Scratch That

Spring has been making an effort, and seems finally to have overcome winter for dominance of the weather.  The days are longer, things have bloomed or are blooming, the popcorn tree has exploded pink petals all over our yard, and the iris are early with their enthusiastic coloring of the front bed - usually they don't burst open until May or June.

The blueberry bushes are heavy with green berries that will tease me for months with their slow ripening.

The Bradford Pear trees are long past their horrid flowering stench.

It's still cool enough at night for a blanket, but warm enough in the daytime hours to allow for shorts if one is so inclined.

Everywhere, life is...lifing.  And everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, things are pollinating.

Ah, pollen.  Wonderful stuff.  If you're a plant.

For a human with allergies, pollen is a special kind of hell.

Lort, but my eyes itch.  I mean, ITCH!  You know, the kind of itch that feels like it'd only be satisfied with a cheese grater?  My eyes itch that way.  Also, my scalp.  I look like one of those old Head and Shoulders advertisements, always scratching.  Gah!!!  My face itches.  My arms.  My legs.  Inside my ears, even!

The world is an odd sort of yellowish-green.  My driveway looks like aliens sneezed all over it.  Puddles are rimmed with bright yellow ribbons, and you can track how quickly they evaporate by the concentric pollen outlines left behind.  The outdoor cats are all the same color, and when they sneeze or move, they poof out pollen-y clouds.

It's a real effort not to scratch.  It won't do any good - short of remaining under water until summer takes his turn on the seasonal wheel, there's no avoiding pollen.  Allergy medications aren't reliable, and they're expensive, so I just have to endure. And shower frequently (I guess that's an upside for anyone hanging out with me, but my water bill gets outrageous this time of year).

Anyway, it builds character having to unglue my eyes every morning, right?  Right???

Employment Opportunity?

From time to time (read: almost every dang day), I find myself stroking my chin thoughtfully (or, more likely, in pensive confusion over the Universe and its shenanigans).  As the years have fallen behind me, I've noticed a disturbing trend.
Wiry little hairs.

Wiry little hairs on my chin.

Dark wiry little hairs on my chin.

Now, what with being a witch and all, I suppose I should expect a few hairs and warts.  Aren't we supposed to have hairy warts?  Or moles?  Or...something?

Being distinctly lacking in green-hued skin and warts, I feel as though I'm coming up aces in the hairs department.

There are two or three (Or a million, who's counting?) pernicious little buggers that love to mock me, lurking in curled anticipation of my wandering fingers and springing forth to tease my fingertips with derisive laughter at my dismay.

Evil things, I loathe them.

As soon as I detect the telltale feeling of steel wool sprouting from my flesh, I begin to tug at them, desperate to pull them out and send them down the sink in a swirling death spiral, or at least cast them to the floor with a triumphant smile.

The hairs resist.

They are rooted deeply, at least three or four feet in, and my too-short fingernails aren't sufficient for the job.  Eventually I resort to the Tweezers of Tweezering Doom (TM, patent pending) and the Terribly Bright Spotlighting Flashlight of Brilliance (also TM, patent pending), shining said light under my chin and highlighting the horrors of time, weight loss, and hairy hellions.

I must be careful with my approach - come at them from the wrong angle and they slip free, and sometimes they manage to get a bit of skin in the tweezers as they dodge.  Ouch!  Sometimes I manage to get them square in the sweet spot of tweezery vengeance, but they simply let their upper part shear off, remaining a tiny black stump too short to grasp but long enough for me to see and feel for days, weeks even, as I wait for them to grow out again.

Sometimes I'll get on with nothing more than slightly longer than usual fingernails and determination, and then?  I want to hold it aloft and parade around the house to be admired with wonder and awe.  Alas, no one really cares, or can even really see the itty-bitty black curl, smaller than a 10 point comma, resting on my fingertip.

Sigh.

I could let them grow, multiply, takeover.  I hear there's good money in being a bearded lady, these days.

My vanity, however, says "Nay!", and so I stroke, and pluck, and cuss, and pluck, and occasionally feel sorry for myself and the swiftly dwindling remains of my scant femininity.

I'll let you know when I hit the freak show circuit.

Dad

I wrote this on Thursday, but I didn't want to publish it until there was time for people to find out via means other than my blog.  Not that the folks who'd want to know read my blog, but I do try to be considerate.  This will be messy, but I'm disinclined to "fix" it.  I'm writing from the heart, and my heart is notoriously untidy under the best of circumstances.

Also, this is lengthy.
~~~~~

My Dad died last night.  This morning.  Just after Midnight.

I was not expecting that.

Well, I kinda knew it was more possible than not, since last week, but still.

I was hoping.

Last week I found out he was in the hospital.  My Uncle B was coming home from Costa Rica.  My stepmother S was on her way back from Sri Lanka.  I though Dad was in Sri Lanka with her.  I don't know why he wasn't, but I'm guessing he really wasn't feeling well or he wouldn't have missed that trip.

While I didn't know much at that time, I knew that for those two to drop their respective trips and come back to the US, things were probably dire.

I managed to talk to him on the phone for about a minute.  He was tired, in pain, couldn't even hold the phone for very long.  I told him I love him.  Several times.

He had surgery, and chemo, because cancer was the root cause of all of this.  Fuck.  Cancer.

He was in pain.  My Daddy was in pain.  He wanted to go  home.  To be done.  He went into hospice care and two days later passed through the veil.

No more pain.  No more cancer.  No more Daddy.

Let me tell you about my father.

He was almost 79, I think.  He and my mom married in 1968.  My brother was born in 1969.  I came along in 1972.  When I was too young to remember, he and Mom parted ways.

I remember occasional gifts in the mail, at holidays or maybe a birthday.  I remember knowing that other kids had fathers, and one day making the connection that this stranger who sometimes came around was my father, that "Dad" meant him, and that while other children had someone at home by that name, I did not.

For a while, that was okay, because it was our normal.  You can't miss what you never had.  Mom never let anyone speak badly of him in front of us kids.  Whatever went wrong, it was between them.  Thanks, Mom.

For a while, I wondered why Daddy didn't want me.  I guess I wondered why he didn't want us, because there was my brother, too, but mostly I wondered why he didn't want me.  What was wrong with me?  What did I do wrong?  Why didn't I hear from him on my birthday, so often gone unremarked by my paternal parent?  Little girls want their Daddies.  That is our first relationship with a male, and it's what we model all future relationships on.  I didn't know that, of course, being still in the single digits in age, but later...

Over time, he reconnected with us.  Largely thanks to S, my stepmother, who shook some sense into him.  I always liked S, even when I was an angsty teenage shit visiting for the summer.  She taught me some things about relationships, probably without knowing she did it - about speaking your mind, voicing what's right even if it's not popular, about sticking to your guns.  Also she taught me that there's no such thing as a seagull.  No, there isn't.  Really.  There are Herring Gulls, Laughing Gulls, Blackback Gulls...but no Sea Gulls.  Anyway.

Dad was a boatman.  He belonged on the water.  He was happy as a skipper, whether the vessel was large or small.  He was good at it.  I loved being on the water with him.  I didn't know until a few years ago that he was in the US Army for a bit.  He grew "Portuguese Peppers" in the woods once, which I often felt bad about because they never seemed to fruit, and he was a good gardener.  When I was a bit older, I found out that "Portuguese Pepper" was code for a different kind of plant.  Hint:  it wasn't actually a pepper.

I'm pretty sure he's been on every continent.

He was wicked smart, funny, and all around a decent fellow.  I admired him, I liked him, I loved him.

Here are some memories I have:

Sitting on his lap in a truck.  He let me steer.  We were at the top of a big hill.  I was very young.  It was awesome.

Eating those jellied fruit slice candies, the kind all covered in big sugar crystals.  Or was it the mint leaves?  He shared them with me.  I liked to nibble the sugar off of them.

Spending a small eternity (or probably a week or two) on his sail boat, the Osprey, "helping" him and S with netting and banding birds somewhere off the New England coast.  Jumping off the boat to swim.  Eating cereal out of those wee boxes, using them as bowls.  This is when I learned that I do not like powdered milk, reconstituted or not.  I do like jumping off of boats and paddling about in the ocean.  Also, salt water doesn't foam up when you shampoo with it.

Summer days on Martha's Vineyard, stretching out into forever.  Taking the John boat down to the beach.  Learning to catch crabs with a pig's foot.  Refusing to pluck ducks that he'd hunted.  His wizardlike ability to find arrow heads on the shore of the pond.  Being a little grossed out when he'd pull an oyster out of the water, open it, and slurp it down.  Wishing he would teach me to drive a stick shift.

Bird banding on Penikese, riding back to the Vineyard on the bow of the boat,  feeling the waves burst against the hull and spray me.  Stiff with salt, going to a store by the dock and getting lobsters for dinner.  The party after, people laughing and talking and eating and scaring the tar out of me with fireworks.

Him asking me if we should or should not pick up a hitchhiker.  They're common on the Vineyard.  I don't think I ever told him to pass one by.

Riding in the bed of the truck, up on the side, wind making a mess of my hair while he drove.

Helping him change a wheel bearing on his truck.  Learning to drive a lawn mower and cutting the grass in the field.  Learning how to prime and start the motor on the John boat.  Going to the huge garden and digging potatoes, picking vegetables to cook for dinner.  Making pretty salads for Dad and S to take to a party or for our own meal.  Peeing on the poison ivy.

Osprey and Scrimshaw, two of his boats that I loved.

Fried clams at the Menemsha Bite.

When I got married, we decided to have a Renfest kind of theme for the clothing.  Dad and S were game.  It was marvelous.  They danced at the reception and I loved seeing them together.

Telling him that he was my favorite crusty old fart, getting a laugh for that.

Our holiday phone calls.  We rarely spoke or visited each other, but I tried always to call on Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We might not talk for the rest of the year, but on those days, we caught up.

Talking to him about addiction, about dealing with, loving, an addict.  It was one of the most adult conversations we ever had, and he never made me feel stupid about it all.  The conversation about mental illness, my mental illness.  His striving to understand, and loving me regardless.

Spending Thanksgiving with him and S on the Vineyard when the Evil Genius was just shy of two.  Ohmuhgoodness, that sausage-brandied apricot dressing!  He and S asked me to make the cranberry sauce.  I'd never done that unless it meant opening a can.  They trusted me to make it right.  Pretty sure I did.

His voice.  My brother sounds just like him.  It will be eerie, now, talking to him.

No matter how angry, bitter, disappointed, disillusioned, or hurt I was about who we were to each other, how we were with each other, what we did or didn't have...I loved him.  Whatever he thought of me, he never made me feel bad for being...me.  Strange, silly, sometimes stupid, sometimes a bit too optimistic and too little realistic daughter, once I realized that his absence in my childhood wasn't about me, it was about him living his life, a life that simply didn't involve kids because it was too much, too out there in the world, too alien to him...I got over myself and realized that I could love him and it was okay.  And love him I have and will continue to do.

Hail, Flip.  Hail the traveler.
May your journey through the veil and into the next life be an easy one.
May you leave behind all memory of pain, sorrow, anger, and loss.
May you carry with you all memory of happiness and love.
May you be met with joy and fellowship by those who went before you, and should you return to this life once more may we who knew and loved you do so again.

I will miss you, Daddy.  I will miss knowing that you were somewhere on this old Earth, knocking about, birding, sailing, raising a little hell, exploring, loving life.

Hail, Flip.  Hail the traveler.

Dammit, Daddy.

Black Dog

I'm not afraid of the black dog.

Harbinger. 

Death Omen.

I'm not afraid of the black dog.

Shadow beast.

Fell beast.

I'm not afraid of the black dog.

There's no ghost dog scares me,

No.

I'm not afraid of the black dog.

It's the humans, the real, the living,

put the fear into me.

I'm not afraid of the black dog.

Dreaming of Dragons

I have been told, at various times, that discussing or blogging about dreams is...boring.

Ah, well, I have never made claims or pretensions to being non-boring.

My nighttime sleep has been restless, often shallow, and rather unsatisfying.  This lack of sleepage has me napping more than usual in the afternoon.  Yes, I am spoiled.  These afternoon naps are long and I tend to sleep hard, once I sleep. 

In sleeping, I chance to dream.

Lately, the dreams have been vivid, disjointed, and especially peculiar.  I know dreams are usually odd, but these have sent the weird-shit-o-meter into the red zone.

For one thing, they're recurring.  I have dreams that have followed me since childhood, but they don't usually happen night (or nap) after night (or nap) like these do.

I've been dreaming of flight, and of dragons, of flying with dragons.  One dream takes place in an abandoned world, once crowded with life but now frozen and empty.  I am myself, utterly, imperfectly human.  Flying low to the ground, dragons high above, snow covering the landscape, I swoop beneath drooping tree branches, scoop up the snow and let it trickle through my fingers, never melting, just a fine white powder swirling in the wind of my passage.  I skim over a lake, dip my fingers into the water, watch droplets fall from my fingertips and glint in bright grey light as they tumble back down.

The dragons are white, and they glitter as they circle above me, silent and watchful.  Guards?  guardians?  I'm not sure, and in the dream I don't care.

It's a chill, clear, quiet dream.

Then there's the other dream.

Flying again, this time between two enormous creatures.  One is a hot, burnished bronze color, the other the crazed, cracked, black and crimson of a lava field.  They dwarf me, and I'm no small thing.  I am a dragon, too, color unknown to me.  The sky in which we fly is burning but it has always been so, always will be so.  What a world we live in, breathing air that tastes of metal and scorched things, ash and embers, dry and dry and dry.  Even the oceans are thick and bubbling spans of red heat.  What we know of water, pure, clean water, is only legend.  Life is usually short, sharp, fierce.  We exult in our strength, our wings sweeping through the blazing sky; we own the wind.

This is a hot, thirsty, roaring dream.

Several nights/days I've watched these scenes unfold and fade into waking.  Not being one for interpreting such things, I simply view them like movies and wonder what the point is and whether something will change, if I'll move on to other scenes, other stories, or keep replaying these until whatever my mind is trying to tell me becomes clear.

Oh Kathryn, Our Kathryn

One week ago this afternoon, the world became a little more shadowed as a brilliant soul passed through the veil.

Kathryn Ann Fernquist Hinds.

She was a shiny person.  I never had a moment with her that wasn't brilliant.  Her smile, laugh, wit, intelligence, and vision made life a finer thing.

I didn't get to know her for very long, and we met because her husband Arthur is a musician (a damned fine one) and we used to play some of the same gigs.  Honestly, I can't remember when I met either of them.  They've just...always been there.  Arthur and Kathryn.  Kathryn and Arthur.  

For the last few years we've been neighbors at PSG, one of the events I regularly attend.  I liked listening to their banter and they tolerated my occasional interjections.  They shared space, let me feed them, Kathryn let me fuss over her and we shared water.  Seeing her in the audience when we played together for Bardapalooza was a treat.  She truly shared in the music in a way that was rare and beautiful.

Some relationships defy the odds, defy  definition or explanation.  Some relationships are just so...perfectly imperfect?  Imperfectly perfect?  So damned marvelous that when we see them, we can't help saying "There.  That's what is could be, what it should be, what I want it to be..." 

Those relationships are rare.  Arthur and Kathryn had what I aspire to.  Oh the laughter, the love...how it enveloped them, and everyone nearby.  They shared unstintingly.

I always told her that I adore her, that she is one of my favorite people.  She was.  Is.  Will likely always be.

Her heart, her magnificent, wise, kind, compassionate, fragile, dysfunctional heart, it couldn't survive the surgery she needed to keep it ticking.

One less drumming, thrumming beat echoing in the ether.  One less laugh reverberating in the circle.

I find myself wondering why, in a world full of horrid people, full of cruel, selfish, ugly-souled assholes, why did we have to lose one of the best people I have ever known?

It isn't right.  

Oh, Arthur.

If I who didn't know her nearly enough can hurt so...oh...I can't even touch imagining how those who knew her long and well must feel.

Me, I feel robbed of something precious.  

She belonged to a community vast and varied, and the hole she leaves is immeasurable.
I posted this on Facebook when I found out:

Hail Kathryn.

Your light will long linger.
I will carry you with me always, and when I shine I will shine with you, sending your light outward. You are one of the best people I’ve known in my lifetime, and I’m better for the knowing.
May your journey to the other side be peaceful and easy. May you leave behind all memory of pain, sorrow, and suffering. May you carry with you all memories of love and laughter. May you be met with joy and fellowship by those who went before you, and when you return to the circle, may we who loved you know you once more.
I raise a glass and toast you, feisty, kind, shiny, wise, compassionate, creative, encouraging, goddess of a woman.
Hail Kathryn. Hail the traveler.

Thoughtfetti

The world lost a bright soul, a shiny person, earlier this week.  I'm still reeling, and I didn't have the honor of knowing her as well or as long as some others.  I cannot imagine the sense of bewilderment and loss that her family is feeling.  Right now, that's all I have in me to write about her.  There will be more in a few days.
~~~~~
It's February.  Cue the ominous music (dunh, dunh, duuunnnnhhh).  If I can make it through there's March after, and things are looking up for March.  Well, up-ish.

The month started in a hole, and it's getting deeper.

I'm going to get through February a week at a time.  And each week?  A day at a time.  Days will be cut into confetti-sized pieces and sprinkled everywhere.  I'll clean up the mess in August or never, whichever comes latest.
~~~~~
I thought the beginning of the week would drag on in an endless drone, a litany of death and sorrow.  It did, but now the week is nearly done and I have a date on Saturday to look forward to.  Not a date date, like with a fellow.  A date with Mizz A.  We're leaving my beloved spawns at home and going out for a few hours.  We both could use some cheering up.
~~~~~
Next week, I have a tentative date with K2.  We're hopefully going to have our combined birthday dinner, just the two of us.

Then there's a lunch date with my Mom two weeks on from that.
~~~~~
In between times, I am working on some sewing and quilting projects.
~~~~~
Distractions, people, I needs 'em.  Positive distractions, I should say.
~~~~~
Later in the month I'm doing a craft show with my mother.  We have fun, and it gets us out of our respective houses/ruts.  I like helping her set up.  We're both taking part in a soup cooking thing as well, on the same weekend.  I didn't say I was distracting myself with anything earth shattering.
~~~~~
The depression has been particularly bad, this winter.  It seems like I say that every year, and it's like my brain takes it as a challenge to make it worst next time around.  I mean, it's always here, it never really goes away, but some winter, it just piles on like tons of stones, and every winter I pick up the stones, put them in my basket, and plod along.  Maybe it's not getting any worse.  Maybe it's just that I have more stones in the basket and I'm not as strong as I used to be.

I'll make it up the mountain, all the same.
~~~~~
If I make the mistake of saying, or even thinking, that it's not so bad right now, it's like my brain think I've challenged it.  Can't win for losing.  Oy.
~~~~~
My house phone, a land line if you can believe that anyone still has one, is sort of fritzy.  The phone doesn't ring, but the answering machine still works.  I guess the battery in the handset gave up, and it won't charge.  Anyway, sometimes a voice will just float out into Casa de Crazy, mostly selling something or telling me I really ought to pay my bills, you know, on time, and every now and then it catches me off guard and I wonder how the hell someone got in the house.  Good times.
~~~~~
I have been re-listening to Eddie Izzard's audio book of his autobiography.  I very much enjoy it.  He's intelligent, which is sexy, and he's funny, which is also sexy.  In addition to his book, I've been listening to a Pandora station I created named - wait for it - Eddie Izzard.

It has a number of other comedians as well, and they have all, so far, kept me in stitches while I stitch (because I listen while I sew, get it?).

I highly recommend making making an Eddie Izzard station on Pandora, or finding a list of his clips on the YouTube.  You may even forget it's February for a minute!

Lean

This morning I woke up weepy, and it hasn't let up.  Every damned thing makes my eyes leak.

I wish I had someone to lean on.

I mean, I have people to lean on, really terrific people who love me and put up with all of my bullshit on a daily basis.

But as wonderful as these good people are, they're not next to me in the small hours when the night is heavy, pressing down on me, stealing my breath and churning my thoughts into a froth of misery.

I wish I had someone to physically lean on.  A shoulder on which to rest my head for a minute when I'm worn out and feel like I can't pick up my basket of stones and carry them one. Step. More.

I'm tired of feeling alone.

Isabelle

Strange days.

Mum called me this evening to let me know that my grandmother passed through the veil at the beginning of the year.

Oddly, Isabelle (known to me as Mimi) has been on my mind of late.  I've been thinking about her, and dreaming about the house that I grew up in, where she and my grandfather lived for most of my young life.  I have been wondering where, and how, she was.

She wasn't kin by blood, but rather by marriage, wed to my grandfather for...umm...a long damn time.

After Papa died, Mimi returned to France and despite my efforts I lost touch with her.  She left our part of the family behind, and it seemed to me like she never looked back.  She moved, moved again, and I never got her new address.  I suppose I could have made more effort - there was a trust, there were lawyers who knew where she was - but why?  She made it clear through her absence and silence that she wasn't interested.  That hurt.  I had to let go.

Still, from time to time I would look for her online, a quick browsing of Google searches giving me nothing.  Last night, Mum found an obituary.

Mum and I talked about her sometimes, she relating news that had filtered to us months or even years after Mimi had come to the US for some reason, or perhaps whispers of where Mimi was living in France, me wondering if she was happy, if she felt loved and was content.  She wondered, once, whether Mimi was even alive.  I told her she'd know when the woman passed - the trustees would be in touch.  We laughed ruefully about that.  As it turns out, no one got in touch.  Mum found the obituary and talked to my aunt, who made some calls and found out what was what.  Without the curiosity and the drive to find out, who knows when we'd have learned of it?

She never told us when she was coming over the pond, and in fact seems to have instructed people who were in the know to NOT tell us.

She lived through the Nazi occupation of France.  She married, came to the US, found that her husband had lied to her about his circumstances and she left him (righteously, IMO), made a life for herself.  She was a terrific cook when she wanted to be.  She taught me to endure and even enjoy all kinds of foods I'd otherwise not have eaten.  From her I learned how to make vinaigrette dressing.  Until I was about 6, I spoke with her in French as easily as English. I can still read and sing in French, although I don't speak it very well any more and my understanding is weak at best.  Google translate has to do a lot of the work for me, these days.

Because of her, I learned exquisite table manners - I can, if pressed, still recall which utensil is for what and I have fond memories of high tea with her.  I still have the eggshell China teacups we used for such occasions. 

She drove like a maniac, but I would sleep in the car without fear.  She hated flying and would take pills and ride the Concord to minimize the horror.

In the evening, she and Papa would watch the news in their living room, and I would sit with her, leaning on her, and she would stroke my head.  She taught me how to pour and appreciate wine.  I can eat just about anything with a knife and fork thanks to her.  At Christmas she would let me set up the nativity scene.

She said horrible things to me with the best of intentions, never knowing how she devastated me.  Some of the the shadow demons with which I do battle sprang from her.

I wasn't much connected to her French family, but I adored one of her nieces (Christine) and found the rest tolerable.

She was a staunch friend and ally to those she loved and believed in.  She was opinionated and acerbic.  Her anger was terrible, her approval rare, her favor much sought after.  No one wanted to be left in the dark, arctic chill of her bad side.
She stuck with my grandfather through his end, and that was no small thing.  I believe that she loved him, and he loved her, even when they didn't see eye to eye (which happened a LOT).  She was relentless in making sure he was well taken care of.  A bulldog on his behalf.  It must have been exhausting.

She wasn't terribly interested in church when I was little, but she was Catholic and became more so as she aged.  I hope her God saw the good in her and let her in to his halls.  There are those who would say she deserved a place in Hell, but I don't think so.  I think she knew enough of Hell here in her earthly life. 

One of the last things I said to her was that she had hurt me, deeply, but that I loved her, and that nothing would change that love.  I meant it then, and ever after.

I hope she remembered that.

There's so much more that I could say, but she was too complex to encapsulate in a blog.

Rest in peace, Isabelle, Mimi, grandmother, force of nature.  Rest in peace.

Yule

It's almost Yule - two days away and I'm almost-but-not-quite ready for it.  Here's the annual repost with alterations to make it current.
~~~~~
Happy Yule, y'all!

Wait, what? Yule - you know...Yule? The holiday that some people celebrated waaayyy before that poor wee baby was supposedly born in a pile of hay? Evergreens ring a bell? Holly? Ivy? Mistletoe??

OK, go get a snack and a nice beverage (eggnog on the right, pink punch in the center, pick a bottle from the high chair to spike it with)(yes, the high chair is our bar - the Evil Genius doesn't need it any more, Sprout has long outgrown the use of it, and it's an heirloom that I want to keep on display - so why not??) and get comfy. All set?

Yule, or Winter Solstice, is a celebration of the returning light.

Yep, it's that simple.

The God is reborn on Yule, and the days will lengthen with his growth, into the fullness of Summer. In some villages, way back in the past, hearth fires would be extinguished (a brave thing when you didn't have Zippos or matches or even two sticks to rub together). They would be relit from brands taken from a community balefire, lit by the sun himself with a little help from some glass (or a hidden coal or two - c'mon, we weren't above a little showmanship, back then), thereby bringing the sun (and, one hoped, his blessings) into the home. It also kept the community united, because everyone shared the same fire, the same light and heat. Cool, huh? Gotta love a religion that encourages playing with fire. Ahem.

The fir tree was (and is) a symbol of life lasting even through death, the promise of life and light renewed, and a reminder that beneath the snow, the Earth-heart beats on. Holly and Ivy were green, too, but they were also symbols of the Green Man, the Forest Lord, Jack o' the Green - the God primeval. The Holly King and the Ivy King, the old and the young, the constant, changing balance. Deep stuff, yo.

Mistletoe is still used in a fairly traditional way, although it wasn't always just kissing done under the stuff. I still use the leaves and occasional berry when I make love bundles for people (Note - a love bundle isn't a love spell, it is meant to strengthen what is already there, not coerce or sublimate the free will of another. I don't DO love spells, so don't even ask.)(I mean it.), and it's a terrific symbol. It was also a fertility and aphrodisiac herb, but only symbolically - even wigged out Druids knew the stuff was toxic!

We light a yule log, in our house one that's cut from the trunk of last year's tree (the rest of which is providing habitat and nutrients in the woods out back). Old tales say if it lights on the first try and burns for twelve hours, we'll have good luck...this year, I'm soaking one end in water, first. What? We need all the good fortune we can get...don't you??

This year, as we do most years, we are spending Yule at Mum's, lighting the burn pile, celebrating the returning light with a little spark of our own. We'll collect some of the ash and bring it home to add to the ash jar and sprinkle around the foundation for a blessing.

Sometimes a group of us will get together and just spend a quiet day nibbling snacks, enjoying each other's company, and taking a break from the holiday insanity out there among the English. If we exchange gifts, we try to make them ourselves, or give things that encourage and nurture our spiritual or creative selves. Things will be a little sparse this year, what with Someone being all in prison and whatnot (in case you didn't know, it can be expensive to have someone in prison, but that's a tale for a later time).  I want the kids to have a nice holiday, and we always have a nice time at Mom's.,Sprout is really excited about the holiday this year, as is the Evil Genius. 

But mostly, it's a celebration of the returning sun, the waxing light, the cycle renewed.

Happy Yule - When the days be cold, may your hearth be warm. When the nights be long, may your fire burn bright. When the wind blows, may you find snug shelter. When tree and field are bare, may your larder be full. May you never know Winter's chill a moment longer than you care to, nor hunger nor want, and should you find you have all that you need and a bit more besides, may you find someone who will gladly take what you offer and live better for the receiving. Blessed be.

Happy Thanksgiving

Here followeth a Casa de Crazy Thanksgiving Day Tradicion:

We hope you have a pleasant, tasty, mellow, comfortable, not-at-all-contentious Thanksgiving day if you are in the USA and an all around good one if not in the USA.

Here's the link of you want to view full screen:  Alice's Restaurant

Thankful

I have a few traditions on Thanksgiving. Not many - the menu, recording the Macy's parade so I can watch it and fast-forward through all the crappy pop music, commercials, and talking heads to see the twenty minutes of balloons, floats and high school bands I'm interested in hidden among all that junk  (although I will have to forgo that pleasure, this year, alas, unless Mom remembers to record it for me to peruse at her house another time), and my list of some things for which I am thankful, in no particular order and in no way complete:

The house in which I live
The Evil Genius

Mum
Sprout
Gypsy, K2, Mizz A, Kit, Sam-I-Am, PJ, Mizz Beth, Martha 'n' Milo, Avalon, and all of my friends who put up with me when I am most myself and therefor least likable. They are the net beneath me when I fly and fall
Bread
The scent of leaf loam and woodsmoke in the crisp autumn air
Books, music, and art
Clean, plentiful water
Clean air
Clean clothes
Freedom
Nature and the way she finds to show me something new of herself every day
Words
Song
Dance
Adversity, that joy is all the sweeter (Okay, okay, the joy is sweet enough, so basta with the adversity for a minute, please)
Every creature and plant that I consume to sustain myself, because without the life I take, I would have no life to live
Love - that it exists at all is a wonder, and I feel blessed to know it in many forms
Chocolate, gift from the Gods (yes, even the perversion called "candy bar") (Mmm...candy bar...)
Honeycrisp Apples
Strong hands
Strong spirit
Strong will
Laughter
Cussed determination not to curl up and die just because life can sometimes be a succession of truly awful, bleak, and desolate days...but sometimes it isn't
The Internet
You

I hope you have a blessed day, and that you the things you're thankful for outweighing the things for which you're not.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all, from us at Casa de Crazy to you out in the Blue Nowhere and beyond.

Thanksgiving Cookery

Every year I post the menu for out Casa de Crazy Thanksgiving extravaganza and every year I wonder why I don't just cut and paste from last year because it very rarely changes.

Oh, the people change, and the weather, but what goes down in the kitchen and gets laid upon the table are as reliable as...well...something very reliable.

I also wonder if anyone cares, but I kind of get a kick out of seeing what y'all are doing and I like to share, so without further ado, here're the eats for Thursday's T-Day dinner:

Turkey, a 13+ pounder this year because we have a couple of extra guests.

Dressing.  Not stuffing.  I like the stuff the gobbler with herbs and use the pan drippings for the gravy, so it's dressing.  No one has complained, yet.

Mashed potatoes (Mum usually helps with these and I let her because she is Mum and you don't tell Mum "no" when she wants to help with the taters).

Gravy, of the home made variety.

Green Beans.  Just plain old steamed green beans.

Seared Corn because I wanna.

Mashed Turnips and carrots, because Mum and I adore them and they're pretty in the fancy, cut glass bowl.

Can-o-Cranberry, because cranberry that isn't can shaped ain't right.

Desserts include Chocolate Silk Pie and Dutch Apple Crumb Pie made just for us by Marie Callender (her pie crusts are way better than mine and I'm fine with letter her do all the work) and Mrs. Smith, and a Key Lime Pie with a shortbread crust (crust store bought, pie made here).  Also Ice Cream and coffee.  And Tums.  Lots of Tums.

Whew, I am full already.  How 'bout you - what's traditional at your Thanksgiving dinner?  What's your favorite savory?  Favorite sweet?

Counting Down

It is Saturday of Thanksgiving week and there is much happening here at the Casa.

The kids and I are terrorizing the cats...er...tidying up a bit.  Poor Casa de Crazy is a right mess as a result of some serious depression, chaos, and stress, and it WILL BE CLEAN for Thanksgiving.  Or, at least, the parts our guests will see will be clean.  I hope.

This is a somewhat traditional post for me - every year I write a little something about this week, as it is the lead-off to The Silly Season and often one of my busiest here at the Casa.

So, here we go.

Saturday (today) - Bread baking for the dressing, and housekeepery. Oh, lort, the housekeepery.  Also washing all of the dishes, bowls, and platters for Thursday since they're the "good" dishes* and sit all year until I pull them out for Thanksgiving.

Sunday - More housework.  Lort, the housework.

Monday - cleaning, cleaning, more cleaning (I move slowly, the Casa is enormous, and I am not a good housekeeper so when we DO clean, it's a job).  Grocery shopping, because theres nothing like looking for obscure ingredients at the last minute.  Panicking about the butter - is two pounds enough for the day?  Gah!  Making sure the table linens are washed and ready to use and pulling out the "good" flatware**.

Tuesday - Quilt guild and pie baking.

Wednesday - helping Mom set up for the Mistletoe Market and making mashed turnips and carrots ahead of time.

Thursday - Turkey goes in to bake.  Dressing goes in to bake.  Green beans are steamed.  Corn is seared.  Finishing up any last minute cleaning.  Children are shooed outside to frolic.  Friends and family trickle in.  Set the table.  Fill the water pitcher.  Watch TV and baste the turkey.  Make food, food, more food.  Serve.  Eat.  Coma.  Dessert and coffee/tea.  More coma.  Play games.  Pack leftovers to go for guests.  Eat more.  Sleep well.

Friday - NO SHOPPING!!!  There may,however, be cookie baking.  Lots of cookie baking.  Certainly lots of leftovers eating and probably some Netflix watching.  Almost certainly crocheting.  Possibly attending a friend's workshop presentation.

Saturday - Start figuring out Yule stuff, maybe start addressing holiday cards, helping Mom with the Mistletoe Market.

Sunday - More Mistletoe Market, then packing it up.
How is your week shaping up?

*These are dishes that Mum and I bought one piece at a time from a grocery store a long, long, looooong time ago.  Service for fourteen including serving dishes, either free or bargain priced with purchase of a certain amount of groceries.  I love them.  Not fancy, but pretty and simple and I like them.

**Not sterling, but some rather lovely and solid stainless steel flatware from the Oneida Company, back when there was a Betty Crocker catalog and we clipped Betty Crocker points from boxes and saved them in a tin on top of the refrigerator.  Service for twelve, and some day I hope to expand it and add more serving pieces and other cutlery, but that'll have to wait a bit because it's a discontinued pattern and getting the pieces I'd like to have will cost a small fortune.  I adore my pattern, bought a few pieces at a time through the mail with little bits of cardboard and postage paid.

Thoughtfetti

My nose and feet are cold.  COLD!

It's 72 degrees inside Casa de Crazy and I have cold body parts.

Oy.
~~~~~
There is something deeply satisfying about crusty French rolls and salted butter.
~~~~~
I went for almost a month without turning on, or even plugging in, my computer.  Whoa.
~~~~~
I didn't realize that DST was starting? ending?  Luckily my phone and computer take care of that for me, or the next week would have been...interesting...
~~~~~
It's November, over 70 degrees inside my house, and have I mentioned that my nose and feet are cold?  because they are.  Cold.
~~~~~
Casa de Crazy is a mess, and I'm determined to have it clean for Thanksgiving.  That shouldn't be a problem, but I feel like I'm moving through Jell-O all the time, and things that should be quick and easy?  Aren't.  Oh, well.  It'll all get done, somehow.
~~~~~
Whoever invented the freezer deserves a medal or sainthood or something.  I can make soup, freeze it, and then share it or have it whenever I want.  My children won't eat soup.  I am not entirely sure they're mine.
~~~~~
My daughter has decided that it's her job to clean off the dining table.  With a sopping paper towel and a generous dollop of dish soap.  Bless her heart.
~~~~~
Next weekend begins the Great Casa Garage Cleanup of 2017.  It is possible that I could be able to park in that space before Winter is over!  Hurrah!  Mizz A is coming down to help me because she's an incredible person who never shirks helping out a friend, and I'm lucky to have her or the garage would likely never have another vehicle in it.  Also, the kids and cats adore her.

Goodwill and the rubbish company will be getting a bonanza.  I will be getting an inside parking place again.  Win-win-win.
~~~~~
I'm going to go tuck myself under a blanket despite the warm house, because did I tell you that my feet and nose are cold?
~~~~~
What're you up to, today?

Between Sleep and Waking

Between sleep and waking there is a place of half aware, half dream, where the mind weaves the input of the senses with threads of fantasy.

In this place conscious thought and imagination are jumbled jigsaw puzzle pieces haphazardly stuck together to make patchwork pictures that defy explanation outside the nebulous, wobbling incohesion between sleep and waking.

It is easy to get lost there, between sleep and waking.  Days dazed, not quite here, not quite there, scattered everywhere.  What was I doing in this room?  Why did I walk over there?  Why am I holding this dish, this broom, this piece of clothing, this book?  What was I trying to get done just now?  Did I see that, hear that, was it inside my head or out?

Walk through a door and forget, and forgetfulness becomes the wet woolen batting that wraps a body up from head to toe and makes everything heavier, sort of musty, slow, unfocused.  Walk back through the door, trying to remember, only to find that memory is elusive, a wisp within the mist swirling throughout the place between sleep and waking.

Minutes, hours, ebb and flow.  Liquid, undefined, gelatinous, oozing time slips through slack fingers, circles the drain, and is gone before it was ever there, life passing in stilted stop-motion muzziness like some old black and white movie playing on an endless loop between sleep and waking.

Somehow life goes on in tenuous moments pasted together with cobwebs, onion skin thin and brittle and always on the edge of becoming dust in the corners of the place between sleep and waking where it will remain unnoticed, unremembered, unremarked until the errant breezes of thought and consciousness send it swirling away to become motes on a sunbeam.

Pandora's Gift

Pandora.

Her name means "all gifts".

She was created as a punishment to men for Prometheus's gift of fire.  She was given to Prometheus's brother Epimetheus to marry, and along with her Zeus sent a locked box which was never to be opened.  Zeus gave the key to Epimetheus to keep, with stern admonishments to never, ever, under any circumstances, open that box.

So of course, Pandora wanted to know what was in there.

Of course she did.

Who wouldn't?

Humans are curious.

We want to know how things tick, and why, and if we can make them tick better, or fix them when they stop ticking.  We poke and tinker and futz and finagle, some by turning to gods and myths and some by turning to science, and we keep after trying to figure things out, down the rabbit hole and damn the consequences, until we have answers...or more questions.

Pandora kept asking Epimetheus to let her open the box.  Zeus kept reminding them not to open it.  Especially when Pandora had a handle on her curiosity, Zeus would whisper to her not to go bothering with that box, now, don't forget.

Eventually Pandora managed to get the box open.  I imagine the lock squealed dire warnings as she turned the key.  I imagine the lid creaked ominously as she lifted it.  I imagine there was darkness, silence, as the lid came to a rest and the contents were finally revealed.

The silence was shattered by the sound of every torment hitherto unknown to humanity cackling, gibbering, howling, shrieking, leaping into flight or clambering over the sides of the box, released from imprisonment and free to wreak their havoc upon the earth.  As they fled, each creature called out its name - war, hunger, hatred, death, fear, sorrow, pestilence, envy, need, and every other negative or unpleasant feeling and experience rushing forth, a box of angry hornets buzzing out to the corners of the world to sting and sting, relentlessly hounding us, our idyllic life suddenly changed in radical ways that we couldn't understand and likely never will.

Poor Pandora.

Reviled for her curiosity, her humanness.  I've noticed that no one ever gets mad at Zeus for being so petty.  He made the box, after all, and filled it up with all of those delightful presents.  He was the one who wouldn't let it rest, wouldn't let Pandora have any peace.

Pandora wept when she realized what she'd done.  She'd unleashed a kind of horror that would never end, could never again be boxed up, contained, again.

As she wept, she heard a whisper.  A soft rustle.  The barest hint of a sound.

It came from the box.

Pandora looked inside, thinking that maybe she could keep at least one terrible thing from escaping.

There, in the back corner, shining brightly in the shadows, was a tiny thing.  Pale, minute, and beautiful, it reached for her.  She lifted it from the box.

Hope, it said.  I am Hope.

I stand and face every dark thing, every shade, every nightmare, every misery, all of the things that drive you to the brink of madness and despair.  I am Hope.

Hope.

Was it worth it?

Before Pandora opened up that box of curiosities, we didn't know anything about how unhappy we could be.  We didn't hurt each other, take what belonged to others, seek to own or dominate or eradicate.

But...

We also didn't have hope.  Before Pandora, humans led a hopeless existence.

She didn't just curse us with all of those evils.  She gifted us with Hope.

We are the better for it.

Grist

I like grist mills.  I like watching the water turn the wheel, the wheel turn the big metal rod thingies, the cogs and sprockets and whatsits all interlocking and translating the motion of the water into the motion of the great stone wheels that grind, grind, grind, until what was once the dried, tough kernel of some grass-related plant turns into powder useful for all kinds of kitchen alchemy.

I like seeing old millstones used in architecture and gardening, repurposed after the grooves are almost worn smooth.  I sometimes imagine making a patio out of some of those magnificent old stones, filling in between them with smaller stones and sand or planting creeping thyme or some other low-growing herb.

I don't like feeling as if I'm one of those hard shelled grains being ground down on some cosmic millstones, the wheel of time turning, turning, turning as I am worn away to nothing.  I don't like feeling as if I have somehow been bound to one of those old, worn out wheels and dropped into the millpond, left to struggle in vain to reach the surface as I am dragged ever downward into the murky depths.

I feel heavy and worn and useless, and I feel as if I would cry if only I could, but I cannot.

Hello, depression.

Tipping Point

When I was a kid, there was a weird little game that, at the time, was enormous fun - Don't Spill the Beans.

Playing was fairly simple - the beans (real ones, back then) were evenly divided among the players, and then each player gingerly placed a bean onto the pot lid.  Eventually enough beans were on the pot lid to cause it to tip over, and whoever made it tip had to collect all the beans.  The player who first offloaded all of their beans, won.

I don't recall if I ever won a game.  I played it at school, probably in kindergarten or first grade, and that seems an awfully long time ago.  The sound of the beans pouring onto the plastic surface underneath was enormously exciting and especially satisfying when it was another player who caused the havoc.

Lately, I've rather felt like that pot, although slightly less goofy, teetering at the tipping point but not quite ready to fall over.  Beans drop in and I wobble, but somehow manage to remain upright.

The thing is, I'd kind of like to turn upside down and dump the whole damned load, let someone else gather it up, tidy away the mess, and start over.

I feel like I'm on emotional gimbals when what I really want is an axle.

Sometimes, one needs to dump the beans (spilling sounds so passive - I like the more aggressive dumping for this), and I just can't seem to manage it.

The Lonely House In Carnesville

Lately it seems like I haven't been witching much.  Other things going on, distractions, life tangling me up in its strands.  Yesterday I got to go visit a beautiful old house with Mizz A, and at the same time be a Witch.

It sits not far from the road that winds through the countryside, hills and farms, churches and cows, horses here and there, and giant rolls of hay that look like unripened or lightly toasted marshmallows waiting for the harvest.  It's on 49 acres, much  of the land let to go wild-ish, because that's a lot of land to care for when you're one woman, kids not interested in the place or the work involved. No blame, there, they have lives, but one person with a dicky back cannot wage that kind of battle with nature and her kind of entropy.

It was a plantation, once, and had a post office/store kind of place, and slaves, and then not-slaves, and there's a graveyard somewhere among the weeds.  The chicken house is still standing, and a barn, and one of the slave cabins and a storage kind of barn thing.

The owner called Mizz A because Miss A is part of a paranormal investigations group, and the owner was concerned about some odd goings on in the house.  Concerned enough that she moved out, cleared a little patch of land nearby, and built a new dwelling there.  Maybe it's haunted, or cursed, and maybe living there is a chance she didn't feel like taking any more.

So the old house?  Sits empty.

She loves that house, though, can't let it go just yet.  She has hopes and dreams, hopes and dreams that won't dry up and blow away just because of some...oddities.

Mizz A asked me if I could maybe come with her to visit the place and maybe despook or decursify it.  I like old houses and outbuildings, and figured a day out of the Casa, sans kids, might be a good thing, so I agreed.  We planned our jaunt, and yesterday was the day so off we went.

As soon as we drove up, I loved the place.  You know the kind of place that's home, even when it isn't?  That's quiet and peaceful and maybe a little sleepy?  Friendly and welcoming and a little quirky, like your crazy Aunt Edna with the crooked straw hat that makes you cookies and tells inappropriate stories that make you laugh?  The kind of place that wraps you in a gentle hug and tells you it's okay, you're safe here, and comfortable, and time slows down a littel?  Yeah, that kind of place.

And as soon as we drove up, I knew there was no haunting, no curse.

The house, it's lonely.

(A view of one side of the house, shot from a little table that was waiting in the yard)
 
It's been empty for a minute.  It used to be full of children, and laughter, and tears; life.  The family that has lived there since forever, the family that used to fill it with noise and motion, the family that steeped its walls with their history, that family didn't want it any more.  No heat.  No AC.  All kinds of updating, restoration, modernizing needed.  No thanks, we have different lives to lead.  No sentiment.  No attachment.  No roots.  They gutted it, sold off everything that once made each room a living space, sold the property, brushed the dust of it from their hands, and left it to its own devices and the whims of its new owner.  

(Roof and chimney, sound and ready to serve)

She saw its bones and felt the lull, the gentle tug of a house that wants to be lived in, and she was caught fast in its spell.  Love me, the house says.  I'm strong, sturdy, I'll weather the storms and keep you safe.  Here, you will have a haven.  Love me.

(Slave quarters, one room with a fireplace, now used as a kind of guest room)

And she does love it.  Every inch.  Every creaky board, every crack in the plaster, aver stone of it.  The house, it knows.  Some of the things she experienced in there, the not-hauntings, not-curse things, were the house trying to welcome her home.  It remembers, and it wants to share that it was a living place, once, and wants to be again.  It wants to welcome her, here, sit on the porch swing and relax with me, be calm, drink tea and let the world go on around us, we're fine right here.

(Oh, this chimney...how I adore this chimney)

You can feel its age.  Smell it.  It was built in a time when air conditioning was the wind, and doors and windows were generous and placed to catch every bit of moving air, let it wander through the house and back out again, carrying the heat with it.

(A barn, still in pretty good shape)

Despite the day being on the hot side, temps around 90F, the house wan't unbearable.  A modern home would feel like an oven, but with doors and windows thrown open, arms spread wide in welcome, high ceilings ready to catch and hold the rising hot air and leave it cooler down below, it wasn't unpleasant.Warm, but not unpleasant.

(The post office/shoppish building, exterior)

We walked around outside, looked at the outbuildings, chatted about the history of the place.  The owner offered us lunch, an unexpected treat of home made tomato sandwiches, sliced and seasoned cucumbers, apples, deviled eggs, radishes.  Chai tea.  We sat and ate and chatted some more, and I told her about the house's loneliness.

(Interior shot from the side door of the post office/whatsis)

She is afraid she will have to sell it.  There's a good bit of work that must be done before it is habitable, and even more to be done to fully restore its splendor.  She has a bad back, and a small bank account, and it's just too much.  Too much, but oh, the heartbreak of having to give it up.  She sees, appreciates, this house and its beautiful bones.

(An old saddle, waiting around)

We are kindred in our love of old houses.  There's something in the way they smell, of wood often polished and plaster, and memories.

(Shelf space...jars...shelf space...ooooh...)

She could do many things with this house.  Live in it, yes, but...

A bed and breakfast?  An event site, perfect for weddings and celebrations, parties, bonfires, music.

A museum, perhaps, or a gallery, or an artist's home.

So many things could be done in such a fine old place.

But you have to get there, don't you?  All it can be right now is a skeleton awaiting flesh, and that kind of flesh requires dollars.

(I wonder how much penny candy this old thing rang up...)

Love it all she may, the owner can't afford it.

(Dear old house)

She might be able to sell some of the land, but not too much, to fund the restoration.  That would be good, because the house doesn't care about the land.  It cares about feeling so empty and alone, and if land has to go in order to live once more, fine.  Make it happen, the house says.

(Front door)

It's not the land that makes the magic, here, although land is living and magical in its own right.  It's this house.  Something I can't quite name, but like the owner, I felt it.  heard it.  A humming, thrumming, in my center.

(Main hall, center through, similar to the house in Little Compton where I spent much of my early life)

As we sat on the lawn and munched our lunches, I felt the happy, tuneless song of the place; happy because people were there, eating, talking, sharing space and time, and even if it wasn't much compared to the past, it was something.  Stay, the house said.  Rest.  Relax.  Enjoy.  It crooned a soothing song, and even the occasional traffic on the road was hardly noticeable though we sat only yards from the pavement.

(The wood...the wood...I love the wood, great big planks of it running along the ceiling)

No curse needed lifting, no vengeful or restless spirit needed sending off.  I gave the owner a blessing I'd written, in Cherokee no less, and offered to do a little blessing but reassured her that there was nothing wrong there.  None of the sad or tragic things that had happened in the history of the place were anything more than life happening.  Nothing evil or angry.  Just a lonely house wishing for a family to fill it.

(The fireplaces all need work, but the chimneys are sound)

We went inside again, in where the feeling of the place was even stronger, the wistful welcome, and I lit some incense, mixed some things up, said a blessing for the house and its human, scattered the mojo mix around, and then played my flute for a bit.

(The kitchen fireplace.  I always wanted a kitchen with a fireplace.)

While Mizz A and the owner went out and chatted on the front steps, I went back inside and shot more photos.  I talked to the place.  Patted the door frames.  Tried to reassure it - someone will come love it, come live in it.  You, the house said.  You come.  I can't, I told it.  No money.  No resources.  No way to do it justice.  Maybe if there's a lottery win...

(The root cellar, currently full of cobwebs and a small water heater.  Yes, I went down there.  It was nifty!)

I felt like weeping.  Some houses are homes, yes, but they aren't alive.  They don't breathe.  They don't remember.  Some houses are just buildings.  No history, nothing and no one tied to them.  

(Chai tea in a chipped cup.)

This dear old place, though, was full of its past and hoping for a future.  One person, 20 people, it doesn't matter as long as there's life within, life without.

(Our hostess prepared a feast!)

I could see, in my mind's eye, what it could be.  Restored, lived in, this room a parlor or music room, center hall the living room, that room a library, those rooms bedrooms.  Dining room full of wooden furniture, kitchen modern but showing respect for the history of the place, maintaining the integrity of its origins in architecture.  Porches with rocking chairs.  Attic made into a finished living space, a staircase added in the front or side hall for access.

(The windows were glazed with old style glass, small ripples giving the world a watery look.)

I could see how I would finish the wood, paint the walls, arrange the kitchen.  I could imagine my family living our lives there, smells of baking, sounds of play, music, wind, fireplaces crackling in winter.

(Fireplace and closets in what would be the master bedroom)

For brief moments here and there, it was so real I could touch it.  The house, offering me possibilities, showing me what could be if only...

(A modern addition, the owner enclosed a bit of porch and added a bathroom - the house had none!)

Alas, I cannot bank if only, nor use it to pay for the artisans needed to do the house justice.  Sorry, house.  Oh, I can love you from a distance and daydream about you, and I certainly will hope that the owner can find a way to bring you back to your glory, but short of a miraculous lottery win, I'm afraid I can't do much more than write about you and wish you the best.

(More of the bathroom and a bit of the space beyond that could be a closet, but right now contains the attic access)

It's funny how old houses draw some of us in.  

(At the back of the center hall, looking at the back door and side hall that leads to the dining room)

The owner told us that when she first saw the place, she wept to leave it.  She drove away crying.  So quickly, she was attached.

(The dining room and the kitchen door as well as a glimpse of the side door that leads to the side porch)

Do you know that feeling?  That feeling of this is the place, this is the one, this is where I belong, and my roots are already sinking deep?

(The kitchen, from the dining room door)

She invited us to come any time, perhaps to have a bonfire.  A drum circle would fit in nicely, there.  A witch could live happily there.  She was relieved to know that the house is not infested with ghostly remnants of the dead, nor cursed.  She was touched that I felt it too, the house's sense of desolation and wish to live again.

(The kitchen and pantry, from the small enclosed porch door)

We agreed that it needed an owner who would love it for that it is, and shared a horror of the idea that anyone could buy it, knock it down, put in tract housing, erase something so fine.

(A nifty plant hanging out in the yard)

I hope something wonderful happens and the owner can keep the Lonely House in Carnesville.  I hope that she can find a way to restore it fully, live in it, enjoy it, and sometimes maybe invite a certain witch and her friend for dinner.

If you know of anyone who'd like to help keep a bit of history alive, who can donate time, talent, or money to put the shine back into it, get in touch with me.  I can repay you in smiles and possibly cookies, and the owner would be most grateful for the assist.