Knitting:

I’ve finished two items. One hat, one neck warmer both from the same free pattern available through Drops, Funfair 122-33.

Reading:

One book down and it was another about true crime, this time the topic was Meyer Lansky and his family. It was OK and rather long. Now, I have two Kindles. One is a Paperwhite and the other is my old Kindle Keyboard which is so full of books that it just moves so slow. I’m working my way through as fast as I can but when you’re knitting projects that require me to pay attention reading and knitting isn’t working so well. Kindle can read to me, but, my mind tends to wander so I miss quite a bit. Every now and then I do get myself into a really dull book so having it read to me works since I always feel committed to finishing a book once I start it. That reminds me. I’ve got one waiting for me that falls into that category.

Other:

I finished an online course through Gale Education which is often free through the local library system. That’s how I’m taking my courses. I signed up using my local library card number. While I was still working my company provided us all with log-ins to take courses through Gale so when I found out I could continue I’ve been taking courses since I quit working in 2016.

This last one was called Get Assertive! and it wasn’t what I thought it would be. It wasn’t one of those rah rah courses like the ones I had been sent to during my work career to teach us how to overcome resistance from customers. This one was all about making yourself understood and heard. One lesson was extremely relevant to my life – the one that clearly states that it’s perfectly OK to state your feelings or tell your story. There will always be those who don’t like what you feel or what you share as your story. So true. So true.

In my case, it’s people who used to be friends in person (not online friends) and one of my daughters. They all think that I was the instigator of a divorce. I do believe I mentioned earlier that she now feels that I have destroyed her childhood. Here’s what happened there. She was 14 closer to 15 when the divorce happened. When she came to visit me at my apartment, or my house later, she felt a sense of freedom that she had never experienced. Her father was, and probably still is, one of those who always needs to be reassured that he’s needed and he feels the need to always be in control. If you would point that out to him he flatly says that’s not true. Oh, it’s true. He was always critical of me even before we got married which should have been my first clue.

Let’s go there.

We met in January of 1976 during the second week of a 10 week quarter at WSU (Wayne State University). He signed up for the course so he could be in the same class as a girl by the name of Lori. She was sitting with her two friends in the row in front of me so he sat next to me. For days they were flirting back and forth which became annoying. I always sat in the same spot which was right where I could see the instructor and not be too far into the row and close to the aisle but not on the aisle. Make sense? I offered to change places with him so he could be closer to her. He declined. Oh well. So for weeks he flirted with the both of us. I already had a boyfriend and we had been together for over a year. My BF wasn’t in college yet as he was three months younger than me. See, my birthday is at the end of the year and his is the beginning. If I was born two weeks later we would have been in the same graduating year.

Anyway, the quarter was done and he decided to sign up for the next Art History course which was required for my program but not his. I still would not go out with him or meet him anywhere. There was something about him that kept me from agreeing to anything. In other words, it took him 20 weeks to convince me to see him outside of class. I found out within minutes that he was all about the physical aspect of a relationship. It was overwhelming to me at the age of 18.

I broke up with my boyfriend and started officially dating him – Mike – and wasn’t quite aware yet of how he needs to be in control and constantly reassured of his worth, etc. That came quickly, real quickly. I needed a car. The car I was driving was a loaner from the company my dad worked for. My sister started driving and it was hard for the both of us to share one car when we both went to school and worked. Mike told me that she should be the one to spend her money on a car not me. I was supposed to save my money for our future. Seriously? Our future? I had only known him for 5 months by then and he was already giving me heck about how I spend my money. My money. Then, he started with the insistence that I needed to get a raise at work. Huh? I worked for a non-union grocery store that worked around my school schedule. No, I needed more money. The minimum wage back then kept going up so each time it went up, so did my pay. I went from $1 per hour to $5 in the 2 1/2 years I worked there. The $5 came about when the other grocery store in town unionized and that was what they were receiving. So, our boss matched it to avoid us wanting a union.

Let’s go forward now to when he and his friends took a trip the following spring. They went to Florida. While they were in Daytona Beach they met a group of girls who were also there. The girls had rented a dune buggy which disappeared one night when a group of guys ‘borrowed’ it. Yep, the girls did the right thing and called the Daytona Beach police to report that it was stolen and they knew who took it. The guys couldn’t return to their hotel room so spent the rest of their trip sleeping in the back of a pickup truck while hiding out. So, I was dating a fugitive. It only got more interesting from there.

We got through another year and I decided that this smothering wasn’t working well for me. The non-stop nagging that ‘we’ needed more money, my degree wasn’t going to earn a lot of money so I should switch to business courses and my favorite – hope I pass the English Proficiency Exam. They all failed it and had to take it two or three times. Phhhhht. No problem. Over this 2nd year I was feeling as if I was being possessed so I started to take mental stock of the situation and started to get more social with others. When my work friends went out after work I went with them. This was before cell phones, etc so I didn’t let Mike know where I was but did warn my parents in advance that we might all go out after work. This is when I realized that there was more to living than being with someone who wanted to map my future for me then act like a GPS giving me directions the entire time on how to get there.

We’ll continue……………

Stay safe.