Michael and Jaspenelle

igoogle

Today is a good day for Spring Cleaning, mostly because a little more the two inches of snow fell last night, so there is no way I am going outside! The nice thing about the weather warming is that all that nasty white stuff has melted off for the most part by now, leaving us with beautiful huge mud puddle slushies. Wouldn’t Damian have loved to dive bomb into ones of those (meeting his daily dirty quota all at once.) Granted, even I may have had the urge to go jump in one, but alas I have no wellies - do they make orange ones?

Anyhow so today has been mostly an indoor day, diaper changes, pizza dough making, pantry organizing, breastfeeding, laundry folding, mopping, sweeping, washing and otherwise boring-to-the-eyes-of-others housewife stuff. All while listening to mind-rotting progressive radio no less. I blogged earlier too I suppose and I identified ones of the birds in my yard using WhatBird. I think. I am 99% sure they are White-crowned Sparrows, but the site said they are only around here in the summer. They must have been confused by the snow, I can relate.

Anyhow, to overwhelm your boredom receptors even further, while I was doing all this stuff, I realized that I lack the necessarily lists to keep track of what the heck I am doing. Enter igoogle.

I have used my igoogle pages as my home page for several months, since it displays my most frequented news feeds, a twitter gadget and my email on one page. I didn’t realize that there were some other really cool gadgets out there too though. I found a wonderful To Do List one today, so I put three of them on my homepage (did I mention I like lists?) One of my daily chores, one of my weekly chores and one for the monthly/seasonal chores.

So far it is working fantastically well, because every time I sit down to waste time work on my computer, I see my to do lists and am guilted motivated to get back to work!

Speaking of getting back to work…

By the Lake

Taken while gathering reeds on Oimelc for Brighid’s crosses.

Frosted Trees

Frosted Needles

Dream: Snake Moon

Last night I had a dream that Raveness (I read her blog over on livejournal) was giving me a tattoo in Greg’s (my father-in-law) office, he has a CPA business. For some reason Greg’s landlord had rented out half of the building to a tattoo parlor. There was a glass wall down the middle. Though Raveness was present through most of the dream, I don’t think we talk about anything substantial. We were talking though.

The tattoo was bizarre to say the least. The central design of the tattoo was encircled by one of my sun designs but it seemed to be shifting around, as if the rays were real. Raveness was just finishing the centeral design when I came into the dream. It was a snake in the form of a waxing crescent moon. It’s tail was the top point of the crescent, the body coiled back and forth to make up the main middle section and the head was the bottom point. It was holding a lantern in its mouth. The tattoo was on my back, behind my manipura chakra (solar plexus.) I mention this chakra because I remember thinking specifically about that in the dream. The snake was a part of that chakra, that thought made more sense in the dream.

At one point I got distracted and when I looked back at the mirror the “moon” was full. The snake was coiled in a circle, head in the middle, it’s eyes made of stars. The eyes were more more then eyes though, they seemed to be holes in me and the stars were inside me, shining through. At the same time, the eyes seemed to be looking at me too. Not sure where the lantern was at this point, maybe outside the sun disk…

Though the dream was black and white, the tattoo seemed to shine like tarnished silver, but it hinted at gold tones too, the same hues as Mexican gold. The whole tattoo seemed to have a life of its own, but it was definitely drawn on my skin.

Michael came by to pick me up. We were living with my mother, or she was living with us, I think the latter. I was trying to figure out how to hide it from her because I was concerned the moving tattoo would freak her out. I also didn’t think she would approve and didn’t want to make any waves. Then in the middle of those thoughts, the roof suddenly collapsed, snow came pouring in (we have had over 60 roof collapsed from snow load around Spokane in the past week, so this isn’t as random as it seems, as it has been on my mind recently.) My brother was standing at the edge of the hole in the roof for some reason and saw my tattoo.

We all got outside safely and he came down from the roof and teasing me that he was going to tell mom. At that point I didn’t really care anymore though. Marko (my boyfriend before I was with Michael) was in the crowd outside, which I noticed only fleetingly then, but seems to be hanging on my mind now that I am awake. My thoughts were drifting at this point between being really pleased with my tattoo and being worried about Greg’s work. Everything felt so surreal.

At some point during these thoughts I woke up.

Just Stuff

In the past three weeks we have had nearly 60 inches of snow, that makes this the snowiest December on record for Spokane. Up until now it had all been dry snow but yesterday we had over five inches of heavy wet snow, we might have 5 more tonight. Three roofs around town collapsed today. Our roof was creaking on and off too, a little disconcerting, but I think it was just the wind since it has not made some much as a peep today. I called management about it though, not that they are going to do anything, I have been calling them daily about my busted dishwasher and still nothing. In February we are probably going to start to look for a house since our lease is up at the end of March I think. Hopefully all this snow will have given way to Spring by then.

I just realized that it is only 10 more days till my 23rd birthday (January 9th.) I don’t usually think about my birthday that much but for some reason it seems particularly exciting this year. Not that I have anything special planned. Maybe I will make myself a cake.

I have been under the weather for a few days, hopefully that will go away before my day. My back pain went away as mysteriously as it showed up, leaving behind general aches, pains and a scratchy throat. Can’t wait to feel better so I can get back to learning to bellydance. I still have to get out to the store to buy knitting needles so I can start working through my dvd about that. Learning to bellydance and knit are on my dreamboard for projects to accomplish this year.

Damian has been doing well, he decided he wanted solid food instead of one of his nursings today. My little guy is growing up! I have had two or three people ask me when I am going to wean him lately, or suggesting that I do so, which I don’t really get. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends breastfeeding for at least one year and as long as mutually desired by mother and child beyond that and the World Health Organization recommends breastfeeding for at least two years. I think they have more weight in my decision then someone’s uninformed opinion. So no, I am not going to be weaning Damian any time some.

I bought Michael a songbook called Songs for Earthlings and it arrived yesterday. I am really pleased with it. It is 390 pages of Pagan songs and chants for all occasions, including sheet music. There is a section on music theory in it so I am trying to learn to read music with it. I got Michael a keyboard a couple years ago so now he has some stuff to actually play with it. If you are into Pagan music, I really recommend it, it is the only one like it out there I think.

Anyhow I’m going to go sit with Michael while he plays Deep and Fallow.

State of Emergency

We are listening to the news on the radio right now. The power is out downtown, apparently an underground vault blew up, they are talking about huge plumes of smoke and fire. Avista (the power company) says it is probably not because of the snow, but definitely bad timing. People are not stopping at the lights (which are out) and that is causing even more problems. No numbers on how many are without power, Avista’s office lost power too (ain’t that ironic?)

My prayers go to the people now without heat on this Christmas Eve.

Mayor Verner declared a state of emergency for Spokane today. Snow is still falling, still breaking records, over 40 inches here since last Tuesday, which is unbelievable for this area. Still more expected tomorrow, maybe 10 inches, and it is wet snow now, so much heavier. A local businesses roof collapsed yesterday and I have been seeing people shoveling roofs off since. Spokane Valley also declared a state of emergency. Sounds like the governor just declared one for the whole state too.

Suddenly my UPS packages being two days late doesn’t seem so bad.

Merry Christmas?

Snow Angels in Spokane

I ran across this video on Anibunny’s blog.

It is exactly what I needed to boost my spirits this evening!

Winter Solstice

I could post about the weekend, or my usual sabbat write up, or link to my podcast but, my write up needs some final touches, as does the podcast… As for posting about my weekend, it was wonderful but I am tuckered out! So I will write more tomorrow, but I wanted to say

Home Again, Home Again

I should probably update everyone to let you know Michael got home safe and sound. Our van is still stuck at our friends, we will try to retrieve it tomorrow or Saturday. A coworker with a Jeep and chains brought him home, he is also taking him to work and back tomorrow as well.

The snow finally tapered off a two or three hours ago, we are to expected scattered snow showers through the night, maybe another inch or two of snow. We have about 28 inches on our patio, another two inches won’t make much of a difference at this point. Coeur d’Alene (just east of us) received just over three feet of snow. Records broken all around.

Now to dig out!