After a year and a half or so, I’m back. There’s been something ping-ponging around in my brain-meats and I’d like to launch a series of posts here to help me figure it out. So let me catch you up on the changes that happened in that time.

First, I went and had a baby! I found out I was pregnant in June 2010, when I was about 9 weeks along. That’s largely responsible for the absence of posts here, as I focused my energies on learning about pregnancy, birth, and early parenthood. It was like dropping into a whole new subculture. There was a LOT to learn: gestational stages, infant and fetal developmental stages, health risks for mother and baby, social norms and expectations (among both pregnant women and new moms as well as parents in general). My daughter was born in February 2011 and she’s almost 8 months old now. I don’t expect to post my birth story here, but I did receive the extraordinary gift of birthing at Imbolc and thus participating bodily in the Wheel of the Year. I do hope to be able to write about that and about my journey into motherhood. If I can’t describe those things, I’m willing to throw a lot of words on the page in the attempt.

Second, I got a day job in July 2010. I’m not sure how much I want to connect my career to an explicitly Pagan blog in a geographical area where that might be risky, so for now, all I’ll say about my day job is that I work second shift and for 40 hours a week, my time is not wholly my own.

Third, because I mentioned Cassiopeia here before, I must note that our not-poly family broke up in August 2010 over a financial imbalance, at least on the surface of things. I had hoped to retain a friendship (and break my usual pattern of completely cutting someone out of my life), but instead we went our separate ways. I know that she’s living in the same big city the Hubs and I now live in, that she’s working hard and saving money, and that her boyfriend recently flew in to spend a lot of time with her, which was something they’d both wanted for a long time. The other day I thought of contacting her again, but what I wanted was that old closeness. I doubted, first, that it’d be possible given the huge bust-up that happened, and second, that she’d want me in her life at all. And I didn’t know what I’d want our friendship to be like if we did reconnect. So that loss is a wound on my heart that’s healed over a little time, but it’s still tender enough to cause some sadness and pain every now and then, when something happens to poke it.

Fourth, the Hubs and I moved into our own tiny house in November 2010. Being heavily pregnant and then having a tiny baby at home, it’s taken us awhile to unpack and rediscover things and decorate and settle in. We’re still working on it and I’m enjoying little bits of the settling-in process. I have the dresser I had throughout my childhood, and I have such a big kitchen that there’s room for gadgets and stuff-accumulating projects (the latest is canning), and so on. I’m feathering my nest with old precious things that come back to me and new things that make a space just right. I may write some posts about how my space affects my Craft, because I have Some Opinions on that and I enjoy airing them.

In the next post, I’ll start sketching out what I’d like to be posting about next.

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