Hibernating With My Winter Witches
January 27, 2023
I was watching a TikTok video about a guy going on vacation in the Canary Islands with his family and I knew I was going to love it because he said “the first thing we had to do once we got to the airport was have a wee,” and then the rest of the video was the blow by blow of getting their toddler through breakfast and to the plane without missing their flight. This is the travel content for me, not some bologna influencer Instagram vacation. Give me reality and a great sense of humor.
I watched a TikTok video about a lady sleep walking that made me laugh so hard I told my kid and they were like oh, is it Celina Spooky? and I was like yes, do you know her? and they said yeah, I’ve watched a lot of her stuff. I started watching all her videos yesterday and could not stop. She’s absolutely hilarious and I’m very invested in her life right now. She wrote and published an entire book about vampires with real-time help and feedback from her followers. She goes to haunted houses and talks to ghosts (like, for real) she’s got some telepathic powers apparently. She launched a makeup line. She does a whole series of telling dumb jokes to her husband, whom I’ve also gotten to know. Some of her funniest videos are of her sleepwalking with 11 cameras in the house, one of which is her husband’s reactions (laughing, mostly, and occasionally gently trying to corral her back to bed) and through her videos I also witnessed the slow, sad revelation that he’d suffered a very serious brain injury somewhere along the way and had been having devastating health problems ever since, but seems like he has now turned the corner and they are doing really well together. They got invited to Disney to do a promotion video because they are influencers now. I love them.
I’m watching TikTok because it’s winter here and it’s the rainiest January on record, which is a lot of rain considering we live in the goddamn Netherlands. It’s hibernation season. It’s I’m in the bath, full-time–candle burning, all my favorite music on repeat mode in my house. I still have to take Brian out 5 million times a day, but I like to walk along the canals and in the Vondelpark. I’m doing pretty well with the long dark season this year — last year was my toughest winter here so far. There’s a lot going on in the background of our household right at this moment regarding career/school/health/extended family/impending future stuff so honestly hibernating and living in a dark, safe, gothic cave feels pretty good. We’ve also made some travel plans for the end of winter, spring and summer so I have a lot of fun stuff to look forward to, which is a feeling I enjoy.
Speaking of witches, I started watching The Mayfair Witches series and I’ve only watched two episodes so far, but I love it so much. I was obsessed with the books when they came out my senior year in high school and I fell in love with New Orleans because of them and went there for the first time my freshman year in college and as often as I could over the next few years to stand outside of Anne Rice’s house (the one the books are based on) to commune with the Mayfair witches and beckon Lasher. Now that I’m 51 I would still like to believe I can summon a demon to help me get everything my heart desires including vengeance on all my enemies, and I thank Anne Rice for inspiring me as a teen to believe I have the power to make all my dreams come true.