Tag: Lori Rader-Day

Million Reasons

I overslept this morning.

It happens, you know? I’d intended to get up this morning, swill down some coffee, and then get in the car and drive over to the West Bank to my car dealer to pick up my license plate, and then go make groceries. Now that I’ve slept in, I am thinking, well, I can go get groceries, and then come home and work on the kitchen, and get the license plate one day before work this week.

This, you see, is how it happens. But I am also thinking that my temporary plate is still good until March, you see, so it actually would make sense, efficiency wise, to wait and go one morning this week, make a list of questions for the guy who sold me my car (he’d explained some things about the car to me the morning I bought it, but of course my mind was completely in I just bought a car mode so I retained none of it), and then stop at Sonic (I love Sonic) on my way into the office.

See? Rationalization is totally key to everything.

And ye Gods: next weekend there are parades. Woo-hoo!

Which reminds me, I need to take a before shot of the bead chest before the parades start.

So, I am going to make groceries at some point, but I am also going to work on organizing and redoing my kitchen as well, which includes the freezer–which is slammed full of things because I’ve just been shoving things in there willy-nilly and now every time I open the freezer door shit falls out. (You have no idea how badly I want one of those refrigerators that has the freezer drawer at the bottom; my goal for this year is to get one.) I also am going to work on my filing–which includes my computer filing–as well as working on an essay for Sisters in Crime on being a gay mystery writer. I was supposed to turn it in for their next newsletter, but I simply couldn’t figure out a way to write it that didn’t sound like whining (I don’t sell more because my characters are gay! Waaaaaaah!), which I absolutely abhor and hate. But I am also looking at this short essay as possibly working out as the prologue or intro to a non-fiction book, part a critique of societal homophobia and how that works/affects gay writers, that I’ve been wanting to write for a very long time, and have attempted to start, organize, and think about perhaps a thousand times.

But this past week it finally hit me on how, precisely, to write such a thing, and how to do it in a way where it not only didn’t sound like whining, but could actually make people reading it think, why, yes, that does indeed make sense and I can see why this is a problem.

One would hope, any way.

So, that’s where I am today. I certainly am also hoping to get some quality reading time in as well with Lori Rader-Day’s Little Pretty Things.

And I guess I should get started on my day since it is now past noon!

Here’s Taylor Lautner, in honor of his birthday.

Waterloo

So, since I didn’t have to go into the office until later yesterday, I decided to take the morning/early afternoon and read (Lori Rader-Day’s Little Pretty Things is soooo good, Constant Reader), did some laundry and the dishes, and then began a new project: cleaning out and reorganizing the kitchen cabinets and drawers. This, as always, made me enormously happy, and now the two bottom cabinets on the right side of the stove are now organized, with plenty of room in there for more stuff–should that become necessary–and the cabinets under the sink are now nice and neat and not crammed full of stuff.

It is perhaps wrong how happy this makes me.

And now I am looking forward to doing MORE of this over the weekend. All of the cabinets are not organized properly; there are also undoubtedly many things that can be donated or discarded in all of them, including my kitchen drawers. There certainly must be a better, more efficient way to put the dishes/mugs/bowls/glasses in their cabinets, after all, and I will find it.

It’s weird, really weird, how not having a deadline hanging over my head has made me feel…I don’t know, more relaxed? My stress levels have gone way down, I’m sleeping so much better than I was, and I am so much more relaxed. I can also tell the difference with my mood; things that would have pushed me into a rage or fury or depression with a deadline over my head now get more of “meh, whatever” response from me, which is kind of great. But now, with two weeks of not really writing anything other than blogs and emails behind me, I’m kind of ready to get back to work on writing some things. As I said the other day, the weekend in Alabama helped shake loose some cobwebs about a cozy series idea I’ve had for years that I think I’ll be able to get going on at some point now; I was writing the series Bible the other day and it was coming fast and furious at me. I have two manuscripts to rewrite, of course, and then there are the edits hanging over my head for the last two I turned in, and short stories galore. I may spend this weekend writing nothing; it’s definitely possible, and I want to finish Lori’s book preparatory to reading a cozy or two before going back to King and Koryta; there are also some literary novels (!!!!) I want to read as well.

Not to mention I have literally dozens of comic books on my iPad I need to catch up on.

How I do love to read.

So, perhaps this will be another weekend of catching up around the house on all those things that slide while I am on deadline (i.e. since 2007) as well as maybe toying with some writing, and doing a lot of reading.

Woo-hoo!

And now, back to the spice mines…oh, wait! I have NO SPICE TO MINE. So, here’s a hunk for that.

Thank You for the Music

I have a late night of bar testing tonight, and as such got to sleep in a bit this morning, which was quite lovely. I am having lunch with a dear friend tomorrow (huzzah!), and I don’t really have any errands to run today before I go in to the office. I could, of course, run a few–there’s always something that needs to be done–but I can make a Costco run this weekend, as well as swing by the grocery store. I also have to pick up my license plate from the dealership, but I think I will also postpone that till next week. Plus I don’t have any deadlines, so I don’t have to worry about getting writing done this weekend so…yes, I can just run errands with a clear conscience this weekend and not worry about “when am I going to get my word count done?”

SO lovely, really. (And I may change my mind and run over to the dealership later today on the way to work….but it’s lovely having options.)

I do have some things around the house I need to get caught up–some cabinets need reorganizing and cleaning out; as do some of my kitchen drawers, and there’s always filing. Carnival is looming on the horizon; Krewe de Vieux is this weekend, and from all the reports I’ve heard and things I’ve seen on-line, with its theme of “The Crass Menagerie” they will be taking on the administration in Washington this year in their vulgar, hilarious and satiric fashion. I was reading some of the the descriptions of some of the floats and themes for the marching groups aloud to Paul last night and he replied, “So, when all of the pictures and videos go viral, the White House will declare war on New Orleans Sunday, won’t they?”

I replied, “I guess it depends on what Saturday Night Live does, really.”

I think, though, this morning I am just going to relax and ease into my late night. Drinking coffee, having some breakfast, and curling up in the easy chair with Lori Rader-Day’s Little Pretty Things does seem like just the right way for the day to get going, doesn’t it?

I’m also still a bit aglow from the weekend. It’s really so lovely to be around other writers and people who love books and love to read. It also recharges the batteries and feeds the creative muscles. Yesterday between clients I jotted down notes for a cozy mystery series I’ve been wanting to write for years, and could never quite wrap my mind around; oddly enough, after a weekend in Alabama I was able to get it all to click together in my head. Whether anything will come of it remains to be seen, but it was a lovely moment as all those clicks popped into place, you know? That’s always nice.

So, my chair and my book are calling to me, so I will leave you now, Constant Reader, with a hunk to get your day off to a great start.

The Name of the Game

Yesterday we had some heavy weather in New Orleans; the part of the city known as New Orleans East (which was decimated in the post-Katrina flood) was hit by tornadoes. It was, to say the least, kind of eerie. We of course got the severe weather alert texts at the office, and all moved downstairs and away from the glass. I spent five years or so living in Kansas, so I am well acquainted with tornadoes and what to do in case one is coming, but New Orleans East and the North Shore were pretty torn up. There are any number of places on-line to donate; and of course, if you’re local, there are some places where you can drop off supplies or volunteer to help out listed on both NOLA.com and TheAdvocate.com.

Wow, such a weird day. And it was my first day back at work, which required re-orienting myself back to the day job reality from a book weekend. The switch from one life to the other is always a bit disorienting, but I came away from the weekend with some great books to read (Little Pretty Things by Lori Rader-Day; Peaches and Scream by Susan Furlong; Digging Up the Dirt by Miranda James; Stripped Bare by Shannon Baker; Run by Andrew Grant; and The Contractors by Harry Hunsicker. The authors who were there whose books I didn’t buy copies of are on my wish list).

I started reading Lori Rader-Day’s Little Pretty Things last night, and it’s quite good so far; I was sucked in almost immediately. I think she won the Mary Higgins Clark Award for this one; I know she was also nominated for an Anthony Award. I got to hang out with Lori a lot over the weekend, and she really made me laugh quite hard. She, Harry, Shannon, and I also made a field trip after the Homewood Library event on Saturday over to the Vulcan statue.

Lori was quick to note he wasn’t wearing pants.

I also came away from the weekend with more of a resolve about writing, the way I always do when I go to a book weekend or a writer’s conference or whatever you want to call those weekends when writers gather to speak to people who love books. I also figured out (finally) how to do the cozy series I’ve always been interested in writing (or trying to write; cozies are a lot harder than people think they are), and I also have some ideas about some other things I want to do. So, it was a big win, over all.

And now, back to the spice mines.