Tag: Maggie Smith

Take Good Care of Her

Ah, here we are on what I wished were Taco Tuesday, but alas, it is not to be. Too much food already on hand to go out and get something entirely new. It’s dark again this morning, and of course there are any number of tropical systems out there that need to be watched, but at least we’re in the final months of the season. I was very comfortable in the bed this morning–Sparky was cuddled up with me when I woke up–but forced myself to get up. My week is kind of messed up already. I had to cover the clinic yesterday because someone’s on vacation (I kept thinking it was Tuesday all day), and now today I am working clinic by myself. That means I’ll probably be tired when I get home tonight, which is okay. I made groceries and got the mail last night, so I can come straight home tonight. I ordered some things on-line this week–new shoes, coffee–and I also repaired a book whose binding had broken (a Three Investigators tome), and tried repairing a pair of very cool Oxfords. I’ve had the shoes for almost thirteen years now, but have only wore them a handful of times (I rarely dress up and they’re too dressy to wear otherwise) so am not comfortable with just throwing them out when they just need to have the sole reattached. (Gorilla Glue failed me, so they’re going to have to wind up going to a shoe repair.) There wasn’t a lot of traffic last night on the way home, and after getting home and bonding with Sparky, I relaxed in my easy chair and bonded with the kitty while watching the news on-line. We did end up watching another episode of American Sports Story, and this season is really about the dangers of the closet, and how that level of self-loathing can twist someone into something dark.

Kind of sad, really; yet another example of the dangers of toxic masculinity (as if we needed another). And the guy who plays Urban Meyer is kind of uncanny.

I also read some more of Rival Queens, and have finally reached the part where the final Valois king, Henri III, has ascended to the French throne, and talks about his gender identity and homosexuality–and of course, the most interesting part to me; the mignons, his handsome young men that danced attendance on him as his favorites. Both mother and sister queens (Catherine de Medici and Marguerite of Navarre) despised the mignons, but weren’t so above the fray to not use them in their own attempts to either control the country or save her own life. It would be interesting, methinks, to write about this treacherous period of religious civil wars in France, with Spain, the Empire and England all meddling in French politics–lots on intrigue, back-stabbing, the changing of sides, assassination and murder, and of course, war. The second half of the sixteenth century saw France torn apart by factionalism and war, which wrecked the economy and kept France from building itself into a major power; fear of France really drove European history for centuries.

There certainly has been a lot of celebrity death lately, so much so that I’ve not really been able to keep up. Maggie Smith–what can I say about Maggie Smith? I first saw her on film in Murder by Death, and she was my favorite part of the movie. When I saw California Suite in the theater, I fell in love with her and wished the entire film had focused on her and Michael Caine; the other stories were dull and trite and cliched. From then on, I made a point to watch anything with Maggie Smith in it, and I was never disappointed. Such a massive talent, and so many great performances left behind. Kris Kristofferson was another giant, of music and acting. I first really noticed him in A Star is Born, and DAMN the man was fine. And that voice! Kristofferson was also a progressive and that came across in many of his classic songs. Just “Help Me Make It Thru The Night”, “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” and “Me and Bobby McGee” is enough to ensure an impressive legacy, and that’s just scratching the surface. He was also a very good person, a classy guy who cared about people and the downtrodden–from that period of country music where the greats (Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kristofferson) were progressives who stood up to oppression and bigotry. (I also love his quote about Toby Keith’s music–“he’s done for country music what pantyhose did for finger-fucking.”)

In other exciting news, the so-called “abortion pills” have now been banned in Gilead, er, Louisiana; the bill banning them outright went into effect this morning. I never thought I’d see the day when we had a worse governor or legislature than we did during the Bobby Jindal “burn Louisiana to the ground” administration…so of course the Reich Wing bigots in Louisiana had to elect someone far, far worse. Such a beautiful state–with so many ugly people living here. That is unfortunately true about the entire South, really, and no, Southern states don’t deserve hurricanes as punishment, either; that’s the kind of hellfire and brimstone shit the Reich believes in, and I reject any natural occurrence as being “God’s punishment” for sin–when God doesn’t choose to protect children from physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, you can miss me with your bloodthirsty god.

I’m looking forward to working on the book some more, and I also want to submit a story to an upcoming anthology deadline that could actually work for me. We shall see how motivated I am, shan’t we?

And on that note, tis off to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I hope you get some tacos tonight!

Get Closer

Monday before the surgery and all is peaceful in the Lost Apartment this morning. I still don’t know what time the surgery is going to be–they’ll be calling me later today with the time to be at the hospital (in METAIRIE)–and I am trying to have an easy day of staying calm and centered as I prepare mentally and emotionally for tomorrow. Last night I had a complete anxiety attack about everything, and even as I spiraled I knew what was happening, what was causing it and why–but that only made it a bit easier. I was concerned I might not be able to shut my mind off and sleep, but that wasn’t a problem. I fell asleep in a matter of moments after going to bed. I also slept deeply and well, feeling great and rested this morning. I have to check up on a few things to make sure things that needed to be done were done and taken care of–the anxiety from last night spiraled out of worry that the form my surgeon needed to fax to HR at the day job wasn’t sent–but even if it wasn’t, I can stay calm and probably get it all taken care of either today or tomorrow before the surgery; I can bring the form with me and Paul can FAX it to HR for me in a worst case scenario if I am too drugged out to deal with it when we get home. I am completely calm and rational about it all this morning–maybe sometimes I need to spiral and work through it to be calm the next day, I don’t know. But I am calm this morning, and rested, and relaxed. Once I finish this, I’ll check with HR to see if the form was received and if not, I’ll work on getting it filled out and returned. I don’t have to go into the office today–today is prep for surgery day, and I didn’t really see how that would work with me going in.

Why does everything have to be difficult? I suppose because otherwise life would be too easy to navigate.

We watched more Happy Valley last night, and this show is exceptionally good. British crime dramas are somehow always better than American ones–even Paul pointed out last night that “British actors look like real people and are super talented. Why do Americans focus on appearance so much?”–which is the source material for an entire other essay; you don’t see Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith and Judi Densch getting their faces shot up with poison and fillers and having everything nipped and tucked and made more generic with a scalpel to the point where their faces don’t move and they’ve become basically voice actors. Paul stayed up super late Saturday night writing a grant, so he slept most of the day and I was left to my own devices. I finished reading Lou Berney’s superb Dark Ride and started J. D. O’Brien’s Zig Zag, which I am also really enjoying. I also did some cleaning and organizing around here to try to make my workspace more functional and more Big Kitten Energy proof–it gets old having to pick up papers and re-sort them every morning because he went bounding around over everything while having the middle of the night Zoomies. It does look better organized this morning and more functional, even if it’s not complete, so we will see how it goes. I also watched another episode of Moonlighting–some are kind of hit and miss, which I didn’t remember from my original watch as it aired back in the 1980’s. Moonlighting had become a hit by then, and was starting to draw big name guest stars. Yesterday’s was Lisa Blount, who enjoyed some success in the 1980’s, but probably is best known for her supporting role in An Officer and a Gentleman–a movie I am relatively certain did not age well. It wasn’t a great episode–it was merely okay, with a clever enough plot and some good banter between David and Maddie; the chemistry was clearly there for them, but it’s another one of those “opposites attract” kind of things, which was only just then turning into a thing for television shows, primarily triggered by the popularity of the Sam and Diane pairing on Cheers that dominated the ratings and the Emmys for the entire decade of the 1980s. Now we’re so used to it that it’s tired, but back in the 1980’s the question of when David and Maddie would get together was something everyone was talking about every week.

I’m trying not to worry about the recovery for the surgery too much–thinking about the physical therapy and so forth was what sent my brain into the spiral last night–how can I be trusted to do things correctly when I’m such a fuck-up? I had one of those moments when Paul came home after his original eye surgery–I am not a trained caregiver! What if I do something wrong?–because I had to, among other things, clean the socket for him every day and apply antibiotic drops and things, and once he was home I was fucking terrified. And it was fine. His socket healed, I didn’t kill him or cause an infection, and we both survived the entire thing. I am a little anxious about Paul as caregiver, but that’s terribly unfair. On the rare occasions when I am actually sick he’s taken very good care of me, and so what if he doesn’t have a lot of experience with caregiving? Neither did I, and I’ve become very good at it over the years.

It’s kind of easy when you don’t have a choice.

And on that note, I am going to do some cleaning and organizing before reaching out to HR to see if there is anything I need to follow up on today. I’ll probably be around again later–I keep meaning to do more blatant self-promotional posts, but as the surgery date draws closer my mind just hasn’t been in that place. So have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back later.

eye in the sky

So it’s Monday morning and I took the day off from work, as I have to head out to Metairie for my pre-operation meetings and clearances and so forth. Woo-hoo. But at least today I expect to know what my recovery is going to look like, and how much time I will actually need to be out of the office. I didn’t sleep great on Saturday night, despite LSU’s big win over Florida, and was up before seven yesterday morning and not really feeling like doing much of anything. I did spend some time with Lou Berney’s delightful Dark Ride, which is like nothing he’s done before–something I always deeply admire with authors–and I really love the voice of his main character. There’s a reason Lou’s won every conceivable award from crime fiction writing; his work is exceptional and I only wish he were more prolific. Hardly is memorable, for many reasons that I cannot wait to get into when I’ve finished reading the book.

The Saints played abysmally yesterday, so I was glad I decided I was too drained already to expand any more emotional energy on watching the game. I was very low energy all weekend, which isn’t surprising, given that I’m kind of dreading the information I am going to be getting today even as I know it’s information that I need to have in order to make decisions that need to be made. Heavy sigh, yes, small wonder I was low energy all weekend. But that’s okay; I did actually think about writing this weekend, and did some of the mental groundwork and even wrote a scene in longhand in my journal, of all things. I also started coming up with names for characters for the next book, which is always fun, and started thinking about which direction to take the story. This is progress, and I will accept that gratefully without flagellating myself or wishing I had produced more and had written something on the computer.

I’m not going to lie, my anxiety is spiking this morning and so I am going to need to struggle a bit with it this morning. I know I’m just borrowing trouble, and being anxious or nervous about the appointments this morning will not change and/or affect what I am going to be told today, which is knowledge I am going to try to use as I sit here to calm my nerves and keep my adrenaline from spiking. I’m going to take Lou’s book with me this morning to read while I wait at the surgeon’s office, and thank God for good books with great writing from talented friends, right? It’s weird to think I’m having surgery next week and it’s also Thanksgiving week, too. I am not sure what we’re going to do for the holiday, since it’s two days after my surgery, but I can get some things over the weekend for it and hopefully it won’t be too big of a deal to make pulled turkey in the crockpot, but then how will I shred the meat with just one hand? A conundrum, for sure. I am going to probably be learning all kinds of lessons in these coming weeks about how imperative it is to have two hands–which is ableist thinking, I know; some people make do their entire lives with merely one hand.

The big news in college football is that Texas A&M went ahead and fired their head coach, Jimbo Fisher, triggering the biggest payout ever for a fired football coach. I thought, at the time, that the contract extension was insane; all he’d managed to do was take A&M to a one-loss season during a pandemic and a limited schedule. They finished in the top ten that year, if I am remembering correctly, but they still didn’t win their division or make it to Atlanta, so I thought it was presumptuous. Of course, this was also right around the time that it was becoming apparent that LSU was going to fire Ed Orgeron, and Fisher had been a target before Orgeron was hired….so A&M was preemptively moving to keep their coach from leaving for Baton Rouge. But A&M underperformed other than that one season, and it was a very bad deal–it’s costing them almost eighty million dollars to fire Fisher, which is also going to create a massive mess for hiring a replacement and for the replacement as well. Fisher was terminated immediately and not being allowed to finish out the season, so when A&M rolls into Tiger Stadium Thanksgiving weekend, they’ll be led by an interim coach. It’s not the first time the LSU-A&M game has had an interim head coach calling the game, either, nor will it be the last, most likely. I mean, seriously–how much money do the Aggie Exes have, for Christ’s sake?

Apparently, a lot. I would imagine the Longhorns are even richer, and they’ll be in the SEC next year.

We finished watching Karen Pirie last night, and it was on the third episode that I realized I’d read the book on which it was based–The Distant Echo, which I had greatly enjoyed. We also are watching the second season of the Jane Seymour crime series, Harry Wild, which is enjoyable–and applause for Ms. Seymour for allowing herself to age gracefully. There you see the primary difference between British and American actresses; Maggie Smith, Diana Rigg, Helen Mirren and Judi Densch have allowed themselves to age, and it’s a beautiful thing to see–whereas American actresses their age now have rigid faces filled with Botox and filler and with all their skin pulled back tightly. It always seemed to me that having a face incapable of movement or expressing emotion would be a negative for an actress, but their insecurities and fears are also predicated on generations of youth worship in Hollywood and sweeping actresses out the door once they’ve hit forty. (In All About Eve the age issue for Margo was turning forty; that same year Sunset Boulevard gave us fifty-year-old has-been Gloria Swanson. The irony that Jessica Lange and That Woman were twenty years older when they played Crawford and Davis in Feud–in which the two fifty-something women miraculously revived their careera–wasn’t lost on this viewer.)

And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close and start getting ready for this morning’s round of pre-surgery appointments. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back this afternoon for some blatant self-promotion.

I Feel the Earth Move

I indulged myself by staying in bed until almost nine this morning–I know, right? I woke up at three and again at five (like every other night this week; this is a trend in my sleep that I am not liking all that much), but stayed in bed. Now that I am up, it’s gray and wet and gloomy outside; maybe it was rain that kept me in bed. What is it about rain and being safe and dry and warm that feels so comforting? I wish I knew. I am also trying to decide this morning over my coffee whether I want to leave the house today. I should swing by the mail and maybe make some groceries and get gas for the car; I also need to get my taxes together, work on my short story, and some other things. I also want to spend some time with Chris Holm’s Child Zero today (and this weekend). I should also brainstorm some more plot ideas for the two books I’ll be working on this year, and once I get this story in some sort of shape I want to go back to “Never Kiss a Stranger” and “Festival of the Redeemer” and some other stories. I had pretty much decided to use April to do clean-up on some things–finishing stories etc–and now it is April; how delightful is that? I can hear thunder, which makes leaving the house seem even more undesirable; I’ve not checked today’s weather. Paul is seeing his trainer today, and instead of going to the office immediately after he’ll be coming home. I think we might (I might) rent Spiderman No Way Home today; we started watching Death on the Nile last night on Hulu but bailed on it when the first ads popped up in mid-scene; at least on a broadcast network, they plan where the commercials will go so a character won’t get cut off in mid-sentence. I am really starting to dislike Hulu’s services for streaming; I remember trying Youtube TV and hating it because it’s interface was useless and difficult to navigate. I really would prefer not to go back to cable under any circumstance; I despise Cox with every fiber of my being. The great irony was the reason I chose Hulu in the first place for a streaming service was because their interface was intuitive and incredibly easy; so naturally they keep changing it and making it less user friendly. (Although to be honest, I was only interested in watching Death on the Nile in order to see Egypt; there’s no way this newer version can possibly top the original with Angela Lansbury, Bette Davis, and Maggie Smith.) Instead we turned over to Netflix and dove into the second season of Dark Desire, which got us caught up in the story immediately.

We wound up going to Costco last night after Paul got home from work to get it out of the way. I also had to take Scooter to the vet for his biannual senior kitty workup–dropping him off and picking him back up later–and I think the Costco trip wore me out. Why is Costco so tiring for me? I hope someday to have a better understanding of that. And we spent a lot of money but it didn’t seem to me like we got as much stuff as we usually do? I don’t understand–will probably never understand that, but I suppose it’s prices going up everywhere that is to blame.

Ooh, it just got darker, which means storm a coming. Ah, there’s the thunder. And it lasted quite a while, too….I suppose I should check the weather.

Ah, rain all morning and then sunny the rest of the day. That I can live with. It also solves the problem of what to do about the errands–run them today or wait? The mail can wait until Monday; there’s no rush to getting it, after all, and I could always just run to the Rouse’s in the CBD to pick up the few things I do actually need. Decisions, decisions.

Ah, there’s the lightning and the rain and even more thunder. I may have to turn on a light, it’s gotten so dark.

I do love New Orleans rain; I’ve never lived any place where it rains the way it does here. I mean, it fucking pours down here, coming down so hard and fast that the drains (and pumps) take a good while to catch up with it. I own about twenty umbrellas as a result of being caught in the rain unexpectedly; it can also go from hot, humid and not a cloud in the sky to a torrential downpour with street flooding in a matter of minutes. Although this doesn’t seem like one of those street-flooding monster storms; this seems more like a oh the greenery needs watering kind of rains. Doesn’t mean it can’t turn even uglier as I sit here typing, but hey. It’s still one of those chill damp mornings where curling up under a blanket with my coffee sounds vastly more appealing than any of the other dreadful things I need to do today–dreadful might be a bit harsh, but unpleasant certainly doesn’t miss the mark nearly as much.

So on that note, I am going to get another cup of coffee and head over to my easy chair to spend an hour with Child Zero–I’ll figure out the rest of the day when that hour is up.

Have a happy Saturday, Constant Reader.

Midnight Train to Georgia

Thursday morning, my first cup of coffee and there’s condensation all over my office windows. There’s mess everywhere in the Lost Apartment this morning–which means, of course, that it’s Thursday. My Monday thru Wednesday work days are lengthy and exhausting so I rarely have the energy to do much of anything on those nights when I get home from work, other than watch a little television, write a bit, and possibly read some. Last night I got home from work, moved a load of laundry from the washer to the dryer, started another load in the washing machine, wrote six or seven hundred words, than escaped to my easy chair. I’m watching a lovely documentary in bits and pieces–Tea with the Dames, on Hulu, which is just Maggie Smith, Judi Densch, Eileen Atkins, and Joan Plowright, talking about their careers, their long friendships, and gossiping about other actors and directors they’ve worked with. It’s quite charming, actually, and then Paul was ready to watch another episode of The Boys, which continues to amaze and impress me.

It’s also now August this morning, so that means there are only nineteen shopping days left before my birthday, so I strongly suggest and recommend you get started looking for my gifts now, okay? It’ll save you so much stress if you do it now, and beat the inevitable crowds that are certain to form the closer the actual day comes.

The big project I’m working on that dropped into my lap lately moves closer to completion; or at least, closer to my part being finished; I’ve acknowledged that after a certain point my assistance is moot and would be useless, but I can get a lot of the groundwork finished to begin with, which is in my wheelhouse, and we’re almost there.

As I said earlier, I only managed 700 or so words on the WIP last night, which isn’t terrific, but there are certainly worse things. Writing this book has been like pulling teeth almost from the very beginning, and doesn’t seem to get any easier the closer I get to the end. But that’s okay; I like the way it’s all coming together, despite the roughness of the words and the writing, it’s just taking me a hot minute to get everything finished, and that’s fine. I’m not so sure I know how to make the Kansas book–which I’ll be revising for the final time once I finish writing this draft–go faster than this; I am doing some heavy revisions and heavy lifting with it (I am literally stunned–and glad I waited on it–to see how many high school tropes and stereotypes I played into with this particular manuscript; I mean, literally–pick one and I can almost certainly let you know that it was included in this book), but I am confident I know what to do with it and am hoping I’ll get through it relatively quickly. I’m kind of glad another project I was scheduled to start working on today has been moved back another couple of months–dealing with it while trying to get this other stuff done (especially the one that dropped out of nowhere into my lap) would have sent me straight to the Xanax bottle. As it is, I have some other odds and ends I need to get done that I don’t seem to have the energy to get to once I do everything else for that day; perhaps one morning this weekend I’ll simply focus on those things and get them out of the way once and for all. I have three short stories promised to write, two of which I haven’t the slightest idea of what the story actually is; I definitely need to set aside some time to brainstorm those as deadlines are looming and drawing nearer and nearer.

And I really need to clean out my email inbox once and for all.

I also agreed to participate in a round table discussion about an aspect of writing–you know me, I never say no since I’m always flattered to be thought of and included in the first place–but yesterday I took a look at the questions and JFC, they are way over my head and slightly too smart for me; answering and participating is going to probably make me look stupid. (Shut up, Bryon.) But I agreed to do it, so I am going to print out the questions this weekend and look them over, because they do require thought rather than off-the-top-of-my-head answers. (Let me put it to you this way; the very first question revolves around an Octavia Butler novel…so you see how far it’s over my head already.)

This morning I feel very rested and very good; I feel like I can conquer the world today, which is always a plus and it’s also been a hot minute since I’ve felt this way.

I got some more books yesterday–Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction by Patricia Highsmith (I am literally drooling to start this); Love and Death in the Sunshine State: The Story of a Murder by Cutter Wood; and The Women of Dauphine by Deb Jannerson, a queer y/a set in New Orleans by a local writer; I don’t recall how I heard about this book, but I did and now I have it. I’ve not read a New Orleans novel in a while, and it might be fun to read another writer’s take on our diverse, vibrant city. I’m actually not sure how I heard about any of these books, to be honest–other than Sarah Weinman was talking about the Highsmith on Twitter last week and convinced me I needed to read it. I generally don’t read how-to-write books anymore (other than John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction, which I primarily read, and reread, for enjoyment because Gardner was such a pompous, pretentious ass, which comes through loud and clear with every sentence–it helps whenever I want to create a character who is a pompous ass literary writer), but Sarah (who has to date never been wrong with recommending something to me) said it’s not only a writing guide but also sort of a memoir, and Highsmith was not only an unpleasant person but she embraced her unpleasantness, which is kind of lovely and fun and admirable–and probably fun to read. I love her novels–I’ve not read the entire canon, and I never finished the Ripley series other than the first one–and I should probably start working my way through the canon at some point. I’ve never been disappointed with a Highsmith, and the last two I read–The Cry of the Owl and The Blunderer, were simply genius and devilishly clever).

I also want to finish reading Steph Cha’s Your House Will Pay, which I’ve been recommending to all my co-workers.

Okay, that’s enough morning reflection. I need another cup of coffee, and I think I’m going to do some chores around answering emails this morning.

Have a lovely Friday Eve, everyone!

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