Sick Days

The last couple of days I have had my hands full with a miserably sick child. It has left me with little desire or drive to write but here I am, doing my level best. Rose is sitting orange tea with honey to sooth her little throat and has aloe wipes to ease the rawness of a runny nose.When you are three, a big snotty nose has somewhat of the equivalent of a world ending event. You are, however, mollified by the fact that by being sick, you are given the best blanket in the house. You are make cherry and rose hip tea, sweetened with liberal honey. You are given a host of storybook shows, which you love so very much and attend to with loyal diligence. You are comforted that because he knows you are no feeling your best, the cat comes to snuggle you. He stays with you for four hours straight, until it is time for your nap. My daughter knows that a house of six people fusses very much and lovingly upon a sick child. She might have a cough and a runny nose but she is as content as she can be.

Such where the days of my youth, my own mother sitting by my bedside while I was fighting off a sickness. When I had pneumonia at the age of six, I was so weak at one point my mother had to carry me like a newborn lamb, folded in a blanket. She boiled down a chicken to stock and hand pulled the meat, cutting up extra carrots to go in my favorite soup because they were my favorite vegetable. She safely ensconced me upon the couch in the living room where she could monitor me from the kitchen, putting on The Wizard of Oz or Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego? My favorite nightlight was a LiteBrite, of which she would help me design a rainbow. I would drift to sleep blanketed in a handmade quilt and a bath of rainbow light. I was as content as I could be.

While Rose plays, I go back to doing something that has become a ritual in our search for a homestead. I go to LandandFarm.com and take up the Search again. Looking for land, for a house and land, or for a farm where a home could be built. I search Granger County, TN, North Carolina, Colorado and other places in hopes I can find the perfect place. I just noticed one of the properties on my saved list is still on the market. I have contacted the Realtor to get more information on the house's status and whether I could come see it anytime soon.

So while it is a sick day here in the Clanhold, is also a day of discovery. Zoe Mulford's voice rings out while I type in the dinning room, thinking of love and reminding Briar Rose to go drink her tea. A cozy day of recovery spent near the heater and with our hands wrapped around warm mugs. Soon I will be fleshing our the rabbit furs and making a report on the pyment Colin and I bottled a week ago. It came out very good.

We will come out good.

Bread in my hands; Food for my soul

Love for you, as the world falls down

David Bowie: January 8th 1947 - January 10th 2016

The Clan, my friends both LARPer and SCAdian, and I mourn the death of glam rock star and pop icon, David Bowie. At sixty nine years old and only two days after the debut of his new album, Blackstar, David Bowie fell to the ravages of the cancer he had been battling for so very long. The Labyrinth itself seems to cry out for the loss of it's beautiful Goblin King. As if it touches me, I feel magic itself shudder. So many believed in him and so many still do. I take this day to raise a glass of my own pyment, bottled yesterday afternoon, to drink in honor of this courageous man who was both a riot of joy, boundless creation and a warrior of his time. 

Until the next turn of the wheel, Jareth.

Come away, a human child
To the waters and the wild

With a faerie hand in hand
For the world's more full of weeping
Than ye can understand...

Lovely Morning Luck

Thanks to a good friend in the Barony, I now have a in-home estimate scheduled for Tuesday up in Fountain City, TN. I am pleased as punch for the opportunity and blessing that is work. Another lady in Thor's Mountain tells me she might need my help next week in Knoxville. I contacted the vending coordinator for Many Path's Beltaine 2016 and fully plan to register as a food vendor, taking Indigo Pastry ice cream and other treats to the festivals.

Seamus is going to run by Kinkos and print me out the YMCA application. If I can get that part time job, it will fit beautifully around my other work. I took action. got pen, pad plus my phone, and set to work this morning to gather work.

It was successful!

You cannot wait for things to just fall into your lap or hope that someone will give you a handout. Destiny, at least for me, is something you grab with two hands and your jaws if you have to. Work means sweat, means relying on yourself to get to were you need to go. My Clan provides emotional and financial support in lean times but if I wasn't self motivated, the moral of this Clanhold would be wrecked. Everyone puts their shoulders in the yoke of work here.

We work and celebrate together. My Clan smiles and nods approvingly as I tell them of the work I have potentially amassed. I'm looking forward to it all, especially bringing home the bacon.

The First Day

The sun rose pale behind a veil of chilly, pewter cloud in a quicksilver sky. There was a bite in the air when I let Pai out to relieve herself and I shook out another cup full of cat food for Durellen. My phone tells me its 39F but feels like 36 with an 8mph wind due north of us. The first chill I have felt since mid November 2015 when we had that temporary cold spell.

Winter has never been my favorite season, disliking the cold and the physical discomfort it brings to my left leg, but I am glad to deep the temperature and the humidity drop. I was up early for multiple reasons. My daughter is an early riser, the pets have needs and, on this particular morning, I had a supper to put on the table. We of the Clan celebrated New Year's Day more like Yule, sitting around our decorate tree and exchanging gifts.

Now, I don't like to talk much about what I buy for myself; it seems too much like bragging and that don't sit well with me. Gifts, however, are a different matter.

Colin gifted me with a fine set of crochet hooks and 100% Peruvian Highland wool yarn. My niece painted me a unicorn constellation on canvas and Rhiannon gave me a lovely analog watch. Seamus gifted me an adult coloring book. I am thankful for the gifts and on my knees grateful for my loving family. We are not your typical family but the Clan is love, through fog and fen, flesh and bone.

I roasted a turkey for our special day, rubbed down with salt, pepper and cumin. I made oatmeal health rolls from scratch, stuffing, and turkey gravy rounded out with five ounces of white moscato. I also add my guilty pleasure. Gods forgive me, I know how to make cranberry jelly from fruit but I just plain like the stuff in the can. It just reminds me of being home with my sister and my parents, which always makes me smile.

We eat, laugh and joke. The table is covered with plates of food, cups of wine, bourbon, beer, and sweet tea. We eat until our stomachs bulge and our grins have gone crooked with the wine. Everyone is home and everyone is happy, warm, safe and enjoying our time together. Not always an easy feat in a big family, with the ages running from 3 to 4. Everyone in my Clan is well read or well read to in Briar Rose's case. We take learning for learning's sake very serious and everyone here is proactive in their own self education. It makes for five people with very good vocabulary, keen minds and sharp tongues. For now, the family is at peace which makes it easy to put aside little annoyance and be content.

I hope this first day of the new year has treated you, dear reader, with grace and the warm love of family and friends. Keep your people close to you because, my darlings, it all goes by too fast. Love now, so you do not know regret in the twilight of your life.