Tag: Sacklers

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. ↩︎

Love to Hate You

Working at home today, but heading into the office this afternoon to get my booster shot. Yay, booster shot!

It’s hard to believe that Halloween is this weekend. WHERE THE HELL DID OCTOBER GO? Granted, when I think back to the summer or spring (let alone the winter) it does seem like it was a million years ago; time seems to slip past very quickly but when looking back, I don’t think, “wasn’t it just Labor Day?” This year has certainly been something–but I much prefer 2021 to 2020, any day of the week, and maybe, just maybe, 2022 will be better than 2021.

Fingers crossed, at any rate.

This has been a strange week. My fuse has been shorter than usual; I don’t know what that is about because I’ve been sleeping really well and have been productive, but at the same time I’ve not actually been writing, and that always causes trouble for me in the long run; if I don’t write, my mood darkens (something I always seem to forget). I’ve not been tired this week–at least not until I get home from the office, at any rate; I generally have been running out of steam around six or so in the evening, which means neither writing nor reading anything; although I’ve been going over my edits in the evenings and will probably do my proofing in the evening as well. I want to step away from the book for a few days anyway; there have been so many drafts and so many changes that I was slowly beginning to not completely trust my memory for the edits (I couldn’t remember if something was in the current draft or I was remembering a former one; I eventually gave up on my memory and trusted that my editor was getting things right because there was no way I could be certain….this memory thing is really becoming problematic).

The memory thing is becoming enough of an issue that I may need to end the Scotty series because I can’t remember what has happened in the past books…I keep meaning to make a series Bible–even took the time to go through a set of the series with little post-it notes, color-coded by character and location…just never got around to extracting the information. Maybe one of these days when I am really tired, or really bored…it probably wouldn’t be a completely terrible idea to reread the entire series from beginning to end, either. Sigh. I really don’t like rereading my own stuff because inevitably I will always find things I want to fix or correct and revise…and of course, it’s too late.

Last night we had the most terrifyingly powerful thunderstorm. The thunder sometimes seemed it wasn’t going to end, and there was more of a downpour than we had during Hurricane Ida. I mean, I was watching television (Paul had gone to the gym) and if I notice that it’s raining–if I can hear it–that means it’s literally getting close to time to build an ark. I actually wondered if I should move the car…and am still a little nervous about getting into it later to drive to the office for my booster to find out it flooded or something. It ended before Paul came home from the gym, but I was worried about him–the lightning and thunder was so intense, and the downpour so strong…it was pretty bad in the parishes so damaged by Ida, too, particularly in Lafourche and Terrebonne.

Louisianans don’t get near enough credit for toughness and resiliency, methinks.

I started watching Foundation again last night, and am really glad I did, as the action and story begin to seriously pick up in episode 4. There’s a weird gap of time between the second and third episodes–definitely a risk by the producers and writers–which isn’t really explained; episode two ends on a major cliffhanger and when the third episode begins, it’s like thirty or more years later, with no explanation or follow-up to the second episode–which was jarring to me as a viewer. But enough happens in episode four that I started to finally get sucked into the story, and episode five was spectacular; I am definitely all-in on the show now. It’s incredibly well-done; visually it’s gorgeous and stunning and epic in design, and it also expands heavily on the original stories. (I read the Foundation trilogy–it was originally a trilogy–back in my brief scifi/fantasy period of the 1980’s; I also read all the follow up Foundation novels, and loved them all. I don’t remember an awful lot of the books, but I do remember being very impressed by them and the universe they created; I loved them so much I went back and read much of Azimov’s past science fictions–the robot books, the Lije Bailey/Daneel Olivaw novels–and really came to an appreciation of Azimov as a visionary writer.)

We also watched the most recent episode of Dopesick, and what a stunning indictment of our capitalist system it is. The fact that the Sackler family’s greed resulted in our current opioid crisis and I don’t even know how many deaths and addictions and crimes…and the fact they are going to not only get away with it but keep most of their ill-gotten gains is sickening and disgusting to me. Sure, Purdue Pharma is bankrupt and going out of business, but the real evil here is the family that owned it–and the fact they are not going to have anything happen to them other than losing a few billion (out of over a dozen)–gosh, how will they fucking sleep at night? The Sacklers certainly make me understand why people so fervently believe in hell.

And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I will check in on you again in the morning.