Dear Darling Ones,

I just finished five hours of work,* put on Waxahatchee’s “Saint Cloud” record, and promptly burst into tears.

Gee whiz, Jodi’s crying again. Shocker. After all, my dad just died!

But these were not grief tears. Not happy tears or tired tears or oh my god I’m hilarious tears or hangry tears or bored tears or horny tears or lonely tears or frustrated tears or rage tears. There are a lot of ways to cry. I am good at all of them. So good at crying.

There were very special, heretofore unknown welcome back to real life, Jodi Chromey tears.

This weekend sucked, Darling Ones. I fell into a grief pit and failed at climbing out of it. The grief was accompanied by guilt, and boy, are those two assholes.

I feel guilty for being incredibly self-centered the past few weeks. I feel guilty for being a giant bummer dropping sadness bombs in the middle of people’s days and then requiring some sort of recognition about my feelings. I feel guilty for being so fucking needy and taking advantage of people’s kindness.

It’s all so gross. As one twitter pal put it, feeling bad about feeling bad is a particular kind of hell.

So why the tears?

Maybe it was hearing the Waxahatchee record I listened to every damn day during the early months of COVID. You’d think the music would be alarming by reminding me of shittier? a different kind of shitty? times.

It did not do that. Instead it was a sonic hug and reminder that I can handle things. The sounds of this are a telegraph to some part of me that I have lived through shitty, unprecedented times before and I managed to survive.

Hearing this record hot on the tail of those five uninterrupted hours of work where I was sharp and focused and didn’t even need to take time to stare out the window, well it felt like a rejuvenation.

Oh, I thought to myself, while I cried, this is what I feel like.

I’m not saying this gonna stick around forever, because I know grief doesn’t work like that. However, for the first time since my dad died I remember what it is to feel like myself again.

Yours,
Jodi

 
* When you are a freelancer five hours of work means five hours hunched over your keyboard doing the stuff people pay you to do (in this case redesigning a nonprofit’s website). It’s not like office work where work means being in the building or area or around your computer for five hours doing whatever it is you feel like doing which may or may not be work. I worked in corporate America for a long time. I frequently went to work for eight hours a day and did zero work, because there was nothing to do or I didn’t feel like it or I had to be in meetings all day which seems like work but is not. Working in America is broken but that’s a letter for another day.

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Forgive me if you’ve heard this one before. When you are so old you forget how old you are (my brain is convinced I’m 47) and your blog is old enough to vote in elections, sometimes you will repeat yourself. I’m sure I’ve told this story in the page of this blog before, but it’s front of mine right now because the trailer for the new Lion King dropped sometime during Thanksgiving.

“Remember” the trailer intones, and my family is all, “Remember?” and then smiling at me like a bunch of hungry hyenas.

See, back in the summer of 1994 I took then fourteen-year-old Sister #4 out for a dinner and a movie to celebrate our birthdays. We went to Pablo’s (bleh) her favorite local restaurant and then caught a showing of “The Lion King” at the Shakopee movie theater which was jam-packed that night.

And then Mufasa died and I literally lost my shit. I ugly cried so hard that I couldn’t catch my breath and people around us asked if I was okay and my poor fourteen-year-old sister nearly died of embarrassment. The story is much better when she tells it. I wonder if she’ll see this new version with me.

The post Day 128 of 200: I’m Not Ready appeared first on I Will Dare.

For the record, I define “cry” as tears falling from your eyes. It could be one or two that slip out or an eye-glass-splashing tsunami of tears.

1.) Because I was singing along with the Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine” and the sun has forsaken Minnesota and it’s been rainy for about 82 days and I was suddenly drowning in nostalgia for 1993 (when I learned about the Indigo Girls) and 1997 (when I saw the Indigo Girls) simultaneously.

2.) Because Chef Fatima Ali has terminal cancer and not much time left to live. I’ve seen every episode of every season of Top Chef at least twice. It’s one of my very favorite TV shows, one I love so much I buy it from Amazon. Fatima was a contestant on season 15 and she was so damn charming that I followed her on Instagram (I’m snooty when it comes to the social media follow). I was bummed when I learned she had cancer, and am so sad that she doesn’t have much time left. Her piece in Bon Appétit is heart breaking.

3.) Because I watched the episode of “The Office” where Jim & Pam get married and it never ceases to make me cry. I’m a goober.

The post Day 77 of 200: Reasons I Cried Today appeared first on I Will Dare.

Some days the lack of Tim Riggins in your life is and the melancholy it causes is so inescapable that you have to stop whatever you’re doing and eat that delicious Lentil & Cauliflower stew you made while watching that first episode of Friday Night Lights.

Long about the time Jason Street lays injured on the field and the camera flashes to the Dillion Panther fans in the stands with their crossed fingers raised in hope, I start to cry. I pretty much don’t stop crying until the episode is over. Sometimes it lasts a little past that.

See what happened there? My need for some Tim Riggins got in the way of clear thinking and I chose a bad episode to watch. Well, it’s not a bad episode per se, but it’s not the episode to watch if you don’t feel like bawling your eyes out. I wasn’t in the mood to bawl my eyes out, but it happened anyway. It seems I’ve added another item to my not-so-secret stash of emotional porn.

As I dried my tears I started composing an email to Christa and then stopped mid email:

“What’s the cryingest episode of tv ever? Jen Lindley’s death? The first episode of FNL? Mitch Leery’s funeral?”

Right about then, I got selfish and said to myself, “Dumbass you should put this on your oft-neglected blog and see what other’s have to say.”

As far as crying-y episodes of TV shows go, I’d submit these as my Top Cryingest Episodes of TV I Can Think of at the Moment.

1. Friday Night Light’s Pilot episode*
2. Jen Lindley’s death on Dawson’s Creek
3. Darlene’s poem on Roseanne
4. Marshall’s father dies on How I Met Your Mother
5. Brendan Frasier dies on Scrubs
6. Darlene gives birth on Roseanne
7. Blind School Fire on Little House on the Prairie
8. Freddie’s Sexual Assault on A Different World

*FNL gets the nod for number one-ness because it’s the very first episode and you have no emotional ties to anyone and yet you still bawl your head off. Also, there is no Buffy because I’ve never watched Buffy. It’s one of my winter projects.

The post FNL Episode 1: The cryingest episode of TV ever? Maybe. appeared first on I Will Dare.

I’m having Ruby problems again. She refuses to start. She likes to make starting-like sounds but really that’s just teasing. There is no starting. My brother-in-law Ben thinks it might be the fuel pump which costs $400 just for the part. I expect labor will probably be even more. The thought of all this makes me want to barf because work is still super slow and I’m already starting to have nightmares where I have to move in with my parents and be 40 and single and living with my parents.

Speaking of my parents. They came over today to help me get Ruby towed to the shop. First the Tow Dude walked into my garage, turned Ruby’s key, and said, “It doesn’t want to start.”
“Yeah, that’s why I called you,” I said.

Tow Dude then went out to his tow truck where he got a hammer, laid down next to Ruby, and started wailing on shit underneath her with that hammer. He asked my dad to turn the key. Then shook his head, and mumbled something about fuel pump and no spark.

I turned to my mom and said, “I could have told him that.” My mom just shook her head, rolled her eyes, and said “Let’s go back inside.”

She was not too happy that Tow Dude wailed on my truck. “He has no right to do that. He’s just supposed to tow the damn thing.”

After Ruby was out of the garage and on her way to the shop (I hope, I have not heard from them at all which makes me a little nervous but not too nervous because she didn’t leave here until after 3 and the shop closed at 5), my parents decided to ask me if I needed money for about the 687th time today.

I’m not sure what it is about parents asking you if you need money that turns you into the worst version of your 25-year-old self — proud and stupid and desperately trying to show how grown up you are — but it totally does. Even though they were over here helping me I was suddenly indignant.

“Nooooo,” I whined. “I don’t need money.”
“Don’t be afraid to ask if you need help,” my dad said.
“I won’t,” I said barely containing an eyeroll.

It sucks. It all sucks and it sucks and I’m crabby about the suck and I’m crabby that all I can think about is how much everything sucks. And it won’t stop raining.

Bah.

Also, to make everything even worse? I told my parents a story about my cats. It involved my nephews but it was still a story about my cats. I can go die of shame now.

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