Category Archives: Life in the Verse

Powerless

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A dear family member has relapsed. They have a long history of relapse after over 7 years of sobriety. They just can’t seem to get sober again. Yet. *sigh* We are not in the same city and any help from me must come from phone or email. Not a daily drinker but the binges are upsetting and becoming more frequent of late. The immediate family members are stressed to the max and extremely exhausted.

The one good thing is that they sound open minded to a solution today that they have never been open to before. I am no longer the crazy bitch but the woman who made it and who is sane and kind. I have proposed that they talk to their spouse and get themselves into treatment immediately. They have been to treatment before but I never felt they were ready then. This time might be the one that works. If I can just get them to agree to go and stop giving 8gazilliion excuses.

I sit here, powerless, waiting to know which choice it will be….

Recovery First

Book Covers

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This is the week I gave myself to recover from working so hard to get the Etsy store up. Sunday, sick as a dog thanks to some allergen, Monday, didn’t get much done watched TV and that is rare to just sit and watch tv.

Yesterday I absolutely needed to get working on something. A great stress reducer, stitching. We’ve got a bit of a crisis in the family at the moment and while I’m pretty pleased at how I’m handling it, it is indeed stressful. A bit of a cry half way through the evening. I had so hoped to be done with this. (more later, I just can’t talk about it right now, too much is up in the air and I hate crying in public)

I wanted to make a cover for my book-esque calendar. Every year I buy Llewellyn’s Witches date book. I adore the artwork of Jennifer Hewitson and it is the one place I get my hands on it. She does other work besides stuff for Llewellyn but it doesn’t appear to be of a witchy nature so I always buy the date book. This year I also bought the wall calendar so that I could have 12 big full color prints of her work.

Any way, the cover is heavy card stock but it gets trashed in my purse over the course of a year. I wanted to protect it a bit. And I wanted a project. AND I am still in love with the project that I did for The Ex for Yule last year.

The cover for the calendar is from wool blend felt in a dark midnight blue. The tree (a sort of Tim Burton type tree but mostly it reminds me of some trees I saw in France) is a dark plum color against an ivory moon. There will be a little strip of felt on the inside that will hold in place my Pocket Astrologer calendar (has more dates and info than LLewellyn’s), and a strap with a button to keep it closed. You can just barely see the stip that will hold the pocket astrologer in place but the felt is so dark it’s hard to see the borders.

A Good Time Was Had By All

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Back in the day when I was hanging out with the band Variant Cause, Jan used to say, when asked how it went, after a no paying gig with a long drive home, “A good time was had by all.”

I think that best describes my Saturday faire event.

The weather was gorgeous. Warm and lovely. The morning started out well in metalsmithing class where I am well on my way to making what I think is a very stunning ring and I can’t believe it is my first effort. I’m convinced I did this in a past life because it’s coming so naturally to me and I simply don’t struggle as the lessons progress. And because I’m so drawn to it. So I was feeling pretty high on my way out of town for the Beltaine Ritual. Singing along with Emerald Rose with the wind in my hair.

The fellow who offered to share his canopy was all set up and had a small space available to me. It was shady and nice and very small. He is a nice man and interesting but he’s far more interested in talking than listening, even the folks who were getting readings from him had to work to get in a word. But it was good for the afternoon.

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Compassion vs Personal Responsibility

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Yesterday I wrote a rant in response to some comments I received. The main reason why I deleted those comments was to keep anonymous the folks who wrote them. To let them save face. For me that allowed me to perform a compassionate act in the middle of a rant.

Last night I found myself musing on the idea of compassion and where does it end and the expectation of personal responsibility on the part of others begin.

For example. I know my boss is a very sad, very frightened human being. Somewhere he learned that he was supposed to be perfect. I knew that my Ex was trying not to confront SNIB, trying to make new friends, to feel independent, and to keep me happy (an impossible situation). And I do feel compassion for them. I really do. It’s why I tried for so many months to tell The Ex why I thought the situation with SNIB was not working and what I believed was going on. It’s why I sat my boss down a couple weeks ago and told him temper tantrums in my office are not only not acceptable but not legal by state employment laws. If I had no compassion I would have simply reported the boss and let him swing and I would have dumped The Ex months before we split.

I firmly believe that sometimes the compassionate thing to do is to talk to someone about their behavior. I believe that venting over the frustrations and stress that are a natural part of being human is compassionate. Othewise I’d just explode all over them and Make. Them. Pay. I try really hard to give folks a chance to look at what they are doing and how it is effecting others. Give them the opportunity to want to change.

I think that just because someone warrants compassion it doesn’t mean they don’t also warrant what I call “A Come To Jesus Meeting.” In other words, to see the light, to have your behavior reflected back at you.

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