How’s that for a title? It seemed more creative than simply saying it was a Monday Round-up. (I still need to find my damn thesaurus, it’s here someplace…) The idea was in my head that cowboys used their lariats (or lanyards) for rounding up herds, which then made me think of words. See? My mind is a funny place. Which is why I share the conversations Daniel and I have, no one would believe that we talk this way unless you had some insight as to how my brain processed crap like this.
Here’s a brief one we had the other day, I was driving, he was passenging, and we were backing up so I could park.
Me ~ Wow, this is great.
Him ~ What?
Me ~ I can see through the back window. I haven’t been able to do that in months.
Him ~ How very reassuring.
What I meant was that since about the beginning of Fall the windows have been a bit foggy, the blower had/has not been working very well for most of those months. I’d been having to use my squeegee to wipe off the glass I could reach. I could mostly see out, but not super clearly. And not always out the back. Wow, he gets so worried about the silliest things.
My Wee Walnut is going to need some serious work pretty soon though, and I’m not happy about it. I had an incident the other day. Something spilled on the front floorboards, so when I got home I went to pull the mats out, and that’s when I saw how very bad the leaks had become. There was standing water, both front and back, on the passenger side. Little rubber mats were wet, little carpet pieces were wet, soaking wet napkins and scraps of paper, hell no wonder there is always so much moisture on the inside of the windshield!
No, it did not smell moldy, but ew, it was very damp in there. Where is all this water getting in, I keep being asked. EVERYWHERE! Not one seal is functioning in that damn car. It rains a lot here, I park in the driveway or on the street, this all equals: wet car. I grabbed a trash bag and filled it with all the icky wet shit, then pulled out as many of the mats and rug thingies that I could (it wasn’t raining at that exact second so I could set them out for a moment, later I had to bring them in the house though). I mopped up the best I could, then I set some old towels over the flooring. It doesn’t happen on “my” side, the heat works over there, so the driver’s side was pretty much okay. The whole thing just made me sad.
I saw the following plates in the past two days: Colorado, Arizona (x 2), and South Dakota. Sparse out right now. Probably because of the rain.
Pillow update: washing went okay, I’d give it a D+, but drying did slightly better, maybe closer to a C. I had to stop doing it though because I was concerned that using all that electricity was just wasteful. They are sitting in their new covers, air drying now. I walk by and fluff out the lumps every time I walk past. I’ve been sleeping on some horrid polyester thing we had on the guest bed. It is unsatisfactory. But ya know, once I’m asleep I kinda don’t notice too much (I’m asleep!).
Our card today made me think of how I still can’t find those re-told myths I keep wanting to put up here. I did a really nice Ostara tale that would be perfect for the coming Easter/Equinox season. I’ll keep looking. (Here is a good article, written by another witch, about these words and some background.)
Disclaimer time again. I have never been comfortable with “recruitment” of any type (the word itself just makes me nauseous), you already know that this is a hate-free zone, all beliefs are welcome in JulieLand. I would NEVER consider trying to make someone think MY way, keep that in mind whenever I toss out a few not-widely known factoids about widely observed holy days .
I won’t drone on about how rabbits and chickies have nothing to do with the holiday many folks celebrate. But I will tell you that originally this time of year was more about the return of the sun and the birth of spring lambs than about a person. It just happened to be a good way to combine what the pagans were already celebrating; basically all of the church holidays were plopped on top of existing ones, the better to “convert” those heathens. (“Heathen” simply means “dweller of the heath, or hearth.”) And the basket in which we put our colored eggs was actually just that, an egg basket, from when the kids were tasked with collecting the eggs from around the yard.
Here’s some more history on the subject, from our Druid Animal Oracle guidebook - The rabbit’s and hare’s habits of foraging and mating at night meant that human observations of its behaviour has, until recently, been severely limited. People once believed that these animals changed gender annually, and that their frantic racing around was confined to the month of March, hence the term “mad as a March hare.” Since we now know that the mating behaviour takes place throughout the breeding season: before March it happens unseen before dawn, in March the days grow longer and they can be observed, but later in the spring the vegetation grows and their “madness” is again unnoticed by humans.
In the old days, rabbits and hares were animals sacred to the Goddess, they brought luck, fertility, transformation, and healing. But as with other sacred animals, like the snake and cat, Christianity degraded and inverted their symbolism.
“Hare ~ Gearr (with a mark over the “a” and pronounced as Gy-arr) ~ Rebirth, Intuition, Balance.
The card shows the original hare of Britain, the Arctic hare which was later replaced by the common brown hare, probably imported by the Romans from the plains of central Europe. It is nearly dawn but we can still see the moon in the sky. In the background stands a dolmen, or symbol of rebirth, and in the foreground we can see a lapwing’s nest, with the eggs which were said to have been brought by the hare. Harebell, hare parsley, and hare’s foot clover grow close by.
Gearr brings us the benefits of balance and intuition, of promise and fulfillment. The hare is a creature of the Goddess, the moon, and the night, and yet it also represents the dawn, brightness, and the east. It is the most adept of animals at shape-shifting: we can never be sure exactly where the hare is, in this or the Otherworld. It represents intuition, which makes things appear suddenly in our consciousness, like the lapwing eggs of Eostre, that magically appear in the hare’s form (nest). As representative of the Corn Spirit and the two equinoxes, the hare brings the excitement of rebirth, fertile abundance and willing release as each creative cycle comes to an end. With the hare as your ally you will be able to negotiate times of change, and you will be able to draw on your intuition to guide you through life.”
Late Night Alert: If you haven’t already seen my son’s comments on yesterday’s post, please go now. They are awesome!
