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January 31, 2005

All About Crazy Aunt Purl

[Last Updated on August 1, 2006 because boy some of this was out of date! -- laurie]

This is more about me than you would ever truly want to know. Hi, I'm Laurie, and I can write about myself for hours and hours. But isn't that why they invented blogs, anyway? I mean, it's just as self-indulgent as therapy but it is SO MUCH CHEAPER.

I am a blog stalker.

Reading weblogs -- particularly knitting blogs -- is my cardio. Sure, I love to eBay, but then I just want to buy something, and that means I spend money, and then I start to get anxious about how much money I spend on eBay, and I feel like a smack addict on a bender, hiding and shameful in my addiction.

Travel websites are the same as eBay. Browse, see amazing sales, resist urge to get out credit card and purchase round trip ticket to Moscow. Credit cards vibrate. Bad, bad, bad.

So, blogs are my little escape from the tedium us working schmoes face from time to time. They're free, and full of yarn porn. And you can burn 300 calories an hour reading them. (shut up! you totally can!)

I'm in this for the voyuerism, folks

I just wish more blogs had pictures of the blog-writer and said writer's surroundings. I'm nosy, I admit it. I like to see where people live. Becky at skinnyrabbit.com occassionally takes pics in and about her adopted home city of Lyon, France. Of course she lives in FRANCE, not Van Nuys, so I'd be snapping some photos, too, if I were her.

But even if you live in a place that you think is boring and not worthy of documenting, THINK AGAIN. There are dorks like me who wish they lived in remote, snowy towns where your neighbor's cat leaves a tunnel in the snow each time it crosses the terrace. And, believe it or not, a spinster, computer nerd, obsessive-compulsive knitter is really excited to see pictures of your shawl in your living room, with the TV on in the background! I'm just that dorky! (Or nosy... you decide.)

To me, these websites are little windows into the life of another person. It's like walking side by side with a complete stranger for a few brief minutes a day. So, having said all that, here are some bits of pieces of my life.

Location, location, location
I live in the San Fernando Valley, which is part of Los Angeles, California. (For now, anyway.) Valley residents want to secede from Los Angeles. Being a Southerner by birth, I'm biologically programmed to prefer areas where the residents are always threatening to run off and start their own country. I LOVE the valley. It's big, crowded, diverse, and full of niches. Also, let it be known that at any time in the valley you are never more than two blocks from a 7-11. It is my personal belief that anything on the planet can be procured in the Valley. Just try to prove me wrong.

Chez Spinster
My charming little house is very, very small. Here in California, we pay enormous sums of money to live in tiny little places. But I love my little place, it has a big picture window overlooking the patio and the leafy green backyard (which is actually bigger than the house).

It's a cozy house, especially with all the furballs. It's also the first house I've ever lived in alone. Which brings me to Mr. X.

I was with Mr. X for eight years of my life. One evening we were having dinner at home, watching the news, and he calmly told me he was moving out. For good. Two weeks later he was living in a bachelor pad in another part of the city. Mr. X said he needed to get his creativity back. He explained how he really needed to be free of responsibility right now. Because, you know, having a wife cook for you and clean for you and shop for you can really put a damper on your CREATIVITY.

Needless to say, this has been the worst time in my entire life. Being rejected sucks. Being abandoned sucks. Being alone and almost-divorced sucks. Of course, not having to clean up after anyone ever again ... is PRICELESS.

Fur & Loathing
I have four cats. This was not the original plan -- you know, being a divorced woman in her mid-thirties with FOUR CATS. It's not exactly the beginning of a Harlequin romance novel. It's not even good chick-lit. I know how it sounds ... "This woman is a cautionary tale!"

Living Out Loud.
These days I am embracing the spinster inside. I have decided that if I'm going to keep on living, I might as well do it exactly as I want, and as truthfully as possible.

When my husband left me, and a variety of other really bad things began to happen in succession (my landlord put the condo up for sale! my car stolen from the subway station! Mr. X goes to Italy without me! moving costs me almost $1000! clearly, I have pissed off the gods!) I finally decided to give up on keeping up appearances. I gained a few pounds. I smoked in public. I told the pizza guy that my husband had left me. I was a little crazy in those first few months, I admit.

Eventually, I figured out that my goal was to simply live out loud. Lie less. ("No, actually, my sex life isn't fulfilling." "To be honest, I am not everyone and I do not love Raymond." "Actually, I hate sushi." "Yeah, I'm older than Sanskrit. What is your point?")

It's worked out pretty well for me, except the sushi thing. I have learned the hard way that people in L.A. are REALLY crazy when it comes to the sushi. So I tell them I'm allergic.

Really, ya'll, trust me: it's far less painful for them than the truth. They cannot handle the truth.

Work.
Every morning I am forced to leave my beloved Valley and travel to downtown Los Angeles (distance: 19 miles. Average travel time: 1 hour, 20 minutes). I'm an artist, and I work at a bank in downtown Los Angeles. I'm actually really lucky because I have a drop-dead cute boss and I love the company I work for, I've met some amazing friends through this job and I've learned enough about finances to even create my own Budget spreadsheet, which has helped me avoid having to move into a storage shed with four cats and eleventy pairs of cute shoes.

Traffic
I am completely obsessed with traffic. Even when I am sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, actually viewing the four-car pileup on the 101 Freeway, I will listen maniacally to news radio for updated traffic reports. It's some kind of weird validation. ("Yes, Laurie, you really are in The. Worst. Traffic. Ever!") Conversely, I hate to drive. My only real goal in life is to be financially stable enough to have a personal driver. One way of getting a driver when you're on a Colt 45 budget is to take mass transportation...

Planes, trains and automobiles
After my car got stolen at the subway station, I decided to start taking the MetroLink, the Los Angeles version of commuter light rail.

As soon as I decided to take the MetroLink, however, a crazed suicidal freak with a ponytail parked his car on the tracks and derailed three trains. There was much news coverage about the safety, or lack thereof, of the Los Angeles commuter rail. Considering how poor my luck is, I decided to take the bus for a while.

I love being chauffered to work each day by the crosstown express. It's great! It's rarely crowded, and I can knit uninterrupted for at least an hour each way, usually more. On rainy days, traffic is so snarly that I am often able to knit for four hours a day -- two hours on the way to work and two on the way home. This is the only way to remain sane in FOUR HOURS of commuting. I take my walkman with me and listen to news radio so I can catch up on the day's headlines (har har, you know I'm really just listening to the traffic reports! even on the bus! that's how dorky I am!)

[Oh, here's an update: Now I'm back to taking the Metrolink a few days a week, because apparently I have forgotten my earlier fear of train crashes, and sometimes I take the subway, and sometimes I drive. If only I could find a boating passage to downtown I might have all my bases covered on the ground... then on to possible air routes... ]

Knitting
I learned to knit in January. After one knitting class, I was completely, utterly hooked.

Knitting calms me down. I have trouble sleeping, but if I knit or read knitting books or plan patterns in my head, I feel less anxious. I keep knitting books on my bedside table (yarn porn) and I enjoy reading about knitting almost as much as the knitting itself. Because I'm cool that way.

My perfectionistic, obsessive-compulsive manic persona is perfectly suited to knitting... and frogging. I don't mind ripping out every stitch of a project when I know I can just re-do the whole thing to perfection. It's the ultimate pastime for the compulsive do-over Type A freak.

After just a few months, knitting has become my obsession. I dream of cold, Nordic winters and long, dark, snowy nights of knitting alpaca while drinking vodka by a fireplace. Of course, I live in one of the hottest places in the United States, where we regularly hit 110 degrees daily from August to October. Thank God for air conditioning. And TiVo. (Which has nothing to do with knitting, but ya'll, we should always give thanks for TiVo whenever possible.)

Travel
I love to travel, and Mr. X. and I did a lot of it. Traveling was our way of spending time together, and towards the end it was the only time I had him all to myself. We looked happy in photographs. Anyway. Moving on.

My friend Jennifer and I are planning to take a trip to Moscow in December 2005. [Update: We actually ended up going to Paris instead, in March of 2006. But one day, Moscowsky, YOU WILL BE MINEsky!] It will be the first trip I have ever taken without Mr. X. This vacation is very important to me. Life doesn't end just because your husband has a midlife crisis! Traveling without him will be the zenith of spinsterhood for me, and I mean that in the best way possible. I will be free to eat at non-pizza, non-McDonald's restaurants and I will be free to bust a move with a hot foreign man, and accept free drinks from strangers on the plane. Life may be short, but it is wide.

The bitter end
I can't believe anyone would still be awake here at the bottom of the page, but if you are ... well, congratulations! You made it through what is basically a self-indulgent therapy session online!

I sure can talk about myself.
Narcissistic much?

Posted by laurie at 03:16 PM