Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment and all is well, at least so far. Yesterday was gorgeous; sunny with some cloud cover, low seventies and no humidity. It’s nice to remember, once again, that going outside isn’t always hellish here in New Orleans. I slept a bit late and feel better physically this morning than I have all week, which is marvelous. Paul had been terribly sick before I went to Baton Rouge last weekend, and this week I had a much milder version of whatever crud he had. DayQuil kept it under control for the most part, but this morning I feel ever so much better and am glad that it’s on the way out. I didn’t do much of anything this week other than tale DayQuil, blow my nose, and joyscroll social media, but reality is beginning to take over for the euphoria again and I have things to get back to work on. There’s a lot of excellent college football today, anchored by LSU-Alabama at 2:30, and there are some other key match-ups today, notably Georgia-Mississippi and Kentucky-Tennessee (among others) so I will probably spend a lot of time in my chair with the games on. I also am going to dip into and out of She Kills by Skip Hollandsworth, while also beginning a revisit of In Cold Blood for Nonfiction November.
Yesterday was pleasant. I got a lot of chores done around here after work, we took Sparky to the vet, and had a nice relaxing, low key day. I watched this week’s reality shows (why is Real Housewives of Orange County still on the air?), and we also started watching the new season of Black Doves, in which Ben Whishaw continues to kill it. Today I am going to just stick around the house and have a low-key kind of day; football games and reading and probably picking up stuff, having stuff delivered, and trying to get the house back under control as well as getting some rest so I can get back to writing tomorrow. I”m going to make a grocery run tomorrow morning, and have some things delivered today so I can make dinner later.
Exciting, am I not?
I also want to work on a newsletter. After the election, I was too caught up in afterglow and possibility that I couldn’t focus on anything else. They’re still counting in both Mississippi and Alaska, and I am really hoping for that wretched Klan bitch Cindy Hyde-Smith to get the karmic bitchslap she so richly deserves. I have several that are close to fruition; one about my short story in Unloaded 3, soon to be released and, I think, only my second publication this year; one about A Streetcar Named Murder; and another in my series about masculinity. I also have some short stories I need to get back to work on, and of course, I need to get back to the book. It is sort of disheartening to know the week was a bust for writing for the most part, but election euphoria and whatever this crud I’ve been fighting off all week had a lot to do with it. At least I didn’t fall behind on my day job duties, thank you Lord and pass the ammunition. I will probably do a lot of scribbling in my journal today, too. I also need to do some other chores around here, too–and honestly don’t feel like doing a fucking thing, which is also an option. It looks to be a gorgeous day outside, so maybe I can take a walk later and get started on building up my stamina again…and I do need to update the to-do diary.
As you can see, all kinds of things for me to get going on today!
There really isn’t much going on to report on, in all honesty. Like I have said repeatedly, I am still in a euphoric state of bliss that started Tuesday night and is only now beginning to wear off. Reading some will help, without question; I am very pleased with how much I read in October; and am looking forward to this nonfiction palate cleanser. I also need to make a grocery list and order some things to be delivered. Getting the apartment cleaned up will help, too. They are dishes to unload, too. One thing I have managed to do lately is get files cleaned up while I am watching things on television.
And on that note, I am going to get cleaned up and get moving on my day. The walk isn’t going to walk itself, and the apartment isn’t going to clean itself, either. Have a great day, Constant Reader, and I will check back in with you again tomorrow morning, okay? GEAUX TIGERS!!
I left work early yesterday because I felt something coming on, and thought it best to come home to try to get ahead of it. Some OTC meds later and I felt much better; so am going to take some of those with me in case, and will mask when I have clients. After work I am going to vote, walking the two blocks to the International School to once again hopefully vote for change in Louisiana. I am cautiously optimistic and not getting my hopes up–this country’s voters have disappointed me too many times in the last twenty-six years to feel confident about anything. The media’s devotion to polling, which has been wrong more than it’s been right this century, really needs to be studied. Somehow everyone has also seemed to have forgotten Nate Silver’s bullshit, and his ass is being treated as reliable again for some reason I don’t know and will probably never understand. And since we have arrived on election day at long last, can we please have a respite from campaigns and money requests for a day or two? I won’t know how this all comes out until tomorrow morning, probably, and depending on what happens will have an impact on my day on Wednesday. I just hope it’s not another hellish J-6 situation…or worse. I will be voting tonight after I get home from work.
I feel much better this morning, thank you for your concern. I brought the DayQuil with me, and yes, I’ll be masking around my clients and co-workers; I don’t want to be Typhoid Greg. I feel fine–no coughing or crud or anything–but better safe than sorry. I’m glad I feel better, and when you have an autoimmune disorder it’s always a bit concerning when you don’t feel well. But I am thinking the heavy rain over the weekend sent my sinuses into overdrive and it all built up until yesterday morning and me feeling like shit. I still have a bit of a tickle in my throat, but I also think that’s from the post-nasal sinus thing.
Sparky doesn’t know the time changed, so he’s trying to wake me up at five every morning, the dear little thing. I don’t get up, of course, but he gets really insistent now when the alarm goes off, so snooze is currently a thing of the past, or at least until his body clock gets reset, and who knows when that will be? He also thought it was dinner time when I got home from work early, so of course, that was a bit of a hassle. He did cuddle in my lap for a while, but when the meds kicked in, he was gone. I did manage to do some chores when I was feeling better, and I made chicken noodle soup for dinner, which also made me feel much better. We started watching a Spanish language show on Netflix, Fate, which is about a cab driver whom a bullfighter decides is his good luck charm, and gets hired on to drive him–but it has to be the cab. It looks interesting, there are only six episodes, and they appear to all be about a half an hour per. Some other shows we like are coming back this week, too, and of course, I have those Friday the 13th the Series DVD’s. There is also a lot of good football this weekend: Missouri-Texas, LSU-Alabama, Ohio State-Oregon, Miami-Notre Dame, Mississippi-Georgia, South Carolina-A&M, and Florida-Oklahoma, so that should make for a tense but fun day. The Saints are also playing on Saturday. I have to come into the office Friday morning for a department meeting, and I’ll probably put a few more hours in while I am here before departing for the day and starting my weekend. I want and need to get back into writing more this week, after not really doing much the last few weeks other than editing, and I also need to find a place to send my story that I wrote for the Bouchercon anthology when I had the deadline incorrect.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Hope you have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning…I’m almost afraid to go to bed tonight because of what tomorrow may bring, but it will have to be faced at some point. Sigh. Till then.
A recent Playgirl Man of the Month, but won’t get banned by the censors. I plan to write about Playgirl someday for the newsletter.
Saturday morning and all is well here in the Lost Apartment. Yesterday turned out lovely, after the rain, there was this lovely chill dampness to the air that was quite nice. I got all of my work done without a problem, and worked on the house. The kitchen looks terrific now–I still need to do the floors and some touch up; same with living room–and it was nice to come downstairs to a very clean kitchen and work space. I also did all the dishes and all the laundry! I also spent some time icing my ankles, and will probably do that some more today. I never got around to writing yesterday, and I didn’t read anything I have in progress already (I honestly don’t know what’s wrong with my brain lately), but as I was moving things around I picked up a couple of books that I paged through a bit (The Last Picture Show and Michelangelo, but more on those later), so that’s something. I watched the reunions for The Traitors seasons 3 and 4, which were fun (more on those later). When Paul came down, I finished the day’s chores and settled in for the LSU-Dartmouth baseball game, before we switched over to the LSU Gymnastics meet against Alabama (yes, if you didn’t know already, we are a very LSU house), and then it was off to bed. I slept really well for the first time in a while, and feel rested. My Achilles tendons also need icing this morning before I head out for my errands later this morning.
Today, I am going to pick up the mail, and make some groceries on the way back home. I had planned on washing the car, but now I don’t think I am going to. I also need to get mailing envelopes because I’ve been terribly lazy about sending the copies of my book to the people I need to; but this whole month has been kind of weird in some ways, which I am still thinking about and processing. I am also a little freaked out that tomorrow is March 1 already, but that’s how time passes in New Orleans in the first two months of the year. It also looks gray outside this morning, but it’s supposed to be sunny and warm by the early afternoon.
As I had mentioned, as I was moving books around yesterday, I came across copies of Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show and Michelangelo by William E. Wallace, both books I enjoyed, and The Last Picture Show was influential on me, I think, as a writer. The Last Picture Show was basically another, male-driven version of Peyton Place–the dark, dirty sex secrets of a small town, and it also made me a lifelong fan of McMurtry. (I also loved the film version.) I was going to reread it a few summers ago, but I gave up on the read when we got to the calf-fucking and taking Billy to the hooker who bloodied his nose. Billy was unable to give consent to anything, so from a modern reading this entire sequence is pretty disturbing, but I think I will give it another go because of how the book treats homosexuality; I’d like to see the book through that lens, and see precisely how the future Oscar winning screenwriter of Brokeback Mountain dealt with it in an early novel.
Left Coast Crime is criming right now, and of course I am enjoying everyone’s social media posts, but…I don’t have any FOMO? Considering FOMO has been a major driving factor throughout my life, and often to my own detriment, I think this is some serious personal growth. I never really liked the “pick me” side of my fractured personality, and I am not in the least bit sorry to banish that part of my brain into some remote, dusty and not easily accessed back wrinkle in the very back of my skull. I think this is a big step forward for me, you know?
Connor Storrie is hosting Saturday Night Live tonight, and I may stay up to watch some of it–I can also replay it on Peacock tomorrow morning, or find clips on Youtube if I can’t stay up that late. They are also bringing on one or two of the Hughes bros–trying to rehab them in front of the audience Connor will bring them (straight women and gay men–yeah, I am sure they’ll be embraced by the live audience and we should be prepared for NBC to mute any negative audience reactions to their stain of an appearance. Since NBC also hosts the Olympics, obviously they feel the need to rehabilitate the men who can’t say sorry, ladies, we totally fucked up in the moment and we are so sorry to spit in your faces about your accomplishments like that. You see how institutions always rally to the cause of infantile boys who never grow up? I do love the way the country has stepped up for the women, though. My favorite thing this past week has been reading the comments on the social media posts of the NHL or the teams’ accounts.
And I think a harsh critique and rebuke of that infantilizing “boys will be boys/locker room talk” enabling bullshit is in order, and could be the introduction to my essays series on masculinity. Hmmm.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I will be back tomorrow morning.
David Florentine is a great New Orleans photographer; check out his work! I especially love the spectral mist in this shot. You can check out his website here.
And here we are on Sunday morning, rested and refreshed and ready to dive into my last day off for this weekend. I slept late again today, after not having much of a busy day; mostly, I watched football games while doing chores and reading. LSU lost, but it wasn’t as bad as I feared it would be. And who knew that Auburn-Vanderbilt would be the game of the day? It was the best I’ve seen Auburn play all season, and it was a shame they lost in overtime. Apparently, Kentucky shellacked Florida last night, too. Tulane played Friday night, and they also won, continuing to be the pride of Louisiana football. Roll Wave!
As I read deeper into The Hunting Wives, the book continues to deviate from the show (which was very fun) and the tone is very different. I will, of course, write about the book and the show once I’ve finished reading it. I had also pushed off writing about Boots until after Halloween, and now I am not sure I remember it well enough to write about it. Ah, well, I have some other newsletters that I need to get written, too. I had a crisis of confidence last night about Chlorine; which is normal for me, I think. (I was spending some time plotting the story and had one of those you’re going to blow this great idea moments; which is self-defeating and the entire point of those wretched kind of thoughts and spirals. Those are holdovers from untreated anxiety, and if I let them run their course without allowing them to take root, they always pass. I’m confident about it again this morning, so this methodology definitely seems to work.) I’ll probably read some more this morning before I hop into the shower and get cleaned up. I am making my own version of Swedish meatballs later on, too.
The cold apparently will descend upon us later today. It’s warm this morning, if cloudy; we’ll probably have thunderstorms in the evening and overnight as the temperature drops to a low of 37 (!!!) overnight. Yesterday was lovely when I ran my errands; I also spent some time pruning the books down again. You can actually see the dent I made in my book hoarder stacks! This is enormously pleasing, and while I did end up putting some books back into the stacks that I considered donating (they intrigued me again while looking at them), I did make the kind of progress I wanted. Maybe next weekend I can be even more ruthless…I mean, some of these I bought ten years or so ago and still haven’t read; maybe it’s time to set them free so someone else can enjoy them instead of collecting dust here in the Lost Apartment, right? And at least I paid for them.
I was also thinking yesterday about my newsletter/blog/personal essays, and how I am always so reluctant to talk deeply about my affinity for some authors and the books I love because I don’t have a degree in Literature and don’t read extensively academic explorations of literature, which makes me fear that anything I might have to say might have already been said (multiple times) by any number of Lit professors, and been dissected, deconstructed, and developed through vigorous debate and argument. It was more self-defeating talk; I may not have read as much of the classics as I maybe should have (most of which I didn’t enjoy in the least) or practiced such things on classics in the collegiate classroom (some day, I will discuss at great length my many failures at secondary education), but ultimately, it always boils down to opinion, doesn’t it? The newsletter essays also aren’t something I generally just write off the top of my head as I experience them; they marinate for a while in my head and I may take more than one run at the topic, too, before sharing them with my slowly growing subscription base. (This blog, on the other hand, is whatever comes to mind in the morning as I drink my coffee, and yawn and stretch and try to come alive.) That’s why I decided to separate opinion essays on movies, books, and television out from here to the newsletter, which eases the time burden on thinking about culture I consume. And the essays are supposed to be creative outlets for me to write about things that interest me, and I have soooo many varied interests.
And it also allows me to write personal essays about my life and past. I am writing one now that was inspired by going to my parents’ high school’s Homecoming game the last time I went up to Alabama. I also thought some yesterday, not just about Chlorine but several other things I am writing or have in progress that I’d love to get off my desk throughout the end of this year and next. I think maybe finishing all this work in progress might make me feel a little less harried and frenzied and behind on everything? Who knows?
And on that note, my book is calling to me, so I am going to head to my easy chair to do some reading. Have a great Sunday and I will be back in the morning.
Maidens supporting a roof on the Acropolis, Athens.
Saturday morning and here we are with another golden and exciting day! Sparky let me sleep later this morning, and the bed was most comfortable. I had an excellent night’s sleep, thank you for asking, and feel pretty good this morning. Yesterday was a nice, relaxing day–hopefully today will be similar! There aren’t a lot of good games to watch today, so I am not even sure there’s much point to having the television on at all until the LSU game tonight, which I don’t have very high hopes for, to be honest. I do have some errands and chores to get done today, and I want to read more of The Hunting Wives with an eye to finishing it this weekend. But without any games to really watch…I should be able to get some reading done and write some while putting the finishing touches on the apartment.
As I said, yesterday was a good, relaxing day. After I got my work done for the day, I ensconced myself in the living room to watch some news of the world and read for a bit. I did do some excellent background work for some things I am working on as well, and the next Scotty–Halloween Party Hijinks–is slowly starting to take shape in my head. I also have figured out how to flesh out a young adult horror novel I started writing over a decade ago. Not to worry, I also did some work on Chlorine, and I need to really get that structured and outlined and pulled together. We’re almost to the halfway point of this month and I am no closer to being finished with a first draft than I have been for years. I think it’s more a sense of doubting myself, of not wanting to fail with this book. But the truth is, it’s just a book, and worrying about failing with the book is stupid, because the book’s success is out of my control and all I can concern myself with is writing the best book that I can.
Which is always the only thing I can control with anything I write. Get out of your head, Gregalicious, and out of your own way.
I watched Scream 3 again as a palate cleanser, and I must admit, as much as I have always loved this movie, it’s really not as good as the original. Sure, I love–and have always loved–the meta factor being amped up so much; what better way to do another Scream than having the murders all happen around the cast and filming of Stab 3? And this film has some absolutely brilliant moments–the Carrie Fisher cameo; watching Jenny McCarthy die a brutal death (I enjoyed that more than I have on past watchings for some reason); and Parker Posey’s absolute brilliance as an actress playing Gale Weathers; her scenes with Courtney Cox as Gale Weathers are classic–that make it worth watching.
We watched the ice dancing competition from Skate Japan last night, too–I keep forgetting that the Winter Olympics are next year–mainly to see the US teams competing, and it’s nice to see we have some young up-and-comers in the discipline. Ironically, ice dancing is the discipline the US has seen the most success in this century with–who would have ever thought such a thing was possible back in the 1990s? Certainly not me!
And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close so I can get my day going. I have to run a couple of short errands this morning, and after that I am in for the weekend. Huzzah! Have a great Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back to talk to you again in the morning.
There should be a laws against Aaron Pierre being this beautiful.Those eyes!
Thursday and my last day in the office for this week. How exciting! I have no idea what the weekend holds for me; I know I will watch the LSU game for a while, but if it goes the way I’m expecting it to I won’t need to watch after half-time. I’m not sure what other games are this weekend, but I’ll have the television on for sure playing games all day while I do other things, like pick up and clean and read and write and all the other fun things I get to do every weekend. I was a bit tired yesterday when I got off from work yesterday (I started to say night, but is it night at five? The sun was still up…sort of), but came straight home. I did some chores (laundry, the dishes) and picked up some around the kitchen. I also caught up on the news (I am really enjoying the MAGA meltdown2, because I am far pettier than they could ever hope to be), and then did a little writing–not much, just a smidgen. But it still counts!
Paul won’t be home tonight until I’ve probably fallen asleep; he’s going to some gala event fundraiser. I probably should go and be Mrs. Festival, but I’ll be so tired I’d fall asleep in a chair somewhere. I feel like I slept well–my mind is alert and other than some ache in my hips, everything else feels fine, which is definitely odd for a Thursday. I’m alone and without a nurse in the clinic again today, but I also don’t think we’re going to be very busy, either. I feel much better overall since my injection on Monday, which is very cool. Maybe I’ll actually be able to get some writing done tonight, since I have the house to myself. Stranger things have happened. Or I’ll just watch some more videos about Appalachian legend and lore. I am really enjoying these, as well as the “Dixie After Dark” podcast, which is really interesting and fun to listen to…and inspirational.
I finally got my email inbox cleared out yesterday, and I definitely like having an empty inbox. I usually fall behind on it, slowly but surely, and a trip will always make me fall behind. Now that my anxiety is (mostly) under control these days, having a full inbox no longer makes me tense and nervous. Weird, I know, but a leftover from serving on boards and getting buried in blizzards of emails. I had to stay current on my email then in order to not get so far behind I could never catch up…but that is certainly no longer the case, so it’s never that much work to empty it, to be honest, and I love that for me.
This week’s episode of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City wasn’t as good as last week’s–a very high bar to clear–but I was highly entertained for the entire episode and never got bored–you never get bored with this cast. I also have to applaud production, because it’s very clear they know what people are watching for and they camp the show up considerably, making it even more fun than just the usual women-screaming-at-each-other-over-petty -shit. I did laugh multiple times, and it took me out of the our present doom-scape (like the election results did; I think my favorite outcome of all was the ouster of the Moms for Liberty3 skanks from school boards everywhere, including red states, cities, and counties. Fuck off, Libs of Tiktok, now and forever. Odd that your concern for children doesn’t extend to voting for and supporting pedophiles. It’s like you don’t really care about children as anything other than political pawns, which is both reprehensible and evil.
Turns out most Americans think you’re scum, too.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.
Yes, I remember when Urban Cowboy came out and country went more mainstream. I remember a bar in Emporia even put in a mechanical bull–and no, I never did it myself. ↩︎
Also was able to use the Islamophobic posts to block and delete people from my feed. I stand for no bigotry and never want to see it on my feed. The Debra Messing meltdown was something else entirely, but I was never a fan of hers. Maybe someday I’ll critique Will and Grace.↩︎
Any group that puts “liberty” in their name actually is fascist and should be side-eyed and blocked from any electoral office. ↩︎
Professional Development Monday blog, in which the office is closed while we do some continuing education and team activities. The place we are meeting this morning is actually pretty close to the house, maybe six blocks or so away? I also don’t have to be there until nine, which means I can leave the house around twenty till or so. I’m not entirely sure how the day is going to go or how taxing it might be, or what time I’ll be done and home for the day, either. I feel decent this morning; I could have gladly slept longer this morning but got up at the same time I usually do on Mondays. (I wasn’t sure what time we had to be there, so I got up so I could look it up and yes, was right about it starting at nine, but oh, well.) I need to reset my body clock after the weekend anyway.
Yesterday was a nice, relaxing day. I got the dishes and the kitchen cleaned (finally) and made the chili. I also spent some time with House of Blood and Rain, which is extraordinary, primarily because it’s a lot of things that I generally don’t enjoy, and avoid a lot when making my reading choices (more on that when I’ve finished reading it at last). We watched Grotesquerie, which had a rather odd episode and we weren’t sure if that was the season finale or not, but a search on-line this morning revealed there are three more, two coming next week and the finale on the day before Halloween. We also watched another episode of Only Murders in the Building, which was fun, and we also watched a lot of Skate America before watching our shows. I should have probably written more than I did this weekend, but it’s fine. I’ll do some tonight after work, and hopefully get a chance to read as well. I am most likely going to leave for Kentucky either this weekend or the one after; I haven’t really decided yet.
It’s been a bit of an off kind of spooky season for me this year. I am reading horror, as I had wanted to, but am a little disappointed at how slow my reading is going this year, but I should get some good reading done while I am at Dad’s; I am kind of leaning towards going the weekend after, to be honest; I kind of feel like I need to get through this week and another weekend before I head up north. I also keep getting confused because LSU usually plays Alabama the first weekend of November, and this year it’s a week later because of how the weeks and days fall; so I keep thinking the bye week is this weekend but it’s not. LSU plays A&M Saturday in a night game, then has the weekend off before playing Alabama. I also have a lot of doctor’s appointments, too, that I have to figure out. I have two this Thursday so I’ll need to take time off that day; I may try to get the one scheduled for the following week rescheduled to the same day, or move it further back. That’s why I need to get this figured out, either today or tomorrow. Heavy heaving sigh.
Now that I’m waking up I feel a lot better this morning. I’ll probably go ahead and shower once I finish this, and then I can read for the rest of the morning until it’s time to leave for the training/Development Day. So exciting, right? Sparky also continues to be a bit on the sullen side about his claws being trimmed back, but I did pick him up and put him on my shoulders and he was fine up there without needing them to dig into my skin to stay up there, so that was a win-win. (I also think going back to the vet’s gave him flashbacks of his pre-adoptive life, which he didn’t appreciate, either.) I think I’ll decide about my trip over the course of the day, and make my decision. This weekend seems awful soon to take the time off already, so I am definitely leaning toward the weekend of the 2nd of November, LSU’s bye week. I can watch games on that Saturday, get up and drive on Sunday, and can drive home on Friday. That just makes the most sense to me; it gives me this weekend to get my shit together for the trip and get the apartment into some semblance of order before I leave, and it’ll be easier–much easier–with an extra week to get it all together.
And now I am waking up enough to feel like oh yes I need to get my life back on track after this lazy weekend, and so, on that note, it’s time for me to head into the spice mines for the day and get my act together, so have a great day, Constant Reader, and I’ll see you later.
Ah, the joys of a work-at-home Friday. I do sincerely hope they never take this away, because I will surely miss it. I was able to take Paul and Tug to meet the Cat Practice so he can get to know them, get his nails trimmed (he was quite shocked to try to climb my leg and not be able to hook into the fabric with those talons) and get a cat leukemia vaccination. They fell madly in love with him as he definitely turned the “I’m so adorable aren’t I?” kitten magic on for them, and they also confirmed our suspicions: he’s going to be a big cat; he’s already gotten much longer in the short time we’ve had him, and his legs are long and his paws are pretty big. He had no problem with the nail trim as it was occurring, making me think we might even be able to do it ourselves (Skittle would have never stood for it, and Scooter wasn’t a fan, either, and I was always worried that we’d hurt them by accident), and then it was back home and back to data entry and quality assurance and condom packing, woo-hoo! But while I was doing all of these things I had music on and was able to get chores done while taking breaks to get up and away from the work every now and again. We also went to Costco after my work was completed for the day–or the working hours ended, at any rate–which was nice. I don’t know why Costco is such a pleasant experience for me almost every time we go there, but it is–I also love how they organize the stuff in your carts for maximum efficiency and space usage; I try to load the cart in the same way. I also realized that there’s no need for me to have the back seat set up; why not put the seats down all the time and just have that big space in the back for loading groceries and so forth? It certainly doesn’t affect me driving in any way, and why not? Usually loading everything into the back doesn’t work and is an unsuccessful game of Jenga; but with the seats down it was not a problem at all.
It only took me six years to figure this out, of course.
Tonight is the LSU-Alabama game, which is generally an enormous anxiety trigger for me. The weird wiring of my brain makes me commit fully as a fan to the point sometimes where the games are emotionally exhausting and draining for me, and since even before the pandemic I’ve been trying to dial that back. There’s such a thing as too vested, and I don’t enjoy those emotional rollercoasters. I do enjoy the thrills and excitement of watching games, and I do take pleasure in being a sports fan–but I don’t want to be a sore loser or go to a dark place if the game doesn’t go well. It’s a game. I love my LSU Tigers and it’s always delightful and a lot of fun when they win–but if they have a bad year or don’t win or whatever, it doesn’t impact my life in any way, shape or form. That seems to be working for the most part–I’ve had a few moments this season that were setbacks to the healthy mental progress I’ve made, but it certainly made a huge difference in how I watched and enjoyed the game last year…which LSU actually won. It was a great game, and even if LSU doesn’t win, I don’t mind as long as it’s a good game and they play well. I have no idea how good any team is this year; even invincible Georgia has had a few shaky moments of vulnerability this year. As the second half of the season rolls on, conference races and play-off berths will be earned as well as trophies and awards.
I was going to run some errands today, but I had a delivery scheduled last night and the lazy incompetent delivery driver (for the record, I always overtip) couldn’t be bothered to contact me by text, as instructed, so my order was returned. I found out this morning it will go out again for delivery today, with no idea or concept or when or what kind of window we were looking at. Their on-line customer service was completely useless, I might add, so now I get to hang around the house all day waiting, which is incredibly frustrating.
I need to make groceries, I wanted to swing by Petco to get some more toys for Tug (and also price kitten foods and special treats), and I also need to go to Lowe’s. I need air filters for the apartment, I need to get a wagon to help bring groceries in when I am recovering from surgery, and I also want to get an easy to assemble set of blinds for the center window here in the workspace. Facebook Memories reminded me yesterday of how long ago it was when my beloved shade crepe myrtles trees were brutalized and destroyed, forcing me to put up an LSU blanket over the window to block the sun. I am too embarrassed to admit how long this blanket has been in my window instead of blinds, but that’s going to finally come to an end this weekend. We’ll see how it goes, and if it’s not a horrible disaster I’ll go ahead and get blinds for the other two windows so they all match. Look at me, taking charge of a situation for once instead of being engulfed in ennui and just letting it continue to slide!
Progress indeed!
We told the Cat Practice Tug’s name is Sparky, even though I keep calling him Tug (and sometimes Boot, like he’s Scooter), and so I decided yesterday that since there’s really no point in continuing the pretense that I am anything other than a Crazy Cat Lady, he’s getting a Crazy Cat Lady Name: Touglas MacSparquer, hence both Tug and Sparky are his names. It also pays tribute to my maternal Scottish line, so it also kind of honors my mom and no, I won’t be telling Dad that.
Since my plans for the day were altered irrevocably by the shitty delivery service, I hope to spend the rest of the day doing things while the games are playing in the living room, and thinking about the next book I am going to write. I have some emails to answer and yes, it’s fine, I can keep my phone handy and check it periodically to see the status of the delivery. This, by the way, is what boomers mean when they talk about how service in the country has declined. But it’s fine, really–I prefer to go to the West Bank on Sundays anyway, and this way I can actually take inventory and make a proper list. My frustrations over the change in plans for the day is fine; I can get stuff done around here and maybe even do some cleaning and writing.
And I can spend some time this morning with Lou Berney’s Dark Ride, which I started reading the other day at my appointment. Huzzah for that, and we’ll just get shit done around here today. That’s a good plan, and one I can live with….and truth be told I didn’t really want to go to the West Bank this morning, so here we are.
Have a great Saturday, Constant Reader, and I will no doubt be back later with some more blatant self-promotional posts.
Thursday and my last day in the office for the week. I also decided to go in a half-hour later than usual and stay until five instead of four-thirty; alert the media! I know how hard it is to go on without knowing these minute details of my life. But it was cold this morning, and Tug woke me at the usual time–but curled up and went to sleep next to my head on my pillow once I hit snooze for the first time. Of course now that he’s awake and eaten and had some water, he’s all over the kitchen counters this morning knocking things off. He is particularly fond of pens and cigarette lighters–Paul is missing any number of them, and I’ve noticed he always make a beeline to any lighter lying around. Why the fascination with my pens and Paul’s cigarette lighters is a mystery for the ages.
I was tired when I got home yesterday. I had book mail yesterday (Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory, which is a horror writer’s version of the Dozier School for Boys in Florida, which I’ve already read two fictionalized versions already–Lori Roy’s and Colson Whitehead’s). I’ve not read Due before–my own fault, and no one else’s–but am really looking forward into digging into this one. I was also oddly tired by the time I got home; I felt fine when I left work, but after a couple of errands I was exhausted by the time I got home. The termite exterminator came by yesterday morning (the hole in the kitchen roof was partly rot and partly termite damage), and apparently Tug was fascinated by the Terminix man. I also watched another episode of Moonlighting last night–guest star was a very young, pre-China Beach Dana Delaney–(that’s another show I wouldn’t mind revisiting; does anyone else remember China Beach?) and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Paul and I then finished The Fall of the House of Usher, which was really quite good and very well done; I also had read a piece recently which stated that Mike Flanagan has placed Ryan Murphy and American Horror Story as everyone’s go-to horror television creator. I will even go further than this and say Flanagan’s surpassed him. There were, at best, three top-level seasons of AHS–“Murder House,” “Asylum” and the election one; but it would be hard for me to say than any Murphy season is superior to any of Flanagan’s work; Midnight Mass alone was so superior to any of Murphy’s seasons that it’s not even a fair comparison–and Murphy had Jessica Lange and all of those other amazing talents in his repertory company.
I also recognized yesterday that I’ve been in a bad place since somewhere around last Thursday. There have been moments this week where I’ve come out of it and gotten some things done, but it’s still there. When I came home yesterday I intended to finish laundry and the dishes, but Tug wanted a lap bed and I gave in, figuring I wouldn’t be there for very long. This was incorrect; he slept there for several hours and since I was tired AND comfortable, I didn’t disturb him and just stayed there, watching Youtube documentaries about the Holy Roman Empire and how it slowly but surely divested itself of its association with the Papacy; Charles V being the last emperor to be actually crowned by a pope. I’ve also been reading The Rival Queens, which is marvelous–it’s a history of Catherine de Medici, Queen of France and her daughter Marguerite, Queen of Navarre–known to history and literature as Queen Margot (which is also the name of the Dumas book about her). I’ve always wanted to write a suspense/intrigue novel set during that time period, and having to do with Catherine de Medici’s Flying Squadron–women who were trained spies and seductresses in her employ. Margot herself is fascinating–and both women would be in my history The Monstrous Regiment of Women about all the women who held power in the sixteenth century. Margot was as equally fascinating as her mother, and pretty much lived her life the way she wanted…which of course made her notorious. But the French, surprisingly enough, loved their princess with the loose morals–and the arrangement between her and her husband, Henri King of Navarre (eventually Henri IV of France) where they lived apart and took as many lovers as they could handle was also surprisingly modern for a royal couple.
I am hoping to spend some time with Lou Berney’s Dark Ride this weekend. Lou has become one of my favorite writers and favorite people in the crime fiction community over the years, ever since that fateful panel at Raleigh Bouchercon where I met and made some new friends who also are amazingly talented. (I think Lori Roy has a book coming out soon, too–huzzah!), and I also want to make a plan to stick to for getting things done this weekend. The LSU-Alabama game is Saturday night, so that will require me to do some strategic planning. I just hope for a good game. Obviously my preference would be for LSU to win–that’s always my default–but as long as we don’t get humiliated I am good with a close and/or exciting game–emotionally exhausting as that will be. I know my anxiety was involved in this funk I’ve been in for longer than I think I’ve been dealing with it–me thinking it started sometime late last week is laughable in its naivete–but I need to get some things done and underway before i get derailed with the surgery. Nineteen days from today I will go under the knife. YIKES.
Which reminds me, I need to review my medical file and see what they say about the recovery period, or if it’s mentioned at all. And sometime before then I am going to get my teeth! Huzzah!
And on that note on this cold Thursday morning in New Orleans, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back later, okay, for some more blatant self-promotion.
And here we are, on the final day of the year 2022. Happy New Year, I guess? It doesn’t feel like the year is turning, but everything has felt so totally out of whack since the 2020 Shutdown that it’s not a surprise, really. As I sit here bleary-eyed with my coffee trying to wake up for another thrilling day of writing and cleaning, it seems very weird to look back to a year ago at this time. I was on deadline then, too–and was way behind on that book, too (A Streetcar Named Murder, for the record), but other than that I don’t remember what my mood was like or what I was thinking about going into the new year. We were still in the midst of the pandemic (that hasn’t changed–what’s changed is it isn’t news anymore and everyone seems to be pretending it’s all over), and I know I wasn’t exactly going into 2022 thinking oh this is the year I’ll get the coronavirus! That did happen, and my ten-day experience with COVID-19 was bearable for the most part. I just had intense and severe exhaustion as well as the brain fog, which hasn’t entirely lifted. I still have no short term memory, and am struggling to remember things every day–which has made writing this book more difficult because I can’t remember small details and things that are kind of important. I also think being so scattered isn’t much help in that regard; I’ve never been able to handle getting a grip on things and have felt like I’ve been behind the eight-ball for the last three years, floundering and struggling to keep my head above water, and never confident that I had a handle on everything. It’s been unpleasant, really; I prefer to be better organized and to have things under some sort of manageable control, and this constant feeling that I am behind and will never catch up on everything has been overwhelming, depressing, and damaging.
I read a lot of great books this year–I was going to try to make a “favorite reads of the year” list, but as I went back through the blog for the last year looking at all the books I talked about on here, there’s no real way for me to quantify what were my avorite reads of the year. I managed to read both of Wanda M. Morris’ marvelous novels, All Her Little Secrets and Anywhere You Run; Marco Carocari’s marvelous Blackout; John Copenhaver’s The Savage Kind; Carol Goodman’s The Night Villa, The Lake of Dead Languages, and The Disinvited Guest; Ruth Ware’s The Death of Mrs. Westaway and The Woman in Cabin Ten; Raquel V. Reyes’ Mango, Mambo and Murder; Ellen Byron’s Bayou Book Thief; Rob Osler’s debut Devil’s Chew Toy; Mia P. Manansala’s Arsenic and Adobo; Kellye Garrett’s Like a Sister; Alex Segura Jr’s Secret Identity; Laurie R. King’s Back to the Garden; Tara Laskowski’s marvelous The Mother Next Door; James Kestrel’s Five Decembers (which would be a contender for favorite read of the year, if I did such things); and of course several Donna Andrews novels as well. I am forgetting some great reads I truly enjoyed this past year, I am sure–I will kick myself later for not remembering I Play One on TV by Alan Orloff, for one example–but it was a year of great reads for me. I know 2023 will also be a great year for reading.
I also watched a lot of great television this past year as well, and again, I won’t be remembering everything and will kick myself later. If nothing else, it was a year of some amazing queer representation on television; this was, after all, the year Netflix not only gave us the wonderful, amazing, adorable Heartstopper but the equally charming and adorable Smiley (which you should watch, absolutely). It was also the year where Elité continued, but the shine is starting to go off the show a bit. I was very vested in their Patrick/Ivan romance, which they ended in this last season with Manu Rios, who plays Patrick, leaving the show at the end of the season along with his two sisters (spoiler, sorry), which was dissatisfying. I am looking forward to seeing what else Manu Rios gets up to in the future…we also enjoyed 1899, Andor, Ted Lasso, Sex Lives of College Girls, Peacemaker, The Sandman, House of the Dragon, Ozark, and so many other shows I can’t possibly begin to remember them all this morning. But I have no problem saying that without question my favorite show of the year was Heartstopper. Even just looking at clips on Youtube, or those “Ten Cutest Moments on Heartstopper” videos, always makes me feel warm and fuzzy when I view them. The soundtrack for the show was also terrific, with some songs so firmly engrained in my head with scenes from the show (one in particular, Shura’s “What’s It Gonna Be” always makes me think of that scene where Charlie comes running after Nick in the rain to give him another kiss, which is what was playing in the background). Wednesday was another highlight, a surprising delight when I was prepared to have my hopes dashed, and The Serpent Queen was also a lot of fun. We also enjoyed The Bastard Son and the Devil Himself, but it was cancelled after its first season, which was disappointing.
Professionally, it was a pretty good year in which I had three book releases: #shedeservedit in January and A Streetcar Named Murder in December, with the anthology Land of 10000 Thrills, thrown in for good measure in the fall. I sold some short stories that haven’t come out yet, as well as some that did this last year: “The Rosary of Broken Promises,” “A Whisper from the Graveyard,””The Snow Globe,” and “This Thing of Darkness” all came out in anthologies this year, with “Solace in a Dying Hour” sold and probably coming out sometime in the spring. I also sold another story to another anthology that will probably come out in the new year as well, and I still have one out on submission. In what was probably the biggest surprise of the year, last year’s Bury Me in Shadows was nominated for not one, but TWO Anthony Awards (Best Paperback Original and Best Children’s/Young Adult) which was one of the biggest shocks of maybe not just the year, but definitely one of the highlights of my career thus far. I lost both to friends and enormously talented writers Jess Lourey and Alan Orloff respectively, which was kind of lovely. I had been nominated for Anthonys before (winning Best Anthology for Blood on the Bayou and “Cold Beer No Flies” was nominated for Best Short Story), but being nominated for one of my queer novels was such a thrill–and to have it nominated in two different categories was fucking lit, as the kids would say. The response to A Streetcar Named Murder was an incredibly pleasant surprise; people seemed to genuinely love the book, which was very exciting and cool.
I traveled quite a bit this year as well–going to Murder in the Magic City/Murder on the Menu, Left Coast Crime, the Edgars, Sleuthfest, and Bouchercon. I went to Kentucky twice to see my family, which further fueled my love of audiobooks for long drives–on both trips I listened to Ruth Ware on the way up and Carol Goodman on the way back–and also did some wonderful podcasts and panels on-line, which was nice. We didn’t go to any games this season in Baton Rouge, but in all honesty I don’t know if I can hang with a game day anymore–the drive there and back, the walk to and from the stadium, the game itself–I would probably need a week’s vacation afterwards!
College football was interesting this season, too. This season saw the reemergence of Tennessee, USC, and UCLA to some kind of relevance again; the slides of the programs at Texas A&M, Florida, Oklahoma, Auburn, and Texas continued; and LSU turned out to be the biggest surprise (for me) of the year. Going into the season I had hopes, as one always does, but after two years of consistent mediocrity (with some surprise wins both years) they weren’t very high. The opening loss to Florida State was a surprise and disappointment, but at least the Tigers came back and almost made it all the way to a win. The blowout loss to Tennessee at home was unpleasant, certainly, as was the loss at Texas A&M. But LSU beat Alabama this season! We also beat Mississippi, so LSU was 2-2 against Top Ten teams this season–and I would have thought it would be 0-4. And 9-4 is not a bad record for a transitional year, with a new coach rebuilding the program. And LSU beat Alabama. The Alabama game will undoubtedly go down as one of the greatest Saturday night games in Tiger Stadium. It was incredibly exciting, and I still can’t quite wrap my mind around it or how it happened. It certainly shouldn’t have; LSU was simply not an elite-level team this past season, but what a job Brian Kelly did coaching in his first season in Baton Rouge. Did I mention that LSU beat Alabama this year? (And one really has to feel for Alabama, in a way; they lost two games by a total of four points on the last play of each game. Four. Points. That would probably be what I would call this season for Alabama: Four Points from Greatness. The LSU-Alabama game this year is definitely one of those that gets a nickname from the fan base, I am just not sure what it would be. The Double Earthquake Game? (The cheers when LSU scored in overtime and then made the two point conversion registered on the campus Richter scale) The Conversion Game? I don’t know what it will be named for all eternity, but it was an amazing game. I do think it also bodes well for the future for LSU. Will both LSU and Tennessee (which also beat Alabama for the first time in like fifteen years) be able to consistently compete with Alabama now? Has Georgia taken over as the SEC behemoth? Has the Alabama run ended? I don’t think so–they have an off year where they lose two or three games periodically (2010, 2019, 2022)–and they could bounce right back. next year and win it all again. You can never count them out, even in their off years.
As for the Saints, they swept Atlanta again this year, and that is enough for me.
I did write a lot this year, even though it didn’t seem like I actually did while the year was passing. I also worked on Chlorine and another project I am working on throughout the year, as well as the novellas, and of course, I was writing short stories and essays for much of the year. I also read a lot more New Orleans and Louisiana history, and I had tons of ideas for things to write all year long. I did make it to the gym on a fairly regular basis at the beginning of the year, but then it became more and more sporadic and after my COVID-19 experience, never again. I also injured my arm a few weeks ago–when I flex the bicep it feels like I have a Charley horse, so not good, but it doesn’t impact my day to day activities. I also had my colonoscopy at last this past year–the prep was horrific, and I am really dreading doing it again at sixty-five, should I make it that far.
Yesterday was a nice day. I was exhausted, and after my work-at-home duties were completed I did some chores–laundry, dishes–and I also spent some time both reading (A Walk on the Wild Side) and writing. I also watched the Clemson-Tennessee Orange Bowl last night before Paul got home from his dinner engagement and we watched a few more episodes of Sex Lives of College Girls. Today I am going to read a bit this morning with my coffee before getting cleaned up and diving headfirst back into the book. Paul has his trainer today and usually either goes to the gym to ride the bike or to his office to work for the rest of the afternoon, so I should be able to have some uninterrupted writing time, which will be lovely. And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a happy and safe New Year’s Eve, Constant Reader, and I will check back in with you later.
