• 

• 

• 

Mariah was sick of all that sweet stuff hanging around, cookies presented so well, breads of all shapes and sizes, oozing with juicy oils, smelling of marvelous spices, and toffied at the edges, all to celebrate winter setting in, in earnest. The sweet treats did not sit so well in her guts. She was determined to eat no more of them, yet if they were in front of her she was apt to reach over in spite of her best intentions and pull out a magnificent clump and swallow it whole even though it is laden with fats and sugars of all kinks. She was currently just a little bit swollen in the wrong places and resolved to make some of her mother’s favorite oatmeal squares to balance everything up.

When her mother made the squares, she would get cut or whole oats and throw boiling water on it and let it sit in a warm place. She added some bran if she had it and some seeds if she had them, even some seaweed and or salt.  After the water was soaked in, her mother would stand over the bowl and squeeze the oats with her bare hands, until it became a bit slimy, creamy. As a child she was sometimes allowed to get her little hands and arms into the mixture. She patiently waited beside her mother’s often-pregnant belly, to be allowed to do such things. Or she would just move in when her mother made a foray to make sure the fire was right for cooking the oatmeal. She worked in some salt and or seaweed then. She used some butter or animal fat or nut butters or sesame butter. Sometimes she had some sesame butters on hand that she got from the Druid. She liked the latter the best. He got it from the dwarves who had many things on sale for gold.  

Then she flattened the thick mixture out on her big iron pans, made squares on it  and covered it, placed it in the coals on the fire, put some red coals on top of the lid and set it to cooking. When it started to burn or brown at the edges, it was time to take it out of the coals. It was always best when fresh out of the pan, with some butter and or honey and a hot cup of tea. The Druid sure had a nose for such fare and was sure to show up around the time it was ready. 

She told him a dream, which included the fact that she wanted to go to the money keepers and avoid letting her friend know she had all her information about her gold. But first there was a problem with her hair. There was a streak of gooey mixture on it and no matter where she went to wash it out she was blocked. The stream went underground, the bog hole was dried up, the door was locked to the bathhouse. She was so frustrated. The druid said that, as the hair was what came out of her head, there fore that would represent her thoughts. There was something wrong with her thoughts about the woman she was dreaming about. 

Well, she and the woman of her dream had had a fallen out, and while Mariah wanted to fix things up, and had sent a note to her to this affect, she had not been successful in mending the breach between them. The druid thought she should think again about what had happened between them and consider that she is blocked because she is set in her attitude that she is right and that the other is wrong. Mariah did not like very much what he was saying, as a few grains of honeyed oats slid down his chin as he talked with his mouth full of her oatcakes. He looks like a horse she though. 

She tried to correct the druid to let him know she had done everything to get back with her friend but he just looked at her from underneath his bushy white eyebrows, with his piercing blue eyes and they dropped the subject. 

Later as she ambled about in the maze of well-kept lanes, she though she would tell the druid the whole story of how she stopped helping her friend in the past when her own gold had dried up. Maybe she would tell him she had cut her off, as she felt resentful of some perceived slights and thinking her friend should help her now. She spoke harshly of the good she had done in the past. Maybe she would confess to taking the love that had been between her and her friend, since they were children, and confess to letting it fall down in the hard times. Maybe the druid would have some advice to give her about how to mend the breach with her friend. That last note she sent to her friend had been met with complete silence. The end. 

If you, like Mariah have stories you would prefer not to tell, and it causes some dream stories of their own, then this time of the year is a perfect time for going into the unconscious to unlock the place of cleansing, the place of getting the thoughts cleaned up. I put the dream story above together from some fragments I heard lately. I put some sacred music on today and cooked some oatmeal squares to try and keep my thought out of cookies and to try and not be too cookie so that Christmas Day can surround me in all its calmness and peace. Happy Christmas to all my readers. Love from Rose.