Category Archives: Weather, Seasons, & Celebrations

Invocation of DayQuil

Hail, powers of DayQuil, conqueror of sinus infections, cold, and flu.
I invoke the powers of Pseudoephedrine Hydrochloride, Dextromethorphan Hydrobromide, and blessed Acetaminophen.
With your might I banish infection and congestion, muscle ache and sore throat.
I invite the ability to breathe clearly and to edit a whole page of this manuscript without coughing so hard that I see spots.
For the good of all (and I really mean it), and with harm to none (because I wouldn’t wish yet another cold on anyone this spring),
So mote it be.

(Yeah, this wretched cold is courtesy of my husband, who feels appropriately guilty. Nothing’s stopping me from seeing the advance screening of Hellboy tonight, though — nothing, I tell you!)

Hail Spring!

In another one of those synchronous miracles that really isn’t because I believe that we create our own coincidences, I taught a class yesterday that compared and contrasted group work with solitary worship, and the students asked very perceptive questions about the group mind and how it forms. Then I came home to a ritual with my new still-gelling group which celebrated the group mind and the wonders of being an individual, while simultaneously being a part of something greater.

It was a fabulous ritual which took the concepts of balance (Vernal Equinox, equal day and night, God/Goddess), co-operation, frolic, and reverence, blended them together, and created a terrific experience through which everyone learned something about themselves and each other. And all this came from an individual who had never written/led a group Sabbat before. (I might be wrong, but I am fairly certain I’m not. If so, then the individual had certainly never written/led a Wicca-based rit for a group.)

Heck, yeah. The invocations raised chills, the raising of energy focused on control instead of quantity, and the whole thing took less than half an hour. That, dear readers, is a sign of a well-managed ritual. Focused, moving, thought-provoking, engages emotional-mental-physical levels, and doesn’t drag on.

And every single one of us walked away with a new understanding of the words “spring” and “balance”.

The group mind. It’s the greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts entity/identity that arises independently from the regular interaction of a group of people. Your clique in high school had a group mind. Your family has a group mind. Your softball team has a group mind. A group mind takes a while to form while everyone gets to know each other socially and within the context of the group’s performance, but when it’s there, whoa baby, it’s a powerful thing. Yesterday’s exercise in circle did a lot to demonstrate that a group mind can not only be formed sooner with intention, but refined through attention and careful management.

I’ve also discovered one of the uses of a coven Book of Shadows. It’s a HPS’ brag book and scrapbook. Years from now we’ll go back over it and say, “Do you remember the day so-and-so led such-and-such ritual?”

So yes: spring. The celebration of new beginnings. One of the affirmations used in yesterday’s ritual was, “I’m glad you’re here.” I’d like to take this opportunity to say to my coven dedicants who have chosen to study with HRH and me: I’m glad you’re here.

And, dear readers, I’m glad you’re here too. After all, what’s a regular literary exploration of words and ideas without an audience?

Human Again

After waking up with a low-grade fever yesterday morning and exhibiting even lower energy than I’d had all week, HRH forbade me to go out for my Sunday afternoon class and ordered me back to bed. I slept until we had to leave for our scheduled dinner with my in-laws, where I sat zoning out in the rocking chair with a quilt over my legs. Matching socks after a load of laundry was pretty much all I could manage to do. Bless them, they fed me and lit candles in the living room and understood.

When we got home I caught the sixth end of the Brier final, assumed all was lost, and took a bath. I emerged just in time to see the tenth end, where Dacey stuck it to Ferby after something apparently miraculous happened in the three ends I’d missed. That final end was sweet and more than made up for last year’s disappointment. I cried.

So today I actually feel human once more, thank goodness. After a week of not being able to do much more than sit staring at a box of Kleenex (a heartfelt apology to all my students, but I honestly don’t remember teaching the two classes I did last week), I’ve touched base with my publisher, and I foresee a huge push forward on the Brighid book today.

And… I’m hungry. Glory be, I’m actually hungry. I’m so sick of tea and juice and water and toast that I might do something reckless today like have a piece of chocolate. Or a soda. I think my taste buds are back in the game.

Impatience of the Virtuous

The cold proceeds apace, oh joy; I’m at the hacking cough stage now. I made myself take a walk in the spring sun yesterday and stopped in at the Co-op Vert to pick up organic ginger tea and a hazelnut bread, which is so incredibly delicious that it doesn’t need butter. It has whole hazelnuts in it, and it’s made with fine whole-wheat flour and molasses. Mmm.

Rehearsal last night was absolutely disastrous. It was the diametrical opposite of the previous practice: stumbling, wincing, and amateur. On top of it all, that guy who never shuts up kept talking behind me. I thought I would strangle him. The only thing that got me through the night was knowing that when I got home, I would have chocolate ice cream and watch Angel. Except when I got home, there were two episodes of Smallville back to back, and no Angel in sight.

I went to bed and sulked.

Tonight I teach the second half of my spellcasting class. It’s certainly different this time around: I’m teaching two good Catholic girls who are interested in learning how to use magic within a Christian context. It’s quite a relief to speak in the terms of one religion while doing this class instead of saying “however you perceive the Divine” all the time. It’s also so nice to hear people say that they believe this power comes from God, and they seek to use it in a positive context. I always enjoy this class, and to be able to teach it without fielding odd questions is a lovely bonus.

I hate being sick.

Is it Tuesday yet?

This has been a frustrating day.

It began when the power went out around midnight last night. Well, it didn’t go off, exactly; it fluctuated in various stages of brownout, setting all the sensitive electric sensors for emergency lights and alarms in the building off at irregular intervals.

By this morning, neither HRH or I had had really decent sleep, and the apartment was stone-cold once again. At various times through the night we had each arisen to unplug power bars and sensitive electronic devices in an effort to protect ourselves from frying expensive stuff. Of course the digital alarm clock wasn’t functioning, due to the lack of continuous power, so we sort of awoke later than we normally do. HRH had begun developing a nasty cold last night, and he was in no shape to squire our goddaugher off to daycare this morning, so I went instead. Of course, the single battery-powered clock we had in the house was half an hour fast, so I discovered on the way to pick her up that I had thirty minutes to kill. I did, with a doughnut and hot chocolate.

After dropping her and her dad off at various places, and having checked the prices on small filing cabinets, I returned home and discovered that the power had still not come back up to any level of useful application. Trusting my intuition, I booted up my laptop on battery power and found an urgent edit sitting in my inbox. This, paired with the book reviews due today, meant that I had to cancel my lunch date with MLG.

The edit’s done, and the book reviews are almost there too; I’ve done longhand work and now that the power is finally back on, I’ve been transferring them to the desktop computer. I took a break earlier to go pick up that parcel which I missed on Friday, only to discover that it hadn’t reached the post office yet.

Yes, it’s been frustrating.

On top of it all, my Owldaughter domain seems to have fallen between the cracks in accounting with my old web host. Skippy came over Friday night and we set up a new hosting space, but my domain still seems to be in limbo – technically still held by my old host, but not paid for (long story, which involves hosting as a gift from someone else whose payment info expired, requiring the substitution of my own info to renew service). I’ve been having problems extracting any sort of useful information from the support team for the last three months, in an attempt to avoid a snarl-up somewhat like this. My efforts have been in vain. (And yes, the lack of return communication was the key reason I chose to take my business elsewhere.) So this has resulted in more frustration.

Now, however, the sun has reached an angle to shine in through the back window, which means that spring is nearly here. I managed to finally get through to my doctor’s office, and as a result I not only have a renewal of my medication, but I also have an appointment to discuss these headaches and worrisome sensitivity to light with her next week.

Perhaps Monday has seemed worse than it actually is simply because it came right after a fantastic Sunday. The class I taught on Norse and Druidic methods of magic was great; the healing ritual I participated in was phenomenal; and on top of it all, I got to game last night too.

Today is just such a… Monday. You know?

Fnyeah. Perhaps Ginger‘s right; we should just declare all of February a holiday.