Counting Down to the New Year, Winter UGH and Winter Ahhhhhh!

Hola darlings!  Goddesschess hopes you all will have a wonderful celebration for New Year's Eve and a happy, healthy and prosperous 2018. 

We are SO cold here, it is horrid.  The Polar Vortex has returned with a vengeance.  UGH!  Even worse, I can't find any forecast that said when this may disappear, if only for a few days.  The entire Midwest all the way east and even engulfing Washington, D.C. are under this Weather Horror Show!  I lived through the dreadful killer Polar Vortex of winter 2012-2013, walking 9 blocks day and night five days a week through feet of snow to and from the bus stop, and I swore NEVER AGAIN.

Ha ha ha, joke's on moi.  I'm no longer trekking to and from the bus stop to go to work, but I still need to go to the supermarket and for my blood draws.  It actually got up to a balmy 9 degrees F yesterday morning as I went to the lab for a blood draw.  I looked like I weighed 300 pounds I was so wrapped up underneath my fuchia down hooded coat.  It takes me 15 minutes just to bundle up!  Then the snow came yesterday evening.  And the winds.  I wasn't expecting this wind.  Windchills today are about 30 below zero F, and we are under a winter windchill advisory. 

Despite the frightful weather (...oh the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful...) I will have my fireplace going over the next few days to snuggle up close to with a good book (received one for Christmas from Isis in Las Vegas) and tomorrow night I'll see if I can stay awake long enough to make it to midnight, LOL!

I saw this beautiful photo at The Washington Post today, wintery though it is.  It is so evocative of the Goddess to me, complete with black birds :)  Deer (and birds) are associated with various goddesses, of course, and horns of a variety of. animals including deer, have been worn and utilized as symbols of power perhaps as far back as man first appeared on Earth.  For instance, Siberian cave paintings dating back as far as 70,000 years ago show thousands of years of images of deer, sometimes associated with the spirit world. 

This photo was taken on December 28, 2017 in Richmond Park in London.  Originally established as a royal hunting preserve, yet today there are approximately 650 red deer and fallow deer along with multiple species of birds who reside inside its protected boundaries.  How incredibly beautiful!  I especially got a kick out of the hitchhiking black bird, LOL!  Thanks, WaPo, for publishing it this week.