Doggie theft

Chalice Level: Half  (Just tired)

It has been a while since I last posted. And tonight post likely will not be that long. But we have had several things happening. First we stole a dog, or according to my mom we rescued it, lol. It has been running around my mother-in-laws home for several months and has always been very friendly. We recently tried to pet it and it cowers. The people who we believe owns it has had several dogs, all of which run the neighborhood and are skinny. At this time of year it is very hot outside and they often look thirsty. So I had had enough and decided that it would be greatly loved at our place. So far so good, he gets along great with our other dog and they both love having someone to play with.




My youngest has been introduced to baby cereal and seems to like it.



My hubby still is without a job, but I have found work at keen.com as a phone psychic which so far I love doing. I did have one person leave really bad feedback which has now affected my overall score since I am really new and now I am having to work even harder trying to build my score back up to where it should be. But it did not cost out of pocket for me to get started and I can do it at home, around my schedule etc.



My meditations have not been going so well since I am falling into the trap of not doing them regularly again. But I plan to do a decent meditation tonight after I spend a little time with the baby who is missing me since I have been doing readings most the evening.



I know I am missing stuff. But that will have to do for now.



TTFN

More Mistakes

Chalice Level: Half full

It was sprinkling tonight while I meditated. It was absolutely beautiful and felt so good to sit out under the clouds. I imagined that I was in a rain forest, which is something I have wanted to see for a very long time now.

I did not do a whole lot with the non-profit today. I am feeling a little burnt out and finding it hard to dive in and feel good about it. Which is the frame of mind I want to be in when working on it since I don't want to dislike what it is that I am doing. It is very hard letting it go for a day or two because I have SO much to do and the time I waste not working on it means that I may really wish I had that time later. I did send out a correction for some information I had previously sent out. I dreaded doing that since one of the people I sent it to was a shop owner that I have previously upset do to things not going smoothly. I actually really like this person, he had helped me out in the past before all this stuff for the WB and I know that he is a huge supporter of our community. So I am not sure what I was more down about as far as informing him of my mistake, that I had made yet ANOTHER mistake or that I likely would hear back from him about it which likely would not be very kind words. I keep telling myself that I just cannot, no matter how hard I try, make things run with out bumps in the road. And that next years Ball will run a lot smoother since I will be aware of my problem areas this year. *big sigh*

I also did a little organizing of my filling cabinet, which till just a few days ago I was just throwing crap into so that my son could not get into it and mess up my organized mess. I should have it completed soon. I am a bit frustrated with two of the vendors that will be at the Ball. One has not yet paid and had agreed to pay on the 9th and the other has given me no prospective date of the other half of her payment. Both are not responding to emails. To make matters worse, the one who has paid half has become quick and good friends with my ex-friend that was apart of the chaos recently and so vicariously is so with the big problem maker. And that vendor is friends with the other vendor who I have yet to get a payment from. I am about to email them both to tell them that if I do not hear back from them within a certain amount of time that I will be refunding the one vendors money and will make the two spaces available to others. I also have yet to get payment from another vendor and she also is not responding, she has two spaces reserved. I having to deal with this "on hold" crap. The member that I was butting heads with is the one that thought this was a grand idea, and now I have to deal with the crap from it. Argh!!!

Moving on. I have found a few volunteers for the ball, two that I mentioned in previous blog posts and and one that has recently showed how much she would love to help. I am calling a vendor meeting for Wednesday of next week to go over ways they can help and then hopefully will feel a little less overwhelmed. The newest volunteer will be helping me a lot with solicitation letters and getting businesses on board to help our fundraising efforts. I hope to work on the letter a bit more tonight, since it is not settling with my quite right. I also need to create a "need list" (with a lot of liquor on it) and update the website to reflect the different levels of sponsorship available.

The house we worked on quite a lot tonight. We have almost completely filled a haul-away dumpster with crap we had originally thrown outside after we moved in because of the mothballs my now father-in-law used. We have had the dumpster for a couple of weeks but it has been way to hot to work. It finally cooled off enough to be able work outside. I love how quite it is in the area, and actually love the property even though we have a lot of work to do on it. Work that will likely take a few years at minimum before we feel like we are finished. I cant wait to start a garden!

I think that is about it for tonight.
TTFN

Follow the white unicorn

Chalice Level: one-eighth full

I am exhausted today. It was very nice outside but I really need to get something to lay on other than the ground. It was breezy and just as I started to come in it started to sprinkle. I really hope this means we get some rain.

So the adventure for the day is that I went down town (busing it again) to get the liquor license for the Ball and found out that it is going to cost a lot more than I realized it would. I have to get two of them which I knew, one for the state and one for the city. The one for the state I was able to find out about online. The one for the city, I had to go down town and apply for, or at least I thought I would apply for. The license costs $350!!! which currently I don't have the funds for. I did however get the articles of incorporation paid for so it can be published, which means I will be in compliance for the 501(c)3. At least I got something done.

I am feeling pretty low tonight, cause not only am I tired but I am stressed about finances for both the Ball and home. The hubby, I feel like, is not looking as hard for a job as our family needs him to. I have started to also start turning in applications in the hopes that one of us will get a job.

I am almost done with the solicitation letter that I tweaked. And one of the volunteers has some great ideas of companies to request donations from. I also informed her about the goodie bags and she said she would start working on that as well.

While meditating tonight I had a vision of a white unicorn. what came to mind was "follow the white unicorn". I have no idea what that means or if maybe my mind is just super tired and is running wild. But just in case it is not. I was facing South. The unicorn was facing East and had its right front hoof bent up like you typically see horses do. It was bobbing its head a little with its hair flying around a bit. After I am done here I am going to see what information I can find about a white unicorn, and if any biz's use it as a symbol.

TTFN

Solicitation

Chalice Level: To the brim

I am in high spirits tonight, I just over all feel good. I wanted to meditate outside longer but it felt like I kept having bugs crawl on me. I am going to have to check for an ant trail tomorrow.

I have at total of 6 now selling the raffle tickets that are for $100. This is very exciting. Hopefully they each will be able to sell a lot of tickets.

TTFN ~ going to work on the solicitation letter.

Just Do It

Chalice Level: Full

I sooooo did not want to come in tonight from meditation. I really was not outside long, maybe 10 minutes? It was so nice and quite. And the incense smelled sooooooo good. But I dragged myself back in :-) see how special you are? whoever you?

I had so much running through my head for what needs to be done. And I also needed to write for 2 days instead of 1 since I missed yesterday, but I am tellin ya. I had a VERY good reason, complete and utter exhaustion!

So after my last entry I went to bed like I said I would, this was around 9pm. At Midnight I am woken up because my oldest is tired of watching the middle child and the hubby is working on something for the house. So I get up to take care of the middle child (his schedule is still off from the other night, we are having a very hard time getting him on track). And guess what, the real situation is that the oldest wants to be on facebook. I was so mad! I had told her already that I would be out running the next day, in the heat and that I really wanted to get some rest. She told me to go back to bed but I was wide awake at this point. I tried several times to go back to sleep during early morning hours but was just not happening. The middle child did not go to bed till very late, the youngest woke up several times and then the hubby's phone kept going off. So I gave up.

I leave around a quarter to nine in the morning, I wanted to leave early enough to get food but that did not work out since I was having a very difficult time getting the hubby to go out of the house. So I wound up being out all day with no food. I had to meet with a psychic at a local shop and then meet with the belly dance director for entertainment for the ball. Finally around 4pm when I was meeting with the director for the belly dancers she gave me a little food that a friend had made. I had mentioned earlier when I spoke to her over the phone that I might stop to get something to eat since I had not had lunch yet. Everywhere I stopped had no restaurants! I couldn't believe it!

Anyhow the meeting with the director went very well. I really like her a lot, and she is so all about helping the community out. She also owns her own vegetarian cafe which is downtown in the art district. She had all these fabulous ideas of how to help out the Ball, the non-profit and even me! She mentioned about doing a "meet the artist" thing for my photography, which I am beyond excited about. But I need to get a website, and biz cards first. I might also be able to do some readings at a monthly event, so this is very exciting! She was also a great listener, I kinda unloaded on her about the problems I'd had with the other members of my non-profit before it had become a non-profit.

I was so tired that on the way home I kept dozing off, and I NEVER do that. I finally stopped doing that when i crouched onto the shoulder of the person next to me!!! which I REALLY never do. I apologized and she seemed to think it was funny, but I sure didn't! I think she was less upset cause she remembers being a mom of a small baby (she was an older lady) but little did she know that at that point I had not hardly slept at all. Anyhow once I got to the last stop for my end of town it was like 7:30 at night and I had pretty much not eaten anything all day, except for the little bit the director had given me. I had my youngest with me and I really did not drink near enough water, and I breastfeed. So when I got to the last stop, I got some food. Went home, took a shower and crashed in the extra bedroom (which is also the coldest, yay!) at about 10pm. I guess the little one was also tired cause she only woke up twice in the time I was asleep. I woke up on my own eventually, and it looked like the sun was just coming up. But I felt pretty good so I got up anyhow. I sat down in the living room and started talking with my hubby, it still looked pretty dark outside so I did not think much until I saw our clock, it was 12:30pm!!! I had slept 14 hours! I guess I really was beat, and so was the baby. She was still sleeping when I woke up and she went to bed about the same time as I did. You do what you gotta do, at almost any cost when you are the one that needs to do it. In this case it was not sleeping, not eating, not drinking much water, & spending and entire day on the bus system with a baby in 115 temperatures, oh and walking a total of about 1 1/2 miles in the middle of the day. Just do it, was my motto for this whole experience.

I was still feeling tired today so I moved pretty slow. But I did get some work done for the Ball and even better, I finally decided I needed to get crakin on the solicitation letters I plan to send out to businesses. This is not an area I am very good at, and I was feeling pretty lost with the whole idea. It is not so bad contacting the company and telling them I would like to send a donation request letter but I didn't have anything good coming out of my head for the donation letter. I googled pagan solicitation letters, and nada! Wiccan solicitation letters, nada again! Wiccan donation letters, nope. And finally Pagan Donation letters, and finally we have a winner!!! And it is a really good letter two. It is not too long, give some information about the organization, how it could benefit the company/ person donating and even better, a small description about Paganism. This is exactly what I needed to expound upon for my organization :-) But the funny thing is (or not so funny) is that this was the ONLY letter I found that is a solicitation for a Pagan organization. Why is that!!! Yes, I know that we are not well known and often have crazy things that people think we are but other organizations really are not trying at least? Actually, so many companies are looking for minorities to help it is astonishing to me that more of our non-profits are not attempting to go this route for help.

Anyhow moving on, I forgot to mention that my eldest has had an offer to be in a bad. The director that I mentioned earlier found out what instrument my kido plays and how fast she picks up on the learning aspect and she offered her an opportunity to be in the bad. I think this is wonderful! So I will be contacting the director tomorrow to let her know. What a blessing this woman has become already!

So the drama for the day is that my eldest has the mother of her boyfriend telling her that he does not want to be with her which totally devastated her. Oh that's right, that's how I woke up, she was all upset! That's OK, I think I was ready to get up anyhow and she needed to hear that it was all her boyfriends mom's fault. I swear the woman is absolutely nuts! We plan to allow him to stay with us as soon as he turns 18. Unfortunately we cannot do much till then, just wait. And the anticipation of waiting to hear from him for my oldest is agonizing. He is currently in a different city and only calls when he can get his hands on his moms phone or borrows someones phone to call. The have not seen each other in a couple of months. He is absolutely nuts about her and treats her really well. I seriously doubt he wants to break up with her.

What else? I think that is about it for tonight.
TTFN

crappy car

Chalice Level: 1/4 full

I am writing this a bit early. I am actually headed to bed at a decent hour since i have a TON of running around on the bus to do when I wake up, in very high temperatures. I hate not having a reliable car.

TTFN

Busy Brain

Chalice Level: To the brim


 Today was a pretty good day. I enjoyed it very much. I think mostly cause I am in "productive" mode, which always makes me feel accomplished, lol.

 So I did the taste testing, my long time friend (since like kindergarten) and the two new ladies I met a few days ago all went to it. We were VERY late, but you know what? I think it worked out for the best since the food sat for a while before we ate it. That let me know how well the food keeps!

I did find out an interesting tid bit of information. The chef told me that the member that I was butting heads with had told her that she could not reschedule the appointment because we needed to get the ball rolling for the Ball as far as food went! This is a big deal because I specifically asked her to find out if they had any other dates available since I would be out of town and the new member had plans that day. So the two members that went to the taste testing were given a huge variety of food to taste and apparently narrowed it down to what we would be using at the Ball and so what we ate tonight!!! And said that they would schedule another taste test for when I and the new girl could make it.

 The more I hear about what was happening behind the scenes (like checks being mailed to home addresses instead of the P.O. Box, with no heads up to me) the more I am infuriated by what was happening. How could the other two members NOT see what was going on? Unless of course it was ME who was not seeing what was really happening. Which as time goes by I think is more and more the case. It was not just this one member that was the problem but ALL of them, and they were trying to slowly shove me out of the picture even though I was the creator of this group. I think what bothers me more is that my supposed friend was along for the ride? And the more I hear, the more I think that she was aware of what was happening and wanted to see me out of this as well. That is what is most bothersome to me. And here I was feeling guilty for making her life so much more difficult with having changed passwords on her and not telling her. At the time I really did not know what else to do since I needed to protect all areas of my group without risk, and at the time I felt she was a small risk. I figured I would try to make a mends afterward when I could see clearly where the members were all going. Obviously I made the correct decision since I think it was me that was not seeing the other two members involvement instead of them not seeing this one members agenda. That sucks.

 So moving on, today is a at the brim day. I have the down payment for the food, and I am working on the one for the alcohol. I need to now get moving on the liquor license so that I make sure everything is a go with that.

 I had a great time at the taste testing and was in such a great mood that I nearly finished the web page about the food that the general public will have access too. I had a really difficult time leaving that so that I could go meditate since my brain was having a very difficult time shutting down. But I missed yesterday. I went out to meditate but the sun was coming up and the flies came out to play with me. They were driving me nuts cause I had two that every time I would start to sink into meditation one would land on me and throw me off. I finally gave up on that and tried to meditate on my bed, but I fell asleep pretty quickly I guess cause I don't remember going past the root stage.

 So finances are stressful at the moment. More so with household money that biz money. Although I need to up my budget, obviously, for the Ball. I think it will all fall into place. As far as house money though, the hubby is still not making much at cab driving. And we have no other prospects of money. I feel like things will fall into place, I am pretty calm about it in comparison to similar situations happening in the past. But the hubby on the other hand is overly stressed. The only thing that comes to mind is that the Goddess will bring to us what we need. We are on the right track.

 Gotta go, TTFN

Dealing with providing for the drinkers!

Chalice Level: Half

My monkey (the toddler boy) took a nap earlier today so now he still has not gone to sleep! I still have not meditated because he does not want me to go outside. So now I am going to have to wait for him to go to sleep before I can sneak outside to meditate. So my process of: meditate, write, find photo & publish is thrown a bit tonight. I am having to meditate last.

I am not really sure what to write about today so I guess today is a rambling day. Today was not a bad day or a good day, just a day. That is why the level is at half.

Oh! I know something I can talk about! I got a quote on bartending for 300 people~~~ OUCH!!!! I keep telling myself that it is for 300 people and that is not so bad. But still, three grand is a LOT of money to put up. I also keep telling myself that we will make the money back when we sell tickets that can be redeemed for a drink. I am also at a loss of how much I should charge for a drink. The number that feels right to me is $6 but that would mean that we would have to sell 500 drinks to break even. The idea is to make money. So what kind of risk am I taking? Will I be able to sell that many drinks? Hmm, what to do, what to do. Actually not really what to do because I have to have it, so I guess I just need to go with the flow. On top of that I have to get two off duty police officers and a liquor license (maybe more cause of city, county & state). Between the venue and the alcohol I am blowing about half my budget! I think I better up my budget, but it is so hard since I have never done this before and I have no idea what the usual budget is.

NICE!!! My computer decided to restart in the middle of me typing, i lost the last 5 sentences or so of what I had written. But at least it reopened the internet for me, that was kinda cool.

OK, as I was writing before on the upside. I am going for a taste testing tomorrow (well technically I suppose it is today) and the Coven director that I met last night is going with me, maybe the assistant director too. So free food and getting to know these ladies a bit better as well. I do want to attend their crafting thing on Saturday, gonna have to talk my oldest or the hubby (if he does not have to work that is) into watching the monkey.

Gonna go see if the monkey is asleep, I intend to meditate and then dig into some chocolate pudding pie with whipped cream after!

TTFN


Chalice Level: Full

The Goddess has a wonderful sense of humor. Anyone that knows me personally will understand this sudden change of Chalice level.

New BFF's

Chalice level: Full


Today did not have any terribly exciting events but it did have some small blessings :-)

My Paypal account for my organization has FINALLY been cleared up. It has been like two months of one hassle after another and I was finally able to transfer the several hundred dollars that was in non-profits account to the bank account for the non-profit. This is a HUGE deal because a good portion of the ticket sales from the Ball and Vendor fee's have been payed online through Paypal. So what a relief that this headache has gone away!!!

Since the account was cleared up a few days ago I was able to transfer the money then and it hit the account today. I bought several things including business cards, a filling cabinet (it locks so my wonderful toddler son cannot open, at least that is the idea. I guess time will tell.), hanging folders, paper etc. This will help to make it a lot easier to function all this from home.

I got to see my mom today, I miss her very much but I think we are both happier. She moved in with my Aunt several months ago because my Uncle died suddenly. My mom at first went for what was supposed to be only a few weeks. Then she said it would be at least a few months, then a year and now two is the plan. I knew when my Uncle died that she would live with my Aunt longer than she thought she would. They are such close sisters, and I am so happy my mom was able to stay with my Aunt at a time when she really needed her sister. Our family has been happier with the distance between us too, I love my mom but it was becoming very difficult to live with her. I am an adult and she sometimes still looks at me as a child that needs to be scolded. And I let her do it so as not to get into a fight. Shame on me I know, but she has been such an amazing support to me through out my life, I love and respect her very much and try not to argue with her. I know she will not be around forever. Now when we are together I feel like I can enjoy the time with her and not worry about arguments. I do wish I got to see her more often, but I think the living situation is really good now.

Another blessing is new friends. When a meditated a few nights ago I was feeling a bit down. That is part of the reason I started this blog. I always am able to work through my problems better when I write my feelings and ideas down.

Anyhow my issue is that I recently lost my best friend of about 2 years to chaos that happened with my organization. I called the meeting and made the suggestion to start a non-profit last year. I asked several people to help me out, one of which was this friend of mine. After the initial start up, the planners turned out to be myself, my friend and an acquaintance. The acquaintance and I repeatedly butted heads over one thing or another but what really bugged me was that she would have little put downs for me. These drove me up a WALL! I kept ignoring them and on occasion would fire back at her almost as subtly as she would make the comments. I talked to my close friends and all of them, except the one who is helping me with the organization, said I need to trust my gut.

Fast forward several months and enters a new member to help with the planning of the Ball and the start up of this non-profit. She is involved for about a month and a half when I have had the last straw with this member I butt heads with. After much meditation, and discussion with other people including some that have non-profits of their own, I legally reserve the name for the non-profit (up to this point we did not have any official documents since we were acting with the help of another non-profit in our community) with the help of my wonderful and amazing magickal mentor. Then I send of an email telling the problem member that things will change, and that these changes must happen for us to continue to work together. As I suspected she would, she resigned but not before telling me what she thought of me. She also emailed the letter to the other two members and apparently they thought she was in the right so they both left the group. This includes my friend, who is now the best of friends with the member that I was butting heads with and pretty much has not wanted to have anything to do with me since. We are cordial when we see each other but that is it. It hurts to know that she traded me in so fast for another person. I know she was hurt by some of the collateral damage of the situation, but I cant believe that warrants writing off an entire friendship! To each their own. I am still kinda wounded over it, but at the same time I have no desire to have a friendship with her again, not after knowing that she could write our friendship off so fast and apparently not think twice since she now has a couple of new BFF's.

So now that I have caught you all (who ever you are, if any) up on the lack of best friend angle I can move on to today. So a few nights ago I was asking the Goddess to show me some people in my area that I can socialize with. Currently my longtime friend and sister within the Goddess lives on the other side of town, which btw is a BIG town, so we don't see each other very often. Other than my family, I feel kinda lonely as far as the friendship area goes. The Goddess directed me to Witchvox and I thought "OK, done that before but will do it again, don't expect anything new". So I checked it out and sure enough, a new Coven had formed in my area and was looking for members. Now I have never looked really for a coven because I did not want to have to follow a particular path. But this Coven was an ecclectic Coven and the common bond is a desire to better the community. Both the traditional community that we live in as well as the community of Pagans. This is totally the type of people I want to associate with! The Coven director emailed me back today, and so I gave her a call like she suggested. We had a wonderful conversation from the get go, she and the assistant/ co director were able to meet with me this evening. That meeting went just as well as the talk on the phone. I believe I have found MY new BFF's and they amount to a hell of a lot more than the one person I had before to regularly hang out with. And honestly, it was becoming very apparent before out falling out, that our values were different. So maybe she needed to exit my life to make it so I would find these others that are much better suited to my path? Oh, and on top of the excellent conversation I had with them. The Coven would like to volunteer to help out at the Ball and for the non-profit in general.

Things definitely seem to be turning around from the point I was in last month. I was having panic attacks (I had never had those before) when I thought about the difficulties I would be dealing with and the amount of work that needed to be done with no help at that point.

TTFN

Starting out

So I really don't have much to say tonight since it is VERY late and I have spent way too much time tweaking this blog so that I would be happy with it.

I hope to eventually have people viewing my blog, but who knows maybe it will always just be me writing my thoughts down and nothing more. What ever the road, that is the way it is supposed to be :-)

I have learned that the best way for me to vent my worries, concerns or even my joys is to write it down, that is the main purpose of this blog. It is to give me a way to spill what is on my mind and in my heart with no worries that the person I am telling will tell another person etc. etc. I don't expect to say anything derogatory about another person, however in the event that I do it will not have an effect on that person or on me since I am the "Invisible Witch".

My plan to to write every night after my meditation, which happens to be around 3am. That has definitely showed to be the least active time for my family and by then, I have unwound enough to need some alone time. Of course that means that I need to actually meditate! Which I hope this blog helps me to do.