Tag: Dad

I Need Your Love Tonight

Monday and back to the office blog this morning, and I didn’t want to get up this morning. But now that I am, I feel fine and ready to get on with this day. I did not have the productive weekend that I wanted to have, but I got rest and that’s really the most important part of the weekend for me now. I did get some reading done–I am loving The Cypress House, more on that later–and I did assemble the new barbecue grill (which took much longer than it needed to and was much more complicated than it needed to be, but it’s done and I most pleased with myself for not only doing it, but redoing it when I had done something wrong, as opposed to just leaving it and making it work); it was cool outside but incredibly muggy, so I got overheated and super sweaty while doing it, with the end result that I was really tired when it was finished…and my appetite was gone. Ah, well, at least it’s done and ready for next weekend, right?

We started watching the final season of Young Royals yesterday, and it’s interesting. What’s even more interesting is seeing how the main characters have grown and changed in real life; the prince is now taller than Simon, which he didn’t used to be. They also look more mature in the face, if that makes sense? But watching them kissing now doesn’t feel as uncomfortable as it did in earlier seasons, so they’ve clearly gotten older in real life. I don’t know the ages of the actors and I don’t know if I care enough to go look and see how old they are, but one of the things that always makes me squirm a bit in shows with age appropriate (or appearing) actors is you feel a bit icky watching them be intimate with each other…which is one of the reasons why most teens in film and television are played by actors in their twenties. This, however, gives us all–especially those of us not around teenagers very often–the wrong idea about how adult teenagers look, especially when they’re sexually active…so it’s shocking when you run into actual teenagers and you see how young they really do look. This is something I’ve been wrapping my mind around since Heartstopper, and trying to write about. Maybe now I can finish those thoughts all the way through? Stranger things have happened…

The eclipse is today, and we won’t get full coverage of the sun here in New Orleans, but about 85%, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t going to be weird. I love that people think the eclipse is going to be the rapture (if only), or an omen/sign from God…because that’s just how the universe and space and time work. One shouldn’t be surprised that Marjorie Taylor Greene, who would have been screaming about witchcraft had she been alive in Salem in the 1690’s, would go all Old-Testament in the face of a celestial event science has explained for centuries now. I’d love to see someone do a deep dive on her life–what are her parents, that raised such an inbred moron, like? Siblings? Where did she go to school, if she did? There really is nothing worse than an idiot who thinks God speaks to them. I wonder if she thinks she’s the second coming of some Biblical character, like the idiot Speaker of the House (Louisiana does NOT elect its best people) thinks he’s Moses? Queen Jezebel would be my best guess as to which Biblical POS harlot she would be–or Herodias, mother of Salome.

In a few weeks I’ll be off to Alabama to meet Dad, after which we will drive up to Kentucky where I’ll stay for a few days. I’ve not seen Dad since October, so it’s well overdue, but of course I also had surgery in the meantime and therapy and so forth. I’ll be packing plenty of books to try to get caught up on my reading–and of course, I’ll be listening to audiobooks in the car while I drive. I’ve downloaded quite a few books to listen to in the car, and I’m really looking forward to the drive and letting my creativity roam as I drive. I am dreading that lengthy drive back to New Orleans, as always, but it could also be a but fun. I always love coming home to Paul and Sparky after being away for a while. The only traveling I’ll be doing for the rest of the year will be going to see Dad, so I am hoping to use the rest of the year to pay down some debt so I can make it to Left Coast Crime next year without a problem or worries.

And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will talk at you again probably later.

I Will Survive

Mom died a year ago today.

Sigh.

I didn’t sleep well last night, for the first time since getting the new night meds, and as I sit here blearily this morning drinking my coffee it occurs to me that anticipation of this day probably had a lot to do with it.

Yesterday was a nice day. I slept super-well and even a bit late, came downstairs, posted three blog entries throughout the day, and managed to get a lot done. I got some laundry done, cleaned out the sink and ran a load in the dishwasher, straightened up around my desk some, did some filing and organizing, worked on cleaning up computer files, and so came downstairs to a relatively clean kitchen. Huzzah! I also started making lists of things I need to write this year as well as the things I need to write this year. I am also trying to sort my short stories predicated on submission calls I’d like to send work to and establish some kind of timeline (just the remotest suggestion of one, knowing mood and energy levels will affect that and I won’t make all of them) for getting them done and keeping myself on track. I also want to finish this y/a novel that’s been languishing in the files for quite some time, and I even started thinking about Scotty X, Hurricane Party Hustle1 , which was kind of nice, too.

In other words, yesterday was one of the best days I’ve had since the surgery, and today will probably not be one of my better ones. I don’t feel grief-stricken or anything, but it’s still difficult. I’m glad I am meeting Dad in Alabama this weekend2. I feel good now that the caffeine is percolating through my veins and my body is responding to it. I don’t feel fatigued, but then again it’s also still early in the morning and I haven’t yet had the inevitable caffeine crash that will come this afternoon. I do have to make groceries again today (it really never ends), but I think after that I can just go straight home, which is great. Any other errands can wait until after PT on Friday, before I head up north to Alabama. I know I’ll be sad once I am around Dad, and it’ll be hard saying goodbye on Sunday and heading back south, but that is a lot easier than having to live in her house.

And really, I had my mother for sixty-one years. Thank God they started young, right?

We also watched The Last Voyage of the Demeter yesterday afternoon, and it was very entertaining, although it’s very hard to maintain suspense once you know it’s based on the captain’s log entries from Dracula, and the movie opens with the ship wrecked on the shore with no survivors. SPOILER. right? But it was a clever idea–I’m always a fan of expanding the mythology from books that weren’t addressed fully in the book, especially for movies and television (like Castle Rock and Chapelthwaite built out from the Stephen King universe), because I think it’s cool, it doesn’t take away from my enjoyment of the originals, and I’ve done some homage work myself (Timothy).

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day!

  1. I’m not sure of this wisdom of this title, honestly. It was supposed to be the fourth Scotty, and I had sent the proposal to my editor the week before Katrina. Certainly, there’s a lot of superstition involved in that kind of thinking, but at the same time I feel kind of squeamish and may come up with something else. ↩︎
  2. I was thinking about my next Alabama book, too. ↩︎