Tag: Life

(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care

Work at home Friday and hurray for getting to sleep a little late this morning! It’s always lovely to wake up without an alarm; I always somehow feel more rested when I’m not ripped from the depths of slumber by the braying annoyance of an alarm. Next week I start strength physical therapy, which is the final step of my recovery from surgery; I am really hoping to settle into a gym routine once I am done finally with the PT. I also made it through the day without succumbing to sleepiness or exhaustion, which didn’t hit until I got home last night. I did some writing–not much–and some chores around the house, and the apartment isn’t a disaster area this morning, despite the rampage Sparky apparently went on in my desk area sometime while I was gone yesterday. Obviously, at some point today I am going to have to work on cat-proofing my workspace more intently.

Even as I type this he is marauding on the kitchen counter, getting up to no good, and soon I imagine everything on the counters will be on the kitchen floor soon enough before he gets bored and moves on to the living room table. Yes, it’s been a hot minute since we had a kitten who will probably grow into a very mischievous, playful cat.

Paul got home late last night and we finished watching Harlan Coben’s Fool Me Once on Netflix, which we really enjoyed before I went to bed. Paul generally doesn’t go into the office on Fridays, but as the festivals are drawing near I am trying to get used to not seeing him as much as I usually do when it’s not festival-season. This is generally my least favorite part of the year, but it will pass eventually. Before I know it the parades will be rolling down St. Charles Avenue, the throws will be flying, parking will be a nightmare, and I’ll have to start planning out my life more carefully so as to manage driving and chores around the parades.

I have some on-line events tomorrow for the Bold Strokes Book-a-thon, so I’ll have to run my errands today after work-at-home duties are completed I am hoping to have a productive day today and a good weekend; I am also going to try to finish the new Tara Laskowski before I move on to my next read. And as I sit here typing this, Sam the handyman has arrived for work and every time he passes the windows Monsieur Sparky dashes to the windows and watches him…which could explain the mess I came home to last night. Le sigh.

It’s weird because it was almost exactly a year ago that I injured my arm in the first place, and now I am heading into the final stage of recovery. Hard to believe that I’ve been dealing with this for nearly a year, isn’t it? 2023 was not a banner year for me personally, was it? LOL. The anniversary of Mom’s final stroke and her death are also rolling up on me; hopefully at some point Carnival and Valentine’s Day won’t be reminders, or be associated with that loss. Despite my best efforts to be kinder to myself in 2023, I am not so certain I succeeded the way I would have wished when I set that goal. I think i may be achieving that at some point this year. I am certainly doing better, but I still had that mentality last year of “ignore it and push through” rather than actually working and processing through my grief, which isn’t mentally healthy. I need to get past thinking of things as excuses rather than reasons. My mother died, for Christ’s sake, and I was always work through it, don’t give in to it, keep going and that was really not the right move for me. I also know I shifted a lot of my grief into concern for Dad, which was good but probably not healthy? I am glad Dad and I have spent more time together and I’m also glad that I feel closer to Dad than I’ve ever felt before, but I’m also not so sure that makes up for the loss, either. Nothing will really make up for that loss.

I’ve also started showing people the scars from the surgery. They’re almost non-existent, and he put them both into natural creases in my arm so that when I am bending or using the arm in any way, they disappear into the creases. I cannot complain about the medical care I received in any way; Dr. O’Brien was fantastic and did an amazing job on me. The final cost of it all was well over $200,000; (thank you, Humana) which is quite a lot for an outpatient surgery. And really, given that I was still prone to anxiety and not being properly medicated for it before the surgery–the insurance wasn’t as big of an issue as I feared it would be. Can we please get single-payer Medicare for all, please?

And on that note, I am getting a piece of king cake and more coffee and diving into my workday head first. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and who knows? I may be back later.

Stranger things have happened.

Is it just me, or does this guy look a lot like young Tom Cruise?

Cool Magic

Yesterday was a wild one here in New Orleans. We were expecting inclement weather–high winds, possible tornadoes, and heavy rain with a strong chance of flooding. I was already planning on leaving work early–PT was scheduled for 3 pm yesterday–so I was able to leave the office without worry as things started shutting down all over the city. It was raining when I got home and hunkered down inside, and it pretty steadily rained all night. I went to bed after watching three episodes of Fool Me Once on Netflix, which we are really enjoying, while checking the score of the national championship game periodically. I was awakened by loud thunder and pouring rain at some point in the middle of the night, but I was able to easily fall back asleep–it really is so comforting to be buried in blankets and warm and dry while it pours outside, isn’t it? Rain always makes me sleepy. But I wound up sleeping very well and waking up with the alarm this morning (Sparky always climbs up into the bed with me when he thinks it’s time for me to get up and feed him, so I know it’s going to be time to get up soon). We still are having high winds today, but no rain, which is great, and Michigan beat Washington last night for their first national title in 27 years.

Good for you, Michigan.

My PT wound up being rescheduled because of the weather, too, so I have to get up at 5 on Thursday, which isn’t great but I can live with it. I do have a department meeting on Friday morning as well, and I’ll probably go into the office for it. I can do it from home, but I think it would be best for me to head over there and be out of the house in the morning, which will get me going on work-at-home duties and errands and so forth before the three day weekend.

And huzzah for a three day weekend, might I add?

I also started working out the five stories I have on hand that may fit for an anthology call (or two or three) that are upcoming, and one–which is just an idea–actually started coming together in my head yesterday while I watched more episodes of War of the Worlds, which took an interesting and slightly insane turn during the later episodes of the second season while I sat doodling in my journal while relaxing in my chair while rain pattered down outside. It also occurred to me how to fix and finish another one that could easily work as well. I need to put my writer’s cap back on and really start getting things finished and cooking on my computer again, methinks. But I also did some more chores when I got home yesterday, which included dishes and laundry, and this morning I woke up to a relatively clean kitchen (we won’t discuss the floors just yet), which was super great. I also wasn’t sleepy, groggy, or tired, which was also awesome. I may actually make it through the day AND the errands I have to run after work today (mail, groceries). I am definitely going to spend some more time with the new Tara Laskowski tonight when I finally get home from everything, and do some touching up so I stay on top of the chores so I am not coming into the weekend needing to clean the house.

I think it’s about time I started feeling like myself again for the first time in a long time, and it does actually kind of feel good. Last year was a cloud, and I just felt like I was drifting through the year for the most part. 2023 started off terribly, beginning with my injury in January and losing Mom in February; it’s little wonder that I sleep=walked through the year, which I’d been doing pretty consistently for a number of years. The pandemic wore me out, with the changes to the world and the changes to my day job, and things had been kind of my control for quite a few years before that. I kind of feel (probably mistakenly) like I have so control over my life again and am looking at things a lot more clearly than I had in years–which probably has something to do with having the right medications. Up until about 2017 or so, I could deal with the anxiety and concomitant insomnia with just Xanax, but the anxiety was out of control from that point on and was when I should have changed my medications to deal with the real problem rather than the symptoms.

I cannot emphasize enough how important the right medications are for your health and mental well-being.

I really do feel like a new person, or the best Gregalicious I can be, which isn’t quite the same thing. I’ve always tried to be the best version of me that I can–because no one, including me, wants to ever see the worst version of me, take my word for that, okay?–which is all I think anyone can do. I do feel more engaged with my work, and my writing, more so than I have in a while, which kind of felt almost like I was writing on autopilot, which does happen sometimes. It’s also kind of ironic that I did my best work during a time period where I really was hating writing and not giving it my full attention, treating it as an odious chore that had to be done rather than trying to do the best work I could. Maybe not trying did the trick? I don’t know. But what I do know is I need to get back on the horse and start creating again, and perhaps don’t goof off as much going forward.

After all, there’s nothing I can’t do if I want to and set my mind to it.

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 knows with a Gregalicious, does one?

The Message

Monday morning and back to the office blog. I have my final PT for dexterity today, before I take a couple of weeks off before starting the strength PT, which will be the final step of getting recovered from the surgery. It seems like it’s been forever, but the truth is I injured the arm initially almost a year ago–so I have been dealing with this for almost a year, and it will be well over a year by the time I finally get through the recovery. It’s taking me a moment to get used to not wearing a brace, frankly–but god DAMN I am so glad to not have to wear that fucking thing anymore. The weather is supposed to be horrific today–heavy winds and flooding rains–which I am not terribly excited about, in all honesty, since I’ll be out and around in it. But I slept really well last night, and am feeling awake and good this morning so far, so we’ll see how the rest of the day goes, shall we?

I read more of Tara Laskowski’s The Weekend Retreat yesterday morning over my coffee, and it is truly addictive and mesmerizing. I am having the best time reading it, and shouldn’t have an issue spending about an hour or so with it again today. I also did some more filing and organizing and cleaning yesterday, as well as made dinner and some other things for the week. There’s another load of dishes that needs doing tonight when I get home from work and PT and everything else, but if I manage to stay caught up on these things, maybe the three day weekend won’t be as disrupted by needing to clean. I’ve narrowed down the stories I have on hand for the possible anthology submissions, so they’ll require reviewing again in addition to revising and editing. I watched some more War of the Worlds, which is interesting, and then I watched a bit of the Golden Globes before I went to bed–you can tell how much I cared about them by the fact that I couldn’t tell you who won any of them, really. I used to care about awards shows, but I don’t anymore. There are rarely any surprises, and there are so many of them now…by the time the Oscars roll around, it’s relatively easy to figure out who’s going to win most everything.

I can’t believe it’s already Carnival, too (but am loving that it’s also king cake season). Parades will be starting in a few weeks, and the Australian Open, and the figure skating championships, and the Festivals are on deck…Lord. I do get tired just thinking about it, in all honesty. But at least the brace is gone. It’s taking some getting used to–not having it on–and periodically I’ll experience some new sensation in the arm, but that’s also the nerves getting used to not having the brace support anymore. Thank God for the new meds, because I’d be a ball of anxiety by now otherwise.

I also saw the previews for a new show I am rather excited about–Mary & George, which is about George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and his ambitious mother, who essentially groomed her handsome son to charm and seduce King James I (he of the King James Version of the Bible, no less), who preferred the company of men and had male favorites at his court. I’ve been meaning to track down a copy of Antonia Fraser’s biography of him, just to see how she handles the questionable sexuality of England’s first Stuart king, or if she erases or elides it. There were several queer kings of England–Richard I, Edward II, James I, Queen Anne–and I’ve also seen things questioning the sexuality of William III, too. (James was also the son of Mary Queen of Scots.) I can’t think of as many French kings that were queer; of the top of my head I can only think of Henri III and Louis XIV’s brother Phillippe duc d’Orléans, Monsieur. It’s also early and I’m not caffeinated enough, frankly, to face the day or put any more thought into gay French royalty. Anyway, one of the guys from Red White and Royal Blue (Nicholas Galitzine) is playing George Villiers, the handsomest man of his age, and if you remember your Three Musketeers, the British minister who was in love with Anne of Austria, Queen of France.

George got around, apparently.

The seventeenth is also one of my favorite centuries.

And on that note, I should head into the spice mines. We’re going to have some bad weather today–potential hail and tornadoes–as well as heavy rains. Hopefully I’ll be able to get to PT this afternoon and then home safely. Have a great Monday, CR, and I may see you again later.

Goodbye to You

And just like that, the brace is gone! Hallelujah! Not wearing it is going to take some getting used to, but that is something I can live with. I also had my first piece of king cake yesterday, officially marking the opening of Carnival season–and am going to have another this morning, thank you very much. I can’t believe it’s Carnival again already; last year’s was all tied up with Mom going into hospice and dying; I missed the first weekend driving up to Kentucky, and the second driving to Alabama for the funeral. I used to associate Carbival with Whitney Houston dying; she died on Endymion Saturday that year, but I guess now Carnival–and especially Valentine’s Day, will now always have losing Mom as an association. It’ll be rough these first years, I suspect, but gradually it’ll become more of a nice, regular reminder.

My surgeon also moved up my strength therapy, from twelve weeks post to eight weeks post. I have one more dexterity therapy session tomorrow, and then I can sit out until around the 21st or so of this month before I get to start that again. So the recovery is going well, the surgeon is very pleased, and so, frankly, am I. Now that the webbing mesh is off (he removed it) the incisions are so small the scarring is actually going to be minimal, which was an unexpected delight, and the stitches themselves will gradually dissolve. It was so nice to go make groceries and drive without the damned brace, you have no idea, Constant Reader, and going to bed without it was even better. Managing to and from work in addition to the therapy is going to be a bit of a bitch during parade season, but I’ll figure it out somehow. But right now, today, I am going to enjoy the fact that I can type without the inconvenience of the brace–but I also have to pay attention to the arm, and when it gets tired and so forth.

I started reading Tara Laskowski’s The Weekend Retreat, which is quite good and sucks you right in, yesterday and will most likely spend some more time with it today. I worked on filing and organizing and getting the apartment back into shape again for the most part yesterday–dishes and floors and filing, oh my–and there’s a little touching up that needs to be done around here today while I write and read and get things done around here. We also started watching the new Harlan Coben show on Netflix, Fool Me Once, which is also quite engaging, and will probably finish it today. I also watched some more War of the Worlds and an episode of the original Jonny Quest show, which I had started rewatching a long time ago but they didn’t have all the original episodes available. Jonny Quest is one of the first cartoons I can remember watching, and I loved it–the Rick Brant science adventure series reminded me a lot of this show, and is part of the reason I enjoyed it so much. It doesn’t quite hold up in modern times and with modern sensibilities as it did when I was a child with a single digit age, but it was done very well–outside and around the rampant racism that was everywhere in entertainment in the 1960’s. I may rewatch the entire original series so I can review it and assess it here, but the show also pulled me into the world of mysteries and adventure, so there’s always that, too.

I still want to write a series for middle-grade before I die, too.

And this morning’s slice of king cake (and yes, you always leave the knife in the box, unless you’re a heathen) is delicious.

I feel good this morning, which is terrific, and hopefully will last through the morning and the early afternoon. I suppose we’ll watch the Golden Globes until it’s time for me to go to bed so I can get up early and start my work week, but next weekend we have another three day weekend, which is going to be amazing and lovely again. So far, 2024 has gone well, and let’s keep that mentality and energy going, shall we?

And on that note, I’m going to make a second cup of coffee and get going on my day. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later; one never really knows with me, do we?

Stand or Fall

Twelfth Night, and I just added a king cake to my grocery list. Huzzah!

In a moment, I’ll be getting cleaned up and going to see my surgeon to get my stitches removed and hopefully losing the brace for good. After that, I am making a grocery run before returning to the safety of the Lost Apartment for the rest of the weekend. I didn’t ger as much done yesterday as I would have liked; after completing my work-at-home duties yesterday and the laundry I kind of repaired to the easy chair and just kind of sat there watching television until it was time for bed. I was tired from PT yesterday morning, and I kind of needed the rest. I did watch LSU Gymnastics triumph over Ohio State, which was a lovely opening to the season, and then was just kind of a cat bed for the rest of the evening before I finally went to bed. I slept well, too. Paul had an appointment yesterday afternoon in Uptown, and brought home a pizza from The Midway on Freret, and it was probably one of the best pizzas I’ve had in years. A very pleasant surprise treat, as it were. Plus, it’s really nice to be able to eat pizza again. I always forget about the plethora of good places to eat that has developed on Freret Street uptown, past Napoleon; and I really do need to be better about experiencing the city and writing about it. I’m already thinking about the next Scotty, with him and the boys temporarily housed in the Diderot carriage house in the Garden District.

I’m not sure what my plans are for after I get home this morning. I do have a to-do list that I need to work through as well as update, and if I do nothing other than organize and file, well, that will be a huge improvement. I know I’ll be able to start reading the new Tara Laskowski, which is exciting–big fan here–and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to get some writing done as well. Stranger things have happened, after all.

It rained pretty hard yesterday, starting in the afternoon and continuing to just come down like a waterfall through the evening. It was a street flooding kind of rain, which is probably the best way to describe it, and of course, coupled with the cold it made me lethargic. It’s sunny but cold this morning, and soon I’ll have to start getting cleaned up and ready to head out for my appointment. I do feel good and rested this morning and awake, which is always a good sign. I do know I am going to make something in the slow cooker either today or tomorrow; it will depend I suppose on how I feel when I get home from everything and put the groceries away. But the kitchen/workspace definitely needs some work before I do anything this morning. There’s dishes to clean and a dishwasher to empty, and I need to clean out the refrigerator and maybe organize it a little better. Heavy sigh. I never have seemed able to get caught up on everything that needs catching up on, you know? Maybe this weekend will be the time…

You have no idea how badly I want to ditch this brace, Constant Reader.

And on that note, I should start getting ready for the appointment. I may be back later, one never knows, and if not, have a lovely Saturday.

You’ve Got Another Thing Coming

And now it’s Thursday, the last day in the office for me this week, and I somehow made it through the entire week of going into the office without being tired by the end. The jury of course is still out about today–I’ll have to see how I feel at the end of the day, or mid-afternoon, of course–but I am very pleased to be awake and feeling rested this morning. I took it easy when I got home from work yesterday, spending some quality playtime with Sparky and watching some Real Housewives–my God, the Salt Lake City finale was some epic reality television–and couldn’t decide what to read next. I am leaning towards R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface (because I love me some publishing noir about authors behaving badly), but there are others in the running as well (most notably Tara Laskowski’s The Weekend Retreat). Tonight when I get home from work I will decide; I am coming home straight from work again; no need to run errands on the cusp of the weekend. I also need to get back to writing, and the sooner the better. I have high hopes for this weekend because it appears as though I won’t be tired going into the weekend, and the kitchen isn’t nearly as big a mess as it usually is on Thursdays–so if I can get the dishes handled tonight, I’ll be way ahead of things when I get home from PT tomorrow morning. I am seeing Dr. O’Brien at last on Saturday, so I am hoping to kiss the brace goodbye once and for all. LSU Gymnastics also has their first meet on Friday night, which is always fun to follow. The team is really loaded this year, too. GEAUX TIGERS!

I also want to get to the library sale this weekend to donate some books, too. Maybe I can spend some time tonight and tomorrow night pruning out more books. The laundry room is nearly under control again, but there are still even more books that can go.

And I should really started copy-editing Jackson Square Jazz so I can finally get that ebook up and available for readers. I am losing money every day that book isn’t available, and I might be able to run a promo when it becomes available (I am thinking of offering Bourbon Street Blues for free and Jackson Square Jazz for $1.99 for about a month or so). I mean, it makes sense: Scotty turns 21 this year, so I should be promoting the hell out of the Scotty series this year–and should really write another to get out this year, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. I’ve always focused more on writing the books than promoting them; I only have so much bandwidth, and writing/editing generally uses up the megabytes in my brain that have to do with writing/publishing. I’ve also been very shy about promo, too–which was the anxiety bedeviling me. Maybe now that I am on the right medications, that won’t be a problem going forward. It’s already helped me with some aspects of doing public stuff; so maybe my nervous aversion to doing things in public has become a thing of the past? Worth a try, at any rate, right?

I also need to work on the procrastination thing I’ve been dealing with for the majority of my life. Why do I always feel the need to wait until the last minute for everything? Why will I always goof off now instead of doing the things I need to do so I can goof off later? This would always immediately play into my anxiety, and always made my stress levels go off the charts. Was that what drove me to get so much done? Stress and anxiety and the pressure I used to put on myself? Will I be able to get as much done in the future now that the anxiety is medically handled? It does make me a bit worried, but I am sure I’ll get back on that horse when I need to.

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

Athena

Up ungodly early to start off the new year with PT and then off to work. I slept well last night, and feel rested this morning; there was no tangle of blankets this morning, so I wasn’t restless, and I don’t feel very tired this morning, which is good. The other nice thing is now getting up at six tomorrow will feel like I’ve actually slept in some. I feel like I’ve rested enough now, although all the time off from the holidays is going to make going back to work five days a week challenging, to say the least.

Yesterday was a decent day, really. It was a low energy day, for some reason, and while I did get some chores and things done yesterday, I didn’t do much of anything for the day. I did read quite a bit of Danielle Arsenault’s Glory Be, which I am really enjoying, and then settled in to watch the LSU game, which they did finally win in the last minutes, 35-31. I think the offense going into next year is in pretty good shape, but the defense needs a lot of work still. We then watched Michigan rally to beat Alabama, and I watched some of the Washington game before going to bed–and woke up to see the national title game will be between Michigan and Washington. Good for them, and now I have no need whatsoever to watch that game, either.

And it’s a new year, which means all the things I’ve not been paying attention to, or responding to, has to be picked up and taken care of this week–like emails; I definitely need to clean out the inbox. I also am behind on day job in the office duties that I will have to get back on top of this week as well. I need to do some things around here when I get home tonight, too, so I hope I am not terribly tired when I get home the way I was last week when I had to get up early for PT. I will have to get the mail on the way home, and maybe even swing by the grocery store…I don’t know. Tomorrow is also pay day and pay-the-bills day, too. (It always seems a little brutal when the first pay day of the new year is in the first week of January, a brutal reminder that bills never take time off as we start a new year.)

I have finally started feeling more like myself lately, which has been really nice, too. I have felt a little off ever since the surgery, which I suppose is normal. I really don’t think I need the PT anymore, but I don’t see Dr. O’Brien again until this next Saturday morning, so I won’t officially be released from it until then. I am also hoping to be freed from the brace this weekend, fingers crossed and prayers aloft. I don’t really think I need it anymore, but I also don’t want to take it off arbitrarily until I am officially cleared either. The arm seems to be doing better, frankly, which pleases me enormously. Overall, this whole experience wasn’t terrible, other than that first terrifying week after the surgery when I was essentially trapped in my easy chair for eight days before I was finally off the ice machine and could return to my bed for sleeping. That seems like a million years ago now…

It’s also only forty degrees out there this morning, with a predicted high of a mere fifty for the day. Woo-hoo. I haven’t been feeling the cold as much this year, but I’ve also not been going outside a whole lot lately, either. But it’s definitely been helping me sleep at night, and the bed has been feeling super-comfortable lately. I feel as though my sleep is finally under control with the new meds, which is awesome, and I don’t feel as tired and groggy as I used to be before the medication switch. And to think, this could have been the case all along had I had a decent primary care physician at any point in the last eight or so years. But no sense weeping about what should have been or what might have been. It won’t change anything, and the past can never be undone–which is why I spent so much of my life never looking back. But looking back doesn’t mean missing the past or wishing it had been different, either; neither extreme is the best option, really. I’ve been doing more of that since Mom died (almost a year ago), and it hasn’t been bad at all. In some ways, it’s been helpful. My pre-thirties life was kind of miserable and unhappy and unfulfilled, and so I never wanted to remember either the 70s or the 80s. But it doesn’t hurt or hinder the present by looking back without regret, either. For me, it’s been more about “okay, why do I handle things like this instead of like that?” and remembering the root cause of so many of my anxiety-driven neuroses has actually kind of helped unlock the neurosis and freed me from it. I am still, at sixty-two, very much a work in progress.

And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back with you soon, if not later today.

Wake Up My Love

…it’s a new year.

2024, to be exact. LSU plays at eleven this morning, and I’ve let a lot of things slide these last few days. Yesterday was a lazy day; I read for awhile, watched the Saints game (they won!), and then we started watching movies. First up was a gay horror film, Midnight Kiss, which was much better than I expected it to be; followed by The Holdovers, which I also enjoyed; and the evening was capped off with The Exorcist: Believers which was so fucking terrible I cannot imagine how much money they had to throw at Ellen Burstyn to reprise her role of Chris MacNeil. (I mean, the movie seemed to have listened to my observation that any religion that ever gets drawn into a horror story inevitably postulates that Catholicism is real, and therefore the only true Christianity, as it expounded exorcism out and beyond Catholicism into other faiths, which was the only nice thing about the movie.)

Sometimes sequels are nothing more than money grabs that demean the original. Just saying.

Today is going to be mostly about college football with some chores tossed in for good measure. I have early morning physical therapy tomorrow, so won’t be able to see the end of the Washington-Texas game, but I’ll check the score when I rise.

So here we are on the first morning of 2024, and as usual, I am thinking about the new year yawning before me like an open blank book and I want to set some attainable goals for it as well as roll over the ones that didn’t get done last year.

I suppose the first and most important goal for me as far as 2024 is concerned is to continue my physical therapy and recovery from my surgery, and to carry that through to eating better and a regular workout routine of some sort, whether it’s simply stretching, walking, or weight training. I want to stay strong and have energy, and being in better physical condition will help me stay injury-free and healthy. I need to eat better, and I’d like to get down to maybe somewhere between 190 and 200 by the end of this year. I had let this slide for a very long time, and it’s going to be hard to get back into the swing of things again at over sixty, but it can be done.

I’m not going to add “get an agent” for this year, as it’s been a goal for longer than this blog has existed and so making it a goal doesn’t mean it’ll happen or get done. I am going to put “finish designing my website” on this list, though. I’ve not had the best luck with that over the years, and I really didn’t/don’t have the time to do it myself, or teach myself how to do it. I did get started on a simple site, but have completely forgotten everything I learned doing it and will essentially have to start over; and probably won’t finish and will end up forgetting everything I learned all over again. But if I steal some time every Saturday or Sunday morning now that football season is almost over…it could be do-able.

I do want to continue working on myself and becoming a better person overall; a lot of that requires self-reflection as well as remembering the past and situations that triggered future behavioral responses in me and hopefully putting that anxiety-ridden trauma to rest once and for all. The self-work includes better educating myself about the world, and viewing history with a more jaundiced eye–and my eye was already more jaundiced than most.

I also would like to read more, and read more for pleasure rather than quite so analytically. It took me a long time to shake over reading as a reviewer, and the easiest way for me to shake that was switching to reading as an editor–which I have also struggled to stop doing. But I think I am there, at last–and so I want to get back into reading a lot more–especially if all I am doing is scrolling on my phone. I do want to spend less time on social media for sure.

I also want to be better about marketing. My issues with promotion and marketing and public appearances were always anxiety-related, and I have finally learned how to control that…plus the new medications should go a long way to making me loosen up and relax a lot more when it comes to those sorts of things. The panel I stepped in to moderate at the last minute at Bouchercon was actually one of the best experiences I’ve had with and on a panel. I hope that there will be more of those experiences, and I am not going to let myself get worked up into knots before hand anymore.

I’m also letting go of a lot of hard feelings. I don’t know if anyone was actually trying to genuinely damage or hurt me, so most of the pettiness is being let go of; I don’t want anyone like that having space in my head or draining any of my energy anymore. I won’t forget or forgive, of course–I just won’t care anymore.

And I want to continue to push myself and grow as a writer. I think I want to try writing a romance.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Sleigh Bell Rock

Friday morning and I have PT again this morning, before I run a few errands and come home to do my work at home duties for the week. I slept well again last night, and yesterday was another stress and anxiety-free day, which was marvelous. I wish I’d known years ago what medications I really needed, rather than the stuff that just dealt with some of the symptoms but not the actual problem; so those medications didn’t work as well as the ones I am now on. It was also my first week back to work after medical leave, and so it was a bit much, I think; I was exhausted every night when I got home from work and you can tell by how the housework, especially in the kitchen, has slipped out of control–I haven’t had the energy since before the surgery to really do much clean up around here. The dishes have been hardest to keep up with, so I have a load in the dishwasher and another load in the sink. Today is also bed linens laundry day, and there’s other laundry I need to take care of before I can start that project. But I am also getting deep and restful sleep, and whatever that bug was that I had last weekend seems to have finally been taken care of by my immune system–sing hallelujah! I am behind on almost everything, so I have to stay motivated this weekend to get caught up. I have to take the car in for an oil change tomorrow morning, which means shopping on the West Bank and either Five Guys or Sonic for lunch. Yay! Although I have to admit, since the surgery and getting the new teeth, my tastes seem to be changing?

While there is something soothing about a routine and being able to do things without much thought because I do them the same way all the time…but it’s also nice to step out of that comfort zone and do different things. One of the things I’ve noticed is the structure of going back to work has got my eating back on schedule, and I wake up hungry every morning, which is a new development. I’d planned on going to bed early last night so I could take advantage of an extra hour of sleep this morning, but I lost track of time somehow and it was almost eleven before I went to bed. Sunday morning I’ll be a lag-a-bed, since I have to get up for the oil change tomorrow morning. Monday is my next PT, and then next Friday I have an appointment with my surgeon to get the stitches taken care of (and hopefully lose the brace completely) right before a four day weekend. The week between Christmas and New Year’s is generally very slow around the office….and I have to remember to make a red velvet cheesecake for the potluck on Thursday. Sigh.

Paul was late getting home, so I watched the first three episodes of Ultimate Girls’ Trip: RHONY Legacy, and I know these women are awful (Ramona Singer), but they are so entertaining in their obliviousness and delusions that it is fun to watch, all the while knowing that watching them is rewarding them, and encouraging Peacock and Bravo to show us more of them. But I think Ramona is off the board now for the future, and she’s the worst of them (on and off the show). But anyway, it was an enjoyable way to turn off my brain for a few hours while Sparky was using his mutant purring power to relax me while sleeping in my lap. (Sparky’s “everything is a toy” mentality hasn’t helped much with the apartment; things are all over the floor everywhere, and all of my good, favorite pens are now missing. Note to self: buy more good pens and keep them put away.) 

And tonight….the new season of Reacher. I cannot wait.

So, I do feel better. The world is burning down, but I can’t let the state of the world affect me because I have no control over any of that; but I’ve felt so beaten down and defeated and overly stressed now for so long that I’ve allowed the negativity of the world seep into how I look at things in my personal life–looking at them in a negative way rather than a positive way, which is a terrible way to waste away life. There are a shit ton of positives in my life, and how I view my life and everything I have going for me is under my control. Why let the world’s and society’s negativity ruin my life? I have great friends, two jobs that I really love and enjoy, and I am doing the best writing of my life so far. Is it really that difficult to see bad things that might pop up here and there as a challenge to overcome rather than a depressing derailment of everything? Adaptability to change and the strength (mental, emotional, and physical) to overcome obstacles is the best way to handle life, really. I don’t want to waste another minute of life getting depressed or down over things I can’t control, and ducking them (avoidance) isn’t healthy, either–get it over and done with and out of the way instead of pushing it off to deal with later…which just means postponement, and there’s never been a single time in my life when I put off dealing with something and it worked out for the better.

Yes, I am feeling very zen this morning, and that’s not a bad thing, ever.

And on that note, I need to get ready for PT this morning, so I am going to bring this to a close. Have a great Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back later most likely.

Christmas Time Is Coming

Tuesday morning, up early and dark is pressing up against my windows. I slept better last night than I have since Friday night, but woke up out of a deep sleep to go to the bathroom around two in the morning and wasn’t able to get back to it–my body was relaxed completely and resting, but my mind was still working. I feel rested this morning but I don’t know how long that’s going to last…I imagine I am going to run out of steam at some point this afternoon, but I also have to get the mail and make groceries, too. I had also wanted to cook some things for dinner tonight–or to at least have something to take for lunch this week (today is a Lean Cuisine). I feel better, though, this morning than I have in a few days upon waking, so I am taking that as a good sign. It’s been nice having all this out of the office, but it’s kind of weird going back. Outside of unemployment periods, I don’t think I’ve ever not worked for this long since probably high school?

I hope I can remember how to do my job.

It’s also cold this morning–forty-nine degrees, according to my phone–which makes going outside less agreeable and certainly undesirable. I can put the brace on over a jacket, take it off to remove the jacket and put it back on, which makes total sense and I don’t understand why this is something I am initially hesitant to do? The PT went well yesterday and I have the full range of motion back for the elbow; and my fingers are getting more dextrous and ny hand grip stronger. (I kind of felt guilty when he said, ‘yes, keep doing your home exercises because they are working’–because I haven’t been doing them…I told you, I am a terrible patient.) I was exhausted from the PT and from not having slept for two nights, so I wound up not doing much of anything yesterday other than reading deeper into Calypso, Corpses and Cooking by Raquel V. Reyes, which I am enjoying–I really like her character, Miriam–and a likable main character is crucial in a cozy mystery. Nurse. Sparky spent most of the afternoon curled up asleep in my lap, which was comforting and calming and adorable, and then when Paul got home we started watching the Big Vape documentary on Netflix (I think?), which is interesting and got me started thinking about smoking. I smoked from ages 16 to 50, a whopping 34 years, before finally quitting, and frankly, I don’t miss it. I do remember how much i used to actually enjoy smoking, but I’ll never smoke another cigarette in my life. The cultural view on smoking certainly has changed over the course of my life–when I was a kid, you could smoke anywhere and pretty much most people seemed to smoke. My parents did, my grandparents did (not my maternal grandmother; Mom was the only smoker in her family, but pretty much everyone on my dad’s side did), and they used to smoke with the windows up with us in the car. No one thought much about it, of course; despite the surgeon general’s warning about carcinogens getting more and more explicit and fervent as the years passed. I tried smoking in junior high but didn’t inhale, and didn’t much care for it; I tried again the night I graduated from high school and essentially smoked for the next thirty-four years. I still smoked cigarettes when I started writing–which is why Chanse was a smoker and all of his friends were (I did get some pushback from readers about the smoking; a friend who was also a smoker joked that his favorite thing about Murder in the Rue Dauphine was that all the good guys smoked and all the bad people didn’t) but I never really addressed him quitting in the books; I just stopped writing him as a smoker after I quit–and the reason I quit was because Skittle died from cancer. That guilt–that I helped contribute to Skittle’s death–was all it took, even though the cancer he had wasn’t caused from second-hand smoke…just the thought that it could have been a contributing factor was too much for me and I refused to do that to another cat–because by then we were definitely confirmed cat people and it just doesn’t feel like home without a cat in it.

There will be more on Big Vape when we finish watching.

I also am going to be getting back to writing. I signed a contract for a sequel to Death Drop and need to get that finished and out of the way. I wasn’t able to get as much done during this lengthy time off because, well, I had surgery and the recovery–while not as painful as i feared–did drain a lot of my energy, and the enforced rest also made it a little harder to get motivated. I did manage to read more than usual, but the ceiling disaster and repair, the recovery, the physical therapy, and the just now changed medications to deal with my brain chemistry issues was a lot to deal with. I’m also not beating myself up over not getting more done because for fuck’s sake, even as mad as I get at myself for not getting things done…I’m giving myself a break on this. It’s not been an easy year, from beginning to end; but like I always say–if you’re going to have bad things happen, isn’t it best for them to happen all at the same time? That probably sounds insane, but in all honesty–when Paul was attacked and lost his eye? That was the best time for the Christian scum to come for me because I was so focused on getting Paul through what he was dealing with that I couldn’t give them very much attention, one way or the other. (At any other time, I would have been freaking the hell out.) And the weird thing is, professionally this was a great year. I was nominated for an Agatha and a Lefty for the first time, I was nominated for three Anthonys, and I have two books out, and I did some short stories that I am pretty damned proud of–it’s just weird that the highs always come with the lows…or maybe the highs make up for the lows? That’s probably the best way to look at it.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a great day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back at some point.