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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Dear Darling Ones,

For the first half of my career I worked on and off with a woman named Linda who used to ask her clients & contractors “What keeps you up at night?” She was asking it to find out what was stressing people out about work so she could figure out how to help. I rarely answered her honestly because work only kept me up for a few years in the early aughts.

The things that keep me up at night usually include: agonizing why I didn’t make out with that guy* when I had the opportunity; shitty things I did in the 90s when I was a complete asshole; and why doesn’t he love me.

This morning as I was getting ready for the day, I reached for my brush and wondered if my mullet had gotten to the point where I could wear my hair in pigtails. While I was brushing my hair I joked to myself, “I should write about this. I bet people are losing sleep over what my hair looks like now.” It’s been ten months since I stopped shaving my head and I’m sure y’all are dying for an update.

In my head you, Darling Ones, are often Teddy from “Bob’s Burgers” kind of obsessed with the mundanities in my life in a kind of endearing way. In this scenario, I too am Teddy, sharing the mundanities of my life that absolutely nobody, not one single person, cares about even a little bit.

So yes, this blog is nothing more than the two parts of my personality having a conversation. Thanks for joining us.

Back to the hair situation. I love wearing my hair in pigtails even if it does make me look like a giant Cabbage Patch Kid mated with a mean turtle. Matters are not helped by the fact that I’m wearing my spare specs because I decided to replace the lenses in my beloved tortiseshells.** I think these spare specs make me look babyish, if babies have dark circles under their eyes and wrinkles around their mouth and also grey hair (which is kinda coppery because of the colored shampoo).

For the record, yesterday was a good hair day and every time I say myself in the mirror I was all, “Hey there, sexy Jackson Browne hair twin with the nice rack.”

Sleep well tonight, Darling Ones,
Jodi
 
*This is a solid gold go-to that has spanned many men and literal decades. Being a coward is always good source for late night angst.

 
**I also bought two pairs of cheapie glasses off the internet. One of the pairs is yellow because Yellow Period, which my sisters kept calling my “yellow phase.” I corrected them every time because I am a pedantic nerd.

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Hi Darling Ones,

You’ve all probably been wondering, where is Jodi’s hair at these days? It’s been months and months since we had an update on this very vital topic we all care about so deeply.

I’m here to tell you, Darling Ones, it ain’t pretty. I’m rocking both a mullet and some picket-fence side spikes, and it is confusing. This is a hairstyle that was popular with both the 80s skater boys I had crushes on in junior high and all the dirtbag fuckers who bullied me back then. I’m oddly attracted and repulsed by my own head.

To be perfectly frank, that’s probably the story of my entire life regarding my appearance. I’m forty-eight years old and I feel like I should be past vanity and caring about what I look like, and yet. . . This is all the more frustrating because I barely care about it to begin with. I’ve never worn makeup. I don’t shave anything. I stopped coloring my hair in like 2015? 2016? I haven’t worn deodorant since 2009. And fashion? I don’t even know her. I never have and that’s fashion’s fault because I might have cared if anyone wanted to cater to the whims of a 6’5″ fat woman.

And yet.
And yet.
AND YET I can’t seem to totally let it go. Yesterday I zoomed with my friend Meagan and we discussed aging. I told her that I better feel something momentous when I turn fifty or I’m gonna be pissed. Maybe the momentous thing will be giving up the last tiny fuck I give regarding my appearance because it is exhausting.

Last week when I listened to Liz & Ani talk, they discussed this passage from Ani’s memoir:
“For a girl, the fear of not being pretty is the fear of not being a valuable object, which is the fear of not being loved. It is a conflation that is instilled so early on and runs so deep that, even when you know it’s a fear perpetrated by patriarchy, goaded by fashion magazines, and used to manipulate you into buying stuff, you still can’t stop the way it affects you. Being a woke feminist doesn’t mean you’ve overcome it, it just means you’ve learned to live with your perpetual self-loathing and your anger around it, too.” ~ No Walls and the Recurring Dream, Ani DiFranco

Even though I had a lot of issues of Ani’s memoir, she’s so right on this count. I’m angry about my own self-loathing regarding my appearance and how I blame it for my inability to attract and keep a man. And yes, it’s 100% the fault of my appearance and not my ice robot heart or indecisiveness or smorgasbord of other quirks & defects. Afterall, my aunts and great aunts and my mom all told me my entire life that at least I have a good personality so obviously it is not the fault of my impeccable personality.

What the actual fuck is that bullshit, Jodi Chromey?

So yes, the great hair grow out of 2021 is going swell and not causing me any kind of angst whatsoever. I’m glad you all asked,
Jodi

P.S. I read two really wonderful things today that took my breath away.

First, Gina Frangello one of my favoeite writers, pointed out a poem by Jill Alexander Esbaum called The Men We Marry, the Men We Fuck. It includes this line which slammed me right to the floor,
And he was as handsome as he was doomed.
Lovely as lust, but fickle as the moon.

That “lovely as lust, but as fickle as the moon” makes my pulse race. It’s so good. I’m like the character in the Tobias Wolff short story Bullet in the Brain repeating the line over and over. Seriously, say it out loud. It’s magnificent.

Second, was If My Body Were a House by Emrys Donaldson in The Rumpus, which grabbed me from the first sentence, “my body is electric with desire when I realize I haven’t been held for months” and never let go.

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So Darling Ones,

My brain has decided that today marks 100 days since I last shaved my head and since I ended my last romantic relationship. I’m about 68% sure these two things did not happen on the same day. I have no idea what day these events actually took place, but 100 days seems like it could be a thing.

So, you’re probably wondering what hair looks like 100-days post shave. Here’s your answer: a nightmare. Last night when I mentioned my confidence is a little low, it’s all due to vanity. My hair looks weird and not like I did it on purpose because I’m cool & edgy weird, but uhh does she not own a mirror weird. And, much like Jo in Little Women, my hair is my one beauty.

Incidentally, my new hair goal is Winona in “Reality Bites,*” but grey. With my ultimate hair goal to Belinda Carlisle in the “Mad About You” video, but grey. And while we’re at it, I would also like her nose, lips, and chin. Thank you.

Unfortunately, I’m smack dab in the middle of if Prue from “Great British Bake Off” mated with a mean turtle stage, which is, shockingly, worse than the if Biff mated with a mean turtle stage.

Sigh. Belinda doesn’t have a nose that makes her look like a mean turtle.

Anyway, today was as stupid and boring as yesterday was. However, I did a bunch of work and I also cleaned my oven, because, why not?

Only fourteen more days until I interact with another human again!

Jodi

*Yesterday the song “Tempted” by Squeeze shuffled up and when he got to the part about “I bought a novel, some perfume, a fortune all for you”, I thought to myself, “I would really love those two things as gifts from a man.” Because one, yes everything is about me and two I’m one lonely motherfucker.

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Dear Darling Ones,

I got a new shirt today. It has Stevie Nicks on it and wearing it makes me feel feminine and witchy, like some alluring mysterious woman of mystery and allure.* I have loved Stevie Nicks ever since nine-year-old me heard “Leather & Lace” and was all, “yes, this is love.” She also felt that way after hearing “Endless Love” by Diana Ross & Lionel Richie.

1981 was apparently a great year for duets.

This shirt is significant as it is a shirt made for a woman and I am woman who very rarely wears actual women’s clothes.

As a tall, fat woman clothes shopping is emotionally fraught and in my memory I spent most of my teen years dressed like Dorothy from “The Golden Girls.” I gave up on fashion pretty early. At a young age I learned fashion was just gonna break my stupid too big for everything heart. I learned this lesson from those adorable Guess Teddy Bear shirts that were all the rage in about 1985 and even if my poor family could have afforded one they did not exist in my size.

If desire were on a scale, 0 would be how much I want Turnip to be re-elected and 192,825,283 would be how much I wanted that Guess sweatshirt. Does this analogy both accurately reflect how much I do not what that fart face to continue his fascist reign and how much I wanted that sweatshirt? I hope so. Even though I slept for something like 10 or 11 hours last night my brain is still foggy.

For the most part I put zero thought into my clothes. I have a uniform I’ve been wearing for the better part of the last 12 years — athletic pants with stripes down the side and a dark-colored, short-sleeved t-shirt in the summer or a long-sleeved thermal shirt in the winter. Occasionally, when I’m feeling a little kicky, I’ll put on some plaid, fleece pajama pants. I do not think I’ve worn pants with a zipper or jeans in all of 2020. All my clothes are shapeless and baggy. Basically I float around in a kind of cotton-polyester cloud for all of my days.

I wear these clothes because they take no thought, they’re comfortable, and, in my head, they render me invisible. For about 30 years I dyed my hair all kinds of eye-catching colors, not just because I liked it, but I was hoping to give people something to comment on other than my body. This worked roughly 30% of the time.

One of the side effects of my rampant, unrepentant TikTok addiction is that I have developed a fetish for men who chop wood (who knew that would be a thing?) and I might be starting to want to look like someone who doesn’t float around in an invisible polyester cloud all the time.

I watch a lot of videos of women promoting body positivity and showing off all themselves — their flabby arms, and back fat, and FUPAs, and I want to lavish every single one of them with praise and affection and thanks. Body positivity is hard.

Rationally and logically, I know my body is my body and fat has no morality. Fatness has no reflection on who I am as a person just like my hazel eyes or the nose that makes me look like a mean turtle. Like I know this. I KNOW THIS, and yet. . .

Working through my internalized fat phobia and shame is so hard. SO HARD. The things I say to myself about my own body are the kinds of things I throat punch my friends for saying about themselves.

So, I got a new shirt. I like it. In fact, I liked it so much I did some ill-advised begging for validation. I wish you could hear the strangled gurgle I just made in my throat.

God, why is it so hard to be a human all the fucking time?
Jodi

P.S. I found my favorite crochet hook in the couch today. Yay!

 
*this was intentional. It is a joke. I’m funny!

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