Wow, it's been a week already?

 Dear Reader,

I have been super busy this week with functionally no time for writing. I had hoped to hop back in the saddle and resume daily posting but life got in the way. A lot of progress was made in off-line happenings but not much with my writing online or off-line. I apologize. I had plans to write a lovely poem for Lady Day but I spent Lady Day doing just about all the dishes in the apartment and prepping a fish tank for a new betta. (Our old betta Snap passed on last month the day before my father-in-law died. We now have a new betta named Pacman (with the nickname Sunshine because the kids couldn't decide on a name) and he is just as silly as Snap. The coolest thing about this betta is that he is yellow. I'd never seen one that was yellow before.)

I did not get as far as planning out blog posts for this week. As such, I didn't have base ideas to work from to create quality content. I'm going to do that today. While yesterday was my planning day, I spent the day running from appointment to appointment. March has been a busy month and April looks to be just as busy, to be honest. Being disorganized does not help my writing process at all. I know there are threads that I have dropped and I'm trying to find them in the back posts here. It slows me down a considerable amount too. I am doing my best to get back to daily content. It may just be a bit rough for a little while. Please bear with me as I am working on it.

Divination: Musings on Crafting Your Own Oracle Deck.

Dear Reader,

I posted a while back that I am working on making my own oracle deck. It is based off of dream images and running themes in my artwork. The preliminary deck is small symbols sketched out on 3x5 notecards with a word associated with the symbol in question at the base of the card. It is proving a bigger challenge than I anticipated. I need to flesh out the artwork because a small glyph doesn't fully capture the meaning of the image.

I am trying to decide if I am going to use paint or colored pencils on the next set of cards I make. I am a fan of both mediums. I don't think I'm brave enough to use the watercolor pencils that you can paint over. I have always had a hard time controlling where the paint goes with watercolors. Either way, the glyphs alone is not sufficient. 

Reading with the deck is pretty meh right now. I have come to the conclusion that the deck is incomplete, which means I need to work up more glyphs for more dream symbols. I can get an ok reading with the deck but it lacks detail. I want the deck to give results that are just as detailed as I can get with a tarot deck. That means tweaking it and working up different layouts for readings. Just pulling cards gives some information that is useful. Laying them out in a fashion similar to the Celtic cross just gives me a jumbled mess. So tarot spreads are not going to work for this deck.

It's a shame that my favorite craft store is going out of business. I'd pick up heavier cardstock and make the cards with that. It's not easy to shuffle a deck of notecards. They tend to bend. But, here's your update on how that project is going. Slow and steady is what's going to win the race here.

Godspousery Notes (a day late)

The past week has been busy. It has been stressful to see what the Trump team is doing to the government. So stressful that I am back on the higher dose of antianxiety medication. I grumbled and muttered about how I didn't want to do it. Both Freyr and Loki gave me a glare. I dare say they had matching expressions of disapproval. I was pointedly reminded that I had just finished a major depressive episode and failing to control my anxiety would drive me into another. I could have been stubborn but that only gets you so far when you're out numbered and logic is on their side.

I thought that Freyr was going to be upset with the vegetal casualties of my depressive episode. He wasn't, much to my surprise. His response when I started to apologize for the umpteenth time was to say "You did your best. How can I expect you to walk on a broken leg while it is still in traction?" He is encouraging me to do more gardening indoors and outdoors. But he is making a point of cautioning me against making plans that are too much for me to handle. Continuing with the broken leg image, he told me that I can't run when I'm using crutches.

Loki has been quiet of late with the exception of the day that I heard about his opinions on my resistance to the antianxiety medication getting raised. It feels like I'm being observed. I am pretty sure he's up to something but I have no idea what. It is a bit unnerving when deities take your measure and you're aware of it on some level. They can see literally everything about you.

Moura 2025 CE: Day 28

 It is Kala. This is the day that Our Lady is slain by the Dark Queen. Given everything going on in the world, it seems like the Dark Queen is running rampant. It's pretty easy to feel tempted to despair. I exhort you all to resist that temptation. When feeling like all hope is lost, sit with the feeling and learn from it what you can. Then bless it and let it go. Resist the urge to ruminate on the feeling because it will only make you feel worse.

When you have done your best to let the feeling of hopelessness go, refocus your efforts on the present moment. Do something that involves as many of your senses as possible. For my part, I'm going to go wash dishes after I finish this entry. I may wind up cleaning up a significant portion of the kitchen. My effort to tending to present matters will help push aside the anxiety that I am feeling and help me to adhere to the ritual taboo against contemplating the future over the next 48 hours.

If washing dishes and tidying up the kitchen doesn't refocus me on the present, I know my stomach will when I am done. Lunch time is about an hour away and I figure I have about an hour's worth of work to do. If that doesn't help, I know there's more housework to focus on. 

Moura 2025 CE: Day 27

 It is almost Kala and my goal of having everything around here picked up by then is impossible. I'm not going to stop cleaning in despair. I did that last year and I think I have enough dust everywhere I could plant things in it. (I really was at a bad place last year.) I have decided that since the world is going haywire, I might as well let myself have some extra time to get the household picked up. It's not like dishes are going to go anywhere, if you know what I mean.

A small part of me hopes that within the coming days that we'll be witness to a miracle and the republic will be restored. It is the same part of me that hoped that Christmas would come with the miracle that life was going to turn around as a kid. I am fairly sure, however, that such a hope is foolish. There are forces at work that I can not fully fathom and I doubt that I have the capacity to effect change on that front, as much as I want to. I pray, but prayer feels useless.

Instead of mumbling pleas that the decay of the US pass me by, I am focusing on what I can do and what I can change. I continue to work on getting things ready for when my eldest son graduates high school. I'm planning a garden and I'm going to get supplies for preserving food. I intend to take time to put by food for my household and some of the extended family. Part of that process is going to be learning how to can tomatoes. Hopefully, I will find a recipe for canning fruit that doesn't require a super huge amount of sugar. 

I am attempting not to despair. I am resisting the urge to chronicle ever aspect of the political happenings in my country. I just know that would make everything harder. So, I am trying to refocus on practical things and what little things I can do to help people around me. I'm still making preemie hats. The rate had slowed down because of last year. But whipping those things off in a half hour does wonders for my stress levels. I plan on dropping off 90 preemie hats with the county hospital next month. I'm 2/3rds of the way to that goal. Focusing on things like that help ease some of my feelings of helplessness and gives me a bit of hope.

Moura 2025 CE: Day 26

 I have been struggling against the ritual prohibition of not contemplating the future during this month. One, there are many worrisome things happening that I am concerned jeopardizes the future of my children. Two, I have blog topics to plan for next week that I am struggling not to start work on. And, three, I have books that I am going to write this year that I want to get organized and such. I am impatient to get to work on the projects like blog planning and I am unable to stop worrying with each new development in the news here in the US.

I attempt to focus on the present. It is part of the reason why my kitchen is actually looking kinda decent right now. When I catch myself worrying, I go and start cleaning. My bathroom is still a disaster but the mirror isn't super foggy from whatever the kids sprayed on it when they last attempted to clean. I am probably going to spend a bunch of time working on handcraft projects today when my worrying begins to be a problem. 

I have a spinning project that has been languishing for months because I have been forgetting to work on it. Spinning yarn is a relaxing hobby for me and since I figured out how to do it as I am walking around, it makes for a good motivator to get some exercise. In fact, I prefer to take a walk and spin with a drop spindle over sitting down at my spinning wheel. I do love my spinning wheel but I don't have a good set up for using it at the moment. The chair that I sit in when I am working on fiber projects has arms on it and makes it hard to get a long draw going with my fiber.

The weather today isn't going to be that fantastic to go for a walk outside and spin, but I can walk around my apartment and do it. It's an ideal project for when I have to focus on the present because I have to carefully watch my fiber to make sure that the yarn I am making is even. I have one of the three singles done and in a ball. I have to make the second Alpaca fiber single and then the third single out of acrylic fiber. I am kinda worried that the acrylic fiber that I have has a ridiculously long staple length and it will be difficult to spin. However, when I get the three singles done, I am going to ply them together on my kick-wheel. It's a project that is going to take a little while to finish up.

I haven't decided what I am going to do with this yarn when I get it done. It is going to be my first 3 ply yarn. I want to save it for myself and when I do another 3 ply, I'll make something else out of it and give it away. I am contemplating selling some of the yarn I spin. According to theory I could fetch a good price for it. I am undecided on it all. But, Moura isn't a time for making decisions like that. It is for focusing on the present and the holy mysteries of the season. 

Moura 2025 CE: Day 25

 I woke early today. I hadn't planned on it, it just happened. I am not groggy, so I guess I got a full night of sleep. I'm hoping this isn't an indicator of heading into hypomania. I have to keep an eye on how much sleep I get. My body isn't exactly helpful on that front with this perimenopause business going on. That said, I am hoping that my migraine doesn't hit me in the face until this evening. This wild weather is wearing on me and it looks like this is going to be a long week due to it.

As I was staring at the ceiling, I was thinking about things like what guidance is needed for non-Madrian households. I have been struggling with this particular question for months. I have prayed for Déa to show me the way to approach this. I keep cycling back to the question, however. The only answer that I have is love. Then it occurs to me that perhaps a better way of approaching the question is how do we express unconditional love in a parental relationship.

There is an expectation of obedience on the part of the child. This obedience is not blindly given, however. It's often like pulling hen's teeth, in my experience. The kids challenge me on a regular basis and pretty much always have with the question why being at the forefront. As a person who's passion is for educating, I have a default response to explain things and do my best to make clear what's going on. My household isn't ruled by mood swings as much as by logic. No  matter where I am at in my bipolar, the kids can count on me to give them an answer that makes sense, as long as they give me the time to explain it.

Perhaps this is something that Déa does with us. She guides us through life and when we ask why things happen, she presents an answer to us. Sometimes we understand her answer and sometimes we don't. If we stay curious, however, things are made clear in their own time. I had a point as to how this related to relationships but I lost it. I fully believe, however, that Déa is always reaching out to us and pointing things out to us that we should focus on.

Things are scary right now and they're hard because of what other people have done. At the same time, however, there is hope because people are (as Chuck Tingle says) proving love is real. And love is one of the most powerful forces in the universe.