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.

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.

A weekend of witchy maintenance...

What a weekend....after raining, and raining and raining Friday night, Saturday burst forth with excessive sunshine and happy feelings which of course made me perky as all hell despite a bit of over-indulgence Friday night.  Sometimes when  you're having fun with friends and getting in a good quality visit, you just have to stay up until there is no beer left LOL

Saturday morning was spent doing the most random of projects. I froze the rose water i made last weekend in 1/2 cup servings so it will stay fresh for my next batch of lotion making, the daily calendulas were picked and i gave the rose scented geranium a much needed hair cut.  Now i have the extra leaves drying on the screen so they can be used in sachets eventually. They smell so good! I emptied and washed jars, rearranged the product closet and got things ready for the next round of garden fertilizing. I also put all my crystals (except the fluorite) outside to charge up in the sun.

Then...oh then....the child had a birthday party and the husband was out building a bridge at my mothers...and I had TIME ALONE! in my house for the first time, I think, since I had the flu back in 2009.  It was wonderful! I was in pagan nerd heaven, sitting at the table on the deck surrounded by research books, papers, notebooks, rocks and paints. I was finally able to take the time to go through all my Hecate material and put together my ideas for a garden altar dedicated to her. I even took a picture....

I am completely amused with using our beagle statue to stand guard over it. His name is Francois. One of Hecate's animals is the hound, so I thought it was be appropriate. I feel like he's standing there waiting to bay at the moon and the night sky.  Shortly after I put this together, the real hound, Scooter, walked himself right through the center of the altar and presented himself for petting while standing over it.  Whether this could be construed as a blessing or just a typical beagle being nosy and wanting his ears scratched, I'll never know.  I'd like to think of it as a little of both.  I like having a place to sit and commune with my garden now, and also a place to leave an offering. I picked flowers to leave on my other two small altars in the house as well.

All this has also inspired me to finally get to a few tasks out there that i have been putting off. In an effort to "kill a little time" Sunday morning, i ended up going through the herb garden roughing up all the soil, pulling the weeds and generally just making it look better and happy and then i finally added the composted manure around all the herbs to give them a little boost. And then i reseeded half of the backyard with grass  seed all over and the last of the clover seed in the larger bare spots. Grass doesn't grow all that well in my yard...too many acidic trees. But with all the rain this year, a grass growing miracle seems to have happened. So i figured I'd throw down more and see how it goes. Toes and fingers crossed that something will come out of it!
Sunday night found me digging out an old journal, from back when i was 19 or 20 and first started getting into paganism. It was amusing to see what my frame of mind was back then, and also to see how my views have changed now that I'm approaching 34. I ended up keeping what i thought was the pertinent information in there, various lists i had wrote, rune meanings, colors etc and have turned it into a garden journal. I've started writing out all the plants that i am currently growing and their properties and correspondences, both magical and mundane. My intent is to keep better track of what is going on in my yard, in the hopes of finding better ways to grow things, what works, what doesn't, etc.
All in all, it was a weekend to be thankful for...and I'm hoping to continue the good vibes through the whole week, especially since this week leads into vacation week!