Here we are on my first ever (and hopefully last ever) work-at-home Monday. I did used to do work-at-home Mondays, but I didn’t like them very much. I didn’t get up as early as I would have liked to, but …the bed was comfy, the blankets were heavy and warm, and Sparky was being a cuddle-bug. Since I didn’t have to get up early to shower before work, I allowed myself more time in the bed this morning. What can I say? I don’t know why Sparky has become a morning cuddlebug, either–he rarely sleeps in the bed with us; Skittle and Scooter loved the bed and slept there without us all the time, but not Sparky. I do have a lot of work-at-home stuff to get done today, which means fighting with Sparky over my chair (something I also had to do with both of his predecessors)…but there are very worse things.
A lot of worse things, actually. I shudder to check the news this morning. Hmm, I see someone sent out an AI image of himself as Jesus. Remember those ten commandments that the Right wants to post in every classroom and outside of public buildings? I believe the very first one is Thou shalt have no other God before Me. Maybe they want to put them up because they need a constant reminder?
I think I may be on to something here. Sheesh. And yes, I screen shot the blasphemy to keep to share whenever some fucking smug Christian pulls that faith bullshit with me on line.
Yesterday was kind of nice. I slept late, felt relaxed and good, and did get some things done around the apartment. I was also creative for a lot of the day, thinking and taking notes and trying to wrap my mind around a few things. My mind is flooding with creativity again, and was kind of all over the map the last few days so much that I didn’t even remotely try to contain it and just let it roam wherever it wanted to go without restraint. I also realized part of my motivational issue with writing right now is because I have so much to work on I feel overwhelmed and paralyzed at the daunting chore ahead of me. But…that isn’t helpful and only increases the feeling of being overwhelmed, so I need to start putting one foot in front of the other and getting things done. So…list and prioritize, get organized and stop just floating from day to day with no plan. I was going to get the mail and maybe some groceries today after my work at home duties, but I can also do that on my way home from the office tomorrow. It was a gorgeous day yesterday, and it looks like another one today–this truly is the best part of the year in New Orleans, when everything is blooming and the air smells lush and sweet and redolent with sweet olive, jasmine, magnolia and honeysuckle. I’ve yet to see a stinging caterpillar, and the return of the termites is just around the corner.
I’ve also kind of reached that same point about the world and the country as I have with the writing; all I do now is just laugh at the insanity and think about how apropos that we’re dancing so close to the abyss because everything is fucking stupid. Yes, I think I may have snapped. I mean, we have the First Lady throwing her husband under the Epstein bus and bringing it back to the forefront again, the disaster of the war and the explosion of inflation because of it–I don’t even want to think about gas prices; another reason I don’t want to leave the house today–but at least there was a bright spot in Hungary as the people there voted out right-wing extremism in a landslide; another slap in the face to MAGA as the world recognizes the scourge of fascism and rejects it yet again. Hey Americans–you have an opportunity to do the same and purge these anti-American traitors this fall. Maybe we can even get the world to start forgiving us for our arrogance and stupidity.
I started a reread of Listen for the Whisperer by Phyllis A. Whitney yesterday on my iPad, and the Gothic-tropes were just radiating off the pages as I made it through the first chapter. I originally read this shortly after Victoria Holt’s The Secret Woman and Mary Stewart’s The Ivy Tree, which put me all in on romantic suspense for the next two decades. Gothics/domestic suspense were about women’s fears; and what could be more hardboiled than thinking the man you love might be trying to kill you? This was my first Whitney novel for adults after reading many of her juvenile mysteries; it had everything I could possibly want: a fading movie star, a decades-old unsolved murder mystery, and some histrionic family melodrama. Leigh Hollins is a professional young woman with emotional issues, so she wasn’t an heiress; her father was a best selling novelist so she had some privilege; she’s in her early twenties. And then it’s off to Norway; more on this later obviously once the reread is complete.
The next Scotty is going to be a sort of Mardi Gras mystery, even though I’ve already done one, and am still working out how to include and interweave all the things I want to include and its going to include some callbacks to the series history, methinks, which will make it more fun for me to write.
I also completed my rewatch of The Traitors fourth American season, and am digesting my thoughts to write about my latest obsession.
And on that note, tis another cup of coffee for me and into the spice mines for the day. Have a great Monday, everyone, and I will be back tomorrow morning bright and early.
Queer and Loathing in America 