Tag: Costco

Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag

Well, yesterday wasn’t so bad, really. The office didn’t burn down in my absence (didn’t think it would) and there was no mess for me to clean up anywhere, so that was nice. I also felt good for most of the day; I had energy and didn’t feel sleepy in the least. I managed to come home from work and get the thing done that needed to be done for today; I also revised and rewrote that short story before discovering the deadline is actually October 20th, so I have time to go over it once again before turning it in for the perusal of the editors. It’s a reach to meet their theme, but nothing ventured and all that. I won’t be disappointed too much if they turn me down. I also have another story to write by the end of the month, and I am not sure which one I have on hand to use for it. Something to look into for this weekend, methinks. And I need to get back to work on Scotty. Heavy sigh.

But I never felt any stress about the deadlines, and I managed to get both things worked on, which I am quite pleased with myself about, frankly. I am rather pleased with the new version of the story; it really does need to be revised one more time (not the least of which is that it’s too long; I always think 5k when writing a story but the CFS for this is 4k max, so some pruning and tightening is in order. I also managed to sleep really well again last night and feel great this morning. I wasn’t tired when I got home, either. After I got through with working, I happily collapsed into my easy chair and caught up on the news. I do think this approach to this year’s election–staying calm and blocking the legacy media1–is the right way to go. I have felt a lot less stressed about everything without losing my shit at the insanity of said legacy media’s insane bias. It doesn’t mean that I’m not worried about the outcome–I am, very much so–but the weight of it all doesn’t need to rest on my shoulders. Thank God for anxiety medications, and the clear-headedness those medications give me.

Today’s goal is to figure out what short story to use for this other call for submissions that is due at the end of the month. I literally have no clue, off the top of my head, and so I am going to have to go through the files and figure out which one I can either finish or revise. A tough problem to have, don’t you think? I kind of want to work on short stories at the moment, which has everything to do with revising one yesterday. Once the dam breaks, and all that stuff and nonsense. I’m just delighted to be writing again, and even more delighted that I am prioritizing my work for once (and from now on). I’ll still do the occasional volunteer thing now and again, but nothing that requires a lengthy commitment or has any urgency; I’ve sacrificed my mental health and my writing for far too long on things that ultimately had no benefit for me other than satisfaction–and sometimes I never even got that, so it’s time for someone else to do whatever it was I thought I was accomplishing. I also have little to no interest in my legacy. I am always amused a bit when I hear writers talk about things like that. For one thing, that’s not for me to decide. Did I make a contribution to American letters? The mystery genre? Queer writing? Most likely not; I am not going to be studied in future college lit courses–genre, for one; gay for the other–and once I’m gone–or stop producing work, I’ll be forgotten, and I am fine with that. The books will all float around on the Internet for years after my death so they are there for the finding. Maybe in a hundred years some scholar will stumble over my work and make a case for me as one of the unsung heroes of crime fiction, but I rather doubt it. In either case, I won’t be here to see it, so why even worry about it? Talk about a waste of energy!

We’re having a cold spell–a front for a few days–where the highs will be in the sixties and the lows in the fifties. It’s fifty-nine right now, brisk and crisp; it will definitely help me sleep and will definitely help bring the power bill down. We resist turning on the heat until it’s actually in the fifties inside, and the heat is far cheaper than air conditioning. I also need to run errands after work today, and then once I am home I need to progress on the apartment before settling into my chair for the evening. I’ve also got to figure out my doctor’s appointments and try to reschedule them all for the same day–or at least to have as many on the same day as possible. Sigh. This is what we call gumbo weather; when you spend the morning in the kitchen making a nice big pot of it–the cooking of it also keeps you warm, and it certainly does warm you up on the inside when you eat it. If the weather holds through the weekend I’ll probably make some kind of shrimp dish–shrimp creole or shrimp scampi or something like that. I also like making potato leek soup and white bean chicken chili (but that will require a Costco trip at some point). I do love the fall here in Louisiana…and it also looks like the two systems the Hurricane Center is monitoring aren’t going to develop into anything for a brief respite.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I may be back later; one never really knows for certain, does one?

  1. They have been committing journalistic malpractice since at least 2015, if not longer. ↩︎

Please Don’t Tell Me How The Story Ends

And now it’s Saturday, and I feel pretty good this morning. There’s lots to do, of course, before the LSU game at 2:30 today; dishes to put away and filing, a couple of errands to run, and of course, as always, cleaning. After work yesterday and running the errands–including Costco–I was very tired when I got home. I wasn’t very energetic yesterday as it was–I could tell the low energy from Thursday had carried over–and it was hard enough putting away the Costco purchases when we got back from that. We also started watching Agatha All Along (more on that later) before going to bed. I slept really well, which was nice, and now I am hoping to get some things done today. I want to finish entering the notes from the marked-up Scotty books into the Bible this weekend, and I also want to mark up the last two so I can get that part of it finished before going through it all and organizing it. I also want to write tomorrow before the Saints game. I also have to make groceries tomorrow morning, but I am going to try to get up fairly early (like today, Sparky got me up at seven) so I can get that done early so I can write some more tomorrow. I also want to do some reading this weekend. I’m really enjoying Jordan Harper’s Everybody Knows–he has a terrific writing style and authorial voice–and it would be great to finish reading it this weekend so I can move on to my reread of We Have Always Lived in the Castle to prep for Halloween Horror Month.

I also need to check the to-do list. I do want to wash the car this weekend, too–perhaps I can get that done this morning if I time everything correctly and I don’t laze around this morning–always a problem. I have any number of other entries I’d also like to get finished at some point–especially two book reviews of recent reads I enjoyed a lot–and I haven’t done a newsletter on Substack for two weeks now, so I am a bit overdue there, too. Heavy heaving sigh, and there’s some emails to answer as well. But…things will get done when they get done, and I don’t really berate myself (or feel like a loser) when I don’t get things done. There’s an essay (which would fit into the ‘my gay life’ essays) I want to get done about jockstraps, of all things; jockstraps are definitely a gay fetish object, they turned 150 years old a few weeks ago, and there’s a piece on them in The Advocate I want to read for background purposes. I cannot speak to why they are such objects of eroticization for so many gay men, although I suspect it has a lot to do with junior/senior high school locker rooms, gym classes, and sports. There’s also some other topics I want to address, but there’s only so much time in a day, isn’t there? Like I want to finish this, get another cup of coffee, and go sit in the living room and read for a while rather than doing anything else on the computer.

There’s also a system in the Gulf near the Yucatan that may organize into another tropical storm–same place where Francine got her act together–that I need to keep a wary eye on, and there are two more crossing the Atlantic, too. Heavy heaving sigh. But at least the heat has broken into something bearable–maybe not for people who don’t like warm weather, we’re so acclimated here that what we consider ‘bearable’ would be miserable for other people. Likewise, people from elsewhere are often excited when the weather gets back up to the fifties and sixties, which is literally winter down here.

I was also rather thrilled because they had one of my extravagances at Costco yesterday, Clearly Canadian flavored sparkling water. I generally get individual bottles at the Fresh Market for about three dollars not on sale, and yesterday they had a box of twelve for $11.99! You best bet that box went right into the cart, and I am now hoping they will always have it. I do miss my mozzarella salad, or those bacon wrapped chicken breasts stuffed with cheese that they never seem to have any more, but the Clearly Canadian was an absolute score–and I don’t mind having to get three of my least favorite flavor (cherry) to get nine bottles of flavors I like. I really miss the green apple, though–that was my favorite.

I also dipped into this new season of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, which I only began watching last season, and wow, is this show off the chain or what? This season the insanity begins in the very first episode, and it looks like this entire season is going to be insane. Hurray!

All right, I need another cup of coffee and something to eat so I can get this day underway. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I may or may not be back a little later; one never truly knows, does on?

Back Home Again

It is very lovely to be here at my desk this morning, with my coffee and Sparky begging for more food, knowing I don’t have to go into the office today. The work-at-home duties today are tedious, but hopefully they will make that time go back more quickly. I was very tired yesterday–I felt great in the morning, but as the day started to pass by I felt fatigue settling in and a feeling of not feeling terribly motivated, which is shameful, so when I got home last night I made myself transcribe the notes from three Scotty volumes into the Bible, and I only have maybe four or five left to go? Light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, quite frankly, and of course once it’s completed it’ll have to be updated. I have lots of errands to run later, after I finish my work-at-home duties, including a Costco run, which will probably wear me out a bit the way it always does.

We started watching Monsters, about the Menendez Brothers, and I’m not entirely sure we’ll continue to watch. I know the story fairly well, even if I may have forgotten a lot of it, because I followed the story as it happened. I also read all of Dominick Dunne’s columns in Vanity Fair back in the day–it was my favorite part of the issue, every month–so..it didn’t really engage me all that much. American Sports Story is kind of on deck (along with Agatha All Along), and there are some other things I’d like to watch dropping either soon, or have already, too. And of course it’s a football weekend; LSU-UCLA being the marquee game of the afternoon. There was also a lot of insane news breaking yesterday–not the least of which was that North Carolina jackass hate-monger’s exposure as a porn addict and a real insane freaky man. It’s exhausting. I’ve also taken the Bluesky/Threads methodology of “block at first sign of annoyance” to Facebook1. It’s much easier to block people than to indulge their idiocies and passive micro-aggressions. For the record, the people that think we shouldn’t allow politics to interfere with relationships? Tell me you’re a straight white cisgender person without saying the fucking words. Fuck you and all your descendants, now and forever, for all eternity. And I don’t owe anyone my friendship or affection, thank you very much.

I do have some plans for the weekend–around the games, of course (Saints at noon on Sunday)–I am going to have to make groceries again this weekend, and the apartment is a disaster area (but not as bad as usual on a Friday morning); I have dishes and filing to do, and of course there’s always laundry. I’m a little worn down this morning, but I’m hoping that will change once I’ve had more coffee and eaten something. The Internet is also out for some reason–this has been happening a lot ever since Francine; it’s annoying as fuck. I’m using my phone as a hotspot so far this morning and I’m really sick of Cox’ incredibly shitty service, which is getting less and less reliable. Every time I think maybe I should ditch the streaming and go back to regular cable, something like this reminds me why I’d really not have all eggs in Cox’ fucking basket.

Ah, remember the extolling virtues of the Internet and streaming back when it was first getting started, about how much better our lives would be now? As always, no one ever answered my questions of how reliable will it be? My personal favorite is everything you have to do with Cox pretty much requires an Internet connection…how can you reset your modem on-line when you can’t get on-line? All the instructions and so forth are on their website, and yes, sure, I can do it all on my phone but I shouldn’t have to. Bastards, really.

Wow, this is not only dull, but taking a really long time for me to get finished and posted. I must be running on accessory this morning, with my energy levels not quite reaching optimization. Man, I was tired when I got home last night–I stopped to get the mail and a few things at the grocery on the way home and didn’t even finish putting everything away, let alone finishing the dishes or doing anything else. Heavy sigh, but probably will get going once I have something to eat. I did eat jelly beans last night (yes, I succumbed to their allure while at the grocery last night) so maybe it’s a sugar crash. It’s possible, and i really do need to stop eating (and bingeing) jelly beans.

I did make a to-do list yesterday, and I need to make a Costco one today. I also need to get cleaned up and head into the spice mines, so I’ll bring this dullness to a close and get going with my work-at-home day. Till I return again, adieu.

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  1. Blockity blockity block block. If you annoy me once, you’ll probably do so more times and each offense is progressively worse than the last, always. Bitch, bye. ↩︎

Can’t You Hear My Heartbeat

Ah, Saturday. I have things to do outside the home–vaccinations, mail, groceries, book sale, possibly gym–and I am sure it’s going to be miserably hot outside. That’s okay, I am settling into my long weekend and just relaxing. Yesterday was great. I got the labs drawn, went to the office, came home and finished my work day, and then Paul and I ran errands. We picked up a prescription for him before heading to Costco, and even that was fine. We found most everything we were looking for, I got some new sweats and a book (The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia) for my birthday, and then we came home. Paul listened along with me in the car to My Dad Wrote a Porno (he agreed it was hilarious and laughed out loud several times; I forgot to sync the phone when we left the pharmacy and headed to Costco, and he insisted that I put it on again! So, I synced the phone when we stopped at the next light and we laughed merrily as we drove around. It was quite fun, and very pleasant. It wasn’t even a hassle getting everything inside and put away, either.

We then had a very pleasant evening watching a Hulu show called Solar Opposites, an animated show which is basically the same premise as Third Rock from the Sun, but way crazier and much more irreverent and completely hilarious (we never really watched Third Rock, and maybe we should remedy that). I was in a very pleasant mood, and even was thinking about writing and the short stories I’m currently working on. I am hoping to get to spend some time with at least one of them today, and if not, well, maybe I’ll have some time to read.

I slept in this morning until nine, which felt wonderful and refreshing; I knew I was low-energy and tired all week and what I really needed was a lengthy night’s deep sleep. I was out, Constant Reader, and dead as a stone. It was rather nice, and I feel rather nice this morning as my brain returns from the depths of Morpheus. I’ve not paid much attention to the news as I could have; by the Democratic National Convention starts on Monday, so I will probably be spending next week watching that and the excitement around Vice-President Harris and Governor Walz continues to build and grow through November. I am a lot more hopeful about the future now–something I am still trying to stay grounded about. It’s going to be a struggle, and even after the voting is done, I seriously doubt MAGA is going to go away any time soon–but at least we have President Biden in the White House this time around. I still think there will be violence as MAGA expels its dying breath, but at least I have hope that we won’t have a useful idiot for Putin as the most powerful person on the planet anymore, praise Jesus.

Two friends had great news this week to share–John Copenhaver’s Hall of Mirrors was on Oprah’s summer reading list (may this sell a lot of books for him) and Alex Segura (aka one of my favorite people on the planet) not only launched a new Spiderman universe comic book he’s written, but he also announced he gets to write a run of one of my favorite comics, the very little known The Question. Yay, John and Alex! I am so happy for you both! I love when good things happen to great people, you know? I really do need to spend some time reading over these next few days–the terrific new books to read are always expanding my TBR pile and I have any number of books on hand that I definitely want to read. And what better way to spend my birthday weekend by doing two things that I really enjoy–writing and reading? Yes, I am planning on doing some writing this weekend. My birthday is simply going to be a relaxing, no pressure, don’t leave the house kind of day–my favorite kind, actually–and I am looking forward to that..although I do kind of want to see the new Alien movie. I also have an idea I’d like to tackle for my Substack–as I am beginning to try to separate the blog out from actual personal essays, which is what I want to post there. The news that the Vice-President worked at McDonalds in college made me think, hey, that was my first job, too and realized another thing I’ve never really talked about is my unemployability and all the shit jobs I’ve had. (For the record, I’ve had jobs I probably don’t remember; I worked at McDonalds, Wendy’s, Burger King, Arby’s, AM/PM, Toys R Us, a floral wholesaler, Marshalls, an insurance brokerage, Bank of America, a natural gas sales company, Continental Airlines, a travel agency, Lambda Literary Foundation, the YMCA, the queer community center, Harrington Park Press, and then finally NO/AIDS-Crescent Care. I also worked at numerous gyms as a trainer or teaching aerobics in there, and of course I was always writing for quite some time. I once wrote a short story about a kid who worked at McDonalds and had no moral compass, but I realized at some point I could never publish a noir story about a kid who worked there called “Quarter Pounders,” either.

But…I could use that title for an essay about working there, and I can adapt the story to another place to eat, a fictitious one.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines for the moment. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and as always, thanks for stopping by. I may be back later, one never really knows, does on?

I Can’t Get No Satisfaction

Blergh.

I am up way too early this morning, and I can’t even have any coffee. I am having labs drawn this morning, and I need to fast for them…so I always schedule it for super-early so I can get it over and done with and back home to the shower and my coffee. I am not working at home today like I usually do; we’re having a department meeting and although I had permission to join the meeting on Teams…I also had some admin work to do in the office so I figured I might as well just go in person and do my work time there. I mean, I took Monday and Tuesday off, so missing out on a work-at-home day when I have four days off in a row isn’t going to be a major issue for me. And it’s not a full day, anyway. We’re going to Costco after I get home from work later, and I do have some errands to get taken care of this weekend. But I took Monday and Tuesday off for my birthday, so I have four days to relax, read, clean, or just do nothing if I so choose.

Well, I am home from having the labs drawn. I won’t spare you the gruesome story of the poor phlebotomist who had to locate a vein–the vein he finally found in my right forearm only gave one vial, so he then had to use my left hand; it actually didn’t hurt (I’ve steeled myself to having blood drawn, and having it done so regularly for my PrEP prescription has kind of inured me to sharp pointy metal things going into my skin. I also scheduled my flu shot and my RSV vaccine for tomorrow morning, so look at me–getting all this medical stuff knocked out and being pro-active about my own health, which is actually kind of lovely. It’s one of those things that I consider “ooh, look at me being a responsible adult” which is kind of a reaction to being told for so long that I was so completely irresponsible by so many people. I do enjoy, however, those moments when I behave like an actual adult. (I’ve set the bar pretty low for myself, in case you couldn’t tell.)

Despite being tired on my way home from work last night, I did do a speck of writing. I’ve been thinking a lot about a short story that’s been in progress for almost ten years, but I was never really sure how to end it, or really what it was about. I got the idea for it when I had to stop to use the rest room at a rest stop in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. There was only one other car there, and it was running with the passenger door open. At first I was amused–I guess someone really had to use the bathroom pretty badly–and of course my next thought was that it was probably a woman…but as I walked up to the building and went into the bathroom there was no one in the men’s room, so I assumed I was right. But after washing my hands, I walked back out and the car was exactly the same as it was when I passed. I called Highway Assistance–in case it was something serious and there was a woman lying on the floor in the bathroom or something, and once I was back on the road again, I thought about the situation all the way to my parents’, and pictured a woman coming to the same rest stop and encountering the same situation, only she finds an unconscious bleeding woman in the bathroom…and the main character is really not in a position herself to call the police. A picture of the Smoky Mountains on Facebook–the riotous colors of fall–came across my feed over the weekend, and it put the story back into my frontal lobe, so I decided to work on it some more this week since it was taking form in my head. I know why the main character is there, I know why the bleeding woman is there, and all I have left is deciding which ending is the best. I didn’t write much–Sparky kept distracting me before Paul came down to watch television with me–but I did get some writing done, and that feels simply wonderful.

Anyway, this day is going to feel off all day because it’s out of the ordinary. Getting up and out for the lab work; coming into the office for a meeting and to catch up on Admin work here that should be done before I leave for my brief vacation this weekend–odds and ends, really, that shouldn’t wait until I return to the office on Wednesday.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for this strange Friday. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I doubt I’ll be back before tomorrow morning.

It’s Nice to Be With You

Here we are on a Sunday morning, wide awake and feeling pretty fine, if I do say so myself. I slept later than I intended–the past two nights I’ve slept for over nine hours, if not ten–which will be a problem for me tomorrow morning, but that’s every Monday morning, isn’t it? Heavy sigh. Our anniversary was nice and low-key. We ran all the errands I didn’t run on Friday because of the weather–we also got rained on yesterday–but I also noticed when I got home from all the errands and had everything put away, I wasn’t exhausted like I have been every time I do a big errand like Costco–and I made groceries, too! I realized once I had the groceries all put away that I wasn’t tired or worn out. This is a great development on my return to normalcy (or what passes for it around here) with recovery and exhaustion and stamina. It also rained overnight–thunder and lighting and downpours–which woke me up around two or three, but the bed was so comfy and warm and cozy, and the sound so comforting that I was able to go back to sleep almost immediately. Sparky also was cuddling with me after I fed him and went back to bed. No wonder I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning.

Paul’s getting a tattoo this afternoon and is going to bring a pizza home, so that’s today sorted. I am going to do some chores this morning, get cleaned up, and want to write this afternoon. I am also going to try to get some reading done–maybe a short story, since for whatever reason I don’t seem to have the bandwidth to read anything longer–and I do want to get chapter four of the new book finished. I’d like to dive into one of my short stories, too, now that I know how to revise them and make them work better. I may even start writing another Sherlock story–crazy talk, right? But my coffee is kicking into gear and my head is clearing, which is always nice, and I should be able to have a productive day. I think I’ll just put Spotify on the television and listen to music while I do things around here. It certainly works for me.

We watched A Family Affair, a romantic comedy that actually worked, mostly thanks to it’s incredible cast of Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, Joey King and Kathy Bates. It was cute, and funny, and really well done; which I generally don’t say about this film genre because they are generally goofy and kind of fluffy and predictable. It was like a big budget Lifetime movie, but they put the money into the cast, script and director–and it was also beautifully shot…though I’d kind of like to know how an author can afford a house in southern California right on the ocean, but…fantasy, Gregalicious, it’s a fantasy.

I think today, after Paul gets home, we’re going to start watching Lady in the Lake on Apple, based on a book I loved by an author I loved, Laura Lippman, and after that, we’ll dive into the new gladiator show, Those About to Die, which looks to have lots of gratuitous male skin and homoeroticism. Woo-hoo! I do want to watch some other films that have come out this summer, but not enough to rent them, like Civil War, which was controversial and might be fun to watch from a ‘the world IS burning to the ground’ perspective, and could spark an interesting (to me anyway) entry about dystopian art and/or whether art used for propaganda is still art. I generally have a lot of Imposter Syndrome when it comes to writing essays and so forth, because I have this feeling that any arguments or interpretations i might made during the course of said essay had already been made or debunked–especially when it comes to commentary on any kind of literary art. I like to think I am smart and intelligent and have interesting perspectives, but I always suspect that I’m not as smart as I think I am (no one is as smart as they think they are) and that trying to sound intelligent and discuss something artistic will simply expose my ignorance and lack of education to the world.

Like that’s ever stopped me before.1

And on that note, I am going to finish this, get some more coffee and have some breakfast before getting cleaned up and getting to work. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.

I never tire of pictures of Finn Balor. That body! That face! Superstar!
  1. It actually has, to be honest. I often decide not to write things because I fear I am not educated enough on the subject to even try. ↩︎

I Wanna Be Free

Saturday morning and here we are, looking forward to another good day at the Lost Apartment, huzzah! Sparky got me up for food at six thirty, but joined me when I returned to bed (after licking his bowls clean) and cuddled with me another hour or so. He really is a dear, even if he turns into a vicious apex predator terror every once in a while. I’ve not seen any bugs or vermin in the house since we acquired him and brought him home either, so I can deal with the vicious apex predator terror for the short while that mood lasts.

I was thinking yesterday as I cleaned up around the kitchen and waited for Paul to get up (I never wake him up unless I know he has to be somewhere), and as a marvelous thunderstorm moved in, that my Substack hasn’t grown much but I also am not actively trying to grow it, to be honest. It’s free, just like the blog, but what I really want to do with the Substack is make it more essays about stuff that no one will ever ask me to write (or not for pay, at any rate), and leave the more personal stuff here and here only. That way, if you just want essays about queer life, history, culture, books, movies and television shows etc. you can subscribe to the Substack and skip the every day here. If you can’t get enough of me, you can do both or you can just stay here. I may eventually get to the point where those essays no longer get posted here…but that will have to wait until the subscribers make complete separation of self worthwhile. I was also thinking yesterday as the sky darkened and the winds picked up, that all of this new free time I am enjoying so much can also be used for productivity–if I can get back to the point where I’m writing 500-5000 words per day again, then this extra time can be utilized for marketing and teaching myself how to work my website and get it all finished and updated. I also am going to start learning how to do more promotion and format ebooks, too, so I can eventually get to the point where I can do my own ebooks. It would be cool to put up a short story or a novella here and there whenever I feel like it, for free–yes, I know my work has value and worth, but every so often it would be fun to gift readers who like my writing with something free every once and a while, you know, as a thank you for sticking with me all these lengthy years.

I also wrote for a whole yesterday, which felt great. I got about a thousand or so words done, which felt great, and I was most pleased with myself for doing so. I also came up with an idea for yet another book that sounds rather interesting and might be fun to explore thematically; I certainly wrote down a shit ton of notes and ideas and riffs in my journal last night, and I have to say I am really enjoying my journal these days. I also managed to get my review essay of Liebestraße finished yesterday, which felt great, and I hope to get some more of those done over the course of the weekend. Yesterday was, overall, a very good day that I got through without much irritation or aggravation, so I will take that. I do have more errands to run today–we ended up skipping Costco, so we have to do that today–and I hope to have some time to read and write later on after I finish everything.

Today is also our anniversary; twenty-nine years today we’ve been together. Almost thirty years, and almost half of my life. We’re going to watch some movies tonight, and we’re going to have a nice little dinner here at home to celebrate. Next year will be thirty years, and in ten days we’ll have lived here in New Orleans twenty-eight years, too. New Orleans was the key to all of my dreams coming true. I wish I would have been less anxious and more confident when I was a teenager, and if I knew then what I know now, I would have gone to college at LSU and moved to New Orleans after graduation, and maybe gotten a master’s in creative writing at the University of New Orleans. My life would be completely different now–I probably would have left New Orleans at some point rather than staying here my entire life, but there’s no use in speculating over that sort of thing–especially since I am settled and extremely happy.

We finished the seasons of The Acolyte and The Boys (which is coming hard for MAGA and I am so here for it; the season finale especially was rather pointed) last night and also watched this week’s The Serpent Queen, which is very well done, but most of the drama for the rest of her life now was political; and I don’t know how the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre is going to play out in the show. There are already inaccuracies in the speeded up timeline; Princess Elisabeth was long married to the King of Spain by the time Charles IX was old enough to be depicted as an adult. I try not to get heavily involved in complaining about inaccuracies in historical shows–they are always rotten with them, but I love watching historicals far too much to stop watching them now because they twist history to fit their storytelling purposes…and this is a period of history I am very interested in. Thank you, cable channels, for committing to doing shows set in historical times I love (like Mary and George). I know there’s a television series based on The Three Musketeers, but it’s very hard for me to watch any adaptation of that after loving the 1970s film versions with (sigh) Michael York (who is an incredibly nice man).

There was a lot of open homosexuality at the royal courts of England and France during this time period, even more so in France rather than England. I’ve always wanted to write about Louis XIV’s brother, Monsieur le duc d’Orléans, who often donned women’s clothing to attend court functions and had a long time lover the Chevalier de Lorraine1 (both were depicted beautifully in the series Versailles, which I also loved). Maybe when I’ve retired I can delve into writing more historicals. I also have an idea for a short story that is a historical; another Sherlock story from 1916, which I am hoping to get started this weekend as well. This morning I am going to do some clean-up around the kitchen before doing some writing and cleaning myself up to go run my errands. I also really still want to write my book about the women in power of the 16th century, too. I suppose it could be called The Monstrous Regiment of Women, but I suppose it could also be called When Women Ruled the World.

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

  1. The Chevalier started a society of homosexuals at the court of Louis XIV, which I would also like to research some more. ↩︎

Words

I am off today, as I have a lot of appointments to get me and Paul too (we always try to schedule our appointments on the same day to get them out of the way) and we are going to go to Costco later. I need to pick up prescriptions and go to the mail, too, and I also need to get some writing done, some cleaning and organizing, and reading done this weekend. Sparky got me up early this morning, but I’ll take the extra hour or so of sleep he afforded me this morning. Now that he’s been fed, he is nowhere to be seen. This morning before we start off on our long day out in the heat, I am going to finally make that damned to-do list I never got around to this weekend as well as figure out what I need to get from the grocery store this weekend and plan our meals. I think we’ll skip cooking out this weekend and I’ll try some new recipes that I’m interested in. I also need to clean out the refrigerator and get things out of there that need to be trashed. What a big, exciting day I have in front of me, don’t I? But it could be a lot worse.

We had a flooding storm again yesterday afternoon, which had me nervous for my drive home. Traffic in the evenings has been particularly horrible this week, and I’m not sure what that is all about, either, but it’s been highly annoying. It took me almost forty minutes to get home Wednesday night, and last night wasn’t much better–and I left early! But I got home, played with Sparky for a while, and then went down some Youtube video wormholes as I did so more research on 1994. It was only thirty years ago (!) but it was such a different world, and of course my memory is only so good, you know? It was actually a lovely, relaxing, and informative evening that I almost had lost track of time until Paul got home (late, grants again). I also have some electronic files to sort, too (always).

And it’s Friday, so the bed linens need laundering.

Such an exciting life I lead, right?

But it’s kind of nice to be in a period where everything in my life has kind of slowed down and settled. The first half of this year has sped by–at the start of the year I was still going to Physical Therapy twice a week for my arm, and I was tired all the time–and it’s almost August. Our anniversary is tomorrow–twenty-nine long years–and that just kind of snuck up on me. Twenty-nine years! Had someone told me thirty years ago that I was a year away from finding my life partner I would have laughed in their face. I do need to get back into the gym regularly–I’ll do that later on today–and maybe I’ll take tomorrow off from things? My birthday is also a month from tomorrow, too–I’ll be sixty-three, yikes–but I don’t feel sixty-three, but I suppose no one does. My sixties are certainly not what I thought they would be; with all the cruelty of youth I assumed that was Old Age, and it’s kind of not? My body isn’t breaking down at all. The biceps thing was an accident and could have happened at any age, really. My lower back was starting to bother me, and so were my hips, which was worrisome…and then I changed out my everyday shoes for a new pair and voilà! My lower back and hips no longer hurt. Sigh. I really can be stupid sometimes. No, that’s not fair to me, the word I should use is oblivious. I’ve always been oblivious, and when I was younger, I had serious trouble reading a room.

Not that I am much better now, but without the anxiety (thank you meds!) I am not terrified of that happening now.

That, I think, is the greatest life change I made this year: the new meds and getting rid of anxiety. I still have some, to be sure, but I don’t spiral the way I used to and it doesn’t affect me physically anymore, and what more can I ask for? I had no idea how much of my life was controlled by anxiety, and how much of my behavior was either a reaction to the anxiety or a workaround to try to get past anxiety. It’s also nice to not waste time on it anymore, too. (Had I been a medieval king, they would have called me Gregory the Anxious.)

And so, on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. I’ll be back later, of course, as there are a few blog drafts I want to finish and get out of the drafts folder, but I hope you have a day that is as marvelous as you are, Constant Reader, and see you soon!

You Just May Be The One

Thursday and my last day in the office this week. I am taking tomorrow off because of appointments with doctors and so forth, and when I am done with all of that we’re going to Costco for a minor visit. I have some things I’d like to get done around here this weekend, but I am mostly going to try to relax and be chill and have a nice time as I gear up for the very next week. We had some rain yesterday, and maybe some overnight as well. I’m turning more and more into my mother with every passing day, as I am now getting to the point where I am getting obsessed with what the weather is going to be like (she always had her television in the kitchen on to the weather channel with the sound off), but there are worse things in life than being like my mom. I’ll do some more pruning of things this weekend, but mostly I want to write and read after I get all of my errands run and taken care of.

I don’t feel tired or groggy or sleepy this morning, either. I haven’t felt that way all week, either, which has been very cool. I don’t like feeling like I need more sleep–I don’t think anyone does–and that’s what I’ve always hated about working full time and having to get up early. I guess I am finally used to this shift after all these years. I think our work-at-home day is going to be phased out, and then I have to get used to being at the office five days a week. Woo-hoo.

I managed to avoid the news and social media for the most part yesterday for my own mental health reasons. Both are just infuriating to me now, and I can’t waste that energy or head space any more getting angry about things I cannot control. The media and some old elite straight white people have decided to try to throw the election, because they learned nothing from 2016 and the garbage’s original term. Corporate greed will be the undoing of this country, and you can’t tell me the pundits who’ve turned on democracy aren’t agitating for keeping their tax cuts. Of course, currying favor with people who already hate you, have always hated you, and always will hate you is a fools’ game–and none of MAGA is going to see any of you (or minorities) as “the good ones.” I get my news now from the Philadephia Inquirer and the Los Angeles Times. I am done forever with the NYT and Washington Post, as well as CNN and MSNBC–and I will never go back to any of them.

And for the record, polls showed Hillary in a landslide in 2016, and Trump trouncing Biden in 2020. But sure, elites, let’s base our decisions on polls taken from people who accept landline calls from UNKNOWN CALLER. Let’s listen to polling, which has rarely been right since 2016. But straight white people will always turn on their base–especially when the base isn’t made up primarily of straight white people. The Democratic Party is falling on its sword to keep their tax breaks and get more from the Republicans while the country burns. Never forget that. Project 2025 is a fucking real thing, and rather than rallying behind the candidate, they just want to throw in the towel and disenfranchise how many millions of their voters? How…undemocratic. And if this happens, I’ll still vote for whoever the candidate is–but that party will never get a dime from me again. And the only candidates I will give money to will be primary opponents for the elected Democrats who are taking a dump on their base. That’s the main difference between the two parties–the Republicans always fall into lockstep with their leadership, while Democrats will always shoot themselves in the foot and betray their big party tent base while claiming to be the party where everyone is welcome and has a say. No, we really don’t, because when push comes to shove the leadership will never listen to their base, always think they know better than their voters, and are tepid at best at uniting behind the leadership. My party support has always been resigned; at least they’re better than Republicans was always my mantra when voting for a party that will stab queer people and other minorities in the back at every turn despite calling us their “base” because they don’t want to fight or negotiate or anything.

So, I am tuning it all out and praying for the best. All I can control and all I can do is take care of myself and fight off despair because there’s never any point to giving in to it. I will check on things when I get up in the morning as my brain wakes up and then tune it all out again until the following morning. The American Experiment, noble and high-minded as it was intended to be, had a good run and never quite got the point of making its ideals for liberty, freedom and self-rule actually work the way it should; the situation we are in now is because the founders–many of whom were lawyers–never dreamed that lawyers would become judges with no respect for the law and precedent and twist and pervert the law and the Constitution to strip the federal government bare and leave citizens to the mercy of soulless corporations and rich elites.

Because that’s always worked out well in the past.

And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and head into the spice mines. I hope to have a good and productive day, and I hope you do, too, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back later most likely.

Daydream Believer

Ah, Saturday morning. I have to make a brief errand run today, nothing major or horribly annoying, but it still means going outside. Tomorrow….tomorrow I am not leaving the house. We did all our errands last night, including a Costco run (we made it out for less than $300! It’s been years), and then we just hung out and watched television–the gymnastics Olympic team trials–and called it a night relatively early. I also managed to get some things done around the house, too–the bed linens laundered, the dishes put away and another load washed, cleaning up the kitchen–and was in a pretty good mood almost the entire day. I realized something else, too; I also bought the new car and took on all that additional monthly expense right around when Mom had her first stroke, too–so there was the Mom subconscious worry on top of monetary stress; something I hadn’t experienced in a very long time and I. Did. Not. Like. That. One. Bit. I am finally beginning to see a distant light at the end of a very long dark tunnel in that regard, but still. I don’t regret the car purchase; I am very pleased with the car and intend to hopefully keep it until I die. It’s hard to believe that I’ve had it now for almost eight years. That’s INSANE.

It was strangely cool and beautiful yesterday–granted, it was 86 degrees, but after the last few weeks it felt heavenly, and the damp in the air was cool not hot. I imagine that was the aftermath of Thursday night’s downpour, but regardless the reason it was lovely. The sun wasn’t out as much, either–there were a lot of clouds, so no endless punishing direct sunlight was also a pleasure to experience this close to the 4th. I am also going to have to keep watching Tropical Storm Beryl. Ah, hurricane season is already revving up for a long and busy summer.

I was also exhausted after we did the errands. I fell asleep in my chair for over an hour after getting back home, and the place is a mess. I was too tired when I got home from Costco (the last errand) to put everything away properly, and I’d also intended to do some work on the workspace, but…tired. I slept later this morning and feel better now that I am up and swilling coffee, but whew, it was hard to get up this morning and my joints all ached. The joys of being an elder, I suppose, but sheesh. I literally thought when I woke up (when Sparky woke me up) that I was too tired physically to get out of bed, but I got there eventually. I do have some errands to run today, but it shouldn’t take very long and then I can come back home and work on the house more. I also want to write this morning (and maybe this afternoon) and hopefully today I won’t get sidetracked or distracted.

The gymnastic trials were fun to watch; I always forget how fun it is to watch athletes trying to reach their dream goal of the Olympics–but of course the thrill of victory also carries with it the agony of defeat or worse, injury. It’s also hard for me to conceive that it’s an Olympic year and I’ve heard so very little about the Olympics (other than Parisians treating it all as a horror and inconvenience; I do sometimes think the Olympics will eventually die because they are too expensive to host) because naturally the election and the horrors that the Christofascists’ puppet SCOTUS are inflicting on our country are sucking all the energy and air out of the room.

I was too tired to make a Pride post yesterday, so I will definitely have to make up for it today by doing perhaps two? I am going to continue Pride through Independence Day, haters be damned, because Pride is about freedom and so is the 4th and therefore Pride should lead into a celebration of everyone’s freedom. And if straight people don’t like it, they can literally just fuck right off. I am so tired of being told how to behave and how to be an adult and how to “not upset the heteros” and you know what? Fuck the heteros and their delicate sensibilities. They’ve been tiptoed around and catered to more than enough, thank you very much. You know what offends me? Abused children, adultery, deadbeat dads, racism, transphobia, homophobia, and misogyny. Clean up your own fucking house before you come for queers, thank you very much. But it’s easier to blame us than take any responsibility for the messy world you’ve created, isn’t it?

And may no one else ever have to fear about their rights every election cycle–although SCOTUS has already delegitimized itself and we know they are coming for marriage equality at some point, too–and sooner than we think. And just remember–there is no divine right of Republicans to rule. How are they any different from the Jacobean Stuart kings of England? Claiming a God-given right, or a “divine mandate”, to be in power is hardly a Christian thought; Jesus said very clearly (if you believe the Bible) that his kingdom was not of this world, and coerced religious conversion isn’t what the Jesus I read about and studied would have wanted for anyone. (I still don’t believe that, if Jesus were real, that he was sent here to start a new religion, but rather to teach by example what a life devoted to good works and godliness looked like.

Funny how all they care about is the Word and not the Deeds.

Well, that got feisty for a bit, didn’t it? I guess I am more awake than I gave myself credit for! I also managed to finish reading Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay, which I really enjoyed (he is a masterful writer, and the language is superb). I am still digesting that book today, because it was a lot of ideas and intense creativity, which is why he’s one of my favorite writers and I am saddened to realize I am running out of his backlist to read, which means postponing reading more of him because I never want to be out of things to read by authors I really enjoy. I am planning on starting the new John Copenhaver today as well, which is exciting. I have quite a recent-release TBR pile–Kellye Garrett, Amina Akhtar, Angela Crook, Angie Kim, and Scott Carson, to name a few glittering names from the stack–and more just keep getting released every month. Sigh. I also need to do a book purge this weekend, too. Heavy heaving sigh. It never ends, does it?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday wherever you are, Constant Reader, and I’ll definitely be checking back in with you later.