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?

It's hibernating time!

Which means, I have been working my tookas off. That's alright, because I need the money, but I will be losing 27 hours a week, come New Year's.

Honestly, I am ready for the time off. Time to turn in. Time to hibernate. Time to curl up in my cave and my blankets and fire up the crock pot. Time for soup. Time to add the fresh nettles and chard that I froze over the summer. Time to READ. Time to watch movies. Time to slurp up extra echinacea and elderberry, just in case.

I have the Llewellyn's Witch's calendar and this month has a piece by...somebody; I didn't mark the name before I sat down at the computer to write this.It's a short but excellent piece about the dark season. Why many people get seasonal affective disorder and why people are so unhappy this time of year-- because we (collectively) live the same way year 'round now, and don't embrace the season, the dark, the turning-in.

I don't get affected by that-- I love the dark season, but this year I am paying special attention to the turning-in, to the hibernatiing. With all the strife that is going on in the world, in my own country, I need the resting time, the healing time. Outwardly, I am giving more to others, when I can. In my heart, I am keeping the dark season. Getting ready to welcome the Sun.

Blessed Solstice!

My Birthday Kicks Off the Holiday Season

So, I am going to be 55 on Monday, in two days. We are celebrating this weekend, because I have a pretty brutal work week coming up and won't have the time for birthdaying.
I am wearing my tiara! Black (plastic, but who cares) with lots and lots of sparkly bling.

True Love stayed overnight last night, and of course we celebrated in, well, rather our own fashion, and then this morning with a pot of steaming coffee-- "Foo" (International Delight Hazelnut, BLECHBLECHBLECH) for him and heavy cream for me. I made him breakfast, as I am dieting, and yes, I will be dieting through my birthday, but it's worth it because I won't be dieting over Thanksgiving, and I am having drooly dreams of turkey. Porn dreams of turkey. With the crispy skin and the buttery, oily goodness only an all-day roasted turkey can bring. Mmm....turkey. Butter. Green beans. NOT casserole. Just fresh sauteed green beans with lots of butter. Oh, and butter!

My birthday is November 17th, always about a week before Thanksgiving. I always hated when it was, when I was a child, because November tends to be so drear, but after living in Syracuse, NY, for 10 years, I got used to "bad" weather and it is my favorite now.
I love my birthday.
And, it kicks off the Winter holiday season.

Birthday, Thanksgiving, St. Lucia's Day, my mom's birthday, True Love's birthday, Yule, Christmas, and tucked away in all of that are other ones, like Boxing Day, Hogmanay, New Year's, Valentine's Day, my son's birthday, Frau Holle, and more.

LOVE the Winter. Love. It.
Crock pots and sweaters and mittens, oh my! 
It's hibernating time! 

I am so ready. Are you? What are your plans?

It's November!

It's November, and wow, busy. Ain't gonna let up soon, either. Because my birthday is November 17th and in my book, it kicks off the Winter holiday season. I made, and am still making, a bunch of homemade stuff for people for Yule and Christmas gifts, and I am hoping to get lots of that done by my birthday.

Last night was the return to Eastern Standard Time. I have to say, I loathe, and I mean loathe, Daylight Savings Time. I think Mom Nature does a fine job all by her lone, making the light shorter in the Winter and longer in the Summer. Why do we meddling humans have to mess with it? And then mess with it more, by pushing back the shoulders by a week or two on either end? GRR!

So, we shall see how my body reacts to it this time. It often kicks my butt for a week.

And I was right about the peak leaves...I think the very peak day was the day after I wrote my last post, October 17th. It's drear out there for sure, since, and especially now, and is getting drearer, if that's a word ;)

I hear Asheville got a couple of inches of snow! Even here in MA we did not get any. We got a hella rain yesterday, but not cold enough for snow. That's alright...there'll be plenty soon enough.

But-- soup weather! Stew weather! Crock pot weather! Hibernating weather, oh, yay! You? Favorite season? Which? And why?

AIR

It has been a whole season of Air, for me. Last post, I mentioned that my father was an airline pilot, and I put things of Air next to him on my Samhain altar...the bird's wing, the feather, the crow.

I keep getting Air messages and images...breezes, and you know, the other day I was marking the breeze and it felt like I got my whole brain aired out. WHOOSHED out. Hush about, any of you who want to say there's nothing in there anyway *glares at you*!

Today, we had a rain storm, all day long. The leaves are in full glory now, but by Sunday, when it's supposed to be pretty and sunny and 50* tops, I bet most of them will be blown down.

Air...it seems so benign, yet is so powerful.

I've been thinking lots about words, lately, and whether they have power or not, and how much power...they're an Air thing, I do believe. And yes, power indeed. That old children's rhyme SHOULD have been "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words, YES, they will hurt me". Words will cut for years and years and decades, where physical hurts only leave scars for a short time, by comparison.

It's a thing to do, I think, to become aware of how one uses one's words. I've been trying to, if not delete swear words from my vocabulary, at least use them in a discretionary manner...be able to modify what I say in which company. I have realized there is a very split second of time in which I have the power to say or not say, and in that very split second, I do make the decision. It is very conscious, though tiny. See for yourself if that's not true. Pay attention to when you are about to say something hurtful, and see if you can stop yourself. I bet you can.

I know there was more I wanted to say about Air....my ADHD brain has made it go POOF. Like, well, a breath of...yeah, Air.

On the way to work today, the leaves were falling like snowflakes across my path, portending the not-so-long-from-now real snowflakes that fall so prodigiously up here in MA.

North Carolina...oh, the lovely mountains...NC rather stopped getting the kind of snow and ice storms that it did when I first moved to the mountains back in '03.

I don't mind the snow. Not this early in the game. NC used to be seasonally appropriate. Then it got warmer, in general. I had to move to MA to once again get seasonally appropriate weather.

I have been here for a whole turn of the wheel, and then some. The trees are just about in full colored glory. Somehow, this year, they seem dead on the branches, which, I suppose they are, but they seem...dry. Wispy. Fly-away.

I've always known that the glorious leaf-coloring is the trees dying...I wonder if human death is so glorious, for the one that is dying. I wish it were so, for those of us left, when a loved one passes beyond the veil. How cool would it be if we went out in a blaze of multi-colored glory?

It's Samhain-tide. It's Ancestor time. I have made my altar and this year it only has my father and my grandmother (his mother, at about age 18) on there. I haven't even put my grandmother's hair thingy there yet. I will still wear it to the Samhain rite, as I do every year. It's funny how my dad was an airline pilot, and instinctively, I put next to him on the altar symbols of flight, of Air-- most of a whole bird's wing that I found in the back yard, a larger feather, a picture of a crow. I don't think it was accidental at all.

I feel them. Do you? Do you feel the pull of your ancestors? What are you doing this year to honor them?