What a weekend.

What a weekend.

Only worked 2 days last week. That part was nice. LOL, & got paid for all 5, even nicer. However......Thursday, official Thanksgiving, we spent at the meeting, as previously noted, that evening was quiet & calm. Friday I worked in My youngests' room, cleaning, purging no longer needed toys, no longer fitting clothes, gathered up 2 bags for Freecycle. rearranged stuff, hung pictures & her awards from school up, & some butterflies Id been keeping for her. Room really looks cute & comfy now. If only she could keep it clean......
Saturday, I spent the day in my eldest's room, doing the same. I was exhausted by days end, Sunday was our big dinner, as some of us are invariably having to work on thanksgiving day. Oh my, did Mom ever outdo herself. She REALLY gets into the cooking part. No wonder I'm fat.LOL
We only had 8 people there, but there was -& still is- enough food for 30!
I'm sure I will be really sick of turkey before it is over. After dinner was over & company had departed, I realized one of our kitties, the Terrorist Kitty himself, was nowhere to be found. Oh shit.
We looked in closets, under beds, in cabinets, in the attic, furnace closet, anywhere you could imagine. No Terrorist Kitty. We grabbed a flashlight & ventured out in the rain, my eldest & I, calling & searching, to no avail.:( Terrorist Kitty was nowhere to be seen. I was going to make another pass in the attic, sat down to talk to Mom for a few & out of the corner of my eye, saw movement. There sat the little shit on the table, calmly licking leftover gravy.......I wanted to choke him. Instead I grabbed him & hugged him. I still have no clue where he managed to hide but I don't care. He wasn't lost outside in the rain & cold. :)
So I deposited him in my daughters hands & went to get ready for bed, already almost 1:30 AM. Bleh. Suddenly a knock on my door, "Mama, come here quick!"
I rush out to see whats wrong & the lights are all off & everyone is gathered by the front door. What in the world?
I peer out & there, on the porch is the biggest, fattest possum I have seen. It was HUGE. Looking for dinner I guess (REALLY glad now Kitty wasn't outside!). He finally wondered off the porch & I went around the side of the house to make sure the trash was secured. Sure enough, it was there, about to tear in. Uh-Uh! No you don't! I stomped my foot & made a hissing sound & that fat little possum ran like hell. LOL
I grabbed the loose bag of trash & moved it higher then walked back inside. How funny.
SO that was my weekend.
Now today, here I sit, workblogging, braindead as hell. Must be something in the air, as everyone in this office is drag-assing around & sluggish. I think I just need caffeine to be injected intravenously & I'll be OK.

Counting my Blessings

I have a lot to be thankful this year. I have a nice home, a fiancee who loves me, family around me, friends I cherish, finances are good, cars are running decently, & looks like this Yule might be rather nice. Health is good, spirituality is higher, what more could I ask for?

While the mice are away...

The cat cleans their rooms out. Time to purge thru everything & get it back in order for the holiday madness that is approaching. Turkey Day here was quiet. Bb's youngest is staying over the long holiday & the girlies are at their fathers house. We actually spent the day at a meeting dinner. Was kind of nice. A bit smoky for me but I hold my breath well.LOL

I'm awfully glad ice King is there. Grateful to be there with him. :-)

Our big dinner is Sunday since Mom works fri & Sat. I cant wait. I'm skipping the Black Friday madness tho. No way I'm going out in the madhouse store, I'm keeping Yule pretty simple this year. I'll do some Xmas decorating just cuz its fun but I try to shy away from the mainstream stuff & stick to the more natural aspects of Yule. We're doing a real Yule tree this year. I haven't had a real one in years. I LOVE the smell of pine! I do hope the 5 freaking psycho cats don't kill it tho. We shall see. promises to be entertaining at the very least.

Voila!

The current floor, as promised......

Found a funny site

http://www.bigdouchebag.com/default.htm
This is great! Check out some of these assholes. It's hilarious!

Praying

To all that is holy & blessed that my inlaws don't get here until tomorrow. I'd REALLY like to sleep in my own bed tonight....

Carpet Sucks part deux

So all the carpets up, the tack boards are up & revealed the floor beneath. Oh my.......
It was in worse shape than Id realized. Sigh.
There were paint splatters, & the finish had worn off in many places & numerous staples all over. Damn
So I commence to scrubbing. The paint comes up. Nothing to be done bout the finish being gone. The staples remain but not for long. They're my next project.
Its not too bad. getting a big throw rug to put over the worst spots. & using a dark colored scratch cover to blend in the lighter places with the darker. ultimate goal is to sand it down & refinish the whole thing but we'll have to be out for awhile before we can do it. it will be worth it. The floor itself is a light oak wood & the boards are actually in pretty good shape, minimal cupping & just a few scratches. Although I don't think it has seen a mop in about 15 years.Yuk.
The water was like mud.....
Anyway, ill take a few pix tomorrow & post em. Toodles!

Reminiscing

Getting sentimental sitting here reading about Christmas gifts. My grandma, without fail every year, sent us a good sized box of gifts, she usually didn't get their names right but I loved every word she wrote. She was the most practical person i ever knew. Never threw anything away & even folded her trash to make less to throw away. I have soo many memories of spending summers with her. I can remember countless days of sitting under her hand made large dining room table that my grandfather made & playing with paper dolls she had painstakingly cut out with me from Sears & JC Penney catalogs. I would be entertained for hours. I remember spending hours admiring her paintings & watching her paint & design them. I was utterly fascinated. She sparked a lifelong interest in art for me. I intend to take back up my pen & begin to draw again, id love to paint as well. She used to sit for hours & tell the most interesting stories of her younger days, the things she had experienced. I'd give anything for more time to listen.

Hi, my name is.......(not Slim Shady)

So I'm reading one of my very favorite blogs over here & I decided to follow suit.
Hello, my name is not David
Hi, my name is Deborah K. Andrews soon to be Gray, but you can call me Mom, Mama, Debb, Aunt Debb or Your Highness. Bitch will do, too. Never in my life have I bungee jumped and frankly, I have no intention of ever doing so. The one person who can drive me absolutely stark raving mad is my well meaning fiancee’, the Ice King. My high school was Redneck Hicksville Catoosa High School. When I'm nervous I wring my hands. The last song I listened to was some song by Eminem. If I were to get married right now it would probably piss the Ice King off pretty bad. My hair is tolerable for the first time in my life. Thank God for Pepsi. When I was 4 I was a total pain in the ass to my sister, BB. Last Christmas, I thought was going to suck & it ended up pretty cool. When I look down I see my big 'ol girls who probably could sit a bit higher than they currently reside.
The happiest recent event was when Jeff got on the wagon. If I were a character on LOST I'd be the one who gets eaten. By this time next year I hope to be half my current size. Twinkies Away!!!!. My current mood is miserable, after our company Thanksgiving dinner. I wanna sleeeeeeep. I have a hard time understanding men..... There's these girls that work in my office & they’re like total bitches.... oops are you reading this?
Shhhhhh. If I won an award, the first person I would tell would be Mom. I want to buy me a new life. I plan to visit Michigan again in January. If you spent the night at my house we'd play on the computer, tuck my girls into bed (well, you'd wait while I did it) then crawl in bed & sleeeeeeeeep. The world could do without any kind of bugs. The most recent thing I've bought myself is a Pepsi, lol. The most recent thing someone else bought me is a Coke.
My middle name is Kaye. In the morning I should just hook myself up to an IV full of caffeine. Last night I was dreaming about sleeping. There's this woman I work with who smells like a dead old person. If I was an animal I'd be a bear & hibernate all winter. A better name for me would be YAWNNNNNNNNNNN. Tomorrow I am going to be scrubbing a wood floor. Tonight I am pulling up tack boards from a wood floor. I wish the asshole that carpeted my current wood floor was a dead motherfucker.

A-ha!

I've found the solution to the floor problem. Ok so the long term solution is sanding & refinishing the floors. However, we need to be out of the house for some I'm & cant walk on it til its dried, 2 or 3 coats of stain & finish. Ok so that sucks.
Sooooo I'm gonna paint it, gonna get a can of a darkish brown floor paint & paint it. When we're ready to sand, it will come up anyway. Who knows, i may like it better.
So that's my brilliant solution.

I hurt.....and carpet sucks

So damned sore. Ice King is kinda pissed off I pulled up the carpet. the floor looks bad......gonna need a lot of work . Its gonna have to be scrubbed, maybe by hand, mopped, sanded, possibly stained & then finished. UGH, the whole FM/CFS shit is kicking my ass right now too, just wanna lie down & sleep a bit.

meanwhile Terorist Kitty is having a ball. He keeps craling under the padding as I pull it up & tries to go to sleep. Apparently he thinks being cute now makes up for this mornings toilet paper shredding incident. hmmmm...he is kinda cute...

But I don't wannnnnnnnnaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Ok, so I agree to yank the livingroom carpet up. Yeah i want it up, its stained & doesn't look very good & there's that stupid &%$&(()()^%())_ cat.................
Does that mean i actually WANT to do it?
nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
I wanna play on here, or blog, or nap, or watch tv, or go down to the river. or, or or.....well, you get the idea. Ive got about 13 of it up. nasty work. dusty, stinky, sweaty work. Don't ever do this unless you're insane.

pagan musings~~something beautiful I found

Pagan Musings
By – Tony Kelly


We're of the Old Religion, sired of Time, and born of our beloved Earth Mother. For too long the people have trodden a stony path that goes only onward beneath a sky that goes only upward. The Horned God plays in a lonely glade for the people are scattered in this barren age and the winds carry His plaintive notes over deserted heaths and reedy moors and into the lonely grasses. Who knows the ancient tongue of the Moon? And who still speaks with the Goddess? The magic of the land of Lirien and the old pagan gods have withered in the dragon's breath; the old ways of magic have slipped into the well of the past, and only the rocks now remember what the Moon told us long ago, and what we learned from the trees and the voices of the grasses and the scent of flowers.
We're Pagans and we worship the Pagan gods, and among the people there are witches yet who speak with the Moon and dance with the Horned One. But a witch is a rare pagan these days, deep and inscrutable, recognizable only by her own kind, by the light in her eyes and the love in her breast, by the magic in her hands and the lilt of her tongue and her knowledge of the real. But the Wiccan way is one way. There are many; there are Pagans the world over who worship the Earth Mother and the Sky Father, the Moon Goddess and the Little People in the mists on the other side of the veil. A Pagan is one who worships the goddesses and gods of Nature, whether by observation or by study, whether by love or adoration, or whether in the sacred rites with the Moon or the great festivals of the Sun.
Many suns ago, as the pale dawn of reason crept across the pagan sky, man grew out of believing in gods. He has yet to grow out of disbelieving in them. He who splits the Goddess on an existence/non-existence dichotomy will earn himself only paradoxes, for the gods are not so divided and neither are the magic lands of the Brother of Time. Does a mind exist? Ask her and she will tell you "yes" but seek her out and she'll elude you. She is in every place, and you'll see her works in all places, but herself in none. Existence was the second-born from the Mother's Womb and contains neither the first-born nor the unborn. Show us your mind, and we'll show you the gods! No matter that you cannot, for we cannot show you the gods. But come with us and the Goddess Herself will be our love and the God will call the tune. But a brass penny for your reason! For logic is a closed ring, and the child does not validate the Mother, nor the dream the dreamer. And what matter the wars of opposites to she who has fallen in love with a whirlwind or to a lover of the arching rainbow.
But tell us of your Goddess as you love her, and the gods that guide your works, and we'll listen with wonder, for to do less would be arrogant. But we'll do more, for the heart of man is aching for memories only half forgotten, and the Old Ones only half unseen. We'll write the old myths as they were always written and we'll read them on the rocks and in the caves and in the deep greenwood shade, and we'll see them in the storm clouds, and in the evening mists, and we'll hear them in the rippling mountain streams and the rustling of the leaves. We've no wish to bring differences together; differences are like different flowers in a meadow, and we are all one in the Mother.
What need is there for a Pagan movement since our religion has no teachings and we hear it in the wind and feel it in the stones and the Moon will still dance with us when she will? There is a need. For a long time has the Divider been among the people and the tribes of man are no more. The sons of the Sky Father have all but conquered Nature, but they have poisoned her breast and the Mother is sad for the butterflies are dying and the night crawls on. A curse on the conquerors! But not of us, for they curse themselves for they are nature, too. They have stolen our magic and sold it to the mindbenders and the mindbenders tramp a maze that has no outlet for they fear to go down into the dark waters, and they fear the real for the One who guards the path.
Where are the Pagan shrines? And where do the people gather? Where is the magic made? And where is the Goddess and the Old Ones? Our shrines are in the fields and on the mountains, in the stars and in the winds, deep in the greenwood and on the algal rocks where two streams meet. But the shrines are deserted, and if we gathered in the arms of the Moon for our ancient rites to rule the Mother's land and claim rights of ownership on the Mother's breast, and make laws of division and frustration for us. We can no longer gather with our gods in a public place and the old rites of communion have been driven from the towns and cities ever deeper into the heath where barely a handful of heathens have remained to guard the old secrets and enact the old rites. There is magic in the heath far from the cold gray society, and there are islands of magic hidden in the entrails of the metropolis behind closed doors, but the people are few, and the barriers between us are formidable. The old religion has become a dark way, obscure, and hidden in the protective bosom of the night. Thin fingers turn pages of books while the sunshine seeks in vain for his worshippers in his leafy glades.
Here, then, is the basic reason for the Pagan Movement. We must create a Pagan society wherein everyone shall be free to worship the gods and goddesses of nature, and the relationship between the worshipper and her gods shall be sacred and inviolable, provided only that in her love for her own gods she doesn't curse the gods of another.
It's not yet our business to press the lawmakers with undivided endeavor to unmake the laws of regression and, with the Mother's love, it may never become our business for the shifting tides of dogmatism are at last already in ebb. Our first work, and our greatest wish, is to come together, to be with each other in our tribes for we haven't yet grown from the Mother's breast to the stature of gods. We're of the earth, and sibs to all the children of wild nature, born long ago in the warm mud of the ocean floor; we were together when, beguiled by the pride of the Sky Father, and forgetful of the Mother's love, we killed her earlier-born children and impoverished the old genetic pool. The Red Child yet lives in America; the Black Child has not forsaken the gods; the old Australians are still with their nature gods; the Old Ones still live deep in the heart of Mother India; and the White Child has still a foot on the Old Wiccan Way, but Neanderthal is no more and her magic fades as the Lli and the Archen burst their banks and the ocean flowed in to divide the Isle of Eire from the land of the White Goddess. Man looked with one eye on the two-faced god when he reached for the heavens and scorned the Earth which alone is our life and our provider and the bosom to which we have ever returned since the dawn of time.
He who looks only to reason to plumb the unfathomable is a fool, for logic is an echo already implicit in the question, and it has no voice of its own; but he is no greater fool that he who scorns logic and derides its impotence from afar, but fears to engage in fair combat when he stands on his opponent's threshold. Don't turn your back on Reason, for his thrust is deadly; but confound him and he'll yield for his code of combat is honorable. So here is more work for the pagan movement. Our lore has been encrusted over the ages with occult trivia and the empty vaporings of the lost. The occult arts are in a state of extreme decadence; astrology is in a state of disrepute and fears to confront the statistician's sword; alien creeds oust our native arts and, being as little understood as our own forgotten arts, are just as futile for their lack of understanding, and more so for their unfamiliarity. Misunderstanding is rife. Disbelief is black on every horizon, and vampires abound on the blood of the credulous; it has no place in the heart of the pagan.
But while we are sad for those who are bemused by Reason, we are deadened by those who see no farther than his syllogisms as he turns the eternal wheel of the Great Tautology. We are not fashioned in the mathematician's computations and we were old when the first alchemist was a child. We have walked the magic forest, bewitched in the old Green Things; we have seen the cauldron and the one become many and the many in one; we know the Silver Maid of the moonlight and the sound of cloven feet. We have heard the pipes on the twilight ferns and we've seen the spells of the Enchantress, and Time, stilled. We've been into eternal darkness where the Night Mare rides and rode to the edge of the Abyss, and beyond, and we know the dark face of the Rising Sun . Spin a spell of words and make a magic knot; spin it on the magic loom and spin it with the gods. Say it in the old chant and say it to the Goddess, and in Her name. Say it to a dark well and breathe it on a stone. There are no signposts on the untrodden path, but we'll make our rituals together and bring them as our gifts to the Goddess and God in the great rites. Here, then, is our work in the Pagan Movement: To make magic in the name of our gods, to share our magic where the gods would wish it and to come together in the ancient festivals of birth, and life, and death and of change in the old rhythm. We'll print the rituals that can be shared in the written word; we'll do all in our power to bring the people together, to teach those who would learn, to learn from those who can teach. We'll initiate groups, bring people to groups, and groups to other groups, in our common devotion to the goddesses and gods of nature. We will not storm the secrets of any coven, nor profane the tools, the magic and still less, the gods of another.
We'll collect the myths of all ages, of our people and of the pagans of other lands, and we'll study the books of the wise and we'll talk to the very young. And whatever the pagan needs in her study, or her worship, then it is our concern, and the business of the Movement will be to do everything possible to help each other in our worship of the gods we love.
We are committed to the lone pagan on the seashore, with he who worships in the vastness of a mountain range or she who sings the old chants in the lost valley far from the metalled road. We are committed to the wanderer, and equally with the prisoner, disinherited from the Mother's milk in darkness of the industrial wrens. We are committed, too, to the coven, with the circular dance in the light of the full moon, with the great festivals of the sun, and the gatherings of the people. We are committed to build our temples in the towns and in the wilderness, to buy lands and the streams from the landowners and give them to the Goddess for her children's use, and we'll replant the greenwood as it was of old for her love of the dryad stillness, and for the love of our children's children. When the streams flow clear and the winds blow pure and the sun never more sets unreknowned nor the moon rides in the skies unloved; when the stones tell of the Horned God and the greenwood grows deep to call back her own; then our work will be ended and the Pagan Movement will return to the beloved womb of our religion, to the nature goddesses and gods of paganism.

Reflections

Went to a concernt today at my daughter's school. The school houses the middle school & the high school. We all sat in the auditorium, high & midde school kids crammed in all around us. It took me back in time. For a few moments I was transported back to being an awkward gangly 13 year old all over again. A kid trying to fit in & trying to be unobtrusive at the same time. It really wasnt a good feeling. I wouldnt relive those days for anything. Sure, theres things Id love to be able to change, like maybe standing up for yself a little more & a little sooner. Maybe telling off the Maureen Brauner's & Shannon Willsey's who used to make fun of me & taunt me for no good reason, except that I was then & still am my own person. Maybe even telling the Mike Given's & the Brett Rozell's of that world to piss off &leave me be. Maybe..
I was not your cookie cutter blonde cheerleader kid & I wasnt a jock. I wasnt even a band 'geek' kid. I kind of stood out, quiet, sensitive & more in my own little world than in the world of hell that was middle school. By the time 7th grade rolled around, I had grown a thincker skin & grown a bit more confident. I still remember slapping Shannon across the face in 7th grade PE class. The teacher never said a word to me...
I can remember in 8th grade , desperately wanting to be someone else. Alas, it never happened, now Im pretty much glad Im who I am, sure, as a fat chick, Id like there to be less of me, but me, my inner self, she's ok.
Back to reality......her concert was great. She sang beautifully. Standing up proud & beautiful. I wonder if she ever feels like I used to?

Yawnnnnnnnnnn

I am sooooo tired. This whole time change bullshit sucks. I love feeling like IM sleeping in , in the mornings, but the day draggggggggggggggggs so bad , especially in the afternoon. Yawnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
I need to get outside this weekend, but have TONS to do before Ice King's mom & step dad come down. Sigh............in-laws................ Need I say more?
Hopefully it won't be too bad. Theyre scheduled to be here on Sunday, I.K. has his surgery on Monday, then they leave on Tuesday. I can run away tuesday but will be at the mercy on sun & monday. Have sooooo much to do, need to get the entire house cleaned from top to bottom, work on a few projects there, We're going to rip the carpet up in the liv room & expose the hardwood floors. hopefully theyre not in terrible shape. No clue whats waiting for us, but its got to be better than the carpet thats there now. Gonna muck out the girls' rooms too, theyre scary.....remember my Pit of Death post? All over again. When we painted, I never got their rooms re-organized so they're toal messes now. Wheeeeeee
I cant say much tho, our room isnt much better, especially since our closet threw up all over the bedroom.......
Well, thats a little drastic, actually the cat did it, yes you heard me right, the cat killed the closet. The closet cieiling anyway, he found a way to access the attic one night & the attic stairs(which inhabit our room) descended on their own (so we thought) one night. I almost peed the bed! The cat rode the stairs down! Then a few nights later, he got into the closet, we hadnt seen him all day, apparently he found a way into the attic yet again, this time he brought part of the closet ceiling down. Now we have this nice big open hole to our attic & the air coming off it is like a refrigerator. But hey, it saves on the A/c bill right?

Peaceful

This has been a very peaceful weekend. I am blessed. I have a lot to be thankful for. I have a fiancee I love very much, who is going thru incredible lengths to make the most of himself & our lives. I am very proud of him. For those of you with access, you know whats been going on. If you don't & you think you are worthy, comment & i might give you access.;-)

I have 2 gorgeous wonderful girls who I am blessed to be a mother to, they are a joy in my life. I have 3 great stepsons whom I wish I could spend more time with. I have a great mom who I wish I could do more for. I want to see her retired & soon. I have a wonderful extended family & many awesome friends who support me in all I do.I also have a great job I actually like. I have a nice home, nice vehicles & a lot of things to fill my home. All in all I think I'm doing pretty good. Thank you my Goddess, thank you. I am grateful.:-)

All's Quiet

On the Okie front. it's been pretty peaceful. I pray for the best. :-)
Girls are home this weekend & my niece & nephew in law, (who are expecting their 1st child) are staying the weekend as well. This is Bb's younger daughter, who stayed behind in order to finish up her education. I think they're gonna make great parents & I'm excited for them. Scared too, as this is her very first.With luck, all goes well & we'll soon have a new little one amongst us. Shes due in May.