Eat Local Challenge
Day 46

You know how they say boy scouts are always prepared? Well, I am too, and I'm not homophobic which is a bonus! As some of you may have guessed, I haven't had a lot of time for cooking in the past week what with getting ready for the Holiday Market downtown and transforming my living room into one we want to live in. I have to admit that when you're doing an eat local challenge, you really better have some quick meals in your freezer to fall back on because most convenience food is not made here in the Portland area. I'm not sure why it is, but most snacky items seem to be manufactured in the Midwest.

The really amazing thing about vacuum sealers is how well they preserve the quality of the food you freeze. This homemade chili (vegetarian, of course) was really good. I didn't make nearly enough of it. My concern with vacuum sealers (or any sealers for that matter) is the amount of plastic you must use and generally speaking, I can't get the bags clean enough to reuse. It's also very expensive. I'm wondering if I can freeze most of my food in glass jars and how sensitive to freezer burn are things frozen in glass?

The biggest question burning a hole in my brain with my eat local challenge right now is: how much of a difference does it make to buy food products from local companies if you don't know where they're getting their raw materials? I need to hear from everyone who has participated in local eating challenges before. The one local meal a week summer challenge...if you found locally made tortillas would you count that as a legitimate "local" product, even if they probably get their corn from nonlocal sources? How deep did you all examine this issue? I have found out that there are a couple of companies that make salsa locally, so I could get salsa all year round from a local source. But obviously they aren't getting their tomatoes from local sources at this time of year. So, is that still within the definition of local?

I'm having a really difficult time deciding this one for myself. On the one hand I think it's a huge step in the right direction for all of us to support companies that are local to us and if that means buying salsa from Emerald Valley instead of Pace, that means I'm putting money into my local economy. But any large company cannot rely on only local sources to make goods. So in most cases you aren't going to be supporting local agriculture by buying that salsa. Maybe during the months that tomatoes are in season here they use local tomatoes, but production doesn't stop for Emerald Valley at the end of the local tomato season, so they have to be getting their tomatoes from further afield.

This issue must be resolved because I need to figure out what fits into my challenge. It's about making a distinction between local raw materials and companies that make products locally. Not the same thing. What does the eat local challenge mean to most people? It wasn't as important to answer this question a month ago because there was still locally grown cilantro at the grocery store. Now it's from California. Now that there is less produce available I am looking for alternatives.

I haven't bought feta in a month and a half. Do you realize how foreign that is to me? I'm relieved to have decided to make Parmesan an exception, but if you were to examine my cells, I'm 99% sure you would find that they have the same DNA as feta cheese, which would explain how come I normally buy large quantities of it. Not buying it doesn't worry me the way not buying Parmesan did. Parmesan is much more difficult to make as it needs at least 10 months to age. It seems I will be needing to make some feta soon. I've never done this before. But I do know it's a lot easier than making hard aged cheeses. I have a lot of crafting and sewing to do before I can tackle this project.

I will admit that I am really missing ketchup on my eggs. My friend Nicole gave me a bottle of her homemade ketchup and I am saving it for a special occasion, like if I'm having a really bad week and not having ketchup on my eggs is the last straw standing between me and going postal. I am aware that loving ketchup is not very haute cuisine of me and is, in fact, rather similar to committing a food crime. My friend Chelsea would say that putting it on eggs is one of the most HEINOUS food crimes of the century. I think she may be sleeping better at night knowing that I can no longer commit this crime against good taste. Whatever. I miss ketchup.

The next challenging moment: facing Thanksgiving without yams. I have eaten yams on Thanksgiving for 36 consecutive years. A year without them is hard enough, but not having them on my favorite day of the year seems like a spiritual sacrifice. I am resolved to get through this though. A huge mound of steaming hot buttery mashed potatoes might do the trick.

The View From The Top

Me, headed to the top. Popular misconception: that hell is in the depths of the earth. I would argue that hell is much higher up than that.

The weirdness of enclosing the outside walls of old buildings with new walls.
aka: Bizarre-chitecture*

Some highlights of my adventures helping to set up the downtown holiday market:

• I was asked to paint some drywall and was given the following tools with which to accomplish the task: a scummy crusty roller that was grey with age and use; a paint tray with no liner that had some minor rust issues; a can of sour primer that had curdled and gone brown on the top 3" and whose smell made my stomach try to slink away from me. Tools notably missing: anything to open the paint can with, a suitable sink in which to clean up paint mess, a warning to not wear my best shoes. It was clear that fresh primer was not in the budget and deciding that there was no way I was going to get personal with paint that smelled like maggoty milk, I purchased fresh primer myself. I'll consider it a contribution to my community.

• After covering my hands with primer I next had to tackle the not insignificant task of trimming off the lower branches of the 15' Christmas tree that was delivered to the site in order to spruce up the dubious back room. Naturally no tools were provided for this so I jetted home to get my own. The job required that my hands be 100% smeared with pine resin. It must be noted, though, that the tree smelled really good.

• Once the tree was standing (and it took three of us to achieve this, did I mention that it is a 15' tree that weighs about 300 pounds?) I was asked to trim it with the lights. Me+heights=poison. I did not make anyone aware of this little equation, however, because everyone was working so hard and stressing so much it seemed surly to point out the inappropriateness of having a heights-phobic individual climb a 15' unsteady ladder to trim a very tall tree. I think the only thing that kept me from getting panicky was the attention I gave to two curious tree huggers- a late season lady bug and a very green bug whose name I don't know. Worrying about crushing the bugs gave me something other than the crazy shiftiness of the ladder to worry about.

• Watching the interesting religious ladies set up their charming tables was definitely a highlight. Having a fascination for anachronistic modes of dress, especially when it involves covering hair chignons with quaint starched caps or with black drapey coverings, may seem strange. Yet I love to see women dressed like this. I think it's ironic that while I admire them, (and I used to dress almost exactly the same as them -long skirts, work boots, bun in hair covered by scarf), they would not share that same admiration for me. I imagine they wouldn't appreciate me describing the way they dress as stylish, since they dress the way they do to honor their husbands and God and to be modest and eschew vanity, none of which are hallmarks of being "stylish". I can't help but wonder what kind of women they are when you get to know them.

I also think they wouldn't appreciate my tendency to swear and to take the Lord's name in vain. It wouldn't make it better knowing that I do so not seriously, as a sinner might, but with insouciance and frequently like a heathen might.


About bath bombs...THEY ARE SO MUCH FUN TO MAKE AND USE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Philip worked very hard last night on labels for my bath salt kits and for my little bath bombs. I was going to do some really fancy wrapping on them but in the end I prefer them to remain simple. This means I can charge less for them as well. I was going to charge $5.00 a piece with really wonderful packaging so that they would be little exquisite presents in themselves, but when I sat down to do something wonderful with them all my ideas fizzled away and nothing seemed quite right. So they are simple, attractive, and only $3.50 each. I will put some on my Etsy shop today.

I am definitely going to do a tutorial on making bath bombs. I am trying to figure out if I can put together a kit for making them as well. Now, I've been thinking about Pam's request for fruity smelling bombs and did a little research and if you want to use 100% natural scents, the only fruity essential oils to be had is citrus. Max would like an apple scented bath bomb but to have that means using synthetic scents. I don't think Max minds, but I do. Anyway, that's what I have to report on that front. Do you and Frankie like citrus, Pam?

I have to go work on the brochure for including in the salt kits so that I can list them in my shop and bring them down to my table at the holiday market. I hope you all are having a wonderful morning.



* A word Philip made up to describe the curious style of add-ons favored by many in McMinnville.

The Williamson Industries Laboratory

The serious work behind Dustpan Alley's glamorous products.

Here at the Dustpan Alley offices, we've been busy developing sophisticated scent blends for using as "smelling salts". Not the old ammoniated variety known well by all ladies of fainting dispositions, but a new heady kind of smelling salts that you can carry with you in your purse and sniff at whenever you feel like it. Whenever you need a legal pick-me-up, you can just whip these babies out of your pocket or your purse and be incredibly interesting by inhaling deeply of the salts, inducing immediate calm or a sensual mood*...

At our labs we insist on the most up to date scientific methods of conducting research. We label everything and meticulously record our results in official notebooks and spreadsheets. We believe that it's irresponsible to write our notes on scraps of paper stuck to the fridge...sooner or later the dog is bound to eat it.

We take pride in the fact that we hire only senior citizens and child labor and can't get in trouble for paying them fourteen cents an hour, because, in fact, we pay them nothing and get the same results! We absolutely guarantee that we never use unnecessary violence with our staff and even when we do, they know we only do it because we love them.

Here is our main non-paid, unskilled day laborer. He's a very promising nose and although he claims to hate nearly every scent we have, he manages to combine them like a pro. Most surprisingly successful scent blend: grapefruit and lavender.

Our senior citizen is taking a well deserved two minute lunch break to chat with the hard working child.

You would not believe how much fun we had making little vials of scent blends to try out on ourselves. Seriously, notes have been taken, vials have been labeled, and Max got drawn into the Laforest/Williamson witchy project until there were no more little jars to play with. We really are a bunch of apothecaries around here. I think this is our secret calling. My mom is talking about making me an athlete's foot powder for a Christmas gift, I'm begging negotiating for it to be a salve. Perhaps some people might think that is a strange and unexciting gift to receive, and I will admit that if I found a tube of commercially made anti-fungal cream in my stocking, I would be a little disappointed. But a home made one put together by my herbalist mom? Oh, totally different story!

It is wonderfully stormy outside. The wind is pushing the trees around and the rain accompanying it is slashing slantwise through the bluster.

Oh, back to herbs and other earthy pursuits...we wanted to make bath bombs last night but didn't have all the ingredients. I've never made them before, and as I've already admitted, my bathtub SUCKS, yet I have to say I'm beyond excited to do this project because I have already imagined how I am going to package them. I plan to make them to put on my Etsy shop and in my Holiday Market booth downtown. Unless they turn out poorly. Here's what excites me though: coming to realize that it isn't my life's ambition to sell merchandise to people but to help them learn to make things themselves and to make things for myself I am free to explore so many projects and work on making them more accessible to you and I.

For example: my mom has a great book of herbal medicine that has all the fundamental information necessary and yet lacks explicit directions on how to actually make the damn recipes. The recipe for foot powder lists ingredients and among them is black walnut hulls, but it fails to tell you what to do with them. Last time I checked, walnut hulls are super hard and when crushed can be sharp as glass. The author fails to indicate if you are supposed to crush them all the way to a powder (which is what we're assuming) so as to avoid making your feet bleed (though obviously, if you make your feet bleed then you will be a lot less worried about them itching) and if so-what kind of tool is required to crush this diamond hard substance into powder? Will a spice grinder suffice, or do you need an industrial grinder?

This is important information. One thing I love about modern tutorials is that they often include very good photographs to illustrate steps, and the instructions are much clearer and explicit, never assuming that you have a secret set of additional instructions that explain all the vague details in the first set of instructions. I want to write clear instructions for projects so that people can get satisfying results at whatever they're doing. I am ideal for this work because I'm the person in the class with a thousand detailed questions that everyone else wants to ask but is afraid to because the teacher will think they're stupid.

I am always asking stupid questions so no one else has to. I leave no dumb question unasked. Should I have that put on my gravestone? It's kind of catchy.

On a slightly unrelated note: would any of you please tell me, if you were looking for a cute apron pattern, would you more likely be looking for a practical full coverage one, or would you be just as likely to seek out a pattern for a cute cocktail apron? I would really like to work on producing a commercial pattern for one of my aprons but can't decide which one to start with. Obviously it is much easier to make a cocktail apron. My bib apron is not for beginners and the instructions will have to be rather lengthy- work that I'm intimidated by, unless I did a pattern for the Peace apron. How about you look at all three and tell me which one you are most likely to want to make for yourself: Flower detail Bib apron, cocktail apron, or the Peace apron.

What do you think? I can't do them all right away. Which one would you be most excited to be able to make for yourself?

Well, my kid has been pestering me since about 5:30am when he woke up way more alert and hyper than any kid should who also woke up at 12:30am and didn't even get to sleep until 9:30pm. He's dying to get me off the computer. He's dying to have his friend over. He is going to be a fly in my ear for the next ten years. I'm not sure I'm ever going to get used to it. One thing's for sure though, I will only survive the rest of this day if I immediately go take a shower.

Note: Sorry Blogher, I haven't posted about food for a whole four days...I promise to return to the regular obsession with cooking and food very soon. I promise.

*Be aware that essential oils may induce certain moods but they are not miracle workers and if you have the sex drive of a withered newt, like myself, no amount of sensual scent is going to make you want to tear your clothes off for a little tumble with your sweetie.

The Way She Used To Wear...

I decided to dress Headless Helen as myself, the way I was.

If you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, please read the post below.

No, I haven't turned into a sad sack of potatoes. It just occurred to me that even though I can't dress myself in my actual style, Headless Helen happens to be the exact size I was. Only her boobs are bigger than mine. So I can show you all who I really am. Or was. Was/am. Because this is still how I'd dress if I could choose what style to wear.

This shirt is one that I love but never got to wear because a friend gave it to me after I was already too big to wear it. I keep figuring that I'll be able to wear it some day and keep it, tag and all.

Now you know. Now you can see. Maybe I should just make clothes for Headless Helen for the rest of my days and live vicariously through her 32" waist line.

Maybe not. That really would be pathetic.

An Ever Shifting Tide Of Crap

I spent much of yesterday viciously attacking enormous piles of pulp. I must have dumped at least 100 pounds of wholesale catalogs, old Max homework, magazines, newspapers we keep getting sent even though I don't read them and didn't ask for them, receipts, and random sheets of paper with chicken scratch notes scrawled all over them. My recycle bin is now almost full. I am not even a quarter of the way through the purge either. My office, which I cleaned and organized last spring, is the landing zone for every single article of uncategorizable shit this household generates.

I am beginning to develop a real strong desire for a house that isn't over-crowded with anything. That carries with it the serene calm of a space that holds no paper terrors. However, we are writers (me), artists (Philip), crafters (all of us), and collectors of other people's trash (Max and Philip), and are not known for our ability to live a spare, quiet, uncluttered life.

It felt good. This is all about reclaiming the balance and flow my life had two years ago. We let everything slip from our grasp, we let it all tumble onto the floor to collect dust, and then out onto our sidewalk to annoy the neighbors. We used to be crazy cluttery people with a sense of order, you walked into our house and even thought he window sills were NEVER dusted, there was no doubt about who we were, what colors we liked, or about what kind of style epitomized our spirits. There was organization underneath the chaos. I could clean my house up in two hours and it would look like a wonderful place that could draw friends in from the sidewalk out front. People visited us. Our house was never Martha clean, but it wasn't a trash heap either.

When our life imploded two years ago we let it slip away. In shock, perhaps. The things we reigned in for our safety and health (cooking food with less fat, drinking liberally and yet with firm boundaries and restrictions, exercise) spun out in a big cheesy stretch of comfort foods and comfort drinks and we let all sense of restraint go because it was too painful to navigate the future while trying to orchestrate lean meals without two pounds of cheddar.

I look around my house now, in the middle of it's transformation-yet still hanging onto the chaos the last two years have accumulated, and I can't stop thinking about the strong dividing line between how life was, and what it became. With it has come unhappy fat bodies. We were never, and never will be, skinny people. We were never, and never will be, teetotaling health nuts, we are people who overflow with life, with geeky enthusiasm for everything that interests us, and the insane mantra "more cheese is always better!" and the happy exclamation "Let there be more beer!". We can't be people we aren't, yet we have covered ourselves up with the excess of gluttonous behaviors, with an overflow of disorder and disharmony, because we have felt paralyzed.

The spell is fading. We are still fat and we don't like ourselves much this way. There's some feeling of having trapped ourselves. We are caught living in the trenches we built and are afraid to come out. To redraw boundaries for a sparer life requires a certain spartan bravery. It requires us to call on self discipline that feels vulnerable and frightening. How can I get through an evening with my tornado child on a "relaxing" cup of tea? I can't help but realize that my life isn't set up in a way that offers relief of stress. There is nowhere to take the child during the witching hour. We used to just go hang out with neighbors. It was wonderful. Here we haven't got that. It's just me and the kid.

The kind of stress we experience cannot be soothed by gentle measures.

The point is that if my house had order imposed on it, it would be easier to clean up fast, it would be a better place for calmness. It would be easier to also impose order on my brain. It feels so far gone that I need another cup of (mostly decaf) coffee just to think about it. There are clothes, boxes of them, that I should probably give away because they don't fit me and what are the chances they ever will? They aren't my "skinny" clothes, because I got rid of those ten years ago. They are my extra larges that, in truth, aren't large enough for actual fat people. Which is what I am now. It's classic, holding on to boxes of clothes that don't fit anymore. Every weight-loss guru, therapist, advice columnist, mother, or successful weight watchers advocate would say the same thing: you must let go of all the clothes that don't fit.

It's the one thing I can't let go of. Because that's me in those boxes. Me. My soul. Who I am. All folded up, waiting to have it's day in the light again. Me now: in the black shirts, the black capris, the endlessly boring clothes I wear, even when I make an effort and put on make-up and jewelry, isn't really me. No one who has met me in the last two years has any idea of what my personal style is. They think of me so differently than I truly am. So I feel fraudulent.

What would happen if I just sent them all to the good will? I can tell you this: I would never stop regretting it. Getting rid of one of a kind skirts I've made, vintage 40's jackets I used to wear, the five thousand striped knit tops I wore every single day...it would be admitting defeat. A defeat that I refuse to bow to. I have not worn a striped shirt since I broke my hip. I haven't worn a neck scarf since then. I haven't worn my cute skirts or my wonderful knickers that I made and wore before they showed up in Vogue.

There are some crafty ladies out there wearing the kind of clothes I used to wear. Ladies who are making fabulous clothes from vintage patterns and from thrift finds that they've manipulated. I see them and I get so excited and inspired and I want to shout out to them all- I am just like you!! You should see what I was doing before I found you all online, before I found this Internet road to connection- I was doing exactly what you are doing! And I want to be part of it all. Then I look down and see that on day seven of the week I am wearing the exact same thing I've been wearing all week-because I own four of the exact same black shirt and I own three of them in brown too.

I'm not actually feeling particularly depressed about these things right now. It feels more like I have stepped outside myself to have a look at my house, my life, my goals, my clutter, my mode, my chaos, and I am evaluating how things got from point A to point B. I am able to see now that it doesn't really matter if our financial situation forces us to sell our house, what matters is to put what we have in order. To do it right now. Reforming our living room was a revelation. It isn't new for us, by the way, that living room now looks almost exactly like our old loved living room looked. What that has done for us is make us feel more at home, it has made us feel that we reclaimed a little bit of who we are. Now when people come into our house, they can actually see who we are instead of the fact that we live in a boring ranch house.

You walk in and you see Philip and Angelina, as they ever were.

Now we have to strip the repulsive wall to wall carpeting from everywhere in our life. From the office, from our brains, and also from our bodies. It feels possible.

The scary truth that I continue to come back to again and again is that I may never find my way to losing weight again. What if I am to remain this size for the rest of my life? There is no vintage pattern made to fit my body. Not even with alterations. There are no cool clothes at the good will that will look good on this carcass of mine. I have lots of fabric and I have pattern drafting skills, plus I'm a professional seamstress, there is no reason not to make myself some clothes.

Except that it depresses me to make clothes with no waist-line. Clothes that will not look good on me no matter how skilled I am at sewing. I want a cape, but I fear I will look ridiculous in one.

I can't worry too much about that right now. I think that if I can de-clutter the rest of my home. If I can paint all the walls, put our pictures up, arrange things well, send boxes and boxes of crap to the Good Will or to the recycle bin, I think I just might be able to face the chaos of my own body, and my own mind. It feels like I'm starting to get somewhere.

A new line must be drawn. There needs to be not just life as it was and life as it became...we also need life as it is now. This life must be different than the one we've been living in the trenches. As everyone knows, life doesn't just shape itself how you want it to be while you sit on your ass waiting for the universe to do your bidding. (More's the pity.) You have to roll up your own sleeves and get dirty.

I really have no clue what the future holds. I have no idea what fortunes await us. If any. The only thing I do know for sure is that there is a fresh breeze blowing around here because I've opened a window. And unlike ex-President Clinton, I most assuredly will be inhaling as much of it as I can.

The Geese Are Going South Again

(and people call me predictable)

Occasionally you could hear and see the geese moving south in the fall in Northern California, but it was a rare and joyful noise. Up here in Northern Oregon you can hear them coming long before you see them and it seems that our house is directly in their flight plan every year. I love seeing them brushing themselves across the sky while making their brash conversations. What do you think they talk about during the long trip to the lower longitudes?

I imagine there's a lot of gossip going on among the ranks "Oh yeah, that patti is always taking up the rear...she doesn't want anyone to see that she's molting at the wrong time- AGAIN!" "Shhhh, don't cackle so loud or she'll hear you!" "Hey, how bout them forty niners?"

I don't know how many minutes it's going to last, but that sky is what my morning looks like here in the north. Although I was super happy it rained last night, because I love rain, I don't mind a little blue sky framing my pretty maple tree.

My pretty maple tree.

As most of my friends know, I have a huge prejudice in my garden towards plants and trees that produce either food for us, food for the beneficial insects, or flowers for cutting. The kind of maple trees I have perform none of these jobs. They do offer a nice place for birds to hang out, and I like birds. But I have three maples in my yard. A little weeping ubiquitous Japanese maple that I would like to give away, a biggish small leafed maple that stands between my front and back yard that I feel indifferently about, and this big one that is lovely and is a really nice established feature of our back yard. I see it from my studio and from the room that used to be my dining room but which will come to be known as the "rain room"* in the very near future.

We're still debating between walnut or pine for the food featured tree. We love pine nuts but I'm concerned about how long it will take to get them, and how likely it is that planting one in the same yard with members of the Ribes family will endanger it. In spite of the fact that nothing grows underneath walnut trees, I think they're beautiful. Especially in the winter when they drop their leaves and their stark branches are framed against a slate sky. A pine tree (the kind that makes edible nuts) is evergreen and rather pretty. I'm not a huge fan of pine or fir trees in the suburban garden as they usually seem more suited to forest environments...

But I really love pine nuts and there's no local source for them. Unless I could find some stone pines growing in the woods somewhere around here. If anyone local knows of any I can forage, please spill the information.

I have some exciting news I'm just agitating to tell you:

Whipup is going to publish a tutorial I wrote about scenting your own bath salts on December first!!

I really enjoyed putting it together and taking pictures for it so it's gratifying that they liked it enough to accept it. I will provide another link to Whipup on the day it's published. If you haven't ever checked out their website and you are a crafty person, you should mosey on over there as soon as you have a chance-you will probably really enjoy yourself. They publish craft tutorials as well as articles about crafting.

It seems that I have about a billion things to do and as usual there is almost no time for anything. Strangely, I'm not that stressed about it at this minute in time. Not sure why. It'll probably wash over me in the next couple of days in choking waves of panic...but I'm enjoying the calm mode I'm in right now. Do you think it might be because I've spent half of this week sniffing smelling salts?

Hey, wait a minute...smelling salts...was that really just scented salts? Vinegar was often used to revive faint females, but they always mention smelling salts in books of the Jane Austen genre and I can't help but wonder if it was salt soaked in strong revivifying scents like peppermint or eucalyptus? I sure feel more awake when I open up my little bottle of rosemary oil and inhale deeply. I've been sniffing a lot of oils that are supposed to be calming and regenerating.

It's time to get going in my day. Lots of cleaning up to do to get ready for more projects. The boys are going to go somewhere to give me some space to get busy. Max really needs to get out in the fresh air and I really need to have an empty house with blasting music.

Then I have a cabbage to introduce to a pie shell and the oven.

*A back-water cousin of the more popular "sun room". We live where there's lots of rain. We moved here because we actually love rain. And lots of it. And grey skies. Misty mornings. So the one room in the house that is ideal for watching the rain come down is what used to be our dining room but which we will be making into a comfortable cozy spot for rain gazing. It is the lightest room in the house so I suppose we could watch the sun shining from it too, but why would we want to do that?!

Headless Helen Models

I have been practicing taking better pictures. I have found something out: I do not have a steady hand. This must be why most people who take their blog pictures seriously use a tripod. I have always brushed this possibility aside because using a tripod shows a level of commitment to superb picture taking that I just haven't felt. Until now. The reason people take such care with their pictures is because good pictures are a pleasure to look at and if a blog or a website has beautiful images you will come back again and again like a crack whore looking to score.

Or, you know, like a person who appreciates really good images.

I've been discovering lots of things in the last couple of days, actually.

One of them being that while I (surprisingly) like ylang ylang scent, it also kind of makes me feel like a dark exotic suffocating six hundred ton pile of flowers has been dropped on my head and I will never crawl out again. I've been scenting bath salts for my craft fair booths and for my Etsy shop. So I've been playing apothecary with my little vials of pure scents and mixing up salt of the earth and sea to make bathing much nicer. I don't generally like any scent that is cloying, heavy, or sweet. Especially sweet scents. I also truly dislike almost all scents that can be described as "musky". Ylang ylang is an exotic, warm, sweet, cloying, heavy, tropical floral scent that is not only quite expensive- it's super potent.

I have devised bath salt scenting kits for my shop which come with one pound of salts (a mixture of Epsom and Dead Sea salts), a scent pack of four tiny vials of pure essential oils, two scent recipes, and instructions on how to blend the scent with the salts. I have come up with three scent themes: scents for lifting melancholy, scents for increasing pep, vim, and vigor, and scents for the relief of anxiety and hysteria.

This actually took a lot of researching because each scent collection needs to achieve a particular result (as in: mood enhancing) while also mixing well together. Even though I will be including two specific scent recipes for each scent collection, the idea is that you can mix and match to please your own nose, knowing that no matter how you mix them you will get a pleasing result and one that does what it claims.

Thank god I'm not claiming that they will increase penis size, that would be so hard to live up to. Although, judging by the number of e-mails I receive claiming that this can be achieved easily, and me without a penis to begin with, it can't be that hard...right? (I can only imagine that there are some desperate dupes out there responding to these ridiculous e-mails, otherwise why would they keep sending them out?)

If you haven't tried to be your own apothecary yet, I highly recommend it. Maybe there's no point to making your own aspirin from the bark of white willow trees, because Advil is so perfect already, but I'll tell you what is worth learning to make on your own: body products (lotions, salves, powders, scrubs, salts, balms, and shampoos.) You might not be able to cure cancer with a little dried root, but you sure can make excellent skin care and you sure can make wonderfully personal and soothing bath products.

I'm not a Wicca or a druid or a high priestess or anything. Just in case you were curious. I tend to imagine myself as a monk in a still house smack dab in the middle of a monastery garden, or an apothecary with no religious affiliation.

It was shocking to discover, this morning, that my child has the day off from school. Holy crap. So my plans to kick butt and clean the house and deal with piles of all sorts is kind of shot to hell. I wanted to clean up the studio and prepare for all kinds of work getting done in there. I'll be lucky if I get the dishes done now. Where's Max's rent-a-brother?!

I feel like I still have some ylang ylang up my nose.

I was uncomfortably reminded of the time my mother pulled out some chocolate teddy bear pops on an evening when we were desperate for a treat, many years ago. Remember how chocolate isn't something I particularly crave? Well, sugar sometimes is and I don't always argue with the form it is offered in. I bit into one of those chocolate teddy bears with a stick up it's bahookie and one bite confirmed that: essential oils and chocolate should not be stored together in the same cabinet. I retched, I gagged, I spat, I eventually really did hurl. And hurled some more. I am dreadfully afraid of vomiting and will do almost anything to avoid it. So you know it's bad if it's got me at the toilet bowl.

I have to stop talking about that now because I can still taste it in my mouth after ten years and it's making me woozy.

Meanwhile the fruit flies are still trying to take over our whole house. I have never experienced this before. My fruit fly experiences have always come with some kind of forgotten fruit in my house being left out to attract them and aid in their breeding programs or massive canning efforts in which every surface in my kitchen is sticky with fruit juice. And always they disappear as soon as the offending attractant disappears. These ones came from nowhere and seem to have no plans on leaving nor have the grace to die on their own, ever. Philip has declared fruit fly killing as my new hobby.

One last note before I face the long day ahead of me with hyper child...my smoke alarm keeps beeping at us. I can't tell which one it is and I'm afraid to change the batteries because in our last house all of the smoke alarms (and there were many after the fire, the insurance people insisted we have one about every two feet of ceiling space) they were all possessed. We had one alarm that kept on beeping even after I ripped it off the ceiling. The chirping is starting to make me go crazy, so obviously I'm going to have to deal with it. I had planned on making Philip do it but he's just as scared to touch those things. He hasn't forgotten the alarm that kept on beeping even after we had it disconnected from the wires and removed the old battery.

How is that even possible?

Who Buys 18 Pounds Of Celery?

Me, that's who. In my desperate bid to blanch and freeze enough locally grown celery to get me through to the next celery season (which is when, by the way?) I bought the only celery I could find at the Hillsdale farmer's market. It's not difficult to process but never the less, it takes time, and of all the food processing projects I've done this year, this one is the most tedious. I'll be happy I did it though when in two months there is nary a celery stalk to be found.

I got it done though. In fact, I got a lot done yesterday. That's what happens when you rip the computer cords out of your veins and turn the screen off.

Have I ever mentioned how much my boy looks forward to his birthday every year? The excitement begins the day after his birthday with conversations like "You know what I want for my next birthday?" Then he checks with us every three weeks to see how soon his birthday will be. He likes parties. Big parties with lots of presents and excitement. I don't have to tell anyone here how much I love throwing parties, right? How much I look forward to inviting hundreds of shrieking children into my domicile to ransack the place. I mean, it's great. Super. A total thrill. Sydney Bristow's got nothing on me when it comes to thrills.

Normally I refuse to conduct games in my house. Party games especially. But Max doesn't have a lot of friends here in Oregon like he did in California. All I had to do down there was invite tons of children, feed them a constant stream of sugar and shove them outside to explode their energy away from my head, then feed all the parents beer and wine so that they wouldn't notice I'd just ruined their children with sugar. It worked out well. With very few kids to invite and it being probable that they won't all come, I figured I better step it up a little and provide something fun for them to do. Something memorable for Max.

So I'm throwing a treasure hunt. I'm not going to buy party favors, I'm going to make them. Little muslin bags with cookies and little notebooks they can decorate afterwards. Doesn't that sound precious? Doesn't it sound like it came right out of Martha Stewart magazine? And yet, I thought it up all by myself.

I was going to have a spy party but realized that some of the children who are invited aren't encouraged to play with toy guns and to wreak destruction on villains. So I thought a treasure hunt couldn't possibly be objectionable to the younger set. What kid doesn't like a treasure hunt?

Well, I didn't when I was a kid, but you can't judge normal kid behavior by me.

So anyway, I made Max's invitations yesterday and actually sent them out. Now I only have to sit around and worry that no one will be able to come.

Which I don't have time for actually. I have to get going now because I'm submitting an article to an online craft blog and must do the writing today. The last time I submitted things to other publications it didn't go anywhere, but you can't stop trying to do what you were meant to do just because some people out there don't see it. I submitted something for that apron book and got accepted...so it's time to put myself out there again. If I don't get accepted, I will publish it here.

Wish me luck and I'll see you tomorrow!

Is This Green Enough For You?

Homemade pasta with pesto from the freezer and steamed Brussels sprouts with a mustard vinaigrette.

I think, upon reflection, that I might have done better if I had steamed carrots instead of Brussels sprouts to break up the monochromatic color story of my dinner. I told myself it didn't matter if my whole dinner was green. Hell, people all over the place are trying to get just one spec of green in their meals and I have accomplished an entire work in shades of spring foliage. I told myself I wouldn't care if my whole dinner was green because that's the kind of thing that "foodies" worry about, and I am not a foodie.

Why do I not like that word "foodie"? Hmm, let me think...maybe because it sounds like a muppet gone bad. It aslo makes me think of some intergalactic one celled plague. It also makes me think of sixth grade name calling. This is the kind of thing that the hamburger helper kids called the vegetarian kid. Which was me.

None of those things are good. The worst is that it also sounds insufferable. It sounds like a person who is preciously into their food to a point where they have lost sight of their main goal (which presumably is to eat super good food) and have become obsessed with their food and have become insufferable snots about it. It also sounds kind of like a cult.

Remember way back when people who had a well developed sophisticated appreciation for food were called gourmands? Was this so offensive to people that a new more "user friendly" name had to be made up? How can one call themselves a "foodie" without feeling ridiculous?

Should people with a great appreciation for large gas guzzling cars be referred to as "gassies"?

Sometimes when I amuse myself I am all alone in my amusement. Don't worry, I'm used to it.

This is what's happening on my stove. The corn bread didn't rise much because the batter was too dry. It tastes good. Unfortunately it's also more crumbly than usual which is something Max doesn't usually appreciate. When he was a toddler I fed him cornbread and when it crumbled apart he would start crying as though the whole world was that piece of cornbread and it just broke. He doesn't like messy food.

I photo-shopped this picture but I don't think it's any better for it. I tried to brighten it up. But when a picture is taken at night there's just not a lot you can do to make it look light and natural. Seeing as it's rather dark at night. My house doesn't have the best lighting anyway. Ever.

I already wrote a post this morning but I'm writing this one now so that I can get down to business tomorrow and not get caught up on the computer. I have a lot to do.

By the way, these Brussels sprouts are super good but when they are cooking they smell like old-man breath. I almost didn't give them a chance the other day because when something smells like that you usually don't feel attracted to the idea of putting it in your mouth. On the other hand, people have been putting rotted cabbage and fish in their mouths for centuries and have greedily ingested fungus that smells like poop for as long as man has foraged his supper out of the woods.

I'm way in trouble with Max's teacher. I'm constantly getting notes that Max needs to practice his spelling and that we need to help him. Which we haven't been. Until last night. These young idealistic whipper snappers bring great energy to the public schools, but they really wear me out. I better go make sure my son learns to spell these words he supposedly should already know how to spell.

Pepper Jelly

A couple of week-ends ago at the Hillsdale farmer's market I bought four pounds of jalapeno peppers to make pepper jelly with. Pepper jelly isn't the kind of thing I would normally gravitate to. In fact, when Lisa E. said she wanted to make pepper jelly I'm pretty sure I stated that nothing on earth would induce me to eat a jellified pepper flavored nastiness. She assured me that my head was up my bahookie and I need to try some new things.

The only thing that's true in the statement above is that I was highly suspicious of pepper jelly and that Lisa E. did make some. Lisa is an incredible cook and I will try things that she's made that I might not try at the hands of a less stellar cook. She served pepper jelly with crackers and cream cheese. Yeah, I couldn't believe how good it was. I also couldn't stop eating it. I may even have dreamed about eating some more a couple of times and woke up in a panic because pepper season is done.

Well, I was lucky to have found the peppers. Unfortunately they sat around for over a week and some had to be tossed. However, yesterday, I finally got around to making the jelly. I have never made jelly before. I generally prefer jam. I'm really not sure how it turned out. I made seven half pints but they haven't set up yet. I wonder if they will? They are fully cooled now and still liquid. I used my pretty "Elite" series of Ball canning jars for this jelly. They are so pretty but so expensive! They would make the perfect gift but I feel selfish. I like to see pretty jars in my pantry.

The Hillsdale market was very busy and still had lots of vendors present. A couple of them indicated that they won't be back for a while though. Only one vendor had celery so I bought eighteen pounds of it. The lady who took my money looked like she thought I must be feeding a very large bunny at home.

I don't know what has happened but yesterday I got a sudden swarm of fruit flies in my house. Bigger than the last time. I don't understand where they all came from...the peppers that had gone bad? I didn't think fruit flies liked things like cabbage, leeks, and jalapenos, which were the things I had out on the counter. They aren't just in the kitchen, they are flying all over the house. Like a swarm of biblical locusts. Is this a sign that Armageddon has begun?

Speaking of Armageddon... it seems to me that if a person wants to be largely self sufficient, one should have a nut tree on their property. When things get dark in this world, when depressions hit hard, when economies crash, things like veal and steak are a lot harder to come by. Even milk could be hard to come by. You should always have more than one source of protein on your property. Eggs are one, nuts are another. Instead of making meat balls in lean times, clever cooks make things like walnut and cheese croquettes. So, we are trying to figure out what nut tree to plant. We have clay soil which basically means no nut will be at it's absolute best here, except filberts...WHICH I HATE. We've narrowed it down to three possibilities: pine nuts, walnuts, or almonds. We most particularly are interested in pine nuts.

What would you grow if the end of the world was nigh and you needed to batten down the hatches and be sure to grow food that will keep you alive?

By the way, I don't really believe in Armageddon or other end-of-the-world theories. I do believe in the end of crude oil, and that might turn out to be similar. By the way, has anyone given thanks recently to the dinosaurs for dying in such a convenient way and leaving their carcasses for us to discover and base our entire modern world around? Is it possible for dead people to turn into tar at some point? Would people be willing to continue to drive cars if it meant they'd have to somehow rely on our own dead to supply our fuel to us?* (And how far would one dead person turned to crude oil get a car? Would dead Great Grandpa Vinnie= 1 day trip to Vegas?)

Wasn't the world going to end in the eighties? Also, the San Francisco Bay Area was supposed to be under water by now. At least that's what my mom told me back in 1987, and she used to stay pretty tuned in to end of the world scares.

My one concern about getting a pine nut producing pine tree is that pine trees are susceptible to the kind of diseases that the Ribes family of fruit carries and spreads to them and I just so happen to be planning on getting lots of gooseberries and currants. Is that just asking for plant plagues?

By the way, last night I didn't have dinner planned in time so I whipped out two frozen pot pies and guess what? THEY WERE SO EFFING GOOD I ALMOST CRIED. That was a successful experiment. You cook them for an hour at 375 degrees and they are perfect. I cannot believe I only have two frozen ones left in there. Obviously I need to make some more while I can. This reminds me of my quiche project. I wanted to see if I could make some quiches that freeze well. My girls are kind of slowing down their egg laying so I may actually have to buy some eggs for the first time in a year. Wow, I have not bought eggs in a year! Hens rock.

I have to go do battle with the swarm of fruit flies and do some house work, do some work-work, and eat some delicious 99% local ingredient soup with a big giant spoonful on non-local Parmesan cheese. I hope you all are going to eat good food today too.

*Yeah, I know it took thousands of years for those huge beasts to produce tar pits, smarty pants.

The Blindness Of Proximity

It is truly amazing to me how blind a person (me) can be to the potential of her own home. Our living room has not worked well since the day we moved in. It presents a lot of challenges and we gave up early on trying to come up with a really comfortable and pretty arrangement. Mostly we gave up because a few months after moving here we were running our little store downtown which pretty much took every single drop of energy we had. The house floundered.

Of course, oatmeal and white are not colors that inspire my imagination and on some days they make me want to stab myself. This is why we ought to have ripped up the carpet and painted the house immediately. We should have known there was no way we could live with it. I see what we have achieved this week and if I was a masochistic person this would be a juicy moment to get busy hurting myself. Luckily, I don't go in for that kind of malarkey. All there is to do now is enjoy the phenomenal results.

These results, by the way, were not brought about by Philip and I and our amazing decorating skill. The color choices, the furniture, and the art are all ours, but the arrangement of our things is not always our strong point. We had to call in the professionals; my mom, and Angela. I have to admit that my feminine skills and talents took a couple of major hits yesterday. There are two things that have become very clear to me and there is not point in trying to hide it anymore:

I suck at spacial arrangements.

I would never, no matter how rich I was, let someone else pick my furniture, my lighting, my paint, my art, or my tchotchkes. No one can decorate my house better than I can and I take pleasure in it. Except that when I get furniture into a room I find it excessively difficult to figure out the most amenable way to arrange it all.

The other hit I took was to my stature as a capable modern do-it-all woman. I almost buffed Philip's foot off with the big buffing machine we rented to shine up our hardwood floors. It took only moments to confirm that I cannot control a buffing machine. Philip, on the other hand, took two minutes to figure it out and claim mastery over it.

Apparently I was wrong when I believed that if I could learn to use a circular saw (I did) that I could do anything.

It doesn't look that hefty or complicated. As a matter of fact, it isn't. It's super easy to operate, in theory. However, the slightest movement of the handle up or down will send the buffer careening either left or right at top speed. It takes the tiniest tightest control to keep it steady.

Chick was suspicious of the buffer and Max thought the whole thing was ridiculous and we should have left the room exactly as it was. Where did this child come from anyway? Did I really grow him myself? He also doesn't want to get rid of the dark 1970's wood paneling in his bedroom because he likes it. Who wants to keep dark wood paneling these days?

You can see the shine Philip achieved. Can you believe that someone would cover up such a gorgeous floor with wall to wall?

Now for the "Before" and "After"s.

Before:

After:

(We haven't put the family pictures and the art back up yet so it's a little bit bare.)

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Does anyone out there prefer the "before"s? I think the transformation is incredible. Remember last week when I was not feeling so good about my house? That's because I hadn't invited my mom and Angela over to work their crazy magic or done those things I knew I needed to do to let the energy loose in this house. It isn't just that it looks prettier now, or more like our style, it's that it flows better. Our house was experiencing energy constipation. (I'll bet you've never heard anyone use that word in relation to decorating before, huh? Just leave it to me to bring the crass into everything.)

Incidentally, some magic and change was worked in our dining room as well, but it isn't complete so I'm not going to share that until it is. I was excited this morning to wake up and see my living room; a place that actually reflects mine and Philip's taste and spirit. You can't underestimate how important that is for your daily life and mental health.

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
Eat Local

Dudes, that wasn't an order! Don't you think that would make a great T-shirt for an eat local campaign? Philip is soon going to be silk screening T-shirts for me and I think that will be one of them. Except that it really sounds like a command and I want to inspire people, not rule them.

Although, if I ruled them then I could pass a law against wearing jeans which would create mass pandemonium because then no one would have anything to wear and it would probably inspire someone to assassinate me...I don't think I'm ready for that. (But wouldn't it be kind fascinating too?)

Jeans and crude oil: can the human race survive without either of them?

Incidentally, just so there's no confusion about this, I don't hate jeans just because I hate them on me. I haven't worn denim since the seventh grade and I'm really happy about that, but I don't mind if you do. It's always devilish to imagine what it would be like to deprive people of things they rely on if you don't yourself rely on those same things.

The prettiest Brussels Sprouts

A surprising find of Philip's: locally made oil paints

A little pleasant surprise of my own.

I have made some new decisions, discoveries, and done some ruminating on the destructive love affair between humans and Convenience that has lasted for the entirety of the previous century and how it has degraded us beyond recognition.

First, for the decision: I am removing chocolate from my exceptions list and putting Parmesan on it. I am also permanently removing celery from the exceptions list. I will buy as much of it as I can in the next month (or until it stops making an appearance in the markets) and if I run out of my blanched frozen portions before it comes back to the markets- I will cook without it. Celery was on the list originally because I didn't think anyone around here grew it at all and I didn't feel willing to go without celery for an entire year.

Since there are two local sources for fancy chocolate, (should I get an unusual craving for it), there isn't any reason to include it on the exceptions list either.

Parmesan is going to be allowed. In the end I feel like it is much too useful in the kitchen, when there are so many other things I won't be able to count on for extra flavor and excitement in my dishes (pine nuts, Kalamata olives, green olives, feta- unless I make it myself, avocado, citrus, cranberries, etc.) I feel that it's alright to allow my favorite imported cheese to remain in my kitchen. When I get back to counting calories (don't laugh at me) there is nothing as indispensable as Parmesan for satisfying a little cheese lust without the incredible damage that a huge hunk of cheddar offers one's hips.

Eating local isn't a contest, it's a vital and healthy direction for us all to head in. Eating local is about ending the love affair with convenience and choosing higher quality over ease of procurement. It's about making our own communities more self sufficient. Eating local is a political statement in which you have the power to fell unhealthy industries by choosing not to support them. You don't have to give every one of your dollars to local companies and merchants, but every dollar you do keep close to home matters. So what if you indulge in some French truffle oil sometimes? If you're aware of it being a luxury and you're aware of the choice you're making then it is a conscious one and isn't about convenience anymore.

There's no prize at the end of my year of eating local. No one is going to say "Oh, if only you hadn't had the Parmesan you might have won a cruise to Mazatlan!"

And anyway- Mazatlan holds no fascination for me.

I thought about what I have already given up, thinking about that strange puritanical urge to feel a little personal pain in order to grow (I actually think that self flagellation is a very disturbing aspect of some religions, the notion that there should be sacrifice in faith in order for it to be real). Although I have not found this challenge particularly difficult yet, seeing as there is a ton of local fresh produce still available, making the choices I've made has changed quite a bit about the way I cook.

For example: I used to eat cous-cous pretty regularly, which is a tiny pasta that no one makes locally and I'd have to be way more insane than I am to try and make myself. It's a quick meal I can whip out and mix with steamed vegetables. I can't eat it anymore so it's challenging coming up with a quick meal. I'm also almost out of other pastas and though I'm sure I can track down some locally produced pasta, there isn't any here in town and so I will have to make it myself when I want it. We eat a lot of pasta, so this has certainly made pasta a more involved dish.

Although I have found two sources for locally grown wild rice (which I don't generally care for all that much) I have yet to purchase any and I can't buy regular rice because there isn't any local source for that. Salads are also more challenging now because there are no more good fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, I can't buy any dried cranberries or pine nuts (both very much loved on salads) and without feta cheese or croutons (which I could make myself and might do soon), salads are kind of a sad affair. A favorite winter salad of the past was avocado and grapefruit salad.

Things I really miss: avocados, feta cheese, cous-cous, lemons, limes, Parmesan, pine nuts, dried cranberries, bananas. A surprising item I don't miss? Sierra Nevada beer. I know, it's almost impossible for that to be true. Luckily, Bridgeport makes an India Pale Ale that is a lot like Sierra Nevada.

Philip, in spite of his little Cheeto snafu, has really gotten into the spirit of this local products challenge and discovered, at the local art store, that one brand of oil paint that he has used and likes is not only made in West Linn (in the Portland area) but is also non-toxic AND as if that wasn't cool enough-is less expensive than some of the comparable brands. Once you get into the hunt for local products you get a thrill every time you find something really good that is made in your own neck of the woods.

Not completely related is a little happy discovery I made while shopping for baking soda today. Of course there is no local source for it, but I was making a careful examination of the labels before me and as I avoid using aluminum as much as possible (though I do use foil for baking) I was interested in the Rumford brand aluminum-free baking powder and saw this on their ingredients list: cornstarch (from Nongenetically Modified Corn). I can never get tired of seeing that on labels, or shouted off of rooftops, or written across the sky... Their other brand probably uses the modified corn, but this is a step: labeling. Labeling is a huge step. At least it gives us all the choice to not support Genetically Modified Organisms if we don't want to.

I most emphatically passionately DON'T WANT TO.

So, about convenience... change is never convenient. That's the bottom line. That's why it's so hard for us all to change. However, the more we all make change the easier it gets. Remember when finding organic vegetables was something you had to go out of your way to get? Remember when big supermarkets didn't have any and were annoyed with anyone who requested it? How easy it is now to find organic foods if you want them. The reason it's so much easier now is because a lot of people were willing to go out of their way to get the good stuff and put their money where their ideals were and the word spread, people cared (it's hard not to care) and in the end it really behooved Safeway to start carrying organic produce too because they risked losing a lot of business.

If you put your money where your mouth is, all the stores you shop at will want to have the products you want to buy. Simple economics, and the power is in OUR hands.

The Great Carpet Exorcism

Evil Incarnate. See that carpet padding? It's real rubber. Real rubber has a way of sticking to things, has good traction. So if you ever remove a huge piece of carpet and get the bright idea of rolling up the carpet and padding together in one big dirty ball? Don't do it. It's actually a very stupid idea. That wad of synthetic fiber wrapped in real rubber doesn't look all that large in this picture, yet it was almost impossible to budge the few inches we got it moved: from the living room out the front door.

Now, we tend to buy houses from people who go the extra mile with their carpet laying. This is a good thing if you love wall to wall and you like what's in your house when you buy it. Artisan work is a bitch to undo, however, and this carpeting was not only stuck in place with rubber padding and the usual carpet tacking, they also felt it wise to staple the carpet in place about every six inches of the parameter of the room. So not only did the carpet not want to budge because of its excellent traction and the fact that it weighed ten thousand pounds, but we had to be very careful not to impale ourselves on the six hundred staples.

I managed to be VERY careful until we made one final push of the damn uncooperative mound of filth and a staple caught my hand. At first it seemed like a little scrape. I put pressure on it immediately. But when I got to the bathroom I almost passed out when I saw that the injury was a two inch SLICE in my hand. It started bleeding a lot.

This is literally as far as we could get it. Right there in the middle of our path. We never did actually lift this bundle. We managed to get it out of the house by kind of rolling it. Kind of. It would take at least four burly full grown men with huge balls to move this piece of rug.*

Philip worked late into the night. I LOVE IT. I know it's bright. I LOVE THAT IT'S BRIGHT. He still has some areas to paint over where the paint was a little thin. But that's fine. I have to take up all the carpet tacking today. And all the staples. Then I have to clean the floor. Then if I'm very lucky I can borrow Angela's hand buffer and buff the wax finish out. Then tomorrow we can move stuff back in!

By the way, if anyone has a medium sized set of mounted antlers (without the animal head attached) that you don't want anymore-send them my way. I have a project in mind for them.

I was going to go take a shower but I don't want my bandage to get wet. I think I may have to take a bath instead. How luxurious. I never take baths because there doesn't seem to be enough hot water to fill the tub, and the tub itself is too shallow to be really satisfying. However, sometimes you have to overlook the little challenges and just enjoy yourself anyway. This will give me a chance to use some calming bath salts. Ohhh! And I get to play lots of loud music while I work today. All the Halloween tension is just drifting away.



*I had no idea just how dirty that sentence sounded until I just reread it. Oh my. That's really quite raunchy. Sorry. I hope no kids were reading.

Update: Yeah, the tub sucks. It's the original and there's value in that, in a way, for someone. But if it isn't a nice soak then I'll never use it. If a day ever comes when I can afford to, I will replace that tub with a taller one. And a water heater that can handle the burden of producing enough hot water for three people.