Tag: gardening

The Art of Letting Go

Saturday morning, and a top o’ the morning to you, me pretties. Yesterday wasn’t too terrible, actually; I always make such a big deal out of things that aren’t big deals and I really need to break that really bad habit at some point before I die. I got up before the alarm, but hit snooze a couple of times before Sparky realized the alarm was mysteriously going off a fifth day in a row, which meant I’d be getting up soon which means breakfast for the kitty! And wasn’t it sweet of him to try to let me sleep in? I feel good and rested this morning; I was tired and sleepy last night when bed time rolled around, and I slept like a stone (how things that aren’t sentient are supposed to sleep has always mystified me) last night, and woke up relatively early this morning. Once again there’s supposed to be some serious thunderstorms in the late afternoon, which would be lovely and a nice time to curl up and read some more of the book I am currently reading and need to finish.

I was tired, though, when I left the office to run my errands before heading home to finish the chores. They didn’t have Creole tomatoes, which was enormously disappointing; I really wanted one of my grilled cheese sandwiches, which I need to rename because it’s not just a grilled cheese sandwich. I usually will put bacon, guacamole and Creole tomatoes on them, too; they are so amazingly good, and when you use Maldon salt and fresh ground pepper? My word. I’m going to have to go to the store again over this weekend to look for Creole tomatoes, which is the only thing I actually need to get. I was a bit brain dead when I got back home, and then worked on the laundry and other chores. I do feel like this is going to be a productive weekend, and I feel good about that. I really straightened up the books in the living room as a first step to making it look less like a FEMA zone, and also couldn’t find a copy of a book I was looking for, which means I’ll have to buy another copy. Oh well. I did also locate my copies of Dancer from the Dance and Faggots while going through the books, which was a bit of a relief. I can revisit them now, at some point. It’ll be interesting to see them again through a modern lens, remembering the first time I read both and what I thought of them then and how they hold up now. I really need to get back to my reading.

We watched an episode of Sugar and I had the end of an episode of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (not enough monsters) on while I was straightening and picking things up last night. I also baked potatoe sbecause I didn’t feel like making ravioli or…anything, really. I also kept thinking it was Thursday all afternoon, and being confused by how early it was before remembering oh yes, you put in six hours at the office. Next Friday is Staff Development Day, also mandatory, and also all day. Hurray. Not loving this, honestly. I’ll survive though–at least, I hope so and if I don’t, well, I could use the rest and not aging anymore isn’t a bad thing.

Amazing what anti-anxiety medication can do for a person, isn’t it?

Paul is going to something tonight–he told me, but I forgot; some kind of art show he’s attending with his board president–so they’re having an early dinner first, which will leave me here alone with Sparky for a few hours later on–probably around the time the thunderstorms are predicted to hit the hood. I also want to do some more deep cleaning on the place; I need to move some furniture around, but getting all the shit various cats over the years have knocked behind or underneath them out. (I told you, I have not been as thorough with the housecleaning chores this decade as I used to be, and I wasn’t joking at all!) I also would like to work on a newsletter some more this weekend, maybe even get it sent out later today or tomorrow (I kind of went overboard with them over the holiday weekend and need to space the next ones out some more), and I do want to work on the book and some short stories today, too–we’ll see how it all goes, though, won’t we?

Okay, on that note I am heading into the spice mines. I am going to take my coffee into the living room and watch some news before I get cleaned up and going on this fine day. It looks beautiful outside my windows, and it’s not that humid because the windows aren’t covered in condensation. So, out with the trash and the recycling, too!

See you tomorrow morning!

Il Duomo in Florence from the air. I love Florence.

Fight It Out

Friday morning and the office is closed for the holiday today, so no work-at-home chores for me today. Sparky let me sleep a little later this morning and I definitely didn’t want to get up this morning, either. I feel a bit worn down today, and a bit foggy, but I’ll be fine once I shower. I was able to leave work early yesterday and run a few errands on the way home (my medication arrived in the mail; had to get another prescription; and pick up my dry cleaning) but I did feel a bit wrung out when I got home. I did some chores (laundry, dishes) and we started watching Margo’s Got Money Problems but didn’t really care much for it, and thus gave up on it. I want to read a bit this morning and do some cleaning around here, and hopefully get some writing done as well. I want to work on newsletters today, too–I have my entry about A Violent Masterpiece to share, and I also want to write about the weirdness of this holiday weekend. They haven’t issued a heat advisory for us yet, but it’s still possible. It currently “feels like” 104 and it’s not even nine yet. There’s a possibility of thunderstorms this afternoon, too. I may have some things delivered today, to get it out of the way so I don’t have to go outside other than to take out trash. That sounds like a lovely plan to me.

It’s hard for me to believe and wrap my mind around the idea that the Bicentennial was fifty years ago; the summer I turned fifteen and was about to start my junior year of high school, starting over again in Kansas, where I stuck out like a sore thumb the moment I crossed the threshold. This is the summer I turn sixty-five, and the country is in a very different mood this time around. Apparently, Ba’al is planning to give an epically long speech tomorrow at the Great American State Embarrassment, and is threatening to go as long as he possibly can to prove that he did. No incumbent president has ever died on July 4th, but at the very least his make-up is going to run–and no telling what will happen to his rat’s nest. However, President Zachary Taylor went to a lengthy celebration of the 4th on a very hot humid day, ate some cold milk and cucumbers to cool down, and got sick and died a few days later.

Dare I dream?

Essence is also this weekend here in New Orleans, and I hope that it’s back to its best form; there were a lot of complaints and some scandals in recent years. Louisiana racists hate Essence Festival (just as they hate Bayou Classic weekend, another Black event), and were pretty gleeful about its possible demise the last couple of years (there are also Quarter businesses that close both weekends, but they’re not racist, wink wink),so here’s hoping its back to form this year and rebuilds back bigger and better than ever before.

The battle between New Orleans and Louisiana rages on, with a grand jury here indicting our criminalistic conservative skank Attorney General for, among other things, abuse of power. Our lovely governor has promised to “pardon her instantly” for any convictions she may get in New Orleans…(that MAGA love and respect for the law and the Constitution on full display here, may they both burn in their own hells for all eternity)…yet conservatives called Huey Long a dictator…when Huey never pulled any of this kind of shit on his own, and he and his candidates always won in landslides. At least the day to day people loved Huey because he fought the 1% to benefit the people–which our modern day demagoguery can’t be bothered with.

I’ve been listening to some old favorites lately in the car as I drive to and from work and around town–albums by Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks, and Pat Benatar from my youth and most of them still hold up today and could be hits. Some of Stevie’s 1980s albums are very much of their time, vastly over-produced like the most excessive Bonnie Tyler hits of the period, unfortunately; I’d love to hear them remade with a more timeless production style.

And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and head into the spice mines for the day. I need to do some chores, and I need to get the kitchen and my workspace back under control. I hope you have a lovely Holiday Eve, Constant Reader, and I hope to see you again here tomorrow morning on the nation’s birthday. Until then, Constant Reader!

Heart of Glass

Monday morning and I am exhausted. I slept very late this morning–my legs and lower back are still a little achy–but it was needed. I was on fumes by the end of dinner last night, so much so that I literally waited eighteen minutes for a streetcar because my phone had died (again) so I couldn’t summon a Lyft, and there was no way I was going to make it home again on foot. It was also achingly, annoyingly humid all weekend, and so my socks were always damp with sweat, which makes me uncomfortable because I feel gross. Lesson from the weekend: you need to go back to the gym and take walks more, so you can be in better condition for weekends such as this. I can’t remember the last time I felt so dried out and exhausted and as just a husk of a human like I do this morning. But…probably it was last year’s Festivals. Maybe next year I should just stay down there and not commute because it’s so exhausting. Who knows?

I woke up late to a marvelous thunderstorm and downpour, one of those lovely New Orleans storms where you start to imagine what it was like when the rains for Noah’s flood started, and since I took the day off (wisely, as it turned out) I could burrow back down into the blankets and stay there, warm and snug and comfortable. (I did spare a “sorry” thought for all those flying out from New Orleans, as flights were probably delayed, before drifting off again.) I stayed there until Sparky’s desire for breakfast became so overwhelming that I felt bad for how hungry he must be so got up. I did some laundry and walked to Walgreens to get a few things, before deciding “meh, I can make groceries tomorrow on the way home from work and I can get the mail then too” and went back to the easy chair with Sparky to rest for a while. I watched the gold medal performances for the US Figure Skating team at Worlds (the US for the first time in a long time–if not ever–won three golds; ice dance, men’s, and women’s), which was fun and exciting, and then Paul came home and we talked and caught up for a while, so now he’s upstairs making sure there are no smoldering embers that need snuffing out from the weekend. I remembered I hadn’t finished this, so decided to walk away from catching up on the news–it’s so disheartening to come out of a lovely bubble of writing and publishing and friends and talking about books and writing with likeminded others to the harsh reality of this unpleasant time-line we’re in, seriously–and came back into the kitchen as the last load of laundry from the weekend tumbles dry.

Damn, I am tired.

It was a lovely weekend, though, despite being tired and sort of mentally foggy from overstimulation, I think, from Friday night on. I laughed a lot and talked a lot and gossiped a lot, drank more than I usually do (which is none at all), and ate out more than I ever do. (I had fried green tomatoes with shrimp remoulade twice, and am determined to learn how to make this at home; I’d never had the tomatoes in a regular frying batter before; it was always corn meal, like with fried okra; regardless, this reminded me that I really like fried green tomatoes.) It was kind of nice, and the weather was more humid than I would have preferred all weekend, but things were good. My panels went well, I think, as did my reading in the Dorothy Allison Tribute and my congratulatory message to the finalists of the short story anthology–and that reading was lit, as was the poetry reading at the closing reception. I’ll probably talk about the whole weekend more as the week goes on, but it was marvelous spending time with people whom I have a great affection for, as well as meeting some new people who were equally marvelous. I did do a lot of walking, so it’s no surprise my tired old out of shape ass is so wrecked from the weekend. I did remember this same thing happening last year–but I didn’t take Monday off last year, so kudos to past Greg; plus I hate having to call it an early night on Sunday because I have to work the next morning.

I probably will still be a little punchy still for a few more days, but I can deal.

I’ll dig myself out of the bubble tomorrow.

It also seems like a lot happened over the weekend that I wasn’t able to acknowledge properly (like the humiliating rebuke to our fascist governor received from Louisiana’s voters Saturday, mwa-ha-ha) that I do want to talk about some more. I also had some lovely ideas over the weekend, and I also heard some things that made me think that I want to explore further, so yes, there was some serious creative stimulation as well. These two festivals are my safe spaces, where I can relax completely and don’t have to worry about experiencing any kind of bigotry. I was on a panel that I’d really rather explore, too, because it made me think about some things about the past and the present that I’d like to explore a bit more.

And on that note, I am going to bring to a close and rest a bit more. Have a lovely Monday, and I’ll talk with you again tomorrow.