Oh, GOD, I'm OLD!

For my daughter's eighth birthday I bought her a knitting starter kit. It seemed like the sort of thing she might enjoy, especially on car trips and things like that. And, you know, anything that both absorbs some of her endless kinetic energy and turns out a nice scarf is a good thing.

Problem is, she's left handed & all the instructions are produced for a right-hand-centric society. Evidently we aren't all that far removed from my mother's childhood in which the left hand was considered the devil's hand and would be slapped with a ruler if used. Though nowadays violence has been replaced by withholding. Passive aggression keeps our hands so much cleaner.

So in order to teach her how to knit, I had to learn first so that I could reverse the instructions.

But something went horribly wrong. It turns out that I actually like to knit. My fidgety fingers just giggled with relief, screaming, "where have you BEEN all my life?" It's the most obsessive fun I've had since crossword puzzles. Or regular puzzles for that matter. But then, by admitting to knitting and puzzles, I am forced tp admit that there is a wholesome little old lady in me just screaming to get out.

It's like I've been shot down in the prime of my life. Might as well just turn in the vinyl pants and glow-in-the-dark wig and go out and buy some support hose and a muu-muu.

Is this is what happens when I turn thirty, what's going to happen to me at forty?

Oh, right. I have a blog.

Wow, the dust is so thick in here it muffles your footsteps! The structure seems intact, though.

Figured since I'm filling in for Susie and she's actually going to link to me where actual people will read my actual words, I'd better clean up a bit.

Dragging this old thing through the wormhole from me in November to me in March is...something like trying to push a Mack truck up a mountain with the emergency brake on.

I do this sometimes, this cocooning to metamorphose. It's hard to explain to the outside world. I won't try to fill in the details, except to say that I got a little lost in the valley of the shadow of thick winter depression and coming to terms with the shitstorm of the past two years. I tried on jaded, hopeless, suicidal and numb. They made me look fat.

I'm done now. I found myself again, the favorite dress in the bottom of the seasonal box. It's fun putting it on again and twirling around, just to feel it moving around me.

Okay, so enough histrionics. Hi again. I'm back & this time I really mean it.