Dear Darling Ones,

My sisters often tease me about what a loud blabbermouth I turn into when I’m anxious. It’s a weird habit for a generally shy introvert.

However, I grew up in an emotionally-volatile family and silence was often a prelude to an explosion of some kind, sometimes it led to violence. I’ll never forget being knocked into a wall at my Grandma Chromey’s apartment when my dad and his siblings got into an argument that ended in a physical fight.

My dad loved to use the silent treatment when he was angry. In my head and body, silence = violence. Whenever I encounter an awkward silence I fill that void, even if the silence is normal, when people aren’t expected to talk.

This makes a lot people believe I’m an outgoing extrovert. Not true! It’s just that I abhor awkward silences more than I value staying quiet and unnoticed.

When I went to the dentist a few months ago Sister #2 said, “You were so loud and laughing so much I thought, ‘Oh, she’s so anxious.’”

It’s an annoying affliction because in the moment I know I’m blathering on. My brain is screaming SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP, but my fight or flight response is all, “fuck off.”

The babbling has, of course, only gotten worse since the stroke robbed me of my balance and ability to walk. Always acutely aware of my towering height and enormous size, I’ve now added a wobbly, lurching stomp accompanied by a giant walker (used for very short distances) making my in public anxiety skyrocket.

To show you what I mean, I present you an abridged list of everything I told the woman who cut my hair Thursday.

• I shaved my head bald on & off from 2018-2023.
• I did the shave/grow out thing once because I wanted to try it, once because of COVID, and once because I had a stroke.
• My goal is to have Belinda Carlisle “Mad About You” hair.
• Thick hair runs in my family.
• So does curly hair.
• My biological father was 6’3″ and my mom is 5’10”
• 5’8″ Sister #2 laughs when she people tell her she’s tall.
• My dad was 5’7″ on a very good day.
• When I had a sleep study the wires they put on people’s legs were too short for me so they improvised.
• And the bed was too short.
• My right side was affected by the stroke.
• I have a tremor and a lot of heaviness on my right side.
• Yes, that’s the tallest walker a lot of people have seen.
• NONE of the six male first responders believed me when I told them I had a stroke and a friend had to take me to the hospital.
• Women need to advocate for themselves because men don’t believe our pain.

I did learn a bit about her. She has a brother and three kids She and her husband redid their basement and now their 6’5″ friend Matt can’t walk through it without hunching.

Gah, I am the worst.

Blabberingly yours,
Jodi

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Sorry, Darling Ones,

I’ve been super chatty thus far this week and I’m sure many people are about full up of my nattering. Good thing reading this website is optional!

Today I have three reasons to come here to post a few selfies (as seen above).

Reason #1: One of the Tea Ladies told me my skin looked wonderful or beautiful or radiant and that made me feel good. You couple that with the thought I had the other day about how I wished I had more pictures of myself from my younger days when I mostly avoided cameras because I was too fffffaaaatttt and that’s a damn shame.

I cannot remember which complimentary adjective the Tea Lady used because I’m an awkward yeti and my brain was scrambling for a joke I could make. I settled for “I did take a shower yesterday.” And that is 100% truth.

Do you want to know my beauty secret? Wash your face with water whenever you shower. After the shower apply The Ordinary’s Hyaluronic Acid 2% + B5 Hydrating Serum and then Radha Rosehips oil. I purchased this stuff two years ago and haven’t had to buy more yet. Now, leave your face alone until the next time you shower. If you eat something greasy or your face feels greasy, do a quick wipe down with witch hazel.

Of course this only works for the incredibly lazy and those who do not wear makeup.

Now you too can look radiant for a few minutes on Zoom when the light hits you right and if you have a kind friend who not only notices those things but also says them out loud.

Reason #2: I decided to take the selfies in the first place because I am endlessly charmed by the grey stripe in my left pig tail. That stripe is my current favorite physical attribute. It only appears stripey when I wear my hair in pigtails. If I wear my hair down it’s a peak-a-book grey patch. If I wear it in a ponytail it looks like I dyed the under parts of my hair grey. I did not.

Reason #3: After a million years (or maybe a decade) of wearing tortoiseshell glasses on the regular, I’m gonna soon find out if I can be a thick, chunky black glasses kind of gal. I’m a little nervous. I have a lot of non-tortoise glasses but I never wear them. They’re my backups (and my second pair of backups, and my other non-progressive backups, and you get the idea). Without fail I go back to the tortoiseshell after a week. Also, Sister #2 has been a black-frames gal for longer than I’ve been a tortoiseshell gal and I’m afraid the devastating accusation of being a copycat is going to be leveled against me. However, she is the all-time queen copycatter so I should be okay.

Reason #4: I never pass up an opportunity to show off my beloved yellow cans.

In other news, I have begun collecting Lilac songs. So far I have four, if you got any toss those titles my way.

I promise to keep quiet tomorrow.

Jodi

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Dear Darling Ones,

These are vital updates I would have made throughout past week or so if I weren’t so busy making the dollars. The worst thing I do to my creative practice is trying to complete all the paying work before I do the stuff that pays my soul. Such is life, I guess. My soul doesn’t pay the goddamn mortgage around here.

Speaking of making the dollars. . .
I had a Zoom meeting with a potential new (PNC) client who is considering giving me dollars for making some words. During the meeting this exchange happened.
Me: I’m very, um, what’s the word? You know for someone who writes a lot?
PNC: prolific?
Me: Yeah! I’m very prolific.
PNC was not afraid of my boneheadedness and I’m signing & sending a contract to him tomorrow. Which is why I . . .

Promptly ran out & spent the dollars I have yet to earn. . .
I fell in love with a red cardigan that is like $60, which is really rich for my inexpensive blood. But it made my heart go zoom when I saw it, so I ordered. Then that felt so good I ordered some more of those expensive socks my feet love. And then because Valentine’s Day is nearing I bought myself a little $38 present I will tell you about later when it comes and I can show you it.

Of course I bought all that garbage and now I’m 83% sure I’m going to have to buy a new coffee maker, but I will bore you about that later.

A truthy interlude
I can’t keep up those kinds of transitions because none of the rest of these have a lot to do with each other, and trying to make them parallel is gonna be awkward and more work than it’s worth. Most of this blog is more work than it’s worth. I go a long away to keep myself amused, which is weird because I’m generally pretty easily amused. I’m still laughing about the Frightened Rabbit lyric I hid in the image on this post.

The other day

1. I made 12 breakfast sandwiches with a bunch of leftover English muffins from Christmas, the dozens of eggs I keep on hand at all times because I live my life like someone is going to walk in, put a gun to my head, and say if I want to live I must make bacon & eggs for nine people, and some of that bacon from the aforementioned imaginary scenario. I’m four sandwiches in and I’m sad to report they are not as good as the frozen kind. Cheaper and healthier, probably? But for my money if you’re gonna make some sort of homemade, handheld breakfast the breakfast burrito is where it’s at.
2. I ate one of those breakfast sandwiches for dinner with some leftover tortilla chips while watching “Bob’s Burgers.” I thought to myself, as I licked a tortilla crumb off my shirt, “It’s a good thing I’m so big, it’s would be hard to fit this much sexy in a smaller body. I need seventy-seven inches to contain all this.” Like I said, very easily amused.
3. Then I looked up and saw Alex Papasian on the screen and realized we were dressed alike (pictured above).
4. Also pictured above, I can put my hair in a ponytail now. We’ve come a long way, baby.

Supergenius vs. The Trash Goblin: The Heating Vent Wars
Now that all the coffee table truffles are gone, Wendell has to find a new fuckery to use to drive me bonkers. His favorite pastime is removing the heating grates from the heating vents in my bedroom. I don’t know if all houses are like this, but my grates are just gently placed on the vent and pretty easy for humans to remove and mildly more difficult for really determined felines to remove.

Wendell cannot abide grates on top of heating vents. It is the scourge of his existence and if I put them back he will spend hours at 3:23 a.m. removing them the way god intended. I have stopped fighting this battle and just let the grates sit next to the vents. But because he is a fucker, sometimes he drops one of his many beloved pipe cleaners down there and then must spend a lot of time rescuing his friend from the fiery pits of hell. At least that’s what it sounds like to me.

Prolifically yours,
Jodi

The post My Soul Doesn’t Pay the Mortgage & Other Vital Updates appeared first on I Will Dare.

Hold on to your butts, Darling Ones,

I have just learned there is a biography of John Cougar Mellencamp coming out next. NEXT WEEK! Are you so excited your heart is kind of pounding? I am. I love biographies and rock & roll and John Cougar Mellencamp. It’s a trifecta of love and boy howdy, could I use some love.

This is not the point of today’s letter, it was just some good news I wanted to share with you. Todays letter is about my hair. I’m sure you’re curious because it has been literally 30 days since the last hair update.

What possible dramatic hair changes could have happened in 30 days, you ask? A lot. Mostly that I went from looking like Jackson Browne to a skeevy, mulleted guy who wore an Aerosmith t-shirt while smoking Marlboro Reds behind the high school in 1988. Ick. It was bad and the feathery mullet was driving me bonkers.

This is why last night at 3 a.m. while insomnia ravaged my brain, I cut the mullet off. I did it myself. And, I gotta say, it doesn’t look too bad. I mean, take a look above to see for yourself.

I was a little salty about not only being unable to sleep, but also all the laundry was done — washed, folded, put away. This is my go-to activity when insomnia is in town. Also it was warm in my boudoir because it’s always ten-fifteen degrees warmer upstairs and I’ve turned off the AC (hopefully for the year). Thus my mullet was a little sweaty and a lot annoying. So I marched into the bathroom, grabbed some scissors from the drawer and in four snips I had myself a new ‘do.

In my head, I was making comparisons to the “Needle in the Hay” scene from “The Royal Tennenbaums.” Only, I rewatched that scene before writing this and uffda! I forgot what a gut punch it is. I expected it to be a little painful because I won’t ever be able to listen to Elliott Smith without some pain, but that scene? Fuck. I’m not the biggest Wes Anderson fan, but that scene is stunning and dark. I also thought of the scene from “Empire Records” where Debra shaves her head. But that one is a post-suicide attempt scene.

FOR THE RECORD: I am not suicidal. I’m not even depressed. I do not suffer from depression. I’m maybe a little bit anxious for dad-related reasons and there’s always my deep, inherent sadness, but, I repeat, I am not suicidal. I’ve had problems in the past with people interpreting things I write here as me wanting to kill myself. I do not want to do that.

Wow, for a post about cutting my hair like some kind of hillbilly, white trash, super religious ding dong this got dark fast. I blame Hollywood because it seems as though they use self hair cutting as a metaphor for a mental breakdown.

My self-done hair cut was a metaphor for being tired, cranky, impulsive/impatient, and a little sweaty. Maybe that’s a kind of breakdown. Doesn’t matter, because I feel like a sexy, punk rock renegade with my yellow Willie Nelson t-shirt that matches my yellow cans (not pictured). Also, I got my favorite cookies from the grocery store today. Not too shabby, all things considered.*

And, lest we forget, there’s a John Cougar Mellencamp book coming out next week.

Love,
Jodi

 
*Today I spent 20 minutes of a 30 minute meeting commiserating with a client about how everything is a lot all the damn time. She asked me if I was exhausted and if trying to get work done was harder than ever? And I was all, “hell yes, it is.” Then we soaked in our bitterness about how our Spring post-vaxx optimism had been crushed and that the disillusionment that has caused is a lot to bear.

The post Shock Me, Shock Me, Shock Me with that Deviant Behavior appeared first on I Will Dare.

Hi Darling Ones,

I was going to title this post “If Jackson Browne Mated with a Mean Turtle: The Last in a Series.” However, by the time I was done typing the word ‘turtle’ I had already changed my mind. If we go back into quarantine I’m 87% sure I’ll shave my head again and thus chronicle its various growing out phases in another round of The COVID Diaries.

As it is, it’s now been a year since I last shaved my head and I’ve entered into the endless Jackson Browne + Mean Turtle phase of my existence. Left to its own devices my hair just really, really loves being Jackson Browne’s hair twin. It’s kinda heavy on top and wispy on the sides and loves to hum “Doctor My Eyes” on many occasions.

With a hair dryer and styling goo, I can make my hair do a lot of other things. My hair is a multi-talented team player that, when given the proper tools, really shines. I am a lazy one-hit wonder who prefers spending my time not doing my hair. We both really like Paul Westerberg’s cover of “These Days.”

I’m kinda looking forward to getting an actual, factual haircut by a professional once my bangs get a little longer (fingers crossed this happens in Octoberish). I haven’t had my haircut by someone other than me since April of 2018 when I decided to shave my head for fun and profit. There was no profit, but I still kept the buzzcut for five months. By the time I grew it back enough we were in COVID quarantine and I shaved it again.

In unrelated news, I’m making bbq ribs for the first (and last) time. It is a gross, pain in the ass process I do not wish to ever replicate. I’m also worried they’re not gonna be very good because I got so exasperated with the process. I’m a firm believer in the food you prepare tasting like how you feel. Or maybe how I feel influences how I think the food I made tastes. It’s something to ponder, I suppose.

Please don’t confront me with my failures, I had not forgotten them,
Jodi

P.S. I can’t stop listening to the “Singles” soundtrack and I may need an intervention.

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