twelve good things

[alexseanchai]

* Showers. Start out all icky greasy dirty, spend ten minutes being utterly focused on the here and now and the pleasurable sensation of water on skin, then rinse off with a bowlful of lustral water, and when you get out you're all fresh and clean and waterfall-scented. Seriously this shit's magical.
* Radio Rivendell.
* Seltzer water.
* Kellianna, "Serpent Mound".
* I keep turning into my apartment complex and being struck all over again with the wonder and delight of I live here now.
* I haven't made these Toby Daye 'verse cookies yet (nb: link has v mild spoilers for A Red-Rose Chain), I only found the recipe earlier today, but damn they sound intriguing.
* Gabapentin is also magical. My hands have barely hurt all week—two weeks, really, I've been on the gabapentin for two weeks, but last week I was off work, so last week doesn't count.
* Handmade dichroic-glass-dot earrings. (Handmade as in I made them. Granted this was effort on the order of "glue the Etsy-acquired dots to the ear studs", and not recently, but.) They are sparkly.
* Breathing. Seriously. I need to pay more attention when I'm feeling tired, because it might be a breathing problem that a hit of albuterol inhaler can alleviate!
* That check from my grandparents.
* I found a quarter.
* It is can be sleep tiem nao? IT IS CAN BE SLEEP TIEM NAO!

I feel blessed beyond my power to articulate.

Comments

[madgastronomer]

I keep thinking this and not mentioning it. But I guess I will.

You are already doing things that are preparatory to being a temple priestex.

Temple attendants must keep a constant higher level of purity while tending. (Most temples had rotating sets of attendants, because that level of purity is very hard to maintain, and precludes a lot of normal life.) So, like, actually bathing in khernips? Not something most people do. That's for ritual purity. Most Hellenics wash face and hands or aspurge themselves with khernips before addressing an altar, or doing ritual, etc. Most ancient Hellenes would only use khernips before entering the temple. That you feel it good and necessary to actually pour it over your whole body? Indicates that you instinctually strive for a higher level of purity.

Likewise, "Hestia first and last" originally applied only to large sacrifices for large festivals. The sacrifice of a bull or ram for a major holiday, or one made by a prominent citizen. Again, you reach immediately for things that are the highest level of ritual.

To warn you ahead of time, at some point, you will almost certainly start being informed that there are taboos specific to you and your temple. Things that accrue miasma for you, things that are forbidden for those who would enter the temple. In ancient times, there were some things that were pretty consistent across the board (no sex except with a spouse while attendant, no contact with dead bodies, newborn or those who have recently given birth, and some other things), but every temple also had a list of no-nos specific to that temple. Eating certain things (garlic), contact with certain things (members of the mustelid family). Eventually, you'll get some of those.

[alexseanchai]

...huh. Okay. Good to know.

I am going to have Thoughts on this later, at least the first part, but right now my brain's gone pretty much to mush.