Easter this year was…intense. I attended the entire run of Holy Week services, starting on Wednesday, which basically meant church every day from then until Sunday. There were a lot of interesting things, and the contrast definitely made Easter stand out more.

But there was one thing that made Easter extra awesome and that was…bunnies! After church a neighbor brought some bunnies over to hang out in the church garden and be petted by the kids. So, naturally, the adults had just as much (if not more) fun awwing over the bunnies.

Bunnies are kind of one of my favorite animals. Actually, they’re probably in a tie for that spot with cats. I love their cute little noses and big ears and little tiny cotton tails. But…I had never held a bunny before. I know. It’s truly sad. But THAT ALL CHANGED.

I really could have snuggled the bunny for ages and I really wish I could have one as a pet. Unfortunately, I don’t think that would go over very well with my cats OR my landlord. Now, here’s a picture of a bunny washing his face. Revel in the adorableness.

What has kept me so busy lately? Among other things, I’m organizing a ball! A charity ball, to be precise, to benefit research into the plight of the bees. Details below, and if you’re in the Bay Area, I do hope you’ll come. Persephone is an excellent  waltz teacher and it should be a fantastic night of fun, all for a good cause.

Ball for the Bees

Come As You Are Coven is proud to present The Ball for the Bees, a fundraiser to support local beekeepers and bee advocacy organizations. Honey bees are essential to our ecosystem and the sudden, unexplained disappearance of bees is an alarming warning bell to our society. We believe that with greater advocacy and local initiates, bee populations can be healthily restored and our mutual stewardship of the Earth’s resources can be brought back into balance. To that end, we are hosting this fundraiser. Proceeds from the event will be split between City Bees (http://www.citybees.com/about.htm), to support urban hives, and the Gordon Frankie Fund at UC Berkeley (http://nature.berkeley.edu/urbanbeegardens/index.html) to further research into what is affecting the bees.

The ball will be held at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists at 1924 Cedar St. in Berkeley. Begin the evening with a beginner lesson in rotary waltz taught by Persephone, then dance the night away!

Lesson: 7pm
Dancing 8pm-11pm
Light refreshments will be available.
Cash bar with beer and wine.

Enjoy a night of fun, fanciness (costumes admired but not required) and enchantment, all while benefiting efforts to support the bees and the development of sustainable resources for their care. There will be a raffle, tarot readers, light refreshments, and more.

Tickets will be $15 if purchased before the event, or $20 at the door. Advanced tickets may be purchased on Eventbrite (http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3037562431) or at The Sacred Well in Oakland.

CAYA Coven’s co-sponsors for this event are The Sacred Well, the Temple of Aphrodite and the Pagan Alliance.

So, people who know me well won’t be surprised when I say that I…am somewhat cleaning challenged.

By which I mean, I’m generally horrible at it. I have great intentions of improving, and I have, but never quite as much as I’d like. I’ll get a good bit done, then backslide and be back where I started, amidst clutter and feeling angry with myself that I don’t have a place presentable enough to have friends over.

But at Candlemas, I had a dream. It was one of those dreams where you just sort of feel like it means more than random neuron firings. In the dream, I knew I had to try a different strategy — to start, not with the public areas of my apartment, but with my bedroom. I also knew that I had to really clean — as in, move the furniture out and clear the energetic space as well as physical.

It took some time to get to that point, but this past weekend, Nancy very kindly agreed to help (mostly with the furniture moving part) and I tackled it. It was rather alarming to see my bedroom look like this:

We pulled as much as we could out — the bedframe didn’t fit without taking it apart, so it just got stood on end, but everything else went. And we cleaned, first physically (and I’m pretty sure that was the first time my ceiling had been cleaned since before I moved in) and scrubbed.

Then we took our bells and tambourines and shook and rattled our way to breaking up the stale energy. We smudged the room with sage for good measure and let it sit. I’d planned on using sage, but since I’ve had moth issues cedar (which is a moth repellent as well) seemed the better choice.

After the smoke had time to cleanse, when it cleared, I mixed up a simple floor wash with some Florida Water and Mojo Wishing Oil added to clear water. Floor washes aren’t for cleaning, and I wanted this one to be a general blessing rather than having a specific purpose. I threw in a couple other things as well, but those were the main ingredients. Because it was a magical wash, I didn’t pour the water down the drain, but hauled my bucket down to the crossroads and poured it out.

After the room had been physically and energetically cleaned and blessed, I set protection wards and sealed all the work. I tend to be a bit more lax about wards then I should be, and especially since I’ve been having nightmares and strange dreams lately, it seemed like a good time to renew those.

Then we moved everything back in, and rearranged it for good measure. I’m not quite ready to show those process photos yet — I have a couple more things to do and then I’ll be ready for the big before and after reveal. But already I can say it’s made a big improvement; it’s got a lot more color and personality and feels like a room I actually want to spend time in. I’m still moving things back in, but I think it’s a great start, hopefully the kind of push I need to keep going and make this place feel more like home.

In the meantime, here’s a sneak peek at some of the changes…

My favorite time of the year is becoming the CAYA retreat. We go to the Quaker Center in Ben Lomond, which is one of the most amazingly beautiful places. There’s redwood forests, a labyrinth and it’s all so incredibly peaceful and serene.

It also falls into the category of camping my way, which is to say not camping at all. There are cabins or dorms, kitchens and electricity. Which is good, because my gear for frolicking in the woods apparently includes a corset and fanciness (including some lovely body art drawn by Branwen.)

There’s no TV or internet, so for me it totally counts as being away from civilization.

The best part is, though, that I get to be there with people I love. I’ve always dreamed of a big family and this feels like what might be like to have one. Or at least live in a magical village where everyone is awesome.  Kids run around and play, people wander in and out and hang out as they feel moved. There’s eating together and relaxing and just seeing each other during the day. People sit together working on crafts or reading or just being.

There’s spontaneous drumming and singing. I love that more than anything, I think. A group of people picking up drums and starting to play or beginning to sing. I even tried my hand at drumming, though I am not very good at it. (I may or may not have been browsing drums online since. I really should be kept away from all new musical instruments.)

We sang a lot — chants and song, pirate shanties, Irish tunes, viking drinking songs. I love the spontaneous singing. Some folks are stronger singers than others but in the end it doesn’t matter, and everyone is having a great time together.

I wish my life could always go like that.

Today I am very thankful for the kindness of strangers.

Last night I got off of BART and walked to my car and started to drive off, only to realize I had a flat tire.

This was not exactly the end I wanted for a Monday — but it was the one I had. So I cleared all the junk out of my trunk and verified I did, in fact, have a spare. But, I discovered, at some point water leaked into my trunk and my jack was completely rusted and useless.

So I began calling friends. As luck would have it, none of my immediate, these-people-have-cars-and-will-come-rescue-you friends were available. I checked with the security guard at the lot, who offered no help in locating either a jack or the number for a tow truck. I was seriously considering who else in my list of contacts I could bribe, beg or guilt into coming to my aid when I saw someone else going to their car.

Now you have to understand here that the part of town I park in is not the greatest. Given that I live in Oakland, that’s saying something. It’s after dark, I’m a girl, I’m alone, and I have a broken car.

This is not exactly a recipe for feeling safe and secure.

Luckily for me, the gentleman in question was perfectly nice and happened to have a jack in his truck. He was able to change the tire for me — a good thing, since he had difficulty getting the spare out and the lug nuts loose, which means there’s little chance I’d have been able to manage it. So I got my tire on and drove carefully home, and tomorrow I will head to the tire place down the street and see about new tires.

But I’m very thankful, for the kindness of a stranger willing to help someone he didn’t know, and for people who are good and kind. While I generally believe most people fit that description, as women in particular we are socialized to be hyper-aware of safety concerns and view people with a bit of suspicion, especially in vulnerable situations.

That’s not always a bad thing, because it can come in useful. But it can make it more difficult when stuck in a challenging situation, because looking for help becomes even more fraught with tension. What if we choose wrongly? What if our actions costs us in terms of our safety?

So I am glad. Glad that things worked out, glad that I trusted my intuition that said this person was safe to approach. Glad that I made it home safe and that there are people willing to do a favor from someone they don’t know.

I mentioned before, but I have decided to embark on project redecorate ALL THE THINGS. Because I am crazy, and also because I am so very tired of living in the land of white walls and blandness.

There will be more detailed posts as things come together, but in the meantime a few peeks at some of the things for the bedroom — newly painted furniture and a bit for a larger project as yet unveiled.

 I’m excited to see things start to come together, even though I mostly keep looking at all that is left to do. One step at a time…

I’m having one of those weeks where I desperately need more hours in the day. Everything seems to take longer than I think, and just when I think I’ve wrangled things back on schedule something else comes along to blow the whole plan up again.

The latest addition to this particular adventure is that, due to a situation in a neighboring unit, my landlord has to come in on Saturday and have an exterminator spray part of my apartment. Which is all fine and good except that it means the cats and I have to find an elsewhere to be for several hours. Not to mention taking a huge chunk of time that I had planned to use to work on things in my apartment and making that impossible.

It’s frustrating and inconvenient; I know in the grand scheme of things it’s not that big a deal but lately it feels like I’m trying to hold everything together through willpower, prayer and luck. And not doing a very good job of it.

Alas. Now I’m just hoping that the original optimistic assessment of the situation is correct and that things won’t be as bad as I fear they might.

Recently I’ve realized that I kind of hate the way my apartment looks. It’s mainly Ikea furniture and white walls and I feel like I’m living in the land of bland. So I had an idea.

For the record, nothing good ever starts with the phrase “I have an idea.”

I decided (for reasons I’ll get into later) that I was going to start with my bedroom. By painting my furniture. I have dressers, nightstands, shelves in that pale beech color and I decided that the three day weekend would be a great time to embark on painting them.

It turns out that to paint laminate furniture you have to start with an oil-based, high-adhesion primer. Which takes forever to dry. No, seriously. Forever. I thought oh they’re exaggerating on the 24 hours, but nope. They aren’t.

Partway through priming everything, I realized that this was going to take a lot longer than anticipated. I scaled back my plans to paint everything and just wanted to get the big pieces done, since friends would be coming to help me move them back Monday evening.

Then I started painting. One coat in I became utterly convinced that this had been a horrible idea. Awful. The colors weren’t quite what I had imagined, there were brush strokes that looked horrible, and I became convinced my color scheme (dark pink, purple and gold) was better suited for a 16 year old girl than an adult.

But I kept going. After all, I can’t un-paint.

After the second coat of paint, things started to come together. The color was more even and closer to the paint chip. As the colors got darker they became more grown up and less eye-screamingly bright.

Now that it’s back in place, I think the furniture has great potential. I’m not done; I have to finish painting shelves, cover the plastic drawer fronts with fancy paper, get new drawer hardware and re-arrange the whole room. Plus some other small projects — new curtains, a fake canopy,  better storage.

It’s progress, though. And I’m excited to be moving forward with it and see all the unrelated pieces start to fall together.

Now I just need to figure out how to get the primer out of my eyebrows.

Someone inspired by a friend online, I recently decided to throw myself a tea for one. No particular occasion, though I suppose we could always call it an Unbirthday tea.

I drink a lot of tea (really, a lot) but I rarely sit at my table and set a nice tea. It always seems like too much fuss and bother for just me. But sometimes that just leads to a spiral of wishing I weren’t alone, of wishing it were easier to make time to see friends, of wishing I were better at making plans. And that goes nowhere good.  So I made tea. I got ambitious. I even made cake.

Okay, really I assembled cake and it turned out, shall we say, rustic. But since I didn’t even get home until 8pm on the night I did this I’m okay with easy assembled foods being the bulk of my tea. I’d love to have the life where I could putter around all day cooking up a feast on a whim but I don’t. I also got some yummy appetizers to heat up and sliced a sandwich into little finger sandwiches.

Of course, the most important part of tea! I pulled out my little teapot and made it properly, and the fancy teacup. I even set my table with a real tablecloth and napkin and beautiful pink flowers.

The cup is particularly special. When I was a little girl, my Nanna and I would have tea together. Unlike my house, with it’s collection of sturdy mugs, Nanna had a lot of delicate china teacups. But when I came over we always used the same two; hers with pink roses and mine with purple violets. Nanna died when I was in college, and a few years ago my aunt sent me those two teacups. I rarely use them because I am so afraid they will break. But there is still something special about drinking tea out of them.

So I made my tea for one, enjoyed my snacks and cake. I’d like to have a grand tea party for many too, but tea for one is a remarkably restorative ritual. After all, why not celebrate all on my own if I feel like it? There’s no reason not to. Especially when there’s cake.