Hi Darling Ones,

I can already hear the complaints. “ANOTHER listicle, Jodi Chromey? We do not pay you for pointless listicles. We demand high-quality, gut-wrenching yet ultimately life-affirming content or we want our money back.”

These are the complaints of the imaginary people who care about what I write here. They’re kinda assholes. Good thing I don’t take their money.

I always feel kinda shitty when I do too many listicles in a row, like they’re gonna take away my writer card. My gut tells me to make a joke about getting my writer card taken away and instead being given the Best Blogger of the Year trophy, but we’re probably past the weird writer vs blogger thing.

Did I ever tell you about the man who in the year of the Hefty Trashbag with Force Flex Technology* (2020? 2021?) mansplained to me, Jodi Chromey Supergenius woman with a two-decade-year old blog, author of many unpublished short stories and one novel, the difference between writing and blogging. He did! I promptly put a hex on him so that his penis would cease bring him pleasure until he stops mansplaining.

Anyway, I keep writing in listicles because I don’t want to fall out of the blogging habit while I’m struggling emotionally. I have many very good ideas for very good essays, but I do not have the emotional bandwith or brain space to give these topics the energy and time they deserve.

I’ve chalked up quite a few Ls lately both personally and professionally. From being ostracized by my dad for Sister #3 related fuckery to last week’s suicide attempt by someone I love dearly to some work that was not as well-received as I initially thought, everything is certainly not coming up Jodi Chromey. Rude.

Things should always be coming up Jodi Chromey.

Despite that fat pile of garbage landing on my psyche, along with the Supreme Court being the absolute worst, I’m not feeling depressed so much as kinda numb. Why? Because I’m doing things to numb myself. And those things mostly involve crocheting while watching endless episodes of “Top Chef” and occasionally reading books (remind me to tell you about Flying Solo by Linda Holmes, which really hit me in my spinster feels).

Because of the numbness/distraction/whathaveyou I’ve decided to count anything that makes me grin as a W. I’m starting to rack up some Ws. Wanna hear about them? I know you don’t we already discussed your boredom with listicles.

• Remember how I mentioned making tacos? I made them tonight and they were muy fucking bueno. I made ground beef and black bean tacos, guacamole, and esquites. I’m gonna have puffy jalapeño lips for the rest of the night, and I don’t even care.
• I’m working on a new crochet project and it involves a stitch I call “criss-cross applesauce.” This stitch was so hard that it took me nine tries to get the first one done. NINE TRIES. Even after getting the first one done it was hard and it would take me an entire night to get one square done. But I stuck with it and last night/today I finished four squares.
• My old Vox nemesis, Hotrod, is digging through my Instagram leaving the comment ‘This is pie’ on all my good pictures or any picture he feels like commenting on. It makes me smile every time. We have a decades-long argument about which is better pie or brownies (the only answer is brownies), and some how that evolved into him needing to tell me all the foods that I like/make are pie (they are not pie. pie is dumb. fruit should not be hot).
• I got an email from a friend I’ve had a crush on for twenty years talking about a Frightened Rabbit song I love.
• This week’s #BarsOfSummer involved a food processor, 21 Oreos, a mixer, and ten tablespoons of butter. I’m surprised I had the attention span to finish them. I don’t yet have room in my stomach (see tacos bullet) to try them, but I’m pretty sure they were worth the effort.

I hope to keep stacking up these small Ws to combat the big Ls until I can write something meaningful again.

If I were in my full brain I’d make some sort of play on the I Will Dare “ain’t lost yet so I gotta be a winner” line, but my brain refuses to be witty.

Wishing you all the Ws and none of the Ls,
Jodi

 
*I hope you can see that subsidized time from Infinite Jest is the part of that novel that’s had the most lasting impact on me,