I almost forgot, depending on where you live it's Beltane - May Day.
The last of the Celtic spring fertility festivals, after Imbolc and Ostara (known in the Christian calendar as St Bridgetís Feast Day and Easter), Beltane marked the arrival of summer. In May, trees leaf out in vibrant green and flowers open their buds to the sun. For ancient agrarian peoples, bellies empty after the long winter, May brought hope for abundant harvests to come. Still, a bountiful harvest was not assured, for tender young crops are susceptible to frost and blight. Believing that the Wheel of the Year would not turn without human intervention, the ancient Celts performed a myriad of rituals to ensure the return of the Sun so necessary to the fertility of the Earth.
ěBeltaneî is thought to mean ěbright fireî or ěfire of Belî, Bel being a Celtic sun god known as the ěBright and Shining Oneî. Purification fires were an essential part of ancient Beltane celebrations, magically bringing the light and warmth of the sun down to earth and ensuring good fortune, healthy livestock and abundant harvests...
For the rest of the legend check out Gaelsong's nice writeup on Beltane, from whence the above came. I need to learn how people make those little boxes for quoted type on their weblogs...
What else, oh yes, the finale of Mad Mad House was last night. Two hours of sitting on the couch, I really was in suspense and kind of wanted both girls to win. I really thought Nichole would win, but they picked Jamie, who finally won her first trial. I thought it was terribly unfair that Eric got to add an extra rock to Nichole in the hanging trial, though, like he wouldn't pick her. And she stayed up for like another hour, to her credit. I was glad Eric didn't win, though, all he did was badmouth Nichole the whole time he was there, which was hardly sporting, and she never said a bad word about anyone, even though she was constantly chattering away.
I don't watch reality shows, but I will watch Season Two when it comes around. This season was so awe-inspiring, lots of healthy eating, love and self care, meditation and inner self-seeking, next season looks like it's going to be Mean Mean World. The Alts tenatively scheduled are: a necromancer, a martial arts expert, a dominatrix, a kemet and a warlock. Now I knew about the necromancer because that's what they asked me about and I gave them a referral. The dominatrix should be fun, and someone seriously into Eastern studies/martial arts disciplines could be very interesting (anyone see Kill Bill 2?). Read that a kemet is something to do with Egyptian cat worship (?), but a warlock? Who calls themselves that? A male witch is a witch. Perhaps they mean someone into Ceremonial Magick, or someone really into the black arts. Or maybe a Satanist? Can they do that on TV in this conservative decade? Now, I know a Satanist doesn't actually worship Satan (really, they worship themselves), just as witches don't worship Satan (we don't believe he even exists), but the general public doesn't.
Who knows... But if the Christian contestants were uncomfortable with Fiona's white magic rituals, what are they going to do with a necromancer and a warlock? I know people that compete on reality shows have no shame and usually are kind of low on the moral scale, but hopefully they can find another group of ultra-conservative folks for season two. They need to come back to Texas, you can't swing a stick here without hitting a bunch of conservative church-types.
But I'm still a little disappointed that Jamie won. Yes, she said she'd give up her job as a stripper, who wouldn't for $100,000? She and Noel were the neediest of the money, but Nichole did seem to work the hardest, especially with everyone else against her. I liked Bonnie the best, but she came into the game with a curious open mind and a big heart, so of course she was eliminated early. Out of all the guests on the show she was the only one I could really relate to.
Oh, FYI, The Vampire Don.com is up and running, very nicely done, looks like a lot of the goth/vampire sites out there. I still can't believe he could even hold a bowling ball with those nails...
Busy week, too much drama, but I'll not go into that... We took Phoebe in for her annual physical this week and because she was so itchy. The vet didn't find anything wrong with her skin, decided it was probably food allergies and switched her to an allergen free diet, IV Green Peas and Duck, which is what she was on when we got her. But she doesn't really like it, though, so I'm still mixing the old food in with it. And the bag of Hill's Sensitive Skin food that I'd ordered a week ago still hadn't arrived so I emailed them to see if I could return it and they hadn't even sent it out yet (!). Geez, they charged my card the day I ordered it, but now they're supposed to be crediting me for the whole order, which included some feather toys too.
I'm afraid I've been giving her too much people food lately, letting her lick the bottle of my yoghurt, etc., which is like her favorite thing to do. And I give her too many treats. The vet gave her a steroid shot for the allergies, he had suggested we give her oral steroids for a week instead and now I kind of wish we'd taken done that instead of the shot. She's been so mellow and calm all week, poor thing, not herself at all. She's hardly played at all and has mostly been sitting on the floor watching us and purring quietly. She seems to slowly be getting some of her energy back, we played a little tonight. But she's not itching and her skin is healing nicely.
And the last couple of days I've been feeling really uncomfortable in my skin for some unknown reason. Wednesday night we went out and I ate pasta for the first time in like a month, maybe it's some side effect of that. I just feel really jumpy and sort of PMSy, though I shouldn't be yet. I read an article saying that the low carb diet worked better if you took a day off once or twice a month and ate semi-normal so I rationalized it that way. I also had a migraine coming on Wednesday morning and took a Maxalt, which for some reason made me really druggy feeling all day to the point where I couldn't even drive. I don't know if it's the change in diet, birth control pills, or Prozac but medicines seem to be affecting me really adversely lately. I've just been a lump. I hate this feeling and I not knowing what's causing it pisses me off. Part of it is my mitral valve prolapse, which causes my heart to beat irregularly sometimes out of nowhere, which it's doing now, but I still have that creepy crawly feeling. And I dreamed about being invaded by bugs last night, which doesn't help at all.
My attempt at running errands Friday was just an exercise in aggravation. I made it through the post office quickly, but then needed to make a deposit at my bank with a real person instead of the ATM and had to wait like 15 minutes just to get through the line of cars. Then I stupidly went out on Braeswood, enroute to Sam's Club by the Dome, straight shot, eh? Made it through Hillcroft, no problem, than bam, all the traffic stops about a block before Chimney Rock. And goes nowhere... OK, I know afternoon traffic is bad but something was definitely wrong here. Is a car broken down, what?
Oh! I get close enough to the light that I can see through the SUV in front of me's window, and the light seems to be cycling funny. Oh crap, not funny at all, the two lights that are like 100 feet apart are out of sync. First light turns green just as the second light is turning red. So three cars get to scoot up each time, hanging out into the intersection, aaagghh! Luckily I was in the first slot when it was my turn and I shot all the way through. In any kind of race I've always been able to get the "out the gate" advantage, I have to make myself stop and wait until I'm sure no one is running a light coming at me because I have had the front end of my car knocked off by an idiot doing just that. But after that it was easy, even the loop didn't back up until I got off just after Fannin. Then I got to stand in line to get my prescription at Sam's, by that time I was pretty much a zombie.
And I was starting to get really hungry, it was dinner time. A lady was giving out samples of something that smelled really good and turned out to be a chimichanga. "It's very hot", she warned, "hold it a little while". It was hot, but after about four minutes of trying to steer a giant shopping cart with one hand while my stomach grumbled out loud, I succumbed. And burnt the crap out of the roof of my mouth. I have an overbite so I'm used to having injured gums, but burned and injured, oww... But it was tasty.