There’s some short scrubby stuff that grows on the sides of the road, etc., and bigger trees where there’s available water by the river and the better running creeks – and that’s about it.

But when they put in my development, they planted some oaks and pecans and other things, ostensibly as “decorative” trees, one of which is an oak that lives in my front yard. The only tree on my property. Of course, my house is a rental, so all I have to go on is “yeah that’s an oak tree.”

Which it definitely is!

I did a bunch of research, and I’d narrowed it down to being either a pin oak or a scarlet oak – most likely (by the shape) a scarlet oak. But there was no way to tell until autumn when the leaves turned which it was. And now, in mid-November, we have finally had some cool nights. Last night we actually had a freeze for the first time, so SOME trees are starting to turn colors? Most trees in NTX just get golden and then turn brown, buuuuuut…

This is Sally

She’s named for Sally Whitemane – a Crusader in World of Warcraft’s Scarlet Crusade and a prominent boss in the Scarlet Monastery dungeon’s Cathedral.

She is almost assuredly a Scarlet Oak, and I can’t wait until she’s in full color.

This is a story from my childhood, when I was a teenager in the suburbs in Dallas-Fort Worth in North Texas. I lived in a stereotypical, super white, mc-mansion style suburban neighborhood. It was very tame most of the time, and a very safe place, if often a pretty boring one.

I love Halloween, and so does my whole family. So every year we decorated; we carved pumpkins; we did the whole bit.

But this is TEXAS.

It’s often not autumn weather in Texas until mid-November. (It’s November 11 right now and we’re getting our first real full week of fall weather THIS WEEK.) This is generally not a good combination with a cut up large gourd that sits outside, sometimes in the beating afternoon sun.

Accordingly, our Jack o’Lanterns lived inside until Halloween night, in an attempt to get as much enjoyment out of them as possible by keeping them in the air conditioning so they didn’t totally rot before we could use them on the 31st. Every year without fail though, my dad and my brother and I each carved at least one pumpkin. Usually fairly large ones. They got sprayed inside with vinegar or bleach, then set on a piece of board/plywood so they could be moved around easily.

One year, there was a bumbus group of older kids (probably teenagers) who were terrorizing all the pumpkins and other decor in the neighborhood – pulling them off people’s porches and smashing them in the street or running over them with cars. Lots of younger kids were pretty upset.

My dad did not like this.

So on about the 25th, our inside pumpkins went out on the back porch – safe and sound, but juuuuuust a little warm.

Then on Halloween night, they got moved – on their boards – to the brick retaining wall in our front yard. Our house was VERY visible too, at the top of a small hill, so you could see the pumpkins and their glowing candles in both directions from the street. Large and with awesome carved faces, they looked great. They were also quite… soft.

We did the trick or treating, and we went to bed.

About 1am, there was a massive ruckus in the front yard.

The next morning, there were the gooey bottom halves of four large pumpkins sitting on the board on the retaining wall, with CLEAR finger/handprints squooged into them from each side, and the top halves (sort of) of gooey, half-rotted pumpkin strewn all over our front yard.

They fucked around. They found out.

On August 29, I got a phone call at 11 at night or so. I was asleep – I’m usually in bed between 9 and 10. There’s a number of people who have my phone number, and who know they can call me any time, day or night, and that so long as they actually CALL me, and make my phone ring, I will wake up. That they are important. Kia is one of those people, so when I saw a phone call from her that had woken me up, I knew – whatever had happened – it was going to be hard. I had no idea how hard.

I won’t recount the specifics of the conversation, but the upshot was that Mike – Rades – our D&D DM for the Korvosa game, long time Elf Wizard Fabulor in the (now completed) Dar na Theria campaign, the minotaur barbarian Crash in the Pan Flute campaign, and all-around pivotal member of our little community – had died. We didn’t know details then, but we know now that he died of a brain aneurism.

We spent Monday in Discord together, most of us from the Slack of Many Things.

And then Tuesday… life had to go on. It didn’t, of course. Not really? Pix and I ended up making a discord for all of Rades’ friends – and he had many. He was a pivotal member of the WoW Insider and Blizzard Watch community, a long time WoW blogger and part of the Twitter community there, the (now retired) raid leader for TTGF, part of the Overwatch community, a DM for the What Sleeps Below game, a player in at least two other D&D games.

Mike did nothing halfway. He was a pillar in all of those places, a person who somehow shouldered all of them. The Discord gave us a place to come together and talk about him, to discover that he was unequivocally himself in all of those disparate places, and that we all knew the same Mike, even as very few of us knew much at all about his life outside of our interactions online.

Mike was unmatched.

As DM, as a player, as a friend. I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered anyone who was so unbelievably brilliant and creative, but whose entire focus as a brilliant and creative person was on finding ways to let other people shine. He was all of our biggest fan. He remembered things, from years ago, and brought them back around later – either to make fun, or to show he cared. Or more realistically, both. I’m not someone who takes being made fun of well, but when Mike did it, you knew it was with the kind of love that said “I’m poking fun at you, but this is a thing we share together, because I think you’re great.”

There was so much laughter – so many jokes. So many things that he remembered about literally everyone he knew. It seems like half of his twitter posts that tagged another person contained a joke, even if it was one that only he and that other person would get.

He brought people in, and he brought people together, and the hole that his death has left in our lives is impossible to measure, even now after all this time trying to think about it. I can try to put words to it – to say that Mike is the first person I’ve lost who I was close to, who was someone I talked to nearly every day, who was a huge part of my creative world, and who died unexpectedly.

But that doesn’t even feel like enough.

I trusted Mike.

I’ve played a lot of D&D – been playing since 1999 or so. A lot of those tables were fun and engaging in their way, but for a lot of reasons I never really trusted either the other players, or especially the DMs. When I joined the Dar na Theria game in 2012, it took me YEARS to feel like I could trust the table with emotional and hard and vulnerable roleplaying.

When I rolled Anvari for the Korvosa game in 2015, I began the process of trusting Mike as a DM and not just as a fellow player. Over the years, that trust expanded, until for the last two years or so, my character has been in the spotlight, and so – accordingly – have I.

I don’t like being there. It’s too vulnerable, there’s too much riding on me and my roleplaying. But Mike never allowed that uncertainty to change the story he wanted to tell with me, and he never questioned that I was capable enough to shine there, as both a player and a creative force. There were hours of DMs, sometimes late into the night after games, of him helping me process what happened. Never giving things away – he was too good of a DM to pull back the curtain – but just helping me see what had happened, see how to respond. Learning how I reacted as a player, and altering future games to make me both more in the spotlight, and more comfortable there.

I trusted Mike, and I loved him.

He engendered trust, I think in everyone he met.

To lose that is unspeakable. It’s to have lost Anvari, in ways that I don’t think I can really put into words except to say that Anvari was as much Mike’s character as she was mine, and I have no desire ever to try to resolve all of those stories without him to guide them. It’s to have watched the Slack of Many Things change, the dynamic never the same without that presence in our midst. (Which is not to say that the SoMT isn’t going to stick around, just that it is different now.)

It’s a million little ways that today, on what would have been his 39th birthday and more than seven weeks after his death, I still struggle to find words and still cry unexpectedly when someone or something reminds me of him.

I miss my friend.

I trusted Mike, and I loved him.

The world is different without him in it, and I cannot bring myself to type “goodbye,” so I won’t.

I’m a Druid and a Priest and an Animist, and there’s lots of things I could say about ancestors and people who have passed. Things I have said at funerals and memorial services. None of them fit. I don’t want them to fit. I want my friend back. And maybe next year, during this time when so many of us talk about those who have died, I’ll be able to think of him that way. This year, all I can do is put my dice bag next to the candles and hope that wherever he is and whatever he is doing – whatever new adventure it is that he’s embarked on – he is surrounded by love and trust and laughter that matches the love and trust and laughter that he surrounded all of us with while we were fortunate enough to know him.

Thank you, Rades, for everything.

The world isn’t the same without you in it, but my gods what an impact you made while you were here.

And then a single raindrop hits the window – followed by another, and another… and then a million of their closest friends come crashing down around you. Your kitchen is transported, the smell of rain from an open window wafting in – damp and cool – the first cold front of autumn heralded by the roll of distant thunder.

You breathe it in. For water is life, but on a morning in September, when the summer still hangs on like a predator, the drops of rain that come with that first storm system herald death instead.

A welcome respite, though a brief one, that will bring another after it – you don’t know when, but you know it will follow. For though the heat returns in a day this time, next time it will be two days, maybe? And then the evenings will crisp and autumn will sweep across the prairie as gently as that first drop that hit the window, but as unrelenting as the millions that came after it.

Nami and Kona – Ya’nami Sandshadow and Zufli An’kona

These two are (obviously) a couple – Nami is a Farraki Rogue, Kona a Darkspear Druid and Witch Doctor. They are a bit of a study in contrasts, him all sand and wind and dunes – tan and brown and grey – and her jungle and water and greenery – teal and emerald and neon.

This gesture – him kissing his fingertips and touching her forehead – is something that actually was invented very early in their relationship. Nami wanted to be affectionate, but a) he has tusks and b) she has this super impressive mohawk. He didn’t want to ask her, and didn’t want to be awkward, so he did this instead. She immediately copied it, and then asked him about it a few days later. Now it’s kind of code between them, something specific to them.

Tea and Falls – Tearyssa Ravenblade and Anfallas Nightsong

These two are the hot mess Illidari that I couldn’t be happier about. They’re best friends, occasionally roommates, and maybe a little bit more (but don’t tell them that yet). Falls is the nickname that Tea gave Anfallas. Anfallas, in return, calls Tea anything and everything related to Tea that she can think of – teaspoon, tealeaf, teapot, teacup. Falls is the instigator (if you couldn’t tell from the art), and Tea somehow always goes along with it, and they have a blast together. They’re gal pals, and I love them so much.

The good kind.

The kind that rustles up on a late summer afternoon, dropping warm rain and warm breezes, with rolling cloud thunder that rumbles along the prairie for miles and miles and miles. The kind that makes you go stand on the porch and smell the wet pavement and feel the wind – warm and damp and somehow almost caressing – on your face. The kind that makes the cars on the road make splashy noises, but doesn’t flood anything. No gullywasher, this, just late August rain that the parched earth drinks and that turns everything that’s still alive into green, even if only for 24 hours.

I have been saving up post ideas, so once I’m back online, I’ll be back in the saddle again! And intermittent posts might happen! But until then, pardon the quiet. I’m still here and still planning on posting, I just can’t really manage the blog until I’ve got actual internet again.

See y’all when I’m back in civilization again.

I am taking a small personal trip this week to see my Nana for her 94th birthday (tomorrow),and to celebrate my grandfather’s passing with the rest of my family. (Pop Pop passed in February, and his death is a whole post on its own. For another time.) I didn’t really think too much about it until today, when I sat down to pack, and realized… I’m going to a funeral with my Baptist family. I need FUNERAL CLOTHING.

In the last 18 months or so, I’ve gone from a size 20-22 to a size 12-14. Last summer, when I was buying interview clothes, I was a size 16-18.

So when I went into my closet to try to patch together something I could wear, I realized three very uncomfortable things.

1. I wear a lot of bold, colorful clothing
2. None of my dress clothes fit at all
3. I am booked straight through until 6pm tonight and there’s not really a way for me to go buy something

This was not a particularly pleasant thing to realize at 8:30 in the morning when I should have been thinking about a travel capsule wardrobe and not whether or not I’m going to have to dress totally inappropriately as the eldest (and black sheep) grandchild at a funeral.

My first thought was to try on my interview pants, which I’d intentionally bought a little snug, and I am relieved to know that they, at least, are still wearable with a belt. However, I do not own a single article of appropriate workwear that I could wear WITH those pants, because they are navy. If they were black, I would have been okay, I think, as I own a number of black tops. But my blouses that I have that go with navy are: white with silver and blue accents, fuchsia with white and black flowers, and electric orange with navy speckles. Not funeral wear.

Next thought was to go through my dresses and see if I could make anything work. For a long time I wore very little that wasn’t an eShakti cotton knit dress in a solid color. Problem is, all the ones from when I wore a 12-14 got pretty threadbare and I turned them into rags a few years ago, and the ones I replaced them with are… 2+ sizes too big. I tried on a wrap dress that I could possibly have made work, but apparently the entirety of my weight loss was in my bust, so it looked pretty silly.

Still I pressed on.

Surely, in my lovely closet, there was ONE THING that I could wear that would be appropriate for a funeral in August.

And truthfully there were two things, though one of them I’ve decided is too casual. I apparently saved two of the dresses that were in better shape from those halcyon days when I lived with my ex in Houston. Both are black, and while they’re a little faded, I kind of can’t be picky right now. The nicer of the two is a gorgeous wide v-neck (and v-back) dress with buttons down the front, a nipped in waistline, and a full skirt that hits just below my kneecap. It’s cap-sleeved, but my mom was consulted, and she says that this won’t be such a conservative affair that my bare arms will cause a scandal. (My tattoos peeking out of the v-back in the dress might, but I’ve decided that’s not my problem.)

I’m bringing a large, black and white square cotton scarf to wrap around me to add a little dimension and color (and also in case someone gets funny about my arms). And if anyone gives me crap for wearing flats, I’m going to offer to stab them in the feet. I have chronic pain. Heels are NOT in my vocabulary anymore.

So I’ll be dressed appropriately, or appropriately enough.

Next challenge: On Sunday, I’m going to visit a buddy I haven’t seen since 2009 and help him paint his son’s room in his brand new (to him) house.

Maybe I can bring something that’s 2+ sizes too big, expect to get paint on it, and just throw it away!

I have done this, first alone, and then with a study group, and then with the grove I founded, and then with friends, and now with a new protogrove, every six weeks, since something like 2004 or 2005? A long time.

Alone, things aren’t so bad! You do your thing, with the energy you have, at the engagement level you are capable of. Over time, the responsibilities grow, but you kind of grow into them, and that’s fine.

When you’re leading things for other people though, it gets complicated. No longer are you able to say “you know what, I don’t got it today” – there’s other folks relying on you to have your shit together, to make sure the fire is lit and the ritual is ready. To get the space prepared and to make sure there’s offerings or cakes and ale or whatever else.

Normally that’s fine, I deeply enjoy that work, and I look forward to it. But it’s always tiring.

This is a story of how I am sometimes extremely stupid.

Yesterday was August 1 – Lammas, the First Harvest, the Festival of Loaves. I have a HUGE personal responsibility that day, from a religious observation sense. I also had a D&D game with the Pan Flute folks, a house to clean, errands to run, a family to feed, and then a ritual I was hosting for Blue Heron at my house.

So I chugged right along into it, burned myself totally out by 5pm, and then had to like… find the energy somewhere in my toenails to make the evening stuff happen for Blue Heron.

That was my first mistake.

My second mistake, equally as dumb, was the part where I’ve regularly scheduled our Blue Heron high day celebrations to be on Sunday evenings. I’d do Fridays, but half the folks I want to show up can’t do Fridays (or couldn’t when we talked about it). Saturdays I’m already booked 3 out of 4 weekends. So that leaves Sunday. No big deal, right?

One of the many reasons that, in my career as a priest, I have chosen not to do ritual work on work nights is that afterward, when everything is done and cleaned up, I am *awake* and if I’m lucky I’ll fall asleep by 2am. And the next day, I’ll be a vegetable. Last night was no exception. I finally passed out around midnight-thirty.

The alarm went off at 6am.

Pardon me, I’m going to nap at my desk now.

And one of these days, maybe I’ll stop making rookie mistakes.

It’s not a special date or anything (our anniversary is 10/12). He just stopped at the store for onions, saw roses, and those came home too, with a card.

He is particularly sweet to know that a) I do really like flowers. A lot. A whole lot. But also b) words of affirmation are really important to me, so the card, especially as there’s a note inside, will probably get saved forever.

He and I met in 2005 or so, playing Vanilla WoW on Feathermoon-US. That was before I was married to my now-ex-husband, and before he’d even met his now-ex-wife. We met in person a few times over the years, at server meetups, and stayed connected on Facebook.

In 2019, we ran into each other purely by accident in WoW Classic, which led me back to WoW Retail, and then… a few months later we were talking every day, texting all the time, playing games together again all the time. One Sunday afternoon we had a conversation that went like this:

Me: “Hey, are you flirting with me?
Gentleman: “Yes, I hope that’s okay.”
Me: “Oh good, because I’m flirting with you too.”

And that was the end of that. I flew to rural NV to see him about six weeks later, and then continued to do so every 4-6 weeks until COVID.

At one point in one of those situations, the subject of gifts came up, and how I was used to buying gifts for myself, because my ex never got me anything I didn’t pick out on my own. Nor had I ever gotten flowers. A few weeks later, between trips, I got a knock on my door, and the following was there:

The note inside said:

“Please accept these amputated plant genitalia as a token of my love and affection.”

I was, and am, very smitten with him. COVID made life hard for us, but in December of 2020, he moved to Texas to be with me. In March of 2021, we signed a lease on a house, and as of April 1, we now live together (with his two kids, which … oof, sometimes, but he (and they!) are so worth it).

Flowers are kind of a cheesy gift sometimes, or they get pooh poohed a lot. But I really like flowers. I’ve bought flowers for myself for years, because I *love* the difference they make in my house to have them there. I’ve long maintained that with the exception of an obviously mourning/funeral bouquet, there’s no such thing as “bad flowers” (okay, except flowers that will kill my cats, but that’s not the flowers’ fault).

I am, though, very lucky. I get told “I love you” in lots and lots of ways. Some of that is that I choose to listen with more than just my ears, but some of that is having a partner who goes out of their way to say it, every day, in so many different languages.