Tag: hydra

Is There Life After Love?

Tuesday morning and can you believe it’s been a week since the national bloodbath? I am sure they are going to finish licking their wounds and start their next tantrum/breakdown/whatever they do to cope when they realize they are not the majority they love to think they are. The weather here has definitely changed, and this is absolutely my favorite time of year in New Orleans. I don’t like getting up in the dark or getting home after dark, but it’s nice to enjoy being outside again. I slept really well yesterday, which was great. I had a good day at work, and felt pretty good when I left the office for home. I am in the final vestiges of this cold or whatever it was, so that’s also kind of nice. I did some chores when I got home, and it was lovely coming down to a clean apartment. It’s lovely to not feel sick anymore…I made a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner, chilled with Sparky, and did a little bit of reading and some free form scribbling in my journal. I even managed to get through some of my emails yesterday, and maybe can get the inbox cleared out once and for all. It’s hard to imagine that ever happening, but one can but dream, you know?

Lauren Boebert officially lost her House seat yesterday, and she can join her old buddies Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Green over in the “irrelevant loser” pile. We, of course, are still waiting on results from Alaska and Mississippi, but soon enough those races will also be over and the rout of MAGA will be complete. I know I’ve lost track, but are there still any Tea Party/MAGA people really left in Congress anymore? I wonder how they’ll rebrand racism and white supremacy and Christian Nationalism for the next go round? They never go away, you know; evil conservatism is like a hydra.

I continued my rewatch of Friday the 13th the Series with the second episode of the first season, “The Poison Pen,” which is one of the sillier and more campy episodes. This time around, a monk known as the Oracle of Death writes prophecies about death down with a quill pen and they come true. (Of course, it never occurs to anyone that his pen is cursed and writing down people’s deaths with it essentially kills them.) The monastery is housed on valuable real estate downtown, and a construction syndicate is offering them a lot of money for their property–which is part of the scheming going on behind the scenes in the cloister. In order to get the pen, the three go undercover in the monastery to retrieve the object before more people die, and Mickey has to bind herself and pretend to be a man. (Hence the campy aspects of the episode.) The effects are cheap and silly to modern eyes, but probably weren’t as bad when the show originally aired; the wildest part is the homicidal, independently flying guillotine blade. But it was fun, and I think I already remember episode three of this season, “Cupid’s Bow,” which if I am remembering correctly, winds up in a fraternity house…which was even funnier than the cheap effects or Mickey in drag moments of episode 2.

We did finish Black Doves on Sunday night; it really is a fun show. I love the lesbian assassins–they remind me of my Ninja Lesbians in my Scotty series, Ben Whishaw is also fantastic as always, he needs to be in more things, and of course, Sarah Lancashire is a queen. I’m not sure how they’ll do another season, but I certainly hope they do and they know how how to do it properly rather than put something terrible together to cash-in on the excellence of the first two seasons.

I also sent out a newsletter, which you can read by clicking here. I talk about my short story “The Sound of Snow Falling”, which is in the newly released anthology Unloaded Volume 3. compiled and edited by Eric Beetner. Huzzah!

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines for the morning. Have a marvelous Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will be back again bright and early for my midweek blog tomorrow. Until then–thanks for stopping by yet again!

This image perfectly illustrates why early settlers and the indigenous people thought the marshes, wetlands, and swamps were full of supernatural creatures in Louisiana.

You Can’t Hold On Too Long

Saturday and I don’t have to go into the office! Man, I was tired last night when I got home from the office. I came straight home, too. The day at the office wasn’t bad, and I fell asleep pretty early in my easy chair after watching the season premier of Peacemaker. I also did some laundry (I wound up washing the bedding once I got home), and I still have some things to do today. I have to run errands (not many, and not too terrible), I have some cleaning and so forth to do around here today, and want to do some reading and some writing as well. I guess it all depends on how much energy I wind up having today. This past week was ever so much better than Last Infusion Week, but I was still tired by the time I got home from the office. Recovery is taking forever, isn’t it?

And it’s not like I’m the most patient person alive.

I did sleep late in spite of Sparky’s biting and clawing attempts to get me up earlier. It felt good, although I do still feel a bit tired. The coffee tastes delicious this morning, and I feel a little low blood sugar this morning, which means I should eat. I’ve not been eating as much in the mornings as I had been these past two weeks. My weight is still climbing–slowly, around a pound per week–but I’m not going to worry about my weight until after Labor Day and my first self-injection. The next few weeks are going to be busy ones–LSU’s first game of the season is next weekend, and then it’s Labor Day and right after that, Bouchercon. I don’t have a lot of plans made for the week of Bouchercon, and I might just leave the weekend as it is already and not make any more plans…I can use that time to write and clean and read and get my act together going into football season. Sigh. I’m trying to not get overwhelmed with so much to do, but…nothing to do but apply nose to grindstone and focus on one task at a time. I’ve got to be better about my to-do list.

I think this morning I’ll go ahead and read for an hour before getting cleaned up and running my errands. I’m not progressing as quickly as I would like with my three current reads, and so need to desperately pick up the pace on my reading. I will never get through the TBR pile at the rate I’m going, and the way I keep adding books to the stack…my TBR pile is like the Hydra. I read and donate a book and add two more. This is not a winning strategy, methinks. But I think my focus is coming back–it’s rusty and needs to be nurtured and encouraged–and that will help with everything.

I’m also still reveling in the death of James Dobson the hateful homophobic misogynist racist advocate of child abuse in the “name of God.” Lord, how I hated that piece of shit and his so-called “ministry”–how much damage did that prick do in the name of money and power? I was thinking about writing a newsletter about Dobson and his hate–I’ll never forget that time I heard him calling me a pervert and pedophile during the Virginia thing on his radio show…but I’ve been toying with doing a lengthy, multi-part one about Christianity and my tangled, complicated relationship with the faith I was groomed into. I’ve also been reading old entries back from the original days of my blog (2005!!!) to get a sense of Katrina to write about again (I’ve started writing it, and hope to have it finished for posting on the anniversary next Friday) and it really is amazing to see how much not only my writing voice has changed but me personally; that’s what I want the Katrina entry to be about, how both the city and I have changed since Katrina because of Katrina. (Which is also my way back into writing Hurricane Season Hustle).

Last night I got my birthday meal of shrimp lo mein at last, and it was quite marvelous as it always is–you can never go wrong with shrimp, noodles, and a sauce, I find. I’m not sure about what meals to make this weekend, but probably will barbecue burgers either today or tomorrow (most likely tomorrow, since I won’t be leaving the house; today I feel is going to be an easy day for food).

And on that note, I am going to take my coffee and go read for a bit before showering. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later; one can never be certain how I am going to do things on an easy unplanned day. If not, tomorrow morning for sure.