Sex and the Knitting

Crap. Only 50% of that post defines my life lately. The sentence itself defines my life last night. I was feeling kind of miserable, so I spent the evening, and most of the night, watching "Sex and the City" and knitting, and crying. And eating chocolate chip cookies. Can't forget the chocolate chip cookies when one is feeling lousy. True to form, at least for me, I just started watching "Sex and the City". I couldn't get into it when it was on HBO. Now, of course, it's in reruns, and I watch it when I can. That means I'm getting a very disjointed view of it. It doesn't seem to be shown in any particular order, which means I'm usually in the dark as to what is going on. HBO is no help - they only have four episodes on their On Demand service. So much for watch what you want, when you want.

August is a hard month for me. The beginning of the month marks the day that my partner of 30+ years upped and left, after telling me a raft of lies about how he loved me, blah, blah, blah. Tucked his tail between his legs and skulked out the door (right after a quick stop for lunch at his mom's, natch.) How many women can count their mother-in-law as the "other woman" in their lives? Then, at the beginning of September, we have my wedding anniversary, or what would have been my anniversary. That surprises me that it bothers me. He mostly ignored it, along with my birthday, Christmas, Valentines day; any time he had the opportunity to make me feel loved and valued. The reason? I "wasn't doing things his way, so I didn't deserve it." Holy shit. So, I've spent most of this month so far wondering what led me to this place in my life. Why didn't I dump this loser before this, and give myself a shot at a life?

It seems like all I've seen lately are happy couples. I work on an OB floor, and I see lots of happy dads thrilled with the birth of their new baby, and the start of their new family. I see other women who seem to have caring relationships with a man who cares about them, what they feel, what they like, if she's tired or whatever, just generally being there for her. And I wonder, what the hell did I do wrong? Why did I spend so much of my life with a man who is so emotionally unavailable. Why didn't I notice sooner? Hell, why didn't I notice that until he moved out? Why do I have my head so far up my butt? Why did I sell myself so short for so many years? Why am I such an optimist that I kept thinking I could fix this, when a part of me knew he was beyond fixing? To this day, I don't think he could tell you anything about me, favorite book, movie, whatever I like. This is a man who thought pots and pans were a good gift, on the occasion I got a gift from him.

It's not a nice world out there for women my age. Men my age are not looking for women my age. And, while I don't have a particularly bad life right now - I have great kids, a good job, and causes I care about - I miss holding hands with someone, I miss just talking to someone - I miss the complainionship. Granted, it's been a hell of a long time since I've had those things, but I miss them nonetheless.

Well, with all this misery, I accomplished a lot of knitting last night. On Something Red, I'm nearly at the point where i have to put the sleeve stitches aside. I finished the first ball of yarn, and started the second. Again, I will say that this yarn has no orange in it; it's more of a marooney red than the picture shows. I'm finding this a nice knit, I'm enjoying the pattern, and I'm going to work on it some more tonight. What you're looking at in the picture is the front. Excuse the mess on my desk in the picture, and as usual, Gremlin has managed to cram himself into the picture. He is snoozing on the bag that contains the rest of the yarn, which is TLC Cotton Plus, by (gasp) Red Heart. It's a bit splitty, but I like the feel of the fabric I'm making. I'm working for the next few nights, so probably won't accomplish too much knitting.