Personal Bruhah

So (I insert here a long, somewhat sad, dramatic pause) the wonderful TheTarotParlor pointed out a typo in my Lydia deck on the Happy Squirrel card. So first! A wee background on this card – which you probably already know, but since I explained it to my friend Kate this past con (her having literally no time left in her life for things like pop culture) I realize not everyone knows the squirrel card.

Long and short – the Happy Squirrel card is a brief moment in an episode of the Simpsons when Lisa goes to a fortune teller tent and gets a tarot card reading. She gets all the bad cards and then the happy squirrel, to her delight, until the fortune teller drops back in horror. It’s one of those cards you will now find in some decks. Some people like it, some don’t. I put this card in mine where it fits. Isidore and Lydia decks both have happy squirrel cards with my own twist. The Isidore Tarot has a happy squirrelthulhu cuz… I don’t know, tentacles! Lydia has a dreary squirrel card because it is a darker deck that still keeps a pinch of humor. The problem? It was pointed out to me that I did not type dreary and no matter how I looked at that card I never saw the typo. I put deary squirrel. Ugh! Double ugh!

I have printed and adopted out so many of these decks at this point. I have an entry in both companion books where dreary is in the meaning literature while the card sits there all lacking an R. My proof reader didn’t catch it! So what to do??!! Accept it I decided. It almost seems like a small joke the woman who is Lydia Wilhelmina might play. She grew up in an era where there were many older woman who might refer to her as deary, and some of them might have voiced it with mischief quietly hidden behind it. She might have done the very same thing herself. So this deck is owning its boo boo and quietly dragging it into the mythos that is the Lydia deck.

And hey… maybe that dreary squirrel comes running out all full of mischief and dark mirth before suddenly pulling a nice tea pot from behind its back and saying “Oh hello there deary! I am a squirrel… I’m here to be naughty. Tuck in!” 😉 Yeah… I’m going with that. TOTALLY!!

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I’m getting caught up on correspondence. I apologize for my being awol this past week. Friday evening my father was taken to the ER by ambulance. She was hysterical when I spoke to her and it took some time calm her down. She’s (just to say again, my dad is transgendered, still dad though) in Rhode Island living with a roommate and she wanted me out there like yesterday. She thought she was dying and didn’t want to be alone. She was moved to a nursing facility on Sunday.

She was in such bad shape when she was here. Her spondylitis (a form of arthritis along the spine) had fused her spine so she can’t turn her head any longer and has to bend at the waist. She was weak, in a great deal of pain, shaking terribly bad, and was having trouble carrying herself–her legs were really weak. It turns out she got pneumonia after coming down with the flu after she returned from her visit here. She had become bed ridden and her roommate was taking care of her. Her roommate phoned me and discussed with me how she can look after my dad for a little while longer but that she wasn’t going to be able to live in their shared apartment any longer. [EDIT: She hadn’t mentioned that she had fallen down the last few stairs as she was going to do her laundry. A bit part of her problem is she has a hairline fracture in her lower spine complicating already bad issue.]

So anyway, I’ve had to find an assisted living facility to move my dad from RI to here in Ohio, and how we’re going to do that, how we’ll afford everything. My dad will be 79 in June. The thing she values more than anything is her independence and she’s been quite frank about what will happen if she goes into nursing care. Though we’ve also discussed the fact that we can’t live together and she doesn’t want me having to care for her the way I did my mother and grandfather. It’s just, to be absolutely blunt, a frightening and fucked up turn of events my husband and I are trying to deal with. Sadly both my brothers have no contact with our dad so I don’t have them to turn to for help. Though my new sister-in-law, the angel that she is, sad she would help me where she could.

Campaign perks are still going out. I’m doubling down on getting everything out so I can put this campaign to rest. I’m also moving through cyber Monday sales. Thank you for being patient.

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I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth, though I might propel myself into space with my coughing. What I thought was a lingering flu turned out to be a rather aggressive lung and inner ear infection. By the time I found this out it had also spread through my lymph nodes and offered some fabulous swelling. So I’ve been on bed rest and a mountain of medication for the past few weeks. Just another lovely perk of having a weakened immune system. I still feel rather blah, but at least my bone rattling cough has gotten much better.

In happier news, my mini decks and tea tins arrived this week so I am officially fully stocked to cover my Lydia campaign perks and my cyber Monday sales. I will be able to begin shipping smaller perks hopefully as soon as next week. I hope to be back to my regular posting then too. Now I’m going to go start tucking minis into their boxes before my body tells me its time to take a break again. 🙂

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I spend way too much of my time on instagram, I cannot lie. During my idle time there I have found some wonderful shops that I think would appeal to those who follow me there and my blog here. So here are a few links for this biggest shopping weekend of the year and I will be adding to it as more shops tip toe across my screen.

Tarot n Tea is just what is sounds like – lots of tarot and some lovely tea to sip as you read. Babbo offers a variety of different gift boxes that come themed for the season and full of lots of lovely things. I’m also a deck contributor so you will see some of my cards in those boxes and in readings. 🙂 Get your box here.

The Bee and the Snake offers neat handmade things, especially drawstring tarot bags! Betsy has an etsy shop of goodness found here.

Spookys Geek Boutique is a fun place for a lil spooky and a lil sweet. They have their own holiday weekend sale going on at their site here.

The 8th House Tarot is in the process of making a tarot deck of the same name. The artwork is simple and straight to the point. Annabel has started a pantheon page to help aid the process of see her deck realized.

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It’s been so hot today! The air can’t keep up. Had to tuck the laptop away for a little bit. It has cooled down to get back to blog work. Feels like a marathon re-watching of Penny Dreadful kind of night. If for no other reason than to watch and learn that wicked elegant card spreading of Vanessa’s. 🖤🕷🕸🦇

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Posts have been a little slow as of late. During the day I’m working on fulfilling my sale orders and during the evening I’ve been tackling my costume for the first convention of the season. Most of that working has been on my first mask, pictured here now that it is finally finished. The mask will have a dual purpose as the gent and I will be vending at the Midsummer Masquerade soon as well. And really? I wanted a huge and fabulous, slightly dark, detailed costume that I could put on like a second skin and move through the convention menacingly while innocently handing out candy. Or something like that. It’s a steampunk convention with a super heroes and villains theme. I wanted to be Poison Ivy, but she’s kind of the go to for a lot of people. So I made up my own villain.

I absolutely adore owls.

I have three animals on my personal totem: The black rabbit, a carry over from my childhood when I was obsessed with the book Watership Down. The white fox, which comes from my love of kitsune in Japanese folklore. And finally the wise owl, companion to the goddess of wisdom Athena; most famously (for me) crafted as Bubo in Clash of the Titans to aid Perseus so Athena didn’t have to send her own beloved owl. It might have struggled with Greek mythology, but that was another place where my mind got interested in certain subjects as a kid. Plus, as an adult who attends steampunk functions, mechanical owls are a thing. I wanted it to look somewhat old, slightly mechanical, but regal with a lot of little parts. And the mask does have all three of my critters. Obviously the mask is meant to look like an owl, plus it has a jeweled owl between the eyes. At the top of the tiny bird scull is a small rabbit. On the back of the mask I drew my fox, which looks a lot like my white feline Ghost, who I’m positive is just a fox pretending to be a feline so I would take her in when I found her as a wee qwueeber in my backyard so long ago. I mean… everything doesn’t have to have a meaning or symbolize something… it’s just more fun that way!

Anyhoo, as I was saying, I’ve been a bit busy for web stuff at the moment. I will get back into the swing of things. In the meantime I have my costume progress and con things over at my personal blog. Or, better stated, I will soon. That site is fighting with posting at the moment so I’m giving it a time out. (With plenty of disapproving scolding finger.) For the record, mask making and art doll making have been on my list of things to try. Basically I wanted to see if I could create 3D designs of my brides artwork, seen here. That is my Black Cat and Poisoned Tea Society collection. I’m rather pleased with my first attempt. Now I should get back to work. Toodles noodles!

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Now that all my sales have concluded and shipped, I’m taking a little break for the holidays. Posts will resume in the new year. And I’ll have previews of the Isidore Tarot’s third edition, as well as a new alternative version of the deck just in time for the approaching spring. (Note to nature: Please be approaching. Please! I was told moving to southwest Ohio would mean I didn’t have to suffer through lakeshore Michigan temps. They fibbed!) So have a very wonderful holiday however you celebrate them and I’ll see you back here in the new year. 🙂

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Picture me standing up with hands on my hips, with a determined look on my face as I stare off into the distance. Maybe I have a cape blowing in the breeze behind me. Can you picture it? No? You just think I’m being weird? Ah well, I do like the dramatics. I just wanted to update those who have been writing my shoppe and my blog. All the business related stuff has been covered by Maggie (thank you Maggie!), but that does leave a lot of my personal correspondence and art inquiries tucked away in a folder to attack when I could. My online time has been very off and on at best.

I am getting caught up on conversations, requests, and things of that nature that Maggie didn’t feel she could properly cover. My left eye (the one I decided to get an up close look at the stairs with) has been blurry since the surgery where they put the plate over my broken orbit area. The surgeon warned me it would be a combination of the injury, the heavy numbing agents, and most likely tiny and hateful gremlins living behind my eyeball. So reading was a pain and I was warned to be weary of eye strain with the laptop screen.

I was given the thumbs up by my eye surgeon this past Wednesday. Yays! With some glasses and groovy eye drops my eye is fighting the good fight. Everything else is pretty much healed. The bethalynne beast lives to growl another day. The surgeon, who is also a plastic surgeon, mentioned he could help correct my heavy eyelids if I had problems with them to which I said “Not my bedroom eyes! What would I do in this world without my prized resting bitch face?!” And there were giggles, but I was totally serious.

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Good afternoon! Or morning, evening, pick your time of the day. I’m about to zoom zoom rooom to Boston for a week with my gent to take in the Inbound marketing convention (courtesy of his day job where I freelance now and again) and visit with my dad, who happens to be in that area. I spent my summers growing up in Boston. It’s a lovely place. I won’t have my laptop with me, but I will have tablet on had to catch my emails. In the meantime, don’t worry! Daily updates will continue as normal in my absence. I have scheduled posts to see Attic Cartomancy through until I return. Be a good cheer!

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As a few of you may know I’ve been swimming through some icky health waters the last couple of months. After some tests and a trip to the surgeon we found out the main culprit of my irritations. Yesterday I had out-patient surgery to correct that irritation. The procedure went along smoothly and I came home snorgled out of my gourd (read that as: They gave me a lot of happy drugs so I wouldn’t feel or really remember what happened) and camped out in a recliner all night in la la land. Today I’m mostly more coherent, but the pain of the surgery is slowing me down a bit.

I’ll be on some heavy meds for the next week or so and keeping myself away from the aetherwebs so I have a little time to relax and heal. Then I’m hoping things will finally be back to normal again. I’ve been working at half capacity and very distracted for months now and I feel like that’s put me behind on so many things. I’m happy I can get back into my sites at full strength again!