Introduction

"Watch out, Bridget Jones: There's a new singleton in town, and she's got needles! This hilarious book chronicles the life of a newly divorced woman, as she struggles, dates, and knits her way back to sanity."--Knit. magazine If you've ever been dumped, duped, or three minutes from crazy, you'll love Crazy Aunt Purl. Side-splittingly funny and profoundly moving, Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair is the true-life misadventures of Laurie Perry, aka Crazy Aunt Purl, a slightly neurotic, displaced Southerner trying to create a new life after her husband leaves her to get his creativity back (Whatever the hell that means.) But will she get her groove back in a tiny rented apartment, with a mountain of boxes, visible panty lines, and a slight wine-and-Cheetos problem? I was a thirty-something woman living alone with four cats. I was probably going to be divorced. I was on the short bus to crazy. I pictured my grandmother making hoop-skirted yarn cozies for the toilet paper. I pictured myself making doilies for furniture that I did not own. I saw my cats wearing knitted hats with lace appliqués. From my vantage point, knitting seemed like 100 percent of some road I did not want to walk down. Yet, surprisingly, it's knitting that saves her and emboldens her to become fully engaged in life again--to discover new friends; to take risks, however scary; and to navigate the ins and outs of the modern dating scene. Dating has changed in a decade. Now there is a higher chance of meeting someone who has an internet porn addiction than someone who has a job. In Los Angeles, your dinner companion might have served time in Pelican Bay or run a meth lab. Or, worst of all, he might spend all night talking about his agent, his craft, and what it means to grow as an actor. Then he'll ask you to read his screenplay. And such is life in this quirky, irreverent memoir, a spin-off of the blog phenomenon, www.crazyaunt purl.com, one of the most successful online diaries in history, exploding to an international fan base of enthusiastic readers. But don't worry, you don't have to knit to love Aunt Purl. You just have to know what it feels like to have loved, to have lost, or to have taken a leap of faith. We've all been there: Pass the wine. Laurie Perry has written for the Los Angeles Daily News. She has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Vogueknitting. Visit her website at www.crazyauntpurl.com.

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Excerpt

Chapter 1

There are three rules every Southern girl has hammered into her consciousness and they shape you and haunt you until the day you die.

Cardinal Rule Number One: Mind your manners.

This is of course the most important rule, especially early on in your upbringing as it applies to everything from “watch your mouth” to “mind your elders,” and encompasses all forms of behavior from “elbows off that table rightnow” to “do not look at me in that tone of voice.” As you get up on in years you learn to mind your manners by not pitching a hissy when a smile and firm but pleasant tone will do, and by always being strong and kind, and of course you never smoke standing upright or while wearing your sorority pin. Because that is just tacky.

Cardinal Rule Number Two: Make the best of a situation.

When delivered by your Uncle Truman or a male teacher or your softball coach, this rule can sound like “Keep your chin up” or “Put your game face on.” Sometimes there’s a bait-and-switch approach, where you may have (in a moment of weakness) confessed some sad or upsetting thing to a willing human listener, and they reply back with a long, often horribly detailed story of the so-and-so girl who faces a far worse and more disastrous situation than you yourself could even imagine, which I suppose is meant to make you feel better about your own pathetic sob story but on me has the opposite effect.

And Cardinal Rule Number Three: Always wear clean panties.

This particular gem was amended by my mother when I was sixteen, as she warned me in no uncertain terms to always wear clean panties and keep them on.

#

These rules presented for me a dilemma of decorum at the best of times and a true test of character in the worst of times. My comportment was once again in the crosshairs on the day this story begins, a day like any other, really, a completely normal day.

Although I was a married woman of thirty-three years of age living in cosmopolitan Los Angeles, California, and working in a downtown skyscraper (I work at a bank, but it sounds more glamorous to say downtown skyscraper), quite a remarkable departure from my small-town roots, I was now facing the trifecta of Southern Cardinal Rules, brought upon by a rather strange and airy sensation in the back regions of my grey pinstripe skirt.

I felt a draft. Back there.

Today, the day of my inconvenient new rear-facing air conditioning system, was a day of precarious underwear selection. While I had every intention of going home that very evening and facing Mount Washmore, the laundry pile in my bedroom closet, I was currently Making The Best Of Things. The wash-day panties I was wearing were nothing more than a string holding together some cotton, and not only was it an unfortunate thong-style contraption, it had the novelty of being green and red because I was on my Christmas undies. I had not embarked upon any lunchtime calisthenics, or lobbed kung fu kicks on my coffee break, or done anything, really, aside from sit on my ass in an air-conditioned office and Look Busy. Graphic designers at financial institutions do not have physically vexing jobs. But as soon as I stood up to stretch, I felt it--yes--a definite draft.

First I performed the not-so-subtle maneuver of slightly pulling my skirt to the left and craning my head back to see if I could spot the damage. Nothing.

A quick recon mission with my hands told me all I needed to know: my skirt had distinctly more air conditioning in the backyard than it had this morning when I pulled it on. Sans panty hose. Meaning, at any moment my Christmas-themed underthings could be exposed to the cruel office air, in August, and also, this was maybe not the sort of impression I wanted my coworkers to have of me.

I stood in my cubicle and considered the alternatives. No sewing kit, so there’s that. No safety pins either. I started for a moment toward the tape dispenser, but let’s be honest here: no amount of Scotch tape in the world could keep my ample behind encased in pinstripes. So I did the only thing I could think of, and with my heavy black corporate stapler in hand, I crab-walked demurely through the hallway into the ladies room. I moved pretty quickly considering all the wind rustling in the eaves behind me, desperately hoping not to run into any chatty or curious or breathing co-workers who might wonder why I had to take my stapler to the restroom with me.

I made it into the ladies room without running into anyone, locked myself into the stall (the big one, of course, better for maneuvering), and stripped off my skirt to perform the necessary stapling surgery on the back seam.

One might imagine that sitting with staples up your backside for the rest of the workday would not be a particularly comfortable thing to do. One would be right. But that’s what I did for the rest of that afternoon, squirming as little as possible, wondering if I were up-to-date on my tetanus shots, wondering if I could actually drink a glass of wine the size of my head when I got home, wondering if my mother had envisioned this very scenario when she advised keeping my panties on. I doubted it.

I drove home that night, a normal night like any other, tired, staples pressing into the backs of my thighs. It was a Thursday, and I sat in traffic trying to decide what to make me and my husband Charlie for dinner. Spaghetti? Baked chicken? Meatloaf? He had very particular tastes when it came to eating, nothing with sauce (except pasta), chunks, or garnishes. No salads and no vegetables besides fried or mashed potatoes, corn, green beans, and (surprisingly) peas. During the first year of our marriage this seemed unusually cruel for a new, young wife who couldn’t cook.

“So you’ll eat tomato sauce, like on pizza or pasta, but not actual tomatoes?”

“Yep.”

“Fascinating.”

Somewhere around year four, I rose to the challenge and began to see cooking as an experiment in creativity: what could I prepare, with my limited skills and his limited palate, that would be edible and also pass the Picky Test?

That night, I walked through the door, said hi to my husband, “Hey! Howwasyourday, I got staples in my behind, be right back,” scratched a cat on the head, and stripped off my poor mangled skirt. I made dinner--spaghetti after all. Charlie liked it with extra Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top, and we sat eating it at the table on a Thursday night just like any other. And that is when my husband told me he was leaving.

And then he did.

And that is where this story begins. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

Discussion Topics from the Author:

(Goes well with a …..)


TOPIC: The “Safe” Marriage
Laurie knew something was wrong in her marriage—she heard the late-night calls and knew he didn’t want a baby, yet she chose to live in denial. She referred to her husband as a “safe sedan”.
Are there times you denied something in your relationship? What was the ultimate result? Have you ever stayed in a relationship just because it was safe?

TOPIC: Living the Fear Life
After her husband left, Laurie isolated herself and lived what she calls the Fear Life, with the Golden Rule of being a Hermit: “I would ideally work from home, submitting my projects remotely and never attend meetings or go to an office. I would piddle in my garden and knit and talk to my cats.”
Have you ever lived for a time—or in any aspect of your life in the Fear Life? When? Why, and how did you come out of it?

TOPIC: Friends
“Faith is a woman I met at my knitting group, and we had become friends, and she knew me only in the context of who I was right then. It’s an odd thought that you’re making friends, and they only know you as the divorced woman, never knew your husband, never knew you as a wife. It’s a really liberating thought, too. You can be anyone you want to be. They see you as a whole woman, not half of a couple.”
Do you have friends you lost as a result of a breakup? Are you in any way a different person “with him” than “without him” and how? Which person is more like who you really are?

TOPIC: Family Rules
“There are three rules every Southern girl has hammered into her consciousness and they shape you and haunt you until the day you die. Cardinal Rule Number One: Mind your manners; make the best of a situation; always wear clean panties.”
Did you have any rules as part of your upbringing that still help—or haunt—you in your love/work/life today?

TOPIC: Women and Money
“I will be the first to admit that prior to my divorce I was not the most fiscally responsible person on the planet. Whenever my financial outlook is particularly uncertain, I have the inconsolable urge to shop…. After the divorce, I was too scared at first to even know how much debt I had. Sure, I had a pretty general idea (“general” meaning “a whole lot of debt” and “maybe I will cry” and “is there any ice cream?”), but I did not know the actual amount. And that is sad. So once I wrote down every bill and expense and credit card, I had a full picture of my finances…Taking control of my own monetary future felt like the biggest step yet on the path to self-sufficiency.”
Do you share Laurie’s proclivities with money? Do you feel in control of your finances or in denial? Were you raised believeing it was “the man’s job” to handle the money? Does it feel frightening to know the exact amount of debt you have? How and why?

TOPIC: Clothes
Laurie describes her post-divorce wardrobe as some of the “worst fashion choices” of her life. Sweatpants on backwards and covered in cat hair and the “schlumpy soon to be divorced woman” work uniform (black pants, un-ironed button-down blouse, Cardigan Of Constant Sorrow)” she wore for the better part of three months.
Do you find that what you wear embodies how you feel? Do you have any pieces of clothing you’ll never throw away—or any that you’ve burned—because they bring back joyful or hurtful times in your life?

TOPIC: Weight
“There’s also something comforting about being heavier. It’s no coincidence that I gained weight when I most needed some protection from the world. I wanted to minimize myself, seem smaller somehow, and what better way to become unseen than to gain weight? People’s eyes pass right over you; men pay less attention to you. I wish it weren’t true because it’s so unfair, and yet at the same time, I used it to my advantage, building a wall of fat and insulation against the world, against rejection, against lonely.”
Has your weight fluctuated in your lifetime? Do you find that the bigger you are the less you are seen?

TOPIC: Dating
“The predate process is exhausting. Clean your house, de-fuzz the cat hair from surfaces, tidy up, declutter as needed, vacuum, and that’s just the house. There’s a whole cleaning and de-fuzzing of your own self that has to happen, and here is the area where perhaps I stumbled a bit….”
Does your predate process sound similar? How do you think this compares to the male gender predate process?

“You see, in my world, the world of the newly divorced and also antiquated…text messaging was not part of my married life, just like flirty e-mails had never been part of the game. In other words, I was freaking clueless. And I needed to learn this text messaging immediately.”
Have you ever felt clueless? Has the dating landscape changed for you while you were involved with someone? Does going high-tech help or hinder you in the dating process?


TOPIC: Being Good to Yourself
“Being good to yourself is hard work. As women, we just do for others and hope they notice. How do you put yourself first without being seen as selfish, or mean, or miserly toward others? How do you ever move your own self to the very, absolute top of all lists?”
Have you put the needs of others’ before your own needs? Is it selfish to make your well-being a priority? Do you worry about being perceived as selfish?

Weblinks

»	Publisher's Book Info
»	Crazy Aunt Purl's web site

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