Tag: Sparky

Trouble in Shangri-La

Ah, Shangri-La. That name used to be very much in the zeitgeist when I was growing up; it’s a mythical place, a utopian paradise, a warm, fertile valley hidden in the Himalayas where no one ages, from a book (and two film adaptations) by James Hilton titled Lost Horizon. (In Tibetan Buddhism, I believe it’s called “Shambhala”–also the title of a hit song by the band Three Dog Night1 in the early 1970s.) I saw the original 1937 film version on the late movies when I was a kid, and became fascinated by the story. I read the book (Hilton also wrote Good-bye Mr. Chips) and really liked it, but you also had to suspend some serious belief because there were definitely holes in the story that didn’t make sense that both Hilton and the film’s director simply glossed over and ignored. The movie was remade as a musical in 1973, I think–it bombed and is considered one of the worst movies ever made; I’ve never seen it because I’d heard it was terrible (although I am now thinking it might be fun to do a project watching major Hollywood bombs). Shangri-La used to be a part of the zeitgeist, but it has faded as I’ve gotten older–funny how that happens; like how no one ever talks about the gold in Fort Knox anymore, or quicksand (Hanna-Barbera have a lot to answer for when it comes to the threat of quicksand).

Here we are on Sunday morning and the time changed, which I always hate. Can’t we just do away with Daylight Saving Time? The extra hour in the fall, while appreciated, never makes up for the lost hour in the spring. I had planned to get up early to offset the lost hour, but that didn’t happen and I stayed in bed until nine (eight, really); the bed was comfortable and Sparky was warm and purring, okay? I could have easily stayed in bed a few more hours, but Sparky eventually got hungry so I went ahead and left the comfort of the pile of blankets and made coffee and fed him and here we are, you know? I am about to get another cup of coffee and put some bread in the toaster. I bought a “gourmet” jar of strawberry preserves yesterday, just to see if it really is better than the Smucker’s brand I usually get; I love preserves so much more than jams or jellies, which I think is the result of my parents being from the country, and us bringing home jars of preserves back home with us when we visited Alabama; my grandmothers were queens of canning–the memory of their blackberry preserves makes my mouth water a bit. I do miss that about going to Alabama in the summer–the fresh fruit and vegetables right off the field.

The gourmet preserves are delicious, by the way.

After my late start yesterday, I managed to run my errands and make groceries, and had some things delivered later on once I was home. Paul saw his trainer and rode the bike for a few hours yesterday afternoon, which gave me a chance to do some chores around here (more of them to do today, too). Once the chores were taken care of and I felt a bit tired, I sat down in my chair to finish off season 2 of The Traitors-UK, and I am noticing a pattern with the different casts–your chances of winning are exponentially higher if you’re an attractive younger man; that was Season 2 from beginning to end, with handsome and sweet and young charmer Harry getting rid of at five other traitors (UK’s season 2 is very traitor heavy; they start with three and recruit several times; there were three of them going into the final six! Today I am going to start season three of the UK version; it’s absolutely delightful to get sucked into the show and vested in the players. I also love the challenges, almost more than the game of Faithful v. Traitor, to be completely honest. I really cannot wait to write my essay about the show.

For the record, I am not as familiar with opera as I am with ballet–and even ballet I am not that familiar with, other than I know it’s an incredibly strict discipline that requires years of training and conditioning and rehearsal. What ballet dancers can do with their bodies is astonishing; it’s like figure skating in the way that it’s actually an incredibly difficult and grueling sport made to look like art. Opera is much the same, only it’s vocal and breathing training, and again–the ability to hit and hold those insane notes requires dedication and devotion and hours and hours of training. Dismissing these art forms as whatever it was the clown prince of the Kardashians called them this week, which was pretty ballsy for someone making a career in the arts and coming from a dance family. It was very tone-deaf for someone who likes to paint himself as some sort of renaissance man, but I also think he’s kind of been reading his own notices and his current mistress comes from the most narcissistic family that has ever lived–so we also can’t rule out the negative influence of the plastic she-thing he sleeps with. I’ve no desire to see his latest movie, and I sincerely doubt he gave a performance as excellent and layered as the dual role Michael B. Jordan played in Sinners.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Hope you have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow as I make my way into the spice mines!

  1. They dropped the “h,” though, calling it “Shambala.” ↩︎

Love’s a Hard Game to Play

Saturday in the Lost Apartment and a lovely weekend to be sure–despite the time change tomorrow, which I always hate–and I had a lovely night’s sleep, actually. I actually slept late this morning, which is wild; not arising from the pile of blankets and comfortable bed until almost nine thirty this morning. Progress, though, is thinking I must have needed more sleep rather than bashing myself for oversleeping. Sparky was also a sweetheart this morning and let me sleep until his hunger overcame him and he whimpered at me, making me open my eyes and look at the clock and think oh, need to get up, don’t I? I feel good this morning, if a bit foggy because the coffee hasn’t started kicking in yet, either. My plan for today was to take it easy and do more chores around reading (and yes, probably some time spent with The Traitors) since I didn’t get everything done yesterday that I wanted to–but the dishes and the laundry are finished. I need to run a brief errand today, too–a quick run by the Fresh Market on the way home from picking up the mail–and then I will be back home for the rest of the day. It was gorgeous outside yesterday as I ran from doctor’s appointment to doctor’s appointment (everything went well, all my vitals and so forth are okay, my blood pressure excellent, etc–always lovely news to hear, you know? Today looks gorgeous, too, which is pretty great; I think the cold is behind us now and it’s a steady march to our brief spring before the horrors of the summer heat return again.

Yesterday was mellow, honestly. I got up, got cleaned up, had my meeting and did some at-home work before i had to start the round of appointments. When I got home from all of that I started cleaning, while watching The Traitors when I took a little break. I also had some creative moments during the day, coming up with several short story ideas while my hands were busy but my mind free, and of course, Sparky imprisoned me for my lap so he could nap for several hours, but I still managed to get a lot of things done while trying not to disturb him; which I don’t get, he’ll just go back to sleep after giving me a groan and serious side-eye but why do I always feel guilty about waking him up? He really is a sweet boy, despite all the scabs and scars on my hands and arms from his claws. I also need to spend some time icing my Achilles tendons, which are still sore but it’s at least bearable now and I can walk normally again, thank God. Tomorrow will be my ambitious day, where I finish the things I didn’t get to today while writing and reading. I really need to finish my newsletter, and get it sent out.

I also definitely need to do some filing and organizing, and I need to find an old contract, too, and I need to find my to-do notebook, which I’ve not been able to look at this week because I didn’t know where it was (other than it not being in my backpack, where it belongs and should always stay) so I can add some things and cross off what I managed to get done this week. Starting the week off being sick really discombobulated me, and I never felt like I got my feet into the groove of the week. I hate that it’s so easy to throw me off and so hard for me to get back on track when my routines are disrupted.

I started season 2 of the UK Traitors yesterday, and it is really interesting how you quickly become involved with the cast, forgetting about the previous season’s in a matter of moments. I do think I like the UK host better than Alan Cumming; Claudia cheers them on during the challenges, and seems genuinely interested in them winning the challenges and adding money to the final prize. Thank you for putting up with this obsession of mine; I should stop talking about it and simply keep watching so I can write about the show for my newsletter.

And on that note, I am going to repair to my easy chair to catch up on the news before today’s errands are to be run. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning with the time change. Ugh.

Gorgeous door frame sculpture in Florence, one of my favorite places in the world

Just Like a Woman

Thursday, and my last day in the office for the week. I am feeling so much better than I did over the weekend and the first few days of this work week and also am feeling a bit more centered than I have since that morning last Monday when there was no water pressure and we were in a boil water advisory. I wound up spending all of last week off-balance, got sick over the weekend (I was coming down with it on Friday evening, and it peaked on Sunday and Monday, with some left over on Tuesday when I went back to the office), and now I finally feel more like myself. Thank God, right? It was so lovely waking up this morning without a head full of snot and a sore throat and post-nasal drip *shudder*. Tomorrow morning I have a meeting in the morning and then have doctors’ appointments in the afternoon, and we do need to go to Costco. I’m not sure how this weekend will turn out–productive or restful, or some combination of the two. I’ve not done any chores these past couple of days, and I really should take care of them tonight so I don’t have to come down to a messy kitchen/office space again, and there’s some laundry I should also get done. It’s always so tempting to sit in my chair and catch up on the news before watching more of The Traitors (yes I am obsessed with that show, and I am revisiting things that spark joy in me–anything Alysa Liu or Amber Glenn related, anything Heated Rivalry, anything Ilia Malinin and US women’s hockey, too) with Sparky not helping matters any by sleeping in my lap.

Obviously, it doesn’t take much to kick me off-track, does it? It was lovely to finally feel good again yesterday, and I feel like I should point out that my Achilles tendons are doing much better. The left is fine, but the right is still a bit tender and tight, so will ice it again thoroughly tonight and periodically over the weekend. I want to start stretching again too. The Achilles tendon issue has delayed my return to working out and exercise, but there’s no reason I can’t start stretching again before I feel up to returning to the gym.

I remembered something over the weekend that I’d completely forgotten about, and once I did, I stewed about it for a few days before deciding what I wanted to do. If you will recall, my close friend Victoria died about a year ago, and she left me a gift in her will, which was an absolute shock. I signed the letter from the probate attorney and forgot about it. His office contacted me on Friday that the estate has been probated and I would be getting the gift in a short amount of time, which was a lovely surprise. But this weekend when I was moving things around I came across copies of a book I wrote that I completely forgot about, which is wild to me. In 2009 or 2010, Victoria decided she wanted to start a small press for diverse children’s and young adult fiction. I wasn’t sure it was a great idea–2009 and 2010 weren’t a good time in publishing; this was during the indy/trad author wars, when ebooks were really changing the entire industry–but she knew I had written a couple of young adult manuscript in the earl 1990s and they were collecting dust in a drawer (we’d talked about this when I met the y/a editor from a major press who was familiar with my work and wanted me to submit a manuscript–but Katrina happened and I let that opportunity slip through my grasp), and she wanted to publish one of them (the other two were Sleeping Angel and Sara, which I sold to Bold Strokes). They weren’t doing anything and I wasn’t doing anything with any of them, so I thought, knowing the odds of me making any money off it were slim to none, but…she was my friend and I wanted to help her out, so I let her publish Sorceress. Like I said, though, it wasn’t a good time to be launching a traditional publishing company (she hated ebooks), and I didn’t worry about it. I promoted the book the best I could, but have no idea how well it sold, if it sold at all, because I never got a sales statement or a royalty check–but I want to be very clear about this: I loved Victoria and I didn’t care. She had wanted me to write a sequel, which I did a first draft of, but never revised or anything. I never brought it up, she never brought it up, and I had no desire to make her feel bad or guilty about it, so why bring it up? People I know who did read it liked it–it was my first real stab at writing Gothic suspense/horror–but like I said, I gave it to her freely with the full expectation of never seeing a cent.

But now that she’s no longer with us (at least once a day I miss her still) I kind of would like to have the rights to it back, and maybe revise it and put it up as an indy book. (I know, I have to get Jackson Square Jazz up and going, too.) And since she left me a gift, why not use that gift to get these two books–and my next short story collection–up independently? But what about the sequel? It’s not necessarily tied to the first book–different characters, for one–but the same California mountain town (same as Sleeping Angel, too). Anyway, it’s something to ponder.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a marvelous Thursday, and I’ll be back in the morning yet again!

Kick It

Well, I intended to get up early today and get a job on it, but I stayed up later than I intended and I was very comfortable–I even got up to feed Sparky and went right back to bed like a lag-a-bed–and so I figured what the hell and stayed in bed relaxing and napping until finally I got up. I stayed up too late watching Connor Storrie on Saturday Night Live–intending to see the monologue and then either watch the whole show or clips this morning. Yet I stayed up, watching, and next thing we knew it was midnight and we’d watched the entire show for the first time in decades. This will always be a Heated Rivalry and everything related to it fan account; it’s a show that brings me joy, and the endless enthusiasm worldwide for the show and everything connected to it also brings me joy. I’ll talk more about last night’s episode, and everything that goes along with that a bit later on.

Dan Simmons, a writer I used to admire, died recently. I had read some of his works in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Carrion Comfort, Summer of Night, Children of the Night) and I really enjoyed the books. I had also read both Song of Kali and Fires of Eden, which I enjoyed but made me very uncomfortable–they reminded me of early twentieth century books about “exoticized” locations and peoples; Song of Kali even seemed like a “means well but still offensive” juvenile series book for kids written pre-1970–and having been to Hawaii, Fires of Eden was an interesting take, I thought at the time, on the old Hawaiian gods; now being more aware than I was when I was a clueless dolt, it’s probably deeply offensive to indigenous Hawaiians. I stopped reading Simmons when I moved away from reading horror to reading exclusively crime and/or queer lit; I’d even forgotten about him entirely until I was judging an award one year and his novel Flashback was entered. “Oh, Dan Simmons! I love his work and had forgotten about it” only to read and see that all it was just a lengthy diatribe that’s message was nearly as conservative and ignorant as anything written by Ayn Rand. The main character is a former college liberal arts professor in a dystopian world ruined by things like free health care and everyone granted a guaranteed income, which naturally led to the collapse of everything good and decent and meaningful in the world–and there was a lot of talk how electing a Black president in 2008 was the beginning of the end. I gave it a zero rating on my judging form, threw it in the garbage, and vowed to never read, or reread, anything he wrote ever again. I don’t give my money to homophobes. I did like the television mini-series of his novel The Terror, despite its blatant homophobia (of course the gay sailor is the villain, because of course), but I was also amused that the second season was a slap in Simmons’ face, focused on the internment of Japanese Americans during the second world war–I’m sure he was a fan of those camps, given his politics. I did feel a bit of a pang when I heard he’d died (one of those too bad he wasted his talent by becoming a fascist), but he really was a good writer, and yes, a shame that happened to him.

Oh, well. It’s a nice day outside today, too!

Yesterday was a pretty good day, overall. I got some much-needed rest, did some chores around here, ran some errands, and was a kitty bed for Sparky for a good while. I have some more chores to do this morning, of course, and I am not really going to plan to do anything today. Plans don’t always seem to happen the way I want them to on the weekends, and making plans and announcing them publicly isn’t really the smart way to go here, because then I have to come here and make excuses for myself, or admit to not operating as efficiently as I like to think of myself being. Which, now that I think about it, is definitely a me thing, a holdover from the anxiety and my youthful training to not be lazy–as though taking it easy and resting and relaxing is somehow a bad thing. I keep finding all these habits and mental things that are all coping mechanisms I built up over the years to handle the anxiety, or try to manage it, at any rate.

We also watched Reality Check, about Tyra Banks and America’s Next Top Model, which we used to watch back in the day, and really, none of what they depicted in the documentary came as a surprise. I saw how they treated the bigger girls, I saw how they slut-shamed Shandi, and so forth. We didn’t watch the show as it aired, but would watch the marathons cable channels would run on the weekends, so it was comfort watching while recovering from going out the night before–lying on the couch, ordering a pizza, no energy, etc.–and everyone excused everything by saying “yes, well, this is the industry”–instead of “we should be fighting to change this.” The world and culture is very different now than it was when the show first started airing, but I’m not precisely sure when we stopped watching; probably when the weekend marathons were discontinued. Even with all the new attention the show has gotten this decade (people found it during lockdown), Tyra still seems to think she didn’t do anything bad or anything wrong, there’s no real accountability other than “I wouldn’t do that now.” (She also wasn’t the first Black supermodel, so I don’t know why she is fine with erasing Naomi Sims? I don’t know modeling that well (it’s not something I’ve ever cared enough about, frankly, to pay much attention to), so maybe there were others before Tyra that I don’t know or remember, but I am pretty damned sure Naomi Sims was before Tyra. I could be wrong.

I really enjoyed watching Saturday Night Live, and while some of the skits didn’t hit, he certainly did. He was terrific on live television! I also loved that they used his old skit from clown school–stripper hit by a car on the way to a bachelorette party–and he was terrific at the physical comedy it required (plus, we got to see him in a bikini, but it wasn’t gratuitous or sexy, which was a lovely flip and a metaphor about always have to deliver for fans), and his monologue was terrific. Like everyone, I was a little bothered by CAA and NBC (hockey AND the Olympics) using his luster and star power to rehabilitate the boys’ team’s image–horribly unfair, especially given how new his star is and not even considering the damage it could cause his image–but the quiet, polite applause when the NFL’s “chosen sacrificial lambs came on stage, and their awkward faces was perfect. They looked like two little boys who wanted to be anywhere else rather than where they were, sorry they got caught and sorry they had to be there, but if they didn’t want to lose Internet privileges they had to do this. They also didn’t look ashamed or sorry, either. But the looks on their faces when Hilary Knight and Megan Keller got long, sustained applause and cheers–something they didn’t get, and never will now outside of a hockey arena–their little bubble finally pierced and they realized oh man we really did fuck up those cheers would have been for US had we not fucked up and I think I watched Toothless Jack die a bit inside. Once again, the women have to clean up after the men, after the men not only laughed at their accomplishments with a rapist pedo and turned the entire conversation about the women’s gold medal into “about what the men did”–you not only buried the national pride in your own medal but built up at the women at your own expense. I also loved how Tkachuk was cornered into admitting his god-king used and embarrassed him on the global stage–I also love how clips of him getting absolutely drilled on the ice are going viral every time it happens. Close the Northern border indeed.

Schadenfreude and her sister karma are bitches indeed.

It was also exciting that Hudson Williams showed up, too!

And yes, I know what’s going on in the Middle East, but don’t have words to express how apoplectic my anger and rage is. Give me time.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back before work tomorrow morning.

Listen to the Rain

Pay-the-Bills Wednesday and I have a lot on my plate here at the midpoint of the week. I didn’t sleep very deeply these last few nights and I’m not sure why that is–I keep waking up and taking a long time to fall back asleep and it’s never really a very deep one. I think I’ve been over-caffeinating myself in the mornings, too. For some reason I drank a shit ton of coffee these last few mornings–yesterday to the point where I was jittery and shaky and slightly overheated and nauseous…which obviously probably affected my sleep this week. So today I need to not drink that much coffee, clearly. My stomach hasn’t been an issue at all since my injection Monday morning, and I feel better than I did before then. That’s a plus, to be sure. The last two nights when I get home from the office and errands I am pretty wiped out, and then of course Sparky wants me in my chair so he can bond and nap, and after that happens I’m a goner. Paul got home later, and we watched another episode of The Traitors (we’re getting to the end of season 3) before going upstairs for the evening.

That off, icky feeling eventually abated after I ate lunch yesterday, so I was able to be productive in the afternoon around my clients, which was also very nice. I knew this adjustment week after all the time off, and really only having like one full work week this year, wasn’t going to be easy, but now I need to snap out of the lethargy or whatever has been going on with me this year and affix nose firmly to grindstone. I also decided yesterday to stay off social media as much as possible, and to resist the urge to look at it when I get bored or are waiting for something; it’s a bottomless tarpit of nastiness, bots, and trolls; even the Twitter replacements aren’t nearly as fun as they were back in the day. Was it ever fun, though? I remember being trolled by assholes when I first went onto Facebook (not by choice; my publisher recommended it for “marketing”, but I don’t think it was ever effective for that) and getting into arguments with people when I didn’t realize that there actually are miserable, sad people whose only joy in enraging other people on-line. I don’t see the pleasure in that myself; but I’ve also never understood people who are deliberately awful, mean and cruel, either. Generally, when I try to understand something, I usually will write about it and that helps me make sense of it–sorting my thoughts, which come and go at a very rapid pace, always works because the thoughts are no longer scattered and ricocheting around inside my skull with thousands of other thoughts. But I’ve never had any success with creating that person because that’s so outside my personal reality? (And yes, I can be rude to people on line, but only to “people” being sexist, fascist, racist or homophobic.)

Yet just typing that out? I just figured out how to do it. A classic trope in suspense/crime from the olden days was the poison pen letter; which, obviously, nobody does anymore and most people wouldn’t even know the term (same with prank phone calls)–but wouldn’t an online, anonymous troll be the same kind of person that would send poison pen letters back in the day? Just like that, I know how to write the story and how to do it and the voice and the tone and everything.

Which is why I always take notes to organize my thoughts; writing them out solves the problem usually.

I suspect I am again going to have a tired day, alas. My legs feel tired, my eyes feel like they’ve not had enough rest, and mentally I don’t want to do anything–but am going to have to force myself to get things done here and at the office. I wonder if I maybe mixed up my pills and am not taking the right one at night? It’s possible.

And on that cheery note, I am heading into the spice mines.

Love is Like a River

Can we pretend yesterday was just a bad dream and start over? Sheesh.

It began with me not sleeping well on Sunday night. I was having some stomach issues on Sunday–heartburn, mostly, with an occasional side of unpleasant burping–and then remembered that oh yes, tomorrow is my injection and I can usually tell the days leading into it., which was why I wasn’t hungry or eating that much over the weekend, and the last few days of last week. Okay, fine, but the heartburn was intermittent and thus I had a night of fitful sleep where I awoke periodically, but never really fell into a really deep sleep. The reason I hit “snooze” yesterday morning just once was because it was warm and comfortable and Sparky was curled up in a ball on my pillow beside me. But I was already awake, needed to shave, and so I grabbed my sweats and ventured out in the horribly cold apartment, and down the stairs, where it was even colder. YIKES. I noticed when I was running water to fill the sink to shave that there wasn’t much water pressure.

Which, of course, led to there not being enough water pressure for the shower.

Sigh. I know it’s more a habit and a mental thing, but I never really feel awake until I’ve showered and gotten cleaned up. Once I am out of the shower, I feel ready to face the day. Not showering? A long day in which I am out of sorts literally almost all day. Turns out, a big water main near the intersection of Claiborne and Toledano burst…and it flooded the neighborhood before they were able to get it off. The drop in water pressure also led to a boil water advisory, businesses and schools closed, and so on. Such a New Orleans thing (note: put that in a Scotty book)!

After I got to work, the day leveled off and I had a relatively good day at the office, in spite of being tired and not taking a hot shower on a cold morning (cold again this morning, but at least no blizzard). Of course, the day was going to be one of those days, it’s just that none of the nonsense was work-related, more of a macro thing than anything else.

Ugh, the world was ablaze yesterday, wasn’t it? The glow I was feeling coming out of the Olympics is now gone, and I rescind my pride in the US Men’s hockey team winning gold–and their alchemic transmutation of gold to lead. Straight men in groups are always garbage, especially when they think no one who isn’t a straight white men won’t know. “Locker room talk,” that bullshit. As for the Hughes brothers, congratulations on being pieces of shit and letting us all know that your mother is one, too. I really don’t think that bitch should be in charge of the safety of young women when she excuses demeaning talk about women from her own sons. This tells me she did a shitty job of raising decent human beings, and I suspect all their “advocacy” for Pride Nights and all that is just PR. “Yay, spend your money to come see us play and buy our merch!” while calling us fags in the locker room and laughing. The minute any white woman pulls out that whole “locker room talk/boys will be boys” dismissal? That tells me she doesn’t believe rape victims, thinks sluts deserve to be raped for leading men astray. I wasn’t a hockey fan–never watch, don’t care–before this, and I won’t be watching any men’s hockey again, and certainly not the US men’s team. I hope they never qualify for another medal round at the Olympics, frankly. That trash doesn’t represent me.

I can’t imagine how the women’s team felt, seeing and hearing that after cheering the men on in every game.

At least my taxes are done. That’s something, right?

Here’s hoping for a better day today! See you tomorrow!

The height difference between the street and the sidewalk is demonstrated by the live oak roots!

Street Angel

It’s cold this morning–in the forties–so I’ll probably wear an extra layer to work today. It’s never going to be warmer than the mid-fifties. We are also in a red flag warning, which means we’ve not had rain in a while so there’s a chance of fires again, in and around the city. I think last year there was a wildfire in one of the swamps east of town and ugh, did the air smell bad. I am rested this morning, but the ankles are still sore and need to be iced tonight when I get home. I didn’t get much of anything done this weekend other than finishing the cabinet/pantry project, but that’s okay, you know? Sparky needed some bonding time, apparently–I was trapped (cat owners understand this) in my chair for almost five hours yesterday because he was a little ball of fur in my lap, in a sleep that was so deep he didn’t react to anything in that entire time. I did get up a few times, but he would yawn and stretch and follow me into the kitchen to ask for treats and then followed me right back to the chair and into the lap he’d go. He was snuggled up with me in the bed this morning–I had a fitful night’s sleep, honestly, the worst night’s sleep I’ve had in months. Today is the date for my every-eight-weeks injection; I could tell yesterday that it was coming up because I had some discomfort yesterday and was a bit concerned and then thought oh yes, I bet the injection is tomorrow and sure enough, it is. Like clockwork, right?

Unfortunately, with Sparky needing a lap and bonding time, instead of reading I turned on the television and watched some news, some replays of the Olympics skating (I”m so proud of our figure skaters!) and was stunned to see that US men’s hockey team captured gold by beating Canada–just like the US women. I think I saw our Olympic team was the most medaled US team in winter Olympic history, which is very cool. It’s very lovely to take pride in our young athletes rather than the constant embarrassment on the world stage that this administration is–and I am thankful to the world for not booing our athletes, which is something I was afraid of, and then realized, projection–US Americans are the type, not people from other countries. I hate that Canada lost the golds in their national sport to us, especially after our government has been non-stop bullying (or trying to, anyway) theirs.

The LA Olympics in 2028–should they happen–will probably rival the 1936 Berlin Games for xenophobia and the triumph of the will…if they aren’t boycotted by every country on the planet. The thought of all the banners to himself he’s going to hang everywhere in sight, lording over the Olympic Games like a syphilitic Nero. I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t try to award the medals himself–or steal the golds. The constant need for adoration and to be awarded prizes he doesn’t deserve is truly pathetic, and I could even feel some empathy or sympathy for that constant reassurance that he is indeed a Very Special Boy that he never got from his revolting parents, if he weren’t so fucking dangerous. It’s all very The Dead Zone, and I’ve thought that since the day he rode down that tacky as fuck escalator to announce he intended to loot and destroy the country while bringing back the 1950s.

No, I will never forgive the people who supported, financed, and voted for him–even if it was only once. How much strychnine can the country take, after all? One good thing about him–the only good thing–is that he has completely exposed the Right and their voters as liars, cheats, and hypocrites whose only gods are money and power and racism. Their Christianity is a heresy, their patriotism is white nationalism, and their love for the country is conditional.

Patriots, my ass. (And today’s picture is of a nice ass, for the record.)

I also refuse to berate myself for resting this entire weekend and not doing much of anything other than chores–I even managed to talk myself out of doing my errands! Although the one thing I will berate myself for is how easily it is to talk myself out of doing everything and anything, but that’s also the negative road and I am choosing not to take it. But I do need to get my ass in gear and get my shit together.

And on that morose note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning (it’s going to be cold again, yay).

Yikes! That’s a rather intense wedgie, isn’t it?

Rose Garden

Good morning! I’m feeling good this morning after a lovely evening of sleep and an even lovelier day of doing very little. I must confess I did feel a bit on the guilty side last evening when I went up the stairs and slid under the covers; but the way I feel this morning makes me think that it was a very good thing that I took a rest day, really. Paul also took a rest day–he wore himself out with a couple of all nighters–and so things were quiet and calm around here all day. I had intended to only sit for a moment and ice my ankles, but Sparky curled up into my lap and I put on season 2 of The Traitors, Paul came downstairs and got under the blankets on the couch…and that’s primarily what I did yesterday: binge-watched The Traitors all the way through the reunion. I have figured out how they keep us hooked and watching–all those cliffhangers and twists and turns–because every time the credits roll I have to see what happened. Paul’s been calling me an addict all week, but yesterday he was the one with the “We have to see who they killed” or “start the next one so we find out if the recruit said yes” and finally I said, “yes, but I’m the addict” and we had a marvelous laugh. We finished up the second season around eleven thirty, but “had to start the third” to see who was in the cast.

I don’t think I’ve been this involved in a show in quite some time? Certainly not a reality show, in any case. We also want to watch the Tyra documentary on Netflix because we used to marathon America’s Next Top Model when they would do marathons on some network–I want to say Bravo but I know that’s wrong–Bravo was our go-to for marathons of The West Wing and Law and Order back in the day. We gradually stopped watching–some of the stuff they did on the show made me uncomfortable, honestly–so I am interested in watching. I knew the show had to be a train wreck behind the scenes, because well, Tyra Banks, and I’d also like to watch the one about The Biggest Loser–a show I never watched because (blech) Jillian Michaels (vomit), plus I worked in fitness for nearly ten years, so I knew, just from the commercials, that it wasn’t good for the contestants and no one seemed to be concerned about their safety, physical and mental. I’ve also never watched any of the romance ones (although I loved the fictional show unReal) because it just seemed…I don’t know, absurd; at first they seemed cringy to me–“who wants to go on television to find a life partner?”–but there’s an audience for them apparently. (Also, I found out it incredibly insensitive and insulting that “marriage equality” was undermining the sanctity of marriage while straight people not only mocked marriage with these shows but made it blatantly obvious how little the actual undermining of the sanctity of marriage truly bothered anyone; it was just the usual homophobic trash with a cross up their ass…and that’s not even mentioning adultery and divorce…)

Sigh. The hypocrisy of the straights never ceases to surprise me.

I did spend some time yesterday cleaning the boxes of books off the top of the cabinets. I have two more to go; it was difficult with the Achilles tendons tightness to climb up and down the ladder, but I also cleared off the top shelf in the pantry for this contents of these boxes. The kitchen is a mess–a bad one, at that–so I am going to spend some time on that this morning when I finish this. I would like to read and do some writing, too, but I am also not going to beat myself to death if I don’t. I feel good this morning but I do need to ice the ankles again today, so I am not entirely sure I won’t get sucked into the comfort of my easy chair and purring kitty sleeping in my lap with the remote control right there on the side table. I did get a lot of the laundry done–there’s very little left going into the week–and I would like to get the pantry/laundry room into some sort of tidy order. Ah, dreams are lovely things, aren’t they?

But in taking the boxes down I also found some books that reminded me of how my childhood interest in history took off–the juvenile histories of Genevieve Foster, “parallel histories” is how she described them, which is kind of what A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman is, so yes, there must be a blog essay about these books and how they inevitably got me incredibly interested in history and how it is all connected (also how it constantly repeats). I paged through some of them while bingeing The Traitors yesterday–I bought copies after Katrina, probably in an attempt to reconnect with my personal history, which I did a lot of in those years–and memories came flooding back; and I also remembered a lot of the contents of those books, too. The first one I read–and I checked them out of the library at Eli Whitney Elementary regularly–was George Washington and His World…and I loved the concept of all that historical information being given to give context to that time and that world. So, my wanting to write that kind of history of the sixteenth century was probably already wired into my brain before reading A Distant Mirror, and probably partly why I loved it so much. I also pruned books out of the bookcases and some of the boxes, which is more progress on the house. Next weekend, I’ll drop some boxes of books at the library sale and will also probably drop off beads at ArcGNO.

And on that note, I’m going to get more coffee and make some breakfast. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning! See you then!

A terrific shot by Linda Minutola, who does great work! Best place to get a burger grilled under a hubcap!

Blue Denim

It’s Thursday but it feels like Tuesday. Heavy heaving sigh. But at least tonight there’s a new episode of my current obsession, Traitors, and tomorrow I don’t have to come in to the office, so there’s that. I really shouldn’t complain about the office this week, should I, since I am only in for two days? Next week is going to be a trial, methinks, and next thing you know it’s March. AIEEE!!!

Meh, there are worse things. And when am I not disoriented and confused anymore these days? Seriously.

Yesterday was actually a relatively easy day at work, which made the return to reality much easier. It was quiet, for one, and there was NO traffic on my way into the office. I managed not only to hit all the lights, but no traffic on I-10 meant I was parking the car a little more than five minutes after I drove off from the curb at home. I wasn’t very far behind on my work and was able to get caught up pretty easily. The city was in ruins as I drove in, too–St. Charles was mostly clean (the slalom course was still up) but the side streets were trashed. The good news was a lot of people were out cleaning it up, so that was nice. Back in the olden days they didn’t even get around to cleaning the Avenue at first so it was always nasty out there on Ash Wednesday. I did start to get tired in the afternoon, which is normal for my usual workdays. I ran uptown and did some errands on the way home. There wasn’t any traffic after work either–I got all the way uptown from work in less than fifteen minutes, at rush hour. I made a few groceries and got the mail and came home to a needy kitty who hadn’t been left completely alone at home since I got home Thursday afternoon, so he demanded my lap for cuddles and sleep–and cat parents know that once they’re curled up and sound asleep in a purring ball in your lap, you ain’t going anywhere. Tonight it’s going to be straight home for me after work so I can get some things done around here.

And that’s why I didn’t do anything after getting home last night–I needed to comfort Sparky, and the longer I sat there with him sleeping and purring in my lap, the more relaxed and less likely to do anything I became. I caught up on the news (ugh) and melted into my chair to the point that I went to bed before Paul got home from the office! I also slept really well, didn’t want to get up this morning, and am looking forward to no alarm tomorrow. That’s the thing with mini-vacations when you’re older–they make retirement look so appealing! But retirement isn’t probably going to happen for me for a few more years, at any rate. I felt kind of guilty last night when I climbed the stairs and headed for bed for not getting more things done around here, and I most likely won’t do anything tonight when I get home…but then, I won’t be tired the way I usually am on Thursday nights, either. I ran errands last night so I can come straight home from work this evening.

Tonight, I think I’ll try to do some reading and writing when I get home, and do some chores if I have the energy and mindset. I’ll need to ice my ankles tonight–I didn’t do it yesterday, but the left seems to be okay now, but the right still complains. It’s not nearly as bad as it was originally–and resting Achilles tendons means being stationary for a long time, and I’ve never been able to sit still for very long. But I think we’re already past the hump on those bastards, and hopefully some more icing will patch up the right as well.

I woke up this morning to the news the British police have arrested Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor for his participation with Epstein1, and good for the British and especially good for the royal family for not shielding him from justice with royal privilege. This is how you do it, Americans. The funny thing about European nations investigating all of this is inevitably, they are going to have to issue arrests warrants for the American president, or statements on his involvement. The cult will never turn, of course, those hard core loyalists for whom raping, torturing and killing children isn’t a dealbreaker. He’ll say it’s a hoax like he does with everything despite all the evidence to the contrary, and they’ll soak it up like a biscuit with gravy. They honestly believe he’s in shape and virile and handsome and intelligent–not just intelligent, but smarter than everyone on the planet2. It’s mind boggling to me, and something I may never be able to entirely wrap my brain around–but I do kind of love that he’s exposed the Right for what they are–unAmerican, authoritarian, party before country, demagogues and liars and grifters. The veneer and facade and pretense they are anything else is long gone; the mask has come off completely and they’ve embraced the horror of who they really are…

And of course, go to church regularly and learn nothing. Which just goes to show…church is for those who need moral guidance and clarity, but they never learn from what they hear or read in their holy book. One of the reasons I like James Talarico so much is because he calls out the Christian Nationalism, which will be known to history as the American Heresy.

AH, my coffee is kicking in and it’s almost time to head into the spice mines. Here’s hoping we all have a lovely day, get everything done we need to get done, and get the rest we need. The times are interesting, but we can’t allow the bastards to win. See you in the morning!

Gorgeous Taylor Zahkar Perez, whom I first noticed as the first centerfold in Minx.
  1. Here’s hoping he rats everyone out for a lesser sentence. ↩︎
  2. There’s a significant difference between intelligence and cunning. He isn’t intelligent, but he is very cunning. I’m willing to grant cunning, but never intelligent. ↩︎

I Still Miss Someone

Everywhere else it’s just Tuesday! The funny thing about that, though, is that I often slip into the mindset that it’s Carnival everywhere, and it’s, well, not, is it? Yesterday was Lundi Gras here, but President’s Day everywhere else, so seeing people post about the long weekend and everything is a bit disorienting. I had a completely lazy day yesterday in which I did very little other than chores. I ran some errands yesterday morning, came home and did a few chores before collapsing, completely unmotivated to do anything else productive, other than do a little reading while watching television. Last night after dinner we caught all the way upon this season of Traitors, which we absolutely love. (This is an excellent cast, by the way, which also makes a difference.) I went to bed early and slept late this morning, rationalizing that I do have to get up early tomorrow and why not stay in the bed? Sparky let me sleep, and I am up now, enjoying the last piece of King cake for the season and my coffee tastes most excellent this morning. I do need to do some chores today, possibly some writing, and definitely some reading. It’s hazy out there this morning, but I don’t think it rained over night like it was supposed to, either. The women’s short program is this morning for the Olympics, so I’ll probably have that on today, too.

Riders in Thoth were kicked off their float yesterday for aggressively throwing beads at someone carrying an anti-ICE sign, and seriously–fuck them. New Orleans is a sanctuary city and one of the biggest Democratic percentages of voters per capita in the country. You want to be MAGA asshile racists? That’s what Metairie parades are for. Fuck you now and for all eternity. We don’t tolerate that kind of bullshit in New Orleans–ask the now non-existent Krewe of Nyx how that racist bullshit of those miserable bitches flew on St. Charles fucking Avenue. Keep your MAGA asses out in your racist MAGA parishes, fuckers. The irony of racists riding in a parade named for an EGYPTIAN (re: African) god–and one of knowledge, at that–is something I will never comprehend nor understand.

But my brain isn’t smooth enough to be MAGA, so there’s that, too. That’s D’etat and Thoth this year showing racist asses, as well as Tucks. Those krewes need to be punished. Maybe their parade permits for next year should be pulled. Kill it with fire and salt the ground so that shit never happens again. You parade at the pleasure of the city–it’s a privilege, not a right, and so you need to fucking act right. Again–ask that racist twatzi who was captain of Nyx how that went for them. Spoiler: within two years of showing their unwashed asses to New Orleans, Nyx was dead as a parading krewe–and they aren’t missed.

Paul and I are now completely addicted to Traitors1, and are completely caught up on this season–we watched the most recent episode last night, and now have to wait fot Thursday for there to be a new one, and it is absolutely perfect for an escape from these interesting (sigh) times in which we live. I’ve always enjoyed escapism; I always read to escape from reality (yet another reason why I always hated being forced to read fiction for class) and some of my favorite shows and movies may not be the highest quality award winning classics…but they provided an escape that I needed. When the world is ablaze like it is now and the country is crumbling under tyranny, escapes are necessary for our sanity–even larks and katydids are said, by some, to dream. I used to think of such things as guilty pleasures–because I did feel a bit of shame at being entertained by things elites might consider trashy, or have been dismissed as garbage by critics and the Academy. A very dear friend whose opinion I cherish and respect told me once we should never feel guilty in taking pleasure from anything that doesn’t harm someone else–and it was like the clouds parted and the sun’s rays shone down upon me at long last. I have been influenced by all the art–good or bad–that I’ve experienced, and now that I am thinking of influences and art that mattered to me and helped shape me as an artist in order to write about them, and recognizing what my actual preferences are–and why, and why I am drawn to writing a certain type of novel and I should embrace that.

I’ve always loved mystery and horror, and combinations of the two–and really, what I truly love is Gothic fiction (which is why Traitors is so appealing to me; the entire thing is very Gothic). I often admit to writers like John D. Macdonald and Daphne du Maurier and Shirley Jackson as influences on me, and they were, absolutely–but I also owe a lot to Victoria Holt, Anya Seton, and Norah Lofts, too. Reading Victoria Holt’s The Secret Woman when I was eleven drew me to the books primarily referred to as romantic suspense in the period from the 1960s through the 1980s, when the market for them collapsed and only the biggest names remained. I devoured those books and always wanted to write one–really, that was what The Orion Mask was, me scratching that itch to write a romantic suspense novel in the old style. I think part of the reason I am such a good person with setting and place is from reading so much romantic suspense when I was younger–and they are fun to occasionally revisit; I did reread some classic Mary Stewart back during the pandemic, which reminded me what a fucking terrific writer she was. Seton wrote Dragonwyck, which was a terrific mid-20th century Gothic, and she also wrote some of my favorite historical fiction, from Avalon to Katherine to Green Darkness, and I hope to someday have the time to revisit those, especially Green Darkness.

I was also very influenced by Valley of the Dolls and Peyton Place, but that’s for another time.

Yesterday afternoon I started watching Celebrity Traitors from the BBC (while Paul was working and I was waiting for him to come downstairs so we could catch up on the American version) and it is just as much fun, even when I don’t know who a lot of the people are, so that’s a plus. Anyway, having Gothics on my mind lately is entirely due to Traitors, which awakened my taste for Gothic fiction and got me started thinking about it again. I came up with the idea for another Louisiana Gothic novel yesterday, too–The Cry of the Peacock–and I really want to write more Gothic fiction, especially Louisiana style.

And all this racism with parade krewes? Now I am thinking about setting another Scotty during Carnival. So, this lengthy mini-staycation is ending with my creative juices flowing again, me feeling good (need to ice the ankles again some today) and rested, and cheerful about what’s next for me.

I hear the bands passing down at the corner, which means Zulu is here. Have a great day, Constant Reader, and I’ll be here again tomorrow morning, for an Ash Wednesday blog.

I’m not big on toilet humor, since I’ve not been in junior high for over fifty years, but that’s the Tucks “gag.” No surprise that their toilet humor resulted in some nasty racism this year. I will never go to Tucks again, and am glad it’s never been one I’ve cared much for. Remember Nyx, you stupid racist fucks? Henceforth, I will only refer to them as Sucks.
  1. Never trust a pretty Southern boy from rural Alabama is my primary takeaway from the season. ↩︎