Tag: food

Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough

Tuesday and here we are moving on into the dead zone of the week. Sigh. It’s okay, I just have to reacclimate to normal four-day-in-the-office weeks again, and I’d forgotten (that short term memory loss cropping up again) how long a week can seem on a Tuesday morning–stretching out endlessly into the future. It’s also very cold in my kitchen this morning; yikes indeed. The heater does an excellent job in every part of the house, except for the kitchen/laundry room and the upstairs bathroom are a bit (much) colder than the other rooms. Currently 33 outside, which is going to be extremely fun to run out to the car in. Layers again today; the high is only in the forties. At least we’re not dealing with the extremes and all the snow that everyone else has to; no shoveling snow or scraping ice off the windshield for one Gregalicious; which is why I won’t live north of I-10 anymore.

Yesterday was a pretty good day, despite the frigid cold (warmer than this morning, though!). I got up, went to the office, worked, ran some errands on the way home, and once I was here, settled in. We started watching the new Harlan Coben show on Netflix, Missing You, and we’re enjoying it so far. I didn’t write anything yesterday, but did do some more work on the book (not much) before mental fatigue set in. We’re going to be busy at the office today, too–but tonight I get to come straight home, which is awesome. Hopefully I’ll be able to do more work tonight when I get home. But cold weather makes me want to do nothing more than curl up under a blanket with a book. But today I have to push through the lazy need for warmth and comfort and get some work done. (Apparently tonight is a “freeze watch,” so we’ll have to leave the taps slightly on tonight when we go to bed; and since the high will only be in the low forties, it will be unpleasant getting home, too. One of my top priorities today is to make a to-do list–a thorough one–so I can make sure I get everything done that I need to be getting done. I’ve really fallen off on my organizing, and I need to get back on top of everything. I have to do some things to send back to my publisher so they can start designing the new cover, which is always very fun and exciting to do. I need to clean out my email inbox, and I need to stop avoiding things I don’t want to deal with. This was always a problem when I was younger, and I’ve kind of slid back into those habits again over the last two years. Meh, I’ll deal with this tomorrow is rarely, if ever, the right answer.

Bad Greg, bad Greg!

Get it over and done with is the proper reaction to unpleasant things I have to do.

More time never makes anything awful more palatable.

But I feel more rested today than I did yesterday. My shoulder is tight and sore this morning, but I just need to do some stretching when I get home tonight and that’ll feel better. My next trip to the gym will either be tomorrow night or Thursday (tomorrow more likely; then I can go on Friday and again on Sunday), and I am getting a bit excited about getting into better physical condition, while also bearing in mind that I will never get back into the shape I was in my forties (when I peaked)–and not really sure that’s something I would want, anyway. I just want to lose some weight and get more toned and firm. Everything currently is sagging, and there’s really no need for that, is there? My ego and vanity no longer care about how I look to other people; I’ve always been a much tougher judge and critic of myself than anyone else–and I am definitely trying to be a lot kinder to myself. Despair is pointless and defeating, albeit very easy to collapse into. The removal of stress and anxiety has been marvelous, but the depression/despair genes aren’t as easily impacted by the new meds as the stress and anxiety–but that is something I can live with. I still have a lot of things to get worked out personally, but I am much healthier mentally than I have ever been in my life, I think, and some of that comes from the long, hard look I’ve taken at my life and career and other people, and my decision to not put up with anything from anyone ever again.

One thing that is really funny hit me yesterday, which was when I also realized how my “don’t want to deal with this now” bit me in the ass, kind of. I had gotten a letter from my bank between Christmas and New Year’s, and figuring it was probably a notice about new fees or higher interest rates on my credit card, I just tossed it into my inbox with a I’ll look at it later. Yesterday I was trying to order something from a website that had my debit card saved there as the form of payment, and was shocked to see my debit card had expired on 12/31/24. Goddamn it, I thought, irritated, I’m going to have to call them to get them to send me a new one. But as I sat in my easy chair last night, Sparky purring in my lap, it hit me–didn’t you get a letter from the bank you didn’t want to deal with? So, I put Sparky up on my shoulders (he loves it up there) and went into the kitchen, found the letter, and sure enough, I could feel there was a card inside–and sure enough, it was my new debit card.

This is why you should always deal with things right away.

Point taken, universe.

And on that note, I am going to bundle up and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and by all means, STAY WARM!

Screenshot

Another Lonely Song

Friday morning and have to go into the office for a number of meetings and things today, but hope to get out of there around 2ish to run errands and head home. Huzzah! I slept well last night (and all the way through; didn’t get up once) and feel pretty terrific this morning. Maybe it was the bellinis I had with dinner last night? Perhaps.

Yesterday was lovely. I had a nice day at work, then came home and wrote before my dinner plans. I managed to finish Chapter 7, which was enormously pleasing, and then went to meet my friend for dinner. Look at me, out on a school night and having two drinks with dinner! But it was very nice. Lilette, the restaurant on Magazine where we had dinner, is marvelous; I always have a good time whenever I have a meal there. The conversation was also quite fabulous; and it was a very contented Gregalicious who got home from dinner around eight thirty. Paul and I watched another episode of American Sports Story; it’s an interesting exploration of toxic masculinity in sport, and how damaging that was for someone like Aaron Hernandez, deeply closeted and so terrified anyone might ever find out. (I did wonder what Tim Tebow would have said to him if Aaron had told him the truth–I think we know, and what a shame there wasn’t a single person in his life he could be honest with.) It’s very well done (although some of the reproductions of Florida football games were clearly reproductions and not actual game footage; it may have even been CGI but it didn’t look real), and the acting is, as always and ever in a Ryan Murphy show, superb. The young man playing Hernandez is quite good. It’s also quite excellent at showing what a monster Urban Meyer is as a coach, and how little he actually cared about his players (every time I think that Urban Meyer had Joe Burrow on the bench, wasting his talent for two years, I smile); I have never liked nor trusted that man. He’s clearly a good coach–he won three national titles at two different schools–but he’s not the kind of coach whose players speak well of him–and his teams at Florida were clearly out of control. (He also had Cam Newton on the bench at Florida; that’s two Heisman Trophy winning quarterbacks who rode the bench for him.)

I do have some errands to run after work; I have to get the mail and pick up prescriptions and maybe do a bit of a grocery run. I also have laundry to do once I get home, and then I think I’ll be in for the day. I have another writer friend in town this weekend that I am hoping to get to see, so I think I’ll try to do that tomorrow. I also want to work on the book some more this weekend, and start playing around with the next one I want to write. I want to finish reading Gabino’s new book–I started it last weekend, and it’s off to a really powerful start. It grabs you by the throat and won’t let you look away, no matter how badly you might want to!

I also have some cleaning up to do around here as well. It never really ends, does it? At least my filing it pretty much caught up, and I certainly can’t let the inbox stack up the way it has in the past. Staying on top of things is usually the smart thing to do…but I sometimes get lazy, particularly if I’m tired; that’s when I really don’t want to do anything when I get home except catch up on the news. I am so much happier now that I’ve blocked every news source that started the “get rid of Biden” nonsense in July; the age and mental acuity of a presidential candidate ceased to be an issue in this election once the President dropped out, despite the patentedly obvious decline of the Republican candidate, not to mention his planned vengeance tour if he wins. After doing everything they could to ensure Hillary lost in 2016, they have the nerve to continue to both-sides everything while pretending this is a normal horse race election because they are a national and historical disgrace, the New York Times editorial board endorsed the Vice-President while continuing their horrendous, clearly partisan reporting.

Your words are hollow when you are sane-washing an incredibly dangerous narcissist. It’s not what you say, but what you actually do, and I will never forgive nor forget their collaborationist quisling bullshit as long as I live.

So, after work today I am going to go run those errands and then come home to be productive. I have my to-do list ready to have things checked off, and there’s some writing that definitely needs to be done this weekend. Next weekend I may be meeting Dad in Alabama, and will probably head up to Kentucky for a week around Halloween; not sure when that would be, but it’s on the schedule.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines on this rainy Friday morning. Have a great day, and I may be back later; I’m tricky that way.

Even the Nights Are Better

I slept in again this morning, and I feel rested and marvelous–if a bit chilly. (And yes, a quick check of the weather shows that it’s in the fifties this morning, and will dip into the forties overnight.) My plan to not leave the house this entire weekend has hit a snag; I do have to go make groceries this morning because there are a few things that are needed, alas and alack. But my coffee is tasting rather marvelous this morning, and as I said, I feel rested and good. Yesterday was a lazy day in which I didn’t do a whole lot of anything, really. I did some cleaning and laundry and put some things away, but mostly worked on cleaning up computer files (it is horrifying how out of control those all are, really) as well as spending quality time with Sparky. We watched both the ice dance and pairs finals yesterday for the US Figure Skating Championships, and binged Lupin in between. I didn’t stay up much later, and went to bed before ten…which makes the oversleeping particularly curious and interesting. But not complaining here at all. Sure, it would have been nice to get up earlier and get more things done this morning, but part of anxiety-free living very much includes not beating myself up over things I can no longer control. I can’t go back in time and get up earlier, so why feel regret or shame over it?

Constant Reader, I may actually be getting healthier mentally–finally.

So, yes, I do have to leave the house this morning–best to do it early and get it out of the way, right? I think I will also go to Mid-city to make the groceries. I like that I am willing to break routines now, and do things differently than the way I always used to. Does that sound odd or crazy? But I fall into ruts quite easily, partly because of my desire to always maximize efficiency and use my time most effectively. I still do this, of course–that will never change, methinks–I always try to plan how to run errands the most efficient way, but I’m not sure it’s necessary anymore. I find myself with time on my hands to waste these days. My inbox is always crammed full with things I have to at the very least acknowledge and read, and I like that very much; I’m always behind on my emails now because I no longer get as many so I no longer feel the need to answer everything immediately. I also don’t feel the urgency to pick up the mail every day the way I used to, either.

So, unless my plans get derailed this morning, my plan is to write this, answer some emails, do some cleaning around here and work on “When I Die” some more before getting cleaned up and heading for the grocery. I had hoped to finish that story and another this weekend, but Paul/Sparky time yesterday proved too much of a distraction and a necessity; Paul and I generally don’t see each other much during these last few months before the festivals, so when the opportunity presents itself, it becomes my priority and I will never apologize for that. I know I’ll watch the men’s final this afternoon, most likely, so I’ll definitely need to get a move on this morning to get everything accomplished that I want to accomplish before the skating starts. I also want to spend some time with Lina’s book, which I am really enjoying and want to carve out some time to enjoy it as well today. I did rearrange and reorganize the books yesterday–it’s amazing what a difference that makes for the appearance of tidiness in the living room, and hope to do the same for the laundry room shelves at some point; there are also some things stored there–the cake carrier, the brace–that don’t need to be there, which opens up more shelf-space.

I also got a new set of knives this week. My old set, which I’d bought about eight years ago at Costco, was just getting too dull and had been sharpened too many times, so I broke down and found a nice set of Oster stainless steel knives (dishwasher safe, no less) on-line and ordered them; and wow, I’d forgotten what it was like to actually have sharp knives. The cheese knife slices through block cheese like its warm butter, and when I cut up the rotisserie chicken for chicken salad yesterday I couldn’t believe how easily the knife was dicing the chicken and the celery. Clearly, I’d waited too long to buy a new set of knives, and I do really like them, you know. The block is smaller than the old one so it takes up less counter space, and the stainless steel handles look so modern and stylish–so yes, you could say that I am very pleased with myself regarding the knives. There are some other things I need to get around here to make life easier–blinds for my windows, since the crepe myrtles are gone and not coming back; a medal case for those medals I won for y/a (Sleeping Angel and Lake Thirteen were the books that won–gold and silver); and maybe this rolling cart I saw at Office Depot that can replace this little table next to my desk so that I can keep the office supples and so forth in, emptying out other drawers so I can use them for something else.

New knives, new microwave: who dis? Hell, I even bought more spoons to replace the ones that had gone missing!

I really do like getting better organized, what can I say? It gives me the illusion that my life is somehow ordered and orderly, and so what if it’s a delusion? It makes me feel better, and yeah, that’s probably partly an anxiety issue but it’s not as intense as it used to be and I don’t look at mess in horror anymore, but rather as something that can be tidied, and that is still satisfying for me to do.

And on that note, I think I am going to head into the spice mines. Y’all have a great Sunday now, you hear? And I may be back later; I may not be back until tomorrow morning. Who knows? We shall see how it all turns out, shan’t we?