The Pagan Mom Blog

I have no idea what to call this post lol. It’s a hodge podge so far in my head.

So far girls have been back in school since yesterday. Mon & Tues they were out because the schools were too overly concerned and called it off. Nothing happened on either day. This Saturday they have a makeup day. Ironically I find out from the news and a recorded phone call but NOTHING has been said about a time frame. I have no idea if this is a normal day of school. Other counties that are doing school this Saturday have announced on the news and online the time frame. I am now thinking that the city district is just too chicken to commit because they think we will get snow. It’s supposed to be in the 50’s this weekend. So freaking frustrating. I get being concerned for safety but this overly protective bs is for the birds. I am considering homeschool once again because at least then I don’t have to worry about snow days. And I could do year round like I want for my kids anyway. BUT, I have got to get myself established with working at home in order to do this. AND it has to be something that I can do when the kids & I move out.

Which brings me to the marital situation. Nothing has changed. He started trying to tell me he was reading these articles on mental disorders and how insomnia is related (I already knew and this is by far not old news). Basically I took away from that whole thing that he was trying to see if I was having a mental breakdown. Perhaps I am, it doesn’t negate the fact that there is marital bullshit to deal with. And when I informed him that marital stress contributes to mental issues he didn’t have a dam thing to say to it. At this rate he isn’t going to find anything out until I am packing the bags. He will not discuss it. And if he doesn’t care enough to discuss it I am not going to waste my time chasing him down to force him to discuss it.

Work has been nuts. Usually is but this year the boss is stuck at home because it has been snowing hard at his house. They live north of us on a mountain. So that’s where all the snow people have been freaking out over has been. Now people are upset because I cannot keep up with the phone. Hubs has been out dealing with his appointments and I have been by myself. With two phone lines. Piles of work to do. And when the phone rings it’s not one line that will ring but both. One guy even came over to the office because he claimed he called several times and there was no answer. He acted perturbed that I don’t have superwoman qualities.

Enough of the bitching though, it’s not all horrible. Hours at work have been awesome. I had a night out the other night at a Haiti Benefit. $5 glasses of wine (although they didn’t have my Reisling!), free chocolate truffles, and a String Quartet. It was awesome. Tonight I have a meeting with TedXAvl. I am a volunteer in their Hospitality department. What this means, I don’t know. LOL! No the organization offers a night of speaking about Technology, Entertainment, and Development. This event will happen in September so we are in planning mode.

I am also doing the March for Babies walk this year. Actually its me and Molly that are doing it. I haven’t done this fundraiser in a long time but I decided we are gonna do it this year. So if you can help there is a handy button to the right you can click to help us out. If you want to help out but strapped for cash, then please join a local walk. Every little penny helps!

Which brings me to my motivation to get fit. I have 65 days to get myself to where I can handle that walk. So once I get the hubs to order more heating oil in our house (we are out again!) I am going to start doing pilates and the 30 Day Shred video. After tax season I am going to order P90X. It is a tough workout but I think it will do nicely for what I want, which is to shed the awful fat from my body and get toned. And once it warms up I will start walking again. My Droid works nicely as an MP3 player so that will help out alot.

All of this also leads to another volunteering gig I am lining up. We have a street festival here called Bele Chere. It’s 3 days of music, awesome food, craft booths, and 300,000 people crammed into our city streets. I volunteered once before in the Children’s Area. This year I am shooting for a roving volunteer. Basically I walk around and give help to whomever needs it. Whether it is finding a specific booth or band or helping them navigate to their car or finding their hotel. I like that idea better because I will work with one other person and we can roam around while helping others. Children’s Area wasn’t bad last time I just don’t want to be stuck in one place like that. I had sort of a traumatic experience last time. I had tried avoiding working on facepainting because I have no cool drawing skills. But that last day someone bailed on us and I gave in and helped that table. I was there for 7 hours. For the most part kids gave me easy tasks. Once in awhile I got something that I had no clue what it even was lol. But the worst was this sweet little boy, maybe all of 7 years old. He wanted superman emblem on his cheek (the one thing I could do extremely well!). So I was hard at work and we were chatting. I can’t remember the specific question but it was something like “Why can’t I do this, so and so can!” I responded “I don’t know, maybe you should ask your mom and dad”. That’s when the kid looked at me so serious, but not sad,  ”My mom died when I was a baby”. Talk about feeling like a huge pile of poo! And what do you say to that? I apologized to him for it and he seemed ok but I just felt horrible. Like I was supposed to start asking all the kids if their parents were alive just so I could be sure I didn’t commit that faux pas again. Fortunatley his dad overheard it and later came up to me and said not to feel bad. I still did. So yea, I will try my hand in another area this year and see how that goes.

So what is going on with you all????

So I was going to do this post about my Tuesday Morning but a few other things have happened since then and it inspired a pet peeve post. I haven’t done one of these in awhile and I felt like it would be a good topic.  Ready?

1. Abuse of your dog. Ok maybe that is a bit extreme BUT I really felt bad for this dog yesterday. We were under a Blizzard Warning and we had winds of up to 60mph. I saw a woman walking her chihuahua (sp?) along a busy road. It was really cold and the woman had foresight to put on extra doggy clothing. Unfortunatley it was either too small, doggy had arthritis, or the cold was bone numbing to poor doggy. This sad little thing was struggling to move his tiny legs. And even worse was the leash was pulled taut as she tried dragging him down the street. I know dogs need exercise but this thing needed to be picked up and cuddled. He was so miserable!

2. Solicitor’s who whisper. I had a call at our office and this woman whispered the entire call. I was really frustrated because I told her repeatedly that I could not hear her. She continued to whisper and all I could get from her was she wanted to send a fax. I thought she might have been a client who was ill and couldn’t speak but needed to get us some information. No. She was from the local paper trying to do some sort of fundraising. It’s bad enough that she wasted my time (and I missed several client calls while dealing with her) with her solicitation but she WHISPERED! What the hell? Is that supposed to be a new trick or something? And if you are sick to the point of loss of voice and your job requires cold calling, you can’t do your job. Go Home! It will be a joy when she calls back in a few days.

3. Who has the worst weather. If you are on the East Coast you know how bad the weather has been. Last night I heard even Louisianna was getting hit with snow! What I really hate is  the pissing contest. ”Well we have 4 feet of snow, pity us more because that is worse” mentality. Northeners who don’t understand why 2 feet of snow shuts down the south, etc etc. Bottom line, it’s not about how much snow you get but how your area can handle it. In MD, my parents have 50″ of snow and yet have power. We get 2 feet around here and you can kiss your power goodbye for at bare minimum of 12 hours and maximum of 3 days (and maybe more if you are real rural). It’s all because north have the training, the crews,and the equipment to deal. We do not. If we had 50″ it would kill us around here. Louisiana it’s gonna be worse. So don’t knock people because they don’t have as much as you and can’t handle it. How often do you think we get snow? LOL we have had more snow this year than what we get in 2!

4. Cellphone usage while driving. Tuesday morning on my way to work was beyond treacherous. I had two people almost rear end me, one almost sideswipe me, and two more cut me off all together. Why? Because they were on their cell phones not paying attention. I used to be one of those people until I almost ran a red light. I refuse to touch my phone while driving now. When they passed the law making it illegal to use themI was thrilled. Too bad it’s not being enforced! I was so scared and pissed Tuesday that there was a 6th person. A woman in a black PT Cruiser. Yea. She was on her phone and driving down the road soooooo slooooooowww. Guess what I did. I laid on my horn the whole way down the road. Oh yes I did. I wanted to interrupt her conversation that bad. 

So there are just a few.Feel free to add to the list in the comments section!

Tax time is in full swing. Yesterday was absolutely exhausting. When we got home and fed kids pizza that we picked up along the way, I checked my Farmville and then laid down. I think I was asleep by 8:30. The good thing is that my hours are going to fly through the roof. When I had stepped out to pick up lunch for us from Subway, 6 people came by and dropped off their info for their returns. The boss looked at the growing stack and asked me if I was sure I didn’t want the part time temp to handle the administrative aspect. I am sure, I really want the hours. So this morning I am ready to go to work and get cracking. But. Kids have a 2 hr delay due to the sleet coming through. So I have to wait. Now I am waiting to hear from the school. Given that the kids keep missing days and they have already taken Good Friday as a makeup, they are now discussing starting to use Spring Break. They are going to call parents and see what they want. I am sure we can figure out my answer…….take the Spring Break days. Those have always been a pain for us. But I doubt that it will happen. I think more parents will vote for the use of Saturdays (which my kids will not want lol). Saturdays wouldn’t affect us much because Alex will still be home. Kyle usually stays and works from home on Saturdays so that  can come to the office.

With regard to the knitting classes this weekend, Kyle and the kids will go down with me Sunday as long as it isn’t snowing. No matter what if it snows I am not going. But Sunday it’s not supposed to and it’s supposed to be above freezing which means melting. And Sunday is the designing class which I am really thrilled about.

Tomorrow Claire gets her glasses….finally! It’s been almost a full year since she had a pair. Hopefully next month I can buy a second pair for her so that in the event she breaks a pair she has a backup. I also need to get a new pair for me because I haven’t been seen in two years. I am afraid Alex needs glasses as well, so I need to get him checked.

In other news, Megadeth is coming to Asheville in March. YAY! They are bringing with them Testament and Exodus. Talk about a blast from the past! I am totally going, friend of mine got our tickets already. Shinedown will also be coming April 1. Not too sure about that one. Tickets go on sale Friday and once my friend finds out how much they are we will talk about it. I really can’t afford it if it’s more than $40. We will see.

That’s about it in my exciting life. I need to check my farm andget ready for work. What are you all up to today?

The weather this winter is seriously messing things up badly. Usually we will get our nasty weather in March. And when it comes it is mostly in the form of ice. This is bad enough. Once in awhile we get snow but it has never been enough for us to make a snowman or even wet enough for it to stay together.  We got 15 inches in December, 10-12 this last weekend. And you know what???? MORE is coming next weekend? Not sure on accumulation but just thinking about the possibilities is enough to anger anyone. If i lived up north I would totally expect this. But I don’t and that entitles me to a little bit of whining. You see next weekend I am supposed to be in South Carolina for a knitting event. This was super important to me because one of the classes I signed up for was a designing class. I want to design my own prayer/meditation shawls and hopefully sell them on the side. So this class was really important! Some of you may wonder what all the fuss is so here is the issue. First off I don’t drive well in snow. I can do it but I reserve it for when I must and walking is too far and I am not driving more than 15-20 minutes. Greeneville is 2 hours away. Secondly we always have ice with our snow. No one can drive on ice, I don’t care what they say. Thirdly, to get out of Asheville means going down mountainsides. No matter which way I go it is a must. The grades are seriously steep. They have special runoff roads for truckers in case they lose control. My own car slows down trying to make it up the grade. Coming down means almost constantly braking. Imagine hitting a patch of ice? Yea, I am not happy about this. I may try to go just Sunday, that’s the designer class. It isn’t supposed to actually snow on that day so the roads might get cleared up.

Along with all of this snow comes alot of school closings. This won’t affect Beltane as I will pull my girls out of school for that. But it could mean they will be in school most of June at this rate. As of now they have to go to school on Good Friday. That has quite a few people up in arms but really it makes me happy. For one we don’t do anything for Good Friday. Secondly Easter comes right around tax deadline and Good Friday has always thrown a wrench into the workday. Now I just need to get someone to take Lil Man off our hands so I can work. Especially now that I am doing the work of two people instead of just my own.

So there was my whining. It will all get worked out, it always does.

How is the weather by you??? It began to snow here yesterday around 3-ish. At 5:30 it looked like this:

It’s dark right now (5:50 am) so I can’t see much to see if we accumulated more overnight like the were calling. I also need to check weather channel again, last night they were saying it was going to snow all day long today.

So I am snowed in and not too interested in going anywhere. Perfect day to catch up on my blog reading. And since it’s Saturday it’s time for me to share with you the Blog Of The Week! I wish I had theme music for that slight announcement, lol.

Bringing Up Salamanders is so amazingly wonderful! I first met her on another blog when we consistently kept showing up in the comments and then responding to each other in the comments. Before you knew it we were visiting each other often. My fave thing about her is that she is in another country. This means she is on a different calendar than the pagans in the US. It’s a nice reminder of what else is out there. And her blogging about her son is simply adorable. Sometimes i just want to fly on down to Brazil and hug him to death. He is such a sweetie! Nadia has this vibrancy about her that I am so jealous of. Even when times are hard she has this life force that is so strong and remains positive. So if you need a new pagan blog to read or you want to see another slice of life, hit up her blog. You won’t regret it!

Ok maybe a tad overdramatic but we haven’t had snow like this in YEARS! I mean when my kids can actually make a snowman for the first time (and the oldest is 10) it leaves a mark.

So I woke up yesterday and I knew snow was on the way but I was skeptical. People around here freak over a single flake and I figured it would be like always. An inch, gone by evening, no big deal. HA! First they closed schools before it snowed. Not out of the ordinary but I was prepared to laugh at the school for being so assumptious.  I should learn to just wait and see. Man did Mother Nature hit us hard!

At 10 am

Yea, nothing to get THAT excited about but it was nice to see. We decided to take the kids for a walk down to the store. At the corner of our street we saw our road sign knocked over.

We continued on to the store

Once at the store we grabbed some toilet paper, snacks, hot cocoa, and….

At 2:30

And at 5 pm

It still is snowing (I am actually typing this up night before) and isn’t supposed to stop the steady snowfall for another 3-4 hours. I think we have about 8 inches now, a foot will be here easily if not more. More snow Saturday on and off with it done by evening. So not sure if we will get to go out much or not.

One interstate has people stranded in their cars. My inlaws commute 45 min into town, today it took them four hours to get home. Another road had  12 car pileup. It is rough, even though it’s gorgeous. Saturday’s plan, make a snowman

********UPDATE*****************

So this morning has been cold. We lost power around 9:30 last night and just now got it back just after noon. Can’t complain, it wasn’t real long but without alternate methods to heat our home, it was cold. As of last night 70,000 customers in 7 counties were out of power. As of 11 am 63,000 were still out. I feel for the people who have no heat and for the workers trying hard to get it to them!