On the Cusp

This pandemic and its subsequent consequences (social distancing, quarantines, stay-at-home orders) has thrown into the spotlight how woefully unprepared a lot of businesses are to offering their employees remote work opportunities, but a lot of them are adapting fast. I really wish I could say the same for my employer... But I'm a week into officially working from home and I'm still struggling with getting the technology to cooperate.

First, it's my hand-me-down laptop that crashed in the middle of hosting a company webinar on Monday. Thankfully, my boss was a co-host for that event and things progressed as smoothly as could be expected for a first attempt.

Second, I found that I was suddenly unable to remote into my work machine and had to actually go to the office, unhook it all and bring it home, only to find that I still need to remote into the servers back at the office (because they aren't WiFi compatible...)

Hopefully that'll be resolved tomorrow.

I feel v…

I started working from home today.

All of the elements came together at the right time, I suppose. The governor finally issued an order to stay at home, the buses had all but stopped running, and I found a convenient way to access my work computer in case I need to pull anything off the server while crafting emergency COVID-19 related content from the discomfort of my kitchen table.

It was getting eerie going into downtown Saint Paul in the morning to see few bodies and even fewer cars on streets that are usually bustling. The quiet unease at the bus stop while waiting with a group of fellow travelers - some masked, most not - lent an aura of imminent danger to just being outside.

It's bad enough to feel like we're on the tipping point of the end of days, which is a very Twilight Zone sensation, I'm also fielding phone calls every other day from the hospital as the ICU staff struggles to determine the best course of action for treating my mom...who has no developed a bacte…

~ On Friday, March 13th my mom went to the hospital with a fever, a cough, and trouble breathing. She was taken by ambulance with paramedics that arrived in protective gear because they were concerned she might have COVID-19.  After a few hours in the local ER, she was intubated and transferred to a larger hospital where she could be cared for.

I want to talk about my mom for a moment....

Last weekend, she went to the ICU with a fever, cough, and shortness of breath. We feared the worst - huddled together in my tiny studio apartment - and waited for an update. It was goods news. She tested negative for the coronavirus, but her oxygen levels were still really low and they had decided to keep her sedated and intubated until the nasty strain of flu she'd caught finally subsided.

I only got to see her in the hospital for a brief moment, after I'd gone through a sanitation process and donned a medical mask, and it was heartbreaking. But the worst part is knowing that she might be th…

If you're a fellow blogger or you just read a lot of blogs (like I do) you'll have noticed the influx of "perfect morning routine" posts over the last few years. Quite often, they contain advice that no normal human could possibly adhere to all the time:

Wake up at 5 am every single morning and drink a giant glass of lemon water!Spend no less than 30 minutes meditating!Eat a nutritional breakfast - admittedly, this one is probably a good idea...Practice gratitude (spend 10 minutes journaling about what you're thankful for)!Go for a brisk walk or twist your way through an entire yoga practice!Read at least five pages of a book or newspaper!Style your hair and wear a full face of natural looking makeup!Check your emails and get a jump start on the day!
I'm not a morning person by nature and believe me, I've tried to change that several times. Weeks would go by where I tried desperately to stick to a prescribed morning routine and join the legions of other s…

I never wrote about this in detail on this blog, but I was in a very toxic relationship for four years prior to dating the wonderful person I'm with now. Truthfully, I'd been caught up in a pattern of less than healthy romantic entanglements for much of my youth and maybe this was, in part, due to the fact that I had no successful relationships to model mine after while growing up.

The reason I want to write about this now is because of the recent audio that has come to light regarding Johnny Depp and Amber Heard's two hour therapy session in which she admits not only to hitting Depp but also verbally lashing out and throwing things at him.

I want to talk about this because....well....

People who are abused can also exhibit abusive behaviors when provoked.

We like to portray victims of abuse as scared, sniveling, and passive participants in a toxic situation - cowering in a corner or acquiescing to avoid a worse outcome. But being abused can also make a person really angr…

I feel like I could be one of the poster children for the Dismissive Avoidant Attachment type. I was a latch-key kid in a single parent home. I have a younger sibling who has a disability and required more attention as a child. My family didn’t display a lot of affection around each other, as that Scandinavian Stoicism was often present.  I wasn’t abused or neglected though. In fact, when I was the only child, I was lavished with attention, love and praise. But then my brother came along and it all kind of fell apart. The family dynamic changed – dad disappeared and mom was suddenly very busy.  I got used to self-soothing when I was lonely or needed something. I became very internal and quiet, preferring to escape into books or fantasy where things always worked out in the end. It was a refuge of my own design.  Attachment Theory in psychology attempts to explain how we form attachments to other people and how our upbringing can affect the ways in which we connect (or don’t) in adult re…

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...


Wait. That's not quite right. I don't celebrate Christmas.

The Twelve Days of Christmas, possibly one of the most annoying carols ever (definitely up there with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer), can be traced back to the late 1700's as a memory and forfeit game. At least, that's about all historians can agree on, though some believe it may be French in origin.

The carol itself refers to the oft-forgotten Christian tradition of the Twelve Days of Christmas - which begins the night of December 25th and runs until January 6th - spanning the supposed time of Christ's birth and ending upon the arrival of the Three Kings.

(Advent, on the other hand, is the number of weeks preceding Christmas. Advent has seen a surge in popularity in recent years with the interest in fun and festive advent calendars.)

Thanks to the Christmas Creep and the commercial calendar treating the 25th as the last day of marketing for the hol…

As I was scrolling through my TL on Twitter this morning, a tweet jumped out at me from user @stfutony that read "there's only ONE MONTH left in the decade. what have you accomplished?" Normally, I would have kept scrolling but something about this tweet felt accusatory, seeming to say that if I didn't acheive great things from the years 2010 to 2020 that I have somehow failed as a person and it was all for naught.

I'm sure that's not how Tony means it, though, and many of the replies featured people both lamenting the fact that they seemed to have accomplished nothing and those who are just so glad to have survived to see the end of the decade that I think this tweet was designed to put things into perspective for ourselves.

Still, it hit something within me. What have I accomplished in the last decade?

2010 

~Started a Gothic Lolita blog
~Found a community of like-minded friends
~Adopted a black cat named Elvira


2011

~Escaped from Montreal (long story)
~Enro…

I love Halloween. Even as a child, it was my favorite holiday.

To me, there's something comforting and wholesome about ghosts, zombies, monsters, black cats, and of course, witches. Metaphorically, they represent our darker sides...our hidden sides...aspects of humanity and existence that make us uncomfortable because they're shrouded in darkness. But darkness doesn't always have to be frightening. The dark can hide us safely away from prying eyes or those who would do us harm. The dark of night lulls us gently to sleep.

I guess I knew early on that this is precisely what drew me to the occult and witchcraft. A safe space to explore our darker sides, to draw our power from them, and to own them instead of letting them own us.

For many witches, Halloween is considered the most important of nights. It is the last harvest festival in many pagan beliefs, a final nail in the coffin to a year of planting, reaping, and sowing. A time of letting old things go and concocting plans…