What A Witch Really Wants.

While talking to my brilliant & kindly HPS today about the Summary Shitcanning from The Barn and whether I want to teach there at all assuming the one student they told me I could still have comes back from a sabbatical, she said, wisely, that as far as long-term goals, it sounded as though I still need to decide what I want.

I know what I don't want. I don't want any more crazy - not dumb & crazy, not brilliant but crazy, none of it. I don't want random dressings-down, insane horses I'm afraid to put my students on, or bizarre business plans.

In short, unless someone is ridiculously stable (LOL SEE WHAT I DID THERE), I don't want to work for anyone else again. I don't want to have a big barn with a lot of show-oriented riders and eventually have to hire someone else to do what I can't  (I never showed high level, and it's been twenty years since I jumped anything taller than two-six).

I don't want to have so many lessons that it starts to feel like an assembly line, or so that rescheduling is almost impossible, or so that my hypothetical horses never get a day off.

I don't want to have to depend on teaching for a living - it's too feast-or-famine for my Scottish financial comfort.

I want a small barn - five schooling horses and no more than ten boarders, some of whom may or may not take lessons. I want to cater to adults who don't care if they ever show. I want a few kids who basically become equine slave labor through their teens. I want boarders who are there to ride, not to try to throw the latest training sensation at everyone else or allow their ill-behaved spawn to run wild through the barnyard. Hell, I don't even care if they ride all that much, so long as someone cares for and interacts with their horse.

Of course, the next question is how the hell I make this happen. Time to consult the oracles.

Because The Salt Across Her Office Doorway Isn't Working.

One of my co-workers is the type of person whose basic personality conflicts with mine in the way that makes me want to whack her with my old Stanford-Binet scores while shouting, "STOP TALKING TO ME LIKE I AM STUPID". She also seems to have some weird desire to make herself look good by making me look less good. My immediate boss is aware of this and always comes to my defense when she hears Annoying Co-Worker doing this.

Today's conversation convinces me that administering Bewitched Baked Goods is going to be necessary:

AC-W: There's a lady on the phone etc so forth blah blah.
ME: (In my head: so why didn't you transfer her to me in the first place?) OK, well, if you told her how to XY the Z, I'm not sure what else I can tell her.
AC-W: Blah blah blah unwillingness to deal
ME: OK. What line is she on?
AC-W: Line 2.
ME: (nota bene: when you put someone on hold, the light for that line blinks) Huh. The line isn't blinking, though. (genuine confusion on my part)
AC-W: (smugly) Yes it is.
ME: No, no it isn't. I can see all 3 lines, none of which are blinking.
AC-W: (still with the smug) Well, it's blinking on mine.
ME: Well, it isn't on mine, so can you transfer her?

It would be bad, wrong, and a violation of Annoying Co-Worker's Free Will to put charmed baked goods in the break area, wouldn't it? I should just surround myself with white light and hold a rose quartz crystal and think loving thoughts at her. I should try to convey in "I messages" that she can talk to me as though I am an intelligent adult, and that my communication style differs from hers, so here's how we can work together more productively.

Or I can hex the hell out of some godsdamn bread and cackle every time she takes a bite.

Equisnot?

Or it could be that that dream was a warning to eat more fruit and take some echinacea, because yesterday I got sick. I am still sick. I paid $30 to learn this, but at least I got antibiotics out of it. I hate my nose.

I am going to hose everyone at work down with Lysol.

That is all for now.

Equinox.

Equinox; equal night. Maybe this is my personal equinox - the light and dark balanced.

Last night, after love, I anointed my own forehead and asked for guidance in dreams, for Sight. And I dreamed. But all I remembered when I woke was telling a bunch of people, "They say I'm dying. But I feel fine. Besides, shouldn't I look sick?" I wasn't scared, just sure that whoever had told me this was wrong.

Somehow, I doubt this has much to do with the Waking World and a lot more to do with the Unseen. I imagine I'll find out soon enough.

Open Letter To The Idiot Landlord.

Dear Idiot Landlord,

We told you that the tree where we park needed trimming so it didn't throw another branch through another of our windshields. You have yet to do so. You have been far too busy pulling out old trailers (so that you can rent still more substandard housing) and tending your garden.

Don't make me blight your crops, you rapacious, tax-evading bastard. While I would feel bad about hurting innocent plants, I would not feel bad about giving you a serious case of the pants-ruining shits.


No love,
the ocelot

I've Been Nominated!

The kind and debonair Veles at Adventures In Witchery has nominated me for a Liebster blog award. I have no idea what this is, but am flattered. Onward to the questions I'm supposed to answer!

1. What is your most favorite magical mistake?

Putting a ward on my dorm room in my sophomore year of college, but forgetting to ward the rest of the house...which meant that the Little Nasty just lurked by my door and scared shit out of two previously skeptical friends. Whoops.

2. What resource (book,etc) do you actively discourage people from reading?

 

Y'know, I don't. I'll tell someone if I think something is shite and why, but I don't even slap a certain author's tiresome tomes out of the hands of noobs (cough - silverravenwolf - cough). Even errata can teach us something.

 

3. A God you'd most like to shag? (We love blasphemy here at Adventures in Witchery)

 

Hm. Pan. And Aphrodite. Jointly and severally.

 

4. Favorite movie witch?

 

Ooo. Tough call. I can't pick just one, so I'll do a top three: Jessica Lange as Fiona on AHS: Coven, Britt Eckland as Willow in The Wicker Man, and Lachlan Morrison in The Wicker Tree.

 

5. Favorite actual witch?

 

Historically? It's a tie between Doreen Valiente and Biddy Early. Personally? All the ones I know and like, both online and in meatspace. Special shout-out to my coven, who, of course, are my favorite favorites.

 

Yes, I know, I am demolishing the meaning of "favorite". Shoo.

 

6. What first drew you to witchcraft?

 

The full moon in the woods on cold spring nights in upstate NY. A book called "The Active-Enzyme, Lemon-Freshened, Junior High School Witch." The idea, gleaned from reading about Native Americans, that everything has a soul. The idea, gleaned from the ancient Greeks, that there are many gods. And, being Irish, probably genetics - I don't think you can get the polytheism out of a Mick.

 

7. If you could go back in time to your newbie self, what mistakes would you correct?

 

I wouldn't almost ask out the Dean of Students' wife - no, wait, yes I would. Oh. That isn't what you meant, is it? Well, I'd have looked for BTW earlier, maybe. But all in all, everything I did and didn't do made me the witch I am now, so I can't say I'd "correct" anything.

 

8. Favorite tarot deck?

 

I like the Crowley deck, but I don't actually use them.

 

9. What drew you to your particular tradition?

 

The people and the feeling that I'd come home.

 

10. What magical or religious system outside of your own interests you?

 

Catholic nuns. I'm actually serious. I'd love to spend a month in a cloistered order under vows of silence. Also, the Mormons and the Amish.

 

11. Biggest pet peeve about online paganism?

 

Oh, please, like I only have one? The idea that just because you have an opinion, you should voice it - no matter how ill-informed you may be. The refusal to admit that if you're not part of an oathbound tradition, you really can't have all that much of an opinion about it. The refusal to admit that some things are provably, factually wrong.

 

Now let me think about who I can shout "TAG!" at and nominate.

 

Better Pissed Off Than Pissed On, Or Why Tao Jones Is Right.

Yesterday, I was looking at where else I might be able to afford to ride, and eventually leverage that into teaching again. I realized that I was feeling less crushed and despairing and more pissed off at my summary and rather shitty dismissal.

Then I thought, fuck this. You forgot. The Good Barn wasn't supposed to be forever - you lost sight of the end goal. You forgot, when you came home grieving and broken, that this was temporary, that all this has ever really been about is you eventually running your own show. Your own barn. Your lessons, run your way. You got comfy and you forgot. Re-break your horse, or pay someone else to do it - he'd actually pay for himself with two lessons a week. Don't go back to where you were, because it is gone for a reason.

And I looked at Tao's comment again, him saying he believes in me, and thought, how? He doesn't really know me. But maybe he does. Maybe Tao is a little smarter about me than I am, right now. Maybe he's right, and the thing to do is dust off my sandals and keep moving toward where I'm really supposed to be.

I have no idea how this will happen. I need at least two schooling horses and the room and time to teach. But I managed to pull my shit together posthaste and find us a place to live, two cars, and enough work that we survived rather well after The Hasband decided to call it quits. Surely I can pull this off. To quote Uncle Aleister, if I do my Will, no other shall say nay.

And who's going to look under my saddle to see if it's got sigils all over it, anyway?