Hi Darling Ones,

Wanna know why I cried at my sleep study Tuesday? Here goes.

“How tall are you?” Zack the sleep study tech asked as he reached up the leg of my pajama pants to grab the wires I had shoved down the top of my pants.

“Six five,” I said.
“That’s tall,” he said.

I nodded. Why could I say? I’ve had this conversation roughly 398,195 times in my life with everyone from strangers at the grocery store to professors to bosses to creepy men stalking me through Target. Yes, 6’5″ is tall for any human, especially a woman. As one doctor told me as a teen, I’m a statistical anomaly.

Zack continued wiring me up. Taping wires to my rib cage and my legs. As I sat in a chair in front of him, he rubbed a gritty cleaning paste on my scalp and attached wires to my head with a sticky goo.

“I’m sorry,” he said at one point, eyeing the bed I was to spend the night in. “The medical world is not built for you.”

What? I could hardly believe my ears. A healthcare working blaming the world and not my unruly body? What? Usually, it’s my fault I don’t fit. My fault my legs and arms are too long. My fault my hips too wide.

Never in my fifty-two years has any medical person at all told me that the medical world was at fault for my not fitting.

I quickly blinked back tars, thankful he couldn’t see me. Then I made a joke about a ding dong woman filming someone at the DNC with her license in full view from her iPhone case on CNN. Because of course I did.

A little later in the evening he announced, “The whole world isn’t built for you, is it? I bet shower heads are kind go a pain.”

Then I told him about my teeny shower that’s so narrow that if I drop something I have to get out of the shower to get it. The top of my head to my waist is longer than the shower is wide.

Because Zack was so rad, knowing he was going to watch me sleep wasn’t as creepy as it originally seemed. And he really did watch me! At one point in the night I rolled over and before I even settled back on the pillow he was in the room giving me a CPAP mask before I fell back to sleep.

I didn’t think I’d sleep that well, but had to be woken up at 9:40 because my ride was supposed to be there at 10. A+ in sleeping?

Darling Ones, I’m doing my damndest to stay alive and right now that involves wearing an itchy heart monitor for the next two weeks. Putting this thing on involved shaving part of my chest and then abrading my skin with medical-grade sandpaper. I’d rather do eight more sleep studies then have to abrade my skin again and then promptly clean it with alcohol wipes. Youch.

Between the heart monitor and the continuous glucose monitor I’m like 23% of the way to being a robot.

Eep-Opp-Ork-Ahh-Ahh,
Jodi

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Hi Darling Ones,

Over the weekend I finished reading Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe. It was a total snooze. I do not recommend. I stuck with it because one of my favorite genres is “when bad things happen to rich people.” Give me a murder mystery set in some English hoity-toity boarding school and I’m happy.

The best thing about “Astor” is it kept reminding me of an argument we had during Rock & Roll Bookclub Dirty Santa this year.

We were playing some kind of “Would you rather” game someone won earlier in the night. One of the questions was Would you rather be rich in the olden days or poor now?

“Rich olden times,” I shouted without a moment’s hesitation.

Most of the room scoffed derisively and chose poor now. I shook my head at their foolishness.

I don’t know if it was Wolfdogg or my brother-in-law pointed out there would be no rock & roll or internet.

“That’s fine,” I said, “I’d make a kick ass Harriet Oleson, running the Mercantile, judging Caroline’s eggs.”

That’s right, the richest, old-timey person my white-trash, tv-rotted brain could come up with was Harriet Oleson from “Little House on the Prairie.” I didn’t think of the Astors or the Vanderbilts or the Gettys or the Morgans or any of the other bazillionaires who took advantage of the working class in the olden days.

I went right to Mrs. Oleson, and I stand by that.

“Okay, transatlantic slave trade,” Wolfdogg said.
“Harriet employed the only black lady in Walnut Grove,” I argued.

Eventually, I did win Sister #2 to my side. The rest of the group still think I’m full of shit, and for that I’m not gonna let them buy anything on credit from the Mercantile. I might even under price their stupid eggs.

Jodi

P.S. This is the one thing my brain seems to be dwelling on. To be fair, most of it has turned to mush after spending 2.5 hours getting my social security disability application started. Plus, you know, current events continue to be unprecedented.

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Hi Darling Ones,

I had my monthly eye treatment today. The joint was hopping. I’ve been going every four weeks since June? And I’ve never seen the waiting rooms so full.

It was so busy we spent like 45 minutes in Waiting Room B after my eye test and scans. There wasn’t a spare seat in the place, and there’s something like 30 seats in the room.

Because we waited so long, I got learn a lot about Janelle.

• She has five sons.
• She gave birth to one and married into some others.
• She and her husband “adopted two orphans.”
• She’s very concerned about what will happen to her land and houses when she dies.
• It’s hard because most of the land is in her and her brother’s name.
• She owns a townhouse from when she was a single mother.
• She rents it out now.
• She’s attending seminars to learn about wills and probate.
• She wants her sons to be able to grieve and not worry about what they’re getting.
• She also wants it to be fair, even though one son is “special to her” because she birthed him.
• She met her husband when she was a single mom playing piano at church.
• She used to teach piano lessons at Schmidt Music until COVID.
• She taught high school in Orono for 20 years.
• She graduated from St. Olaf in 1984.
• She got her dog from a “reputable” breeder in Iowa.
• Her husband doesn’t like to talk about wills and death.
• She loves playing grand pianos.
• She’s friends with the Schmidt-guy of Schmidt Music fame.
• The twins are going to tour St. Thomas this week because it’s MEA.
• One of them loves science and one wants an MBA.
• She really likes the small, private Christian colleges.
• She loves Doc Severinsen.

For the record, Janelle wasn’t talking to me. Or my mom. Or even sitting near us in the waiting room.

Eavesdroppingly yours,
Jodi

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Hi Darling Ones,

I just got off the phone with my friend EM, my westernerd friend who lives in Madison. We were debriefing about the weekend. Well, she was. My weekend consisted of napping, reading, and eating soup. There wasn’t much to debrief about on my end. Though I did give a small lecture on my disappointment on what an asshole John Cougar Mellencamp was in the 80s and 90s, but that’s a topic for another day.

Towards the end of our conversation I told her that I think I’m getting sick. My eyes hurt, I felt run down, and my throat was killing me.

“It’s allergies,” she said.
“But I took my allergy meds this morning,” I said.
“The trees are full of crap making everyone miserable.”
“That’s ironic,” I said, popping more allergy meds into my gob. “I love trees. I have trees in my house.”
“That’s right!”

Then I told her about my trees, specifically Steven and Trevour. Steven, a much anticipated birthday tree, has been a big disappointment. However, Trevour who has been summering outside is growing like a god damn champ.

“Are you shaming your tree?” EM asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Steven is a disappointment and he should know it. He needs to either die or thrive. Pick a lane, Steven.”
She laughed.
“I had dreams of a giant, majestic tree in my bedroom. He did not live up to my expectations.”
“Umm. . .” she said.
“I realize this is a metaphor for all my relationships.”
“The old, it’s not me, it’s you.”
“Yup,” I said. “He could still live up to my expectations if he wants. Or he just needs to die and go away.”

She had no more responses until I told her I was gonna write about this. “So not only are you a tree shamer,” she said. “You’re a proud tree shamer.”
“It’s not my fault he sucks at being a tree.”

Honestly, Darling Ones, I a trying to accommodate Steven. I cater to his every need and do my best to keep Wendell the Vengeance Demon away from him. Steven is just not happy with me or my bedroom, which is a damn shame because I’ve never had complaints before.

Just kidding, I have. I’ve stupidly fucked thoughtlessly cruel men, but that’s a topic for another day.
Jodi

P.S. I will say, for the record, one man told me, after we had sex, that my back was too long.

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Hi Darling Ones,

There is a fingers-spread, hand-sized wet spot on the kitchen ceiling. I suspect the guest bathroom toilet is leaking some place that I cannot see. There is no water on the floor of the upstairs bathroom so maybe it’s in the under the floor parts? I do not know because I am not a plumber. However, I did schedule an appointment with a plumber and do you know hard it was to discuss this problem without using the phrase “wet spot” six-hundred times? Very hard.

My inner Beavis & Butthead cannot let me say “wet spot” with the accompanying “heh-heh-heh-heh.” I would have thought I would be well past the horny fourteen-year-old everything is a funny sex euphemism stage of my life by this point. Surprise! Wet spot makes me laugh like a goon.

I am not mature enough to be a homeowner, of this I am 100% sure.

I noticed the wet spot yesterday afternoon while I was making Sadness Breakfast Burritos (I was sad, I don’t know why). I told myself I could magical think my way around it for a day, but if it was still wet this morning I would have to do something about it.

Bleh. So now I have a plumber coming over between noon and two on Wednesday. If you never hear from me again after that, the plumber did it! I super hate having strange men in my house when I’m alone. I’m convinced they will murder me for reasons. This is why I had to stop watching a lot of true crime shows.

The irony is, not an hour ago a random dude knocked on my door. I wouldn’t have answered it but we made eye contact through the window and my Minnesota niceness would not allow me to hide after being so clearly seen. Bleh.

So I stood as tall as I could, using all of my six feet and five inches to fill that doorway as I opened it to see what he wanted. Dude was masked up and holding a small container of paint with a paint brush. He explained where he lived and how his neighbor, Sherri, had got some extra paint from the Homeowner’s Association to fix the trim on the front door.

Apparently, when we all got our front doors painted in July, they painted them while they were closed leaving a thin strip of faded, old paint framing the door. I had not noticed this at all because I rarely come in through the front door. Also, I did not really care.

However, since he was so kind and going door to door offering to paint the trim for people, I could not resist. It was the cutest, and also I was way bigger than this guy and if he had murder on his mind I could have for sure taken him.

What followed was the most awkward eight hundred and sixty-eight minutes of my life. That’s how long it felt like it took him to paint the trim. Really, he was here for maybe four minutes total. In that time I learned he is a Vikings fan with a son and at one point had two cats, Woody & Buzz. Sadly, Woody died at the age of sixteen after a lifetime of diabetes. His brother, Buzz, is still going strong and will be seventeen in November.

Being a homeowner is fun,
Jodi

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