Hi Darling Ones,

How was your Thanksgiving? Just to get this out of the way, my Thanksgiving sucked and I hated it.

Sure having Sister #4 & Dolly (her Beagle/German Shepherd mix who super hates me as the running joke goes) here for three days was a goddamn delight. We ate pizza, watched obscure game shows from the 90s, bumbled our way through making Thanksgiving Dinner for Maxwell & The Olds, compared loneliness (she too is single and lives alone), and laughed until our throats hurt.

Most importantly, she listened to all my Dolly Parton fun facts and didn’t ghost me after. She didn’t even make fun of me when I cried while talking about Dolly, The Highwomen, and feminism.

I only cried a little bit after she left today. Now she’ll sit in her house for a month and I’ll sit in mine and we’ll do this all over again for Christmas which, prediction: Will suck and I will hate it.

Odds are against the Portlanders coming home for Christmas, which is what makes the holidays sucky and hateable. We FaceTime and group chat on the regular, but it’s not the same. I miss them so much I cry thinking about it. I’m crying now typing about it. Since Sister #3 unsubscribed from the Sister Club, the Portland-contingent’s absence is even harder.

This is all so hard. It’s hard on everyone, I know that. I know it’s hard in different ways, but knowing everyone is suffering doesn’t make me feel any better.

Maybe if I spend $200 on the LEGO Bookshop I’ll feel better? So far buying a new record and a pine tree hasn’t made me feel better.

Tomorrow I will be cheerier, Darling Ones. I promise. Maybe I won’t even talk about crying.
Jodi

P.S. I included a new picture of my Sadness Garden for you to gaze upon. I got a philodendron to replace the dead lavender. He is named Phil (obviously) after the Danny Devito character in Disney’s “Hercules” because I recently listened to 12 hours of classical mythology lectures and now I’m full of Greek myth fun facts, which I also shared with Sister #4 only she did make fun of me for those ones.

The post The COVID Diaries: It Sucked & I Hated It appeared first on I Will Dare.

When we last left off, I was discussing my 32-year-old envy for Lisa’s myth about Dandra. Lest you underestimate the enormity of my envy, you should know I never read the myth she wrote, she just told it to me. Yep, the good ol’ oral tradition.

So I was feeling a little not good enough when the final project for the section rolled around. I can’t remember the assignment, but I do remember that I spent a ridiculous amount of time recreating Pandora’s Box. To totally brag, my project was so good Ms. Marquette asked me if she could keep it to show to future 9th graders. It was probably the best thing to happen to me during the entirety of 9th grade.

All this is on my mind because my passion for Greek mythology has come roaring back.

First, I read Madeline Miller’s wonderful novel Circe, which led to listening to Suzanne Vega’s “Calypso” 193 times in a row (I know Circe & Calypso are different).
Then, I discovered Let’s Talk About Myths, Baby, a podcast that is the new love of my life.
Finally, I’m reading The Silence of the Girls because when I obsess, I obsess all the way.

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Ms. Marquette was my 9th grade English teacher. She was a teeny, tiny woman* who looked like Betty Boop come to life. That is, if Betty dressed like a 1986 9th grade English teacher. Ms. Marquette had big, heavily-lined eyes and a dark curly bob.

She’s easily in the Top 10 all-time favorite teachers, and definitely Top 5 English teachers (I took a lot of English classes during my education. I like books and writing).

She taught us so much — Emily Dickinson and “Romeo & Juliet” and Lord of the Flies and how to properly pronounce the word “melancholy” and the importance of clarity and thoroughness when writing, which she demonstrated by following word-for-word our instructions on how to make a peanut butter & jelly sandwich.

And, most importantly, for the purpose of these next two blog posts, Greek mythology.

I fell fast and hard for Greek mythology. I remember writing a myth about how tall people were turned into trees. It wasn’t very good.

My friend Lisa wrote one about how a woman named Dandra was cursed with dandruff for being so proud of her hair. I’m still a little envious.

*She might not have been that tiny, but I was a 6’2″ 9th grader.

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