Abbey Night: Servant Edition

I suppose we can snottily claim more "accurate" street cred for our Abbey Night because it wound up to be closer to our actual Downton Abbey station (i.e. servant class) verses our imagined ideal (i.e. the bitchy sisters and family).

I thought Abbey night would have, like, red wine and reading my French aspirational book.  Maybe beauty regime or occult hijinx.  We'd eat dinner slowly and have sparkling conversation.

Instead, as my first craft show is this coming Sat, we got to have a little time in the morning to (futilely) try to get tickets for the Sleep No More Remix (it sold out in under five fucking minutes.  Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh) and a little time to check emails in the morning.  I felt upbeat for the first time in weeks and even a bit optimistic about the day.

Then I needed to package everything I sold.

Then I needed to press all the oils I made.  Then some decanting and labeling.

Then it was 3p.  I needed to get dressed.

Then we went to the church (errand running for the Queen Mum).

Then onto the post office (. . . like a motherfucking adult).

A short break with a lunch at Fresh and coffee at Starbucks where Jow was downtrodden and disspirited by his lot as a servant.  I was feeling pretty depressed about life as well because (a) everyone else around me is currently beaten down by life so it's hard to be all yay life with that (b) all my days off have been eaten with completely unfun errands and crafting and (c) I'm feeling like I'm losing sight of my Experiment and feel like I am destined to be fat forever and a nanny and will never have money ever again.  I was thinking about the lines that the one maid said in Downton Abbey, None of it. I'm not going to be a secretary. I'm not going to leave service. I doubt I'll leave here before I'm sixty.  Oh, you saw their faces. And they're right. Oh, look at me! I'm the daughter of a farmhand, I'm lucky to be a maid. I was born with nothing and I'll die with nothing.
No plotting against each other or the ruling family (i.e. the cats) was done, too tired to do so.

Came home, cleaned the entire house.

Made candles, finished making soap.  Can't even take la-dee-da Mormon Mom pics because it looks like a hot mess when I'm working. 

Fed the complaining ruling family who was unappreciative.

Took my bedtime pills.  Got to eat dinner around 9p.

By that time we wanted our servants' privledge of making our own fun so it was intertubes forever for about an hour until bed.  Got to get up at 6a to take care of babies.

Next Abbey night we will be part of the imagined ruling class, damnit.

Reformed Abbeyists

Cat and I grew up as bloggists starting on Diaryland.  I had no idea what she wanted with me to be frank.  She wrote things that were beautiful and amazing (even just on Diaryland!  She hadn't even written any books yet!) and she was living abroad in Japan which sounded incredibly romantic and unfathomable at the time.  I, on the other hand, was a secretary living in Jersey who used her Diaryland to complain excessively about her mother.  But through the years, we've managed to somehow be present for key parts of each other's lives and I learned she cussed a lot too and liked cookies and macros so clearly, we were meant to be friends. 

Now we're both working on unfucking our lives through our own methodology and struggling (sometimes hilariously because sometimes the only way to get through it is to tell it as a story and make it funny).  But Cat had a great idea about starting Abbey Nights in her house.  When reading about it, my brain was so fried it was crunching so I thought, what a great idea!  Jow and I should do that once a month!  And I promptly marked it on the calendar to happen weeks from when I thought about it so presumably my life will have neatly fallen into place in a wonder of perfection and I'd be emotionally and intellectually ready to handle this. 

That week is this Sunday.

Weirdly, my life hasn't settled into perfection somehow.  I thought maybe I could just, like, not mention it and Jow would forget about it and we could settle comfortably in internet forever. 

Jow: So that Abbey thing is this Sunday right?

Me:  (damnit)  Ummmm.  Yeah.  I guess.

Jow: So how will this work?

Me: Candles aren't really too practical for us.  We don't have enough and I don't want either of us to go blind.

Jow: Agreed.  Besides Downton Abbey had electricity and they're an abbey--

Me: Right.  We haven't even started and already we're watering this down.

Jow: We're not watering it down.  We're just not Orthodox.  We're Reformed Abbeyists, that's all.

Me: Hee!  It's so weird because I'm like crap, what am I going to do?  No music, no telly, no internet.  Nothing.  Since I can't do anything fun I guess I could magically cleanse the house.  Or do a puja.  Or connect with my gods individually.  Clip the cats' nails.  Read my new book.  Spin on my wheel--

Jow: Yeah just all of that stuff that's imperative but never gets done.

Me:  Yeah.  That.

I'll report how it goes!

[New Year, New You] A Note/ Scenes From a Pagan Household

Stop being a pain.  YOU STOP BEING A PAIN!

Me: Well?

Jow:  The first part is really beautiful but the second part seems sort of like Something You've Been Putting Off.

Me (exasperatedly): It's a focus week!  Everyone's still putting something off!  I still haven't been to the gym yet during this!  The point is to do the specific work that's required for the goals this week.  Not work on other things to help make it stick this week, just do the damn thing.

Jow: Well, presumably everyone is doing that.

Me: I'm not even doing everything I'm supposed to be doing for my goals.  Yeah, I could give you some kind of bullshit task this week or you could chose to actually do the work you're supposed to do for your goals this week at this time like I said.

Jow: Touche.  You should post about that.

Me: Besides, you don't even understand.   The people who have been doing the Experiment the whole time?  We're all, like, on the same wavelength and are thinking about doing the same things at the same time which is why these prompts have been working so well.  Sooooo, they'll get it, we're all pinging each other from the wilds of internet ether.

Jow: You're right.  I'm totes not doing enough of this to be that in touch with all y'all's processes the way you are with each other right now.  And . . .that's probably for the best.

Scenes From a Pagan Household

For a lot of reasons, we needed to declutter and clean our house and then cleanse our house. For a lot the same reasons, we plan on doing Scylla's Charm Against the Evil Eye. Generally I do the cleansing aspect with the house as I've previously outlined. Yesterday however I was def feeling fibro-ish from overdoing it at Crucible and the impending fall weather. I also needed to write my lecture on Hoodoo which I would be presenting to my alma mater's Pagan group, which the more I tried to figure out how to explain Hoodoo while both acknowledging it was not a "white light" path per se but only explaining some positive workings was giving me a headache as well as inspiring cold fear remembering The Pagan Picnic . Those things together made it so I was feeling pretty drained and not up to doing magic. Jow had decided to try his hand at doing it on his own, though previously we were going to do it together though that just led to another Model UN squabble.

Him (after finishing it): Well, what do you think?

Me: Well, at first I didn't feel anything but then when you started going room to room with the candle I did.

Him: Awesome. Wow. It feels so much different than when you do it.

Me: Yep.

Him: Almost too strong . . .

Me: Well. You kind of didn't sweep anything outside.

Him: I burned the bothersome things! With fire.

Me: Right. So . . .now there's like . . .the equivalent of a house full of dead bugs. They're not doing anything but they're lying all over the place dead.

Him: Burnt dead bugs.

Me: I'll sweep tomorrow.

Other Lives. Further Scenes From a Pagan Household

Dear Muse,
You are a horrible fickle b*tch. You had nothing to say to me for months and now? Now? Last night when I had to be asleep to be up early to nanny you couldn’t shut up for hours about a story I haven’t touched in years.
I hate you. I love you. I’ll thank you tomorrow.

I'm posting more and going somewhat more off track from what this blog is "supposed" to be about, something I myself scold about but. Penelope has been delightfully off the rails lately which has endeared her to me a great deal.

As y'all know, I is a riter. But I get distracted. Gordon is patient. He should consider some kind of high power cat herding career for his next move. But finally even he had enough of my squirrely writer ways and scolded from across the pond to say something like Darling, it doesn't matter which you pick. But write something and stick to it damn it. I'm supposed to be writing a kitchen witch book as you know. I set deadlines and word counts and then just sort of started chasing moths. I started focusing on my crafting and even going to the gym to dodge it.

But. She sneaks up on you. I needed to get up early this morning to herd my tiny charge who has now learned to throw toys but smiles while doing so, so I did what any chick would do - I went to the gym (*dodge*), took an extra xanax (*double dodge*) and a shot of vodka before bed (*suuuuuuuper dodge*). I was curled into bed with Jow and all of a sudden, I heard her. She was insistent. I told her to shut the fuck up as she's been ignoring me for months so I'm ignoring her now and I had work the next day, damn it. She didn't care. She never does. I try to explain work as an orderly concept of punching the clock and getting things done and getting paid for it regardless to inspiration but she rolled her eyes, smelling of tequila, last night's club makeup still smeared all over her. I have a theory. Remember that story you wrote like way more words than you ever have? But it sort of faltered and you didn't touch it for years? You didn't know what to do with her either, your heroine was unlikable in a Bella Swan kind of way before there was a Bella Swan? There were even two boys like in Those Books sort of? I fixed it. You're welcome. Meet Anna. Between my muse and Anna [a new character, the first time it's ever happened like that honestly], I was tossing and turning for hours and generally driving poor Jow crazy until I gave up and stumbled into the office and scribbled down some notes in the dark and tried to get them both to shut up already until I slept fitfully for a few hours.l

I got up and went to work, glad that my tiny charge can't talk yet. My arms were killing me from the gym and the baby. I stumbled home trying to jazz myself up for cooking and house cleaning but Jow had other plans. He enticed me into bed and to take my bra off and put on comfy 'jamas. Once we were lying in bed bullshitting about our days I knew there was no hope of any productivity which was only further proved by Jow seductively whispering that we could clean the house this weekend and order Chinese food. Since that was established and neither of us had slept (if I can't sleep, he can't sleep), I decided to share with him my encounter with my muse and Anna though I got shy feeling like it was a brilliant idea I had when drunk that wasn't so brilliant in the daylight. As we talked more about it and he got more interested, he said I needed to write this. And I realize I do, it's a burning in the blood now fueled by exhaustion. Of course, today I learned about my Florence's new song which led to this conversation:

Me (points to the screen): Why don't I have a work space like this?
Jow (patiently): You have the office.
Me: But . . .it's an office. I want creative romance!
Jow: She's a musician.
Me: She writes things too! It shows it right here! Plus I want candelabras and fancy water bottles. I concede I don't get the white frilly dress to flounce around in.
Jow: We'll invest in . . .candelabras?
Me: I want to go to thrift stores and get teacups and candelabras for next to nothing like MsDirty's and Italics' thrift store runs.
Jow: Okay.

So . . .it's on. Starting tomorrow, this is my project. But for now I need to cede the computer to Jow's Book Removal Wednesday.

End times, folks.