Dainty Kitty

Knitting With Balls

If you're looking to get fired up or perhaps you'd like a good laugh, check out this article by Debbie Schlussel.  I'm not familiar with Ms. Schlussel's work but here she talks about "our society's largely successful attempt to feminize America's men"...through knitting and the book Knitting with Balls.  Seriously.  The article is titled, "Men, the New Women, Alert: No, Balls of Yarn Are not Cojones" if you can believe that.

Other choice phrases -

"Just when less and less women in America are knitting, we compensate for it by . . . having young boys knit?!"

"Here's a note for those who mistakenly think knitting is for men: It ain't. Despite the title of this book, cojones do not equal balls of yarn and two wooden sticks. And the same holds true vice versa."

And in closing, "For the record, I do knit. Or did. Takes waaaaay too long to make anything decent. It's strictly for the very bored, IMO."

And this was my favorite - left by Ms. Schlussel - in response to a comment, "THEY'RE SLACKER DUDES BEING ENCOURAGED TO DO SO IN YET ANOTHER ATTEMPT TO BLUR THE GENDER LINES." 

Go over and read the article.  Then read the comments.  They're great - nearly all are in support of men who knit and full of all kinds of interesting information.   I'm actually glad I found the article (through the blog of a male knitter, by the way) for the comments alone. 

Then leave a comment of your own.  I did. 

Talking Wrong

This is a good example of just how sensitive I am.

Jake points out when I say or write something incorrectly.  It angers me and really hurts my feelings.  At first I just shrugged it off.  He eventually asked if it bothered me and I was stupid and said no but it was early in the relationship.

Everyone has their little quirks.  One of mine is that I often say "went" instead of "gone."  As in, "Oh the price on that cereal's went down"  (this was the last time he corrected me - yes, I remember).  Sure, it's wrong but am I hurting anyone?  When he corrected me in the cereal aisle I pointed out that everyone has their little idiosyncrasies and I'd be sure to point his out.  "Please do," he said.  My tone was obvious.  It bothers me.  I don't want it pointed out to me.

Today I wrote in an email, "Of course, it started to DOWNPOUR about five minutes before I had to leave."

His comment (besides saying that it stopped raining just before he walked out his front door), "By the way, I don't think that 'downpour' is a verb."

I started to reply but was so hurt and angry that I just couldn't.  I even started to reply to just that sentence.   But I didn't.  I came here instead. 

I mean, come on.  Just let it slide, for Pete's sake. 

I work with a lot of people who regularly say "we was" and it makes me cringe but I'd never point it out.  I've known people who were worried about their grammar or afraid that I would correct them just because I'm an English major.  But I'm not like that. 

It's indicative, though, of his entire personality.  He's a bit snobby.  Sure, he's smart but so am I - we just have different interests.  We're knowledgeable in different subjects. 

Every year, my family has a picnic on the weekend of the air show every year.  It's this weekend and I told him it was okay if he wanted to stay home if he wanted to...because I don't really want him to go.  My family is fairly uneducated.  They're going to "talk wrong."  But I'm not embarrassed by them at all.  I'm afraid of being embarrassed by him. 

That's awful. 

Unfortunately, I had dinner with my mom and her parents last night.  My grandparents haven't met him and it's obvious that they'd like to so when I talked to him last night I let him know that my family would like to have him there.  So he's going.   

I'm just noticing his snobbery a lot recently.  I also know that it has to do with the fact that I'm looking for reasons to end this relationship.  Because I'm going to have to eventually.

I shouldn't be venting like this here but...I am.  And I'll probably delete this eventually but for now...I'm going to go ahead and post it.  And I think I'm not going to reply to his email for awhile.  I want to reply but right now I don't want to be nice about it.  I want to reply to that sentence and nothing else.  But I won't.

When I do reply (to the entire email), though, I'm going to make it clear that this hurts my feelings and he'll stop doing it...but that doesn't fix everything.   This is just another straw. 

A Rant

  I am absolutely LIVID.

I'm on the phone with Jake, a check-in call to see how far along we are in the Deathly Hallows, and I hear a loud voice, laughing and speaking Spanish outside my patio door (I'm on the second floor and have a sliding door but no porch - just a wrought iron fence, waist high)) and there's an odd smell.

There's someone on a ladder, face peering into my living room, painting the fence! 

What the fuck?!  No note, no phone call to say that some complete stranger is going to be looking into your apartment Sunday afternoon.  And I don't care if they're not paying attention to what's going on inside...for Pete's sake - what if I were having sex on my living room floor when that face first appeared outside my door?!

I'm absolutely furious.  I left a voice mail for the apartment manager using the word "unacceptable" and demanding a phone call.  My demands for a phone call in the past have gone unanswered but I will call back this time.  I'm tired of letting this shoddy place walk on me.  I had serious problems when they were fixing the leak in my front rooms in February - including the fact that workers showed up on a Saturday morning, unannounced.  At the time my heat was out and I was waiting for the office to call me back about getting someone to fix it (this was the second or third time it had happened).  The workers finally left, saying they'd be back on Monday, and I then called Wendy to ask if we could get together because it was something like fifty-eight degrees in my apartment and I needed to get out.   On my way to meet her - around noon - I stopped at the office.  The manager hadn't even listened to the voice mail!  She said she would send Jay, the maintenance person, to fix it although she didn't say when.  I left.

When I returned, several hours later, my front door was standing open and there were four strangers in my apartment.  Not only was my door standing open (I have two cats) but there were four workers there, again unannounced.   Four!  To work on my tiny drywall problem!  Strangers!

I guess I should count my lucky stars that the heat was fixed, though.   

I called and left a nasty message then, too.  Never heard back.  In fact, after the drywall was fixed I never heard anything again.  They never painted my rooms or rehung the blinds.  This was in February! Sure, it's my fault now that I haven't called but I pretty much feel like vomiting when I think about someone else coming into my apartment to paint.  I'd rather live without covers on my window for a year (my lease is up in February) than have someone in here. 

The second thing that got me up in arms was the fact that they hung paper over the front windows a month or so ago because they were painting the building (haphazard blinds, perhaps?).  That paper stayed up over my windows for TWO WEEKS! 

Unacceptable.  I'm going to seriously think about demanding that I am let out of my lease without penalty and moving while the weather is still warm.  I can't really afford to considering that they'll hang onto my deposit as long as possible, I'm sure - but I will demand it back even if I break my lease - but this place has really turned out to be a pretty shitty place to live. 

I have a few more examples but I guess I've vented enough.  I've got one hundred and fifty pages left in the Deathly Hallows.  I'm going to try to calm down enough to sit back down to read....

Plus, I think the stranger is finally gone.