Tidings from an absent blogger

It's been a busy past 6 months in the world of Summer. Summer the season has been and gone, as has fall, and winter is upon us.

I will confess I haven't really felt the blogging inspiration since June. July was an insane month with visiting relatives, two trips back to Ontario, the passing of my grandmother, and everyone in a tizzy with flood recovery. My town was spared for the most part, we were just without power for a couple of days and only houses near the river were damaged. August brought some exciting news - the boyfriend and I went on a long-awaited vacation up to Jasper on which he transformed from the BF to the FH (future husband). I suppose I've transformed too, to a FW. September was full of wedding planning excitement, birthdays, camping trips, and epic hikes. October brought with it a more relaxed pace and time for reflection with the turn of the wheel. I could have blogged, but couldn't think anything to say, I suppose.

November and December - well, the FH runs the Christmas activities at his work (a major hotel) and I work part-time in retail in addition to my regular job, so needless to say it's been busy. But today, December 24th, almost exactly 6 months since my last post seemed an appropriate time to make a reappearance.

Having a wedding on the horizon really clarified the need for me to get my spirituality sorted. Big Italian Catholic family on my dad's side coming together with FH's ambiguously spiritual family, his United Church mother, with my agnostic FH and me stuck in the middle. I need to figure out where I stand spiritually so I can defend whatever sort of ceremony we end up having to anyone who questions it (in all likelihood, that'll be my very Catholic aunts and my dad).

I don't know if this paganism thing is really for me. I don't practice rituals because they don't feel right to me, but being in the Catholic church feels a bit stuffy. However I do  notice the turning of the wheel, how this fall brought time for real introspection and harvest of the seeds I'd sown throughout the year. I notice the changing phases of the moon, and I feel wonderfully at home in the woods at night. How does this all work together? That's my task to figure out.

That all being said, I'm going to Mass at the local Catholic church tonight. Christmas Eve just doesn't feel right without going. I feel grounded in the faith of my family, even if it isn't the perfect fit for me. Perhaps this will give me some new perspective on the issue.

Whatever your traditions are for the evening and the days that follow, I wish you the very best. May your days be filled with hope, happiness, and light. Because really, that's all that matters.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Friends of mine are getting married today, on the summer solstice. What a nice way to celebrate, don't you think? The turning of the Wheel, a new chapter in life...


I had plans for a lovely post and an even lovelier celebration, that's all gone.

I live in one of the parts of Southern Alberta that's been hit with a LOT of rain in the last 48 hours. My town is ok, we're just on a flood watch for the river, but the next town over.....it's bad. People have been evacuated from their homes, only to be evacuated from the evacuation centres. The Trans Canada Highway, the main artery in and out of here has been destroyed. No one will be able to get in from Calgary with any sort of ease for about a week.

Yesterday we were cut off from the rest of the world by the destruction of the highway to the east of us, and a mudslide to the west. The mudslide has been cleared, one lane of westbound traffic is getting through, so the boyfriend and I are making the push to get to Salmon Arm, BC, where the wedding is taking place. We've packed our camping gear and lots of extra food (including military rations!) just in case we get stuck along the way there or back.

Not really feeling the celebratory spirit yet, but here's hoping!

Where is this "spring" you speak of?

I do this every year. I get all excited that spring is coming and then....then I remember that I live in the Rockies. In Canada. The cold Canadian Rockies.


Winter wasn't so terrible this year (only one REALLY cold day to speak of) but that doesn't mean I wasn't looking forward to warm weather! I was in Calgary at the Comic Expo on Sunday:  17C, sunny, and we were a little worried about sunburns when we were in the outdoor lineups. And then Monday happened. And today followed suit. Blizzards out my window, -10C in the morning, car scraping, breath fogging. BAH. Oh yes, and I spent 3 days trying to figure out how to get the furnace working again.

Tomorrow is Beltaine, and folks, I am really not feeling it. I just can't figure how anyone would be frolicking nekkid in the fields or prancing around a Maypole in this weather.

If anyone's looking for me, I'll be hiding out with my laptop re-living my brief encounter with the handsomest man on television.

Moments of Clarity

I've just returned to practicing yoga after a year and a bit hiatus. My physiotherapist banned me from yoga until I got some other issues sorted out, and I've finally been allowed to go back because my shoulders and neck have been really suffering. I did yoga a lot when I first moved out West - free classes offered through the gym were a welcome antidote to my desk job until they became too painful to continue.

Today was my fourth class back and I'm still doing the free classes through work. It feels different this time around. I have to be very conscious of my form so I don't hurt myself, taking modifications, and knowing when I should hold back instead of pushing myself. I'm not sure if this imposed mindfulness is the reason, but yoga has brought me a certain awareness this time. I had a moment in class today, where I could so clearly see the barriers I've put in place in other parts of my life that are holding me back from achieving the things I want to do. Everything was so obvious and the path forward seemed so clear. Hours later, the clarity is now receding, but this flash of self-awareness has motivated me to move forward.


Last weekend we were blessed with fresh snow and beautiful weather - prime ski conditions! The boyfriend and I went out to Sunshine Village on the Saturday and had a great day skiing around the mountain...and then he decided it was time for me to learn how to ski moguls. Now, I hate moguls. HATE them. Why? Because I'm afraid of them. As a little kid, the bumps were always icy and hard, and they would bounce me around until I fell over. I still don't like rough terrain (in fact, earlier that same day I followed the BF down to a choppy run, froze and started crying and hyperventilating at the top while he was oblivious to the fact that I wasn't following right behind him). It bounces you around and it's hard to turn and you go too fast and it's SCAREY.  So we went to a mogul run. I tried a couple of turns, failed, and left for more level terrain. And then I tried it again. "Commit!" the boyfriend said. "You have to commit to the turn, you have to be aggressive." Ok, I think. Pick your line. Traverse. Pole plant. Shift your weight, and "Turn. Turn, dammnit! Commit and TURN!" And I turned! Again, I yelled, "TURN! COMMIT!" and again I turned. I committed and turned all the way down that run, dammit, and I made it. I sounded like I was crazy, but it worked.

I learned the lesson that day on the ski hill and saw it clearly today on the yoga mat. I put barriers in place, I don't commit, I don't follow through because I'm afraid of doing it wrong. Of completely losing my balance, getting bounced around and maybe even falling top over tea kettle. Of screwing things up really badly. This is why, after 5 years of reading and learning about Wicca and Paganism, I have little to show for it other than a collection of books. I'm afraid of doing it wrong. I am worried about feeling stupid, being judged, about offending these mysterious gods and goddesses, of screwing things up really badly, or worst of all - of finding out that I've been wrong all along and should have just kept with Catholicism.

Like in skiing, you have to commit to be successful in any spiritual practice. Tomorrow is Ostara, a sabbat of new beginnings. I have celebrated few sabbats as I never know what I should be doing -rituals pre-written in books never seem quite right. But you have to start somewhere. I haven't quite decided what I'll do yet, but I'll do something. Turn over a new leaf. Commit.

Success!

Emerging From the Pile of Boxes

A completely accurate depiction of my last 4 weeks

Hey there blogland, good to see you again! It has been a few weeks, hasn't it?

And what weeks they were! Moving is never my favourite task, but this time...oye vey.You never really realize how much stuff you acquire until it comes time to pack it all. Inevitably, since you didn't realize how much crap you have to purge/pack until you started, you always end up starting about 2 weeks later than you really should have and everything is done in a last minute rush. The BF took moving week off, stating that he'd get all the major packing done that week....well, you can guess how well that went. Moving day was a frenzy of last minute packing, multiple car trips across town, and a good hour of panic when we thought we'd lost the keys to the moving truck.

That all being said, things went pretty well. We found the keys, got everything in, unpacked the kitchen, bedrooms, TV, were able to run over to the next town to pick up some Kijiji furniture finds with the truck, and had it all done in time to catch the 2nd period of the hockey game - Leafs vs Canadiens. (And, if I recall correctly, I think the Leafs even won. Incredible!)

Of course, Moving Day is just the start of all the fun! The BF and I have spent the last 4 weeks unpacking, repacking, moving, and tripping over an infinite number of boxes, along with the requisite trips into the city for IKEA and HomeSense runs. And then the subsequent trips to return the stuff you bought the first time when it doesn't fit, or is missing those damn little bits of IKEA hardware.

Things are starting to settle down and we're really enjoying being homeowners.  Every day finds me quietly grinning to myself and offering up silent prayers of gratitude to whichever deity is listening. I still cannot believe that we got so lucky.

I'm Back!

*whew* that was close!

Holiday crazy time combined with my laptop refusing to connect to the internet meant I was out of the loop for a little while there. I missed out on everyone's New Year's and holiday posts, so I am now only catching up. Good news is my new computer has arrived (internet issues were the last in a very long litany of problems with the old one) and I've figured out how to use Windows 8 (mostly).  However I'll be moving house in the next two weeks, so I probably won't be around much during that time either!

Happy New Year, all, and I hope January is treating you well. See you in a few weeks!

Happy Solstice!

Happy Solstice/Yule, everyone! Well we're all still here, and so is the world, so I think that's pretty good cause for a celebration. Also, it was the last day of work before the holidays, which is a pretty good reason to celebrate, too ;)

Today dawned beautiful and bright with a fresh dusting of snow and not-very cold, just a mere -5 in my neck of the woods. A perfect reminder that the dark days of winter will not last forever. Awesome boss let us all go at noon today, so I toddled off downtown to do some shopping and grab some lunch. I walked down the forest path that leads back to town, and along the quite side streets when I had....my perfect solstice moment.

The scene in front of me

A beautiful bluebird day with the mountains shining bright and white with their new coat of snow. The sun was warm on my back, and I had to squint against the glittering snow. Quiet. Peaceful. Perfect.

 Yule is a time when we celebrate the return of the Sun and welcome it back into our lives. Today I felt as though the sun was welcoming me back into it's life - he was happy to see me out and about and enjoying his presence, instead of scuttling from building to building, from one job to another, to home, to bed. Today was a promise: the days ahead may still be dark and cold, but I am still here. I will return. It was a perfect moment.

To top it all off, the world didn't end AND there is an "Ecumenical Solstice Celebration" happening in the next town over! I'll be heading over to that after dinner to celebrate tonight. Wherever you are, however you worship, I wish you all a Very Happy Yule. May your celebrations be merry and bright.

Ackbar's Fishsticks

Thanks to the boyfriend's alarm on his phone this morning, I have now had this stuck in my head all day. Time to share the love!

Braiiiiins

I will confess to being a bit of a spiritual and intellectual zombie for the past month. I've just been shuffling along from one day to the next, one job to the next, from rehearsal to the couch to bed without really engaging with anything on a deeper level. I read the usual blog posts, of course, but nothing really flipped the switches in my noggin.

My immune system was walloped with a food-poisoning-and-cold one-two punch in the last week, which has knocked me firmly on my backside and has me taking some much needed time to regain perspective. Lo and behold, no sooner did I do so, fun new fascinating concepts fall into my lap. Yay!

A possibly-former-Catholic and definitely queer past boss/now facebook friend of mine posted a link to a video about the Catholic Church and it's secrety history on sex, abortion, and birth control, which has just got my mind a-whirring. I won't post the entire video here (it's 45 mins long) but you can watch the documentary here: http://www.catholicsforchoice.com/secrethistory.asp

This video reminded my why I enjoyed religion class so much in (my Catholic) high school, it was as much about learning the tenets of the Church as it was about philosophy, history, ethics, asking questions, and really intellectually engaging with your faith. The theologians and professors interviewed in the documentary revealed facts I never knew about the Church's history and in particular in regards to St. Augustine's writings (i.e. that he basically just projected his issues over his own promiscuous sexual history on the rest of the population) and the role of conscience vs doctrine. Their willingness to engage with these issues and ability to come out and basically say "The hierarchy of the Church is old, stubborn, and dead wrong" made my brain sit up and take notice. I wasn't/am not the only one! Not that I didn't know that, of course, just hearing it after all the nonsense in the States about institutional conscience rights and depriving people of birth control...it was nice.

This is what has attracted me to pagan leanings (aside from my hippy tree-hugging tendencies), is the pagan community's great capacity not to take themselves too seriously and to continually examine, discuss, and adapt their beliefs to the relevant social and scientific contexts. There is (generally) a recognition that the pagan beliefs and rituals of today are only a few decades old and they cannot and should not be set in stone. There is always room for exploration and examination. People are willing to use their brains.

Here's another happy for today: Fox News gets schooled for their "War on Christmas" rhetoric


So remember folks, use your brains or you'll end up a zombie!

Happy Hallowe'en

Happy Hallowe'en and Samhain, all!

Today the BF and I celebrated our first "real" Hallowe'en together: costumes, jack-o-lanterns, and handing out candy. We tried to do this last year, but it was a very last minute affair in which we ended up carving a butternut squash and tossing candy off our balcony at random passers-by. This year we bought our pumpkins in advance, carved them on Monday night, left them outside where they froze, had to use a hairdryer to thaw out the tops so I could get the lids off to light them, and went over to a friends house that gets kids trick-or-treating. It's a true Canadian Hallowe'en! (not really. I've never seen it this cold on a Hallowe'en before)

I hope you all had a wonderful night, and a very safe and blessed evening. Now I must run as the BF and I must have a very serious discussion about the Disney buyout of Lucasfilm, and the future of Star Wars. Serious business, folks!

DIY Deoderant

It's a dark and snowy day here in the mountains, which means it's a perfect time for another DIY personal care recipe!

Deodorant seems to be the first product most people think about when considering going "au naturel" with their personal care routine. Most of these thoughts end up somewhere in the vincinity of an un-shaved armpit, a need to forgo the offending drugstore stick,  and a very "naturel" odour emanating from your person. Needless to say, no one really wants to run that risk.

I have tried several store-bought deodorants with success, my two favourites being Rocky Mountain Soap Company's Liquid Crystal Deodorant, and Weleda's spray-on Sage deodorant. However, it does always make me cringe a little to pay around $10 for a bottle of deoderant (granted, the Rocky Mountain Soap one lasts me for at least a year) so I decided to try making my own.

This recipe is from Gill Deacon's fabulous book "There's Lead in you Lipstick."

Creamy Coconut Deoderant

*1/4 cup baking soda
*1/4 cup cornstarch
*10 - 20 drops lavender oil (can substitute tea tree oil for a less girly scent, but test it on your skin first to make sure you don't get a rash!)
*2 Tbsp coconut oil

Step 1: Mix together to form a stiff paste.
Note: Do this in a microwaveable bowl. Coconut oil is a solid at room temperature and doesn't mix well. I found the best way was to measure out the oil as a solid, put it in with your other ingredients, and then nuke it in the microwave for a few seconds to melt the oil. When we did this in my eco-care workshop, those who melted the oil first and then measured it out did not get the right consistency in the end - it was all crumbly.

My original attempts with a stainless steel bowl

Step 2: Pack into an old deodorant stick container and apply a thin layer to underarm.
Note: allow the coconut oil to re-solidify before you apply, wait a few hours.

Lacking an old deodorant stick, I re-used a Rocky Mountain Soap body butter container, as well as another empty face cream container I had saved.

Verdict?  AWESOME. This is actually the best natural deodorant I have ever used. It is even more effective than the other two I mentioned above. And it's cheap as chips: $2.52 for the whole batch. The most expensive part of it was the lavender essential oil - $16.49 for a 12ml bottle (for those wondering, 20 drops = 1 ml). Now, this is not the deodorant to wear with your little black dress, it does leave white marks, but this is great for everyday wear and even survived my Friday lunchtime spin-and-muscle-pump class at the gym.

Oh, and a word to the wise: wear an apron when you're doing this. That cornstarch gets EVERYWHERE.

Gratitude

I just re-read my last post and felt my anxiety level go through the roof. I didn't think I was that stressed, to be honest.

It reminded me of Mrs. B's Gratitude post from a couple of weeks back, so I thought I'd try listing the things I'm grateful for in a bid to focus on more positive things.

1. I live in a beautiful place. My life is a postcard.

2. I have a pretty awesome significant other.

3. Said significant other is agreeable to buying a house with me.

4. We can afford to consider buying a place in this beautiful, expensive, postcard town.

5. I have family nearby.

6. My big crazy extended family may be crazy, but that's what makes them all the more awesome, and I love them for it.

7. My sister is coming to visit in a few months!

8. Bellydance troupe :)

9. I am strong and healthy.

10. Dairy-free pumpkin pie. YUMM!

There are many more things to list, but these are the first that come to mind.

Bahhhhgh!

Summer's nerves are a little more on edge than usual these days.

First of, the virtual inlaws have moved across the country to settle less than 20 mins away from our place. While it's lovely to have family in the area (especially such nice, grounded people) it's a new demand on our time and social life.

Second, one of my younger cousins(who is stubborn as hell) has been diagnosed with anorexia, and the whole dang extended family is in an uproar while her parents are locking horns with her every day trying to get her into treatment, or, you know, actually eat food.

Third, one of my favorite profs from back in the day passed away last week.

Fourth, the boy and I are house shopping. Nuff said, right? Oh, but then we saw one that we loved, so we made an offer!(gahhhh!) So we're buying a house. But then it was rejected, so we're not. Oh but wait! They changed their minds! We're may be buying a house again! or do we make an offer on another one that we really like as well? BAHHHHHH!

I've been alternating between cleaning everything in sight out of nervous energy and collapsing on the couch with not even enough motivation to get dinner together. My kitchen sinks had better watch out: they are in mortal danger of being scrubbed within an inch of their lives, or bing suffocated under a pile of unwashed dishes.

Thank goodness for dance practice tonight.

DIY....toothpaste?

Hello folks! The vacation was lovely, but alas it's over and it's time to get back into the swing of things. I have a workshop that I'm running for work at the end of the month that I need to prepare for, so I thought I'd accomplish two things at once and share what I'm working on with you fine folks on teh interwebz.

The project is a lunch'n learn on eco-personal care that I'm offering to our staff through our HR department. I did an info session on the toxins in our personal care for the artists in residence earlier in the summer and it got a really good response. The environmental committee was impressed with all the research I had done and my borderline-obsessive knowledge of the effects of toxic chemicals, and asked if I would be interested in running DIY sessions if they helped pay for the supplies. Of course I was!

I've asked people to request what they'd like to learn to make in our sessions, and the first request I had was for toothpaste. Personally, I'm a store-bought eco-toothpaste kind of girl (Green Beaver Frosty Mint is currently in my bathroom), but I figured I'd give it a try. The following recipe is from Adria Vasil's book Ecoholic (pg. 20, in the Canadian edition), which I believe she got from www.pioneerthinking.com

DIY Eco-Toothpaste

6 teaspoons baking soda (whitener)
1/3 teaspoon salt (mild abrasive)
4 teaspoons vegetable glycerin (to create the gel)
15 drops of an organic essential oil - wintergreen, spearmint (minty fresh flavour) (I used peppermint instead)

Mix into a paste. Store in a small, labelled jar.

My slightly drippy homemade toothpaste

I....am not sure what I really think about this one. It is SUPER salty, and no amount of added mint essential oil is going to change that. However, baking soda does leave your teeth feeling very nice smooth. I found another recipe elsewhere that used coconut oil and xylitol in addition to the baking soda, which apparently helps off-set the saltiness. However, I forgot to look for xylitol at the health food store today, so that'll have to wait for another day.


I really don't know if toothpaste is one of those things you can successfully DIY. Sure, it's cheaper this way but I think I might rather wait for 10% off Tuesday at the health food store and stock up then. Has anyone else tried making their own before?

Gone Fishin'

...or something like that.

I'm off on vacation! Back to Ontario for me for two weeks for my BFF's wedding and some family festivities. It's starting to feel like fall (already!) in the Rockies, so the timing is ideal - Southern Ontario is still hot humid, and very much like summer. Also, I heard something about potential snow on Friday, so I'm skeedadling my little butt off to the airport as fast as possible! Time for some fun, sun, and yes, maybe even some fishing.

See you in a few weeks!

Summer

Feisty Foxes Bring Home the Hardware!

 Dragonboat festival was, in a word, awesome. Or, in three words: SO MUCH FUN!!!! (this is how I felt all weekend, complete with all five exclamation points :P)

 My upstart women’s team, the Feisty Foxes, did quite well coming in third place in the women’s division. Not too shabby for a bunch of ladies who (mostly) only set foot in a real dragon boat last week! We did have some veterans on our team, ladies such as myself who competed on corporate teams in years past, but “veteran” really means only an additional 4 hours of practice in this case.

What a great group of women, and such great community spirit. This was the first time my community had put together a community team for the festival – that is, a team that wasn’t a corporate thing. In this sort of town, it’s too easy for all of the special events to be for the tourists and leave the locals on the outside. To have a team made up of local women from all demographics – long-timers, seasonal workers, and even the mayor, certainly says something about our local community. Add in the fact that we had more committed women than we had seats on a boat, and that everyone worked together to ensure we all got a fair chance to paddle – well that certainly says something indeed.

I am so freaking proud of all these women who came together to made this team. I am even more proud of us for making this team work without any drama, whining, backstabbing, or stupidity and giving it our all in every race – even when we were doing back-to-back 500m races against mixed teams who could have easily kicked our collective asses. (btw, we actually did okay in those ones too- came  in fifth in C divison!) (Okay, fine, fifth out of six teams.) (IT WAS BACK TO BACK 500M FINALS!)

...

Whatever, we only cared about our women’s standings anyways.

Ahem. Sorry, where was I?

It’s Thursday now, so most of the sore muscles and frantic energy have worn off, but wow, what an experience. We brought home the hardware, had a great time, and can’t wait to do it all over again. All of the local teams (corporate and otherwise) are churning with ideas and by next year we should have our very own local dragon boat club. But the best part? All that training paid off, and I now have a wicked set of guns :P


Note: I wrote this post on Thursday with the intent of posting it when I got home and got some pictures. Unfortunately I'm having picture issues, so I'm posing it now and will add the pics later. Because I KNOW you all want digital tickets to the gun show :P

Hello!

Photo from North Shore Dragon Boat Festival

Just popping in quickly to let you know that I'm still here! I haven't given up on this blog yet, I promise :)

This past month has been non-stop busy with working both of my jobs (50 hours a week is FUN! :P), preparing for my best friend's wedding, creating and presenting my first Toxin-Free Body Care session for the the local community, and training for race weekend.

Yes, race weekend! I am part of the inaugural crew of our valley's first all-women's dragonboat team. We've been training since May on dry land and in large voyageur canoes all prepping for this weekend's Dragon Boat Festival! We're a casual social team with a competitive streak, and we're going up against some very experienced crews from out of province and out of country in our division. Needless to say, we've got a long way to go to have half a chance of keeping up with our competition, so we've been training hard. And it doesn't hurt that the very attractive professional coach and event orgainzer has come down from Edmonton to train us either :)

I'll be back after this weekend with some posts, 'til then, Paddles Up!

Not my team :P Photo from ottawacitizen.com

Happy Belated Canada Day!

Summer has been a busy little blogger this week, doing everything under the sun EXCEPT blogging, lol!

Summer (the season) has finally made an appearance in my neck of the woods, and it's here with a vengance! Bright blue skies 3 days in a row, hight 20-ies every day....after all the rain and cold(and snow!) in June, I'm feeling very spoiled. So, when I haven't been working at one of my 3 jobs, participating in flash mobs, training with my dragonboat team, or madly trying to get errands done in my spare time, I've been just crashing outside on the deck with a beer in hand. Ahhhhh....sunshine and beer. Good combination :)

So yes, it's been busy. I started a new position with my company this week which has been interesting and challenging, however I'm still doing some shifts in my old position to help cover until they can find a replacement. In addition to that I'm still working my part-time retail job, so I get the fabulous luck of two weeks straight without any days off! Yay! *Sigh* I know, I know,  I brought it on myself. Just...can I get to complain a little? just a little? Okay. A tiny bit. I'm done now.

I am happy being busy, it's no fun to sit at home and be bored. I just think I've overextended myself a bit of late. I actually ended up sleeping in until 10:30 yesterday. Ten thirty! Unheard of! Usually I'm up by 8am and raring to go. It's just that this summer weather is such a rarity, I can't help but wish I was outside hiking or canoing or something, rather than inside working. Granted, this does mean I get to wear pretty sundresses to work, so it's not such a bad trade-off.

I have a couple of things I want to blog about, most notably the bellydance flash mob that I was in this week, and a thing call "The Modesty Project." I originally read about it on Mrs. B's blog last week, and it's been niggling at my mind ever since. I hope to get those niggly thoughts out on blog-paper soon. For now though, I'm writing this during a quite moment at work, and should probably get back to it. Until next time!

Culturally Catholic

I found this intriguing blog post today while wandering over to Charmed I'm Sure.  Deborah Castellano is an excellent writer -  I found her moral compass article on Witchvox, which of course lead me to her blog, which leads me here. (As an aside, I've been trying to follow her blog for a while now but was being technologically challenged and just couldn't figure out how to do that from my phone. Blogger = not so phone friendly. Glad I finally managed to wander over on a real computer!).

Anyways, Debora wrote this great little piece on doing the Catholicism to Pagan thing, and trying to find peace and balance with your Catholic roots. She brought up this concept of being culturally Catholic, much like people are culturally Jewish though they may not actively practice the religion. It's an interesting concept, and one I had never considered before. I had a roommate in university who had a Jewish background one side of her family, but never practiced as far as I knew. I couldn't understand how she could classify herself as Jewish but not practice that religion, though I knew people did it all the time. A few years down the road, I can now see what she was saying. As Andrew B Watt, one of the commenters on the blog post said, "[It's] like belonging to a particular tribe. Which we do. It’s not necessarily the set of religious obligations we hold to throughout our lives, but it’s the set of rituals and ceremonies we were initiated in, and it’s hard to let go of that."
I had never considered the possibility of this applying to my own heritage - that I could be culturally Catholic and religiously ambiguous.

Unlike Deborah, I don't have nieces and nephews to godparent yet, but I can see this concept as helping me reconcile my faith choices with my Italian Catholic family. It's a way of saying "I respect and honour the values of our family's religion. I do not reject this common bond that is so important in your life. I respect your commitment and your efforts to bring me up to be a upstanding member of our (non-religious) community and society. I accept the values you have instilled in me and will bring them with me as I progress through life, and pass them on to future generations."

Catholicism was such an integral part of my life for the first 18-odd years, it has made me the person I am today. I had a pretty good relationship with the Church, we just differed on certain topics (e.g. birth control) and the priests I was exposed to just seemed out of touch with the world I lived in. My real turning point was when, in confession one day, I told the priest that I didn't agree with the Church on some things, like homosexuality, and he took it as "I'm a lesbian" and started talking vaguely about how we should resist the urges and pray for guidance...he totally missed the mark and wasn't listening to what I had to say. At which point, I stopped making regular efforts to go to church. One misunderstanding priest was obviously not the whole reason, but the trigger. But I'm getting off-topic. Such an important part of one's life cannot be dismissed away by conversion from one religion to another, or even by rejecting religion altogether.

Has anyone else heard of the idea of being culturally Catholic/Christian? How have you been able to integrate that into your identity? I'm intrigued by this idea, and would love to hear input from others.

Whooo boy! It's been a while, eh?

Things have been super busy around my neck of the woods. I think I had about 2 days off of work total for the entire month of May. I have a full-time job as well as a part-time one, and the hours really ramped up last month. I kept meaning to blog every time I saw a good post that I wanted to respond to...it was just a matter of finding the time. Clearly, I didn't. Not to worry though, June is looking a lot less hetic!

Lots of stuff going on around Casa de Summer. I (finally!) started my planter box garden experiments, something I've been meaning to do since the beginning of last summer. For the vast majority of the year, my apartment balcony gets zero sunlight (north facing windows for the win!), but with the sun riding high in the sky and the long days around Midsummer, we do actually get some sunlight from 3pm-7pm. I've been desperate to grow some plants, but didn't know how they'd survive with the lack of sun. They don't get much, but the herbs I've planted aren't dead yet! Actually, the chives are looking quite happy. I wish I could say the same for my shade-loving coleus... out of six, 2 shriveled with in the first week.They were supposed to be the sure bet! Freakin' coleus. I would show you pictures but it's snowing today (SNOWING) and it's just sad.

What else has been going on...I bought a bike (yay green transportation!), joined the local women's dragonboat team, wore shorts, it snowed, wore my winter jacket, cut off most of my hair on a whim (it's so short now!), learned how to install insulation, and got a new full-time job. Oh yes, and the town has been under flood advisories for the past few days. The river has overrun many of its banks and has turned low-lying fields into new ponds. I think I should have bought a canoe instead of a bike...I'd get more use out of it.

Midsummer is just a few weeks away, and I cannot WAIT. As a kid, I loved the long days of summer, but the days are a lot longer here in Alberta than Southern Ontario. It's bright at 4am, and doesn't get properly dark until 10:30 or 11pm. It's really messing with my sleep schedule, so I'm looking forward to the days getting a little shorter. Not a lot shorter, just a little. (Did I mention that in December the sun is barely up by the time I get to work at 8:30am and has already set by 5pm?) It's a matter of extremes out here.

I'm not sure what I'll do to celebrate this year. I really like the sound of a bonfire, but as the fire pits at the rec grounds are currently underwater, that might be a bit soggy still. Smaller risk of forest fire, I guess! I'm the only pagan-y person I know out here, so I might just do a non-pagan celebration with friends that night. Who doesn't love a party? What are your plans?

I plan to get at least 1 more post done in June (ha!), so I shall see you around soon!