Earlier today, I finished up a round of cleaning in the house which was long overdue in coming.^_^' I opened all the windows, and the breeze and the sunlight (actual sunlight! I'm so excited^_^ ^_^ ^_^) managed to filter in nicely through the steady flow of dust I'd been thrashing out... ah, spring!

The feeling of the air is getting so clear and revitalized these days that I've been wanting to go visit the Japanese Tea Gardens in Golden Gate Park. If you're in the area and have never been there, you should go- it's one of the most beautiful and pleasant places to sit down and relax that you've ever seen. They even have a nice little pavilion which serves tea and crackers, and a couple of ducks to watch while you drink- I can't vouch for the crackers (the Japanese have strange taste^_^'), but the tea is very good.

Today's major cleaning project was the altar- every now and then I take the whole thing apart, dust and clean every aspect, wipe down the inside of the naos and everything in it with Frankincense water, and put it all back together again. This time, it took me four hours solid- and this is why I don't do it very often.^_^' I've heard folks from other ATRs say that you should never disturb the altar by removing more than one item at a time. They say that it annoys the spirit of the altar. I'm not sure how much this can be applied to AE religion, since technically there wouldn't have been very much to remove from a temple naos, and your average person's deity niche was far less elaborate from what we have today, as well. Personally, I have a little white whisk which I use to clean off the front of the altar every time I observe a ritual, but there are some drawbacks to using a white altar cloth... colored wax stains it, spilled herbs and oils show up very well, and there's the ever-present cat hair that makes for some BIG dustbunnies. The only way to wash the cloth is to take everything off it, and I figure that so long as I'm going to disturb the ntjrw by moving stuff around I might as well make it a thorough cleaning. Today I raised dust clouds to rival the smoke of full-blown festival incense!

I always breath a sigh of relief after the altar's been cleaned- and I bet the ntjrw do, too.^_^ I tore all the sheets off my bed, while I was at it, and Achilles was inspired to start cleaning in the den. There are still some areas which could use some attention, but I feel that for now I'm ready to call it a day and move on.

I found an empty jar while cleaning the altar- one of the big ones which used to hold the Bast incense. I figured it's the perfect candidate for my preliminary Bast lotion experiments since it screws shut and has a pretty wide mouth- and it was packed full of Bast incense for a long time, anyway, so maybe it's got a residual charge. I mixed up some of my favorite lotion (LubriDerm- recommended by the nurse who oversees all my checkups^_^) with the Bast oil from The Sword and Rose, and so far it seems to be doing great! I think I'll lower the concentration of the oil, though- I don't want the scent to be too overpowering. It smelled kinda funky at first- the LubriDerm has something of a... medical smell to it, for lack of a better term. I'm not sure what that smell is, actually. Combine that with the scent of the Bast oil and the results were rather interesting.^_^' But the lotion absorbs through the skin completely, whereas the oil doesn't seem to travel with it as much. That leaves a very fine coating of the Bast oil on the outer layers of the skin- not greasy or anything, but after a while it's the only part of the lotion you can smell. Success! Now I just need to learn how to make my own lotion, order a bit of the Skhmt oil from Witch and Famous (or make my own), and make the Skhmt lotion to take with me to work!

Speaking of work, I've decided that I'm just going to wear scrubs from now on.^_^ They're comfy, I can always find some that fit, they come in a wide range of colors and a few different styles, and they're made with the expectation that you'll be spilling icky things on them all day long and will need to clean them often. They're not that expensive, either. When I first started wearing them for work, I used to tell everyone who asked that I loved my scrubs so much that I'd wear them every day if I could! Well guess what? I can. And I think I will.^_^ The pants work well, at least- and there are a few styles of tops which don't actually look like uniforms. I bought a pair of khaki scrub pants a couple of weeks ago, and have tested it out on a few "normal" type shirts, and they look just fine! So, yay! Low stress wardrobe!

In other news, I got myself locked in a graveyard last night. Ack! I thought I was just going to unwind for a bit, after my shift and before the long drive home, and it was such a bright, clear day- I wanted to be outside in the grass and sun for a while. When you think about it, cemeteries are intentionally designed to evoke a feeling of calm, and they're one of the few public domain areas where you have wide open spaces and few buildings. People actually breathe there, and the air just seems like it has less baggage. I mean, that's all so long as you can get over the fact that it's a cemetery, which admittedly can be a tricky thing to do. But you can often find a lot of pretty statuary there (especially in Catholic cemeteries), the trees are beautiful and meditative- they give water and shelter to the dead, like so many funerary goddesses in our tradition- and it is holy ground. People come there full of an awareness of god, and I think that's reflected in the atmosphere. But that being said, it's amazing how that feeling of calm will completely vanish when you decide to leave and find the gates are locked and the office is closed, and you have no way out.

Except, of course, to climb the fence, abandon your car, and put in a somewhat panicked call back to the hospital for someone to come pick you up. The folks at work tell me I'm unflappable, but they definitely saw me flapped last night- I wanted to go home so bad and I couldn't think of a single solution other than rattling the cemetery gates... which just wasn't producing the result I'd been hoping for. In short, our office manager and all-around awesome person called the cemetery phone number and actually got someone to answer. Just so y'all know, a cemetery phone number is like a 24-hour graveyard crisis hotline. "Locked in the graveyard? Afraid of the dark? Call now, and our team of trained security professionals will come and let your stupid a** out of the freakish predicament you've managed to get yourself into!"

But I'm home now, and everything's A-OK. ...I'm thinking next time maybe I'll just go to the Tea Garden.^_^'