Tag: Hurricane Ida

I’m on the Road

We tried to stick it out, ever hopeful that Entergy would pull off a miracle, but today we cracked and couldn’t take it anymore. We were also out of food, and while some stores are indeed open (without power), it was incredibly ridiculously hot today; I’ve not really slept since the power went out Sunday morning; and we decided to go today. With it being the Thursday before Labor Day weekend, I knew–between Louisiana evacuees and “last holiday weekend at the beach” people, there was no point in following I-10 East and trying to find anywhere to stay. I only had a half-tank of gas, and wasn’t sure we’d be able to get any if we went north or west, so we headed east on I-10. We got gas near Biloxi (yay!) and once we hit Mobile we turned north. I knew we’d be able to find a pet friendly room somewhere between Mobile and Montgomery, and I was correct. Paul, Scooter and I are now checked into a motel in Greenville, Alabama. We’ve both taken our first hot showers since before the power went out, and are relaxing in the air conditioning (on high and full blast) while the US Open plays on the television. Everything is currently charging. Scooter isn’t sure what to make of this, as he has never stayed anywhere besides our house or the Cat Practice in the last eleven years, but he was great in the car and just slept…which is his usual state. I am looking forward to tonight’s sleep–you have no idea, Constant Reader, how much I am looking forward to finally getting some sleep. We have the room until Sunday–we’ll either go back to New Orleans or decide what to do next then. I’ll worry about it tomorrow.

It was very weird how quickly this storm came together–we barely had space to breathe or even think, and then it was already too late to go. I had to turn in my edits on #shedeservedit by the first; there were rumblings Friday morning that we were in trouble, and I had to power through the edits to get them done just in case (a wise decision, for once). I had to have my teeth cleaned Friday morning, and after I got home from that I just worked on the edits, finally finished about half an hour before I was due to meet my friend Ellen Byron for dinner at Red Gravy on Magazine Street. (The dinner and the conversation was marvelous.) Saturday morning I got up and by the time I was coherent–I overslept a bit, as did Paul–it was too late, really. I-10 in both directions a parking lot; I-55 and I-59 north both the same. We left very late for Katrina–and the crawl across the twin spans with the beginnings of the system starting to come in was not something I ever wanted to live through again. We just kind of looked at each other, and decided to ride it out and hope for the best–figuring if we made it through, we could leave afterwards. We watched a lot of television Saturday night, went to bed relatively early, and then of course, Sunday morning the power went out around eleven. I grabbed a book–I had started Megan Abbott’s The Turnout last week, and so I read for the rest of the day.

The storm was terrifying. The entire house rattled and shook, and there were times when I thought–I would swear to God this is true–I felt the house shifting before settling back to where it was once the gust had finished. I kept waiting for the windows to blow out–I moved my computer away from the windows–and finally, it was over. I never want to ride out a storm like that again, frankly; once was more than enough. And then we settled in to wait for the power to come back on, with no Internet and very very VERY spotty (did I say VERY) cell phone service, we were essentially cut off from the rest of the world. My friend Alafair texted me at some point and I asked her if the levees held; we literally had no idea what was going on, not only in the rest of the world, but in our own city–let alone our neighborhood. The weather was hot and humid but bearable–it was miserable, but it could have been much worse; had Monday been like today we would have left then.

I did manage to read a lot–I finished The Turnout and moved on to Yes, Daddy by Jonathan Parks-Ramage (loved it!), Dead Dead Girls by Nekesa Afia (also recommend); A Beautiful Crime by Christopher Bollen; Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng; and A Letter of Mary by Laurie R. King. I started rereading Paul Monette’s The Gold Diggers, and also started Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Velvet Was the Night, which came with me to Alabama. I am going to do blog posts on all of these books at some point–it was a week of amazing reading, frankly–and I also thought a lot about things I am working on and things I want to be working on, so it wasn’t a total loss of a week. I cleaned and organized in the kitchen some, and of course today I had to throw away everything in the refrigerator and the freezer, which was sad–all that money into the trash–but better to clean it out now rather than let it sit in there rotting and then come home to it. (A valuable lesson from Katrina.)

I thought about bringing manuscripts to edit with me, but then decided not to–I have the electronic files, after all, and I have enough paper around as it is. I started purging books again too–and I spent a lot of time, as I mentioned, thinking about things and life in general and what my priorities should be going forward–there’s nothing like a catastrophe to make you sit down and think about what is and isn’t important–and I am going to probably make some changes going forward. I hate that this disruption came when I was on a roll–with my writing, with the gym, with the reorganization of the apartment–but I am glad that it did happen in some ways; I was kind of letting myself drown again and a reset was kind of necessary. I also don’t know how long this particular disruption is going to last, either.

So, I am going to relax, enjoy hot showers and air conditioning and having access to the Internet again–and read and write and try to dig out from under.

And now I am going to take a doll and go to sleep.

Til tomorrow, then.

I’ll Meet You Halfway

At least we still have power this morning so I can have coffee to get the day started…although whether I want to be alert today or not is something that remains to be seen or determined.

It’s already starting to look nasty outside. The eye is still going to pass to our west, but we are going to experience hurricane force winds later today, as well as the heavy rains and storm surge into the lakes. I’m not sure how much longer we’ll have power–the strong winds will probably take care of that in a few hours–and it will be coming ashore around noon. Was staying the smartest thing we’ve ever done? Probably not, but all we can do at this point–once the evacuation window had closed yesterday–is hope for the best. I had a lot of mental back-and-forths yesterday about this very thing: was staying a really bad idea? We’re going to regret this, aren’t we? but around two or three in the afternoon I stopped thinking in those terms because self-recrimination at that point was far too late and pointless other than making me feel bad or come close to having a panic attack or freaking out.

And none of those things were productive, or a constructive use of my time and energy. I am really not a big fan over freaking out over something beyond my control.

Yesterday was a weird day, really. I stayed away from social media for the most part, and I also stayed off the weather reports; there were official updates from the national weather service and national hurricane center every three hours, so I just would check those updates when they came rather than the old school methodology of watching every second of every breathless, wide-eyed doom broadcast–not having cable television and using streaming services was a help, of course. I did see that Jim Cantore was in town–never a good sign, under any circumstances–and I follow Margaret Orr, the most experienced meteorologist in the city since Nash Roberts retired, on Twitter, so I just periodically checked in with Aunt Margaret to make sure I wasn’t missing anything I needed to know about.

And seriously, all there is to do now is wait.

It’s eerie and gray outside, with occasional gusts of wind making the crepe myrtles dance and sway. It isn’t raining, but I can tell the wind has been intense as it gusts because the sidewalk is covered in crepe myrtle blossom debris. It’s not raining now; but I am sure that will change relatively soon. I want to get the kitchen cleaned up this morning and take one last shower while we still have power–and then I’ll probably do busy work–straightening things up, putting things away, sorting. I started doing cleaning yesterday but as Paul pointed out, “So, you want the house to be clean in case we lose the roof again?”

Fair point, but I might do some this morning just to keep me occupied.

I watched Nightmare Alley yesterday on the TCM app; it’s one of my all-time favorite novels (Megan Abbott recommended I read it; and it’s haunted me ever since I did) and I’ve always wanted to see the movie. The movie, surprisingly enough, follows the book much more closely than movies usually did during that time period, and Tyrone Power (I’ve never seen one of his films before, if you can believe that) gave a stirring performance in the lead role–and you can also never go wrong with Joan Blondell, who has never gotten the appreciation she truly deserved. The movie is not quite as dark as the book–production code and all–but it also gave me a very strong desire to reread the book again. I also spent some time with Megan Abbott’s The Turnout, which is incredible; but then I put it aside, figuring once the power goes out there will be nothing to do but read, so save it for then. I might go ahead and read it some today–the mind distraction will be lovely–but I don’t know how good my attention span will be for reading until after it’s all over. There’s always that little knot in your stomach and that little alert going off in a corner of the brain–worry worry worry you should be worrying more–so who knows? We also watched everything we are watching–Archer, Titans, Nine Perfect Strangers–before I drank a cup of Sleepytime Tea and heavily medicated myself for a good night’s sleep (which I did, in fact) have.

I also started writing a short story last night in my journal, in long hand; “Parlor Tricks.” I’d had the idea before, of course–I think I may have even briefly started writing it around the time I had the idea for it–and was having a lot of fun with it. The main character I am writing about it in this story–as always with me and my creative ADHD–is someone I find interesting; and I actually had another idea around the same time centering a similar type character (“The Oracle of Orange Street,” to be exact)–and while I was working on this yesterday I realized that my still unnamed main character could easily be in both stories; and really, “Parlor Tricks” would be a great way to introduce the character and then possibly bring her back for a novel, The Oracle of Orange Street….because precisely what I need right now is another book to write.

And on that note, I am going to make another cup of coffee, take that shower, and do the dishes (no need for dirty dishes to stay dirty during a loss of power, after all).

Will check in when I can!

I Can Feel Your Heartbeat

Well, this has turned into a rather interesting stay-cation, has it not?

This morning, as I swill coffee and read weather reports with bleary eyes, trying to decide what to do–we are still leaning towards not leaving; knowing at best we will probably be without power until Thursday at the earliest in a best case scenario–which is horribly unappealing, given how hot it’s been and the time of year it is–but…but…ugh. I’m not even certain, were we to go, where we would go–north, east, west–and from everything I am seeing this morning the highways out of the city are backed up, bumper to bumper and barely moving; that could be incorrect, of course (one never really knows unless one is out there). I don’t see the sense in going west or north, to be honest; the track will probably bring Ida ashore west of New Orleans, and the storm is going to go north from landfall. East would be the best choice, methinks, but…it’s not like everywhere east also isn’t a hotbed of COVID-19, either. I’m not really sure what to do, to be honest, and there’s definitely a part of me that thinks we’ve already missed the evacuation window period, anyway.

The good news is that the imminent loss of power/potential evacuation forced me to sit my ass down and get through the manuscript yesterday. I think I may have missed some spots, and I am not certain about a decision I made with something to bring it in line with things further back in the manuscript, but I am going to print it all out today (if I have enough ink) so I at least can look at it if we don’t have power for the next few days (if we evacuate, of course, it won’t matter because I can access it on my laptop). But that’s one more thing to cross off the list, which is very cool, but I suspect everything is going to come to a screeching halt by tomorrow at any rate, so I should probably get as much done as I can while I still have power.

Last night I had dinner with a friend from out of town–scheduled to come in for Bouchercon, she came to town anyway because her daughter goes to school here–at Red Gravy on Magazine Street (it was really good; I recommend the lasagna but don’t get the margarita with agave juice; it’s too sweet–at least for me; I like the tequila bite in a regular margarita myself) and she texted me this morning that she and her daughter are heading for Texas; which is kind of a bit of a relief. I was worried about them; the daughter is Not From Here and has already had some horrible experiences with losing power for days since she came to the city last year–I am, insanely, more concerned about the loss of power than anything else myself–and I hope they make it west safely. It was a lovely evening–there were hardly any people out and about; the only indication of anything was the lines at the gas stations–and then I came home. We watched this week’s Ted Lasso, which was marvelous as always, and then started watching the new season of American Horror Story: Red Tide, which was….interesting. It’s entertaining enough, but kind of, well, stupid. I kept thinking why would you stay there? It’s set in Provincetown in the off-season, as a writer brings his pregnant wife and daughter there so he can write, and they’ve got free rent as long as the wife, a decorator, redecorates the house. But crazy shit starts happening almost immediately–which begs the question, where does Provincetown hide all these crazy creatures during tourist season? A lot of it doesn’t really make sense (well, it is Ryan Murphy, after all) but we’ll keep watching because it’s entertaining.

And as always, the imminent arrival of a hurricane inevitably reminds me of the abandoned fourth Scotty novel, Hurricane Party Hustle, which I had planned in the wake of finishing and turning in Mardi Gras Mambo that August of 2005…that obviously had to be abandoned after Katrina came a-calling. I had always wanted to write a murder mystery set during that eerie time when the city empties out for an evacuation, with 80% of the people gone and the eerie silence and weird emptiness that comes with it. I used some of the stuff I’d already written for this book for Murder in the Garden District, which also has an evacuation in it–I used the memories of evacuating for Katrina for Murder in the Rue Chartres— and every once in a while, the thought crosses my mind that the Scotty version would be interesting to write and experience. I’ve never really dealt much with Katrina in the Scotty books–it was in the past and he basically waves it away as the past in the prologue to Vieux Carré Voodoo–and I’ve always thought about going back and writing the Scotty Katrina book–I can always keep the series going by filling in the times between books, if it comes to that or if writing Scotty in his sixties is unappealing–but I probably won’t do that. I don’t know–but I am also laughing at myself this morning; only a writer would view an approaching and imminent natural disaster as material and start thinking about ways to build a crime novel around it.

Take THAT, Imposter Syndrome!

And now, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and keep Louisiana in your thoughts!

Only a Moment Ago

And just like that, it’s Friday again.

Of course, the emergence of a potentially major storm heading for the Gulf and our coastline–and how quickly it has happened–has certainly sucked a lot of the energy out of the room. The fact it will come ashore on the 16th anniversary of Katrina (Sunday) hasn’t triggered a lot of PTSD for me, strangely; although I was remembering it all last night as I sat in my easy chair watching Margaret Orr on local television (and checking her Twitter feed). The weather outside my condensation-covered windows this morning doesn’t look that great, to be honest–we’ve had rain all day yesterday off and on–but I don’t know if we are going to need to leave yet or not. It’s not looking good for us right now; at the very least we’re going to probably be without power for a few days (yay). But at least if we do end up leaving (probably tomorrow morning, if we go) at least I have a relatively new car, and I believe I already have a tank of gas. I have some errands to run today–I am getting my teeth cleaned later this morning, and I need to get the mail. I had planned on doing some grocery shopping today but am not sure if it’s wise to get anything perishable, so am probably just going to let that sit until afterwards.

I’m also having dinner with a friend tonight–scheduled to come in for Bouchercon, she decided to keep her trip since her daughter goes to school here anyway–which should be a good time; social contact outside of my office has remained low, so it will be sort of nice to get out of the house and spend the evening with someone whose company I enjoy…especially with a hurricane looming. If it stays on center track, it’ll pass us to the west–putting New Orleans on the bad side of the storm. I’m kind of surprised I am not having flashbacks triggered by any or all of this, to be honest. I only remember the anniversary now when I am reminded–I’d not even given it a thought until the other day when this system developed below Cuba–although I am also now remembering there have been issues with I storms in the past–Ike and Isaac, for example; one of them sat on the city for like three days and we were without power for nearly a week. The other was our last evacuation and it, too, was around this same time. Late August, after my birthday and before Labor Day–never a good combination for an I-named storm in the Gulf, apparently.

I rewatched an old Doris Day/Rock Hudson movie last night while I was waiting for Paul to come home (working late because of grant deadlines and potential hurricane; potential loss of power means everyone has to get things done earlier than they’d thought). I had wanted to rewatch Pillow Talk, which was the best of the their three films together, but couldn’t find it streaming anywhere, so settled for the follow-up, Lover Come Back, which, while not as good as the first, was still quite entertaining–if problematic. The message of the Day/Hudson movies–at least the first three; they played a married couple in their third pairing–was always that Day was an uptight and repressed career woman with no interest in men or marriage–who really just needed a good fuck. The irony that the good fuck she needed was being delivered on-screen by a gay man escaped audiences of the time, who made the films huge hits and made Doris Day the biggest money-making star in the country. It’s great, though, that she was shown as a highly successful, talented, and driven career woman; unfortunate that the screenwriters seemed to think that went along with an empty life without love or a man. Given how beautiful and sexy Day was, it’s kind of hard to believe that she wouldn’t have men hanging off her–but she’s kind of portrayed as an ice princess, who needs a man to thaw her out. The games Hudson plays with Day–mimicked in both films–where he pretends to be a shy, inexperienced (read: almost gay) man whose sweetness she falls for doesn’t really play today for a sex comedy; such a movie would never be made today.

I did manage to get some things done yesterday. I worked on the manuscript, and have maybe a third of it left to go. I’ve already edited out almost ten thousand words, making it leaner and cleaner, but it’s still such a horrible mess I cannot believe I turned it in to my long-suffering editor. But it’s getting better, and the primary issue is that there were so many different versions over the years of working on it that I missed things when merging all the versions together to get a final one–the great irony being the problem with the manuscript not ever being what I thought it was, so all those different drafts were relatively pointless; it’s terrible when you are writing a book and you aren’t really completely sure what it’s about consciously. I’ve always said this book was about rape culture, but it’s actually not–although that’s a part of it; what it’s actually about is toxic masculinity from the point of view of someone trapped inside of it who desperately wants out and doesn’t know how to get out. I didn’t completely understand that–and something else–until this final editing run; glad I figured this out before it went to press, right?

So I am going to try to get some things done around here this morning before leaving for the dentist, then I am coming home to work on the manuscript. I’d like to get this pass finished today–not an easy task, since its taking me hours to get through small sections, longer than I’d thought it would, honestly–so it can sit for a day or two; if we lose power and I have to stop working on it, I am hoping I’ll be able to at least get it sent off somehow–if I need t make my phone a hotspot and send it from my laptop or something, I should be able to get it done and in on time. I was going to try to make it to the gym today, but think I’ll just push that off until tomorrow and focus on getting the manuscript finished today. Once I finish and post this, I am going to clean out my inbox (or try to) before having to get ready for the teeth cleaning expedition (not looking forward to this either, I might add). I had wanted to spend some time getting organized–but the need to get this manuscript out of the way in case of power loss, at least getting this pass finished, at any rate, has overcome any desire to work on the other things that need to be worked on around here; I can go to the gym tomorrow and clean/organize then (if we aren’t in the car, that is).

And on that note, tis time to head back into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader.