So now here it is just after Lammas, and once again I am a woeful slacker. I forgot I even had a blog, for a little while.

We just got back from Asheville for a summer vacation. Got to the top of NC, just below the TN border, and even The Boy yells out "We're home!"

Ahh....sigh. Yeah. I miss the mountains terribly. And Asheville is my heart home. I did not realize how acutely I miss those mountains. One day... one day I will be back.

It won't be for lots of years, probably. The Boy got into the most prestigious high school in the area, and I am so proud of him. SO proud! This, if you haven't noticed, is my giant PROUD MAMA MOMENT, so hush about, and let me enjoy it. President Obama himself ASKED...asked, I tell you, they didn't ask him, he asked them...to speak at the commencement of this high school last year. It has a 96% graduation rate. It's a technical high school with some twenty-six majors and they have hands-on and they have apprenticeships.

But I digress...my point being, we will be here for at least the next four years, if not beyond, because I am going to see my kid graduate from this high school, but also the political climate in NC is just in the dang toilet. Last year when we went back...even the kids don't have health insurance anymore. It's such a beautiful place, and it is so decrepit and corrupt now, which is beyond sad. My friends there are all so angry, and I do not blame them.
Having the steeply discounted grocery stores is fun, but it does not make up for no health insurance. And they are now a necessity for so many, because they allow people to free up just a little money (hopefully) in case someone gets sick.

Me, now, I bumped slightly (financially) out of the free version of MA health insurance, because of more hours at work, so I had to get another tier of insurance that I pay for....and then I lost all those hours. I mean all this in a month. I have to buy dental now, too. Which, I am not complaining because there isn't any insurance at all to be had in NC, without paying hundreds out the nose each month, and this is altogether less than $100/month....but I just lost all those hours, so dang.

I'll figure it out. I know it will all work out. I know it will. But I did not go into the lottery to chance being John Barleycorn at the Lammas ritual anyway, just in case.

I have put this blog on the back burner and I really have to not. I just wonder if people get bored hearing about the weather.

So, it's nearly the end of May, already! Wherever does the time go? I suspect it's that thing about getting older and time going faster...I had a theory about that when I was rip-roaring drunk, years ago, and what scared me is how it still held water after I sobered up. Yikes. It had to do with the theory of relativity...but it's too early to get my brain warping that much ;)

As a Pagan, my calendar is a bit skewed from the secular calendar. I believe Midsummer (around 23 June, Litha) is MID-summer, and that's why it is called MID-summer, because it's the middle, duh, not the beginning like our calendar says. That being said, then, Beltane is the beginning. Of summer. So it's been summer here in Massachusetts for twenty-six days, now.

And while the temperature still hasn't much hit 80* yet (yay me! I'm not dying of heat!), all the trees are in bloom, the daffodils and tulips have come and gone. Bad me, I planted my Easter gift daffodil bulbs in the back yard during the rising moon. I am no gardener, bad Pagan me, but I think if they are bulbs they should have been planted on the waning? But I just couldn't wait to get them in. And see if they come up next year.

Today it is supposed to get to 85*. Which is above my limit of tolerable. But I suspect that in Asheville it's been 85* for a month or more. I don't cotton well to hot, so it's all good, being hot for much less time up here, not to mention I don't have the air conditioner window units in, yet. It's nice to sit here at 6:30am and have the windows open, enjoying the 62* breeze.

I think this is the first time since, oh, forever? That I am just the teeniest bit anxious for warmer weather. Well, no....not warmer so much, but sunnier and greener. It was nearly 70* the other day, and that's very nearly my max outdoor temperature where I can still maybe wear long sleeves, and wear fuzzy dinosaur pants indoors. Okay, I admit I also have fuzzy Hello Kitty pants, but hush now-- I love Hello Kitty, and I'm sure lots of you do, too, and I promise I won't tell.

So here it is the 23rd of April and I still have not taken off the plastic that's on the three windows, and I still have my flannel sheets on, and I still have all four blankets including the wool one. It's very cozy at night....except that I am croning, actively, and a couple times in a night, I have to throw off all those blankets until the sweat dries and I'm freezing and I can snuggle down in again.

There's buds! There's buds! The trees have baby colors on the edges of them. I'm so excited. I saw a willow over at Elm Park today, near the pond, and I am SO going over there to see if she has dropped a stray branch for me.

I knew it, I knew it! It's SO Spring. It snowed today and I was like yeah, so what, it's not "real". Heehee! Now it's bright and sunny and very, very pretty out. I just went out barefoot to check my mailbox.

The other day? I put my bare tootsies on the Earth for the first time since Winter commenced! There's no grass yet, up here. No green. But I could tell. Things are stirring, deep in the Earth. I heard Asheville already has buds on the trees. I remember from living there, that they're about an hour behind here, for sunrises and sunsets, and about a month off for seasons. I'm so confused, still, by frost-free dates and such.

I am so glad I have been mostly keeping up my grounding and shielding every morning. I do mine in the shower. Where do you do yours? I honestly would love to have the patience to do altar time, and ground and shield there, but I don't, and plus, my altar is way on top of my upright dresser, so, until I get another surface where I can put an altar and not have to practically tiptoe to see it....this will have to suffice.

It's so funny to hear people talk about the Equinox as "The first day of Spring". Um, no. It's the MIDDLE of Spring. Which is why, for instance, Midsummer is called, duh, MID summer and not The First Day of Summer. Whose silly idea was it to arrange the secular calendar like that?

Anyway. I think this is the first time in years and years I have looked forward to the changing of the seasons to the warm seasons. You betcha I will complain about the superheat of Summer, but for now? I am reveling in the warming of the planet, here in my new little corner of the Northeast.

Spring is on its way, I am sure of it. I can smell it. I can feel it in my very fiber. And for the first time in years and years, I am looking forward to it.

Because of all the snow, I'm guessing. We didn't have that in Asheville. Much. I hear they got hit with a bit of storming, lately, though! I think it's fun when the whole city shuts down.

My family, and many people I know, would have it 80* and sunny all.the.time. If they could. Heck, not me. I love winter. Summer is my very least favorite season, but I am going to learn to appreciate summer this year if it kills me!

I saw a whole flock of crows today, cawing their little heads off. I love crows. LOVE them, and they make me so happy. I wonder what kind of omen it may have been to have a whole couple of dozen of them above my head as I came out of work? There is nothing so nifty looking as the silhouette of crows, sitting on the brances of a bare tree in the winter.

I have noticed that I notice things, such as sounds, of crows, of trains-- I stop and listen. They make me perk up my ears. I wonder do other people do that, but I think they probably go through life with blinders on, and earplugs. I would like to think they do not.

Ramble, ramble....I do apologize for my blathering, this time. I shall try to be more coherent in future!

It is past the middle of February. Here in Worcester, MA, we are buried in snow, and I think I heard that more is on the way.

Coming out of our driveway, the snowbanks are so high on both sides, and across the street at the car wash entrance, that it feels like we live in an old fashioned icebox. Snow mountains as far as the eye can see. The roads have been reduced to one lane. It's crazy.

I am still in hibernate mode.

And yet, I can feel Spring. I detect the small stirrings and whisperings of life, far beneath the frozen ground. I know it's imminent.
People think I am nuts if I mention this-- I read one account that said this is the snowiest winter on record, for this area, since they've been keeping records. Some 120 years.

And I'm happy. Totally, completely happy. I think I chose my name (WinterHeart) rightly. I would not want too much of it, mind you-- but four seasons, weather-appropriate, I can deal with.
Plus, it's fun to be so mind-boggled with all this snow.

My tendencies run to gratitude. For living indoors, first and foremost, and for heat (however inadequate my apartment heat is), and for running water. Especially for water.

I tire of people grumbling about the weather. As if it's anything under our control! Me, I work on contentment for What Is. Spring will happen when it happens, and then I will be ready. But not before.

And...here it is, 3 weeks after my last post. The hibernating time got crunched all of a sudden with Things To Get Done, such as Yule and Christmas, and all of a sudden HERE THEY WERE and I WAS NOT READY.

Actually, I was more ready than I've been in past years. I wanted to get all my gifting done before Thanksgiving so that I could Enjoy The Season, but honestly? I had much done by then, though disorganized, and I was Enjoying The Season the whole time. I didn't lay around watching movies, but I did relax a lot more in my head, which is where it counts, anyway.

I had a huge Hibernating Mentality. And I still do, though now that I am only working 10-1/2 hours a week for now, I will be hopefully able to get all my appointments out of the way, and Hibernate a lot more. I love this season. LOVE.IT. I'd give anything if the powers that be would put Daylight Savings Time back to where it used to be, instead of expanding it to nearly 9 months of the whole dang year, but that's another rant for another time...heavy sigh.
Y'know, I think Mom Nature does a fine job all by Herself, making it darker in Winter and lighter in Summer...but that's me. Being the humans that we are, it's just our nature to flub it up more, I guess.

So...in-between times...New Year's...I don't do parties, and I don't stay up late, and I don't do resolutions, but I do have traditions that carry me through this liminal time like I do for other In Between times.

What I did this year is to leave bright shiny pennies on my two doorsteps, for prosperity, and I let the old year out one door, and the new year in the other door, right at midnight.

On New Year's Day I cooked pork (for living high on the hog) and collards (for green money) and black eyed peas (for coin money), and cornbread (for gold), and I chose my Word For The Year, like my Pagan Mama group has been doing for ages.
My Word this year is Consider. As in, consider that others have opinions and ideas that are not mine. That I am not the boss of them. That they have their own higher power and it is not me. That much as I would like to think I do sometimes, I do not rule the world.

Happy New Year! What are your traditions?