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
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Monday, October 19, 2015
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
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
Monday, October 5, 2015
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
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
Thursday, August 13, 2015
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
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
Friday, August 7, 2015
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
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
Sunday, July 26, 2015
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
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
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
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
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
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