Tag: travel

Oh Sherrie

Saturday in the Lost Apartment, and I am going to take it very easy this morning. I got my flu shot yesterday after work, and it knocked me for a loop the way it does every year. It also occurs to me that this year’s much worse reaction has everything to do with the ulcerative colitis, a compromised immune system, and the medication I take for it. Last evening, as I switched between the US Open and the Auburn-Baylor game (WAR EAGLE!) while trying to read The Hunting Wives, I didn’t feel sick or anything, just exhausted and my joints (especially the hips) ached and kept locking up, so every time I got up to do something it was awkward and uncomfortable at first as everything unkinked. The hips ache again this morning, too.

I was hoping to not leave the house today, but I have to replace my phone. Thursday night when I got home from work I couldn’t find my phone before I went to bed. I used the “find my phone” feature, and discovered it was last located at the corner of Marigny and Claiborne, where I turn onto Claiborne. Yesterday morning I went to look for it, but the battery was undoubtedly dead and that was its last known location. I couldn’t find it anywhere, so obviously someone found it. I erased it once I got back home, and one of my errands yesterday was to go to the AT&T store on St. Charles to replace it. The girl who “helped” me wasn’t very good at her job, I think, because she finally just told me to go to the other store on Magazine Street. It was all very weird and strange, and having already had the flu shot was already getting tired, so I went to Raising Cane’s to get something to eat and came home. So I have to go to the store on Magazine this morning, and might as well go by the mail and the Fresh Market on my way home, hopefully with a new phone. It’s been weird not having one, but kind of nice at the same time. I really need to break my phone addiction.

College football season has already sort of started, but it kicks into gear today. LSU plays at Clemson tonight, Alabama plays Florida State (I think?) and Texas is at Ohio State today. I’ll probably not do much of anything except some chores during the games. A new football season is always kind of exciting because nobody really knows what will happen, and the “rankings” are based on nothing more than last year’s results and the opinion of “experts”–and the older I get the less I want to hear from “experts.” The only truly decent commentator–one who isn’t full of himself and talks to hear himself talk–is Greg McElroy, the former Alabama quarterback. He is a sports journalist, he isn’t biased, and he takes his job seriously. I wish he was the primary color commentator for SEC games. Sigh. I really miss Keith Jackson every Saturday in the fall…

I wrote and published my Katrina newsletter/essay (click there to read it if you haven’t and want to), and of course last night as I watched the third episode of Spike Lee’s Katrina: Come Hell and High Water, which was quite excellent. It also reminded me of the biggest lesson out of Katrina, one that I didn’t even realize I’d learned until watching last night: I learned rom the Katrina experience just how privileged I am, and it was the first time in my life I “woke” up and realized it. We had the means to leave, so our story isn’t nearly as traumatic as that of those who couldn’t leave. We lived in the “sliver by the river” so our streets didn’t flood in my neighborhood; our damage was from above with losing the roof…but we still had a place to live in New Orleans so we could come back while the roof and apartment were repaired. Our jobs survived the disaster so we still had income. We didn’t have to ride the storm out in the Superdome, or needed to be rescued from our roof. Yes, the event was traumatizing, but I never felt like I had the right to complain about our situation because we were so much luckier than so many others. There was also that weird experience of, for months and even years, having to catch up on Katrina stories when I ran into someone I hadn’t seen for awhile. “Are you back for good?” was always one of the things I’d ask to start with.

And, oh, it was so lovely running into those folks again!

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

Whenever I Call You “Friend”

Good morning, Sunday! I slept late again this morning despite Sparky’s best efforts, and after all those years of insomnia, I do enjoy getting up later. Yesterday was a pretty decent day, overall. I did some things, ran some errands, did chores and kind of overdid it…I was tired by the mid-afternoon, so just hung out in my chair with Sparky in my lap, and we watched some television while Paul dozed on and off for the rest of the day. Some of what we watched was research, so it’s not like I blew off the entire day or anything. The weather has also cooled; it was in the mid-eighties yesterday with a very low degree of humidity so it was actually pleasant outside (and yes, calling the mid-eighties pleasant and almost fall-like is an indication of how hellishly hot here these last few months)–supposed to be similar today, and since I have to walk to Walgreens later on, I’m hoping it is just like yesterday. I think we’re supposed to have cooler weather the rest of the week? The Katrina anniversary is also this Friday–so glad it’s my work-at-home day.

We finished watching Smoke last night and we really enjoyed it. Taron Egerton is a terrific actor, and I love Jurnee Smollett in everything I see her in. There were lots of twists and turns, and the show changes its centering in almost every episode, with some very clever writing sleight-of-hand along the way that always keeps you guessing. It was very well done, and I do recommend it.

I also watched the HBO documentary The Serial Killer’s Apprentice (I also have the book in my TBR stack). I’ve been interested in the Dean Corll/Candyman murders since I first heard about them when I lived in Houston back in 1989-1991, and one of my future projects is rooted in that horrific true crime story. We certainly do know a lot more about psychology, abuse, and grooming nowadays, and so Dr. Katherine Ramsland, who wrote the book based on her interviews with Corll’s teenaged ‘helper’, Elmer Wayne Henley Jr. The documentary doesn’t get into what Corll and his helpers did to those poor boys, but it was horrific. One torture detail that has stuck in my mind all these years since I first heard about the case and read a book about it–I don’t remember the title, but it was fairly old and was written shortly after the trials, and wasn’t terribly long. (When I talk about The Summer of Lost Boys, that’s my Candyman book.) Watching this documentary gave me some other ideas about how to write and structure said book.

I also had the television on for background noise while I was cleaning and doing things yesterday, and tuned in for the Kansas State-Iowa State game from Dublin (KSU lost). I cannot believe it’s football season already, with LSU playing this coming Saturday at Clemson.

The Cracker Barrel uproar from the MAGA morons has been incredibly amusing, but they do have a point. The redesign of the interiors is soulless and horrible, but as for removing the old man and the barrel and the words “old country store” off their logo? It is just rebranding to try to get a new customer base since theirs is dying off. Why is change so hard and terrifying for people to accept? I’ll never understand the perpetual victimhood of right-wingers, myself–yet they call us snowflakes. God, there are few things I despise more than hypocrisy. The only constant in life is change, so fighting change is a fool’s errand, and I sure don’t have time for that, although it sure seems a lot of other people do. It must be nice having a life that allows you the energy and time to waste bitching about a corporate decision that ultimately doesn’t affect or impact anyone in any way, shape or form.

But they have opinions, and of course, it’s the libs’ fault, even though most of couldn’t possibly give less of a shit about Cracker Barrel’s logo. But that redesign of the restaurant space is a mistake, a very big mistake. I maybe eat at a Cracker Barrel once a year with Dad when I’m in Kentucky, but that’s about it. Cracker Barrel hasn’t gotten this kind of attention since they were racist homophobes back in the day.

Had I but known how triggering this would be for the right-wing snowflakes, I would have pushed for a logo redesign for Cracker Barrel decades ago.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. There’s a lot of mess I need to clean up this morning, and I want to read a bit before Paul goes to his trainer. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back either later or tomorrow, okay?

Ah, those Chippendales calendars in the 80s!

When I’m Sixty-four

For the first time in decades, I am not taking my birthday off.

That’s why I am up at this ungodly hour, swilling down coffee and consuming coffee cake like it’s going out of style. I need to conserve my PTO, because I am going to the panhandle (barring unforeseen circumstances) for a week with my dad in October after a weekend in Alabama for Dad’s and Mom’s birthdays. I also have to take some time off during Bouchercon–there’s no way I can work all day and then host Noir at the Bar that Thursday, and probably not going to be able to do much work that Friday, either. I think I’ve managed to get it all planned out so that I will have just enough vacation time left to do the family thing in October, and then let things start building back up again for the new year. It’s going to be weird going to work on my birthday–I generally take the day off because I don’t need or want the attention that comes with it–but I will survive, I am sure.

Sixty. Four.

Christ on the cross.

I never planned for my future because I never thought I would have one. When I was a kid, I was certain I wasn’t going to have much of an adult life; I always had nightmares about not only dying but how I would die; either in a car accident, or a fall from a high place. This is why I am always, to this day, a little bit tense when I’m in a car and a LOT tense when I am the passenger. In my early twenties, I thought I was going to seroconvert and die from AIDS–why would I ever think that I would survive that pandemic? The next thing I knew I had somehow made it to fifty, then sixty–and now I am sixty-four, with another milestone birthday just a year in my future, should I make it till then. I am woefully unprepared for retirement, so most likely will continue to work for another few years to at least try to get my debt down to a manageable place. Ha ha ha ha, I’m so adorable, aren’t I?

I guess the ship has sailed on me dying young, hasn’t it?

But it’s been a pretty good life thus far, I have to say. I’ve written and published a shit ton of work, which can never be taken away from me, and neither can the awards I’ve either won or made the shortlist for…how many authors never make a shortlist of any kind? But the childhood conditioning that celebrating myself and things I’ve accomplished is a hubristic tempting of fate; how many stories and myths and fables are there about hubristic humans who anger a god? Like I often say, I live in the city I love with the man I love doing work that I love. All of my dreams came true, no matter what happens in the future.

My sixties haven’t been easy on me, and I don’t have the energy I used to have so recovery from physical, emotional, and professional blows doesn’t happen as fast as it used to; but I’m still pretty pleased and happy with my life. I try not to worry about future outcomes that I can’t control, and can only prepare for the things I can. If my thirties were about getting myself mentally healthy so I could have the life I wanted, and the forties were about getting started in my career and the fifties were about getting further along and getting better as a writer, my sixties have been a time of revisiting and rethinking my past, finally getting to understand myself and where a lot of my neuroses stem from. The anxiety medication has helped me enormously in that regard, too. Realizing how emotionally crippling my anxiety was when I was a minor also has enabled me to remember, and those memories aren’t painful anymore because so much of my misery was directly attributable to said anxiety.

So now I am sixty-four. I am older than my grandparents were throughout my childhood, which is also a staggering realization. It’s also weird to think that I was born sixteen years after the end of World War II, the country was sinking into the depths of the Cold War, and President Kennedy hadn’t even been in office for a full year yet. I never imagined what it would be like to be this age, mainly because I, as stated earlier, never thought I would live this long. I’m trying not to be that old person–you know, “When I was your age” or “We used to call it” and that sort of thing, because no one really wants to hear it. I’ve seen a lot in my life, witnessed all kinds of events (the Challenger explosion, 9/11, Watergate hearings, on and on), and lived through all kinds of things. I’ve lived in Alabama, Chicago, Kansas, California, Houston, Tampa, Minneapolis, and New Orleans. I went to two high schools in different states, and two colleges in different states. I went to Italy for a week over ten years ago. I’ve had so many jobs, but being a writer/sexual health counselor were the only things that took with me.

Life’s been good to me so far.

After work, I am going to head home and just hang out with Sparky. If I had to hazard a guess, Paul will probably get us Hoshun for dinner tonight. But I got my vacuum cleaner last week, and that’s all I really cared about.

Happy birthday to me! And may my next year be a lovely one!

The only picture of my face as a baby, my first day home from the hospital.

Moving in Stereo

Good morning, Constant Reader! Hope you sprang forth from your bed wide awake and a-rarin’ to go, because today is Wednesday! We’ve made it to the halfway point again this week! Huzzah! Although this week hasn’t been terrible, other than being tired when I get home from work every day. I feel oddly more awake and alert this morning; not sure what that is about, but I am not going to argue with it, either. I’ll ride this wave as long as it lasts before petering out at shore.

It rained off and on for most of the day and it was gloomy a lot yesterday. I am never really sure what’s going on with the weather when I am at work; my testing room doesn’t have a window, and I don’t get near the windows on the floor very often. But a couple of clients were wet from the rain when they came in, and the few times I was around the front desk I could see the rain. It was nice when I made groceries after work, but it started sprinkling when I got home and it rained for most of the night. I got very tired yesterday afternoon, just as I was getting ready to head home. (I did cancel one errand I was going to run because I was tired, but was very proud of myself for making groceries.) I also did some writing work when I got home, too. Yay for me! I’ve not really experienced the page opening and me falling into it yet1. I haven’t had that experience in quite a while; which I think is what has been fueling the Imposter Syndrome2 of the last few years. But I am slowly doing more and more, and my creativity, despite being covered in dust and cobwebs, is getting better, too.

I slept well again last night–trust me, I do not miss insomnia–and could happily go back to bed this morning. It looks like a sunny morning out there, and the forecast shows no rain for the day.

Then again, yesterday’s forecast said no rain until the evening, too. They’re inevitably always wrong here in the tropical season.

I do think being tired affects my ability to write, because now when I’m tired physically, I also am tired emotionally and mentally.

Being Tuesday, I made tacos for dinner last night when I got home and in spite of being tired, I managed to do the dishes before making dinner. Paul came downstairs, and I queued up Unspeakable Sins, which continues to be a rollercoaster ride (spoiler: the only decent character in the show is the escort; everyone else is kind of awful but so fun to watch) and we’re over halfway finished. There were two more kidnappings and now everyone knows the faked death was actually faked and Claudio is still alive–and last night we did find out who was behind everything going on. I kind of suspected that character already, and they just became a lot more interesting! One thing I have noticed about this show–I noticed it right away–is how they’ve embraced the physical beauty of Andres Baida and how much the camera sexualizes him in a way usually reserved for women3. He is shirtless in every episode at least once, and we generally see his bare ass every episode too–and how the camera lingers on his body is the way it usually does on women. His introduction to the viewers was him rising from a swimming pool in tight little square cuts, slowly revealing his muscular form as it rose, shining and wet and dripping, out of the water. Last night there was an episode where he was being tortured for information by a ruthless gangster. His wrists were chained together, his shirt was gone, and his arms were straight overhead, the chain holding him up. He looked like he was being lifted right out of his low-rise pants which were barely hanging on, his face and torso covered in oil and sweat and some blood, and it looked almost like a scene from a gay bondage porn film.

And tonight Wednesday drops. Huzzah!

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

I always thought Michael Newman was hotter than David Hasselhoff on BAYWATCH.
  1. Callback/shout out to Misery by Stephen King. ↩︎
  2. Whom we are no longer listening to under any circumstances. ↩︎
  3. Make no mistake, I am on board with the sexualization of men in film and television. ↩︎

I’m In Touch With Your World

Sunday morning and I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning. Sparky, of course, had opinions, so I got up and fed him and had a cup of coffee and now am feeling a bit run down this morning. I think after I post this I am going to repair to the easy chair for the rest of the morning, and do some reading before settling into the saddle to write. I didn’t write yesterday–I ran all my errands in the morning and then spent the rest of the day cleaning and organizing everything we bought/had delivered on Friday. We finished watching The Hunting Wives (more on that later), and then caught up on the news before I got ready to meet some people for dinner (more on that later). After dinner I came home and fell asleep in said easy chair, and Paul had to wake me so I could go to bed.

And here we are.

I really enjoyed The Hunting Wives, which was Dynasty-like in its over-the-top characters and storylines. The first season ended on a cliffhanger, and a humdinger of one at that, with a body being buried in the woods. The show was full of twists and turns and surprises, but I was pretty sure who the killer was and, he typed modestly, I was proven right. I did doubt myself a few times, but every time someone else would all under suspicion, I couldn’t figure how that person–despite their motive and their actions–could have done it. Brittany Snow was amazing as lead character Sophie, and overall, the entire cast was excellent in their roles. I’m going to probably read the book at some point, now. Perhaps another new-to-me author I am going to enjoy? I don’t need more authors to read at this point, but…I kind of want to see how different the book is from the show.

So, last night I had dinner with two women I went to high school with in Kansas and their husbands. It was nice to reconnect with the distant past once again–I graduated from high school almost fifty years ago, and maybe the most interesting thing about said reconnection is hearing how people you went to high school saw you back then as well as what they remember. We’re always so certain that people see us the way we see ourselves, aren’t we? I was, for the most part, miserable for the most part when I was in high school, for any number of reasons, but I always thought, you know, like I was weird-looking and there was the gay thing and being dorky and all of that. It’s strange to hear contradictory opinions to what I was so roundly convinced was true, you know?

Not to mention seeing people who knew me when I had hair. I don’t encounter that very often.

So, it was very nice, actually. I’m still processing it all, to be honest, but…I’m glad I made the time to meet them all for dinner.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, and I’ll be back on the morrow.

Adrian Zmed

Avalon

Many years ago, Anya Seton published a terrific historical novel set in pre-1066 England and titled Avalon. The title was a throwback to the female lead character’s bloodline; she was descended from King Arthur and thus part of the English royal family. I loved Anya Seton (Green Darkness remains one of my favorite books to this day)–it’s been a while since I’ve revisited her work, but maybe I should…her books are soooo long, though! Anyway, Avalon is an island from the Arthur mythology…I suppose this is where I admit I’ve never read anything about King Arthur other than the Mary Stewart novels, but I enjoyed those so much I never really felt much of a need to read anything else Arthurian1. For those of you who missed the 1980s, Roxy Music recorded an album titled Avalon, and the title song was gorgeous…as is the entire album, which I’ve been listening to lately. It still, for the record, holds up.

The tropical system turned out to be not much of anything here in New Orleans, but it was rough where it did rain and flood. Yesterday–which was supposed to be the worst of it–was gorgeous for most of the day. After work, we did go to Costco and then I had dinner with a good friend at Saba, which was lovely. My Lyft drivers in both directions were pretty great, too–which was very lovely. The meal was terrific, and I allowed myself a single cocktail–A Dionysus Revival, which was an interesting mix of tequila, cucumber, and mild ancho chili; it was delicious. I also did chores yesterday around working, and the kitchen–which still needs some work–looks so much better this morning than it did yesterday morning, and that makes me very happy this morning. NO DISHES!

I hope to have a good day today, I have some errands to run around noon (mail, make a little groceries), but other than that I am home for the day. We’ll probably watch some more of America’s Sweethearts later, too. I’m not entirely sure why this show fascinates us both so much–there’s definitely a camp quality to it–but it just sucks us in every time we start watching. We, of course, are old school–we used to watch this on TNN when it was called Making the Team, and you can tell Netflix spends more money on the show than TNN ever did. My coffee is tasting marvelous this morning, Sparky let me sleep a little later than usual, and I feel very good this morning. My sinuses are behaving and I don’t have the headache that’s plagued me for the last couple of weeks. I’m also going to spend some time with the new Megan Abbott and my other current reads. Tomorrow we are going to go see Superman, which I am absolutely looking forward to seeing. Reader, there will be a newsletter about my almost life-long love of the character.

I am also hoping to get some writing done today as well. It’s about time for me to get back in the saddle again–and every day that passes when I don’t climb up on that horse again is time slipping through my fingers. It’s creeping up on football season, too–which is going to make it harder to be productive on the weekends, like it always does. I need to clean off my desk and do the floors here in the kitchen, which will be my housework for the day; and I’ll pick up in the living room later on.

Such an exciting life I lead, right?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow morning.

  1. I did watch Camelot–we saw it in the theater when I was really young. I tried rewatching it during the pandemic, but couldn’t get through it. I’ll never understand why they didn’t cast Julie Andrews as Guinevere, since she’d played it on stage. ↩︎

Bad Streets

New Orleans is filled with bad streets–potholes and cracks and floods, oh my! I wrote about the pothole situation in A Streetcar Named Murder, which was a lot of fun to write. Helpful hint to people Not From Here but writing about New Orleans: if you want to sound authentic, mention the potholes. Every local and native reading it will nod appreciatively while smiling ruefully.

We very much bond complaining about potholes, and everyone in New Orleans has at least one pothole story–at least one. There’s The Pothole That Won’t Die on my street, for example, and of course, we can’t forget the time a pothole ate one of my tires. And actually, it was very strange that I never wrote about potholes before, in all of my books about New Orleans. But…I’ve also never written about New Orleans food and music, either.

I woke up this morning with my sinuses acting up and a headache, too–the same one I had all day yesterday. I really dislike this. I took a Claritin this morning and my nose is still running, which is annoying. I love the rain and thunder, but I hate what it does to my sinuses. I managed to sleep well, in spite of this condition, but it’s always miserable when I wake up and they (sinuses) are out of control like they were this morning. But…it’s been a hot minute since they’ve acted up the way they have been these past few weeks, so I am going to grit my teeth and get through this madness.

Last night I made groceries on my way home from the office, and worked once I got home. Alas, the sink is still full of dishes, but I was very pleased with the progress I made on my work last night. I edited and revised; am looking forward to another day of edits and revisions today as well. I am finally getting the voice right–although I think more edits and revisions are necessary as I shake out the plot–which feels very good; I am hopeful to get this entire thing ready to go by the weekend. We’ll be going to Costco and seeing Superman1 this weekend, too, so I’ll probably be very tired by the time Monday rolls around, which is when I get the next infusion.

Hopefully, that won’t make me tired all week. As always, I have too much to do for me to spend the week recovering from fatigue induced by the infusion.

We also watched some more of We Were Liars, and really, the majority of characters on the show, particularly the adults, are terrible people, but it’s getting more and more interesting the deeper we get into the story. There are only two more episodes left, and we’ll probably finish it off tonight. I am coming straight home from the office tonight, so there’s no excuse for me not to do the dishes tonight. I did manage to empty the dishwasher at one point–while I was making my Gregalicious grilled cheese sandwich for dinner–and the refrigerator is organized, but there’s already other mess in the kitchen (didn’t take long, did it?). So tonight I have to do some laundry and at least clean out the kitchen sink; I don’t think there are enough dishes to warrant running the dishwasher quite yet.

Sigh.

And on that depressing note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, and I will most likely be back tomorrow morning.

Screenshot
  1. And no, we still haven’t seen the new Jurassic movie. But Superman is my priority. ↩︎

Fall

Sunday of the holiday weekend and I finally feel rested. Yesterday was another sinus day, but I did get some things done. I did some clean-up around the apartment, finished reading Summerhouse (which I really enjoyed) as well as some more of my other two current reads; I’d forgotten how chilling The Crying Child was. We also started watching a show with Jensen Ackles called Countdown. It’s mildly entertaining, and might get better, but the only reason we started and continued was Jensen Ackles. We’re both fans, what can I say? We’re still planning on seeing Jurassic World Rebirth this afternoon, so there are things I need to do before we leave for that today (Paul did have his trainer yesterday). I want to get started on Megan Abbott’s El Dorado Drive, I want to get my next newsletter finished and sent, and I want to do some writing today. I haven’t consulted my to-do list all weekend, which was a strategic error, I believe–but the apartment looks a lot better this morning than it did yesterday morning when I got up, so I will take that as a win.

I was horrified to see the scope of the flash flooding and loss of life in Texas, and no, I don’t care that Texas is a red state (Louisiana is as well, remember?). Are some right-wingers callous and hateful and disgusting when a natural disaster strikes a blue state? Absolutely; I’m old enough to remember “christians” blaming Hurricane Katrina on the gay community, and also some Republican elected officials basically saying fuck New Orleans, it’ll just happen again. Does that mean I will point and laugh and enjoy suffering somewhere else? Of course not. You cannot call out the right for their cruelty when disaster strikes a blue state when you return the cruelty when one hits a red state, period. I get the impulse, of course; but this is one instance where my empathy outweighs my anger and desire for revenge on all MAGA. The loss of children especially–I don’t celebrate mass shootings in red states, either. It really is a matter of humanity. No parent should lose their child this way (anti-vaxxer parents, on the other hand,,,), and really, no parent should outlive their child. Those people who lost everything in the flooding are going to be suffering enough as is with the cuts to FEMA–North Carolina victims of Helene last year are still suffering, and their requests for government assistance were all rejected-and let’s face it, a fully funded FEMA was hard enough to deal with, let alone what an underfunded FEMA will be like.

And yes, I am well aware that if and when another disaster strikes a blue state, MAGA will be cheering for the disaster. But that’s on them. I certainly don’t expect awful people to change, or suddenly discover they are capable of empathy after all. That ship has sailed, alas.

Of course, Wimbledon is also going on, so we may not be going to the movie after all–but we are definitely watching Superman next weekend.

Heavy heaving sigh.

And of course, there’s no telling what Chantal is doing to South Carolina as I type this.

And it’s only July–who knows what this hurricane season is going to bring with it? I’m confident Louisiana’s two MAGA senators will fight for us if the state gets hit this year…yeah, right. I doubt either would be able to stop licking boots long enough to do anything for Louisiana; they certainly haven’t done a fucking thing since their first day in the Senate.

It’s depressing to think about it, isn’t it? Ah, well.

It is what it is.

Well, I probably should finish this and get back to work around here. I’d like to get some writing done this morning before moving to my chair to read. There’s so much to work on, so much cleaning and chores to do, more coffee to drink, more breakfast to eat (I’m starving this morning for some reason), and always, always–there’s always something else to do, isn’t there? I need to empty the dishwasher, wipe down the kitchen counters and do some more filing and organizing…so I should head into the spice mines and get to work. So, have a lovely Sunday, and I’ll be back in the morning, most likely.

I’ll Take You There

I know a place, ain’t nobody crying…

I love the Staple Singers. I think the fact I was always drawn to great female singers when I was growing up was one of the first clues what my sexuality was going to be. Why precisely was I drawn to the women singers? I can’t answer that any more than I can answer why I was such a fan of the great women stars, like Crawford and Davis and Stanwyck and Hepburn. I definitely wanted to be one of the Pips singing and dancing behind Gladys Knight.

But I am one of the few, if not the only, gay men who doesn’t like The Wizard of Oz.1

I wrote 1300 words on a short story yesterday, but kind of got stuck. I know how I want to end this story, but I am a little stuck on the middle of it–where I always get stuck. So, I am going to stick a pin in it and work on revising something else; I usually solve problems in one work when I’m working on another, odd as that may seem (and last night, as we finished off The Survivors, I figured out the next part of the story; see how that works sometimes?). I was tired yesterday, too. Not sure why that was, but I did go by the mail on the way home (where my copies of Lori Roy’s The Final Episode and S. A. Cosby’s King of Ashes were waiting for me; huzzah!) and after we finished The Survivors, I did chores and got some things organized and ready for tomorrow. It was super nice coming downstairs to a clean kitchen this morning. My coffee is pretty tasty, too.

We had a marvelous downpour last night, along with some truly lovely thunder and lightning. I love rain, I really do, and as I sat in my chair watching the end of the show last night, I couldn’t help but feel so snug and comfortable and warm. There’s just something about rain that makes me relax and feel so content; years ago I used to listen to that “forest rain” CD to fall asleep, and I always fell into a deep one. I also realized that I write about the rain a lot. I love writing about rain; the short story I am working on is at about two thousand words now, and it’s raining in the story. It rains throughout the entire Scotty book that I also need to get back to writing once my creative muscles have regained their fitness and are strong again.

I also am feeling better. I am a little tired this morning, and yesterday I did hit a wall at work yesterday afternoon (but I also got all of my work done and so am on top of everything again, huzzah), and I did sleep well last night (thanks, thunderstorm!), but this morning feels like a Wednesday morning; I’m awake and alive but a little bit tired. But I just need to get through today and tomorrow before getting to sleep late (of my alarm kitty will allow it) on Remote Friday. I am not actually wishing my life away, the way I usually do; that’s another thing that has changed for me mentally since the height of the illness. I still haven’t made a to-do list for this week–so I need to do that today. I also need to make some calls about my treatment plan for this colitis; I spoke to my GI specialist’s office yesterday and he’s fighting with my insurance to get the infusions covered (because they of course declined to cover that, but the shots for the rest of my life they are fine with). Sigh. I knew it was too good to be true. Louisiana Blue (aka Blue Cross/Blue Shield) isn’t really much better than United Healthcare; deny defend depose. I am sure my specialist will win this fight, it’s just insane that an insurer can decide arbitrarily, without examining me or my chart, what treatment options are best for me over the recommendations of the person who correctly diagnosed me and put me on the road to recovery.

This country is so seriously fucked, and broken, because that’s the end result of capitalism. For-profit models do not improve service or keep costs down, the way the Right keeps insisting that the “market place” works and is therefore the best possible option because otherwise SOCIALISM! Yeah, well, you know what doesn’t happen in socialist countries? People don’t die from not having access to health care.

Are we great again yet? Asking for a friend.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll see you here again on the morrow.

  1. Thinking about it now, I only watched it one time when I was a kid and maybe the flying monkeys scared me? Plus our television was black and white, so there was no difference between Oz and Kansas. I also only watched that one time and never again. ↩︎

Look What You Made Me Do

And we made it to Thursday, our last day in the office for the week and we survived! Huzzah!

We had a marvelous rain last night, a steady downpour that no doubt flooded neighborhoods and streets and ruined any number of cars. There was thunder, too, and it made an already tired Gregalicious even sleepier, so much so that rather than doing chores before bed, I just went to bed and slept. I slept great as long as the storm lasted, but once it was over I was restless and tossing and turning. Sigh. We’re also busy in clinic today, so I sense another evening of exhaustion. I made groceries on the way home yesterday, and was thus very tired when I got home. I made a pizza for dinner, and then Paul and I watched Sirens (didn’t care for it so stopped watching) and then moved on to the final season of Big Mouth, which is so wrong but so damned fucking funny; it’s about kids going through puberty and is hilarious. It’s animated, so that removes the ick factor it would have if it were live action. I also didn’t do chores last night, so tonight I’ll have to push through the exhaustion and get the kitchen under control for Remote Friday. Yippee!

Ooh, just heard thunder and it’s overcast outside–that should help me stay awake all day, right? But I am going to enjoy the rain as long as I can, since next week the Saharan dust will be here drying everything out. And it’s pouring out there now–I’m going to actually have to take an umbrella with me to the car. YIKES–and trying to keep my feet dry will be a challenge.

My mind is still not capable of producing fiction when it’s tired, alas; I tried to work on the prologue for the new Scotty book (and am finding my cards for the tarot reading each chapter serves as) but it was painful and didn’t get anywhere. Oddly enough, my mind can focus on writing non-fiction (hence the flurry of newsletters over the holiday weekend) and reading it, too. I hope to finish Laura Lippman’s new book this weekend as well as Moonraker, which also means writing about them for the newsletter as well. I also have some other things I need to get done this weekend. I have some errands to run tomorrow after work (including, sigh, more bloodwork) and preparing a pitch for Chlorine. Wish me luck!

I also met with my case manager/nurse from the drug company that produces the medication I’ll be dealing with for the rest of my life. I am actually really impressed by this service (I also have one for the infusion center, one from the specialist, and one from the hospital, which is a lot to keep track of; I’m also going to have to take some time to figure this all out and know what’s going on and where I am going), but it’s also making me realize just how serious this condition actually is, which is kind of scary in some ways, but…what can you do? Buckle down, accept it, and go forward. I am getting stronger every day; I can climb the steps without stopping or needing to balance with the railing, which is a good thing. The grocery store is no longer exhausting, simply tiring, which I can also live with happily, and while my skin is still ashy, the moisturizing does help but I am still, I guess, a little on the dehydrated side.

And on that note, I am off to the spice mines and to make a to-do list for the weekend. Have a lovely Thursday, and I’ll be back on the morrow.

Jedi Master Gregalicious