Not a bad weekend. Friday evening I went out after work with friends - I didn't stay out late at all, but the Bossy One was way stressed about the change in the routine. I have rarely been out of the house after dinner for the past two years and the dog is three years old, so for most of his life he was used to Mommy coming home and staying home - and when I WAS gone, it was for a bad reason, like Daddy in the hospital, and then I was gone long hours. So now if I go out after dark he sits at the window near the front door, a tiny portrait of anxiety, and greets me frantically when I come home. And this weekend I went out TWO evenings in a row - Saturday I went to my admin. asst/friend's house for "coffee" (with liberal Kahlua) and television. I didn't stay out late, but when I pulled into the driveway I saw poor Murphy was sitting there at the front door, little brow furrowed, a Worried Little Dog. But he didn't seem frantic when I came in, I didn't have to hold him on my lap for a while until he stopped whimpering and bitching at me about my absence. Friday night was bad - it was an hour before he settled down and stopped demanding my attention and expressing his relief that I was home and he didn't have to pay the mortgage. Last night it wasn't as big a deal, and I came home a few hours later. So I think he'll adjust to this new life soon, just as I will.


Exciting diet progress - though poundage-wise I am not losing fast, admin-and-friend commented that the clothes I was wearing on Friday looked too big and baggy to her - and these were my formerly way-too-tight and more fitted Levis that only started fitting recently. That was a minor dieter's rush.


I was always too stubborn to get rid of my "skinny" clothes, though I haven't worn them for years, so this morning I decided to pull out a pair of the "skinner" jeans from the later stages of thin, but still in the pre-Bad Years (not to be confused with my goal size 8 jeans - these are 10s) and damn, they fit! I actually could button and zip and breathe, even in the pair with no stretch. So I'm making progress - it's damn slow, but that's the joy of the over-40 metabolism - but at least it's still possible to do it. I am so glad, because since cutting my hair and losing the first few pounds I have started hating everything in my closet. Well, not the entire contents, but quite a bit. There's still some nice stuff at the back that I haven't worn in years that I don't totally hate. I need more feminine clothes, dressier clothes, and dammit, I want to buy them in a size 8. If that's shallow, then I am unapologetically shallow - I can deal with being middle aged, I can deal with being a widow - I have no choice about either one, so I just have to deal with it - but dammit, I do have a choice about not facing the unknown future as a dowdy and dumpy-assed middle-aged widow, and I flat refuse to be one, which means I need to burn most of the contents of my closet.


I normally don't tell stories from my working life, because the Internet is a wide open and weird place and you never know who might be reading and recognize themselves, but I think this is a fairly safe one. In the insanely unlikely event the subject of the story happened by and recognized himself, this is just a thank-you of sorts, so it's okay. A few months ago I was chatting with an attorney I know - he works with us a lot. I used to work for him, way back in, OhmyGOD, the late 80s. We are the same age (and not as young as we used to be....) He is absolutely drop-dead gorgeous and looks ten years younger than his actual age, and also a really nice guy (with an equally gorgeous wife and equally gorgeous kids and they're all so ridiculously perfect you just want to projectile vomit, except they're also totally likeable, but I digress...) So anyway, we're having a nice conversation and I'm standing there talking to him, and suddenly I realized that I really looked like SHIT. We are the SAME AGE. We used to be equivalently youthful-looking. He is standing there in his casually elegant clothes, looking like he just wandered over from a photo shoot for GQ, and I'm there in my dumpy-ass jeans and tennies and a polo shirt. I rarely am that conscious of my appearance, especially lately when I had so many more important things to care about, but damn, that was suddenly a very depressing moment - he still looked great. I looked like dogshit in comparison. We are the same age. I never felt this uncomfortable standing next to him, or was that horribly aware of how I was dressed or how I must look. This was not a good moment in my life, but a turning point of sorts - that was the day I really understood that I'd "let myself go" way too far, to the point where it bothered me deeply. This dumpy broad in the drab clothes is not the person I am inside, and it sure isn't who I want to be for the rest of my life. And when you're 45, it's a bit late to do the "I'll deal with it someday" - no, what you are is what you are, take a good hard look, and if you aren't happy about what you see, you better get the lead out of your ass and start working on it. Life is short. So the veil of Denial finally fell from my eyes, once and for all, and I started seeing myself as others were seeing me, and I started to get myself back together. It has not been a smooth and easy path, I didn't just magically develop the ability to stick to a diet and exercise plan and turn into Demi Moore overnight. But I started caring again, and that's a Good Thing.

And on that note - I know, you were thinking I'd NEVER get to any knitting content - I've started re-evaluating the things I will knit for me. I'm totally loving this red Sitcom Chic in the Softball cotton from my mysterious benefactor. Now I'm thinking my stash of black Cotton Fleece would look really nice as a
Shapely Tank Top underneath it. I find a lot of patterns are unflatteringly boxy and shapeless - hello designers, sizing them down so an "extra-large" is a 39-inch bust doesn't affect the overall shape of the pattern, it just makes a smaller box. I am now looking at shaping with a critical eye, and I plan to concentrate on patterns with some curves to them for myself. I'm finally getting my waist and hips back, I don't want to drown them in a boxy sweater. It can be really cute when you're in your 20s - youth compensates for all sorts of fashions - but as one gets into the "mature years" - gag, barf, puke - the word "dowdy" starts to pop into your head more often - at least it does mine. A lot of the knitting patterns I see strike me as dowdy. Boxy. Busy. Shapeless. That's why I love Rowan's classic styles, and I love Berroco and I love Bonne Marie's stuff. Knitty is cute, but way too "young" for me - but nobody can say those designs are boxy and dowdy. So that's the knitting link to the lengthy prelude - it's possible to make knitted things that do not make one look like a wooly cube, and I need to steer away from the wooly cube school of design in the future.