Merry Yule and Christmas and Happy New Year

Friends and family, loved ones near and far, Hannah and I wanted to take a moment to extend some Holiday warmth and cheer to you and yours. As most of you know, our 2017 has been wrought with change. As if we jumped into the Tower card of the nearest Tarot deck, we have been faced with sudden and life altering situations that have made for one intense 2017. Early in the year Hannah underwent a surgery that brought with it a slow and painful recovery. Later in the year, on the first of October, in fact, our apartment complex gave us 30 days to vacate as they had become a tax credit property and we no longer qualified to live there. The good news was that they gave us a rehoming stipend to help; the bad news was that October happened to be the month of our wedding.  

It was only with the help of our amazing friends that we were able to accomplish a Friday the 13th Wedding, a honeymoon to Seattle, and a move-out in the span of a month. Sanity aside, we then began the very adult task of shopping for a house. No more renting for us. We were ready to put down some real roots. We stayed with friends and my parents while looking for a home and finally, two months to the day after our wedding, we closed on a house on Wellesley.

I cannot thank you enough, all of you, for helping Hannah and I make it through this turbulent time to find peace just in time for Yule, Christmas, and New Years. Making it through this year wouldn’t have been possible without your helping hands and encouragement.

Thank you so much to all those who listened to our woes and helped us ground our emotions, who walked backwards up a ramp hauling a handcart loaded with hundreds of books, who arrived early, who stayed late, who donated money to our honeymoon, who stunned us with generosity, who humbled us with kindness, who kept us going with positive energy and litanies of ‘good luck’ and ‘hang in there.’ Hannah and I have been so stressed that we may not have seemed as grateful as we actually felt. So I tell you now: dear friends and family, know that we love and appreciate you and wish you peace and joy during this magical time of year.

Kitty's gonna Kit; Pyrex gonna Py

Tomorrow marks week three after catching the sick and I'm finally feeling better. Still coughing (because goodness knows I wouldn't want to spend a day not doing that!) and still a bit weak and sore in my core but overall I'm feeling much more like my old self. And I can talk again! World beware. So here's a quick update of all things fanged and fragile.

Our friend Chris got us a cat for Christmas/Yule. She knew we were looking and so she paid half of the adoption fee which was the only reason we were able to get a cat and it was damn nice of her. We visited her rescue ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc                                                                                                                                                    yttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttth6777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777x

Okay... so I left the computer for a minute and came back to the above nonsense. Since it was the new cat who inserted said nonsense, I've decided to leave it for your viewing pleasure. Also it ties in nicely with my explanation of this cat's proclivities. 

So back to where I was: we visited the rescue and found a four month old little orange tabby. He came from a feral mama but had been fostered pretty much since birth with his brothers and sister. Of the litter he was the smallest as well as the last to be adopted. So we brought him home. Narcisa had things to say. Mostly hissing things to say. But it hasn't even been a week and the cats are already playing and chasing each other. They sniff each other a lot and are not aggressive toward each other at all, however it may still take some time before they cuddle. If they ever do cuddle. But I think eventually Thorin (that is the little one's name) will wear her down.

In the mean time however the Son of Thrain has found his calling in dismantling our computers. He took mine off internet access for two days. It wasn't that he put it into airplane mode... no he somehow erased my computer's connection to our wifi. Hannah had to work her magic and run a whole bunch of cleaners before I was able to get back on the net. No sooner was my compy back up and running did he waltz over to Hannah's and erase all her icons. He's been known to turn off the computers as well as save print-screen images to Hannah's one drive. Yeah, he's pretty good with the technology but that isn't surprising as most kids these days are born with a tablet in their hand. 

The cat and his shenanigans aren't the only reason for this post tonight. Earlier today, friend Rachel of kettle korn fame, came over to the house to hang out with us while Hannah made a butt-load of bierocks (German buns) and I made an equally loaded butt of baklava (honey-nut pastry). Apparently it was b-named food night in the Hannamanda kitchen. Anyhow, I made some fun alterations to the baklava. I am trying to think of a dairy and gluten free sort of substitute for a friend but that might not happen. I'm a wee bit discouraged, you see. I made the Krampus-klava (pumpkin spices and whiskey) without too much stress and followed that up with Snow-klava (the addition of sweetened coconut) but then I made my masterpiece: Freya's Delight Baklava. We named it that as I was constructing it. This baklava had everything in it apart from the kitchen sink. And the honey syrup mixture that I put on top was perfection! I set it on the stove to cool and went to work on a special fruit filled batch for my dad that I call Loaded Odin Baklava. 

I got one layer of Loaded Odin down when there was a sudden loud pop-crack sound. I looked up to see Freya's delight (and Rachel's very special baking dish that she had let me borrow) scattered all over the kitchen with a decent sized fire roaring over the burner. A burner that I had left on. I feel like a moron for that rookie mistake but I know that I'm not the only one who has done it and I take solace in knowing that while it's embarrassing at least it is common enough to illicit a teensy bit of sympathy from my culinary friends. The best part about this sudden emergency was that none of us panicked. Hannah quickly and efficiently herded the cats to the bedroom and closed them in while Rachel and her boyfriend helped me to extinguish the fire (baking soda is my new best friend) and clean up massive chunks of broken glass and honey. What a fucking mess! But how cool of them to help me. 

The kitchen counters are very clean now and I'm nearly 100% certain that there is no glass in the bierocks that Hannah made earlier. I suppose if we find blood in our stool we shall know otherwise. The last thing I have do to now is to mop the kitchen and that will have to wait until morning. I'm exhausted and it wasn't until Rachel and her boyfriend left that I realized how late it was. Today has been an interesting one to be sure. (Or yesterday into today rather, since it is still in the very wee hours of the morning right now.) 

At first we thought the breaking dish might have been a sign that we'd angered the gods or that we were somehow undergoing a sort of curse. Earlier in the evening my Yule tree fell over on the table for no seemingly no reason. So the tree falling and dish breaking all seemed a bit spooky at first but we realized in the end that the tree fell because I had neglected to ever balance it properly (something I have since rectified) and the dish broke because I'm a moron. In all actuality we can count this as a blessing because no one was hurt. We could have easily been in the kitchen and been cut, burned, or otherwise harmed when the dish exploded but everyone was off doing their own things. A cat could have been in there, or been in the tree. But no kitties were harmed either. Aside from adding a lot of cleaning to the evening and wasting a batch of baklava (and the loss of Rachel's dish which I'm still very sad about as the dish had belonged to her mother who is no longer with us) the evening was a fairly decent one. 

Coughing for Christmas

This Tuesday will mark two full weeks of upper respiratory infection. It feels like it's been months. The worst of it is over. I no longer have the fevers, the shakes, the horrible congestion that makes me throw up and piss myself. I feel, for the most part, like a regular human, except that now I am a coughing machine. I suspect it's the damage I've done to my throat and airways over the past two weeks that are keeping the cough well and alive. Which means I'm right back to dealing with piddling here and there because I can only take so much coughing before my eyes water, my nose runs, and my bladder leaks. Today I couldn't get much out without being winded by cough. At work I sounded horrible and after work, at my mom and dad's house, I sounded even worse. 

We went to see my mom tonight and do a little Christmas shopping. (The roads were fun in the "wow, maybe this was a horrible idea, we might die!" kind of way). We don't have much money and many of our friends are just getting the flat Hannah and Amanda versions of ourselves that we are working on. But even in tight times I still like to treat my Hannah and my parents to a stocking full of goodies come Christmas morning. For Hannah and I we open gifts in honor of Yuletide, but with the folks we will always do a Christmas thing. There is something very magical and mysterious in the quietude of Christmas morning when the whole world (or at least a generous portion) takes a break and just watches a loved one open a gift. Doesn't matter what the gift is... somewhere in the world little hands are tearing at tissue paper, a teenager is breaking in a brand new karaoke machine, a husband is ignoring the instructions as he puts together a bike, a dog is gnawing a new bone, and a cat is playing with a wrapper. That's what Christmas is to me - a time of year when secular, Christian, and Pagan traditions all come together to invite fellowship. No matter what entity or vision of Santa Claus a person celebrates, they are still celebrating. Even the bah-humbug, Grinch-wannabes are participating in the energy. Whether they want to or not. The harder you look away, the more energy you are sending out. 

And I'll be spending most of this magical morning with my Dispatch rep at work. There will be no customer calls that day. I'll mainly be providing carrier line back up and checking emails. I plan on bringing in something yummy for her and I to munch on as well as bringing in Dutch Bro's coffee for us. I am Starbuck's girl through and through, but my Dispatch Peep is all about the DB. One thing I've learned being a lead in newspaper circulation: keep your Dispatch happy. So I swing the way of the Dutch Bro's when I'm there with Dispatch. It's a small sacrifice to make to keep the world turning. 

Speaking of circulation and all that jazz, today was made of suck. It was so stressful and so busy and I had to wrangle so many attitudes. And all this while coughing out a series of distressed foghorn signals and trying not to fill the cushion of computer chair with Prednisone scented piss. I have one day left. Tomorrow I work from 7:30 until 4:30pm. After that I'm free for over a week! With Hannah applying for disability much of that free time is going to go toward doctor's appointments but still, that's a much different level of stress than going in to work to listen to the pre-Holiday rage that always seems to happen to the customer class right before we get the magical Christmas morning scene. This month has turned out much busier than I had wanted it to and I'm a little worried that any time off I have is going to fly by so fast it'll leave my head spinning.Still I'm going to make the most of my time away from work. I'm going to recharge and get ready for the new year and hope that at the very least 2017 will see me free from persistent coughing. 

A Special Christmas for Mom and Everyone

This month has been a very busy one indeed.  I imagine that it is a busy month for most people no matter what they celebrate.  As for me and my girlfriend, we celebrated Yule twice, lit candles for the fourth day of Hanukkah, and celebrated Christmas Eve and Day.  One round of Yule found us in Spokane with the IEPG.  We participated in a beautiful Ritual wherein the Holly King slays the Oak King so that the nights might be shorter and that new life can spring forth on earth.  The second round of Yule was at home with the parents.  We sent our wishes and blessings into the fire to be lifted into the air with the incensed smoke.  All in all it was a beautiful night spent partly out of doors.  Our kitty, Narcisa, wore her harness and joined us around the fire.  She sat with Hannah on the lawn bench.  I have hopes that she will be able to explore the outside with us bit by bit and yet remain safe.  Already she rides in the car very well.  What we're working on right now is getting her to associate her harness with the privilege of going outside - and that in order to go outside she must wear it.   I know she's smart enough to grasp this concept but as of yet she is still young and squirmy and bitchy about the whole affair of putting the harness on.  

For Christmas Eve I experienced something very strange.  My boss lost her grandmother and had to leave to take care of her family (which I understand completely), and I spent the last few hours at the store alone.  This is not usual for us at all - we always have two or more employees in the store at any given time for safety measures - and so this was my first time in this situation.  We took measures to make sure I was safe but it was a bit exhilarating and scary to close all by myself having only closed a handful of times prior.  The rest of the evening was much more relaxing however.  At home we had pizza and movies.  Hannah and I watched 12/12/12 which was absolutely awful.  Then we watched the Radio City Music Hall Rockette's Christmas Special on Netflix.  That was infinitely better than the other one.  (We later watched 13/13/13 and now have finished out the whole set that started with 11/11/11 and have appeased the innate OCD that forced us to watch them in the first place).  

Christmas Day began at six in the morning.  My mother is the activities director for two assisted living homes in Hayden.  Her residents are more than just people she plans activities for - they are a part of her life and steadily becoming her extended family.  She put a great deal of her own money into making sure that they all had gifts to open on Christmas Day this year (in years past they often times are forgotten by family and others) and she wanted to be there to share in the joy with them. 

At the first house we had coffee and doughnuts (cheap little Walgreen baggies of doughnuts since the house employee responsible for making sure we had cinnamon rolls that morning totally botched his mission), and then passed out presents and stockings and watched with pleasure as the residents opened their gifts.  Then we went to the other house - now sufficiently caffeinated and sugared up - and watched them enjoy the fruits of my mother's diligence and labor.  After everything was opened and being enjoyed, a few of us went into the sun room and sang Christmas carols while a deaf resident played the piano accompaniment for us.  It was unique and beautiful and it made that resident's day.  

We had our own Christmas after all of that and opened our own stockings and gifts.  It was wonderful and yet the excitement paled to some degree in comparison to the pure delight in sharing Christmas with those who often receive nothing.  

Some of the gifts Hannah and I received include: the Luis Royo Tarot, the Gothic Tarot, Tarot for Writer's by Corrine Kenner, a slew of books, some beautiful jewelry (namely a dandelion puff necklace that I cannot wait to wear!), soaps and scrubs, blankies and Monster High Dolls.  That's a small list of all our goodies.  Already I'm delving into some of the books as well as the tarot deck.  Lots of inspiration and information to be found in our gifts this year.  Hannah and I have been doing some writing exercises from the Tarot for Writer's book to stir up our creativity and passion for the craft once more.  

Holiday Letter!

I have a long to-do list.  I've had my Thanksgiving fun and now it's back to work.  I got one item ticked off the list tonight and that is the Holiday Letter.  Most of our friends and family will be getting this letter in the mail with a Christmas/Yule card.  But I was kind of proud and thought I would share it here as well.  If you read it here first and then get it in the mail... still act surprised!

Holiday Letter 2014

Dear family and friends, I hope you’re all right,

My thoughts are of you as I sit down to write:

Twelve months is a lot to cram in a letter,

Just like my boobs barely fit in a sweater.

So where to begin? Let me line up my ducks, 

Please poets forgive me, my iambic sucks.

Another year’s over and what is the news? 

I’ll tell you the tale and await your reviews.

This April, Miss Hannah joined SNHU,

To finish her bachelors and broaden her view.

Through workshops and classes she’s written a bunch!

But ‘applied finite math,’ she’d just like to punch.

Along with her school, she’s got crafts and crochet,

She’s pumping out afghans, at least one a day!

Often she’s homesick for the Wichita crew,

And so she extends an, “I love and miss you!” 

Now me, I still work at L’eggs Hanes and Bali,

And hope for the day we might live in the Valley

Of Spokane, if you please, or even downtown,

Closer to culture, we’d like to settle down.

My Masters in writing, I’ve almost attained,

My sources are cited, my fingers are trained!

Graduation’s in July and if all goes well

I’ll have a dystopian story to sell.

Six months ago we had a hard time for sure,

We lost our sweet Yoda, our baby of fur.

He’s a kitty we’ll never ever forget,

But to help heal our hearts, we sought a new pet.

So, a black scraggly beast, Narcisa, she’s called,

Now leaves fresh destruction wherever she’s crawled.

Galen and Ellie and Narcisa make three,

And Yoda makes four alive in memory.

This year has been busy from schoolwork alone,

We barely had time to explore the unknown.

We hunted for ghosts and read lots of tarot,

Camped in the summer, the cold chilled our marrow.

And then in the autumn, a party we threw,

To say, "out with the old and in with the new."

As you finish this letter, how ‘bout a dare? 

Close both your eyes and for a second we’re there.

Snow Queen Yule Winter Solstice Goddess

Yule and Sirens

Tonight, Hannah and I decided, rather on the spur of the moment, to take some food, some wood, some matches, and some sodas and go out to Kiwanis Park to cook a Solstice meal and enjoy nature.  Well, the park technically closes from "sunset to sunrise" and since today is the shortest day of the year, sunset came at 3:59 PM.  Meaning our trespassing began shortly after we arrived.  In the time it took us to walk from the car to the pavilion, there went the sun.  For all my talk, I'm actually a pretty rule abiding citizen, same with Hannah, and so with the dark came a feeling of breaking the law.  Fear of being fined (we are so freaking poor right now) and fear of being arrested (thank you Cracked.com articles featuring the bad apple/barrel police department encounters) quickly overshadowed the slight adrenaline high that comes from being rebellious.  Maybe it was the mixture of fear and adrenaline that kept us there because before we knew it I was starting a fire in the grill pit and Hannah was fixing up the MP3 player with the speakers.

The air was filled with the crackling of summer wood and the melodies of Solstice carols.  We were about to put the tinfoil wrapped casserole and bacon onto the grate when I pointed out that lacked a stick for poking and proding the food and fire.   I was pretty certain we had a metal poker in the car so I got the keys and readied myself to venture back to the parking lot alone (probably a three minute walk but still, it was dark!).

And then, through the trees we see headlights moving nice and slow, somewhat reminiscent of how a cop car might drive through a closed park to keep all Pagan shenanigans to a minimum.  So Hannah and I freeze and watch the balls of light as they slow to a stop and then disappear.  Suddenly I decided I didn't really need to go to the car.  It had to have been a cop, right?  And I just knew that he'd either taken down the license plate number so he could fine us later or left a big fat ticket on the window.  And if he wasn't a cop then it was a random person out looking for someone to tattle on.

Our hearts beating a little faster after the mysterious drive-by, we threw the food onto the fire and cuddled together to wait for the feast, hoping that we could still enjoy our evening before the police showed up in force to haul us away. It was nice to just sit there in the woods, surrounded by snow and the pretty orange glow of the fire.  But that ended when we heard, way off in the distance, the sound of a police siren followed by the loud belching alarm of a firetruck.  We gave each other nervous smiles and tried to ignore it, but it kept getting louder and louder and louder.  Until it sounded like they were pulling into the park.  Hannah immediately began piling snow onto our nice fire sending a whoosh of smoke up into the night sky, making a kind of 'guilty' beacon.

The siren sound gets closer and closer and then goes right on by.  Yep.  But we've already killed the fire and it seems like a good time to make a run for it before something does happen, so we grab our half cooked food, our blankies, music, and sodas and head home.  I half figured there would be a police road block waiting for us at the park entrance, but the only thing waiting for us were a couple of deer and they were beautiful. The best part of the story, however, is that later, when explaining how we freaked ourselves out over a random car driving slowly through the park, dad replies casually, "Oh, that was us!"  My parents went out to see if the area was plowed because they worried that we might be stuck in the snow.  We weren't stuck.  Just paranoid.

Christmas? Why wait!

Busy day today!  I forgot my medicine last night and so I'm bordering on mania which is alright because today was a Christmas Spirit day!  We started it off by going up to the garage and storing away all our Halloween goodies and dragging down all the Christmas shit we've accumulated over the years.  And there's a lot.  The tree is not up and decorated (we still have so much more to put on it) and we have figured out a variety of things to put on the gift table for our Family Christmas Party coming up the first part of December.  I'm really excited because we're going to make two candle platters as well as a kitchen basket filled with lots of seasonal cooking accessories.

We found a mini tree in the garage that has been used in the past for birthday celebrations.  It's about two feet tall, pure white, and covered in little lights.  Well, tonight Hannah and I covered that little tree with over fifty My Little Ponies.  It's ridiculous and wonderful and my Avengers Hawkeye action figure is standing guard at the base protecting the Pony Tree.  Yep, I'd say we got a fairly good start on Christmas.  I have gifts to wrap and a few more gifts to get but other than that I'm doing quite well.  And it's not even Thanksgiving yet.

Christmas So Far

Yesterday, Christmas Eve, I worked from noon to five and then went home to find several packages freshly arrived and ready for wrapping.  While I worked on the gifts, Hannah and my cousin made chocolate chip pancakes from scratch which were delicious.  After dinner we went on a drive around Coeurd'Alene to see the lights near the boardwalk and around Sherman.  On the Dike Road we pulled over and made our way down to the cold lakeside.  It was a nice night, cold and crisp, and the Marina was lit up like the Vegas Strip.  We were rather eager to get back home and get warm after all of our running around.  The movie pick for the evening was 'Event Horizon' and then 'Land of the Dead.'  

My plans to stay up late and wake the family at 4 am for Christmas Morning shenanigans were foiled by a nice deep sleep which didn't let up till about eight or so.  We rose slowly and stiffly (most of us having slept on various pieces of furniture) and dug into the stockings.  I think that everyone was pleased with their Christmas swag.  A few of the fun and things that I received: a Loki collectible Bobble head, an awesome velvet wall scroll map of Germany, a Fluttershy brushable from MLP, a vintage crystal decanter, and an 8 gig bullet shaped flash drive.