Christmas has devolved from the traditions of thirty something years… of fifty something years… of… whatever… into… five dogs, two humans (both pretty much mostly lost) and a sixty five degree day. Evolution into a new set of whatever kind of new traditions we are going to be chasing.
Sky is in New York with his family of choice.
So many losses… so many being (human and not) being missed.
Contemplation…
Christmas dinner, today, was Korean Hot Pot (kind of liking the restaurant we ate at… but it would have been nice to have any of the bubble teas).
I cleaned the kitchen.
Started a new batch of Pineapple vinegar (I really really hope that adding in the mother to the jars will help with it… no mold… no mold… no mold).
Three loads of laundry.
Two loads of dishes.
Putting some of Granny’s Snoozle Salve on Meatball’s and Ellie’s snoozles (and Roxy’s calluses) to see how it helps with the healing.
What do I want to name the different concoctions that I’m going to try selling… that I’m going to keep making because I’m loving them. Vapo Rub… Dragon Balm… Snoozle Salve… Joy hand salve… Pine hand salve… and Sweet Dreams balm… If nothing else, I think I’m going to keep making these concoctions… maybe adding in a bit of drawing salve. I’m really loving these recipes. I’m at the edge of tiny batches…. I will need to figure out how to bump up the recipes (and the heating source) to be more than a half pint at a time. Chatted with sister sue about flu bombs, onion cough syrup, garlic honey and my interesting things I’m making.
As the year creeps to the end… I started my temperature ‘thing’ to crochet for 2024. I have tried to make a temperature blanket before and it really doesn’t work for me. I don’t think making a new blanket will cut it again… I’m never able to do that past mid February. This year, I’m going to make a temperature snake. I made his head this morning… he’s sitting here waiting for New Year’s Day to dawn bright and (by the looks of it) colder. Looks like Theo The Temperature Snake will start out with a couple rows of dark blue!
This Christmas has my heart hurting in a lot of ways… but it has my year ending with plans and hopes.
Sitting here, recovering from the single longest on call week I think I’ve ever spent. Smores coffee (from yesterday in the percolator), Rebirth of the Sun Ambience (youtube), and the doggoes are my morning company.
I completely enjoy quiet mornings like this. They seem to come too few and far between. When they do come… it helps immeasurably. But I always end up waiting for the other shoe to drop and something, or someone, to help everything come crashing down.
The last few days I have been using my generic “muscle balm” because my name brand Tiger Balm ran out and the off brand was cheaper when I went hunting it. Even the off brand is a bit pricey and none of what we can get in the US matches the amazing stuff I bought when we were in South East Asia. Apparently the FDA limits the amount of menthol and camphor that can be in ours.
A guy at work told me (SEVERAL years ago) that you can buy the menthol crystals from an Indian store, melt your US Tiger Balm and add in the extras, but I could never get a good ‘try this amount’ idea, so I never tried it.
I found out that the stuff I have relied on for like ever when my hands start screaming is toxic to dogs. If you have it on your hands, before you be near your pets, make sure you wash your hands extremely well. Uh… I use it when my hands scream… washing it off is counter productive.
Tiger Balm was always my ‘go to’ before the Dr prescribed the stuff that will probably kill my dogs, so I’ve been falling back to that.
And it works.
But the jars are SO freaking tiny. What is with that? I love that I can toss it in my “makeup bag” (the one that I carry all of my portable medicinal crap in) and it doesn’t take up much room. But it’s almost always on the shopping list.
AND, if you look at the ingredients list on, at least, the off brand I have here… there is petroleum in it. Yeah, yeah, I get it. petroleum is cheap and lord knows it is SO freaking plentiful… I mean, it’s not like we can run out of it or anything.
Sigh
WAIT… wait wait wait…
Dr Google to the rescue.
There are a metric crap ton of places where you can get DIY versions of almost everything. I was very good at my online retrieval class at Pitt. I bet I can couple searching for DIY versions with digging into what and how much would be applicable to my situation… bump up the menthol and the camphor just an eensie bit (too much, it turns out, can be a bad thing, health wise but is it two extra crystals or three extra crystals that will send you over the edge… thinking… thinking… thinking… ).
I stumbled onto Jenni Raincloud’s website and went down a HUGE rabbit hole. She has the most amazing DIY products. A DIY for Tiger Balm (yes, I messed a bit with her recipe but not much), one for vapo-rub, one for “vaseline”, and a metric crap ton more things for in the ‘medicine’ cabinet.
And the ingredient list is… you know… stuff like coconut oil, olive oil, bees wax pellets… essential oils…
Not a whole lot scary in all of that… and holy freaking crap, I have a bunch of it in my cupboard already.
So, yesterday, while I was sitting at my desk during my 12 hours of work on my 7th day in a row trying not to completely and totally lose it with everything… I started a batch of the DIY Tiger Balm. Enter crock pot, glass measuring cups and canning jars.
It takes for freaking ever for even the pellets of bees wax to melt in a water bath in the crockpot but on the up side I don’t have to worry about watching it like a hawk and having to be RIGHT THERE stirring it all the time.
I bumped up the menthol crystals by half again as much.
and I added an extra 5 drops of camphor
and viola… my first batch was made.
I was a little worried, since when I took the lid off it didn’t smell as strong as what I was used to, but putting it on my neck and hands… It’s pretty much exactly what I was after. And for less than what a .63 oz ‘jar’ would cost me, I made a half pint jar. The jar and the lid cost more than the ingredients.
Yeah, I had to buy some of the oils, because they weren’t in the <much sarcasm> treasure trove </sarcasm> of essential oils that I was sold a while ago, but oz per oz, dollar for dollar, I can make a batch of this that FILLS a half pint jar for less than a dollar.
So… since I already had the ingredients, once the stupid bees wax pellets melted and I jarred up the balm, I decided to make vapo-rub.
Again… less than a dollar. Added in a little Shea butter that I already had… and poof…
And this dark, windy, cold, wintry mix morning there is a batch of “vaseline” (can’t actually call it petroleum jelly since there is zero petroleum in it) melting in the crock pot. Looking at the ingredients for pretty much all of the recipes on Jenni’s website, it looks like if I just make up and put away a few jars of this base, I can melt it down and tinker with it (adding in whatever essential oils are needed and maybe some Shea butter) to make almost anything.
I’m thinking that my next investment is going to be comfrey essential oil (yes I know… ew ick… comfrey is poisonous if consumed in large doses… much like sassafras is too) to make some healing salves… and some activated charcoal capsules and bentonite clay for drawing salve.
All in due time… all in due time… but for now… this morning I put on my balm when my hands started to complain (too much ‘doing’ not enough resting)… and here we are.
Will I still use napproxen? Yeah. There are times when it takes a bit more to make the hot glass shards that feel like they are in my fingers… wrists… elbows… shoulders… quiet down. But for the day to day stuff… I have found my new go to.
Now, to find a supplier of smaller jars to carry some around with me… and maybe put it out on my table next venue I’m selling at… see what the legalities there are…
DIY Achey Hands Balm
DIY Vapo Rub
Love and Light
have a magical day
AprilJoy (AKA… Granny of Granny Fricket’s Thicket)
Yeah… the title of this entry into my life doesn’t seem to be such a good thing. People view failing rather poorly. I guess it is kind of how you look at it, how you see it. AND, I guess it is kind of the frame of mind you’re in when you do see it…
I got up this morning, made coffee, took my daily “you’re on call this week” morning handoff from Kuala Lumpur, fed the dogs and stirred my latest batches of vinegar.
The vinegar is where the failure comes in…
I have two jars of rice vinegar in my china cupboard, the curing remains of a few apple and pear jars, and I had (emphasis on HAD) two jars of pineapple vinegar going. I was so proud of the pineapple stuff. It had made it to smelling like alcohol, the bubbles had pretty much stopped, and I really thought I had turned the corner on getting it going.
I heard wonderful things about pineapple vinegar. I was really looking forward to trying it.
And then, this morning, on BOTH jars… mold. The smell went from fermenting to nasty like overnight.
Seriously? GHAAAA
So, I dumped the contents down the sink, down the grinder… and the jars will go through the super duper hot dishwasher in a bit… and I will start over.
I don’t have a pineapple to start over with, but I do have a bunch of apples I can cut up to start another batch or two of apple vinegar. And I have the mother I can put a chunk of into jump start that batch, so we are good there.
I’m disappointed, yes. But the pineapple came from flashfoods so it only cost about 30 cents and I can keep an eye out for more to use. I want to try this vinegar so badly that I will keep trying until I manage to not screw it up.
On the up side, the rice vinegar is fermenting nicely and I’m looking forward to seeing how it pans out.
Also… this morning I started reading on what a vanilla mother jar is and I’m going to start one of those as soon as I can get a little cheap vodka rounded up. I have the perfect place to store these marvelous concoctions to see how we do.
A vanilla mother jar?
This is the best explanation I’ve found for it and I’m very much looking forward to trying it. I have my half gallon jars and a couple of vanilla beans so all I have to do is scrounge up a bit of vodka or other booze and get a jar cooking in my china cupboard.
Did I fail?
yeah
Will I fail again?
yeah
but
This adventure is really so much fun, I’m learning as I go and I’m building on my treasures.
It’s all in the way you look at it.
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas A. Edison
Now if that isn’t an interesting title, nothing is. Several weeks ago, I was reading (another bunny trail) how you can make your own vinegar out of peels and cores and ‘bees are eating them’ and ‘deer (or the damn … Continue reading →
Yesterday was a crappy day even with going for a walk early in the morning. That usually helps. It didn’t. My bulldog has his nickers in a twist and I can not figure out all that is wrong with him. … Continue reading →
So…. The corona virus is a thing. And people, suddenly, have started taking notice of being careful (sometimes overly careful) of germs… of noticing the things that I have had to notice for years. And many of them are also over reacting.
And I’ve started to be even a little more cautious than I had been being anyway. I have been doing the use your knuckle or elbow on the elevator thing. I rarely if ever open doors with my hands. I sing happy birthday twice in my head when I wash my hands. And I use hand sanitizer. Not HOLY CRAP amounts, but there are times when I use it because it is prudent.
Yesterday, because I suddenly got overly scared, I sent Monkey Butt out to see if he could find hand sanitizer. There is none to be had in Strongsville. None. Not at Giant Eagle. None at Walmart or Target. None at Marcs or the dollar store. None.
It is the winter of not having to stock up on bread and milk and toilet paper (not a big snow yet this year), it is the winter of there being a huge rush on hand sanitizer.
But I went online (go figure, right?) and I found where you can do it yourself hand sanitizer. So, while he was out, I had him look for alcohol and aloe. I was anticipating aloe gel (the stuff you see/get in the summer in the sun screen isle… vitamin e and aloe gel). What he found, and brought home, was a gallon of aloe vera. Liquid aloe. 100% aloe in liquid form. Interesting. He also, finally, found alcohol (most places were out of that as well… ) and brought home $9 worth of stuff.
I have had tea tree oil.
I don’t have lavender essential oil… and that kind of makes me sad panda because it would make it even better… but I made do with what I have. And since it is all liquid, I put it in an alcohol spray bottle that I already had… mixed it up… shook it real well… and decided to give it a try…. it’s awesome.
I used 1 part 91% isopropyl alcohol, 2 parts liquid aloe, and 20 drops of tea tree oil (essential oil).
It smells pretty good
It is strong enough alcohol to kill whatever needs killing when soap and water are not around.
And it has an amazing side effect that commercial hand sanitizer doesn’t seem to have no matter what kind I get… it leaves my hands not dry but soft… like I just used lotion.
Now, I just need to find some bottles I can put it in in my purse and backpack to carry with me (the squirty bottle is too big) and I will be a very very happy panda.
Now that I figured out how to mix this up on my own, I can always have some made up and not have to worry so much about, necessarily, touching things. I will still worry… yay imunocompromised… but I will have a less harsh way of dealing with worrying after touching money or buttons or the table at any restaurant.
A Figment Of Fitness 