I've noticed a thing I do lately. I recalculate all things temporal around Karl's death. When I think back about things that happened recently, I think "He'd been gone for 3 months," or "That was only 6 weeks before he died." I imagine this is common, but haven't really looked for others doing the same thing. It's like my own personal BC/AD system, with August 22 in the middle... I knew I did this when thinking about Karl, but tonight I was looking at knitting projects in my online knitting group, and I was re-structuring the dates (in my head) that I started and finished pieces based on this new scale of time.

I've also been thinking about dating. Mostly I just brush off the thoughts, because it gets so complicated. Sometimes I think I'm "ready" to date - but it isn't like there's a timer in my gut that went DING. Several people have brought it up recently, and I say I'm open to the idea, but not particularly hopeful or willing to put a lot of effort into it. When I think about the next relationship, I inevitably end up fighting with this as yet nonexistent significant other about his jealousy issues, or his inability to really understand how important Elliot is to me, or his frustration about how little time I have for "us". And I'm having these arguments with somebody I haven't even met. So maybe I'm not so ready after all, and I should wait a little longer for the ticking to stop and the timer to chime in.