Nesting

It's uncanny how Wiccan holidays sneak up on you. February 2nd was Imbolc (or the 1st or 5th depending on your calendar). It's a Celtic cross-quarter holiday and one I often gloss over being that I am not of Gardenerian variety of witch. Nevertheless, it's a solid enough holiday, the vestige of it that you might recognize is Groundhog Day.

Imbolc, or Candlemas, is sort of a placeholder in my mind. The point between the longest night of winter and the vernal equinox in March when spring is really getting into full gear. As the groundhog tradition indicates, it's a time to start getting ready for spring and pace yourself through the vestiges of winter. It a holiday of spring cleaning, getting your house in order, beginning to put the winter items away, and starting the spring gardening.

So anyway, I totally flaked on Imbolc. I had some plans and totally forgot about them. In the meantime, I've developed and unhealthy obsession with finding an apartment-- a plan that cannot be set into motion until March or April. Regardless, I've been torturing myself by filling in floorplans like crosswords and gazing flirtatiously at large kettles imagining tea parties for a half-dozen and other such rituals for domesticating of a space. All month I've hungrily devoured interior decorating magazines, rabidly dogearing the pages with pleasing paint and exotic furniture. I even doubled the size of my herb garden in an afternoon. It wasn't until I was longingly stroking a seven foot framed mirror at Home Goods that I realized what was going on.

Brigid, the patron goddess of Imbolc, had her hands all over this frenzy.

I thought I had skipped Imbolc, but it clearly hadn't skipped me. Retracing my steps, February 2nd was, in fact, the very day I had inexplicably taken a sewing break to peek at apartments Craigslist.

That's kind of the end of the anecdote, I guess. It's probably more charming if you know your holidays or could see me pacing around World Market with utter covetousness in my witchy eyes.