Unravelling

Last week I spent a couple of pleasant evenings working on a scarf for a friend of mine, made out of soft, furry purple angora-blend yarn and some silver iridescent eyelash yarn. Sounds like a fright, you say? Correct.

So I frogged it just now, entertaining the kittens to no end -- sparkly eyelash yarn is now their best friend -- and started knitting a scarf with just the purple yarn, ripped it out after a couple of rows, started it again in a new stitch pattern, ripped it again and threw the yarn across the room.

I hate this yarn. I want a divorce.

It is entirely repulsive to me now. I have no idea what I saw in it in the first place. I find its presence in my closet to be passive-aggressive, almost sinister. It exists to prove my bad judgement, my poor taste, my rash decision-making.

The color is brash and unsubtle. The fuzziness is tawdry. No possible stitch pattern could redeem this yarn. I am, however, considering turning it into a tiny pocket creature like this. With the silver iridescent eyelash as the hair.

In absolutely unrelated news to my foul mood and irritability, my husband just left for his radio show. He has a little book that he writes down all of his song titles in as he plays them, and can never look for this book until he is running late. Back when he had a car that was reliable, he just left it in his car. Along with six month's worth of food wrappers, dirty coffee cups, newspapers, and ATM receipts.

Now that he uses my fabulous new car, I struggle to keep the interior clean. I do not leave shit in the car. Not a thing. I consider this a slippery slope, a matter of principle. So, on Monday mornings, when I get back in the car after he has driven it to the radio station and back in the middle of the night, I empty it of his debris.

Now he wants to know where his book is.

I tell him where I put it when I cleaned out the car last week. It's not there now. He is late. I tell him to take his notes on scrap paper, he can transcribe it to the book later.

In a fit of getting-the-last-word-in, he says, as he swings the door shut behind him, I don't see how my little book is ruining your car.

Your little book does not ruin my car. One little ATM receipt also does not ruin my car. But I know what will happen: I have been here before.

I buy a nice shiny new car, resolve to keep it clean this time. After a week or so, you spill coffee all over the dash and do not clean it up. The dash is now sticky and gross, and it is not my fault. I do not wipe it up, which is admittedly my bad. Having gotten your dirty little foot wedged in the door, however, it is only a matter of days before there is a change of clothes, five empty coffee cups, and a half-empty bag of Doritos in the back of my car.

You do not get to leave your book in my car because it is not just a book. It is the opening, the tiny hole in the dike, the hairline fracture in the dam.

You do not get to leave your book in my car because we live in a tiny house the size of a postage stamp and are therefore in each other's earholes with each other's stuff. There is no corner of the house that is entirely mine, and you are a tornado, spewing your personal effects wherever you touch down. This is my car, and I get to decide how it is kept.

You do not get to leave your book in my car because you are not in the house for two minutes without dropping a pair of dirty socks in the kitchen, your belt in the living room, your pants in the bathroom.

You do not get to keep your book in my car because that is not where it goes. The lid goes on the sugar jar, not beside it, dirty dishes go in the sink, not where you ate off them, and the book does not go in my car.

You do not get to leave your book in my car because it is my car, dammit. You have a car. It is a piece of crap. It is already over for your car. My car is in the prime of its youth, unspoiled and clean. There is no reason to hasten its demise.

And now you really don't get to keep your book in my car because you have now made this An Issue: evidence of my inflexibility, my tenuous hold on sanity, my lack of cool.

Well, suck it up. It doesn't go in my damn car.