A Comb, A Witch, And 10 Gallons of Holy Water

 It's Wild Card Wednesday because I skipped out on Agriculture Tuesday here on ye olde blog.

This week, Wild Card Wednesday is going to start with me complaining about myself because I stupidly didn't think to check the oil tank (we use heating oil here, which sucks), because I'm still mentally running on Summer Usage (we don't use hardly any heating oil in the summer, so a tank lasts for months).  So to the surprise and delight of absolutely no one here in the house, we ran out this morning and can't get on the delivery schedule until tomorrow.  So that means we're turning the living room into a one-room schoolhouse today and everyone is just going to bundle up and offer it up.  Also, I now have to mentally move to Winter Usage mentality and start ordering oil every month again.

Anyway, it's cold here right now.

This week, I posted a picture on my instagram of a comb I bought myself for my birthday.  I bought it off Etsy, from a woman in Russia who gave off vague witch vibes.  In the 2.5 months it took for the comb to be made and make its way across thousands and thousands of miles, I began to get more and more worried that it was Baba Yaga herself who was crafting me this comb, so by the time I received it this week, the kids were convinced it was probably a cursed object and insisted I douse it with holy water before using it.

When I posted this story on instagram, someone in the comments asked if had holy water just sitting around on hand.  

BOY LET ME TELL YOU

For the last couple years, we've had our favorite priest come over to bless the fields each spring.  This year, I asked him to also bless 10 gallons of water, 2 Costco jugs of olive oil, and a couple big tubs of salt.  Ken just sort of rolled his eyes when I piled up the goods in front of our priest, but who was laughing 2 weeks later when all the parishes in our state shut down for the next 4 months?

Actually, nobody was laughing.  But if we were cut off from the Sacraments, at least we had sacramentals in spades.  AND I had the tools necessary for decursifying mail from Baba Yaga.

And right now, the house is cold enough to make that Russian wood scene all the more plausible.  But heating oil comes tomorrow, and today I've got a stockpile of sacramentals in case I see any witches in barrels emerging from the woods.