Mental cobweb clean out!

Gee haven’t I been the blogger bummer lately lol…I figured I should at least get something down here if only to get the rambles out of my head. Things have been very low key lately and that’s just the way I like them.

Last weekend, we did a little impromptu visiting of relatives in the cemetery and also wandered around picking things up for random strangers….setting toppled flowers right, fixing a few flags that were blown asunder and scraping the dirt off one flat stone so the man’s name could be seen again.  Sometimes people consider cemeteries to be spooky places, but they can be peaceful as well as interestingly informative if you take the time to look around at the more historical monuments and stones.

Following a “horrible” doctor appointment with what I now realize is an absolutely crazy GYN doctor…I’m attempting to take steps to lose a little weight. Her reasoning for all of my girl problems are because I’m heavy, well as being too heavy to have my tubes tied (WTF??)…Luckily I work with doctors and nurses who all have reassured me that something is “off” with the above mentioned doctor, which makes me feel better…as did the ultrasound that she begrudgingly let me have that showed a fibroid.  So….now begins an attempt to get healthier and lose a little weight, partially to prove to myself that she was wrong (this would be the wrong reason LOL) and partially to just feel better about myself (the right reason). Now at least when I decide to visit another doctor, maybe they won’t have the heavy card to play anymore. I guess this is just an example of how some doctors and some people just don’t click with each other, and how important it is to really have someone you feel comfortable with.

Well, now that I’ve digressed completely on the point of weight loss, let’s move on…I have whipped up myself a little mojo bag to help me on this journey; amazonite and moonstone in with lemon balm leaves in a red bag. I wrote up an appropriate verse to chant and put it all together under the full moon during my ritual. I thought I could use a little extra magic boost in my efforts…something to focus on when I need to not have that second bowl of pasta or ice cream, etc. At the very least, I guess I could chew on it when I get desperate! LOL 

In happier news, I have my Halloween altar all set up on the porch and it’s looking quite cute…I feel even better about it this weekend because I really did a huge purging out there and my adorable little sitting area is back and looking nice and clean, instead of crowded and piled up with crap and too many pieces of furniture.  A clean anything always makes my view on life a happy one! We’ve also got our outdoor decorations and lights up…mostly for our own personal amusement, since we live in the middle of nowhere and no one comes to our house to trick or treat anyway. Halloween is my daughter’s favorite holiday…so I’m taking this as a positive sign that maybe I’ll make a witch out of her yet…no pressure, just hoping.

My calendula oil is coming along nicely….there is definitely a change in the color of the oil, so the petals are giving off their oils quite well.  I’m getting excited to make something with it…lip balm, cuticle cream, hand salve…oh boy! 

My latest Goddess research has led me to Bast, the Egyptian cat Goddess. I find it both interesting and amusing that these ladies always make me take a round-about way to find them. Between various red herrings and odd connections, it’s like a live action Scooby Doo mystery of the Goddesses and honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

A Tuesday dabble round-up...

Just a quick note on some recent dabbles…I finally deemed my garlic and apple cider vinegar tincture to be done….and I was completely weirded out by it, so I ended up tossing it LOL  Have you ever got the feeling that something was just bad…you look at it from this way and that way and you smell it and poke it and it just gives you the heebee jeebees?  Yeah, that’s how I felt about this stuff…ah well, lesson learned.  Maybe I should have kept it in the fridge, or maybe I should have actually preserved it like one does with jellies…maybe I should just stick to bath products, potions not meant for drinking and edible things that have already been tested by others…like tea! I will be putting my tincture bottles to good use by keeping plain old apple cider vinegar in them in the fridge to use as a daily tonic on its own…mixed with water of course.

On a more exciting note – the calendulas are done blooming and the petals are dried.  Last night I mixed them with oil…about 8 oz of petals with 1 cup of sunflower oil, ½ cup of sweet almond oil and ½ cup of apricot kernel oil and now they sit in my window slowing infusing themselves with the wonderful essence of the calendula flowers. Such a fantastic plant, with so many good uses…I’m planning on using the oil in a balm as well as keeping a little bit in its oil form as well.  I have some fantastic glass vials with corks…from some cone incense I got a while ago…and they’re just screaming to have something put in them.

I’ve also decided to keep my peppermint plant inside for the winter instead of getting it into the ground before a frost…and darned if the thing hasn’t been growing better since it came in. The same thing with the four lavenders as well…they are still small and wee, as my daughter says so on the bakers rack they went as well….between those two and the rose scented geranium that has become ginormous in the past few weeks…I have one corner of my house that smalls happy and herby all the time. It’s nice to have a place to go when I’m stressed out and just squash my face in the leaves and breathe deeply.

I still desperately need to get the elderberry, hyssop and Artemisia into the ground…if it would stop raining and be sunny long enough for me to feel like going outside, that would be awesome!  I discovered that I have another type of Artemisia growing in my yard…who knew.  This I was very excited about…I seem to be drawn to this plant for some reason.  Admittedly it might have to do with our discovery of legalized absinthe over the past year, but that was before I discovered these plants in my locale.  My next Goddess to research will be Artemis…I’ve come to learn that when Goddess clues are thrown at me in strange ways, I need to investigate them more because they have something important to say to me.

Lastly…Alaska, today I honor you….The Last Frontier, The Land of the Midnight Sun…you’re beautiful and I hope to visit you one day! On behalf of most of America, I would like to apologise for "that woman" who has brought you so much attention over the past 3 years...we too would like her to shuffle quietly off into the sunset.

Summer reflections...

Summer’s almost gone and I’m a little sad….as much as I like fall, it also signals another year older for my daughter. She started 8^th grade this year and I think it was kind of a bummer of a summer for her a little bit.  We weren’t able to do much that would be considered exciting this year…my husband having been laid off for 8 months and things being tight. 

At the beginning of the summer, just when school finished, we took a trip to Salem, MA, for a weekend and in true pre-teen fashion, she bitched the entire time we were there and we were all miserable, and then lamented because she complained the whole time and didn’t appreciate it like she should have.  Sigh…but I’ve had numerous reports from other parents that this seems to happen a lot, with all of them.

It was also rough for her the rest of the time a little too….she spends her days with my mother, who has reached that point in her early 60s where she is just losing it and can make everyone around her bonkers and frustrated on a regular basis…combine that with a know it all pre-teen and it’s a recipe for disaster. The ride home each night was very draining, having to listen to all the things that went wrong in her day. Of course, she also learned to shoot pool, drive a gator tractor and was able to spend her days lounging by the pool…but she’s not of the age where these things count just yet.

Most of our summer nights were spent watching the reruns of Little House on the Prairie…not exciting by any means but I had hoped that some of the little life lessons they taught would rub off on her, and they might have…at least she enjoyed watching it and we were able to spend time together as a family. I also think it was hard for her to hear about all the other fun things her friends were doing…one friend seemed to go away every other weekend.

And to top it off, we never made it to the beach….this I’m sad about.  But I’m hoping to rectify it this week, before summer “officially” ends.  If she will let me…sometimes her anxiety doesn’t let me do things I’d like to do, because the thought of anything out of the ordinary sends her into a spiral that is easier to just void than try to push through. I’m going to try to take a ride down to the ocean the last night of summer.  My husband is working the evening shift, and we’ll be able to say good bye to the season.  I’m hoping she’ll understand the symbolism of my last ditch effort to get her to the beach…even if it’s not  exactly how she wanted it to be.

On a more positive note, we created ourselves a witch bottle this weekend and will be burying it (hopefully) this weekend…something strange did happen to it though and I have to see how that’s going to pan out. It was sitting on the counter, and when I looked at it the next day, the metal top (Ball canning jar) was dented up…when I took off the cover…it was bubbling LOL and I have no idea why….so it now sits on my porch in a cup, and I’m patiently waiting for it to stop bubbling…I assume it will eventually.  I am glad I hadn’t gotten around to sealing it up with wax just yet.  I guess this is just another example of how hearth and home witchery really can be exciting…you never know what you’re going to make explode in the kitchen! 

This week I need to get off my butt and plan out my Mabon ritual, decide what I’m making for dinner that night and pick up a bottle of celebratory mead. We had a mini-celebratory meal last night…I baked the good bread, cooked a chicken with the fixings and had some Octoberfest beer. I figured better to do it now while we’re all together, since I didn’t know just yet if my husband would be home Friday night. It’s a season of many feasts, I think anyway…so we might as well start early and make them most of it!

I’m taking part in the Practical  Magic Blog Party this weekend as well….I haven’t a clue if what I did is what’s expected, but I think it will be ok….I get to play the clueless novice blogger card if it’s not that great LOL Unfortunately, I can’t make midnight margaritas…heartburn and I’ve started to realize these days that tequila shortens my temper to such a short string that it’s just safer for everyone if I just avoid it all together.

Wednesday week review.....

So many goofy things to talk about...where oh where to begin LOL…Since the husband has started working again, I get to have more time with daughter alone.  Friday night we got to have a “date” and went to the Dollar Tree to get some things for fall decorating…loose leaves, pumpkins, gourds, fall flowers, a leaf garland, a scare crow that I realized this morning is among the missing and the best tea light holders ever! They’re reddish brown glass and shaped like oak leaves!  These went on my kitchen window altar and I changed the tarot card to Justice, added a gnome and a piece of amethyst. 

We ended up going to the Chinese restaurant for dinner and also hit up Michael’s crafts, where I bought the cutest witch stamp for a buck, as well as a little cow for the kitchen altar as well.  This is for Isis, and it stands next to my wee small pig for Hestia. Don’t know why, but the farm animal aspect seemed right for me LOL

Daughter redecorated the seasonal altar on the sun porch as well…we put out the new altar cloth, added a small basket of leaves and gourds, added another gnome and amethyst, put out a glass vase with grapes on it to hold the mini sunflowers, changed the tarot cards that go on there…and she decided to hang my antlers on the wall instead of leaving them resting on the top of the chest…and I have to say, it works…I added a maroon sash to them, wrapped around the points and the effect is quite striking. I really do love how she gets into the seasonal decorating with me…she might not choose being a pagan as her religion but it’s nice to know that she at least gets it a little. 

After all that, we moved on to the last but not least decorating inside…I have a wreath I hang in the kitchen and we switch out the flowers and other things appropriately….the summer flowers and little frogs have been packed away and the leaves, mums and grapes now adorn it, quite festive!  For the table, I made the best score….in my own house.  A reminder to those who hoard and stash away things…check your closets frequently, you never know what’s in there!  I found a pitcher with fall leaves on it, and a faux wood serving dish with leaves and grapes on it…courtesy of things nana had and I saved, and forgot about it.  Whew! That officially ends the fall decorating until the Halloween season starts!  Saw some great signs at Michael’s I want…but I’ll save those details for later on. 

Posted on the Something Oddly blog last week was an entry regarding pennies.  I showed my daughter and she decided that we should make ankle bracelets with them as well….so I ended up with 3 pennies from 1977 and she has 5 of them dated 1968, 1978, 1988, 1998 and 2008.  Husband drilled, she strung them up and I made up an enchantment for them and now we have our lucky pennies around our ankles…they are actually really cute.

Daughter started school yesterday and I sent her off with a little mojo bag in her pocketbook….9 rose scented geranium leaves, a tigers eye and an apache tear. She also wears a rose quartz and clear quartz pendants on chain…with all that I think, metaphysically speaking, she’s ready to take on anything LOL

Tonight is my 9^th wedding anniversary and I’ll be home alone…sigh….poor me! LOL  But after being out of work for 8 months, and getting a chance for extra hours at the new job, I told the husband he should take the chance do work and we’d do something another night.  Of course, I’m kicking myself now for that decision, but it is what it is.  Was thinking I’d pull some cards tonight with the daughter just for fun and see what we end up with…I don’t usually do this very often, but for some reason I really want to tonight.  When the universe speaks, we need to listen….and listen, and pull cards I shall.