#owner content

[owosa]

Bonus Owner’s content: Manual for  @rosedufirmament

Hope you enjoyed the ride!

This is just one of the panels that I liked the most.  The complete manual is the property of the owner of the pet.

Patreon / Commission Info / Adoptables Info / Ko-fi

[thatwitchmorri]

Routine and the lack thereof

One of the curses of ADHD is that while we thrive on routine, nothing really ever becomes routine. Whatever is messed up in our brain does not allow for the typical habit forming of “do a thing for 30 days and it will stick.” It doesn’t stick. At least not for me and my type of ADHD. I’m constantly having to work at it. 

I crave routine in my life, and have for most of my 30s. And it always sits just out of reach of becoming auto-pilot. I can remember my grandmother’s routines to a point and routines of my childhood, but I haven’t so far been successful in translating that feeling of peace and calm into my adult life. 

And it sucks. Lists don’t help. Chore charts haven’t really done much for me. It hasn’t helped that “just pick a thing and do it” was even out of my reach thanks to executive dysfunction until I was finally medicated recently. And I didn’t go into medication thinking it would magically fix everything, but it’s still frustrating to be closer to 40 years old than not and still be trying to find a system that works for me. 

But I suppose I should stop whining about where I want to be and take a moment to acknowledge where I am. My kitchen has stayed reasonably clean since I recovered from every dish being dirty two weekends ago. That was the first weekend I had my meds. And I did get up and start a load of laundry. I also pulled some meat out of the freezer to defrost so I can cook it later to have dinner tonight and some easy leftovers to pull out of the fridge if we don’t feel like cooking after work this week. 

Let’s try to remember it’s not a race. It’s not even a marathon. It’s just a path we’re on, and paths are messy with branches and trees, weeds and roots to get tangled in, and sometimes they double back on themselves or get lost all together. We are all just trying to keep moving forward, and if we’re doing that we’re succeeding.

Any suggestions or sympathy is very welcome.

[thatwitchmorri]

My girls in their Moonfire outfits. Anessa, Renee, Rhyann, and Kaia. 4 more characters to go.... Yes I have a problem.

[thatwitchmorri]

Overwhelmed but Not Frozen

This week has been a little rough. Changes at work. Changes at home. All of it boils down to a change in routine and I have never dealt well with those. I’ve joked since I graduated high school that I never could get the hang of July, but 2020 being what it is, apparently that’s going to extend into August this year. 

My poor significant other is having to work through what’s looking like most of this month without a day off, which sucks. We’re ships passing in the night twice a day if we’re lucky for most of the week, so not even having a couple of days to spend time together is hard. It means he’s not home when he “should” be, which throws off my entire groove for how my week should go. A groove I was just getting started on to begin with.

So here I sit, my go to “noise-for-company” show on in the background, medicated but in my head about how I should be doing something, but there’s so much that I could be doing it’s hard to pick. It’s a lot. There’s still so much catching up to do after a decade of worsening executive dysfunction neglect on my poor house. 

Normally that would freeze me and I’d end up doing nothing but sitting here scrolling social media and watching this show for the fiftieth time....

Today, I’m going to take these thin sections of sheets in a pile on the side table and sew them in layers together to make them more absorbent as towels/rags. that will allow me to move forward with getting them off the damn side table which will be a good first step in getting the living room back into some kind of shape. The meds are not failing me just because after two decades of chronic stress I’m having to take it slow getting my life together. 

Any forward momentum counts as a win when your opponent is entropy.  

[thatwitchmorri]

Season-ality

I’ve struggled with... not so much my faith, but I suppose the practice of it, for some years. This morning, my thoughts have turned to the disconnect I feel when it comes to seasons.

For those who don’t know, Paganism tends to be very oriented toward having a relationship with the natural world. I pay more attention to natural cycles and try to find ways to fit my life into them in a way that harmonizes. Over the course of studying, you pick up on symbolism and mythos associated with different points on the calendar that are the benchmarks through the year. People that aren’t Pagan do this as well, just think of jack-o-lantern everything around Halloween and turkeys and cornucopias around Thanksgiving.

The problem is, the symbolism doesn’t line up for me. We just passed Lughnasadh, which is observed on August 1st. It’s known as “First Harvest,” and a lot of the typical imagery around it in Pagan circles is of wheat and bread, coming from a British Isles sort of agricultural cycle. But I’m not in the British Isles. I’m in the Appalachian Mountains. In Eastern Tennessee. A lower latitude and very different biome. 

We’ve been harvesting for most of July. My mom has canned 40 some quarts of green beans alone. So what to do? I could go out and buy the stuff to make bread and do all kinds of bread and wheat based things to match the symbolism of the day, sure, but that doesn’t do much for making me feel connected to Nature where I live. I’ve never even known anyone who grows wheat...

Clearly the answer is to celebrate these days by what’s going on in my part of the world. To come up with new symbolism and adjust the myths to be more personal and local. So what is late July and early August a time for? Well as mentioned above, green beans. And fresh from the garden tomatoes and cucumbers. So the harvest theme is still there and intact.

But what about September? The autumn equinox is our benchmark here, with symbolism of “Fall,” colorful leaves, apples, cozy things. Basically (ha) “pumpkin spice season.” But Tennessee is rarely like that toward the end of September. Our leaves don’t start changing until further into October, at least in my adult memory, and it’s still too damn hot to be drinking warm drinks. I can still acknowledge the equal time between daylight and dark, but it’s a bit harder to figure out how to connect with what Nature is doing locally around this time for me.

All of this is beside the fact that I’m what my mom calls Nature deprived to begin with. I go to work and sit in an office all day, then come home and sit in my house the rest of the time. I’m very rarely outside longer than it takes to walk from a vehicle to a door. So spending more time outside will probably be a good first step to figuring out September.

What do you all do to feel more connected with your local natural cycles?

[thatwitchmorri]

I have returned to nightshift. Given how much instantly less stressed I was, it is apparently my natural habitat. There's entirely too much sensory overload during daylight hours.

[thatwitchmorri]

Depression thought rejected of the day - "I called him 'dear' because he was to me. And he thought it was condescending. I never knew until I saw his post on reddit after the break-up."

You can't read minds. And you are not responsible for what they choose not to bring up.