warts and all

I'm sure you love me just the way I am. I, however, have been less than fond of the pesky lump on my wrist for some time. Now it's small, nothing anyone would probably notice. But it would itch sometimes and I'd see it and feel chagrined. Stupid wart, killing my chances as a wristwatch model. What to do? (this is so simple and unbelievable and effective and simple it's going to blow your mind a little).

Don't worry, while this is a home remedy anyone can do, this is not the wart removal technique I heard growing up. My great-grandmother legendarily instructed the afflicted individual to take a kernel of corn, rub it on the wart, look out into the yard and mentally choose a chicken, toss the corn into the yard, and if the chosen chicken ate the corn - voila! Bob's your uncle, the wart is gone!

But say you're low on chickens or superstitions? Then what?

You pluck a dandelion. Squeeze the stem. Spread the milky juice on your wart. Okay, wait. Back up. It helps to have a cute little fella in overalls and rainboots pick your dandelion.

This is what my wrist looked like before I smeared any dandelion milk on it at all. It's a little red and, though the picture isn't wonderfully clear, definitely raised.

My intent was to take a picture every day, but I forgot and that's kind of boring anyway. A picture of my wrist every day? hah-shoo, hah-shoo. Also, I neglected to apply the dandelion milk again for a few days. After the first application, the wart skin got dark and scabby. I really should have taken a picture of that, but it's probably for the better that I didn't. For your sake, anyway. And then the scabby came off in a shower and the area was no longer raised. I have only bothered to put the dandelion milk on one more time.

And now it looks like this:

There's a shiny dot of fresh, happy skin now! Could anything be cheaper, easier, less invasive?!

I can't remember where I picked this up, but I do remember it's something we did to effectively remove a wart on the husband's hand years ago and I remember taking family walks and the girl would pluck dandelions and rub them on her hand, too, just like her dad. She was about 2 then, so I guess this has been in our home remedy arsenal since then, 8 years or so. We've used it numerous times.

Not that we're a particularly warty bunch.

it is what it is

Monday night at my house = soup, stew or chili night. More or less. My menu ideas are always so broad, the esoteric details not typically revealed until right at prep time. If I know, vaguely, what sort of thing to make, I work from that point and use what I've got. Am I doing a casserole? A stir-fry? Pasta? Each category gives me a good beginning direction and I take what's in my pantry, my fridge, and go from there. I can follow recipes but it's more comfortable for me to throw things together, some of this. . . a little of that. . . the way my boy does in the backyard. Holly berries, dry leaves and dog water? No problem. I got chili simmering (my old 3 bean + quinoa standard) early enough today -before lunch even!- and had visions of an early dinner and an early bedtime (for the children, anyway; more light means they stay up so late and the husband and i zonk out soon after and lose out on any grown-up teevee watching time) but an unplanned late nap and all the other things that come to a head in the late afternoon happened and here it is now: just after six and I'm my second jam jar into a bottle of cheap pink wine and the cornbread's still in the oven.

just going through the motions

There was something both complete hilarious and utterly grotesque about listening to a few backlogged episodes of James Howard Kunstler podcasts while painting my half bath yellow. (psst! If you're not listening to JHK's Kunstlercast, I guess I don't know why, maybe because you didn't know about it? Well, hey! Now you do!). It's not that I am a big fan of climate change and the end of cheap oil and drastic transitions. It's that I think they're all inevitable -sooner than we think even!- and I'd rather know what I'm up against than be caught with my head in a vat of air conditioned petroleum when the stuff hits the fan, you know.

So while my head was thinking about this stuff, my hands were so frivolously changing the color of a bathroom that is mostly used by guests (when I remember to tell guests it's there, so hidden it is around the corner where no one notices, and when we have guests at all, not so often, really). And it seemed like a foolish sort of task.

Life in the Bleak House here (really, we could take a number because our plight is not unique, but it's hard to always keep that perspective) has been full up with foolishness. I'd like to stand tall and declare how everything we do is purposeful, useful, good. But our home improvement projects (and there have been many!) are mostly for our own pleasure. I'm indescribably pleased about the new kitchen floor. I'm delighted every time I walk into my cheerfully blue laundry room. I cross my fingers that if, as we suspect, we might have to put this home we love on the chopping block real estate market sooner than later, the improvements will make all the difference.

But we're still totally protected by the comfort of cheap(ish) oil. We still have the luxury of doing fluffy things, frivolous things, things that will matter less when life is leaner and our collective amusement ranks lower.

However, tonight's Sunday and I made pizza, like I do, and now, because I swear I haven't forgotten, I will share a song, and that's amusing.

I find myself humming this song all the time. It's used as the opening song for the kunstlercast and it stuck in my head so much that I had to look it up and download it for my very own. And then! When looking for a decent quality version to embed here, I found this little gem, the only non-live copy on youtube and it made me smile. (I am a responsible adult who does her own dishes! Ha! Yes!)