Northeast Blizzard "Juno" 2015

I don't live in the Northeast. But, I know people who do. And, those people have my thoughts right now.

The Northeast is preparing for "Juno", the blizzard named by The Weather Channel that looks to dump 3 feet of snow on New York, New Jersey, and several other northeastern states. If you live in these areas, and you are not a preparedness type, I implore you to change your battle plan.

Now, I realize that most "preppers" are looked at as ammo and gun hoarding, bus burying freaks who carry guns into the local Denny's. But, not everyone who practices disaster preparedness is like that. In fact, in my experience the ones who are like that are the rarities.

But, I'm going to show you why I practice food storage (called a pantry when in my grandparents' day) and disaster preparedness. I come from the NORTH, I know what this shit is like. I still practice this living in the South, but for different disasters.

 https://twitter.com/aimerodnews/status/559720805001887747/photo/1

Bread, milk and water flew off the shelves this weekend as New Yorkers prepared for the #Blizzard2015 #LIBlizzard

 If I didn't have food storage, I'd be staring at that empty bread shelf about now saying, "WTF am I going to feed my kids?!". I don't know about you, but I don't want to be put into that situation. Yes, these disasters aren't "OMGArmageddon!". But, when you've got no power and no way to get around in 3 feet of snow and are told by the authorities to stay put, what the hell are going to do when and if you run out of food?!

I store everything I would need to make bread. To make bread on my grill, with no power. How many people do you suppose do that? Not many by the looks of that bread aisle. Crikey.

https://twitter.com/gravano95/status/559743035794530304/photo/1

Shelves stocked to 100 at shoprite .

The meat aisle doesn't seem to be looking any better than the bread aisle. I have a fully stocked freezer. Yes, if I run out of power, my freezer is going to need attention. But, at least I'm not going to starve. And, I'm also not going to decimate a meat counter at the grocery store hours before a blizzard either. In fact, I won't even need to hit the grocery store before one.

This is the line at a CT grocery store before today's “potentially historic” blizzard: 

https://twitter.com/DavidNelsonNews/status/559646553435275264/photo/1

 This is one of the reasons that I don't want to "have" to hit up a grocery store hours before a big storm of any kind. I don't care if it's only going to dust me, and snow storms where I live are only a dusting but you should see how the people react. I don't want to be hitting a grocery store less than 72 hours away from a big storm of any kind. You don't want to need something and have to stand through this.

https://twitter.com/danobrien155/status/559450167754358784/photo/1

Another photo of the lines. No way. That's almost like Black Friday.

https://twitter.com/nycjim/status/559682373571608576/photo/1

More panic shopping. This is why I do what I do. There's no reason to live like that.


Whenever this happens, we see pictures like this. And, I always ask myself just how many times a person would have to go through this before they would change their strategies. A lot, apparently. Because this happens up there a lot and......we still see these photos.

We have a saying in my family. It started with my grandparents and actually, I think it's even older than that. My oldest grandmother died last October, she was almost 101. They used to tell us, "Snow means you stock up." But, they weren't talking about shopping the day the storm was to hit. They meant stocking up when you hear the front is coming.

I've had some weird looks where I live because I still do the things taught by my grandparents. I stock up at least 72 hours before the front gets to me. I sure wish other people did that. You would fight less at the grocery store.

Whatever your circumstances, if you are up in the Northeast, hunker down, stay warm and be safe.

Approaching The Crone Phase

My mother is incredibly afraid of getting "old". She's always been this way. She is so terrified of it, and I suspect of death, that she lies about age related topics and has never really engaged in age appropriate activities or gathered in age appropriate circles.

Whenever possible, she claims that when people find out how old she is they always tell her that she looks as though she's in her late 40s or early 50s. It's a great compliment if they really do say it, but I suspect they don't really mean that. Because, while my mother doesn't really look 67, she definitely doesn't look 50, either. In fact, I suspect the entire situation there is a lie, but that's a post for another day. The bottom line is that my mother is sadly, petrified of aging or embracing the stage of her life she is clearly in and has been in for the last 17 years.

I, on the other hand, look at life stages from a more optimistic perspective. Now, anyway. During my Christian, "searching for the one true God and Jesus" days, I was intensely afraid of death. I was a truly negative person for very many years. I credit my time as a pagan with looking at life in a different way.

Life is a condition. A terminal one. You can either waste your time in fear of it and in fear of whatever may come after it, or you can run with it and make the best of every life phase. I still have a mild fear of death. I think you really kind of have to.

This morning, I've been pondering the phase of life I'm approaching.

The Crone Phase

I just had a birthday last November and I really only have a handful of years left until I will enter this phase. Technically, if I were Wiccan, it might be possible for me to have my Croning ceremony already since I meet all of the criteria.

To become a Crone, you have to be past your fertile "Mother Phase" years. Most women wait until after menopause has already begun and I've been menopause for a couple of years already. It began early for me and I was already in perimenopause at age 37 when I had my hysterectomy. The Mother Phase is definitely over for me. My kids are grown and there will be no more. Even though, I will never be an "empty nester", Mother Phase is waning.

To become a Crone, most traditions say you should be 50+. So, that's really the guideline I'm working with when I say I only have a handful of years left before I will officially become a Crone.

I've been thinking of my Croning. Should I have one? I don't have a coven as there aren't any atheist, Earth centric covens out there, that I know of anyway. What would I do for a Croning? It's something I will think a lot of in the coming year, I suspect. I'm 43, so I have some time.

I'm excited.

New Year 2015

One of my goals for 2015 is to get back to blogging. I found out last year, when I didn't blog much at all, that my life is significantly less stressful when I've got an outlet.

We'll see how it goes.

The goal as of right now is to blog at least once a week for the entire year. That's 52 posts. I'd like to have most of the posts be photo related, I don't know if that will work out or not. We'll see. I also want the posts to focus on the Wheel and how it relates to my everyday life.

I just had a bit of deja vu, did I say this once before??? I probably said it last year. Heh.

Welcome, 2015!

Rules of Couponing and Building a Stockpile

I was a lucky kid. I had 3 sets of grandparents. This was because one of my biological parents died when I was very young and I got to be adopted by another parent. So, I had 3 sets of grandparents. Two of those sets of grandparents were active preparedness and self sufficiency practitioners. Meaning that two sets of my grandparents, not ironically the two sets I was most familiar with, did things like garden, can their own food, and practice food storage and stockpiling.

Today, when we hear the word "stockpile", we think of hoarders. That's because this lifestyle went out in the early 80's with modern convenience. But, some of us still practice it. FEMA now recommends that you have at least 3 days of food and water in your house. I think that's a pathetically low estimate to shoot for. After 3 days, if the disaster is bad enough, you're screwed. Have a 72 hour kit, you say? Okay, I'll admit, I've got a 72 hour kit. Wanna know what it's for? It's for me getting the hell out of dodge, as they say. If I'm relying on that 72 hours worth that FEMA recommends, it means that shit has gotten bad enough for me to GTFO, so to speak.

No, my grandparents would never have sat back on their laurels with only 72 hours of supplies on hand. I can imagine the panic attacks they would have had just being that low on supplies. The apples don't fall far from the trees as they say, and my brother and I both practice preparedness and stockpiling. We don't hoard, we can actually walk through our homes and if you were to enter one of them you wouldn't really know we actually had food storage or stockpiles.

I don't do couponing the way that you see on reality TV. I don't go into the CVS, mainly because we don't even have a CVS, and come out with 17 lugs of Arm and Hammer. I don't walk into the store and load up a cart with $300 worth of groceries and walk out after paying only $11. First of all, you can't even do that here. We don't have enough grocery stores and places to shop to do that. We have Walmart, United and Dollar General. And, we stay the hell out of Dollar General, more on that later.

Here are my rules and ways of couponing and stockpiling.

1. Don't Shop During Peak Hours

Nothing pisses off an entire checkout line full of people like a woman and her coupons. Couponers are second class citizens these days. The reason for that is all the trash TV like Extreme Couponing that give honest couponers a bad name. It's all good if you take up people's time because your debit card magnetic strip is worn out and it won't read your card. Or if you take up other people's time freaking out over your EBT card, or even having them do a price check on all 400 items in your cart at the cashier. But, if you pull out a wad of coupons here, you might as well have announced to the entire store that Jesus Christ never existed. And, by the way, the machine never wants to scan the coupons. It takes the cashier like a minute and a half on each coupon to get the shitty machine to scan it. How do you make that worse? Shop at 5 o'clock on a Friday night. Or at 1pm on a Saturday afternoon.

Hell on Earth.

I shop during non peak hours only. Lately, that's been 9am on Thursday mornings. However, that's about to change because apparently there are more unemployed people hanging out in the stores than usual lately. It was packed today. That ain't right. I've also shopped after 9pm on a Sunday. By far the best time, I'll probably return to that. Bottom line is, the only time I consider it okay to even enter a store during a peak time or during any kind of rush event, is when it's an emergency.

2. Only Two Coupons For the Same Item Per Trip

We don't have extremers here in my neck of the woods. It's not possible to do that here, so I've never seen one. However, I can only imagine that gnashing of teeth involved with being behind a person in a checkout line who's got 70 coupons for the same item. Not only that, but shelf clearing is not okay, ever. I buy two like items with coupons at one time, never more than that. If I've got more coupons and it's a great deal, I do back later for two more. Never more than two.

3. Don't.Buy.Coupons!

Most of the coupon fraud going on right now is a direct result of people purchasing coupons from clipping services and ebay. I don't do it and I don't condone it. I print my coupons (this might be changing since coupons printed at home are even harder to scan than the regular newspaper coupons) and get them from the Sunday paper. I pay for 3 Sunday papers a week. This is more than enough coupons for me.

4. Don't Stress About My Percentage Saved

Times are tough. I know that. But, you know what? Adults were saying this when I was 6. That was in 1977. Times have always been tough. That's part of life. My goal is to save money. However, my goal is not to reduce my grocery bill 90%. In fact, I almost consider that highway robbery. I'm not opposed to paying for my groceries, I would just like a moderate discount.

That said, if I happen to end up getting free stuff along the way, I consider that a win. But, I am in no way aiming for free anything. It's not really even possible here, except for maybe once in a blue moon, so, I don't sweat it.

5. Buy Only What Is On Sale

This takes time. If I had more stores to pick from, this would have been easier to do. There is an initial investment to build a stockpile. And, until you actually have a stockpile, you will be paying full price for almost everything. Meal planning based on sales works, but it can work better if you have a stockpile. Today, my shopping list is built on 85% sale items. But, I didn't start out that way. I started out buying extras of everything we use. 

If I was buying toothpaste that week, I bought two. Sometimes three. If I was buying cans of tomato sauce, I bought 5. After awhile, I noticed that since I had been building the stockpile based on our menus, I had a store built up and I could add more sale items to the list. Now, I build the list almost entirely out of sale items. The items on it that aren't on sale are usually on one of my prep lists and I need to start getting them.

I do my sale lists a bit differently. I can't just write down a sale item on a list and go buy it from the store it's on sale at. If I did that, I would not be saving the maximum amount of money that I could save. Instead, I add whatever is on the United Supermarket sale ad to my list. I also write down on it the price. If I can get a better deal at Walmart, then I get it there. Sometimes, I don't get the brand name that's even on sale. I get something cheaper. I was going to get the item anyway, now I'm going to get it the cheapest way I can.

Once in awhile, it happens that something is on sale and I happen to have a coupon for it. I love those times and that's the only way I use coupons. I don't use them on any full priced items. Sale items only. This means I have a lot of expired coupons that I don't get to use, but it also means that I saved when I could. Rarely, I can get cheaper store brand items for even cheaper than sale items plus the coupon. 

6. Stay the Hell Out of the Dollar General!

I used to love Dollar stores. I used to love them because everything in them was a dollar. No so anymore. Most things at Dollar General are not even as cheap as I can get them in Walmart unless they're on sale. Dollar General is like Walmart-Lite.

Secondly, our Dollar General used to occupy a large industrial type building. Then they rebuilt another building for it and moved. That building is like a match box. It's tiny! The aisle shelves are so close together that you feel like you're in the trash compactor in Star Wars! Seriously, the building isn't even 1/4th as big as the last building they were in. Why they moved, I have no idea. It was a bad idea, to say the very least. 

Did I mention they're sitting on top of a hill? And, that the parking lot is on a very steep incline? Yeah, there's that.

The third reason is the most polarizing. I mean no disrespect with what I'm about to say, but, some will no doubt take offense. Dollar General, at least here where I live, is the EBT mecha of my town. It is full of food stamp recipients from the minute the doors open until they close at night. This is not automatically a bad thing.

The thing is, once you get there for their sales, there's nothing left there. It's usually wiped out on sale items about 4 hours after their new sale ad comes out. The store isn't big enough to stock for even the population of this town. So, it sort of means, that by default, it's not worth it to go there because the food stamps have wiped out the sale. On top of that, I dare you to pull out even one coupon in my Dollar General. The slant ways looks you get are mind boggling. It's okay to pull out EBT cards in there, no one even looks at you cross eyed. Take out coupons and suddenly you're wearing a t-shirt that says, "I'm a baby eating Satanist! RAWRRRRR!". Saving money is on par with Satanism, here.

So far we have:

It's not cheaper than Walmart. It's not even a dollar!

It's a tiny building, are we about to die in here?!

What is this, the apocalypse?!

Waste of time, cats, waste.of.time.

7. Only Buy Stuff You Use or Can Donate

The bone that I have to pick with extreme couponing is that most of the time I see people just buying random shit simply because they can get it for free. I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to those people and assume they're donating it. But, I watched a video of a girl buying Glucerna shakes and admitting she's not diabetic. I can't imagine why she just had to buy those shakes, but I'm going to assume she donated them to the nursing homes. Please. Let that be a reality.

I donate some items every week to my son's day-habilitation center. This week it's two twelvers of lime soda. Sometimes it's giant bottles of Germ-X. My son has Down Syndrome, so he goes to a day hab two days a week. These people are a great place to donate sale items. If I ever do score anything I can't use, it will go to either the day hab, his former teachers and aides at the high school, or one of our nursing homes.

Other than that, I do not buy anything that we don't use. I don't buy 15 bottles of laundry detergent simply because I make my own. I might buy 1 bottle and donate it. If there ever comes a time when I can actually do a CVS sale and take advantage of what they have to offer, I will end up buying things just to donate them.

My stockpile took me months to accumulate. And, none of it, so far, has been free. It's all cost me money, as well as, gas and time. I save about 20% on my bill right now. That will change as my stock grows and changes. There will come a time when I only spend half of what we spend right now. I look forward to that day.

So, there you have it. Those are my 7 basic rules for practicing what I consider to be basic fundamentals of cottage witchcraft. Stockpiling and preparedness. This was more about stockpiling today, but I will get into preparedness later on in another entry.

Food Surprises Can Lead to Food Phobias

I would like.....to take you......on a very strange journey.

Oh, sorry. That was the beginning of Rocky Horror Picture Show. But, it's accurate. I would like to take you on a journey through the life of a person for whom the relationship with food is a love/hate thing. It's a delicate situation. Anything can set off either a "food hate" or a "food phobia". How does something like that start? I'm about to tell you.

Picture it. You're at a......pot luck of some sort. Church, school....whatever. Being a person with a lot of food dislikes, potlucks are dangerous. But, you don't know that yet. You're about to find out, but for now, all is well.

People have made relatively normal food dishes so far. You've had a surprisingly enjoyable dinner. This is significant because some people like to get creative with their potluck food and make Eggplant Parmesan or coleslaw. It's okay when it's foods you are familiar with and like. Potlucks are like the lottery, you never know what numbers you're going to get or if they're going to be winners. You don't know this yet. You are young, wide eyed and naive. To you, everything in life consists of macaroni and cheese and pumpkin pie. You are not aware that there are more foods out there. Everyone lives on macaroni and cheese......don't they?

Now, after your main courses of bbq pulled pork, baked beans and au gratin potatoes (3 things you've eaten before and like relatively well), you're ready for desserts. There are many to choose from. You scan the dessert table (this is a fairly large potluck) and you start seeing things you've never seen at any family dinner, ever. Upon approaching the table, cautiously since hardly anything on it seems familiar, the lady that is supervising it starts explaining to you what everything is. Here is when your horror starts.

We have a mixed fruit salad with these little roundish things in it that look like tapioca. She calls it "Frog's Eye Salad" and your eyes bug out of your skull. How is this even remotely appetizing?? Well, you're not eating any frog's eyes, so you say 'no' to that. Then we have another mixed fruit salad, this one is called "Waldorf Salad". You've heard of this one, your clinically insane relatives make this one at American Thanksgiving. You've never been able to actually sit down and eat a fruit salad, mainly because the only fruits you like are peaches, bananas and blueberries and you definitely don't want those in the same bowl. Remember, your food can't touch. So, you say 'no' to that.

After the lady cycles through pretty much everything on the table, including minced meat pie (ground beef, brown sugar and raisins in the same pie crust. You have GOT to be freakin kidding me), heavenly pink salad (which looks innocent enough until you notice little particles floating in it,  they're pistachios), and an assortment of cakes (carrot cake, freakin seriously?!), you eye two plates. One has the most scrumptious looking brownies you've ever seen on it, waiting for you to gobble two or three of them down. The other has what look to your untrained, young, naive eye like oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips in them. Hot damn! You love chocolate chips! So, you pile 2 of those on your plate with your 2 chocolate fudge brownies and head back to the table. Don't pay attention to your parents raised eyebrows at how much sugar is actually piled on your plate, they obviously wouldn't understand.

Your parents have taught you that you do not waste food. If you take it, you damned sure better eat it because if you don't you're going to be eating it for breakfast the next day. They don't know that this is a failed parental tactic, they won't know that until you call their bluff on it once in the future when you're about 12, but that's neither here nor there. For now, you are scared of nasty meatloaf for breakfast and you heed the warnings about eating what you take and not looking like an arse. Won't be problem right now, though, right??? A plate full of cookies and brownies? Hell, you can eat this in your sleep!

You pick up a brownie and look at it. Admire it. Covet it. It looks like any normal brownie on the outside. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just chocolate fudge and cake. Oooey, gooey, brownie. You take a giant bite out of it and for about 3 glorious seconds you are in chocolate fudge heaven. After that 3 seconds of slow chewing, your chocolate fudge heaven turns into a chocolate fudge and "something crunchy" nightmare hell. You don't know what it is at first. But, you don't dare spit it out. Your father would freak. You just chew, eyes wider than before, yet not really raising any alarm. You swallow and then take a careful look at this brownie you've just bitten into.

It's freakin' walnuts. Some sick, twisted, masochistic freak as decided to ruin a perfectly good brownie by putting freakin' walnuts in it. Holy hell. How are you going to choke down 2 ruined brownies? It's like when you make brownies but you burn them and don't know it until you eat one. Ruined. 

You manage to gag down the rest of the brownie. You feel sick. You don't want to continue, but you've got two more there. Mocking you. "Bawhaha! We've got walnuts!" Eff you, brownies! You cautiously move on to the chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. You don't know one person that's ever put chocolate chips in an oatmeal cookie, but there's always a first time. You pick up a cookie and eye it. You're looking for hidden walnuts. There doesn't seem to be any, but without deconstructing this cookie in public, you have no idea. It looks okay, take a small nibble. The nibble turns out okay, no stealth walnuts. So, you take a giant chomp and chew. Holy hell! That's......not a chocolate chip! It's a..........*gag*........raisin! Oh my god! You not only have to gag down another ruined brownie with walnuts, but now you have to eat another oatmeal cookie with nasty raisins in it!

Yep, that there happened to me at about age 6. My diet was already screwed because of my mother's fears that I wouldn't eat. I had a very hard time with food from......birth. I'm extra sensitive with food tastes. I think they now call this a.....super taster.....or something equally dorky. Super tasters can have selective eating disorder. And, I definitely have that! I've always had a limited diet, always. I probably always will. But, for the purposes of this story, there are two things I hate in this world. One is walnuts. The other is raisins. They ruin anything they're associated with. With the minor exception of Raisin Bran. I'll eat that. Why, I have no idea.

That incident there lead me to be very suspicious and cautious of eating foods that other people prepare if I'm not around to watch. I don't like to eat at other people's homes because of this. You just don't know what you're getting. That spaghetti you're piling on your plate could be full of extra hot italian sausage, which can ruin a plate of spaghetti for some. That cheese rice could have broccoli in it. That jello salad could have pistachio nuts in it, why people do that I have no idea. It also made me hate brownies. I have been unable to really enjoy brownies for most of my life. I loved them until that incident. Now, it's a flashback to the crunch, crunch of walnuts ruining. I also detest oatmeal cookies now. 9 times out of 10, people put raisins in them. 

My point with this story is that food surprises can lead to food phobias for certain people. I usually tell people exactly what I'm making when I make food for others. I also tell them exactly what's in them. If the table lady had told me that those were fudge brownies with walnuts and oatmeal cookies with raisins, I wouldn't have taken them. I would have been one disappointed 6 year old kid with nothing edible on that table, but I still wouldn't have had to gag down 4 items that were pretty much useless to me.

A couple years ago, I tried to overcome this particular flaw. Well, I see it as a flaw. I decided I was going to eat as much unknown stuff as I could that year. Some of it worked, I found some foods I do like and now I can eat them without any worries. But, it also added to the problem. You know they say that selective eating disorder can be overcome. I'm starting to have my doubts about that.

The Colorful Life of the Dark

My friend Magaly over at Pagan Culture is having a blog party called So Good, So Dark! Everyday from October 13th until October 21st, several bloggers will be posting things to show why darkness is not necessarily evil. This will be my contribution to that party.

Today, I want to talk about facing the darkness. In her introduction post for the blog party Magaly mentioned light being recognized as the default for good and dark being the default for evil. But, I argue that people just don't see that the dark has a life of it's own. It's completely neutral, as is light. There are just as many evil things that take place in the light as there are in the dark. Of course, we have some very dark, very evil people in this world. But, I don't think darkness gets it's fair shake.

Think about the bat. No, not the baseball bat, the flying, furry bat. Bats are nocturnal animals. While you sleep, he's up eating your mosquitoes. I'd say that's a good thing. Owls are also nocturnal. Probably up keeping the rodents at bay. Also a good thing. The physical darkness has quite a colorful life if you were to light it up with infrared and look at it. Watch it all happen.

But, on a personal note, facing the darkness within ourselves should not be seen as a bad thing or evil. At some of the very darkest times in my life, facing what was actually going on allowed me to see the light there. Think of an addict in rehab, going through the withdrawls from his addiction, dealing with the anxiety and physical implications of that. Is that evil? Certainly not. Going through this time will most likely save his life! There are scores of people, right now, in therapy for something. That can be a pretty dark time for people. But, it's in no way evil.

Inside everyone is a dark side. I've noticed that many people try to shun that side of themselves and I've also noticed that those same people are also the most fake. They haven't gone through the process of self-acceptance and facing their own inner dark. It usually shows in their language.

We can't overcome any of our own fears or flaws without going into the dark and actually seeing them. It's a hard process, but that doesn't make it evil.

There is also a lot of connection with the dark and the supernatural. Like no hauntings ever take place in the daylight, amirite?? Afterall, the witching hour is at 3am. In the dark. However, even a ghost in the middle of the night doesn't have to be evil. Obviously, I have a lot of internal struggle over whether or not I believe in the supernatural. I have personally experienced some things I can't explain. But, I still would not classify those things as evil, or bad in any way. None of my family has ever been hurt by these things. Why does everyone assume that there will be some sort of supernatural killing at 3am. They've been watching too many horror movies.

Finally, facing death. Probably our darkest moment on this planet. There is so much fear surrounding death that some people feel they can't face it without an afterlife attached to it. But, were we all miserable being dead before we were born? Can you remember any pain associated with not being here? I can't. Death will be exactly like it was before we were alive. We were perfectly content. I think facing the fear of death is probably one of the most significant things we will do as human beings. Whether it's facing the death of a loved one, or of a precious pet, or maybe of that animal you just had to kill to sustain your own life. And, facing our own demise. Certainly, none of those things I just mentioned are evil. But, they are certainly dark.

In closing, if there is light, there has to be dark. You can not have one without the other. A life with no dark, would be a life with an absence of light because there would be no concept for it to exist. If you love one, you should love and embrace the other, as well.

The Difference Between Online Reality and Offline Reality: Reconnecting with Real Life

When I first got on the internet, I joined a lot of chat rooms. Remember those? LA Live chatroom was my favorite. I got into a lot of trouble in that chatroom. After awhile, though, I came to a point where I figured out that the people in the chat room weren't real people. They might be real people on the other side of the monitors, but the people they were inside the internet chat room were not real people. The things that went on inside the chat room were not real life. The internet provides opportunities for people to be someone else. Most of them are not the same people offline that they are online.

After chat rooms came forums. I joined every forum I could find for every single subject I found interesting. The same types of things that went on in chatrooms also went on in internet forums. Faceless names, trying to make people believe they were who they said they were and that they did what they said they did. Reality was far different offline than online in that instance, as well.

I used to frequent a forum for mothers. I won't name the forum because I steer people away from that forum, now. I don't recommend anyone go there for any reason. But, I was a member there for about 2 years, possibly more. I was still hard to grasp the fact that the internet would never really be real life and that the things that happen online don't necessarily take place offline.

Like Earth Hour. I know that certain groups really want this to be a real "thing" offline. But, the sad reality is that it just isn't. No one is talking about Earth Hour offline. No one in my town even knows what Earth Hour is.......

Another example, online there is a thing called "extended rear facing" in reference to how long you should keep your children's car seats facing backward before finally spinning them around so that the child faces the front. I had never heard of it until the internet. I didn't know this was a thing. So, here I was, asking everyone I knew from real life about "extended rear facing". Each one of them responded to me with some variation of, "extended what?!". Not one person that I know face to face has ever heard of extended rear facing car seats. Everyone I know did the exact same thing I did. We spun the kid around when he was too big to face the seat anymore. Once the child is uncomfortable and his/her legs are bending against the seat, it's time to face forward.

Our kids are all alive. We drive defensively, not like douches. So, even though we know accidents happen, we haven't had any.

What I found out is that "extended rear facing" has a niche following online. But, in real life, offline, in reality, extended rear facing is only now starting to be a "thing" and not in very many places. More power to you, if you feel like your kid needs that, if you live in a big city and the dangers are such that you feel you need to keep them faced that way longer, fine. But, it's not a thing for a great portion of the U.S. and never will be. However, the negativity that other mothers were getting from some of the......"women"......on that site about the fact that they didn't live or drive in an environment that would necessitate extended rear facing and therefore didn't do it, was abysmal. It became counter productive and not very constructive. Women that were really in the market for some good advice and social connection instead got some bullying from a fringe group of internet society.

Same thing happened with baby wearing. I went to school in Southern California. Only one of the greatest hippy mechas in this country. Not one person that I know face to face wears, or wore, their babies. Great idea, if that's for you and you have the means to do it, fine. But, holy cow the abuse that came to women who didn't wear their babies.....insanity. This is not a "thing" for most of society. Baby wearers, like extended rear facers, are a fringe group of society. Or, they are a fringe group of internet society. Offline society may not even know these people exist, nor do they care. The group on that site, however, was under they impression that everyone should know.

It came to the point where being on the forum wasn't really adding anything to my life. It was really just a place for trolls and I'll go out on a limb here and bet that probably 40%  of the "women" who are supposedly members of that site aren't women at all and are really men trolling other men and hoping to troll whatever women might happen to be on the site. Another 50% of the members are people who will say whatever they can to make it look like they are perfect and do all of the latest fad "things", they probably really don't do most of it, if any, offline. The last 10% are the fringe groups.

I left the site about 2 years ago. It was necessary. Internet and real life are not the same and most of the people aren't the same. They might be the same people technically, but the character they play online isn't the same as offline.

The internet kind of teaches us to self segregate. I became somewhat of a hermit when I started playing on the internet a lot. It's been work to actually unplug and disconnect from the internet and instead, reconnect to real life. Part of that is understanding that the two are actually different realities.

I left some other forums last year. One was a pagan forum and another was a forum for survivalists. I left the survival forum because they're hostile to anyone who isn't a conservative republican. I am not, I'm a left leaning libertarian. Sadly, even though I grew up in a family of survivalists and hunters, according to the internet, the lifestyle isn't for anyone who is not a conservative republican. In fact, while checking on some of the places I'd left for this post, I checked that site. There is a thread titled, "Why are there liberals on this site?!". The body of which includes, "Why would they come here other than to troll??".

The pagan forum was the exact opposite. I'll bet you're thinking I left it because of the arguments about who is and is not pagan, right? Well, you'd be wrong. I left it because of the hopeless internet liberals. According to the internet, paganism is for internet liberals. If you are anything other than an Obama fangirl/fanboy democrat, you are not pagan. If you disagree with Obamacare at all, you are not a pagan.

By the way, an internet liberal is not the same as a real life liberal. Internet liberals are only liberals on the internet and when they can troll other people with it. But, leaving those two forums became the only way to deal with the problem. It was counter productive to even stay on them. On one there was some discussion of survivalism, but more of it was just a bunch of mud slinging across party lines. On the other, there was pagan discussion in between political mud throwing. The discussion revolved around new age-y practices though and I'm not into any of that besides meditation.

So, today, I'm finding that I again need to disconnect from online life. Not totally, but I need to get out of some environments that aren't adding to my lifestyle or life in any way and are instead either distracting me from it, or affecting it negatively. I read Reddit, so I went through my subs and got out of a bunch of subs that were just not going to add anything constructive. I deleted accounts to several separate forums and deleted bookmarks to those and some others that were nothing but a bunch of drama or devolving into a bunch of drama. I deleted Twitter and signed up under another name to only follow breaking news.

The bottom line is that it's easy to get too wrapped up in internet life. It takes away from my offline life and it's around this time of year that I take a look at what I'm doing online and start decluttering. So that I can reconnect to real life. I consider this work just as important as the work I'm doing offline to get my house ready to be closed up for the winter.

Autumn cleaning and decluttering. Add the internet to your list, today!

Has the Label of "Pagan" Outlived It's Usefulness?

I've left paganism more than once. Each time I've left, it's because I can get right with being lumped into the greater perception of the word "pagan".

The first time I left, I couldn't deal with all the in-fighting in the eclectic wiccan groups. This was before the internet. The arguments were all the same. Are eclectics real pagans? Is there room in paganism for soft polytheism? Back then, atheists had absolutely no staked claim in paganism. You were either a hard or soft polytheist, or you weren't a pagan. End of subject.

But, everything evolves. Paganism has been no exception to that statement. Today, there are more types of pagans than I care to shake a stick at. The part that really bakes my noodle is that I'm usually seen as someone who wears all black, drips in pentacle engraved gear and wears enough eyeliner to make ancient egyptians jealous. When I say I'm pagan, people automatically think I worship Zeus, or that I am really good at dark poetry and I wave my hands mysteriously over my cauldron the stove.

Depending on what they've heard about pagans, I'm perhaps seen as an environmental extremist. Someone who rides bikes to work in the snow, eats granola and tries to reduce my carbon footprint to inhuman levels. I'm supposed to protest animal fur wearers and be against hunting for sport.

Or maybe they've heard that all pagans go to Ren faires and are member of the SCA.

My point here is that the word "pagan" has become pretty meaningless. All of those types of people are represented in greater paganism. So, when do we just become a regular old crowd of people on the street, and less a community?

John Halstead over at The Allergic Pagan has this to say about a recent exodus of hard polytheists from the greater pagan community. I appreciate his point in that post. We should embrace and appreciate our polytheists, both the hard and soft boiled versions. We shouldn't strive to run them out of the community. However, I understand why they're doing what they're doing. I understand why they're upset. I've been in their shoes. I was tired of being labeled by the mainstream as anything but what I was in reality. The "hards" are tired of the atheists taking over the term "pagan". I can 100% understand that.

I'm dodgy on the word "pagan". I've been trying to avoid it for longer than I care to admit. It's polarizing on both sides of the coin. It really means nothing. Pagans are so diverse a group of people that on the outside, we look like any other group of people. It's kind of like the work "geek". Everyone is seen as a geek now! "I wear glasses.....I'm such a geek!". No one even understand the term, anymore.

I'll wager that the same is true of "pagan". Does anyone really understand it's meaning anymore? It's been redefined so many times......

So, should we use it? Or at the end of the day, should we really just be using our specific labels and drop "pagan" altogether? I'm a naturalist. I'm a humanist. I'm a witch. I'm an atheist. I'm a naturalist witch. Maybe, I should just use that. Maybe the BTWs had the right idea when they moved away from the word "wiccan".

Here is what hard polytheist, Star Foster, has to say on this topic and I agree with her 100%. The last sentence in that post is very profound, perhaps that should happen. Perhaps we do need to re-examine how we classify our beliefs. Maybe we all really don't have anything in common aside from maybe a few holidays. Star left the pagan blogosphere in 2012. I don't pretend to know the specifics of her departure, but reading a few of her other posts before the last one, I've gathered an idea. I've felt exactly the same as she has, just on the other side of the coin.

I know what makes people disconnect from the greater pagan community. It's very tough to actually find common ground. Moreso now than before the web.

A Very Merry Equinox!

Today is the Autumn Equinox! Light and dark are balanced, but the dark from now until Spring Equinox next March will be longer than the light.

I don't really feel in balance, right now. I feel like the dark has taken over a little early. This is probably not a bad thing, but it could be very exhausting.

We did our equinox feast last night. I don't do meals like this well on Sundays, I prefer to rest on Sundays and eat light.

As I reported a few posts ago, we have a grilled chicken salad. With that I decided on baked potato with butter, sour cream and bacon bits, gluten free bread and butter, and baked apples with cinnamon, brown sugar, ginger and vanilla ice cream. I didn't get a picture of the dessert, that's how good it was. But, I did get one of my dinner. Sorry for the terrible picture. Took that with my Galaxy Note II because I was too hungry to spend time readying the Fujifilm.

Before anyone asks, no, I did not manage to eat all that. *laugh* I saved some for today.

I will get my meditations done later tonight. Tonight will focus on all of the upcoming work that starts, now. The incense I decided to use was a Cinnamon/Apple.

I hope everyone is having a very Merry Equinox!

Shadow Work and Introspection Season

I'm soon to begin work on my dark half for the year. This is the time of the year when I retreat inward to muck out my hidden issues.

I suffer from quite a few....neurosis? I have not been seen by a professional since 2002, but I know enough about my past and some of my life long problems to know that I suffer from things that I need to face.

I have food related phobias and OCD. I have generalized anxiety disorder (this was why I was seen from 1996 - 2002), social anxiety and panic disorder. Also, from talking to a therapist friend of mine, it's very probable that I have PTSD (no idea how badly, and I can't afford therapy to find out) from my childhood and an abusive parent. I am thankful that none of the above issues is as bad as I've read from some other people who suffer from them, but I do have a lot of muck to deal with. The food related phobias have caused me the most problems. Having a couple of actual food related physical problems (allergies, etc), it's really caused me to go off the deep end about food. I had lost an obscene amount of weight in 2011 and I was actually starting to get very scared about my health. Me being scared about my health is a bad thing because I teeter on the edge of legitimate concern for my health and full blown hypochondria. I can't watch health programs on TV or shows like House or ER. Those are damned death sentence for a person like me.

I watched a show about hantavirus once. Just once. And, then I saw a mouse and about had a damned heart attack and was convinced for about 4 weeks that I was going to die of hantavirus. My husband had a heart attack in 2008. I'm so glad he survived and is doing well, now. But, I've been waiting for my heart attack ever since. Every twinge on the left side of my body is an oncoming heart attack.

As for my generalized anxiety, it's mostly controlled now. But, I have to do a lot of work to keep it that way. I have to plan absolutely every single social interaction. Nothing can be spontaneous or it sends me into fits. I shop during off hours because going to the Walmart or grocery store is an exercise in control that I'm only now starting to get good at. Crowds make me want to vomit and I'm very uncomfortable in them. Where I live, there is no such thing as person space, the people here will crawl right up your leg until you can smell what they've had for lunch. I also don't do very well with small talk. If I don't know you well enough to have a full on conversation with you, I'd rather you just nod and move on. Stopping to talk to obscure people I don't know well makes me want to run for the truck and I'll return at midnight when everyone should be sleeping.

It takes me days to recover both mentally AND physically from social gatherings. I recently went to my in laws' for 5 hours. It took me 5 days to shake the "social gathering hangover". My panic attacks are caused by stress and too much anxiety. If I get worked up without a break, I have attacks. I also can have random attacks for no reason, but those are rare now.

The food thing is....actually kind of funny in a way. I've always been really weird about food, even as a toddler. I wouldn't eat anything. I ate 3 things for like 4 years of my life and none of my food could touch. Ever. I'm still like this, only am a little better about it. If it's meat and potatoes, it can touch. If my dessert touches my gravy, I will squeal like a stuck pig. It grosses me out. My mother puts fruit in her salads. In her green, dinner salads! Those are two flavors that shouldn't even be in the same room at the same time, let alone in the same bowl! Gross. I'm very close to divided plates.

I also have this crippling fear of food allergies. I have some legitimate ones. I'm allergic to melons. Deathly. That one allergy has caused me years of torment. Not because I like melons, I don't. But, because my mother used to torture me with this phrase: "You can develop an allergy at ANY time." Now, I'm afraid to eat. All the time. I've got IBS, so this doesn't help. Gluten intolerant doesn't help either. I haven't eaten seafood since 2000. Not because hate seafood, I love it. But, because my mother told me I could be allergic to it at any time. Haven't eaten it since.

Trying new foods? Nope. No can do, Chief. I might be allergic to it. What's that? You want me to try frog legs? Not only is there the chance of an allergy, but yuck. No. You can imagine what it's like to live with me. Here's the cruel twist to this. It's coming up to pumpkin season. Each year, I must fight my food related OCD and phobias to eat my favorite veggie, the pumpkin. I might be allergic to it, now.

I'm also deathly afraid of under cooked food. Chicken, pork, both deadly. I love both chicken and pork. But, either me or someone I trust must cook it! I would never order pork at a restaurant, and very rarely order chicken. I'll get steak all day long, med. rare please (this is an enigma to me, I don't know why I can eat almost raw steak). But, chicken just isn't something I will do when I go out to eat. Fish? No.

These are the things I work on during the dark half of the year. I don't face any of these to any serious degree until Autumn Equinox and after until Mid-winter when I take 30 some days off to switch to the light self. The time between Mid-summer and Equinox is my time off , as well. I just meditate for peace during that time.

Starting on Equinox, I'll be meditating on my mental hang ups, on my generalized anxiety, etc. I will be socializing a lot more than I do during the light half of the year. I will be facing some of my very crippling fears about food and actually, I usually try a new food during this time. I will be having a few panic attacks I would imagine. I usually do when I do shadow work. Nightmares, too. But, I wouldn't be as far as I am in dealing with all this stuff without meditation and exercise. Those are two life savers, believe me!

I'll also be dealing with something that only pops up during the winter. Germ related OCD. Now, please don't get the wrong idea. I don't have this as badly as a lot of sufferers do. I don't suffer from this like some people I've read about and I'm both thankful for that and sad for those people. My problem with this is bad only because I have to go places where sick people are. I have to take myself and my son to the doc's office at least once during this time of year. That place is a death factory. I don't touch anything in doc's offices. I won't use their pens, read their mags, touch their chairs with my hands, nothing. I bathe in germ-x so much during the winter that we go through 2 gallons of the stuff. Every time I get a virus, it's very tough to keep myself calm because I'm convinced it's going to turn into pneumonia and kill me. Or, that one of my kids will get sick and die, I'm really anxious about my kids, too.

These are not fun things to deal with. Back when I was kid, most of this stuff was already making itself apparent. Instead of helping me like any normal parent, my mother would chastise me and call me a faker or a hypochondriac. Hypochondriac isn't a slur, it's very real disease and it's not funny. But, for some reason, she finds it hilarious. Even though I have had some very real health scares that could have been very deadly and serious, and still have a couple, she would call me a faker, or a hypochondriac. She would never give them any real thought, or care. So, my work to overcome my mental hangups is pretty daunting. But, the first step was even admitting I had these. That's been in the works for years because I denied them for a long time.

I'm hoping to include drawings with some of my shadow work. I don't know that I will be able to, or can. I'm not a good artist and never have been. But, we'll see.

What will you be doing for the dark half of the year? What "shadows" plague you?

The Use of Divine Images in Spirituality

I don't know what it is about atheistic paganism that gets people's hair all in a snit, but it seems as though someone has taken issue something I said my first blog post. This post was republished on Humanistic Paganism dot com, so, I'm not sure if the emailer I just heard from read it here or on that other site.

In the post, I mentioned that just because I don't believe the Gods exist in physical, sentient form that doesn't mean that I won't use their images in my own spiritual practice. I had a commenter over there ask me about how I use the images or would use them, but I don't think this email came from that commenter. I will redact the personal information and just give you the gist of the email.

The emailer wanted me to know how off putting it is to hear that other pagans are "using" images of deities in their practices while not actually honoring or believing in said deity. One example was that if I used the image of Bast either on my altar (I do have a mildly functional altar) or in my rituals, if I don't really believe in Bast and am not living my life in honor of Bast, I am actually at risk of offending deities. The deities "don't like this".

No offense intended, but........I find that laughable, frankly. I'm sure that I've done a lot more in my life that would be offensive to Bast than using a cat image in an occasional ritual or on my altar. Like, I don't know, running a stray cat out of my yard and away from my truck, or, not feeding a stray cat. And, how exactly does one live their lives in honor of Bast?? Does anyone really have an answer to that? Or are you all just making this up as you go along the same as the rest of us?

The thing is, I don't believe people who say, "I work with Bast." Because, no deity, if they were real, would have any real reason to "work with" a human being. I have always wanted to ask them, "what kind of work does Bast do, exactly? Do you show up at the homeless shelter and try and save all the homeless in the name of Bast?" My hunch is that's a big "no". You just live life. You might worship Bast, you might honor Bast. You might believe in Bast, 100%. But, I just have always highly resented the "work with" phrase when dealing with deities. It's not convincing, especially not while telling me that the same deities would have a problem with me "working with their images."

So, I suppose that makes us even. Mr. or Ms. Emailer? Doesn't it? You take issue with the fact that the face of the deity I see as representative of the holiday or practice in question and not as something that requires my worship or belief or undying fealty, and you believe the opposite. You believe you've got a personal window into Bast's psyche.

I don't care what other pagans choose to do. I'll freely admit that in the back of my mind I'm questioning them the same as I'm questioning any Christian or Muslim or Jew who claims their God is real and claims to know what these deities would want if they were real. Their images aren't that important to me beyond how they fit into my daily connection with the Wheel of the Year. How their images have, for centuries, been associated with certain aspects of the seasons and of nature. The thing is, I just don't really care about the deities beyond that very elementary connection.

And, just to prove that it doesn't really matter which deity you choose, I'm going to do something. I had toyed with this idea back when I wrote the first post and even more when I wrote the Grimoire post. This email just basically made the decision for me. Not because it made me angry, because I wouldn't give it that much credit, but because I actually found it funny enough to do this.

Each year, I'm going to use a different deity as my symbolism. Some of them might be known to a lot of people, but the one I'm going to start with isn't a deity of old. He's a totally made up deity. I'm going to show that the spirituality doesn't change even if the face of the deity does change. I'm going to prove that Bast isn't going to come out and bite me if I use her image, or that lightning bolts aren't going to shoot me in the ass if I use Zeus without actually believing in Zeus.

This next year, 365 days starting All Hallow's to All Hallow's, I'm going to be dedicating everything to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Pastafarian paganism? Could be fun.....! I'm even going to tailor my holiday menus to include a pasta dish. All my Grimoire pages will be connected to incorporating FSM into naturalist/atheist paganism. I'm going to show that naturalism is the same regardless. That one doesn't need to concern themselves with the offense of the deities, Christian, Pagan, Pastafarian or otherwise. The offense comes from people not deities. When we live life, we're just living life according to our individual set of values and morals and none of it really has anything to do with deities.

I actually look forward to this. I plan to explore all sorts of different deities over the next few years and devoting 365 days to incorporating their image into naturalist/atheist paganism. Complete with prayers and rituals and incense offerings. Should be a lot of fun and will be a great way to learn the mythology behind the deities from an atheist perspective.

Yarrrrrr!

Planning for Autumn Equinox

I know what you're thinking. "But.....it's only August!", right? Yes, I agree. But, if I don't plan these things, they always get fouled up in the details. And, when you live on a budget, you have to plan. Thoroughly.

School starts here on the 26th, and the stores are full of Moms and Dads taking little junior around to get his clothes and supplies for the year. Now, that none of my kids are in school anymore, I get to use these times to stock up on crafting supplies. Mainly for this Grimoire I'll be doing.

Remember when I said that I had tried the Grimoire thing before, I just couldn't get into the digital type media to create the thing. Old habits.....they die hard, isn't that the saying? I bought a new printer, and I have things in mind for how I can incorporate digital art into my book. For some reason, I just have a fire under my butt, now.

So, Equinox. It's still going to be over 85 degrees here during that time, so the traditional food of the Wiccan Mabon has never made sense. It did when I lived up north, but I've been down here for 10 years, and no one is eating stews and soups in September. I also have little to no ties or connection to some of the more traditional foods that pagans serve on Autumn Equinox.

Like, Colcannon. This is a traditional Irish dish, a great many pagans list it as one of their traditional recipes for both Lammas (Mid-summer for me) and Mabon (Autumn Equinox). Sometimes it seems like some people just reprint some of the recipes they see on the correspondence list on someone else's site and you wonder if they're really serving that. I used to get stuck behind that barrier. Colcannon is traditional, but my family has never done any traditional Irish or Celtic cooking. What to do.

Since it's still hot here, the last thing I want to be doing is cooking a stew all day. Or eating Colcannon. So, we will be having a roasted chicken breast green salad with homemade ranch. For dessert, it will be baked cinnamon apples. There will probably be ice cream involved in this, also.

My meditation for this holiday will be similar to what we do in America on Thanksgiving. Except, instead of giving thanks with a prayer to God, I'll be giving thanks by meditating on all of the good that has happened this year and saying good-bye to the light half of the year. I'm also going to try and convince my husband to drive out to the lake for some "Welcome to Fall!" photos. We'll see. The colors don't like to change here until around Halloween.

I'm also planning something else, this has nothing to do with Equinox, though. I am planning to make Egyptian Kyphi. With my trying to transition into making my own loose incense, it made sense to try this. It's only in the planning stages right now, and I can't get some of the ingredients until I save the money to do it. But, I'm excited. I've wanted to make Kyphi for years and just didn't think it was the right time. When it gets closer to the time I'm going to make it, I'll post the recipe I'll be using. I really hope it turns out!

Astrology and Naturalism

Someone asked me, about a year ago, if I also believed in astrology "like most New Agers do". Once I finished wincing at the term "new ager", I told them that I didn't. And, then I told them that "new age" has nothing to do with me, I'm an atheist.

I revisited the question a couple of times wondering if I actually should believe in it, though. I mean, my path really revolves around the Universe and how it affects everyone. So, why not believe in astrology? In the end, I still don't do astrology.

I'm a Scorpio. I've had my chart all mapped out. Scorpio sun sign, Pisces rising sign, Capricorn moon sign. Plus a bunch of planets in various places. The description of my character based on the very generic descriptions given by astrology is really only vaguely accurate. I suppose it would be easy for anyone to believe astrology works when the information is as generalized as it is.

At the end of the day, I do believe that planets and the sun and the moon have a lot to do with people and affect us greatly. Just not on a personality related level. I don't believe in horoscopes, or that I should be hard to get close to because I have a scorpion for a leading constellation. I am.........hard to get close to. But, not because of my astrology, it's because I'm a giant introvert. And, many Scorpios I know aren't introverts at all.

I guess I just don't see a reason to believe in categorizing people based on star alignments. I see personalities as random occurrences and I think if most people looked at other people on an individual basis, instead of a generalized one, they'd see that there is no real way that astrology works.

Then there's the fact that "new age" is attached to it. A whole other problem in and of itself.