Tag: thunderstorms

King of My Heart

Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment and all is well–at least so far. Sparky is behaving himself (for now; I am sure he’ll be attacking my ankles and feet at any moment before going to sleep for the rest of the morning on the couch, because that’s just how he rolls, you know?). He got me up before six yesterday morning, which was fine. I managed to tumble out of bed and head to the kitchen and poured myself a cup of ambition; and I got the chores caught up that I had left so that I don’t have to play catch-up this morning. I also finished my Vicki Barr newsletter, but won’t be posting that until after Pride because, for this entire month, my newsletter is all gay all the time! Woo-hoo! I’ve also been picking up new subscribers, which is kind of nice, too–I generally don’t pay much attention to that kind of stuff because it makes me nervous, and I worry about writing for the audience instead of writing what feels right for me at the time–that kind of thinking is anathema for a writer, and it happens much too often for me when I am working on a novel or a short story than I would prefer.

But it was a good, productive day, and we did make it to Costco–we even got out spending less than four hundred, a rarity indeed–and the traffic on the way home wasn’t bad other than the usual occasional stupid white man nonsense. I read some more of Summerhouse, and The Dark on the Other Side, both of which I am enjoying thoroughly (I don’t remember the plot of the reread of the Michaels, so it’s like reading a whole new book), but also fell asleep in my chair after I finished the laundry–not really asleep, actually, but just sitting there kind of staring into space while my mind raced around, and before I knew it, it was seven and time to make dinner. But…I got a lot done around here, I got my work done, and we were able to get in two episodes of Department Q last night, which was lovely. The characters are all so interesting and complex! I think I am watching more for the characters than the cold case (which, to be fair, is interesting) they are working on.

And that’s saying a lot for a crime show, but of course, it’s British, not American.

I am feeling a bit tired and low energy this morning. Sparky the Alarm Kitty let me sleep till quarter past six this morning, which was odd, but my coffee is tasting good. The kitchen is still kind of a wreck–I still have stuff to put away from Costco, the dishwasher needs to be unloaded and reloaded, and the rugs are all messed up–but I can get that all taken care of in a jiffy before retiring to my chair to read some more. LSU plays at 1 in the super regional, and I am going to have some food delivered today from the grocery store so I don’t have to leave the house. We had a marvelous thunderstorm and downpour last night (while the sun was out; it’s very disorienting to have it be so bright in the evening while the walk is covered in water and it sounds like a waterfall outside, the sound of falling water only disrupted by the occasional clap of thunder) but much as I hoped it would last all night, it did not. The heat index for today is forecast to be 105 (!!!!), which is another reason I don’t want to go outside if it can be helped today.

But the first part of my breakfast, already eaten, is making me feel more alert and awake and alive, which is, of course, quite marvelous. I want to write this weekend, too–I have two short stories that I want to finish first drafts of, I need to reread some old manuscripts to get back into writing them, and I need to make another to-do list. I’ve also organized all the short story submission calls I want to submit to–one of the new stories is for a deadline on June 20th, so I need to get moving on that one, for sure; I have something already that might be able to be tweaked and revised to fit, but that requires me sitting with my butt in my desk chair writing, doesn’t it?1

And on that note, the writing and cleaning and organizing (I also cleaned out my inbox and filed some yesterday like a good Gregalicious) isn’t going to do itself, so let me get my bowl of Cheerios, bring this to a close, and head into the spice mines. Have yourself a lovely little Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back on the morrow.

Ballerinos have always fascinated me with what they can do with their incredible bodies. I’d like to write a ballet noir at some point, bec
  1. Which is why I don’t mind getting up early the way I used to; I’ve been able to get so much more done on the weekends not sleeping in, plus it makes it much easier to get back into the swing of getting up early on Monday. Win-win? ↩︎

Don’t Cry Out Loud

..when you check your 401k. I checked mine yesterday, which is risk-adverse and there’s not much in it, and it was still a shock. Mine had declined in value by 10%–and it’s risk averse. I can only imagine what happened to those that were higher risk/higher reward but also higher potential for loss.

Remember how the Republicans have always wanted to make social security investment accounts, just like they changed pensions to investment accounts under Reagan? How’s that working out for y’all? They have never had the best interests of the American people at heart, ever.

Gah.

We’re supposed to have thunderstorms all day today, which will be a nice way of dealing with the humidity we’ve been “enjoying” over the last few weeks. It’s also supposed to be in the fifties at night this week, which means better sleep. I slept pretty well this weekend, Sparky getting me up early for food but I’ve also been going to bed early every night; really getting tired around nine these last few nights and dozing off in the bed. We finished watching The Residence last night, which I highly recommend. It’s a witty, well done, and deeply clever murder mystery set in the White House, and it’s very Agatha Christie. WE then started watching season three of The White Lotus, which everyone has been talking about; we’d started season one but gave up after the first episode. Parker Posey is perfectly cast, as is everyone else; and God, Patrick Schwarzenegger’s character is such a douche bro; I despise him so far, about three or four episodes in? LSU also won their regional final yesterday was yet another score over 198.00; this is their sixth straight competition with a score of that or higher–and they left points on the board yesterday. GEAUX TIGERS!

I just looked out the windows and the sidewalk is wet, and it hasn’t rained…which means the humidity must be getting unbearable outside. I am looking forward to the thunderstorms arriving, because that’s when I am going to curl up under my blankets and read some more. I wanted to go to yesterday’s protests, but correctly assessed in the morning that I was fatigued, and other than some chores, I wasn’t going to get much of anything done. I’d planned to run an errand, but stayed inside and rested, hence the television bingeing. I hate that I wasn’t able to go; but I feel rested and good this morning (so far) so maybe it will last and I can get things done. There was insane turnout yesterday all across the country (and even across Louisiana!), and of course, it was largely ignored by State Media (Fox) and State Media-lite (everyone else). The utter failure of the legacy media to meet this moment in US History will be studied for centuries, provided the coming collapse of the United States doesn’t result in the world being plunged into a reoccurrence of the Dark Ages.

I hate that I am now so old that I can’t even go to protests anymore. But the massive turnout nation-wide yesterday gives me some hope–even as cishet white people don’t seem to quite understand what protests are, and they can be dangerous? Especially under this administration? Everyone who actually was able to attend yesterday was basically putting their bodies, lives and freedom on the line to take a stand; for those of you who still don’t get it try googling Kent State, or any of the protest marches in Alabama in the 1960s. The insanity I saw yesterday on social media–I still can’t believe the “bouncy house” thread was serious–just is another indication of why most marginalized communities don’t trust the cishet whites. One of the reasons I don’t feel sympathy for any MAGA voter with regrets or pulling the “I didn’t vote for this” Pilate handwashing of their crimes–is because you did vote for this. He didn’t lie to you about any of this. He told you he was going to do all of this, but he did lie about everyone getting rich; but…he was talking about rich people and corporations, not the voters who worship him. Sorry not sorry I don’t believe your claims that you aren’t transphobic or racist or homophobic now and were just misled; any rational adult could see you were being given Flavor-Ade to drink and were lapping it all up and asking for more. I feel so owned, you have no idea.

And on that cheery note, I am going to head into the spice mines while I wait for the thunderstorms to arrive (although the sun has just come out again). I have cleaning to do and taxes to organize, and I had hoped to make it to the gym today…but my shoulder is feeling sore again, so probably best to stay home and rest it, I guess. I hate being frail. I doubt I’ll be back before the morrow, so have a lovely Sunday fun day and I will see you in the morning.

Heart of Glass

Monday morning and I am exhausted. I slept very late this morning–my legs and lower back are still a little achy–but it was needed. I was on fumes by the end of dinner last night, so much so that I literally waited eighteen minutes for a streetcar because my phone had died (again) so I couldn’t summon a Lyft, and there was no way I was going to make it home again on foot. It was also achingly, annoyingly humid all weekend, and so my socks were always damp with sweat, which makes me uncomfortable because I feel gross. Lesson from the weekend: you need to go back to the gym and take walks more, so you can be in better condition for weekends such as this. I can’t remember the last time I felt so dried out and exhausted and as just a husk of a human like I do this morning. But…probably it was last year’s Festivals. Maybe next year I should just stay down there and not commute because it’s so exhausting. Who knows?

I woke up late to a marvelous thunderstorm and downpour, one of those lovely New Orleans storms where you start to imagine what it was like when the rains for Noah’s flood started, and since I took the day off (wisely, as it turned out) I could burrow back down into the blankets and stay there, warm and snug and comfortable. (I did spare a “sorry” thought for all those flying out from New Orleans, as flights were probably delayed, before drifting off again.) I stayed there until Sparky’s desire for breakfast became so overwhelming that I felt bad for how hungry he must be so got up. I did some laundry and walked to Walgreens to get a few things, before deciding “meh, I can make groceries tomorrow on the way home from work and I can get the mail then too” and went back to the easy chair with Sparky to rest for a while. I watched the gold medal performances for the US Figure Skating team at Worlds (the US for the first time in a long time–if not ever–won three golds; ice dance, men’s, and women’s), which was fun and exciting, and then Paul came home and we talked and caught up for a while, so now he’s upstairs making sure there are no smoldering embers that need snuffing out from the weekend. I remembered I hadn’t finished this, so decided to walk away from catching up on the news–it’s so disheartening to come out of a lovely bubble of writing and publishing and friends and talking about books and writing with likeminded others to the harsh reality of this unpleasant time-line we’re in, seriously–and came back into the kitchen as the last load of laundry from the weekend tumbles dry.

Damn, I am tired.

It was a lovely weekend, though, despite being tired and sort of mentally foggy from overstimulation, I think, from Friday night on. I laughed a lot and talked a lot and gossiped a lot, drank more than I usually do (which is none at all), and ate out more than I ever do. (I had fried green tomatoes with shrimp remoulade twice, and am determined to learn how to make this at home; I’d never had the tomatoes in a regular frying batter before; it was always corn meal, like with fried okra; regardless, this reminded me that I really like fried green tomatoes.) It was kind of nice, and the weather was more humid than I would have preferred all weekend, but things were good. My panels went well, I think, as did my reading in the Dorothy Allison Tribute and my congratulatory message to the finalists of the short story anthology–and that reading was lit, as was the poetry reading at the closing reception. I’ll probably talk about the whole weekend more as the week goes on, but it was marvelous spending time with people whom I have a great affection for, as well as meeting some new people who were equally marvelous. I did do a lot of walking, so it’s no surprise my tired old out of shape ass is so wrecked from the weekend. I did remember this same thing happening last year–but I didn’t take Monday off last year, so kudos to past Greg; plus I hate having to call it an early night on Sunday because I have to work the next morning.

I probably will still be a little punchy still for a few more days, but I can deal.

I’ll dig myself out of the bubble tomorrow.

It also seems like a lot happened over the weekend that I wasn’t able to acknowledge properly (like the humiliating rebuke to our fascist governor received from Louisiana’s voters Saturday, mwa-ha-ha) that I do want to talk about some more. I also had some lovely ideas over the weekend, and I also heard some things that made me think that I want to explore further, so yes, there was some serious creative stimulation as well. These two festivals are my safe spaces, where I can relax completely and don’t have to worry about experiencing any kind of bigotry. I was on a panel that I’d really rather explore, too, because it made me think about some things about the past and the present that I’d like to explore a bit more.

And on that note, I am going to bring to a close and rest a bit more. Have a lovely Monday, and I’ll talk with you again tomorrow.

Goin’ Down

Monday and back to the office this morning, woo-hoo! Yesterday was an interesting one. I got up later than expected, did some chores, got cleaned up, and had a book breakthrough, so huzzah for all that. It rained most of the day, heavy downpours around thunder and lightning. The power even flickered once. Sparky and I spent most of the day cleaning and doing bits and pieces and odds and ends while I was thinking about the book and coming up with some answers. I love rainy days when I can stay in the house, you know? Paul went to get a tattoo, and that was when I worked on some essays and picked apart my book, and then he brought a pizza home from Midway on Freret (they are most excellent) before we started watching Those About to Die, which is interesting but…a bit disappointing at the same time. But there’s queer rep, and we’ve already seen some male nudity. The CGI isn’t terribly good and is kind of obvious, which pulls me out of it when it happens, but overall, not bad at all.

Yesterday the mega donors and the news media, along with rich old white men like George Clooney, David Axelrod, and Rob Reiner got their wish (along with the party donors and the news media) and President Biden announced he would not seek the nomination of his party at the convention. My spirits sank immediately, particularly since the racist old fucks never said “step aside for KAMALA HARRIS the vice president” but made it plain that not only did they want the President gone, they wanted to pass her over. Within an hour, though, the endorsements started coming in as the rank-and-file of the party (you know, the voters) started getting inspired and money started flowing and by the time Paul got home, I was excited again1 and ready to get out the vote and donated…to her campaign, not the DNC. From now on, only the candidates I am supporting will get a donation from me directly, no more party donations or PAC donations or anything like that for me. Y’all blew it, as far as I am concerned.2 I also love that Beyoncé has already endorsed the Vice President, and can Taylor Swift be far behind? There’s going to be a lot of racism and misogynistic bullshit being flung from the right for the next three months, and the conduct of the news media during that time will have to be monitored to see if they are on a redemptive path. If not, I never have to watch or read them again and will go with either the Philly paper or the Los Angeles Times.

I feel inspired now, and hopeful. We can do this and save the country, expand the Supreme Court to mitigate the Trumpian/Heritage Foundation damage to the judicial branch, and pass some goddamned laws. We also need both chambers–and there will be, undoubtedly, Manchin 2.0 and Sinema 2.0, and the Pass the Torchers certainly cannot be trusted to act like Democrats. And I will say, as much as I have always liked Joe Biden, I love Kamala Harris. She was my candidate in 2020, and was bummed when she dropped out, and thrilled again when President Biden selected her. I love that we now have the dichotomy of a convicted felon running against a former prosecutor. The right is scrambling now–all of their anti-Biden plans and ads and everything now have to be scrapped while they try to come up with attacks on her. It’ll start with her not being a citizen, of course–alas, we still have birthright citizenship in this country regardless of Project 2025 (which is already being test-driven in Louisiana)–and then the law and order party will no doubt attack her as a cop, which is far too easy to counter–so it’s all going to boil down to her being a biracial woman. You know who else’s parents weren’t citizens? The first nine presidents. There will be all kinds of legal fuckery coming, too–since they can be certain of a favorable rubber stamp from their operatives on SCOTUS, but for some reason I feel much better this morning. I still don’t trust the media at all, but…there are other and better sources that didn’t spend the last four years dragging down the man who saved the country.

As for the book, as you may have noticed, I’ve been having trouble moving on with the fourth chapter because I am at a stopping place for the chapter but it’s not nearly long enough as it is, which means restructuring the first four chapters again. This chapter, for example, can begin in the previous one–where the chapter ran further than I should have allowed it–and it won’t kill me to pull these first chapters apart and put them back together in a better order than I already had them in and perhaps then I can move on. This is a good idea, and it’s been so long since I’ve written a book where I had the time to sit and think and realize I have to go back now in order to move forward–usually I just have to bulldoze through it and hope it all plays out in the wash–which is probably another reason I feel like my work could be better. More time doesn’t mean better, of course, but the stress and anxiety I usually feel from writing a book on deadline feels pretty fucking marvelous, to be honest.

And on that note, I think I am going to get cleaned up and head into the office. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will be back later.

  1. But make no mistake, the Pass the Torch people are on my permanent shitlist and I will never forgive them. I’m still carrying a grudge against Susan Sarandon from 2000. I will carry a grudge to the fucking grave. ↩︎
  2. I, for one, will never forget that it was Biden who got President Obama to change his mind about marriage equality. ↩︎

Forget That Girl

And another Wednesday Pay the Bills Day has dawned anew. It rained over night, and I suspect we’re going to be getting a lot more rain over the next few days; the weather forecast certainly believes it to be so. I do love rain, and outside of the constant fear of flooding out the car, I don’t even mind driving in it. There’s something about being warm and cozy and comfortable while everything outside is getting wet that just makes my entire body relax. I remember thinking about this when I was a kid once–I was in the car, we were heading for Alabama from up north, it was raining outside and I had a blanket wrapped around me while I was reading The Mystery of Cobbett’s Island, which opens with Trixie and her Bob-White friends in a station wagon in the rain heading for the ferry to the island. Ever since then, whenever it rains all I want to do is curl up with a book under a blanket. I it rains a lot this weekend, I should get a lot of reading handled.

I was a bit tired and drained when I got home from work last night. I did a load of laundry and hung out with Sparky for most of the evening while I scribbled in my journal while doing 1970’s research on Youtube for my next book. I also worked on the book some last night, and feel a lot better about what I am doing. The Imposter Syndrome has been finally chased away by the need to tell this story and develop these characters, and that’s always a good sign. I also thought about that Sherlock story a lot more, too, and may even start writing it this weekend, one never knows. I also figured out how to solve the problem of another short story that’s been bedeviling me for over ten years, and I want to include it in my collection. I still haven’t made a to-do list, so I seem to be floundering around looking for something to do every day but can’t remember what I need to do, and that’s always a problem. I also need to make sure I update the bills list before Monday, too–but that will have to wait until I pay the bills and wait for everything to update. I know Entergy is due today, which absolutely must be paid; the summer is the only time I really don’t care about my carbon footprint.

And football season is drawing closer with every passing day.

Sigh.

Politics and the news continue to be dumpster fires and I really need to avoid social media. I don’t know why I let people infuriate me on social media, but I do, and it’s dumb. What do I care about a total stranger’s beliefs and values? Sure, I hate racism and the phobias and misogyny and fascism as much as any sentient human being, but you’re never going to change someone’s mind on social media when most people are there to provoke anger and arguments and I keep falling for the bait. Social media hasn’t been fun in nearly a decade, and it continues to get worse with every passing day; but we’ve all become addicted to it and I need to step away from it. Publishing and publishers have been insisting for quite some time that we authors need to be there and build a following and so forth to market our books and sell copies, but is that really effective? I think maybe the next time I have a book coming out, I may invest in some ads on social media and see if that makes the needle move at all…it may also bring trolls and assholes in its wake, as well.

And I checked the weather and we are not only in a heat advisory but also rain through next week with thunderstorms every day through the weekend. Woo-hoo! Definitely a good stay inside and read forecast. I really need to get going on my reading…but it’s hard to read when you’re writing something new, at least for me, at least now. I don’t know if I stopped reading when I was writing before, but I don’t think that is the case. I think my abilities to do everything that I was able to do before has slowed down and I don’t have the brain function anymore to juggle many different projects the way that I used to, and it’s also nice to finally be in a place where I can primarily focus my brainpower entirely on the writing without it being diluted by other responsibilities. I like that idea an awful lot, quite frankly.

And on that note I am going to get cleaned up and head into the spice mines. I may be back later as there are some drafts I need to finish–they’re building up again, and I don’t like that one bit–but you never know. But have a lovely middle of the week, Constant Reader, and I always do appreciate it when you check in on me, so thank you again.

Screenshot

Along Came Jones

Our power went out last night, around 5:45 a.m. per the email from Entergy (if our power is out, how do they expect me to read an email? I guess my cell phone, but still), but for whatever reason, somehow Paul got up to wake me up at the time I usually rise (my Cat Alarm, aka Sparky, also failed this morning but once Paul got up, he started), but I slept so well last night that it took me awhile this morning to get up and going. Not sure what that’s about (thunderstorm, no doubt), but my coffee tastes good and it looks like the kitchen roof didn’t leak last night, so that’s a good thing. We’re supposed to have heavy weather this morning with off and on showers all day (at least that was the forecast yesterday). A quick glance at my phone, however, has let me know that later this morning it will get sunny and it will stay that way the rest of the day. That’s nice. In fact, the sun is out already so I think that forecast may be off. I know there were tornado warnings west and north of the city last night, and most of the truly bad weather missed us.

I’m not going to lie, I felt very off-balance at work yesterday. It started raining in the early afternoon, which certainly didn’t help (damp air and rain always makes me sleepy), and there were some other things that went on in the early morning after I arrived at the office that had me wondering why the hell didn’t you call in sick this morning, dumb ass? But it all worked out in the end, and the rest of the day went swimmingly. I ran my errands once I was out of the office, and then came home. I was a little tired by then, so didn’t get much of anything done last night other than bonding with Sparky (i.e. being a cat bed). We started watching a new British show called After the Flood, which looked really interesting, but I also noted that only the first two episodes (of six) were up on Britbox, which is…odd. We really liked the show, so I am going to have to figure out how to watch the other four episodes. But that’s peculiar, isn’t it? I think I may have let my subscription go, which is probably why we can only access the first two episodes. Heavy sigh. I really need to get a handle on the streaming services I pay for, don’t I?

I am trying to get a handle on easing back into my normality again–a week off is so disorienting, but nice at the same time–so I figured this wasn’t going to wind up being highly productive, either. I need to at least stay on top of things, though, so I am not buried this weekend trying to get caught up. I need to get the dishes done tonight when I get home, and there’s some laundry and other straightening up to do, and I need to get back to reading my book, too. I managed to get all the book posts done yesterday, but still need to get the one for Dead Boy Detectives, which I loved, finished as well. If you’ve not watched, you really should get cracking on it; it’s definitely one of my favorite new shows of the year. It’s been so long since I finished watching that it may be difficult to write about it now (I finished before I left on the trip), but it pleased me enormously, and I loved all the queerness, especially the Cat King (Lukas Gage, who is fantastic in the part). Of course, you can never go wrong with Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, or anything that comes out of it.

I didn’t read last night when I got home, either, being tired. But I am looking forward to spending some more time with Where They Wait, which I was really enjoying reading last week in Kentucky. I also kind of feel a bit off with the writing stuff, too–it’s been a hot minute since I’ve written anything other than the blog, so the muscles, already rusted, have kind of tightened up on me again, but I also need to deal with things I’ve been putting off because I didn’t want to deal with them and that’s really not a good way to deal with anything. I need to make a to-do list, too.

And on that note, I am heading back into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I hope to be back here at some point later on.

Shock the Monkey

Saturday morning, and feeling okay. I ran some errands yesterday–mail, prescription, grocery shopping–and instead of going to Five Guys I stopped and got a very healthy turkey-avocado sandwich for lunch instead, on wheat bread, and it was delicious. I used the wagon to bring everything back from the car to the apartment, but after putting the groceries away was very exhausted. I started reading my next book (Lisa Unger’s Christmas Presents) but didn’t get very far into it. I wound up watching the Oregon-Washington game (to see how their quarterbacks matched up against Jayden Daniels for the Heisman; I am biased but was utterly unimpressed with either of them) for a while, and then just kind of zoned out and watched documentaries on Youtube for a few hours till the game started. I am feeling better, but my energy levels still deplete quickly–probably why my surgeon didn’t want me to return to work just yet.

Last night I slept through–didn’t wake up at five like I inevitably always do and then go back to sleep–and woke up at eight, deciding to go ahead and get up rather than loll about in the bed. I figured I could write my blog entry, drink some coffee, and then head over to the easy chair to read the new book for a few hours before trying to get back into writing MY new book. I also need to do some self-promotional entries today to get back on track on promoting my two new releases, and I also kind of need to figure out where I am at with all of my in-progress projects and make a plan to proceed with everything. I think I am going to go back to trying to plan out my year and so forth, because this scattershot method I’ve been using for so long hasn’t really worked out the way I would have liked; but scattershot tends to do that. I have any number of short stories I’d like to get finished, and there are also the novellas; and I have at least two novels in progress that are up to five chapters but have gone no further than that. I also need to get better organized with everything else in my life, too–my desk area looks better than it has in years as far as clutter is concerned, but it needs to be cleaned and straightened up a bit, and there are other things in my desk–the stack of Scotty books, for example–that don’t need to be here. I rearranged the work space before the surgery specifically to free up space on the desktop, and it did work; this arrangement looks better than the way that it used to look. I want to write today–I think I am going to work on some things for the new book too, so I can really dive in headfirst; I don’t have much of a plan for the book other than I know what one of the driving forces behind the plot is going to be; who the villain is; and who is going to die. It’s all mapped out in my journal, but I need to write it all up into a word document so I can easily reference it. Plus, typing shit makes it seem more real to me, which makes no sense to anything other than my twisted brain.

Sparky has discovered the great joy of knocking over the recycling to look for bottle caps, which are his favorite toy and means I don’t need to waste any money buying him anything; why spend more money when every bottle comes with a plastic cap toy for the little darling? He’s inquisitive and he’s smart–he now scales the drawers like a ladder to get up on the counter when the drawers are closed; if he can’t get up there the usual way. He showed off this new trick to us yesterday when we were putting away the groceries; so there wasn’t a clear space for him to jump up, so instead he pulled himself up by climbing the drawers. This tells me there’s really no point to putting things out of reach because he’ll just figure out a way to get there. Scooter wasn’t especially smart, nor was he terribly interested in toys or playing or anything, but Skittle was smart–and I suspect Sparky is even smarter than Skittle, and he’s getting so big! I think he might even wind up bigger than Skittle. Do I want to have a big, incredibly smart cat? It scares me just a little bit, to be honest. But now he seems to have calmed down a bit, and is a sleeping kitten donut on my desk. He really is a beautiful cat.

We had a lot of rain overnight–flash flood warnings, tornado watches all around us in neighboring parishes, the usual–I slept through it all. I didn’t even notice it was raining last night–without my hearing aids, I can’t hear anything other than thunder–but I am sure the rain helped me sleep. I didn’t sleep for a full ten hours; it was only nine. I was thinking yesterday that I need to start getting used to getting up early again before I have to return to work on the 12th, so it won’t be as horrible as it might be. I had finally gotten used to getting up early, and now I have to start getting used to it all over again, which isn’t going to be very much fun at all. But this is a relatively easy month to ease my way back into work again, with the holidays and extra time off at the end, so there’s that. And then again, it’s Carnival shortly thereafter, which I think is late again? I haven’t looked, but I think we have a late Fat Tuesday again this next year.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for the morning. Have a fabulous Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in again later.

I’ve Already Loved You in My Mind

Yesterday was a great test for me when it comes to fighting my anxiety.

I slept incredibly well, finished reading Laura Lippman’s Prom Mom, wrote three blog entries, and started doing laundry. I also spent a lot of time on social media, stealing pictures from the weekend because I never remember to take any myself, and just was kind of taking it easy for the day. We had a thunderstorm blow through right after Paul left for the gym, and therein came the test. I did all the laundry, and when the sheets were finished I took that basket upstairs (Paul hates putting on the fitted sheet and I hate shoving the pillows into their cases, so I put on the sheet and he does the pillow cases, if you were wondering) and only wearing socks–which I never do because the stairs were varnished and are insanely slippery and steep, and they make two ninety degree turns on the way up–when I stepped into a puddle after the first turn. What the hell? I thought as I stepped onto another puddled step, and still another–only to get hit on the head with several drops of water. I looked up and just before the second ninety degree turn is a light fixture–the primary one for lighting the stairs–and the water was coming from the fixture! Fortunately it was off–I don’t even want to think about if it had been on–and I put on the sheet, changed my socks, grabbed my slippers, and a handful of towels. I mopped up the mess with one towel before covering the rest of the steps that had been wet with towels, going down a few more steps with the towels just in case.

Immediately, I thought oh my God we have a leak from a big thunderstorm that caused street flooding, which means that water has probably been pooling somewhere inside the house somewhere; we haven’t had a downpour that caused flooding most of the summer (its usually a weekly occurrence in the summer time), which further led to oh no what about mold and will the wall have to be ripped out again to well at least we know where the problem is to great termites love wet wood before I was able to take a breath and recognize that I was spiraling and the anxiety was starting to spread to a physical and emotional reaction. I took a deep breath, and remembered that it’s out of my control. Getting worked up and emotional will not stop the leak or repair the wall. I was borrowing trouble and letting my mind start to control my narrative and I don’t want that. I sat down at my desk and thought, “Okay. When Paul gets home I’ll tell him to call the landlady. She’ll need to come see it, then call someone. So I have to get the living room picked up and make it look better. I still need to put away the dishes and I need to make a to-do list because I have things I need to get done this week. Will this be convenient with everything I have going on this fall? No, but when has life ever been convenient?

Never. And that’s what Paul and I discussed last night: getting frustrated, irritated, and upset by things you have no control over is a waste of time and energy. Dealing with the anxiety is a big part of this with me; I can’t control the physical reaction, but I can the emotional and mental, and as long as I keep that under control and don’t spiral, I will be okay. Things have to be taken care of, and that includes what I always call “odious chores,” or what other people might call “adulting” (I hate the turning nouns into verbs that don’t need to be verbs, and so I try not to ever use that word–it’s always grated on me. When you’re not adulting, are you childing? Of course not. That’s why it grates.). I don’t like conflict, and this is also a part of my anxiety–the fear of conflict creates anxiety and keeps me from doing things that might cause conflict, even though they rarely do. At one point last night as we caught up on our shows, I said, “I wish today was Saturday because I don’t want to get up in the morning” and Paul replied, “let it go”–we’d had a conversation about all of this and stopping being negative about things we can’t control and etc.–and I said, “you’re right. I have to get up early and moaning about it won’t change it, so why bother? It just is.” So I came back downstairs and watched this week’s My Adventures with Superman (it really is a. great show) and then Paul joined me for Only Murders in the Building, Ahsoka, and then we started a MAX (that is weird to me, just like saying X instead of Twitter–but fuck Elon, that I will never do) documentary called Telemarketers which is incredibly fascinating. There will be more on that later, once we’ve finished it (and I remember getting calls from these people back in the day; I always felt sorry for the callers as I always do with any kind of telemarketer–but after watching the first episode I don’t feel as sorry for them as I used to).

Ironically, my body clock is also all screwed up somehow. I was exhausted last night and was falling asleep in my chair by nine; so I went to bed early and am up and awake at five am this morning. It was a very good night’s sleep, too. So here I am last night whining about getting up early briefly–and this morning I voluntarily got out of bed an hour earlier than normal because I was awake and clearly wasn’t going to fall back asleep at any time. So here I am at my desk, swilling coffee and blearily thinking about all the things I need to get done before Friday. Tonight I am picking up my hearing aids after work, getting the mail, and running by the grocery store. I have to finish paying the bills. I have a million emails to respond to as well as numerous to generate.

It’s also funny that, after years of not thinking about the past or revisit it, I’ve started doing that more and more, especially since Dad is now telling me things I didn’t know before. Since I turned sixty, I started looking back over the years, which I had always seen as pointless before. You can’t do anything about the past, after all, and we also have a tendency to view the past as better and rosier than it actually was the further in the past it becomes. Sure, Mom dying earlier this year and talking to Dad about the past certainly has something to do with it all–but I had already started down that path. What is it, I wonder, about that particular milestone that resonated with me so deeply that I turned philosophical and decided to start unpacking my past? I don’t know. But I saw something on Facebook the other day about someone’s first words, and that made me remember that my parents always said I didn’t start talking until I was almost three years old (Mom would always add “and you haven’t shut up since”), but I was walking at nine months; they also always said that ruefully and with regret, because they believed the issues with my leg joints–the rolling ankles, the ease with which my hips will pop out of joint–is because I started walking too young. I never really thought anything about it, really, other than well thanks a lot for those issues…but this time I thought, “that must have really been weird and scary for them as parents barely out of their teens,” and you know every other adult and parent they knew privately judged them while offering all kinds of unsound advice and old wives’ tales from the country that made no sense and had no basis in any kind of science. Such a shame about their boy, you think he’s retarded? (Yes, that word–preferably not used anymore–was in common usage when I was a child, and yes, I heard adults talking about when they thought I was out of earshot. I think that was about the time my “selective hearing” started; being able to hear clearly for the first time in my adulthood tonight after getting the hearing aids did make me wonder do I really want to be able to hear everything?)

And yes, my primary takeaway from Bouchercon this weekend was feeling something I’ve not felt in a long time, and definitely not since the pandemic: ambitious. I told Paul last night (and someone over the weekend, probably my poor friend Teresa, aka Carsen Taite) “I kind of feel like life is happening to me, rather than me living my life, and I don’t like that feeling.” So, it’s time for me to start planning and mapping things out and deciding what I want and setting goals and figuring out how to get what I want again. I also realize I have to be very careful with what I agree to do this fall–not knowing how long some of these recoveries from procedures will take, for one thing–and I need to stop having anxiety about not having books under contract and then throwing out a bunch of proposals and getting deadlines. No, I need to plan. I need to strategize. I need to get my shit together and set some goddamned goals.

And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines so I can make this week’s to-do list and start tackling the email inbox. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will be back later without doubt.

Saying Hello, Saying I Love You, Saying Goodbye

Tuesday and tomorrow I depart for San Diego. I am trying very hard not to get anxious about everything, but I am starting to feel it a bit. I have to decide what to pack, and I need to see what the weather is going to be like. I discovered a conflict in my schedule that I have to resolve in a way I don’t want, and there’s groceries to make and mail and prescriptions to pick up and laundry and dishes to finish and yes, I am going to be hopping all day today getting ready and/or thinking about the trip and making plans. I also have a lot of work to do in the office before I leave, because the month changes while I am gone so the things I always do over the month change have to be done–or at least I can get it as ready as I can. I think I answered all the emails I needed to get answered, and I think I can breathe a bit of a sigh of relief.

I ran errands last night on the way home circling a thunderstorm, and then once I was finished I drove directly into its beating heart as it gave us a little respite from the horrific, seemingly endless heat. The big cold drops of rain started splatting down from above like liquid shrapnel. I managed to get inside the house before it really started coming down, and there was thunder and lightning, too. A marvelous New Orleans summer tropical storm, like we haven’t had hardly any of this entire blighted summer of hellish heat. The kind where so much water comes down the streets fill, swirling around catch basins and rising closer to the bottoms of cars, while the potholes and low=lying cracks and buckles in roads and sidewalks immediately fill with clear water. The temperature drops precipitously, given tired air conditioning systems the opportunity to catch up and finally take a well-deserved break after weeks of going at full blast–and sometimes not being able to keep up. The kind where condensation finally appears on your windows for the first time this summer, or so it seems. And even though you know all that water means it’ll be muggy as a rain forest again tomorrow as it evaporates into the heated air once more, you can at least breathe for a moment and enjoy the blessed break from what has become an unfortunate norm this summer.

But in checking my email, I see that today’s severe weather alert is merely coastal flooding, and there’s no extreme heat warning for the day, which is actually kind of nice. Today will be a break, and tomorrow I leave for the coast. My car will be roasting, of course, in the long-term off-airport parking lot, but there are worse things. I’m really looking forward to the trip, pushing down all of my anxiety triggers around traveling, and I will get home Sunday night, have Monday off, and then return to the office on Tuesday. I’m hoping there won’t be an adjustment to time zones involved on this trip, but I am sure it will be. If I wake up at my usual time, it will be four in the morning on the coast. But the day of traveling home will wear me out, plus I’ll be exhausted from being “on” panels and socializing. I just have to get over my intense FOMO and repair to my room to rest and relax periodically; I don’t need to be non-stop on the go, etc. and need to remember I’m an introvert who primarily is used to dealing with people quietly, one on one, and not in group environments. There will be lots of overstimulation.

But I can’t wait to see my queer crime writer friends again! Woo-hoo! They are always a good time.

I was tired when I got home last night from errands and so forth, and the thunderstorm and the damp chill in the air didn’t help matters very much. Paul stayed upstairs watching the US Open–so I have no need to fear Paul’s boredom while I am gone, as he’ll have the tennis to watch. We’re also hoping to get a cat at last once I get back, although my oral surgery is scheduled for that Friday; depending on how I feel, we could possibly get one on Saturday if I don’t still need painkillers and thus have a clear enough mind to drive, which would be super-great. All of my fall plans are currently on hold until I find out when my arm surgery is going to be. I hate that, because I feel like I am wasting time, which brings the anxiety out again. It’s so much fun being me, Constant Reader, you have literally no idea. But therein lies the rub; life really always is a endless string of “hurry up and wait” or “can’t make any plans until I find this out.” The joys of being older.

I think for now at least there’s nothing potentially going to develop that will threaten Louisiana tropically while I am gone–traveling during hurricane season means one more thing to check off the list. I am sorry and worried about those in the path of this Idalia monster that has Florida strictly in its sights. (If I were an evangelical piece of shit, I’d say something like “God is clearly not pleased with deSantis”–but I happily leave that kind of blame-shame to the “christian” cos-players. Funny how it’s usually red states at risk but they don’t see that as God’s punishment, but let something happen to a blue state–or New Orleans–and they start thumping their Bibles again instead of reading them. I’m so glad I’m not an evangelical piece of shit cosplay christian.)

I was hoping to get some writing done last night, but I wound up not doing a whole hell of a lot of anything. I watched some history videos on Youtube, started to watch the latest episode of Foundation–which, truth be told, is extremely well done but difficult to follow because it doesn’t always hold my interest, but I am definitely here for hot Lee Pace–but gave up as the opening credits rolled and went back to Youtube. I did end up watching something but couldn’t tell you what it was to save my life this morning, so clearly it made no impact on me. I did greatly enjoy the recent episode of My Adventures with Superman, which is quickly becoming one of my all-time favorite depictions of Superman and his cast of characters, but I think tonight–after cleaning the downstairs, packing, and cleaning out the refrigerator–I am going to read some more of Kelly Ford’s marvelous The Hunt, which I am enjoying; I do not want anyone to get the idea that I am not enjoying the book–it’s just that the heat and my mind being sort of fried has made it really hard for me to focus on reading something longform. I also finished reading the proofs for Mississippi River Mischief, which I’ll be bring with me to try to get some progress made on the proofing; if I manage to do that and nothing else while in San Diego I will be very pleased.

And on that note I think I will head into the spice mines for the day. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and tomorrow I will be writing to you before I leave for the coast. Huzzah!

Road, River and Rail

Work at home Friday, and all is well thus far in the Lost Apartment. I did make it through the day somehow–don’t ask me how–but I didn’t feel tired for most of the day and it wasn’t until I headed home that I hit a wall of sorts. I had to pick up the mail–yay for my copy of All The Sinners Bleed!–and then picked up a prescription during a massive thunderstorm, which was kind of fun. I actually love when it rains; I just don’t love that no one in New Orleans seems to know how to drive in rain. One would think that, given how much torrential rain we get here, that–I don’t know–that drivers here would have learned how at some point? (I also got some other buys from eBay in the mail; Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories to Be Read with the Door Locked, which looks fun, and Mary M. Luke’s A Crown for Elizabeth, which picks up the tale of the Tudor dynasty with the continuation of the story from Catherine the Queen, covering the years 1533 thru 1558. I am excited about both, to be honest.) Paul worked on a grant last night while I watched the last extended gay disco remix episode of the Vanderpump Rules reunion, which was remarkable. I do want to write about reality television, particularly the Bravo flavored kind, but I am also trying to do all these extra Pride entries about not just being a queer crime writer but being a queer American trying to navigate an increasingly hostile world. There’s also been so much coverage of the scandalous last season of this show–along with its mother show, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills–that I don’t really have anything new to add to the discourse, other than to make some observations from a cultural and societal perspective? I think it also might not hurt to unpack why I get so caught up in the (usually) manufactured drama of these shows.

But after I got home and watched, my brain was a bit too fried from the day and the week for the work to be able to make up for the lost time last night and get back on track. It’s getting very close, to the point where I am almost starting to get antsy and have to resist the urge to hurry and finish it as quickly as possible. I am always afraid the endings of my books are rushed because I am so heartily tired of it already and cannot wait to be finished and on to the next thing. I am looking forward to this weekend, primarily for the rest and also for getting things very caught up that have kind of slid this week. I have some chores that have to be done today around the work-at-home duties, and I’d like to finish reading Chris Clarkson’s That Summer Night on Frenchmen Street this weekend, since I now have the latest S. A. Cosby, Megan Abbott, and Christopher Bollen novels to get through. My reading has definitely slid a bid this year, too. I spent some time last night reading the introductions to the Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthology as well as an old MWA one, edited by Robert Fish, that came in Wednesday’s mail, With Malice for All (or something like that). I read the first story in the Fish MWA anthology, and it was very creepy and very short and quite the punch in the face to start off the book.

I really need to get back to the Short Story Project, too.

It was a pleasant week, for the most part. I got a lot of work done this week, which feels great, and I feel pretty confident about moving on and getting this all finished sooner rather than later. I’m looking forward to sleeping in both mornings this weekend, and while I am going to have to leave the house to run errands at some point, at least this morning I can sit here in my chair sipping coffee and thinking I may not have to leave the house all weekend. At one point this week during the office I wandered up to the front desk where some of my co-workers were sitting during the needle exchange (making it Wednesday afternoon, thank you, logic modules in my brain) and they were asking each other icebreaker type questions. When I walked up, the current question was what animal would you want to be so I replied, “My cat, because never leaving the house and sleeping 22 hours a day sounds really appealing.” Scooter has been super-cuddly and affectionate lately, more so than usual, which is saying something because he’s always been super-cuddly and affectionate. I worry about him because we’ve now had him for thirteen years this September, and he was supposedly already two years old when we got him. He’s a sweet boy. I think we’ll probably always have a ginger cat; I suspect when we lose Scooter we may even end up with two of them.

The Strand Critics’ Award nominations came out yesterday, and as always it’s a friend-studded list. Shout out to every finalist. The books nominated that I’ve read are superb, so the choice of a winner isn’t going to be easy–glad the choice didn’t fall into my hands. I am already glad I am not judging any awards this year–I’ve already read so many good books this year that I don’t know that I could chose just the one–and like I said, I’ve not gotten to this year’s releases by some of my favorite authors (and people) and there’s a new Laura Lippman dropping this summer. Woo-hoo! And of course, my TBR pile is already stacked with amazing reads I’d love to make a serious dent in this year.

And on that note, I think I’m going to grab another cup of coffee and put the dishes away and start making a dent in the mess that is the Lost Apartment before I start working for the day. May you have a fabulous Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll talk to you again later.