Jumping In and Out

Everything keeps changing so fast that it's hard to keep up.

We moved last Friday and Friday night, Witchlet left to spend a week with her fiancee. She came home this past Friday night, only to moan about how much she missed him and going on and on about him wanting her to move in with him.

She left home, the first time, when she was 17 and only moved back in last December. After over 2 years, Draco and I had finally adjusted to being "empty-nesters", so having her come back home was a big adjustment for us. It's taken us most of the nearly 3 months she'd been here to adjust again.

Yesterday, she called him and had him come back after her and she left to move in with him. So, our little Witchlet has jumped on her broomstick and flown away again.

When we were looking for a place to move to a few weeks ago, she had tried to convince us to get something more expensive, based on her promise to help with bills when she found a job and we opted instead for something we knew we could pay ourselves. Now, I'm so glad we didn't let her talk us into anything.

This morning, I sat down with the bills and when Draco got up, we sat and talked about our new situation. We'd both been so stressed until this last week, and although Draco would never ask her to stay, I could see the worry starting to brew behind his eyes. I laid out our financial situation to him, which wasn't as bad as I think he feared, and offered him some options.

We finally settled on a course of action that we hope will get us where we want to be and I could almost watch the worry evaporating from his eyes. I have to admit that I loved being able to set his mind at ease for a change.

I will be reopening the business I started last summer so that I can work from home and try to help him. I will be spending part of this week going through the supplies I have here and converting what would have been Witchlet's room into a work room. In the process of this, I need to come up with some sort of inventory and bookkeeping system so that I know what I'm doing and I can save receipts for next year's taxes and be able to track my sales and expenses. I will also be setting up seperate financial records for the business.

Suffice it to say, I'm going to be a busy woman while I wait for taxes to come since I'm going to need to make a small investment to get running again.

So, that's what's going on in our neck of the woods right now. What changes are 2013 bringing your way?

Love and light,

Rayven

Nothing Serious

I've put doing serious posting, requiring research and such, on hold for the moment. We moved last weekend from an extremely stressful situation into a very comfortable one.

Witchlet has been out of town since Friday night and I've had the house to myself when Draco is at work. Honestly, we all needed the break. Prolonged stress will cause families to fight, even when they don't mean to.

Right now, I'm just focusing on putting my house together, making arrangements to get the rest of our stuff from storage and getting my nerves back under control.

Hopefully in the next few weeks, we'll be getting internet (I'm doing everything from my phone right now), or I'll find time to go sit where I have wi-fi and get some stuff done. We'll see what happens.

Know that we're ok, I'm still here (sort of), and I'm not planning to go anywhere.

Namaste,
Rayven

Sunday Catch-Up 4-17-13

My life got turned upside-down last week. We found ourselves moving on very short notice, but now, here I sit almost a week later happier and more relaxed than I can remember being in a while.

Getting here wasn't easy though. As last as Thursday afternoon, I was still wondering what we were going to do, and time had nearly run out. I was so worried that I even briefly considered the possibility that we might end up sleeping in our car.

At the last minute, a suggestion from a friend turned into a plan and then into reality.

We've been lucky all the way around. We ended up finding exactly what we needed at the last moment, for a price we can live with. It's two bedrooms, which means Witchlet is no longer a resident of my living room.

Friday, I was up at 5 am packing. By 1 pm, we were done. The first night here, we didn't even have furniture, but today, the house is almost completely furnished and some of it even belongs to us!

At any rate, between Friday and Saturday, I'd had 3 hours sleep and slept 5 last night, so I feel like I'm running on empty tanks today.

Witchlet is staying with a friend until either tomorrow or Tuesday, so maybe I'll be able to establish some routines before she comes home.

That's it for me right now.

Namaste,

Rayven

Battling Depression

Today is Valentines Day and my 17th anniversary.

I considered writing a post about the history of the holiday, but everyone else is already doing that.

I thought about writing about my relationship with Draco, but after 17 years, I would think my love and affection is obvious.

Instead, I decided to write about something near and dear to my heart, as I believe that the winter holidays, from Thanksgiving to Valentines Day, can be the worst time of the year for people who suffer from depression.

Depression is a common affliction that effects more people than you may realize.

Most of us don't go around announcing "I'm depressed" to everyone. Most of us feel ashamed of being depressed and try hard to "act normal" around people. We force smiles that never light up our eyes, we try to laugh when we know we should. Many of us even make the effort to get up and do the things we know we're supposed to do, even when our heart isn't in it.

For many people, like me, depression can often be mistaken simply as "stress".

I realized that this morning when a good friend and Co-worker of Draco's was talking to us.

I woke up knowing that I was beginning to pull out of the depression that's been slamming me for a month now. I felt more myself than I had in a while. I had hope, and even a little joy.

As we were talking this morning, our friend says something like "well, y'all don't look nearly as stressed out as you have been".

I admit, there's been stress. My landlady lost her mind about a month ago and has crossed lines left and right and now, she's having the utilities cut off tomorrow. We are trying to find somewhere to move to and have had to borrow money against or tax return for deposits. It's been crazy. The stress is what triggered the depression, but I have been floundering in a very dark depression.

I suppose that my efforts to hide my depression may have come across as stress.

How do I know I was depressed? The house is a wreck, laundry was climbing the walls and I simply have not cared. I've mentioned before that I am very domestic, which is why I consider myself a hearth witch, but the state of the house has not mattered to me in the least recently. The only thing that HAS mattered has been my bed and my pillow.

I have laid in the bed, not even sleeping half the time, for nearly a month. I've not cared about hygiene and even realized one day last week that I had been in the same sleep-clothes for almost 3 days. Yes, that's depression, not simply "stress".

My situation has been stressful, but in truth, for those that suffer from depression, it doesn't take that much to trigger it. Even something as simple as being alone today, while everything is about couples and love, can be enough to trigger depression.

Do you know someone who is going to spend today alone? Reach out to them, tell them you care. Love is in the air, but not just romantic love. Buy a lonely friend lunch, or a quick drink after work before you rush off to your romantic evening.

You never know, such a simple thing from you, could mean everything to someone else.

Wishing you love, light and happiness today and every day,

Rayven

Return of the Light

I am an early riser, not because I choose to be, but because Draco works a day job and has to be at work by 7 am. Although I've never been much of a morning person, there are a few advantages to getting up early.

One of those advantages is that I have become more aware of the sunrise.

Since getting out of school, I spent most of my adult life on second shift hours. For the majority of our relationship, it was the preferred shift for both of us. That meant that by the time I got up, the sun had been up for hours and my ride home from work was done in the moonlight.

I will never cease to be captivated by the moon, but I've come to realize that I was missing out on something without even knowing it.

This year is the first year that I've truly celebrated Imbolc and I think that it's because I was unaware of the subtle shifts in the light until now.

When I first moved here and began my morning treks to take Draco to work, we were already nearly through fall. Mornings were dark. By the time the sun kissed the horizon, I was already in the house and sunrise was judged by the growing glare on my laptop screen.

As we progressed from December to January, and now into February, I have seen the mornings growing gradually lighter going from a lighter shade of dark to now almost full light on my ride home.

Where I park my car at home faces full East and I'm often rewarded with a beautiful sunrise as I pull into the yard. In spite of the cold, I've taken to sitting in my car for a half hour or more when I get home watching the sun come up. This new ritual has given me more than I ever thought it would, making sitting in the cold more than worth it.

In addition to becoming more aware of the return of the sun to my corner of the world, I think it's made winter, my least favorite of the seasons, more bearable, and perhaps even a little enjoyable.

I'm usually still in my car, as I am this morning, when the birds begin their morning song. One moment there is nighttime silence but as the sun begins to paint the eastern sky in shades of blue, pink and orange, the birds begin greeting the day. On several occasions my car has even been surrounded by my second most favorite birds (my most favorite being hummingbirds), finches.

These tiny birds amaze me in their numbers as well as their determination. They brave the wrath of the larger Cardinals and Blue Jays to find their breakfast and I've even seen them band together to run the much larger birds off the bird feeder.

I have also had the privilege of watching the hawk, that has taken up residence at the pond, come out in search of his own breakfast. He is majestic in his hunt. Graceful, resourceful and cunning and I often watch him still out hunting as late as 8 am as the mysterious bagpipes begin to play (bagpipe music emanates from am unknown location every morning at 8 am echoing the strands of Amazing Grace through the Valley), another event that I had been unaware of.

As I watch, patches of red appear in the trees. The male Cardinals have appeared. Soon, there will be flashes of grey and brown on the ground beneath the trees as the females come out to eat under the watchful eyes of the males. The bird feeder hanging on the porch is in for a workout and I'm reminded to refill it once again. My feathered morning guests have quite the appetite in the winter when food is scarce and even though I know we really can't afford it, I'm reluctant to give up buying their seed now that I have watched them happily eating and remaining fat through the winter.

I am also reminded of how much of life I was missing out on. How much was going in my own front yard that I was unaware of. How disconnected I had become from nature and how unbalanced my nocturnal preferences had made me.

I will always have a deep love for the night and all her enchantments but I have gained a new respect for the day, and as the light returns to the world, I know that I have received a true Imbolc blessing.

Namaste,

Rayven

Catching Up Again

Since my last post, I have been in the depths of my self-induced "house-arrest". I have successfully avoided my landlady in the process, hoping to give myself some time to calm down, only that's not the effect it ended up having.

Last Sunday was my last truly coherent and "together" day until this afternoon. The continued stress and feeling "trapped" in the house, left me just short of a babbling idiot and not anywhere near functional.

Sunday, we decided since Draco and Witchlet were less than enthused about the idea of going to the local UU Church with me, that we would begin to have "classes" at home where we could learn and grow together. We had one last Sunday and it was fulfilling for both of us but a stupid disagreement Sunday night would render me worthless the rest of the week.

My personal classes stopped. I wrote the paper I mentioned in my last post, but never made it beyond that. On Monday, I was able to give Witchlet a crash-course in Tarot, then went to bed where I pretty much have stayed this week.

Last night, the anxiety attacks that I knew were coming hit me and I fought with myself all night. This morning, I was still in the throes of what I call "the little rolling ones" that usually tell me that I'm headed for the edge and that a big one is coming.

I cried last night, cried some more this morning, flipped out on Draco before he went to work, then let Witchlet's chronic attitude (she's been pissy for a few weeks now) push me over the edge at lunch.

The big one hit so hard that I came thisclose to having another heart attack. That was nearly 5 hours ago now.

I'm finally through it, even the little ones are gone, but it's left me exhausted in every possible way, sore from the chest pains and not being able to breathe and more than a little contrite and ashamed of myself for how I've been acting.

Reminding myself that I have "problems" and "can't help it" sound like lame excuses, even to my own ears, so I refuse to offer them to anyone else, especially Draco, who always seems to get the worst of my "episodes".

I apparently was still writing even though I hadn't known it until about 30 minutes ago. Thank the God and Goddess I didn't publish them. I sounded like a raving lunatic with a conspiracy theory and deleted them all.

Although I regret the need for my absence, I would rather my blog have been left untainted by my ravings, so I won't apologize for my silence. I'm endlessly grateful that I never hit publish this week.

I am, however, back (as far as I can tell at the moment at least) and will try to work on that routine I believe I've mentioned before.

I am, once again, active on Facebook as well for anyone interested in following me there.

The landlady seems to have ignored my reactions, or forgiven them, and has asked Draco to come help with some work tomorrow. I have promised both him and myself (as well as the Goddess) that I will try to behave no matter what she says.

Wish me luck and hopefully I will be here more.

Namaste,

Rayven