Hi Darling Ones,

Today I had to check in three different times with three different people as to what day of the week it was. A lot of things happened for a Monday.

1. I folded & put away an entire load of laundry that I washed yesterday. Usually it lives in the dryer for at least three days.
2. I showered and put on my new Medusa shirt. It makes me feel extra bad ass.
3. The project manager of a new gig I’ll be working on next month told me the client said, about my writing, “she really makes you feel something!”
4. I got the Wet Leg record and the new Jennifer Egan book in the mail.
5. Adam & Jake (BFK’s husband and son) came over to drop off Jake’s car for Maxwell to use this week, since his was stolen from work Saturday.
6. Max & Sonya brought gyros over and we chatted for three hours before they took the car. I hadn’t seen them since Christmas and it was nice to catch up with them.
7. I cancelled Easter because I don’t feel like Eastering this year. Thankfully, Sister #4 was amenable, especially because the nibs are going to Portland to be with their parents.
8. Oh, and I spent a good portion of time obsessing about my broken (again) ice maker. This is the third time it has gone kaput. I’m unclear why this thing hates me so much. I use it every day. I love it so much and yet. I also don’t know why the busted ice maker bothers me so much. I’m obsessed. I’ve watched roughly 83 youtube videos about troubleshooting the ice maker. I’ve already warned Adam that he might have to fix it for me. I texted BFK about it yesterday morning when I woke up to very little ice. Right now I’m in the process of doing what I did last time it broke. I turned it off for three days and then turned it back on and it was reborn. Let’s all pray for an Easter miracle in my refrigerator.
9. I had chorizo, black beans, and rice nachos for dinner because my goal is to eat all the leftovers I froze earlier this year. Last night it was chili cheese dogs.
10. Now I’m typing this list, playing fetch with Wendell G. Hobbs, and pondering how early I can go to bed, because I’m damn tired.

Not at all icily yours,
Jodi=

The post The Ice Maker Doesn’t Like Me & Other Vital Updates appeared first on I Will Dare.

Hi Darling Ones,

Last night The Youths came over for dinner. We ate pizza and watched the Stevie Nicks’ episode of VH1 Storytellers from 1998.* For the record, both of my viewing companions were born after this episode aired on VH1. In fact, I don’t even think either of them even knew what VH1 was. They for sure didn’t know what Storytellers was, because I told them.

Of The Youth’s many charms their love of Stevie Nicks is probably on the Top 10 list. They sat enthralled through the entire episode listening to Stevie Nicks talk about Prince and writing Landslide and Rhiannon during the same trip to Aspen.

After the show we sat and talked about music and Maxwell tattled on Sonya.

“She doesn’t like Pearl Jam,” he said.
I winced because that’s sacrilegious in our family.
“I don’t really like grunge,” she admitted.
“Her favorite grunge band is Babes in Toyland,” he said.
“THAT’S NOT GRUNGE!” Sonya and I shouted in unison.

The grunge discussion led us to watching Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York.

As the show started up I said to them, “I was your age when this came out.”

Both of their heads snapped to the right to look at me and as they stared at me with no small amount of horror my hair turned to mildew and my bones to dust.

“Wow,” Maxwell said. “I keep forgetting how long ago the 90s really were.”
“Yeah,” Sonya said. “They were like thirty years ago.”
“So the 70s were like fifty years ago?” Maxwell asked.
Sonya shook her head yes.

I would have said something by lips had curled into my toothless mouth as my skin wrinkled and turned grey right before my eyes.

Anciently yours,
Jodi

P.S. The song “All Apologies” always reminds me of my college newspaper days where we would constantly change the line “I wish I was like you easily amused” to be a kind of burn on whomever was in the room. It was nerdy and fun.

P.P.S I was inadvertently super social the last few days and today I’m paying the price in sheer exhaustion and foggy-headedness.

P.P.P.S. I also got super obsessed with finishing BFK’s magic lantern blanket and thus ended up watching a lot of TV and writing zero things.

 
*Thanks to the Great Socialist Streaming Revolt of June 2020, I now have all the things. Like all of them and one of them has a bunch of episodes of Unplugged & Storytellers and when I tell you it’s the best thing to happen to me since GSSRJ20, I am not kidding.

The post Can I Handle the Seasons of My Life? appeared first on I Will Dare.

Hi Darling Ones,

I’m just gonna do a quick bit of bragging about my nephew, Maxwell. He came over early tonight for dinner so he could grill the brats. He also made Rice Krispie bars to share. Two kinds! Chocolate and plain. He also got both me and my mom sweet, thoughtful gifts. Lavender and mint soap for me. A Mickey Mouse rubber duckie for her.

And when we were done eating he helped load the dishwasher and put everything away — without asking!

That is one good kid.

And in return I sent him home* with:

• Two pints of tuna salad
• Two pints of potato salad
• 4 brats + 4 buns
• 5 cans of Coke
• 1 quart of brownie cookie dough ice cream
• 12 Lindor truffles because I couldn’t eat them anymore and they were from Christmas
• 8 Mega Rolls = 41 Rolls of Charmin Ultra Strong Toilet Paper
• 1 case of Fancy Feast cat food because Wendell refuses to eat that stuff

In other news, my mom is weirdly concerned with me getting sick after Shot #2 on Wednesday. She told me, repeatedly, that even though she and my dad were going up to Hinckley tomorrow they would be home on Thursday in case I got sick.

“What are you going to do?” I asked. “Watch me have a fever?”
“Well, I don’t know,” she said. “I could bring you stuff.”

I was all, oh, okay. This is the same woman who didn’t even call me when I had pneumonia in 2004. My mom is not the nurturing type. At all. Which is fine by me, because when it comes to being sick I’m more of a “leave me alone so I can die in peace” kind of person than a “please nurse me back to health” person. I get that from her.

So, anyway, we survived Mother’s Day. I hope you did too. I know this tends to be a weird, fraught day for a lot of people. I’ve struggled with it in the past. This year it was good. I’m lucky my mom is super low key about this kind of thing and also easy to please when it comes to food. We had her favorite meal — brats, tuna salad, and potato chips.

Wiped out from all the talking,
Jodi

*Whenever The Youth visit I send them home with things. It’s a habit I picked up from my Grammu, who would always give stuff to people when they visited.

The post The COVID Diaries: A Quickie About Mother’s Day appeared first on I Will Dare.

Hi Darling Ones,

Another lavender plant died in my custody. I didn’t even have this one for a week before it started to die!

I was gonna say I killed it, but I think this is just a weak-ass strain of lavender. Once? yeah, probably my fault, but twice? Really? I’ve kept Muriel alive for 17 years so, like I said, I’m practically a farmer.

Even though I really want to grow lavender, I’ve decided to have it replaced with a philodendron. Like I told the very nice customer service person at Bloomscape, I cannot have another dead lavender on my conscience. I have a small vase full of dried lavender on my coffee table. I get the heart-eyes whenever I look at it because Jaycie brought me the lavender all the way from Oregon and Maxwell bought me the blue vase because it’s my favorite color and so I’d have something to keep it in. They really are the reason that I’m never too sad about not having children of my own. Being an aunt is sufficient.

That childlessness has been on my mind a bit today. This total heteronormative bullshit June 2019 article “Unmarried Women with No Kids Are the ‘Healthiest and Happiest Population Subgroup,’ Says Expert” blipped by on Twitter this morning and it made me so angry I put my glasses on at 7 a.m. even though I wasn’t ready to get up.

Excuse me, could you define happiness Expert Dude? Does it include the crushing loneliness mixed with constant financial and emotional insecurity? Where does the societal pressure fit in? How about the near constant feedback that you are pointless and could easily blip out of existence without anyone being effected in the least? Fuck man, life is hard for everyone. My hard is just different than a wife or mother, I know that. But sanctimonious assholes expect my life is all orgasms and naps all the time because I don’t have any kids or responsibilities. Thanks, Jenny, I also don’t have anyone to help pay the mortgage either.

Now, instead of rage barfing for 100 years, I’m gonna tell you one good thing about the dying lavender. No, two good things.

First of all, it smells wonderful.

Second of all, it’s still sitting on the dining room table slowly dying because in the secret optimistic chambers of my bitter, cynical heart I believe it’s going to make a dramatic comeback and thrive like a motherfucker because I want it to.

In the meantime, every time I walk past the table I sing “Dead Flowers” by The Rolling Stones. This is probably my favorite Stones’ song. Some days it’s “Get Off My Cloud” because drums and hand claps make me feel like I have Pop Rocks in my veins in a really good way.

Whenever I sing “Dead Flowers” I always think of my pal, Vodo. Many nights at Grumpy’s he would try to con me into singing karaoke and I always responded with “I’d rather die” or I would explain that I am so shy that I would die if I got up in front of people and sang with my own voice.

Just thinking about it gives me shivers of horror. I will serenade the shit out of you at our table. In Ruby. Randomly while I’m sitting on the couch. But in front of people? No.

Anyway, one of those nights we were talking about The Stones and my favorite must have been “Dead Flowers” that night and Vodo said, “You can do that one! It’s not even really singing. You can say it.” Then he busted into the first lines of the song. It was adorable.

Your queen of the underground,
Jodi

The post The COVID Diaries: Dead Flowers appeared first on I Will Dare.

Hi Darling Ones,

Today is my nephew Maxwell’s 22nd birthday. Do you remember when I interviewed him for this here blog back when he was four? Some of you might. It’s weird to read it, because the kid still loves all the animals and his dream job is still to work at the Minnesota Zoo.

To celebrate his birthday I made a Mexican feast. There were two kinds of enchiladas, fajitas, Spanish rice, esquites, chips, and salsa. I did not make a dessert. I feel a little guilty about that, but sleep continues to elude me so my energy is kinda low.

Like I think I can actually feel my synapses firing slower than normal. As Ellen Willis is my witness, I’m gonna take a handful of melatonin and sleep eight hours tonight if it’s the last thing I ever do.

For the record, tonight Max & Sonya went home with:

• 5 cream cheese chicken enchiladas
• 1 beef enchilada
• 1 box of some kind of blueberry and almond butter granola bars I got as a free sample from the grocery store
• 1 lemon
• 1 pint of Spanish rice
• $235 worth of quarters
• 1 can of Coke

The quarters were from my mom, a retired waitress (she just retired in January). Last time the youth (that’s what I call my niblings + their partners now) were here for dinner they did laundry and mom was outraged at them having to pay for it in their apartment’s laundry room. They talked about how hard it was to find quarters and my mom was all, “I’ll show you quarters.”

She’s hilarious.

Oh Darling Ones, I’m not worth a lick of beans right now. I wanted to tell you about Zooming with my out of state sisters and how much I miss them and how Thanksgiving is giving me tons of sadness and anxiety, but I’m too fucking tired. There was also a wonderful talk with the youth about TikTok and astrology.

But my poor tired brain cannot make the words so good right now.

Sleepily yours,
Jodi

The post The COVID Diaries: Cannot Make the Words So Good Right Now appeared first on I Will Dare.