brothers last night, which is always fun; I always like learning more about Hollywood history. The documentary didn’t really provide me with anything new or insightful about the history of the studio, other than further confirmation that Jack Warner was an asshole. There are two more parts, so that takes care of our television watching needs for this evening, at the very least. I figure with show episodes dropping this week and me being gone next week will help our shows build up back episodes to watch.

It’s also weird that it’s Tuesday already. I feel like I am going to be off this entire week because of it, then I’m out of the office for a week, and then I come back to the abbreviated 4th of July holiday week. As much as I love having extra time off, it’s always a weird week when the work week is truncated this way; I always feel kind of somehow off my game no matter what. But it’s a short week, I’m off next, and I need to get organized. I need a to-do list, most importantly, and to figure out where I’m at with everything. I always have this tendency to be as laser-focused as someone with (undiagnosed) ADHD can be; which means the book is the biggest priority and everything else is an incredible inconvenience that I don’t pay much attention to other than the occasional yeah yeah I know I need to work on you, but give me a minute.

Despite not feeling well yesterday–I also was feverish most of the day–I was able to get chores done around the house so it looks a little neater and a little less fraternity dorm room. I do want to drop books off for the library sale this coming weekend before leaving town, and I also want to get the car washed and cleaned out–chores for Saturday! Huzzah! I think we’re doing an escape room team bonding thing on Friday morning and then having lunch, then I can go home and do data entry–woo-hoo! It doesn’t get much more exciting than that, does it? And then of course Sunday it’s up to Alabama to meet Dad. I had a bad day one day last week about Mom; when the grief came back and I wasn’t able to reason or breathe or mind-clear my way out of it, so I just gave in and had a nice, good cry for a few minutes, and then I was able to get moving again. It’s been four months since we lost Mom, and I don’t think it’s something I’ll ever get used to but rather something I will gradually just be able to live with. I don’t think any of us can expect more than that, really.

And on that note I am heading out in the thick heavy air of a hot summer day in June. I’ll catch you later, Constant Reader; hope you have a lovely day.

Hate That I Love You

Tuesday and we survived Monday, Constant Reader–that has to count for something, doesn’t it? Actually, it wasn’t that bad, to be honest. I slept decently and woke up without problem with the alarm, and didn’t feel tired for most of the day. I had a highly productive day at the office, and then I came home and worked some more on the manuscript, which I am really starting to feel good about, believe it or not. I like my characters and I like the story, and I like that it isn’t set in either Uptown or the French Quarter or–where I always go–the Lower Garden District is always the default for me. This time out I set the book in the 7th Ward, on what we used to say was the “wrong side” of St. Claude (this is also the neighborhood where my office building is now, on Elysian Fields); even now people say this neighborhood is “unsafe”; and yes, we’ve had some instances where there was gunfire outside and we went into a code and locked down the office. Maybe I just have a false sense of security–which won’t change until something bad happens to me, as usual–but I never feel all that unsafe either going to or from my car before and after work. (I also love that realtors are trying to rebrand the neighborhood as ‘the new Marigny.” Um, no, it’s not and there’s no such thing as the ‘new Marigny.’)

I also slept well last night, which is great. I feel rested and relaxed this morning, but I also have to see clients today. I’ll probably be a bit tired when I get home tonight; seeing clients can drain you a bit, which is why I don’t see clients four days a week instead of three. I got some more work on the book done yesterday, and hope to get further along today as well–no relaxing until I get my work done tonight. I had a ZOOM meeting last night so I wasn’t able to get as much work done as i would have liked–still behind, of course, as always–but I am pretty happy with the work I am doing and how the manuscript is coming together, which is always lovely. I’m not hating the manuscript as I work on it, which is kind of a nice change, overall. Maybe I have finally gotten less self-loathing about my own work, after twenty-odd years? Nah, that can’t be it! Maybe I just feel centered for the first time in a long time? That is more likely.

It’s been a time, there’s no question about that. Mom’s health had been declining for years, so that was always weighing on the back of my mind, no matter how hard I tried to not think about it or even consider the possibilities inherent in recognizing that her health was failing; there was a pandemic and a dramatic shift/change in my day job; and of course I was doing a lot of volunteering around writing and trying to keep my authorial career going at the same time. I’m surprised I didn’t have more mental breakdowns over the last few years, in all honesty. It’s no wonder I was low energy, depressed, and tired all the time. There were paradigm shifts happening everywhere in my life, and I was completely unprepared for any of them, either physically or emotionally or intellectually. I don’t remember writing the books I wrote since the shutdown three years ago; Bury Me in Shadows, A Streetcar Named Murder, #shedeservedit–I remember the young adults because I’ve been working on them for years before I sold them; but the revision process? The editing? I don’t remember a fucking thing. I do worry some about how my brain works now; one thing that has definitely happened over the last three years is a complete loss of remembering how to deal with the ADHD, so focusing is a lot harder than it used to be. I don’t know if that’s related to the ten-day COVID I had last summer, or if it’s because of all the changes and shifts, or maybe it’s even a combination of all those things. I don’t know, but I know I haven’t been functioning at full brain capacity for quite some time now, and I am starting to feel normal (or what passes for that around here) for the first time in a long time. More like myself, I should say, rather than normal; I’ve always taken great pride in not being normal–once I accepted it.

But I also don’t remember much of my life post-Katrina, either; there are years after Katrina that are foggy memories, if that. It shouldn’t come as a surprise (or a shock) that things that occur during times of trauma and stress don’t go into the permanent memory bank (which isn’t as big and powerful as it used to be). I should be used to it by now, right? But I don’t think you ever get used to traumatic events, and your brain just figures out the easiest way to get through it all without causing more trauma, and if that means not remembering things that happen, well, who am I to question how my twisted brain works and functions?

I’m just glad it’s still functioning, really, even if it is all over the place.

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

The Dealer

Sunday morning in the Lost Apartment and I am feeling a bit bleary-eyed this morning. I slept magnificently last night; I didn’t want to arise from the nest of blankets in my comfortable bed this morning in the least. But arise I did, because there are things I must get done today and staying in the bed for a longer time than usual would not help accomplish anything except, you know, more pleasure of sleep.

We did finish watching Black Bird last night, which was an interesting show based on a true story and executive-produced by Dennis Lehane; in which a cop’s son turned bad gets a chance to get his sentence commuted if he goes into a prison for the criminally insane and gets a serial killer–whose appeal might earn his release–to confess to him. It was quite entertaining and more than a little intense, but I do recommend it. I don’t think it needed to be six episodes–I think it felt a little padded here and there to get to six episodes, which seems to be the American minimum/sweet spot for mini-series. We also started watching Five Days at Memorial, which is…interesting. It’s a dramatization based on a book and the true-life experiences of those who were trapped there after Katrina and the flooding; one thing that was absolutely spot-on was how everyone kept lapsing and calling the hospital “Baptist” instead of “Memorial”–the hospital had been bought out by Tenet Health and renamed in the years before the storm; it was a New Orleans thing as to how long it would take for the new name to catch on; I was still calling it “Baptist” to the point that even the title of the series took me aback; I actually did wonder before we started watching, was the name of the hospital Baptist Memorial and we all just called it Baptist? Mystery solved.

I did run my errands yesterday–it didn’t feel quite as miserable outside as I thought it would–and actually made dinner last night…meatballs in the slow cooker, but I also made them differently than I usually make slow-cooker meatballs, the recipe I donated to the Mystery Writers of America Cookbook; I added sour cream to the recipe, for one thing, as well as some other spices and vegetables in the sauce. They turned out really well–quite tasty, actually–and as I sliced bell peppers, celery and onions yesterday while the roux bubbled and browned, I remembered oh yes, I love to cook; I just never get the opportunity to do so anymore. Our work and sleep schedules are now completely out of sync, and the only time I ever cook anything is on the weekends. Today I do need to make things to take for lunch this week–the meatballs will only stretch so far, and I am starting the week in the office on Monday instead of Tuesday this week. I am also having Costco delivered this afternoon as well. I also need to get to work on my second-pass page proofs for a Streetcar today; they are due on my birthday, ironically, but I’d rather get them out of the way today. I also want to get some writing in today, if I am lucky and motivated; I need to start getting more focused and less concerned about other things and issues as well as getting distracted, which is getting easier and easier all the damned time. I know there’s medication for ADHD, but unfortunately it can also act like speed–and the last thing in the world I need is to take something that will make it harder for me to fall asleep.

Yeah, definitely don’t need something to keep me awake longer. (Although every night before I go to bed now I start drifting off to sleep in my easy chair, which is so fucking lovely you have no idea.)

I’ve been reading some non-fiction lately; my mind hasn’t been clear or steady enough to continue reading fiction–a malaise that has come and gone since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020–so I’ve been focusing more on non-fiction when I am reading lately. I’ve got a really interesting book called Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang, which is absolutely fascinating. I loved the Charlie Chan movies when I was a kid (neither knowing nor comprehending how racist they were, not to mention their “yellowface” aspects)–again, the influence of my grandmother–and I read some of the Earl Derr Biggers novels when I was a teenager. I am really interested in getting into the meat of this book, since the character was beloved but is problematic in our more enlightened time; can the stories and the character be reclaimed from the morass of stereotyping and cultural colonialism the books and films were steeped in so deeply? Reading the introduction to the book yesterday did again make me feel like gosh, I wish I was educated enough in criticism and the writing of non-fiction to produce this type of work; there are any number of books and writers and characters I would love to explore and dissect and deconstruct. But alas, I do not have that background or education, nor do I have the necessary egotism/self-confidence in my own intellect to believe that I could come up with anything interesting or constructive or scintillatingly brilliant to say that hasn’t already been side (although I have an interesting take on Rebecca I would love to write about someday). I’d love to write about the heyday of romantic suspense and the women who hit the bestseller lists throughout the 50’s-80’s writing those books (Whitney, Stewart, Holt being the holy trinity); deconstructing the themes and tropes and tracing their evolution as the role of women in society began to change during the decades they wrote their novels.

I also bought an ebook about the children of Nazis, which is something that has always fascinated me; how did and have Germany and Germans dealt with, and continue to deal with, their horrific and genocidal past?

Obviously, as a Southerner, I am curious to see how one deals with a horrific history.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Y’all have a lovely Sunday, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

Run, Run, Run

Wednesday morning and it’s not as cold as it has been, but it’s still (of course) cold in the Lost Apartment, same as it ever was when it is cold outside. I didn’t want to get out of my warm bed this morning yet again, but there’s no choice, obviously, as I have to leave for the office shortly. It’s my last day in the office of the week; I had actually taken tomorrow off because we were going to have our new year’s lunch at Commander’s tomorrow, but with the recent uptick of cases and changes in safety protocols and so forth, we all decided it was probably for the best to cancel it. This gives me another day off at home to work on the book and do some cleaning; not the worst possible outcome, but I would rather be having lunch at Commander’s if I have to be honest about it. Friday will thus be another work-at-home day for me, and then I will have the weekend to work some more on the book.

Not the best, but certainly not the worst potential outcome here.

I did tape “The Reading Life” with the always delightful Susan Larson for WWNO yesterday, which is always a pleasure. I also am going to be interviewed for a newspaper over the phone on Friday; it’s been a while since I’ve done one of those, and so it should be interesting. I am also not feeling quite as tired or sleepy this morning as I did yesterday; perhaps it’s the coffee, perhaps it’s a better night’s sleep, I am not sure which is true, frankly, I just know this morning I feel more awake than I did yesterday (not as awake and energetic as Monday, to be sure, but still, this is better than yesterday when I felt like something Scooter had dragged in). We watched the LSU bowl game for a while before finally, regretfully, giving up on the game and watching another episode of Yellowjackets, which continues to enthrall; I am really looking forward to getting back to it again tonight, to be honest. It’s so very well done, well written and acted, and such a spectacular cast, too! I do recommend it, even though it’s early in the season and things can still easily go off the rails.

It’s also Pay-the-Bills Day (huzzah?), so I will be spending some of my lunch hour doing exactly that, and determining if a Costco run this weekend is in order. I don’t know, to be honest; there’s only a few things that I actually need from there, and there’s a very real sense that I can probably do without those things for another week or so, right? It always ends up costing so much to go there…because I can always find more things I “need” than are on my grocery list–defeating the purpose of the list entirely.

My mind is all over the place this morning, which is to be expected, I suppose. It’s really a wonder my ADHD-addled brain allows me to get anything finished or accomplished at all. I have managed to get coping mechanisms in place to help me with my fevered all-over-the-place brain; the one good thing about having an ADHD-addled mind is that when you are able to focus it, you can focus it with laser-like precision. I am having some trouble focusing my brain this morning, but I am hoping that the causes of that will fade as the morning progresses and I’ll be able to get focused the later in the day it gets. I need to do some writing today and I need to empty out my email inbox once and for all. I need to make a list of things I need to get done this week. I need to clean the house and stop to make a little groceries on the way home from the office tonight.

I also need to stop being overwhelmed by how much I have to get done and just start fucking doing it.

And so, on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I am going to be productive today if it kills me. Have a lovely Wednesday!

Turn the Beat Around

Tuesday morning, came with no warning, of what was to beeeeeeeeeeeeee…

Heh, heh, couldn’t resist riffing on “Monday Monday”; I personally prefer Mondays to Tuesdays, always, quite frankly. Although as far as Mondays go, yesterday wasn’t a bad one. We had our usual flash flood warning/severe weather watch yesterday afternoon; and it did pour for a while, but by the time I got off work and drove home it was all over. Paul was working on a grant last night so i sat in my chair with the cat purring in my lap while I …didn’t really do much of anything. I cleaned the kitchen when I got home, wrote in my journal for a while, and watched some stuff on Youtube before we watched Hulu’s new show about life on an Oklahoma Native American reservation, Reservation Dogs, which was interesting. I wasn’t quite sure about the tone they were going for–it seemed like it was a comedy but perhaps a bit of a dark one? We’ll watch some more–the young Native actors were all appealing, and it’s an America I certainly have never seen before, or know much about (much to my own shame), but it was also nice to see a show about Natives written and produced and starring Natives–something pretty far overdue in American culture, to say the least.

College football looms, with all of its stadium super-spreader potential (sadly), and I am curious to see how this LSU team is going to do this year. Texas and Oklahoma have officially joined the SEC, effective 2025–so we have four years left of the SEC in its current iteration. I understand why the expansions have happened and why they feel they are necessary, but (and with no offense intended whatsoever to any of these schools) but it’s still hard for me to wrap my mind around Arkansas, Missouri, Texas A&M, and South Carolina as SEC schools, let alone this latest addition of Texas and Oklahoma. Who knows what college football is going to look like in 2025? it will be interesting….if I live that long.

But I only have two more days of my work week left after today–yay for the long weekend they gave us–and next week will also be a shorter week. As my birthday is looming on the horizon, I am trying to slowly treat myself to things as little birthday gifts for myself; I scheduled an indulgence for myself this Friday–and I am also planning on getting phô at long last this Friday as well–and I think Friday might just be my Greg does nothing day this weekend. I have errands to run; Vietnamese noodles to get; and of course my indulgence. I may wind up spending the rest of that day just reading and kicking back around the house, saving the writing for the rest of the weekend. I have to get serious work on #shedeservedit at least underway that weekend, hoping to finish during the Bouchercon vacation week I now have (it’s so weird, I have all this time off from work around my birthday, but the birthday itself remains a work day–but taking the day off from work seemed a bit extreme given how much other time off I have this month, and Labor Day is also looming on the horizon) because I had promised to have it finished by the end of the month. It’s definitely do-able, don’t get me wrong–it’s just going to be a lot of work along the way.

Which is fine. Right now it seems intimidating, but every project seems intimidating before you start on it.

I don’t even want to think about how many projects I have in some form of development at the moment. Seriously. If it weren’t for the fact that ADHD medication wires you–which could affect my sleep–I’d seriously consider going on some. There’s another couple of them, in fact, that were sort of in suspended animation for awhile that are also going to be kicking into gear this fall….which could change my planned writing schedule for the rest of the year, so I am going to have to take a long hard look at everything and reconfigure and plan and so forth. Heavy heaving sigh. But this is a good thing, and it means that there will also be lots of writing and so forth to get done next year as well.

Running out of ideas and projects is never going to be an issue for me.

I am hoping to make it to the gym tonight for the first official Leg Day in a long time; I’m not going to overdue it (I do need to be able to walk tomorrow and climb stairs, etc.) but introducing new exercises is never an issue as long as it is done properly, and I think it’ll be easier to squeeze in a Leg Day in the evenings than it is to do upper body; everyone is always doing upper body (which explains their legs, LOL–YES I WILL ALWAYS SHAME PEOPLE WHO SKIP LEG DAY) it seems, which is part of the reason I decided to break the workout in two to begin with. By the end of the year I am hoping to have it to the point where each workout is specific: arms and shoulders; legs; chest and back, and that’s when the real changes to my shape will actually start to develop.

Of course, I could also start eating healthier…..HA HA HA HA. It had to be said, in fairness.

And on that note, I am going to dive headfirst into my Tuesday. Have a great day, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.