It snowed this morning!! (Well, yesterday morning bow, lol.) And after hardly any song Jess recently, this morning my choke cherry tree is absolutely full of cardinals and robins and finches -- I've never seen it this full of song birds!! Such a small thing but it made my heart so happy! No real sunrise because we have snow skies and light flakes are swirling about even now. Maybe not much will accumulate, but my childhood Halloweens were cold ones with thermal layers under the costumes and sometimes you had to wear snow boots for trick or treating because there was enough snow to ruin other shoes. So it always takes a dip below freezing chill in the air and some ice or snow for my inner child to feel that Samhain is REALLY here. I've kinda accepted that with global warming I'll be lucky whenever there's a white Christmas and shouldn't even hope for flurries in October anymore. 

I've in a bit of a funk of self doubt verging as close as my eternal optimism gets into depression these last couple days and just.... yeah... Some of it is the money stress, that's rather new to me this life because in the recent past I've chosen fame/power/family wealth/power or I've lived native/shamanic lives where there are other problems but poverty is imposed on an entire community sharing resources. I haven't had to deal with "I am in charge of my own personal fortunes and fuck money earning is hard in colonialist/capitalist/feudalist societies when you're not born in among the oligarch ruling class."  I mean, I recognize I'm relatively sheltered have it easier than most and that I have untapped options and right now collectively this recession is hitting people harder than the news media is acknowledging..... It's worse than the recession right out of college but nobody is really talking about it because gen x/Pluto in Libras said, "This system ain't fair, I'm doing my bare minimum and nothing more" and then millennials/Pluto in Scorpio are like, "o another recession? That's just life. Money is an imaginary concept with 7-10 year cycles of death and rebirth and I lack the power to change the structures that cause these cycles" and Gen Z/Pluto in Sag are like, "I deserve better I ain't busting ass for this broken system; I need to figure out how to game this system become an influencer so I can be among the oligarchs not the plebs and focus my energy on better things, I ain't hustling for the system, I'm hustling for myself" and frankly it won't be until Pluto in Capricorn are coming of age that we will see the much needed systemic structural reforms to the economics/society from this descent of free market capitalism into crony capitalism into true oligarchy....  I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but generationally, that's where the masses are and the people with money/power aren't making the changes for a more equal society, they are making the choices to maintain/stratify further a tiered class system of humanity. Which will blow up in their faces, it always does, but I'm not an oligarch or technocrat and that shit ain't my problem this life. I'm trying to survive and live a good life where the fate of the world doesn't rest on my shoulders and tactician play the long game to win for the behind the scenes spiritual battles from spilling over into the socio-political dynamic. I have enough on my plate and there's only saving what is good that can be saved from what's coming, no amount of money and yachts will save you. Skills, useful skills may save you. And knowledge -- knowledge in your head a d/or printed/written,  ot dependent on looking it up on the Internet. 

Anyway. That's a separate issue. Don't ask the precog for what's coming unless you actually want to know what's coming....

Another thing is. Bronx has been going on about how they hate soulmate/twin flame type readings because it feeds into limerence patterns and as someone with avoidant attachment style they have limerence issues always in every relationship. And so then I went down the rabbit hole of limerence and trying to understand it and how akin it si to infatuation or claiming to be in love with someone when you hardly know then but then being unable to form real deep abiding love once you do know them. And it just got me in a deep funk of questioning with the bond and all where it falls and if it's healthy or toxic and if I should be letting myself feed into helping it grow or if I ought to be treating it like a toxic limerence pattern that should be tough love cut all remaining contacts because it's unhealthy and not helping in the formation/maintenance of ACTUAL relationships with deep love growing roots. 

It's been rather exhausting examining these thoughts and questions. 

I also wasn't eating enough and when I did it was mostly candy... I don't get super intense PMS issues, I'm quite lucky in having short painless periods where the biggest nuisance is the ick of changing my tampons and if it goes into three days I get annoyed with it -- but I do get down on myself and about a week before my period I will get one drink tipsy lightweight and as I get older I've recognized I get some not nice to myself body dysmorphia for about 3-5 days beforehand and intense chocolate cravings. Nothing super intense, just enough of an irrational pattern for me to notice and try to rationalize being kinder to myself if I can be. And then when I check the calendar and/or my period starts, I can intellectually go, "O that's what this is!" but knowing doesn't change the feelings or motivate me to do something or be more gentle on me until just about when my period starts and I look in the mirror have the realization, "o shit my cheek bines and collar bones have gotten prominently gaunt! When did I last eat a real meal?!?!" And the answer is I had grill out burgers and chips for lunch on Friday and a fairly small salad for dinner Sat night and other than that I've been eating like Halloween candy and chips and some nuts and some cider with whiskey/scotch in it for calories ever since... which I don't claim to have been healthy choices, but between ADHD time blindness  and PMS body dysmorphia, I genuinely didn't realize until tonight when I looked in the mirror after I used the bathroom before taking the dog outside HOW gaunt my cheek bones and collar bones had gotten over the recent days. So as soon as we got inside, before I could get distracted by books or writing I made me chop up and roast a big baking sheet of (mostly root) veggies (potatoes, diakon radish, brussel sprouts, carrots, half a red onion, tomatoes) with garlic and herbs and olive oil and red wine and butter and added some ghost pepper maple syrup with sel gris to caramelize things every time I took it out at 10mins intervals to stir and see how well roasted things were. I ate about 2/3 of what I roasted and put the rest away on a plate to reheat with a cooked frozen salmon patty (to get some protein in me) for breakfast. (I'm out of eggs until I go shopping next, so my current protein sources are butter, cheese, frozen meat options, legumes. Thus why I'm making the breakfast choice of a salmon patty with roasted veggies for tomorrow's breakfast.

I feel much more human and kind to myself doing the best I can between eating actual food and the rest of the bottle of red wine making me agape love of everyone. 

I don't have a proper opinion right now on whether the bond should be considered limerence or not. (I would say his falling into instant infatuation and lust with his ex girlfriend the lamprey is closer to limerence obsession/infatuation than love.) But I don't know that I have to HAVE an answer to that right now so long as I keep mindful of the question, "Am I falling in emotion with who you show yourself to be or with my ide of who you are?" Because aiming for the former true sighted reality check opens a path to abiding love whereas the second is what will always lead you down paths of limerence/infatuation/obsession and end in messy outcomes when the reality of the person can never live up to the ideal version you built in your head. I don't think it hurts for me to question it, but also as long as I keep checking my idea of him against the reality of him he shows himself as choosing to be, I can keep myself from the toxic unhealthy patterns. And I would want him to do the same with me. I don't want to have to compete against a version of me on a pedestal. We ain't Pygmalion and Galatea and I always hated that myth anyway because she never got to be a fully formed PERSON, just his idealized pedestal maiden made flesh, so he never fell in love with a person just with his IDEA of an ideal woman... (actually, my favorite Greek myths are and have always been 1) Psyche and Eros and 2) Atalanta. But I've always self identified with Cassandra.) 

Anyways. The wobble wasn't about you. Things just been wobbly recently. But making me rest and introvert recharge and eat some real good has helped immensely!  And, even when questioning leads to wobbles, I still think we're better for what the questions make us ask and how they make us (re)examine the assumptions at the foundations of the versions of ourselves we let us be.... 

I still have a lot to do editing and getting those poems in the order I want them to be for a 45-80pg first book of poetry and submission deadlin is midnight tonight.  And I have no excuses not to get SOMETHING submission ready by midnight. Even if not my best possible work (because for me my poetry has always been a second thought not my real work) you will always fail what you never even try to achieve. And I have more than 45pgs of poems, so I'm an idiot who deserves ally insults to myself if I don't even fucking submit anything, y'know?  

Right now I'm going to continue listening to Chopin Nocturnes while I finish this story in my reading this collection of classic Gothic ghost stories (literally a Scholastic Classics published hardbound book called "a ghost Stories that's purple with blue gilding on it and every story in it is Gothic/Romantic/Victorian era classic ghost stories) and drinking this last glass of wine and let the purring cat curled up on my lap keep sleeping there til I have a need to get up...but LATER damnit I'm going to have myself a manuscript of 45-80 pgs of poems (including table of contents) in some semblance of organized order that even if it isn't perfect is finished to submit by that midnight deadline because if I don't at least try for it, then I deserve whatever the world dishes out to me.... 

Also. Respect the spooky season. As much as I love me some autumn snow and I will be all in on the Christmas music and decorations in a week or so, Dia de los Muertos is until Nov. 2 and the veil stays thing in traditional Samhain celebrations until 15° Scorpio which is Nov. 7 on the modern calendar. So spooky season waits to start creeping in until AFTER lughnasadh and Yule season decorations wait until after 15° Scorpio, dang it! I usually wait til day after Thanksgiving for putting up holiday decoration, but no holiday lights til after veil thin spooky season ends and that isn't til 15° Scorpio, or Nov 7 if you want a date date damnit! 

P. S. If someone who can football better than I can could explain to me the Rasul Douglas trade to the Bills that the Packers announced today, I would greatly appreciate it. Like, he's one of the few players consistently playing good ball this season and NOT contributing to the team losses so we trade him to Buffalo Bills and a fifth round pick to gain a third round pick?!?! WTF?!?!?! Make it make sense to me..... Are we trying to suck as bad as possible this season so we can have a great hand for draft pick rebuild or wtf?!?!  We're not even halfway through the season to be giving up that badly.... Unless somebody got money on it, betting against them this season, I can't fathom it.