Hello Darling Ones,

Back in the olden days, in the year of Brach’s Red Hots Cinnamon Candy Canes*, I had a recurring bit called It’s Sunday & I’m Boring. What happened in those posts seems pretty self-explanatory, right?

Guess what? Today is Sunday and I am boring. It’s just like the old days again.

8:10 a.m.

I woke up because the coffee maker was beeping. I was in the midst of a dream where I was involved in a big sexual harassment case at work and my boss was Ian, one of the editors from my college newspaper. Also I worked with Drew Barrymore, because of course. I only got up because I had to pee and my goal was to go back to sleep for hours, but that didn’t happen. There are many levels to waking up in my world.

1. Opening your eyes, stumbling to the bathroom, and then going right back to sleep.
2. Opening your eyes, stumbling to the bathroom, and instead of going right back to sleep you think of every shitty thing ever until you decide to practice in hopes that will help you get back to sleep. This one works 7 out of 10 times.
3. Checking your phone one-eyed because you don’t want to put on your glasses because you might go back to sleep, but you just wanna check your phone real fast because someone might have emailed/texted/DMed during the night to profess their undying love (this has never ever happened not once in my entire life and yet. . . ).
4. Putting on your glasses and reading twitter to see if anything exciting happened but don’t sit up because you might still go back to sleep.
5. Sitting up, deciding to take a shower, and then running shivering, wet, and naked back to bed because you might still go back to sleep.
6. Saying fuckit, sitting up, putting on your glasses, and riding the bike while doing your Spanish.

Today was a 3+5 combo platter which found me moisturized and dressed putting peanut butter on a bagel by like 9:30. This is impressive because as of late I have not been opening my eyes until at least 9 a.m. Ya girl is tired lately.

10ish a.m. – I dunno 2?

I stared reading Consent by Vanessa Springora while eating breakfast and drinking coffee, but then I stopped because it made my stomach hurt.

After that I spent some time looking at what’s on sale at Hy-Vee this week and figuring out what sort of snacks I’ll need for the MN Boys’ State High School Hockey Tournament this week. Also, I need to buy food for Easter dinner because that’s gonna be a thing and I kind of want ham, so I’m not too salty.

Because I am old and afraid of forgetting things I wrote what time all the hockey games start in my calendar. I also put the Top Chef Portland premiere in there, and so I didn’t feel like a total loser I added tomorrow’s to-do list too. I’m almost like a grown up with very important appointments to keep track of in my calendar, which is mostly used for random song lyrics, things that happened so I don’t forget I existed that day, and words I like. Sometimes quotes from books. For instance, “She gave him a kiss that tasted like Starburst & tobacco,” Kevin Brockmeier.

I’m super literary, yo.

With all that out of the way, I literally got down to work. I popped on my cans, turned up the music, and spent a few hours putting together a new website for one of my clients. It’s a lot of copy/paste and click/drag so I really got to get some good singing in. I listened to Soul Asylum’s “Grave Dancers Union” in its entirety. Then I listened to their song “Cartoon” three times in a row because it’s one of Wolfdogg’s favorites. Then I had a mini-SA discussion on twitter where I told them how “Marionette” is my favorite Soul Asylum song because a cute boy sang it to me in an Olive Garden in Eau Claire in 1995.

One of the songs that shuffled up was “Possum Kingdom” by The Toadies, which is one of those songs that is super dark and menacing while being super fun to sing. Like, dude, I do not want to see your dark secret behind the boathouse, knockitoff.

However, this got me thinking about angels, the word and the. . . creature? I know zero things about angels other than they have wings, float around on clouds, and maybe are the embodiment of dead children. Yes, I learned everything I know about angels from a Hallmark card. Anyway, I made a mental note to learn more about angels and see what the deal is there.

2ish to 4:10 p.m.

Work was starting to bore me so I made a grilled cheese sandwich and ate it with some chips & salsa. Then I laid on the couch and read Consent until I had a rage attack over an old man telling a fourteen-year-old girl in a relationship with his fifty-year-old colleague that she needs to shut up and take it because it’s an honor to be the ol’ perv’s muse and women need to know there place in supporting artists.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

Once I calmed down I took a bit of nap, got up, and finished reading the book (It’s really short). It made my stomach hurt the entire time.

5 p.m. – 6:26 p.m.

Once I finished the book I decided that I should write some words here, again to prove my existence. I made the header image featuring a picture I took of Wendell, the vengeance demon, this morning while I was still deciding how to wake up. Regardless of the wake up method, Wendell demands petting as soon as I put on my glasses. I also included a line from the song The Modern Leper by Frightened Rabbit because I love the song, and duh, I’m telling you all about what I did today.

I started writing all this out in excruciating detail and then I had to get up and swat at Wendell who was licking some of the plants in the Sadness Garden. While I was up I decided to clean a potato and pop it in the oven for dinner. I also cleaned and chopped up some broccoli that get steamed and dumped on top of that potato. There will also be a cheeseburger on a pretzel bun because I haven’t had a cheeseburger since The Year of Think Outside the Bun. My thinking is firmly inside the bun.

What does the future hold?

Well, that cheeseburger for one. I’m hoping to finish up “Blossom” tonight because man, am I sick of it and yet I need to finish it because I’m a weirdo like that. I’ll also watch Bob’s Burgers, because it is my favorite and makes me happy inside my heart. Like last week? When Teddy kept talking about his underpants and I died eight times because, I AM TEDDY. Do you want me to tell you about my underpants? Again? Because I told Sister #4 all about them when she was here. I will do all this TV watching while making magic lanterns for BFK’s blanket or getting caught up on my woefully-behind temperature blanket. I will also check twitter about 183 times and play Disney Emoji Blitz 5 times.

Unless, of course, something more exciting happens.

Until tomorrow or maybe Tuesday, who knows? I can’t really predict the future,
Jodi

*This bit is stolen from David Foster Wallace’s subsidized time in Infinite Jest.

P.S. Right now Wendell is doing a super tight snuggle right up against my thigh and he looks so cute and he’s so warm that it’s making my ice-robot heart a little melty.

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This is totally to brag, but I did not get out of bed until 10:30 both days this weekend. I lolled around in bed an hour and a half intermittently reading, masturbating, and dozing. It was glorious. Since I’m still hanging on to this stupid cold I decided this indulgence was curative.

I spent the rest of the day working like a chump, a chump who procrastinates and instead of doing their work during the nine-to-five business hours does it on a Sunday afternoon. I do regret this a little, but only because I had to work six hours yesterday. I had planned that work, but still, I worked all weekend, please heap sympathy upon me.

Also, I made a vat of sausage gravy to eat over biscuits, which made me stomach rebel, but was kind of worth it. Tomorrow I’m taking my first foray into dumplings — a pork, ginger, cabbage affair that I’m hoping I have the attention span for.

Now I’m winding down by watching even more episodes of “The Mindy Project.” I’ve seen them all, but the show auto-started after I watched something and I just kind of went with it because I find Mindy Kaling super charming.

The post Day 173 of 200: It’s Sunday & I’m Boring appeared first on I Will Dare.

8:00 a.m. The rarely-set alarm went off and I hit snooze. I had a call at 8:30 with a new potential client. However, that did nothing for my usual night-owl tendencies which are only exacerbated by the “oh my god I’m going to forget to do this thing” anxiety I get whenever I have something on the agenda the next day that involves other people. So, I was up late finishing Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy and then was plagued by a dream about being bamboozled into kidnapping a young woman from a Soul Coughing concert at First Ave.

8:09 a.m. Rise from bed convinced that I had slept for like three snoozes, when it was only one. Those were some solid minutes of sleep. Clear throat and guzzle coffee, curse early risers and wonder why morning people gotta be so morning-y.

8:30 – 9:00 a.m. Land new client with half of my brain still asleep.

9:00 – 9:15 a.m. Add an event & upload a PDF to Client #1’s website, respond to email about it.

9:15 – 9:30 a.m. Spend entirely too much time trying to find a URL for a client.

9:30 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. Email Client #2 about logos and book cover design, assure her that your toes do not feel stepped on by new designer.

Crush some candy. Sister #2 and I are in a constant competition to see who is winning at Candy Crush. For all of our candy crushing history I’ve been winning, until the last month or so. Now I can’t catch her and I am bitter. Read about seasoning a cast iron pan with flaxseed oil. Confession: I am powerless in the face of any article about cast iron pans. Read about last night’s debate. Chitter chat on Twitter about the debate and the unnerving strain of sexism that seems to run through the most rabid of Bernie fanboys.

12:15 – 1:00 p.m. Eat cold meatloaf (leftover from Family Dinner on Sunday) on the couch while watching “Days of Our Lives” and playing Plants vs. Zombies. Cry a little. See, they just killed Will Horton on DOOL and it’s sad. I’ve watched DOOL on and off since I was like fifteen. Even if I got years without watching, it only takes a day or two to jump right back into the story because the characters never change.

1:00 – 1:15 p.m. Catch Richard Blais on Rachael Ray. I was unable to take my eyes off him. He’s easily on my Top 10 list of all-time favorite Top Chef contestants. Also, he was making all these crazy caramel apples. Hubba Hubba.

1:15 – 4:30 p.m. Answer an email from Client #3’s assistant about changing a sales page on the site. Spend some time in Google Analytics to prove a point. Get to use the word ‘efficacy’ and feel quite proud of that.

Post a press release to a Client #1’s website and update a few pages about the new boss there. Have a call with the client about posting the press release to the website. Get back to the posting. Email back and forth about tiny changes. Make tiny changes.

Spend a majority of the afternoon working on Client #4’s redesign/repositioning. This require a lot of thought and concentration. Fiddle with a page on the new site. Re-write an intro paragraph seven times. Get frustrated. Decide to make soup.

4:30 – 5 p.m. Chop up carrots and onions and sausage for soup. Rejoice at finding chicken stock in the pantry. Add tons of garlic, bay leaves, kale, and beans to soup. Feel smug about the beans and CSA kale and carrot soup. Set it to simmer.

5 – 6:45 p.m. Sit back down at the computer but decide your brain is done with trying to re-write that paragraph. Slap down the lid of Enid and crash into the couch with Saga Volume 5. After polishing it off close my eyes for a minute and wake up forty-five minutes later.

6:45 – 9 p.m. Dish up some soup and settle back onto the couch with last week’s episode of “Nashville.” Taste the soup and curse. It tastes like failure and sadness with a hint of dish soap. Ponder if kale is related to cilantro somehow and that’s why it tastes of dish soap. Eat some more and ponder how to save the soup. Get up and try each of the individual components to see if anything is salvageable. It all tastes of regret and dish soap. Dump the entire pot down the garbage disposal, make a second dinner of PB&J with a side of peanut M&Ms. Do dishes. Read the Twitters about “Empire” and the Lynx winning the WNBA championship. Start writing this really boring post in hopes of getting back in the writing habit.

Cross fingers. Push publish.

The post It’s Wednesday & I’m Boring: The Life of a Sexy Freelancer Edition appeared first on I Will Dare.

8 a.m. This would have been a nice and good hour to rise had I not been up until nearly 2 with some vague fuckery. I laid in bed and contemplated grocery shopping. There are zero bread-type products in my house. No bagels. No bread. No English muffins. Nothing. So despite my groggy state, I dragged myself out of bed and donned clothes. It wasn’t until I wheeled into the local Cub that it struck me that it was Mother’s Day. Because I am not a sadist, I peeled outta there and got myself an Egg McMuffin and some coffee. Foraging for food would have to wait for another day.

9:30ish a.m. Poking around the Internet I wonder when Mother’s Day became so emotionally fraught. Maybe it always was and I never noticed it. I mean, I always knew Mother’s Day made me feel worthless for never having the good sense to grow a human being in my body or get one through other legal means, but I thought that was just me being selfish and bratty. And it kind of is.

And I tried to ponder a bit why Mother’s Day is so rough for me. Maybe it’s regret. Maybe it’s just sour grapes-like “Why is there no White History Month?” kind of bullshit because there’s no “single, childless woman taking care of herself” day and if you say every day is that day I will sock you in the nose. Though I do kind of get that. Also I wonder, is Father’s Day as emotionally fraught for people? Are there dudes filled with regret and melancholy? Or maybe not because they can jizz out kids until they’re like a hundred.

I decide to blame all this boo-hooeyness on lack of sleep and promptly curled up on the couch with Lauren Groff’s upcoming Fates and Furies. At some point I nodded off, and when I woke up about 45 minutes later I decided a real nap was in order.

10:45ish a.m. I crash into bed, and turn on It’s a Long Story: My Life, Willie Nelson’s autobio that I am listening to. It’s making me all swoony. Willie talks about music so beautifully and so passionately that I have to resist the urge to tweet every other line from the book. I fail at this a lot.

So as I waited for nap #2 to overtake me I pondered last night’s fuckery which involved a dude I was supposed to meet for coffee like three weeks ago. An hour or so before he totally bailed on some trumped up excuse about a work emergency. Whatever, right? It could happen. But then dude disappears for, well, three weeks until about midnight last night when he’s all up in my email with the hi, how are you?

Fuck that noise. I would like to say this is the first time this has happened. But I’ve gotten to the almost meeting point with a few dudes only to have them disappear. I think I missed my magical calling. Also, I wish I had better control over this gift because there’s a few people I’d like to disappear into a cornfield but can’t seem to no matter how much I try.

So now he’s all “I really want to meet you.” And I’m all “YOU HAD YOUR CHANCE!”

I don’t know what the hell my problem is. Either I have a knack for attracting cowards or, fuck, if I know. Not only does dating suck, attempting to date is equal in the suckage.

2ish p.m. I woke from the second nap ravenous and quickly downed some leftover pasta and asparagus. Then I settled in with “Sabrina” the Audrey Hepburn version on Movie! and chatted with some friends while pondering taking another nap.

9:10 p.m. Family Dinner with the fam was good. We got Mamala a Fitbit and she’s excited as hell about it. She’s a nerdy gamer deep down. Also, I had a small victory when she went on endlessly about a how hilarious the sassy comment I made to Sister #3’s schmoopy Facebook post was. It was worth the death glares from Sister #3. Totally worth it.

Now I am home fielding emails and text messages from men who want to “cuddle” with me but do not care at all what I think about anything at all. I’ve discovered I’m “exotic” because of my size which means men want to get all up in my business, but have zero interest in actually knowing what my business is about. Bleh.

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7:00 a.m. Wake from a dream, grab your phone in hopes of finding apologetic texts or emails, finding none, roll over and watch the sun rise over the neighbor’s trees. Try not to feel. Try not to remember every “Wake up, I miss you” text and how it made you feel like someone who would be missed. Close your eyes and wish sleep to come back.

8:16 a.m. Get out of bed and feed Paco because he’s annoying the fuck out of you. Thank your luck stars that there is no sign of whiskey hangover while simultaneously wincing at how much whiskey is gone from the bottle. Ponder breakfast, which your stomach decides is not happening. Grab water, coffee, and settle in with your laptop. Turn to The Current and hear The Replacements’ “Bastards of Young.” Thank the universe for this small gift.

8:30 – 10:00 a.m. Write a 1300-word letter to the tornado that leveled you. Ponder if you are being melodramatic, decide “fuck it” because your feelings are hurt and writing helps.

10:30 – 11 a.m. Take a picture of your tear stained glasses. If you’re gonna melodrama, you are gonna melodrama all the way. Get weepy at the kindness of the people you follow on twitter. Take solace that your words can make people feel things. Listen to “Someone to Pull the Trigger” about thirteen times in a row. Sing along emphatically. Show no shame as you sing and look at a picture of his young happy family on his wife’s Facebook page. Poke, poke, poke at your heart and see how much you can take.

11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m. Decide food would be a good idea and wander around the kitchen pondering what to put in your body. Reject everything and then decide on a bowl of Peanut Butter Cheerios and a banana, settle on the couch with it and the final five episodes of Season 4 of Dawson’s Creek. Skip right to spring break at Aunt Gwen’s because of all the kissing. Skip the stupid regatta episode and dive right into Junior Prom. Cry many tears when Pacey talks about Joey’s mom’s bracelet. Close your eyes and beg for a nap but realize the sun in your eyes makes your face too hot. Get up and go back to the computer.

1:10 p.m. – 2 p.m. Turn on the “He Broke Her Heart” playlist which was meant as mood music for your main character, Cora Finch. Poke, poke, poke while gazing at the family picture. Harbor elaborate rom-com fairytale fantasies that range from marrying John Cusack at the Young Chef’s brew pub to getting a long email that starts out “Hi, I’m Not-Michael’s Real Name, and boy did I fuck some shit up with this totally rad woman. . . ” All scenarios end in happily ever after. Take a Buzzfeed quiz that guesses you are 7-feet tall and says “You truly are larger than life. You are a giant, and have the brains and heart to match.” Shrug. Decide it’s time to start the takes for-fucking-ever deep dish pizza crust making. Listen to “Someone to Pull the Trigger” one more time.

2:15 p.m. Fall into a pit of what the fuck is exactly wrong with you. Like, you’re 42 years old and you can’t figure out how to get someone to love you romantically. What is your damage? People way less smart than you figure it out all the fucking time. And here you are crying over an imaginary relationship with someone who didn’t even exist. And is your desperation so apparent? A siren call to the predators who will use your stupid fucking needy heart against you? Because this isn’t the first time this has happened. Obviously you are defective in some way you are not smart enough to figure out and fix. Wonder if you were better off when you packed yourself away and decided nothing was enough. Listen to Someone to Pull the Trigger. Switch all rom-com fairytales to circa 1993 Matthew Sweet.

2:30 p.m. – 6:18 p.m. Get the pizza dough started and then Dawson hardcore on the couch. Beg for a nap to come, but your eyes refuse to shut. Watch the Finale and boohoo through Jen’s death. Laugh bitterly at Joey Potter’s line, “Dawson, do you know how lucky you are? You’re a writer. You get to live life twice.” Laugh genuinely at the cryface surprise in the final montage. You’d forgotten it was gonna be in there. This face will never not be funny. Come back to the computer to burn time before dinner. Poke, poke, poke. Listen to “Things” three times in a row.

6:30 p.m. Wonder if the whole time the Young Chef was lying to you if he was smug and satisfied with his deception and your ignorance or if he was pants-crappingly scared you’d figure it out any minute. Wish you knew the answer.

7 p.m. – 10 p.m. Numb. A lot of numb, two slices of pizza, and zero whiskey. Pop in “High Fidelity” and quote it to yourself. Ponder going to bed because suddenly you are exhausted, but worry you’ll be up at 6 a.m. You wonder if the thing that makes getting over heartbreak so hard is that it opens up all the old wounds, so you have to mourn and grieve over every one who left and the older you get the more people there are. Eh, you know that’s not the case, because when you look back at most of the heartaches from your early 30s they seem as though they happened to someone else. Nice try trying to fool yourself that you weren’t as invested in this stupid two-month affair as you were, though. Maybe you just need to go to bed.

10:45 p.m. – 11 p.m. Exchange emails with a friend whose occasional desire for you you hoped to use as a balm for your sore heart and tender ego only to find he too is hurting. Wish your arms were long enough to reach Chicago so you could hug him. Thank him for commiserating with you, then turn off the lights, turn off the phone, turn on Jason Isbell. Pull your arms and legs as tight into a ball as you can manage, you want to be as small as you feel, pray sleep comes quickly and dreamlessly.

Sunday 7 a.m. – 7:47 a.m. Open your eyes. Maybe tomorrow will be the day the Young Chef isn’t the first thing you think about. Decide that apparently 7 a.m. is when you wake up now. Congratulate yourself on garbage dreams of nonsense that don’t feature him. After peeing stand at the side of your bed and contemplate getting back in. Find yourself remembering how you used to imagine him in that bed, on the other side you never sleep on, pull on yesterday’s clothes, coffee it up. Turn on the computer and dial up Ani DiFranco’s “Untouchable Face” first thing. You need to stop with the old sad bastard music. You need to not poke, poke, poke. You need to not read the paragraph in the letter that makes you sob. You should probably avoid the 2:15 update too.

You need to sing “Fuck you and your untouchable face. And fuck you for existing in the first place.” Grab your phone, delete the contact so his stupid cutie face isn’t staring up at you every time you hit that home button too many times. Set this post to publish at 10 a.m. Open the file called Rock & Roll Loudmouth_Jodi Chromey. There is work to do.

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