Hey Darling Ones,

How goes it? I’ve been quiet lately. I’m sorry. Some of you get a little worried when I go dark for more than a week. Would you believe in the way olden days people would get freaked out if I went dark for a day or two? This was before social media or what we know as social media. This was when we used to update our blogs like Twitter. It was fun.

Speaking of the way olden days, a week or so ago I quit reading Swipe Up for More three pages in. Why? This was a nonfiction book about influencers and the author called her subject an “OG Mommy blogger” because in 2022 the woman had been blogging for an entire decade.

I can’t remember noping out of a book so fast in my life.

Are you kidding me? We love to credit Mommy Bloggers with making blogging a thing in like 2004, but trust me people were blogging well before that. I started in 2000 and I’m not even an OG.

Bleh.

This cranky anecdote fits perfectly with my mood of late and explains why I’ve been so quiet.

I’m unpleasant to be around lately. At least to myself I am. And I got nothing much to say that isn’t a frustrated yawp followed by a deep growl.

My tremor continues to be super tremory. My balance is such crap that I have to use a wheelchair to get the pool for physical therapy, which I dislike. And the world is general misery. Bridges collapsing in Baltimore. Turnip’s continued ascendancy. Genocide in Gaza. Fucking dire, shit.

Also, the stroke and its physical repercussions have entered my dream life and that’s bummer. Up until a week ago my dreams, for the most part, had me in my pre-stroke body. I walked okay and drove in my dreams. It was glorious. A few times I’d dream I was kinda pissed nobody was as amazed as I thought they should be that I was walking like normal. But now in my dreams, I can’t walk very well at all and have to use the walker. Frankly, it’s rude of my subconscious to do me dirty this way.

Ugh.

What sucks is despite everything I have plenty I to be happy about. I mean, Top Chef has returned and it’s set in Wisconsin.

A friend of mine who will remain anonymous paid my mortgage for April.

YES! MY ENTIRE MORTGAGE.

Do you have any idea what kind of relief that is for someone who has only made $1300 so far in 2024? Huge.

And yet, I’m still sitting around in crankypants for no damn good reason other than maybe seasonal transitions are rough.

My goal come April is to write more because I always feel better after I write, even if it’s just pointless bellyaching. I’ll try to make it more than that, but no guarantees.

Love & kisses,
Jodi

The post Betrayed By My Subconscious & Other Complaints appeared first on I Will Dare.

Hoo Boy, Darling Ones,

I got some grief kicking my ass. I knew it was gonna come, and here it is.

Earlier today 3/4 of the Tea Ladies gathered on Zoom for our monthly catch up. I’d love to tell you some of the life-stuff we discussed. It was a conversation filled with brave and beautiful stories from my friends that are not mine to tell.

One of the Tea Ladies asked how I was doing as the year anniversary of my stroke grows ever nearer (March 6). I burst into tears telling them how I’m finally feeling the grief, which literally struck that the moment.

As I work to accept how this might be as good as it gets, I’m mourning what might have been. What is that? I’m not sure. It’s hard to mourn something that never happened and never will. It’s a nebulous, idyllic future that was definitely better than what my future will be.

I’m also mourning more concrete losses. My ability to drive and the freedom that brings. The best friend who cut me out of her life over a misunderstanding I don’t have the emotional bandwidth or energy to clear up (told you the stroke made me more self-centered). Financial security. Life without debt. Pasta.

Pasta was lost to diabetes, not the stroke, but it’s a big loss.

I have three kinds of recurring dreams now.

1. I can walk without a walker or a cane and nobody is as surprised as I think they should be.
2. Everyone is sick of taking care of me or making accommodations for me, so they just leave me behind.
3. Medical bills for like $5000 keep popping up, like a game of financial whack-a-mole.

I’m doing that thing where I’m trying to feel my feelings. I guess this is something people do instead of cracking jokes about having an emotion. Sounds suspicious to me. Jokes are fun. Sadness and grief, kind of a drag.

So I’m sad and feeling grief for losses, both ambiguous and concrete. And I’m dealing with a spotty Spotify that won’t let me listen to John Cougar Mellencamp on my TV like God and America intended.

Endlessly troubled,
Jodi

The post Stroke Me Day 337: All of the Grief appeared first on I Will Dare.

Hi Darling Ones,

Ever since my dad died in September, he has been in every single dream I remember having. Doesn’t matter what the theme of the dream is, he’s there, usually in the background. He rarely has a speaking role.

He had a bigger role in the dreams shortly after his death, and the him in those dreams was the frail him of his last two years. The him in my dreams now, as an extra in the movies of my subconscious, is him from about 25? 30? years ago. It’s him with hair that is dark and he usually has a mustache.

I don’t know why my brain chooses that version of him. Brains are weird.

Do not worry I’m not going to go in-depth about the weirdo dream I had last night. Nobody cares about your dreams. I know that. I will just mention the subplots to last night’s dream involved Cher, Dolly Parton, skinny-dipping, Carrie Bradshaw, Mr. Edwards, my sisters and niece, and Pete Davidson. I do not know what I was on about last night.

Anyway, I’m writing about this dream because it’s clinging to me and I cannot shake it. It’s bugging me.

Last night’s dream involved being on a train with my parents and my dad informing me I had forgotten to go to work for the last four months.

And I said to him, “I haven’t gone to work since my dad died?”
He was all, “Yep. That was kind of dumb.”

It’s the anxiety of the dream I cannot shake. The dread in my stomach at the thought of logging into my work email for the first time in four months to explain to my boss, Darren, how I forgot to go to work for the last sixteen weeks in a row.

Lest you forget, in my waking life I do not have a boss, much less one named Darren. I have not had a boss since 2009.

I haven’t forgotten to go work for the last sixteen weeks. In fact, I worked so much since my dad died I was just celebrating a lull. A lull, I must say with some disdain, that lasted about as long as it took to write that blog post.

So what the fuck is my brain going on about? And, more importantly, why is it that I cannot shake the anxiety the dream dripped all over me?

Please solve my brain.

Thank you,
Jodi

The post Please Solve My Brain appeared first on I Will Dare.

Hi Darling Ones,

Does anyone remember the Great Fungus Gnat Infestation of 2012? That’s when those little bastards killed my herb garden and also my desire to have an herb garden. There was also a small Fungus Gnat Revival of 2021.

Now I’m in the midst of what can only be described as the Gnat Resurrection of 2022.

I don’t know where these tiny fuckers are coming from. For the last week or so I’ve had one gnat dive-bombing me during my morning routine. It was just one and I couldn’t tell if I had one really resilient motherfucker on my hands or if a new gnat was finding its way to my corner on the couch every morning.

Of course, I immediately blamed the Sadness Garden because they were the most obvious suspects. I shoved a few of those sticky-tape stakes into some of the plants and so far they have trapped exactly one gnat. And yet I still got gnats.

Today there are a lot of gnats. I’ve managed to kill two three with my bare hands and there are at least three more flying about.

I can’t figure out where they’re coming from. Part of me fears they’ve found the Atomic Fireball that fell out of my mouth and rolled away to spot I cannot find. Another part of me fears they’re coming from inside me. The gnats seems to appear wherever I am, so this makes absolute perfect sense.

This afternoon I put a small jar of red wine vinegar mixed with sugar, water, and dishsoap on the window ledge next to me. So far it has been as effective as the sticky traps, and half 1/3 as effective as my own homicidal hands (I just slaughtered another one my slapping my own chest).

I will keep you posted as this story develops. Or I won’t. Maybe life will get exciting.

This weekend has been kind of a dud as far as exciting media consumption or thoughts go. I read a boring novel that had two different characters in two different chapters use the word “unctuousness” to describe the color black in a painting and I’m kinda annoyed with myself for finishing the book.

I was supposed to watch The Bear on Hulu, but instead continued to chug down episodes of Top Chef because I’ve only got 1.5 seasons left and I have a one-track mind.

This weekend has been such a thoughtless dud that last night I dreamt I attended a Hell, Inc. company meeting, a company I have not worked at since 2008. The last company meeting I attended was in November 2007 when they announced they were closing the office and laying most of us off.

One good thing about this weekend? On Thursday I made chile verde and have been eating what are, without a doubt, the best tacos I have ever made I my entire life. These tacos are so good that I had them for dinner on Thursday and Friday and Saturday and I plan on having them again for dinner tonight and I’m not even sick of them. These tacos are so good that I never want to make another meal again because everything I cook will pale in comparison.

Your favorite thoughtless dud,
Jodi

P.S. As you can see above I am still obsessed with the teeny flowers Hugh, the tradescantia, keeps kicking out. I take a picture of every single one because it is glorious and amazing.

The post My Homicidal Hands appeared first on I Will Dare.

Hi Darling Ones,

It’s no secret there’s a deep river of venomous rage running just below my skin. Frankly, the fact that I don’t breath fire or have snakes for hair surprises me on the regular. The filter between the rage and world outside of my skin grows ever thinner as the world continues to burn.

The rage filter was pretty thick until the 2016 election and things went really downhill from there for obvious and relentless reasons. Some people who have spoken to me face to face over the course of my life might disagree with this, but they’re wrong. A lot of people mistake my passion for rage, and trust me even though they sometimes sound the same they are very, very different.

For the past week or so it’s taken a lot of work to keep my rage at bay. This task would be much easier if I could open my mouth and unleash a horde of angry wasps upon the world, but I cannot. Instead, I bite my tongue about everything, which isn’t so great for me, but pretty good for anyone who happens to accidentally prick my ire.

This is a kind of maturity. Instead of making people feel shitty for being annoying or willfully obtuse or pompous or whatever else they might do that does not please me in the moment, I keep my mouth shut, or more accurately, my fingers still. This is zero percent fun, but being a bitch who randomly makes people feel shitty for stupid things is negative eight percent fun. So, math.

To be transparent, a lot of this rage is irrational and misdirected. It’s born of feeling frustrated and helpless (see: Being a Human in 2022), the dregs of winter and the ennui it brings.

For example here’s a short list of things that have enraged me today: the book I was reading being too much like a few books I’ve read recently; people tweeting “read this thread*;” the misogyny in 80s hair metal (more on this later); lunch; a chirping brand-fucking-new smoke detector at 2:30 a.m.; the CDC COVID guidelines & the anxiety they’re producing in people; ALLL the Russia stuff; and ding-a-lings who filter the fuck out of their selfies so they look like Barbie dolls as if we believe for one goddamn second that they have pore-less skin with no lines.

Because there is so much to be angry about and I’m trying not to be a bitch, my rage needs somewhere to go at night. It has chosen my dreams. For the past three or four nights I’ve had a recurring dream about being stalked, a scary inside the house I need to move kind of stalking. Sometimes the stalker is a man I don’t know, and couldn’t name. Sometimes it’s someone I know but who is definitely not stalking me. All of the times I am INFURIATED at the audacity of the man to do this to me. In the dreams I frequently go after the stalker like I’m gonna fight him and have to be held back (randomly by my cousin Greg, my dad, my BFK, etc.). Last night the stalker bought me a puppy because he decided we were moving in together and then took the puppy away and left me a really mean note for not letting him move in.

In all the dreams I start out scared and end up furious. I don’t know what else it could be besides my rage finding a way to escape.

Despite all my rage I will not quote a Smashing Pumpkins song,
Jodi

 
*As Ellen Willis is my witness I’m never gonna read a motherfucking twitter thread as long as I live. Please, just get a goddamn blog already. I BEG YOU.

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