Tag: oxycontin

Southern Cross

Monday and back to the office.

The time change is always so weird to me, really. I always understood it had something to do with kids and not catching the bus in the dark in the mornings or something like that, but if they’re all walking home after school in the dark, how does that make sense? I always appreciate the extra hour, but always resent giving it back (or having it taken away?) in the spring. I kept finding clocks I hadn’t reset in the apartment (after thinking, wow, time has flown–wait a minute), and I did do some things. I did manage to make it to the West Bank, but it was really a wasted trip; Sundays are clearly not the day to do shopping over there as almost every place was out of almost everything. I got my wagon but couldn’t get the wheels to lock in place (I am so not handy) and I also got the wrong size blinds–so I get to go back. Hurray. But I did get some things for lunch this week, and I made ravioli last night for dinner for something different (I even managed to eat some bread softened with red gravy), which was nice. I watched the end of the Saints game–which they tried very hard to lose–and then another episode of Moonlighting. I found a much later and much more revised version of one of the novellas, “Fireflies”–which needs a lot of work, but is a very good idea and the kernel of a terrific novellas is there, if I can stick the landing–and also was put in mind of Chlorine yet again by coming across Matt Baume’s Tab Hunter1 documentary on Youtube (another great job, Matt!)–and I had a germ of an idea for how a part of the plot would work–another piece fell into place, as it were, and so I scribbled it down in my journal (huzzah for journals!) to wait for the day and time I can get back to work on it and give it my full attention.

I realized yesterday–once again astonishing myself with my own obtuseness–that part of what’s going on with me lately–the moodiness, the surliness, the self-destructive inability to get anything done, and the anxiety that comes with all of the above–has everything to do with my coming surgery. The compartmentalization doesn’t always work, you see, when something is creating a lot of anxiety for me. I have very little idea of what to expect and what it’s going to be like–or how restricted I am going to be as far as movement and so forth or for how long. I know I shouldn’t consult Dr. Google, but in lieu of any other information that I can recall, what else is there to do? And Dr. Google was right when I looked up the information on the injury when it was finally correctly diagnosed, after all. So I can look at about three weeks out of the office on medical leave, and then possibly some limited mobility after that. It sounds like if I am going to be able to type at all it will be one-handed, which is limiting, so I am hoping that if I am not drugged out to the gills I can spend time getting caught up on my reading as well as doing a lot of editing work on my own stuff. I am not going to be able to lift or carry things, which is going to make the whole grocery situation interesting for a couple of weeks, but I guess I can have things delivered. Probably the best way to compartmentalize all of the concern and anxiety about the surgery would be to start planning and preparing so I can be as ready as I can, right? It’s been a year, really. I suppose my end of the year round-up blog post on New Year’s Day will be a bit morose and melancholy.

I think one tends to be a bit more morose and melancholy as one gets older.

I also started watching A Haunting in Venice and while it was shot beautifully and had a great cast–it didn’t really hold my interest. The Agatha Christie novel it’s loosely based on–and I do mean loosely–is not one of the more better known ones; Halloween Party was a perfectly adequate Christie novel but it wasn’t anything spectacular. I do remember it, and I do have a hardcover book club edition of it, too. It probably belonged to my grandmother, or else I picked it up at a second hand store or a flea market or somewhere like that. I took a break about halfway through and then went back…and kind of dozed a bit through the second half. It’s a shame; I watched because I had Venice on the brain after rereading “Festival of the Redeemer” Saturday afternoon, and rethinking how to rewrite and revise and improve it. But it was beautifully shot, and made me wish I could live, even if for a brief month or so, in Venice for a while. I did go back and finish it–but I found it disappointing. Beautifully shot, yes, and Venice is always beautiful on film, but such a waste of so much remarkable talent.

I went to bed early–it was a struggle staying up until ten, which felt like eleven, and slept really well. I feel rested enough to actually face the day and potentially be productive–crazy, I know–but I generally feel well rested on Monday; it’s the rest of the week when my ass starts dragging. I also have to keep pushing forward on some things, too–progress must always be made, even when I don’t feel like making progress on anything. (Watching Tug get used to having his nails trimmed and not being able to use thing to climb–me, in particular–has been rather cute, but then again he is world’s most adorable kitten.) I didn’t read very much this weekend, either, more’s the pity; but I am thinking I’ll be doing a lot of reading once the surgery has taken place and I am no longer living on pain medications–maybe I can even read while on painkillers; I know they are going to give me oxycontin or some version or derivative of it, which makes watching all those movies and documentaries and mini-series based on the crimes of the Sackler family against the American public perhaps not as smart as it seemed at the time; I am terrified of becoming addicted to a pain medication–but that’s also an excellent time to wean myself off the Xanax, too.2

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines for the morning. Have a great Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back to check in on you again later with undoubtedly more blatant self-promotion.

  1. I actually met Tab Hunter, which is something that amazes me to this very day; I actually met him and his husband several times. How cool is my life, really? ↩︎
  2. While I’ve been taking it to control mood swings all these years, it’s really not something you’re supposed to take on a daily basis but rather as needed; now that I know it’s anxiety I can treat it appropriately. Most of my medications are now wrong, and need to be changed. ↩︎

In Our Angelhood

LSU is in the finals of the College World Series! Woo-hoo! GEAUX TIGERS! And what a great game that was last night, for real. A pitcher’s duel with no runs until the bottom of the 11th; when Dylan Crews hit a base hit and Wake Forest brought in a relief pitcher—whose only pitch was a home run! Tigers win, 2-0! Apparently that pitcher had also said in a press conference “who can beat us?” Well, there’s your irony, bud–your answer was LSU! And yes, the Tiger fans are on track to double the old Rocco’s Bar jello shot challenge record. (It amazes me that this has made the news all over the country; the fact Louisianans love to drink is one of the reasons I’ve always loved it here, even though I really don’t drink much anymore myself. )

Today is a work-at-home Friday, but we have a team building exercise today and our team’s supervisor is taking us out to lunch afterwards. I have some errands to run at some point today, and am really looking forward to getting back home into the cool. Yesterday when I got off work and walked out to the car I thought, hey it’s still kind of unseasonably cool, I would have thought it would be miserable again already and when I started the car and looked at the dashboard, it was ninety-seven degrees! Amazing what a difference lower humidity can make to how hot it feels around here. I slept marvelously last night–I think I was emotionally worn out after the rollercoaster ride that was the LSU game last night (there was also one of the most amazing defensive plays I’ve ever see in baseball, when Tre Morgan saved the game by making a play to home base that tagged the runner at home with seconds to spare; it was as big a play as the home run that won it) and so had an easy time of falling asleep. I have to make a list of what all I need to get done before I leave on Sunday morning for Alabama.

But I feel rested this morning, and I am very glad. I’ll probably take a Lyft to the escape room (that’s what we’re doing for team building; I’ve never done one before so I am intrigued to experience something new) and then another one home; ordinarily I would just walk or take the streetcar, but it’s sooooo miserably hot that I don’t want the heat to leech all my energy and will out of me because I have things to do today. I got some more good work done on the book yesterday, and I am hoping to be able to get it finished either tonight or tomorrow. Once it’s done and I am back from Kentucky, I’ll probably go ahead and share the cover and post about the book, how it came to be and all of that. I’m going to need to get the apartment cleaned up some, the refrigerator cleaned out, and I need to make a grocery list for the week so I can get supplies put in for Paul before I leave–although he’ll probably just get salads from Rouse’s or Subway–and I also have some books to drop off at the library sale on Saturday.

Mmmm, my coffee tastes marvelous this morning. It always seems to taste better when I’ve slept well. I also think I am over whatever that bug is that I was dealing with earlier in the week. I took some DayQuil yesterday which alleviated the symptoms and once it wore off, the symptoms didn’t come back. I still am a bit congested so I’m not completely over it, but I feel a thousand times better than I did, which is a relief. There’s nothing worse than a long drive when you don’t feel well, you know. I also watched the American Pain documentary, about the horrible twin brothers who ran the country biggest pill mills and helped create the current opioid crisis (it’s also lovely that the one who has done his time and been released takes absolutely no responsibility for what he did–because their addiction is their own fault since he didn’t make them take the Oxy; they chose to do that themselves. Sure, bud, their doctors got them hooked and you made profits off their suffering, but you do you, sociopath. What a monster–both brothers are just utter and complete pieces of shit. Their case is also an example of how different justice is for white boys from an upper middle class family than it is for non-whites or whites from a lower social strata–they’d been getting in trouble with the law since they were kids and never got more than a slap on the wrist; there were never any consequences for their behavior so they turned into sociopaths. You just know if they were Black or from a trailer park they would have been sent to jail in their late teens and the key thrown away. But because they were rich white boys…no one wanted to ruin their futures.

Look how that turned out. Disgusting.

And on that note, I am going to make more coffee and head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you later.

Stay with Me

Gotta get down it’s Friday!

I slept late this morning, which is a latter-day miracle. I’ve been waking up at five for over a week now, which, while not entirely unpleasant, has resulted in me not necessarily feeling as rested and energetic as perhaps I could and/or should. I am hoping this is a good sign, and the fall back this weekend (which I resent every spring when we have to give the hour back) will give me an extra hour of sleep every morning until I adjust, which is also incredibly lovely. It’s another work-at-home day for me, and the data is glaring at me from the stack of forms I have to input today. But getting this finished and the forms out of the house is yet another step in the right direction in my attempts to get everything around here under control at long last.

I also need to get some more work on the book done today. Yesterday wasn’t a good one, frankly, so I tried going over the page proofs for #shedeservedit, which are due on Monday. In fact, I think I will try to get that finished this evening so I have the weekend completely free to write. LSU plays Alabama this weekend, which will undoubtedly be a tragedy in four quarters–and last year I stopped watching at half-time when the score was like 100-0. I don’t see this year being much more promising, frankly. Tomorrow morning I think I’m going to take a walk to scope out the neighborhood for the book a bit more–I am going to have to be a lot looser with the Irish Channel’s actual geography than I prefer to be in my books about New Orleans, but moving a house a few blocks really isn’t that big of a deal, as long as I get other things about the city right. New Orleans will have to be a character in the book, of course; my settings generally inevitably are characters in their own right–setting and atmosphere is probably my biggest strength as a writer, actually (someone shouts you have no strengths as a writer from the back; shut up, Imposter Syndrome! How very dare you!)–and I also really need to start getting more and more into who my point of view character is. She’s the key to the whole story, isn’t she? As well as her community of friends and family?

We shall see.

We got caught up on this week’s episodes of Dopesick and The Sinner last night once Paul got home from the gym. Dopesick, like the documentary Crime of the Century, sicken and disgust me; it’s impossible to watch either without feeling utter disgust for the billionaire Sackler family–still trying to evade any punishment for their crimes against the country, all in the name of greed and power–and for the corrupt system that allowed them to create an addiction crisis. Their intent was never helping people; it was about getting rich and doing whatever they could, including bribing people in oversight positions, to push this horribly addicting drug on unsuspecting pain patients, or people suffering from chronic pain. Pain is exhausting; the times when I’ve suffered through it–usually something relatively minor at that, like an abscessed tooth or a pulled/strained muscle–has been completely debilitating, and was always in the short term, over quickly with me only losing a few days to it. It’s impossible to think or work through pain; let alone function as a human being. I cannot imagine chronic, constant pain–and I can see how something like this drug could have seemed like a miracle to sufferers at first.

But things that seem to be too good to be true inevitably prove not to be.

Addiction is one of the things that absolutely terrifies me. I am terrified of developing a dependence on something, particularly at my age, and I feel relatively certain I wouldn’t have the strength to fight through it and recover. I’ve always worried about this at various times in my life; I certainly have a weird relationship with alcohol that I should probably write about someday. Currently I do worry about some of the medications I take daily, but I think I’ll be okay.

At least for now, at any rate.

And on that somber note, I am heading into the spice mines. I am kind of dull this morning–it’s also gloomy outside, but not “it’s going to rain” gloomy, but simply “lots and lots of white clouds” gloomy,

Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader.

A Little Respect

Well, hello, Wednesday morning, how are you doing? I am at home today because I am doing the prep work necessary for tomorrow morning’s procedure (it’s a colonoscopy; I am not sure why I am being so coy about it. I am over sixty now and this is long overdue; the hurdles I had to clear and hoops I had to jump through to get this thing scheduled….oy. I don’t understand the mentality of the people who defend our health care/insurance system…and sadly, it’s better now than it was when I first got health insurance back in 2006), and the doctor recommended being in close reach of a bathroom for most of the day. I have to get up at midnight to begin Stage II, then I have to get up and be at Touro for the procedure by seven tomorrow morning. I also have to go to Touro later today to get a rapid COVID test to get clearance.

Seriously, with my luck I’ll test positive and then not only have to reschedule the entire thing but have to quarantine for fourteen more days.

That sure took a turn, didn’t it?That should give an indication of my late October mood, though, shouldn’t it? I don’t know, maybe it’s the procedure and having to go underneath anesthetic for the first time in a really long time; or perhaps it’s the whole Halloween thing? Who knows? Halloween is certainly a time for darkness and the macabre; which is interesting, since the name is a contraction of all hallows eve, which means, really, the eve of All Saints Day, which you’d think would be more celebratory? It also occurs to me that I’ve never actually written about Halloween, and given what a popular holiday it is in New Orleans, that’s kind of odd. Jackson Square Jazz is set just before Halloween; I think in the afterward Scotty mentions the costumes he and the boys were to the Halloween Ball? It’s been a hot minute, so I can’t remember…but I know there’s not a Scotty Halloween book, and I know I never did one with Chanse–who couldn’t be bothered to wear a costume; he’d find the whole thing tiresome. But not even a short story! (“The Snow Globe,” in fairness, began as a Halloween story and was originally titled “All Hallows Eve”; obviously I changed that.)

Unfortunately, given the timeline I’ve got going with the Scotty books now, I don’t know that the next one can be a Halloween book. Although I could play with the timeline a little more, I suppose. Royal Street Reveillon was set during the Christmas season, and I’ve always thought of it as Christmas 2019 (which means it became cemented into my brain as set in that year; and my stubborn subconscious never lets it go until my conscious mind realizes how stupid I am actually being)….with a pandemic just around the corner. But the book itself came out in October 2019, so I finished writing it earlier that year so there’s no reason it can’t be 2018…or 2017 for that matter, and I can also go back and put books in between the ones I’ve already published, if I so desire…ah, the Godlike power of being an author! What, though, would be a good Scotty Halloween title? Hmmmm…Halloween Season Hijinks? Halloween Party Horror?

Sigh. This will be in the back of my head now for awhile, which is how this always goes, doesn’t it?

I did sleep very well last night, which was lovely. (I set the alarm of course, reflexively, as I slipped into bed last night) We finished the first season of Only Murders in the Building, which resolved the first season but ended with a cliffhanger setting up Season 2–something I was wondering about–and thoroughly enjoyed it. We also started watching Dopesick, a fictionalized version of how the Sackler family single-handedly created the opioid crisis in this country so they can make billions. It’s very well done–I’d watched the documentary version of this already, whose name I cannot recall–and the acting is stellar. It’s powerful, too; I love that they are showing how this all happened through the eyes of a doctor in Appalachia (played by Michael Keaton), as well as showing the lives of some of his patients and how they got sucked into oxycontin addiction. I don’t know how anyone can watch this (or the original documentary) without burning with rage at the Sackler family and the politicians they fucking bought off so they could exploit the pain of the working class for profit, and what a classic example this is of how an unmonitored and unregulated capitalism–the ideal of the conservatives (let the market decide!)–can not only be damaging but lethal. We are still cleaning up the mess this created, while they sip expensive wine and eat caviar and fly to glamorous places on private jets. (I think the next time someone pulls some of that Ayn Rand libertarian “no regulation” bullshit on me I’m just going to smile and say “Oxycontin and the Sackler family disprove her theories on everything.”)

I also got Dr. Alecia P. Long’s latest book yesterday, Cruising for Conspirators: How a New Orleans DA Prosecuted the Kennedy Assassination as a Sex Crime, which I am really looking forward to reading. This is, of course, about the Clay Shaw trials here in New Orleans, and how Jim Garrison abused his power as district attorney; Oliver Stone based JFK on this, treating Garrison as an unsung American hero when he was anything but that–I’ve not seen the film, nor any other Oliver Stone film since this piece of propaganda and packet of lies was filmed. I also don’t trust anything Stone did, or does, anymore to be honest and truthful and factual. He basically ignored all the evidence–and there was plenty of it–and turned Garrison into some kind of folk-hero when he truly was a corrupt monster who tainted everything he touched and made the Puritans look like sex maniacs. And this country being what it is, the completely fictional film JFK and its conclusions and accusations are now seen by people as being factual. I’ve always been interested in writing about this case fictionally–seriously, the history of New Orleans and Louisiana is so rich and deep and rife with potential for writing, I could never run out of material here–and have done some loose reading up on it…and I’ve never come across anything backing up Garrison or his claims that didn’t originate in some insane right-wing crackpot conspiracy generator. I could be wrong, but I feel Dr. Long–whose The Great Southern Babylon is also a must-read for people interested in New Orleans and her history–is not a Garrison sympathizer; certainly the book’s title implies that; but I also trust Dr. Long, her scholarship, and her dedication to research. This will inevitably prove to be the definitive book on the subject.

I’m also still reading Robert A. Caro’s massive The Power Broker: Bob Moses and the Fall of New York, which, like all of Caro’s work, is exceptional. I’m perhaps about a quarter of the way through the book, but it’s also fascinating; a history of the New York parks and recreational facilities and the building of highways and parkways and roads so that New Yorkers could escape the city and enjoy the outside recreationally on the weekends. The power struggle over making Long Island more accessible to the city dwellers is deeply fascinating, as is watching how another idealistic young man slowly realizes that politics is more about reality and power than ideals, and learns to use politics and power to get what he wants–even if doing so might not be exactly legal. (This was my primary takeaway from Huey Long by Harry Williams.) I hope to read more of Paul Tremblay’s Disappearance at Devil’s Rock with an eye to finishing it, over the course of the next few days and the weekend. Tremblay is becoming one of my favorite horror writers; I’ve certainly loved everything he’s written thus far, and would like to get some more horror read this month before Halloween and we move into the Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year’s holiday cycle.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, everyone, and I will check in with you again tomorrow after the procedure. (Depending on how it goes and how drugged I am and how quickly the drugs wear off.)

Truth

Friday! I am up ridiculously early on what would ordinarily be a work-at-home day, but I actually have taken a personal day today because I have to take my desktop to the Apple Store in Metairie at nine this morning. Yes, I finally broke down and decided to see if there’s anything that can be done with it. Last week, I had to take Paul out there to buy a cord for his phone (and a remote for the Apple TV, since somehow ours disappeared) and I asked them about loading an operating system into it; the guy said they’d do it for free, so I made the appointment. I don’t entirely trust Apple, though, so I am expecting that it either will cost me money, or they’ll tell me the computer is irreparable or something. Heavy sigh, it’s always something, isn’t it?

I couldn’t sleep last night–par for the course, really, anymore–and so at six this morning I just gave up and got up. I am going to try to swill down enough coffee to make me lucid before having to drive out there. I’m going to also see if I can buy replacement watchbands–I have two watches with broken bands–while I am at the mall, even though the rest of the mall doesn’t open until eleven. I am taking a book with me, and of course will have my phone, as I plan to simply wait there at the mall until my computer is ready. If it’s going to take more than a few hours, I *may* drive home and then go back out there again; I don’t know. I guess I will see what they say when I check the computer in…I know when Wendy and I went to the Apple Store in Tampa during Bouchercon several years ago to get her phone repaired, they said it wouldn’t take more than an hour but we were there for hours, waiting–so these things generally, inevitably, always take longer than they say.

I have other errands I am going to do today; I had two other appointments–doctor and eye doctor–but in an odd weird coincidence, both were cancelled yesterday afternoon…a pain in the ass, to be sure, but what can I do? I was trying to be efficient and do everything I need to do in Metairie on the same day, but it was, alas, not to be.

We got caught up on Mare of Easttown last night, and started watching a documentary about the opioid epidemic on HBO MAX, The Crime of the Century, which was very well done and really horrifying to watch–it’s just another example of how fucked up this country is, and what an enormously flawed system capitalism actually is; when there is no legal accountability for a pharmaceutical company for addicting millions of Americans deliberately, and elected officials and doctors are complicit, what hope does anyone have for justice? Addiction has always terrified me–I have had mental addictions before, but thank God no physical cravings for anything–and it’s one of the many reasons I try to be careful with my alprazolam prescription; I am out and cannot have it refilled again until July–so hold on to your hats as my moods are going to start swinging and my anxiety is going to get out of control again, yippee! But it’s probably best that I go cold turkey on it for a couple of months…anyway, back to the opioids. I never really quite understood the connection between oxycontin and heroin before; why people who became addicted to an opioid would then go to heroin; I knew it happened, but never completely made the connection that, for all intents and purposes, oxycontin was simply a legal, pure form of stronger heroin. I myself have been prescribed oxycontin before–for pain–but I also have always had a high tolerance for pain and so never needed to use every pill prescribed; being able to take a couple to get through the intense pain and then handling it on my own after that without taking anything. I can certainly see how one can become addicted to it–it’s lovely to not have pain, after all, and you also never realize how many aches and pains you deal with on a daily basis (and think nothing of) until you take something that makes all of that go away. For people who have chronic pain, this is the choice they are given: live in pain or become a drug addict, and possibly die from an overdose.

Addiction is yet another big subject I’ve never tackled in my own fiction; I was always very careful to make certain I didn’t give in to the incredibly easy trope of the alcoholic (or hard drinking) private eye–there are very few who manage to do it well, make it fresh, have something new to say about it. J. M. Redmann’s Micky Knight series is one where it works; Micky’s fondness for whiskey (particularly fine Scotch) never really crosses the line into an alcoholism trope; I have written about drinking too much and having a hangover and having to deal with reality while suffering from the after-effects of binge drinking; that is something I am familiar enough with to write about, although I always fear I have gone to that well far too often. I often question myself too much, I think, about my work, and in addition to my frequent imposter syndrome, I always am worried that I am repeating myself in my work; something that becomes all too easy the older I get and the more I have written and the more my memory declines.

As my body continues to break down and decay as it ages, that’s part of the reason I am hopeful my desktop computer can be easily be repaired and made usable again; I need the big screen to view and work on. I have tried, for the longest time, to get used to using the small screen of my laptop and be able to work on it–I really have no choice, but it has made me feel incredibly disconnected from my work and like I am not working the way I should be, and my lack of productivity over the past few years has been directly connected to having to work on this MacBook Air. I have already decided if the computer is irreparable, I am going to probably go ahead and use my tax refund to buy a new desktop; it is a tax deduction, inevitably, even if I don’t want to spend the money, it is a necessary work tool. I don’t fool myself into thinking it will actually solve my productivity issues, by any means, but it will help–and once I’ve spent the money, I think I can make myself do the work if for no other reason than for the fact that I spent all that money.

Sigh. It also just occurred to me that the computer may not even get worked on today; they might just be checking it in and at some point it’ll be ready over the weekend or next week….

On that cheery thought, I need to get in the shower and ready to head for Metairie. May your Friday be lovely and marvelous, Constant Reader.