Mabon and Lunacy

This is actually tomorrow, as it's 12:10 as I start this post. You must be thinking that this night HAD to be pretty interesting for me to stay up this late posting to a blog. Your thoughts are not leading you astray.

First off, I want to thank everybody for your positive response to the new header. I rather enjoyed making it.

Yesterday was interesting to say the least. Actually, you could say the last two days, (not counting this one, which is already over and a new one begun) were something to write home about. Thursday, the census is low in the CCU, and it being MY turn to be sacrificed to the Gods of Floating, get to go babysit 6 (count them; SIX) Baker-Acted (a legal term for crazy people or suicide attempters ending up in our care) patients in various stages of not quite being all there. You do NOT want to spend 12 straight hours sitting on your butt hoping you won't have to tackle some nutcase attempting to exit the premises to prevent them from exiting the premises because the law says they are not allowed to exit this particular premise until a shrink says otherwise one way or another. Yes, there are much bigger and more muscular security type people SOMEWHERE around these premises who will eventually respond to your cries of "I NEED HELP HERE!", but till then all sorts of mayhem might erupt that could involve your getting hurt because some of these crazy people are BIG crazy people.

I somehow survived that and came home and did not axe murder the family. Then I went back the next day,

And it was a pretty normal, run of the mill day, too, only there were barely enough patients to justify my presence towards the end of the shift and thus the charge nurse was JUST about to let me go home early and.....sigh.....back to the ER to watch ANOTHER patient of the NOWHEREFUCKINGNEARSANE persuasion. I sat there with him in that small room trying to appear disinterested in his rambling lunatic manifesto while being actually VERY interested in screaming for help if this person leapt off his stretcher and attacked me. However, another aid came to relieve me after about an hour and I left in one piece, and again, did not go home to axe murder the family.

The above being said I want to assure everybody that there really IS a measure of empathy involved here. One cannot spend any amount of time in the company of irrationality and not imagine the horror of their own minds bugging out on them. There is rarely any element of choice in these circumstances, and as unpleasant as these people can be, it is not done for your or anyone else's entertainment. Sometimes bad choices are made when it comes to taking or not taking medications, but life is what it is, and there but for the grace of the Gods, go any one of us. What I would dearly love to see is the community take responsibility in the aftermath of the government closing down dysfunctional mental institutions and not replacing them with any alternative, instead being content to let them wonder the streets until they dare bother us by getting in our way. Sooner or later almost all of us will experience this tragedy in our own families and it best we be proactive about providing mental health care rather than this piss-poor system of reactive incarceration. I'm going to shut up now in case this begins to resemble a rant........

So, the weekend began with preparations for our Mabon celebration, which the wife claimed would be attended by no less than seven friends and coworkers. Wow, almost an instant coven! But of course, all but two of them "couldn't" attend, so we soldiered on with five total. One girl brought her husband, which had me thinking for ONCE I'd get some masculine reinforcement, usually being the token male around here, but nooooooo, he had only given her a ride and had to get back home to babysit.

Now, one of the hallmarks of life here at Pendragon Hold is the comedy factor, provided so ably by my loving partner and High Priestess, THE Wife. She is at all times surrounded by what I charitably refer to as the "Electromagnetic Klutz Field", and in the company of our guests, this field was running at full strength, as our intrepid Priestess led off the ceremony by unceremoniously plowing right into a potted plant, almost tripping over that and falling flat on her face, because, she claims later, she couldn't see where she was going with the hood of her new cape down over her face! I turn to our guests and assure them that this is normal and to please not panic..............

Once everybody has picked themselves off the ground laughing, we get on with the ceremony, and the rest of the night proceeds without major incident, and Mother Gaia was kind enough to keep the rainstorms at bay for the rest of that night, although the leaden skies kept Momma Moon out of sight.

After the ceremony, as the girls retired indoors and I was grabbing the last of the stuff that had to be retrieved from the circle for the night, a flying squirrel decided to glide into the brightly lit circle and land on one of the trees next to me. Either that, or in the spirit of communication between this world and the next, Rocky, the late mate of Natasha, came to visit. Within a few seconds the apparition had shimmied up the tree and out of sight.

One of our guests had partaken of the wine to slight excess and needed to be driven home by the other, and I think that both of them will report back to the missing crowd that nobody died or was injured in the performance of this circle. That is, unless the demons who possessed them act up and scare everybody....hehe.....just kidding.......

It is now Sunday morning and all is quiet here at Pendragon Hold. While the Christians dress to impress and attend their bastions of family values, we will relax and enjoy our godless heathen atmosphere, one of love and sharing and appreciation for all we have been blessed with. Then, it's back to work.

Till next time, this has been another episode of the Chronicles of Pendragon Hold, and we are hoping you and yours can laugh despite the darkness we all face thanks to greed and "conservative" stewardship of our financial markets. Blessed be!