To be or not to be.... fat

So recently my husband has decided that I should lose some weight. Now, I wouldn't mind losing a few pounds but mainly I just need to be in better shape. I want to give my muscles some tone and basically just rearrange the pounds I have. But I am surprised by how much this opinion of his has hurt me.... I find myself dwelling on my weight and I *feel* fat... I refuse to be become one of those women who counts calories and is constantly obsessing about my weight but I just feel fat... and pissed that I feel that way when I am clearly *NOT* fat. I don't really believe in dieting. I think that if you eat sensibly and get some exercise you should be fine. The problem is that I don't really get very get much exercise. I do yoga a few times a week (most weeks!) but not a whole lot else. Every time I mention getting a gym membership or something I met with out right denial or just apathy. I don't know how to explain to my husband that I need his support of this. I don't need to be told that I eat too much sour cream and yet hear nothing about what we can do to be active. This whole problem has impacted our intimate life as well, it's hard to be in the mood when I feel fat...I don't know what to do!

BoS

I have a dilemma, I have a, so called, book of shadow (I don't like that term btw, I think it's kind of silly and pretentious but anyway... ) And I have put things in it. But not a lot. And the reason is this: Do I put *everything* in it so it's kind of an all in one encyclopdia of all things witchy *or* do I only put in things that are unique to myself; my own rituals, thoughts, what works what doesn't etc.... My first instinct is to put everything in there... but then that's why I own so many books. Why write it all out again? I tell myself that I can distill, summarize and present the information that I want better my own way. But again, the information is still available to me, just not in one place. And my other dilemma is this, my own personal book is a regular book format (the coven book is not, it's in binder format) so I can only enter information in as I think of it. With the coven book I can have *sections* and go back and keep like information together. I am thinking that the coven book will eventually be the all in one witchy encyclopedia and that my own book will have to be less than that. But this does not seem very satisfying.

Autumn

It is just about the fall equinox and now is the time for fall cleaning. In spring you clean in order to open up your life to new possibilities. In fall it's time for closing in. For consolidation. So you clean, you purge, you organize and otherwise prepare your house and your life for being closed in for the winter. It's an ending. I love fall. I always have.

Health Care

I do not understand how people can be opposed to health care reform.... There are almost 50 *million* uninsured Americans. How can we let this stand? And I hear people complaining about the cost but of all the things to spend your money on shouldn't health care be one of the most important?? We can find however many *billion* dollars for wars but we don't want to spend anything on health care?? Our health care system *obviously* doesn't work. Look at my own personal case. I have insurance through work. My husband doesn't work, he is not insured. We can't afford it. Now since he last had insurance he has injured his shoulder and back... so even if we could afford insurance he couldn't get it because of a "pre-existing condition!" *ANYTHING* would be better than nothing, any insurance at all! By the way, we don't qualify for our state healthcare assistance because we make too much money... I also hear people say that a government backed system would be unfair to private companies.... but look at the post office, Fedex and UPS are doing just *fine*. There are plenty of government run programs that work and compete fairly with privately run companies. I just don't get it!

9/11

I was trying to think of something stirring and inspirational for 9/11, it's been eight years but I've got nothing.... I remember the day so clearly, I woke up, late (I had missed my early class) and went to go take a shower. There was a radio playing and there was no music playing... after a little while I realized that there was still no music... and what seemed more ominous, no commercials. I turned up the volume in time to hear the DJ saying that the NY Port Authority was closing all the bridges and tunnels into NY.... I wondered what the hell was going on. I hurried, rinsed my hair and ran back to my room... in time to hear that a *plane* had flown into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. A few minutes later I saw the second plane hit. I have never seen a TV anchor speechless but I did that day. I was glued to the TV, I switched channels but quickly realized that all the news networks were sharing feeds so it didn't matter anyway. I saw the people jumping and everything. Then they showed a wide shot, and my roommate said "wait I thought there were *two* towers" the first tower had fallen. They showed shots of the firefighters running into the other tower and then it fell. That was when I got upset, I realized that all those brave firefighters couldn't possibly have survived that. I called my mom at work, I called the school and when the receptionist, Mary I answered I told them to turn on the TV.... she told me they knew and that I couldn't talk to Mom right then but that she'd tell her I called and was fine. I was glued to the TV *all* day.... I didn't go to class, but later I went across town to my boyfriends. At about 10 or 11 PM I finally turned off the TV knowing that if they weren't finding any survivors by then they weren't going to... they did find a few more but it was horrible. So, no inspiration here, just sad memories.

Terror

My Grandfather died when I was 5 or so. I don't have very clear memories of him. When I was very small I remember him being very tall but by the time he died diabetes had taken both of his legs. He had had a stroke about 15 years before he died and I don't remember his voice at all. The whole family was there when he finally died. Mom swears she saw his spirit rise out of him and go shooting off into space, she says glad to be free and ready to explore space. My Grandfather was a remarkable man. He was in Germany, going to school, when Hitler rose to power. He said that he left the country after the first time he heard Hitler speak. He said it was the most frightening thing he'd ever heard, because Hitler's power was that you *believed* him. Grandfather left that day, fled to England where he lied about his age and joined the air force. He could fly and spoke German, during the war he took people out of Germany and into Switzerland. He spoke 9 languages fluently, he worked on the Voyager space project. Mom says that as a child they were never allowed to watch TV because it "rots your brain" but now my most vivid memory is my grandfather sitting in his wheelchair, silent and without legs... watching TV.
Ever read Flowers for Algernon? If you haven't you should... If you ever want to see me reduced to a sobbing wreck have me read that story. I think the losing of your intelligence is the most terrifying prospect imaginable. Alzheimer's disease is the most cruel fate I can think of. I'm not a genius by any means but I think I am reasonably intelligent and the thought of losing that terrifies me.

It's the End of the World

I love end of the world/post apocalyptic stories. Love them, although I find most of the characters in them stupid and/or annoying. It's one of my husbands and I's favorite games to play. It's also one of the reasons why I choose to raise my own food etc. Not because I think the end of the world is coming but just in case.... I simply like the idea that if something *did* happen, something really catastrophic, we would be alright. My favorite scenario is what if, one morning, you woke up and found that the cast majority (let's say 99 out of every 100 people) just... disappeared? We like this scenario because it's neatest (no dead bodies, no chance of catching a plague or whatever). I like to think that our life would be able to go on a lot like it always did. Animals still need to be fed and watered.... I just like the idea of sustainability. I would like to be able to support my own lifestyle, and the way I look at it. If I'm producing a lot of the things I need, that gives me more money to spend on things I want to have/do. Next time I'll list some of my favorite books/movies. :)

Witches, magic and pagans

As I said in a previous post I have a problem with terminology and it's attendant baggage. You ever try finding a definition for pagan, witch, wiccan, or magic? Oh, you can find the technical dictionary definition but that's not how people *use* the words. Some people don't use the word witch because they imagine a Wicked Witch of the West sort.... And then there is the magic/magick debate.... (Magic is a *whole* other topic btw) And I think a lot of people also use Wicca and witchcraft interchangeably. So here is my take on the whole thing, and I fully expect the wrath of all sorts of people to fall on my head for these but here I go anyway!
Pagan to me is a very broad term, it includes pretty much anything nature based, dualistic ad/or pantheonistic (is that a word?) and a mystery tradtion. I think that you can be wiccan without being a witch and vice versa. Being a witch is more about magic... whereas I think you can be wiccan and never do any magic at all. If I had to call myself something I would probably choose witch.... I think the term has romance and in my mind at least the term wiccan has been ruined by fluffbunnies (also another topic).
I do *not* think that in wicca you can just pick and choose what you "like" and I have major issues with people borrowing from native american and other tradition when the person doing the borrowing has no connection with that culture. I just don't feel comfortable borrowing deities from a culture I know nothing about. Now I may change my mind about all this tomorrow or next week, or not.
I also have an issue with people who insist that they have all the right ideas and not only are you wrong but you're stupid for thinking the way you do. They are so busy proving themselves right that they aren't willing to even consider that there might be different points of view, it's just too threatening. Whew... alright that's it for now. I'm sure I will think of a hundred and one points that contridict myself tomorrow lol but that's for tomorrow.

Women's Mysteries

I've been pondering "women's mysteries" lately.... I'm a little conflicted about the term (I'm a little conflicted about a lot of terms though, so much baggage!). The term makes things sound so grand and mysterious... and that's not how I feel. I feel tired and yucky and pissed off because I am two weeks early! I have cramps, I've been alternating between bitchy and weepy and I'm supposed to celebrate my womanhood or some such??! All I want to do is stay in bed with a book and some tea and not talk to anything male. And to be fair not a whole lot of females either. But here is where I agree with the whole mystery thing... men do not get it. They can try to understand and be sympathetic but in the end they can never understand it because they cannot experience it and that is what lies at the heart of a mystery tradition.
So I know that my experience of something depends on my mind set but I have a terrible time finding something positive in my monthly visitor. Oh no, I take that back... every month I tell myself, thank the Gods I'm not pregnant! I've been there, done that. And it was the final nail in the coffin of any hopes of having children. There is *NO WAY* I would go through that for nine months. And I know, I will now forever miss out on the "mystery of childbirth" but I'm ok with that.

Personal relationships cont.

When my very younger brother was little he thought slaughter day must be the coolest thing ever. He was probably 5 or 6 when Mom finally caved and told him he could watch us chop the heads off of the geese we were going to eat for Christmas. So we all go out to the barn. We grab the machete and catch us some geese. We lay the first goose out on the chopping and.... *whack!*
Unfortunately we had forgotten to sharpen the machete so the poor goose makes a horrible strangled gasping honk and it takes another whack to get the head off... My brother cried and never thought slaughter day was cool again. It couldn't have been a better lesson for my poor brother if we had staged it and the goose was tasty!

Personal relationships

So I told a friend of mine not too long ago that I thought people should have a more personal relationship with their food. I meant not just personal but I think there should be a spiritual element as well. Growing up we raised our own cattle for beef. Usually in the spring we would buy a calf and then the following fall we would butcher it ourselves. We always made sure our cows were as tame as possible, it just made life easier. It was easier if we had to treat them for something, or anything really if you could just walk right up to the cow and say hello. (People always ask me if making friends with the cow made it harder to eat later; have you ever *met* a cow, they are stupid and a pain in the ass! But I did like some of our cows.) So having friendly cows (sometimes we would come home to escaped cows on the front porch!) made slaughter time much easier. Just behind our barn we had a great big tree and in the tree we had a big chain pulley with a triangular shaped rack with two big hooks at the bottom two corners on it. It was for hoisting up a cow or deer or whatever by their back feet so you could skin it and gut it more easily. So we would call the cow up to the barn with a bucket of grain. We'd walk him over to the butchering tree and feed him grain and tell him (or sometimes her) what a good cow he is and how glad that he will be tasty and then we would shoot him in the head and then proceed with butchering. Now some people just think that this is a horrible thing to do. But I figure this, the cow had as good of a life as we could make it, lots of grass and water a big pasture to roam around in. And at the end he was surrounded by love and gratitude, sounds like a good way to go. This wasn't overtly spiritual but there was a sense of gratitude about the whole procedure and conveying some of that gratitude to the cow.

Rural Wiccans

Why are there not more rural wiccans? I don't see literature for it, I don't see it online, am I not looking in the right place? I understand perfectly well why there are lots and lots of *urban* pagan/wiccans but I can't be the only person who wants where and how they live to be reflected and reflected in their spirituality....
Now I could quibble about the term wiccan, or pagan, or witch, etc. but surely there are people who practice a nature based religion, you know with a God and Goddess with those seasonal festivals for planting and harvesting stuff? Doesn't it make *sense* to live in such a way that those festivals make sense? Now a lot of people might say, "but I live in AZ and those festivals don't make sense for me!" and I would give you that. But there are a lot of people who do live places where the seasons more or less line up. I do, so where are the other people who think the same way I do!