(no subject)

I don't know if I've ever written about this or not.

A few years ago, after we came back from Louisiana, we moved into an apartment. We were in the process of moving in and I think I was getting ready to vacuum the floor. The living room & kitchen were separated by a bar/counter thingie (which was one of the things I loved about that apartment) and there was a wall plug near the floor on the living room side of the bar. I had bent down to plug the vacuum (or whatever it was, might have even been a fan), and when I stood up I looked over the bar into the kitchen. Herne was standing in front of the refrigerator.

For those unfamiliar with that particular spirit, Herne is similar to Cernunnos. His name is the sound a rutting stag makes, "Herrnnnn", he's antlered and usually shown with the legs of a deer. He's a hunter-spirit, guardian of the Windsor forest in England, leader of the Wild Hunt... He wasn't particularly tall, he was slight but wiry. He was dark haired and dark-eyed, bare chested and wearing a buckskin kilt, holding his bow in one hand, and the room was filled with a smell like musk, damp ferns and blackberries and rain.

Herne looked at me over the counter & I looked at him. The hair on my arms & legs had stood on end, I imagine the hair on my head was probably doing the same thing. He seemed like a deer caught in mid-leap, poised & ready to flee, but he also seemed kind of like he was waiting and listening for something. Honestly, I was terrified. I'd never experienced anything so visceral and out of context before, and I don't think I was thinking anything. A part of me expected to die, and it felt like my voice had disappeared.

Rob came in with another load of boxes and the moment ended. Herne just went away, not a slow fade or flashy vanishing act - one minute he was there, the next, gone.

It's kind of funny because his appearance didn't seem to portend anything. It wasn't an omen or a sign. It was just Herne, standing in my kitchen for no apparent reason. For me, though, it was about that time that I stopped doing spells & rituals. It's hard to explain exactly why... Maybe it was a realization that the Gods do what they will, even popping up in people's kitchens, and nothing I could say or do would make them change their minds, and it was a tad egotistical to think that my burning a few candles would have that much impact on the world around me.

Adventures at Quick Care

My foot has been bugging me since I rolled it week before last, so tonight I finally gave in & went to Quick Care. Considering most of my other trips to Quick Care, this one was actually quick. When I described what I did to it, the swelling & the bruising, everyone seemed pretty convinced that I had fractured something. There's a ligament that wraps around the foot & when the foot is rolled to the outside, that ligament puts a lot of torque on the top bones & wrenches them & can even snap them like toothpicks. And I've broken a lot of those little bones doing the exact same move.

At any rate, they took x-rays - nothing broken. I probably pulled some tendons - basically sprained my foot. However, the x-ray revealed that I've got some calcium deposits ('bone spurs') on the sites of old injuries, arthritis and a heel spur. Which explains some of the pain in my Achilles' tendon that seems to start in my heel. Every time Chelsie steps on my foot, though, I just want to ball up & cry, so I ACE bandaged it.

Tomorrow we're having a barbecue potluck for my birthday, lol. I tried to make macaroni & cheese & fucked it all up. My cheese sauce broke. My dad did not inject my mother with enough Cajun for me to make a decent roux. I would sell my soul for the ability to make a killer roux. Ah well, I can still make some co'nbread. Chelsie gets her final set of booster shots tomorrow, so we can maybe take her to the dog park up the road on the weekends. I read some forum about greyhounds & this woman had written a letter to the webmaster about the 'dangers of greyhounds'. She had taken her 4 mo. old puppy to a dog park, she had let it off the leash & it was attacked by a pair of greyhounds. She wanted to warn everyone about their fierce nature & powerful prey drive.

I'm like, someone needed to slap that woman for taking a 4 mo. old puppy to a dog park in the first place & letting it run loose. It's not even old enough to get its rabies vaccination, heartworm medication, and it's not finished w/its bordatella or parvovirus boosters. Parvo kills so many puppies. People piss me off sometimes.