Working for a Living

This week I begin a new, temporary, chapter in my life. Working full time outside the home. I was a single mother for over 10 years, I am not in unfamiliar territory. I hated it then and I hate it now. But, my mother needed surgery and wouldn't get it unless she felt things were handled and her boss trusts me, so I have agreed to do her job for six weeks.

We need money, it's true and this is a good opportunity to keep my skills fresh. (I am learning Windows 8. Yay) The most important thing is that I'm helping out my mom though. I wouldn't do it otherwise. It is simply not worth it to (as my husband dramatically puts it) let "the institution" raise my child. After I pay daycare, I have very little money left and that's going to gas, clothing and easy to prepare meals. What little is left has debts waiting for it.

Mothers who work outside the home like to sneer at mothers who stay home with their children and say "I do everything you do, plus I work full time." But the truth is they don't, I didn't before and I can't now. They make enough money to pay someone else to do what stay at home moms do all day.

Right now I am paying $41 a day for someone else to supervise, entertain and teach my child. And no, I don't think they can do it better than me. Yesterday was story time at the Library and we missed it because I had to be at the office. Tonight, I paid someone else to make Chinese food which I dropped off at home, along with my toddler to my teenager who babysat (that is, played Super Smash Bros on his DS in the same room while the toddler watched Toy Story) while I ran out to train a dog(because I still have to do my job too). I got home in time to catch the tail end of bath time with daddy and give little man a kiss goodnight, run through the week's schedule with teen man, make sure I still have three ducks, do the dishes and finally settle into the desk chair to check email and throw my angst at a hasty blog post.

Tomorrow is parent teacher conferences at the High School, the next day is Parent night at the Technical Center, so those evenings will run similarly to this evening. Unless I decide to skip Parent Teacher Conferences. I could do that... He's only in two classes at the High School and they are both variations on Gym...

You see. I've been a working mom 2 days and I already don't do the things I did as a stay at home mom.

Usually, I clean out the duck's crate daily and take the poo-soaked newspaper out to the garden and turn it into mulch. This whole process takes about a half hour. Today I didn't even collect the eggs until I was ready to put the ducks back in for the night and I just tossed clean newspaper on top of the old stuff. Wow, I am going to have to start giving away eggs because I don't have time to bake or make breakfast from scratch anymore!

Bread. Crackers. Cookies. Muffins. You can buy them if you don't have time to bake. Who knows what's in them? Is it even food? They sure cost a lot more. Yes, paying other people to do what  you don't.

I have not seen my garden in daylight since Sunday. I do not expect to do so again till Saturday. If there is anything ripe out there, something else is going to eat it. I hope it's the ducks. I hope the ducks eat my weeds. I hope nobody eats my ducks while they're all unsupervised out there all day every day.

I wish I could afford a housekeeper.

Transitions always suck for me.

But this will be a grand experiment. You see, in my memory, being a working mom was easier than being a stay-at-home mom. My house was as clean as I left it when I got home (of course I didn't have teenagers at home, just kids in school and daycare all day) and I didn't have to think of ways to entertain and mentally stimulate my kids. They got all that stuff at school and daycare and all the time I spent with them (about 3 hours a day) could be just us time. I cooked dinner, we ate dinner, we cleaned up dinner, we got ready for bed. At home I decompressed from work. At work I decompressed from home. I had work friends. My kids had school friends. I didn't have to arrange play groups or get along with their friends moms. I just had to occasionally nod and look appropriately concerned as the school or daycare people told me what terrible thing my kid had been up to that day. Nobody expected me to volunteer for anything or make snacks, because the stay at home moms had that covered and they all knew I wasn't one of them.

But what was I talking about? Oh yes! This is an experiment to explore the question: Which is easier, staying at home or working outside the home? I'll do it for science.

What I'm worried about though is how this will affect my son. For six weeks he will be in daycare from 8am to 6pm every day. And then it'll stop and he'll go back to once a week. How weird is that going to be? I am thinking it might be better to just keep working full time and keep him in daycare/pre-school, but the jobs advertised in my area are $8-10 per day. Since daycare is $40 per day, I'm not sure it's worth it. Something to chew on/research over the next six weeks.

Monday House Blessing

So the Flylady has us (Flybabies) do this thing every Monday she calls the Weekly Home Blessing Hour. This appeals to my Kitchen Witchiness so I embrace it even though  she's using the word "blessing" in a figurative sense, and I am using it magically.

Of course, the first time I did it I raced through it and read it wrong and thought that I was supposed to do a 10 minute de-clutter of every room and then go back and vacuum and dust and after about the third room I was tired and cranky and done with it. I finished with the de-cluttering, but no vacuuming or dusting got done and I was irritated with the whole process. But then I re-read and realized that I was a silly monkey and tried again next week. In truth, many of those rooms were so cluttered that vacuuming and dusting wouldn't have been possible without some pre-work anyway, so it's just as well I did it the way I did it.

The following week I got it right, except that a lot of the things she says to do simply don't apply to me; Like throwing away newspapers and magazines since we don't do magazines (though I did toss a few gardening catalogs) and the newspapers we collect from folks who actually read them get put to practical use (First they line the duck's crate or the lizard's cage, then they get used as mulch in the garden.) Anyway, my house looked and felt great but it still took longer than I liked.

By the third week I was a pro and it was done quickly and I had time to add my own little Kitchen Witchery touch with a ritual broom and some incense and my spray bottle full of salted water and basil oil (for family harmony) for a proper home blessing. The energy in my home is amazing. I invite you to visit my own online Book of Shadows to see the House Blessing spell I have now incorporated into this method at http://sacredhearth.com/house-blessing

Now I'm about to begin a six week temporary office job. It's 9 to 5 with a killer commute. I don't know how next Monday's house blessing will go! I may have to move home blessing hour to Sunday.

Flying at Night, Falling Flat, and we're up again

As you may know, I made the Hearth Day Resolution to follow the Flylady's program to get my house in order and I am proud to say that my house is looking pretty decent. Each month, she gives you a habit to work on with the goal that you will develop all these wonderful positive habits that will keep your house clean and organized and you'll just do them, because they're habits, and won't even notice. After that, I think there is some more advanced work, but I'm not there yet.

The habit for September was the before bed routine and I had a really hard time with it. I do a lot of running around all day. After dinner, I want to rest, watch Hulu or Netflix and eventually wander off to bed. I am tired. When my husband comes home and hauls my Sunshine off for his bedtime story, I am done. No routine. I'm tired. Bite me. 

But I tried. I struggled all friggin' month with this. I read and re-read her article on the subject and the testimonials from other flybabies and I was right on board with the before-bed routine being a good idea. I just couldn't get myself to do anything before bed. 

It wasn't until the last week of the month that a light bulb went off. I was stuck on the "before bed" part. Why does it have to be right before bed? It doesn't. Flylady says so herself! It doesn't even really have to be in the evening! All I needed was to give myself a list of things to complete throughout the day that needed to be finished before I went to bed (not started just before bedtime). I can get the coffee pot ready for tomorrow right after I'm finished with it in the morning. I don't have to wait 'till bedtime. I can lay out clothing for tomorrow while I'm doing laundry in the morning. I can pack tomorrow's lunches while I'm making tonight's dinner! Now all I really have to do before bed is take a peek in the kitchen to make sure it's clean, take a bath and put on my pajamas.

Yea. I got this.

And now on to October when we tackle Paper Clutter. I am a ready!

Book Review: Curses and Bindings

Today I am reviewing another book from Witchipedia's Read A Long Book Club, Curses & Bindings: How To Do Them, How To Defend Against Them, How To Heal From Them, by Tannita. I would like to say that this isn't normally the type of book that I'd read, but that's not entirely true. Reading about the darker aspects of magick is something of a guilty pleasure of mine so I was pleased when the author requested I add this book to the Book Club roster. However, this book took me much farther outside my comfort zone than I was at all interested in going, in more ways than one.

My very first impression was one of absolute awe that a book so poorly formatted and with such abysmal grammar ever made it to publishing. I suppose it was self-published. But even so, you'd think the author would have had at least one friend read it over before presenting it to the world. It's not just a few typos- I'm talking about major issues. Lots of , , , <-- Yes that. That doesn't belong in any publish work. It's annoying enough in a forum but seeing , , , in nearly every line of a book you paid money for is more than distracting. It makes my eyes bleed. The author also does not seem to have a firm grasp on the difference between they're, their and there, weak and week and loose and lose. (I once broke up with a guy because he wrote me a letter in which he declared that he didn't want to "loose" me. Seriously, that's why. I couldn't get past the "loose".) I know not everyone is as grammar extreme as myself, but for crying out loud; this is a published book that I paid for! There is also quite a lot of weird sentence structure that leads me to believe that English is not the author's first language, but that doesn't excuse the rest of the mess.

That all being said, there is some good information in the book if you can find it within the author's rambling writing style. She does stick to the topics within the headers, but there really are no sub-topics and she seems to bounce around between some here and there. This can be confusing.

It is also important to note that the author makes quite a strong assumption that the reader already has basic magical skills. The spells are not step-by-step, but very general and the reader is obliged to fill in the gaps with previous magical knowledge. I think this is a good approach to a book on such a heavy subject. I frankly find all the repeated basic review so common in books that are supposed to be 102 and above to be annoying and boring.

What else is there to say? The subject matter was uncomfortable. I found myself growing red in the face at the suggestion that I might want to magickally encourage someone to step in front of a moving vehicle or similar. But I do believe it's subject matter that the advanced practitioner should take a look at eventually, if only for informational purposes.

I did not hate this book completely, it had good information, it was interesting, but it was not a pleasure to read.

Adventures in Laundry

As the month of August closes, I am reviewing my laundry adventures, which were substantial, before we move on to the next habit in the Flylady's plan: The Bedtime Routine. The Universe must've taken note of my intention to perfect my laundry routine because she cooperated beautifully by rendering me without fully functioning laundry facilities for several days.

I had just put up my shiny new clothesline (referred to around here as the "redneck clothesline"). I had a clothesline setup in mind that wasn't practical at the moment for several reasons. The first being that we couldn't afford it, but also because in order for maximum sun exposure a certain tree would have had to move and the deck, upon which the plan depended, is in serious need of repairs (that is, a complete rebuild) which would have meant that the clothesline would have to be dismantled sometime in the future. So I gave myself a stern talking to, convinced myself that any clothesline is better than no clothesline, and ran a line between two trees. It works beautifully, of course, and gets just the right amount of sun, but I will wax poetic about my clothesline in a minute.

Shortly after we installed this clothesline, I put in a load of laundry and went to bed, looking forward to hanging the clothes on the line in the early morning sun. My husband arrived home around 3am. When he gets home this late, he generally sleeps on the couch in the mancave, so as not to disturb my beauty sleep. When he visited the bathroom off the mancave, he discovered the whole bathroom flooded. He quickly realized the washing machine was running in the laundry room (which shares a wall with the bathroom) and spewing water everywhere. My darling husband did not wake me up to assist him with squeegeeing, mopping and setting up fans and dehumidifiers, even though the mess was entirely my fault (never leave your washing machine or dryer unattended) and he, not I, had to be at work at 8am the following morning. Best. Husband. Ever. Of course he didn't have time to actually figure out what was wrong with the washing machine and fix it. That would have to wait for the weekend. In the meantime, I had an adventure and learned some stuff.

Things I Learned from My Broken Washing Machine

So I woke up to a rather damp, but not flooded laundry room and squishy carpet in the downstairs hall and a washing machine I could not use. At least not the way I was used to using it. I could fill it, if I watched it carefully and it would spin out if I manually turned the knob to spin. It would not agitate. So, I did small loads, filled up the washer, agitated it with two rubber scrub brushes (From Flylady's line of Rubba cleaning products), set it to spin when I was ready to drain it and then refilled it to rinse and repeat. Then I gathered up my clothes and took them out to the clothesline. The result was an unexpected growing intimacy with my laundry.

• By observing the water go in and out of my machine, I became more aware of the amount of water I am using with each wash. I began collecting the final rinse water and adding that to the first wash water of the next load, as well as dumping the water from the dehumidifier in there. 

• By observing the draining of my rinse water, I came to realize that I am using too much soap, or perhaps not rinsing enough. Following the washing machine's usual process and watching the final drain (and often collecting it) I came to realize that this "final rinse" water was full of soap! So I'm using less soap now. In fact, I am using soap nuts in most cases. 

Things I Learned from Line Drying My Clothes

I thought that line-drying my clothes was going to be a pain in the butt, but it's really not. I take my first load out when I take the ducks out in the morning and the cat comes out too and it's all very festive. The air smells wonderful, the sun is coming up and the birds are singing and it's still quite cool. I shake the dew off the line and pin up my clothes, it is a moment of silence. I am thinking of nothing, except pinning up my clothes. It's really a wonderful way to start the day. But more than just a morning meditation, line drying my clothes has taught me to be more mindful of my clothes themselves.

• Hanging up my teenage son's clothes in particular, I have noticed several items that need repair that I had never noticed before. When you just take them from the washer to the dryer, you don't notice these things until someone points them out to you. My son just doesn't. But when you're shaking out a pair of pants and turning out the pockets so they will dry properly and hanging them up by their ankles, you notice if there's a tear in the hem or a hole in the pocket. 

• Also, and this mostly with regard to my toddler's clothing, I am more aware of stains. When you are just going from washer to dryer, you don't tend to notice the stains until they've been through the dryer and then they're set. When you're hanging them on the line, you can notice if the spaghetti sauce didn't come out of a shirt and you can take it back in and give it some attention. 

• Line dried clothes smell freaking amazing. And the smell sticks. There's no comparison.

• If there's any soap left in your clothes, line dried clothes can be really stiff. So an extra rinse or use of Using soap nuts instead of laundry soap helps.

What Does This Have to do With Witchcraft?

Okay someone recently told me that if I am going to claim that this is a Kitchen Witchery blog, then I need to focus more of my articles on "Witchy" topics. I need to say why this relates to Witchcraft. I feel like it should be self-explanatory, but maybe it's not. As a Witch, I try to live as close to Nature as possible. Not just because of the usual fairy dumpling "I love nature" business, but also because I believe that when you are in tune with nature, your magick is in tune with nature and is automatically more effective. Magick operates by natural laws, and we can talk about natural laws all the time, but until you live with the rhythms of nature, you only kind of get it. 

Doing your laundry mindfully, as using manual methods of washing and drying forces us to do, puts us in tune with nature in a way that simply tossing your clothes into the washer and then into the dryer simply does not allow and it helps us to walk softly on the Earth, which should be the goal of every Witch.

• Line-drying uses less electricity, which saves money, a goal any homemaker can appreciate, and is gentler on the Earth, which is the goal of most Earth-based Witches.

• Manual washing makes us aware of how much water we are using, again, this can save money (if you pay for city water) and it's gentler on the Earth.

• In both cases, your clothes last longer and you use less soap and other products (like fabric softener sheets) which saves money and is gentler on the Earth.

• Line drying makes us pay closer attention to what's going on outside; not just while we're out there hanging clothing, but also while we're planning our laundry adventures. Does it look like rain? Is this going to pass quickly? As time goes by and this observation and thinking becomes habit, you start to recognize the signs of a quick short rain, a bit of overcast that'll move on soon or the illusion of a sunny day that'll downpour soon. Maybe you don't have time to dry jeans and hoodies, but maybe a load of sheets or dress shirts will make it before the wet weather hits. Predicting the weather is a cool witchy skill.

• You also need to be aware of Sunset, at least around here, because the second the sun goes down, the dew descends and all your clothes are wet again. 

Review: Practical Prosperity Magick #witchesread

Practical Prosperity Magick; Crafting Success and Abundance by Ellen Dugan was the Read-A-Long book for the Witchipedia for the month of July and I just finished it a few days ago and have been chewing on it since. There is some good information in this book, but I really really do not like the delivery. First I should say that I came to the book a bit prejudiced because I do not like this author. I have read other books by her and been absolutely turned off by her overly dramatic personality, negative attitude and a gossipy, condescending tone. I will explain.
 
Throughout the whole book she writes like she probably talks and she makes a lot of assumptions about the reader, like that we don't know anything at all about magic. She says things like "believe it or not, that's right, I said it, it's true!" (okay, maybe not all those words in one sentence, that would be ridiculous) She also puts in a lot of cutesy words that are entirely unnecessary, particularly adjectives. Saying things like "your witchy fingers". Honestly, there are so many unnecessary words of cuteness and fun that the book could be half its size if you took them out. This sort of cute, conversational writing might make some people smile and feel more at ease, but it just made my brain hurt and my jaw clench and is probably why it took me over a month to read this book. I had to take frequent breaks.

She begins the book with a story of how she cast a prosperity spell, was soon offered a job that she hated, was forced to work with people she did not like and ultimately, through this job, met someone she got along with well who offered her yet another job that matched her skills, which she did not accept. This story is replete with personal details about the people she doesn't like, so that anyone who lives in her town could easily know exactly who the pregnant woman with no sense of humor is talking about. I feel like this is unprofessional and perhaps unethical. She goes on and on about the reason why her prosperity spell didn't work out was because she wasn't in the proper mind-set when she cast the spell. But it did work. It put her into the situation she needed to be in to cross paths with the person she needed to meet to get the job she wanted. But she didn't take it. That's her fault. The universe did the best it could and she gave it the middle finger. And then wrote a book about it.

She goes on to explain some various concepts of higher magic than she usually rights about, Hermetic principals, planetary seals, etc. and she clearly doesn't understand them fully but instead tries to squeeze them into her Goddess-centered Wiccan-esque (I mean by this that her path seems to be Wiccan-like, but not strictly) worldview. This may not be as big an issue for some people as it for me, but it is one of my pet peeves. Of course, it probably all works out fine in the end, so I shouldn't stress it.

Another pet peeve of mine is the random calling of any old God and Goddess to "work with" in magic based solely on sphere of influence, regardless of pantheon or personal relationship. She does this a lot. There are a bunch of completely unrelated Gods and Goddesses in there, some she clearly has no real experience with. (But I did notice a distinct lack of Mercury or Hermes, which  I thought was strange since Hermes is my go-to guy for all things related to money, luck and employment.) I know that these things don't bother everyone. I am probably actually in the minority so, take that for what it's worth.

The spells are okay. They're sound and would probably work out just fine, assuming you actually know the Gods she works with. They aren't Gods I'm overly familiar with either, so I can't tell. I don't like her rhymes. They lack rhythm. And precision. But this isn't a book of poetry. You should come up with your own rhymes anyway, so it doesn't matter too much. She leaves room for customization, which I feel is very important. I don't agree with a lot of her definitions, but there's nothing damaging there, so it's probably not that big a deal.

In short, I did not like the book but I was able to get some good information out of it. If your world view is Wiccan, you'll probably like it better than I did, assuming the author's personality doesn't turn you off. I got a lot more out of Financial Sorcery by Jason Miller.

On Sharing the Bathroom with Trans-Gender Folks

Since it seems to be a hot topic of late, I thought I'd chime in. You know, just for fun. It looks like fun.

If you look like a girl, dress like a girl, talk like a girl, walk like a girl, I am not even going to notice you walking into the lady's room. If you look like a man, talk like a man, walk like a man, I am and I'm going to wonder what the hell you're doing in girly land. I will probably try to help you out by kindly pointing out that you're in the wrong place, or I might wonder out loud if I'm in the wrong place. I am certainly not going to check if you have a penis. If you don't have a penis and proceed to explain that to me, we're just going to both be embarrassed. Your penis or lack thereof is not my business. It makes much more sense for someone who lives as a man to go where he won't draw attention and for someone who lives as a woman to do likewise. After all, going to the bathroom in a public restroom is awkward enough without having to explain yourself.

That all being said, we need more gender neutral bathrooms. It is awkward when you have a passel of kids to get all of their excretory needs handled when you can't go in the bathroom with all of them. This is especially troublesome for the dad who must parade his little girl past a bunch of guys using urinals.  And then you have a six year old of the opposite gender insisting that he or she is too old to go in the "wrong" bathroom and you have the choice of risking sending him or her into the "right" bathroom unsupervised, standing awkwardly at the door imagining all sorts of nightmarish scenarios until they get done playing with every automatic faucet and electric dryer they can find and wander out, or having a giant meltdown in the movie theater lobby.

All of this can be prevented with gender neutral bathrooms. Kids of all ages, mothers, fathers, transgender, boys, girls, etc. All welcome. Pee here for free.  And then, if a transgender person walks into the gender neutral bathroom, all the paranoid mothers who think that people just decide to be transgender to make it easier to rape women and molest children can stand there and watch while the transgender people go in the stall, do their thing, come out, wash their hands and leave and ensure that they don't touch their precious darlings and infect them with their proclivities.

What we need to do is ban germ freaks from public bathrooms because they're annoying. I am so tired of having to clean up some other woman's pee because she can't sit on the seat for fear of germs. If you have to hover, why can't you clean up after yourself? Because you might touch where someone else's butt touched? Doesn't it make more sense to touch your butt to that spot? No? You don't want to touch it at all. So I have to clean up your pee so that I can sit!! That's freaking gross. And the coverers are just as bad leaving their paper all over the place so I have to clean it up and flush it before I can go. WTF people. Let's focus on the real problems in the public rest rooms. Hoverers and coverers! Damn you all!