May Eve Grumblings

Yesterday, it was bright, warmish, and sunny (for a bit). I even broke out the shorts for the first time all season. Today, there were snowflakes falling as I went into work. Someone explain to me how this is spring again?

This May Eve doesn't feel very May-ey. It's been chilly and drizzly and all together gross. If this keeps up, local Beltane revellers are really going to have to re-think the "getting in on in a field" thing.

Spring fertility my butt...*grumble grumble*

I wouldn't mind curling up next to this, today!

 Hope your Beltane celebrations are significantly more spring-like!

Image Credit

The Pig of Happiness

I saw this video on a friend's facebook feed, and had to share :)

Creator's warning: Watching [this video] is likely to make you a happier person. Sharing it with your friends is likely to make them happier too.

Caught in the middle

There they go. My parents have left for Good Friday service and for the first time in my life I'm not going with them. I feel...happy, no, relieved that there was no fight with my dad about not going to church, but sad that I kind of wanted to go as a sign of respect for my parents and there was the assumption that I wasn't coming. I might have wanted to, you know.

My parents have been in town for a week, they arrived last Friday night (one of many reasons for my recent absence from the blogosphere). Last weekend was Palm Sunday and, being completely worn out from a long work week, little sleep, and hard skiing the day before I had no interest in going. Dad was upset that morning, though I couldn't figure out if that was because I wasn't dressed and ready to go with them or because they were late getting out of the house. They were walking to church, and I think ended up getting lost along the way, after all the directions and consternation. When they returned (I, having spent the hour cleaning with great vigor and having imaginary religious arguments with my father in my head) Dad offered me a palm and I decided it was best to accept it with grace and put it on display.

I've never had a proper talk with my parents about what I believe, or why I've stopped attending Mass. Dad brought it up at the dinner table several years back when I was still staying with them on occasion, and they knew that I was reading a lot of books on witchcraft. It didn't go well. Dad was not pleased with what he saw as my rejection of our family's religion, was unwilling to consider other perspectives, and despite trying to be civil about it, ended up uttering the famous phrase "But the Bible says it (what ever I might be studying) is evil and you'll go to hell!". Needless to say I felt cornered, could not articulate my thoughts, started crying, and Mom (the perpetual mediator) stepped in with the "I don't hear a willingness to listen others' points here, I hear a lot of judging", which made Dad more upset, I left the table and we've never spoken of it since. I've been thinking it's a chat we need to have, but I've never found the right time. Also, I'm still trying to work out what exactly I do believe (e.g. one lifetime or many? Eternal punishment/reward, or we all end up in the Summerlands?)

Which brings me here to this Good Friday. When I'm at home I go to church with my family as a sign of respect for them and the faith that bonded our family together. It was a hugely integral part of my upbringing. Here, out west, an independent adult, I do not go to church. So now here, out west, but with my parents staying with me - what to do? I want to honour and respect my parents, I can relate to the Easter story with Jesus nailed to a cross, dying, and resurrecting much in the same way I can relate to the Pagan stories of people/gods passing into the underworld to re-emerge. I see them all as stories humans created to help them relate to the Great Unknowable. However, would I also not be perpetuating a falsehood - that I consider myself a Catholic? Or worse, that I've become a "C&E Catholic", the likes of whom we looked down upon in church? You could always pick them out, those that did not remember when to sit/stand/kneel or did not know the words to say along with the priest because they only came twice a year. Lazy Catholics - only bothered to show up for Christmas and Easter.

No, I do not want to be seen as one of those. However, neither can I come forth an proclaim myself Pagan of one path or another because I just haven't figured it out yet. I haven't met any particular gods or goddesses (at least not by name), and I feel foolish performing rituals by myself at home. I don't wear a pentacle, but I do talk to trees and birds, and while I don't cast spells, I do know that when I cry out in pain and despair, that comfort will come on the wind. What I am I? I'm an in-betweener, existing the the liminal spiritual places between declared religions.

And thus, as an in-betweener I shall eat no meat today on Good Friday, I shall decorate my home with tulips and daffodils to celebrate the coming of spring, and sit here and keep an eye on the hot-cross bun dough that is rising in the oven while two of the people I love the most mark the decent of their god into the underworld.

...and probably eat some chocolate. Happy Easter, all - however you celebrate!

Somewhere between Paganism and Christianity is this photo.

Happy Ostara!

I will confess, I'm not doing anything to celebrate Ostara today, besides marveling that there is still light in the sky when I get home at 8:30. Yes, it's been one of those days where your day finishes at 8:30...

I'll do a quick candle ritual to celebrate tomorrow, and have a nice post for you with nice pictures :)

I hope your Ostara a happy and blessed one!

For me, being religious (or spiritual) has always been a given. When I was younger I couldn't imagine anyone NOT being religious, to me it was just such an obvious thing. Of course there is something greater than us all out there. Of course we should aspire to be better people because that's what's right and God told us so. Do unto others, love your neighbour as yourself. Be a good member of the collective - communities religious and otherwise. As I grew older and met more people who grew up outside of the "Catholic Bubble," I would find that the above was rarely true. You were given funny looks for saying you believed in God, and told only stupid people believed in religion because it was irrational and there was no scientific proof. At first I thought it was just directed towards Catholics (Catholics=conservative=no fun, goody two shoes-es, and are therefore stupid) but now as a (sort-of) follower of a fringe spirituality I see the disdain is equally distributed.

Most of the people I've heard speak about religion think that those who believe is something that cannot be seen or definitively quantified are stupid, irrational, or morons. And these are people who range from my significant other to TV personalities such as Bill Maher. I am always trying to find ways to understand and describe how I, as a fairly logical person, need to believe and participate in something they see as totally irrational. I have several amorphous ideas centering around the human mind's inability to grasp concepts or interact with something that exists beyond our realm of understanding, however nothing concrete.

Thus, I was very pleased to have come across this TED Talk on Facebook today that explains a social scientist's perspective as to why humans have evolved to seek out self-transcendental experiences, such as those associated with religion. It is about 18 minutes long, but it's a good talk and I encourage you all to check it out.

You call this spring?

Can we just talk about the fact that spring is SO not coming here yet? Ellen Dugan blogged this week about how her perennials are sprouting in her garden and buds are swelling on the trees....not so here! It's been about -15 every morning this week, and it was so cold when I was skiing on Sunday that I actually got a bit of frostbite on my cheeks. Spring is coming my ass! It's still February (by a margin of a couple of hours), and Mother Nature hasn't forgotten.

I suppose I'll quit my complaining - at least I finally got out on the slopes!

Things have been really busy lately with work and some very weird stuff happening in my personal life, so I'm mostly just popping in to say "hi." Hope you all are keeping warm and enjoying the longer daylight hours - it's now light when I go to work AND when I get home! Miracles will never cease :P

In Which I Make Laundry Jello

I consider myself a fairly green cleaner. Not like some weird version of Molly Maid that only dresses in shades of emerald (that'd be weird), but I do my bit. The floors are washed with vinegar and hot water (thanks Mom!), and the BF even scrubs the bathtub with baking soda on a regular basis. I'm phasing known toxins out of my personal care routine, too for an added bonus. But, it wasn't enough. I needed a bigger challenge. Something to really let me earn my patchouli-scented hippie stripes. And, since I haven't heard the BF comment on how cleaning the house with vinegar makes him crave chips in a while (salt and vinegar, om-nom-nom!), I figured the time was ripe to green my laundry...or at least my laundry detergent.

I've seen a couple recipes floating around, many of which involve ingredients I've never heard of or have know idea where to find (or both). NotHannah, over on her wonderful blog I'm Not Hannah wrote a great post about her forays into home-made laundry detergent, but it involves Fels Naptha soap which I a) had never heard of previously and b) consequently found out may be a bit toxic in it's own right, and most importantly c) couldn't be bothered to go looking for it. Anything slightly odd-sounding is generally difficult to find out here unless you want to drive 2 hours into the city.

Anyways, I found a series of recipes on the David Suzuki Queen of Green blog and I was all like "Sweet! I know what these are won't have to drive to Calgary to get them!" There's a whole PDF of various cleaning methods (which you can find here) which say they have all been tested by the Queen of Green herself. Lovely. So we know this will turn out. (Ha!)

I decided to follow the instructions for the first one, the liquid laundry detergent. For those of you who didn't open the PDF, it goes as follows:
7L of water
1c of soap granules
1/2 c washing soda
1/2 c borax
20 drops essential oil (optional)

It seems a little weird to add that much water when it's all going to go into a washing machine full of water, but whatever. I dutifully measure out my one liter of water into a saucepan and heat it up, while dissolving my soap granules and making sure the whole darn thing doesn't bubble all over the stove. I fill up my mop bucket with the remaining 6L of water, measuring exactly, and mixing in the remaining elements. I pour the hot soapy water in the bucket, give it a stir and feel very pleased with myself and my laundry-detergent-making abilities. Lookit me! I'm so awesome and independent! I don't need mass-produced toxic laundry detergent, I'll make it myself! 7 liters at a time!

7 liters at a time? uh-oh. My brain slowly starts churning and putting 2 and 2 together. Somehow in this VERY simple process, I failed to realize that 7 liters of water on the ingredients list would make this batch at least as large. My plan was to re-purpose my old laundry detergent bottle (Reduce! Reuse! Go me!) which is only 2.4 L. Balls. Well, at least I can pour some of it in there for now until I can find containers for the rest. A pickle jar and yogurt container are rescued from the recycling bin and I begin to pour... well, "pour" is not the exact word. See that bit on the instructions where it says "Soap will gel as it cools?" Apparently it cools rather quickly.  And "liquid" laundry detergent is a bit of a misnomer - my super awesome green cleaning power detergent has now reached the consistency of very thick hair conditioner. I can coax it into the wide-mouthed pickle jar and yogurt containers, but there ain't no way it's fitting in that teensy-tiny opening on the detergent bottle. Double Balls.

So here I am with a bottle of Straub's Kosher Dills and Strawberry Activia detergent, and a whole other 6 liters of lavender-scented goop sitting in my mop bucket. This bucket which I now need to wash the floors after my kitchen chemistry experiment (soap flakes go EVERYWHERE). I called up a friend that I was going to meet for dinner, and all she could offer me was an empty wine bottle. I would have been better off with a full one, I think. Preferable a nice white from New Zealand. But then, in a stroke of genius, I thought of the person who introduced me to white wine from New Zealand! The BF! an honourary Kiwi himself! Who conveniently works at a hotel with many MANY restaurants that would totally have large leftover food buckets from the kitchens!

By the time he brought a bucket home from work many hours later, my laundry detergent had become laundry jello. Very, very thick laundry jello. We precariously shook it out of one bucket and into the other and somehow managed to get the near-solid all in without making a gigantic mess. I tried it out the next day, and it seems to work just dandy, although you really do have to put it in the washer first and let the water run for a bit to dissolve it before putting the laundry in.

Here's the kicker though. After going through this entire process, I happened to take a look at the powdered laundry soap recipe on the other side of the page as it was stuck to my fridge. It's the exact same, minus those stupid 7 liters of water.