Marinating

I was taking a brief "break in the action" this morning to do a little reading in my private suite. You know the one I'm talking about--it has 4 walls and a door that really closes and locks, there's a sink and a shower/tub and a.... Well I was parked on the throne so I grabbed the latest magazine to thumb through which happened to be the April issue of Harper's Bazaar. In it was an article called What's Age got to Do With It? by Gail Sheey (p.122). I haven't read any of her previous books (Passages, etc.) but one line in the article caught my attention. She was talking about women over 50 (I'm not quite there yet, but close enough) who are now "feeling free to reinvent themselves, to find and follow their passions, and to celebrate being seasoned women."

Interesting idea, I thought, and to some extent I sort of fit although not necessarily in the same way that she is thinking. My changes in course have been out of necessity as much as personal choice. But I loved her definition of the seasoned woman as "someone who has been marinated in life experience." Sheehy goes on to expand on this notion, but it struck a chord with me. I am at one of those turning points in life where you look back at where you were, assess how far you've come to arrive at the current place, and look forward with an openness to the possibilities that lie ahead. And while I think I have always followed my passions I have been quite conscious of the effect that being seasoned with life's experiences has had on me and those with whom I interact. Marinating really is a good thing!

I picked up some knitting in the last day or so, mostly because I was too fried to do anything constructive with the Dissertation. When I am that exhausted, lace knitting usually isn't a wise thing either. Late last night I discovered that I had made a mistake in my Shhh, it's a Secret Shawl that I'm designing. I tried to ladder down and fix the mistake, but I couldn't really decipher what I done wrong and I couldn't fix it either. The complex color variegations of the yarn both helped and hindered the process. I might have fudged it and gone on, trusting that the colors in the yarn would hide my error but I was on the last row before a planned pattern change and I was afraid the error might really mess up my stitch counts. So.... I patiently tinked oh, maybe 500 stitches? I don't really know. I am proud of myself for fixing the mistake. I just finished putting in a lifeline so I can frog back if I don't like the design I have planned next. I don't use lifelines much, but this time I know I need one. Who knows what will happen next? LOL