Dear Darling Ones,

For many years I would write Christmas wishes to you, all three of my readers. It started in 2006 when my friend Myka (who used to go by the name Kelly), changed out of her pajama pants to go see a cute boy’s band with me.

Can you even imagine? The olden days were so magical — going to places with your friends to see cute boy’s bands.

I stopped writing Christmas wishes after 2014 because I am fickle and erratic. It’s part of my charm*.

This year Christmas is weighing heavy on my heart. I miss my family so much it nearly breaks me. Today (December 24th) is Sister #2’s birthday. This is the first time in her entire life that I have not gotten to spend at least some part of the day with her.

In a year so full of missing things, I seem to be missing Christmas the most. Last night I missed decorating Supergenius HQ and eating pizza with Sister #4 and the niblings on Christmas Eve Eve. I miss hosting my loud, hilarious cousins for A Very St. Martin Christmas. I miss the Sister Club game we play every Christmas Day. I miss getting the Spinster Special on Boxing Day Lunch at the Savage American Legion. I miss getting drunk at Dirty Santa Rock & Roll Bookclub. I miss the nap I take on the couch after everyone leaves and my house is mine again.

Sometimes I wonder how we’re ever going to recover from the trauma this pandemic has inflicted upon us. What could I possibly wish for people aside from an end to all this suffering?

Then I thought, I will wish for you, Darling Ones, the same things I’m wishing for myself in 2021:

• The opportunity to spend time with my favorite people without the constant anxiety that we’re exposing each other to a deadly virus
• The courage to be wildly creative and the patience to see a project to fruition
• To discover new music that I feel right in my guts
• To find a person who will ask me on the reg “What are you thinking?” and then listen. Also, it would be nice if this person also wanted to makeout with me, but I don’t want to put that kind of pressure on 2021
• To stop apologizing for being who I am. I know I’m too much. I can’t help it. If you don’t like it you can spend 2021 fucking all the way off

Here’s to better days, Darling Ones.

*it is not.

The post My 2020 Christmas Wish for You, Darling Ones appeared first on I Will Dare.

Yesterday, as I sat making a mental checklist of all the things I needed to do before a Very St. Martin Christmas, I heard someone pull into the driveway and a flurry of doors open and close.

“Who is that?” I asked Jaycie, my seventeen-year-old niece, who was sitting on the couch by the windows.
“It’s Kari,” she said, and hopped up to get the door.
“What’re they doing here?” I asked.
My front door swung open and I expected to see BFK and her family come in, but in popped a dog. My brain wondered, Why did they bring Lex over?

Then as the dog jumped into my lap, I realized it was Walter! Walter was here from Portland, and he had brought Sister #2 and Ben with him. I promptly burst into tears as my sister stood in the middle of my living room cackling.

“Oh my god, Walter! Oh my god.” I said over and over again. “What are you doing here?”
“Are you surprised?” Sister #2 asked.
“Yes,” I said, still crying. “Happy birthday!”

See, Sister #2 wasn’t supposed to come into town until this afternoon. Ben and Walter weren’t going to make it back for Christmas at all.

So seeing them at my house was a shock.

I snuggled with Walter as Sister #2 and Ben explained their nefarious plan to me and their stunned children.

At one point I looked over at BFK who was standing by the door. “Are you crying?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m just so happy I could do this for you guys.”

This is a big. BFK rarely cries. She cries so rarely that we often tease her about her dead heart. I’ve known her for fifteen years and I can probably count on one hand how many times I’ve seen her cry.

So my wish for you this year, Darling Ones, for you to experience good surprises that bring tears to your eyes. Surprises that bring together your friends and family in ways that make everyone feel like framily. Or some other made up word.

I also still wish all these things for you:

• 2006 Wish: Someone in your life who will change out of their pajama pants for you.
• 2007 Wish: A life full of hilarious serendipity.
• 2008 Wish: Periods of time that are so full of fun and activity you don’t have time to write about it.
• 2009 Wish: People who make you laugh so hard wine comes out your nose.
• 2010 Wish: The inner-strength to make it through the trying times.
• 2011 Wish: Creative endeavors that bring out your passion.
• 2012 Wish: People who will love you anyway.
• 2013 Wish: Someone you can turn to when you?re freaked out who will make you feel better.

The post My 2014 Christmas Wish for You, Darling Ones appeared first on I Will Dare.

When I was in college, I was the editor-in-chief of our twice-weekly student newspaper, The Spectator at the time it was the biggest deal of my life. Being editor meant you were in charge of all the things: hiring editors and making sure they did their jobs; writing and editing stories; working with the advertising department; training people; and drinking until your liver exploded.
I took all these responsibilities quite seriously. In the fall while putting together our very first issue I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Things were not going very well, there was a lot to do in a very short amount of time, and the ad department seemed to be fucking up something new every day.

At one point, I sat in the editor’s office and cried. The stress was so great and my frustration so high, there was nothing else I could do but cry at my desk. In the midst of my pity party my friend LaFrenz bumbled into the office. For someone who was so ridiculously good-looking it was hard to look at him, LaFrenz was also one of the kindest people I’ve ever had the honor of knowing.

“Ahh Chromes,” he said when he found me all tear-stained and freaked. “Don’t worry. It’ll (the issue) come out.”
“What if it doesn’t?” I moaned.
“It will,” he said. “It will come out because it always does.”

His words were a balm. That might have had more to do with the giant goobery crush I had on him than the soundness of his logic, but it works. And the issue came out. And all the issues I was responsible for after that.

Since that day I’ve used that weird nonsense mantra whenever things have gotten too much to handle. It was a chant I’d tell myself when I worked at Hell, Inc. before every launch when things got crazy busy.

Somehow, though, this advice slipped my mind this year. This holiday season got away from me, mostly because I decided to make all the gifts. I’ve spent most nearly all the hours of every day for the past two weeks making the gifts. All the time with the making. No time to listen to music or write or hardly even work because I was making all the gifts.

And I was preparing my house for the influx of my family, and overnight guests, and babysitting, and making all the fucking gifts. Did I mention that I was making all the gifts?

It’s been an awful and stressful two weeks. I reached the pinnacle of stress and anxiety and too much to do yesterday afternoon at about 2 p.m., a mere four hours before my guests were to arrive. My house was in shambles, my nephews were pissed at me, and Sister #4 was sick upstairs in my spare bedroom.

I was done by the time Sister #3 arrive to collect her children. We sat at my dining room table and I sobbed. “I can’t get it all done,” I cried, sweeping my arms around my messy house, the half-made dinner, the unfinished gifts.
“So?” she said. “They’re gonna come anyway, and they’re not coming to see how clean your floors are.”
“But, but, but. . .” I said.
“Christmas is going to come. It always does,” she said, which reminded me of those words of LaFrenz’s all those years ago.

And Christmas did come. And the gifts didn’t all get finished and it was okay. The world didn’t end. And nobody commented on the state of my floors or left in a huff because I forgot to make the corn. And on Christmas Eve when I finally sat down to eat, sitting at the table next to my cousin Billy, he went on and on about how great the food was and how much he loved coming to my house for Christmas more than all the other Christmas events he attended because it was low key and fun and not at all fussy or demanding.

And so, I guess, darling ones my Christmas wish for you is that you have someone you can turn to when you’re freaked out who will make you feel better OR, if you like, I wish you the wisdom to not get so worked up over things that don’t matter. Take your pick.

And, as always, I wish you:

• someone in your life who will change out of their pajama pants for you;
• a life full of hilarious serendipity;
• periods of time that are so full of fun and activity you don’t have time to write about it;
• people who make you laugh so hard wine comes out your nose;
• the inner-strength to make it through the trying times;
• creative endeavors that bring out your passion; and
• people who will love you anyway.

The post My 2013 Christmas Wish for You, Darling Ones appeared first on I Will Dare.

I don’t like to drive when it snows. It’s a fear that has grown into a full-blown, anxiety-induced phobia. Of all my quirks and neuroses this is the one I loathe the most because it makes me feel flaky and wimpy.

Because I am a hearty Minnesotan, I spent many years white-knuckling it from here to there as my truck, Ruby, fishtailed with all her shitty 2-wheel-drive might. With every slip and slide and tightened grip on the steering wheel, I’d envision myself losing control and ending up dead in a snowy ditch. While this might seem super dramatic, twenty-one years ago Sister #2’s best friend died because of just such an accident. Jill was driving home from a friend’s house on Christmas Eve when her car hit black ice and slid into an oncoming SUV. Jill’s boyfriend died instantly. Jill lingered in a drug-induced coma for a week before she was declared brain dead.

Since 1991 whenever my car would slide on an icy road I was sure my own death was imminent. On a snowy day in February 2006 I found myself losing control and spinning into oncoming traffic until I landed on my side on a hill. It was terrifying.

So yeah, the more angry hermity I get the more this phobia grows. Now fast forward to a couple weeks ago when we got about 10 inches of snow on a Sunday. As the inches piled up my anxiety began, and I spent the entirety of the next forty-eight hours telling myself the roads would be fine by the time I had writing group on Tuesday night. They would be fine and I could drive to Minneapolis from Shakopee with my delicious cauliflower-lentil stew and spend the evening with the writers I adore the most.

I checked road conditions compulsively and read with dread as my Twitter pals complained about two-hour long commutes due to bad roads. When I woke up that Tuesday and read about the heinous commutes, I flaked on my writing group and felt awful. So awful.

But then my friend Kelly wrote: “We love you anyway.”

Four magic words that every person needs to hear when they feel like they’re being their worst possible self. We love you anyway. Isn’t that all we really want out of life? To be loved anyway?

And that, my darling ones, is my Christmas Wish for you. People who will love you anyway.

I also wish you someone who will change out of their pajama pants for you; a life full of hilarious serendipity; periods of time that are so full of fun and activity you don’t have time to write about it; people who make you laugh so hard wine comes out your nose; the inner-strength to make it through the trying times; and creative endeavors that bring out your passion.

Merry Christmas!

The post My 2012 Christmas Wish for You, Darling Ones appeared first on I Will Dare.

Here is what I wish for you, darling ones: someone who will change out of their pajama pants for you; a life full of hilarious serendipity, periods of time that are so full of fun and activity you don’t have time to write about it; people who make you laugh so hard wine comes out your nose; the inner-strength to make it through the trying times; and this year I wish for you the time and patience and faith in yourself to participate in a creative hobby.

For Christmas, I made all my sisters and nephews and my niece and my brother-in-law hats and scarves. I made them with my own two hands, and I have the sore forearms to prove it.

It was ridiculously hard and a lot of work, and yet totally rewarding. I can see why people get addicted to knitting or crocheting. There’s something quite meditative about it. Plus, I’m a giant goober so with every stitch I made I would think I love you I love you I love you about the person I was crafting for. I was so proud of my handiwork that when my family ripped open their gifts, I’m the one who burst into tears.

“I’m so proud of me,” I shouted over the noise. “I’m crying.”
“I’m crying for you too,” Sister #3 said.

The reason I am wishing you the creative hobby is because I’ve spent the last NINE DAYS with Sister #4 (and trust me when I say this: the fact that we’re still speaking and she’s not been injured is a testament to my will power. I’m not sure if homicide committed due to a million tiny annoyances is justifiable or not and I’d hate to have to spend the rest of my life in prison because I couldn’t take her fucking tap tap tapping any more).

Anyway, she spent the better part of the past NINE DAYS a bored lump on the end of my couch. Her friends were working, I was working, and she has nothing to entertain herself save for Facebook and the TV. How depressing is that? So Darling Ones, that’s my wish for you, to do your brains a favor this year and try to cultivate a hobby that doesn’t involve time in front of a screen.

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