The Craft, Zoos and Other Things Keeping Me Busy

My lovely Friends: Black Magic, The Lifeguard, Kitten, Oscelot, The Real Deal, and Auto.



Me and my ladies having fun outside the tiger enclosure.

I've been a bad blogger. Sorry Idisappeared. This last couple of weeks has been busy at work, and I've actually gotten to do some stuff with my friends inthe off time, which means very little work on my novel and even less time to blog.

So this last week I did two or three fun things. The first is I went and got a notebook to use as my book of shadows. Its great. I've actually been taking tiem to learn about my Craft, and I love it. Saukura has been coming over in the evenings when he is free, and the four of us have been sitting and talking about our goals, what we want from life and our practice. I've been learning and it feels really good. I liked having other practitioners to talk with, because up until now I've been what is generally called a solitary practitioner. The prospect of having someone to celbrate holidays with and work with is exciting. I feel like there are all sorts of possibilites opening up before me. I almost get now why Christians would want to go to church, although I have to admit church has never been anything particularly filling for me.

My other big outing this week was to our local zoo. It's not huge, because it is privately funded. Still, it's pretty big. We went with a gourp of friends on Tuesday, which is our day off. This week, we got together in the morning with Black Magic and Lifeguard (another friend of ours you'll probably hear a lot about) and had breakfast. It was nice, because Kitten makes the best breakfasts on the planet. eriously, she's theonly person I've ever met who won't scre wup my bacon, my eggs, or my hashbrowns. If it hadn't already been love, it would have been the first time she made me breakfast.

Afterwards we met two of Oscelot and I's co-workers at the zoo. They are without a doubt one of the cutest couples that I have ever met. Real Deal, the girl, is a server with us, and her and Oscelot get along really well. Auto, her boyfriend, has worked with me since I started at Casa Bueno, and is my very favorite cook. So the six of us went off to explore our lovely zoo and take lots of pictures.

We had a really nice time. I got a kick out of playing in the petting zoo, we fed the fish enough food to waste probably $8 in quarters, but it was fun. We kept trying to get the food to the turtles, who seemed either too slow or too stupid to get to the food before the fish did.

I got time to play on the playground with Lifeguard, which was great, because I like having someone else around willing to go down the slides, climb the monkey bars and all those other fun things. It makes me feel less like an old person and more like I've got plenty of life left in me.

We were a little disappointed. The giraffe feeding deck was closed by the time we got to it, and we were really wanting to do that. The otters, who are normally out and showing off, were not in their yard. That kinda sucked too. I love the otters. Otherwise, we had a great time. The bears were playing together under the trees, and it was completely adorable. I played hide and seek with the warthog, which ws hilarious, because every time I disappeared around the corner he would start grunting really, really loudly.

The Lions acutally decided to get up (they are almost always sleeping) and we got a bit of a show from them. The male started calling to the female and his voice was beautiful. She came out of their little cave and gave him kisses, and then went back inside. He thought this was great, and I got an awesome picture of him on his back, looking more like one of my cats (albeit huge) and a lot less like an animal that could tear your throat out.

The sun was out and we got plenty of it. It was almost ninety degrees at the hottest point in the day. That's not normal for May in this area of the country, but we weren't complaining. I wore sunscreen, of course, and actually got enough sun that once of my coworkers commented on it the day after. I was sorry that the many interactive water features at the zoo werent running yet, but again, its just now the middle of May. We were having July weather. (until yesterday, when we had a frost. A frost!)

I will admit, the walking was a little rough on my ankle, which is still pretty sore. It isn't swollen twice its size anymore, but I'm still bracing it for work, and when I get home I have to elevate and ice it.

In other news, I had an eye appointment last week which precipitated a meltdown on my part. Turns out the insurance from Casa Bueno has gotten messed up, with respects to me, so I had taken out my last pair of contacts and was waiting to get my eyes checked when the blurry figure of the nurse came to tell me my insurance had been canceled. I wasn't pleased. At all. I'm still working out how to fix that, and in the meantime I rescheduled my appointment and the eye doctor graciously lent me a pair of contacts in my old prescription so I wouldn't have to be blind. Which is good, because I am legally blind without my contacts and glasses. I ended up upset enough the girls took me to dinner. They very graciously allowed me to call Lifeguard, and she and I went for a drive hat evening. It was really nice. We had gelato and made a mess of ourselves. That was fun. I was glad to do it, because she had to go back to her hometown for the summer on Friday.

Tonight is one of our coven nights, although we usually just play games on Sunday and bond. I'm looknig forward to it.

Also, I have to mention, God and Godess bless the people who came in to my section earlier this week. I was talking to them about pets and they found out about all the stray cats we feed. One of them has family that runs a pet shelter, and they have acess to more pet food than they will ever need. They offered to let me take flats (whole truckoads!) of food from them at no charge to feed my starving outdoor kids. They only live a couple neighborhoods away form me. I was crying at the table. It is such a relief. We spend almost as much a month on cat food as we do on human food. I was so greatful.

That's me in a nutshell for the past two weeks.

I'm pretty boring, huh?

AGxx