New World Childe...

Why is it never sunny when I need it to be? After days and days of a jacked up sleeping schedule, I finally get somewhere close to normal .... and it's raining.

I wouldn't mind the rain if it didn't make me hurt. God knows I miss the days of walking in it and sitting in trees to watch the storms pass over me. Oh well.

I'm thinking of embarking on a new journey. A parenting blog. I know, I barely make use of this one. Fail. But more and more often I find myself needing to talk about Bratexander the Great and my experiences raising him. I'm not sure that this is the place to do it. I've got a theory that I accidentally killed this blog by mixing up who I follow and instead of keeping up my normally compartmentalized life. I think of it as an awkward party where the frugal peeps are in a corner whispering about the witch-y peeps, who are all staring down the Christian peeps.

And now I want peeps.

Except not really. My stomach has been warring against me for nearly a week now. I think it has something to do with the acupuncture kicking in and doing too good of a job. So, I'm learning my way around the changes.

So.. New World Childe.  That's what I describe the boy child as to my mother when I need to make a point, or when I feel like I need to make a point. He wears pink, and loves the Harajuku mini line at Bullseye, he wakes trees with bells, loves to garden, cries a lot, and makes all my neighbors go " Well.. he's fabulous" in that way that means they think he's gay.

Yeah.. he's eight and autistic. It'll be a long time before he discovers any kind of sexuality. He just like what he likes and has parents who let him be.

The Royal Queen Grandmother of Bratexander the Great.. also known as my mama.. well, she's possessive of him. Her biggest pet peeve is his hair getting too long, and she hates any sort of structure and discipline. This is the same woman who regularly whooped my ass at home for sometimes petty reasons. God forbid I give him a stern look. She's got Grandma syndrome.

She's also a hardcore Christian. So.. whenever The Brat wanders into territory I think she'll dislike, I remind her that he's not me, and he's not her. He's his own person, growing up in his own time. He's the child of a new world. That world isn't her home of Peru, or even my home of the nineties. He prays to God and talks to trees, he likes dresses and skirts and pink, he thinks he's Irish, and loves taking trips to new places. He thinks the world ends at Georgia.

Sometimes he kills me with cute and other times I think I'll kill him with my bare hands. Boy has got an ATTITUDE. All the talking in the world doesn't seem to be helping.

Gahh... the family is awake and I must run. More blogging soon.

-Angelwick

The Grocery List and pinteresting food ideas...

I have been dying to blog about food shopping for like EVER. Having been ridiculously inspired by Frugal in Florida, I've been counting down the days until it was time to make a supermarket run. Finally, that day was yesterday. Our freezer had the sufficient amount of space empty and the pantry was looking a little bare.

Normally I don't wait until things get that bad, but, for a couple of months we had been shopping for the sake of shopping. Stocking up on things just because they were on sale. Which, unfortunately led to having to throw out half-used things in order to make room. Well, that just about killed me.

Anywho.. I'm nowhere near stocked for the month. There's still more shopping to be done. Which has me feeling horrible, since I over-spent yesterday. Only by about twenty or thirty dollars, but that's a lot of money to me. I can't just shrug it off.

So.. What did I pick up?

Two pints of grape tomatoes at ninety-nine cents a pint. I loooove these.
One pound of strawberries.  $2.50
Three cans of sweetened condensed milk. 3 for $5.00
Two jars of Kosher Dill Pickles. $1.99  These are for Bratexander The Great.
Two heads of Cauliflower at $1.50 a piece.  I'd like to go back for more.
Two lbs Tropical White Cheese at $2.50 a lbs.   A splurge, but the price was amazing. It's usually twice that.

One bottle of Worcestershire sauce for $0.99 cents.
Two four-packs of Pillsbury biscuits at $2.99 per pack.
Fifteen plantains for $2.00
Three lbs of Dried Black Beans at $4.00
One round loaf of Semolina bread $2.59
One round loaf whole grain bread $2.59
One Whole Eye Round Roast for $19.43  Good Lord, that was $4.29 a lbs.
One dozen Medium White Eggs $1.39
One package of Split Chicken Breast $5.68
One more package of Split Chicken Breast $6.75
Two jars of Sofrito $4.00
One box oatmeal creme pies $1.79  Because The Brat asked nicely.

I shall try to edit later with pictures of our meager haul. All of the above totaled up to $77.60.  I normally make eighty dollars of groceries go so much further.

Stay tuned for dinner. Steak and cauliflower poppers and a random veggie.

-Angelwick.

Hello Bloggy it's me again. Punky.

It's been what feels like forever since I last posted an entry. There's been a lot on my mind, and I've been thinking about airing it all out here, but I'm not going to do that today. That will wait for another day. Today I'm going to talk about how beautiful it is outside, how it's the perfect start to Imbolc, and how tomorrow we have plans to honor the Goddess in a simple but wonderful way. At this time we can't go out and buy new things, and we don't even have to.

Angel told me that because I'm the Celt, I have to be the one that comes up with a game plan. And actually, I have, tonight we're going to lay out pieces of clothing that we wish the Goddess to bless, and give our thanks to her. Tomorrow we're going to the park, we're going to walk around, asking that all the greenery quickly comes forth to give way to spring, and look for any new signs of life.

Tonight, after I've cooked, I'm going to see if there's any way to make Brighid's Wheel out of paper, and put it up somewhere. Most likely on the front door. It's not much I know, and it's not even all I'd like to do but right now it's all I have and I honestly know the Goddess will be alright with that. I think, as I always have, that Brighid is the closest Goddess to my heart, and that she'll see my good intentions and know I have a welcoming and loving openness to her.

I hope that makes sense.

PS. It really is beautiful outside. Stepping out into it put a spring in my walk, and joy in my heart.

-- Punky

The Witch's Circle...

PLEASE NOTE - THIS POST HAS RACIAL THEMES THAT MAY BE OFFENSIVE TO SOME.
READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

My bloggy godmother Aine has just been all up in my brain today. She's just posted a Witch's Circle discussion post, and it just so happens to be about something that's been on my mind off and on recently.

Here's the short background on me. ( Short as in shorter than the usual version, but probably not that short at all.)

I was born and raised right here in New York City. I've traveled up and down the eastern coast of the states, but New York has always been home. I love to travel, but this is where I hang my hat. As for heritage, I'm so mixed it's not funny. Typical, as they don't call my city a melting pot for nothing.

I am half Inca Peruvian, on my mother's side and a weird mix of Puerto Rican French on my father's side. These pieces of me are very specifically divided up with neon lines. I'm the sort of person who compartmentalizes everything, and the make-up of my blood is no different.

When I say I'm half Inca Peruvian, I mean it. My mother is a native, child to some natives, who all come from a remote little no where in the jungle. She is an Inca as I know them. They call themselves Indian now, but we all know that's just a word the Europeans brought with them. It's not even the right word, Christopher Columbus was just a confused son of a bitch. My mother's mother spoke Quechua, one of the two native tongues of Peru. My mother did too, until tragedy best saved for another day because this is supposed to be the short version.

My mother sung me Peruvian lullabies when I was a child. Half-Spanish, half-Quechua. She told me fairy tales about the children of the sun and taught me endless dances set to pan-pipes and sorrowful sounding flutes. Such large parts of my childhood never melded with anyone else's because she was so different. She came from such a different place. Peru is still, and always will be, a magical wonder to me.

I've talked about her before. My five-foot nothing pocket mother. She's a tiny thing, with no boundaries and all the grace of a bull in a china shop. She's primal and wise and ... too many things to put into words. At once she'll give you the feeling that where she truly belongs is back in her lands, surrounded by rainforests, calling out the sun, reading futures in wine and making life's every need with her own two hands.

In the next she's the woman who had it writ in stone that I marry a white man with blonde hair and blue eyes, preferably of German descent, with a military career. At least once a week we debate the merits or lack thereof, of coming to this country to start a new life, leaving all she knew behind. If it were up to me, I'd be there right now, tending sheep.

I grew up with that duality, and an extra side helping of my non-Spanish speaking Father who wanted me to go to Harvard and become a lawyer. The Great White Hope. Sadly, my parents were suckers. They were so ready to turn their backs on where they came from in order to produce a child belonging to this country.

They were screwed. Not initially though, and even now not completely. As a child, I took for fact all they said. I learned perfect English, and have not a trace of an accent. I got good grades and prepared for my own military career. The American Way was the Right way. I had a longing for all things White.

As a teenager, I wanted to be a goth kid. That was how I identified. Now here in NYC there are all kinds of goth kids. Spanish, Black, Indian. We all club together in the city with our dark eyeliner. But good God do we stick out like sore thumbs. We're the odd men and women out in the sea of white boys and girls, with their pale eyes and pale skin. They don't need an extra dusting of Urban Decay to look the part. They wake up in the morning, throw on a band t-shirt and they are the part.

This was and still is a theme that recurs throughout my life.

Very lately, I've noticed how it creeps into this witch-y path I walk.

I haven't been a devoted Christian since age thirteen when my life went to hell in a handbasket. Even before then, when I was a Christian, pagan paths called to me. How could they not, given the way my mother raised me?

I believe in the existence of many deities. I am drawn to the magic in nature. I dream things that'll happen to me. I see shades. There's no denying, at least for me, that part of life.

So why have I had such a hard time coming to this path? I think, because I was trying to do it the white way.

Go back a few posts and you'll see some pictures of me. I am not white. I sometimes wish I was, but I'm not. I can't even pass for white. Couldn't if my life depended on it. ( I've got Southern in-laws now, and someday my life will depend on it. At which point I will be dead.)

So what am I doing, boning up on the Celtic ways? I've got no business dabbling in Irish things, and British things, and Euro things. I am not any of the above.

As recently as last year, I was wracking my brain trying to figure out why I couldn't keep up with the pagan days and all they entail. Why was I such a failure? Why couldn't I Winter Solstice with everyone else?

Because my Winter Solstice happens on the 24th of June. That is when my people report to the sun-father, and ask his blessings. My people kill a llama and burn its heart. We divine in a drink made of purple corn. We just do it differently. Never better or worse, because those terms don't apply. Just different.

I'm different. My path is different. I think in Spanish, and speak in English, and then I wonder why incantations just feel wrong. I'm the product of migration. My mother got it into her head to cross a hemisphere and start over, and I flail about lost with no grounding and no understanding why I feel upside down.

Thank something or other for Bloggy Godmothers.

-Angelwick.

P.S.  I epically failed at answering the questions in Aine's post, but I just feel too stupid to answer them. I apologize.

Mastering Intent

Aine's recent post about feeling some creepy energy sent me off into a thought spiral that I couldn't jot down quite fast enough.

For the most part energy has been on the mind because I've got endless questions that I fear I already know the answer to. There's nothing worse than being able to look just that far forward, the feeling of thinking you know what the answer is but not really knowing if you're right or not. I've blogged about it before, I don't exactly have a plethora of people in my life that I can turn to about these things. I actually miss the sort of witch-y community I knew.

I live in an ancient building. Like most things and places that are old, there are the usual creaks and groans of old age, and then there are the unusual ones. It's not just the creaks and groans though, it's the shadows you see out of the corner of your eyes, the nightmares that have nothing to do with personal fears, and other strange occurrences. Funnily enough, for a place that has so many different people in it, it's pretty much accepted fact that the building is haunted. Neighbors from all walks of life, past many language barriers, all have stories of their apartments having ghosts in them, or other such stories. Things go missing only to appear in another room. Things that sound like the works of fairies.

One neighbor in particular has had feelings of being ..hmm.. I don't know the right words. I believe her words were something like ' a witch riding her back '. It's a night time happening that dispels with prayer.

So, what's behind it all?

I personally don't think that there's only one answer. I think it's a little bit of everything. Energy in different forms, with different intentions. Some of it is even most likely self-manifested. Give something enough thought and you'll just about bring it into existence.

I relay the following story a little cautiously.. I know, and can imagine the many reasons why, it will upset some. So.. I'll warn now. It's about a family member dying from cancer. If that's a personal trigger, it might be safer to just walk away from this entry now.

Some years ago, my aunt passed away from ovarian cancer. The cancer, as I imagine it is for everyone who receives such a diagnosis, was a shock. She was quite advanced in years. QUITE. Not dropping numbers here, out of love for her, but let us just say that even before the cancer news, she'd already had all her ducks in a row in terms of final wishes.

Healthwise? She was actually pretty healthy for her age. She was ninety-percent independent, and lived on her own. She cooked her own meals, unless I was bringing dinner over, and only had a handful of hours a day with her home attendant to do things like shopping. She lived on the third floor of a walk up, and always managed to make it up and down just fine.

For almost a year before her diagnosis, she talked to my mother and I about knowing that something was wrong. She felt like something was wrong, but couldn't tell us what. She thought maybe it was her stomach. She had a very good team of doctors taking care of her health, but so far no one had found anything. After some time, she became frustrated with them. An emotion I am too familiar with.

In private however, my mother talked to me about the possibility that my aunt was going to make herself sick. Not quite Munchhausen's, but intent and thought. I rebelled. My mother and I weren't on great terms at that point in my life, and my aunt was.. just about everything to me. She was a mother and a friend and a therapist and even escape from some of the darker days.

So I didn't want to hear that she was making herself sick. Until it came true. I was the first person she told. I was in the back of ambulances with her when she became sick, I slept on her couch, she took care of me and I took care of her. I put my heart and soul in it. I wouldn't lose her to this. No way.

I didn't even think about the things my mother had said until one day when my aunt looked over at me very smug and told me that she'd been right. She gave a small I Told You So speech, which I handled well, if only because we shared the plight of always being in hospitals and doctor's offices and I know what emotions that sort of life brings up.

I didn't mind the I Told You So, I knew it wasn't personal. She just needed to vent.

Except she seemed so damn happy to be right. I couldn't help it, I thought about my mother, her words, and lost myself in a dark spiral of doubt. Could she really have given herself a disease?

Now, raised as I was raised, believing what I believe with no fanaticism whatsoever, I believed then as I believe now that it's possible. Not that it's fact, but that it could be.

I know Cancer is a disease. I know it's not a germ you pick up at a playground, like catching a cold. I also know that it's a mystery. If we had it all figured out, and if I wasn't a conspiracy theorist about our government and pharmaceutical companies, we could cure it.

The knowing and the believing are not mutually exclusive, they exist in the same place inside me. I don't know if my aunt wished herself into illness. I only know that she could have if she wanted to. I believe that thoughts can be that powerful. It is with thought that we manipulate energy around us. Thought is usually the beginning of all things.

So.. given everything that I believe.. I become stuck when it comes to the goings on of my own home. What do I do about the shadows and bumps in the night?

Punky is from The South. She's from the kind of South that has to be capitalized, that's how southern she is. So naturally she believes in a good old fashioned sage-ing. This is apparently all the rage down there when your house needs a little spiritual cleaning up. Even though I've never done it, I'm familiar with the process.

Satan was from a totally different place with a similar custom. In his case you'd burn incense and carry it around the house, waving the smoke with your hand. It's supposed to dispel negative energies, and rid the home of unwanted guests.

Me personally? I was raised Christian, and know the power of smoke. Consider this if you will, in the bible it says you can burn something here on Earth and the aroma would reach God. These days I've strayed too far from that path to call myself a Christian anymore, but I still believe in the power of smoke, for lack of a better word.

The hangup is that I believe you have to do these things with unwavering conviction, or not only will they not work, they'll backfire. I'm all kinds of wavery. I don't have the sort of strength necessary within myself to do these things as they should be done.

Physically I'm a big believer in Man Up and Walk It Off. Hell, I push myself to walk three miles a day on broken and aching knees. I also know that the worst thing that'll happen is that I'll fall and go to the hospital.

The worst thing, in terms of spiritually stirring the pot here at home, won't just be a trip to the hospital. It could be much much worse and make for very unpleasant living situations.

So how does one master intent? My money would be to start out with some meditation. Always a good idea to look inwards, except that right now I'm in a place that makes me scared to look inside. I've been dealing with too much doctor bullshit. I'm all fucked up about it. Sometimes it makes me into a person that I don't want to be.

So.. temporarily, I'm lost.

-Angelwick

I think I know what's wrong with me..

I am such a pansy. Woke up a couple of hours ago and thought, well... today really is the day that I have nothing to blog about. Didn't cook anything, haven't done anything... nothing to post about.

So I settled for reading other peoples blogs. Frugality has been high on the mind since it's the end of the month. Settled up my January finances yesterday, and am planning on a bank trip today. Lucky for me, I've been on a roll, finding tons of blog content with inspirational tips and ideas for saving money in tons of ways.

Why that put me in mind of a spell my Bloggy Godmother tweeted about... I have no clue. My brain is a strange strange place.

A couple of months ago I intended to join some witch-y discussions that were being hosted by Aine @ The Deepest Well. I flaked. Now I'm actually really sorry that I didn't stick around for them. I might have been able to figure this out much sooner.

I asked Aine about spellwork and what actually constitutes a spell. From my research, I've noted that it usually involves a fair bit of writing. Spells and the rituals that often accompany them are highly personal and tailor-fit kind of things. You're the one with the purpose, you're the one doing the work, so most if not all of it is up to you.

Yes, there's the pre-written stuff, but having never used it I can't really comment on how that works.

My own personal problem with spellwork has been the words. I am utterly incapable of incantations. They have never ever felt right to me, not even when I'm the one writing them. Hence, I asked Miss Aine if spell-work could be done like an Anne of Green Gables prayer.

For those of you ( HA! As if anyone is reading.) who haven't seen the movies, Anne is an orphan who isn't big on prayer, and doesn't know how to do it. She tells the woman teaching her " If I wanted to pray, I would just go out into a field and FEEL a prayer."

The quote is not verbatim, and yes she's very over-dramatic, but that is in a nutshell how I've felt about spellwork. Mind you, I just have no clue if it would work. Hence my turning to Aine, my bloggy godmother.

Of course, half the problem has been not knowing what the problem is. I have no idea why spell words and I clash. I do have a theory all of a sudden.

I speak English. Actually, I speak so much English these days that I'm forgetting my Spanish. However.... I think in Spanish. I think in Spanish and speak in English. Punky always says she feels sorry for me, because it sounds difficult. It's actually about as difficult as breathing. I don't think about it, that's just how my brain works.

Spanish was my first language. I spoke it, read it and wrote it long before I ever stepped into an american public school.

So there we are. Maybe the hang-up is in trying to do something so primal while patching it all through a radio translator known as my brain.

Any thoughts class?

-Angelwick

Feeling the drag and Miss Aine's Giveaway.

It's that time of the week/month/year when I just don't feel like there's anything good to write about it. This time it isn't even true. So, I'm trying to work through the drag the same way I've been trying to work through the aches and the munchies in order to meet my weight loss goal.

Saw my doctor yesterday. This visit went well, he was in a better mood than last visit. The usual poking and prodding didn't really reveal anything specific. Which.. hey.. what's he supposed to see under skin and muscle? I told him about avoiding the E.R. since they'd just take an x-ray. He agreed that the E.R. wasn't the right place, but had me take the x-rays all the same. I'm not exactly keyed up to hear back about them though, cause the issue is in the tendons or ligaments. Bone pics won't show much, if anything. It hurt to bend my knee into the correct position for the x-rays though.

On the brighter side, I really like my doctor. He's new-ish to the position, and aside from one instance of yelling at me, he's everything I need in a PCP. Sure, he's a little rough around the edges, but I don't need him to be my best friend. I've had doctors be my buddies and do crap for my health. He's the opposite. Cut and dry, right to the problems, and then, miracle of miracles, right to the scripts. No game playing. It's such a weight off my shoulders.

He's ordered an MRI of my knee, which is exactly what I need, and I didn't even have to tell him to. We're waiting on approval from my insurance, which should come sometime next week. Already made my appointments to the ortho specialist.

He upped my pain meds, but I haven't hit them yet. I'm doing the whole Pain is Fear Leaving the Body thing and just pushing through. Planning on sneaking out of the house when Punky is asleep for another two mile walk. It's not like it'll be a secret for long, she'll know as soon as she hears me come home and I'll get scolded, but I'm motivated in the moment and I'm trying to hold on to it for as long as I can ride it out. Lords and Ladies know that it'll go away soon enough and I'll have to be dragged out of bed.

I'm just trying to be as effective as possible while I've got the wind to do it.

Other news. Pinterest.com has eaten my life. I advise all people stay away from it. Though.. if anyone has a spare invite, I wouldn't mind one.

One of my bloggy godmother's is having a giveaway! I really want to figure out how to do a blogroll or a sidebar with icons so I can pimp her blog properly, but in the meantime I'm mentioning her here.

Aine writes at :  http://deepestwell.blogspot.com/    

She's giving away a tarot reading via e-mail. I've tossed my hat into the ring, but I'm all about more people getting in there. She's amazing.

Dinner was take-out last night. Pizza. It was supposed to be a pick-me-up. I behaved like a champ. One slice only. It was hard, but I made it through. I'm excited about the upcoming food shopping that needs to be done. We have discovered that Punky likes black beans. YAY. Another food to add to the list.

That's pretty much it over here. Sitting around in Princess Leia Buns with socks in my hair because Punky and I read somewhere about this making it curly. We shall see. Found an interesting tutorial about gardening in a shoe organizer, which I might just have to try out. Also been trying to branch out on blogger, follow some other people, maybe if I'm lucky some of them will wander over here too and I won't feel like I'm talking to myself all the time.

Full of positive energy for now..
-Angelwick

Dinner and the closing of January.

Since January is wrapping up, I whipped out the handy dandy monthly planner and set to updating it. Mostly, it was the addition of medical appointments and re-reading bill paying reminders.

This month I knock off another card into the paid in full pile. Children's Place. Mind you, all I owe is 26.00 dollars. I picked The Brat up a coat there last month and put it on the card just to keep it in use. I've only used it one other time, and it was only for like 30.00 dollars.

The Bullseye card is the one I really need to focus on now. It's not maxed out or anything, but I don't want it to be either. I came closer than I ever wanted to in December. Come the first week of February I'll be grinding away at the balance. Estimated time? Four months. That's only because I do need to keep up on my two other cards. Just over minimum payment on those though.

If I really wanted to, I could just dig into the savings and pay them all off and be in the clear, but I rather tighten the belt and pay them off month to month. It'll hopefully teach me to be even more careful.

The final breakdown? I have seven credit cards. Five of them are store cards. Bullseye. Children's Place. And the three fat stores. Two of them are just regular credit cards. One of them is secured, the other one unsecured. Out of the seven, three are paid in full, one is about to be. Not bad by my standards.

January will close out in a few days with a savings of 450.00 dollars for the month. Not quite the ideal amount, but I keep telling myself that something is better than nothing. Looking at the calendar, February is another 450.00 month.

Just under a thousand dollars in the first two months of the year doesn't sound like a bad deal does it?

March will be a six hundred dollar month. But.. I'm getting ahead of myself.

Yesterday I got gung-ho about getting some walking done if I couldn't get to the gym. I wound up hurting myself pretty bad. Bad enough that today I'm off to the doctor. So... those of you who know my masochistic tendencies.. might be able to guess what I did.

I decided to wobble around on my busted knee and cook dinner and have Punky take pictures for blogging purposes. Dinner last night? Beef and broccoli with white rice.

Started out with some steak that Punky helpfully sliced thin for me.

Seasoned with some of this.

A liberal handful of this stuff.  >.>;  I so don't do measurements.

So.. we get this. Which gets manhandled into

This.

Got my olive oil handy.

Got it working in my pan.

Mm.. Yummy smells.

Generous helping of soy sauce.

Tossed in some broccoli. It wasn't as chopped as I like it. Will improve next time.

Yummy white rice.

Dinner is served.

-Angelwick

Closets of many a kind....

Umm.. does anyone know why my archive link is suddenly in Spanish? Did I do that?

So.. today I meant to blog about The Broom Closet and lost the wind in my sails. Now that they've picked up again, I figured I'd try to put my thoughts down, including ones about the many other closets I hide in.

You see, what I really wanted to do today was stay awake long enough to cook, take pictures of the process and share the recipe. Unfortunately, I just couldn't stay awake that long. My schedule is still all topsy turvy from a couple of bad nights. So now I wake up between 8 and 10 pm, and stay awake until noon.

Worst schedule ever. I feel like I miss the whole day. Case in point, I didn't get to cook. Punky did it. So of course my previously diagnosed Cleaver Syndrome kicked in. (Thank you Dr. Aine W.D.) I feel like it would have been stupid to blog about Turkeyroni. Who doesn't know how to make their own version? Psh.

Then I thought about blogging about my trials and tribulations in parenting and even about some of my wins.. but I got paranoid that I'd give away information that Satan would somehow pile up and take to court to take The Brat away from me with.  Mind you.. there isn't anything I could say that would logically lead to that.. I'm just paranoid.

These are some of the many closets I hide in. Some of them are the results of pride. Actually, most of them are in one way or another. They come about from a worry that people won't see me as I want them to see me. I'm a person like any other, I've got about a hundred sides to me.. but I want people to see the right ones first. It's about pride, and control, and a bunch of other stuff too.

So... here's me making attempt number one at coming out of some of these.

I cook stupid things like Turkeyroni. I'm aware you can get Beefaroni in a can, I just like my version better. Also the yield by price is way more awesome. It's not gourmet, or even pretty, but it's delicious. My mom used to make it for me. I taught Punky to make it, and now we both make it for our kid. The next time I make it, I vow to take pictures and show them off. NO MORE TURKEYRONI SHAME.

Ahem.

I am an awesome and righteous parent. Righteous as in I'm cool as hell, not in the AND JESUS SAID.. kind of way.

Bratexander the Great is autistic. Boy, was I not prepared for that. Is anyone ever prepared for that bomb? I mean, by the time he was officially diagnosed, we had kind of figured it out at home, but the figuring out part was the shocker. What do you do with an autistic child? How special are his special needs? How far from normal are we talking?

I got lucky. We got lucky. The Brat is on the low end of the spectrum. Which basically means that if anyone of you happened upon him in a park or on the street, his only tell would be his speaking difficulty. Of course, it doesn't help that he's got a retainer now and goddamnit has that thing set him back eons.

Anywho... like the average parent, I educated myself to the best of my ability. Most of it was trial and error. I learned that the television turns the boy child into a zombie. I think I've mentioned it before. His brain melts and pours out of his ears. So for the past three years he just hasn't had one. There's only one tv in the house and it comes out of the closet for Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Years. We watch the parade on Thanksgiving, and the lighting of the tree. That's about it.

I will admit that we are slowly relaxing on the rule lately, and perhaps allowing a little bit of x-box time. He's coming up on his first decade of life soon. His friends all have one, or even more than one. Not to mention a whole library of games. I became torn about making him an outcast. I figure that anything I forbid is just going to be something that he runs to and loses himself in as soon as I let the reigns go. I don't want him to be a eighteen year old basement dweller obsessed with  an x-box.

He can't play Monday thru Friday unless he saves some nuns from a burning building or something. I suppose that would earn him some x-box time. He has to earn play time. Thirty minutes of reading with no fussing earns him thirty minutes of game time. Miracle of miracles... he's not a little snot about it. He's not perfect, but not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be.

So what does an autistic boy with no t.v. do when he's not in school? Time to come out of the internet anonymity closet.

He takes dorky web-cam pictures with his mamas. Hello world.

He cooks. One of his favorite pass times actually.

He takes over the world like a Bratexander should.

He goes to dance class. 

He hangs out with toy soldiers.

And visits the elves.

He goes ice skating at Lasker Rink.

Tries his hand at being a mermaid display at the Museum of Natural History.

Measures up against tigers at the zoo.

Plus you know there's piano class. Aikido. Visits to Lela's house. Can you tell? This is a kid that doesn't know the meaning of sitting at home and doing nothing. He's always somewhere doing something. That right there is my greatest accomplishment as a parent.

So.. who am I? 

I'm the rockstar mom in the Kim Kardashian shades.

Basking in the sunshine.

Trying to be a tiger.

And hopping out of the broom closet to try and find my witch-y path in nature. Horrible picture of me though.

The Broom Closet Miss Aine calls it. She's brilliant. I would have never thought to give it a name. I don't know that I've ever lingered in one for long. I think my relationship with my mother is the only one in which I'd still be in there. Only because I've never said to her, Mom, I'm a witch. Lord knows that we talk about witchcraft often enough. Miss Aine thinks my mom might even be one. 

Hilarious because my mom is a hardcore talk to God about it Christian. But I see it too. My mom raised me to know that the events of a harvest could be read in spilled wine. She's got what I teasingly call Peruvian Voodoo in her. She'll even get close to admitting it some days. When and where she grew up, you didn't rely on doctors as much as you did on Shamans.

She knows how to make all matters of herbs and vegetables and fruits work for her. I wish I was half as talented, but I know that I'm not because I'm still warm. Neither Hot nor Cold, just suspended somewhere in the grey middle.

But I dream things that'll happen. I have since I was tiny. Good lord did that suck. Knowing how you were going to be bullied the next day didn't exactly inspire to get up and go to school in the morning. Of course, it's never like it is in the movies. You can't just ninja dodge whatever is coming to you just because you know it's there. At least it never worked that way for me.

These days I wake up and mutter lines from shows and movies that make no sense out of context. Weeks/months/days later, whatever I sleepily muttered to Punky plays in a trailer or something. Utterly useless to me because I didn't want to dream anymore. So I begged the God that I believe in to please make it stop.

At the time, I had a near and dear witchy friend who told me not to do it. She said it was bad news to turn away from a gift. Said it wouldn't go away anyway. To this day I can't tell if she was just being harsh on me, or if she was just plain right. Maybe both. Eventually the dreams stopped meaning anything. 

And now my son sees things. AUGH. Damnit.Curse her and her witchy ways, but not really. That wasn't the sort of blowback I was expecting. I suppose that I should have been. So, I've been stuck lately. I don't have a community of witches that I belong to. I don't even have any more witchy friends as I used to, save for my bloggy godmother's Aine and Jeanne. Lord knows I bug them enough with all my endless questions. It sure feels like I'm in a broom closet.

Except for the part where I'm not. I live in the greatest city in the world. There isn't much you can do around here that'll shock anyone. Case in point, a neighbor came by months ago on a friendly visit and noticed that Punky had put some small storage containers she gave her to good use. So.. What was in them? Shepherd's purse. Without thinking twice about it, I just said it when she asked. Even went as far as to mention that it was for some spell work. She didn't blink twice, nodded along, and we carried on conversation until it was time for her to go. 

That's my tale on the broom closet. I don't really live in one, and some days I even whip out the witch card that I may or may not be entitled to just to scare away the crazies. 

So.. as I wrap it up.. I've got a question for you, my bloggy godmother. Though.. anyone with their own two cents can feel free to chime on in.

You define a witch as someone who does the magic. I think, I might be wrong, you've mentioned that he or she do it every day. It's just a part of life.  How strict is the every day thing? Is it like cooking? I try to cook at home ninety to ninety-five percent of the time. Sometimes though, there's pizza. Or Chinese. Or bootlegg KFC. Does it make me less of a cook? 

-Angelwick.

It's Okay Tuesday, The Broom Closet, Money and Frugality and Other Pilfered Ideas

So apparently Glamour Magazine has a thing called Hey It's Okay Tuesday, which I learned about through Whispering Writer @ http://whisperingwriter.blogspot.com/

So.. Here are some things I am trying to be okay about..

It's okay that I can't just pull a car out of thin air just to get my son into a fancy dance school.

It's okay to not want to rush an appointment that'll show me my insides and all the fat they're covered in.

It's okay to miss Fish Sticks. They were delicious and great for calorie counting.

It's okay to be a little worried/scared about walking to the gym and back alone.

And finally.. It's okay to borrow ideas from other blogs until I get my own groove back.

In other news.. the end of the month feels like it's dragging horribly. The last two weeks have felt like molasses to me. I think it's because before those two weeks time felt like it had really been speeding by. I thought the trend would continue. Oh well. There's an upside.

End of the month is usually budget-planning time. Lords and Ladies know I love me some planning. These are the days when I drive Punky up a wall asking for a pen at the randomest of times, scribbling all over envelopes, notebooks, anything paper. Even some things I probably shouldn't scribble on.

Our yearly planner is still all shiny and new since it's only January, but something about seeing the pages slowly fill up with our combined annotations really makes me genuinely happy. It sort of sucks to say that there are precious few things that make me feel that way. Which isn't to say that I'm Eeyore and totally bummed all the time.. it's just that happiness is a very special and specific feeling. It's as good as it is, maybe, because it is a little rare. All the other good feelings are still good.. they're just .. something else.

Our savings are slowly chugging along. Normally January is a great savings month for us, since we tend to take care of Christmas long before it actually arrives. There isn't too much blowback or debt from the holidays. I'm the sort of person that starts picking items out in July and packing them away for Christmas. Then I just pull them out of the closet and wrap and deliver in December. It takes a lot of the stress off. There'll always be last minute things to pick up, and even the occasional surprise swerve, but it's just not so bad.

Anyway.. This January our savings are short a couple hundred dollars. I can't even point out a main reason, just a sort of combination of things. Still, though it's frustrating, I'm glad that we were able to put something away. Something, will always be better than nothing. There's still the rest of the year ahead of us, and last years savings are still snugly put away. Punky and I have put together a tiny little nest egg that we're immensely proud of. We know that every penny that we pour into it lays the foundation of the ten year dream.

Not bad for a couple of traumatized twenty-six year olds, huh?

Catching up with my previously mentioned Bloggy Godmother has rendered other bits of inspiration and thought fodder. Some of it even lines up with some of my previous thoughts up there about the end of the month and money situations.

I used to belong to a LiveJournal community that was for posting grocery shopping receipts. It was a good place for comparing prices in different places and even picking up an idea or two. Unfortunately, there weren't that many members and the place sort of quietly died. I'd really like to find an alternative for it, since it always helps to be able to do things in groups.

NYC is a great place to be frugal in. All the money you save on little things adds up and then you can do awesome things. Food shopping here isn't a hardship. That happens to be because I live outside Manhattan. Still in the city proper, just not in the priciest part of it. Food here is cheaper than in many of the supermarkets I've visited in other states. Food shopping is where I do a lot of my savings. It isn't always easy, since The Brat goes through stretches of eating like he's got a bottomless pit in his belly.

( Any advice on that last bit dearest Bloggy Godmothers? Have either of you raised hungry boys with bottomless bellies? The MiL says Ramen, but that is such a tiny solution. )

There are five big supermarkets in my neighborhood. Actually, there are probably like six or seven, but some of them are hidden on side streets that I don't really venture to. Anywho... Once a week our building gets a delivery of all their flyers/circulars. They come in about a day or two before sales kick in, which gives us time for planning.

I used to try and menu plan with them, but that only worked out halfway for us. I can't get too specific ahead of time, as it guarantees that the family will revolt and not want to eat whatever is planned for Tuesday, because they want the Thursday meal instead. Thursday rolls around and they want take out. Kaboom. The plan blows up. Instead, I stock up on very versatile ingredients that lend themselves to a variety of meals.

Ground Beef/Turkey is a great example. It lends itself to everything from meatballs to chilli to tacos and burgers. So, at night I take a portion down from the freezer to defrost and take votes on the meal later.

If nothing else turns up, I might just take a crack at blogging my cheapness. Any other frugaholics out there?

I was going to blog about The Broom Closet .. but all the wind has gone out of my sails. Maybe next time?

-Angelwick

Rainy Day Pondering...

To go out or not to go out... that is the question. All my talk of making the sun come out scared it away I suppose. I had been hoping to get back into the gym routine this morning.

Tramadol.. the wonder drug I wrote about some months ago.. helped my various pains so much that I was able to start going to the local World Healthyness. I started out not being able to do too much for very long at all, and slowly each day I could do a little more. Now it's been about two weeks since I've been. I miss it. I don't want to stay off the bandwagon just because I've fallen off of it.

The sucky part about the rain is that I'll have to wear a coat. Normally, I just shuffle out of the house in my work-out clothes and catch the bus to the gym. It drops me off practically at the door of the place, so I don't usually need a jacket or anything. Just my trusty mp3 player. However, recent ambition to save up crazy amounts of money for the next six months means that I've chosen to go without my monthly buss pass.

Okay.. backtracking a little.. The wonder drug? It lets me walk to Bullseye. The Bullseye that's always stealing my money? Yeah.. it's just under two miles away from my house, and I haven't been able to walk that sort of distance in years. The gym is even closer than that, so walking is an option, I just don't know if walking in the rain with no coat is an option.

Ideally, I'd want to get out of here soon-ish. Today is a sort of busy day. Not with actual doings, but with telephone calls. I have three referrals from my primary care physician and appointment making over the phone sucks. It can be hours of bad music and stupid questions sometimes. And that's just one appointment. I also have to schedule an ultrasound of my liver. Recent blood tests show that my liver enzymes are really high.

The liver thing scared me for a bit because my doctor threw around the Hepatitis B/C card. I can happily say I'm much calmer about it now that I've done some reading up on it though. It's not the HIV /  Herpes doom-bomb I thought it was. I may not even have it. He also said it could just be fatty liver disease.

All disease is bad disease, but in this case, and in the case of the arthritis I supposedly have, I'm not frantic. My doctors blase and oft repeated cure is to lose the weight. Well, I'm working on it. I've dropped about ten plus pounds, and I'm managing to keep it off. It's not just going to all fall off in the blink of an eye though. I gained weight over many many years of not being able to walk. It'll probably be years before I'm down to my goal size 14.

I so want to go to the gym. I think I'm going to.

In other news. Bratexander has a dance performance thing tonight. His semester of Hip Hop is over. So far it's the only activity we've stuck him in that he didn't love. I kind of mourn the three hundred plus dollars that went whoosh.. but I'm all about making him try new things. He loves music and he has joyful seizures that pretend to be dance moves whenever he is around a radio. I thought dance class would help and I even resisted the urge to stick him in ballet. Unfortunately, he wound up being the only boy in his class and he felt unnerved being surrounded by nothing but girls. I guess until now his interactions with other children had always been more balanced.

Then there was the bit about not remembering anything he'd learned in class once he got home. Talking to his teacher revealed something that was already a familiar pattern to us. He's great in class. So says every teacher we expose him to. School. Piano. Dance. Now martial arts. ( Mind you, we the parental units wouldn't know, as he hates all things we try to work on or teach him at home. Reading. Math. Piano practice. It's like pulling teeth. He gets to class, and he's some kind of idiot savant.) The Hip Hop teacher couldn't help figure out why he wasn't remembering choreography at home, so we just sort of sucked it up and rode it out.

Punky and I continue to half jokingly discuss sticking him in Irish Stepdance, since he had a little taste of that last year at the IAC. My mother would like to see him in ballet, for one to see the family tradition continue, and for another, because she thinks ballet is the road to life. It helps with flexibility and balance. Things that will come in handy when we try and make an Olympian out of him.

And honestly? Bratexader the Great will probably wind up doing it all. Maybe not all at the same time, so as not to overwhelm him, but still getting a taste of it all. Over the years as he grows up, whenever I've butted heads with my mother as to his upbringing there's been a certain phrase I keep going back to.

To me, Bratexander the Great is a New Child. I tell my mother often that he's not a child of the past like I was, instead he belongs to the future. He's a world child. He's got just about every corner of the world in his blood, and the corners that aren't in the blood are in the house or around him elsewhere and helping in his raising. I may not mention the rest of the village often, but they are there, and he is being raised by all of them.

I've got Martin Luther King Jr. type dreams for my son. I want nothing to be foreign to him. I want him to see the world, and know about it. I want him to know the music of it, and its dances. I want him to eat all its foods and see all its colors.

The Brat and I share a birthday. He was the only present I got the night of my eighteenth birthday. Which means, that when he is eighteen, I will only be thirty six. Okay, so most of the time I amongst the female population that feels like thirty should stay away forever. I won't lie. But.. in truth, thirty six is pretty young. Lots of people are only just starting to figure it all out at that age. I've at least got a good steady solid plan. That's what I do, I'm a planner. When I'm thirty six, I'll still be young. Hopefully, I'll be strong. I'm trying to shape up my health now, so it'll be there when I need it then.

When I am thirty six Satan will no longer have a hold on me. If on a whim I want to put us all on a plane to Japan, I'll be able to do that and no one could stop me.

Anywho.. I need more parental friends that I can talk to. Parenting has started to feel a little lonely, and I know it affects the boy too. Me not having parent-y friends means no play dates. My neighborly Raven has sort of fallen off the map and The Brat hasn't exactly made friends at his lessons. I have such a hard time making friends though. I'm closed off, defensive, and.. just .. me. I'm a lone lion?

Oh well. No closer to figuring out if I should risk the rain and go to the gym.  Help?

-Angelwick

Inspiration and the imprecision of language....

EDIT : Credit for the questions goes to Miss Aine of The Deepest Well @ http://deepestwell.blogspot.com/ 

Since having an anxiety attack has prompted me into blogging again, I've been trying to catch up on the blogs I follow. I started with a lady I consider a Bloggy Godmother, and even though I've barely scratched the surface of all I've missed on her blog, I came across a bit that sort of stuck out and hit home.

Are you a Witch or Wiccan?
Do you belong to a group/coven or are you solitary?
Do you abide by The Rede or oany other Rule in your practice?
Does your belief system include a deity or deities? If so, explain who they are, your relationship with them.
Does your path include magical practices?
Do you/how do you celebrate seasonal changes/Sabbats/Wheel of the Year
Do you agree with the statement "All Wiccans are Witches, but not all Witches are Wiccan" ?
Do you believe that Witchcraft is a religion?

I'd like to answer some of those questions, or at least take a crack at them, but I'm frustrated by the words that I do not have. I find myself going around in circles around words that don't explain much. Suddenly an aversion to labels renders me mute. How can you identify something without words that label it? But how can you label something too grand to put in a jar?

Am I a witch? I don't know. Who decides if I am? Do I? What is a witch? If I come from a people that can make the sun come out and answer to them, am I a witch? And if my son can make the rain fall down, does that make me a witch? And if I can dream the future?

When does the strawberry become jam? Is it in the pot or in the jar? Does the secret lie in the mashing, or is it only jam when it has finished? Is a human being ever finished? I don't think so. I think death is our end as humans. I'm not done growing and learning and transforming until then. Then I have become the jam, I suppose.

Am I solitary? More solitary than most can know. So alone it isn't funny, but I belong to a people if I am not with them. I belong to them, even if they do not embrace me like I long to embrace them.

Maybe, like Aine, my winter has just become too long. I'm ready for life again, for picnics in the park and running the soccer fields with Bratexander the Great. I'm reaching for a life that I feel people are trying to tie up and take away. I don't do well in cages. I'm not an animal meant for them, if there are even any that are.

No, to the Rede. As for rules.. I think all things work by them. I must as well, even if I do not know them.

As for the rest.. I want to answer, I may even come back to them.. but I just don't have answers in me right now. It all comes back to language. What is magic? If my mother can scare disease from your eye is that magic? What is a deity? When my orphan child of a mother looked out on the mountains covered in flowers that no one had planted she knew that something bigger than herself was at work and calling to her, but she didn't call that thing God. At least not right away. Sometimes it seems like God is just a word. A name. It is a thing, like I am a thing, like all things are things.


-Angelwick

The thought of breaking anonymity

... has only just occurred to me because I'm a cocky son of a bitch wanting to show off and post videos of myself.

I think I'll manage to resist the urge. You know the camera adds ten pounds.

So for a while now, a week or so, I've been meaning to get on here, skip the excuses and talk about my anxiety attack. Apparently I can't do that unless Michael Flatley makes me wanna take him on on the dancefloor and I wind up listening to Peruvian music and scheming and Machiavelling it.

So. I had an anxiety attack. My first ever. And I was very lucky to just be sitting in a doctors office so he could diagnose it all nice and official like. His bedside manner could use a little work, but I don't go to doctors to make friends out of them. I know it's just their pay the rent 9 - 5 and I don't usually need the extra coddling.

Apparently, if you walk me into your office, look at my hand, press my right thumb back and declare that I am not hypermobile and walk out... I. Cannot. Breathe.

Actually, at first I just sort of started leaking from the eyeballs. And no, that's not just a manly cover up for crying. Crying takes some sort of intent, or at least awareness. Nope, I just started leaking and then made weird faces cause no really, I'm leaking and don't know what to do about it. Then I got all embarrassed that people might walk by and be worried that I was crying by myself in a doctors office. So I told myself to stop, wiped my eyes.... and of course continued leaking.

It took me the ten minutes that he was gone to compose myself. The whole time I was very confused. I have H.M.S. I am the definition of hypermobile. I can disjoint my thumb at will. The rest of me dislocates against my will. Frequently. The running joke in my family is that I fall too fast for anyone to catch. Which is totally true.

Anyways... I was diagnosed pretty early on in my teenage years and subsequently had the rest of my life ruined.

Now just in case I find myself amongst the optimistic or the ruin lovers.. hey.. I love them too. I love visiting all kinds of ruins, climbing them, communing with them and just feeling the spirit of anything they have left behind. I think they're beautiful, and awesome in the actual definition of the word, as in awe inspiring, take your breath away awesome.

But a ruin is a ruin. And if the flaming wreckage of my life is functional/pretty/whatever, it is still a ruin.

I had plans. Ten plus years of my life were derailed and shit upon by this stupid disease that took out my kneecaps like a sniper. So.. I've been telling myself I was entitled to a full blown freak out and anxiety attack when some doctor looked at me for a literal not figurative ten seconds and drops the You're Not Hypermobile bomb on me.

So yeah.. that's been up.

The rest is pretty predictable. Obviously, this guy is in quack territory. Even if he's right, that's probably not the way to handle it. We're running tests. I'm going back to my primary doctor tomorrow. I've got some bones to pick with him too. He's apparently been sitting on some important bloodwork.

In the meantime I have asked all the traditional questions in my own non-traditional way.

Really? My son can make it rain and my claim to fame is anxiety attacks?
Wait a minute.. my people make the sun come out.. and are apparently so powerful that they can even make white folk feel something in the air when they do it and I'm a pussy who has anxiety attacks?
Hang on.. what about that time I cursed a boy.. I HAVE ANXIETY ATTACKS?!?!

Unfortunately, the comforting idea that it might have been a one time thing was shot down when I had some oral surgery a couple of days ago and freaked out there too. This time, no reason.

Gah. I'm so upset. SO UPSET. I am not an anxiety attack having person.

And yes, I know that saying something like that and then trying to explain it away is like someone saying, " I don't like black people... I'm not racist though." 

However, I don't hate people who have anxiety attacks. I don't think less of them for having them. I've had too many of them (people who have anxiety attacks) in my life to be that sort of ignorant. My hang up is more like.. utter confusion and loss of self. It'd be the same emotion if I woke up tomorrow and was told that it's common for fish to have anxiety attacks. Excuse me what? Oh yes.. didn't you know? You're a fish.  Umm.. I would think that was something I should have been told at birth. And yes... I know my control issues are showing, thank you very much.

So now.. I'm a fish who has anxiety attacks. And wants to outdance Michael Flatley. I could dance circles around him I could! You know... if my mama showed me how again... I've forgotten.

My poor mama. I gave her a heart attack. After I left the doctor's office shell shocked my feet apparently figured out that I should not go home and traumatize Bratexander the Great. Somehow I wound up at my mama's door. I've got no recollection of the trip though. All I had on me was my bus pass.

Then I forgot how to knock or ring a bell. So I just stood outside mewling "Mama..mama.." over and over again. When she opened the door, I couldn't walk in.

She later told me I scared her and she thought I wasn't even going to make it inside. She'd thought the doctor had told me I only had x many days left and she didn't know what to do.

Thankfully she patched me up, made me presentable and called me a cab home. Bratexander the Great was not traumatized and does not know that his parental unit was so badly damaged.

So obviously, I want him to learn Gaelic. What? I don't know. My brain isn't functioning fully yet. I haven't been sleeping at night. This started before the attack of doom though. I watched a funny video on youtube that was clips of Reagan from The Exorcist thrashing on her bed set to the song Whip My Hair by Willow Smith.

Don't get me wrong, that video was funny and I cracked up but I'm still petrified by that movie. I believe in possession you know? So... no sleeping at night lest Reagan gets me.. plus watching the new Lord of the Dance equals I need Bratexander the Great to learn Gaelic at the Irish Arts Center.

I also blame Bullseye. Damn them and their money stealing ways. They've got out all their St. Paddy's Day merchandise and we're going back to the IAC here in the city for their childrens open house.

So yeah.. I'm gonna outdance Michael Flatley and my son will speak Gaelic while I do it.

Anywho.. As I spell-check.. I notice I haven't actually talked about my anxiety attack. I've talked about the stuff leading up to it, and the stuff after.

The actual attack was a lot like drowning. Something I have some experience with, because I have asthma. I got a couple of scary attacks when I was very very young that were close calls. Drowning. No air in or out. Just a lot of gasping.

So.. I was leaking in one office for about ten minutes. Then the doc came back and moved me to another room. The first was his office, the second was the one with the exam table and all that. I sat. He sat. He started typing and asking some basic medical questions. I answered the first three or so, started leaking again, and then BAM. No air.

So, crying plus no air, plus hysterically asking what he means there's nothing wrong with me, equals a bonafide anxiety attack. A very nice well meaning nurse came in, asked what was wrong, then stayed with me to try and soothe me through it.

She was nice, but I'm not the sort of person that can be told " It'll all be alright" on a good day, let alone on a bad day. " You're not hypermobile" plus " It's all okay" ... Not helping.

I did eventually calm down though. At least, that's what shell shock feels like, calming down.

Then I freaked out the day before yesterday at the oral thing. Afterwards Punky was all " It's just the medicine making you emotional. You're okay." And I nearly tore her head off with my teeth.

This is apparently because she's a Granny Smith Apple. Look.. I've broken anonymity so bad it's not funny. If Satan ever wound up here, he'd know it was us right away. It's a pun on her last name. Apparently, her father also shoves both feet and a hand in his mouth around his anxiety prone wife.

Granny Smith Apples need to be re-educated.

On to better stuff... I was going to sign off and ask to be reminded to blog later about stuff, but I know I wouldn't get around to it, and the mood would pass. Tomorrow is visit the mama day.


Anywho... Last June, a Peruvian group put on Inti Raymi in the city. Inti Raymi is the Inca winter solstice. It's a festival of the sun. It takes place in Peru every June 24th and is a very big deal even today. Like Superbowl big. Maybe bigger since some people aren't sports fans. For Inti Raymi entire villages shut down and empty. No work, no stores, no restaurants, nothing but going to the festival.

Here a festival is rides, music, stalls, and food. There's some of that in Peru, but Inti Raymi is very different. It's more like a recreation event. Entire groups of people dress as hundreds of parts of people for the recreation. There's an Inca, priests, warriors, soldiers, farmers, dancers and more. Hundreds and hundreds of people in this giant play.

The Inca is like the King. Only, he isn't called King, he's called THE Inca. He leads ceremonies honoring his father the sun, asking for his love and mercy and all things good.

So... last June, a group I won't name because I have a love/HATE relationship with them, put on Inti Raymi. I just wish they hadn't done it in the backyard of a catholic church. Really? That's where we're going to practice our witchcraft? Whatever.

So.. the day of? Cloudy day. The sun could only really be seen in small five minute bursts. I sort of thought it sucked to have a cloudy day on sun worship day, but oh well, what can you do? Can't control the weather, right? Don't get me wrong, it was bright out.. I'm gonna edit some pics and put them up later, you'll be able to see... just no direct sunshine.

Anywho.. there's some traditional food being sold, a small area for vendors, and a place for kids to learn all about the culture. There was some time before the ceremony was supposed to start. It's more like a play than a ceremony really, but.. when it counted, they made the sun come out.

The priest did his thing, the soldiers of the four corners showed up and gave their reports to the Inca, the dancers danced. Etc. Then they start the ritual part and it's cloudy. We're outdoors, so I'm staring straight up at the sky, gauging how big the clouds are, and by my calculations, the current clouds up above us will be covering the sun up for a while. They weren't going anywhere.

But the Inca does his thing anyway, and talks to his father and asks for him to shine down. Bam. Outta nowhere. Sun. Clouds part and it's all but freaking holy. I thought it was a miracle coincidence, but Punky to this day teases me about being so out of touch that I couldn't feel what she felt. She says it was something in the air. Like something had been summoned. She says the only time she's felt anything like it was when she used to practice witchcraft.

That's my Peruvian Voodoo story for the night. I don't care if I didn't feel it, I'm still Peruvian and can claim that my people can make the sun come out.

If you'd like to see it for yourself, there's a show called 1000 places to see before you die. They have an episode in Peru, and it's up on YouTube in 5 parts. If you watch it, they go to Inti Raymi and something similar happens.

Peace and Long Life. Live Long and Prosper.
Just don't tell me I'll be fine.
-Angelwick