Hi Darling Ones,

How goes it?

My eyes have been extra garbage lately which makes writing harder than normal. In fact, I’m dictating this to my iPhone, which makes me feel kind of stupid because I’m talking to an empty room, which is not my jam. I’ll never be one of those posting video of myself spouting pithy remarks while looking into my phone’s camera. So thank your lucky stars for that.

So here I am talking to my phone like a complete doofus.

If you look at the picture above, you can see me giving the bird to an empty room while wearing a black wrist weight. My occupational therapist has decided we’re going to try trickery as a therapeutic tool.

She wants to see if my brain will recognize when my arm is actually heavier (with the weight) and stop thinking it’s heavy all the damn time. This week I did all my OT exercises with the weight on. When I told her I had one at home, she told me to wear if a day to see if it makes a difference,

Since we’re going to be wrapping up my occupational therapy soon, I joke with myself this is a last ditch effort. I’m both bummed and eager to end occupational therapy.

The irrational parts of me are still, “I’m not ready. I AM STILL BROKEN!”

And the smaller, quieter rational parts of me totally get it. As are as the functionality of my Floppy Scoop goes, I’m as good as I’m going to get. I have all the average strength of a woman my age. I have the normal reaction times of a woman my age who didn’t have a stroke. Even with the tremor my fine motor skills are good, and a lot go my hand-eye coordination is poor because of the retinopathy/macular edema (which is not stroke related).

Basically, my brain’s a jerk. Last week my occupational therapist and I had a long discussion about how long it takes to build new neural pathways once part of your brain has died.

While I knew I had brain damage, I didn’t thnk about it as part of my brain dying. When she said that, I was like oh my God, part of my brain died! Then I went on long rant about how pissed I was that I never did drugs. I totally ate up that “this is your brain on drugs” commercial and I was very worried about harming my brain because I knew that being smart was my way out of poverty (and while I’m broke again, I’m not as poor as I’ve been).

All those years protecting that motherfucker and it turned on me anyway. So rude. There was probably a lot of cocaine I could’ve done. Kidding. I wouldn’t do cocaine ever because of Regina Morrow in Sweet Valley High. I know if I ever did cocaine once, just one little time I’d probably die. But yeah, I’m still a little pissed at my brain for continuing jerkiness despite my “drug free is the way to be” lifestyle.

Cleanly & crankily yours,
Jodi

P.S. the way I talk or at least the way the phone interprets me talking. It starts this letter with “Hi darling worms,” which I find amusing.

The post Resorting to Trickery appeared first on I Will Dare.

The #1 reason I created I Will Dare back in 2000 and why I’ve kept at it for 20 years is because it amuses me. A lot. I was a lonely 28-year-old customer service rep living in a shitty apartment, I needed something to amuse me. A lot.

I Will Dare checks all my boxes. It lets me try my hand at graphic design, writing, and some technical stuff. Granted there was way more technical stuff back in 2000 when you had to write HTML to get a blog to work (thanks four chapters of HTML for Dummies), but I don’t miss that as much.

Aside: As I am typing this Wendell is making me play fetch. I toss a red pipe cleaner as far as I can get it to go and then he fetches it and brings it back. I suppose you probably know how fetch happens.

Today I changed the header on I Will Dare to be a parody of Sweet Valley High book covers, specifically SVH #1 Double Love. I giggled with glee the entire time I was working on this. It took me much longer to complete than I had anticipated.

Why? I’m glad you asked. It’s because Sister #3 called my mom last Friday crying about how I was writing lies about her on my website. After an initial flare of anger I calmly explained to my mom how I know what I wrote, I don’t regret it, and I’m willing to deal with the consequences. I also told her how I’ve spent the last 10+ years tip-toeing around Sister #3’s lies and drama and I’m done. I told my mom I was going to write about my life and that Sister #3 can be mad about it forever if she wants. I’ve done everything I can to help her.

Remember how I negotiated a work from home day at my last corporate job so I could help her with child care? Remember every #TibbleSummer? Remember how I took in her oldest son so he could get out of jail even though the last time I saw him before that he stormed out of my house telling me to fuck off with a bottle of my vodka down his pants?

Apparently she doesn’t. Because all my love and support and back-breaking aunt acrobatics have gotten me bupkis. She’s still angry and trying to turn our parents against me.

So yeah, be mad forever. I’ve done all I could and loved with my entire heart. I regret nothing.

And wanna know what I super don’t regret? That bitchen header. It delights me every time I look at it and who couldn’t use a little bit of delight right now?

The post The COVID Diaries: Amused, Party of 1 appeared first on I Will Dare.

Today, @Citesomething posted the most magical tweet of the year.

I saw the picture and a shiver of excitement ran up my spine. I loved the Scholastic Book Fair. I also loved Scholastic book orders. In fact, I remember the very last book I got from a Scholastic book order. It was Sweet Valley High #4 Power Play where Jessica and Elizabeth fight about fat Robin joining the Pi Betas. It’s about how fat shaming is totally a good method to get a girl to lose weight and that you will only be accepted if you’re not such a fatty.

Not my favorite in the oeuvre.

I got the book in seventh grade and remember Mr. Johnson handing it to me in English class because Cam Anderson, whom I loved, made fun of it because it looked like the girls on the cover were gonna kiss. Yeah.

I also remember getting this in particular because it’s the only book in my SVH that didn’t have the red Bantam rooster on the spine and instead had some Scholastic thing. This still, 34 years later, bothers the crap out of me.

The post Day 197 of 200: The Last Book I Got from a Book Order appeared first on I Will Dare.

The first thing you should know is that the movie All the Boys I Loved Before does live up to all the hype. It’s sweet and charming and makes me wonder if there was a lot of fake dating in high school and I just missed it because I was too busy remembering the plots to Sweet Valley High books in chronological order.

Playing with Fire (SVH #3) was always one of my favorites. I like that it was a little dirty by SVH standards. . . there was an untied bikini top. Plus, it was always fun when Jessica squares off against 1Bruce1 Patman.

I watched the movie tonight with my 20-year-old niece who leaves for her junior year of college in Eugene, OR in five days. I’m already sad about it.

However, I was not sad while we ate Chinese food, pretended to talk as Walter & Sully, and she answered my annoying movie-related questions like, “Do people really use the word ‘bae’?” (apparently, only high school kids do and some non-high school kids use it ironically.) and “Oh my god, do they do it?” (no spoiler on that one.)

But she’s left and I have some of the old Sunday melancholy.

The post Day 40 of 200: Two, Two, Two Teen References in One Post appeared first on I Will Dare.

The one nice thing about working all the time is that I haven’t freaked out and lost sleep about paying my mortgage in months. The bad thing about working all the time is everything else. I never write for myself anymore. I don’t blog (obvs). I’m super boring because all I do now is work, think about work, and watch Supermarket Sweep on Buzzr while shoveling salad into my face.

I keep having anxiety dreams where I got a “real” job and forget to go to it and I’m worried they’re going to fire me for forgetting to come to work. Also, I recently dreamt about hamsterspiders, which were hamsters with giant, furry spider legs (eight of them). You’re welcome for that image.

Also, I’ve been up since 5:30 this morning. Not because of work anxiety, but roofing anxiety. They’re re-roofing Supergenius HQ and all the townhouses in the development. I was worried I’d oversleep the alleged 8 a.m. start time and get busted bareass in bed as the roofers climbed past my bedroom window.

Though I needn’t have worried because they started making noise around 6 this morning with the beepbeepbeeping of the supply drop off vehicle and then the setting up of the ladders and then shimmying up and down the ladders. And, well it’s been a very loud and hammery day here. If I were smarter I’d have gotten up and dressed and out the door to hole up in some coffee shop while they worked. However, I am not smarter. My brain operates at 30% on anything less than 6 hours of sleep.

In other news, I shaved my head again last week. I went way, way, way shorter than Ben did when he first shaved it on Easter — live 4 millimeters shorter, which is way more than you would think. When I was done, I had enough hair to make at least two hamsterspiders (sixteen legs and all).

I’m not quite ready to grow it out yet. First of all, I’m still not sick of rubbing my hand all over my nubbly head. Second of all, it’s so nice not having hair. I think I’ll keep this look through summer and spend the winter looking like a Monchichi.

What else? What else?

My dad got us all flowers for Mother’s Day, or as I liked to call mine “You never procreated but I still love you flowers.” He’s gotten adorably sentimental this year.

This morning Jaycie sent me a Buzzfeed quiz: What % Jessica And What % Elizabeth From “Sweet Valley High” Are You?. It’s kinda bullshit though because Jaycie & I got the exact same percentages — 51% Jessica and 49% Elizabeth, and while that might be true for her I’m 100% Elizabeth.

As I type one of roofer guys is hauling two boxes of shingles up the ladder to the roof and it’s so scary that I can’t even look. I’m waiting for one of those men to fall off that ladder and die in my bushes.

The post I Re-Upped & Other Anxiety Tales appeared first on I Will Dare.