…and here we are. I am very glad to be down and gone from the winter holiday season. Hoping 2013 isn’t unkind, both to me and mine, and everyone else. And I am totally looking forward to New Year readings! (By the by, o lovely reader, I’ll happily do a reading for you if you send me an Ask. Just make sure you give me your email address.)

My grandfather sent me a card for the holidays, with a picture of the Kilmarnock house. I promptly dreamt last night that he had bought the house back and we were moving back in. I realized halfway in that this was a dream, and not reality, and was rather sad for the rest of it. I still love visiting Kilmarnock in my dreams but it’s always tinged with that little bit of sadness when I realize it is just a dream.

Weather’s been as it should be here, unlike last year’s not-a-winter-at-all. We have been getting a nice amount of snow. But it also means that the days dawn painfully clear and then cloud over, so I am migraining every morning. Not my favorite of things, even if I am thoroughly enjoying my winter skies and the sound of the wind in the frozen trees.

Apparently I have been overdue for some wolf-walking. I have been very busy the last few nights - primarily with teaching, oddly enough. I have also noticed the prevalence of Cedar, as things go. I think I will be working more with this spirit in the future. It is a plant ally I am well-acquainted with already, so I’m hoping this will result in a deeper relationship.

I am still plotting a nice cleansing bath in the near future - as soon as I have the spoons to clean the bathtub! I’m thinking cedar and hyssop, so far. Will have to poke the brainmeats about it later when my head isn’t an echo chamber occupied by bundles of shrilly-singing nerves.

And soon my thoughts will turn to Imbolc and Bríd’s unveiling…

I’m not very together. Today you get random bits and pieces.

- I apparently intimidate the hell out of people. I come off about a thousand times more blunt and harsh online than I do offline. I guess I don’t come off well personality-wise from the way I write; many people don’t catch the tone I’m going for. As well, my sense of humour proves to be equally as elusive.

- I’m very much a person who likes the little things. Details make me happy. I am not unaware of the big picture, but I’m much more interested in what’s in the doodles in the margins. For me, the macrocosm is reflected in the microcosm - every little bit of it.

- I love good ritual. Ritual for me is ‘theater for the Gods’. It is a spectacle and a show of respect, love, and joy we perform for their pleasure. Rituals are large and small, formal and informal. And I can totally understand why some people have difficulty with ritual - if you’re not into dramatics in that way, it’s hard.

- I don’t connect well with ‘pretty’ witchcraft. All those pictures of witches standing in romantic trailing sleeves in candlelight with their shiny gewgaws are impossible for me to relate to. They’re fantasy. And I’m not given to letting fantasy rule me or my desires.

I am stubbornly practical. I don’t object to beauty, but it can’t just be for show. I’m all about function and form. I don’t care if it looks like hell as long as it works well. Long trailing sleeves? Look great, but I’m gonna light them on fire working at the altar. Fancy leather-bound books? They’re no use to me if I’d be upset to use them - they are bound to get wine and wax on them as I work. Athame? Absolutely useless if the handle’s shape is uncomfortable in my hand, impractical to hold for a length of time, or if the blade’s dull because it’s a display piece.

And while I love ritual, I’m also not the type to stand on ceremony if there’s no need for it. ‘Keep It Simple, Stupid’ works wonders.

- I like to create my own tools. That way they’re exactly what I want and need, and they’re unique. Witchcraft, for me, is heavy on the ‘craft’ part - making sacred, powerful objects is one of my greatest joys.

On the same tangent, witchcraft for me is all about getting dirty. I’m hands on, and I’m not squeamish. If you’re afraid of hair, piss, sweat, bone, blood, tears, and dirt, I don’t think witchcraft is for you. Nature is not clean, polite, or prissy, and humans are still animals. We’re not above anything.

- I prefer to listen and to observe, than to talk. I’m very much content to sit in the background and learn about people in silence, than to try to talk about anything. I wait until I feel comfortable before I join in. Sometimes that never happens.

- I prefer to be alone. When I’m alone, my anxiety is less crushing. I don’t spend every moment wondering if I should say anything, fearing what I do say, and then obsessively worrying that I’ve made an ass out of myself for talking at all. I absolutely loathe and dread small talk, and being in groups of people larger than four, including me.