Blessed Beltane

 Hello, my beloved little corner of the interwebz! Beltane is coming, with a full moon in Scorpio, and the air is absolutely electric with so many possibilities. Confronting shadow, releasing old burdens, embracing your potential. 

This coven thing hasn't been working out the way I'd thought it would. I fully expected a lot of surface level interest, but what I didn't expect was not one, not one, single person has actually made the effort to meet. 

But I'm not mad about it.  How could I be? This isn't a popularity contest. It's not a simple social gathering. It's about celebration, love and joy, embracing the world and the life around us, and whoever is meant to be part of that will find me. Or I'll find them. 

In other news, it finally rained today, after weeks of drought. It's still a drought, but I'm glad we got something. 

Oh, and I burned myself. Splashed boiling water on my chest. My necklace got in the way, so I have a partial outline of it in the burn. Looks kinda wicked, but I do not recommend it.

Seriously though, do yourself a favor and keep some burn cream handy. I've kept it slathered on my wound after running it under cool (not cold!) water for like 15 minutes, and the angry bubble that tried to form disappeared overnight. It still hurt, but it's not nearly as bad as it could have been.

Let's see, what else is there? I have one current grump, other than the burn, but I hope to be rid of it soon. Nothing worth mentioning, except to say  YOU'LL GET OVER IT! 

lolz.

Anywhom, Beltane, Beltane. This is probably the 2nd most important holi-day to pagans who follow the Wheel of the Year, with the first being Samhain. 

Beltane marks the midway point between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, the start of the summer and every green and beautiful thing that grows with the sun. If you do nothing else to celebrate, take a moment to step outside, feel the warmth and light on your skin. Breathe in the air and just appreciate it. See the leaves, the grass, the bugs, the birds, and feel their joy in simply being alive. Not big fancy ritual necessary....though one day I'd like that to happen, too. 

Blessed Be, friend. 

My Pink Cadillac

 Have you heard the news? Doomsday is coming...again. Gas prices are soaring...again. Donald Trump is bombing shit...again. 

It's always something with these people. They're worried about the eCoNoMy, as if the thing hasn't been in absolute shambles since way back in the Reagan days 40 fucking years ago. But Me? I grew up in desperate poverty. Sleeping on the trailer floor huddled up with my brothers and sisters in front of an old ceramic heater, the kind with the weird bricks. No bathroom, instead we did our business in an old coffee tin...as the eldest, it was my job to empty it. Foraging for food off of trees and bushes because we didn't have any at home. So on and so on.

As a result, I've always been a bit of a hoarder. I have stacks upon stacks of dry beans, rice, powdered milk and the like, just in case. It's not as deep as it sounds, I'm just not keen on experiencing real hunger pangs ever again. 

My bonus kid works in a bicycle shop. 2 christmases ago, he managed to score this bubblegum pink electra bike (not electric, it's just the brand name) for FREE, because some rich couple had broken up, the wife or girlfriend left it behind during their separation, and the hubby/boyfriend just wanted to be rid of it. Sooooo, it's mine. It's miiiiine, and I am overjoyed.

I want a rear cargo rack, and one of those cute baskets that hang over either side (pannier? is that what it's called?) but for now, I have a not-too-shabby basket in the front.

I've been wanting to lower my carbon footprint anyway, eliminate plastic and all that muck. I've started using bar shampoo, bar soaps, and there's this fantastic little sub on Reddit called r/VisibleMending that I've been stalking for a while for inspiration.

When oil eventually hits 100 bajillion dollars a barrel and no one can afford to drive or buy oranges that were shipped from Brazil, I'll be living high on the hog with my sturdy supply of beans and bike and non-liquid soaps and patchwork clothing. 

I highly suggest you start kissing my ass, now. 😁

Rainy Days and Rainbows

The Rainy Day Part

I hate feel-good stories. You know, the ones that are like "This homeless kid worked 7 jobs and didn't sleep for 5 years to put himself through college, and now he's the proud owner of his very own Volvo!" or "This woman lost her arms, legs, eyes, teeth, tongue, skin, intestines and brain in a diving accident, but now she's the president of her very own coloring book company!"

 For me, it's the implication that with enough hard work, anyone can pull him/herself out of the gutter. If you're not making it, it's because you're a lazy, good for nothing sack of shit. You're not trying hard enough, unlike these people who had it so much worse than you'll ever know.

Did you know that I'm a former child bride? Not in the 3rd world 8 year old sold off by her family to a 63 year old pedo way, but in the this is America and we're still doing this shit way. I was married before I could even legally drive. I won't get into all the details of that nightmare right now, except to say he was exactly the type of man you'd expect to marry a 14/15 year old, and I ran away the day before my 18th birthday.

15 year old me and my rapist husband

Now, here's a few things no one will tell you about being a child bride in a first world country. You are 100% on your own. You miiiiiiight get foodstamps and/or medicaid for your baby, if you're lucky, but you'll have to jump through hoops to get it. And being a literal child, with no bills, no credit, no job and no money to your name means you're not getting your GED until your mid 20s, nor a license until you're almost 30. You never had a college fund so don't even worry about getting a higher education.
Child support? What's that?
Childcare? Where? 
 People will give you all sorts of useless advice, like Get family to babysit so you can work! Ask your friends to give you a ride! What? Me? No, I can't babysit or drop you off, I have other things to do. But somebody else definitely will! You're just not begging hard enough.

I am in my 40s now, and 25 years removed from that point of my life, but I still live with the repercussions of that time and very little to show for it. 

The Rainbows Part

I have very little to show for it, but I like the very little I do have now. My children are all former middle and high school band nerds, something I desperately wanted for myself but never got....until now. My eldest and her husband gave me a lefty guitar for christmas and I've been youtubing and practicing every day. My gay ass kid and his gay ass boyfriend gave me a very expensive bicycle a couple of christmases back. They got it for fucking FREE. It's an Electra somethingsomethingidkwhat, and it's mine. I thrifted some sweet, sweet strawberry bedding for $10. 6 year old me squealed with delight when I found it. 

Like, yeah, okay. I don't have a rags-to-riches story to make society feel better about itself. But I did find a four leaf clover today. I taped it into my diary so I can keep it forever. 

And I do feel lucky. I could have easily turned to drugs, alcohol, prostitution. I could have abandoned these brats of mine and focused on myself. I think they'll always be a little ashamed of me or wish I'd been more than I was, but I'm okay with that.

In addition to the clover, I also managed to blow all the fluff off a dandelion poof in one breath. I made a wish. I can't tell you what it was yet but you'll be the first to know when it comes true. 

And I have so much more to show you. everything I've been up to lately. So many pictures. So many little things to love and be grateful for.

But this is getting long enough and probably comes off a lot more sad and bleak than I actually intended, so I'll save it for the next post.

Here's a sneak peek. Toodles. 

Year Three

 Time moves in strange ways. I don't understand how it sometimes feels like days or weeks, while other times it feels like sluggish decades, since daddy died. 

There are good days and bad days. I thought this would for sure be one of the bad ones, but today was actually pretty decent. I picked up the copy of The Neverending Story the local bookstore ordered for me. I mentioned to my bestie a couple of weeks ago that I am eager to enter my Stevie Nicks phase of life by wearing lots of shawls...and this bitch mailed me a magnificent shawl that showed up today. Also I got to eat sushi. Everything is great.

And that is making me kinda sad. Like I didn't love my daddy enough to cry today, or something. Like I'm the worst daughter ever because I'm not sitting under the tree where I put his ashes - the ashes I had to fight to get my hands on because the step-monsters were hell bent on keeping them purely out of spite. 

But I think about it every day. The ache in my heart is there. I suspect it'll be there as long as I live. Proof of my love, and I don't need any yearly anniversary to be reminded of something I'm always aware of. 

One of my babies got married back in October, and included daddy's tarot deck as part of a shrine to our dearly departed during the wedding. I desperately wanted to keep this deck since I have so very little left of him, but handing it down to the next generation just felt right. 

The little I have of his is more important to me than anything the stepmonsters stole. I have his copy of Raymond Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft, which he gave to me. My altar is a table he carved himself, another thing he gave to me. His big statue of Baphomet, which is almost as old as I am, is sitting outside on my balcony, looking lovely next to my little outdoor sanctuary. His other Baphomet sits next to a picture of him, his own little shrine. Every day, I am bathed in the love and light of this world, none of which I'd know without him. 

Hail the Traveler, on this the third year of his journey to and through the Summerland. I miss you every day, but you are neither gone, nor forgotten. 

Love you, daddy. 💕

The Weird True Stories PeeWee Used To Tell Me

 PeeWee was what we called my great grandmother. I have no idea why, that's just who she was, and that's what everybody called her. 

She was born in 1903 in some rural shithole in smalltown, USA. Very fire and brimstone, southern baptist, sicko kiddie diddling husband - you know, the usual. Wouldn't let us wear shorts, beat us, blah blah blah. I honestly hated that woman.

But on hot summer nights, when it was too muggy to sit inside our unconditioned mobile home, I remember her in her old porch rocker, us chirrens sitting around her feet, begging her to sing to us the old creepy bluegrass/country songs she liked to sing in her warbly old church lady voice. Like this one, but old lady. She'd also tell us these over the top, fantastic stories that I used to think were made up for our benefit, but as an adult I found out at least 2 of them were very, very TRUE so now I'm wondering about the third.

Story One
There was this old fortune teller witch who lived nearby, she'd tell you the gender of your unborn child, let you know where to find your dirty cheating husband, she even solved a murder in Coweta County where some farmer dumped another guy in a well (they made a movie about that one).According to PeeWee, the locals accused the woman of being an agent of Satan, which she absolutely denied. Supposedly, her grave stone was struck by and destroyed by lightning on 3 separate occasions, which I guess had something to do with the devil? Also, her brain was sent off to whatever university to be studied to see if they could find the source of her psychic powers. Oh, and she had like a million dollars hidden in the walls of her old, dilapidated house. 

Sounds like typical, Appalachian country folk tales, right? Except her name was Mayhayley Lancaster, and she was 100% real. The murder thing? Real. The psychic shit? Real. And there was so much more to her than that, she was a lawyer, a midwife, an activist and political advocate, and more. Go on and look her up. She's got her own wikipedia page, a billion youtube videos, and even a couple of books. 

Story Two

PeeWee used to work in the cotton mill, and told us all about the time when the national guard showed up, parked one of those big gatling guns at the end of Park Avenue, pointed at the homes of the mill workers to intimidate them. The guard kicked people out of their houses and even murdered a few townspeople...why? Because the mills had been working everyone to death and people were trying to unionize. The big machine gun on wheels part used to freak me out and I thought there was no way a governor would have sent in the NATIONAL FRIKKIN GUARD to murder their own citizens, simply for asking for humane working conditions.

But this is the south, and the mill owners made their fortune off the backs of their slave laborers, so it should really come as no surprise to learn they continued this tradition. I found out PeeWee's crazy story was true about 30 years later, when I was given the book pictured. It's actually so much worse than I was told as a child, but according to my great grandmother, the violence was much, much worse than what the author here was aware of, because the news of these killings and beatings were heavily suppressed.

Story Three
This one was never confirmed. I have no way to confirm it. But PeeWee's other 2 insane stories turned out to be true, so this doesn't seem terribly farfetched.

In addition, PeeWee's brother Amos (whom we called Wig....fuck if I know why), in his old age, used to speak his thoughts out loud. Most of the time it was perfectly mundane things, remembering something his mama told him, some funny story about a long dead cousin, and...this one. in full detail. More detail than PeeWee gave us.

So, the story goes, when they were young, they were doing something around the village square, somewhere near Roanoke, Alabama. Som even I don't remember had taken place...church, maybe? Some kind of fair? I really don't recall. But, there was a reason why everyone was out that day. A shadow blocks out the sun, and they turn their faces to the sky, expecting a storm cloud, and instead witnessing a massive bird. Thunderbird, they called it. Black, with a wingspan the size of a biplane. It looked like a hawk, she said, but so so so much bigger then any they'd seen before. Everyone out went running for some nearby barn. Were barns normal in small, podunk towns back then? In the chaos, a small toddler was left behind, and this giant, plane sized bird swooped down, snatched up this baby, and flew off again. But they called the baby a "colored baby" because they were old at the retelling, this supposedly happened sometime in the 1910s, and that language was just how everyone talked, gross as it is. PeeWee left the story at that, but in Wig's demented old man ramblings, they later found some of the baby's bones on some rocky outcropping. 

So, that's it. Those are my great grandmama's stories.

Chasing Coven

Okay, well....I'm over it. I'm so over it. So, so, so, sooo over it.

Have you ever tried to sell anything on Facebook? If so, you're probably familiar with the 500,000 "Is this still available?" messages that come flying at you out of nowhere, dinging your messenger all hours of the day and night, and when you try to respond to any of them, you get silence in response. (On an only slightly related note, I'm so glad I deleted that fucking app and all its other related apps.)

Anyhoot, I think I mentioned here that I'd added my area to the online coven finder, right? So far, the experience has been really similar to facebook marketplace. I've had several inquiries; most go nowhere after initial contact. It's really odd, actually, because the introductory email is usually fairly simple.

"Hello, my name is PersonFace. I found you on WebsiteName. I live in Area and have been practicing since SpecificDate. I've been looking for a coven and wonder if you can answer some questions for me."  

And I answer with the same sort of generic energy. Of course, I'm more than happy to answer your questions, here's some recommended but not mandatory reading material, let me know how I can help, blessed be, so on and so forth. I used to be much more enthusiastic about it, writing out these long, thoughtful, personalized emails that didn't actually seem to gain any more response than the generic does. 

So far:

• half never respond again
• the reply email reiterates wanting to ask questions but never actually asks any questions
• a handful make it as far as exchanging numbers, but fizzle out quickly

Now, I mean no disrespect when I say this, but to me it feels like a lot of these people are expecting something more glamourous...like I slip our business card in at the end of the email - something all black with a glowing rune or the eye of Sauron on it, giving a cryptic but yet also plainly stated secret location for our midnight mass where initiation takes place immediately but also this person remains a quiet outside observer. We begin by showing you everything we got. 

I could be very wrong about that, but it's almost like I can feel the sigh of disappointment in some of these emails when I reply with something completely benign and ordinary. All of the enthusiasm and unasked questions just seem to die. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it feels like a pretty predictable pattern. 

That's okay, though. I could be wrong, but even if I'm right, all it means is that the people who are only in it for the vibe or curiosity or passing interest sorta weed themselves out. 

Everyone wins. Yay. 

I Took a Ride on the Egg Cleanse Bandwagon

 You've seen it, I'm sure. I hear it's all the rage on TikTok but I don't use that creepy app, so I wouldn't know, but I see them fairly regularly on reddit and the comments are usually moaning and groaning about it.

So I decided to give it a whirl.
The short and sweet version, in case you are unaware - you take an egg, purify it in whatever way you see fit, and rub it all over your face and body. Then you crack it into a tall glass of room temperature water, wait about 10 minutes, and interpret its meaning. There are 500,930,213,444 cheat sheets available online, most of them copied nearly verbatim off each other, but if you want to be really obnoxious about it, you, too, can go on reddit, explain that you're a "baby witch" and beg someone to interpret it for you. They totally love that over there.

Sadly, I've chosen to do it by myself, and this is my result.

First things to note - my yolk is intact, the water is clean, there are no spots or discolorations or blemishes anywhere. There is some slight webbing in the egg white, and according to the cheat sheets that indicates some kind of negativity, but it's all very low lying. Below the yolk, not climbing up into the water. Nothing jagged, nothing sharp. also note that the webbing doesn't actually make contact with the yolk. 

There is a single, long strand toward the left, connecting a very large surface bubble to the egg white on the bottom. The cheat sheets suggest that bubbles are the result of the negativity being lifted away from you, and if that's the case, this seems like a lovely omen. It's like a UFO beaming up all the angry cows hanging around my feet. 

There's another, smaller bubble hovering over the yolk...it's not connected the way the other one is, but maybe it's like an eggy version of a guardian angel, watching from up high. 

Overall, not terribly eventful, but good things rarely are. I'd like to take comfort in the thought that whatever ick is being thunk in my direction is beneath me. 

Kbai. <3