A little herbal lore and some TMI

Arnica: good for sprains strains and bruises
You don't really want to be injesting this stuff but it is great for external use. I've been using this arnica salve I bought on some bruises I've aquired through purely consentual ways. My boy and I tend to enjoy a rough tumble in the sac now and (more often than) then and I tend to come out a bit marked up. Sometimes these marks are more obvious (huge purple things on the sides of my neck)then others. I've used the arnica salve on a few just to experiment and they seem to clear up alot quicker. I'm thinking about doing an experiment with 2 bruises where one gets the salve and the other doesn't just to see if it actually works as well as I think it does. The way its supposed to work is that arnica causes the bitty capillaries in the skin to dilate where it has been applied. This allows more blood into the area to carry off the escaped blood in cases of bruising, or more blood into an ouchy area to help it heal faster. It sounds to me like it would work better on bruising then sprains and strains but I haven't tried it yet.....maybe i should try it on my tweaky muscle in my neck to see how it works. I have a tweaky muscle when I move my head in certain ways (depending on my stress level) it tweaks causing a sharp pain to go up my neck and usually makes me make a vocal noise of pain. Nothing is more embarassing then sitting down at a fairly quiet table and as you sit your neck tweaks and you gasp out in pain and they all look up at you.
I'll let you know how the experiment goes.

still working on that new schedule

well, last week was hell and I'm still feeling the ripples off it. Still waiting to see about that positive earth shattering change the cards talked about. I don't exactly know where I stand with a very good friend of mine and I still pretty much want to curl up in bed and not move until things are back to how they should be. Of course, with this change the cards speak of that may never happen, which really is too terrifying a thought to entertain at this point in time because I cannot imagine what this positive change could be and thinking about it only makes the nervousness worse.
I've set up a meeting with the career center lady to help me find a job after school. depending on how intricate and full of stuff to do that process ends up being I might talk about that....not that it will help stave off the panic (the whole reason this blog was created) so maybe not a good idea. I don't have a cooking shift this semester. I'll probably bring back the cooking talk when I get out of here and have a place of my own where I have to cook food because that was alot of fun and I have a million recipes I want to try. If I do the tarot stuff which I'm thinking I will, it will need to be sunday night. We shall see....when I'm not submerged up to my knees in homework. I'm also thinking of buckling down and working on meditation stuff to help ease the nervousness spoken about above, the theory being if I write about it here, I'll actually do it.
On a different note entirely arnica (its an herb) is pretty sweet stuff. I'll talk more on that tomorrow.

Tarot cards, The divine instrument to deliver cosmic 2x4s

To the back of my head.....repeatedly or just one really hard brain jolting, ear ringing, lets not leave our room today for fear of more reprocussions blow to the head.

And now a letter to the universe

Dear Mom and Dad
I know you don't control people's actions.....but really now? Do I need to deal with this shit right now? Couldn't there have been a less stressful time for people to pull stupid shit on me? Some time when people's well meaning "help" won't make me burst into tears cause I'm so stressed and their still well meaning but even less helpful attempts at making me do what they think I should making things worse for me and certain people I care the world about....is this REALLY necessary?
Love always
you're super confused and really unhappy daughter

We

As I was watching the inauguration today this quote from my favorite science fiction show, Babylon 5, floated up from the depths of my brain. It used to be a favorite quote of mine, I'd always loved the idea of creation that it conjured. It was a place of beauty and peace. I hadn't thought about that quote for a long, long time. In the show the captain of the space station is talking to a technomage, a person who does magic with technology. The quote goes like this:

Elric(technomage),"We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers. We study the mysteries of laser and circuit, crystal and scanner, holographic demons and invocations of equations. These are the tools we employ and we know many things."
Sheridan,(captain) " Such as."
Elric, "The true secrets, the important things, 14 words to make someone fall in love with you forever. 7 words to make them go without pain or say good-bye to a friend who is dying. How to be poor. How to be rich. How to rediscover dreams when the world has stolen them."

We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers......it calls to mind the way Tolkien opened up the Silmarillion with a creation story of the Gods singing the world into being. Each and every person can sing their own world into being. We aren't Gods but we have been given the gift of creation and truely the only thing that can limit us is our own creativity. And if many put thier minds to something it can happen, look what we acomplished. We elected the first Black president. Look what we have acomplished. Dreamers, shapers, singers and makers.....THAT is what is inside each of us. We only have to choose, lets hope we choose correctly.

Happy MLK day

You should watch this its a great song, I don't really like the images that go with the song but its the best quality I could find.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl_QUZBUyLE&feature=related

Yeah, I'm hopped up on extra strength excedrin because I had a badass headache and can't sit still long enough to focus to write anything of merit. Small body + 2 extra strength excedrin = Caffeine high

Every little bit helps

I thought about this just as I was going to bed last night. In these trying times where we are all doing our best to save our money charities are getting shafted. But there are still ways to help that don't cost us a penny. Click to donate sites. You, free of charge (except what it costs to keep your computer and internet running) click on these little buttons and certain companies donate a small amount (it really is itty bitty) of money to that charity. Personally I think this idea is awesome. Here is one click to donate site that has compiled a whole lot of them in one place.

http://thenonprofits.com/

And while we are talking about such things why not donate money to charities you specify while you search for things online?

www.goodsearch.com

In this way you don't have to feel bad that you didn't give money to whoever this year because you are still helping.

I found a use for winter!

This is a thought I had a few days ago about saving electricity/money. In the winter why not just put your frozen things outside, they'll stay just as cold...possibly colder. You might even put the things in your fridge out there....that might be a bad idea. But if your family is anything like mine you have a huge freezer someplace that is full of stuff that no one eats and some turkeys that have been in there for a very....very long time. Putting that stuff in a container outside would save you and the environment a bit of hassle. Just a thought.

Plant Post!!!

well, my tomatoes survived break a little more then worse for wear and the impatient dumpster plant is still hanging in there by a few fingers. Everything is looking a bit ragged (I keep telling them just a few more months and I'll be able to put them outside in the warm sunshine) except for the still un-named batch of bulbs that are sticking up single pokey leaf like things. I have 3 amarylises now. My first has a mold problem on its leaves so its only growing a flower this year, and probably won't flower next year, if it lives. The second one looks like it won't flower this year and my new one hardly has its leaves poking out of the bulb and its already growing a flower.

Lets not do depressing things today

I had this article all ready for your viewing pleasure (or something) about how autism is on the rise and is being linked to infant exposure to pesticides, and house cleaners and viruses and other toxic crap like that but I'd rather not talk about that today, so I think I'll do that book review I was planning on.

The book is called Food Not Lawns: How to turn your yard into a garden and your neighborhood into a community by Heather Coburn Flores. I saw this book in borders in the gardening section and mentioned it to my mom and *poof* it was under the christmas tree. But really it was a great book. (of course my father didn't let me get 6 pages into it before he tried debating with me how not everyone can grow thier own food, and kept trying to debate with me after I told him that I hadn't even gotten through the 6th page yet) There was alot of thing about gardening and how to fill a garden space (I mean really fill it by using plants that will work together to help eachother grow. ex) 3 sisters corn, beans, squash) but also alot of other interesting ways to lower your carbon footprint and reusing water from showers and sinks for different purposes, as well as ways to bring your neighbors closer together. There were a few things that I wasn't quite sure really fell in with the conserving water ideas that she spoke of now and then but all in all it was a very interesting book and I think I will try some of her ideas. The title was a little misleading because it really was packed with more then just community garden information. I also really liked that the back of the book was packed with resources as well as footnotes where you can read more about certain subjects. I really feel like I got more information then I payed for in some ways.

And here we go one more time around the wheel

Recently I have been reading many books that all say the same thing about cycles. "they are more like spirals" because every time they come back to the original spot the cycle is a little different. And I am begging to agree. I've started my last 2nd semester of school and it is much the same as every other time I've done it. I'm older, the classes are different but it always follows the same routine: get schedule, find the classroom, get a seat, get a syllabus and go through it, have some lecture time before class is over. For a while I could intellectually understand why they said this but I never really agreed with it (maybe I just hadn't thought about it hard enough). So now I agree....(and really wish someone would come open up the co-op cause I'm starving my ass off).

I have a few new ideas for things to talk about on different days, one of them being astrology (it will depend on if I have time to learn things myself), I may or may not have a cooking shift this semester hopefully I'll find out by next week. I might also try and talk about tarot cards, maybe pull a card a week (it will aid in my learning of my own deck that I've had for at least 3 or 4 years and still don't know). We shall see. All will get sorted out in the fullness of time (which could be a really long time from now)

Oh mercury retrograde.....

yeah, mercury is in retrograde and is making my life rather frustrating.

Got this off a astrology on the web and as I am technologically challenged and can't figure out how to link things properly I'll just put up the bit I found really interesting: At 16:45 UT (Universal Time), on Sunday, January 11th, 2009, Mercury the cosmic trickster turns retrograde in Aquarius, the sign of the Water-Bearer, sending communications, travel, appointments, mail and the www into a general snarlup! Since this is the day of the potent Full Moon in Cancer, people's emotions will be on high alert! The retro period begins a few days before the actual turning point (as Mercury slows). In general, Mercury rules thinking and perception, processing and disseminating information and all means of communication, commerce, education and transportation. By extension, Mercury rules people who work in these areas, especially people who work with their minds or their wits: writers and orators, commentators and critics, gossips and spin doctors, teachers, travellers, tricksters and thieves. Mercury retrograde gives rise to personal misunderstandings; flawed, disrupted, or delayed communications, negotiations and trade; glitches and breakdowns with phones, computers, cars, buses, and trains. And all of these problems usually arise because some crucial piece of information, or component, has gone astray or awry.

That sounds like my weekend and today....especially that emotions on high alert and mail going wonky bit. No matter what anyone says about the horoscopes being off because of planetary shift and such I am totally and irrevocably a cancer and I appologize for it. It was a bad weekend.

Late night super fast musings

I always forget what I want to talk about on here if I don't write it down right away. I've have a few great ideas over break....and then promptly forgot them. I had a thought while I was at work today though, stemmed partly from Twilight (great books....movies are very close to them which makes me happy). In this one scene Bella (the main character/damsel in distress) and Edward (main vampire character who saves Bella every 5 seconds) were talking and he says to Bella, something along the lines of you don't see yourself clearly. Of course, the boy is blinded by love but that phrase still sent my brain wandering (work is boring and very condusive to brain wanderings). Everyone has a skewed view of themselves, no one sees themselves clearly. And I began to wonder how/where my view of myself is skewed and what other people actually see in me. I am a fairly quiet and shy person (probably viewed by those who don't know me as downright anti-socialness) unless you put me in a room with a bunch of my friends, I don't talk unless I have something to add to a conversation, I love to dance but don't do it often (do it rarely would be more accurate), nor do I have any strong desire to work REALLY hard at making myself up and looking amazing (I don't dress to impress just anyone....if I do it, it is to impress a specific someone now and again) I am a submissive by nature and cringe at leadership type things. I am comfortable with how I am. It has been pointed out to me that this combination of traits shows itself as low confidence (yes I have a hard time beliving I am pretty, what girl doesn't? Blame society!). Yes, this is what I think about when I file papers....among other things.

What do others see when they see/know you? (not what you think they see, what do they REALLY see?) In ways that is more you the the warped bendy carnival mirror we look at ourselves through (only look through the eyes of people you know for this or you might see yourself worse then you already do)

By next week I should be back to regular schedule with a few post schedule modifications

Ok so I'm bad when I'm on break

Work and visiting friends I hardly ever see distract me. But I have two things today to chat about. 1) is the fact that the trail mix I got for Christmas came from Walmart. Dad thought it was funny because I hate Walmart and WILL NOT shop there. There is something very wrong with buying a person a present from a place they hate for moral reasons. That would be like buying him pagan stuff. But I digress.

For those of you who prefer tasty organic veggie foods I have scary news for you. We might still be getting those antibiotics they put in farm animals through use of manure as fertilizer.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=vegetables-contain-antibiotics&sc=CAT_HLTH_20090106

Oh what a messed up world we live in.

Its no wonder the Solstice is a big deal

It got dark around 5:30 today. There is nothing, I mean NOTHING, better then seeing the days lengthen during the winter months. That little reminder that it won't stay cold forever. It will only seem like forever before the spring and summer come. It gives hope to those of us who grudgingly aknowlege that it is part of nature and it is a great demonstration of the cycle of life/death/rebirth and therefore maybe has some value and we can learn something from it.....maybe. As long as we don't die of cold or cold season first.