Your Cheatin' Heart

I can't even bring myself to count the days till Christmas! I know I said something to this effect earlier but I feel the need to repeat it. I am soooo not ready! That's one of my beefs with living in So Cal. It takes forever to get cool autumn weather so you can get in the holiday mood. When I lived in the Midwest, fall usually hit by the end of September with the potential for a week of Indian Summer which could pop up anytime in October. By Halloween though, it was definitely fall.

Only in the last two weeks has it really seemed like a full-fledged fall. Well, until today that is, when it's supposed to hit 80F (26C) and higher in the next few days. That's just not inspirational weather for Christmas preparations such as gift making especially when it's knitting.

I don't plan to decorate for the holidays. When I was married, the other half hated going out and getting a tree and putting up lights so I slowly succumbed to an undecorated Christmas. He further squelched decorating by wanting to go on a vacation over Christmas. Not that I minded a vacation to Hawaii, but Christmas just sort of vanished for me. It was also a way to get out of going back to the freezing Midwest to visit our parents. What's ironic is that once he started cheating, he suddenly was putting up lights and getting a tree...out of the blue...no prompting on my part since I expected nothing.

But then this would fall into the category of how to tell when a spouse is cheating. During this time, he bought an MP3 player while having shown no interest in music in the past. He also bought the trendiest sunglasses available at the time and started chewing gum non-stop. Things he never had interest in previously. On a flight home from where he worked and lived part-time (in another state) he immediately went on a diet that a "woman" who he sat next to him on the plane had raved about. He told me I should go on it because the woman really looked great. It got to the point where he was almost evangelistic about it.

I think this surfaced to consciousness since I'm still not divorced and I'm looking at another holiday alone. I don't care how much your friends care for you, as years go by, you discover that no one invites you over anymore. I think part of it is the fact that virtually all my friends are married and I've become the odd man out. A potential reminder, a stigma.

I find this so different than the life in the Midwest. As kids we always had an "adopted grandmother" over for almost every holiday. It's just sort of customary in the Midwest. California is another story.

I guess the point of this post is that one should immediately pick up on such warning signs of cheating. This was the time of year is when I started noticing such behavior on his part. I misread it for male mid-life crisis. I was so very wrong. 

Oh well, life goes on.