The Rambling Corkgirl

Galway is inundated, and Cork is drowning.
This has been a bitch of a week. still stunned about the crash. Four girls all from small communities and a fifth in hospital - spare a thought especially for Baile na hAbhain.

Have been re-reading some Archaeology and Burial stuff, really looking forward to the talk in December.
Other than that, have miserable drive home to galway tomorrow and had rotten drive down here today.
Thank heavens my lovely boy came too, he drove most of the way and when we got here only the garden was flooded not the house!

OK I am off now, have to help him finish with the windows etc, hopefully house will survive the next week lol

I do despair sometimes.
I would love to think the days of bitchy women - and women who are proud not to get on with other women - would be behind us as a gender but it's a pipe dream.
Any woman who has no understanding of women's rights history should be ashamed; not just because it's a denial of the women who earned our rights for us but because the issues they fought on affect millions of women around the world today. How can you hope to understand the Stolkholm Sydrome of women who impose the Burka on other women if you don't understand the same actions 100 years ago from Conservative wives and mothers against suffragettes?
Everything is linked, Everything has a relationship. Remembering that principle when looking at history is vital; remembering it as a political person in a modern world even more so.
I'm with Pink - Stupid Girls..

well my little hiatus has passed, our new guy is in place and kicking arse so we're being very virtuous and hardworking, until his enthusiasm wanes. One of the benefits of being a civilian is that the new guy on the team always treats you really nicely. That wears off too but until then they're not about to get themselves bollocked for piddling off the consultant :)
Actually though I like him, he seems really straightforward and very level headed and he's already reorganised a few things that I've always felt were badly managed, so it's so far so good.

I've enjoyed catching up a bit online, and so I think I'll make more of an effort now. I am thinking about a few things for instance that I fall betwen two stools as a pagan - I am not interested in the extremely esoteric, convuluted theories that some groups build on the sagas and texts nor do I put much credence in Personal Gnosis. I am somewhere in the middle, something i want to explore a bit further.

And it's biblical rain here in Galway!

Just like the old joke - thanks to someone for posting this elsewhere

Medium in Court on Fraud Charges

I really should revive my Great Psychic Adventure. I got bored when literally every single so called psychic online and off melted away the minute I asked for actual proof of their claims. I got awfully sick of psychics claiming to have helped the police and then saying they couldn't give details for legal reasons or some such bull. I know for a fact that's rubbish and when I point it out suddenly they disappear. I've contact two police forces about two different claims and been told that not only were they lying about helping the police but in one case she was a well known crank who had been successfully prosecuted for making hoax calls. So as you can imagine I got pretty tired of it all.

Still, at times it was great fun, indeed hilarious....I may have to revisit...  

...I really do. There's so much underhand, back biting meanness around it's refreshing to see someone be brave. It's good for the soul :)

Yep, it's another one of those days :) I am officially allowed to doss again, while we await the arrival of the new team leader. Well I say doss, I have a few things to do which i fly through, and then I can doss!
I have to say I really haven't had a few days like this in months and months - I've caught up online with friends, and sites and all kinds of projects and uplouded photos and so on - it's been brill. It won't last, the new boy will be here tomorrow or monday but yay til then.Plus - The boys have gone out for a long lunch - I went yesterday but today I decided to come back, and sort out a couple of things that needed to be done for the weekend shift and the big boss called me in, said he was glad to catch me on my own and told me they were delighted with my work, and lots of nice things.
I'm in very good form :)
I'll be out of here early, and my lovely boy is taking me out to dinner because he is wonderful.
YAY!

I do love this time of year! Is it just me or does anyone else find that odd things just happen at this time of year? Coming into samhain if there's an old friend around, they get in touch; an ex will ring ; someone will call my name on the street and it turns out to be a long lost schoolpal. Or things end, or start? there always seems to be more movement around now. I may post this on ITW and ask if anyone else feels the same!
I love it though, it is as if either unfinished business or new business has to be resolved or kickstarted before the end of this month - I go around with a sense that something is about to happen, or as if anything could happen.
I've had three "odd" events today - two just weird coincidence thingies and one gob smacking OMG moment when someone I never thought I'd hear from again got in touch and emailed me.
Can't wait to see what happens next :)

...it's passive agressive sly digs.
goodness people are rude.

It's out!!

http://www.cafepress.com/paganpaeans


oh my good gods!

This is my first time appearing in any anthology, and the first time really more than one or two poems appeared anywhere. The PPP was the first place I really shared my poems, and if it wasn't for the encouragement I recieved there I would still be too embarrassed to ever try to get them published. I've had poems published elsewhere in the last two years and more importantly I've submitted poems and been rejected and the only reason the rejection didn't crush me was the encoruagement and confidence that the PPP gave me. 

So I'm so proud to be in this first anthology and I really really hope people buy it and enjoy it!!!

beirn_ie has great news for me today

The Pagan Poetry Pages first Anthology is coming out MAy 1st !!!!

I am in it! YAY !!!

I have several poems in it and I am so proud, it's the best compliment ever paid to my poetry !

I've seen a sneak preview of the covers etc and they look AWESOME. Absolutely fabulous :)

I'm so delighted..........and there is a competition to launch it! with great prizes!!
£20 gift voucher for amazon and a free copy of the anthology!

You can read about it
1) on the PPP site
2) Indymedia.ie Article
3) Nowpublic News Article
4) The Chicken Quill

GO FOR IT!

only £9.95 stg and you'll be supporting the best independent poetry site on the web.  

Wow it;s the week for it.( FREAKS )

on other news, have rented to a nice couple, newly weds from Lithuania, she actually worked with a friend of mine last year so delighted to have them. Very nice, normal, friendly people.
Thanks for all the sympathy folks I really really needed some yesterday :) I really don't do the mentallers well :)

Crickey! I've just had a weird conversation with a woman who married a prisoner in America that she used to write to - i am still speechless. Am I just extremely sheltered and naive? I cannot get my head around this.
She says she started writing to him and fell in love with him; first of all she was vague about what he was "in" for, and then she expanded a bit and finally she said he was in for murder (!) but that he was "innocent"
Innocent? Holy gods.

 

( completely and utterly bewildered!! )

Hmmm

I was looking at some sites earlier and reading some blogs and I was a bit surprised at something. There are people whom I don't agree with personally but who I've always sort of grouped in my head as "very straight talking" and sort of robust. i have always assumed they would actually welcome challenge and debate.(I've been spoiled lol I know a good few pagans who actually do - looking at the AF crowd :) :) ) so i sort of assumed although they aren't part of that group they were sort of on the same lines.
But they're not - if you disagree with them they simply screen you out. Use the foe button.
I know, I know, lots of people do, i don;t I have never foed anyone even on literary sites where you get total nutters lol
It's just seems a bit....insulated?
I don't know why I find this disappointing - they're hardly people I even know on any level, and I am sure they don't care what some randomer thinks anyway. But I am a bit disappointed.
Maybe I'm being silly? maybe everyone does this...but it's a pity cos some of the things I read I was impressed by and now I know it isn't open to challenge...it just affects how I see them....
Apologies for being obscure it's just not worth being specific as it may provoke some types; I am just interested more in my own reaction to it...I was surprised.

I read some interesting things over the holidays and one was a claim that a belief in gods is somehow a sign of intellectual inferiority. Now the writer was an idiot but his comment garnered a chorus of guarded and not so guarded agreement from certain factions within pagan fora who have adopted the latest fad in Paganism, following on from the hilarious "pagans who aren't pagans", namely, pagans who don't believe in gods, having transcended "all that."
( Afraid of gods )

It's just dawned on me! I went in for a day or two last week but that was grand, we had a bit to do to catch up on paperwork and we got it all done then went for dinner and had a few beers so more social than wok. But my leave is up tomorrow in earnest...argh. I am off back to bed for a nap while I still can then ordering takeaway and snuggling with the BF til I crawl to bed.

Xmas was cool - I spent xmas day with my brother and his family and then went to visit Bf and his family late that evening, I was treated like royalty and waited on hand and foot and I met his sister for the first time and we got on like old mates, we even went shopping a few days ago. I was so nervous to meet her but she was brilliant and lovely and i can't get over how easy it all was.

lots of love to everyone hope you all had fab break, catch up properly very soon!

Not very pc I know but god there are some women I would sterilise.

I have a friend who is a single mother, with a lovely pre-teen girl. The kid is a dote, full of life but a naturally nice kid. But so grown up because her mother is such a child - the mother drinks like a fish, has a different man every few months, has moved in at least three men as partners only for it all to fall apart leaving the poor child devastated and is generally a selfish, partying mess. And the dad is as bad, he's well-meaning but foolish - often drunk, often misses his days with the child, often involved in messy relationships, rarely reliable.
Today I took the kid shopping for presents for her friends as her mother promised to get stuff and "forgot" ie the mother told me it was too much trouble to go round the shops, she just wasn't in the mood. Her father prefers partying with his loser mates - they are Galway's local crusties, all fired up about the state of Tibet but not so hot on the welfare of their own children - and her granny while a lovely woman is too frail to be pushed around Shop Street.
The kid had her own money saved up and lots of ideas about what she wants and we had a lovely day. SHe's as easy to look after and the BF came and meet us and took us for dinner, and then on the spur of the moment we caught a movie. We delivered her home and as we drove away I got  a text saying thanks, and it would put a spear through your heart. "no one ever took me out like that before, thank you so much it was the best christmas present ever"
Some people should be sterilized

( dealing with idiots )

WTF?

I spent an enjoyable afternoon browsing on Amazon looking at possible Christmas presents. But one thing kind of got to me after a short while, the number of so called pagan / new age books where the author quiet clearly wrote the review!! One in particular was ridiculous, they gave themselves a five star rating and the review was nothing more than a blurb for the book! Weird thing to do - I mean, it would hardly make you want to read it would it??

I know that they were all nonsense books, anyway, some worse than others but still, ridiculous.

DO people actually care about truth?
I was talking about this the other day with friends - we were discussing the repulsive Sarah Palin in particular and how many women in America only see "woman candidate" and ignore the fact that she is a right wing and ignorant bigot, who refuses to believe in science (eg evolution, global warming, climate change) and who wants to drill for oil in Alaska, while supporting a group that wants an independent Alaska and whose motto is "we hate America" not to mention her behaviour towards her pregnant 17 year old.
and we got talking about how people refuse to believe the truth about things, politicians or situations; how they prefer to believe a lie. If the lie comforts them and fits in with their prejudices or their self interest they believe it; they can look at someone like Palin and ignore the faults while looking at someone much better and see nothing but bad.

I have to say I've got very cynical. I think a lot of people you meet are very deluded - about life, about themselves, about politics. I think that the few who care about truth get really tired of shouting it all the time and it's so easy to call them "cranks" because they stick their heads up above the parapet and sound like they're always banging on. You see that everywhere - a sort of "oh ffs you're always so negative" when in fact what they mean is, we know you are right, what you say is accurate, you are speaking truth, it is inconvenient so please shut up.

I don't like it when i notice myself doing it - I try to pull myself up and realize that it's not good enough. But in general people do it whenever there are "consensus" issues at stake. If the consensus is that wicca is an ancient religion and the lone voice says, um here is the historical evidence against that then you get the pack attacking the one. If you have a group that want to believe all immigrants are dole spongers, and all foreigners are bad, then they ignore all evidence that doesn't fit their theory and when the self evident (not all of any population group can be evil) they get more and more convinced that they are being oppressed for having an opinion. When in fact they are being opposed for having an erroneous opinion.

So the question is when you see things are wrong, when you know the truth is being murdered, when you know in your heart that you are being told an uncomfortable truth - do you fight or flee, believe it or do you deny it? self interest first, truth second?

I'm feeling a bit sad. I have a bit of a saga going on here at the moment and it involves friends and I'm stuck firmly in the middle. I've just about driven myself and everyone else mad about it, so i just have to stop going on in real life about it, so I am going to moan here.
the background:

( Friends and Forgiveness )

Really fed up. I know, It's not exactly the most important problem in the world but it really has got me down, I wish I could fix it. So letting off steam here instead :)