Image: A furry friend on Solstice (an opossum peeking out of our garage door at Mason.).

For those of you new to my blog, my family and I celebrate Solstice. For us, this means that we open presents under a decorated tree (usually books or other low-key craft items). Shawn grew up with Christmas, so we'll do more present opening as the days progress. 

After we open Solstice presents, we light the Yule log, and have a living room picnic feast. (Don't ask. Kind of an odd tradition we started some time ago that features "low rent charcuterie," aka Swiss Colony sausages and cheese). Once we're filled up with our favorite trash foods, we either have a bonfire in the backyard or we light a symbolic candle to represent keeping the sun's light. We then keep it alive during the darkest of nights, one way or the other. We are hoping, one day, to actually do a bonfire that lasts the whole night. But, most of my family is early to bedders and so the best we usually manage is a small fire for a few hours. We then bring a candle, lit from the flames of the bonfire, inside in an overnight safe candle holder and go to bed with it somewhere in the bedroom. 

However, our son Mason is home from college until after J-term, so we did a few slightly different things. He took himself out for a long walk as the sun was setting, Apparently, he watched the sun setting from a nice park bench somewhere in St. Paul. Then, we did our usual stuff, and he decided to volunteer as tribute to stay up and tend the symbolic bonfire, aka a candle. (We determined that, while the weather has been nice enough to do the outside fire, the leaves were way too dry to risk it.) Mason played video games all night long while keeping an eye on the Yule candle until dawn. As the sun rose, he took another walk and caught a glimpse (and a photo) of an opossum in our garage.

Seems like a good omen.

Possums are awesome. North American's only native marsupial that eats its weight in ticks and carries its babies on its back. Our neighborhood, Midway loves its possums. We have an entire fan group devoted to "the" (there are probably actually dozens/generations of dozens) Midway Possum. 


Image: Yule log with three red candles lit. 

At any rate, I hope you find joy and light in this dark season in the Northern Hemisphere. Happy holidays to all.

 I have this sense that, particularly for artists, sometimes the universe will give you hints about what you should be doing with your life, you know? Like, if you've been banging your head against some door forever and the universe keeps giving you these opportunities at another, like, maybe you should follow those opportunities.

Well, you know how the Loft "cancelled" me over my manuscript critique?

Guess who suddenly has not one, but TWO new critique jobs.

THIS GIRL!

So, I feel very VALIDATED by the universe. True, one of the jobs is with someone I have known in the science fiction community forever and who knows about the Loft malarky, but the other is a Complete STRANGER. The universe seems to be saying, "Stop beating yourself up about all of this. I know you're a good critiquer--here, have a couple of jobs immediately so you don't lose heart."

Thank you, universe!  I needed this!

Image: Wisteria bridge in Ashikaga Flower Park, Asikaga City, Tochigi, Japan

Like a crazy-person, I got myself up out of my warm, snuggly bed at 2:15 pm Central Standard Time (aka -6 GMT) to join a live-stream in Tochigi, Japan of the light show in Ashikaga Flower Park. The best part of this foolishness is that I THOUGHT that the tour started at 2:30, but it actually started at 2 am, and so I missed the first fifteen minutes. On top of that, our guide, Erika, had a shaky connection and so much of the tour was me refreshing and/or squinting at pixelated shots.

But when things were clear, it was a pretty nice trip.


Image: blue (at the moment) color-changing tulip lights along a park path.

Ashikaga Flower Park is known for its 150-some year old wisteria tree. Of course, it is not blooming in the winter, but they apparently decorate the park with millions of LED lights and put on a walking show. An American on the tour complained that she wished that there was something like this here in the US, and a bunch of us hopped into the chat to say that, well, depending where you live, there often is. Here in Saint Paul, there's something like this (for driving through) in the State Fair Grounds. In LaCrosse, where I grew up, there are lights put up by people like the Rotary Club for walking through (and driving through) in one of the larger parks.

There isn't, of course, anything quite like this....

Image: A truly Japanese smiling... Marigold... flotilla? (It rotated.) Those are real marigolds.

...because: Japan.

Like the tall building tour, this is one of those things I signed up for where I thought to myself, "Would I put this on my itinerary if I were in Japan right now?" and the answer is, "Probably not." YET, that's actually a big part of the appeal? These folks are going places that I probably wouldn't. They're not hitting all the spots everyone sees (maybe with the exception of Mount Fuji;) they're going places they think are appealing.

Like, Eriko brought her mom.

They both waved at us during the long goodbye (so designed so that people have time to tip) and her mom just patiently waved along, and I thought, "I suddenly love everything about this." Like, suddenly I imagined Erika being all, "Come on, Mom. It's a thing we can do together while I work!" and then Mom finding out that Erika has booked not one, but two of these--hours apart. I went on the 2 am one, and then discovered that there was another one at 5:00 am, which might have been easier to wake up to. Anyway, I wonder if Mom hung around for the second tour or if she bailed and took the train back to wherever home is. The other thing is that while it was pretty, the whole park had a very Disney vibe going on that... I'm not sure I always find attractive? Like, it can feel over the top.

\
Image: Gaudy or fun or gaudy AND fun.... you decide!

The thing that is kind of cool about Ashikaga Flower Park is that a section of it was built on a wetland, so there are these kind of bog walks around reflectively clear pools of water. Erika gave us some information about how much charcoal was used to filter the water, but kind of tuned her out because it sounded a bit like environmental destruction to me and I didn't want to be THAT person on this tour, especially without coffee (and plus, what do I know?) There was something about moving the wisteria tree too that kind of made my head hurt, but, again, it was two o'clock in the morning. With all the technical glitches, I'm not even entirely sure what all was said.

The funny part was that when I got up for the second time that morning, I started to show Shawn the pictures from this trip and she spotted that a tour happening right then of the Rollright Stones near Chipping Norton, UK. She'd been wanting to see how the tours worked, so I pressed the go and off we went, following our insanely knowledgeable--could've passed for David Attenborough--tour guide named Ian.



Image: Rollright Standing Stone Circle, Little Rollright, UK.

Some of the stones in this collection are older than Stonehenge. Ian walked us between a collection of three standing stones, the Whispering Knights, the King's Stone, and the King's Soldiers' Circle (which is the picture above.)



Image: Whispering Knights standing stones.

In one day, I travelled 9,482 km, between Asikaga, Japan and Rollright, UK... and was live at each. This is the power of the internet, my friends. Pretty darn cool, if you ask me.

The Lap of Love folks have their own memorial page for pets and so I decided to add Ms. Ball. If you'd like to see a bit more about how Ball got her name and came to us, there's a short bit of a story about her under the "about" tab: www.lapoflove.com/pet-memorial.aspx. You are welcome to leave a "candle" there, if you like. (It all appears to be free.)

But, there's no need to make a special effort. I have very much appreciated all the comments left here for her and in support of our family during this horrible time.

In other news, because life goes on, I've decided to take on a rather unusual project for the next year. One of my Solstice gifts was Llewellyn's Witches' Spell-a-Day Almanac. Even though I'm getting a late start, I thought I would attempt to do each daily spell for the rest of the year. I will report on them here, probably a bit like I did with Ms. Ball's update, under a cut, in case my pagan practices aren't terribly interesting to you. But, nearly every year I vow to be "more witchy" and this seemed like a fun project to undertake. Plus, I have long followed the Tarot for Yourself practice of figuring out my personal "year" card, and, by chance, this year I have Temperance.



Image: Temperance (Aquarian Deck)


Which, according to Greer (my Tarot book author) means when applied to the year: "Developing health and haling practices, testing and trying out your beliefs and philosophy, creative combinations." (emphasis mine.) Seems like a good year, then, to try something like this.

I should probably put out there, before I begin this, that I'm very much aware that Llewellyn is in the BUSINESS of magic, and so, I will likely be critiquing some of these spells based on how much their ingredients might cost a newbie who might think they need the exact oils, herbs, soaps, etc., and will be offering cheaper alternatives (or practices that involve buying NOTHING.) I have, myself, been practicing witchcraft since the early 1990s, so I will be taking a lot of these spells with the proverbial grain of salt. If there are ones that I feel are ill-advised I will post about why I think so and see if the previous years' almanacs have alternatives that might work better.

But, even so, there's no harm in trying a project like this. I think it will be a fun away to be more mindful in my practice.Test out my beliefs, think about my philosophy. These are good things.

( Spell-a-Day Project (Jan. 6) )

( Spell-a-Day Project (Jan. 7) )

New Year's day is the day we take down our Christmas/Yule tree and pack away the decorations.

This year is no exception. Though we did start in on the process a little bit yesterday, since we knew any big undertaking all at once would be too much for us. Normally, I find this process a little sad and emptying, but, this time, it restored a small sense of order.

Partly because we often use our downstairs bathroom as a place to store all the boxes and bins that the Yule stuff comes out of. Normally, this is a temporary hassle that is tolerable and makes more sense than dragging everything back up to the attic, only to drag it all down and back up again in a matter of weeks. However, with the very much needed addition of an emergency downstairs litter box, it was impossible to keep the floor clean of litter bits and everything just felt chaotic any time I needed to change the box or even just didn't want to bother to go upstairs to do my own bathrooming.

The decoration bins are now staged to migrate upstairs over the next day or two and then be tucked back into their corner in the attic. The rocking chair is off the porch and back in its spot as the guest chair. It was never MEANT to only belong to guests, but... well, funny story about that:

I have a friend Theo, who, when they were buying a house for themselves, got really into the theory of interior decorating. They read a book that talked a lot about what your furniture and style choices say about you and your family's values. They took one look around our cozy little living room, the three overstuffed chairs pointed towards each other in an intimate circle, and the weird, almost out of place rocker and nodded and said, "This house is house for three."

And they are absolutely right.

We happily entertain others, but in the end of the day, this house is a house for three. Possibly three HOBBITS, given the amount of food around the house. We have little stacks of books at our feet and blankets (and snoozing cats) everywhere. The house often smells of something baking.

In fact, I took bread out of the oven only a few minutes ago. I have a French bread recipe I always make as an accompaniment to our traditional wild rice soup for New Year's day. Wild rice soup became the tradition because the recipe we have--from my late stepbrother Mark--calls for BOTH turkey and ham, and we always have leftovers of each in the freezer from the holidays.

We have a pagan ritual we do every morning of the new year, too. Last night, some time before midnight, we find a dime minted in the current year and add it to our collection of dimes that are wrapped in a gold silk square. We put this symbolic "silver and gold" outside of our house and then, in the morning, we bring it in over the threshold to symbolize the act of bringing fortune to us in the new year. This has been our good luck tradition for years (we could probably count the years, given the number of dimes. At least 20, at a guess. I can't remember if we were doing this when we lived in Uptown before we bought this house or not.)

Do you have something personal like that, something to bring you luck in the new year?

I have to say, this is the first year that I've even heard of the whole "rabbit, rabbit" thing. But, I had two FB friends discussing it this morning. Despite my surname, I'm clearly not British (or American?) enough for this whole tradition.

( Quick cat update for those interested... )

 Well, maybe you're not pagan, so you're not on her list!  But, the Ostara bunny came to ours.  She left her usual basket and a few Goddess themed eggs:


Image: blue Ostara egg with yellow Brigit's Cross

The actual basket:

Image: Ostara basket filled with eggs, candies, treats, and a smiling cat toy.

One more of the Goddess eggs:


Image: a mottled purple Ostara egg with a silvery-blue moon.

Mason told me that he feels too old to do the actual HUNTING for the eggs, but he does still like getting the basket. I told him that he can keep getting an Ostara basket as long as he wants. I'd even send one to college, because WHO DOESN'T LOVE PEEPS AND CHOCOLATE COVERED MARSHMALLOW BUNNIES???!!!???  

Yesterday, I also changed over the altar to its spring clothes... no that that's stopped the snow from falling. When we headed out to school/work this morning, a light dusting was falling. I can see the it's sticking in places. I don't like to complain about the weather too much, but, OMG, the snow could stop any time now. People I know in Chicago are posting pictures of flowers in bloom.

Ah well.

 For those of you who don't know, my family is Pagan. We're not always the most observant of pagans and we do also do some Christmas-y things around this time of year.  But we do make an effort on Yule/Winter Solstice, the shortest day/longest night of the year.  

We've had a Yule Log for years.  Shawn and a friend of hers "liberated" (aka stole) a perfect-sized birch log from Eloise Butler Wildflower Preserve.  Another friend of ours drilled three holes in it for candles.  Every year, we pull it out of storage and I decorate it from pine boughs either scavenged from our tree or from the leftovers at the Y's Men's tree sale (they usually have a bundle we can take for free.)  

On Yule, once the sun goes down, we do a very simple ritual of singing a few songs (including Fa-la-la-la-la because it mentions Yuletide) and a lighting of the candles. We normally open a few presents on Solstice under this light--and that of the tree. Traditionally, we try to give the more meaningful, less expensive, non-commercial gifts on Yule, but that doesn't always work out either. This year I gave Shawn her SUPER expensive hair product, for instance, which is neither non-commercial, nor cheap.  :-)

Then, once the excitement of all that dies down, Mason and I brave the cold and take one of the candles outside and light a fire in the chiminea.  We have a cast iron chiminea in the back yard, and I collect firewood all year for Yule. Last year, we stayed out so long, I actually RAN OUT of kindling.  This year our toes got chilly, but we hung out watching the flames and thinking about life, the universe, and everything for an hour--maybe a little longer.  Once we felt sufficiently "bonfired," we relit the candle from the chiminea, banked the flames, and came back inside.

We then transfer the flame to a fire-safe glass that we can leave unattended (though we keep it where we can keep an eye on it, in our bedroom) for it to burn all night, symbolically keeping the light going in the darkness. We have this really lovely stained-glass chalice type thing that, when light shines through it, looks a bit like a multi-faceted sun in yellows and light greens. I often use it whenever we do Solar rituals, in fact. 

Sometimes, one of us (usually Mason, since he's such a night owl) volunteers to keep vigil for the return of the sun by staying up all night and officially greeting the sun.  This year, Mason passed out watching Haikyu! (a volleyball anime) with me in the TV room.  So, I tucked him in, shut off the lights, and went to bed.  I'd put a 10-hour votive in the little stained-glass thingy so I wasn't surprised it was still going when I went to bed around midnight.

It was still going in the morning.

In fact, somehow, it stayed lit until the next nightfall, almost 24 hours.

My theory is that somehow, I placed the votive exactly on top of an old wick. There was old wax in the chalice thingie, but I thought that the previous candle was completely spent.  I'm guessing not.   What was especially neat to me was how STRONG the sunlight was the day after the day after Solstice.  It was almost like the sun really did absorb all of our Yule energy.  :-)  Of course we didn't really do that, but it was magical, none-the less.

But... spiritually and metaphorically, I think the world needed more light after give how dark and... awful (politically) 2017 has been. I hope that our small ritual gave the world what it needs to get through, and, in fact, it is my hope that our Yuletide miracle extends to you and your family.  If you have been in darkness, let our light shine through. 

 Today's breakfast is two eggs over easy (but three yolks, because I got  double one!) and two slices of yesterday's cardamom bread. This is a little heartier than normal for me, but I'm bracing myself for a long day at Quatrefoil Library.I'm volunteering with the acquisitions committee. I have no real idea what I'll be doing exactly, but hopefully it will be fun or rewarding or both.  I'll let you know how it went tomorrow. I'll be doing something with them from 9:30 am, until 1:00 pm.  

I also have to take off even earlier this morning to hit the post office before Q.  Not only did I finish off my pen pal list, but I also have a package that needs to go to New Zealand for one of the winners of the charity auction that Jim Hines organized to help fun the trans hotline in Michigan. If you're curious, I raised a decent amount of money considering that there were only three books on offer. I'll be curious to know how this auction is going over all, but fingers crossed that he's raising good money.

Otherwise, the weekend was very quiet.  My family intended it to be that way, since, like most Minnesotans, we'd heard that the polar vortex was coming and so basically planned to hunker down and wait it out.  I went outside exactly three times this weekend. The first time early Saturday morning to shovel the sidewalk. The second time, I started up the car Sunday morning to move it over to the day plow side of the street (a frustrating exercise since the day plow NEVER SHOWED.)  The third and final time was to take Mason over to his friend Rosemary's for their traditional Saturday (moved to Sunday) dinner and movie night. I guess last night they also made a gingerbread house with Rosemary's brother, which frankly looked AMAZING (ours last year was more of a gingerbread shack and kept listing to the side.)

We finished decorating the house for Yule, which, in our case, meant actually getting the Yule Log together and putting various evergreen boughs around the house.  Yeah, we decked the halls.  Except without holly, since I think holly berries are poisonous to cats... and this year I would not trust our new kitty Buttercup not to eat ALL THE POISON.  He already likes to climb up on of of the larger presents under the tree and carefully chose various ornaments to steal and then noisily bat around the room.  THIS is why we decided to revert to our "toddler tree" in which we hang absolutely nothing breakable on the lower 2/3rds of the tree.

Solstice shopping is done, but I still have a few Christmas presents to get.  The bonus of being pagan is that decided to double up on the gift-giving holidays and we celebrate Yule/Solstice AND Christmas (because, really, outside of this whole birth of Christ thing, have you LOOKED at Christmas?  It's completely pagan.)  Plus, Shawn was raised Christian and decided she wanted to keep Christmas.  Given that none of what she wants involves going to a church, it seemed perfectly fine with me.  I will say that I'm just as happy to celebrate it.  Easter always gets me, because we celebrate Ostara and it ALWAYS comes early (being one of the points from which such things are counted) and so I end up wandering around on Easter Sunday wondering why the heck all the stores are closed!  

Ah, I'd better run. There's sure to be a line around the block at the post office, and I don't want to be late to my first volunteer gig!

So yesterday, I was quite convinced that my printer was going to defeat my plans for Mason's Solstice gift. For those of you just tuning in, on Solstice, this pagan family attempts to give gifts that are 'from the heart'--which has come to mean, homemade rather than store bought or of SOME DEEP SIGNIFICANCE. For instance, I once spent quite a bit of money on a pair of earrings for Shawn for Solstice, but they were perfect replicas of a children's story about Raven that we read to Mason when he was quite young. It's the story of Raven stealing the sun and the earrings were Native made and actually included a sun in the raven's beak.

But, so I started out thinking that to make Mason's tee-shirt, I would need to use our printer and heat-transfer paper that I bought at Michael's (a craft store.) This assumed that what I had at home was an InkJet printer... which I thought I had, but it turns out not so much. In fact, the heat-transfer paper nicely went in.... AND PROMPTLY MELTED COMPLETELY, like didn't even come out the other side AT ALL. Very smelly. Very impressive. I do believe, however, that my printer may actually survive this mistreatment. BUT, I had to give up on the printer option. My friends on the Interwebs suggested trying Kinko's, the lady at Kinko's said they had no InkJet printers so, nope, try Office Max. The Office Max helper also said, "No, sorry!"

I thought, perhaps, I was defeated. Because, while I can draw, I normally am baffled by straight lines (which this design would require.) But, I gave it a go anyway:



I think it turned out pretty well. You may be wondering why I am gifting my son with the number 11 in kanji. The answer is, of course, Bleach related. The 11th Division kicks butt and, since Mason might be wearing this to kuk sool (which requires black tees under the gi) this will give him extra kickiness to his buttness, I'm sure. We already swear in Japanese as part of our key-yop. Luckily, these folks are Korean, so shouting the s-word equivelant really doesn't make much of an impression. Plus, our Japanese is crappy enough I'm SURE no one notices.

Today is the official launch date of the second book in my vampire princess of St. Paul series, ALMOST FINAL CURTAIN.

The back cover copy says:

Craving the spotlight is in her blood.

Ever since high school student Anastasija Parker discovered she was vampire royalty, her life has been sort of crazy. The half-vampire- half-witch just wants some normalcy, and trying out for the spring musical seems like the perfect fix.

But when the ancient talisman that stands between vampire freedom and slavery to witches is stolen, Ana has to skip rehearsal and track down the dangerous artifact before someone uses it to make this year's curtain call her last...

And, you can read the first chapter here: www.tatehallaway.com

-----

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In other news, Shawn and I had fun yesterday shopping for crafty (Crafty?) things at Michael's. We've been putting together a new family altar in the sunroom (which the cats have instantly adopted as a new favorite perch, so it already has good energy.) I've been having fun doing a little fabric painting on various colors of altar cloths. Plus, we bought some "modge podge" just because it's fun to say, and I was pretty sure I could find projects to do with it. When we get it all together I'll post a picture or two.

The sun is finally out, so I may try to plant a few containers or expand Mason's garden EVEN MORE. We kind of went "hog wild" at Menards, so we're going to need a lot of room for all the veggies he picked out. Luckily, I'm terrible at growing grass (probably my reluctance to fertilize,) so I don't feel badly tearing up sod to make room for something more useful -- like spinach.

Whole Foods actually has some blueberry plants for sale that they claim don't need acidic soil or other of the usual requirements (like male and female plants.) I'm going to look up the scientific name of what they have on offer and see how much of that is true, and if they're right that these are relatively low-maintance, I'm thinking of building a raised bed for a couple of blueberry plants. It would be COOL to have home-grown blueberries.

Otherwise, I got jack done on the new novel. I hope to do better today, but, man, that sun is calling my name....