Shelves

The project these past few days has been assorted levels of cleaning and putting away. The incident with the plastic shelf starting to tip and starting to dump the heavy bottles off of the top has resulted in an incredible mess all over my living room floor: nothing was broken or spilled, but all of the things that were on the shelf came off of it, most of them because I picked them off and put them down, and only some of them from falling.

Some years back I got a very nice pine board shelf from the Fry's Grocery closest to me. When I moved in to the new apartment here, I got a similar one from the one on the corner of 19th and Glendale. That edition was very similar, but of boards of poorer quality, and less easy to put together. I was slightly vexed. But the shelf was still a good one, so I got two more in the past few weeks.

The shelves are supposed to be stacking. It appears that the new model is not stackable with the old model! Vexed indeed! Last night was putting together of the first new shelf, and I had planned to stack it with the oldest shelf. But they do not stack, so I will put together the second new shelf in order that they may be stacked with each other and no one will get hurt. Then, finally, perhaps my dining room floor will be clear?

I clearly need an entire house. Perhaps even a family.

That was liberating.

My sleep schedule is a joke. If I try to go to bed before midnight, I wake up at midnight. That's what happened. I was exhausted on Sunday, so I took that "nap", and then now I'm awake; I won't have much of a Monday left by the time I get some more sleep and wake up again.

While I was awake, I did bounce some things off John. The constant underlying frustration of the social aspects of the friendship with Darkside reached an abrupt boil as of 2 seconds after his mom told me he wouldn't be expected home until after 9. I have faith that this, as always, is something that needs screaming out between the two of us, and goodness knows that since he is his own man and not an extension of me, he'll probably have a far different perspective on it that will knock me sideways and completely out of my egocentric rut, but still as we've not really talked this one out lately, I'm still somewhere between pissy, furious, irate, and living in hope when it hurts to hope.

(No one said love cured all problems. Whole new can of worms. But goodness knows that without this friendship, I'd be in a far worse place. Could be I wouldn't even be in a place, if the Catholic Limbo actually exists.... So I take what comes up in stride, because, well, I'm alive and I'm reasonably happy, and I love him very much. But I still get fucking frustrated.)

I have a nice long soul-baring rant typed out to deliver to him, but I'm waiting on sleep and sanity to actually send it, because it would be just stupid to e-mail out something like that without benefit of a cold quiet sane eye of proofreading and general sanity-smackitude.

Ned and Priscilla are giving me courage to get things said; Priscilla and Luna, and Edward and Lavinia, are giving me general hope. Reading RP is good for the soul.

Random witchy advice picked up from the archives of my journal...

The magical equivalent of picking up flaming steel wool instead of a battery is Not Fun. If you should ever do this, take the advice I gave to someone who did this, and ask a friendly local aloe plant if you may please have some of its energy to put on your scoured and burnt channels.

There is such a thing as an esoteric tech support hotline, though it's rarely formalized and is normally done via the Good Ol' Pagans' Network rather than through a business or anything like that.


Tier 1a is that random person who looks like they know something about magic. There's usually one in every workplace, or in every neighborhood. They may not be a big wheel in the pagan or magical community, but people identify them as probably knowing something about magic, and if Weird Shit goes down that normal stuff doesn't work on, this is the person you contact. This can be face-to-face or online, of course.

Tier 1b is sort of like Tier 1a, except the people needing magical tech support will refer you to other people needing same. "Oh, haunted house? Ask Miss Lunatic. Yeah, can't miss her, she's the one in the black; she helped with that spooky thing that was going on."

Tier 2 is when randoms from the magical/pagan community show up for magical tech support, including Tier 1 people.

Tier 3 provides support for all below tiers and its own members.


Having something published in the field usually means at least Tier 2. Those who are given a vocation to go seek out problems to fix them are not really designed to fit in this model.

A few illustrations of work.

( Building layout. )

( New org chart. )