Here Comes The Bride.

Evn, yesterday, reminded me that a wedding isn't about the two people involved so much as everyone else who's attending. Trothwy said, "It's YOUR day."

I am the Bride, and tend to lean towards Trothwy's view.

I am the Bride. Despite being recently divorced and handfasted to my Bridegroom for two years, I feel very...new. Shiny. Like this is a whole new ballgame, even though I can't imagine much changing between myself and the Husband/Bridegroom.

But there's something different. Maybe it's, as I said to him over something silly a few nights ago, that he taught me to dream again. I can dream, now, about a little barn and five or so safe schooling horses, and maybe giving lessons on the weekends at a place where I call the shots. I can dream about living somewhere else which is NOT godsdamn Costa Rica* (don't ask). I have someone, now, who genuinely appreciates every little thing I do. Someone who dug me a garden (which is being decimated my moles from below and deer from above, but I digress).

I survived a financially ruinous divorce in which I lost Land and stability and pets, and came out, as Deb said I would, feeling bulletproof. And with this official, legal marriage, I feel even newer. I mean, come on - I'm 42 and have been married, if not legally, to the man I'm marrying on Saturday for two years already. Why did buying plastic cups in pretty spring-party colors at Sam's make me feel so fluttery? Why am I starting to think that I need some sort of veil for him to lift on Saturday? Why am I thinking that a ban on sex until Saturday might be both incredibly hot and remarkably symbolic?

The things he asks of me are so few, and so simple, and really come down to two things - that I love him, and that I be myself. Really myself, not some domesticated version that's easier to handle and explain to the neighbors and doesn't inconvenience anyone.

Well, that and tuna casserole. He loves it when I make my mother's tuna casserole. And cookies. And that tater tot-poblano-roasted corn-cheese gunk. He adores that shit.

Back to me.

Maybe this whole Bride thing is because I've never done a wedding by myself before, and while his family certainly has helped, we've done a lot of the logistics. I'm wearing a dress I haven't fit into in eight years. It has cherries on it.

How symbolic, right?

All the kidding and flippancy aside, this is momentous. I will walk through the yard on Saturday to the altar where Trothwy and Evn and my little horned Bridegroom wait (if only he could wear a set of small antlers). And when everyone finally goes home, we will be alone for the first time as legal spouses, Bride and Bridegroom, as much archtypes as people. I have no idea what happens after that, but I suspect it will be wonderful and interesting and something I never even saw coming.

*I have nothing against Costa Rica. I just also have no more desire to live there than I do, say, London or Finland.

The First Beltaine.

For twenty years, Beltaine was my handfasting/wedding anniversary. This time last year, The Ex had this big trip to New Orleans planned for us (a trip we never took). Less than three months later, he decided he didn't want to be married to me at all.

My relationship with the holiday may be a bit contentious this year.

My relationship with the holidays has been a bit contentious ever since The Disaster, really. Samhain was the most anti-climactic and dull one I've ever had, with every plan for celebration/witchery falling through. Given that we share this house (and it's many, many windows) with other people who are unlikely to simply shrug at me and The Husband frolicking in the nude twixt the peppers and the cucumbers, an outdoor celebration is inadvisable for Beltaine. Also, ants. Stupid ants.

What with me having to work late on Beltaine night, and going to work early the next morning, I'm flummoxed as to what to do. Romantic dinner? Nah. Gathering dew? I don't know - is it dew at 4:45am? A surreptitious sacred shag in the neighbor's pasture? Again, ants. And possible uncomfortable conversations with the local constabulary. The last time I looked for rowan, I couldn't find any, so saining the house is also right out - especially considering that one of our housemates is probably the type of Christian to be offended, though you never can tell what can be passed off as "family customs".

At least the Cabinet for Them is done, and they'll be put in it tonight. It's an ex-spice rack, which makes me think They like "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" as much as I do.* I've painted it black for now, and will decorate it more as I get instructions on what They'd like. I suspect plant designs may be requested, or maybe even live plants, if I can figure out how and what won't hurt the pets if they eat them. I'll ask to be told, and I'm sure I'll get some kind of answer.


*Willow is getting deeper into witchcraft, and joins a "Wicca group" in college. When asked how it was, she says that it was all talk, no witchcraft, and that "every girl with a henna tattoo and a spice rack thinks she's a sister to the Dark Ones."

The Good, The Bad, And The Other Stuff.

It's been a busy week.

First, I am now divorced. Despite a minor glitch in the paperwork (which almost led to me shrieking "WHAT DID YOU DO YOU ASSHOLE" at The Ex), I am happily legally undone from The Ex. He and That Woman/Ex-Housemate were behind me and The Husband, making smootchy-face before the judge came in. Seriously? You feel the need to put on such a show when he and I are GETTING DIVORCED? Jeebus Christmas, how insecure can you get?

Second, a little chat with Something Hostile in the yard seems to have led to a truce. It didn't try to scare me this morning when I was out walking the dog, and I'm good with that.

Third, one of my favorite riding students just quit. He's five, and his dad had mentioned last weekend that he was thinking about doing other things, but I'm hoping that Barn Owner doesn't decide that it's because I suck as an instructor. HINT TO PARENTS: if your kid is ADD/ADHD/has the attention span of most five-year-olds/is emotionally overwrought due to a pending divorce, please tell their instructor's boss that they're not quitting because of their instructor. Thank you.

So I'm out in the yard with the dog, blogging and surfing. I didn't go get my Freedom Certificate (divorce decree), because it was entirely too beautiful outside and I haven't really gotten to do a damn thing I wanted to all week (except for meeting with Trothwy and Evn, which is always a super dose of "me" time). I may call some friends. I may not.

I will sit and stare at my bean plants. They are awesome, as is the rest of our garden.

Wherein The Husband Takes Up A Hobby, And Other Stuff.

The Husband is making me an athame. Like, right now, as we speak. With me helping to hold the steel while he turns it into a blade. I blessed his new forge in Brigid's name last night. When a woman who belongs to Brigid winds up with someone who wants to be a smith...well, what's more magical than that?

I have made pita bread, baba ghanouj, and felafel mix. The felafel remains uncooked. We are too busy outside, forging this thing together.

Wherein The Ocelot Ponders The Garden And The West.

The Husband and I dug up the Garden tonight. Dirt under my nails and turned earth up my nose and the desire to roll in it naked. The urge to spill seed onto the ground, to spit into the dirt, to let fluids fall onto the soil. To transfer the fertility I've been avoiding all my life to a little patch of something that might feed us.

Except this is Texas, and I got bit all to hell yesterday in the barnyard while fully dressed, so I know better than to try to have a Blessing of the Crops end in a mad dash for Benadryl. Such things can only end in ant bites and unpleasantness.

I saw a picture of Billings, Montana, today, and it made me miss the Rockies so much I almost wept. The sky was a million miles wide, out there, and it's almost enough to make me forget that even though I loved the foothills and the plains by the airport and the mountains, I hated Denver proper. And that I don't miss snow.

But I do miss all that space. The wild places where you don't hear traffic. That feeling that you could ride across the plains forever and never see another soul. The Gods were there, though strangely removed and very present all at the same time - it isn't the Northeast, or even Texas, and They sound a little different, there.

I never rode in gloves. I always had grut from the tack under my nails and my blood is literally in the dirt somewhere in Westminister, Colorado. My trainer, wiping it out of my eyes after that breaking that went so terribly wrong so suddenly, the closest I'd ever heard to panic in her voice, asking where all the blood was coming from until she found the cut at the bridge of my nose, and the young horse looking abashed not ten feet away, his head hanging and standing quiet as the grave.

Maybe I just need to go camping. Or to finally sling the saddle back on my horse and remember the days when I knew less fear, or at least how to deal with it better. I've already decided to go to my divorce hearing alone, just to show that I don't need the entourage I'm sure The Ex will bring. To quote "Pretty In Pink", that amazingly 80's film, I want to show that I haven't been broken. That I can still pitch my heels to the sky and unseat anyone. That, as Deb said in an email, I'm bulletproof now.

I dig the dirt. I ride the horses. I go on no matter what life throws at me and I pray to know The Gods better when I take my dog out every night, head thrown back and eyes on the stars. And I dream of Colorado and the wide-open spaces thirteen years gone.

Wherein The Ocelot Is Sick And Ponders Various Things.

After four days of denial, I am ready to admit it - I'm sick. I feel like crap and so did the Intelligent Thing and canceled my lesson and went back to bed. The Husband is bringing me various foods and liquids and some homeopathic remedy that tastes like sweetened ass. I am grumpy about my plans for gardening getting nuked by my stupid sinuses.

When presented with the amazing resource of a whole bunch of Elder Knowledge And Experience right there in front of me, why on earth can I never think of anything good to ask?

I must remember never to take Beltway 8 again. It is my own personal Hotel California. "Look, kids - Big Ben!"

I still want to know what Club Tranz was, especially given the Really Short Dude with the two Really Tall Possible Ladies Of The Evening not far from it, relatively speaking. Mr. Goldstar, we are SO going in for a drink next time.

Update.

I have my dog and one of my cats with me now. The divorce papers are filed. I live in a house that, while shared, has a huge yard. There are bluebirds, mockingbirds, and cardinals everywhere. There will be a garden. There are goats in the field across the street.

My work clothes are unpacked, my saddle is here, and They are by my bedside. They are a bit more out-in-the open than They were, and They are a bit dissatisfied about that, but They are being patient about me making Them a better shrine.

They also like the tree in the front yard with the gigantic knothole in it. I have been told to leave offerings there. I have also been told that sneaking this past Crazy Jeebus Landlady is my problem, not Theirs, and that I am a very sneaky witch who ought to be able to handle this.

My dog and cat are sleeping next to me. My Husband is playing a computer game. There are bluebirds in the yard of this windswept, Grey Gardens house, and I am happy.