Financial Fun

Blessings Darlings!

Today being the first of the month, one of the activities of the day was paying bills.  This included the electricity bill ... the last electricity bill before they show the cost of heating out home.

Our winter heating bills are bloody scary.  I have to assume that they will be at least $400 a month for December thru' April.  All electric heat, and heat pumps, are not what I'd choose on my own.  But, it's what we have.  Damn, I wish we had a woodstove, or at least a fireplace.

All our time yesterday was spent on health insurance.  It was the last day of open enrollment at Job #2 (Job #1 doesn't offer insurance).  At the end of the number crunching, benefit comparisons, and discussions about if the tendonitis in my hands will let me continue to work both jobs ... we have our basic health plan thru' the ACA marketplace, and vision and dental care thru' Job #2.  Dental and vision feels EXTREMELY luxurious, even tho' the coverage is very limited.  By the way - none of the ACA marketplace plans have dentists in my area.  Welcome to West Virginia, where having teeth is extremely optional.

The death march to try to find tax info from the past continues.  I don't know when it will end, but we (mostly me) persevere.

At least the water and electricity will remain on for another month.  THAT is a good thing.

Frondly, Fern

Them Ancestors

Blessings Darlings!

As many of y'all know, I don't use 'calendar dates' for the Celtic holy days.  I use nature's signals.  And given the recent unusual cold weather in the Northeastern US - we had our killing frost last night.  So by my reckoning, Samhain is this Wednesday.

So one wonders, why are the Ancestors coming early this year?  Is part of the message that we REALLY REALLY need their wisdom now, during what Byron Ballard calls 'tower time'?  Well, yes, of course we do.

Step up your workings with the Ancestors, my loves.  It is critical!

Frondly, Fern

Learn to cook. It's not hard.

Blessings Darlings!

Work - at the restaurant - has been a bear lately.  We've been getting slammed with customers.  And it's not as if our food is something to write home about.  Folks can make this stuff at home easily, and without spending much time.  And without spending the silly amount we charge for this stuff.  Really - $1.25 for a cup of soup?  Two dollars for a soda or a cup of coffee?

I just don't get it.

Make your own dang French Toast - beat a couple of eggs with a splash of milk and a dash of cinnamon.  Dip slices of bread into that mix.  Fry the dipped bread. Done!

It's not hard. We are not serving you fancy stuff. 

Take a dead chicken (really, this is a recipe, not another dead chicken spell). Put some poultry seasoning, or lemon pepper, or garlic salt, or BBQ rub on it.  Put it in a pan.  Put it in the oven at 350 for one hour.  During the first half hour - talk to your kids.  Second half hour, cook some rice and  put some frozen veggies in a pot and simmer them.  Done!

Have the kids do the clean up.  They need to learn that.

Frondly, Fern the Fed Up

Visualize THIS.

Blessings, Darlings!

Today in an extremely fluffy Facebook 'witch' and 'Wicca' group - where I'm totally sure that no one has an initiation in lineaged Wicca or could explain what an egregore is and how that related to lineaged Wicca - I was ... informed ... that magic is all about visualization. 

So I asked if that meant that the blind can't do magic. 

This told me several things.  First, that people using the word 'visualization' haven't thought about that ableist phrasing, obviously. Second, that they are just parroting things that they read in bad books (or that their 'teachers' read in bad books).  Third ... that they have no bloody idea what magic is about.

Trust me - there would be a crap load of bleeding bodies around me if magic was just 'visualization'. At the very least, with all the magic user out there imagining/visualizing things - think of what would have happened to Donald Trump's hair by now!

No, magic is NOT about 'visualization'. It's about moving energy.  Beginners are often taught to move energy by using visualization, but ONLY because it helps them past a few limits they've put on themselves.  The visualization is NOT THE MAGIC. MOVING THE ENERGY is the magic.

And if you do not understand that, you fucking shouldn't be teaching.

Frondly (or not), Fern

Taking A Wider View

Blessings Darlings!

This morning, when I finally got up (I closed last night, got home at midnight, then spent an hour on the phone with Verizon because cable TV is down), the Chubby Hubby informed me the outlet that all the florescent lights in his lab are plugged into was broken.  He had already tried re-setting the circuit breakers, which were in the garage, but that hadn't helped.  He'd 'fixed' the problem by adding an extension cord and using a different outlet.

Okay.

I go about my day.  That includes getting meat out to thaw for dinner.  The big freezer, along with a small dorm refrigerator, are in the garage.  Once in the garage, I see a puddle on the floor from the dorm fridge - it's not working. No power.  Big freezer has no power either.  This is not good. Big freezer is full of meat, including two legs of lamb that the Spawn found marked down the other day.

Husband and I look at the problem together. Not the circuit breakers. All plugged in. Oh - that little red light on the outlet the frig and freezer and plugged into - THAT's where the problem is!  Push button to reset that, all is well.  Not just for freezers, but for the house alarm system and the outlet in the lab.

THEN CH tells me that he'd seen the puddle on the floor when he fiddled with the circuit breakers before I'd gotten up, but didn't think to connect it to the electrical issue.  Or think at ALL about where a puddle would have come from in a garage.   

CH had a narrow focus.  And had 'fixed' his narrow problem, sort of. But this was a broader-based problem, and it took noticing the broader-based evidence to fix it.  And a bit of luck - had I not gone to the freezer for meat, we might have lost EVERYTHING we had in the freezer.  And I would have had one hell of a tantrum.

All's well ... that starts with LOTS of observations.

Frondly, Fern

You're not REALLY going to eat that.

Blessings Darlings!

Back in May I posted about eating weeds, and how bitter some of them are.  And WAY back, when I reviewed the Hunger Games books, I posted about how the author had clearly never eaten the dandelions she had her characters eat and enjoy.  And folks in Pagan groups online seem to post ALL THE TIME about edible wild plants - "And the seeds of plantain and etc can be ground into flour and cooked and eaten!"

Well, yeah, they can be.  But the odds are you aren't going to enjoy eating them.  That we know that they can be eaten is not a celebration of edible weeds so much as a commentary on how desperate folks have been in the past, by folks who are NOT desperate, and have never eaten them, today.

Yes, for us preppers and, probably, for us pagans it's important to know options that you have.  But that has to be coupled by having actually DONE the things you are telling others can be done.  Armchair knowledge without experience is 99% useless. 

I LIKE bitter foods, and can't eat most wild greens without 1 - only harvesting the youngest leaves; 2 - soaking them in several changes of CLEAN water before cooking 3 - cooking them; 4 - mixing the with other foods to help hide the bitterness.  My husband does NOT like bitter foods - if I was to assume that, in time of Great Need, I could feed him them, and I'd find out right quick that he'd ot be able to choke them down.  And a friend HAS gathered and ground seeds from plantain, cooked it, and found it pretty much inedible. 

"Intellectually knowing" that something can be done, "Intellectually knowing' how to do something, is not at all the same as having done it. This is both a prepper and an occult fact. 

Put down the book. Turn off the internet. Go out there and DO SOMETHING.

Frondly, Fern

Tea Time

Blessings Darlings!

I'm at my desk with a hot cup of tea, preparing to do a bit of divination by reading tea leaves.  This is NOT something I'm good at, instead, it's a skill I'm still learning.

And I bumped up against a limitation of this as a form of divination.

See, I'm checking out the not-visible results of doing a bit of a hex.  Normally, using Tarot cards, I could pull a card each for effectiveness, how doing it would effect me, how doing it would effect those around my target.  Mix, pull, interpret.  Pretty straight forward.

That's not how it works with tea leaves, at least for the readings I'm practicing now.  I'm just doing, for this divination, a 'how will this work out over the next month' reading, not a 'let's look at every house of the zodiac' reading.  (I DO plan to learn that later, but I really don't speak astrology).  So I would have to have one cup of tea for each and every one of those questions. 

That's a lot of tea to have, especially on a hot day.  My bladder just looked up at me and said "Really?  REALLY?"

So ... I'm just asking how it would effect ME. Because I'm that way today.

Now, what the heck does that elephant mean?

Frondly, Fern

Egregores

Blessings Darlings!

Every group that lasts long enough has it's own egregore. To be clear, I'm not talking about Facebook groups here (tho some certainly do have one), I'm talking about groups out in the real, not digital, world. They are sentient psychic entities. They are created by the group mind, and then once created have a strong influence on the group mind.

We're all in multiple egregores, of course. A family usually has one - you might have one for your nuclear family, one for your mother's side of the family, and one for your father's side. Your workplace, if you have one, has one. Political parties have them. Hobby groups have them. Schools have them. A founding group of like minded folks get together to work on some goal, the psychic energy and will coalesce over time, and - rather like cosmic dust building enough mass and gravity that fusion starts and a star is formed - a sentient entity forms.

Every occult and/or spiritual study group, if it's around long enough, develops an egregore. Every coven. Every tradition. A coven IN a tradition is, obviously, part of at least two egregores.
Gerald Gardner, IMNHO, with his rather extensive occult experience, consciously set up the egregore for Wicca (just as he consciously set up the religion). He set up ways to become a part of the egregore, because that is what occultists DO.

We can call the entity the egregore of Lineaged or Traditional Wicca.

Decades later ... came Eclectic Wicca. It seems to me that it's based on Outer Court/not initiated/not part of the Lineaged Traditional Wiccan Egregore information about Wicca. Does it have an egregore? Sure. Does it have the same Egregore that Lineaged Traditional Wicca has? No, because to be come part of that egregore, Gardner set up a specific way to join THAT egregore - initiation, done in a specific way, and by an person who meets specific qualifications.

Is Eclectic Wicca a 'valid spiritual path'? Yes.
Is Eclectic Wicca the same thing that Traditional Lineaged Wicca is? No.

Now, I'm willing to bet that there are folks who agree with this.

And I'm willing to bet that there are folks who disagree with this.

So, let's discuss.

Frondly, Fern

Anti-Racism Magic

Blessings Darlings!

I assume that everyone reading has heard of the attack earlier this week on the people - black people - at the Emmanuel AME church in South Carolina.  I'm going to provide a simple magic aimed at reducing racism.

BUT - before I get to that - I'm going to write about what racism is and what to do in the mundane about it. 

First I'm going to point out that the dictionary definition of racism is totally inadequate.  The dictionary (written by ... whom? think on that) defines racism as the same as 'prejudice'.  As an individual issue.  That's not correct, in my never humble view. In my view, racism is a societal power issue - you can be prejudiced against folks you don't have power over, but racism has IMPACT on daily lives of others. Racism requires power over the 'others'.  That can only happen when privilege is a basic part of society.  BTW - you might want to research why/how the AME church was created.

It can be hard to see privilege if you have it.  I guess that's kind of like not seeing air if you're a land animal, or not seeing water if you're a fish.  If you're not sure what privilege looks like, you can google things like 'how to recognize white privilege'. 

Actually ending racism is going to end white privilege. That's going to be a side effect. If you do the magic right, and it starts working at least in your local area ... if you're white, you may see changes in your life that you might not like. Police and courts might treat you the same way they treat blacks.  Because privilege is built into the legal and enforcement systems.  And the system is going to fight ending privilege.

In the Mundane - move out of your comfort level. 

To work on ending racism in every day life, you're going to have to speak up when you see/hear racism and prejudice.  Speak up when folks make 'jokes' putting down other races.  The terrorist in Charleston made lots of them.  His friends laughed.  

Have those discussions about race, prejudice, racism that might be scary for you to have.  If you're white, you fear of words is nothing compared to the fear of being attacked for your race by the agents of the state.

And, FFS (BTW, on MY blog, FFS means "For Fern's Sake"), listen to people of color when they describe their experiences.  Don't try to rush them to 'forgiveness' when the perps haven't asked for it, and when the attacks are ongoing. 

The Magic

This is real simple magic.  Go weed your garden. Charge the weeds with being 'racism', and root those weeds up. Let them dry to nothing in the light of the sun.  

That's it.  Really. Most magic is simple.

Frondly, Fern

Defrosting The Freezer

Blessings Darlings!

Being the busy little home maker I am, I'm defrosting the freezer as I type this.  We have an OLD upright freezer, 14.7 cubic feet, not at all frost-free.  We got it in January 1979, so it predates our 1980 marriage and LONG predates our 1987 Spawn. 

Every now and then (really, more NOW), it needs to be defrosted.  It's one of the easiest household tasks, if you manage things right.  And the one thing that is most critical, to me, in 'managing things right' is to use big cardboard boxes - the type to hold hanging files in - in your freezer to  hold things as a matter of course. 

Our freezer has 4 of those in use.  Two for meats, one for bones for broth and prepared broth, and one for fruits.  I also use the cardboard 'bases' from cases of catfood in two places.

The boxes do two things.  First, they prevent ice buildup on the TOP of the shelves.  This the cardboard bases to, too.  But on top of that, to empty the freezer before defrosting, and to re-fill after defrosting, all I have to do is move the box out or in.  No trying to find things to store that food in.  Easy peasy. 

Once everything is out of the freezer, I just put big pots of boiling water in, close the door, and wait. Thermodynamics FTW! Of course, I have layers of towels on the floor, but since the freezer is in the garage, mostly I just sweep the puddles out after I'm done.

Once defrosted, the old darling runs like a top. 

And while it defrosts, I get to multitask online.

Frondly, Fern

Unemployment!

Blessings, Darlings!

This last Sunday, May 17, at 3 pm, Corporate locked the doors at the restaurant Spawn and I worked at, closing the store.  No official advance warning, just a notice of a mandatory meeting about 'food safety issues'.  Oh, okay - for those who Googled the company, there was this announcement last month that they would be closing a bunch of restaurants. 

So Spawn is out of his only job, and I'm out of my #2 job.  He will qualify for unemployment.  I won't.  We will be able to see the severance package this weekend. Word is that we'll be offered two weeks pay (I worked there 19 months, he worked there 3 1/2 years), but what we'll have to sign away to get that isn't clear.  We MAY be offered jobs at other restaurants in the chain, but that's not guaranteed - nor if the Spawn gets hired is it at ALL guaranteed that he'll get his current pay.  He's gotten a LOT of raises while he was there, because he's that good.

Now, an $850 hit in our monthly budget is, of course, PAINFUL (that's what I was paid plus what the Spawn pays in rent). But we're applying for new jobs, and y'all KNOW that I can do the Cheap Bitch thing really well. Yes, veggies are going into the space I had meant to put a flower bed in. Yes, I spend this morning washing out 'lightly used' zip-lock bags for re-use.  Yes, I have bones and skin from chickens past browning in the oven now, for chicken stock later today.

You and I know the drill.  We've been around this block before. 

It's a real shame, tho', for many of our coworkers, who relied on this as their only job.  They really need good thoughts from all y'all for getting new jobs.

Frondly, Fern

Eating on the Wild Side

Blessings, Darlings!

So, as some of y'all already know that my husband neglected to read some of his e-mail ... so didn't send in something that our health insurance needed ... so auto payment of health insurance emptied our checking account of not just our expected $245 payment but an additional almost $2000. The $2000 for rent, utilities, food, etc.

We scrambled to cover the bills this weekend, and we will EVENTUALLY get the $ back, but it will take 2 to 4 months. So we are in financial pain just when we thought things would be calmer.

So ... let's talk about eating weeds again. It's something that *I* can do, but my husband can't. Wild greens have more flavor, or as my husband puts it "are too bitter". My husband is a super taster.

Now, he's right that most of the current round of wild greens available ARE bitter. The weather is getting hot, which contributes. The younger wild mustards and shepherd purses were tame. Early (pre-blooming) dandelions weren't TOO bad. But wild green things now are flavored to repel leaf munching insects, and apparently the plants see humans as bigger insects.

Therefore, in keeping score so far this week - Narrow Leaf Plantain: bitter, but added to soup and hot sauce added was fine. Miner's Lettuce: bitterness lessened by soaking in a few changes of water, was fine added to a tomato based spaghetti sauce to top pasta.

Today's adventure will be bind weed. Which apparently I'll have to mix with some other greens because "too much can have a laxative effect'.

Tomorrow I'll be finding out if thistle leaves, lightly steamed, really do taste like asparagus.

Frondly, Fern

Go Read this! Now!

Blessings Darlings!

I'm glad you're here.   Now, go read the article I'm linking to. It's about talking with others and privilege. History matters.

https://storify.com/balmergal/engaging-with-poc-on-twitter

Frondly, Fern

Ham R Us.

Blessings Darlings!

We're not a particularly ham loving family.  I grew up Jewish and wasn't raised on it. My husband likes it on occassion.  My son doesn't like it.

That said ...

I walked into Aldi's to pick up a few groceries yesterday.  They had a few hams, all at $5 each, since today is the 'sell by' date.  I picked up the largest one that was left.  And extra eggs, and a package of English muffins, and a package of sliced American cheese.  I now have 6 'egg McMuffins' in the freezer, Navy bean soup is on the stove, split pea soup is going to be made, as will a ham and scalloped potato casserole.  AND I'll still have ham left over that I'll freeze to cook with later.

I'm glad I had a few extra dollars available! 

Frondly, Fern

Planting them seeds at Imbolc.

Blessings Darlings!

The interwebs are full of Imbolc rituals full of seed plantings.  Regardless of local conditions, regardless of local climate zones.  Regardless of the fact that, in most of Europe/North America, the only seeds you'd plant now are onions (and that's not necessarily the occult correspondence most folks are after just now, ya know.)  Regardless of what's actually going on in their local land base. Yeah, the seeds represent changes in your life - but working outside of nature isn't all that Pagan/Witchy.

Doesn't work for me, but okay, if that floats their boat (that was said in my best Bawltimore accent, not a Boston accent, hon), let's go into what has to be kept in mind when doing seed work.

PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Planting seeds, and having them come up soon, can be a great psychological boost.  So, while parsley is a seed that can be started now - don't use it.  It takes forever to sprout, even if soaked before planting.  One of the parsley seeds I planted outside last spring ... didn't sprout until fall.

How are you with houseplants?  If you tend to kill them all - this type of ritual isn't the type for you.  What you plant isn't likely to grow any better, and if you are relying on a magical bond between the plants you are starting and your outcome - you may well have a problem.

Does what your planting actually grow in your area, and if not, does it grow well indoors?  Will the plant last as long as it takes you to make a real change?

SPIRITUAL CONSIDERATIONS
Nothing grows well unless you've prepared the soil beforehand.  Ideally, you'd have been doing that since Yule.  Gathering materials, clearing away known obstacles, clearing room, carefully identifying goals and steps along the way, etc.  

Have you taken care of this step?

Planting - the official starting - of the process is great.  But there's a long time and a lot of work between planting and harvesting.  What are you plans for dealing with early frosts?  With weeds? With insects and disease?  Spiritual goals have these things, too.  And just doing the planting isn't really enough to get past the vice of Malkut (inertia).

How long can you go without getting the harvest you expect?  We all know the meme "Oh, Lord, grant me patience, and give it to me NOW".  

Are the seeds in tune with your spiritual goal?  Lavender sprouts well, but may not be the best to plant if you're after physical fitness, or business success.




Will you need help with harvest?  Okay, most of you aren't planting acres of wheat, but still ...


This isn't an exhaustive list, obviously. Just stuff to keep in mind.


Frondly, Fern

Fern's Failure - Drill Press Edition

Blessings Darlings!

Today in being frugal, I figured I'd make a sprinkling can out of a used one-gallon milk jug.  Should be easy, right?  Just drill a bunch of small holes in the screw-on top to the jug.

So, I washed out the jug and headed down to the lab with the lid.  Couldn't find the chuck for the drill press, but chucks are pretty much universal so the chuck for the hand drill tightened the drill bit in place.   Find an extension cord, plug it in, and ... just an electrical hum.  No movement.

Opened the drill press up and found that the belt, sometime in the rather long while since we last used it, had ... disintegrated.  There was goo that used to be plastic, and there were some strands of whatever they had used to reinforce the plastic. 

Instead of being creative, I just got the metal wires or whatever out of the goo, and will use goo-gne or such on it, outside, sometime when the weather is nicer.  And we'll have to find the manual, find out what brand it is, and order a new belt.

So, I'll wait.  It's 33 degrees out, anyway, so I don't need a sprinkling can for outside plants immediately, anyway.

OTOH, I had HOPED to use this inside, to rinse hand-washed dishes using less water.  THAT I could have used starting right now.

Dang.

Frondly, Fern

Think Globally - Do Magic Locally

Blessings Darlings!

The other day I commented on a post on Facebook, recommending igneous rocks for a working.  Thinking further about that, tho', I realized that was a holdover from growing up in the Midwest, and not what I'd do myself, now that I live in the Appalachians.

The bulk of Illinois land is sand loam - six or more feet deep of it.  There are occassional streaks of sand or clay, and occassional stones (usually granite, scraped up by the glaciers when they dug out the Great Lakes in the last Ice Age. As a result of growing up there, and starting my practice there, my 'mother tongue' of land magic is based on that.

But I'm no longer in Illinois.  I'm not even in the stoney silt/clay mix of the piedmont of Maryland anymore.  I'm in the Appalachians, with a Duffield Clay variety of soil.  I've posted before on how my local soil, when worked by hand for gardens, rewards hard workers with nice chunks of quartz.

The local clay also, I've discovered, can make fine talismans, amulets, other magical objects, if dug up and purified.  And THAT is what I'd now use in place of chunks of igneous rocks in the same workings.

What's your land base like?

Frondly, Fern

The Crows Spoke Again.

Blessings Darlings!

I don't know if crows act as messengers from the Goddess who has me collared, but there are these times when ... well, they can certainly be omens.  So far, always omens about crap going down at work.  It happened again yesterday.

I was just driving in to the job.  The Chubby Hubby and Spawn, who had been out in the car earlier, had left me an almost empty gas tank, so I went to fill it before work rather than after.  Snow was predicted, after all. 

All along the drive there were crows, in abnormal numbers, in abnormal places.  I figured it was just due to the oncoming snow - just crows being crows, and confirming the weather report.  In fact I felt a bit smug, as I reviewed that I was filling the gas tank, had pretty new tires, my radiator was finally fixed, I'd replaced a burnt out turn signal bulb myself, etc.

Well.

Thirty minutes after I got to work, or no reason, the damn 'fire suppressant system' goes off.  Green chemical pours down on the grills and my stove (where I had a large batch of vegetable soup started), mist from it goes EVERYWHERE. 

The rest of my time there was spent cleaning up toxic chemicals.  Oh joy, oh rapture.

Maybe I should have warned the managers when I got in. 

Frondly, Fern

The Obligatory Mercury Retrograde Post

Blessings Darlings!

About 3 times a year, the planet Mercury is said to go 'retrograde' - that is, from the viewpoint of someone watching it from Earth, it goes 'backwards' from it's usual course.  This regularly-scheduled event leads to a crapload of posts full of strum und drung among the neoPagan community.  "Don't sign any legal agreement!" "Expect all your electronics to break!" Etc.

Well.

Mercury Retrogrades, like Saturn Returns,  CAN be plenty uncomfortable.  But they are, as I mentioned above, a regularly-scheduled part of life.  They are part of the necessary 'clearing out so you can build anew'.  You know, the cycles of nature that most Pagans like to claim that they are in sync with. 

So, get with the program. 

Build up that financial reserve/emergency fund.  You are going to need it - if not this retro, maybe this year.  If not this year, maybe next year.  Cars break down.  Bikes need replacing.  Teeth go bad.  Having that reserve fund will help you handle that.

Get the car's oil changed, and have other preventive maintenance done.  If you can, get your teeth cleaned/checked.  Eat well.  Get some exercise.  Say what you mean, clearly, so you will be understood.  After  meeting, repeat all that you/they have agreed to in an e-mail to keep a paper trail. 

Don't count on privilege - of any sort - to have your back.  You might have to own everything that you do/don't do.

Which is, of course, how we really should be living every day.  But most of us don't. 

Frondly, Fern

The Spirits Laughed.

Blessings Darlings!

Today is just a typical day at Chez Fern, with the Big Cooking Project making bone broth (don't worry, it wasn't anyone you knew).  So I add the baked bones to the water, throw in a little vinegar, and add some peppercorns, and I notice that the pepper mill is kind of low on peppercorns.

No problem.  I trot upstairs to the pantry to grab the big bottle of peppercorns.  Ooops - knocked the basil plant, that I had clipped at the soil line and hung up to dry, off of it's support.  Many, many dried basil leaves on the floor.

"Oh, gosh", says I, "What can I store those up?"

Every freaking spirit in the house laughs.  Because that pantry is where about half of my canning jars are.  Apparently the spirits found the rhetorical question amusing.

Insolent Spirits!

Frondly, Fern