Fangs in Check

I asked the shipping manager to save boxes for me so he called the warehouse and got me 25. They smell like plain ol' cardboard so I'm not tempted to bite anyone. Whew.

On an unrelated note of Lust

Daddy (the middle-aged has been, not my father) still thinks he’s hot. He isn’t but he smells wonderful. He smells so wonderful that if I were a vampire I’d sink my teeth into his neck. Actually I want to do that anyway whenever I get a whiff.

So I’m packing right now and I keep thinking about him and do you know why? Hmmm?

It’s because I asked him to save boxes for me and even though he only held the boxes a few minutes, they smell like him.

I need to find another source of packing materials.

Today

I went straight to the house. Go me. I get lost in shopping centers.

Today I took my father to see the house. On the way we stopped at work and I showed him my office and the parts room. He didn’t seem all that interested which made me feel like he wasn’t very proud of me. I know I don’t have a high profile job, but I like my job and I’ve done a lot of work. I suppose the point I was trying to get across is that I feel a sense of belonging with the company but I think Dad missed it.

The house is in Tallapoosa County where my father’s family is from. He showed me lots of landmarks and shortcuts and we drove a good bit. I thought every thing was fine until we got back and then he told my mother how awful it was.

I don’t think the house is awful. I think the problem is I’m not moving back home. I am an only child. I am not the only child my parents wanted, I am the only child they could have. My parents tend to treat me as if I’m made of glass and incredibly stupid. Their coddling has made me fiercely independent. Kevin gets mad at me sometimes because I take on a lot without getting help, but the truth is it doesn’t occur to me to ask.

I’m really excited about moving back to the country. I don’t really have neighbors and that just thrills me to death. Part of what I don’t like about living here is I can stand in my living room and see into my neighbor’s bedroom. (And no, I live next door to a retired Black couple, there’s nothing interesting to watch.)

I’m happy because my new house is actually a house with a real yard, a covered porch, and trees. I like that the closest major highway is five miles away and not running through the front yard. This trailer is parallel to a federal highway and traffic is non-stop. Sometimes I think I’m going to have an accident trying to turn into my driveway because the cars don’t want to slow down. I put on the blinker well before I reach the house and people still try to run up the tailpipe. Sometimes they whip around me, horn blasting and finger extended as if going home is a major traffic impediment.

Kevin is excited about the move too. I will be closer to his house. He is planning a dog pen. He told me if I have everything boxed up he will move it all while I am at work. (This offer won several brownie points with my mom.) Kevin and I are happy about being closer to the river. He likes to fish and like to drink beer and ride in the boat. Now it won’t take half the day just to get to the water.

I like that the rent is only $25 more a month than I already pay. I like that I know my landlord and I know what kind of a person he is. I like the fact that the house has no carpet (allergy sufferers unite!) I like that my dogs are welcome. I’m allowed to plant a garden, how cool is that? I have more closet space. Okay, the kitchen sucks and there’s no Internet, but I can learn to adjust. I love that I’m moving to one of the oldest places in the state and it’s pretty.

I’m trying to overlook Dad’s bad attitude. After all, he complained bitterly when I moved into this place.

Moving

I got the house! It is small and the kitchen is practically non-existent, but otherwise it is perfect. My main problem will be Internet. It’s so far out in the country there’s no cable; I will be forced to use dial-up. Sigh. I don’t know who the phone company is out there. I will have to get a house phone anyway b/c my cell doesn’t pick up a signal.

My order of business is to wash clothes. My new house already has a washer and dryer that are much newer than mine. I’m selling my set and I will use the money to buy gas. The house has gas heat and a gas stove. I’ve always had an electric stove so I’m not sure how I will like it.

I’m taking my potted plants over today. I figured the garden stuff would be easy to pack up and I need to make sure I can find the house again. It was almost dark when I went over yesterday. I don’t have keys yet so that will be about all I can take right now anyway.

For those of you interested in witchy stuff - the first items I will take into my new house will be food, salt, and money. This insures I will prosper in my new home. Those were the first items I brought into this house and while money was sometimes tight I never got into a situation where I couldn’t pay my bills.

Another witch tip- it is bad luck to take your old broom into a new house. Doing so brings old negative energy inside. When I move I will buy a brand new broom.

As for the dogs- they now have a big yard to run around in. Kevin is building a dog pen and the dogs will be outside while I’m at work and in when I’m home. Now all of us should be happy.

I’ll post again soon, right now I have packing to do.

Today's Exciting News

I may be moving! I'm going to look at a house tonight and it sounds idea- no close neighbors, big yard, cheap rent, and my dogs are not a problem!

Funny

A cruise on the Pacific goes all wrong, the ship sinks, and there are only 3 Survivors; Bob, Tom and Debbie. They manage to swim to a small island and they live there for a couple of years doing what's natural for men and women to do.

After several years of casual sex, all the time, Debbie felt absolutely horrible about what she was doing. She felt having sex with both Bob and Tom was so immoral and bad that she killed herself.

It was tragic, but Bob and Tom managed to get through it. After a while, Bob and Tom’s resistance to natures urgings waned, and the inevitable happened.

Well, a couple more years went by and Bob and Tom began to feel absolutely horrible about what they were doing. So they buried Debbie.

Bitches

I’m going to have to stop with the magick for a while and talk about my dogs.

Saturday before last Kevin came over EARLY. I wasn’t even awake yet. He was playing hooky from work (his shift starts at 6am) I think it was about 5:45. Anyway, he offered to be nice and walk the dogs for me. I don’t let Kevin walk the dogs because he’s simply not good at it. But before sunrise I cannot think so I said ok.

I heard a yell and a BUMP and my kitchen window rattled. I jumped out of bed just in time to see Kevin getting dragged into the house with his hand bloody and his knees very dirty. The dogs had pulled him down and then slammed him against the house. I laughed like hell. Kevin’s a big man and he let two dogs (one’s technically still a puppy) drag him across the yard. It was too funny and he was highly perturbed. I rubbed it in- I never get dragged down.

So this morning in the predawn light the dogs spied the neighbor’s cat. I was not very awake and really not paying attention. All I can tell you is that I was standing up and then suddenly I was zooming across the yard at an amazing rate of speed. My hands, forearms, and left hip was scrapped very raw and I would have suffered worse damage but I let go of the leashes.

The cat made it safely under the porch and I retrieved the dogs without my neighbors being any wiser.

I didn’t say anything to Kev.

The Path of Least Resistance

Magick follows the path of least resistance. That means you’ll get what you asked for exactly the way you asked for it. Think of magick flowing like water. Water doesn’t flow uphill. It doesn’t go over objects, water goes around. No matter how often you pour out water it never falls into exactly the same splatter pattern. Magick is the same way.

When I talked about turning letters into numbers for spells I picked what I thought was a benign example, I want a vacation. I should have picked something that I actually wanted, but I couldn’t think of any thing right off the bat so I chose something that I figured was harmless.
I didn’t even know the spell worked. I didn’t even think about it as casting a spell because I was just using an example. But last Sunday I came down with a severe sinus infection. On Monday I couldn’t breathe so I stayed out of work. Tuesday I still couldn’t breathe and I was weak from not eating much so I stayed home again. Wednesday I felt like crap on toast but I’m poor so I went to work.

I had to ask our purchaser about some parts and while I was talking to Daddy I had a fit of coughing. (Daddy got his nick name during one of our blood drives. A hot nurse was staring at him so being a middle-aged has-been he grinned back. Nurse Hottie smiled, came over to him and said, “I don’t mean to stare but you look just like my daddy.” He was ticked and being a mean bunch of coworkers we won’t let him forget it.) Anyway, Daddy said, “Are you sick?”
“Well, why do you think I was out for two days?”
“Thought you took a vacation.”
I just shook my head and walked away but four more people asked me if I enjoyed ‘my days off.’

Here’s another example:
Halloween is the witches’ new year. Every year fellow witch Autumn Moon and I celebrate. We have a nice ritual and we drink a good bit and then we make wishes. Her wish was to lose ten pounds. The next day she got a virus. She lost six pounds in one week.

Be careful what you wish for.

Answers

I didn't get a question, just a comment, but I still felt it deserved a response.

What I know about magick I read in books. I mainly studied Celtic magick b/c that is what’s most popular. I tried to learn about the magicks native to my part of the country but folk magick tends to be looked down on, or considered not as powerful so it’s surprisingly hard to learn what the witch up the road is doing. Finally I settled on Hoodoo which is shrouded in misconception and false information. People don’t talk about Hoodoo. I got hold of a book called Not in Kansas Anymore, the Curious Tale of How Magic is Transforming America by Christine Wicker and thus discovered this site
http://www.luckymojo.com/
The site covers things besides Hoodoo and the book was written by a religious reporter who explores several different magickal systems to uncover what magick is without belittling it. That alone impressed me. Sometimes when non-magickal people write about magick they seem to try to debunk it or they make fun of the people who practice it. That’s one reason why I don’t tell people I’m a witch. I don’t think I’m obligated to defend my beliefs to strangers. Some people get deeply offended by witchcraft. I think this is because they don’t want to explore their own belief system. If a person has been told all their life that witches don’t exist and then they meet one that may mean some other things they were taught are also wrong. I think some people are just scared to find out how many lies they believe.

I never thought of shape-shifting as black magick. Of course, I never met anyone who could shift their physical body. I was taught the shift occurred to the astral body so that changes could occur on the astral plane to gradually make changes on the physical plane, sort of like a rippling water effect.

My grandfather used to cure sick babies. His mother-in-law taught him how to do it. He was not allowed to tell another man the cure, only a woman, and he couldn’t tell anyone who was blood related. He would take the child in the woods. He cut a branch off a certain bush and said a certain bible verse and within an hour the child would be cured. That is all my family knows about it. I think the not telling thing was originally designed to protect the magick but it had the opposite effect- magick just got lost. There’s an old family in Virginia who used to have all sorts of cures but they aren’t allowed to write them down. Now most of the spells are gone. I’m all for sharing information. I don’t think it lessens the power in any way. I do think someone’s negative energy can have an adverse effect on me and that’s why I keep my personal spells secret. I don’t mind telling you how I did the spell, but I’m not going to reveal what I’m working for.

Despite having a magickal family (the great-grandmother who taught Papa had visions and spoke to a ‘little man’- probably a fairy) no one in my family ever taught me magick except for my mother who showed me how to use a pendulum. She uses a pendulum to determine the gender of unborn children. You can use a pendulum for lots of things (think ‘Charmed’) but she only knows how to tell if it’s a boy or a girl. It’s like my family knows magick but only in bits and pieces.

Using herbs can be as simple or as complex as you want. I learned by buying spices at the grocery store and reading about them. Sometimes I experimented with them. I kept notes on what worked and what didn’t. If I had pretty good success I would try growing the herb. I think you should use what’s available and not worry about some rare, hard to find ingredient.

I don’t charge people either, nor do I take donations. Actually, I’m leery of doing spells FOR people because if they lie to me whatever I do ends up on my karma. I usually tell people HOW to do the spell so if they make a mess it’s on them, not me.

When I was a child I used to dream things before they happened. Then I grew up and I don’t dream like that anymore. I could also tell what people were feeling. I can still do it, but I try not to because it’s exhausting. I literally feel what everyone else does so one minute I’m happy, then I’m depressed, then an angry person walks by and I want to kill someone. I avoid the mall. It’s really hard to separate other emotions from my own. The bad part is I just absorb things so sometimes I’m really down and then I suddenly wonder why. I’ll look and realize a negative person is near, so I walk off and then I feel fine. I suppose in some cases it would be an advantage to know what people are really feeling, but about 97% of the time you don’t want to know what kind of junk people carry around.

Call for Inquiries

Muddy Waters' question has made me think- some of you might have questions about the occult or witchcraft. If so, post your questions/comments and I'll answer them. I may not be able to answer everything in one post, but I will answer them all.

Shadow People

I was going to talk about the path of least resistance but Muddy Waters asked about shadow people. To be perfectly honest, I’m not really sure what shadow people are, only that they creep me out. I’ve seen a few. I banished one of mine and I had to help banish another one that was bothering a friend, but I never saw hers. She was creeped out, too.

The picture you see to the left is just one I found by searching "shadow people" on Google Images. I just wanted to have some kind of a reference point because shadow can cover a lot. That picture looks like what I've seen.

The first shadow person I ever saw was in my high school auditorium. Now the building was brand new and I think that gives us one clue about them; shadow people seem drawn to emotions. Maybe they feed off them (like psychic vampires) or maybe shadow people ARE emotions that have somehow got trapped in this world. Since the auditorium was home to the school drama club and since all members were hormone riddled teenagers, there was plenty of strong emotions. The shadows in the school seemed to have more power as they could slam doors and make foot steps. The ones I saw were thicker, somehow. I could see through them but barely.

I was a teacher’s aide to the drama teacher and I spent a lot of time in the auditorium alone. Sometimes I would hear doors slamming backstage and after a long time Mr. H would come in though the outside door and I’d ask, Why were you backstage? He always say, I wasn’t. I thought he was lying to me until I realized that if he WAS backstage there would be no reason for him to go out the back door and walk all the way around the building to the side door. So one day I heard those doors slam and I went to see what was going on.

I found nothing. Nobody nowhere.

This happened a few times until I got smart and decided to wait backstage. I saw thick shadows cross the hall. I really thought I was just seeing things so I walked toward them. All the shadows disappeared. I checked the door- locked. I went back towards the stage and heard SLAM! I ran back and no one was there.

After that the shadows seemed to follow me whenever I was alone. Sometimes I’d see them standing between the curtains. Sometimes they’d come to me. The auditorium had a great sound system and when I had it all to myself I’d put a tape in, turn off the lights and just listen. It would be wonderful, like going to a concert hall. Then I’d sense a presence nearby. Slowly I’d open my eyes and see a shadow standing in front of me. I’d stare until it disappeared. Then suddenly I’d relax. I never did tell anyone what I saw. We had other ‘occurrences’ but nobody ever mentioned a shadow.

Our lead actor saw a woman in the mirror. The dressing room had a small bathroom with no door. Directly across from the opening was a counter with a full mirror. He came out of the bathroom, sat down at the counter and looked up. A woman in a white dress was standing in the bathroom. There was absolutely no way anyone could have gotten in without him noticing. I’m talking about maybe 8 feet of space here and only one door. He stared at her for a long time and then another actor opened the door and asked if he was ready. As soon as the door opened the woman disappeared.

Now that’s a ghost and not a shadow person. I don’t think shadow people are ghosts. Ghosts are definitely beings that were once living. Despite having a human form shadow people don’t seem to be living. Aware, yes. Able to interact, yes. But not living.

Some think that if enough people believe, or if one person believes strongly enough, ghosts can be created. Several years ago I read about an experiment were these scientists were going to debunk the spirit realm by creating a ghost named Philip. They then got several believers together, gave them a ouija board and told them to contact “Philip” Much to the amazement of the scientists, the seance produced good results of contact with Philip including his full name, date of birth and how he ‘died’ The debunkers thought that maybe they had stumbled upon an actual historical figure. Local records were searched and no Philip was found because he was a work of fiction.

So it could be that the shadow people at my high school were created by bored teenagers looking to scare each other. But that doesn’t quite explain how the rumors got started to begin with because remember I didn’t tell anybody. Of course our leading man told his ghost story but nobody else ever saw the woman. And that still doesn’t explain the Thing on the catwalk.
My friend T did not believe in ghosts. That was just silly. I’m not really sure who brought it up, but during one performance the ghost talk was flying and T decided to prove it was all a lie. So she grabbed a supporting actor and they headed upstairs.

Please remember this was DURING a play with a full house. Nobody was allowed on the catwalk. First of all it was dangerous. Nothing was nailed down to make it easier to access the spotlights which could only be moved manually. So lights were carefully set in place and then to make sure they stayed put we were all threatened with expulsion to keep us off the catwalk.
So T and this scrawny little freshman boy creep up the stairs. They carefully get on the catwalk. It’s dark. There are wires and cables every where. They sneak down to the very end and T says, ‘I told you nothing was up here.’

Then they see It.

At the far end of the catwalk was Something. It was dark and small, but they couldn’t see through it. Whatever it was hunched down, watched them for a minute and then ran straight at them.

T and Freshman hauled ass. T became a believer. I’m sure some of my readers are saying right now that someone played a joke on T, but that’s not what happened. It was T’s idea to go up and no one was on the catwalk. In order for the Thing to sneak past them it would have to wait on the support beams in the dark and then crawl silently into place. And it ran towards them in a space that was too confining to stand up in. Our catwalk was plywood laying over steel I-beams. It made a god-awful racket if stomped on it, yet the audience didn’t hear anything. The crew didn’t know anyone went up until T came thundering down the stairs dragging Freshman behind her. Mr. H didn’t appreciate all this backstage noise and he stormed up the catwalk intent on killing a student but nobody was up there. No one was out of place. Everyone was accounted for.

That Thing could be a shadow person. All T could describe of it was ‘black’ but as it ran that seems to suggest something with form. The shadow people I’ve seen seem to just appear and vanish. If they move they sort of glide. But the shadow in my house started out as a shapeless cloud that gradually took on a human-like form. Maybe the stronger they are they more solid they become.

A few years after high school T married a GI and had a baby. They lived on base in a housing unit. One day she called me and said there was a presence in the house. T wanted me to come over and take care of it because when you’re a Witch you get asked to do things. I have been asked to banish ghosts, predict deaths, throw curses, come up with winning lottery numbers, make people fall in love and stop severe weather. And I don’t even tell people I’m a Witch. I feel sorry for the Witches who are ‘out of the broom closet’ they probably get bombarded on a daily basis. Just to clarify I can get rid of ghosts, I don’t know when you’re going to die and I wouldn’t tell you even if I did, if I had lottery numbers I’d be rich, and while I can provoke a good case of lust I cannot make anyone fall in love for real, and yes I can affect the weather but it is foolish to mess with nature. On with the story.

T didn’t think it was a ghost. She thought it was evil. She said she often saw a man in the apartment. She never saw him directly just out of the corner of her eye or maybe for an instant as she glanced up. When she looked again he’d be gone. She said he was ‘shadowy’ What freaked her out was the breathing.

One morning her husband had worked all night and she had to pick him up. She was in the kitchen getting her purse and making sure the stove was off and dog had water when she heard heavy breathing. Thinking her husband had gotten a ride and was already home, she turned around to bitch about getting up for no reason and no one was there. Convinced someone had broken in, she ran upstairs to get her baby. The child was fine, but the animals were acting strangely, as if someone was in the house. T checked every room and found no one. She sacred to death and decided to leave. That’s when she realized the door was still locked.

To banish the shadow I sprinkled salt all over the house. I lit several candles. I placed a mirror in the center of the home to turn back negative energy. Finally I left crystals in the place where T usually saw the shadow. The crystals were to provide protection and peace. What I did worked because the shadow never returned.

St. Paddy's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I am almost done with my first tornado quilt. It needs a border and then it will be tied (I don't have time to quilt it) I've already planned out my next quilt.

I am also dying fabric to use in future quilts which is a fun and artistic process.

I plan to post pics of the quilt, but as I don't have a digital camera, I bought a little disposable one and I have to wait for whenever I finish the roll. I'll probably post several quilt pictures at once.

There's another magick post coming.

Don't forget to wear green!

Magick

I decided to take a break from quilting (which is coming along nicely) and write a post about magick b/c I mentioned doing it on one of the Melissa posts. This is a tough one for me to write because it is so much unconscious thought that I may as well be describing how I walk.

First, note that k I added to magic. A long time ago I read that witches spell it magick to differentiate true Witchcraft from stage magic. Now some people make fun of the word magick because it’s associated with the ‘fluff bunnies’ people who are a little overboard in their efforts not to harm anyone while doing only good magick. I still use magick and not magic because now magic looks to me as if it’s misspelled.

I also have issues with so called ‘good magick’ I think magick is like electricity- in and of it’s self it is a neutral power that can light up your house or kill a man on death row. The electricity doesn’t care what it is doing; it’s people who determine if it’s good or bad. I am very firm on protecting myself. I don’t have a problem putting binding or banishing spells on stalkers, potential rapists, or even people who gossip about me. I don’t attack people just for the fun of hexing, but if someone is trying to hurt me I see no reason to be a doormat.

I’m a kitchen witch. This means that most of my spells deal with my home and my garden. Some people think that is a selfish kind of magick but I think my home is the place where I rest, heal, live, love, etc, and it needs to be the most ideal environment for me to thrive. Doing home magick tends to radiate out into the world. I use magick to make the garden grow and then I share my harvest with my neighbors thus creating community.

Some people think kitchen witch is a derogatory term. Since I’m not conjuring demons or controlling the weather some think I have no power. I think it is harder to make a spell work with a few simple ingredients than it is with a full ritual. So you cast a circle, called the watchtowers, evoked the gods, and summoned a dragon to protect your house. I achieved the same goal with one candle and three herbs. No power? Hah!

Which brings me to the question, what does one need to create magick? Just yourself. Yes, I used to do full rituals, but I think that was just training for my mind. They were something to make me feel ‘witchy’ until I learned what the flow and rise of magick felt like. After I got a handle on how to do it I could sit in my backyard and cast spells in my head with no tools or props. And that’s usually what I do. I have a ley line in my backyard.

I insist on keeping my spells secret. To do this I reduce everything to numbers. (Please note this is unusual for a kitchen witch) Every letter of the alphabet corresponds to a number. Write out the alphabet and number each letter 1 through 26. Then add each two digit number together to get one digit. J is the 10th letter, so 1+0= 1. That should give you a chart like this:
1 A, J, S
2 B, K, T
3 C, L, U
4 D, M, V
5 E, N, W
6 F, O, X
7 G, P, Y
8 H, Q, Z
9 I, R

Now I write down exactly what I want. Let’s say
I WANT A VACATION.

I turn my letters into numbers.
(9) (5,1,5,2) (1) (4,1,3,1,2,9,6,5)

You can add up the whole string, but I tend to miss numbers that way so I reduce each word to one number and then add them. Please note that you can get different numbers depending on your adding. It doesn’t matter which way you do it as long as you do it the same way every time.
9+4+1+4= 18

1+8= 9 So 9 is my number. I write 9 on a piece of paper, put it in a bag, add some herb and stones. Then I empower the bag which is my favorite part.

If I don’t need the spell right away I leave it in a circle of crystals. The bag pulls in the power of the stones. I usually let my spells stay in the circle overnight. If I need the spell that day I use my rocking chair.

I saw my Granny do this a hundred times but back then I didn’t know what she was doing. She would rock with a spool of thread in her hand, eyes closed and whispering. Then she’d go sew and she made the most perfect clothes. She never had to rip any thing out. Her patterns were always accurate and the bias never stretched. She was enchanting the thread for smooth sewing.

This is something that can’t be rushed. It’s ready when it’s ready. Sit down with the bag in your hand and both feet on the floor. Think about what you want and keep that picture in your head as you rock. You’ll find a rhythm. Some spells require fast rocking, but most are slow. Just find what feels comfortable and keeping thinking about what you want. If your mind wanders just refocus. Keep going until the bag feels warm and heavy then it’s empowered. Carry the bag with you until your wish manifests.

A spell doesn’t need ingredients to work. Just saying your wish allowed can make it happen. That’s how I got my pool table.

It was two years ago on my birthday and Kevin took me to the movies. When we got to the theater the time had been changed so we had an hour to kill. We wandered into the Sears next door (Let me stop right here and say don’t ever, ever, ever buy anything with a Sears credit card. The card is designed to keep you in debt until you die and then your family can be in debt. Whatever you put on the card will end up costing three times the original price. I know this because I used to work for them.)

Upstairs we found the sporting goods department. I picked up a very nice solid black pool cue and admired it. I showed it to Kev and said, “You should buy this for me.”

“Why?”

“For the pool table I’m going to get!”

He laughed.

A week later I drove past the dump and saw a pool table.

I couldn’t believe someone would throw out a pool table. I decided there must be something wrong with it. On the other hand, I wanted one and this one was free. I decided that if the table was still there when I came back I would stop.

It was.

By that time it was full dark and I couldn't see very well. It appeared to just be the top, but still, it was free, so I decided I could always find legs for it later. As I was wondering how I was going to load it on the truck by myself a teenage couple stopped and the girlfriend made her boyfriend help me. I took the pool to my parents house and my father helped me put it in the barn, telling me the whole while I was wasting my time, nobody throws out a pool table.

The next day I came back and discovered the pool table did have legs- they folded under. All that was wrong with the table was one tiny rip in the felt and one loose pocket.

I’ve gotten so good at manifesting objects that I really don’t need to say anything now. Last year I wanted a new coat, but couldn’t afford it. I admired the coat. I longed for the coat, but it was out of my budget and being that it was so expensive I wasn’t going to ask anyone to buy it for me. But I kept thinking about it.

One weekend I went to my parents house and my mother told me she bought something she thought I would like. It was a leather coat almost identical to the one I wanted. It was shorter and the pockets were different, but basically the same. Mom got it on sale for next to nothing. That’s really how magick works, you gotta want it.

Threats

It seems to me that something wants to destroy my town.

I finally got over there today and it was far worse than the Internet showed. Houses are simply...gone.

I visited with my parents and then made one last drive through and saw smoke. Just one wisp in the middle of the brush. It was so odd and out of place that I stopped to investigate.

Someone had started a fire.

I called 911 who responded promptly.

First tornado, then snow, now fire. I am so pissed.

An Important Task

I may not be blogging as much in the near future. As I mentioned, we had a tornado before we had snow. My hometown was pretty much demolished. I still haven't driven over, but I did search the 'net and the one picture that was shown over and over is the Webb house. It is a brick two story and now the second story is missing. Fortunately, no one was home when the tornado struck. But it is the saddest picture I have ever seen because I know these people and I know that is their dream house and they waited years before they had enough money to build it.

Salem is an old place dating back before the Civil War. There are houses that have stood over 150 years and now they are no more. People are leaving. They are depressed. They are so overwhelmed by the loss of things that have been permanent fixtures for as long they can remember.

Terrible things are happening now. Lootting has begun. Traffic has slowed to a crawl as out of towners gawk at the destruction.

Kevin drove by in the semi and he says you can tell the exact path the tornado traveled. He was awed by the damage and couldn't stop talking about it until I gently reminded him, I know these people.

Of course the clean up has started. There's talk of rebuilding. The school will be closed for a long time (much to delight of the students, I'm sure) The church isn't sure yet what they are going to do.

But I have decided what I need to do. I need to create comfort. So I will be quilting. My goal is one quilt for each house hit. I don't know how long this will take and I don't care. It is something that needs to be done.

I will still be blogging, just not as often. Right now I have a lot of work to do.

The End

I’m going to do my best to get this story wrapped up today because quite frankly I’m tired of remembering this stupid shit. Once was enough. Also lots of things have been going on here. I mentioned that we got snow. The day before the snow we had a tornado. My hometown made the weather channel. My cousin Eddie called my parents to see if they were okay and I guess he didn’t believe them because he drove down here (an hour and half drive for him) I didn’t know anything about the tornado while it was happening. I just thought we were having a bad storm with lots of lightning. Kevin told me it was going to snow the next day and I didn’t believe him because it was just muggy hot, but I thought I should go to the store just in case. We’ve had freak snow before. I wanted to take a shower first, but I had to wait for the lightning to stop. When I got out my mother had left me a voice mail asking if I was alright. The tornado passed by them but didn’t touch down. I am less than 10 miles away and the wind barely picked up here. Today is nice but I still have snow on my porch which is in the shade where the sun can’t melt it. The snow has frozen over and I have been trying in vain to clear the porch so the dogs don’t break my neck as I try to walk them. If any of you have a quick way to get rid of snow tell me about it. I’ve never been outside the South and I am clueless.

So on with the homeless woman story.

Of course with the garnishment Melissa’s take home pay was considerably less and she needed to make some changes. Now bear in mind she had plenty of warning- this built up for weeks. She had time to save up, cut unnecessary items, make arrangements, etc. She did nothing. So when it came time to make a choice between her house and her car, she let the apartment go.

I’m sure some of you are feeling sorry for Melissa right now but don’t bother. I say this for 2 reasons- 1.) Several people tried to help her. Shelly offered to give Melissa half her house. Melissa turned her down because Shelly had animals. Just one cat and two outside dogs, but Melissa made it sound like a pig sty and she had never even seen the house. Jane said Melissa could stay with her if she bought her own food and Melissa said she couldn’t afford it but she was already buying her own food. Every night Melissa went to the store and got several TV dinners and put them in the lab fridge. She ate them all in one night and the next day she’d buy more. It would have to be cheaper to take up Jane’s offer. Shirley said Melissa could stay with her totally free and Melissa turned her down because Shirley lived two towns over and Melissa didn’t want to drive that far. But she drove all over the county every day looking for places to park her car. So that brings me to the second reason I don’t feel sorry for Melissa that’s because I think she enjoyed being homeless.

It wasn’t just Shelly, Jane, and Shirley, lots and lots of people offered to help, even people that didn’t like her and Melissa turned down everybody. Melissa told me she’d been homeless before. If it happened to me I would want to make sure it never happened again but apparently Melissa enjoyed roaming about town every day hunting for food. I’m not sure how much of the story is real. Melissa embellished a story with every retelling until it no longer resembled the original. But anyway, she told me she had been engaged (yeah right) to a solider from Virginia. She moved up there to live with his family until he got back to the states and then he dumped her over the phone. Since she was no longer engaged to the son the family kicked her out and it took Melissa ONE WHOLE YEAR to get back to Alabama.

I asked why it took so long and she said she left her car here in storage. I asked why she didn’t drive it and she said he told her she didn’t need it anymore. I asked why she didn’t get on a plane or a bus and she said she didn’t have any money. I asked what she was doing in Virginia for a year and she said nothing much. I asked where she lived and she said around different places. Finally she got an odd job, scraped up some cash, and got home. She immediately went to get the car and it wouldn’t start so she gave it away. I was just flabbergasted. ‘Melissa, didn’t you know the battery was dead?’ She just shrugged, said she didn’t know much about cars and the person she gave it to seemed happy to get it. And I was like, well duh, you gave her a perfectly good free car. Even if she sold it for $500 she still came out way ahead. Melissa didn’t seem to understand what I was talking about so I gave up.

I question if that even happened, but on the other hand Melissa did so many stupid things so it sounds like her. She got fired once for sexual harassment. I mean she was the harasser. She first told me that she accidentally brushed against a male co-worker and he made a big mess out of nothing. Then she became friends with a 15 year-old boy she met in the mall and she made sexual advances towards him. So after she showed me the text message she sent the boy about dreaming of him in a leather thong (and confused as to why he wasn’t calling her back) I saw the sexual harassment story in a new light.

Then there was the guy at the gym. In order to be able to shower every day Melissa joined a gym. She didn’t lose any weight, and if anything she seemed to eat more, so I guess the gym was strictly for shower room privileges. One day she came in raving about a ‘hot guy’ Melissa told Angel she saw a man with a towel around his neck and Angel was like so what? So Melissa tells Hattie she saw a hot guy with a towel around his waist and he dropped it. Then Melissa told me she walked into the men’s room by mistake and saw a really hot, sexy guy taking a shower. Now you see how hard it is to pin down Melissa with the truth. And I still haven’t gotten to the part about her washing her underwear in the sink.

It was starting to get cold and the temperatures dropped below freezing most nights. Melissa said she was staying at a camp site on the edge of town (funny, but there is no camp site on the edge of town) and she had a season pass but in the off season she still had to pay to camp. She started sleeping in the parking lot at work (short commute there) But it was cold. So that’s when she started sleeping upstairs.

This is hands down the dumbest thing I have ever seen. The office workers left at 5 and Melissa’s shift ended at six. So she clocked out and went upstairs and slept on the floor of a cubical. The next morning she got up at 5:30, washed off in the bathroom, got dressed, nuked a TV dinner for breakfast and then clocked in. What got her in trouble was acting like she really was at home.

She got an air mattress so she wouldn’t have to sleep on that hard floor. Then she decided to sleep in since the office workers didn’t show until 8. So she’d wake up at 5:45, go clock in, reset the alarm, and go back to sleep. She was still doing nothing all day. She still sat in the break room reading and eating for hours. Then Melissa started leaving without clocking out. She go to the gym or the store or the mall or wherever. This went on for months and months.
Everybody knew about it but overlooked her because nobody wanted to be the asshole who fired a homeless person.

It all came to a head one day when Melissa got locked out of her bedroom. Keith came upstairs to use the computer. He tried the door but it was locked. He started to leave and Melissa opened the door. I think she was a little afraid because no one had ever walked in on her sleeping before. Actually, he hadn’t caught her, he just tried a locked door and if Melissa had kept her cool she could have gotten up and gotten the mattress out of sight. But she let Keith in and then she went downstairs. When Keith left he pulled the door to, locking it. Melissa couldn’t get back in until the office people showed up and they didn’t know what to make of the mattress and clanging alarm clock.

She still could have gotten away with it, but she came back up there to get her stuff and she ranted and raved the whole time about Keith locking her out on purpose. So somebody complained. That was the first blow.

The next blow was she ate something that disagreed with her and she didn’t make it to the bathroom on time so Melissa took off her panties and washed them out in the sink. Then she hung them over the stall to dry. The two most anal-retentive-must-play-by-the-rules-goody-two-shoes people at work came in, saw the giant tent-like panties covering the stall and raised hell.

Depressed by these turns of events, Melissa headed to the break room for some comfort food. The lab manager asked her to test some vials and she said she would ‘when she got off break.’ An hour later she was still on break so the manager asked her about it again. Melissa went off on the man. Strike three.

Finally all of these reached the ears of our boss. He might have been able to overlook each event if they had all occurred on different days. But now people were pressuring him to do something.

He got Melissa out of the break room and told her she had to do some work. Last chance. He came back to check on her and she was back on break, stuffing her face and reading. So he gave her the boot. Nobody accused him of being an asshole.

Homeless Woman Part II

So when we last left the bill collectors were circling. These were not just any old bill collectors, these were collectors for student loans.

I said Melissa is around 40. I think she’s actually older. She had a birthday and she told everyone she was 38. Allen commented that she must be older because he was 36 and he couldn’t remember some of the events she talked about. She had mentioned college in the eighties and he was thinking about when he graduated from high school and Melissa would need to be a good bit older in order to be enrolled in college in 1984 unless she started early. Melissa never mentioned graduating from high school, so it is possible that she dropped out, got her GED, and then immediately enrolled at the Cow College on the Plains. (She says she went to the same school I did but she might have just been talking shit) But still, the years aren’t adding up.

Anyway, Melissa never paid off her student loans. She owed over $100,000. I don’t know if the interest really racked up over the years or if she accepted the biggest loan offered but I can tell you that if I owed that much money I’d have a PhD to show for it. Melissa never finished college. I don’t know why she quit. She told me that she declared bankruptcy and the judge made a special exception for her and allowed the student loans to be in the bankruptcy. Normally this isn’t done because then everybody would go to school for free and then declare bankruptcy upon graduation. Melissa claims the judge felt sorry for her because she was a ward of the state and there was no way she’d ever be able to pay back the loans. Then she said her lawyer didn’t file the paperwork correctly so she got stuck with the loans anyway. I don’t believe it. The lawyer would have to follow the court orders and even if it did happen that way she could have fought it. I think the truth is she wanted the loans to be included and they weren’t so she decided to ignore them.

Because that’s what she did when the phone calls started. When she bought the car the dealer ran her credit and those loans came up. Now the collectors had her contact information and they called her cell until she turned it off. Then they called the lab and every day Allen, me, Hattie, and a few times Slutty Girl took the calls and relayed the messages to Melissa who was belligerent and rude when we handed her Post-It notes. On the rare occasions that she did answer the phone the student loan people would tell her to just pay something, anything, even $20 a week, or they would have to garnish her wages. And she would scream and cuss and slam the phone down. Then she’d tell one of us that she wasn’t paying anything so they could go on and garnish her wages if that’s what they wanted to do. I don’t think Melissa understood what garnishment was. I tried to tell her that if she had a garnishment on her wages she WOULD be paying and she stomped off angrily.

It took a long time for the garnishment to go though because there’s a complicated process to follow where the collector has to establish that the person actually owes the money and they really work for the company and then earnings have to be figured up and the collectors can only take a certain percentage and I think the company has to agree to it. Hattie told me that when she was just starting out she had lots of credit cards and she wound up in trouble with two garnishments. The plant manager called her in his office and told her if she got a third one he would have no choice but to fire her. So based on what Hattie told me I think companies can be held liable in some way because if several collection agencies are taking your pay then you basically become like slave labor. I don’t know for sure, I’m just speculating. I didn’t want to embarrass Hattie by asking because I could see that it hurt her pride to confide in me. I know she tried to tell her story to Melissa because she told me so. But Melissa didn’t want to hear it.

In the meantime Melissa got to be damn lazy. She did nothing all day. And I mean nothing. She sat in the break room from 9am until 1pm reading and eating and eating and eating. One day I went in and Melissa was eating bread sticks. There was a pizza box beside her. It was about 8:30 and I asked if she was eating lunch already. Oh no, just the bread sticks. She was saving the left over pizza for lunch. I took my break and went back to work. Melissa was still in the break room around 12 I came back. It was my half day but I had agreed to work over. I didn’t know how long I would be, so I wanted something out of the vending machine to tide me over.
Melissa was still sitting in the same spot eating the pizza. But it wasn’t left over, it was nearly whole- she was eating the second slice. I tried to get some doughnuts, but they didn’t fall. I beat on the machine and cussed at it but no luck, my doughnuts were stuck. I said, ‘Well, that was fatting anyway.’ I started to walk off and Melissa spoke up and said she’d buy some doughnuts and then mine would probably fall. I told her no, but she insisted. So we both got doughnuts. And then she sat down and ate six mini chocolate doughnuts. Then she went back to eating the pizza. When I left at 1:47 she was still in the same spot with various empty food wrappers sounding her.

Melissa was always complaining that she had far too much to do. I had a really stressful job that I hated. One day I got absolutely furious and decided to quit. Mark talked me out of it. He told me to just hold on a little longer, he was going to help me. He created a job for me as Melissa’s alternate. This was not exactly what Melissa wanted. She thought Mark should hire her an assistant. Mark made us equals and Melissa thought it was unfair.

So now I could see how much work there was. It wasn’t much at all. If you did what you were supposed to when you were supposed to do it you could get it all done. Everyday I finished up at 1:30 and then I had to find ways to occupy myself until the shift ended at 6. Melissa kept complaining that there was too much to do and she couldn’t possibly manage it all. She told every one that I just didn’t do as much. No one really believed that so she started telling people that I messed up a lot so she always had to go behind me and redo my work. That was bullshit and that’s when we started fighting and this is where I must end for now. Next time I’ll talk about how she slept in the parking lot and washed her underwear in the ladies room sink.

We Interupt This Story...

...to say it snowed! That's a big deal here in the South. I am 32 and I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen snow.