Hi Darling Ones,

Even before the fascists regained control of our country (which wasn’t so hot before), I vowed I would spend 2025 noticing and celebrating happiness.

This is a project I’ve been half-assedly attempting since the triple whammy of my dad’s death, The Stroke, and the end of my 24-year friendship with BFK all in the span of 11 months. I had, and have, a lot of reasons to wallow in woe is me.

To be fair, after this week we ALL have a lot of reasons to wallow. I need to say that because lots of people really want to win The Suffering Olympics and tell me how much sadder/rougher/whathaveyou their life is. I refuse to participate. Everyone’s fighting a hard battle and all that. Plus, I don’t think you get a trophy upon death for having suffered the most. If you do, you can find me in the afterlife and brag about your trophy.

One of things that I’ve noticed since BFK broke up with me is how much I allowed her energy to impact mine. It sounds woo woo, but hear me out. BFK had a lot of misery in her life some real and some trumped up for attention’s sake. I carried a lot of her anger and sadness in solidarity, and it was exhausting, but I did it because I love her. I will do that for everyone I love. It’s part of being human. However, it’s frustrating to see someone miserable for years and years and refusing to do anything about it. Part of the reason BFK dumped me is that I told her she needed to do something different to change that. Oops.

As my friend EM said, nobody wants to hear they’re in charge of their own happiness. Another thing I need to say: mental health and neurodivergence makes happiness more difficult for some. I know!

The worst part about writing on the internet is people think if you don’t mention every fucking situation then you are ignorant of those things. It’s hard to cover all the bases in one simple blog post.

It was not my plan to have this week filled with small happy things, but it happened. I’m going to share a few with you.

• While I was not pleased with this news, Dr. Davies, my eye guy, was thrilled that my eyes have been stable since November. He claims that’s good. I claim it’s crap because my vision is still garbage (the distortion persists). He and my neurologist seem to think stability is good and I’m all, “that’s like thinking Cs are good.”
• On Wednesday I got to meet my friend Hotrod in real life. We’ve been arguing on the Internet for about 20 years (we think), but this is the first time we got to spend time together. You think it’d be strange to meet someone you’ve known online for 20 years, but it was surprisingly not awkward. We took a pic together before he left Supergenius HQ and texted it to our families and they were as happy about the visit as he and I were. He gave me a Pie book, which I’ll talk about later.
• I got a new water softener. Spending $1500 on it was not my favorite, but the plumber kid was my favorite. He was not a child, and I almost pooped my pants when he said he was 38. He almost pooped his pants when I told him I had a stroke. “You’re too young to have a stroke,” he said. So yes, I love him.
• I also love him because when were setting up the installation I asked him if he wanted a deposit or something and he said, “Nah, I trust you.” I told him I was a freelancer and I said the same thing to my clients.
• Some Darling Ones threw some cash my way and that really helped with the Water Softener. Plus, I got to buy some yarn because one of them said that’s what the money was for (thank you!)
• I hung an old drawer organizer on my wall. It started as a way to display some of the thimble collection my Grandma Chromey started for me, and then I added my best rocks, one of dad’s Pez dispenser, five Burnt Sienna crayons, and some of my other toys. Now I’m obsessed and accepting rocks, happy meal toys, and other garbage to put on it.
• My friend Solace was all, you should listen to the new jasmine.4.t record, specially the song Tall Girl.

It was a week that did my mood good, Darling Ones, and I wanted to share that with you.

Love,
Jodi

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Hola Queridas,

In this house we mostly use the feminine form of Spanish words.

How have you been? I’ve been busier than a one-legged woman at an ass-kicking contest (one of my favorite corny aphorisms).

I got a new microwave and dishwasher and then I had to get my new dishwasher fixed. Then I also had a bunch of work to do, enough to pay my mortgage in January. YAY!

Mostly, I’ve been working my Floppy Scoop and tremory fingers to the bone making Christmas magic. Aside from shopping for, unboxing, and wrapping every gift my mom bought for the Sister Club, I’ve been making stuff. See the cabbage above.

I’m putting together gift bags for a Christmas game we’ll play during a Very St.Martin Christmas. It will be epic. And if it’s not, at least I’ll have had a lot of fun in the process.

The big news is I saw a Cardio-Vascular surgeon yesterday. He was very handsome and laughed at my brain damage joke, so totally aces. I had to make a brain damage joke because my sister had to correct me twice about the date of my stroke. 2022? 2023? What’s the difference?

He said there’s nothing to do right now about the narrowing in my left carotid artery. Same with the weird lesion on my brain.

This was brand new information. What weird lesion on my brain? He said it was abnormal but nothing to worry about now and we’d keep an eye on it. That means I get to have yearly CT scans. So that will be fun.

Happy Holidays, Darling Ones,
Jodi

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Hello Darling Ones,

How are you? You know if you ever want to say how you are you can leave a comment or email me or message/@ me on various platforms. Just giving you that option.

As for me, I’m still down in the dumps. I didn’t get any LEGOs for Easter, BFK still dislikes me, and my tremor continues to be a dramatic son of a bitch. Kind.

Yesterday my physical therapist made me do sit-to-stands in the pool. I hate doing sit-to-stands, both on land and at sea.

“How are you doing?” she asked as I hauled me carcass off the pool step into standing position.
“I hate these,” I whined. “I feel so wobbly!”

She checked to make sure I feel safe, because PTs worry about that. They never want you to fall, which I think makes their jobs about 64% less hilarious. Although, if your job is to help people get strong, falls aren’t so funny. Besides, when a patient falls they have to do a ton paperwork, which is 0% hilarious.

“If it makes you feel any better,” she said. “You don’t look wobbly.”
“You know,” I said. “I don’t think it does.”

For some reason I’m afraid people will think I’m faking it. It’s as though I need some physical marker to show people that yes, yes, I am indeed disabled at the moment. The problem when your afflictions are all in your head is it feels like it’s all in your head.

So I continue to be sad and cranky and looking for bright spots, no matter how small.

For example, I was on the phone with EM last night telling her how pumped I am that the Netflix Glass Blowing show is back. I cannot think of the name of it and I’m refusing to look it up. Best in Blow? Best in Glass? Blowin’ it?

It’s a Top Chef/Project Runwayesque show where glass blowers create glass art in a certain amount of time following the challenge, one goes home each week until there one glower left. It’s fabulous and there’s always the chance that shit is gonna bread, which is the glass blowing equivalent of a patient falling in physical therapy.

This show is very much my jam (jar).

May I remind you how much I love glass crap? I’m quite literally wasted my life by not being a glass blower. At the time I was sure all I needed to fill the hole in my soul was my own glory hole.

“I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t become a glass blower,” I told EM. “Can you imagine how sad I’d be if I had to give up my passion because of the stroke?”

That, my Darling Ones, is what we call finding a silver-lining.

Fragilely & transparently yours,
Jodi

P.S. Pictured above is my red crystal Hershey Kiss candy dish. Isn’t she a beaut? Before I was poor I liked to play eBay chicken for cute crap. This usually involved me bidding $5-$10 on something marked “or best offer.” I won some. I lost a bunch. I love that $5 candy dish.

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Dear Darling Ones,

A long, long time ago at the dawn of the internet age I worked as a copywriter at a software company. It was my first grown-up job and I took it very seriously as a grown up would. Even with all the seriousness I still found time to update my personal blog seven times a day, illegally download songs from Audio Galaxy, chat with friends both in the office and online, carry on several email flirtations including one with the silent man in the creative department I called Art Guy, and take an hour-long lunch every day.

When I tell you nobody needs to work 40 hours a week in the office, I know of what I speak. Though, to be transparent, whenever we were launching new software I legit worked 60 hours a week writing all the things.

About the time of the second round of major layoffs I figured out corporate America is a heartless soul sucking wasteland, and I took the job a little less seriously. By the time we were acquired by Hell, Inc. and most of the company was let go including the entire creative department sans me, I realized it was mostly shenanigans, foolishness, nerf ball.

I was a bad worker because my boss was in Canada and mostly forgot I existed. Frequently, I had very little to do and because I’m not a dummy I did not call attention to that fact. After all, I was a single woman with a mortgage. I was gonna ride this gravy train until it crashed (which it did, in November of 2007 One summer I left the office every Friday at lunch and went to see a movie. I’d come back after, gather my things, and leave. Nobody ever knew.

This went off the rails. I came to write about my new Slinky and not my years as a cube-dwelling corporate drone, and yet somehow it snuck in there. Probably because whenever I think of Slinkies I think of Seamus and how we spent an entire afternoon conducting a “scientific” study of my Slinkies — Big Slink and Lil Slink. Shortly after the study I got a third Slinky that was raindbow-colored and plastic which we dubbed Brokeback Slink since I often displayed it and Lil Slink intertwined on my desk.

Recently, I explained to my friend EM what it meant when someone treated you like a Slinky. “It’s like the toy, you know. You ignore for months and months until you’re moved for unknown reasons to pick it up and play with it and it’s super fun for like three minutes. Then you put it down and don’t touch it again for a few months. That’s what [EM’S friend] does to you. She ignores you for months pays attention to you for a week and then disappears again.”

Incidentally, Slinkies are the kind of toys that always cause fights between siblings. Nobody will touch the Slinky for months (as mentioned above) and the minute someone does everyone wants the Slinky. You will often hear cries of “But it’s mine” as well as “You weren’t even playing with it.” Other toys in this category: Rubik’s cube and something I have just learned is called Pin Art

So anyway, I recently bought myself a new Slinky because I wanted one and it was $3. All my old ones were destroyed by The Tibbles back in 08. This new Slinky is the best and I play with it so much it makes my hands smell like Slinky and get a little tingly. It’s the perfect toy for idly slinking back and forth while thinking, which is why I kept them on my desk in the first place.

A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing,
Jodi

P.S. As I typed this I was distracted. There was a Caramel Apple sucker stuck to the roof of my mouth and I gave my tongue a real workout trying to dislodge it.

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Dear Darling Ones,

I’m a little blue today. This funk sprung out of nowhere and I even attempted to buy myself a plant to make me feel better and my inner voice said all petulant and cranky-like, I don’t want another plant.

Let’s blame the funk on the weather. Things get moldy fast when it’s hot and humid. It’s been above 90º here in Minnesota for the last week. The bread I used to make a lunchtime sandwich yesterday, was a forest of green today when I went to go make a sandwich.

Also, the fungus gnats are slowly trying to kill the wildflower card I’m growing. Well, they’ve successfully killed most of the teeny green shoots, but I got one that’s still going like a champ. I’m gonna love the shit out of that motherfucker so it turns into a flower.

Even though I’m kinda sad, I still wanted to tell you about the best, most thoughtful birthday gifts I’ve gotten so far. I say so far even though my birthday was Sunday because I’m waiting to open gifts from Sisters #2 & #4 for when they get here on June 20somethingth.

First up, we have a gift from my nephew Maxwell. He got me a vintage, mid-century modern divided dish (pictured above with Monday’s lunch). It has gold stars on the side, but I took a shitty picture to show him how it’s an excellent lunch dish and not to show him what it looks like because he already knows. He thought it was the relish tray I’m obsessed about. Alas, it was not. But it is still so rad because it’s so thoughtful. Not only did he remember that I love vintage cookware, but also that the relish tray I want is divided (it’s also crystal or clear glass, which is the part her forgot). I love this dish.

And then, to out do everyone, my friend Atom (BFK’s husband) spent the last year saving wheat pennies for my collection. For my birthday he gave me the seven cents he found thus far. Did you know I collect wheat pennies? I have since I worked at a gas station in the 90s. I have 51 of them now.

When BFK told me about it I nearly cried. It’s so damn thoughtful and sweet I don’t even know what to say.

Now accepting wheat pennies for my thoughts,
Jodi

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