Sunday morning here in the Lost Apartment, and today’s blog title seems particularly apropos; I do feel more rested and relaxed and ready to go this morning, and certainly more so than I have all weekend. Never fear, I can always derail my day at any time, but for right now I feel rested and able to get it going somehow. I did sleep later than I (and Sparky) wanted to, but I am firmly believe your body knows what it needs more than your conscious self. I was tired yesterday. I had to go make groceries to get the things I wasn’t able to get Friday evening, and when I got back home from that, I was tired. I had intended to cook out yesterday, but I also had the time for the NCAA Regional Gymnastics Finals wrong–it was on at five rather than seven, as I believed–so I didn’t have time to assemble our new grill in time. I wound up just having a turkey sandwich and Paul made scrambled eggs.
LSU did win that regional meet and qualified for the national semi-finals, and scored over 198, which is a benchmark. They also didn’t have a great vault rotation, which means they could score even higher if they hit on every event. The delightful Haleigh Bryant got two 10’s–vault and bars–and they pulled away from everyone by the end of the second rotation. We also finished Ripley, which is marvelous, and started watching Sugar on Apple, with Colin Farrell–which is also pretty good with a powerful neo-noir sensibility; Sugar, the main character, also has an affinity for old noir films, so sometimes the show is in black and white and sometimes in color, which gives that old, slick late 40’s noir feel to the viewer. It’s also set in LA, so there’s all that wonderful Chandler feel to it, too.
And the apartment is a bit of a mess today, too. I’ve done some good work this weekend getting it all under control, but it’s still not completely, which I will have to work on today around writing and doing others things. I also started reading Michael Koryta’s The Cypress House, which is really good (everything he writes is gold; if he weren’t so good we’d be burning with jealousy) and reminds me I need to really work a lot harder on my own stuff. I read quite a bit of it yesterday morning with my coffee; I will probably do the same again today. It felt good to be reading again; I was also paging through Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell, which is always a fun ride down memory lane–it’s about the horror boom of the 70s and 80s, which definitely had an impact and influence on me as a writer; I always went back and forth between horror and crime when I was unpublished, and while I mostly write about crime now I always enjoy branching out into horror sometimes–I have two more supernatural/horror type stories in draft form that I would love to get revised and put in my short story collection. I was doing a lot of thinking about works in progress yesterday while I watched the crime shows and the gymnastics; it’s been a while since my mind started roaming creatively like that, and I really liked experiencing that again; my mind has been fallow for so long I was beginning to worry (as always) that it was going to be stuck like that at some point.
I am also looking forward to reading more often and regularly now; I should absolutely 100% read for an hour every day when I get home from work and decompress; what better way than to curl up in my chair with Sparky purring in my lap? And reading a good writer before settling in to do my own word count for the day is a pretty good idea–I’ve always held that one of the best ways to write better is to read works by authors you admire, and there are so many authors I admire…I also came up with the idea for the next Scotty as well as its title, which is always a challenge. I’ll probably write that later this summer, after I get everything else I want to get done this year done. I am feeling better and am feeling good again; today I have to go to the gym and get restarted on my therapy on my own, too.
And on that note, I am heading to the easy chair with my book for the next hour or so before I come back here to dig into the day’s writing. You have a marvelous Sunday, Constant Reader, and I may be back later; one never knows. I have several entries that I need to finish, too.
Queer and Loathing in America 