My friend Daniel had me listen to this song yesterday, and I can’t stop listening to it. With a title like Gay Pirates, you don’t expect something so… Utterly sweet and wonderful. And seriously? The line “I’ll love you still in hell?” Amazing.

I just had to share.

This is just a quick note to say that I have been in Memphis, Tennessee for the last week visiting friends and loved ones.  Tomorrow afternoon I get back on the bus to go home.  I have so much to write about!  Argh!  It kills me to have to go to bed now instead of rambling on and on and on like I want to.  Therefore, I leave you with a few pictures I took from Elmwood Cemetery instead because I am a closet goth…  But seriously it is ridiculously beautiful there.

Jasper, Mouse (1991-2011), and Bully (1999-2011) in 2006

Two days after posting about Mouse, we were forced to say good-bye to him.  Time has gone on, and in our home we find ourselves missing him at the strangest times – Cleaning out the litter box being one of them.  He always made a mess.  We always hated it.  Now we find ourselves missing it.

My studio, which is where he spent most of his time, has been abandoned for now.  I just can’t manage to spend time there.  I go in, grab what I need, and take it elsewhere.  At least I’ve stopped crying every time I don’t find him in there.  This week I’ll open up the windows and hope that the fresh air will suck out some of the void.

Even Jasper has experienced the loss.  Granted, Mouse hated Jasper, but Jasper loved him anyway.  Now he freaks out due to separation anxiety if Mr. NaW or I leave for even five minutes.  I’m already talking about getting another cat, but only because of Jasper.  Mr. NaW isn’t happy with it.  In my defense, I’ve talked about a new cat for years.  It’ll be a while before we bring another one home, but I worry about Jasper’s emotional health.

I wanted to write Mouse a letter, but I’m just not ready to yet.  I thought about posting it here, but in honesty I seem to prefer to mourn in the comfort of my own home.  Ideally alone.  That is what the last month has taught me, at least, between the loss of my mother’s dog and Mouse.  Wonderful, wonderful Mouse.

I miss him.

What IS it? What does it mean to you? How can it exist? How does it work? What’s with the extra ‘k’, anyhow?

Expound as you see fit.

 – Pagan Blog Prompts, 3/31/11

Magic is an interesting subject to me, and I am endlessly fascinated with the different ways it is used in different areas of history and the world. I think, perhaps, that’s where the seeds of my interest in religious studies started. When I started to put it all together and see the common threads, I became more understanding that we are all kind of doing the same thing despite having different words and beliefs.

My personal understanding of magic is that it’s basically very powerful prayer. You build your energy through intentional acts and push it out into the world. In a way, I think it sends off a chain reaction, energy bumping energy, directed towards whatever your goal may be.

Magic, to me, is just energy. Performing magic is simply sticking your hand into the mix and guiding your intentions towards the goal. Sometimes that’s enough, but most of the time one has to continue guiding it by working towards the goal at the same time. For instance, if a person casts a spell to get a job, they have to keep looking for a job.

Magic is sacred. It is in everything, yes, but as humans we have the ability to use it like clay to mold it to our desires.

It’s the same thing with praying. As humans, we have the very fortunate luck of being able to connect with our higher power and ask them for things. However, we are responsible for working for what we want. If you’re not opening up the door to get that new job by searching, applying, interviewing, the likelihood of someone showing up at your door and offering you one is pretty slim.

I don’t practice magic. Even in the direst circumstances, I never have the urge to do so. This doesn’t mean in the future something may pop up that I feel it’s necessary to employ it. I just put my faith in my gods. My relationship with them makes me feel confident that my prayers will be answered, though not always in a manner that makes sense right away. I worship them, and they take care of me. They are the gods, and I am the human… They know better than me, you know?

Thinking on it, I guess I’ve learned how to incorporate a few things into my life that I don’t think about anymore… For instance, when my friend felt the need to severe ties that were resulting in an evil eye situation, I rubbed her down with an egg… That’s about the extent of it.

Talismans? Sure. Purified crystals? You betcha. Colored candles on my altar to signal requests? Yup. But for the most part, despite these being magical in concept, I don’t… Well, I guess I don’t practice “high magic.” I don’t chant incantations – Does anyone else feel silly rhyming? I am not a fantasy novel.

Not too long ago I discovered that my former teacher and group of Wiccans performed a spell to have a football team win for local media. A football team… Because in a world with so many other things happening, we worry about if our team is going to win a game.

It made me sad. Not only because magic shouldn’t be a publicity stunt, but because it seems to me that we shouldn’t plug up energy fields with trivial matters. In a world where many of us live pay check-to-pay check with the risk of losing everything, don’t have a cure for cancer, and are experiencing natural disasters more often as the Earth changes… Well, I understand some people are fanatics about sports, but we should be looking at the bigger picture. I won’t even get into the politics of Pagans performing magic for the media today.

The spell didn’t work, by the way. While I won’t say the Gods aren’t sports fans, I guess they had their money down on the other team that day. And as we should all know by now, the Gods’ will trumps human desire.

As a well-known 12-step program has taught my family, the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.  My problem is good cheese.  I can’t handle not having it, but my brain also can’t handle paying for it.

Not to make light of addiction, because my, um…  Passion for goat cheese is a far cry from one.  However paying the $5 to $7 price for those becoming logs of goat cheese at the supermarket for a mere 4 ounces nearly kills me.  The problem, beyond being proudly cheap, is that once I get it home I will sit and eat the entire thing in one sitting.  Sometimes by itself.  And, well, sitting isn’t really the proper word for it.  It’s more of an ecstatic writhing.  Complete with moaning if I happen to be alone – Which I usually am since I wouldn’t want anyone else to witness me partaking in rolling around on the ground speaking in tongues over food.

I figure as long as I’m not naked while doing this, I’m not hitting an all-time low.  But summer is coming up, so I wouldn’t rule it out completely just yet once the weather is warmer.

In my quest to be more in touch with my food and save lots of money, I’ve discovered that yogurt cheese is much cheaper to make and is an acceptable substitution.  I picked up one of the larger bulk containers of plain yogurt yesterday for $2; granted it’s not organic.  (We’re still not 100% organic around here, but that’s another blog post altogether.)

I don’t have cheesecloth currently, but it’s the ideal thing to use.  Instead, just this once, I stole a couple of Mr. NaW’s coffee filters, because my floursack towels are all dirty.  I’ve found that floursack towels work.  So if you have them (everyone should!) and a lack of cheesecloth, by all means use them…  Just not the ones you use for household chemicals obviously.

Here is my recipe-in-progress*:

Yields approximately 2 cups of soft cheese.

3 cups yogurt
Dash of salt
Dash of pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried dill
1 teaspoon dried chives

1. Mix it all up in a bowl
2. Line a metal strainer with 2 layers of cheese cloth or flour sack.  Put yogurt and herb mixture onto your cloth.
3. At this point you can optionally wrap your yogurt with the cloth and begin wringing out some of the moisture from it.  This will mean you don’t have to wait as long for awesomeness, but don’t feel the need to if you’re patient.  Return to strainer.
4. Put the cloth on the strainer again, and put the strainer on top of a bowl so that the water can drain into it.
5. Put the bowl in the refrigerator for a day or two.  I suggest dumping the liquid from time-to-time just so you can check out how your cheese is doing.
6. Transfer to a clean, sealed container – Like the yogurt container if it had a lid!  This should keep about two weeks.
7. Feel less neurotically guilty about the price of deliciousness as you devour it.  Clothing optional.

Even those who are less hardcore in DIYing than I am may want to give this a try!  I mean how much easier can it get than mixing things up in a bowl and basically wandering off for a couple days?

I’m pondering the future with a sun-dried tomato and basil mix.  Or maybe garlic overload.  What other things can you think to add in with this?

*Warning: My recipes-in-progress rarely involve exact measurements.  I hold the title of Queen Eyeballer in my home.  I’ve successfully made cookies in the past with no measuring cups or spoons, so I can’t be too bad at it.  However, I’d start with small amounts of seasoning and taste as you add more.  Rarely does anyone get as thrilled over dill as I do.

A rather hideous cold overtook me for about a week and derailed regular posting.  Then I spent the rest of the time getting ready for an insane journey to New Orleans.  I was only in the city for about 16 hours and most of it was spent sleeping.  I can’t help but be disappointed about my first trip to New Orleans, because other than seeing Congo Square I didn’t really have any time to get a very good feel for the things about the city that I have an interest in.  Heck, it doesn’t even feel like I was there.  It looks like the fiancé and I will be honey mooning there, though.

I can say, though, that I’m happy to be home.  Waking up in my own bed and getting back to see my container of radishes thriving was quite nice.  The plants that are growing seem to be thriving.

About three weeks ago, the frogs came out of their slumber around my home – Signaling to me that spring really was approaching.  I’ve never lived close enough to a body of water that allowed me to experience the arrival of the frogs.  Once again, I feel very blessed about where we are currently living.  With a creek running about 100 feet away, I am gifted with the Spring Peepers’ singing.

Last night while I was outside, I looked down to see one of my amphibian friends after hearing a strange noise by my feet.  As I watched it, it continued to hop repeatedly into my front door as if trying to jump through it.  I’m not sure if he was just trying to get away from me, he couldn’t see the giant white door in front of him, or exactly why he was determined to batter himself against something.  I’m assuming he was trying to get away from me and panicked, though, because when I stepped back more he calmed for a little while.

Eventually, though, I needed to go back inside.  I bent down in hopes of gently picking him up to take out to the yard.  No such luck.  He took to hopping back into things.  I’m a miserable frog catcher, because he was so little, I was afraid to hurt him.  I explained to him that there was a cat on the other side of the door that would love to hurt him, and I was just trying to move him to safety.  We finally agreed to him hopping along the door until he was away from it with the help of my novice frog-herding skills.

It was a nice welcome home for me.  Being the omen-believing girl that I am, I can only assume that it meant something.  In modern association, the frog is considered a sacred animal to Hecate.  (Note: perhaps ancient association, too, but I’ve not found the actual source of it beyond scholarly assumption that she evolved from Heket in Egypt.)  It was determined to get inside my home – Hecate ruling doorways.  Message from the goddess I hold so dear?  I’m thinking so.

I’ve not meditated on it.  Nor do I really plan to on a very formal level.  It means something, but I’m trying my hardest not to read what meaning I want into it.  Reading over various sources for what Frog means has given me a good foundation of understanding and possibilities…

Healing?  Fertility?  Self-transformation?  Yup, I need some of it all right now, thank you.

Okay, I’ve babbled on a little here.  I’m alive and well(ish).  I need to get my baking for the week done and catch up with family.  Hopefully tomorrow I’ll get written what I’ve promised…  Or something.

Oh! And I’m almost at 100 followers! Wow!

With Vernal Equinox around the corner, one way I’m celebrating is by doing the traditional spring cleaning starting with the physical. In my home, we avoid using chemicals as much as possible. While I would like to claim that it’s because we’re green, that part is honestly just an added bonus. The truth is that I’m incredibly sensitive to chlorine bleach and basically any chemical they use in common cleaning compounds.

And, let’s face it; the pre-made natural stuff is expensive. Being thrifty is something I pride myself on, but it’s also necessary for a young couple living on a small amount of money. Blow-by-blow, even with essential oils, you’ll find that using basic natural ingredients cuts costs – I’ve read that it costs so much as 1/10th what regular cleaning supplies cost.

I will note that with natural home cleaning, you’ve got to put a little more elbow grease into some jobs sometimes. The plus side is that you’re probably strengthening something muscle-wise by doing so. At least that’s what I tell myself.

This will be a short series that goes in depth on each item, but today we’re just going to go over building a basic cleaning kit for your home.

So what is in my cleaning kit?

• Baking soda – This is hands-down my go-to product for basically any need in the world, including but not limited to home cleaning. It is a great non-abrasive scrubber, deodorizer, and mild detergent. We buy giant boxes of it in bulk because we use so much of it.
• White distilled vinegar – The strong smell of this goes away after it dries, so don’t fear the stink. This is used in our house as a dissolver for the most part, but you’ll regularly see me sprinkling baking soda and dumping vinegar on afterwards to break up things like a funky coffee pot. Or anything else I can manage to do this to, because there’s nothing I love more than making things fizz and foam like an elementary school cleaning project.
• Lemon – Strongly acidic and a great disinfectant.  I buy it in concentrated powdered form when I can find it since it lasts longer.
• Essential oils – I try to keep clove and tea tree oil around as much as possible for disinfectant purposes. Lavender is also great for the same reason, but I find I get migraines from it.
• Salt – Another great scrubber, especially when added to vinegar or lemon juice.
• Soap – We have tended to buy natural liquid all-pupose cleaner in the past by either Simple Green or Method, but next time I will be purchasing castile soap in bulk along with a couple bars of unscented lye soap. The only thing to avoid are soaps with petroleum distillates.
• Borax – We don’t use this much at this point, but I keep it around for soldering silver, and it sometimes spills over into housecleaning. I have used it in the past to kill roaches, so I’ve always been cautious of it. However, just last month I read that the Environmental Working Group has deemed it unsafe via Mother Earth News I mention it because it’s something you’ll find commonly in green lists. If you’re concerned about fertility, you’ll want to check out the links and consider all of this for yourself, too. Otherwise, just practice logical caution – Wear gloves and a mask when you have to use borax. And don’t eat it despite your whacky hippie recipes telling you to.  Links: Borax Has Issues; You Have Alternatives and Borax: Not the Green Alternative It’s Cracked Up to Be 
• Ethanol or 100 proof alcohol – Not for sipping when you get too stressed out by housework! Okay, maybe a little, but we use it for a disinfectant. I’ve also used it for killing nasties like spider mites on plants. It works double-time for making tinctures. For those living in dry households, you may substitute with isopropyl alcohol.

Optional:

• Cornstarch – Great for shampooing carpets and rugs or using to polish furniture.
• Washing soda – Some use it for bathroom cleaning and using in their laundry. It can be a strong irritant, so use care. Don’t use it on aluminum.

As a note, Glad Rags is having a giant giveaway and they currently have a coupon for 20% off your purchase on their website – Including sale items. Ladies, if you haven’t made the switch to reusable menstrual products but have been thinking about it or are looking for period-friendly items I suggest you check out this great deal. The coupon code is MOVE11. To get in on their giveaway, you’ll need to visit their Facebook page. I’m admittedly a little disappointed by that, because I’d rather not have random people I went to high school with knowing about my feminine hygiene habits.  So I didn’t enter, but I figure I’d share for those of you who aren’t as inhibited as I am.  Haha.

And while you’re on Facebook, check out Ayamanatara who is amazing. She is a multi-denominational shaman. I have had the good fortune of sitting in on one of her classes, and she is truly gifted at her calling. Her Facebok updates are a service on their own, and I find myself pausing when I read them to reflect on what she’s saying.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, three entries in a month with two in the week?! I’m on a roll!

Yesterday I got new glasses for the first time in six years. In that time my prescription went up from a +1 to a +2, which for those non-spectacle-wearers is just short of a whole lot. I liken it to going up three or four pant sizes and somehow still managing to squeeze into your old jeans – Which has also happened to me at one point in my life without realizing it somehow.

Somehow, being the unapologetic living-in-my-brain-more-than-in-the-real-world-type, I am prone to not noticing long-term changes if it changes on a day-to-day basis. Somewhere I read that moving a cat’s litter box or even toilet training them could be done in the same manner – I’m pretty sure cats and I actually live on the same plane of existence. Inch-by-inch you move the litter box. Day-by-day you go a little blinder. Bite-by-bite your butt gets bigger.

But, attempting gently to pull myself away from pondering the size of my rump, I want to return to these most magical glasses that I put on for the first time yesterday. Slipping them on my nose and adjusting them on my nose, I was absolutely shocked. Shocked, I tell you. I managed through small miracle to keep this surprise to a couple dazed blinks in the middle of JC Penney’s optical department.

What was so befuddling, despite knowing that I needed new glasses, was not realizing how badly I had needed them. There are many days, after all, that I hadn’t even bothered wearing them because I thought I was seeing clearly.

Guess what? The world is not soft and fuzzy around the edges – I didn’t even realize I was seeing it as such! My mind was quick to consider all of this, and I had a sudden epiphany that a lot of things in my life have been like the glasses.

Clutter due to winter blahs has made my living space blurry. And let’s face it – My windows, smudged over the month by the wet nose of an excited cat, are about as clean as my old lenses on the final day I wore them.

My attitude, worst of all, hasn’t been as clear and true as it could be.

I suppose that’s what I’m trying to get at… Little by little, it is easy to fall into old habits. I think after 29 years of living, I have just realized this morning that unless I keep on top of things I’ll let life get into a state of disarray without even noticing it. I mean, I realized it before, but thinking on it now caused it to make sense.

There is, of course, a happy medium to it all – Going from completely procrastinating to utter control freak in 24 hours is just a recipe for disaster. Sadly some days I just don’t have the energy to keep on top of things even, but even that is something to work on.

I invite you, though, to take a new look at your life and see if there’s some habit or situation you’ve recently not been seeing clearly. Perhaps, like me, something has changed in such small ways over time that you’ve not noticed the big change. This is the time of year we should be searching out our goals on what we’d like to grow over the upcoming seasons – It’s just like planning your summer gardens!

I know I will be deciding what seeds I want to plant within myself so that I can start cultivating my inner-growth in preparation for Vernal Equinox. I’m thankful that the world gave me the opportunity to see more clearly by finally forcing me to get new glasses at just the right time.