Buckle up, Darling Ones,

Or maybe ducking is in order? I’m in the midst of weathering a perfect storm of responsible humaning and I’m very cranky about.

I usually try to the spread out the bullshit tasks that come with being an adult grown up who wants to function on some level. For instance, I never empty the dishwasher the same day I must fold laundry. Because I excel at procrastination and I’m not above squalor this rarely happens, where I have to do two tasks on the same day.

So I don’t know what the fuck happened with today. I blame Wendell. That furry fucker woke me up at 5:16 a.m. because he was relentlessly and noisily pawing at my dresser. I’d yell at him to knock it off and he’d stop for only as long as it took to walk to the other side of the dresser and paw at it again.

The ding-dong dropped one of his pipe cleaner friends behind the dresser and could not rescue it. His arms are too short. After listening to him raise a ruckus for forty-five minutes I finally got out of bed, moved the dresser, and used a hanger to get the pipe cleaner for him.

Want to know what he did after that? He sniffed at it, jumped on the bed, and promptly went to sleep.

When I saw one of my biggest flaws is being a sucker for a cutieface, this is one example of that. See also, my last relationship and 903 other dumb things I’ve done.

My mojo is all discombobulated now, which is the only way I can explain why I had to do all the adult garbage today, including literally taking out the garbage.

Here’s a short list of tasks I did today:

1. Put laundry in the dryer.
2. Fold & put away the laundry that had been chilling in the dryer for two weeks.
3. Empty the dishwasher.
4. Get groceries.
5. Put away the groceries.
6. Drag the garbage bins into the garage.
7. Pay the electric bill.
8. Postpone jury duty.
9. Work.

How do people do all those tasks all the time on the same day? Sometimes many days in a row? Is this why nobody reads books anymore because they’re too busy doing the fucking laundry or the dishes? No wonder people are tired and cranky all the time.

Here’s a short list of funtivities I did today:

At some point I’m going to have to figure out what to have for dinner, but that may be one task too many. I might just eat cherries and Hawaiian Punch popsicles (the smartest thing I’ve purchased all summer). I might take a wee nap to see if I can’t adjust this attitude. I might light the entire world on fire.

Crankily yours,
Jodi

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Hi Darling Ones,

Why is it that our grandest triumphs and greatest tragedies seem to go hand in hand? Do we need one to properly appreciate the other? Is this how we gain perspective?

Should I start with the good news or the bad news? Probably the good since that has uncovered the bad.

Remember my derelict ice maker that likes to break all the time and refuses to make ice for reasons that I cannot discern? And do you also remember how I apologized whoever cursed me with a derelict ice maker and asked them to lift the curse?

Guess what happened? Can you guess? My ice maker spontaneously came back to life this afternoon. I did nothing to fix it since I turned it off and on a few weeks ago. There I was just minding my own business on the couch when I heard the ice maker call the water and, unlike every day since it broke, the water responded. Now I have ice.

Was the curse lifted? If you ignore a problem will it eventually go away? Did my ice maker fix itself? We’ll never know.

If the ice maker is still properly functioning in June I will be shocked as hell.

This brings me to the tragedy part of my tale. Nobody cares about my ice maker. Nobody is annoyed enough when it’s not working and nobody is joyous enough when it spontaneously fixes itself and rises from the dead like some kind of sub-zero Lazarus. Sometimes all I want in life is someone to care as much about really stupid shit as I do and who also wants to have sex with me.

In the fairytales I tell myself about how it is to be in a romantic partnership, as soon as I told my partner about the ice maker rising from the dead we would clink peanut butter dippers (a giant peanut butter cookie half of which was dipped in chocolate. I get them from the Cub bakery) while we sang “What a Resurrection Really Feels Like” to each other.

Unfortunately in the reality of life, I tell strangers on the internet who think I’m a little sad and a little off and who are not nearly happy enough about my cautious joy around the ice maker that is also a heartbreaker.

Your little hoodrat friend,
Jodi

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Hi Darling Ones,

Today I had to check in three different times with three different people as to what day of the week it was. A lot of things happened for a Monday.

1. I folded & put away an entire load of laundry that I washed yesterday. Usually it lives in the dryer for at least three days.
2. I showered and put on my new Medusa shirt. It makes me feel extra bad ass.
3. The project manager of a new gig I’ll be working on next month told me the client said, about my writing, “she really makes you feel something!”
4. I got the Wet Leg record and the new Jennifer Egan book in the mail.
5. Adam & Jake (BFK’s husband and son) came over to drop off Jake’s car for Maxwell to use this week, since his was stolen from work Saturday.
6. Max & Sonya brought gyros over and we chatted for three hours before they took the car. I hadn’t seen them since Christmas and it was nice to catch up with them.
7. I cancelled Easter because I don’t feel like Eastering this year. Thankfully, Sister #4 was amenable, especially because the nibs are going to Portland to be with their parents.
8. Oh, and I spent a good portion of time obsessing about my broken (again) ice maker. This is the third time it has gone kaput. I’m unclear why this thing hates me so much. I use it every day. I love it so much and yet. I also don’t know why the busted ice maker bothers me so much. I’m obsessed. I’ve watched roughly 83 youtube videos about troubleshooting the ice maker. I’ve already warned Adam that he might have to fix it for me. I texted BFK about it yesterday morning when I woke up to very little ice. Right now I’m in the process of doing what I did last time it broke. I turned it off for three days and then turned it back on and it was reborn. Let’s all pray for an Easter miracle in my refrigerator.
9. I had chorizo, black beans, and rice nachos for dinner because my goal is to eat all the leftovers I froze earlier this year. Last night it was chili cheese dogs.
10. Now I’m typing this list, playing fetch with Wendell G. Hobbs, and pondering how early I can go to bed, because I’m damn tired.

Not at all icily yours,
Jodi=

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Hi Darling Ones,

I often like to portray myself as a lackadaisical slacker despite it not being wholly true. When I am finally able to achieve my truest form, this is what I’ll be. The dream of the 90s is always alive in my bitter, jaded GenX heart.

While I frequently come close to achieving my final form sometimes I have to revert to driven career automaton. That might be overstating a bit. It’s more like lackadaisical slacker who is only driven by actual, factual deadlines with an obsessive streak that makes her work endlessly until the thing is done. Or until her brain falls right out of her head and anything she continues to work on isn’t getting anything done.

I used to be super motivated and career-driven. Some of the early posts in this here blog are so cringey now. I was so fucking earnest and took my work very seriously as if we were curing cancer and not launching photo editing software. God, I was such an adorable, annoying dummy. I learned the hard way that Corporate America does not care about me and will not handsomely reward me for giving it all my time and energy and creativity.

This is a very long way to say that I had to work my fucking ass off this week. I worked twenty-five billable hours this week, which is like 50+ office hours. Please do not make me give the billable hours lecture and just trust me that they are different than office hours.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had to kick this kind of ass on two different projects for two different clients. It was a good reminder that I still got it and also that working so much in one week makes you really boring.

All I did is work and eat and work and sleep and work and occasionally watch Bob’s Burgers and then work some more. I have no idea what’s going on in the world or on the Internet, except for the “think about the donuts of your day” kid. I caught that because of the donuts, obviously.

I’m like that Lucinda Williams song, I need cool quiet and time to think. I have had zero time to think and that’s what makes everything so boring. The only original thought I had this week was how I needed to stop feeling bad for yelling at Wendell. I don’t yell at him a ton but sometimes he jumps on the counters when I’m trying to cook and starts rubbing his face against a pack of powdered sugar donut holes so hard he knocks them off the counter and we have a powdered sugar mess. That’s when I yell, immediately feel bad, and then apologize.

Why do I feel bad? Yelling at him has never prevented one single iota of his myriad fuckeries. And I know he can hear me. When he comes downstairs and I yell, “What’s up Wendell GEEEEEEEEEEEE?” He jumps on the couch to collect his head scratches. When he’s in the kitchen alone making noise and I say “Knock it off, ding-dong,” he comes into the living to display that he is capable of knocking it off.

Fuck, told you I was boring.

Tediously yours,
Jodi

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Hi Darling Ones,

Because I still blog like it’s 2002, I feel the need to keep you abreast of any planned lapses in content delivery. For real, if a blogger missed too many days in a row people got legit worried. Were they dead? Did they abandon their blog? What mysterious circumstances would prevent them from telling us all about the delicious turkey sandwich they had for lunch? The possibilities were endless.

I also like to pretend I’m the CEO of this joint, which is a properly run, profitable corporation and bust out all the corporate speak I can remember from my days as a cube-drone in the early-aughts. I don’t why this cracks me up, but it does. Maybe because as I type this I’m wearing fuzzy, grey pajama pants and have Jenny Lewis pumping through my beloved yellow cans.

Speaking of Ms. Lewis, have you heard her latest song “Puppy & a Truck?” It’s hilarious and with a few edits it could be my life. Though, I will not be getting a puppy anytime soon. I got Wendell. He plays fetch like a dog. However, ever since Walter got here yesterday this song has been playing on repeat in my head. Because now I have a puppy and a truck. You know Ruby’s a 1999 Chevrolet S-10 right? And while Walter is an old man now, and I never knew him as a puppy (he’s a rescue), he’s still a puppy in my heart.

So here’s the current state of affairs.

• Last night I made my sister & brother-in-law watch the AMAs. My brother-in-law was treated to my sister and I singing all the words to all the songs during the New Edition/New Kids on the Block melody.
• My sister is working while she’s here. She has a lot of meetings where she talks a lot very loudly. I got the noise cancelling on and it is no match for her. Also, it’s hilarious to hear her explain to the other meeting participants about her book/Funko Pop background (she’s working from my dining room table).
• My brother-in-law got a new iPhone today (because we kept making fun of his old phone which still had a button) and he already threw away the box it came in. He hasn’t even had it for four hours! The man is a legend.
• My sister had me read one of her academic papers she and her colleagues are submitting for publication to make sure their argument was cogent. It was a lot of pressure, but I think I passed. It was kind of an honor.
• I have two books I need to talk about once I’m done thinking about them. One is The Sentence by Louise Erdrich and the other is A Face for Picasso by Ariel Henry.

Anyway, don’t expect much out of me for the rest of the week. Sister #4 arrives tomorrow and the chaos of a full house does not prove conducive for thinking, writing, or doing any thing but surviving my super extroverted sisters. Thankfully, they all leave Friday so I have an entire weekend to recover.

Thankful for you always,
Jodi

The post The Current State of Affairs & Our Path Forward appeared first on I Will Dare.