Summer Solstice!

Happy Summer Solstice!

I mostly celebrated in my head, but yesterday I set out treats for the fairies-- slices of almond-poppyseed cake, strawberries, and milk/cream. They accepted all! Yay!

I wore my bright yellow Sun shirt to work today, with the sparkly bling on it, and my Sun earrings that my friend Ginger made, and sparkly gold eye shadow and sparkly gold nail polish and my amber necklace that basked in the Solstice sun all day. I ate chicken and eggs and cucumber salad, and had coffee and I got all treaty and had a Dr. Pepper and I had strawberries with cream.
I basked in the Sunshine my ownself, out by my favorite Tree. 

And I finally set up a nice, but simple, altar. It looks good and I'm happy with it. 

Saturday upcoming is the ritual out at Asphodel, the people I circle with (First Kingdom Church of Asphodel, which sounds like a real church of sorts, but they're not; they're Pagan as all heck). I get to be Solsticy all week!
 It's supposed to be like 85* on Saturday! Finally, we have a Summer, of sorts. It's been right cool up to now. 

My big celebration was putting an AC unit in my bedroom, today. It was 84* in there! It's 74* in the rest of the house, which is fine and liveable. But no way could I sleep in that. I set the AC to 74* but it's not that cooled off yet. It's better than it was, though! 

How are you celebrating Solstice? 

I forgot I had a blog ~blush~

Been busy mommying, and working!

Up here in Massachusetts, it's so different from NC. I'm still, almost 3 years into being here, getting used to being here. People talk funny ;)
Also, the seasons are all shifted around. Here it is the middle of April, and it's still in the 30s at night, I still have plastic on my windows, I still very occasionally use the space heater to take the edge off, in my bedroom.

We had a very late Winter this year. It was warm warm warm up till like January, then BAM, Winter. Spring is late to start, now, also. It's about 50s in the day and 30s at night and I still have the flannel sheets on my bed.

That's alright. There's daffodils out, now, and dandelions, yay! And wonder of wonders-- it's still too early to tell, but I think there's chickweed growing between the grass and clover on the strip between the sidewalk and the house. I know I shouldn't eat what's there, because cars and traffic and ew, but man... I've really missed chickweed. It's on my top 10 list of favorite plants.

I can't wait to make a new dandelion salve this year, too. I'll have to find someone who doens't live right here in the city, and who doesn't spray, that I can harvest them from. And plantain, too.

So...funny how illness is. I have stopped basking. I can't stay still long enough. I do sometimes now find myself utterly exhausted, and then I go lay down, and if I have the chance and that sun is shining through my bedroom window, then I will bask in it, but I'm not making a point to stop and go bask like I was when I was sick. Or coming out of the sick. 

I found me a sweet spot by a river yesterday. I have driven by it umpteen times in the past almost 3 years and I do not know how I missed it. I swear I made skidding sounds as I yanked my car to the side of the road. Got out, tussled through the still-wintery brambles until I could get down near the water. Felt SO grounded, putting my hands in and letting the water flow over me. Then I found a tree that lent me its strong trunk to sit by, and watch the water for awhile. Ahhh.

Ima find that spot again and go utilize it, though I know from some of the trash that other people use it, too...a tiny liquor bottle, for one. When I came out of there, some guy on the other side of the street asked me what time it was, and then asked if I would give him a ride-- in the other direction from the way my car was facing. Um, no.
Which makes me wonder if it was a safe thing to do, go traipsing around in the woodsy area right in the city by myself, but heck. I needed that river and I'm going back there and aside from magickal, perhaps I shall bone up on my ninja skills.  

Basking

I have absolutely, utterly lost several weeks of my life, it seems.

Right before my son's birthday, in January, I came down sick, and I cranked on my homemade Elderberry syrup and kicked it right out of me...I thought.
Then in February I got sick again. I was stupidly fatigued, and I slogged through work as best I could, but took most of my off-time to rest. Then over the weekend, I just could not shake it.

I had clogged sinuses, I had congested lungs, and the fatigue was overwhelming.
That Tuesday I called out of work and went to the doctor.
She told me I had a cold, albeit a vicious one, and to keep doing what I was doing-- you know the routine. Rest, fluids, etc. And she wrote me a note to stay out of work for the rest of the week.

For the next umpteen days, I would get up as best I could, have a coffee, check my email, and that was about as much energy as I could manage before I had to crash and go back to bed. My son was off school for a vacation, which was a double-edged sword...I didn't, thankfully, have to use the alarm, but at the same time, I couldn't entirely rest because I wasn't alone, ever. But he's 15 now and I did get lots of rest time. He's such a sweetie.

I went back to the doctor on Saturday, and that doctor still couldn't really diagnose me, I think, so she decided she was treating me for a sinus infection, and prescribed me a 5-day course of azythromycin. And an inhaler.
Both the doctors said my lungs were clear, which is weird, because I could have taken a Sharpie and drawn a line across my chest where the congestion stopped and the clear began, but whatever. They still feel cloggy.
It took 3 of the 5 days of antibiotics to even start feeling a little better.

Then, yay for things coming in threes, I have a mouth infection where I'm going to need a root canal, and I'm highly suspecting Carpal Tunnel in my dominant hand (the right, if you're curious), so I'm on penicillin now. And a butt-ton of probiotics, because no WAY am I doing a yeast infection, too.

I'm a medical mess, lately. Gah. Because I'm mostly pretty healthy.

Point being, after all that, is that I kind of lived in a dreamtime during my illness.
I've had lots of time to muse, and dream, and think, and what I came to is that I think very old people, and people on the edge of dying, the reason they sleep so much is they're getting ready for the next great adventure. It's a dreamtime.
It's not really a bad place to be.
That dreamtime...it's kind of soothing. But it's a very in-between place. It's a threshold. You know, like a door? Or a window. Between this place and the next. You know how in ritual, after the casting of the circle, the priest/ess will say "Now we are between the worlds"....it's very like that.

I've gotten very quiet, in my mind. And I'm slower and more deliberate about my daily tasks, and I've taken to basking in the sunlight that streams through my bedroom window in the afternoon. I did that during my sickness-- I lay across my bed, with my face in the sunlight, and just...basked. Only, being sick, it wasn't so much a luxury as a necessity. And now I still think it's necessary. It restoreth my soul, and all that. And it's very "in the moment", because the sun moves, as we all know, with the seasons, so the time is not exactly the same every day. I have to stop what I am doing to go bask.
It's very meditative.

Go try it. Go find your place where the sun comes in your window. If you don't have a chair, or a bed, where that window is, then make a nest on the floor. Turn your face to the sun. Say a prayer of gratitude and thanks. Go bask.

Finally, snow! Weather! Yay!

It's only a dusting, but there must have been ice, because vehicles are having trouble making it up and down my hilly street. We're near the bottom. I can see that cars are driving probably fine on the highway, but the 1/4 mile it would take for me to get to the highway would be an issue. It's slippery out there, seems like.
There's a AAA tow truck outside our driveway. I think it's for someone in the building, but not sure. The tow truck pulled backward into the driveway and had trouble getting back out, with his tires turning and not getting any traction.
Yikes.
It's finally seasonal! It's not inches and inches like NPR said it was going to be, but I'll take it.

I don't get people complaining about the weather. I have caught my ownself doing it, but I'm getting better.
Weather falls under Things We Cannot Change, and I'm a big fan of the Serenity Prayer. I'm working on getting better at following it. Super simple, but not easy! 

In case y'all are not familiar, here it is:

"God/dess, grant me the Serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And Wisdom to know the difference."

See? Hard as the Wiccan Rede-- which, for a religion having one "rule", is not easy. Try it.

Here is the Wiccan Rede, if you're unfamiliar with that, too:

"An' it harm none, do as ye will."

Remember, "none" includes yourself. See? Because if you are not saying a simple "thank-you" to a compliment, for instance, brushing it off and saying "but...", then you are dissing yourself and that's harming. I'm trying not to go "ugh" at every photograph taken of me. Because harm.

Right now I am white-lighting the tow truck and the AAA guy and my neighbor. 
I'm practicing gratitude for those folks who go out in weather to help people, even if they do get paid for it, because they signed up for the job to begin with, so they deserve my prayers and gratitude. 

It's a day for staying in and eating soup. Drinking tea, or coffee. Being homely-- as in, doing home things. Hibernating. 

Blessed Yule!

The Winter Solstice has just passed, yesterday morn, and my boy and I are here in Virginia Beach to celebrate Christmas with my family of origin.

It's going to be eighty degrees tomorrow, Christmas Eve. EIGHTY. Eighty is not normal this time of year, even for Virginia.
I think it's to be near 70-something in Worcester, MA. 70-something for sure is not normal for this time of year in Massachusetts.
This frightens me. I know there are plenty of fluctuations in the weather over the years, but I just do not see how people can deny that humans and their machines have any influence on the planet. Any? None at all? How could that be?? We are making such a mess of our little blue world, and so many folks in charge seem to care so very little.

Anyway...in my own little world, I had so much joy and introspection and focus and BE HERE NOW with Joanna Powell Colbert's 30 Days of Hecate online course, that I decided to take the 30 Days of Yule, too. Here is a link to her page where her e-courses are, if I can do it right: http://www.gaiansoul.com/work-with-me/ecourses/

It's nice...well, more than nice, it's necessary... to take some intentional time, especially this time of year, to turn inward, to hibernate, to eat soup and bundle up on the couch, or in my bed under the covers, to watch movies or read books. We're not supposed to be doing all this glittery holiday stuff, with company and parties and buying and shopping and commercials and loudness. It's grating on the nerves, and it's no wonder people get SAD (seasonal affective disorder, not actually sad) this time of year, because I think we're going against our natural inclinations to hide. I think it very possibly has very little to do with the need for sunshine. Because there's often plenty sunshine when it's cold or snowy.

And actually, all this warmness, that's contrary too, to what this part of our world is supposed to be doing at this time of year.

I'm glad we're getting to see family, though. We're only getting to see them once a year, now, and so I make the journey South with intention, because I love them. Yay for family! Yay Yule! Yay Christmas!

Wild Life

Someone posted in my online class about her Urban Wildwood backyard, and it made me think of mine. I have an Urban Wildwood, too.

I live in a city now, and there's not much green space in my section of it. I mean...there are trees, true, but not like....I mean, in Asheville, there's so much green there I don't know how they built a city in the midst of it and still retained the greenness of it.
 
But here, it's a city, a "real" one, an ugly mess of concrete and steel and sidewalks and trains and traffic and litter. Unless you choose to focus elsewhere, and that's doable, but hard.

My back "yard" is a tiny space held in by a concrete wall. In that space is one giant pine tree and a bunch of smaller trees. There's vines and pine straw and a little bit of grass here and there, and some bare spots.
There's a ton of wildlife for such a small space!

There's gray squirrels. LOTS of them. Some of them must be getting on in years, like me, because their tails are gray. My tail is not, thank all the gods, but my head hair is starting to grow glitter out of it.
 
There's cats. I think there's only one from last year that survived the winter, but we have named her Shmoo. She's a small black cat. She had 4 kittens that are now bigger than she is. I haven't seen all of them around in awhile, but there's one that has stuck around.
 
There's a TON of birds. I am on the first floor so I am lucky enough to live right under all that tree canopy, and I also have a bird feeder right at the edge of my porch, and our kitty likes to look out the window at all those potential kitty snacks on the bird feeder. We get chickadees, which is the MA state bird, and we get blue jays, which I heard are relatives of crows, and we get I think what are nut hatches, and I have seen a cardinal or two every now and again.
 
Last year we had a skunk-- silly thing, with short legs like a dachsund, long hair, and a waddle-- what a funny guy he was!
 
My neighbor said she saw raccoons, but I have not seen any.
 
I had a neighbor's girlfriend early this summer who said I reminded her of Snow White, with all the animals around me unafraid. What a compliment! I'll take it.

My little wild space in the backyard of my city. I don't think anyone else ever notices back there but me. I'm super, super grateful to have it.