I havent done any surveys in a long time, as life has just been too busy... and i dont have the time to go looking on OD/LJ etc  for the good ones. But I remember them as being a fun and great way to get to know someone better, and there's someone in my life that I'm in the process of doing that with. So... send me your surveys, ones from your diaries, or that you've found online... about anything and everything... and i will not only send them to my friend, but try to take some time to do them myself. maybe they'll even help me some in my journey of self discovery... i feel like ive lost pieces of me, in the course of the past couple of years, and I'm trying to find who i am again.

You can email them to me at earthymamawitch@hotmail.com

Anyone that's on either of these sites, feel free to add me!

FACEBOOK

MYSPACE

Well tomorrow is a HUGE day for me. I'm getting my tattoo cherry popped! I mean c'mon Ive had to date probably a total of 20 piercings (tho most of them are out/retired right now) so it's ABOUT TIME!!!

We went to a Beltaine ritual by the local druid grove a few weeks ago, and they happened to be doing a fundraiser and auctioned off a $60 gift certificate for a new tattoo parlor run by the proprieter of a local pagan shop. I got it for only a few bucks, using my bday money that i was saving for something special. I stopped in last weekend at the shop and talked to Kali, the artist, and we set it up for tomorrow at noon. I want a Celtic tree of life, the design she came up with for me is below:




its a pencil drawing, so black & white, but the actual tattoo will most likely be in color, with the branches/wood shaded brown and the leaves green. Im SO EXCITED!!!! I've been wanting to do this for YEARS!!!

This design was created by the lovely Kali of Bloodeagle Tattoos in Oakland... if you're in the area and interested in custom work please check her out!!! She also does ritual tattooing which I thought was really interesting.

I managed to get hold of some tickets to the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for tonite... I recently joined the Pittsburgh Freecycle list, and someone was giving them away!!! HERE'S a link to the concert schedule for tonite. Anyway, I'm super excited, we so rarely get a real honest to goddess night out. So I'm off to get prettied up :-D YAY!!!

Was just wanting to find out if anyone has any special Ostara rituals or activities that you do with your children... since it's coming up this weekend and I would really like to celebrate it with the kids. We always celebrate Beltaine and Yule with ours, and I would like to try and incorporate some more of the pagan holidays into their lives, and educate them in the process. So any suggestons anyone has, or ideas for reading material about it, would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks! :)

I  woke up with my period this morning, and am having just a horrible day so far. I had a 3 day migraine preceding it, which is usually a precursor for me, which really wore me out and made the weekend difficult. The cramps are really bad this month, and Im just so exhausted. Ive been dozing on the couch all day. My mood is totally in the toilet, even more than usual - I'm really down in the dumps, and everything the kids do is just annoying the fuck out of me, Its like l have no patience today. I also cant seem to get my temperature right, either Im freezing cold, or I wrap up in a blanket and end up sweating, the dampness from which makes me then colder when I take the blanket off. YUK.

I HATE this time of the month.

ya know how i mentioned one of the things that has been bugging me w/jim is how organized he needs to be, scheduling everything and planning everything and making lists etc? well he's really gone over the edge with it now. he sat down with a grid last night, that had the days of the week laid out with every hour of the day having its own space... and he proceeded to place his entire life on a schedule. the only thing he didnt put on there was going to the bathroom (and honestly im surprised he didnt) he actually used his calculator to figure out how many hours a week he is spending on each thing - i.e. driving, eating, sleeping, working... and then the percentages of his time each thing is. Turns out that he's giving me and the kids less than 5% of his time, which so hurt my feelings I didn't even know what to say. Especially considering that he is trying to study for his CFP (certified financial planner) license and he allows himself 19 hours a week to study for it (2 hours every week say plus 5 hours a day on the weekend - which leaves very little time for cleaning the house, running errands, etc on the weekend when we used to do such things) plus 5 hours a week for the class he is taking... but between me and the kids, counting date night, counting sat night when we try to watch a movie with the kds every week, and counting the weekend, he gives us a total of 10 hours a week. I tried to explain to him that thats not fair... just the kids alone deserve better than that, but what about me? What if Im having a bad day and I need more time than the half an hour before bed he's allowing me? (especially on days that I have therapy, I come home really triggered usually and need extra cuddling and talking in order to quell the anxiety and be able to relax) We used to have a couple favorite TV shows we watched together every week... thats not enough time to watch our shows, let alone a movie. and what about sex??? with all of the stress and parenting and such it takes us both time to unwind at night and feel close before we're ready to jump into sex. he's not giving us enough time to do that - we'll just barely be unwinding and it will be time for him to go to bed. What about foreplay? what about talking? what about cuddling? let alone the fact that unless you're doing a quickie all of the time, half an hour isnt really that long for sex. What if I want more? I feel like he's cheating me. And I'm just plain offended that he even WANTS to try to schedule something like this, it just feels WRONG. whatever happened to spontanaeity?

not to mention just how weird it is for someone to need to micromanage their lives like this. I really don't *get* it. I know that some people are more organized than others, but folks this is going overboard even for him. My therapist said it sounds like he has something like obsessive compulsive disorder, and honestly I wonder if she is right. He says he's not asking ME to live on his schedule... c'mon, I'm his wife. What he does affects me, and since he's the one dictating when we run errands and when we get time together and when we do everything, he's basically asking - no, telling - me to conform to his schedule and be available when he needs me to. He's already mentioned during the times when he's putting pressure on me about managing my time better that he thinks i should try to plan my day better, and account for my time to him. What's next, is he going to hand me a grid and insist that I map out every hour of my day for his approval??? I dont FUCKIN think so. That would drive me absolutely batshit, trying to live me life like that. and I dont think he has the right.

When I expressed my feelings about this, and my concerns, he just got really angry, said that this was what he *needed*, and that I was not showing concern for him and his needs. Well hello, what about me? What about the kids? what about *our* needs? I dont see him caring about that. This is all about HIM, and what he wants. Then he started going off about how Im such a slacker, I dont manage my time wisely, I show no organization, etc. the usual bullshit.

Can I really be happy living with this man, and dealing with this insanity???

EDIT TO ADD - this is not just him trying to map out a general idea of how he wants to use his time. He is trying to rigidly plan every minute - and i know him, he will insist on sticking to it no matter what. there will be no flexibility, no give and take.

To answer a question that a noter brought up in my previous entry....

Yes there may be other antidepressants that have less side effects. But to be honest I have tried just about everything in the SSRI category - Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa, Lexapro, Paxil - plus Wellbutrin which is in a class of its won -  with varying degrees of success. Some help more than others with the depression, but just about all of them have side effects in either the sexual category, the weight gain/loss category, or both. There is another class called tricyclics, they are older, predating the SSRI's, but most of those have even more and worse side effects, which is why they are rarely if ever used any more. So my docs tell me I am really out of options, unless I am willing to put up with side effects.

I was taking St Johns Wort (which is like an herbal version of an SSRI) for about 8 weeks, and it helped to some extent with the depression, but it reduced it only by about 50%, which meant I was still feeling pretty shitty. Now I'm off that, and taking 5-HTP, which works in a different way, and it helps too, but it still feels like its not enough.

Part of the problem is that I have depression for several different reasons. One, I have Major depression, which is related to brain chemistry and the brain not managing seratonin very well. I basically have a chemical imbalance, which is partially inherited - alot of people in my family are either bipolar or depressives. Two, I have PTSD (Post traumatic stress disorder) which is from my childhood and the abuse I grew up with. That also causes symptoms of depression, as well as anxiety. So I get it from both ends. The meds help with the major depression some by leveling out my brain chemistry and making it a little more normal. But I still have emotional problems and flashbacks and fucked up ways of thinking from the PTSD, and only therapy and time - LOTS of time - will help that. So the meds are not a complete answer, even on the best meds possible, I'd still be somewhat depressed.