My Big Fat Pagan Handfasting

It was a cold, snowy, Valentine’s Day. Sunnie and I were celebrating our 5th Wedding Anniversary and we had planned to as the Catholics say, have our Marriage blessed. The night before and part of Valentine’s day it snowed, sleeted, and had episodes of freezing rain, so for all intent & purposes, we had to postpone our Handfasting until the following Saturday. I posted several times on the NE Pagans group on Yahoo to which I belong that we were Hand fasting to see who was coming, but mainly what I found out was that a majority of Pagans as well as running on Pagan Standard Time (PST), they fail to ever post responses to any surveys ever posted. Two sets of people did contact me directly that they were coming & 3 sets did contact me that they would not be able to make it. The only family member I did tell about it outside of my kids was my sister, but she declined because she is still trying to deal with me “coming out of the broom closet” and being a devout Catholic, did not want to compromise anything in her faith. I hold no ill will towards her for that, but we even had a lengthy conversation regarding this several days before, but she is set in her ways and if this is a sample of how my parents will take it, it will be some time before I tell them even though I have been dropping subtle hints here and there to ease them into knowing that their son is a Witch. I just wish that people would open their minds and not be clouded by the prejudices instilled in them by the Catholic Church. I think I will send my sister the 13 Principles of Wiccan Belief to better educate her & once I get the TLC special about Witches that aired the other night.

Fast forward to Saturday, February, 17th, a cold winter night, by clear with no snow, this time it’s a go. I spent most of the day cleaning my house up due to 5 kids with 2 teenage slobs included. My 19 month old actually picks up after himself better than my 17 yo & 14 yo, but that’s a different blog. Talitha was the first to arrive very fashionably early at 5:30 pm (this is very rare for a Pagan fore most Pagans follow PST, Pagan Standard Time, which means your are always late. The next guest was my 5 month pregnant daughter Caitlyn who came without her boyfriend because he is not religious; handfasting is the same as marriage, with the only difference being we bless the marriage. The third guest was Sunnie’s friend Sue, nicknamed “The Church Lady” by me and my friends, who eventhough is a Methodist, is very open minded and provided pictures of the event. My sons Bobby, Aidan, & Liam were already here, and my step-daughter Abria was away for her HS retreat weekend, that left Tempest & Brenda because the rest of my Coven bailed on us due to one thing or the other or prior commitments. Tempest and Brenda held to true PST by arriving at 7:30 for a 7 pm event. With my family here, my dearest Covenmates & HPS, and friend/photographer, we all merged to the basement where I set the Altar up and we were ready to go.
Talitha led us through a beautiful Handfasting Ceremony that she uses as a standard with the addition to the Rose Ceremony that Sunnie & me added. Talitha blessed our rings, and asked us both positive and negative questions to which we responded “I will!” to the positive and “I may.” to the negative with “Is that your intent?” asked following that to which we responded, “No!”. After the questions, a cord was draped over our arms which ended up totaling six and the knot was tied. Our Handfasting cord now hangs at the traditional spot on the wall above our bed to serve as a reminder to our Love. After the Ceremony we feasted on steak, chicken, a veggie stir fry, buttered rice, salad, & caramel-apple cheesecake. All in all, I am glad that we chose to renew our vows on our 5th Anniversary and to bless our marriage in the eyes of the God & the Goddess!

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Business Today

Business today is all the same, whether it is small, big or corporate America, its all business. What's more important to business today? Keeping employees happy & retaining them, or going to the grave with more money than they could ever spend (and usually its not even their money, since most business & Corporate America are run by Board of Directors who do not have a penny invested anyway)? What ever happened to people working the same job & being happy from the time they graduated either High School or College till they retired? What happened to businesses taking care of their injured employees and making sure that their families are ok? Why when you ask your employer for a much deserved raise, they consider you a troublemaker and either get rid of you or make the time you work miserable? Why when you question the decisions made by people who do not have a clue of what's going on in the world, you get your balls busted? Why must employees be "Yes men"? Why doesn't the working person's opinion count anymore? The main reason is money & power!

I was at my dream job as Maintenance Supervisor for Pennypack Woods Home Ownership Association (it was a dream job because I could roll out of bed and be at my office in 30 seconds) for a little more than a year last year when re-injured my lower back & wound up herniating 3 more discs & bulging 2 while working. I herniated 1 disc in my neck along with 2 bulging discs, and herniated 2 discs in my middle back. When I reported my injury to my boss via a written report, she looked at it and laughed while handing it back to me. I then told her that she needed to sign it which she did. As standard procedure, injured employees are sent to the Work Health Doctor at Frankford-Torresdale Hospital, she did not follow thru with that. I continued to limp around work the next 3 days with out any questioning about how I feel, or maybe you should see a doctor. My boss even knew about my pre-existing condition and still did nothing. I finished out my work week and went to my own doctor the next week. My family doctor immediately put me out of work on a week to week basis. I emailed my boss as well as turning in the out of work order and asked her to submit a Workers Comp claim and her uneducated response was, “Well since its only for a week, there is no need to submit a claim”. Duh! It’s a work related injury and by law, it must be submitted to the insurance company, but when someone is uneducated in a position of power and can not make a decision on her own without asking a member of the Pennypack Board of Directors (aka a Yes Man Puppet), I expected this.

Rewind to December 2000. I was working for FootLocker/Kids FootLocker for almost 10 years. I had a emergency appendectomy which led to complications, 2 more surgeries, a blood clot, and a 5 week hospital stay. Again I am dealing with an incompetent boss (which is actually my 1st one, but whose counting). I called my District Manager to tell her that I am in the hospital recovering from an emergency appendectomy, and the response I got was not what I was expecting. I got, “What’s that mean, how long are You going to be out?” No, “How are you feeling or Are you ok?” What’s that mean, how long are You going to be out! How fucking stupid and inhumane is that? I was just 5 hours removed from surgery and that’s what I got asked! And to top things off, my Regional Vice President called, not to see how I was, just to see if I was in the hospital! Did I get flowers or a card from my employer? Hell no! All I got was harassment via weekly phone calls from my District Manager asking when I was coming back to work. My employees who all lived in either North Philly or West Philly, took the bus to see me at the hospital a few times and called me daily to see how I was. I went back to work 2 months later and wound up falling off the top of an 8’ ladder in October of 2001, thus ending my illustrious career with FootLocker. Oops, I forgot to mention, this time was worse than the hospital stay, cause no bosses even called me to see how I was at all. All I got was harassment from my same brain dead, unpersonable DM who did not have a clue what was going on in her district and was once again, a “Yes Man”.

I guess lack of sympathy and no free thought is a requirement for the bosses of the world. I was told that in order to move up the ranks in the corporate world, you must be a “Yes Man” and not get personally involved with your employees. Ok, I can see being a brainless fuck and not voicing your opinion because they hire people to make the decisions for you or have an uneducated Board of Directors with their own hidden agendas, mind you, these decision makers never worked a day on the FootLocker sales floor or got their hands dirty in the maintenance field. My boss at Pennypack Woods was afraid of her own shadow and did not want to make a decision because she did not want to get in trouble for making the wrong move. She was jealous of me because I knew my job, got compliments from people due to the good work (and to show you how stupid she was, did not realize that my good job, made her look good in the process), and most importantly, I was a risk taker. I do not wait for others to make decisions for me, I am a free spirit, I take the ball & run with it & take chances.

My boss at Pennypack Woods relied on 1 person to make decisions for her, and I will call him Hand Gun (only because that’s what his license plate says). Hand Gun & I clashed while I was on the Pennypack Board of Directors for 3 years, he was out for himself, I was out for the good of the community. He used his position as a board member to get the association manager to do as he said. What the dumb ass manager did not realize was that he was only 1 of 9 people and he was a 2 fisted jerkoff that was basically a bully. He always bragged that when he was a manager at a knitting mill, he treated his employees like shit because that’s how you get results. I don’t agree with this thinking. Employees are to be treated like people who have feelings and emotions and families. I always got results with my way of management & in fact, when I worked for Kids FootLocker, I was the most popular manager and always had more friends in the company than my DM because I was a people person. Anyhow to make a long story short, when I got hired by Pennypack as the Maintenance Supervisor, I had to resign from the Board. Hand Gun being the narrow minded fuck that he was, saw his opportunity to get even with me for disagreeing with him in the past, since now I was a paid employee he could just come in and be a prick to me without me arguing back. My 1st meeting with the board as Supervisor, he started with me and I argued back. I was then told later on by my manager, you are no longer a board member and do not have an opinion and can not argue with the board because they are our bosses. Also, since I live in Pennypack I am a 1/1000th association owner. Now work here, I lose my right to voice any opinions or question the decisions of the board at the Quarterly Homeowners General Membership meeting my brainless manager told me because that’s the way it is. So just because some people are on an ego trip & mind you hold a volunteer position that they make consume their life, I must now also bow down to people who all wipe their asses the same way as me. When I was on the Pennypack Board of Directors, I went to the bi-monthly meetings and that was it. I stayed out of the office and maintenance because that’s why we have paid employees. If I had to be in the office day in & day out to make decisions for a wishy-washy manager, then I would hire someone that would do the job on their own, but then again, I am no evil puppet master. Oh, did I mention that Hand Gun was a big time “Holy Roller” who brags that he does this & that for his church, but does not lead that kinda life outside his sacred church? What a Pharisees, to quote the New Testament I say.

So as you can see from all this, I have come to the following conclusions to get ahead in life & to keep the same job forever:
1. Always, always be a Yes Man.
2. Don’t get personally involved in your employees lives as a role model, mentor, or coach.
3. Shit on all employees & be rotten to them.
4. Never stick to your word.
5. Always be a puppet & allow your puppet master to control you.
6. Never, ever, ever make a decision on your own.
7. Sit in your office and when you need to make a decision call someone so you can say this is what I decided on my own to do.
8. If any of your employees get sick or hurt, fuck em cause they don’t matter no matter how much of an asset they are.
9. Get jealous of your subordinates for doing a good job & realize that they take the shine out of your star because no matter if they make you look good, the attention & praise are on them.
10. Don’t pay your people shit no matter how good of a job they do because there is room in your coffin to take your wealth with you to the after life whether or not it is actually yours or the corporation’s.
11. And the most important conclusion to get ahead & keep the same job forever is that you should take every chance you get to fuck people over because you are all that matters and if you didn’t everyone on the outside would see how incompetent you actually are.

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