Category Archives: Words Words Words

Battered

At least once a day Liam does something that hurts me enough to make me yelp at him. Some days it’s hitting my forehead with the corner of a wooden train as he whips around quickly. Others, it’s one of his booted feet stomping down with all his weight on my tarsals. Whatever he does usually leaves a bruise or a welt or a scrape. He doesn’t do it on purpose; it’s just collateral damage inflicted by a very enthusiastic twenty month old boy. It can be hard to remember that, however, when one is tired and cranky and short on patience.

Early this morning, he grabbed lightning-fast at the fresh hot cup of tea I held in my hand, which spilled down the neck of my sweater and left a burn line down my breastbone to my stomach. I put cold compresses on it and massaged in some lavender oil, but the red line remains. It’s not a severe burn or anything; still, it’s enough to twinge when my pullover rubs against it.

I know it wasn’t intentional. Nonetheless, after the first aid I had to go sit in another room by myself for a while and do some breathing exercises in order to calm down, and when Liam came charging in right away to see what I was doing I asked HRH to take him away to play somewhere else for a few minutes.

I need down time. I just never seem to get it, because there’s always something I have to be doing when Liam is with his caregiver or his grandma for a day. Any time winter wants to leave town would be fine, too, because it’s not helping.

I never did get a cup of tea this morning. I will go remedy that right now.

Do You Have It?

I’ve been looking for some of my books recently, and some are missing. I have a bad habit of enthusiastically pressing books on people as they leave my home, and I forget to write down who has what.

Today I’m looking for Poppy Palin’s Craft of the Wild Witch: Green Spirituality & Natural Enchantment. Do any of my Gentle Readers perchance have my copy in their possession?

Actually, if you currently have any of my books I’d appreciate a note in the comments, even if you think that I remember that you have it. Despite your confidence in my mental recall, chances are good that I won’t notice that you have it until I need it.

Imbolc Blessings

A full moon last night, or more accurately this morning, at 12:45.

I love the images of Imbolc: White pillar candle in a silver bowl of snow. Berries in the offering bowl. Brid’s crosses, half-woven by candlelight.

Imbolc for me is about ten days of honoring. A few years ago I realised that the actual second of February doesn’t resonate with me as much as the days following it. Like other sabbats, the changing energy that the festival honours doesn’t happen all at once on a single day; energy is in constant motion, of course, and the sabbat is a day set aside to observe that ongoing change and to examine how one is responding to it. There are very few sabbats for which I can do this in a single day, however, and so the day of the sabbat often represents the beginning of ten or so days of introspection and reconnection.

We did our Imbolc ritual after Liam’s dinner. He watched me scoop freshly fallen snow up in the silver bowl and put it on the altar, then place the candle in the centre of it and put the bowl of berries next to it as an offering. We lit it and talked to him about how even though it was very very cold and snowy, the earth was already thinking about spring deep inside. “Candle,” he said, pointing to it, so we talked about the importance of light and warm hearths in the home too, and how Brid helps us make our home a loving one. Then he decided he wanted berries, so we went back into the kitchen and he ate most of what was left over. The last one he held in his hand and thought hard. “Do you want to give that to the Goddess?” I said. He nodded and ran into the living room to stand in front of the altar, reaching his hand up as high as it would go. I lifted him up, and he pointed to the goddess statue we have. “Lady!” he said, and put the berry in the curve of her arms. He’s a natural.

I have some very welcome meditation and honouring planned during this upcoming week. And I’ll be making my Brid’s crosses again, once I find appropriate material. I have to check to see if the corn husks I saved and dried will work properly. I think they will, once I soak them a bit to make them pliable.

And as my contribution to this year’s Imbolc poetry web, this poem about light returning:

A Winter Dawn

Above the marge of night a star still shines,
And on the frosty hills the sombre pines
Harbor an eerie wind that crooneth low
Over the glimmering wastes of virgin snow.

Through the pale arch of orient the morn
Comes in a milk-white splendor newly-born,
A sword of crimson cuts in twain the gray
Banners of shadow hosts, and lo, the day!

~ Lucy Maud Montgomery, 1899

(Editor’s note: For some reason this didn’t publish last Friday night, and as this is the first chance I’ve had to sit down since then I didn’t notice until now. Fixed.)

Gnash

Does my phone number have a “call me” sign taped to its back? Three telemarketers have interrupted me so far this evening since I sat down to work.

In other news, I have 678 words of a preface written. Most of them are good. I feel like I’m missing something meaningful, but most of my overbrain considers this a symptom of exhaustion.

Also?

Eating sugar does not help. The sugar rush bit doesn’t happen; the body and mind go directly to the sugar crash. Do not pass go; do not collect $200 worth of perky focus-on-work.

Feeling so tired that you can’t even manage a sugar high is a sad state to be in, let me tell you.

Focus

I feel like I’ve been walking around asleep for the past two days, which is a bad thing. I couldn’t stop yawning last night at orchestra, and when I try to remember something from the past forty-eight hours my mind’s eye sees it through a sort of odd distorted filter. It’s just general exhaustion that has accumulated over the past ten days. Too, Liam seems to have recently developed an extra level of energy that makes being at home with him and keeping up with his antics that much harder, despite his ongoing awesomeness, as well as a new edge to his mood that pushes the limit of patience (both his and mine).

All I want to do is take a bath and go to bed (do you sense a theme in the last week’s worth of posts?). The preface needs to be finished before I can do that. A seven hundred and fifty word article. It’s 19h00 right now. I have a two-hundred word point-form outline. I can do this.

It’s probably a bad sign that I want to use my ‘Buggre Alle this’ icon before I’ve even begun working.