Dear Darling Ones,

As I type it is 57º in Shakopee, Minnesota on this the 15th day of December in the year 2021. Future Darling Ones may read that sentence and be all, no bigs, so it’s a little chilly in Minnesota in December, that happens sometimes. Oh, Future Darling Ones, I’m so sorry about the hellscape you inherited. It sucks. Back in the olden days Minnesota was consistently cold and snowy in the winter. Now, in the year 2021 it is chaos. We got 12+ inches of snow in Shakopee on December 10th. Tomorrow the high temperature is supposed to be 24º.

There are severe thunderstorms and tornadoes forecasted for this evening. Weather people are losing their shit. It’s actually kind of charming while also being spooky.

Shit is weird today Future & Present Darling Ones. bell hooks died. A story about a cat named Jorts took over the entire Internet. And then there’s this weather.

I don’t read a lot of dystopian/speculative/sci-fi books. It’s not my jam. However, from what I have read all those author nailed the weird, rapidly changing weather. This is also not my jam.

And of all the weather-related jams that are not mine, tornadoes are the most not my jam. All phrases relating to whether or not things are my jam, are my jam.

I’ve had tornado anxiety since I was a kid. I’ve mostly grown out of it and the weather has to get super creepy for me to get my hackles up. And guess what Darling Ones everywhere on the time-space continuum? The weather is super creepy right now.

So here’s my advice on how to prepare for a snownado, as the middle-aged people of the internet say, your mileage may vary.

• Sleep in as much as possible and grumble loudly about how you’re fucking trying to sleep while everyone in the nation appears to be texting you.
• Upon accepting that sleeping time is over, exercise while listening to the latest ep of your podcast which is not a podcast you make but rather the only one you listen to.
• Skip the shower because you don’t feel that grody.
• Listen to your new favorite song, Joy Oladokun’s “sorry isn’t good enough” about 12 times.
• Go to the grocery store to stock up on all the donuts and most of the coffee creamer. While you’re out start gathering all the provisions for Christmas Eve dinner, Christmas brunch, and Rock & Roll Bookclub Dirty Santa. Holiday parties do not stop for snownadoes.
• Start writing this list until you feel a nap coming on.
• Charge your phone & Angrboda. Take that nap.
• Wake and ponder if the noise outside is melting snow dripping off the roof or if it has begun to rain.
• Doomscroll through twitter, which is utter chaos. The vibes are off, Darling Ones.
• Take a picture of your front yard so you can show the contrast and also the annoying as fuck Christmas lights the new Fence-y neighbors used to decorate their kids’ play structure. Feel super Grinch-like because you hate those lights. They shine right into your bedroom and it’s like the episode of “Seinfeld” when the Kenny Rogers’ Roasters sign illuminates Kramer’s bedroom.
• While standing in the doorway eye your tree warily and ask it politely to not fall over and if it needs to fall over to do it anywhere but the front window.
• Listen to the entire Joy Oladokun record. Again.
• Finish typing this list while pondering what to have for dinner.
• Ask Mother Nature to chill out with the weirdness and keep everyone safe.

As ready as I’m gonna be,
Jodi

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So, Darling Ones,

It’s clear to me now that many mistakes were made.

The mistakes began on Sunday when I decided to throw open the windows despite dire warnings about air quality. It didn’t look so bad out and the ass-tastic heat and humidity had finally broken. The weather was so nice I left the windows open all day and all night.

It took about four seconds after waking up to realize what a mistake that was. I woke up with my throat on fire, my sinuses trying to escape my face, and eyes so watery it’s been hard to focus all day. I felt like such total garbage I thought that maybe I had caught a cold. Like that’s a thing that can happen now, right?

For awhile I thought maybe I got the Delta, but like the cold, who would I have gotten that from? Because I am a monster, I haven’t been with people in like two weeks before yesterday’s family dinner.

There’s a joke that frequently runs around Minnesota when it gets really cold out about why we would live in a state where the air hurts our faces. I’m beginning to question myself about living in a place where the air quite literally makes me sick. At least I think it’s the air. What else could it be?

I was so miserable that during a Zoom this afternoon my colleague took one look at me, asked what was wrong, and then ran around her own house shutting all the windows.

My other mistake was the naps.

Because I’m a big, giant baby I took all the drugs in the house and took a nap at like 10:30 this morning. When that did nothing to alleviate my misery I took some more drugs and another at four this afternoon. Nothing worked until most of the misery subsided at about eight o’clock tonight. My throat still hurts, but I can live with that. It was the headache/sinuses that were doing me in.

What I won’t be able to live with is the inability to sleep tonight. As I type right now it’s 11:15 p.m., I’m four episodes into a Flintstones marathon, and there doesn’t seem to be any slumber on the horizon. I might try to go to bed and see if I can’t trick my body into thinking it’s time for sleep.

Hoping Mr. Sandman will bring me a dream,
Jodi

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Hi Darling Ones,

I don’t know where you are, but here in Minnesota it is the worst kind of ass out. The temperature is 92º, the humidity is 55%, and the dewpoint is 74º. We are living in satan’s butthole and it is 0% fun.

This weather is makes me cranky even from the relative comfort of my air conditioned home. I don’t know how people who have been alive for the past forty-nine years can deny climate change. HOW?! Have they not been paying attention? Do they think it’s all a liberal conspiracy to take away all their freedoms?

I’m really exhausted by most Americans being the utterly stupidest, most thoughtless trash human beings.

When I was an intern at the Eau Claire newspaper the summer of 1995 the city editor assigned me a story about how it was a cold, wet Memorial Day weekend and to find out what people had to say about it. He laughed about the assignment because it was always cold and rainy on Memorial Day and they ran that story every year.

I think about that a lot now as the earth dies beneath our feet. I also think, as I’ve said 1000 times, about how the lilacs used to bloom the week of my birthday and now they are well past blooming by the time June 6th rolls around.

Also, my brain keep reciting Robert Frost’s poem “Fire and Ice.”
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Apparently I only think in poetry now, which is kind of annoying because I don’t know tons of poetry. I’m eager to go back to thinking in song lyrics along with quotes from Almost Famous and High Fidelity.

Speaking of poetry I fell in love with a line from Ted Hughes, which kinda makes me angry because I don’t like him very much at all. However, he wrote the line, “slightly filthy with erotic mystery” for his lover Assia Wevill and I can’t get it out of my head. I say it out loud about sixty-seven times a day. Last night, I read the line to my friend EM, who is a poet, and she agreed it is a good line.

That hard K-sound in the middle of all those slippery ee-sounding endings? The idea of having erotic mystery? Being not totally, but slightly filthy? Just. . . damn, I am only human.

Your totally stinky with maybe esoteric mystery friend,
Jodi

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Well, Darling Ones,

Today I’ve been unable to out run the vague feeing of unrest/out-of-sortsness that has been plaguing the last few weeks. I’m blaming the current unease on the weather and bad air and the fact that I made the mistake of listening to NPR while running errands yesterday.

The Current lured me in with Japanese Breakfast’s “Savage Good Boy”* and then hit me with all of the doom and most of the gloom. Have you heard the news lately? It is not good. Delta Variant! Oregon is Burning! The Earth is Trying to Kill Us!

It was intense, and it bummed me out.

Climate change freaks me out on the same level the Cold War freaked me out when I was a kid in the eighties. If I start to think about it, no sleep will be had. I keep myself awake imagining ever worsening scenarios that end with the death of everyone I love. The worst part is that these scenarios are not wholly irrational and some of them are coming to pass (on a milder scale than my imagination) already.

In not totally unrelated news, my smart thermostat keeps wanting to go into eco mode because in Minnesota the Earth is trying to kill us by making it very hot for a very long stretch of time, but the thermostat is not smart enough to realize I’m a fat, perimenopausal lady and I just cannot with the heat. I like to make up for it by keeping it cold in here in the winter.

And another thing contributing to the out-of-sortsness, I learned that Pearl Jam’s debut album “Ten” will be thirty-years-old next month and that really hurt my feelings.

Also, I got my new computer specs today and the progressive lenses are a trip. My eyesight seems to change every time I move my head a fraction of an inch in any direction. So that’s fun.

I did not want to write here today because I was feeling kinda yucky in the brain, but I feel so much better already. I probably shouldn’t subject the Internet to my random, petty grievances and should keep them in a paper journal somewhere, but frankly I only write in paper journals when I’m way deep deep down in it over some romantic entanglement that isn’t going the way that I want it to go. It’s been a years since I’ve written in a paper journal. However, I do like to jot random things in my calendar, kinda like Sylvia Plath did. But you probably remember that.

Also, you should know, I’m going through a real “frankly” phase right now. I’m not sure where it came from but I had to delete two other franklys in this letter.

Also, I once dated a man named Frank who wanted me to say “I love you” whenever we had sex and I would fudge it and say “I love this” because I don’t say “I love you” unless I really and truly mean it.

But I love you, Darling Ones, I really do.

Jodi

P.S. Today I told the new clients I’m working with they should never work with a writer who doesn’t like to read.

P.P.S.Today was my ONE THOUSANDTH day in a row of doing Spanish lessons on Duolingo.

 
*The whole new record gives me an early-80s Madonna vibe but in a smarter, more modern way. This is a good thing because if I was anything in 1984 it was a 6-foot aqua-eyeshadowed, Madonnawannabe who wore a neon pink t-shirt with a Madonna iron-on that she got at the shop that ironed things on shirts in the Northtown Mall.

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