The End of the (*Bleep!*) Me Shoes Era

Before I had my lovely accident and lost sensation and fine motor control in my lower legs and feet  ... I used to be able to, when I felt like dressing up and behaving badly, wear what I now fondly refer to as my (*Bleep!*) Me Shoes ... you know the shoe:  really high stiletto heels.  AFTER the accident, I tried them once and lost my balance in them – I no longer had the sensation (translation:  fine motor skills require the ability to sense variations in the ground) in my lower legs and feet to achieve the necessary balance for them.  I expected things to improve – or at least, that’s what the surgeon told me – so I put them away for later.

5 years later ... I figured:  hey, I’ve been strengthening my legs and feet by running underwater and doing aerobics, maybe I can wear them again.  Put them on ... and had to hold onto a counter walking gingerly down the length of my house.  A woman just knows when her own (*Bleep!*) Me Shoes era comes to a wobbly close ... I just muttered “damn!” ... do I put them away again and hope for an improvement?  Or do I give up the thought of ever wearing high heels again?

[Comment from the assembled masses:  “Hey, here’s an idea, dummy:  why don’t you start out with lower heels and work your way back up to  (*Bleep!*) Me Shoes, instead of aiming for the sex appeal summit right off the bat?”]

[Blink]  Okay, fine.  Reasonable idea.  (*sigh*)

Anyway, I’m on vacation this week of Thanksgiving.  I am finally – finally! – getting my sewing/textile arts area set up ... everything had been in plastic bins and is now being moved onto shelves.  Some of the fabric is still in bins in my storage room, so sometime today or this week, I’m going to retrieve the rest of it.  THEN (hopefully) I can talk Dana into helping me move the remainder of my stuff from my North Andover storage room into this one.  Ah, life is so complicated sometimes.

Weirdest thing:  I come home last Thursday night and there’s a notice on my door.  I don’t have the notice anymore, but, basically, it went:  “WARNING!  DANGER!  The Chief of Police is holding a meeting about the dangerous standoff of a few days ago!  It is IMPERATIVE that you be there!”  The meeting was to be held on Friday at 3 in the afternoon, while I was still at work.

My first reaction:  “Huh?  WHAT standoff of a few days ago?”  I had to go look it up in the online local news.  Apparently, some guy had barricaded himself in his home two streets in our subdivision away from me, threatening to kill himself and take us all with him.  No mention of how he planned to do that.  The local SWAT team (who knew a town this small had one?) was called in; the standoff lasted 10 hours, after which he surrendered and was carted off to jail.  He actually didn’t own the home he was barricaded in; his father did, so technically he’s not even a resident.  He also wasn’t allowed to own firearms, so the fact that he did was a bit of an issue, as far as the police were concerned.

I still couldn’t figure out what danger I was still supposedly in, so I called the police to ask.  They weren’t aware of the notice written by our Homeowner’s Association and posted on my door, and when I read it to them, they kinda went, “Sheesh.”  So apparently the Homeowner’s Association had gotten a little carried away with the imminent danger side of it.  I said, “You arrested him and he’s in jail, right?” 

Them:      Yup.  He won’t be out for a long time.
Me:      So there’s nothing I need to worry about?
Them:      Nope.
Me:      OK. I’m good.  Thanks.

 – and tossed the IMPERATIVE MEETING YOUR LIFE IS AT STAKE! notice in the trash in a state of complete agreement:  sheesh.

Note to self:  the Homeowner’s Association seems to be full of over-reactive hysterics.  I never did ask the police how he planned to “take all of us with him”, and assume he was just blustering.

Bottom line:  fortunately for me, and unfortunately for all of you slogging through this blog, I’m still here.

Finally have my  new permanent tooth. I don’t think I ever mentioned my front tooth.  Picture it:  winter, 2014.  Temperature:  something like 10 degrees below zero.  I’m shivering on the Andover commuter rail platform, waiting for the train.  I make the fatal mistake of breathing.

I heard this loud “KERRACK!” and suddenly feel something hard on my tongue.  I spit it out and look at it.  Half a tooth!  My front tooth had, in the bitter cold, cracked right in half!

Since then, I had to have the missing part of the tooth slathered in with whatever material they use to make new teeth.  That got me through a few days.  Then I had to have the remaining part of the tooth extracted, and was given a “flipper” – looked like a retainer, except it had a fake tooth on it which was created based on the remaining half of my front tooth so it looked like the original, and I had to take it out to eat, which was really annoying. 

But even worse, the sides of that “flipper” kept scraping away at other teeth and my tongue, and I hated the thing.  Extremely painful, most of the time.  A month or so ago (I had to wait until I could afford the balance of the procedure), I was given a temporary tooth, which was screwed into the bone, and I could finally get rid of the annoying flipper.  Then I returned for the permanent front tooth to be put in.  Finally!!

So – moving on – yesterday I pulled together my first-ever formal circle casting, quarters calling, deities invoking and spell casting ritual ... which is the ultimate goal for this year’s class, but you need to get started working on it from the beginning.  They always tell you never to share the spell itself with anyone else, so I won’t, but I can share a few funny and not-so-funny lessons learned: 

First:  move the coffee-table/slash/altar away from the couch BEFORE doing anything – I barked my shins on that thing more times than I can count.

Second:  while I thought I had done a run-through in my head for logistics purposes, it appears I had missed a few things.  I had ground the incense in my mortar ahead of time, and had the cast iron censor/slash/miniature cauldron ready, but forgot the long matches to light the charcoal at the bottom of it.  Had to open a door, failed to find the matches, ended up grabbing a set of tongs and using those.

Third:  test things first.  Used a gorgeous seashell as a water container, only to discover the shell had a hole in it.  Ended up having to quickly shove a paper towel under the cloth so that I wouldn’t get a water mark.  Luckily, I hadn’t cast the circle yet when that happened.

Fourth:  hadn’t caught all of the “ye”s, “thou”s and other Old English variants in the invocation and had to improvise on the fly.  I need to make sure the spoken words are words I can speak in my own voice.  And I don’t speak using “thee”s, “thou”s and “ye old”s.  It isn’t me speaking, if I start tossing out words like that, it’s somebody else.  As for the wonderful beings I directed my invocation to, trust me, they understand me quite well without all the Old English.

Fifth:  that blue circle really does generate a lot of energy.  Almost feels electric, as though it should be buzzing.  It was a lovely sensation, actually feeling the energy.

Sixth:  didn’t know that directions had different invoking and banishing symbols, so I should have printed out a diagram to refer to, at least until I have memorized them.

Seventh:  I don’t know how this will work out when I have to do this in class, because my correspondences are so different.  SO many people place water in the west and air in the east, which would work beautifully if I lived in California – but I don’t.  For me, water is in the east, because I can walk out my door, head east, and there’s the Atlantic Ocean.  The traditions that Americans use are typically Celtic or British – where water IS in the west.  The correspondences have to be entirely different for people in Australia and New Zealand.

Eighth:  bring tissues!!!  Again, won’t mention the spell, but when I was with the deities who took me under their sphere of protection and guidance when I was initiated, I ended up with tears running down my face – which can happen with you’re facing the God of Spoken Truth (Thoth) who catches every prevarication you might attempt ... not that I tried.  Point is:  complete self-honesty can be painful sometimes.  Ergo, the tears.  Unfortunately, I had nothing to mop them up with but a sleeve.

Ninth:  you might want to preview the musical accompaniment BEFORE everything starts.  I had downloaded what I thought was meditation music and missed the actually quite catchy and upbeat (also raucous and filled with laughter) tribute to Loki, right in the middle of it.  Now, under normal circumstances, I would have gotten a kick out of the song, because after watching Tom Hiddleston play Loki in the Marvel films (and doing one heck of a memorable job of it), I would have sung along with it.  However ... the juxtaposition was a bit distracting, coming as it did right in the midst of the rite.

Just opened the door to retrieve the last of the groceries:  OH NO!!!   SNOW!!!!