Travel Log 6-3: It's Out of My Control

  I apologize ahead of time for having the music player on the sidebar and for putting a music video in this post. Please turn the music player on the right instead of forgetting about it and just playing the video like I do, lol.
    I don't normally do things like this but please start the video and read the lyrics then continue to the rest of my post below it. It will all make sense I swear. It's Waiting For The End by Linkin Park.

This is not the end
This is not the beginning,
Just a voice like a riot
Rocking every revision
But you listen to the tone
And the violent rhythm
Though the words sound steady
Something empty's within 'em

We say Yeah!
With fists flying up in the air
Like we're holding onto something
That's invisible there,
'Cause we're living at the mercy of
The pain and the fear
Until we dead it, Forget it,
Let it all disappear.

Waiting for the end to come
Wishing I had strength to stand
This is not what I had planned
It's out of my control....

Flying at the speed of light
Thoughts were spinning in my head
So many things were left unsaid
It's hard to let you go...

(Oh!) I know what it takes to move on,
I know how it feels to lie,
All I wanna do
Is trade this life for something new
Holding on to what I haven't got

Sitting in an empty room
Trying to forget the past
This was never meant to last,
I wish it wasn't so...

(Oh!) I know what it takes to move on,
I know how it feels to lie,
All I wanna do
Is trade this life for something new
Holding on to what I haven't got

What was left when that fire was gone?
I thought it felt right but that right was wrong
All caught up in the eye of the storm
And trying to figure out what it's like moving on
And i don't even know what kind of things I've said
My mouth kept moving and my mind went dead
So, picking up the pieces, now where to begin?
The hardest part of ending Is starting again!!

All I wanna do
Is trade this life for something new
Holding on to what i haven't got...

This is not the end
This is not the beginning,
Just a voice like a riot
Rocking every revision
But you listen to the tone
And the violet rhythm
Though the words sound steady
Something empty's within 'em
(Holding on to what i haven't got)

We say Yeah!
With fists flying up in the air
Like we're holding onto something
That's invisible there,
'Cause we're living at the mercy of
The pain and the fear
Until we dead it, Forget it,
Let it all disappear
(Holding on to what i haven't got!)


Ok now my post:

        The Circle of Mom's thing has been a level 3 brewhaha from the start but has quickly escalated to a level 6 fiasco complete with death threats and religious warfare. (if by chance you have so far been lucky enough not to see the general asshattery going on with this check out Mrs. B's post HERE and catch up it's the whole situation is seriously ridiculous and unnecessary).
     So many great people have weighed in on this (Kallan, Not Hannah, Mrs. B, Gumbo Soul, and so many more) but it has affected me so badly that I felt the need to use you all as a purging ground for it- sorry 'bout that.
     I was raised in a christian household. Not amazingly devout or anything. We were catholic but after a little misunderstanding when I was 3 we left and didn't go back. I bounced around christian denominations and schools for almost all of my life. My parents never preached religion at me or even really talked about it at all really.
    I started my pagan journey when I was about 14. When I talked to my parents about it they pretty much thought it was a great joke. They still do, which is why we don't talk about it. When I talked to the pastors that I had gone to for advice before their reactions ranged from laughter to talk of demonic possesion (tip to teenage pagans out there who just happen to be going to chirstian schools and are good at theology- be very careful who you discuss your own religion with, some people hide the crazy very well). As you can imagine I did not spend my formative years talking about my own faith pretty much AT ALL. I wish I could say that I was one of those rare brave people that found the strength to stand firm and fight for my faith but I wasn't. I pretty much put my head down, kept my mouth shut and tried to get through. Especially after I got shipped off to a reform school for juvenile delinquents in the middle of backwater southern mormon land (not for being a pagan but for running away from home for a week to go to my friends LSD baptism of all things- my parents knew a judge and were very over reactive).
    This brings me to the song that I featured above(I told you it would make sense eventually). After taking some good hard looks at my reactions to what is going on over at Circle of Moms, this song is what keeps playing in my head. What upsets me the most about what is going on (besides the whole death threat/religious hate thing of course) is that I feel like it's dragging me back into a time and place I don't ever want to be in  again. I ended something and began a different journey, but the ending never seems to be complete, and I can never seem to leave behind the remnants of what went before.
     I want to be left alone in my faith, separate and distanced from the christian world. I don't want to be seen by them or be forced to look at the pain some of them can cause. Why can't they leave me alone in my faith? Why do they care what I believe or how I live? And why can't I stop caring about it all?

EDIT****************************
    Ok, after rereading it the above sounds really really whiney, lol. Unfortunately you guys often get my thoughts as they pour out of my head and apparently I was having an emo moment. What I really wanted to say was that although I am not personally being attacked, or closely involved, between what is going on with this particular situation and the current political climate throughout the nation of right wing hard core scary christian legislating going on (mainly in the states not at a national level-yet) it is all dragging me back to a place that was really really dark in my life. I cannot understand why, when no one is going out of their way to have anything to do with these people, the really hateful and obscene crawls out of the woodwork and comes spitting in someone decents' face. Especially when the someone who's face is being spit upon really just wants to live their life and is not seeking to interact with the jerk spitting on them in any way.
   In short the teenager in side of me is screaming at these people things along the lines of  'So what if  you're not inviting me to your party, I don't want to go to your party, Now get the hades out of mine people want to dance and your car's blocking the DJ!'
    Leaving christianity honestly seems like trying to break up with a particularly needy boyfriend sometimes....

Travel Log 6-1: Pagan Values

Ok, honestly I had absolutely no idea about pagan values blogging month until Mrs. B posted about it and I read this post by Bishop in The Grove (check it out it is a great read, and if you've never checked out his blog before I highly recommend it). However with all the hooplah and brewhaha going on right now between whether to call ourselves pagans and random christians popping up to be jerks over a blog contest I feel motivated to join in now that I know about it.
    So, in the style of Bishop in The Grove,  I'll be randomly (because as we all know most of my posting is totally random, lol) posting what values I find to be most important to me personally as a pagan.
    I'll start with one that is, for me, a cornerstone- acceptance.

        As a pagan, acceptance is the foundation that I build my faith on. I accept that there are things I will never understand. I accept the responsibility of living every day the best that I can as the price for my life. I accept others as they are and know that I can only touch their lives to the extent that they allow me. I accept that I am but a small pebble on the ocean of existence, but I am not alone- the sun shall warm me and the ocean soothe me, the earth shall support me and the air cool me. I accept that I am a small thread among many, but the fabric into which I am woven  is vast and beautiful and as ephemeral as a wish.
       Acceptance has not come easily to me. I am proud and selfish had find it difficult to accept that my will cannot always prevail, that change is not just up to me. Because it does not come easily acceptance is something that I value.

Travel Log 5-31: What a Weekend!

  Well the long weekend is over and was it ever packed, lol.
    We went on the Ghost tour on Saturday and let me say, it rocked! The Whaley house was awesome!! Not only did I have some one rubbing my arm in the theater (and no one was sitting on either side of me) but I got almost a dibilitating fear of falling in a room where a young woman tried to jump to her death but failed (she later shot herself in the outhouse). This is considered the most haunted place in the United States and to top it off Vincent Price slept there!!! (I know- I'm a dweeb and dead person fan girl, lol). Also I finally got to visit the Hotel Del Coronado (where Some Like it Hot was filmed- yet again old film and dead person dweeb cause Marylin is said to haunt a villa there) and even sneaked up to room 3327 were a mysterious con lady who was shot there is said to haunt. I want to stay there just because it is beautiful.
    We got down to old town San Diego about 3 hours early and boy was I glad we did. I've been to San Diego before, but only to Sea World and the Gaslamp district (essentially the old red light district also called the Stingeree) and those are nice, but wow to old town. It's a little tourist trappy but it is also a whole lot of preserved buildings from back in the adobe and clapboard period. The whole town square of the old city is practically there, and a lot of it in absolutely awesome condition. While most are museums some are also artisan's shops and they have some really awesome stuff. Next time I have cash to spend I'm heading down that way.
      So yeah, we had a ton of fun there, lol. I haven't gone through my photo's yet but if there are any good ones I'll post them. Oh and if anyone is in the So Cal area and want to have some awesome ghosty fun there is a group of ghost investigators that investigate the Whaley house every month and they take visitors. We are so going to try and go on one of their investigations!
     Friday we had a Hairspray Marathon when my hubby got home. I was craving some of my oldies musicals but couldn't bring myself to watch Grease so soon after Kinicky passed (you have no idea the level of obsession I have had with that movie ever since I was a kid- I even liked the sequel). Maybe I'll do a tribute next weekend.
      We also picked up the Xbox version of L.A. Nior this weekend so that has kept me away from the computer as well, lol. If you at all like video games and crime shows I suggest you pick this one up- it rocks.
     I should have a couple more entries into my Thrifty witch series this week as well, so w00t for being productive! Oh and I finished my first crochet project finally (only after about 4 months and 3 yarn changes and 7 restarts, lol) so I'll get pics and post that too.
      I hope everyone had as much fun this past weekend as I did!

Travel Log 5-23: We're All Still Here

   Well Saturday came and went and doesn't look like the world ended. There were a lot of people looking forward to that on both sides of the issue so to speak. But honestly I hope that we can all take a lesson away from this. For me that lesson is to remind myself that it doesn't matter what tomorrow is going to bring I still have to live today. All those poor people who gave their life savings to a charletain that promised them heaven on a specific day forgot that one. Planning for tomorrow is great, but live today for all it's worth.
    In happier news (I know what's happier than the world not ending right?) this week is the Monkeyman's birthday!  11 years ago I gave up my dream of living as a hermit in some remote Irish cottage and got a new one that apparently is going to include pirates.
     I kinda feel bad for the kid since his birthday is the last day of school, but that at least means that he's going to get to stay out late. We already did the cake and presents this weekend (video's and underwear and ipod's oh my!) and the cake thing. Now normally I make a cake from scratch and then make it all pretty but for some reason my oven decided that it was going to go nuclear this weekend. It burned 3 cakes even with me cutting the cook time in half. So I had to go store bought and then customize the heck out of it. So here's the pretty darn good (if I do say so myself) re furbished store bought cake that he got on Sunday after he ripped through his presents-

The sculls were made out of fondant and were super fun. It was my first foray into fondant and I can tell you it will be making further debut's into our confectionary life, lol.
    So he had his pirate cake, and then after we almost died of chocolate we headed out to catch the new Pirates of The Caribbean movie (and Johnny Depp still looks good in eyeliner). On his birthday on Wednesday we'll be heading to the Pirate's Dinner Adventure (think Medieval Times but on a boat and no armor or horses) for his final celebration on the actual day.
    Then I'll be depressed for a couple days because on Friday they go to their dad's for the summer. Never a great time for me, but this year my hubby has helped to distract me. On Friday the little guys will be going on their first overnight to grandma and grandpa's and my hubby and I will have 2 nights alone without children in 4 years. A mini vacation kinda. And we're going to be going to a Haunted History tour in San Diego. It's going to include the Star of India and The Wiley House (the oldest brick house left on the west coast) so I am super stoked about that. His birthday is next week and he's being an absolute sweety and taking his birthday celebration to make me feel better. Hopefully we won't go into kid withdrawal and scrap the whole thing Saturday morning, lol.

Travel Log 5-18: It's Too Quiet In Here...

I have the house to myself for a few hours this afternoon. The 2 older kids are at school, and my parents are having a farm adventure in the next city over with the 2 little guys. It is eerily quiet in the house now and I have no idea if I want to go sliding through the house in my socks or go take a nap (thus is the proof that I am, in fact, getting old, lol).
    But since I've been dealing with a nasty start of summer cold I've fallen behind on doing nifty stuff on here so I figure I'll  get some of this stuff taken care of.
   First things first- If you haven't had your palm read by Kijjet over at Dear Goddess Bless Me then you are missing out. She is doing readings for free out of the goodness of her heart, and let me tell you she is good.  She even pinpointed years that specific things happened that have effected me my whole life (often I think that my whole life is almost purely about these things). So thank you Kijjet, it was a truly awesome experience that it's taken me a few weeks to truly digest.
     And the next order of business is an award that The charming Magaly over at Pagan Culture gave me!

  Now normally I deposit these lovelies into my awards cauldron over to the right and thank the person, but since it's Magaly I'll give this one a shot, but with her rules =)

   3 Random Things About Me.......at Disneyland

1). One of my fondest wishes in life is to go to Club 33. I glare green fire at anyone who already has, and will invade a small country for anyone who can get me in.
2). One of the best parts of the day is sitting in lines for the rides and make up stories about the people in other parts of the lines. When I was younger my friends and I would have a competition for the best story matched to most unusual person (Bat's day was awesome for that- nothing better than hundreds of goths at Disneyland to make great stories). Winner had to buy dinner at the Blue Bayou

3). When I was growing up I was terrified of roller coasters. I shook and cried with fear of anything that went up and down, or even took me off the ground for any appreciable amount of time (except for some reason Space Mountain- loved that ride until the one time I was on it and they turned on the lights, couldn't go on it for about 5 years after that). My father was dead set that he was going to get me over this fear, so every time we went to Disneyland he would drag me onto Big Thunder Mountain. I would sit in my seat next to him and demand that he wrap his arm around me, and then he would go into his routine of trying to show me that it was silly to be afraid of it. His favorite part would be to point out one of the animatronic animals they have on the ride. It's this goat at the top of one of the hills that you go slowly up. It sits there rocking back and forth on a boulder with a stick of dynamite in it's mouth, baaing at people as they crest the hill and then drop. He loved to tell me that I was so silly the goat was laughing at me. I sometimes still dream about sneaking a baseball bat onto that ride and taking out that goat...

And now the 10 other people I'm going to tip the nod (or wink depending on what you do with it, lol) to make this a lucky 13...

1.A Witch In The Tea Closet
2.Broom With A View
3.Can We Have A New Witch Ours Melted
4.Dark Mother Goddess
5.Dear Goddess: Bless Me
6.Lost in the Trailer Park
7.Riding on a Broomstick
8.Step Away From The Cauldron..
9.Very Nearly Hippy
10.Wanna-B-Witch

There you guys go, Have fun! I'm off to do some writing while the midgets are out.

Travel Log 5-12: Oh the Strange, Strange World Inside My Head..

Lately I've spent a lot more time inside there, and can I say I think I might have some serious mental issues....
     Since I've instituted the Get Me Off My Butt And Finish A Novel plan (also known as GMOMBaFN or BaF for short) I've been looking at all the work that I have started and stopped in the past 4 years. A total of 9 different novels with completely separate premises have been started and abandoned by me. 9. And the amount of blood and mayhem involved is outrageous (did I mention that my favorite genre's are murder mystery and fantasy?).
     Which leads me to my worry over my mental health. If these characters that I am killing off willy nilly are from my subconscious, am I really gruesomely killing myself? Or do I just have some seriously screwed up fantasies?
     Either way I can say that it feels really darn good to actually look at doing this and knowing deep down, by hook or by crook, I am going to finish at least one of these.
      Because I have a tendency to start and stall I've picked 5 to hop back and forth so that my momentum doesn't stall with a block on one. I know that sound insane, but hey, I'm pretty sure that no one I know is going to say that's anything new.
      However a big difference is that one of the projects is going to be non fiction. I'm seriously considering putting a proposal for a book based on my Thrifty Witch crafts, so I might be using you guys as guinea pigs constructive critics to see if my premise makes sense to anyone else but me.
   See something I've found while coming up with and doing these crafts is, to me, it's not just about saving the money by doing these things myself and cheaply. It's a bit deeper than that. It's about reclaiming something that is mundane and discarded by someone and turning it into something, yet again to me, holy. It's about finding pieces that are just right, and using my intuition to find them. And it's also about cleansing these things and filling them with my purpose and self.
    So yeah I may be showing you guys some of my work on that to see if others who have similar spirituality might get what I'm talking about or if it is in fact time for that tin foil hat.
   

Travel Log 5-9: I Ain't Ded

Sorry for the radio silence over the past week but I've been trying desperately to focus on my writing projects. I know I know, I'm constantly trying to actually work on those. But finally I think the hubby and I have come to an 'arrangement' that might just work. See normally I try and set up a regime of writing time that invariably gets broken into by every other member of my family. Constantly. Which (besides my near crippling fear of failing) is one of the main reason I keep giving up on finishing any of them. After about the 12th interruption to oversee something that the other adult in the house could handle I pretty much throw in the towel (sometimes aimed at my husband and wrapped around a brick...). He doesn't mean to, but he just doesn't understand that I can't interrupt my thoughts and then pick right back up after whatever the interruption was about (hence he constantly tries to hold conversations with me while I'm reading).
    So we've found a solution and worked our way around to figuring out how to make that solution work. 3-4 days a week as soon as he gets home I'm going to be heading out of the house to the library, park, or local starbucks (depending on if my son's laptop that I'm going to be borrowing needs a charge, lol) and writing until I can't write anymore. No interruptions and no breaks in my concentration, just 4-5 hours of writing and time inside my own head. Not as great as having all the time in the world to devote to it, but hopefully having a finite amount of time to do it will help focus me on the task at hand.
     In other news Mother's Day was fun. Got 2 e-books and some time to read not to mention breakfast burrito's in bed.
     I'm debating about actually starting another blog that focuses on my writing and keeping me motivated, but then I look at how long it took me to actually get another post up here and I'm not sure how that will work out.  
      We'll see. I hope everyone else had a great weekend!