I have been trying to devote time to blogging, and while I could be a little more prolific, I'm generally happy with the quality (if not the quantity) of my recent posts.
I have really enjoyed the DIY Wednesdays, and plan to continue them. But just not tomorrow. Tonight we had a big family dinner, and after cooking, cleaning up, coloring with my older granddaughter, smoking out in the cold with my sister and my daughter in law - well, I'm just slap worn out.
Until next time!
"Steve Best is an asshat."
This statement got me put in Facebook jail for today. I was also reported for using a fake name on Facebook, which is hilarious because I am literally the only person ON EARTH with my name.
So while I languish (okay, I'm not really languishing, I'm just going about my usual business) in the level of hell reserved for people who have been naughty on Facebook, Camille Marino is languishing in a real jail. A real jail with bars, where she is not free to go about her usual business.
So won't you please go to the Negotiation Is Over site (http://www.negotiationisover.com) and make a donation toward Camille's legal bills?
Thank you.
Here's another cheap,cruelty free, and environmentally friendly household recipe. This formula has many variations, and I've tried (and adapted) several. This one cleans better than any commercially made powder I know of.
Many recipes call for kosher, or iodine free, salt. It doesn't make a difference - just use whatever salt you have.
2 parts borax
2 parts washing soda
1 part salt
1 part citric acid
Mix all four powders together. I just put it all in a jar and shake it up good. I may or may not do this while dancing around to the song with the same name. (Yes, I am well aware that I have issues.)
Use a heaping tablespoon for each load.
Now that Isabella is 4, I decided it's time to break out my old Play Dough recipe. I wanted to always have some on hand, plus I know kids eat the stuff so it needs to be safe. Also I'm extremely cheap. Pathologically cheap. I'm also lazy, so I don't want it to be complicated.
Here's the recipe:
2 parts flour
1 part salt
~1 part hot water
a few drops of glycerin
food coloring
Mix all this together and knead. Get your kids to help with this. I store in ziplock bags or tupperware type containers.
It dries when left out, so it's great for projects, like making letters with cookie cutters.
Lately it seems like everyone but me is boycotting Daiya products because the company is promoting the use of its products to lactose intolerant meat eaters. People are outraged. Seriously outraged.
I think I get it. But here's the thing: planet earth is full of meat eaters and that's not going to change in the foreseeable future.
By promoting Daiya products to a wider audience, the company could very well introduce vegetarianism and veganism to people who would never have given their food a second thought. But that's not why I'm not boycotting.
I'm not boycotting because every single consumer product in the world is produced by a company that does something objectionable. There's no way around it. There's no way in hell to boycott everything.
In the online discussions about this issue, other companies were mentioned. The "cruelty free" Tom's of Maine (which has been owned by Colgate-Palmolive since 2006) is supposedly okay (according to some), even though the parent company is notorious for vivisection in its product "testing." Why? Because Colgate-Palmolive doesn't market itself as pro animal rights. Wait, what?
So it's okay to buy from a company that tests on animals, but not okay to buy from a vegan identified company that is trying to expand its customer base. Gotcha.
This is making my head hurt. That is all.
Today's DIY is laundry soap. This particular recipe is super simple, but does require just a little bit of prep when you go to use it.
But our first order of business is to explain the difference between soap and detergent. Here is a great and simple explanation from Care2:
Let's get started.
You will need:
1 grated bar of soap
Most of the bars of soap you find in the grocery store are actually detergent bars, with the exception of Ivory.
My all time favorite is Dr. Bronner's. It's real soap, vegan, and cruelty free.
1 cup of Borax
1 cup of washing soda
(NOT baking soda)
Put the powder ingredients into whatever container you've chosen, then add the grated soap. Stir with a rubber scraper, or if your grater is like mine, you can use that.
That's it. You're done!
Now, here's how to use this laundry doap:
It only takes one or two tablespoons full for an average load of laundry. Seriously. That's it.
If you are washing in cold water, just take your tablespoon(s) of the laundry soap and mix it with some hot water in a measuring cup. If you want to add essential oils for scent, now is when you do that. You can also add condition products that you have either made yourself, or order products from a store like Lucky Mojo.
Because I always add scents, etc I dissolve the powder in hot water even when I'm not using cold water.
That's it. Now go wash your clothes!
Well, here we go with the second episode!
1) You can't choose your intelligence sources. (Hilarious extra: "My mother's understanding of my career changes from what she wants from me. One day she can name everyone on the National Security Council and the next day she thinks I work for the Post Office.")
2) Not all bugs are the same. If it's got a battery, it's disposable, short term. If it's wired into the house power, it's a longer term thing. If it has a transmitter, you can figure out how close the listener is.
3) Once your surveillance knows you're onto them, the clock starts ticking. The question for you is whether you can find them before every bit of useful information is turned into a pile of burning slag.
4) Often, the best way to get intel is to provoke action, set people in motion. Pros know better, but they usually have to work with a fee amateurs. Amateurs panic. So you beat the bushes a little and see what flies out. Once your frightened amateur leads you to the pros, the work begins.
5) Con artists and spies are both professional liars. Cons do it for the money and spies do it for the flag, but it's mostly the same gig. They run operations. They follow security procedures. They recruit support staff and issue orders.
6) When you go after a spy, you send another spy. The same goes for con artists. To catch one, you've got to beat him at his own game - be a better liar than he is.
7) No matter how good your cover identity is, you've got to sell it and that's not always easy. Sometimes you have to decide just how committed you are to pretending you are who you say you are. A good cover identity keeps the target feeling in control - you talk too much, drink too much...just to let him think he has an edge.
8) Running from cops has it's advantages. It builds your credibility with criminals when you flee a crime scene.
9) Eavesdropping and fieldwork go hand in hand. You want to know what your target is saying, what he's typing into his computer - but technology can't work miracles. Bugs don't plant themselves. Fact is, even the fanciest equipment sometimes needs help from a good old fashioned crowbar.
10) It's useful to disable a car remotely. A cell phone, some wire. You can ground the circuit on the electrical system with a phone call. (Or blow it up by wiring the phone to a blasting cap in the gas tank.*)
11) Go after a group of people together and they pull together. They get stronger. Taking down a tight knit group is about making them turn on each other. You plant the seeds of distrust and watch them grow. (Sowing seeds of distrust is harder when nobody trusts you.)
12) You've been in the business too long when you recognize the sound of a .45 over the phone.
13) Club girls are a good source of information. Men say things to beautiful women. They let down their guard, give out phone numbers, hotel keys, etc.
14) A hit man is like a plumber, a dentist, or a mechanic - everybody's looking for a good one.
15) Paranoids are erratic and make bad decisions. This is good if that's what you would like them to do.
16) Identity theft isn't hard. An account number and an ID are all you need to drain a bank account. You can also mess up someone's day by using their identity to contact terrorist organizations, threaten a federal judge, and insult the local drug cartel.
* This is another of those "sounds good, but it it really possible" kind of things I would love to find out more about.
That's it for Episode 2. Till next time!
Monday is the day that I do the main part of my prosperity work. That's basically because both "money" and "Monday" both start with the leter "m." Also, because I'm a bit weird.
There are so many different components to money work, as well as even more ways to actually perform money work. So I have decided that each Monday I'm going to write about a money related topic.
Today, I'm going to share my recipe for money spray. This is safe for most fabrics and for skin - at least the skin of me and some of the people I know.
All it takes is:
a spray bottle
a cinnamon stick
basil essential oil
lemongrass essential oil
water
You just combine those ingredients in a spray bottle. Be sure not to be heavy handed - a little goes a long way!
You can use this to spray your money, spray yourself on your way out the door to work, your desk at work (speaking of work,) your cash register, your welcome mat. Basically you can spray anywhere you think needs a little perk up to call in more money and prosperity.
Enjoy!
Lots of people try to make "spells," or anything remotely "magical" complicated as all hell. Chant these fancy words that make no sense, write a petition paper with precision, yada yada yada....
But, in reality, you could do a money work with a coffee can of pennies if that's what you have. Rootwork is about using what you have.
It's great to have the supplies you want (and when my orders from Lucky Mojo arrive, I swear it feels like Christmas), but I doubt people living in the backwoods a hundred years ago had that luxury. In fact, I know they didn't. Ever heard the Jerry Clower story about the family who
lived way back in the woods?
The Mother told her son, "Go to town, get some sugar, flour, coffee, and the mail." So, he took off to town. He got there, and he met up with a Marine Corps recruiter. Well he signed up and did two tours of duty. He went back home and handed his mother the sugar, coffee, and flour. Then he said, "Mama, there weren't no mail."
Get my point? While I do have a prosperity table (I don't like using the word "altar"), I did the set up in the picture totally on the spur of the moment, on the end of my kitchen counter. It has: my rose of jericho plant, my dollar store piggy bank I've had for 20 years (all our loose change goes in it), and a cinnamon scented Glade scented oil candle. That's it. Simple and easy peasy.
Why don't you try to do something simple too?
This work by Dorothy Kernaghan-Baez is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at mailto:dorothybaez@yahoo.com?subject=permission to use your work.
