Food, Health, Kids, Keystones

It's Monday, the first two kids have made it safely back to Pittsburgh and we're in for another round of intense germ-fighting with the second two. Though it seems to be going better -- Jerilynn's cough, which apparently persisted all of last week without any relief, has almost disappeared after less than 24 hours with us. So I consider that a win. On the other hand, she managed to dump almost an entire water bottle full of water on herself and the bed in the middle of the night last night, put a pillow over the spill and then promptly forgot about it until after breakfast this morning. So all the sheets and the bed padding are back in the wash for the second time in as many days, and I'm hoping the soaked couch cushions won't be too much worse for wear if we can give them the day to dry out. But it means instead of spending the morning in bed resting, the kids are both out in the living room and I have no space on the desk to work, so I'm in our bedroom. With iced coffee. Trying to chill out a little bit.

It's weird how different the two pairs of kids are. Josh and Savanah are very clearly the loud, bossy ones, very intense, and you have to explain things to them two or three times (like about which shower door to use). They listen, they insist they understand, and then when they mess up they always have some weird justification for why they just weren't paying attention and they'll argue with you about it for very stupid reasons instead of just apologizing and trying to be more considerate in the future. (Even though I gave S her own dedicated trash can and tissue box, we're still finding random dirty tissues stuffed into couch cushions, though while Jeff was making the airport exchange yesterday I did a pretty thorough cleaning of every room in the house.) Jerilynn and Fiona, on the other hand, are pretty good at listening the first time, and Fiona especially is about ten times better at listening and thinking things through before doing something than her oldest sister is. But if they do make a mistake, they're much more likely to try to hide it and lie about it, hoping to just not get caught, instead of trying to justify or explain it away. If they do get caught, they just say sorry and try to downplay it and move on as quickly as possible (and all of this is more true of Jerilynn than Fiona). Totally makes sense, if they're dealing with other family members who are super bossy, tending towards melodrama and eager to argue every minor point until they're blue in the face. So on the one hand, J and F are the "easy ones," but on the other, you never know when you're going to discover some weird thing after the fact. Like when they arrived, several outfits in their bag were damp and moldy. No idea why or how it happened (J says the bag got wet during their layover in Chicago, but even if that were the case, that doesn't explain the mold). We were planning to wash everything anyway to try to degermify everything (which is how we discovered the mold to begin with), and it's easy to blame Emily for being an incredibly bad example of cleanliness and not bothering to do simple things like wash the kids laundry (apparently, each kid only has enough outfits to last a single week... and that's regardless of weather or season, which is kind of insane and makes us wonder where the hell Jeff's child support money is going if it's not to buy his kids some decent clothes). On the other hand, J did just demonstrate that she's prone to spilling things, hiding the fact and then forgetting about it. On the other other hand, Jeff and I are at least paying enough attention to realize this and then take the necessary steps to keep things clean, instead of leaving everything for our fucking legally blind housekeeper to take care of when she comes by once a week. At least J hasn't said anything about the gluten issue (I think the talk we had with her during solstice hit home), but she is still obsessing about her weight and talking about how she needs to eat less because she's too fat. Disturbingly, Josh said something similar last week about how he's too fat. I really, really hate the fact that these kids live in a house with people who are so immature and insecure that they have to project their own weight and health problems onto their children. Not to mention that most of what they eat is meat and butter based meals, so even though neither of them are actually overweight by any stretch of the imagination, it's probably true that they do need to eat more fruits and vegetables than they are probably getting at their mom's house. Did I mention that being a long-distance stepparent sucks?

Speaking of weight and health, though, Jeff said the other night that he's hit his lowest weight and fat percentage in something like two years, which is awesome. We've been doing lots of hiking and spending time outside on weekends (and also these two weeks in the afternoons with the kids), which I'm sure is helping, though biking to work also probably helps. I'm wondering if the cooking with Leah is also making a difference, since it's a chance for Jeff to experiment with food. I know that Jeff really loves thinking about and working with food, and sometimes I feel bad that cooking just doesn't interest me that much. It's not that I don't enjoy and appreciate (and understand the value of) good, healthy food and how that impacts my body and my physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual health. But I just don't spend much of my time thinking about cooking, it doesn't interest me that much. Cooking is like chemistry -- there are lots of really interesting ways to combine things, and some people love that experimentation and exploration. I'm a hunter-gatherer, not a cook. I like having simple foods I can eat right away whenever I'm hungry, especially fresh fruits and veggies, and I don't have the interest necessary to spend lots of time in preparation and experimentation. That's awesome if other people do, especially if they don't mind sharing the results. But left to my own devices, I pretty much always revert back to hunter-gatherer mode, not complex agricultural we-have-to-burn-this-with-fire-before-it's-edible mode.

I think this might also have parallels with health and exercise. Someone shared a link on Twitter to a blog post written by a fat-acceptance/fat-positive blogger, in which the blogger proudly (read: maybe a bit defensively) declares that she just isn't interested in being healthy, and that should be okay, who are we to judge her? Now, I can totally understand if what she means is that she isn't interested in the kind of compartmentalized, weekend-warrior exercise-routine madness that some people do. Personally, I've always rather liked trying out different exercise routines, and I've been my healthiest when I've done a combination of meditation and regular exercise like that... but just like cooking isn't for everybody, that approach to exercise isn't for everybody either. I do think it's probably a bad idea to conflate this with "being healthy," though, in the same way it's a mistake to think that because I don't care much about cooking that therefore I don't care about the quality of the food that I eat and how it affects my body. For some people, particular forms of exercise are like hobbies, that require all kinds of special equipment and training. But you can be perfectly healthy without doing that kind of thing, and plenty of people who are into that stuff aren't necessarily all that healthy. Same thing with food. You can really love food, but not necessarily eat shitty bad-for-you foods all the time. In fact (and this is one of those fat-shaming bingo phrases that people freak out about, but I'm going to say it anyway): the better food you eat, the more you actually enjoy it. So go nuts, eat lots of food. And be whatever shape and size you are. The point is that there are many, many ways to be healthy, and lots of them are easy and natural. We are biologically designed to be healthy, and living in the kind of civilization we do -- with sanitation and indoor plumbing and a wide variety of medical practices from herbal remedies to acupuncture to modern Western medicine -- most of us won't die of things that might have killed our ancestors. But saying you don't want to be healthy is like saying you don't like breathing. I just don't believe it. Everyone wants to be healthy and feel good, and to be physically capable of doing the things they enjoy doing without feeling sore, exhausted, breathless or queasy.

The problem isn't that we're being super-judgy by expecting people to want to be healthy... it's that a lot of our social structures and institutions undermine what should otherwise be a completely natural aspect of our lives. It'd be like if, in order to get fresh air and not die of lung cancer, you had to drive out to special "fresh air bubbles" in the countryside once a week where membership cost $100/month. Yeah, if that were the case, then people would be perfectly justified in saying they resent having to put even more of their time and money towards that and they're just "not that interested" in fresh air. Likewise, when most people have to earn a living sitting in a tiny, dimly lit cubicle staring at a computer screen and eating grease-drenched meals out of a food truck during a "working lunch break".... they might feel resentful at being expected to put even more time, energy and money towards good food and exercise, when those things should be naturally, easily and freely available to everyone. I mean, you're already putting so many hours into a shitty way of life just to get by, and then people expect you to give up your free leisure time to do something that's unnecessarily difficult instead of being able to use that time to do something you want to do? That totally sucks. But this is a social problem and requires a social solution. If, instead of demanding that healthy food and lifestyles be readily available to everyone and that obstacles to healthy living be reduced or removed, we throw up our hands and say we're just "not interested in being healthy," we're doing not only ourselves but everyone else a disservice, too. We're making it harder for everyone to be healthy, by not demanding that healthy living be a viable, natural way of life supported by social infrastructure.

Speaking of things that make health easy... I wish there was an easy way to make iced tea. Jeff and I have been drinking this iced coffee (instead of soda) which is super easy to make -- it's just an instant organic coffee mix, combined with a tiny bit of sugar, almond milk, some chocolate or other flavoring if desired, and then heated (but not boiling) water added to top it off. Shake until frothy for an iced latté drink. The result is a luke-warm mix that can be poured immediately over ice or stuck in the fridge, and you can make it in small enough batches that one jar will last one or two days, which is the perfect amount and a small enough container that it won't get shoved to the back of the fridge and forgotten about like all of our taller containers. Making iced tea is a pain in the ass. I haven't found a good way to make iced tea quickly in a way that doesn't involve not only steeping the tea, but then allowing the mixture to sit and cool for another hour or so before being able to put it in the fridge, let alone drink it. Leah mentioned finding a good iced tea recipe for us, but most of the ones I've seen online involve adding all sorts of extras like fruit juices and herbal blends to change the way they taste. Again, I feel like there's an assumption that my disinterest in cooking comes from not enjoying the taste of food, or because cooking is hard, rather than from the pretty straightforward fact that there are just things I want to be doing with my time other than elaborate prep that takes longer than the meal. I tend to drink tea plain whetever kind it is and I enjoy simple teas, anyway, so a complex iced tea recipe with all sorts of extras and lots of steps is probably just going to leave me even less motivated to make iced tea than before. Anyway, what I want is an easy to way to make "instant" iced tea that won't result in a jar that's too hot to pick up for an hour but that still allows the tea to steep relatively quickly. I think the best approach might be to brew a super-strong concentrate, and then add cool water to end up with the same kind of luke-warm mix as the iced coffee, that can be put over ice right away or stored in the fridge.

The fact that I've spent even this much time thinking about how to make iced tea, instead of writing about something else, is starting to discourage me. But I'm taking the morning to do some free-associative journaling, since I spent all of last week working on my next column for Aontacht.

Speaking of which! I've been expanding the outline for that column series, so now it's definitely going to be at least four parts, but possibly more. I've been thinking about ways to expand this series into an e-course that will last four to six weeks, with emails going out about twice weekly with short articles, follow-up resources and recommended exercises. From there, the entire thing can probably be expanded into a short ebook of 60 or so pages. I'm also trying to brainstorm something similar for SageWoman, so that each of my columns can be the building blocks for longer works that we can produce through FF&C as online long-distance learning courses and ebooks. Only doing one podcast episode each month will give us lots more time to develop these other aspects of FF&C, instead of always leaving them on the back-burner and spending all of our time on the podcast research and editing. I'm hoping that after we get some feedback about the correspondence e-course, I can develop an in-person workshop along similar lines, especially for people in the local area. It's one thing to talk in broad, abstract terms about the importance of grounding your spiritual practice in the local landscape. It's a totally different thing to actually teach people directly about the specifics of their own landscape. Since Aontacht has a wide readership in the U.S., Europe and Australia, it's pretty much impossible to get specific, though I do end up using a lot of examples from my own bioregion since that's what I'm most familiar with. But what I'd really love to do is actually work with people to transition from "this is why it's important to work with the local bioregion" to "this is how these big ideas translate into specific relationships and practices involving this bioregion." I can only really do that if I work in-person with people who live in this area. But starting with a basic structure for the workshop and/or multi-workshop training course by building up a long-distance e-course is a good place to start and makes the work much more manageable.

I do love working with people in-person, though. It was awesome going to the ponds twice last week with Savanah and Josh, not only because it gave us more time outside but because the critters we encountered were quite different on the different days. Including this beauty:


Who hung out only a dozen yards away for much of the time we were there. This brings me back, again, to why it's so important to show up and do the work, even while acknowledging just how big a role grace plays in how our spiritual encounters in the wild are going to be. I've been reading a lot about Taoist philosophy and, to a lesser extent, ritual (especially movement-meditations like QiGong and T'ai Chi) -- I'm very drawn to the simplicity of these types of approaches, and I feel like it would be very beneficial to inject some of this simplicity back into modern Paganism. I know lots of Pagans are drawn to the elaborate, arcane ritual work of ceremonial magic and reconstructionist traditions, and I do enjoy crafting rituals like that for some holidays. But for daily work, I think developing a strong foundation of simple practices that open us up to the presence of spirit(s) and grace is really important. I think that's why I've enjoyed working with and building on this idea of the "keystones" so much. The Keystones are so important to a landscape, and their presence can be seen everywhere if you know how to look for the signs, but actually encountering them directly is often a moment of grace, an encounter with mystery and surprise that you can't plan for, though you can definitely seek it out. This is why, as good as meditation and visualization is, I don't think it's sufficient for regular spiritual work. It's too easy for that kind of work to devolve into navel-gazing, and if you're going to be doing that kind of work with any intensity, you almost need some kind of teacher or mentor to hold you accountable and keep you grounded in the world beyond your own mind. If you don't have that kind of teacher or friend, you need to make yourself an apprentice to the world itself, and show up to the world around you as much as possible in order to be open to the presence and grace of the divine acting in the world. My best meditative practices have always been sitting quietly in a natural setting watching what's going on around me, rather than the times I sit inside in my own home, eyes closed, trying to "clear my mind" (or visualize some natural scene, for that matter, though both of those techniques can be good for getting to know your own mind). As usual, I think it comes down to balance, and knowing how to cultivate the kind of self-reflection that makes natural observation and movement-meditation the most effective and meaningful. When developing this e-course and ebook, I want to focus on finding a way to strike that balance with the lessons and exercises, so that regardless of the student's strengths or weaknesses, they will have some things that challenge and stretch them in one way or the other.

Jeff just stopped me to let me know that, astrologically, right now the moon is new (in fact, literally right now, as I'm typing this, it's both new and only about ten minutes away from being at its peak elevation for the day) -- so, this is a good time for intention setting. Tomorrow, something's going on with Ares (blanking on the details), which means that things are going to move pretty fast towards whatever intentions I'm setting today. So I think the rest of this week would be a good time to finish working on the outline for the remaining columns for Aontacht and maybe start brainstorming ways to expand that into an ecourse. I want to be able to launch the ecourse for FF&C Pro Members by Beltane, May 1, if not sooner. I'd also like to be a good way done with the book so that the final ecourse lesson can include an offer to purchase the book for people who want to continue working with the Keystones more in-depth.

But now, it's lunch time! Soup!

Post-Ritual Drag (And Moontide Blues)

It's becoming increasingly obvious to me that one area I need to focus on in my spiritual practice is working to regulate my energy. This is probably a combination of easing up on myself when I'm working too hard, and finding both mundane and magical ways of maintaining my energy levels through low periods.

And I do mean periods. I had been hoping to perform last night's protection ritual earlier in the week, riding the tide of the just-past-full moon, but I was slammed by my usual 2-to-3-day phase of intense pain and complete exhaustion that occurs every month. Every month. Recently, I had hoped perhaps I could somehow manage to avoid it. I've been eating better and exercising more routinely, and my energy levels have not just been higher, but downright awesome. Last month's moodtides laid me low, but it was in the wake of the custody hearing and a week with my parents, so I naturally attributed the energy lag to the stress, and within a day or two I was back on my feet. This month, I was disappointed and frustrated to find that all that awesome energy and vitality I'd been feeling for the last few weeks suddenly fled as quickly as usual, leaving me a sack of meat, fat and bones barely able to raise myself up in bed, let alone change out of pajamas and get my shit together.

For anyone (all two of you) reading this and wondering: it is extremely frustrating and embarrassing to have a regularly scheduled illness every month that slams you in the stomach like clockwork, especially when you're as intense and serious-minded as I am, and especially in a culture in which Successful, Serious People are supposed to be On the Ball all the time. Promises that birth control would help mitigate symptoms turned out to be empty promises, just compounding my usual fatigue and pain with morning sickness.

Yesterday, my energy was finally climbing back up to usual levels, and so Jeff and I dove into ritual. This morning, my energy was pretty good (I wrote that blog post, didn't I? yes I did, while walking on the treadmill).

Now, Jeff is on his way home, biking seven miles like a boss, and I feel like I can barely keep my eyes open. Physical sensations include: a headache that stretches across my temples, tension in my neck, eyes that feel tired and dry, muscles that feel flabby and somewhat tingly, feet that feel cold (my whole body generally feels cold), and an overall feeling of my old bag of flesh and bones being too heavy to shift around properly and hold steady. This is par for the course after a period, but it feels as though the effects were prolonged this month because of the energy work I did last night.

So..... items for the to-do list:
• Work on evening out my energy levels through the month so that, for the sake of slightly calmer highs, I don't find myself at such disruptively and frustratingly low lows.
• Work on post-ritual energy reboot to keep me grounded and healthy.

I really am not a witch. I really dislike being a female body sometimes, and my euphemistic moontides have been a bitch for most of my life. This is not oh-isn't-it-magical-and-special-to-be-a-woman time. Puberty was not a blessing. Menopause just might be. But let's take things one step at a time. I celebrate the sun. That's why I'm a Druid. But my fiery goddess has put me on hold for a little while and counseled me to get my act together and find a better balance, because otherwise she's fed up with me and my burn out.

So. Sorta-moon goddess, you're up. Let's do this thing. You aid women in labor, and this monthly round of gut-punching pain and bloodloss feels close enough to me. Let's say you and me work this out.

First things first:
• I'm going to make a list of activities that help me regenerate and re-energize, and see if I can get some healthy habits going. Same goes for foods.
• I'm going to make a list of activities and foods that deplete my energy and resources, and try to do better at avoiding them.
• I'm going to turn my morning meditations towards more deliberate energy work.
• I'm going to keep doing Tai Chi like a motherfucking KLINGON.
• I'm going to ask for help. Even if it kills me.

Diary - Naturalist Journal and Health

Tomorrow Jeff and I officially begin our work as volunteer naturalists with the Seattle Parks, attending a potluck welcoming party and introduction to the program. This Saturday is our first actual training class, and I'm hoping to be able to attend both the Saturday and the Thursday modules, both because I'm interested in getting as much out of this as I can and because I'd like to have the flexibility to teach both weekday school programs and the general public programs held on weekends. Plus, more time outside in the park - nothing wrong with that.

I've been keeping up with my naturalist journal that I started about a week and a half ago, sitting down to do some drawing and research every few days. It's been amazing how good drawing feels - quieting down to work, being able to focus and concentrate on just the details in front of me, and in the end somehow ending up with something that looks half-way decent. Unlike much of my writing these days, which just feels like a slog through a jungle of noisy details and half-formed ideas, sketching is refreshing and satisfying, helping me to focus without overwhelming me. Perhaps I've just burned myself out with writing recently, putting too much pressure on myself, and so I need some nonverbal form of creativity and self-expression to loosen things up again.

It's also been a fantastic way to learn more about the animals and plants in the area. I'm not doing all that intense research, but I have been slowly gathering sources on specific species and such. Reading the two books on naturalist journaling that I got was a huge help in giving me some direction on how to focus and what to note while out in the field - and there's something satisfying with being able to carefully observe a creature that you're unfamiliar with, and then come home and look them up in a field guide and be able to identify them and learn something more about them. I especially like the "thought experiments" recommended in the book I just finished (Tomlinson's How to Keep a Naturalist's Notebook), asking questions about what the evidence can tell you about a certain animal and its habits, for instance. (The example she uses is the fox scat she finds, which leads her to question what direction it was facing when it relieved itself, what was it looking at, why did it choose that particular spot, were there other foxes around, etc. All from a few scat droppings and never even seeing the fox itself.) I do sometimes feel overwhelmed by the idea of asking questions I don't have answers to, or not even knowing what questions to ask. For instance, I'd like to ask myself where the chickadees who frequent the trees in our front yard actually make their nests, or where the hummingbird who sometimes perches on top of the tree goes once he's done with the neighbor's feeder. But I don't even know where I'd start to find the answers to those questions or how I could track down those places even if I could find out. I'm sure there are other things I could ask - like how the males attract the females, and when the mating season starts and when nest building occurs and how could I go about locating a nest, etc. - but the number of things I don't know seems somewhat overwhelming.

I'm just getting my feet wet in this and I have a feeling a lot of my learning will involve doing the research first and then setting myself tasks, like a scavenger hunt, to seek out certain things I've read about. And of course, the volunteer naturalist training will help a lot, too. I'm very excited about taking notes and then hopefully following up on what I've learned over the course of the following week. Nervous, of course, as I always am before something like this - but also eager. Sometimes I think I really do love learning much more than I enjoy putting that learning to any kind of practical use. For me, the exploration and discovery is the real treat, the same way that learning the little details about the person you're falling in love with is a pleasure in itself and not just a means to getting into their pants or something so crude. There is joy in growing into that kind of intimacy, and that's what I'm hoping to cultivate with this work - an intimacy with the land and landscape that has become my new home.

~

I'm also feeling motivated to exercise more. I've put on three more pounds since Christmas, so that I'm pretty much the heaviest I've ever been in my life. Even that isn't so overweight, but it's still more than I'd like and I'm sure it affects my energy levels and such. I think the primary cause is simply stress, and the fact that I've allowed that stress to lead me into some rather bad habits (like dessert after dinner every night). But I want to live a long and healthy life, so nipping those bad habits in the bud right now is a fairly high priority.

It's also a point of pride, I suppose. My mother always used having kids as an excuse for her weight gain, and while I can understand that I also think it was more of an excuse than it needed to be. There are healthy ways to cope with stress, and there are unhealthy ways. And since I have chosen to be child-free by choice, even if I am a stepmother, I have to admit that I do somewhat resent putting on stress-related weight because of all this bullshit nonsense of dealing - not with the kids, but with Emily and her insanity. I'm not sure how I managed to get so far down the rabbit hole of guilt and expectation even while fighting all along against her warped belief that a woman's job is to be a mother and failure at that - or rejection of that - was a failure to be fully mature and responsible. I have to admit, I hold a lot of resentment towards that woman, not only for how she treats me (which is piss poor on the best of days, and she never had been able to bring herself to treat me as an adult), but especially for how she treats Jeff. I could strangle her for that - even now, I find myself getting angry simply thinking about it. But we've let the lawyers know we will no longer be working with them, since they misled us and overcharged us so completely, and now it's going to be on Emily's dime to file for a custody adjustment, and we can be the ones who sit back and say "no" while insisting we want to be amiable and fair. See how she likes it. And since the current custody arrangement states that Jeff has 50/50 joint physical and legal custody and that all he needs is a verbal agreement from Emily to change the specifics of times, etc. - a verbal agreement which he got from her, in front of five other witnesses - it doesn't matter how long she takes to file for a custody adjustment, he can show up and get the kids any time he wants until that point. So we're finally in a position where we're holding the cards and she won't be able to force us to spend any more money or make us miserable. She hasn't has the guts to actually enforce the incredibly limited schedule that she proposed for Jeff talking to the kids on Skype (though she insists he can only talk to them until 2:30 PM PST/5:30 PM EST because that's when they have to have dinner, she's never once ever actually had dinner ready on time, so he's been able to talk to them for longer). Since they've set up a regular schedule, she also doesn't have any excuse for "accidentally" scheduling things during that time and so cutting into Jeff's time to talk with them - if she does, everyone will know that it's her incompetence and not Jeff's neglectfulness that is fucking things up.

But I'm tired of writing about this and feeling stressed and angry about it. Obviously, my health and weight issues are deeply tied up with my anxiety and stress about the kids. I've been carrying around a sense of responsibility and thus guilt for a long time, even though really I have very little control over the situation and probably shouldn't be shouldering as much as I have. I'm finally feeling a free - or at least freer - to release some of that and give up this notion that I have to compensate for Emily's warped vision so that I make sure the kids still like me. If they can like Emily, they can like me - she's pretty awful, after all. And even if they don't.... well, maybe that's just how it has to be. But I was just hearing again recently about the study they did on the number of friends any one person can actually keep track of, and how those communities tend to be pretty small, around 150 people. I've spent too much time over the last couple years worrying about trying to please people that I don't particularly like or respect - whether they're ex-wives or editors and bloggers online - and it's a waste of my 150 people to put so much effort into that. I should fill my 150 quota with people who support and love me and help me to be a better person. People who drag me down and stress me out and make me feel unworthy - why spend time worrying about them?

Maybe it would be a good exercise to go through and list the people in my life I appreciate for their support and caring and inspiration, and consciously try to cultivate a "community" of friends and colleagues who affirm me in my work. Something to keep in mind, maybe.

~

I'm about done with journaling for now. It's a beautiful, sunny morning and it's supposed to get up near 50º F later this afternoon (and even warmer tomorrow), so I think I'll go for a walk a bit later. For now, sitting in front of the computer screen is giving me a bit of a headache (and hurting my wrists trying to type at the desk). That might be another reason why writing has been difficult for me lately - trying to find a comfortable way to do it. The physical discomfort of being stuck in front of a tiny screen at an uncomfortable desk can definitely wear on a person. (This is just me wanting an excuse to get a nice new desktop, I know.) It's interesting that sketching and drawing can leave me feeling so refreshed - I do wonder if it's not partly because I'm not squinting at a computer screen the whole time in order to do it. Going back to taking notes and drafting my writing pieces in an actual, physical notebook might help with this writer's block, if part of it is due to physical discomfort. We'll see, anyway.

~

This morning, after yoga, I did some meditation - a Three Realms working to connect to land, sea and sky. I prayed to Brighid and Manannan, who now appear fairly often as a pair of columns - one of fire on my right, and one of water on my left. The sense of their presence was powerful and uplifting. I feel such gratitude and joy for the presence of my gods in my life. One thing I really want to do - maybe even this morning! - is set up an altar for them somewhere. Although we're mostly unpacked, I've been putting off unpacking the box(es) of small decorative and ritual items, hoping that we'll first get the curtains up in the various rooms. But the curtains are turning out to be a pain in the ass and we haven't gotten them up yet, so the apartment is still lacking most of those personal touches and sacred items that are usually placed and arranged carefully throughout the space. I want to get to that soon, though.

I also want to spend some time outdoors meditating and connecting more directly to the land. But despite what we were promised, it's been rather ridiculously cold (okay, hovering around freezing, which compared to Pittsburgh's usual 10 - 20 º weather this time of year isn't so bad) and not conducive to spending much time outdoors. I'm still trying to do some walking and occasionally jogging, though. And hopefully the weather will be warming up soon. It's certainly been sunnier this week than the last several, anyway. Though I do also enjoy the rain (much more than snow, anyway).

Diary - Anger, Grace and God

Sun: scorpio (fixed water), 7:39 am - 6:29 pm
Moon: waning crescent, virgo (mutable earth), VoC
Earth: beautiful, sunny autumn day, crisp and cool but not too chilly


The shit has hit the fan, so to speak. We caught E in a direct lie about Josh's health - when we asked her what the results were from the allergy test, her response was that he was "definitely allergic." Her phrasing was circuitous enough (e.g. avoiding directly saying that's what the doctor had told her) that Jeff called the doctor himself to speak to him directly to make sure he understood the whole situation, at which point we found out that all of the test results had come back negative and the only evidence that Josh had any kind of allergy at all was E's word that he showed symptoms obviously and consistently after eating corn. (Part of her evidence, in fact, was that he shows symptoms every Monday. Obviously we can't say whether or not this is true, but if it is, it actually suggests it's not a corn allergy, since he's been on a raw vegan diet with us for months now and most definitely never has corn when he's with us on weekends. But this is just one more example of her inconsistency in reporting what exactly are his symptoms and when they show up.)

On top of the corn allergy issue (and Jerilynn's newly invented gluten intolerance, which E says explains why Jerilynn eats too much (?!)), E has taken it upon herself to insist that Jeff quit his job in order to stay in Pittsburgh, and even started job hunting for him (despite not being able to find and keep even a part-time job for herself and being entirely ignorant except for the most general terms about Jeff's skills and job qualifications). Besides all of the obvious reasons (e.g. a struggling economy) why it would be idiotic for him to quit his job and leave a career he loves on the assumption he can just find a different one.... her assumption that it's her responsibility to order Jeff's life is pretty mind-boggling.

When confronted with all of this directly - especially after the blatant lying, which made Jeff the angriest I've ever seen him - she justified her behavior and even claimed that she hadn't lied. She emailed him earlier today saying that they were going to have a talk when he dropped off the kids and he better be prepared to "stay for a while." He wrote back saying that he was too angry to talk to her right now and that he would email her. Unfortunately, this weekend we'd happened to borrow the van so that all of us could attend a boy scout event of Josh's, so when we arrived to drop off the kids and the van and pick up Jeff's car - she was sitting on top of it in an attempt to ambush us and force us into talking. At first she tried to sweet-talk Jeff, saying (in a double lie) that she'd only wanted to say one quick thing, and that was that she thought the plan for the move (which she had vehemently objected to via email) was actually a great idea. Both of these things were direct contradictions to things she had said in emails earlier. When we repeated that we weren't interested in talking to her right now and we would be communicating through email, her mood suddenly swung in the opposite direction. (I thought our response was pretty restrained, since we didn't point out that she had ambushed us, knowing we were angry with her and still ignoring our explicitly stated wishes, and then lied to us right in front of the kids.) She said with angry sarcasm, "What a great example to set for the kids!" (who, if she hadn't decided to corner us right in front of them, would never have even known whether we were emailing or calling), and then turned on the kids are snapped at them to get inside. Speaking of great examples....

I am, admittedly, very angry and still a bit shaken up. Her audacity in lying to us continues to compound every time she gets caught in another one, and her manipulative behavior I could never imagined would have gotten to the point of literally trying to prevent us from physically being able to leave (though, after all, this was the woman who broke into our apartment and then used it as a reason that we might as well give her a key so she wouldn't have to next time, so.... I guess I shouldn't be surprised).

Jeff and I have decided to try a strategy recommended to us by some folks who also have experience with high-drama exes over child custody issues. It's called "low-contact," and there are ten basic rules. It mostly involves making sure that all communication is written and documents, brief and to the point with no room for vagueness or exploitation. There are some recommendations that we're not sure how to handle - for instance, always making exchanges of the kids in public places where the ex can't make a scene or ambush you - but we can work that out somehow.

Reading the list of recommended strategies, I could definitely see some areas where I've been responding or reacting in ways that weren't helpful and that just fed into E's need to create drama and conflict. I'm trying not to be too hard on myself about that, and just resolve to do better in the future and keep my own anger at her in check. I think I got sucked into seeing things from her perspective - not so much agreeing with her, but thinking of the kids as some sort of project that needed to be carefully watched and controlled and protected from negative influences. The other night on the phone, I found myself telling my mother how it was hard to just let things go - especially lies that E tells to the kids - because it wasn't about Jeff or me at all, but about what was best for the kids and that was our end goal: do what is best for the kids. But of course, that's exactly the story E tells herself - that she needs to lie or manipulate others in order to protect the kids and do what's best for them. But ends don't justify the means. Compromising on personal values is not helpful for the kids, no matter what the end result might be. And I don't want to be the kind of person who is always angry and on the defensive and obsessing over all the ways their other care-givers are "doing it wrong." That's just playing E's game. And it's not a game I want to play anymore.

The thing is - last night I prayed to God. I was restless and angry and couldn't sleep, and I just kept arguing with E in my head repeating the same tirades over and over..... Finally, I just closed my eyes and prayed to God - not a god, but God, the god I knew in my childhood, the god I'd grown up knowing as the Christian god, the one who was in some way I never quite understood related to Jesus and his love and sacrifice. And I asked God to help me to find clarity and peace, and most of all to discover in myself the place where I could trust in Love and surrender to that trust and be the better person that I so much wanted to be. And almost immediately, I felt a wave of relaxation sweep over me and soon fell right asleep. And today... well, it's been stressful, yes, especially the confrontation with E. But I do still feel a certain among of clarity, even despite the stress. And that clarity is mostly about myself, and the things that I could be doing better and the ways that I can reclaim that center of myself that's sustained me for so long. That's why I trust it. It wasn't suddenly some clarity about how awful everyone else was or how they could be doing better - it was a way through to my own core, my own center. It wasn't judgement. It was grace.

And that sounds very Christian, I guess. But I still believe in all the things I've always believed in as a Pagan, I still believe that there are many gods and that the world is alive and thriving with beings of all kinds. It's just.... I'm thinking maybe I was too hasty to try to abandon the god of my childhood just because he got slapped with a Christian label before I knew any better. I no longer think of him as the only god, but.... I don't know. Maybe he's still my god, if that makes any sense. Or, at least, one of them. In the somewhat lackadaisical liberal Christianity I grew up with, there was a real relationship there that grew not out of dogma but out of my own self, my own center. And it nourished me and nurtured me and guided me well. Then I learned more about Christianity and understood I could not be Christian in good conscience.... but maybe I assumed that meant I couldn't have that relationship anymore because I'd always assumed it was a Christian one. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe that doesn't matter. It feels sort of like... coming home, the prodigal son.

Or maybe it was a coincidence. I don't know. But I think I want to see where it leads. To allow myself to pray to "God" as I knew him, and see where it takes me. I guess we'll see.

Diary Tarot Card

What insight can you give me tonight to help me find the clarity I seek?

At first, it seems that Temperance (XIV) is a block to the energy flow in the spread. Both the Page of Cups and the Two of Wands face towards the right, towards the future and the realm of activity in the external world; yet Temperance faces towards the right, towards the inner world and the past, where memory and intuition alike reside. After this first impression, though, the spread seems to suggest another interpretation - Temperance as a balance point between two opposites, the watery realm of Cups and the fiery realm of Wands. Even in the card itself, fire and water mingle in a spiraling yin-yang, dancing outward as dragon and phoenix as the angel of Temperance looks on.

So what, then, does Temperance balance? On the left, the Page of Cups is a card of intuition and innocent dreams, a connection to the deep waters of the unconscious where imagination and wisdom are born. The figure (as the artist describes) seeks out a place of quiet solitude where she might contemplate the golden shining reflections in her cup - listening to the still small voice of her intuition and giving free rein to her dreams and inspiration. On the right, the Two of Wands is a card of eager action, looking with attention and energy towards the future. The female figure sits upon her companion, a lion of strength and courage, perched on a high rock outcropping, over-looking the lands of her ancestors and (as the artist describes) imagining what great deeds she might accomplish now that those lands have passed on to her. She looks forward to all the great things she might manifest in the world with the resources available to her, and in her solitary stillness she makes plans and imagines possibilities. Both of these cards are concerned with the future, but those futures concern different realms - the inner and the outer. While the Two of Wands is a figure of strength and courage who is willing to act on her dreams in order to accomplish great things, the Page of Cups is a figure of receptivity and mystery who is willing to quiet her own thoughts in order to explore the realms of the unseen and the only-half-imagined.

Temperance in the center is a card of balance, but not only that. It is a card of dynamic and harmonious balance - in which opposites are brought into a dance with one another, rather than being restricted or arrested in a binding compromise. Temperance is a card of process, and the process is one of balance and harmonious relationship. Both the Page of Cups and the Two of Wands have their vulnerabilities. The Page of Cups is still a young woman, not yet risen to the wisdom of a queen, and her withdrawal into herself to seek her intuition and the inspiration of her dreams can too easily become an excuse for idle fantasy and naive, wishful thinking. On the other hand, the Two of Wands is a card of action and eagerness, at just the start of the journey, but the power of the will can become too outwardly-focused, resulting in rigid willfulness and stagnation which is isolated from the intuitive wisdom that could give it direction and focus. In both cases, a dynamic balance between the two are necessary to give each card's energies limits and boundaries in which to work most effectively.

Yet Temperance faces towards the Page of Cups on the left. In the end, I think this reading indicates that I have moved too much to the right, towards the energies of will and action of the Two of Wands, and that to find that healthy dynamic balance I would do best to look "to the past" and allow myself more of the solitude and stillness I once had, in which to find the time and space to listen more deeply to my own intuition and explore my own dreams. Perhaps this choice might put me at the risk of appearing foolish or naive, too much of a day-dreamer, to those who are eager to judge me as immature, just a silly page. Maybe this is where the courage and strength of the Two of Wands can serve me well - in being willing to be vulnerable in that way, and to more courageously seek out the solitude and quiet that I know my own soul truly needs at times.