November? It's been that long?

Dear Reader,

I have been having life drive me crazy. I keep wanting to write but finding the motivation, energy, and time has been very difficult. Perimenopause has been the primary culprit for my struggle with motivation and energy. Brain fog is a real problem. Also, hot flashes suck the life out of you. I have been having difficulty thinking of what to write. I have also been having difficulty getting my computer to cooperate with me on getting online. (I fixed that today by a combination of luck, grim determination, and being talked through the process of how to resolve the 1k cookies that were on my browser. Thank you to Beloved for his endless patience and being tech support off his work hours.)

I have tried a couple times to back track through past posts to figure out what series of posts got left incomplete but that was not working so great because of the cookie problem with the browser. I'm going to attempt this again to try to pick up old threads and reweave things. I have some housekeeping I have to do with organizing these posts series that I have done. It is going to be a process but I think I might actually have some success this time I attempt it because the computer is actually cooperating with me.

I have a few incomplete book manuscripts that I have to type up and finish. I also have books to revise and do new editions of. Look for a new book out early next year. Research is still happening and editing is going to be a bear of a problem, I can just feel it.

Still, I am going to be writing more soon. My hope is to get back to daily posts. Right now, however, it may just be weekly posts as I have time. Wish me luck. 

Umm... Format changes were going to happen but I forgot. LOL

Hi everyone!

Yeah, I had big plans. I was going to completely revamp the blog and reorganize material. Then I forgot about it in the midst of life being a pain in the neck. I've been having a lot of issues with my anxiety and executive functioning (flashbacks are the seriously un-fun part of C-PTSD). I would have been writing but I was afraid to. Some of it because of flashbacks and some of it because of the flashback trigger - the current political-social environment.

Once I realized that was the problem, I was so angry that I was ready to spit nails. I took my anxiety medicine and did some deep breathing to calm myself down. The anxiety medication worked better than the deep breathing this time, I was that mad. I could have written a flaming rant about everything, but I stopped myself and looked at things from a bit of a clearer perspective. I realized that flaming rants are not going to help anything (especially my blood pressure). I thought about it and came to the conclusion that if I continued posting my content, it would be an act of resistance against the christo-facist crap getting spewed everywhere.

I grew up in an abusive household that had this type of garbage flying through the air and any resistance or rejection of this you got a nasty response ranging from verbal humiliation to physical punishment. To say the least, this isn't an easy topic for me. I was afraid that my blogs were going to get shut down because the powers that be are falling into line behind the president. Then it struck me, I'm not a big enough fish for them to worry about. I didn't have to worry about getting beat for being too liberal. No one was going to verbally shred me without consequence for disagreeing with the government. And, right now, I still am free to say whatever the hell is on my mind.

In a way, there's going to be something of a format change. I am going to be posting stuff that is political on a weekly basis. It will tie back to religion and witchcraft in some fashion usually. But some of the posts may just be old fashioned rants.

Admin Note: Big Format Change coming!

Hi everyone!

I just wanted to let you all know that before I resume topic based posting, I have to dust off cobwebs and reshuffle some things around. I am planning on making more pages with links to individual posts for topics like tarot reading. It is my hope that it will make this blog more user friendly. Daily topics are going to remain the same. Mondays are for divination, Tuesdays are for witchcraft specific items, and Wednesdays are sharing some of the treasures that I have. Thursdays are going to be vlog days. Each month is going to have a theme for the vlog. I will post transcripts of the vlog posts with the link to the vlog entry. And Fridays are recommendations. Saturdays are dedicated to sharing the antics of myself as a godspouse to Loki and Freyr. Sundays are my off day because it is frequently a day that I don't have much access to the computer due to family responsibilities.

I welcome requests and suggestions for topics to cover. I have been a practicing witch since 1993 and I love to share what I have learned. I'm an educator at heart. I will be covering themes and topics relating to Filianism. I'm still at the organizing stage of a full critical analysis of the Opera Omina of the Madrian Orders. This is a big project and will keep me busy for a while as I address each element of the two volumes individually. I will also be working on a new revision of the Children of Déa version of the Clear Recital. There's some formatting issues that need corrected among some other points of order to be addressed. In the early planning stages is a second daybook like A Year With Déa. I hope to have some progress on that by later in the year, with out the formatting problems that happened in the first daybook. 

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.

Posting to Resume Soon

 Hi everybody!

I have finally crawled my way out of a major depressive episode. It took a long time and a lot of prayer, but I made it. I am profoundly thankful for the antidepressants that my doctor prescribed. Bipolar is a real bear to deal with. I think this depressive episode was longer and deeper than the last one, which Beloved seems to agree on. My sense of time is rather scrambled and I am struggling to remember what plans I had made for this blog. After flailing a bit on this front last week, I said forget it and I'll just make new plans. Which is what I'm working on.

I don't have any posts in line right now to auto load this week. As the kids are on winter break, it's going to be a bit challenging to get them done. While they are teens, they still need some supervision and guidance. I can't just throw myself into writing all day and ignore the world around me. This is a thing I do when I get into the 'zone' as I am working. I start in the morning and next thing I know, it's time for the kids to get home from school.

If you have something that you're interested in seeing up here on this blog, drop me a comment on this post. I am willing to tackle most any topic within the scope of witchcraft and religion on here. Occult studies is one of my passions as well. Also, if anyone has any book recommendations, comment. I am looking for witchy books to read and review. Until next week, I hope everyone is warm, safe, and doing well. Thanks for your readership and I will be doing more work in the near future. Right now, it's time to plan.

I apologize for a lack of Divination related posts.

Dear Reader,

I have not given up the practice of divination. Indeed, I am still deeply in love with this aspect of magical study. My problem is I am rather stumped on what direction to go next. I have to review the plethora of posts I have made on this topic to find the loose threads that got dropped so that I can pick them up and work them out.

It has been difficult to do that because of two things: 1 - there are so many posts to go through from the years that it is overwhelming. 2 - my health issues are getting in the way of posting things or really doing any writing except for that which is therapy related. It's kinda bad, y'all. I'm working with my doctors and specialists to get it sorted out. I'm eyeballs deep in alligators trying to make handbags while they're gnawing on me. It's not fun. But I'm trying.

Nativity & Yule have passed. What now?

 Something of a personal post today because I have been so busy that I haven't had time to come up with anything for the topic of Divination. If I can, later today, I will post a reading for the Filianic community at large. I had wanted to do one draw each day of Nativity to give an overview of what the corresponding month is bringing next year. That didn't happen. I wanted to do a reading for the heathen community at large and the lokean community, but that didn't happen.

I've been so busy knitting and finishing projects that I haven't had time. When I wasn't doing that, I was cleaning. I'm still in this position because I have a bear to finish for my younger son and a sweater to sew together for my eldest son when it is done blocking. It has all together been frustrating and dealing with crisis after to crisis for the last month has been grueling. Gods only know what's coming next.

Progress Report: Making my own Dream Oracle Deck.

 Dear Reader,

I wish I could say that this project is complete since I announced it last year. Unfortunately, it is not. The initial set of cards have gone missing, much to my frustration. I haven't had time to re-draw them because I've been busy with health related problems most of this year. When I wasn't sick, I was attempting to clean house because it turns into a disaster when I'm not well and staying on top of the cleaning. (Ah, teenagers, they stack dirty dishes instead of washing them.)

I haven't begun my notations on the meaning or how to work with the cards because the cards are missing in action since July. I am really hoping that they didn't get accidentally thrown away. If I had enough random magazines, I would like to collage the cards along the themes they represent but I am not going to cannibalize my crochet magazines because there are patterns in there that I still want to make.

I just haven't had the time to poke my head in at the library to ask if they have a pile of old magazines that they want to discard. So, when I finally do find the cards, I suspect I'll be making abstract backgrounds to go with the glyph on each card.

Speaking of dreams, my dreams of late have been influenced by the news and my past trauma. On top of that anxiety inducing bit of fun, I have been diagnosed with sleep apnea which could explain some of the nightmares as well. Faceless people trying to kill you is not a pleasant dream, trust me.

As you may have seen on Tumblr, I am quite ill.

Dear Reader,

I am quite ill between the pneumonia that has been lasting since, well, I think it was the last week of August I was diagnosed. I've been on three courses of antibiotics. It has been unpleasant because I am exhausted on top of the preexisting sleep problems that have been going on for nearly two years. It is currently 4:21 in the afternoon here and I will need to start working on dinner soon. I have no desire to do anything but sleep. My chest aches but I have had at no point in time since I was diagnosed has an urge to cough. This is deeply concerning because it's pneumonia, you're supposed to cough that gunk out of your chest so you can breathe.

I am trying to kick start my writing mojo back into action but it is really hard to write when you are unconscious. I have been sleeping a good deal of the day. Chores are starting to stack up again. It's rough. Next week, I will be speaking with a sleep specialist about the results of the sleep study and finding out if there's anything they can do about that problem. I will also be talking to my family doctor about this pneumonia business. I am really hoping that we don't have to take the next step and admit me to the hospital to figure this out. I have things to do and kids to mind.

I am doing my best not to worry but it is difficult when you've been sick for approximately two months.

Too many tarot decks? Naw, not enough shelves!

 Dear Reader,

My collection of tarot decks has invaded the living room. I have a box that I keep them in but it is so full it can't close. (For a former box to hold Legos, that's kinda impressive.) I look at my bookshelves and find they're filled to the point of bursting. And so a pile of tarot decks rove around the living room like a Roomba searching for dog poop to scatter everywhere. (I swear from what I have heard and seen, those things are on 'seek and destroy' mode with that.)

Some days, I ask myself why I have so many when I only need is one. And then I sit down and start looking at the artwork. They're all lovely decks for so many artistic reasons. I will peruse the internet to look at the art styles that are popular in current decks. Next thing you know, I have acquired one more deck for the pile. Some would say I have a problem with hording tarot decks. Others would say that I am curating an artistic legacy. All I know is that I love these cards and I need a better storage solution than an old Lego box. I'm considering a rolling cart with drawers. I think I could fill up a small one. If I do that, Beloved is going to laugh at me. But, then I won't have tarot decks everywhere.

Ugh.

 Dear Reader,

Life offline has become a complicated mess again. The school messed up one son's schedule in a horrific fashion. He is literally talking about dropping out of school if he is forced to participate in one of the alternative educational programs. He had a lot of difficulty in that program because of the unstructured classroom environment. As such, he has decided that if he must go back into that learning environment, he is simply going to leave and do his best to get his GED. This is a really big deal and stressing him and us out.

The other son is not quite having panic attacks about the idea of the bullies that harassed him all through middle school having co-conspirators in the high school to harass him there as well. Also, his IEP got messed up and we're trying to fix it. And did I mention we made the horrific discovery that neither young man is at grade level for their mathematics and we suspect other subjects got glossed over. It's been a bit of a nightmare over here trying to fix this mess and getting the kids to talk about their concerns with their therapists.

Gods help me, my hair is going to be white by the end of this fiasco. 

Video Post: An Update and some rambling: Did the Dark Queen Cause All Suffering?

 

Dear Reader,

I apologize for the blurriness of the video, a lot of light behind me and some stuff on the lens doesn't make for a great picture. I open this video with an explanation and an apology why I've been away for so long. It's been a rough year between my bipolar type 2 acting up and my seasonal affective disorder kicking me in the teeth roughly around a week after the solstice last year. I'm doing a bit better now, but it's utter chaos trying to pick up all the threads laying around and get the kids ready for school. Also, I have forgotten how to do algebra which is making tutoring my eldest son a nightmare. Between the two of us, I can't multiply with out a calculator and he can't divide with out one. It's been rough going.

I've been visiting with the local Jehovah's Witnesses for a little while. The gave me a tract and shared with me a video that presented the claim that the fall of the angels was due to Satan's questioning Jehovah about the possibility of a perfectly good world. And, as per their tract and video, the Jehovah's Witnesses argue that all suffering in this world is due to Satan, who has command of it.

This got me to thinking about the Dark Queen and her relationship to the world and suffering. I am of a position that suffering is a natural consequence of being in this world. It's not a punishment or the result of a sadistic anti-demiurge wanting to torture all of existence. The Dark Queen and her servants can cause mischief, mayhem, and misery but they are not the reason why I have bipolar type 2 or that my nieces have it as well. That's just flawed genetics which arises from being in an imperfect world.

The Dark Queen's power is diminished by the Daughter's Sacrifice and the Mother's Rescuing of her Daughter. The servants are as mist on the wind. They can give us a spiritual chill and make illusions dance before us in that mist, but they are powerless over us. Temptation to despair and give up hope are ultimately empty words from the Dark Queen's servants, no matter how beguiling they sound. Because in the end, they are forced to pass away from us and we see the light of Déa shining through the mist, banishing it to the place it arose from.

I humbly ask your patience.

 Dear Reader,

Over the last week, things have become challenging. My efforts to draft entries and similar bits for this blog have been falling to pieces because I am functioning on not enough sleep due to chronic nightmares because I'm coming up on a big trauma anniversary date. Well, a string of them. Complex Post Traumatic Disorder is really hard to deal with and remain functional. I'll keep trying and eventually, we'll get past this rocky period.

At some point, I may even tell you the story of what caused this trauma that makes writing difficult. For now, I ask for your patience as I work through this mess.

Incapacitating Migraines can be Odd.

 Dear Reader,

I now understand the theory that Hildegarde von Bingen had ocular migraines and this was the root of her visions. I have ocular migraines. The aura symptoms for me include pain, food cravings, and my vision going blurry/foggy in my right eye. I usually have to take my medicine and go lay down in a dark room for a few hours. This time the migraine lasted three days. With my eyes closed, I saw colors and wavy lines. It was odd.

When sleep finally came, my dreams were vivid in color and realistic in action. Alas, they were nightmares of past trauma. As I woke up, on day two of this fun-fest, I heard a quiet voice telling me that I am strong enough to thole this as I have other pains. Thole is an interesting word from Anglo-Saxon. It means the ability to endure suffering and continue to act. (I am slowly learning Anglo-Saxon. I don't think I'll ever have a comprehensive grasp on it. I started too late and teachers are few.)

I don't know if Hildegarde's visions came during her migraines. I know that mine do not. But sometimes, the symptoms leading up to the migraine include elements that I had seen before in dreams. It's usually right before a pretty bad migraine. Precognitive dreams are funky. You see something happen and you see yourself acting, but it is all as if it is a movie, you have no control over anything despite the hyper realism of the dream. The hyper realism thing usually happens in lucid dreams, which you can control stuff and do things like fly.

My visions hit me like my flashbacks to trauma do. I get a cold sensation in the pit of my gut and suddenly I'm not here anymore. Flashbacks, I can't act or say anything. I can only relive the trauma in full color and all the sensory awfulness that happened. Visions, I can act and I can speak. They last a minute at most, though they were longer when I was younger and not on psychoactive medication to control my flashbacks. But, given Einstein's law of General Relativity, time is relative to the frame of action. Thus that one minute can feel like an hour. And a lot can happen in an hour. 

Uh oh, my health is acting up again.

Picture from Pixbay via Pexels.com

 Dear Reader,

I'm having a bit of a rough time of it over here. We've safely ruled out long Covid. (That was a huge relief.) But my doctor is talking about all of my problems with sleep (nightmares, difficulty falling asleep, and difficulty staying asleep) are likely the result of sleep apnea. He has ordered some testing and I hope the results can help us figure out what on Earth is going on with me since August of 2021. My daytime drowsiness has be awful and I barely get any of my household chores done and can hardly keep up with the kids. It's been rough, like I said.

I envy that kitten in the picture. Little cutiepie sleeping peacefully. I'm hoping when we sort all this out I'll stop losing half a day, every day, to naps. Exhaustion is just rotten and makes doing things like driving to appointments a bit hazardous. But, that's what has been keeping me from posting of late. I will try to get more posts up in the near future. They may be posted in the evening or late afternoon. Either way, I'm going to try my hardest to get this blog moving again. Wish me luck, all y'all.

Happy Lunar New Year (a day late)

 Hi, everybody!

I have not abandoned this blog. I have been struggling with what is seriously looking like 'Long Covid' with all the brain fog, exhaustion, and the fever that won't quit since October of last year. (Yes, I will be discussing this with my primary care doctor when I see him at the end of the week.) I have sat down to write posts and forgotten what I was doing in the middle of the process. Being too much of a perfectionist, I just can't post a half completed piece. It is taking me longer to do my writing across any platform. My brain is struggling to get words right. I keep having to check my spelling on common words, names, and pretty much everything because of the brain fog.

My anxiety is creeping upward. I am deeply concerned that I have become unreliable and that it will have horrific consequences. (Good gods, that was harder to spell correctly than it should have been. Took me 4 tries.)

My charity work has been put on pause because I really have to finish my eldest son's sweater. I am a quarter of the way done with it. I knit slower now and drop more stitches. This thing is in garter stitch but here I am struggling with it. Ugh.

Update on the Charity Works.

 Dear Friends,

I have no words to express my gratitude for your support. The preemie hats are due to go to a rural hospital that the big program I was a part of missed. I may start making more preemie hats to send to the other rural hospitals in the area. I'm still deciding.

I am in the process of locating local organizations that would distribute scarves to the needy. It's not quite as easy as I thought it would be. I am not going to be defeated by people being hard to contact and such. If I have to, I'll show up on their door step with a box of scarves and say 'Hi, you help people in need. Winter's coming, these will be useful.'

Having just gotten over Covid, everything I've made thus far is going to go through a wash on high heat (thank goodness acrylic can stand it and just gets softer with it). I think I have about a medium load of stuff to wash. It feels like it should be more, but all of these hats are so small.

I am also working on a preemie layette. I've been writing down the pattern. I'm going to include a note with it requesting that they hold onto it until Nov. 7 (approximately) so that the preemie born on my birthday gets their first birthday present from someone who was a micro-preemie. I'll be including a card for the family of the child. This idea hit me as I was wrestling with some super thin yarn. And it struck me as so perfect a way to close this project for me. A bit of love and good will to someone who is fighting the good fight from another who fought that fight is always a good thing.

Please forgive my extended absence.

 Dear Friends,

Life got screwy around here and I was having trouble being grounded enough to do my daily chores let alone my writing in any format. When that problem more or less resolved itself, I caught Covid and was sick for a month. To say the least it has been a trying experience. I am not going to make any promises that I'll be back in form for writing every day. But I am going to try. Some of this will mean preloaded blog posts that were written several days before hand and some of this may include reposting of old content (as a last resort). If nothing else, I may post a few funny memes that I have had sent to me.

I am still dealing with a lot of exhaustion and some other symptoms, but I am much better than I was last week. This has me hopeful that I can get writing done, possibly across all formats. Covid was an awful experience, even with the milder Omicron variant (which we caught at my house from school). The anti-viral medications are serious business but they taste awful and you have to choke down 4 pills per dose. I guess that's better than a horse pill, but it wasn't easy. Fortunately, I and none of my family lost our sense of smell or taste.

My eldest is making noises that he feels like he's caught a cold. Given that was how he felt when he caught Covid, I'm a little nervous. My youngest is just fine and had mild flu symptoms for his experience. And Beloved was taking care of all of us as he had the sniffles. It was a strange experience to have the whole household sick with the same thing and displaying different variants of how it manifests. I also envy the living daylights out of my husband's immune systems. It always happens like this, I get sick and I'm flat on my back for at least a week and he gets the sniffles. As he says "Well, somebody's supposed to take care of you." He's a sweet heart but I still envy his immune system. LOL

I could go on an extended rant about how my region has decided to treat Covid like it's the flu but I won't because that's a bit too far afield from the purpose of this blog. To say the least, I am not happy with it and my kids want to go to a school board meeting to demand the reinstitution of the mask protocol from last year. This is a big thing given how they dislike public speaking. But, we're all muddling by as best we can. I've finally turned something of a corner in my recovery as my congestion is clearing up. Now I just need more energy and I can get stuff done. But such is life when you get sick, right?

When it rains, it pours.

 The familial health crisis has now reached the recovery phase. I am kinda sitting on my loved one to make sure they don't over do it. I forgot how stubborn that man is. He is healing up well and has a follow up visit with our family doctor soon which we're expecting to hear good news. In the case of my dear niece she had her baby about a month ago (7lbs 3 oz) and it appears to have cleared up her health issues.

This weekend (Sunday into Monday) I had a migraine that kept me from writing as I had planned. Apparently there is a phase of a migraine that makes me temporarily stupid. Usually, I am sleeping through it but yesterday I didn't have that luxury. Too much stuff to get done. And I only managed two things on my to-do list. Granted they were important things (I had to order new eyeglasses and pickup prescriptions.) but I just didn't have the energy or the brain power to do things like wash dishes.

Then today, I'm groggy and thick witted as I recover from the migraine when the neighbors next door have a domestic altercation that set off my ptsd and left me a bit paranoid and distressed for the remainder of the day. So my plan to get two posts up today got nuked by my lizard brain saying I had to stay aware if someone was going to burst into my home and cause trouble. I tried doing some embroidery to calm myself down and give myself a sense of focus. That didn't work great.

It's been a rough week and it's only Tuesday.

Due to a familial crisis, I will not be posting this week.

 Dear Reader,

There's an ongoing health crisis in my household that I am scrambling to prepare for potential fall out and the possibility that it takes my Beloved longer to recover from his testing than he thinks it will. If you're of the inclination to pray for others, please keep my Beloved in your thoughts.