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