Last night's Packers loss, it's had me unable to sleep and deep in my feels because without them going into the playoffs, it may be the last time I ever get to watch a game with my Packers pup who picked out her own first jersey at her first Christmas and insisted she wanted it more than food and that it had to be the Packers jersey, not any other team and not any of the other shirts or outfits but the team jersey... And she gets so excited as soon as the weather gets football season crisp for her to wear her jersey and so depressed when the season ends and I switch her out of it. This year, I already decided that no matter how long or short the season, and no matter how sad seeing it makes other people for the season being over, Audrey will get to wear her jersey all the rest of winter. Because if she dies before the Spring, I want her to die wearing it and to be buried in it. Weirdly enough, Audrey insisted on needing to be a Packers pup the same season Brett retired and Aaron became starter -- with all the talk about if this might be his last season, with the Packers and playing football at all, it's making it hit even harder that Audrey may not make it to her next birthday let alone to next Packers season.....  

I mean, I'm very deep in my feels lately, all of December and January I'm in my feels about my dog's mortality. Ever since she stopped having her normal interest in food and I took her off the Prednisone because it was making her so depressed she didn't even care about the fresh snow. And baby girl LOVES the snow, it's always been one of the absolute favorite things ever. 25 hours after I decided to stop the Prednisone, just at the point it was cleared out her system, she got so happy and excited about the snow fall and she was back to her happy self instead of the numbed not caring depressed her.... And the thing is, she has so much joy in life (but especially snow, she's so upset it's all melted and the lack of snow is definitely not helping my sorrowing) and so much more energy than she's had since she got so sick over the summer from the salmonella peas -- but she's still hardly eating anything at all. And I KNOW corticosteroids depress her body's own production and it can be a month or more before her appetite comes back and I know that some of the lingering side effects like upset to her go can also take a month to heal.... But she's just eating so little... Sometimes when her breathing in her sleep gets shallow, I'll go check on her just to make sure she's still alive. And I'm also losing weight getting gaunt in the face right now since I've been pouring my energy into her to reduce inflammation and to block any tumor growths/shrink them and to reset her endocrine system and truth is I've hardly been eating much (I haven't gone grocery shopping or bought myself any food since I got back from Seattle.... Everything I've eaten has been something bought for me or made from what little stores I had in my pantry and freezer....) And I know that Audrey worries when I don't eat, she will refuse to eat until after she sees me eat when the ADHD hits strong and i forget to eat for too long... But it's more than that this time because she's refusing a lot of her treats as not of interest to her and not eating her kibble much at all, though she will eat pieces of pulled beef and steak and salmon and veggies off my plate. She's also generally been consistent about eating beef liver crunchies and the Stella & Chewies 93% beef and organs freeze dried meat mixers (which can count as meal substitutes but she not eating enough of it to count.) She's just not eating enough and she's feeling frail and I'm worried and facing her mortality. 

She doesn't have a blockage of any sort, ultra sound didn't indicate it and she's still pooping. It could be pancreatitis from the Prednisone or other gi inflammation, it could be diabetes though her blood sugar levels were fine her last CBC as was her liver and kidney function. It could be her age causing inappetence especially as taste/smell decrease with age, (and since dogs can get COVID, it's possible she has been exposed to it again and so food doesn't smell or taste good to her right now), it could be an internal bleed or cancer but it would take more extensive ultrasounds and MRIs to find that out and it wouldn't help to know other than for considering euthanasia because I refuse to put her on chemo drugs that would take away her remaining appetite and joie de vivre and  she's not a good candidate for surgeries between her age and her anemia/platelet issues... I wonder if she's having allergies to poultry after years of having issue with duck (but loving it) so I'm buying her kibbles and soft foods and treats with no chicken because that's what she'll eat when she will eat..... It's unclear WHAT her inappetence issues are, but she's old and everything is only palliative and making sure she has good quality of life anyway when a dog is as old as she is.... 

And it doesn't MATTER how damn much I tell myself or anyone else that the price of adopting a fur baby is the loss of them or that since she'll be 15 years old in March and I've had her since she was 12 weeks old, I've already had more time with her than most pet owners ever get and I know I'm spoiled and I should be grateful for all the time I've had.... But she's my baby girl who I got as a handful of puppy and she's the first animal I've ever had deeply bonded to just me (as opposed to my family growing up) and she's always been such a chow hound we joke about her having an inner lab and so it's so hard on me every time she refuses food.....because when a dog has no interest in food, it's usually the indication they're nearing the end.... And I just.... I already feel the brink of the hollows form in me at just the though of her absence from my life... It's there waiting for me. And every time I think how she if we don't get more snow soon she might never get to play and eat snow again or she might never get excited for touchdown treats for the Packers games next season or how maybe I should cancel her BarkBox before it renews in February or how soon I might never get to hold her and  cuddle her ever again, I just start crying and I can't help it or stop even by finding myself she's still here right now and I need to appreciate all the time and snuggles and walks and joy in food when I can get her to eat while she's still here. 

It's all the things that may be the last time with her and it's just breaking my heart making me cry so many oceans of tears I feel like I'm drowning in my hurt and grief. And I'm trying not to eat it bleed down any of my empathy bonds or show in my eyes when I make me go see people (mostly my parents and Crissy and Mikaela and Sarah and other coworkers. I ended my meet cute dating fling with the soccer player when Audrey started getting worse even with me being home now because I was too destabilized in my sorrow and anxiety over her and every time I wasn't with her I was regretting the time lost that I could never have back because it just feels so finite right now. Which wasn't fair to him, but also you can't bring someone into that deep end of grieving heart break on such a short term of acquaintance.) But it's always there right now threatening to spill over and out of my control and drown not just me but anyone with an empathy bond to me or who's empath enough to hear me broadcasting my sorrow and loss and I magnify all my emotions loud if I don't control them.... If you reach for me down the bond right now all you will get is deep oceans of sadness and impending loss and emptiness. 

And the thing is, other than the not eating enough, Audrey is doing really well and she's so happy and has souch joy in life and seeing everyone. And she's super cuddly snuggly again, which she stopped being while on Prednisone and in addition to Prednisone, aloofness is a common side effect for dogs. By every obvious indication other than the inappetence and how frail that's making her, Audrey is doing amazing and everyone remains surprised whenever I say her age because even if they'd guess senior dog they think maybe 8 years old.... And I myself have always jokignly insisted since she was a puppy that she would live to be 21.5 years young, and my Pisces pup is not yet 15..... And that wasn't a precog, just something I've always said about her. Just as I've said to her since she was a small puppy that if she still wants to be with me after this life of he's ends, she can find me again to be my dog or my child if I ever have children. It's not her soul that won't share time and life with me, but I will miss snuggling into her fur holding her and this personality version of her as joyous highly intelligent little bear luck dragon tomboy of a Pisces pup princess deeply soul bonded to me.... 

And yet, when I can't get her to eat enough or when she feels more frail to me than the day before, I keep thinking of all the things I'm not ready to be the last time I have with her and it starts me crying and feeling the future loss of her so keenly.... I've cried more tears since the start of the year over the potential imminence of my dog's mortality being sooner than I'm ready for than I cried tears in all of 2020-2022..... I don't think anyone understands how much I've been crying over the thought of losing my baby girl and all the "never agains" and having to bring her wrapped in a sheet or towel for my father and I to bury her in the backyard along with all our other fur babies who have passed away..... Every time I think on these things it starts me grieving and crying because I know that even if not this year, they're coming and they will happen and I will be deep in the hollows over the loss of my sweet puppy child.

All night since the loss I've been crying off and on about next Packers season maybe not having her with me and how I'm going to handle living in Wisconsin when every Packers jersey will make me mourn my dog. I'm crying about it again now while writing just thinking about how she might never see another Packers game now or get a Packers touchdown dance treat while I'm writing, even though she's curled up next to me in her bed using my left foot as her pillow in deep happy contented sleep. And it's stupid as it is inevitable for me to be drowning in such sorrow and sense of loss NOW while she's here with me..... But her not eating enough getting frail is pushing me to contemplate her mortality and all of the "last times" with her and how few and finite my moments remain to have her in my life at all.... Because I know the moments I'm seeing are coming for me even though I don't know if they are this year or in a future year. And those with the gift of prophecy always grieve and mourn out of sync with the flow of time's passage.... 

I am grateful not to have many concerts or major travel plans or even fest season holding much for me this coming year.  As much as my heart breaks about being with her or the one it find her when her time comes, it devastates me far more to think of her dying in my absence knowing that I am the center of her world and how desperately she misses me and longs for me and gets depressed in my absence.... I just wish she would eat so it wouldn't be so omnipresent with me thinking about all the last times she and I will get to do certain things together... Because if she can get through this month, I think she'll be back to her self-regulated pre Prednisone levels of health and with my healing her she will get better enough to still have years of life in her - but I'm really uncertain if she can make it through this month and then to her next birthday. I don't think she could without me here spending so much time with her and pouring souch energy into her.... 

But yeah, if you've been getting waves of ineffable deep sorrow and grief and loss that you feel like you'll drown in since just after the New Year, that would be me facing the mortality of my dog because she's hardly eating much at all right now and it's got me thinking about how I'm approaching all of the last times with her for everything she loves brings us joy and how finite my remaining time is with her and me acknowledging to myself how deep into the hollows (where the numbness of nothing touches my heart protects me from drowning in my grieving) I'll go when her absence is real not just somewhere in the future nebulous. That's me, that's my grief at the potential of these being the last times and the heartache on the horizon. If you don't want to be swamped by sorrows, I'm sorry but my only advice is that if you can't shut off the bond to me you at least refrain from reaching down it if you can't swim in the depths of feeling grief and loss completely as deep as it goes.... 

I don't have any songs or music for this grieving or to help lighten it for me. And just like I won't be able to see anyone wearing a Packers jersey without wanting to cry after my baby girl dies, it will be many many long years before I'll be able to listen to Billy Joel songs without thinking of her and breaking down. Which given my deep love for both the Packers and Billy Joel is going to be hard on me, no matter how near or far my baby girl's death day is.... It would be nice to have music to turn to when I hurt like this, I have in the past but right now there's no songwriter or vocalist who fills those holes in my heart and soothes me when I'm upset like this.  There were, but, for reasons I've stated in the past, those songs no longer bring me joy or peace as they did. I can't love your songs if I can't respect or admire you as a human....if you cross that and don't make things right, you take away any comfort present or future that your music could ever hold for me. Even when I need it most toa other my heart's aching, the songs I once loved or could have loved won't work any magic on me so long as I can't respect the creator of it. (But I'd give just about anything to be able to turn to Meaning of It All on repeat right now for some soul comfort while I'm grappling with the 50ft waves of this grief that feels like it might drown me in the futures that will be but aren't yet.)

Audrey's holding on, in hope and joy despite her body failing her, for something or someone. But I don't know what or why. All I know is that other than whatever has her holding on still, she wants to be near me and with me and if she wakes up to find I'm not nearby she sets off to find me or to keep watching the door for my return. 

We had a difficult winter. We had rough few months. When the storms came in off the coast, It felt like they broke everything on us at once. It's easy enough to talk about Blitz spirit, When you're not holding the roof up and knee deep in it. And the pictures and the papers got ruined by the rain, And we wondered if they'd ever get dry again. But I don't want spend the whole of my life indoors, Laying low, waiting on the next storm. I don't want spend the whole of my life inside, I wanna step out, and face the sunshine. We lost faith in the omens. We lost faith in the Gods. We just ended up clutching at the empty rituals, Like gamblers clutching long odds....

 As the year closes out, I decided I didn't like where and how I left this. It never was nor has been my desire to use my words to cut in ways to hurt Eric, though I know sometimes they do because I have a tendency to bring the hidden things into the light and speak even the hardest of truths because without facing the hidden  there is no healing. 

I can't help that -- much as I dislike injustice and intentional cruelty because Libra sun with Pisces ascendant, the most dominant in my chart placements are actually fire even though all the fire placements in my chart are in Sag with my Sag placement stellium (my Mars and Neptune being an exact conjunction at 28 degrees and only 8 degrees from my Sag midheaven, although my 10th house stellium has my exact degree Mars-Neptune and then my Capricorn Jupiter) even though it's none of them in my core "defining" inner house placements of SMRV -- followed by water with my 8th house Scorpio stellium (Venus, Saturn, and Pluto) and Pisces ascendant. I communicate via air given Libra sun and Mercury and a third house Chiron in Gemini, and my emotions and karma lines are in earth because Capricorn moon and Jupiter with a north node at 28 Taurus. (There's that 28 degree again, a perfect number and an old soul degree of perfectionism nearly anaretic degree placement. 28 degree influence of perfectionism nearly the fated 29 degree on my Mars, my Neptune, my North node and my south node..... It's a lot I know.). Anyway, just trust me, my presence or my observation drags the hidden things that need to die/rebirth into the light of truth to be faced or outed. It's karmically one of the things I do merely by existing as a Hand of Ma'at. No intentions or judgement, just fulfilling a need and catalyzing the growth/change of bringing the darkest secrets into the light to be cleansed by truth speaking and true seeing. (It's exhausting tbh. But I don't know how to turn it off, that's beyond my abilities or gifts while I'm in the cycle of souls. As long as I'm incarnating, it will be a side effect of my proximity or my attention. The more you want your shame hidden, the more it will insist on coming into the light of public view to be healed once I'm in the picture -- even tangentially.)

But the prominent Sag stellium and Scorpio stellium are why when you get me mad, I have my fiery temper and my cold frozen anger but both will manifest in me saying to your face all the hidden truths you're not ready to acknowledge regardless the damage being seen so clearly will do to you. Libra Mercury and Capricorn moon with a Sag Mars exact conjunct to Neptune and an eighth house Scorpio stellium -- the more you want something to be hidden or are ashamed of the worst in you, the more my presence will bring it into the light for an opportunity of karmic transmutation.  

But. I just. I didn't LIKE that the last thing I had shared here before setting it private was so hurtful toward my polar bear. Because. The thing is, I don't blame him or judge him for his choices that let the glacial ice form -- I love him more dearly than I have ever loved another incarnating soul in all the time that he and I have been walking this planet in all our myriad incarnations. It's just.... I love him enough to respect his free will choices as his to make even if they require I let him go. Even if it means letting him go with NO CERTAINTY of when or how our paths can cross again, only a deep and abiding faith in his stubbornness and determination once he sets his heart on something he will never rest until he reaches it and thus no matter how far or how wyrd I wander, eventually when he tires of the distractions and realizes the distance grown between us he'll seek me and not give up until he finds me again no matter what path it takes to get him there. I can't tell you when or how because I don't know, especially since this is a fucking fluxy tangled nexus of fatelines AND I have no insights for how infatuated he IS with his distractions and siren song illusions and how long that will last.... But I know it's right for me to let him go to pursue that if it's what he wants while it's what he chooses for himself. And I know that if or when he chooses me again, there is no force in any realm that can stop him following the tug of the bond between us until he finds a way of reaching me, not even the vastness of space-time itself. 

It's not because I don't love him that I turn away to pursue other things, it's because of how deeply I love him and trust him and believe his free will choices are sacrosanct even when the consequences make things more difficult than they ever needed to be. It's not that it doesn't hurt like a missing limb to turn down paths without him, because it does. And it's not that I don't WANT him to choose me, now and always and in every fucking chance the fatelines give us on our paths. And it's not that sacrificing my faith that this life we could be together in reality in the 3d and grow old together isn't the hardest thing I've ever given up in this entire life.... It's just.... My love for him is deeper and my faith in him stronger and my karmic true sight empathy to accept that whatever he chooses is something his soul needs for his own growth or healing is so much bigger than any of that hurting or desiring or pain of sacrificing. It's that depth of love strength of faith in him and understanding that his growth/healing matters more than my selfishness that stopped me from breaking the glacial ice never of my choosing -- and it's those same forces gave me strength to turn away to fight and work with the Goddess and other incarnated deities/fey to make choices only an incarnating soul can act on to keep the balance of creation unfolding. Same as on the first dream it was our shared love and longing reaching through that shattered the glacial ice for him to walk the path I was on rather than need to find another lengthy way around for our paths to cross. 

But it was neither lack of love nor any sort of moral judgement that is why I accepted the ice forming of his choices and finally reached an inner point of acknowledging I couldn't wait longer while he was infatuated with the distractions and illusions after losing his true sight... It was the love that can let the beloved go when that's their choice and still have hope and faith that somehow they'll find their way back to you when that's what they want and need for their own truest happiness. 

And I really DO have things I've been neglecting and work I need to do and tests I need to pass and lessons of my own to work on -- and yes battles and healing and teaching and awakening gifts in the dormant seeds I've spent centuries planting for exactly this crucible point in history. I really do have to stop expending energy writing here and I need to stop staring sadly and impotently through the glacial ice formed of his repeated choices. I don't actually shoot the bolt into the demon-nephilim that's here until next life -- even the earliest vision dreams of it I had, I was a different me and my current father will be my older brother and Eric will be my twin and I will die young again after loosing the bolt that can destroy it force it to face the light of Creation and karmic judgement as it is now.... This is still a reward life and I still have seeds to plant and things to set in motion and this life gets to be as long as possible provided my other two conditions are met that any soul seeking me be able to find me and that I live this entire life surrounded in love of me qua me, not idols or ideas of me but love for me as I am in this life living my truest truth I can.

Also. Every time I delve deeply into my love of emo punk rock and pop-punk music, we are 3-6 months out from economic crises that are going to upend the monetary system and bankrupt millions/billions and lose all their monetary life savings. If you're attached to money/fame cycles of dharma, I've been on my All-American Rejects, Frank Turner, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, The Killers, Panic! At the Disco playlists like mad for the last week or so....  Sorry but this is the closest you'll get to prophecy on that, it's not emotionally relevant enough to me for true precogs if the dirty money systems collapse... More concerningly, I've been migraine-y and today was having fainitng spells again. Every time I have fainting spells right before New year's, society leveling major events happen the following year. Such as 9/11 (that was the year I spent New Year's Eve in the hospital after fainting and they ran tons of tests and brain scans and ekgs and I was diagnosed with a condition that in lay terms means "you are a perfectly healthy young woman between 12 and 40 who passes every test and is fainting for no known medical reason." I also had fainting spells right before the drone wars started. The fainting spells right before New year's Day seem tied to changes in polotico-war machine society level. The emo punk music is my eff you to the collapsing monetary structures. All signs are pointing to 2023 is going to be insane -- even compared to the last few years preamble....

I really will be closing this down to private with the close of the year. I have to. I have other things to do that need my focused intention and gift with words I have wasted so frivolously these last years hoping for a miracle shift before I finally came to accept that I must now turn away from the ice too thick for either of us alone to get through and I must release him from any assumptions of selfish claims of desire on my side so he can pursue whatever and whoever he chooses to bring him the happiness he seeks right now. 

The Goddess has let me wallow in self pity and frustrated desire long enough and I have work to do if I don't want to make all my past lives plans and efforts and seeds come to naught because I miss a hop to navigate the stepping stone path to safety through the fatelines. It's time for me to let go and pour my energies and my words into what I can touch and transform and heal and help grow. I've waited too long for him to choose differently instead of accepting him as the version he lets himself be this life and the choices he makes for himself and the lessons/healing he needs to learn on his own soul path. But I do so with nothing in my heart but the deepest love for him, the strongest faith in his ability to know his own mind and needs, and the only wish I have inside me to make on any falling stars or dandelions gone to seed: That he find the happiness he seeks and have the courage to claim it for the center of his life -- no matter what that means for him and who he is in this life.

And. Just. I didn't. I mean I don't. I don't want anyone walking into the new year under any mistaken beliefs that I don't love my polar bear more than I could ever find the words to articulate and that I still want him more than I want anything this modern world holds except for the one thing I can't give him if I'm not what he wants enough to choose in his life: the happiness he seeks and chooses for himself this life. I wanted to make sure it was understood that my releasing him and not letting him reach me unless/until he's ready to choose me for himself of his own free will is about me desiring his happiness he seeks more than I desire my own selfishness to be fulfilled. It's his life, his choices to follow whatever damn path he chooses for himself. I trust him to know better than me what he wants and needs for his soul path -- and I won't stand in the way of any choices he makes for himself even when I can see the consequences of them but my true sight and gift of prophecy were never among the things considered or weighed among the factors that led to his choices 

Farewell and may you find me in my wandering whenever you are ready to seek me. And most of all, may the new year bring you ever closer to your heart's truest desire, whatever that may be for you. Only you can ever know the deepest truths of what that is, only you can choose to manifest the magic of it into the reality of the quotidian. And I hope that my blessings are enough at parting to help you see the lights on the path you choose and to recognize your own North star when you think to look for it.

Au revoir, mon cher. But, hold the faith that despite any odds stacked against it there will be a revoir, that we will see each other again. 

"So open the shutters, raise up the mast

Rejoice, rebuild, the storm has passed.

Cast off the crutches, cut off the cast,

Rejoice, rebuild, the storm has passed.

Rejoice, rebuild, the storm has passed.

I don't want to spend the whole of my life indoors,

Laying low, waiting on the next storm.

I don't want to spend the whole of my life inside

I wanna step out, and face the sunshine. 

I'm not gonna live the whole of my life indoors

I'm gonna step out, and face the next storm."

[Post title and end quotation: lyrics to the Frank Turner song The Next Storm. My love of Frank's songs and live shows is 14 years strong, since the release of Love, Ire & Song -- not everyone chooses to ostracize me and have karma judge their works for the cruelty of their choices. Some people stay true to their ethics and light up that in a sea of odds against them their soul crossed paths with mine once more. Before this life, I hadn't crossed paths with Frank since that tavern in Elizabethan London, lol. But not everyone forgets or turns on their old teachers because they don't want their family/friends to know the truths of their cruelty and bad behavior patterns of bullying so they lie and gaslight and victim blame and rationalize to themselves/their loved ones to try to hide the truths rather than bring the poison to the light so it can be healed. I mean, serendipity lives on my left shoulder and karma on my right, encountering me is a catalyst for choosing to grow or repeat old toxic patterns -- but everything you do while I'm around or even more especially actions you do to me get immediate review and rewarded with instant karma cause and effect. I can't control it, it just happens around me, and I can't make your choices for you. But you're fake as fake can be with no real spiritual gifts if you claim to be a witch but can't see karma shining around me and sense the Goddess always protecting me.... You reap what you sow far faster once you cross my path, but it's always about your choices and your actions -- make different choices if you want a happier karmic cause and effect for your works.  But that was never a concern with Frank. I only had unalloyed joy when I first heard his songs found him on BBC Radio stream on the internet back in college. Frank by all his names in all his lives thus far is a good egg and true all the way through with the most unshakeable ethics and wanderlust of any imp incarnating in the cycle of souls. And his songs delight me for that, always and still!]

 I had a related vision dream last night. Not the part of watching/checking in on the polar bear through the ice at varying levels of thickness which I've had many times intermittently over the last six months or so. This vision dream is from earlier. Or before. Or...however time works in vision dreams?...  This one is/was/will be from when the glacial ice was just starting to form and so thin it wasn't even turning blue yet and I could easily have broken it barehanded with no effort. And I was staring through it thinking about breaking it, about how much I hated it and wanted to break it. But I didn't. because this was his free will choices and who was I to tell him it was a mistake even if it was lies and illusions? Still, I had my hands in fists ready to punch through the thin ice forming.

That was when The Goddess appeared behind me and told me, "You can break it easily now, you can keep breaking it -- but that won't get you what you want and it will mean standing here breaking that ice as it forms over and over until he tires of his distractions and remembers you. Which won't be for a while -- see that lamprey twined around him and feeding on him? He's infatuated with her and she's making him soul sick. he won't see the distractions with true sight so long as he thinks he's in love with the lamprey feeding on him. Still, you can break that ice of his choosing. If you want. If you don't break it, it will keep growing. if you do break it, the ice will keep growing back to cover this entrance for as long as he keeps making these life choices and idolizing people and things that make him soul sick. No matter what you do with the ice his choices are forming, you can't make his choices for him and you know why you won't try to change them while it's what his free will chooses. So what do you choose, my Hiereia?"

I stopped from lifting my balled fist to smash the ice as I'd been about to do before The Goddess appeared. And I turned to her and said, "Destroying this ice over and over and over never knowing when my task will be done is pointless torture from Tartarus. I don't want that for me. But what else is there for me to do while he's trapped by his own willful blindness to the siren song illusions?"

She smiled at me and everything was brighter than the full moon and she said, "There's my chosen makheteia!" Then she pulled from the air a bright shining leaf blade sword and turned it to hand me hilt first and laconically said, "We have a demon nephilim to hunt and slay. You marked it for me to hunt and unravel the harm it's done so far and you placed boundary limits on its reach to spread poisons which I can enforce -- but by the rules of incarnation I need an incarnating soul ready to battle it with me for us to expel it and defeat it. So. if not you, then who?"

I grasped the hilt and with a wry half smile said, "That is my question. If not me then who? Especially since I'm the one who found it. When we're done, will you bring me back here for when he's ready to see through the illusion and is looking for me again?" 

The Goddess nodded her head, "So mote it be. I will return you to this spot in Divine Timing and you can make your choices based on what you find at that time." 

"Thank you Artemis Britomartis." Then I gave a heavy sigh and said, "Can you show me, just for a moment, how he sees what he's choosing? Before you return to me my true sight."

She looked sad and said, "I will, for I love you as I love myself. But it won't help anything or make you feel better to see the lamprey and the minnow sirens how he sees them."

And she did. And it didn't make anything better, but it helped me understand why the polar bear was spending his time and frittering his life away the way he was choosing. I did ask her, "Why does the lamprey look so much like me in his false sight?"

She said quite seriously, "Because he still seeks you but he's scared and feels old guilt so he doesn't think he deserves you. So he has found one who reminds him of you and is trying to convince himself she's what he's always sought. Even though in truth she is a lamprey, a vampire fish gorging on his life force who will bleed him dry if he doesn't see her truth in time. This is not the first time he has made such a choice. Perhaps it will be his last. Perhaps not. This is his karmic pattern to break and it's what has kept him from you since he handed you over to be burned even after you warned him with the prophecy it was what his lord would do with you if he kept his liege troth. What one regrets doing isn't the same lesson as what one refuses to ever do again. He has learned the first, he doesn't realize he has learned the second. And since you are under my protection, I won't let him reach you while he thinks he might still choose to be the reason you burn or lie to himself about his choices."

And she was right. I guess I had just hoped he had learned but it was clear from his choices over this year that he has not yet learned. And I understood also why it would be so hard for him to choose differently. And I wondered how thick the glacial ice would grow by the time I returned.... But this wasn't my fight and nothing I could do could make him ready to see through the illusions to the truth until he would be ready. So I squared my shoulders, took a deep breath and belted my sword on and turned back, "I'm ready. Let us hunt."

She held up her hand and reminded me, "You've lost your bow and the fang tipped Arrow of Lerna. You can't kill this demon without it."

I looked around for it and realized she was right. But I shrugged and said, "You and your brother have always been the truest shot. Why should we need my shot? Why not have the best archers take theirs instead."

She just shook her head at me and reminded me, "You are the Pythia. You chose to incarnate for that reason. Only your shot as an Incarnating soul can win this hunt, no matter how many arrows me and my brother loose in the demon. Stop trying to hand your shot off to others -- you're the one marked after you chose this path."

I made a face and said, "I know. So where are my bow and the Arrow of Lerna now?" 

She smiled again, "Right where you left them." When I didn't do anything but look confused she sighed in exasperation before she said, "Here." And just like with my sword, she pulled them out of the air and handed them to me, then made a face and pulled forth a horn quiver so I didn't have to carry it all. "How annoying it must be to choose to be mortal and have to carry your weapons everywhere, to not be able to let the pockets between space/time hold your things."

I laughed, the first genuine laugh since she had found me there pensively staring through the ice at the polar bear, "Isn't that what you deities and fée do for me? Disappear my things into the pockets of space-time until I ask for them or you decide I need them back?"

She grinned at me, all brightness cutting through shadows again, "Yes. I certainly do. And I know others among us do. You have many friends and allies across these lifetimes you've chosen to incarnate. Which makes your allies my allies, even the ones I wouldn't have chosen." Then she became serious again,  took a step toward me and gestured for me to come to her said, "Now. We go to my brother where he stands watch over the wards you put around this demon nephilim to try to contain it. And don't worry. I will make certain you return here when it is time for choosing. You've already been here when you're meant to be and you will be again. When the time is right. When he sees the illusions with his true sight and he's ready to free himself from what he has chosen for himself and his life." 

Then The Goddess hugged me and kissed my forehead in benediction and everything turned to the brightest light. And I woke up still feeling The Goddess with me and Her protection surrounding me. It was 3:33 according to the clock.

And in me, after talking to The Goddess, I felt peace over my decision to release him from all expectations in this life and my choice of boundary to not let him reach for me down the bond until he's ready to choose to seek me out have me in his actual life.

And I do have a hunt or be hunted battle ahead of me, one I've known to be inevitable for a long time and I've been taking steps to neutralize the demon nephilim over the last year or so as I found it in an unexpected place. Remember when I mentioned that I sicced Durga on something that i was working on and the Hindu Goddess who is all the warrior goddesses in one thanked me told me it took me long enough to ask her. And it's where I should be focusing my time/energy, especially while he's choosing to fill his life with a lamprey twining herself around him feeding on his energy making him so soul sick that he believes minnows are seals. Luckily, I have some damn fucking strong allies in Spirit. Including The Goddess, who has always watched over me in all my incarnations. 

 Also. This post makes 999 posts/drafts here. And that feels the right number to close the chapter. After this post, I will close this window into me and leave it closed. It is time and past time and all that needed to be shared here has been. 

 Y'know those times when you get like 4 hours of sleep and wake up at the witching hour but you feel wide awake and rested and you don't think going back to sleep is a good idea because your alarms are set to get up again in just a couple hours and going back to sleep will mean the wrong amount of sleep so you'll be groggy and cranky all day no matter what you do -- so you just get up and make a cuppa tea and light some candles to start your day in the hours before dawn? Okay maybe you don't, maybe that's just a me thing. but it's a thing that happens with me and today was one of those mornings. But it's good I gave me some introvert recharge hours to myself to reflect and meditate (this morning my thoughts were on the plasticity of human consciousness and the truth that the more times you listen to the same lie the deeper you come to believe it EVEN IF there is no actual proof beyond the repetitions -- repetition is the key to change most people's moral codes and belief systems, not truths) and wake up before having to be at my parents house at 7:45 and then all day with people before I can have any introvert time again. My mom tried to tell me again recently that I wasn't always such an introvert, that it's gotten worse because I used to be more sociable as a child -- at which point I asked her, "Don't you remember all the times I'd run away and no one could find me because I was hiding in a closet or the space under a set of stairs or behind all the coats or in the rooms where the pets were locked away from the guests? Don't you remember how before I could even walk, I would crawl away from the party when you had people over to go hide under a table to sleep so you always had to look under tables to find me? Don't you remember all the times where I'd stand up with no warning and blurt out that I was going to go outside to play and you'd find me alone in the woods or by the lake talking to ducks or in a garden talking to the flowers or hiding up a tree with a book -- and I wouldn't come back until the sun started to set or everyone came shouting looking for me? Don't you remember all the times in middle school and high school you called me anti social because after dinner I preferred to be alone in my room than downstairs watching TV with everyone else? I've always been an introvert -- you just never noticed because I was polite and curious and talked to the adults for a bit before I'd get overwhelmed and run away."  She was just like, "O right. You have always done those things...." 

Anyway. This morning I woke up so suddenly from a vision dream with the polar bear in it. Or maybe it was the cat woke me up. Or both. But the dream stuck with me. So, there was thick turquoise glacial ice across the cave/path opening between me and the bear and it was constantly thickening like the slow accumulating growth of glaciers and he didn't even notice or care because he was distracted trying to catch all these illusory fish that kept sliding through his paws that were siren singing how they were great big seals but when you looked at them with true sight they were less than minnows or sprats and that's why they kept sliding away between his paws no matter how many he caught...... And finally I decided to stop waiting because I was tired of waiting and being ignored and it was cold and growing darker and I was hungry. Only there was no food right on my side of the ice except I could see further up the path was a berry bush so I turned away from the ice and the bear it was starting to obscure to leave. the polar bear saw me turning away to leave and came running over upset he only just realized the glacial ice had grown between us, started scratching attacking at the ice that had built up with such a furious intensity like he'd gone mad now that he'd noticed it was forming there. I just watched the frenzy of his attacking the ice and I did nothing, because after all he was the one who let the glacier form between us, that was what he'd chosen and wanted right up until the moment I turned to leave. Finally he stopped when I turned once more to head away down the path open to me and he gave one really loud bellowing roar of so much hurt that I startled and stopped in my tracks at the pain in his voice over that glacial ice and me walking away. So I looked back over my shoulder at the noise and he was just sat there unmoving,  looking so sad and defeated hanging his head against his chest.... And that pulled at my heart in a way that all that fury at the results of his own choices hadn't so I turned back toward him once more to at least give a proper farewell instead of just disappearing and I walked back over to the glacier ice that was already reforming around the scars of all those deep claw gouges. And I put my hand up against the ice at heart height and said, "O silly bear. I never wanted this either. But what did you think would happen given the choices you made with all those distractions? You'll have to find another way around and hope it crosses my path somewhere ahead." And he heaved a big heavy sigh and a tear slid out his eye and the bear put his paw on the exact spot on the other side of the ice where my hand was. And then we both leaned into our hands for just a moment, but a long moment because it was before I thought I was turning to go again and I didn't know when I'd see him next but my side of the ice had no food and I had to go find some. And just before I removed my hand to leave, the ice cracked radially, in a spiral pattern from where our palms were and then from the outer curve of the spiral it had rays like sunbeams beyond the spiral. And the whole wall of ice from the glacial formation shattered and when it did the inside of my left forearm got scratched near the elbow by the falling ice as it exploded along those cracks. And I saw the bear start to come rushing through the hole even as the ice was starting to drip threatening to re form. Just then I glanced away down at my bleeding left arm and open palm -- and then I woke up to my cat jumping right up on the bed next to my head staring into my eyes and chirping, "Mryeowl?" And then when I said, "Hey Spock. I was having a vision dream and don't know how it ends. I don't know if the bear made it through to reach me on my side or not." he decided to try to walk over me to lay on my chest but he slipped on the curve of my shoulder where the collarbone is and tried to catch himself but slid more on the curve of my arm and ended up scratching my left arm with his hind claws exactly where I still felt the phantom wound from the ice cutting me when it shattered.... When I checked my arm, there were no visible marks and the cat didn't break the skin when his hind legs slipped like that, but it still FEELS like it's been torn open and is healing up the cuts....

Anyway. I'm up and dressed and ready and breakfasted on some bread and butter (which I shared with the animals) and now I'm just sitting around drinking coffee wondering how the dream ends and contemplating what it means and when it means -- does it mean now or in the future? And is that near future or far future? Or is it already too late for breaking that glacial ice so now the bear will have to find the long way round? Is it promise or warning or what's going on in the deeps under the surface where even I can't see it? I don't know... Vision dreams exist somewhere beyond and outside normal flow of time, somewhere in the unending long now. They always do.... I think I'm going to read the next comic in Endless Nights to distract me from my overthinking and contemplating and questions I can't (yet) answer. I'm not letting me read more than one in a sitting because some of them are new to me first reads to savor and these are the last last until I do another re-read of all of The Sandman graphic novels.

I hope the snow stays. It's supposed to warm up to almost 40 the next couple days and then rain for a few days turning to mixed precipitation then snow. I'd rather it just stayed snow..... Everything is brighter and more full of hope in my world when there's snow to tuck in all the resting trees and sleeping roots and seeds under the white blanket that protects them from the cold until Spring thaw. So I hope it shifts enough to get colder so we can keep the snow and all that promised precipitation next week will be snow and not the desultory blahs of drab December rains instead of bright sparkly snow.... It's December after all, colder and snow instead of rain, please and thank you.  It will keep me from getting restless and impulsive for sheer fractiousness at the lack of snow. 

 For the record, my snow giddies have absolutely nothing to do with either a) the dinner date or anything related to that or b) any of the sword edged truths and intuitive knowings from last night which I still am keeping to myself at this time. My snow giddies are just a thing unto themselves. Always have been. 

I just get extremely luminously incandescently joyous whenever it snows. It's like the most beautiful benediction and blank slate and reminder of just how improbable the beauty that IS and how lucky I feel to get to experience it.... It's just something that has always delighted me in a deeply spiritual beaming joy and love into the world way every time I get to experience snowfall. It's totally a me thing -- I have had more than one ex get jealous over how happy the snow makes me and wondering why I never would light up like that seeing him. Which is a pretty fair critique of me not having as much emotional investment as I should have -- but also snow is the most magical and beautiful thing!!! It beautifies everything it touches and ti fills one with wonder in the Creation and how physics can make something so wondrously beautiful from two of the most basic and life giving atoms: Hydrogen and oxygen.... I mean, there's so much that fills me with gratitude and wonder that it IS despite all the odds against its existence. But fresh falling snow is always one of them. And it doesn't come when people order it, it happens when the conditions and tiing align, but then nothing can stop it. And it's a beauty that's free for everyone. The snow falling while I was out in Kirkland made my brother-in-law say with wonder while we were waiting at the bus stop with Jack, "You are just so giddy right now. I've never seen an adult with an ear to ear grin from something so simple and free." I mean, this is the sort of luminous full of wonder and starlight in my soul that snow falling makes me feel -- from today:

Whenever I'm watching snow fall or especially when I'm out in it, I just have the biggest ear to ear grin that I can't stop even when my cheeks ache from smiling so hard.

Things that are beautiful in their inteinsic ISNESS make me shine super bright with joy that they exist. I can't stand fake fronting lies and hypocrites, but things thay are genuine unto themselves and their own truth? Every time I see them I shine in my delight over the beauty of that defiance of isness.... Especially something as full of sparkly magic as fresh snow. Ain't nothing any oil baron heiress investors or musk worshipping crypto douchebag dude bros (both these types of shallow ego driven self-centered humans give me intensely visceral icks due to their moral relativism and soul sickness and I want nothing to do with them and I do everything I can to minimize them crossing my life path) can buy with all their ill gotten millions that can create from nothing the incadescant joy that I feel from something so simple and miraculous as snow falling and the beauty it paints on everything it touches.... I wouldn't sell the light in my soul for anything they could offer. And they have offered this life. I should tell you the full story sometime about when I was visiting my friend Fred who lives central Manhattan and while I was wandering my own discoveries while Fred was at work, I got pulled into some expensive prestigious invite only club because some young stockbroker in a suit saw me walking by and offered me however much I asked to have a drink with him and smile at him the way I had been smiling at a tree and the flowers by it. I got angry and said nothing while the lights all flickered in the building and one of the crystals in the chandelier shattered and dropped to the floor between us before I controlled my temper flare enough to raise my chin and look him in the eyes tell him, "My smiles and my time are not for sale. I give them to those who deserve them." Then I turned on my heel and walked out and the lightbulbs by the door fried themselves as I passed by... Not my finest moment as far as controlling my temper -- but you should have heard Fred howl with laughter until he cried when he heard the story. And then I let Fred take me to a French restaurant we'd been to with another friend who was in town from Paris and pay for the celebratory French bubbly.  And then we went to his favorite piano bar (a gay piano bar with a lot of show tune, Fred being a mostly gay bi man, where people actually sounded amazing singing along and everyone gave me the biggest grins and hugs like we were old friends the second night we ended up there. 

What can I say? You can take the girl out of France but you can't take the French standards of class and disdain for the tasteless ostentation of the nouveau riche out of the girl. My soul has been french too many time and this body is of French descent -- there's a vinyard with award winning wines and an ancient castle in Gascogne with my family's name on it from back when they were border march mercenaries. (There actually is, though the castle is closed for some refurbishment until the summer and most of it is of later date but a small portion of it goes back to the 12th century  -- and it has ties to the brother of Jeanne d'Arc and there's a room where local legend says she stayed. I've never yet been to visit it this life, but it's beautiful and they host the most gorgeous weddings.... I'm also distantly related to the family that brought tulips to Netherlands and there's a very famous garden in the Netherlands named for that merchant branch. but I don't talk about him much because he was also a slave trader...)  but I'm descended from the black sheep of the family who fell in love with an aerialist acrobat and so he ran away with the Russian circus and that's how he ended up stateside. My family lineage on every side of the family is so fucking weird -- the truth is even weirder than the family stories... There's a reason everyone in my family are non-conformist characters.)

But anyway. Fresh falling snow lights me up with joy and so far, none of my exes manage to hit that incandescent joy and wonder that their isness IS in my life despite all the odds against it.  It's why I go through long bouts of deciding to stay single so as not to break hearts of people who I like well enough but know aren't meant for me. I dislike hurting people, and breakups always involve hurting people and as a precog, it makes me feel guilty when I can see the end before the beginning. I've promised myself never again will I date if I can see the end before the beginning, though I allow me to still go out with them if I see the end after the first couple dates because at least then I went into it without knowing I'd only hurt the guy who could make me "happy enough for a time."  I mean, like, there's "happy enough" and then there's what lights your soul incandescent. And most of my dating has been people who I "loved well enough" and who made me "happy enough" but not anyone who makes me light up with incandescent joy even as much as snow makes me light up. 

So anyway, this morning's transcendant brightness that left no room in me for any anger was entirely about the snow and the beauty and wonder of it. Had nothing to do with last night's dinner date.

I should finish this tea and head home fairly soon though... I need to head to my parents house early in the morning unless the weather makes it a bad idea to head up to green Bay for my cousin Teddy and his fiancée Felicia's baby shower for little Winston.  Even though it will affect me watching World Cup and the most important game to me so far (France v. England) I will Tubi the matches (half hour after a match ends, FOX puts the full match of every World Cup match up on Tubi for free in the USA) after the fact or watch with my mom once we're back. On verra.  But there's a non-zero possibility of freezing rain, freezing fog, mixed precipitation, and/or snow between here and Green Bay before we'd get back. So on verra.

IT'S SNOWING!!!! IT'S SNOWING!!!! ITS SNOWING!!!! 

O BUT I'M SO HAPPY I HAVE THE SHINIEST BRIGHTEST SNOW GIDDIES!!!!!!!! MY SOUL FEELS LIKE IT'S MADE OF STARLIGHT AND IT'S ONLY THE MOST INCREDIBLE LUCK THAT MY BODY CAN CONTAIN ALL THE LIGHT AND JOY BEAMS OF MY BEING!!!!!!

IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE UP TO LIKE 4 INCHES OF SNOW BEFORE THE DAY IS OVER!!!!!

I can't wait until the sun comes up and it's light enough for me to take my dog on a snow frolic!!!! Pisces pup loves snow walks even more than rainy day rambles, even in her old age. 

I had some things I realized last night at the end of my dinner date and then further epiphanies/intuitive knowings across the hours I couldn't sleep for my excited anticipation over the snow on today's forecast. I wrote the realizations out, but they are truths that cut like swords and if anyone isn't yet ready to hear or face them than they could cut deeply enough to cause significantly more harm than good. And I only speak the truths that cut to wound when there's a chance those truths spoken could help heal by lancing the infection or if you goad me to either my hot anger or my cold anger. 

Me losing my temper, even flickers of annoyance or irritation, is my hot anger and burns palpably like a wildfire until it burns itself out and it tends to spill over manifest in destroying lightbulbs and frying electronics  and shattering glass/ceramics along their flaws with the sheer power of the energy behind it. You never know what it might destroy while it reigns unchecked, but it is easily put out by throwing water on it if you deal with whatever set me off to lose control of my temper -- and once it burns itself out it's nothing but ashes and things I need to repair after my hot anger broke them. Most of the times you ever see me angry or irked it will be my hot anger you have to deal with.  But I have another kind of anger inside me and that is my cold anger, my righteous anger, and it is usually acts of injustice or intentional cruelty or bullying that bring it out. It's a ruthless emotionless pitiless sort of anger -- when it takes the reins then I let Ma'at speak karmic justice through me as if the person faces the scales of judgement now as they are. I speak all the truths a person is unwilling and scared to face about themselves and I prophecy for them their future fateline if they don't change course to be better. And I say all of it with no emotion, just matter of fact as if it's a truth that everyone sees and knows but nobody has cared about them enough to tell them. I don't recommend goading me to any type of anger, I say truths that people can't yet face and I won't care the damage they cause while I'm angry. But my cold anger, my righteous anger, is by far the scarier of the two -- because the Divine speaks through me and sees you and all the truths you want to bury are presented to you as if everyone knows them as your true identity and then you are "gifted" the knowledge of your fate if you don't choose to be better than the version of you that goaded me to my place of cold righteous anger. 

And the truths I wrote before, they were sword edged deadly truths. The kind I carry and use if angered and cornered. But I'm not even the slightest bit angry about anything right now, I'm full of bright joy and snow giddies and delight in the beauty of the world. It is not my wish to hurt anyone, not even with truths they should know but aren't yet ready to face. Right now I'm extra shiny bright rejoicing in the fresh falling snow and that I am lucky enough to live the moments of today inside the beauty of a snow globe reality. (I swear, if climate change takes real winters from me, I'm moving to Lofoten Norway. That particular place pulls me magnetically and makes my soul sing the way holy sites of ancient Greece make it sing. And every time I see pictures of Lofoten, even though I don't recognize it as anywhere my past selves have lived, it feels like the rightness of coming home deep inside my being. I don't know what a girl has to do to be able to emigrate to Lofoten Norway, but if ever the northern areas of the US and Canada loses its snow to climate change, this woman will figure out how she gets herself to Lofoten. No matter what it takes or what coin she must pay in.... Because my heart is renewed and healed by the beauty of a fresh snowfall, and Lofoten makes my soul sing whenever I see pictures of it.) 

But anyway. I am a being of joyous light over the snow right now and there's no room inside me for even the tiniest spark of anger. So I'll keep those truths in a draft, but I'll burden nobody else with how those swords of hard truths cut deeply.... Not at this time. For only in anger do I wield truth speaking as weapons (and I'm damn good with any blade in my hand, in any life.) And there is no anger in me this morning. There is only bright shining joy and love for the beauty that IS in spite of everything. Right now, everything sparkles for me with luminous incandescent joie de vivre in a world with such a beautiful snowfall blanketing everything!!!

 But I promised my dog I'd (im)patiently wait til after first light for our snow frolic.... 

So for right now, my serenity and soul cleansing is me watching the snow falling in the dark before dawn with candles lit beside me and a cuppa Comfort & Joy tea and George Winston playing and reading Neil Gaiman's Endless Nights. (It's the last I needed for my Sandman collection, it's a collection of graphic novels about each of The Endless, Dream and his siblings. It arrived while I was in Kirkland and I hadn't had the chance to read it yet. But I've been up all night in anticipation of this beautiful wondrously heavy snowfall I was promised for today.) And I will take the dog out once there's enough snow accumulated to make for a fraptious day of snow frolic! 

ALSO!!!! IT'S SNOWING!!!! AND I LIVE IN A SNOW GLOBE!!!! AND GEORGE WINSTON PIANO MUSIC IS SO MAGICAL!!!! BEST SOUNDTRACK FOR LIVING IN A SNOW GLOBE!!!!! I CAN'T WAIT TO GO PLAY AND FROLIC IN THE SPARKLE FLUFF ONCE ENOUGH OF IT ACCUMULATES!!!!!!

When I said professional athletes are intense, I meant that they are so focused and driven and they don't give up on anyone or anything once they set their heart on it. Which is a lot when the focus is on you, Lord knows I married one in my last life and I've dated several in this life. (and there was another I forgot I dated since Isaiah, but that's because it was really just a physical carnal thing and nothing grew from it -- in part because he was super competitive as a form of bonding and I'm not; I'm competitive against my own potential but I'm not competitive with other people or even with past versions or future versions of myself. I'm only competitive against my own best me in the moment I'm in.)  There's something about the intensity of feeling seen and wanted that being romantically with a professional athlete gives you... And obvs there's the ego boost in just being with someone who chooses you and you can question, "You could have anyone you wanted -- why me?" and also, um, well, athletes don't date people who don't have hot bodies. They just don't. So there's an additional ego boost there too. I got laughed at for my self-deprecating admission, "I was surprised you asked me out, I'm in really terrible shape right now. Mostly because I haven't bothered trying in a while." and then he told me, "How do you not realize how hot you are? Trying or not. I wouldn't have asked you out if I thought you were in terrible shape. But if you want to get in better shape, it wouldn't take much toning and tweaking to get you there from where you are now. Let me know when you're serious about wanting that."

It's still very much exploratory, not relationship at all, and certainly not something I'm telling anyone about. (I tend to keep my dating to myself -- mostly because I hate the cleanup after introducing temporary people to permanent people in my life. Life is more straightforward if they never cross paths until I'm certain someone has potential to be permanent in my life.)  But he wanted to go out for dinner again tonight so I said yes.  And when he looks at me, he has that intensity of single-minded desire in his eyes that athletes get when they're truly into someone or something. And as someone who is so incredibly go with the flow wanderer all about what I can discover in my wandering (Libra sun Pisces ascendant) there's something I find damn sexy about that sort of determination and desire to make a vision manifest by sheer force of will... I use my force of will to right injustices and to heal spiritual/physical hurts, but in this life I rarely use my force of will to redirect people or systems or life paths. So being with someone who uses their force of will on the tangibles of life to achieve goals helps to balance me out a bit, y'know? I like to observe and question and deal with reality of things as they are, but I'm always at my best when I'm partnering energies with someone who likes to intervene and tinker and make things how they think they should be.  

See, the thing is. I've had the world in the palm of my hand in enough past lives and I've used my life/death to save the world and alter the path of history enough times that in this life I have no interest in money or fame or power or those who pursue/value such things. I'm not even that into me changing the world. Let humanity collectively choose to change itself, it can do it without my intervention this life. This life I give up ego temptations and claims on the world. This life is perfectly fine with me if it's forgotten by history and society after I leave -- it's a life for me and the people I care deepest about, not a life for the world  I want to make better everyone/everything I touch with my life but I don't need that to be a large quantity of people and I don't desire to be remembered for it. I'm here to remember what gives meaning to incarnating and the joys of being alive to the reality of incarnations. I am far happier as a hermit with my trees and books and music and art and fur babies and plants and tea than I ever feel getting dragged back into the entitled assholes and drama and mess. I have no desire to live in a big city where the light pollution hides the shining of the stars -- anything you try to build there will be a miss with me. Especially if it's to try to curry favor or respect from the rich or the would be glitterati... I've had that last life, it was fun tinsel, but it's ultimately empty and meaningless and busy just for the sake of being busy. I want a space big enough for my books and some canvases to paint and to comfortably house the lives contained in my home -- and no bigger. I want to live where I can see the stars on a clear night and have space for flower gardens and herb gardens and I can hug a tree friend any time I get the urge and where wild critters can continuously surprise and delight me as we wander across each other's paths. 

I do like this new soccer player love interest quite a bit and I'm enjoying the explorations of how we might fit together. It's why I said yes to seeing him again tonight, two dates in two days instead of waiting longer - he piques my interest and curiosity. Do I like him as much or as soul deeply as I have been drawn to Eric? No, but that door is closed by Eric's own choice for the direction he's taking his life path and the person he's letting himself become. I'm not going to wait or let him reach for me down the bond if he's choosing someone else for his life. That's not how it works. If he chooses to have relationships with others, then I have the right to the same thing. And if he wishes to explore life outside of the soul bond between us, that's his choice but it also means I have the right to explore other connections which I prioritize in this life.  The only way he can have any right or claim to my love or my energy is if he is choosing of his own free will to pursue a connection with me in this lifetime right now in the present. And only when I also choose that do I have any rights of expectations towards him. He's not making such a choice , his energy changes at a soul level when he chooses to build romantic relationships with other women so I always know when his choices shift, and so I'm going to explore and see where other explorations with other men leads me to my own heart/body's content. I'm not here to tell him what to do with his life/time or try to chain him to anything he doesn't choose for himself -- but I won't share with him the delight in the strength and light and love of our connection if he's not going to choose it as central to his own life. 

In his past lives he has made me complicit in the infidelity of our mutual longing while building his life with someone else who can never be me. He has done it in enough of his past lives for it to be a recurring pattern of choices for him and I have reached a point I choose for myself that I refuse to wait on him when he behaves that way or to be complicit in him perpetuating it in this life or in future ones. He can repeat that karmic cycle of his own longing and fear of choosing to pursue his longing for however many lives he wants, but I don't want any part of it and I won't knowingly encourage or take part in it. If he chooses to seek a life built around others, he can -- but I will do my best to consider him a closed door and push him away when he reaches down the bond for me until he chooses to seek a life built around shared real world 3d tangible experiences with me.  It was different when we were younger, especially as kids when our life paths are to most extents created by our parents choices, but once our life paths crossed it became more than just a pull in a direction and a yearning for something not yet in your life -- every moment since our paths crossed has been a moment of choosing whether you want the pull to be in your life guiding it or not. If either of us chooses not, then ethically I will do everything I can to not be complicit in making the pull of the bond stronger. Including finding innovative new ways to use my gifts and/or spiritual allies to shut him out or put the bond to sleep. It was different when the pull of the bond hadn't yet manifested in recognition and life paths crossing. Now, now it becomes an ethics issue to choose something else but not to choose it wholeheartedly or with a desire/temptation always pulling you away from what you're building with a third party 

He's free to choose anything he wants for himself and I will always hope for his sake that it brings him the happiness he seeks -- but he is not free of the consequences of his choices. Nobody is. Incarnating into life on this planet is about the sanctity of free will and on learning the hard way of consequences what the responsibility of that free will entails. It helps you make better choices if or when you're ready to incarnate elsewhere than in this mess of free will being tempered only by the cause and effect of karmic repercussions and lessons. Which is why I will hold free will sacrosanct for as long as I'm choosing to incarnate among humans, a choice I've been making for thousands of lifetimes now for reasons of "if not me then who?" that are why I first entered this mortal coil. It's sacrosanct meaning you're free to choose whatever you want and I won't try to interfere or give advice unsought unless there's a very good reason for me to speak up, even when I can see the consequences of the choices being made, but it also means I won't feel any pity or do anything to help you or save you from the consequences of your choices when they fall upon you.  Holding free will sacrosanct means holding sacred all the consequences of the free will choices made. 

Still. I'm enjoying this current flirtation so far and I look forward to seeing where it might grow, even if it's only a short term mutual interest that doesn't last. Including dinner tonight. It all feels so Hallmark movie right now. And I'm going to make myself get up out of this cozy warm bed to go take the dog on a brisk morning walk. May as well do something now to be more active in my own life.

I do expect this post to be the last little niggling thing for me to want to give the story lines an ending (or as much as the unfolding of living has endings) and that I will then set this private to authors and leave it that way. There's no real reason for it, I could just as easily leave it public and keep writing here after all. My choice here boils down to a simple intuitive sense it's time to close a chapter so a new one can begin and ending this as a window into my heart and soul and random thoughts is a part of the closing chapter. 

Eufgh. I keep setting this to private then feeling like I haven't properly ended a story that I started in here... Which annoys me. So then I set it back public to close a story and then go back to private.... I'm really bad at this.... Too many side thoughts.  If you are ever "lucky" enough to be on the phone with me or receive my texts or just get me talking, I will very frequently just start a whole new tangent by stating, "Thinking of which" (something I've said since I was a small child because people would accuse me of complete non sequitors and my father objected to me using "speaking of which" to introduce random ADHD thoughts so without batting an eye I said, "right. Anyway. Thinking of which..." and it stuck as my segue into whatever random thought I have that I want to share) or in text form random thoughts are introduced "Also." frequently followed by "Also also." and occasionally followed by "Also also also." 

But here are the things I felt I hadn't closed and tied with a pretty bow ending and felt there was more I ought to write about them. 

1) My hand is almost entirely healed now except for the worst scalds which were blisters on blisters second maybe third degree burns 9the fact it hurts tends to rank it a second degree burn because third degree destroys nerve cells BUT there are also those who consider all scalds (wet burns) to be third degrees because of how the heat travels)  -- the one on my pinky is the absolute worst and most likely to scar. Or. Short term scar.... I've had bad third degree burn scars in the past but they have generally disappeared within a year. So not really permanent scars. Accelerated healing gifts mean that most of my scars don't last more than 6 months to a year, and if i get really sick or break something that needs healing even those fade and heal further every time. I have three scars that are "permanent" ones on me or that have at least lasted a decade or more. The first is on my upper lip, I have parallel scars from the time that while my sister and I were latch key kids, one afternoon I went to give our cat a kiss on his side while he slept and he woke up feeling attacked so he bit me wouldn't let go until he realized it was just me and then the cat felt really terrible about it and snuggled me afterward... Similar to my hand, I didn't yell out or do anything so my sister (who was in the other room) would know, I went and washed it with soap and water and because I knew cat bites could easily get infected I put triple antibiotic on it and then held tissue on it to staunch the blood. Which didn't staunch and when my parents came home 3 hours later they were FURIOUS that I had spent 3 hours bleeding and just calmly holding tissue to my face while doing my homework and my sister told them tearfully and truthfully she had no idea how badly hurt I was because when she asked about it I had told her nonchalantly, "Cat bite. It was my fault for doing something stupid. It will stop bleeding eventually." and then she never actually saw it or knew how often i was changing tissues to try to staunch it. then they dragged my arse to the ER because acute cares were all closed and they discussed stitches but instead surgi stripped it and gave me some intense antibiotics for it -- and then I wasn't allowed to move my upper lip at ALL for three weeks (including smiling or laughing or any expressions) because moving it split it back open and every time I resplit it open I was likely to increase chances of bad scarring issues. And it is very very hard for a 9 year old never to laugh or smile or make faces for weeks on end.... So that scarred.  And then the second permanent scar on me is from my bike accident when I was 13 when my bike wheel hit a raised portion of sidewalk on a corner that sent me straight head on into a fire hydrant that I then flipped over my bike handlebars (and the fire hydrant) did a somersault to land properly in the road. And I definitely stood up, checked over the bike and sent Sam Z on his way after he stopped because he saw what I had done but I told him I was fine, walked the bike back to the sidewalk and looked at the hydrant as I passed saw raw flesh on the top of it and recall thinking, "Eww. that's disgusting. I'm glad I didn't get any of that on me..." then  put my injured leg over the bike and my foot back on the pedal to start biking again before my camp counselor Jaime yelled, "DANIELLA! STOP! WE NEED TO CALL YOU AN AMBULANCE!! LOOK AT YOUR LEG!" And then I looked down at my leg and there was a huge gaping hole bigger than a fist on the inside of my right thigh that I later learned was within an eighth of an inch of nicking my femoral artery (a wound where you die in under 2 minutes if you hit it -- luckily a retired EMT lived across the street saw what i did and came running out with everything for a tourniquet got to me just as my camp counselor did) and which took 26 stitches (only 15 of them external) once the ambulance got me to the ER....The third permanent scar on me is one I did in college where I was making some late night nachos while working on a paper and I grated the knuckle of my forefinger down deep enough to expose bone. I calmly and without waking up my roommate who was asleep pulled my finger away to wash it and wrapped a wet paper towel around that knuckle while I cleaned the cheese grater and checked for blood in the cheese already grated, finished grating the rest of the cheese and got my nachos started in the microwave before going to the bathroom to properly clean my hand and neosporin it and put gauze on it and wrap around it with paper towel and tape. Then I ate my nachos and finished typing up/writing my essay and I didn't go in or do anything I should have for a wound down to the knuckle bone even though it still sometimes reopened started bleeding more than a week later..... So I have a heart/butterfly shaped scar on my knuckle from cheese.

And those are just the wounds that left scars -- I've done the same thing for every fracture I've ever had. Even finishing (and winning) a basketball game after chipping the knuckle on my right forefinger in the game and going to an intermediate-advanced ballet class three days after fracturing three of my toes (including my big toe) and getting upset with the teacher for not having noticed me falling off my demi point in pirouettes at the barre and grand jeté-piqué arabesques across the floor when that broken big toe gave out on me.... This trait in me and having been at home with the incident of the cat bite without ever knowing about it until my parents came home is absolutely the reason why my sister as an adult insists on checking over and checking back in whenever she's around and I hurt myself.... Because she knows from deeply personal experience that I just calmly accept whatever happened and hop back up without crying out and try to stoicly deal with it without worrying anyone and continue doing whatever I was doing before I was interrupted. She has good reasons to know about me that I deal with bad wounds as if they're no big deal... And that goes for emotional hurts as well as physical hurts. It's a good thing to recognize about me -- because even if badly hurt I likely won't tell you and/or I won't let on to how serious it is unless you directly ask or inspect it yourself.... It's just how I handle hurt -- which is that i don't call out or ask for help, I just deal with it to the best of my abilities and then try to keep going onward as if I'm not hurting at all.

So anyway. This is currently the state of my left hand:

It's healing slower than I (personally) expect of me when I'm already five days after the scalding burns.... But I was using up a lot of my healing energy to help my family while they were so sick (they got sicker after I left) but since getting home I've been able to sleep and focus on healing my hand. the only other healing detracting from me working on my hand is the healing I do on my dog to keep her stable and healthy despite her medical conditions due to her age. (She is 14.5 years old after all. My fur baby familiars have all lived well over thirteen years -- and that wouldn't happen without me doing energetic healing maintenance on them as needed.)

I mean, it's not the prettiest and all three fingers have areas that were definitely second degree burns and that burn on my pinky will likely scar for a bit and should have gone in to at least acute care for it (but what would they have done that we didn't do, y'know?)

2) I'm quite serious about not wanting him to reach for me down the bond if he chooses to be with anyone else. Not even in dreamspace. I've always been consistent on that score, in every life, and I've ALWAYS pushed him away EVERY time he chooses to be with someone else or in past lives marry someone else. He's allowed to choose to be with whoever he wants, but ethically I refuse to be complicit in any sort of internal disloyalty and faithlessness which is what it is for him to be reaching down the inner bond for me while being with someone else... It's ethically wrong and it's an emotional cheating even if physically you're not playing around. So I will CONTINUE to push him away whenever he tries to energetically reach for me down the bond and I always will any time he is interested enough in someone else that he is allowing emotional entanglement to occur. I don't have to know it factually, I just have to feel the shift inside HIM for me to react by pushing him away energetically and telling him not to reach for me down the bond or reach for that light inside him where the bond to me is. And that's how it is. he's free to choose whatever he wants -- but he's not free from the consequences of his choices. And if/when any overlays start, I will do whatever I need to do to stop them from occurring -- including if that requires something more permanent to the bond than just pushing him away telling him to leave me alone and not reach for me while he's with someone else.... That's a warning -- if you put me in a place of ethical dilemma, I will do what's right no matter what it costs me.... So stop reaching for me while making this choice. I've told you that since over the summer when the shift in him started and it's not going to change other than for me to get more and more intense in whatever it will take to keep him from reaching me so that I am not complicit in what I consider to be ethically wrong.....

This is my boundary, that I won't be complicit in lying or doing wrong by an innocent third party and so he can make whatever choices he wants to make for himself but it means that I will be pushing him away shutting him out from all energy exchange or light or love down the bond while he is emotionally entangled in a romantic relationship with ANYONE else.  And all he does by trying to reach for me via the bond while he's with ANYONE else is to make me look for increasingly harsh and permanent ways to keep him from making me complicit in the ethical wrong he's committing towards someone else who he has convinced they can trust him.

And if that door is closed... Well, then there ain't nothing stopping me from playing and flirting whenever I encounter any man who piques my interest. If you aren't ready to choose me, I'll go spend time with someone else who is if/when i encounter someone of interest to me. Even if it's a new meet cute on a plane. This is a direct consequence of his choices -- he's allowed to choose anything he chooses but like all of us he's never free of the consequences of his choices....

 O right, I made it home safely from the Pac Northwest. Had a meet cute on the plane from Denver to Milwaukee (tall good looking Dani type, soccer player with Madison Forward, also he made me laugh) when he decided to sit in the aisle seat next to me and we had nobody in the middle seat. We're getting together for drinks on the 7th. I've been pushing away and shutting down contact down the bond since the summer and I definitely have been feeling that since that is a closed door as far as I'm concerned I've felt the desire to flirt and play around in other relationships at the same time. I don't really have a reason for feeling that way, it's an intuitive thing and it's the same way I was when he was with the Scorpion chick. Which probably means he's been seriously dating someone since like June or July when I felt the shift within me to push him away and shut down contact and move on as if that door is closed. Haven't yet had to deal with any overlays from him, but when they happen, I'll do something about it to make sure I don't get them -- anything else would be ethically wrong.  I'm pretty excited for the 7th and that we both agreed to wait until a day without World Cup matches for it, been a while since I've dated for fun. Been a hermit a lot these last several years. Haven't dated a serious athlete since college though when I dated Isaiah who at the time was training as the qualified alternate to the upcoming US Olympic team in steeple chase. Professional competitive athletes tend to be... intense... Fun, but intense. So we'll see how I feel about this as more than a flirtation. But it's been a bit of a while since I said yes to being asked out, so there's that.

Anyway, I still intend to set this to private to authors and close this window into my heart/soul. But wanted to be clear I made it home. Symphony and dinner plans tonight with friends but that's about it until the 7th other than World Cup and working and unpacking and spending time with my beasties who missed me while I was out of town.

 O right! The denouement of last night's story! Unless you're my sister, brother-in-law, niblings, or best friend you don't know it yet.... I should at least give the end of the story before I cease writing here, set this to private, and retreat to hermitage mode....

Remember how I said I surged the last bit of the power grid to the house to keep electricity until the kettle boiled? I failed to mention that when it happened, I was holding the mug I intended to make tea in and moving it to be by the kettle when all the power went out and I felt my temper flash as I thought, "No! Not until after the kettle is ready for my tea." A small detail that I had my fingers of my right hand threaded through the handle and the cup itself cradled in the palm of my hand when I reacted , less entertaining than my sister's reactions, but an important one. Particularly since if you know me, you know that I tend to release energy through the palms of my hands when doing energy work magic with my gifts....

Anyway. So fast forward to this morning. (power came back on at like 2am -- was able to watch the France match at 7 no problem and my nephew who was off school for snow day district wide cancellation came downstairs at like 7:15 to join me.) My nephew and I came upstairs at half time to check on breakfast and for me to get some coffee. I also went to go make myself some tea to bring back downstairs with me after finishing my first cup of coffee and making a second I put at my spot on the table to have with breakfast. So bag is in the cup, water boils, pour hot water into cup, wait a couple minutes while it steeps -- normal tea making, non? Not today though. Today, when I use my left hand (I'm ambidextrous, my left hand is quicker but elementary teachers forced me to train everything for my right hand) to pick up the cuppa by the handle and the entire cup cracks down the side with a sound makes everyone turn to look at me  -- scalding water boiled to a 212F temp comes pouring through the crack burning my fingers near the knuckles.

 I didn't cry out or anything, just calmly set down the cup in the sink next to me and inspect my hand. (Later I threw out the mug.) My sister immediately asked, "Are you okay?!?!" and came running over to verify for herself if I was truly okay. She asked this not only because mother of small children, but she has known me her entire life and knows that it is my way to stay calm, pick up myself and try to brave face stoic carry on as if nothing happened no matter how badly hurt I am. And I calmly said, "I'm fine. My hand is burned enough it hurts quite badly right now and will likely blister a bit, but nothing major." She insisted on looking over it herself immediately then got me a gel burn pack from the freezer. My nephew later asked if she was mad at me about breaking the cup and I said, "Honestly, when it happened, your mom was more concerned about my hand than the cup I broke." My sister told him, "accidents happen. Cups break. I bought extras of this set knowing that inevitably they would break. I have more cups. I only have one sister. And you can't ever trust her to tell you she's hurting after an accident happens. She'll always tell you she's fine so long as she believes she will be eventually. No matter how hurt she is." (Which is very true about me. Luckily, in addition to studying me her whole life, my little sister is a Virgo sun with a Pisces moon so she's practical, empathic, and instinctively mothering in a balanced way that works well dealing with my Libra sun and Capricorn moon which makes me diplomatic stoic who will occasionally mislead you by omissions rather than upset you with blunt truths but will always give you honesty if directly asked.)

Anyway. Here are pictures from today of my hand when I first did it, when the blisters started to form so I could see what I was doing, when I first stopped alternating soaking it in water and the hydrogel patch so I could instead bandage it up, and just now to see how well it's already healed and me not even sleeping yet to accelerate the healing. 

Jon was teasing me that my bandaids make me look like a drummer with protective hand tape on. 😆 

This was how my best friend reacted when I told her about it because she's picking me up at the airport and initially I was uncertain if the undersides of my knuckles were just mild burns or if they would blister making extra difficult mode my airports journeying on Friday....

I'm planning to sleep with the bandaids on so that if I accidentally pop the two bad blisters while I sleep I won't get blister lymph fluid on the bedding and to reduce risks of infection in the popped blisters. The liquid hydrogel to reduce heat in the tissue that my sister had from her bad oil burns a while back and which I put on can stay bandaged for up to 3 days per the instructions. I intend to leave it on either until the morning or until I shower tomorrow night or Friday morning.... And then new bandages after checking on it following the shower. 

But anyway. Yeah. Remember the use of chi/prana/gifts is raw energy work and be cautious of directing it into or through brittle ceramics. Normally it's electrical currents or lightbulbs I fry, but glass/mirrors and ceramics and even plastics will crack along their flaws if you release energy through them.... I'm just glad that since it was my doing, nobody else got injured by trying to use that mug when the crack split.... Although, when I told Elliot (the 6 month old) who was staring at my hand with the cooling gel pack on it, "Your aunt did something silly this morning -- it was stupid of her and she should have known better." My sister said, "Did you though? Was it your fault you got hurt? You just did a normal thing you've done thousands of times and bad luck physics caught up to you." So I laughed and said, "Alright then. Ellie Belle, your aunt hurt herself this morning. It was an accident, but it doesn't feel the best just yet." At which my sister said, "Better. Luckily, you had your accident visiting a family of klutzes so I am well stocked for burns." 

It'll be fine. It's already mostly better except the blisters I haven't checked in about 10 hours. 

But anyway that's the denouement to the story of last night. 

Et maintenant, bonne nuit. 

P. S. Yes, energy work, taking away pain, healing hands, and accelerating my own healing are among my gifts. There are limits, obvs. But you'd be astonished by what I can do with those gifts....most of my sister's family have no idea how sick they'd be without me here through whatever they caught. That said, healing energy work makes me super hungry, especially accelerated healing on myself