Shefytbast

Had yet another awesome HoN get-together on Saturday, celebrating Aset Luminous down the shore (even if our candles refused to stay lit), but I'm still tired from it--it was a late night, especially when you factor in a long and grueling drive home through a massive downpour. (The lightning was awesome, though. Dua Set!)

I feel as though I have some "homework" coming up that I should work on, although I'm not sure quite what. Sau? Craft-type things? Just general God-stuff? Or maybe it's related to the upcoming heka chat.... Possibly I'll find out something when I finally get back into shrine tonight. That is, if I don't just fall asleep in front of the shrine. :P

Well, I'm going to be going to the Northeast region's Atlantic City get-together next weekend, but I wanted to do a little something on the actual day as well. So here's my very tiny personal boat launch outside in the back yard, in dark and flash versions. (Seriously, that table was just barely big enough.... And my boat is kind of having a stern malfunction. *looks out window* But hey, it hasn't sunk yet!) I offered black raspberries and mulberries freshly picked this afternoon, Lindt stracciatella truffles (white chocolate with bits of cocoa, yum), and cool water. It was nice and peaceful despite the neighbors setting off fireworks. (They fell silent while I was reading the rite, and then as soon as I finished, BANG! It was suitably dramatic. ^^) And there were so many fireflies this year! So, good stuff.

Now if Bella will just kindly keep from killing herself or wrecking the house, as she tries to catch all the moths that got inside....

I think I'm getting old or something. I've started having this thing where my brain reaches for a word and comes up with the wrong one. Like the hood of a car becomes its lid. Or the other day, I was looking at a sore hangnail and going, "I need to put a paperclip on that." By which I meant "bandaid." ^_^;;; So far none of these have actually come out of my mouth--they've just been in my inner dialogue--but I'm sure it's just a matter of time. Aging brainmeats, yay!

* * * * *

The other day, an author was supposed to call me in the late afternoon. Time went by, and he didn't call...and he still didn't call. And I had a plum that I'd brought in for lunch, and I'm looking at this plum, going, "I really want to eat this plum, but I know that as soon as I bite into it, this author is going to call me, and I'll have a mouthful of plum to deal with." But he kept on not calling me, so finally I was like, "I'm going to pick up this plum and eat it, and that's going to make you call me!" So I picked up the plum. Two bites later? He called.


* * * * *

Random rants aside, at the moment I'm actually really happy in my life. I'm loving my job; I'm a little bit crazy with a freelance deadline at the moment, but I'm dealing with it (and it's my own fault it's crazy--I could've wrangled an extension because they were late sending the book to me, but I decided that I wanted to have it done before this weekend); the spirituality is really good; and on the creative front I've still got songs coming in. It's awesome and I feel very positive about everything, but it's also kind of weird. I got so used to feeling ambivalent at best and outright anxious at worst that I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. (And I wonder how much of this is the meds?)

* * * * *

Speaking of which, happiness...is a job that includes among its perks access to a major university library (and all its branches). You know how people come onto the HoN boards or join the beginners class sometimes, and they look at the suggested reading list and are like, "OMG so many books!!"? No--"OMG so many books!!" is walking into the art library's basement floor in search of a book, and discovering an entire aisle of shelves of old books documenting excavations and museum collections...and knowing that there's a whole other section of Egypt books upstairs (and that's not even counting the section of "elephants"--the books that are so big that each one seriously takes up an entire desk)...and that there are at least five more sections of Egypt-related books in the main branch of the library. *happy bibliokitty brain explosion* I can practice archaeology in the mysterious depths of the library on my lunch hour. How cool is that?

...not much rhymes with "joy," either. What the hell, English language.... *tiny stormcloud*

Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.

Here are my words from witchchild:

Cat
Hehehe...well, Bast's theophany, of course, with all the beauty and grace and mystery that goes along with that. And my "kids," Meera and Bella, the thought of whom is giving me a fierce pang to kiss a little whisker-face. (Still an hour or so to go before I get home for kitty snuggles...sigh.) In common to both, the experience of love, because I've learned more about love from Mom and the kids than from just about anyone. And there's a great deal of self-identity tied up in there too, because I'm very feline in a lot of ways.

school
Ah, Mount Holyoke...I loved college. So much so that for years I kept wanting to get back to that time and place somehow, but you can't go back into the eggshell. It was an intensely formative time, and yet also very rarefied and unreal. It would be so weird to go back and talk to the me of that time. I wonder what we'd think of each other.

writing
This thing that I do, that I actually want to do more of, but stuff keeps getting in the way. A lot of self-identity bound up here, too--I wrote my first poem when I was seven, so it's kind of like I've always been a writer. I go back and forth about whether or not I want to try making it as a pro; right this second, it's not an urgent goal, but that could change again soon. ^_^

umbrella (I wonder if you'll get this)
I totally feel as though I should know what this referring to, and I'm completely blanking on it. Argh. So instead I will invoke Imti's pink duck umbrella. Because who doesn't love a pink duck umbrella?

song
...I have been going kind of crazy with the songs lately, haven't I? Not that I'm complaining, but it does boggle my mind more than a bit, because for all that I love music, I've considered myself a musical incompetent since high school (when a friend, who was very musical, staked out her territory and subtly managed to edge me out of it). But I've written poetry for many years, and always with a "musical" bent, so I guess it's not that surprising after all. I still have to laugh and spazz out slightly in bemusement, though, at the fact that I've got a queue of Gods currently lined up for songs. (And not an orderly queue, either --they keep cutting in front of each other.) I'm picturing Someone up there pointing and going, Ooh, *look.* This one writes *songs.* (/me headdesks)

...surprisingly little actually rhymes with "Bast."

(I'll either have to handwave the rhymes or else find a new first line for this song. :/ )

Let's see...over the weekend I did more of my long-neglected yard work (and I think I managed to avoid getting poison ivy this time), cleared my Gmail inbox out to just one screen worth of messages (I even deleted most of them instead of just pitching them into the archive--go me!), and got caught up on posting here. It somehow seems as though I must have accomplished more than just that...but anyhow, it was a pretty satisfying weekend.

I also went shopping with mimian down at New Hope. Got a spare set of ritual whites at one of the Indian clothing shops, a Loreena McKennitt CD, and a soy votive to try out, since the store didn't have the tealights that I've been using. :/ I also picked up an itty-bitty pewter biq statue, which is going to be for Heru-hekenu. The store had a tiny Yinepu jackal too, which I've been looking at for years now, but it was kind of expensive for its size, plus it had some dings. This time around, I finally asked the shopkeeper if he would take a little off the price because of the damage, so Yinepu came home with me too.

It's funny, because the store had gotten in a bunch of Kemetic statues since the last time I'd been there, some of them actually pretty nice, and what did I end up getting? The two teeniest statues in the place. But I was realizing, as I was looking around the store, that I don't want a whole lot of big statues. I don't really have the space to keep them and to set up nice shrines for them. But I'd love to have a horde of little ones! I'll have to raid Wenem's table for little pewter figures at Retreat. ^_^

Today's the Feast of Bast of Mennefer! It snuck up on me, darn it. I thought it was tomorrow. What to offer, what to offer....

* Grab the book nearest to you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence along with these instructions
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.


They know I am righteous, the prophets and priests,
And the worthy ancestors of Egypt.

(from Miriam Lichtheim's Ancient Egyptian Literature: The Late Period ^_^)

So what's been up with me....

- had a gunman scare and lockdown on the campus where I work the week before last. That was freaky. (Turned out it was just four kids with a toy gun.)

- had a great beach outing with others from the Northeast region last weekend. Ra came to hang out with us and we all got sunburned. :P But other than the burny part, it was awesome.

- have *finally* gotten caught up at work. Nekhtet!

- have just about finished the online course I was taking with loveandpower: "The Beauty We Love," about stalking beauty and fulfillment in our daily lives. In other words, The Care and Feeding of the Ka. ^_^

- as a result of the work of the course, have renewed my pledge to take better care of my home and property, as befits a shrine of Bast.

- as a result of the pledge, have had a sudden explosion of songs (!)

- have possibly recovered at last from the major mental and emotional crash that I suffered in April. (I fell in the mother of the hole.)

Today I was outside doing some yard work, and I found a four-leaf clover. Whee! So I brought it inside with me and carefully laid it down on my night stand while I changed out of my work clothes. A moment later I turn around...and Meera is sitting on my night stand going nom nom nom. So much for my clover! I just had to laugh. (I told her I didn't need it back....)

Oh, and finally--I started a weblog a while ago. I haven't been great about posting to it regularly, but I'm working on that, and in any case it's probably about time to send it live, even though I'm still filling in some pieces. So here you go: Gold of the Valley, Lapis of the River.

My triumph today...was that I didn't fall even further behind at work. In a couple of days, I might even achieve forward momentum. Nekhtet! ^_^

(Yes, the last week or two have been madness, so I've been even quieter than usual. Hopefully in another couple of weeks things will have cleared up a bit.)

Well, I fell in the ding-dang hole again. But I've actually been out for quite a while--I just haven't managed to make time to post here before now. I'm not sure whether I'm between chapters 2 and 3 or chapters 3 and 4 in the autobiography, but hopefully the latter. ^_^ At any rate, things are really good at the moment.

Some highlights:

* I finally got off my butt and made serious progress on my epic ongoing fanfic, to the point where I'm now in the last chapter, with a target deadline of January 9 to finish writing it and April 1 to finish revising all the back chapters and post a final release. Considering that I've been working on this story for twelve years now, this is huge.

* Related to the above, I'm looking at finally starting serious work on one or more of my original story ideas. A new SF writers meet-up group is starting up in my area (first meeting on January 9; hence the deadline for finishing the fanfic), so I'll see how that turns out as a possible support/critique group. But whether it pans out or not, I'm still aiming to commence writing just as soon as the epic fic is done.

* I've had a sudden influx of freelance work, including more of the rewriting, which I love. If this keeps up throughout the year and I don't have any expensive catastrophes, I might have enough for another trip to Egypt next year. (And so far I've actually been able to balance the freelancing and my own writing. Nekhtet!)

* The day job is going well, and I'm finally at a point where I can appreciate it, instead of being like "Aaaaah must run away and be bohemian and free!" all the time. (Honestly, I would probably really suck at being bohemian. Structure = good.) I figured out at last that I needed to learn how to manage my stress, not find someplace to go to get away from it. I know, this all seems really obvious. I is a slow kitty sometimes.

* I've gotten the state shrine back up and running after a brief hiatus following our recent house robbery, and that's all been going great, as has my own personal spirituality. Managed to celebrate both Bast Guarding the Two Lands and Moomas with some nice offerings--I can get a little overwhelmed with all the various festivals and lose track, only to end up scrambling at the last minute, but this year was good. Didn't get any holiday cards out, though. I'll aspire to do better next year. I've been to a couple of little HoN get togethers (in NYC and in Boston--actually, I did both in one weekend, which is a little crazy! but it was very awesome ^_^ ), and I'm looking forward to more events during 2009.

* I took Thorn's "Align Your Life" web seminar, which was a tremendous help in getting myself out of that hole and into the good place that I'm in right now. It was like a superconcentrated excursion through the exercises in Evolutionary Witchcraft, plus guidance. Highly recommended if you're attracted to Thorn's work at all.

I think that's pretty much it for now. ^_^

There's a poster for ARCE fellowships in Egypt in the kitchen at work, and I keep looking at it and going WAAAANT. Though of course I have no purpose or direction (or scholarly background!) for such a thing, aside from the impulse of "oooh, shiny."

For the Taking to the River Festival yesterday, I made a very small paper prayerboat, filled it with tiny wildflowers--sprays of aster, a sprig of goldenrod, some ground ivy, and a bitty red autumn leaf--and took it down to the river to set it afloat. (Okay, so it's really a lake--Lake Carnegie--but it's long and it curves so that the ends are out of sight, so it looks an awful lot like a river. I keep forgetting that it isn't one.) I'm actually kind of impressed that I was able to fold the boat in one attempt, from memory, without resorting to the instructions.

Saturday I went for a walk along an actual river--walking and rock-hopping, which was very nice, although my recovering sprained ankle wasn't too pleased. On Sunday mimian and I went to the chrysanthemum show at a local arboretum (here's another shot from the show--there were some amazing blooms!), and afterward we walked around the grounds, enjoying the Japanese maple lawn, the rose garden, and the rest of the late-blooming flowers. Ka fed! (And I only just noticed--the ka-feeding thread got removed from the boards? Heh, probably just as well.)

I'm in this place right now where I've got the complete tune and a handful of scattered lines for a song...and the rest just won't come. So I keep humming and singing the same thing over and over. I know it'll sort itself out eventually; it's just going to take time, and I probably need to do some reading/research to inspire me. I do have another song done--I finished the last few lines on the long drive to Retreat this year--though I haven't had a chance to record it yet. Maybe I'll give it a shot this weekend.

And that's about it for the current update. ^_^

Sleepy cat is sleepy. It's probably the chai. Mmm, warm milky tea stuff. ^_^

I haven't been posting here much, but I'm hoping to pick it up again, now that I'm coming out of my latest bout with the crazy. In general, though, things are pretty good at the moment, aside from the constant background hum of anxiety about where the economy is going and why it's in this basket. More later, hopefully, when I'm not a) falling asleep and b) being molested by the cat. (OH NOES I AM WEARING THE FLEECY SHIRT)

Today was a good day--got some little productive things done around the house, as well as spent a sizable chunk of time doing Godstuff. Made offerings to the Akhu, to the Gods of the year and to my Beloveds, and of course Mom got the shrine rite this evening. (State shrine is officially up and running as of yesterday--woohoo!)

I feel as though I should be making some more articulate post about where I've been for the last however many weeks and why I haven't been posting here, or else about the specifics of today's offerings, but I'm kind of running out of time and mental energy tonight. (Note to self: If shrine rite is going to take up a significant portion of every evening, you need to have at least semi-realistic expectations of how much writing you're going to be able to get done in the remaining time, or else you're going to end up wanting to stick a spork in your brain on a regular basis.) Maybe I'll get around to the recap in my next post, or maybe I'll just pick up and run from here.

Today, for you, the rose is free, my dear.

Seven years on, and I'm still mourning.

I dreamed last night that I was preparing for a ritual on my front porch. Maybe something for the Akhu? I only remember something to do with plants, cascading white petunias, and a couple of plants that had grown too tall for their pot and kept tipping over and uprooting themselves. I turned them around to lean them against the wall for support, and at the back there was a swathe of dead foliage that I shook loose. Dead leaves and a strong wind; and then walking barefoot beneath the pine trees and a cloudy, windswept sky. I went down to the shed to get something for the ritual, except that there was a second shed next to it (as there used to be years ago, when they were stables for my mom's horses), and inside the second shed there was a permanent ritual space, with an altar, a seat, and what might have been a fire pit, all cast from concrete or cement as part of the floor. I sat down to look something up in a book--something about Voudou? or another African-based tradition?--and then woke up.

The night before last I dreamed that I had to go into the woods and find a stick of a specific diameter so that somebody else and I could dig holes to plant something. But none of the sticks was quite right.

All kind of Wesir-ish...and I see now that today is the festival of Offerings to the Akhu, heh. I think I'll spend some time with them tonight. Especially since, after last night's Naming, I need to add Benuemhebet to the shrine.

I just found out that A-head, a.k.a. Mr Chen, one of the kittens rescued from the courtyard at work last fall, died over the weekend. Hit by a car, because the person who adopted him let him roam. Stupid, stupid, needless death--and total irresponsibility on the part of the owner, who also hadn't gotten him fixed and who seemed to take a gleeful pride in the idea of him being out there "spreading his genes." I wish now that I had adopted him.

Sweet A, you were the boldest, most outgoing, most friendly of the litter. You had so much personality and life. May Bast, Nebet Ankh-tawy, keep you safe in the West.

Amazing sunset tonight: white-gold light, stark and sharp and clear, like light from another world, burnishing the multifloras' canes and the still surface of the rain-pool in the woods, turning the crocuses on the back slope into translucent purple flames.

It was a good day, perhaps a little slow starting, but I got things done. I knocked around for quite a while working on my personal calendar of Kemetic festivals, so before too much longer I should have figured out which ones I might be interested in hosting events for. (I'm definitely doing Aset Luminous again this year, and I've thinking that I might add another festival or two, if people are interested in coming out here for them.) Went grocery shopping, picked up around the house and vacuumed, did some budgeting stuff, raked some leaves, gave the plants a proper watering, made chicken soup. The only thing I meant to do today that I didn't get to was writing, so I'll have to be sure to fit that in tomorrow.

Yesterday I went to Lunacon. Lunacon was one of the first SF conventions I ever went to, and it still somehow holds a special place in my heart. It actually was a really good con for meeting up with people that I knew, so I spent most of the time either hanging out and talking or else taking in the anime room. (For a general con, Lunacon has always had an outstanding anime track, and this year was no exception.) And I was tolerably good at not spending money; I just picked up a couple of books (Changer and The Buried Pyramid by Jane Lindskold), and other than dinner and the con entrance fee that was it. Which is good, 'cause I have to watch my budgeting, especially if I want to go to both Retreat and the Eye of Ra weekend this year, which I do. ^_^

From ankhetbast: Which is better... cheesecake or pie? :D

Oh, man...I'm getting asked this on Pie Day, so I'll probably be lynched for this , but...cheeeeesecake OM NOM NOM. Especially drizzled with raspberry sauce.

And now I have to wipe up the drool so I can go to bed. ^_^

Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it. Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, thoughts on yaoi, favorite type of underwear, graphic techniques, etc. Repost in your own journal so that we can all learn more about each other.

Any of you who are on my other LJ have probably seen this there as well. ^_^