29 year old Pagan
female who lives in Florida with her guy and two cats, loves Disney,
reads fanatically, tinkers in photography and believes growing up is
overrated
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"winter wonderland" ver. 15
originally created 12/1/06 and designed for
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There are people on the net that
have nothing better to do with their time then be nasty to other
people online. They post rude comments, spend hours a day talking
about sites they hate so much, that they well, spend hours a day
talking about them. (lame) They mock the owners and posters for
their opinions and their right to free speech. They expect everyone
to fit into their narrow-minded little world view or else they throw
a temper tantrum.
To these people I say
grow up.
Here's a bit of info people...the
web is a HUGE place. If you don't like what I say here, or who I am,
or what I do, or talk about, or what I look like, or the color of my
hair, or whatever asinine thing you dwell on, go somewhere else.
It's really, really easy. Honest. You just click the little "x" in
the corner of your browser and *poof* the offending, big, mean and
nasty site has disappeared.
I pay for this site. It's mine.
That means I can use it for whatever the hell I want to. Don't like
it if I'm bitching about something in my life? Oh fucking well. Go
somewhere else. Think I'm stupid for expressing my thoughts? Too
fucking bad, don't read them. Somewhere along the line, someone
forgot this simple fact: Live and let live Don't like me,
cool, fine, whatever, I don't care. This journal is NOT for
you. It's for me. I'm not in it for popularity or fame or anything
stupid like that. I write it because I need to write and express
myself and get things out of my head sometimes. So read or don't, it
doesn't matter, but don't waste my time (or yours) bitching about
it.
*gets off soapbox*
: : welcome to
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donations through paypal with
balance, checking account, savings or credit card
M. Turner
Po Box 1484
Elfers, FL 34680
win with me on blingo! I can vouch it really works. I've won
already.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Yule, Recap, Happy Mail, Tree, Cookies, and More! This is going to be a large entry with a lot of subjects I've been meaning to get around to, so get comfy.
So let's get to it.
Yule Brightest Yule Blessings to all! Merry Solstice!
I'm going to try to do what I always do on this night - hold vigil through the long dark until sunrise. To me, it's very sacred day and very important to be a Watcher through the night. I say "try" only because I'm exhausted and already tired. I have been all day. Wish me luck as it's going to be a long night.
Recap Tuesday of course we had the tree crashing fiasco. And I had to completely re-do the tree. (More on the finished product the second time next.) Wednesday I ran a few holiday related errands with my mom. She also brought me mail from the post office box. Within were several more cards from LJ friends as well as from the Holiday Wishes community. But there was something else in there as well. Which brings me to...
Happy Mail A simple bubble mailer. No return address. Simply addressed to "M. Turner" at my post office box. An unreadable postmark. Inside was what can only be described as utterly jaw-dropping. Someone sent me two gift cards for a total of $150 good for eyeglasses. Let me say that again: One hundred and fifty dollars. Instantly I have half the money I'll need to get my new glasses. (Last time, thanks to knowing someone who's an assistant manager at a place I can use the gift cards, I got both my sunglasses and my regular glasses for just under $300. The retail on both pairs was almost $800.) I can't tell you how amazingly blessed I feel. It's been such a frustrating struggle this year knowing how bad my vision is getting, dealing with the chipped lens for about six months now and being forced to stop driving at night due to the weakness in my prescription. I'm so much closer now to correcting (no pun intended!) that massive hurdle. Whomever you are, thank you. I don't think I have words to express how thankful I truly am.
I also received a beautiful, handknit scarf from my friend, Phoe. (You can see it here on her knitting blog.) It's made from a combination of mohair and silk in lovely shade of blue-grey and it's so very, very soft. It's very delicate looking too. Thank you Phoe for the handmade loveliness!
Tree - Take Two As mentioned above, Tuesday my tree collapsed. About a dozen ornaments were broken including some 60+ year old antique ones that have been in my family for three generations. It was a terrible day and took hours and hours of cleaning, getting the tree into a new stand, undoing the remaining ornaments and lights and then starting over from scratch. I have to admit, my heart wasn't in it as much the second time around. The tree looks fine, but of course, I find myself looking at it and seeing all the flaws in the ornament placement or the way the branches are laying. (Many got bent and broken during the fall so we had to rotate it to show a different angle and some places seem too empty because of it to me.) I don't think it's ugly by any stretch of the imagination, but the magic's gone out of it a bit for me. I'm sure no one else sees it's downsides quite as much as I do.
Second time around:
Cookies I made up a batch of my Tea Biscuit Cookies on Tuesday prior to Tree Crash 2006, but I didn't get a chance to make any Sugar Cookies yet. I'm going to try to work on that tonight. (Seeing as I have many, many hours to kill! I can't wait because they're super yummy.
Gifts, Shopping, Presents - Oh My! Last night (Thursday), we ran around and got most of our shopping done. And yes, we do tend to wait until the last minute. Not because we want to, but because that tends to be how the budget (or lack thereof truly) works out. I was trying to win a very specific item on ebay for our friend Rand, but dammit, I lost it. So back to square one for him. We also still need to get something for Love's parents. Beyond that though, we're pretty much done. Oh! I do need to get a replacement mat for the framed photo I'm giving my sister. It was under the tree when it fell, and the water totally ruined the matting. The picture and frame thankfully were salvageable, but not the mat. Problem is I've been to two stores already and can't find another of the same color. There's one more place to check and dammit, I hope they have it. I loved the colors in the one I chose and I'm going to be really bummed if I have to settle for something else.
Love took off tomorrow and we're going to get our remaining stuff done then. Well, correction. He's going to shop for me in the morning. I'm going to be up until dawn, so I'll be sleeping into tomorrow afternoon. THEN if he needs my participation, well, that's fine. Downside of the extra time tonight is that I lose it tomorrow in sleep.
I think though that I'll spend some time tonight to wrap the gifts. Might as well since, again, lots of free time.
Done! Ok, seeing as I started writing this at 8:25pm and it's now 10:21pm (I stopped to run to the supermarket in the middle though), I think I've finally wrapped up all the topics that were outstanding. There was a lot I wanted to mention, hence the long entry. If I don't get a chance to post over the weekend, I hope everyone has a lovely weekend with their friends, loved ones and families, that they have a bright and beautiful Solstice and that the holidays are a source of warmth and comfort to all.
Twelve Hours Every 30 minutes for the past TWELVE HOURS a car alarm has gone off. Every. Thirty. Minutes. It's now 7:22am and I haven't slept. At all. I'm ungodly sick to my stomach from exhaustion and I already had a migraine from the stress last night. I can't tell you how frustrated and disgusted and pissed I am. I'm supposed to be getting together with my mom at noon - 4 1/2 hours from now. And I feel like I'm going to vomit from the pain and upset in my stomach from the utter lack of sleep. It's impossible to accurately put into words how miserable this fucking car alarm bullshit has been.
No, you're not seeing things. Nor are you imagining that you remember this already. This is how my Christmas tree currently looks.
But M, you ponder. I've already seen the photos of your tree all decorated and pretty. What do you mean this is how your tree looks?
Well, it all started with a very loud sound. CRASH!. And it only got worse from there.
Let's rewind a smidge. I put up my tree and decorated it last week. It was lovely and perfect. I was enjoying it greatly. Today, I finally had some time in the day to work on my holiday cookies. So I was working on my Tea Biscuit recipe and talking to my mom about the problems I was having with flour-to-butter ratio. (I need to change it because I think 2 cups flour and 2 sticks butter work better than 2 1/2 cups flour.) ANYWAY, after speaking with my mom, while my cookies are in the oven, I'm on the phone with my friend Rand discussing presents and the still unfinished shopping when I hear the worst noise ever.
My tree had crashed completely on it's side to the ground. Broken glass everywhere. Water soaking the carpet. Ornaments both broken and intact strewn across the living room. I broke down sobbing. I tried to pick the tree up and couldn't do it. It weighs about as much as I do and all I could manage was to get it propped against the wall. Hysterical, I asked my friend Rand if he could come over and help me get it standing. He was at work, but his work is a mere 3-minute drive away. Love on the other hand is an hour away. Dear friend that he is, he came right over and spent the next hour with me picking up glass, collecting the unbroken ornaments and trying (unsuccessfully) to reset the tree. Turns out the stand broke. Whether it broke and that's what caused the crash, or Gracie knocked it over and it broke because of the crash, I can't say. I know it wasn't Mika because she was on the couch sleeping when it happened. I have a hard time believing that it fell just randomly out of nowhere on it's own. But I don't know for sure either way.
What I do know is that I lost about a dozen ornaments. Some were just generic balls, one was part of a Mickey set of 12 we got last year and about five or six were heartbreaking. You see, I have ornaments on my tree that are over 60 years old. I'm the third generation to have them on my tree. They were on my mother's before me and my mother's mother before her. They are utterly priceless to me and utterly irreplaceable. It breaks my heart that I lost so many of them. I've never broken any in all the years since she gave them to me and now - poof - in an instant, five or six (it's hard to tell; a couple ornaments shattered into tiny, unidentifiable pieces) are just gone forever.
Rand went back to work for the last 45 minutes or so of his day. Love stopped and bought a new tree stand on the way home. Rand came by after work and helped Love and I get the tree set up in the new stand. I had to take everything off - including the lights - because everything had fallen and dragged and shifted from the fall. Some of the branches even got bent and broken. We ended up rotating the tree slightly from where it was facing before to try to offset the broken/tattered branches.
So now here I am, with a tree that I have to re-light and re-decorate. While it's fun the first time, it's really not the second. I'm still so shaken from the whole experience. I've never had a tree collapse before. The image of all those broken ornaments all over the carpet.... It's heartbreaking. I cried so much this afternoon. (In fact, the crying and the stress have left me with a terrible headache.)
Love and I were going to do some gift shopping tonight, but we're going to do the tree instead. It's just frustrating and depressing to have to start all over. Especially when it's because of a situation as sad as this one.
And that's my day. I thought yesterday was a bleak rain cloud, but gee, it apparently got worse today.
OMG *SQUEE!* I had the best surprise waiting for me in my mailbox tonight. The box was little, but heavy. And it bore the return address of the super sweet Lorena! Immediately I was excited. She let slip I had made her knitted list this year. I can't tell you how giddy that made me. So when I saw the box, I knew there had to be some handcrafted goodness within.
And still, I was unprepared for what a totally lovely package it was!
I smiled when I read the card. Knowing my glycerin sensitivity, she opted not to send me any handmade soap. While I love the stuff and she does an AWESOME job, *sigh* I just can't deny the allergy reaction any longer I get from glycerin. And she said she didn't want to send her famous Chex Mix because of concerns about MSG. (Almost all snack products contain it in large quantities sadly.) It was so awesome of her to remember both of those things and go above and beyond to accommodate that. I mean, that's really sweet. I wouldn't have been sad in the slightest if she'd just sent the socks. But, Lorena is such a dear, that she had to "make up" for my sensitivities.
Instead, she sent tea. And yes, Lorena, I LOVE tea. Love, love, love. So, in the box was two flavors of Adagio Teas: white tangerine and mango melange. Yum! Fruity teas are my favorite. And, to be sure I could enjoy my loose tea, she also included a B&N mug and a loose tea infuser. There's also two handmade candles that smell really yummy.
Of course, the big joy of the package was my very own (and very first!) pair of handknit socks.
Yule
Recap
Instantly I have half the money I'll need to get my new glasses. (Last time, thanks to knowing someone who's an assistant manager at a place I can use the gift cards, I got both my sunglasses and my regular glasses for just under $300. The retail on both pairs was almost $800.) I can't tell you how amazingly blessed I feel. It's been such a frustrating struggle this year knowing how bad my vision is getting, dealing with the chipped lens for about six months now and being forced to stop driving at night due to the weakness in my prescription. I'm so much closer now to correcting (no pun intended!) that massive hurdle. Whomever you are, thank you. I don't think I have words to express how thankful I truly am.
Tree - Take Two
Cookies
Gifts, Shopping, Presents - Oh My!
Downside of the extra time tonight is that I lose it tomorrow in sleep.
Done!
surprise waiting for me in my mailbox tonight. The box was little, but heavy. And it bore the return address of the super sweet 
She let slip I had made her knitted list this year. I can't tell you how giddy that made me. So when I saw the box, I knew there had to be some handcrafted goodness within.
I absolutely love it all. You went above and beyond.