Tag: Life

Love You Inside Out

Remote Friday! I slept decently last night, which was a lovely thing. Sparky cuddled with me this morning when he got hungry, which was very sweet–I’d rather wake up to a cuddling, purring kitty than to an alarm any day. I’ve always believed alarms were unnatural, forcing you to wake from sleep before you’re ready or you’ve had enough. But that’s all part and parcel of the tyranny of capitalism we’re all subjected to most of our lives, and we’re all about to be (or already been) sacrificed on the altar of Ayn Rand acolytes who only read The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged, and not her actual philosophy. (Whenever someone mentions her admiringly, I always ask if they’ve read her essay collection The Virtue of Selfishness and the answer is always no…so I stop listening to anything they say and see no point in arguing with them from a place of better knowledge;1 and the true believers are just another branch of the MAGA family tree of cruelty and bigotry.) Must get up, must make money to spend money to keep the economy going…and round and round it goes.

I was very tired when I got home from work last night and sadly, didn’t get much of anything done. I came home, fed and played with Sparky, and then collapsed into my easy chair with a tired body and worn out brain. Thursdays really are my least favorite day at the office. Paul got home later than I would have liked, but I have to say this year I’ve seen more of him than I usually do during my Festival widowhood, so in a way I’m kind of glad the building collapsed? He’s going to be gone most of today, too, once he gets up, and I am going to be doing my remote work and writing and doing chores and getting the house as in order as I can manage. That always makes me feel better; I always find a messy apartment to be kind of…unsettling and oppressive, which has everything to do with fears of being a hoarder. I’m letting go of my need to never get rid of a book under any circumstance, but that comes from the reality of limited space options. I’ve also cut back on my buying books all the time, and limiting myself to new books from friends, or their recommendations. That has definitely helped financially, too. (But I will never donate my kids’ series books, ever.)

I also want to get some reading done this weekend. I want to get further into my revisit of Moonraker, and I have already moved Christa Faust’s The Get Off to the on-deck position of the TBR list. I’ve been waiting for this book for fourteen years! I love Christa’s voice and her style of writing, as well as how fierce she is, and boy, does that ever come across in the Angel Dare trilogy. Angel is an unusual heroine, and I do think the series will become noir classics to shelve alongside James M. Cain, Patricia Highsmith, and Cornell Woolrich2. I’d love to see them filmed, to be honest, and what a great role she’d be for an ambitious actress.

I did try to write some last night to little or no avail. I really need to get back into that saddle again and get things going. Deadlines loom overhead, and the Festivals are next weekend, and I am going to be super busy during both–I have several things I have to do, and I have all kinds of friends coming into town to speak at one or both. It’s going to be so exhausting, I am already kind of dreading how tired I’ll be. Not to mention commuting to the Quarter and back so we don’t have to board Sparky…and all that walking. Yes, I am going to be completely exhausted…but at least nothing I am doing is in the morning, thank you God, so I can at least sleep in some.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you either later today or tomorrow morning. We shall see, shan’t we?

  1. I read Ayn Rand in my twenties–I read her short novel Anthem in high school–and studied her philosophy, which required reading her non-fiction. I saw the fallacy in her “objectivism”, the flaw that unspools the entire thing, almost immediately, which gave me the knowledge to know she–and everything she believed, was patently predicated on a lack of understanding of human nature and behavior, and most of her acolytes embraced only the parts that confirmed their own biases while ignoring the rest. Check out her writings on religion sometime, and ask yourself how Paul Ryan and others–anyone, really–could be a “devout Christian” and an objectivist, when she wrote and believed that religion was ignorant superstition and unworthy of an intellectual. ↩︎
  2. Note to self: revisit Cain, and read more in the Woolrich and Highsmith canons. ↩︎

I Want You to Want Me

Thursday and my last day in the office for the week. Huzzah!

I am a bit tired this morning, but not from the week. I woke up around three in the morning and couldn’t fall completely back asleep…so when Sparky started trying to get me up before the alarm, I was able to have some fun with him. Usually I bury my face, hands and feet under the blankets so he can’t claw or bite them (swipes and nips, designed to wake me up–but the claw in the face is a bit much); this morning instead I’d grab him and cuddle him and hold on to him until he squirmed away and tried again….so I grabbed him and made him cuddle again. He really is such a sweet boy. When I start putting on my sweats he’ll run to the stairs…and then come back wondering what is taking me so long, and then runs ahead of me down the stairs. Every morning when I leave, he walks down along the back of the couch to the living room window and watches me go…and he’s always right there at the door when I get home to greet me (and beg for food and attention). I’m so glad we got another cat.

I did some writing last night, but was very tired both physically and mentally. I did get the laundry finished, so tonight I need to empty the dishwasher and refill it. I may have to stop on the way home tonight to get some things, but I can do the Rouses in the CBD as opposed to going all the way uptown, which can wait until Saturday. I have some things that need to get done between now and Monday–short story revision, more work on the book, reading The Get Off, which I’ve moved to the top of the TBR pile–as well as cleaning up the house some. Working on the book last night was difficult, primarily because I realized how shitty the work on the current chapter was, and I also realized I have ten characters to keep track of in the Diderot House during the hurricane–not very easy, and means I need to pay a lot closer attention. I am enjoying the writing, though yesterday’s being tired meant it was more of a slog than anything else. I am physically tired this morning but not mentally fatigued, which is a lovely thing. My synapses aren’t all firing properly this morning–I got confused about something I should know like the back of my hand, which was a little alarming, but once the coffee kicks in I should be able to make it through the day.

And the SEC Gymnastics championship meet is this weekend, too, which will be fun to watch. GEAUX TIGERS!!!

The world is continuing to burn to the ground as I type, and every day it seems to be a bit worse. That slippery slope they always warned us about when it came to the Second Amendment? Turns out the entire Constitution and all of the institutions and systems put into place to preserve liberty and freedom was also a slippery slope, and now we’re at the bottom of the slope, having slid all the way down into authoritarianism. It has always amazed me that racists would rather lose all their freedoms and liberties instead of sharing that with everyone else.

And the rebranding of the new party from the left that will rise from the ashes of the once great Democratic party? It should be called the Liberty Party. Go ahead and call us libs, racist garbage, just know that from now on I will be hearing that as “pro-liberty” instead of “liberal.” Fuck off all the way, Cons. I’ve never understood why we never called them cons, in all honesty. They are the party of con artists and convicts, after all–and in the instance of “pros and cons”, again, a negative connotation for those three letters. At some point I will write about the decline of the American Right–but did it really decline? Weren’t they always the pro-Fascist party? And moderates can also go fuck all the way off. They’ve been surrendering to the Fascist Right for so long it’s their second nature.

Sigh.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.

Screenshot

I Was Made For Dancin’

Tuesday morning and am easing back into the week somehow. I was a bit tired yesterday, and felt a little low energy, like the prelude to an onset of something. By the time I got home from work I truly felt lousy, so relaxed for a while, took some Dayquil, and let my mind wander while watching the news, this week’s John Oliver episode, and decided to peek in on the most recent episode of The White Lotus, to see what everyone was talking about on social media all day yesterday. Okay, got it. We’ll probably watch the entire season once it’s all available; it definitely piqued my interest and I will have forgotten all or most of this by the time we watch anyway–one of the benefits of this truly shitty memory thing I have going on anymore. I did work on the book a bit, and knew what to do, but was just too fatigued to do it. I hate when that happens. But this morning I feel better than I did yesterday morning, so here’s to a productive day. I really hate feeling under the weather. Tired is an entirely different thing I don’t mind so much, but being sick can fuck all the way off.

The world, and country, continue to burn to the ground as the MAGA government by billionaire further establishes and consolidates power to the executive branch. (Thanks again, Sycophant Schumer. Your interview in the New York Times only served to further underscore how out of touch with your constituents and your base you are. You’re as big a disgrace as Roger P. Taney and James Buchanan. You fucking own this, you and the other nine who knifed the base in the back. Oh, and thanks again for shivving Biden last summer, you fucking piece of shit, and handing the White House back to the Right. Remember, we sent the Rosenbergs to the chair. We are where we are because of Democratic cowardice. I will never forget.) It’s hard not to get worried, stressed or be anxious. My job is federally funded, after all, and they are coming for queers and queer books, too. Woo-hoo, nothing like having both of your careers hanging over the precipice, is there? My Social Security and Medicare apparently are also on the line, so after a lifetime of working hard and paying into both systems, I’ll never be able to retire…voluntarily, at any rate.

Thank God I have anxiety medications. Thanks again, Senator Schumer and the Asinine Nine.

Heavy heaving sigh.

I am pleased with how the book is coming along, even if I was too brain-dead last night to do much more work on it. It’s going to be pretty good, I think, nice and spooky and Gothic and creepy. Years ago I read a John D. MacDonald novel called Murder in the Wind, which takes place during a hurricane, when a bunch of motorists take shelter in an abandoned house–all strangers, but one car contained a psychopathic criminal–and that’s kind of the tone I want to merge with the usual Scotty tone to pull the whole story off. I know MacDonald was a sexist writer whose work was very much of its time and some of it hasn’t aged well, but the man could write and tell a story and create some memorable characters, plots and situations; I’m sure a revisit of his canon would also turn up some racism and homophobia, too. I do think, were he to be alive and writing now, he’d be more woke than conservative; almost all of his later Florida novels had to do with environmentalism and how greed and corruption were destroying the state (Condominium, anyone?), and I have often longed for someone to write those kind of Louisiana books…I also think Carl Hiassen style novels about Louisiana would also be kind of awesome. Don’t look at me, I’m not a strong enough plotter to write anything like Haissen, just as I am not familiar enough with the environmental disasters conservative greed and corruption create to write about them…and doing the research would probably make me anxious again. I know I’ve always wanted to write about cancer alley and the poor Black communities poisoned by it, but how do you tell that story when there’s no justice in the end for anyone? Not to mention the disappearing wetlands. Who knows how long Louisiana can still call itself “sportsmen’s paradise” once everything is ruined down here?

Louisiana, and New Orleans, never cease to be sources of inspiration, you know?

And who knows? Stranger things have happened.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later. One never can be entirely sure.

The bare curve of a male ass–do we think it will trigger Meta’s puritans?

Gold

People out there turning music into gold….

Saturday morning and I slept late; Sparky didn’t seem to mind and let me stay in bed until hunger overtook him and he became insistent that I get up and feed him. I slept deeply and well, and today of course we are going to have really bad weather from about noon till six pm, with potential tornados, and we are also going to have high winds all day. I need to run get some things I forgot at the grocery store yesterday–so I will clearly need to get that done before noon, methinks. Yesterday was pleasant, I did my remote work, ran some errands, and did some chores around the house. I started reading Moonraker again (hesitant to call it a reread since I remember absolutely nothing about the book), and have some thoughts already about it (definitely written and published in the mid-1950s originally). We caught up on our shows, watched LSU Gymnastics, and watched the new Kate Hudson show on Netflix, Running Point, which we are really enjoying. It’s very well-cast and a lot more interesting than I expected it to be; I’m not interested in basketball, but I found myself enjoying it and even laughing out loud. I got my chores done yesterday, too. Woo-hoo!

I also spent most of yesterday in a rage about the latest Democratic betrayal of their voting base, led by Chuck Schumer (who needs to step aside for someone younger and more in touch) and nine other Democratic quislings who ended their careers yesterday by agreeing to let DOGE gut everything to keep the government open to “not cause pain”–although the fucking bill they signed off will most definitely cause pain to people who are never in a million years going to vote for this iteration of the Democratic Party. I actually went on-line after Schumer and The Asinine Nine pissed in all of our faces to change my voter registration from Democratic to independent. Not another dime to the Party, any of its election committees for the House or the Senate, or to anything other than an individual candidate1. I am sick to death of these “norms and institutional preservationists” who are not only not meeting the moment but actively working to make things so much worse for everyone and hoping we’ll forget this abject betrayal. And with all due respect, I would have never thought there would be a Senate leader of the party who’d make Harry Reid look like a fighter. Well done, Chuck Schumer, and fuck you from now to eternity. I will donate to your primary opponent, just as I will for the other nine Judases who betrayed their base but want our money and loyalty.

You can die in a fucking fire, Democratic Party, and congratulations about making this deeply unpopular bill your fucking mess. You bought it, you own it, fucking trash, and as long as I live I will never let you forget it.

And we’re here because the Chicks had more courage than you in 2003 to begin with.

But I also was thinking that maybe I shouldn’t talk about politics and our continued slide into full-bore authoritarianism (thanks again, Chuck! You’re as shitty as your wretched cousin Amy) because why contribute to the growing sense of dread and fear as the world burns? I have this bad habit of thinking I have nothing to add to any kind of discourse, and this is a holdover from my horrific college experiences–everything witty and wise has already been said before, and what do I know? I know enough to know I don’t know enough, but why does that make my opinions any less valid than someone else’s? Sure, I’ve not read all of the academic papers on crime fiction, politics, history, or queer literature. I also worry that my conclusions or discoveries about things I’m interested in aren’t terribly original and have already been stated many times before (and better) with someone more grounded in art and science and history. But that doesn’t mean what I think and feel and conclude isn’t valid. I’m always going to think I am under-read on any given subject, you know? And I also don’t read as quickly as I used to, either. But again, I need to stop NOT taking myself so lightly. And if I post something and someone has a different opinion, that doesn’t make mine invalid, either–and this is a growth experience, something I can use to expand my knowledge.

I also managed to finally make it past a particular level in my Duolingo German lessons. That particular challenge took me a week to finally complete, and I still got some things wrong. It was mostly typos and article gender agreement2 which was frustrating, but I finally defeated that level yesterday and conquered the next this morning, so maybe my German will get back on track.

And on that note, I am going to run to the store and pick up the things I need before the storms begin. Have a great Saturday and I will check back with you again later, okay?

  1. But those individuals I’ve donated to–Fetterman, Synema, etc–turned around nd stabbed us all in the back as well. So maybe no more donations, period. ↩︎
  2. Every noun in German is gendered, and there’s a version of “the” for every noun’s gender; male, female, it. ↩︎

I’ll Never Love This Way Again

Remote Friday, which used to be Work-from-Home Friday–they call them “remote days” at the office now, so I had to rename the blog entry to be correct, because I am nothing if not a stickler (as if). I was correct in assuming I would be brain frazzled when I got home from work (it was a good day, if busy, and I got a lot done. Even wilder, there wasn’t much back-up of traffic on the highway), so I recharged for a bit in my easy chair with Sparky, and reacquainted myself with what happened in the advancing collapse of the Weimar Republic while I turned my attention away, and wasn’t in the least bit surprised at the most recent Neville Chamberlain-like statesmanship from Democratic leadership. The party just needs to die at this point before it gets too ugly…for them. I believe when MAGA turns on the people they voted for it will be incredibly violent and deadly–which is going to be a true Reign of Terror, since the betrayal runs so deep. The failure, and potential death of the Democratic Party–thanks, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, for your utter failure of leadership–will be less ugly, but ugly just the same. It’ll save me some money, since I will no longer be donating to any politician or party going forward…and I certainly will not be doing any campaign work of any kind ever again, either. Right now, the list of donations for 2026 is looking like it will be entirely to primary opponents. Why on earth would I ever support people who aren’t going to fight for the country and the Constitution?

I managed to get chores done last night, as I wasn’t physically tired at all, but had no bandwidth for reading or writing–but instead of sitting in my chair all night, I got my ass up and started doing chores. I did laundry, emptied the dishwasher, and washed everything in the sink and reloaded and ran it again. I picked stuff up and worked on the kitchen, too. I hate that my mind is so fried by Thursday, but this was also a busy-ass week and I was in clinic every day. I also slept very well last night, and Sparky wasn’t as insistent that I get up at six as he usually is. I also managed to pay my car registration on line, got the bills all paid, and now get to do some work-at-home duties before running some errands before settling in to read and write for the rest of the afternoon. LSU’s final gymnastics meet is tonight, at Auburn, so we’ll be watching that tonight, and we need to find something new to stream–but we also have this week’s Reacher and Abbott Elementary to watch, too. That’s tonight sorted, any way.

Tomorrow the weather is going to be ugly with some sort of super storm cell capable of producing powerful tornados. We don’t really have basements or interior rooms here, and the houses all have enormous windows, so yeah, tornados here are quite unpleasant. Yet another reason for me to get everything done outside of the house that needs to be done today, you know? I just need to get the mail and some groceries, nothing too terrible and relatively easy to get taken care of, which will be very nice. It also appears that the Irish Channel St. Patrick’s Day parade is cancelled, possibly postponed.

By checking the news for the weather, I also saw that today is the anniversary of one of the city’s darkest days in history–the lynching of eleven Italian-American immigrants in the city jail. The police chief had been murdered, and the (bigoted) view of New Orleanians that it was a Mafia or a local Italian crime gang, so when some of them were acquitted…the good white men of New Orleans (sarcasm) stormed the jail and lynched the prisoners. It created an international incident and almost led to war with Italy; to appease the Italian government, one of the things the US did (besides paying an enormous indemnity) was create Columbus Day–which is how that happened….funny that a holiday created to honor a genocidal maniac came about because of bigotry, racism, and murder. I wonder…is this the time period racists mean when they talk about how New Orleans “used to be safer”? Because that doesn’t sound too safe to me…maybe it was when Storyville was open? When the Axeman was killing people? I do want to write about the lynchings some time, but I don’t know how to turn that into a story or a book. Perhaps someday….

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I may be back either later or not till tomorrow morning. I will see you then!

You Can’t Change That

Here we are on a Thursday morning. Everyone is arriving in Denver for Left Coast Crime, but I don’t have any FOMO. Sure, there are people I would love to see and spend time with, and I always have fun at conferences, but…there are also other people there. I thought I would really miss not going to Bouchercon in Nashville last year, but…I didn’t. I’ve always been a FOMO person, scared that I was missing out on a good time, but I didn’t the entire time it was going on, or even after. And the local ones are next weekend, anyway.

I just saw that we are in the path of some massive storm system this weekend that’s going to throw up potential tornadoes in New Orleans, which means we may lose power, which will be incredibly annoying if it happens, but also means I can just light some candles and read in my easy chair. I do want to make some more reading progress this weekend in addition to everything else on the to-do list. We just can’t seem to catch a break down here this year, can we? Terrorism, blizzards, high winds, the Super Bowl, Carnival…sheesh. It’s like we can’t ever just breathe…and we are heading into stinging caterpillar season, with swarming termites not far behind.

We were busy at work yesterday again, with the end result that I was, as I suspected, exhausted when I got home from my post-work errands last night. I collapsed into my easy chair with a purring kitty and was down for the rest of the night. I caught up on my reality show, caught up on the latest news of the great American collapse (or whatever future historians will call the end of the Great American Experiment in Self-Rule), and then went to bed at a fairly early hour. I did run the dishwasher, as planned, but not the washing machine as planned. I am a bit fatigued today–synapses aren’t quite firing the way they should be–so I may not be able to write or read when I get home tonight. I guess we shall see. We’re also busy today, too. Sigh. It’s been a week at the office, has it not? But at least I only need to log four hours of remote work and then the day is mine.

Woo-hoo!

I was, naturally, saddened by the loss of a long-time friend this week, Felice Picano. It’s very strange to think I won’t ever see him again, or get that mischievous kid look on his face when he was about to say something absolutely terrible about someone to me. Felice was the first published writer I ever met. I went to a signing he did for the paperback release of Like People in History at the Borders in Minneapolis that used to be on the corner of Lake and Hennepin. Paul had bought me a hardcover copy as a gift the year before, and I’d loved the book. I was too shy and awestruck to do anything but put my book down for a signature…but when Paul went to work for the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival, they wanted to put together a queer panel and I suggested Felice for it, and I got to pick him up at the airport. That ride in from the airport was my first actual conversation with him, and the start of a friendship that lasted almost thirty years. We always tried to have coffee or lunch or something when he was in town for Saints & Sinners after that, I stayed in his house in the Hollywood Hills several times, and there was one amazing weekend when he gave me a lift to Palm Springs from LA, and oh, how hard we laughed in the car on the way there. I didn’t see or interact with him as much as I used to, but every time I saw him, it was like we’d just seen each other the day before. He meant a lot to me, and the fact that he always treated me as a peer from that first meeting at the airport on meant the world to me.

I just can’t believe I’ll never see him again. The worst thing about getting older is losing people.

And on that somber note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday Eve, everyone, and I’ll be back eventually.

Ballerinos have the most amazing bodies–and even more amazing is what they can DO with those bodies.

Goodnight Tonight

Wednesday pay-the-bills day has rolled around again (huzzah?). But we’re also halfway through the week and I am not exhausted yet, so that’s a plus? I slept very well last night, and the bed felt very comfortable this morning when Sparky and my alarm started trying to get me out from under my heavy blankets. Yesterday was a fairly good day. I finished the short story and sent it in, and now tonight hopefully I will be able to get back into writing the book again. St. Patrick’s Day is also this weekend, so I’ll be trapped at home because of the Irish Channel parade–traffic will be horrible, so I need to check the time and what day and the route and all that and plan my weekend around it.

There’s nothing more New Orleanian than planning around a parade, is there? Ah, the Crescent City life, right?

Paul got home late again last night, so after I worked on my story and did a few chores, I settled into my easy chair with Sparky for some bonding and to watch the news…which becomes more and more dystopian and insane every goddamned day. Now the government is illegally detaining and disappearing legal residents under the guise of “preventing anti-Semitism.” This is terrifying. This is one of the biggest violations of the First Amendment I’ve seen. If we have to listen to bigotry and prejudice and hatred all under the umbrella of ‘free speech,’ then everyone has to suck it up and hear speech they don’t like. It isn’t “free speech for me, but never for thee.” Everyone in this country, whether they are here legally or not, is entitled to the protections of our Constitution–which include due process. It always amazes me that people miss that part. (It’s the same kind of elitist “us v. them” that Christianity teaches them.)

And now we have someone using the highest office in the land to make car commercials in front of the White House. Talk about cheapening the dignity of the office! But the office was cheapened when he returned to it, wasn’t it? I will give him credit, as he’s accomplished several things no one thought possible in uniting Canada and Europe against us. What a lovely way to repay our allies, right? We’re going back to that horrible period between the world wars, where our economy crashes and the United States are isolated from the rest of the world….and how did that turn out for the world? SPOILER: Not well.

Sigh. I suppose we should be glad it wasn’t a McDonalds or KFC commercial.

I am so tired of living in this, the dumbest timeline of all. It’s been really amazing seeing how fragile our systems and institutions are, and how much people love to cosplay “patriotism” without understanding even the barest minimum of how to be a good citizen in this country. I’m tired of people complaining about paying their taxes but also bitching about how shitty the government is. Why are we so uneducated? Because the Right has always hated free public education and has been doing their damnedest to undermine and underfund it since its inception. The reason why societies always fail under conservatives/libertarians. Libertarians are all about the theory, but subscribing to a theory that is a fallacy will always end up with terrible outcomes. The fact that so many people don’t know how fucking tariffs work (and neither do the current administration) is a stinging indictment of public education–not to mention no longer requiring either a civics or government course. (My US Government course has proven so valuable to me over the years…like 2000, when I was one of the few people aware of what the Electoral College was and its role in elections.) But…an educated populace who knows how the government works and is capable of critical thinking would never vote conservative, so here we are. No Christian should ever vote conservative and show their face in church the following Sunday, but…

Sigh. A lot of people in our society love to cosplay at things they don’t understand.

I still haven’t started reading my next book, and I may try to dive into Moonraker tonight after I get home from my errands (Sparky needs treats!). We shall see.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a marvelous day, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later!

Yeah, Tom Cruise was most definitely NOT the embodiment of Reacher

Shake Your Groove Thing

What precisely is a “groove thing,” anyway? I’ve always wondered. And yesterday’s picture–of a dancer wearing a dance belt only in profile, showing the curve of both bulge and ass–did not trigger an adult content warning or removal from Meta. Weird, isn’t it? Go figure. Less revealing photos always seem to set off the puritan bat signal, but this one didn’t. I’m done trying to figure out what stick they currently have up their ass, since it’s different every day. Meta is dying, anyway, such a pity. (I was highly amused that some stupid rag of a newspaper claimed that Zuckerberg was a “gay icon.” Um, no. As I said on Threads, we still have our sight and sense of smell. You just know he smells like urine.)

Yesterday turned out to be a good day. We were busy in the clinic all day, but we managed just fine. No one was seen late; in fact, almost everyone was seen early. I was kept on my toes for most of the day, but it was a mellow day and everything flowed really well. I had very little time to think or so anything else, but that’s fine. My primary concern was that, as team lead and my supervisor was out for the day, I was going to be buried in problems and questions (which usually happens and by the end of the day I’m so exhausted I’m afraid I’ll fall asleep in the car on the drive home), but that didn’t happen and the day went by pretty quickly and easily. I wasn’t even tired when I got home from work! I was able to get some things done when I got home–got some things crossed off the list, and was able to get chores done. Paul didn’t get home from the office until late (and yes, Sparky was a bundle of need when I got home). I slept very well last night, too, and still feel rested today, which is a good thing. I need to get a lot done…and need to get a lot done pretty much every day until the end of the month. Heavy sigh.

And now it’s Tuesday and I feel pretty good today–clear headed and physically rested, which is really nice. I’m not sure precisely which night this week will be when I hit the wall; usually Wednesday isn’t a good day for me, for real. That’s when I generally start feeling tired in the afternoons and even more tired when I get home from work. Sparky of course loves those nights because he gets to cuddle in my lap and gets a lot of attention. He’s such a sweet boy, really. Now in the mornings he jumps into the bed before my alarm goes off (his body clock has already adjusted to the time change), and lays down on the pillow above my head and curls up. Once the alarm goes off the first time, he moved down and curls up inside the crook of my knees, and stays there until I actually go ahead and get up. He also likes to ride my shoulders downstairs. He’s our first cat who’s a shoulder cat, and I sometimes forget he’s asking to be lifted up on my shoulders….which is where he really goes to town on purring as he wraps himself around my neck, like a mink stole.

But I need to get my short stories finished and back to work on the book. Deadlines loom, and next weekend is Saints and Sinners. YIKES. So yeah, definitely need to get working. I don’t think I have much to do this weekend outside of the house, so I should be able to get some good work done on the book. I need to do some more revising, and I also need to reread everything so I know where everything is at with the story (and remind myself where it’s going…I hate not having a memory anymore) and so I can get back to it. But…am feeling better about writing, and my place in the mystery world, so we’ll see how everything goes from now on.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a great Tuesday, and I’ll check back in with you again later.

Just When I Needed You Most

Monday morning and back to the office with me today. Woo-hoo! I’ll be in the clinic all day today for what is usually my Admin day, but things happen. Woo-hoo, indeed. I do feel rested for the day, which is good. It’s going to also take me a few days to get used to coming to work in the dark again–actually, it’s more gray than dark, but you know what I mean; the sun isn’t completely up before I park at the building. But I do prefer coming home after work in daylight, which is always a plus. We finished watching all of our shows this weekend–Prime Target, The Madness–and caught up on those still airing (Reacher, Abbott Elementary), and did a lengthy binge of Arrested Development. We also watched two documentary series last night–the Gabby Petito one and the Ruby Franke one–both of which were enormously disturbing1.

I didn’t get much done this weekend, other than some writing and finishing reading my book, which will work–no choice there, really–so this week means completely buckling down and ploughing ahead on everything. We’re going to be busy in clinic all week–the week after Mardi Gras, always, just like right after Southern Decadence and Halloween; the gays know when they need to get STI testing done–which will be draining and tiring, but there it is, you know? Wednesday is Pay the Bills Day, and the schedule will be getting easier by the end of the week. I did do a lot of note taking and thinking this weekend, which is always a plus and helpful in the long run…but it doesn’t get the writing done, either. And deadlines loom!

I need to get a lot done this week, so hopefully after work today Sparky won’t be needy like he usually is and I’ll be able to sit in my chair and get some work done. I was thinking about that this morning–Scooter was much the same, if not needier, because he’d been left alone all day. Sparky is needier, because he thinks he’s abandoned when we’re both not home because Paul works at home a lot more since HIS BUILDING COLLAPSED. So now whenever Sparky is home by himself for a protracted period of time the poor needy little boy needs lots of attention and love when I get home. (I do have my laptop and have been working in my easy chair while he hogs my chair–he also always wants to be seated in my desk chair when I’m home, too) What can I say? I’m a cat dad.

The Gabby Petito documentary made me think about an idea I’ve had for quite some time about a book I want to write about a mom like the murderer’s mom (that Burn after Reading note was so horrifying; no wonder the son had little to no moral compass) called Boymom, which has become a thing lately and is very creepy to me. I ran across one on social media the other day that was particularly creepy and borderline incestuous; young women need to avoid that woman’s son like he has bubonic plague. (I really need to revisit the novel Mildred Pierce; I know the film practically by heart and the book is different; I’ve always been interested in Veda’s perspective…) There’s just something about parenting noir that has always intrigued me and I’ve always wanted to write about it.

Probably because I don’t actually have kids.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back in the morning.

Odds this image will trigger the puritannical Meta censors? 1:1.
  1. Both were disturbing for different reasons; I was appalled by the conduct of Gabby’s killer’s family (the apple didn’t fall far from that tree), and of course, Ruby Franke’s descent into narcissism and religious mania, resulting in the abuse of her children, was horrifying to see. ↩︎

New York Groove

Sunday morning where we’ve sprung forward (I hate Daylight Savings Time) and I feel off, like always when this happens. I’ve never cared for the spring part of it, but must admit I do enjoy the “extra” hour in the fall. I did go to bed early last night, and slept well–it apparently rained overnight, which undoubtedly helped with that. Of course, Sparky’s body clock didn’t change, so he wasn’t hungry enough to bother me until it was actually time for me to go ahead and get up, which was nice. (It’s this fall when he’ll annoy me early, isn’t it?) I have some things I need to get done today, which should be easy enough to do. I finished reading The Bell in the Fog yesterday (my thoughts are posted here) and really enjoyed it; and I am going to revisit an old Ian Fleming James Bond novel, Moonraker1 next I think. I may read something new alongside of it, but I haven’t decided which yet. Revisiting the original Fleming Bond novels will also give me something to think and write about on the subject of toxic masculinity and sociopathy. (So many post-war “heroes” defined masculinity so narrowly–and dangerously; Mike Hammer, James Bond…and yes, reading The Bell in the Fog put me in mind of post-war crime fiction.)

I am kind of working on a long essay–I have been since last spring, actually–about gay men and masculinity, and how societal norms and mores about them impact/twist our lives and makes it harder for us to just, I don’t know, be. I just read a great piece on the taboo of the male body that also plays into the paradigm I’m writing about. The societal reticence about the male body, and male nudity, is almost always centered on the groin area; you could depict a male completely nude as long as there was a fig leaf over the genitals. A lot of Renaissance paintings and sculptures at one point had “modesty leaves” placed over make genitals–and why is that? (Don’t even get me started on women…I’d be here for the rest of the year) Because whenever someone sees a limp penis resting on a pair of testicles they go mad with desire and sexual lust? (Although the way websites for gays drool and get “parched” over revealing pictures of influencers, actors, musicians, and other celebrities has always turned my stomach a little bit. I know, I know, but at the same time there’s something a little ‘junior high locker room” about that I find personally distasteful and almost cringe-y. Your mileage might vary and I am only speaking for myself. I enjoy looking at gorgeous men as much as the next gay man or cishet woman; I post one on here with every entry that isn’t about a book, movie or TV show. I like eye candy! There’s nothing wrong with it! I just feel the way the links and emails and so forth are shared, and the language used, is kind of juvenile and pandering and Tiger Beat-esque.)

You see how reading can influence my work? Lev’s got me thinking about writing queer historicals again–not that I was ever not going to write Chlorine, and I am hoping to get that done this summer or fall, finally–but the next book I am writing is Never Kiss a Stranger, which is also kind of a historical, since it is set in New Orleans in the summer of 1994. (An excerpt from it will be published in an upcoming anthology, which is very exciting for me. I also sold an excerpt from Chlorine recently also as a short story, so guess what, Constant Reader? You’ll be able to get a preview of both books soon! How fucking fun is that?) I often think of all the things I want to write–books, essays, short stories–and get overwhelmed because I know I’ll never get to them all before I expire. It doesn’t look like I will ever be able to retire now (fuck you again, MAGA, now and forever and ever, amen), so it really is going to be about managing my energy, being selfish, and being able to continue to write in my free time. It’s also going to make doing research no easier. Sigh. I am starting to resent all the volunteer time I’ve done over the last twenty years or so–not for Saints and Sinners, but pretty much everything else. I used to think I was making a difference, not only in the world but in various writing communities, but the truth is I wasn’t.

I’ve always wanted to make a difference in the world, and the reality is I should have realized that difference I could make would be best served from my writing, not from anything else. I think that comes from a lifetime of never taking myself seriously because no one else ever did. I did learn things about myself, the community, and other people from the volunteering; so that was something gained, and while I hardly consider myself to be a “sage” or even a “community elder” 2, I have been around a long time. I always thought I got started in publishing way too late, but the number of people who published their first novel before forty isn’t that long, actually. But that also means I’ve been doing this now for almost thirty years (I started writing for a queer paper in Minneapolis in 1996, and my how things have changed over the years. I also never really had any desire to be famous; sure, when I was a kid I fantasized about being a movie star or a singer (alas, couldn’t act or sing), but writing was what I always wanted to do, hungered to do, and basically that desire subsumed every other ambition or fantasy. I also never wanted to be a celebrity author, or have the kind of success others have. All I ever wanted was to just write and make a living from that. I don’t need to be rich; I’ve never needed that. I’d prefer to be comfortable, and never have to worry about bills and things.

But the thing with money and success is most people never think they have enough, isn’t it?

Look at Space Nazi, for example. Isn’t he about the right age to be a boy from Brazil?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will chat at you again soon, most likely tomorrow morning.

  1. I saw a meme on-line that pointed out how dated Moonraker was–since it’s about a billionaire who moves to England and gets involved in the government with an ulterior motive… ↩︎
  2. I can’t deny I am old, so therefore it stands to reason I am, in fact, an elder. But I don’t think I’m a sage at all. ↩︎