Hi Darling Ones,

Here’s a look at some of the stuff I’ve been digging this month. I spared you the Barley Chronicles but will sum it up as OMG BARLEY! Who knew?

People Who Listen to My Election Anxiety

You can always tell when somethings got my anxiety on high – I don’t shut up about it. As the election draws nearer I’m rambling to everyone about how anxious it’s making me. I’m afraid if Harris wins and I’m afraid if she loses. I do not trust Republicans to handle this election and any outcome like rational adults.

I’m reminded after I had my colonoscopy when I told the guy they had six years (or whenever I need another one) to get the prep stuff to taste like a milkshake.

“Everyone says the prep is the worst,” he said.
“Eh,” I said. “Everyone must have a bad imagination. It wasn’t fun but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be.”

That’s how my brain is doing the election. I’m imaging large-scale armed insurrection where Republicans take Coon Rapids and the Dakota and I need to hunker down in Supergenuis HQ trying to participate in some kind of underground railroad for Trump’s “enemies” and that’s the scenario if Harris wins!

OBSERVATIONS FROM A CROWDED ROOM, Joy Oladokun

As a white midewestern lady it feels weird to write about how much I enjoy Oladokun’s new record about dealing with racism and her role in music.

But it’s smart, beautiful record and the least I can do is bear witness. I’ve been a fan since I first stumbled on “sorry isn’t good enough.”

This new record is chef’s kiss and one of those I’ve listened to in its entirety every day. I love when she talks about James Baldwin and waiting for progress. “I’d Miss the Birds” is my favorite song on the record. So sad and beautiful, my favorite combo next to sweet and salty.

We Are Living in a Golden Age of Apples

I love apples and am #TeamHoneycrisp, though I’ll SweeTango and Cosmic Crisp will do in a pinch. I also love whatever green apple AffyTapple uses. Red Delicious are garbage and I’d rather have zero apples than one of those things.

This article about apples is fascinating and not at all boring even thought it contains words like “genome” and “Mesopotamia.”

Really liked this bit:
“I spoke with several apple researchers while working on this story, and do you know who loves their jobs? Apple researchers. And that’s not just because they get to taste new varieties all the time and spend workdays in an orchard. All of them, as well as the other orchardists and hobbyists I know, are proud of the progress they’ve made in the past few decades and optimistic about the future.”

On Legacies, Noticing, and Being Seen

This 20-minute talk pulled at my heart strings and made my neurons fire. And it gave me goosebumps. Just watch it. I don’t want to say more and spoil the delight.

A Few Books

I’m gonna keep this part short because the Floppy Scoop is protesting and my eyes are starting to not focus.

Icarus by K. Ancrum — a lovely YA novel about art theft and finding your community.

The Plot and The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz — literary mysteries in the truest sense of the word. Plagiarism and death and black mail and so so so funny,

Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors — while nothing earth-shatteringly original or even surprising, it’s a lovely book about grief and sisterhood. Really hit me where it counts because it’s about four sisters and that’s my weakness.

What have you dug this lovely October?

Jodi

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Hi Darling Ones,

I recently read Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey, a book I liked a lot more in theory than in practice. Hersey’s ideas around how capitalism and white supremacy exploits us and grind culture literally grinds us down are excellent. The writing, not so much. The book was really repetitive and disjointed, but the ideas are so good I ended up enjoying it.

Perhaps the reason I enjoyed it so much is that it reinforced some of the things I’ve been doing in my life for years. Making it a goal to be as unbusy possible. Not just in work, but in life.nI’m an introvert that needs a lot of alone time to think and decompress. My social battery drains fast and takes a long time to recharge.

Even before COVID hit I set some boundaries on my time, I started to refuse traveling to meetings more than 15 minutes away. It just wasn’t worth it to drive 25 minutes to Minneapolis, meet for an hour, and then spend an 70+ minutes in rush hour traffic to get home. That one hour meeting would eat up most of my day when you factored in getting ready time and decompressing. No thanks.

Then when COVID hit, I stopped taking meetings before 11 a.m. I am not a morning person, and people can like it or limp it. Since the stroke this has become vital to my well-being. Mornings are really, really hard. Waking up is difficult and I’m exhausted most of the time.

I recently found out I have “moderate to severe sleep apnea.” I’m getting fitted for a CPAP on Monday. I’m super hopeful this will make getting out of bed before 11 or noon easier. I long to feel well-rested and not like I’m forcibly dragging myself through each day.

Sorry, got a little off track there.

What I enjoyed the most about Hersey’s book is that it’s really gotten me to think about divorcing my self-worth from capitalism.

This is going to a be toughie for many reasons.

First, as a single, never-married, childless woman what am I if not my work?
Second, as a fat person how can I show the world I’m not lazy if I’m not successful in my career?
Third, if I’m not using my time earning money how will I afford to live?

Uffda!

Right now I spend my time when I would’ve been working worrying about money. It’s like my part-time job that pays nothing. I’m still working to get on the dole (Social Security Disability), but I’m not there yet, and it’s no guarantee.

Yesterday my mom had to help me fill out 14 page of paperwork explaining my day-to-day life. It was so depressing. One of the questions was “what is your average day like from the time you get out of bed until you go to sleep at night.”

Without a lot of work my life sounds to empty. Having to say it out loud while my mom wrote it down was frustrating. Having to name all things I cannot do — stand for more than 90 seconds, walk unassisted, walk and carry something, my own laundry — was humiliating. But I did it.

What I didn’t do, because Social Security didn’t ask, is imagine what my life might be like if I wasn’t constantly worrying about money. I imagine it will be filled with guilt about how I should be working. But eventually that might wear off, right? Eventually I might be able to fill my time with thinking and creating and resting. Maybe?

I don’t know. It’s all so up in the air and I’m doing my best not worry about it with minor success (thanks, Lexapro!)

So I’m starting the divorce process. I’m curious to see how my self-worth handles not being a cog in the capitalist machine.

Could be fun.

Jodi

The post Can I Divorce My Self-Worth from Capitalism? appeared first on I Will Dare.

Hello Darling Ones,

How is your summer winding down? Mine has been filled with the west coast fam, who have slowly trickled in over the past week and start to trickle out on Sunday. It’s been a delight to have them here. One of the best side effects of the stroke and benefits of Lexapro is really, really appreciating my family. The Lexapro has eased all the anxiety-based annoyance, and my new disabled state makes me so happy to have some help.

Despite that I’ve been in a low-key constant state of annoyance because I have to wear a heart monitor for 30 days and it itches like a motherfucker. I had a small glimmer of hope that i’d only be 2 weeks, since the monitor instructions clearly state I must take it off and send it back after 14 days. Wednesday another monitor showed up. Damnit.

And even though, despite such petty hardship, I’ve still found things to appreciate this month,

Nick Cave on Hope

“It took a devastation to understand the idea of mortal value, and it took a devastation to find hope,” he says.

I feel that in my bones. The stroke was my devastation and while my inherent cynicism and nihilism is still with me, I try to let love and hope have a larger role in my life. It’s difficult because so much pisses me off and I’m a jaded, untrusting GenXer to my core, but you can find joy in annoyance, hilarity in anger, and even when I’m crabby as hell about my tremor or inability to balance on my own two feet, I’m so happy I get to be crabby. Dying in March 2023 would have sucked.

Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott

I loved this book. It swept away to a world with walking houses, Russian folklore, and magical twins. It was a delight to spend time with the Yaga siblings and their weird house. If you’re in the mood for some really good storytelling, you can’t go wrong with this book.

Sierra Ferrell, Trail of Flowers

I’m a little late to the party on this record, which came out in March. Now that I’m here, I’m not leaving. This is twangy and smart, with tons of nostalgia. Some of that really classic country sound like “I Could Drive You Crazy” scared me away. I’m not always a fan of that early, early Grand Ol’ Opry sounded stuff. It was “Dollar Bill Bar” and “American Dreaming” that won me over, and now I can see the charm in “Crazy” even if it’s not my favorite.

Who was Dan Patch?

Being a child of lifelong residents of Savage, MN I know who Dan Patch is. I worked at Dan Patch Lanes for years, so the 1:55 record is forever etched in my memory. You can’t go anywhere in Savage without being inundated with Dan Patch. The clinic I go to is in Savage and the lobby/waiting area is exclusively decorated in Dan Patch pictures. The Culver’s in Savage had a huge history of Marion Savage and Dan Patch on the walls. It might still be there I haven’t been to the Culver’s since 2007.

I’m extra-special appreciative of everything today. The west coast fam got news that a good, good friend died this morning. They were only 44 and was diagnosed with cancer around the same time I had the stroke.

Cancer is the worst of all motherfuckers, roughly 3,994,382 times worse than an itchy heart monitor.

I appreciate you, Darling Ones.

Love,
Jodi

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Hello Darling Ones,

Last night I finished Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia by philosopher Kate Manne. It’s one of those books that should be required reading for all humans. I’d also include Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot and probably, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi.

I enjoyed Manne’s book a lot, even if I didn’t learn a ton. Having lived in a fat body my entire life I’m familiar with the insidiousness of fatphobia. I know about the failure of diets and the damage they do to our bodies, how long term weight loss is unsustainable. I know what it’s like to exist in a world where you literally do not fit.

While I did not learn a lot of new-to-me-information, the book did spur some internal debate and helped me clarify some of my thinking regarding losing weight, specifically my own weightless.

Darling Ones, I’ve been on Ozempic for about 12 weeks now. I owe nobody who reads here any information about my health, my body, my life, I know this, and yet I feel like I’ve been hiding a dirt secret.

There is no small amount of shame that comes with being fat, obviously. My battles with my body and with fatphobia have been well-chronicled in these pixels. I feel like I had finally reached a detente with my body and its size. Or maybe I was slowly creeping up on detente.

But then my brain had to go betray me and everything went out the door.

I’ve been so preoccupied with working on recovering from the stroke that I don’t spend a lot time wallowing in shame for staying away from healthcare for so long due to, well, body shame. I will forever be grateful to my Nurse Practitioner for never, not ever making me feel ashamed for being fat. She’s only shamed for one thing thus far, being too hard on myself. This is why I continue to see her every three months to stay on track of my overall health and recovery.

It may seem surprising, but I approached her about taking Ozempic.

Here’s why: my goal is to walk without a walker and if I’m so fortunate I’d love to walk and carry things at the same time again. I’m willing to do nearly anything to make that happen. Nearly. I’m unwilling, right now, to get my knees replaced. I’m too afraid of having another stroke during surgery.

What’s any of this got to do with losing weight?

Right now I got a host of things working against me: right-side heaviness from the stroke, a tremor that pops up periodically, neuropathy in my feet, distorted vision from the macular edema, general balance issues from the stroke, and chronic pain in my knees from arthritis. There might be more, but I can’t think of them.

When I saw the knee guy last year he said weightless would help with the pain. He said every pound I lose would mean 8 pounds of pressure off my knees.

Because I’ve lived in a fat body my entire life, weightloss has always been suggested as the cure for whatever ails me. So, of course, I ignored him. It’s not like I haven tried to lose weight for the past 48 years (I was put on my first diet medically-prescribed diet when I was four).

Then I started pool therapy and hot damn! that changed everything. When I was nearly weightless in the water, my knees didn’t bother me. I could stand and walk and exercise. It was glorious (and I miss it).

Maybe, I realized, there is something to the knee guy’s weightloss theory. So I talked about Ozempic with my NP. It was a little dicey at first because she wasn’t sure insurance would cover it. My diabetes has been well-controlled with insulin since I found out I had it (my A1C has been below 6 since May 2023). But she worked her magic and I’ve been on it for three months. My body has adapted well, unlike the Victoza insurance wanted me to use.

This will not become a diary of my “weightloss journey.” Diet culture is toxic bullshit. And I hate it. Fatphobia is a real thing that kills people and diminishes quality of life. These are all facts. Which is why I’m going through no small amount of inner strife over this decision. But I’ve set a goal and I really love meeting my goals.

Love,
Jodi

P.S. I forget to mention it’s working in all the ways it’s supposed to and I’ll be off inulin sometime next week.

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Hi Darling Ones,

Did you miss me? I took a brief hiatus while Sister #2 was here. She left Friday and I spent all day yesterday sleeping. It always takes me a little while to readjust to hermit life after spending a ton of time with my extrovert sisters. Speaking of which, we’re gonna kick off this month’s appreciation list with them.

Sisters

I cannot say enough how rad it is that my sisters have consistently shown up for me since the stroke. From washing my underpants to helping me clean out closets and moving my bookshelves around so I could display my Funko POPs, they continue to help without complaint. Or at least without complaint within my ear shot. One is in the midst of buying a house and one is in the midst of some remodeling and they still show up. I’m very lucky.

Cherries

This is my favorite food seasons. I’ve taken down two pounds of these sweet, juicy beauties and I got two more pounds waiting for me in the freezer.

Annie Bot by Sierra Greer

This novel was a delightful and occasionally dirty thinker that had me question some of my own assumptions on freedom and forgiveness. It’s about a sort of sex robot with the ability to learn from experience. It’s surprising and infuriating and wonderful. Read it!

Creative Purrsuits

I present to you the completed catghan. It’s enormous! My mom and Sister #2 are 5’10” and 5’8″ and they couldn’t hold out all the way up. She’s a beauty, isn’t she? This is my new favorite thing I made. Hannah’s Blanket has been moved to #2.

That’s all I got time for now, Darling Ones. What have you been appreciating? I’m on the lookout for new music, as I’m in one of those “sick of everything I love” phases.

More soon!
Jodi

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