Christmas 2005 Fades into History....

Well, the Christmas and Yule holidays are done. We all had a great time, and, like most of the holidays since we've owned our house, the event was held here. That's pretty cool, and I love it, but I am indeed glad it is done.

Andrea, Kristopher and I all agreed to open one present on the night before Christmas Eve when everyone else was due to make their appearance. Mostly because I thought Kristopher was going to explode from excitment, which I found very adorable and endearing.

Here is a picture of him opening his remote control Evo, which was a 1/14th scale model of the car from 2 fast 2 Furious. I thought he would love it, and he did. Take a look at his face:


Next, we have a picture of Andie opening her pre-Christmas eve gift. It is a charm bracelet with all manner of kitty charms on it. Andie volunteers for the Purrfect Pals organization and sure loves her kitty friends. It was a very appropriate bracelet for her and I think she liked it quite a bit.


After this festive bit of present opening, oh! and I opened one too, it's just that I was taking the pictures and didn't get a photo of the beautiful amethyst earrings purchased for me by my sweetie. Anyway, we headed over to our friends' house where we took and polished off a bottle of Vanilla Rum. It was definitely some good stuff.

So, the next day brought Christmas Eve and the rest of the family. Kristopher's mother, his brother and my son and daughter-in-law.

This next picture is of my grown son, Tim, opening a Nerf gun that I got him. He is an autonomous adult with bills and a wife and all the rest of the hassle that the rest of us have, but he's still my little boy, and I thought he could use a toy. And, from the look on his face, I think maybe....just maybe, he agrees.


There aren't a lot of pictures of me, and that I am quite okay with. However, I didn't want to get left out of the festivities altogether, so here is one of the nifty presents that I got from my mother-in-law and my brother-in-law combined. I am holding it up like a trophy:


And, last but not least, a photo of Kristoper with his brother and his mother sitting on our sofa.


Christmas was a great time, and one that shall go down as one of the better ones I've had in my 40 years. However, I must say that I am not unhappy that it is over and done with. It is a lot of work every year, but well worth it.

I will tell you, however, (whomever is reading this if anyone) that I rested on Christmas day itself, but the next day (today) busied myself the entire day wrapping and putting away every Yule decoration in the house including the outside lights and wreaths. NO sense in dragging the holiday on any longer than it already goes, and, for the most part, that stuff had been up in our home since about December 1. So, in my book, it was time. I drive around the neighborhoods and see the die-hard Yulers with their decorations on that will be lit until New Year's Eve, and I am grateful for them, but still can't seem to stand that for myself. I think it is the same gene that makes me put everything in the suitcase away as soon as I am back from a trip and get the suitcase tucked back in the attic or the rafters or wherever it came from.

Anyway, OCD nothwithstanding, I must say, in the words of Tiny Tim in A Chistmas Carol....God Bless Us, Every One. And I mean that. May we all be blessed with the good sense and manners to be thankful for the things we have, and may we be blessed with the spirit of generosity to share those things with those less fortunate than ourselves and with the inate understanding of how to make our world a better place.

I'll be talkin' to you.

Az

Krikey! It's almost Christmas!

Well, I'm back again. I thought I was gonna wait until after the gift-giving madness to put up another post, but why wait. The fun just never stops! Work today has been about as hectic as I've seen it in a long while - and we were counting on some blow off time with the supervisor gone! :)

My friend and co-worker had to run out of here like his clothes were on fire because he got online and found out that someone was making big withdrawals from his bank account and when he tried to call his bank to get it corrected, they kept hanging up on him. Poor bastard. It's not like he and his wife have a lot of money either. I hope it get straightened out quickly and doesn't cost him a lot of money. He's such a nice guy....what a friggin' drag man.


So, I'm posting a new picture today - largely because I don't really want the Willy Nelson Bush-Face to be the first thing I see when I log on. Maybe that's what spurs these super-bloggers. They take a look at the shit they've posted and decide that they need to bury it!

This picture expresses pretty much how most people feel after the year-end holidays are done. I was very fortunate this year in that I got an abundance of holiday spirit - and not that it couldn't get squished....I'm pretty sure that a run in with something like my co-worker is looking at would squish it really good for me....but the normal flurry isn't going to squish it or put out its light in any way. So, I'm thankful. I'm thankful for the return of the light....the promise of longer days and shorter periods of darkness. The promise of spring and of the summer to follow. Yeah....all that good witchy stuff.

Stay tuned. I'll write more later.

One Down, One to Go

Hello all....I am checking in after getting one Yule celebration done and while looking forward to another.

My witchy family had their doin's last night and it was a good time. I got a siler Bacchus wine caddy that slips over a bottle of wine and lets you pour it as if it had a handle. It's pretty cool. We had a good Yule service as well. Jumped and chanted and carried on like fools. It was a goo dtime.

Yule is the time of year when we Wiccans celebrate the return of the light to earth. The "birth" if you will, of the son of the Goddess - the son who will eventually grow up to be her consort at the time of Beltaine. It's a great time.

I'm including a rather obscene picture here that was sent sent to me and to the husband by a friend of ours. It was one of a whole album that of people who did body painting for a painted body jamboree in Florida. I'll bet this chick didn't get any sex while she had this thing on! :)

Anyway, just wanted to say "hi."

Happy Holidays again....
Az

Bizarre Universe

I've been intending to write a post about one of the wierdest things that has ever happened to me, but I've been crazy-busy like everyone else and so have just now found the time.

Allow me to tell you a little story about a funny thing that happened to me on the way back from singing at Pike Market on Friday, December 2.

I was with my good friend Susan and we were walking down the street together, back toward our office. Susan was wearing reindeer antlers on her head even though we were about five blocks from where we had been perfoming and she bqsically just looked like a middle aged woman wearing huge antlers and walking down the street. We were talking about how ridiculous she looked when we were approached by a beautiful, young, African American woman. She was dressed stylishly in suede cloth pants, nice boots, and a tailored jacket. Her hair was long and straight, she was wearing a spunky little hat on her head and she walked right up to me and said, "you look like a nice person. You deserve a gift." And she handed me this:


Okay. I'm thinking 'this is weird.' But the tea basket was nice so I extended my hands and took it from her - then I asked her why. She looked at me and she looked at Susan and she said, "well, it was a gift for my husband. But he's out to lunch with his secretary who he's having an affair with, so you get it." I was so stunned. I didn't know what to say. So, she leaves it in my hands, waves goodbye to Susan and I and says "have a nice day." When I found my voice again I called down the street after her that if she wanted to kick his ass, I had some time. But I don't think she heard me. At any rate, it was an odd thing to happen to me - at least I thought it was odd and it was extra coincidental and synergistic since I had done battle on the same side of an affair as she was on and looked at it much differently.

I tucked the tea basket under my arm and Susan and I went back to work. For several days it sat in my office unopened. I wasn't sure that I wanted to keep it, given its origins and I certainly didn't want to keep it if it was destined for someone else. (we witches put a lot of stock in the purpose and patterns of things)

Okay....here's what I noodled out that this was about, or at least the meaning I assigned to it.

1. It showed me that there is a different way to look at things. That you can know that someone is betraying you and you can hold your head high and just go on about your life - not allowing the betrayal to get you down. (No, I am not so naive as to believe that this young woman didn't later get upset and do a lot of crying or had not already done a lot of crying on the subject before she tea'd me - but she was definitely going to be A-Okay no matter what happened, and THAT is what I think I was meant to see.

2. She was gorgeous. All I could think about was how beautiful she was and what kind of moron would be double-dealin her. This made me feel better about the whole self-image thing that gets crushed when someone has an affair on you. I am not physically inadequate - I am not unlovely....my husband's bad decision was just that - a bad decision and it would have been that way no matter WHAT I looked like.

3. She was the embodiment of the Goddess - showing me in a real life example what strength and self confidence can look like in a situation like this.

So...that was enough for me. I decided to keep the tea basket for my own and absorb at least these lessons as I ate and drank its contents.

I've been getting steadily better since August - and this was another good-sized stepping stone. How very odd....I would really love to thank this young woman. And I do. I thank her in words and feelings woven into the great tapestry that is our collective destiny. I thank her by drinking tea out of the little gold teapot that came in the basket and thinking of her and wishing her well. I thank her by growing in self-confidence and scraping off another layer of hopelessness and helplessness and arming myself with the shield and sword of confidence and healing.

It is definitely a bizarre universe, and I for one am grateful.

Blessed Be.

And then there is that

Can you believe it's already December?????

Hi everyone! Well, with Thanksgiving behind us, we still have a lot of holiday-ing to do. today marks the first day of the official month of Christmas. While I am a pagan and don't celebrate Christmas in the Christian sense of the word, I certainly enjoy celebrating the secular elements of Christmas and combining them with the witch's sabbat of Yule - which is the celebration of the returning of the light. Lemme tell ya, at this lattitude, the return of the light is something to celebrate indeed! And it goes really fast. It seems like one day you're watching it get dark at 3:00 p.m., and then, just after Yule, it starts to get later and later. Living in the Pacific Northwest is a wonderful thing. Our house is totally decked-out for the holidays.
We have lights and garlands and a beautiful tree that already has PRESENTS UNDER IT! YAY!

My birthday is nestled in December pretty soon. I dont want to make a big fuss, but I guess we're going to have some friends over, which is just dandy with me. So long as I don't ahve to do any of the cooking, buying or cleaning up after. I love being a Saggitarius. It makes life plenty interesting to be of the sign known for mutable fire. That means that you're passionate about things, but you're not a pit-bull when it comes to getting and idea stuck in your head.

I'm sitting at work now about to finish up for the day, but thought I'd check in with my blog spot on this the first day of the official month of Yule.

Blessed Be Everyone! I'll upload some pictures of the Holiday window I'm painting when I get the design more firmly set in my head.

Az

Turkey Day 2005 - call it a Wrap!

Excellent. Thanksgiving 2005 went off without a hitch. We had 15 people here in our little castle in Lynnwood - all to a sit-down style dinner with linen napkins, water glasses and salad forks, baby. It was a good time all the way around. Today is the infamous "busiest shopping day of the year" - which means that I will be avoiding all retail establishments as though they were giving away e-bola at the door. My daughter, who is turning 16 years old tomorrow, wants to go get her nails done anyway - so I guess I gotta be down for that.

I've got all of the Fall decorations in a bag and am preparing to take them out to the garage and put up the Yule decorations. It is an endless parade of decorative stuff around this house from the beginning of October onward. :) Maybe one of these days I will hit the pinnacle and have stuff up for every different sabbat of the witches wheel year. The ones that come in the fall are so similar that you can pretty much leave up the same stuff from August on through until you change the stuff to Yule and just basically stack the Halloween stuff in on top of it. Maybe that's what I'll do in 2006.

Yesterday, my husband's grandmother stamped me with her seal of approval. :) Nice to know the family likes you and wants to keep you around. I've added some pics here of my loving family on Thanksgiving. The first picture is of my brother in law and his fiance. Aren't they cute? Got engaged about 2 weeks before Thanksgiving. I told my brother-in-law that it was just like hi yto rig it so that T-Day dinner with the fam is his engagement party! He countered with a "no it isn't. we already had our engagement party ....friends only." Ouch! OOooooOoOo... Wow! Happy Turkey Day mutha-fucka!



The two psychos basting the turkey are my children- Andie and Tim Allen. This is also a photo I'd like to call "best thing about the holidays."
The large man with the knife standing above the turkey is my husband.
I avoided taking pictures of the rest of the family to keep from embarrassing them on the internet. I'll leave that job to my daugther's blog at MySpace AndieBabe>

Happy Holidaze all ya'll. I'll be writin' atcha.

Az

For Fuck's Sake!

This has been one of the longest weeks in many, many a moon. First, the furnace went out, and this is after our having just gotten all new top-o-the-line windows and doors installed in our little Lynnwood castle. So, the husband stayed home the first day with it while a technician came out - we came home later that evening nad it was fuck-all cold in the house again, so I wound up staying out the following day with it, only to have a service man show up at the tail end of the day and tell me that he wasn't prepared to do the job, and that I needed to find someone to "camp out" on it. Doesn't that sound good? Doesnt' that sound like a metric butt-load of money? Anyway, so the next day the husband stayed home from his job again. It's like parents alternating over who's staying home with the sick kid, only there's no sick kid....just endless waiting for the service guy. The good news is that the next one who came out DID in fact come prepared to work and did the whole job for a mere $100. We got off light.

So, I'm here at work now, trying to get prepared for a major week ahead of me and well, frankly, I just can't seem to strap it on to care. My computers in my training room are not working properly. Looks like it might even be some weekend warrior action for me. Oh joy. :( I wish someone would pay me what I make doing by computer job for weaving baskets or drumming or something. :) That'll be the day, huh? I'm not likely to hold my breath for it though.

Have a great weekend.
Az

Rainy Day People

Howdy,
Well, the rain has come to Seattle in earnest. Some feel it more than others, but most are just a little more sleepy, just a little more reluctant to leave their warm beds for the cold, soggy commute, and maybe even a little more depressed or at least contemplative. I am all of the above. But, as a computer trainer, I do have some down time where I can catch up on my reading (of things like the Outlook 2003 manual) - not that interesting, but still, it feels good to be able to get to some of that stuff. In my tradition of witchcraft, Samhain (Halloween to those in the secular world) is the new year. It marks a time of reflection and contemplation of the accomplishments of the year before and of the seeds you wish to sow for the coming year. I think of friends and family - of all the people I've known who have influenced me and touched my heart. Some of it makes me sad, some makes me laugh, but all of it makes me feel extremely lucky. Especially that little red-head in the picture here. Well, she's not a red-head anymore. This was taken last summer at a company picnic - but I don't have very many pictures of us together so it will have to do. She's a wonderful little muffin and I can't believe she's turning 16 on November 26. She's going to have a birthday party with a bunch of her friends on the 19th - so I'm sure she'll feel like she's all grown up then - but she's still just a baby.

So that's about it. I have to get back to my riveting work now as my lunch break is just about over, but I wanted to check in post-Halloween (which, by the way was a gas) - we went to a Halloween wedding, went to a Halloween party, decked out the house and went in costume to work. Can't beat that! If I were writing this post from my other machine I'd stick up a picture or two. Might have to do that later anyway, even though Halloween is gone for another year. Anyway, Blessed Be, and be sure to check out my website for my Thanksgiving page which will have all kinds of recipes and after the event, some pics for the family to see.

Halloween is coming

I'm getting so excited that Halloween is right around the corner.
Today is October 20th - or for at least another 45 mintues it is. Tomorrow is my husand's birthday and I have taken the day off with him. I'm hoping he has a really good one. I have made apumpkin cake for him and will be icing it with a lovely cream cheese icing made from scratch - as was the pumpkin cake. HIs mother, brother and his girlfriend are going to join us for a dinner of cornbread and stew. I'm excited to have a little party for him and we'll even eat off of cool little Halloween plates and I'll have the table all decked out with some little Halloween favors.

So that's about it. I just finished one of my big project windows last night and am waiting fo rit to dry. It is a Halloween theme window and I'll be sure to put up a picture of it when I have it. 'Til then, nighty night.

Today is Thursday

So I finally took the 15 minutes that was necessary in order to figure out how to get the hideous pink off of my blog. Yay! I work in the tech field (and am at work now, as a matter of fact) but have been so busy I haven't had time to farkle around with it. My company is in the process of rolling out new software to all the end users (about a thousand of us)and we have BEEN working on this crap for about a year now. It's only an advance to another version of the production software, but all of these programs have to work in concert and have to work well enough that we don't have people calling the Help Desk and screeching that we have deliberately sabbotaged their work. This is a challenge. As I see my co-workers become more and more apathetic about whether we EVER get anything done or not, I think I am gaining a broader view of why there is so much apathy in government and politics in general. There are just too many people involved to get the cart moving. We've proven time and time again historically that war can motivate us as a unit - bring us together and help us reach heights of productivity that we didn't believe possible. What the hell is up with that? We have to have a war to come together as a people? We have to have a threat to our homeland to find the wherewithall to give a damn? Yeah...I guess that's it. Maybe that's what that micro-brained re-tard in the Whitehouse was thinking when he declared war on Iraq. (Okay....you're right...I'm giving him too much credit. We all know what that was about....yep...money). Okay then, what am I talking about today? Nothing really. I guess I need to go back to my work and try to polish the stuff that I do have for the day when we do roll the product out. I guess I'd better practice what I preach and fight apathy with all my brain cells. But it's getting harder every day.

My Friend Karen

Well, one of my really good friends left the company that I work for on Friday. It was time....there were issues....there were things there should not have been in 2005. There were things that should not have been in the Pacific Northwest - a chunk of America that never knew slavery and supposedly not the prejudices we faced, attempted to overcome and are still licking the wounds from in the South. But happen they did. The reality is that we have a long way to go before the majority of the world is color blind. We have a long way to go before people understand that there are some wounds that you can't poke with a stick and expect them to not hurt. A long way indeed.

My friend called me today and she told me that she was happy - she sounded happy and I am happy for her. There's a picture of her here in this post - she's the beautiful African American woman wedged between the two over-fed whities. I teased her on the phone today and told her that I was going to upload this picture to the Internet and tell the world (well, the three people that read my blog) that she left so she could avoid getting whatever it was that caused these two white women to puff up like this. ;) (No, I don't eat cornstarch!)

KL, we are sisters, you and I. We've seen things and felt things that let us know where the other one is comin' from in our hearts and in our heads. You've held me and told me it's going to be alright when I thought my world was caving in on me. I've prayed for you in my way, and you have prayed for me in yours. We've seen fire and rain, baby....and I'm so very happy for you that you have removed yourself from a situation that was simply bringing you down. Praise the Great Power that moves the moon, and sets all the planets in motion - I'm looking at my fireplace with a big roaring fire in it at the moment. I am sending you the good vibe. That means my love, and my sincerest wish and prayer for you to have a successful and enriching life. Not that I'm not gonna kick your ass if you don't call me now and then, because I will. But I'm setting my wish for you here in cyberspace so it's recorded somewhere. Like a spell, I have set my good thoughts and wishes for you in motion by writing these words.

Blessed be -

On the Lighter Side

So I went to my daughter's school this evening for an open ouse. It was pretty cool. My daughter is fifteen yearsl old and goes to a pretty large high school - she has six classes a day on a campus the size of a small airport. Her first class in the morning, very early - like 7:30 - is an English class. This English class is taught in a sort of portable barn-like building attached to the greenhouse at the school. It is separate from the main building and seems kind of cold and dank. Th teacher is a native San Franciscan who is kind of a hippy, dopy chick type. She's a drama teacher most of the time, but teaches english as well. She was nice enough, but I could tell that, as an English teacher, there was quite a bit lacking. Oh well, hopefully she will make it through the curriculum of Holocaust victims, Lord of the Flies and Midsummer Night's Dream.

Her next class is Integrated math with a very sensible seeming Asian guy for a teacher. Not too much you can bullshit about in math. you either get it or you don't, byou either do the work or you don't. Nice enough guy.

Third period finds her in Spanish class with a young male teacher who has them build up points for class by collecting pesos (pesos are the measure of credit given for doing extra curricular stuff like watching the Spanish channel). She seems like she's going to do fine in that class.

Next was Chef's class where she has an anal retentive hun for a teacher who is a "portions" Nazi. Very bizarre. My daughter has been cooking and learning and doing very well with all the stuff she does, but she only got shit for cdredit because we put the recipes up on a web-site, and apparently they needed to be "typed, double spaced, one sheet of paper." Okay then.....

Next was her World civics teacher who just about made me crack up - what a SPAZ this guy is. I doubt she's going to learn much of anything in that class. He was just all over the place. He didn't string together a coherant sentence the whole time we were in there. He was so nervous and spastic that it was comical.

And last but not least was her chemisty teacher who was like a wet piece of white bread.

It reminded me of my high school days. Some teachers good....most atrocious. These people are influencing our kids lives and most of them are there just to collect a paycheck (I'm not faulting them for that....we've all got to make a living) and some are there to feed their own egos and others are there because they simply don't know what else to do with their lives. Then, there are a rare few who really care....who really get fired up about teaching....who really have the capactiy the will and the drive to make a difference in these kids lives. And to those, I met two of them tonight...potentially three...I say thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for showing my kid something positive and giving her the idea and the fire to follow her dreams and her heart. And to you others I say, have a heart....reevealuate what you're doing....wake up....look at how important you are to the kids you teach. Look at the potential you have to shape the future for all of us through them. Wake up! Wake up!

Goodnight everybody,
Az

Evil Exists in the World

Today's post is inspired by a conversation I had with a very dear and very wonderful friend of mine. She has talked me down out of many an emotional tree, and for that I can never thank her enough.

About 16 months ago, I found out that my husband had been having an ongoing affair with what I thought was one of my friends and who definitely was a co-worker and had been for five years. My husband and I had only been married about a year and a half at the time, and I was deeply in love with him and convinced that he was my knight in shining armor after a 20-year-long bad marriage that felt more like a jail sentence than a loving union. When I found out what my husband had been doing, it almost killed me. Literally. I had to start taking tranquilizers, I found myself lost in my own neighborhood without any idea how I had gotten to that street or how to get back to my own house - I was a strung-out mess. My husband was remorseful and wanted another chance - because my own past was quite checkered and I'd done my share of bad things, I felt that, karmically, I owed it to the Universe to grant that one chance. My husband and I have been picking up the pieces ever since. His infidelity is still a dominant thought in my mind, however, and I'm not sure that I will ever be entirely free of it. The unwashed slut that was my co-worker and supposed "friend" hi-tailed her ass out of this company and went to work for another law firm here in town, got herself fired after three months for gross incompetence, then started working at a local beauty salon as a hair sweep-up and phone girl, then started selling parquet wood floors, then, lo and behold, found herself back here in downtown Seattle where she took another job as a legal secretary in a lawfirm.....next-friggin-door. So, after months of healing and feeling better and better.....thinking that it was all done and being so very happy to be moving forward.....I saw the "creature" (that's what I call her now...."the creature" and use the term "it" when speaking about it, rather than the feminine pronouns of "she" or "her."

I had been aware that the day would come when I would spot it....I just didn't know when, and for 15 months had been very fortunate ineed. However, the time had come and the spotting was done. I found myself fighting off shock and dismay. A cadre of emotions welled up inside me and were put down. I felt physically ill - dizzy, short of breath. Everything was fresh again. Everything was new and terrible again. I began to think of all my progress as having been a sham....I flailed about for answers. Days went by and I headed down into a black hole of depression and absolute RAGE. This is where my conversation with my girlfriend Chris comes in.

I had the brilliant idea last night that what I really needed to do was to have some closure on the other side of the equation of the betrayal that I was a victim of a year and a half ago. I needed to find out how someone could pretent to be your friend and could look you right in the face and say, "Maryellen, you know that I love you and I would never do anything to hurt you," when she sees you falling apart over the fact that you believe your husband is pulling away from you. I believed that answers for questions like, "how could you do this to me? We've been friends for five-friggin' years?" would somehow help me in my healing and recovery process and perhaps, just perhaps, put to rest some of this enormous rage that I have to wrestle with on an almost daily basis. However, there was something inside of me that told me this would not be a good idea. To send and email to the creature soliciting reasons behind why it could be so cruel, would alert the creature to the fact that I was still thinking about this stuff. This knowledge would, in some ways, give "it" power over me - and I didn't think I wanted to do that. So I called Chris to help talk me out of my newly planned course of action.

She asked me what I hoped to gain by emailing the creature.....I told her "closure" - and we talked a bit more, and she said that she didn't think I would get the answers I needed or was seeking. She said that what had happened and how the creature was able to do what it did was due to the simple fact that "evil exists in the world, and she (the creature) operates on the basest level of instinct and the most gutteral sphere of human nature." And that's true. It does. I didn't see it because I give people the benefit of the doubt. I assume goodness in people and, unless they show me differently, will continue to assume that goodness for the duration of our association. Never in my life have I been so grossly and rudely awakened to the possibility of evil and treachery so great. I am not going to go into the details of their affair here, but suffice to say, it had a hard-nosed counselor near tears and sitting on the edge of her chair saying that she simply did not know how I was going to get past all of it and come out to a place of forgiveness. And counselors just don't say that shit. They pretty much know how things are and that splitting up a marriage is one of the hardest exercises to which you can subject the psyche that exisits in the modern world.

So, anyway....yes Virginia.....evil exists in the world. And sometimes it slimes you. You cannot reason with it....you cannot plead with it....it has no more sense or congnisense than a lobotomy patient who endlessly masterbates all day. Evil such as the creature is cold, calculating and a slave to the self-serving attitude that causes wars. All you can do if it has touched you is to try to wipe it off and move on with your life. Move on and love. Love everyone who will love you back. Spread that love around. I try....I am trying....as I write these words I still struggle to understand even while I know there is no understanding what happened to me....but I try.

Heavy writing today, huh?

Blessed be, and may this never, ever happen to you. But if it does, may you find a way out and to the other side where there waits forgiveness which will set everyone free.

Az

Too Much Going On

I remember when I was bored . . . when I didn't have anything to do. Now there are too many things to do and not enough time to do them in. I wish I could go without sleep without becoming completely goofy for loss of 3 to 4 hours of it.
Check out my web page at http://www.theinvoker.com. I want you to see my new window project. This is a single pane of the 4-pane window I leaded and painted. Well, gotta go to bed now so I can get up and do it all again tomorrow. Ciao!

Katrina.....YOU BITCH!

Well, New Orleans....will it ever be the same? I can guarantee you that it won't, and maybe it shouldn't. But I'm not worried about Bourbon Street or the rest of the French Quarter or any of the other touristy-schmouristy crap down there. What I am worried about is all of those people. Those poor people who found themselves wading around in a bowl of human feces and dead bodies. I can't seem to get them off my mind. I'm also mindful of how much time it took our illustrious government to respond to their desperate need and situation. You can bet your ass that if they had been white middle-class citizens they would have been friggin' air lifted out of there as soon as the winds died down. I find it really scary to realize we are essentially living in a caste system here in the United States. Probably the reason it's been so long in dawning on me is that I was born into the privileged class. I'm sure, had I been born black, or hispanic, I would have realized this a very long time ago indeed.

So what is the point of this blog entry. Not one really. I just pray for the people of New Orleans. That they have the strength and courage they need to pick up their lives and move on from this point. That's really all they can do. I pray that the people who are holding on to their homesteads down there realize that they are holding on to death and decay, and that they let go and get the help they need.

Blessed be to the people ravaged by Katrina. Blessed be and may light cover you and may the Goddess see you through these incredibly trying times.

My.....my.....my....September already

So I'm sitting here on my cranberry colored camel-backed sofa typing away on my laptop as my husband sits on the other end of the same cranberry-colored camel-backed sofa typing on his laptop. It's Friday evening and we're waiting for our friends to come over so we can "do something." What this something is that we are going to do is anybody's guess.

Everyone, including myself, is bummed and upset about the poor hurricaine victims in Louisiana and Mississippi. It is incredible to see that kind of devestation on your own lawn....the few photos that I have seen of it look like the aftermath of the bombing of a 3d world country. Or, perhaps...oh...I dunno....maybe reminiscent of some of the photos coming back from Iraq in recent memory.

These times they are a'changin'. Our economy is in the sewer -or, if not quite there yet, well on its way. Gasoline is over $3 a gallon here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, the cost of living is going up faster than wages, interest rates are rising along with unemployment, and well....we are headed for tough times.

We will weather these tough times and life will go on, but I have to say that I am really not looking forward to what the leeward side of a second Republican presidential term brings. I've seen this several times in my life already. Once with Ronald Regan, and once with Big Daddy Bush, and now with Junior. Each time, prices rose, wages stayed static, people became worried and didn't spend money (which just drove the process further into the abyss). **sigh** Hang on, those of you who don't remember, you'll get to see what I'm talking about soon enough - and for those of you who do remember - well, here we go again.

Pray for the hurricaine victims though. They need our support now. No matter how tough it may seem for you because you don't have the cash to go out and party tonight, or maybe you can't afford that new dress or car....if you're reading this blog, chances are you have a roof over your head and your house isn't under water, and you have electricity and you don't have dead bodies lying around in the street.

Blessed be, everyone. I don't mean to bring anyone down. I'm just kind of in a funk right now myself.

Last Day of Vacation

The worst thing about vacations is having them end. This sucks. I've been home just about enough time to get relaxed a little bit and get my bearings and now I'm going back to work. Suck-age abounds.

Our exchange student, Yuka, leaves for Japan tomorrow. We're going to miss her. Very strange to have a person you don't know come into your house and stay for three weeks, then just be suddenly gone. I'm wearing the shirt she brought for me from Japan. It has a Kanji character on it that means "Samari" but I have a piece of paper where she has written many more Kanji symbols for more ordinary and pertinent things like "garden" and so forth. I will use them in my art work. Right now I'm in the process of making painted glass windows anchored to a planter for the back patio. I haven't gotten very far on the project today because I've wanted to be available to drive the girls wherever they wanted to go - and that I did. I will work on them some more tomorrow. There's a lot of prep work before I get to the actual design. I think I'll take some pictures in the process I think. My husband takes pictures every step of the way in his work as a blacksmith and on his art projects as a metal smith (one in the same thing, actually for him anyway).

So it's just about time for the man to get home on this fine, fine Friday. We're sending Yuka back to Japan with her last dinner being a Tex-Mex creation by yours truly - just some tacos, rice, beans, salsa, guacamole - y'know.....'merican food.

It occurs to me that by the time I get back to work on Monday I will have been gone from the office for 11 days - it'll feel like no time at all because I've been working from home - but those are the hazards of keeping up with the job so you don't have a heart attack when you return from all the pile-up.

Another Day

Well, we've made it through another day with our Japanese exchangee. She is very sweet, and very helpful around the house - but it is also quite strange and surprisingly taxing to have someone living in the house who does not speak much English, and thus has some difficulty communicating.
For instance, this evening I asked her to take some watermelon rinds to the the large trash container in the back yard - explaining "the gray can" and when I looked up from the dishes, she was hucking them around the yard as she had seen me do with bread and small corn cobs for the squirrels. It was quite amusing.
And, there's the added pleasure of having her interact with our teenage daughter who is so concentrated on how much attention she gets vs. how much attention the exchange student gets that she renders an accounting several times a day. It is absolutely exhausting. But we haven't signed on for a whole year, thank goodness, and our little Yuka will be winging her way back to Japan in just two short weeks. Well, gotta go....I have to take some cookies out of the oven. She seems to love cookies beyond all other types of food, and when I make them, I feel like I am at least letting her know that I want to please her if I can.
Blessed be to any and all who read this post. Az

Okay, WTF?

Alrighty then....I've been wondering whether blogging is actually worth it or if anyone looks or reads or whatever - and then today a co-worker sent me a link to her husbands blogspot and I have to tell you - that thing is FLIPPIN' AWESOME. So, I'm going to take a page out of this dude's book and diversify a bit. I'm not just going to talk about witchcraft and Wicca - I think I'll just talk about anything I darn well please. Work, love, the state of mashed potatoes. Whatever! My teenage daughter, or our Japanese exchangee - whatever I feel like. Then I might be more interested in keeping up these posts. Let's see how it goes.

Hanging in there a while longer....

Howdy - seems I've been away for 2 months this time - almost to the day. Lots has happened, and summer has finally begun in Seattle. Took long enough! I am continuing my study of Witchcraft and trying to figure out what my place is and what my role is to be in perpetuating the practice of Witchcraft. It is going to be a lifelong pursuit. My husband is sitting here with me this evening, sharing in the Sunday evening blues that come when you feel like you should have some more time off work. This next week is going to be a killer at my day job - so it's fun to take a look at the diversion of posting sutff to the Internet. My husband and I are working on herbs in our Witchcraft class. That's what I should be working on right now - we have 40 herbs to catalog and describe in our notebooks before our next class meets. However, what I'd really like to be doing is reading "Harry Potrter - the Half Blood Prince." I like to call it "Harry Pot-head, the Half-Baked Prince." Like that? I think that J.K. Rowling is a good writer - when she was "hungry" she was a great writer - but it is taking her longer and longer to produce books. And why not? Now she has everthing she could ever want and her life is comfortable and set. But for making some obligations that she must due to contracts that she no doubt entered into, she really has no reason to write. When she was having a heard time feeding her kids and was on the British welfare system, she was LIVING in Harry Potter's world as an escape device.
I've written two full novels myself - and not had any luck getting them published. Of course, for the past 8 years, I've really made no serious attempts so it is my own fault. I have an idea for another novel and we'll see haow it goes, or if it goes anywhere at all.
So tonight is just for rambling and I hope you are all doing well and this finds you happy.

Long Time Away!

Well, into the life of every witch comes all the other stuff that gets in the way like working, paying the bills and keeping up with the husband and kid. Such is the way of things.

I'm just going to cut to it - since I'm not receiving any input on this site, I'm thinking of taking it down. I thought there would be more dynamic interplay with a site as cool as this, and, especially since I learned about it through a monthly legal publication that touted its attributes. But, this witch only has so much time to write and put forth ideas and teachings about the Craft, and there are other forums where people will actually engage me and get a dialog going.

One more month without any responses to any of my posts, and Asradel's Blog Cauldron will put the lid on and move down the road. Blessed be!

Spellbound

I was going to use this blog to talk strictly about Witchcraft and it's rising star in the United States, but I see that no one is commenting on this thread, and maybe that's the way of things with blogs - guess I'm used to newsgroups and message boards which have a lot more activity - and that may be the way I go with things if this blog doesn't generate some interest within the next few months. Anyway, basically what I want to talk about today is spellwork. I don't want to go into a long, drawn-out tretise on it, I just want to say that it is only a small part of Witchcraft as a whole. Doing spells and incantations is a lovely, rich part of Witchcraft that is like prayer in other religions. If you need something as a witch, you may think it best to create a spell to bring that thing about. You would gather the herbs and the words and you would cast your spell at a time that was astrologically favorable to your purpose. And then, you let it go. You let the universe and the herb beings go about what they were set to do. You don't worry about it any more - and you go on with your life as you were before you cast the spell. Spellwork is a very powerful part of witchcraft. A witch friend of mine and I were talking about this just yesterday. One of the things were were lamenting is that modern life doesn't leave a lot of time of occult practice - as occult practice can be very time consuming. But simple spells can be done with little or no preparation - and they can be done with the aid of no other thing than the sheer force of your will. Well, I have to get back to my daily grind - I have a newsletter to write and get published. Ciao for now! - Az

The Spirit is Upon Me

So, it's either really late or really early - depends on how you look at it. It's 12:20 a.m. and rather than going to bed, which would be the sane thing to do on a work night, I am sitting up writing a blog entry. This one is a bit more personal, as I just wanted to record that I am very glad to be experiencing the spiritual inspiration that has come on me in the past month. I've lived long enough to see the waves of inspiration and I love it when they come in. The Great Power is the the highest part of ourselves. it is our God self and the self that is connected to all that exists in the world.

When you tap into this universal energy, it provides a wellspring of energy and sometimes it is difficult to go to sleep. I just wrote a poem for WitchVox called "Grateful" and that is what I am. I am grateful to the Goddess and God for all that they have given me in this life. Grateful for the lessons learned - grateful for the people and places that I have encountered along the way. Grateful for each day and each night and all the experiences in between. Blessed be, and goodnight. - Az

The Gods Need Us and We Need Them

If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound? An age old philosophical question that pretty much sums up the subject of today's entry. The Gods need worshippers in order to thrive and be powerful. Why would this be? Yaweh doesn't need this to exist - Jehovah doesn't need worshippers to thrive and be powerful you might argue - but it would be a short-sighted argument indeed. Think to two-thousand years into the future. What if by that time Christianity has been diminished to a few faithful? The tenets of the religion just a dusty tatters of the tapestry of beliefs that existed only a few millenia ago, and another religion, with a totally different deity and/or savior now standing in its place. A very different picture, huh? Who would remember who Jesus was? Who would buy into the whole death and rebirth and assumption into heaven thing? When you think about it that wayBasically the gods need us to remember what they are all about. Bear in mind at all times that "all gods are one" in Witchcraft and that we are talking about aspects of that one god or power here. When you worship a deity, whichever deity(ies) you see fit to worship, you give power to that deity. Power by recognition, power by calling the name. Power by thinking of them over and over. By doing these things, you give power to and revive their particular aspect of the great power. In return, they are better able to grant you your prayers and petitions. Sound crazy? Well, it might, but it isn't. It's nothing more than the natural law of like drawing like to itself. On the astral plane, we create our own reality - we create our own afterlife, our own rewards, our own punishments. And, in a way, by worshipping them, we create our gods. Think about it. 'Til next time. - Az

There is No Part of Me that is Not Part of the Gods

In my last post I discussed how paganism, and specifically Witchcraft, works with a pantheon of gods and goddesses. The title to this post is "there is no part of me that is not part of the gods." This is an affirmation used by many pagan groups, including most branches of British Traditional Witchcraft. It simply states the premise that everything that is within us, as human beings, is of the gods. There is light and dark within each of us, and, therefore, there is light and dark within the gods. In Witchcraft deity is not all good with the all bad half somewhere and someone else with whom the deity is constantly at war. In other words, we do not follow the god/devil model of Christianity. In Witchcraft, deity, like ourselves, has light and dark within them. And, as I've said in the previous post, all gods are really aspects of the one great power. So we are talking about parts of a whole here. There cannot be light without darkness. There cannot be good without bad. There cannot be joy without suffering. Life is a complicated whole and a beautiful dance of opposites. From a witches eyes, it would be foolish to think deity, which is part of the natrual order of things, followed different rules from everything and everyone else. - Az

Witchcraft is a Religion

Many (or even, dare I say, most) people who look into witchcraft do so because they believe it is all about spells and hexes and such - they don't think about or realize that it is first and foremost a religion. Taken as a whole, it is, in fact, a way of life.

The religion of Wicca (and I will use the terms Witchcraft and Wicca interchangeably until I later elaborate on the subtle differences between the terms) there are pantheons of Gods and Goddesses to venerate and worship. We do not believe that they fly around like so many fairies, floating in the air above us. Rather that they are potent concentrations of the great unifying force that is the One great life force of creation - and that they express and manifest themselves in certain ways and have certain roles in our lives and on the invisible plane. Different witches have different Gods and Goddesses that they work with and venerate. Covens (groups of 3 or more like-minded witches working together) have deities that the group works with when they are together which increases the potency of their workings. "Workings" mainly include the sort of thing you would hear about in any church on any Sunday - someone needs healing, someone needs money for a new car to get back and forth to work, someone needs to find a job so they can make their house payment. That sort of thing. Nothing dark or sinister, and certainly nothing to fear. - Az

In the Beginning

Hello - welcome to my blog. This is my first posting and I am creating this blog as result of reading an article written by a novice blogger in a legal publication. He seemed so enrapt with the idea of being able to express and share his ideas and expertise, it was infectuous. So here I am.

This blog is going to be about witchcraft, Wicca, and the rise of paganism in its' many forms in the United States. You are welcome to comment on anything you read here, and I will, of course, read what you have written. Be warned, however, that no hate-mongering will be tolerated here. If you post something that bashes or otherwise displays intolerance of my, or anyone else's religion, it will be deleted. Otherwise, freedom of speech is alive and well on my blog - so long as the webmasters will allow it, so will I.

Today's offering will be brief:

What is Witchcraft?
Witchcraft is the practice of a pagan way of life and religion comprised of many and various elements. There are as many different types of witches and witchcraft as there are Christians with their various beliefs. Think of it for a moment - there are Catholics (certainly Christian), Mormons (yep - Christian), Baptists (again, Christian) and literally dozens more under the broad umbrella of Christianity. Each of these religions share some very fundamental concepts and core beliefs, but are wildly different in practice. And so it is with Witchcraft.

Stay tuned for more. I will be back to post more in the next couple of days.

Until then, Bright Blessings,
Asradel