Tag: Apple TV Plus

You Can’t Hurry Love

One week from today I return to the office, and in a little while I’ll be heading to my first physical therapy appointment. I’ve not been outside for a few days–seriously, this recovery has only helped play into my “I don’t want to leave the house” mentality, and it’s amazing how quickly I slide into that–and it feels cold. The roofers came by yesterday and chased me out of the kitchen so they could rip the damaged ceiling out; they will be returning to day to fix it. It was okay, though. I stayed in the living room and brainstormed and worked out the next few chapters of the book, and I also read two books. One was a reread of a book I read as a kid, Danger at Niagara by Margaret Goff Clark1, about a fifteen year old boy who lives along the river during the War of 1812, and the other was the second-to-most recent Donna Andrews, Birder She Wrote2—I couldn’t bring myself to read the books out of order so I could get to the Christmas one sooner, but at least now I can dig into this year’s Christmas mystery by Donna. (There will be more on both books later; I don’t have time to write about them before I leave for PT, and the roofers will be here when I get home. I imagine this means I’ll be reading the Christmas book and brainstorming ideas for my book while they put in the insulation and new ceiling and rehang the ceiling fan.)

I slept super well again last night–and woke up at six, so that’s still wired into my brain, which is a good thing; getting up to go back to the office next week will not be as big a challenge as I feared; I was also wide awake and it took me a while to go back to sleep, and I had a nightmare in that brief hour or so–oddly enough, it was about leaving a faucet running and the apartment flooding and having to clean up the mess while thinking I don’t have time for this. Subconscious deadline fear? Perhaps. But I do feel a lot more confident about writing the book now, and it’s just a matter of being able to sit down for a few hours every day and writing it, and I need to stop pressuring myself to get it right the first time.

We got caught up on Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, which is really well done and very interesting. I hadn’t realized that it all hadn’t aired yet, so we are now caught up through everything that is available to stream on Apple TV, and then we moved onto the Showtime mini-series based on Thomas Mallon’s novel Fellow Travelers, which I have a copy somewhere in the massive TBR stack and have wanted to get around to, if for no other reason than it’s set in the same period as Chlorine, which I have decided I am going to go. back to once I have this new drag queen cozy finished. Yes, that’s right, I’ve decided that once I finish this draft, I am going to go back to Chlorine and try to get a first draft done while alternating with Muscles, and hopefully I will finally get first drafts of each finished by Carnival–which I can easily do as long as I stay motivated. This morning I feel like I can conquer the world again, and I haven’t felt like that in years; it’s been so long I can’t remember the last time I felt so confident in myself. It feels good. I ain’t gonna lie; I’ve been down, depressed, and feeling defeated now for quite a long time–I think going back to buying my car, which, while it was exciting to actually have a new car, that thrill died as I started realizing how much that car payment was damaging my finances. I paid off the car right as the pandemic started, so I swapped out one stressful headache for the overall societal depression everyone was feeling at that time, and I never really recovered or got my equilibrium back, if that makes sense? And of course, I bought the car right around the time Mom’s health went south, so that was also always in the back of my head.

But I am going into the new year with hearing aids and my teeth fixed; and the injury to my left arm repaired. Once I finish the strengthening physical therapy for that (which can’t start till the end of February), then I can start going back to the gym. And that actually makes me excited and anticipatory; I’m not so concerned about looking great as I am about feeling good–there’s absolutely no vanity involved in my wanting to get back into a regular exercise regimen. I think I am going to start taking walks around the neighborhood, if for no other reason than to see the Christmas decorations, and New Orleans always does decorating up. I’ve also been backing up my back-up hard drive to Dropbox, which is taking quite some time, but once it’s all done, the future back-ups will be ever so much easier to do. I really need to eliminate duplicate files–there are so many of them it’s not even funny–and get my electronic storage under control. It’s really such a huge project that it scares me to think about how long it will take, and that’s mainly because of so many duplicate files, and the fact I don’t name picture files…and I am a file hoarder, which isn’t good–but is yet another symptom of my anxiety.

And on that note, I need to eat something before I go to physical therapy, so I am going to bring this to a close. I may be back later; it’s hard to say depending on how the ceiling reconstruction goes, but I will most definitely be back tomorrow morning. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you at the latest tomorrow.

  1. I have some serious thoughts about this book as pro-US propaganda, which i obviously didn’t notice as a child but were huge red flags on this reread. ↩︎
  2. I loved this book, as I do all of her books; it’s a remarkable achievement keeping a series this fresh and interesting this deep in; I think she might be at almost thirty in the series now? A master class in maintaining a long-running series, seriously. ↩︎

Take Me Home, Country Roads

And here we are, Sunday morning, and the dawn of a new week. I am still controlling things with copious amounts of DayQuil–it really works wonders.

I finished reading Daphne du Maurier’s story “The Menace” yesterday, and am not quite sure what to make of it, to be honest. It was very strange, and again, like “The Archduchess”, not your typical du Maurier story (if it can be said that there is such a thing as a typical du Maurier story), but I also wasn’t certain how it fit the supposed theme of the stories in The Breaking Point–people pushed to their breaking point, and how they react or behave once they break. But it was an interesting read, and I’m not sorry I read it. I may wait before moving onto the other stories in the collection I’ve not read yet–“The Limpet” and “The Lordly Ones”–because these last two seemed like lesser stories…but it’s also kind of nice to know that du Maurier didn’t always hit it out of the park, too.

Makes me feel a little better about myself, don’t you know.

I also started rereading my favorite ghost story of all time, Barbara Michaels’ Ammie Come Home, which is just as charming, enchanting, and compulsively readable as it was the first time I read it, many many years ago when I was a just a child.

Yesterday was okay, health-wise, for the most part. It comes in waves, it seems, and I dosed myself regularly with DayQuil. At one point yesterday I wasn’t paying attention to the time, and  I could feel my nose starting to run and my temperature starting to go up, so I walked into the kitchen and dosed myself. I started shivering for a moment and then it kicked in and that was that. So, DayQuil, if you’re ever looking for testimonials…you know where to find me. The DayQuil seems to help keep the fever down, and to help with the coughing. There was a slight headache now and again, with several minor dry-coughing fits throughout the day, but no uncontrollable shivering, which for me was really the worst part of it other than feeling off. I am still sticking to my plan of getting tested tomorrow and self-quarantining for the rest of the week–it’s the only thing that makes sense and is responsible. I cannot assume that what I have isn’t the COVID-19 virus, and I cannot put other people at risk (any more than I already have–which is quite a lovely burden to shoulder, I might add). At worst, I’ll exhaust my sick and vacation time staying home for the week; at best, I’m getting better and not getting anyone else sick. I hate the thought that I put people at risk more than anything else, but I also didn’t know, so there’s that–but does that make it any better? Obviously, deliberately infecting people is worse, and now that I’ve been sick, I know better than to go to work every day until I know I don’t have it, or until I know I did have it and have taken the time to get over it completely.

I slept very well again last night, which was lovely, but I did feel tired most of the day yesterday. Going up and down the stairs seemed to really tire out my legs. But my breathing seems to still be okay–no tightness in my lungs, no restriction to my breathing–and while there were a couple of dry coughing fits (which go on until my lungs ached), for the most part my respiratory system seems to be functioning properly. So far so good this morning–although I should probably take a shot of DayQuil pretty soon; certainly before my second cup of coffee.

We watched a lot of episodes of Kim’s Convenience last night, which is a really cute and charming show that occasionally takes on some interesting and topical subjects. It’s very well cast, and I think my favorite character is the mom, who is absolutely hilarious. After a few hours spent with the Kims, we decided to try something else, and I remembered that we have Apple TV Plus (yes, we have too many streaming services, and I know I really should take the time some time to sit down and figure out which ones we need and which ones we don’t), and so I clicked over to that app and saw that Stephen Spielberg’s reboot of Amazing Stories was available, so we watched the first two episodes. The show is aptly titles, by the way–it is amazing. The stories are what Harlan Ellison called speculative fiction–that terrific catch-all that covers horror, fantasy, and science fiction, with all the crossovers and gray spaces in between. The first episode dealt with time travel; the second with spirits trapped in limbo, and both were so incredibly well done. The writing and acting and directing were pinpoint sharp; and the production values made it very clear we were watching a Spielberg production. The first starred Dylan O’Brien of Teen Wolf fame, and despite being about time travel it never created the paradox issues that usually pop up with time travel and was entirely satisfying at the end, with everything wrapped up beautifully. The ghosts in limbo story was equally emotionally honest and strong, about the bond of love between two young girls of color who were track stars and best friends since they were children, until one dies in a tragic accident. The two episodes were so sharp and strongly written they reminded me of Ellison and one of my favorite short stories of all time, “Paladin of the Lost Hour,” which was filmed as an episode of the mid-1908’s reboot of The Twilight Zone (that remains one of my favorite television episodes of all time as well); I am really looking forward to watching more of Amazing Stories–which reminded me I also pay for CBS All-Access, which means we can also watch Jordan Peele’s reboot of The Twilight Zone, which is also incredibly cool. It also made me think that the reboots of these shows should do what Rod Serling and the producers of other such shows in the 1950’s and 1960’s did–buy speculative fiction short stories from masters of the genre to film. Goddess knows there are plenty of them around these days.

And now I’m starting to fade a little bit, so I think I am going to repair to my easy chair and take it easy for a while. Have a lovely, and safe, Sunday, Constant Reader!

clayton snyder