Tag: Life

I Don’t See Me in Your Eyes Anymore

And now it’s Thursday.

Despite waking up multiple times during the night and never falling into a deep sleep, I wasn’t as tired when I got home last night. I’d picked up some packages at the post office (coffee…lots of coffee, and the new Lev AC Rosen novel, Rough Pages. It’s a gorgeous cover, too. Once I got home I just glared at the new but not completely assembled desk chair and decide not to ruin a decent mood on it, unpacked the boxes, took out the trash, did the dishes and the laundry (!!!!) and wrote over a thousand words on the book. I also managed to mark up Mississippi River Mischief, and copy the highlighted information from Jackson Square Jazz into a notebook. Not too shabby for a Wednesday night, wouldn’t you say? Tonight I am having dinner with a friend, and I got a message from another writer who’s in town, who I am definitely hoping to see. Look at me, being sociable and not even thinking twice about either. Who am I? This is actually kind of nice. And yesterday at work was a nice day, as well. I hope to get Chapter Seven finished tomorrow evening, and maybe even get Chapter Eight going over the weekend, too. I want to go to the gym this weekend, and start trying to be more regular with that; I can go on nights when I don’t plan to write.

I do have to come into the office tomorrow, not my usual Friday; we have a department meeting and then my team meeting and a benefits seminar (meeting). I also have an eye appointment on Saturday in Metairie (better make sure my shots are up to date, just kidding), so I have a lot of stuff to navigate over the next few days and the weekend, don’t I? I should be able to squeeze some writing in, too, as well as all my errands. It’s crazy for me to have all this going on; I can go months without going out of the house to be sociable. My natural tendency is always to stay home; I’ve always said that it’s a good thing I have a day job so I have to leave the house at least four days a week now, otherwise I never would other than make groceries and so on. Good thing LSU is off this weekend and the Saints play Monday night.

We’re supposed to get rain this weekend, and that system down by the Yucatan (same place Helene started) still isn’t doing much, but could form but will most likely head over to Florida. I am still stunned by the destruction wrought by Helene, as pictures and news and updates come from the communities up in the Appalachians along and near the Tennessee-North Carolina border. It sounds like the estimate to get running water again in Asheville is not until next year. That’s way worse than Katrina; and while more people were killed by Katrina than Helene, I think the devastation is on par with Katrina, if not worse. It’s horrifying to think this could happen more often, which is sadly more likely, and imagine the same scenario with rain and wind and so forth heading to Birmingham or Nashville (or both, really), or up the river to Memphis. 20-30 inches of rain on the Mississippi River would be catastrophic; 1927 level flooding. My heart is with everyone affected by Helene, and I wish there was more that I could do to help.

I woke up several times during the night again, but woke up feeling fine again this morning. Today is going to be a slower day at the office, but I’m pretty much all caught up on everything. I do have something new to do while my boss is in England for the next two weeks, but I’m sure it’s something I can handle. I also made a to-do list for the weekend last night, and hopefully I can stick to it and keep that momentum going forward. Lists are very necessary for me because I don’t remember anything anymore, but I’m not going to pretend like I had a great memory. I did used to have one, but I started making lists when I was in my thirties because…I was forgetting things. I also used to have a great memory for trivia (I always killed at both Trivial Pursuit and Jeopardy), but even that’s iffy anymore. (I also don’t know much trivia from this century because I gradually stopped paying attention to things like pop culture.) There’s nothing wrong with that, either. Compiling the Scotty Bible has been very illuminating–I’d forgotten a lot about the plots of the books over the years; hell, I had trouble remembering things from Mississippi River Mischief and it just came out last year.

Overall, I am rather pleased with myself. The ship seems to have finally righted itself after many years of disorganized chaos. Of course that probably means more chaos is on its way; that’s just the way things go. Life is just a long list of chaos, anyway. Trying to make sense of the chaos or trying to control it is a fool’s errand; when you’re in the midst of bad chaos, you’re just trying to survive and get through it, but it never really ends. Chaos can change you–you may not even know how you’ve changed. I’ve also come to accept that my biggest delusion is thinking I’m self-aware…I so am not.

I Overlooked an Orchid

Wednesday and we’ve almost made it over the hump preparatory to sliding into the weekend. I was fatigued last night after I got home from work, so didn’t do a whole lot of anything. I picked up my new desk chair from Office Depot, than got really irritated trying to assemble it and gave up for the night. (I also realized I didn’t take my medications yesterday morning when I found them in my backpack, because of course I forgot to take them.) It’s also really amazing that I can tell that I haven’t taken anxiety medication. I didn’t want to watch the debate last night because I despise the Couchfucker so much I can’t even stand the sound of his voice. It’s been nice shielding myself from the election and all the insanity, dabbling in whenever I feel I can stand it (and I never can, for very long; can we sue the legacy media for malpractice?). How anxious and stressed about the election would I be were I not on these marvelous new medications? I don’t even want to think about it, honestly. Paul didn’t get home until after I went to bed–board meeting–and so I didn’t do a lot of anything last night other than play with Sparky and fall asleep in my easy chair–which was interesting, because I woke up several times during the night but feel strangely rested this morning? My new shoes will arrive tomorrow, and some other things I ordered will be arriving over the next few days (including the new Lev Rosen!!!) Such an exciting life, isn’t it?

But tonight when I get home from work I hope to get going on the next chapter of the Scotty, and maybe start marking up those last two Scotty books for the Bible. I’m almost done with it; three more books to add to it, and then I just need to do the synopses of each book and it’ll be finished. I want to release a Scotty every year until the series runs out of steam; I know there are going to be at least two more beyond this one.

The dockworkers in New Orleans are part of the bigger strike. When I was driving home from work the other night and stopped at the grocery store, on my way home I had to drive past their headquarters (corner of Louisiana and Tchoupitoulas) and they were out in force; the street was clogged with parked cars and dockworkers walking to the building. Sigh. Prepare for the cost of bananas and coffee to skyrocket. New Orleans used to be the country’s biggest port; 60% of imports and exports came through the port of New Orleans. It’s not that huge of a port in the overall scheme of things now, but it’s still an important one, which is why New Orleans has to exist. Losing New Orleans to a hurricane and not rebuilding would close the entire Mississippi River waterways to shipping. New Orleans is the city that has to be. I don’t know why that’s so hard for people to understand, but I for one will never forget nor forgive the Republican Party for trying so hard to not help the city rebuild after Katrina–or some of the things the trash had to say, including the only Speaker of the House to go to jail for raping children, Dennis Hastert.1

I do feel pretty good this morning; surprisingly, given the off-and-on sleep I had last night. The one nice thing about it was I did discover that Sparky does indeed sleep at the foot of the bed, down near our feet and in between mine and Paul’s. That’s also the spot on the bed where he sleeps if he gets in the bed during the daytime, so I have to assume that, in his kitty brain, is his spot. He does have his own peculiarities, as do all cats, and he certainly loves to ride on my shoulders. Just mine–not Paul’s.

So, tonight I hope to have energy when I get home. I am going to run by the post office on the way home tonight–and once I get home, I need to do a load of laundry and another sink full of dishes, and hopefully write for a bit and/or read; we also have some shows to catch up on, and I believe a new Agatha All Along drops today? I also should do some picking up and cleaning around the house, too–the old “let it go until the weekend” mentality needs to be broken once and for all. I’m usually not tired when I get home from work–yesterday was an outlier–and so I need to play with Sparky a little bit but he needs to wait for cuddle time until I have gotten some things done. Heavy sigh. I also have to go out to Metairie Saturday morning for an eye appointment; wish me luck, and I’ll probably hit a fast food drive thru on my way home.

Yikes, what a bore I am today! And that’s a lovely segue into heading into the spice mines for the rest of the day. May your day be special and bright, Constant Reader., and I’ll be back with another exciting dose of Gregalicious at some point!

  1. Never forget, they were garbage LONG before Trump. He’s simply the end result of their rotted souls and desire for power at any cost–and with our short attention span as a country, it’s easy to bemoan Trump and MAGA as the “decline” of the GOP, but the rise of a “populist” Fascist was the inevitable result of everything they started with Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. They were the people who laughed about AIDS killing the right people, so why should we fund research or a cure or a preventative? Let them die, let them die, let them die! If the only candidates to vote for were Republicans, I wouldn’t vote. ↩︎

Ruby Baby

And Saturday morning has rolled around again, and it’s a lovely morning here in the Lost Apartment. The LSU game tonight is being televised (SEC Network) so I can flip back and forth between LSU and the Georgia-Alabama game. There aren’t many games on today that I feel the need to watch or even follow, but I can have the games on while I do other things. Yesterday I ended up taking the day off–I didn’t know how long I’d be out with the errands so I just bit the bullet and took a personal day. It ended up being a lovely day; the weather was very spectacular; in the heat of the summer it’s easy to forget how gorgeous it is here the rest of the year. After the errands were done, I finished reading Jordan Harper’s superb Everybody Knows (more on that later), cleaned up the house some, and had a rather nice day at home with Sparky. I think for the weekend I am going to reread two rather short horror novels to get in the mood for Halloween Horror Month, and the first read of that month will be Gabino Iglesias’ House of Rain and Bone.

We started watching Grotesquerie last night, and it’s really superb. Niecy Nash-Betts is a fantastic actress with incredible range, and this part is perfect for her. The show is very creepy and reminiscent in some ways of the classic Seven, from the 1990’s with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman (which is also my favorite Gwyneth Paltrow film), and we were sucked in again. I hope the show doesn’t wind up going off the rails, as so many of Murphy’s shows do, but I am looking forward to watching. I’m actually also still thinking about Monsters–isn’t the point of great art to unsettle you, make you see things from a different perspective, and perhaps even change your mind about something? I don’t know that I’m interested in learning any more about the case–not doing any deep dives into the Menendez case, but watching the show did give a fresh perspective on the case, and society and the culture have changed significantly since the murders and the trials.

I do have some errands to run today–I need to get the mail, drop books off at the library sale, wash the car, and make a grocery run. I ordered a new desk chair (my old one was torn to shreds by Skittle…and he’s been gone for fourteen years) because this old one is definitely ready to be retired and sent to the dumpster. I don’t think I am going to cook out this weekend–unless I decide to barbecue that pork tenderloin in the freezer; tenderloin always tastes better when it’s got a bit of burnt crust. Note to self: either set it out to defrost or get something else at the Fresh Market for dinner tomorrow. Of course, I could just get a pizza for tomorrow…decisions, decisions. I also want to make some more progress on the book today and the Scotty Bible; I need to mark pages in the last two Scotty books, and I am also trying to decide how this current one works out (I did solve problems I was having with two other works-in-progress, Muscles and Chlorine; reading good writers always gives me inspiration for my own; thanks, Jordan!). The Saints play the Dirty Birds tomorrow, and I’ll probably do a grocery run tomorrow, too. I also want to get caught on some blog posts that have been in drafts for a while, and I’ve not done a Substack in quite a while–you can’t build an audience (I blocked a right-winger yesterday who started following me; no fucking thanks, treasonous scum) without posting.

And there’s always, always, cleaning to do.

But…truth be told, I don’t feel anxious or stressed about anything. That’s actually kind of lovely, you know? I also want to watch Saturday Night Live tonight–at least the cold open, I can always stream it tomorrow–but not sure if I want to stay up that late. I stayed up later than I intended to last night, which was fine, but I managed to get up at eight anyway (thanks to Sparky) and I feel good today. I need some more coffee and some breakfast, and to get cleaned up, but I kind of want to get the kitchen and so forth under control before I run my errands before coming home to watch games and do things. I had the Eras tour on yesterday while I read and cleaned, and it really is very excellent; reminding me again of what a force of talented creativity Taylor Swift is–and the way those massive crowds react to her is really something to see, the joy on the faces of people actually there as they dance and sing along with her as she puts on a helluva show. (I still wish she’d done “Red,” but her choices from the Red album were pretty good ones, and the ten-minute version of “All Too Well” certainly belongs on the set list.) So, of course MAGA has targeted her–they want to kill all joy. Period. The Joy Killers is what we should be calling them.

And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close so I can get more coffee and have breakfast. Have a spectacular Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back for sure.

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Trouble in Paradise

Work at home Friday (gotta get down it’s Friday) and I slept a little later than I thought I would; Sparky didn’t even try to wake me up at the usual time (how does he know?) but there you have it. I feel good and rested this morning, and I have errands to run this morning before my work-at-home chores this afternoon. I have to take Paul to some appointments and since I’m already out, might as well run my own while I’m at it, right? I am going to get a new desk chair today; this one is incredibly old–I bought it when we moved back in here after Katrina from the carriage house–and Skittle is the one who ripped it to shreds, and he’s been gone since 2010, so yeah, I am overdue for a new one. It always sinks, too, so I sit too low at the computer.

I hope everyone still in Helene’s path are sheltering safely, and those over whom it has already passed are okay. She’s turned out to be quite the bitch. I worry about the flooding, which looks to be horrific. Although all this rain water and swollen flooding rivers will help deter this year’s salt intrusion up the river, which isn’t a bad thing.

I had a pretty decent day, but by the time I got home from work last night I was feeling a little brain fatigue. I worked a bit on the Scotty Bible last night (got Garden District Gothic entered, leaving only a few left to go, including Jackson Square Jazz), and went ahead and rewatched the first two episodes of Monsters, and within the context of the rest of the series, they aren’t as bad as I originally thought they were. I’m still not sure whose perspective that first episode was supposed to be from, but I think it’s the American public’s, and the second was the cops’. It is really interesting how much thinking I’ve done about this show, and there’s some interesting commentary, methinks, that I should be able to write and talk about. I want to start watching Grotesquerie tonight (love me some Niecy Nash-Betts) after Paul gets home, and I also want to get some cleaning done today. I have to launder the bed linens, and there’s still a sink filled with dishes to wash. Heavy sigh. But I was thinking last night I might put the film of the Eras tour on again while I am working around the house today; I do love me some Taylor Swift, and I was thinking I am not as familiar with her newer stuff as I am her older stuff (which I still love and has never gotten old to me), and I enjoyed the concert film, so why not watch it again?

The LSU game tomorrow night is being broadcast on the SEC Network, so I can watch it if I so desire, but it’s also on at the same time as Georgia-Alabama, which is what I will probably end up watching. The Saints game is at noon on Sunday, and we’re playing the hated Falcons, so I am going to have to plan my Sunday around that. I am not sure of the college football schedule for tomorrow, but I should try to do any remaining errands tomorrow morning before the games start. A quick glance over the schedule really doesn’t show anything I absolutely must watch, so I am hopeful I won’t go into a football coma and get sucked into watching games I don’t care about all day. Que sera, sera.

I am going to be taking Jordan Harper’s Everybody Knows with me on this morning’s Paul’s appointments tour of the city, and I also hope to finish reading it this weekend before diving into my October Horror reading, starting with a reread of We Have Always Lived in the Castle and Gabino Iglesias’ new book. I’d like to get through several horror novels this coming month, but I also am not sure how that would look. I am going to have to go up to Kentucky later in the month–LSU’s bye weekend is looking pretty good for that trip–and I should be able to get a lot of reading done while I am up there. Also, I can listen to books in the car. I am probably going to meet Dad in Alabama for the weekend weekend after next (the Mississippi game), and then go up to Kentucky a week or so later for a longer visit. It’ll be cold up there (of course), but it’s been a hot minute so I’ll probably drive up on a Saturday and back on Sunday.

And on that note, I am bringing this to a close so I can get cleaned up and do some other things this morning. Have a lovely Friday, and please please please stay safe if you’re in the path of Helene.

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I See The Want To In Your Eyes

Ah, Thursday and my last day at the office for this week. Huzzah?

Yesterday was a good day at work. I managed to get caught up on all my paperwork and admin stuff (just in time to get trained for some more new duties, woo-hoo!) before getting the mail on my way home. I also managed to finish Chapter Six (it’s terrible, but that’s what future drafts are for) before repairing to my easy chair for Sparky cuddle time. He was especially sweet last night; he even went and cuddled up to Paul on the couch on his own, which was delightful for Paul. Our cats have always been more Paul’s pet than mine (not that I didn’t love them), so having me be Sparky’s primary parent has been a bit weird for us. But when I woke up in the middle of the night, he was curled up at the foot of the bed between my feet and Paul’s–so he’s starting to sleep in the bed, too. Progress! The problem, of course, is that we got Sparky right before my surgery, so I was stuck in my easy chair for several weeks while Paul was gone all the time because of work…so Sparky got used to me. It’s also kind of hard to believe that the one-year anniversary of the surgery is coming up. Last fall was rough for me, wasn’t it? LOL. I went to Bouchercon for Labor Day, came home to oral surgery, and once that was all taken care of I had my other surgery.

2023 was quite a year.

Helene is battering Florida today, should make landfall this evening, so stay safe, my Florida peeps. This storm is large enough to effect everyone in the state–Miami is getting strong winds already, and they aren’t even in the cone–and it looks like it’s going to be even rougher the further inland and north it goes. Looking at the map, even Kentucky is going to get slammed with about 2-4 inches of rain, which I know is a lot for a place that doesn’t really get flooding rains regularly. Everyone in the path, please be careful and I hope you’re prepared for it.

We watched this week’s episodes of Bad Monkey, English Teacher, and Agatha All Along, all of which we are thoroughly enjoying, and I think we’re going to start Grotesquerie and American Sports Story tonight. I don’t have to go into the office tomorrow, which is a lovely thought, and then it’s the weekend. Woo-hoo! I want to get to work on Chapter Seven, and I also want to finish a couple of essays. I still want to rewatch the first episode of Monsters before I write about the show (it truly deserves its own entry), and I also would like to get some of my other essays completed this weekend. I think I’ll try to make a to-do list at work between clients this morning.

I was realizing last night that my life seems so weird to me now because I was on a serious treadmill for well over a decade and now I am no longer on a treadmill with an inbox full of emails every morning needing to be answered and books and stories to write and volunteering on top of my day job and that I was also editing anywhere from fourteen to thirty novels a year. Editing was the first thing I cut loose to try to get myself more rest and free time, but the last almost but not quite two years has been very rough for and on me, and also made me realize that giving up on the volunteer work was the smartest thing I could have ever done for myself; there is no way I could have handled everything since January 2023 on while still trying to get the volunteer work done, too–so that was the right decision. Right now, I am using the free time to acclimate and write and clean and organize and read and to relax, which is very lovely and nice.

It’s also super lovely to not worry about making sure I answer all my emails within 24 hours of receiving them, either.

Oh! And in another great and delightful development this week, I solved the primary problem with another thing I am working on and am delighted and excited to get back to it. Yay! I also got some thrilling (for me) news from Paul last night re: the Festivals, which is going to be awesome.

Louisiana politicians continue to prove they are raw sewage, and will always try to one-up each other: “Oh, Senator Kennedy went all Klan Master on someone at a Senate hearing? HOLD MY MOONSHINE!” Clay Higgins continues to embarrass the state and his constituents, and it’s really amazing how the quality of national politicians from the state of Louisiana has declined since the rise of the Tea Party and the horror of the country electing a biracial president two elections in a row. Louisiana used to have people like Hale Boggs, Russell Long, and Mary Landrieu on the national stage–now we have garbage like Kennedy and Cassidy and Higgins;1 who is probably more racist than David Duke. We also can lay claim to disgusting piece of shit Steve Scalise, a power-hungry hateful bigot whose only god is power and money. I’m not sure what happened to the Democratic Party in Louisiana, but it’s been pretty ineffectual for quite some time. Louisiana has always been a banana republic under one-party rule, but there are still Democrats in Louisiana and the Project 2025 takeover of the state has been unopposed for the most part. Part of is the national party’s total disinterest in red states to the point they’ve written them off completely. We do get some decent candidates in races, but without money or active boots-on-the-ground work, we will continue our slide into a third-world country (we’ve always joked about the state being just that, but now it’s not a joke anymore). Alas, I don’t have the energy or time to do much about any of this, and so that’s why I don’t complain about the situation more. But on the other hand, if I can bring attention to what’s going on in Louisiana to my small audience, that is something, isn’t it? Utilize my own gifts and focus on writing about situations that concern me? Well, I can try but I make no promises. (For the record, I love when I post something on social media about something going on here that’s horrible and then people come shrieking in to scream about how horrible it is here…um, thanks I HADN’T NOTICED)

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and please stay safe all those in the path of Helene.

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  1. And Moses himself, the false prophet Mike Johnson, who is no Christian. ↩︎

The Grand Tour

Another Wednesday Pay-the-Bills day has rolled around, and I woke up relatively early this morning. I’d been wondering what time Sparky gets into the bed with me every morning, and now I know. I woke up at five thirty for some reason that remains a mystery to me, but I did, opened my eyes and looked at my alarm to see the time. While I was doing that Sparky materialized from wherever he sleeps at night, climbed up into the bed, and curled up into a cat puddle by my feet. He didn’t bother me at all until the alarm started going off–and even then, he mostly was just hitting me on the top of my head with a paw–no claws out this time. Of course, the first thing I did once I got downstairs and made coffee was check the hurricane path for Helene; she’s shifting even further east since yesterday, so maybe the panhandle won’t got clobbered as bad as it was looking yesterday. It looks now like the path is going into the bend of Florida’s Gulf side, and heading north through Georgia from there. Stay safe, everyone. It looks like it will hit tomorrow.

I got home later than usual last night, which was okay, I guess. Paul didn’t get home until late, either; so I wrote for a while, and did clean-up duty around the kitchen. It looks much better down here this morning, and maybe tonight I can do some more when I get home. I mostly cleaned and did dishes once I finished writing–Chapter 6 is actually kind of a bitch to write, but it’s coming along nicely–and went to bed shortly after Paul got home. I also slept extremely well last night; looks like we may be back to the “more rested the later in the week it gets” weirdness from before. (I’ve lost track of time again because everything has been so nuts and crazy–between the craziness of the most bizarre election cycle in US History, a hurricane, and the craziness of everything else, and yes, I am really tired of living through interesting times, to be honest, thank you for asking.) It does seem like the news is mostly the nonsensical latest madness to come from the other side, and just like that, we’re back to the sycophantic mainstream media letting the right determine the news coverage with their bizarre and weird antics. I’m glad I’ve blocked the primary offenders, and I will never forgive them for this election cycle news coverage, or go back to them as they continue to lose relevance. Good riddance to bad rubbish, is all I have to say.

I’m kind of excited about this weekend. There are great games to watch Saturday, climaxing with Georgia at Alabama, but LSU is playing South Alabama and it may not even be televised, which means I can get shit done around the house rather than settling into my chair waiting for the LSU game all day (it’s a night game in Tiger Stadium, natch). I think Saturday I’ll get my car washed and make a grocery run–it can wait till the weekend; I can make little stops to get things needed until Saturday morning. So I am hoping to get some good writing work done, as well as some good work organizing the apartment and cleaning things up and clearing things out. I’ve made some great progress this year–most of the boxes are down from on top of the cabinets, and now I need to start working on the attic, which might be a fun thing to start this weekend, one box at a time.

It’s nice being so awake and functional on a Wednesday morning, in all honesty. Yesterday I was definitely groggy when I got up, and I don’t think my brain was truly operational until around ten, most likely. I doubt that tomorrow morning I am going to wake up before the alarm, but stranger things have happened. I hope to be able to not only write this evening but also to read for a little while. I think I also want to watch the first episode of Monsters, now that I know every episode was from a different character’s perspective on the case, what happened, what happened before, and so on. That first episode was so jarringly different from the others, so I want to get another look at it with a new perspective. I think the first episode is actually not from a particular character’s POV, but rather from the general public’s; this is how the story was seen by most people. Yes, this show has really gotten into my head, and has made me reconsider some of the things I remembered and my point of view–which was primarily shaped by Dominick Dunne’s1 reporting…and Dunne himself is someone I’d like to revisit and think about. (When I originally read The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, I thought it was a fictional account of the Reynolds murder but it was the Woodward case–also a topic Truman Capote certainly talked about, viciously)

Interestingly enough, I had an experience this morning on social media that wasn’t a surprise, but I don’t understand why–I’ll never understand why, to be honest–people from my past think it’s okay, when I’ve not interacted with you at all in the last forty years, to suddenly pop up and pop off in a horribly nasty way about the right to choose…particularly coming from someone who never told girls he had herpes (and other STI’s), and loved to get girls so wasted that he could fuck them while they were barely conscious. Yes, I have no doubt that you’re a pathetic MAGA freak now–because if you don’t believe women are human beings, and you remember all the shit you pulled in college, the only way you can justify that shitty conduct is by blaming everyone else for your entitled male bullshit behavior…and I hope you don’t have any daughters.

That’s part of the reason I despise Justice Cavanaugh so much; watching and listening to his testimony was a one-way ticket back into the past of my college days, and I could easily picture the vast majority of my fraternity2 brothers being grilled by Senator Harris and having to resort to frustrated tears because boys will be boys goddamnit!!!!

Yeah, I don’t think I’ll be reexamining college with the same distance and understanding I have been trying to bring to the other dark times in my past any time soon.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Pay-the-Bills Day, Constant Reader, and I may be back later.

  1. He was definitely one of my favorite writers; sometimes his columns would be the only thing in Vanity Fair I read in that particular month. I also loved the novels. ↩︎
  2. A tale for another time, for sure. ↩︎

The Streak

Tuesday morning and staring down a brand new day; the week is passing every so slowly but that’s fine, you know. I slept really well last night, but was kind of slow to waking up this morning. The coffee is going down pretty well so far, and I do feel rested this morning; much more awake than yesterday, but not lively as of yet. Yesterday was a nice day, if a very busy one at the office; I suspect that is going to be the case again today. I think I’ll just come straight home from work tonight. I didn’t do much of anything when I got home from work yesterday, other than finish watching Monsters before going to bed relatively early. The kitchen is a mess and disaster area, so I need to get that taken care of tonight when I get home; tomorrow I can do the mail and the grocery store if I need to. Fascinating, right?

I did manage to do very little writing last night–Chapter Six proving to be a bit more difficult than Five was–but that’s okay; I was tired and not really operating on all cylinders, either. I was horribly lazy, too. When I came downstairs this morning to the kitchen I was horrified that I left it like that overnight, knowing I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it until after work tonight. The sink has dirty dishes and there’s stuff all over my counters. I didn’t even make the chicken salad, which I will absolutely have to do tonight. The refrigerator also needs to be organized. Sigh. And I’m sure there’s another load of laundry already, too. Heavy heaving sigh. This is why I need to get this shit completely done on the weekends.

I also didn’t do my daily German lesson yesterday, either, which is a total shame because I was on a rather long streak with it. Some of it is coming back to me, which makes the lessons somewhat easier; I remember a lot of vocabulary words–or they come back at least when I see them on the screen. Our plan is to go to Amsterdam and Germany at some point; I’d rather like to see Berlin and the German Museum where the stolen head of Queen Nefertiti–which belongs in Egypt–is currently housed. I don’t want to be fluent, but at least be able to speak somewhat coherently to the locals. So, definitely have to do it tonight, for sure.

I also discovered something chilling about my last name yesterday–I may have been aware but my mind had forgotten–but the Nazi Master Race theory? Die herrenvolk. Yikes. I’ve always assumed herren meant men–it’s on every men’s room door in Germany, Austria and Switzerland–but it also means lord…as well as master. Double yikes. It was definitely unsettling to be slapped in the face with a reminder (if I knew it once) of what herrenvolk means….triple yikes and gross.

I also didn’t get to read last night. I managed about six or seven hundred words written on the book, and Sparky really wanted me in my easy chair–he’s always super needy on Mondays after having us both home all weekend, and was climbing me while I fed him–so I obliged. He’s such a sweet baby, and he was in bed with me again this morning when I hit snooze for the first time. He’s not as docile as Scooter, and isn’t nearly as manipulative as Skittle was, but he’s a sweet baby doofus who’s gradually getting more calm than he was when we first got him. And I love how he’s always waiting at the door when I get home–he hears the gate close. Paul says he’ll be upstairs asleep on the bed and will suddenly pop up, jump down and run down the stairs…and he knows it means I’ll be coming through the front door in a moment or two. He still likes to ride on my shoulders, too.

It does look as if that tropical system off the Yucatan is going to form and head for the Florida panhandle, as there’s a cold front coming in from Texas to Louisiana which will push it that direction–which of course is always subject to change right up until the eye wall comes ashore. It’s projected to be arriving sometime Thursday afternoon. I wish everyone on the panhandle and in the path of said storm luck and a speedy recovery from the destruction, which will be minimal, fingers crossed.

I enjoyed Monsters, and so did Paul. He doesn’t really remember the Menendez case as well as I do–of course, back then I was a potential crime writer, so all big crimes interested me for a while until there was so much coverage I got sick of the cases. I honestly don’t remember the incest stuff, which apparently the real brothers are really bothered by; but I also had that sense when it was going on from somewhere, that there was incest beyond the paternal molestation and rape, and according to the show, Erik testified to molesting his brother with a toothbrush? One of the final episodes is more focused on Dominick Dunne, and frankly, I’d love to see a series where Nathan Lane plays Dunne; he deserves an Emmy for that episode alone. I’m going to think about the show a bit more before writing about it, of course–it needs digesting–but the acting was top notch, as almost always in a Murphy series; the actors playing the leads are very impressive…and will probably be seen in a lot of Murphy shows as he likes to work with the same people over and over again.

And on that note, I’m heading into the spice mines. I do have a ZOOM meeting tonight at 6, and will be trying to clean the kitchen before that gets started. I may be back later, I’m never really sure how that goes, you know? If not, I will see you on the morrow, Constant Reader.

Screenshot

Amazing Grace

Wednesday and the parades are rolling again tonight. I don’t think I’m ready to deal with this, to be honest. I can’t believe it’s the final weekend of Mardi Gras madness already, can you? I have to run a couple of errands today after leaving work, trying to get it all accomplished and get my ass home while it’s still possible to find a place to park. Much as I don’t want to deal with the errands tonight, tomorrow would be even more difficult as it’s Muses Thursday, and going straight home from work is no guarantee I can park within a mile of the house. Sigh. The pleasure of living inside the box, right?

I was super tired when I got home yesterday, and I never did feel like I was fully awake all day, to be honest. I was finally able to get my night time prescription refilled again, after the first pill bottle mysteriously disappeared (all fingers point at Sparky, and it’s probably under the dishwasher or the couch), and so I had to adjust back from one medication (I still had my old night time medication) to the right one again, which would explain why yesterday I never felt like my brain escaped the fog. Today is, in fact, the first day in a long time where I’ve felt mentally alert again, which is great. It’s terrible when you’re not on your game, and you aren’t sure why; now that I am in my sixties mental things are much more alarming than they used to be–and some memories I’ve forgotten are so forgotten even when I am reminded, in great detail, I don’t remember anything about it. That’s disturbing on a very deep level; my mental acuity is something I do worry about as I get older. We don’t have any mental deterioration diseases in the family as far as I can remember–I need to ask Dad about that, along with any other genetic conditions he and Mom might have or know about within the family (we aren’t a family that talks about that sort of thing much; I think it’s mostly because we have so much genetic tendency to faulty wiring in our brains to begin with)–but I think I’d know about it if it was in the immediate family.

Anyway, tonight when I get home from work I need to do some laundry and the dishes. I don’t know if I’ll go out to the corner tonight or not, but all signs point to not. Nyx is the final parade tonight, and as far as I know, Nyx is still a horrific white supremacy krewe (last year my mind was not on Carnival), so I don’t know if I’d want to go to that even if I didn’t have to get up so early in the morning tomorrow. I do need to write about that at some point, don’t I? The great thing about being a crime writer is you never run out of prejudice, bigotry and hate to write about.

It looks like I’ll be going to Alabama to see family and visit Mom’s grave next weekend; Dad is going down for the anniversary of losing her, and I’ll go up and meet him up there for the weekend. It’s just easier, really, for me to go instead of my sister, and I don’t think Dad should do these grave visits without one of us there for him. It’s also kind of for me; it’s just easier mentally and emotionally to focus on Dad’s loss rather than my own. It’s probably not the healthiest way to deal with it, but this is how I generally deal with any kind of personal loss or tragedy in my life: focus on the grief of others. I also suppose that the impending anniversary (today, I think, is the anniversary of her final stroke? It’s all murky to me other than knowing she died on Valentine’s Day) has probably also been working on me subconsciously (subconscious BASTARDS!!!) and could have something to do with the foggy funk I’ve been in lately, in addition to the unfortunate medication change of the last couple of weeks.

I didn’t watch the Grammys the other night, but I did watch the Tracy Chapman/Luke Combs “Fast Car” performance on Youtube, which brought back a lot of memories. “Fast Car” was a very important song in the development of my life and my adulthood; the lyrics of feeling trapped and needing to escape a toxic life situation resonated very deeply with Double Life Gregalicious, and helped start the process of finally merging those two very separate mentally unhealthy existences, which is something else I should blog about–but it was amazing seeing the audience reaction to a middle-aged out Black lesbian, and I’m going to have to listen to her album again; it’s been a hot minute. But thanks again, for your voice and your music and your soul, Ms. Chapman.

I did edit a short story–or started editing, at any rate–last night, and it really is amazing what you don’t see when you’re in the midst of writing it and when you come back to it again after a lengthy period of time. “How the hell did I not see how clunky that sentence is?” was constantly running through my mind, and I also realized what the point of the story was–he’s reached his breaking point, and I need to communicate that to the reader more clearly than in the original draft. It felt good, you know, to work on something, and feel like I was doing some good polishing work on it. I really do love writing.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a great Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I will most likely check in again with some more blatant self-promotion later.

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

I did not want to get up this morning. PT was particularly exhausting yesterday after work, and I also made groceries right after. By the time I got into the apartment and had the car unloaded, I…don’t really remember much of the rest of the evening, other than I sat in my chair and watched documentaries about the Eastern Roman Empire on Youtube for most of the rest of the night before I retired to bed early. I feel very rested this morning but still a bit tired, and also like I am running a bit on accessory. I know once the fog in my mind clears I’ll be ready to get this show on the road, but right now all my body wants to do is go back to bed and climb back into the blanket cocoon. Today is going to bounce around between 48 and 55 degrees, with the potential for wind and rain all day. Sounds like the kind of day when you’re very grateful to get back into the house after work, doesn’t it? It’s hard to believe it’s only Tuesday.

I know I will be very grateful to go back to bed tonight and go back to sleep. Clearly, I need more coffee.

I ordered a toy for Sparky that comes on a stretchy string and you hang from the doorframe, and he’s been playing with it almost incessantly since I hung it up. Given he bored very quickly of every other toy we’ve gotten him, I now know the answer: a hanging toy. He’s been trying to get the mouse ever since we came downstairs, and he spent hours jumping at it last night (which was cute; he also finally got it down at one point and dragged it into the living room to show me, and then took it upstairs to show Paul; who brought it back down and rehung it for more hours of kitty entertainment). He was also cuddly last night when he wore himself out, and he was cuddly this morning in bed. Could it be all he needed was a hanging toy? He’s also getting so big! He still likes to ride on my shoulders, draped around my neck–I have to let him up there every time I get home from work, and then I have to walk him over to the dangling ceiling fan cords–and wants to go up there every morning, and he rides up there as I walk down the stairs, chirping happily. He still doesn’t meow; like I said, he still just chirps, or some variation of the chirp–he draws it out into a whine sometimes, but that’s really it for cat noises from him so far.

Ah, now the caffeine is starting to jumpstart my engine and I am beginning to feel more awake, more alive, more ready to face this Tuesday before Mardi Gras. Parades begin again tomorrow, and run every day from there till Fat Tuesday. I have to leave work earlier every night the rest of this week, so I can get home before they close the streets and (hopefully) find a place to park within a mile of the house. I did take Monday off, so once I am finished here Thursday I don’t have to go anywhere other than to PT Friday morning and one final grocery run before the car is parked for four days. (Oh, I take that back; I do have PT on Lundi Gras in the morning–hopefully I’ll be able to park coming home from that excursion) and then I only have a three day work-week next week, which will make for a nice break. I hope to get stuff done on all those days at home; I will probably skip Wednesday night parades, go to Muses on Thursday, do the Friday night parades and Iris and Tucks on Saturday before skipping all of Sunday and going out for Orpheus Monday night.

I also felt a little off yesterday, and this morning realized I hadn’t taken my medications yesterday, which is never a good thing. It does make a difference–the absence of a new does of blood pressure and acid reflux and anti-anxiety meds is always noticeable the first time I forget, and extremely noticeable if I miss two consecutive days. I do feel calmer today than I did yesterday, and I was anxious a few times (should have been the tip-off, really) and snapped at other drivers a few times while driving around town. I also grew irritated and impatient with the woman in front of me at the grocery store, who seemed to think the smart way to unload her entire cart onto the belt was one item at a time per hand while trying to decide how she wanted them bagged, I suppose; she was arranging things on the belt and then digging through everything to find the next item to go on the belt properly. It was a very slow process and had I been on my meds yesterday I wouldn’t have been annoyed or irritated–because I would have thought ah, she has anxiety or is OCD or somehow isn’t wired right either rather than letting my own faulty wiring default to impatience. (As I started writing that example is when I realized her brain probably isn’t wired right, either–which I would have thought instead of impatiently scrolling through my phone and resisting the urge to say something snarky. Meds make a difference, seriously.)

And on that note, I am getting another cup of coffee and heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later–you never know.

Wasted on the Way

Thursday and the last day in the office for the week. I am very tired this morning. I slept well but could easily sleep for another few hours or so (interesting that I went from almost non-stop anxiety about insomnia to anxiety about sleeping too much, isn’t it?), but as I slowly and groggily get going this morning, the coffee is definitely hitting the way it is supposed to. Tomorrow morning I have a doctor’s appointment and PT, as well as whatever errands I can get run before the parades start tomorrow night. Gah. I can’t believe it is already parade season, and I didn’t get nearly as much done as I would have liked in the meantime. I did work some more on the story yesterday night after I got home from work and the errands (I picked up the mail) and settled in for a relaxing evening.

For some reason I watched the season premiere of Vanderpump Rules, which is now picking up with the fallout from last season’s “Scandoval,” and I don’t know about continuing to watch. I had stopped watching the show years ago–years before Stassi and Kristen were fired for being racists, and long before Jax met and married that bizarre woman. I came back briefly for the scandal, and watching the aftermath I am just not feeling it, and probably won’t watch more. I do sometimes question my fandom of these reality shows, which generally feature terrible people being terrible, all for the sake of entertainment. I had never really watched The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City before–I had intended to, but then Jen Shah was arrested for massive scale fraud and remained on the show, and that was a bit too much for me (likewise, I stopped watching New Jersey when the Giudices went to jail, and I remain conflicted about Beverly Hills with fraud-adjacent Erica Girardi unapologetically remaing as a member of the cast and even getting, apparently, a redemption arc this season; which I vehemently oppose); I did start watching this most recent season at the urging of friends and yes, I was missing reality drama by not watching; I doubt that I will go back and watch the old seasons, which is something I never really do; why go back and watch old drama that doesn’t matter anymore? Reality shows like these are really like the old prime-time soaps; you can start watching at any time and just jump into the show without having to go back and watch the back stories–which you could never do with the daytime soaps but you could with the night-time.

Well, what do you know? I never finished this before leaving the house this morning so I find myself trying to finish this over my lunch break–and even my lunch is later today than usual, so yeah–been a day. But I feel good, tomorrow morning I have appointments and PT and so forth; before coming home to do work-at-home duties for the rest of the day. I’ve also kind of lost the train of thought I was riffing on before leaving the house this morning, and checking out what I’ve already written here didn’t return me to that particular mindset, so who knows where this is going to wind up going? I hope I have the energy after making groceries on the way home from work today to finish working on my story so I don’t have to worry about that over the weekend. I don’t know how my parade attendance will go this weekend; Paul’s got a lot of work to do and going out there by myself–which I can handle, and have done before–just isn’t as much fun as when I am with Paul, even if we barely speak while we’re out there. And I am not sure how much my stamina is going to hold up, either. We shall see, I suppose.

It’s also supposed to rain all day Saturday and Sunday, which will put a damper on the weekend anyway.

I did also watch the season finale of Percy Jackson and the Olympians last night, and I have to say I really do enjoy the series much more than I did the films. I did read the books a very long time ago–Rick Riordan’s series are the best fantasy novels for kids bar none, fuck all the way off, TERF Queen–so I don’t remember a lot of it, but I thought the series really adapted the books well, and I also appreciated that the cast went with kids rather than teens (or actors in their twenties acting as teens); which made the story make a lot more sense than it would with them in their mid-to-late teens. It’s also such a great concept; I really envy Riordan that idea, seriously. I used to want to do something similar–I still want to write a young adult novel set during the Trojan War–and I’ve had other ideas involving mythology and gods and goddesses, but nothing has ever come to fruition. The best idea I had I am not sure is usable, honestly, but every so often I remember it and think oh, if only…

Ah, well. As it is, I won’t have time to write everything I want to before I die anyway, so there are some things I will never get around to–and as long as it’s taking me to write this damned short story, I may not even wind up writing the things I do think I’ll have the time to get to, of course.

And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later. You never know, and sorry for being so late today.