in honor of tonight’s witching hour :)

here’s a simple spell for not losing power during a snowstorm.  i like to call it “murphy’s power spell”.

1.  light a candle (always good for spells)

2.  painstakingly fill a 12 gallon cooler with water using your low-flow shower sprayer (you remember that last time the power went out, your well-pump also stopped and you had no water.  12 gallons is almost 4 whole toilet flushes!)

3.  mop up the mess that you made, then move a smaller cooler into the bathroom and fill it with drinking water (make sure this cooler is clean!)

4.  light another candle

5.  find all of the other large containers in your house (bucket?  bathtub?) and fill them with water too

6.  mop up the mess and light another candle

7.  cook lots of yummy food that  you can sit out in the snow when your powerless refrigerator gets too warm

8.  assemble the following items on your altar:  flashlights, more candles, matches, aluminum foil for directing the candlelight towards your homework reading

9.  light a final candle and either a) pray, b) recite meaningful and situationally-appropriate incantations, or c) swear threateningly at the weatherman

if you do all of these things, i promise you that you won’t lose power (though you will have to blow out lots of candles and painstaking empty several coolers).  it worked for me two nights ago!!  find yourself unprepared and you’ll be wishing—in the dark, or perhaps in a gas station bathroom—that you’d cast a murphy’s power spell!

blessed be…….

experiment: one month of no ‘poo

the title of this piece reminded me of a totally random and wholly unrelated funny childhood memory that i’ve just got to share with you.  indulge me.  so when i was little, i was obsessed with all things egypt.  i was convinced that archaeology was my life’s calling and that i’d have fun digging in the valley of the kings for an exorbitant paycheck from god-knows-where.  i’d find tombs and statues and sarcophagi and golden busts, and i’d unlock mystical secrets of the past.  for this reason, i was totally jealous when my cousin beth showed up one day sporting a necklace with a bust of nefertiti dangling from it, all gold and magical-looking.  when i asked her what it was, she told me it was the great egyptian queen “never-teetee” and that she never, not once in her life, ever went to the bathroom.  it boggles the (five year old) mind!  just like i did when beth told me that there was a horrible sphinx living in our back bathroom, sweet little ol’ me believed her.  wow, i thought, she NEVER teeteed—no wonder she’s famous!

not wholly unrelated i guess, if you consider that my first point of clarification in this post needed to be that by ‘poo, i mean shampoo, not “poo” poo.  (“all hail the great and powerful queen neverpoopoo!” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.)

so this experiment stems from a couple of things.  first, i’ve been on a bit of a mission the past few years to try and cut chemicals out of my healthcare regimen.  i’ve swapped hand-made masks, oils, scrubs, and cleansers for the phthalates, sulfates, and parabens of my past, and besides having a heck of a lot of fun doing it, i’ve actually found that all of it works.  shampoo though is a bit of a last frontier for me.  someone once suggested that washing your hair with doctor bronners was the safest, most eco-friendly option.  tried it.  hair was a strawy, waxy mess.  someone else suggested nettle infusion rinse.  tried it.  smelled like cooked greens and looked like death warmed over.  all i needed was some hot sauce.  (hopefully this new technique will work.)

the second impetus for going no ‘poo is money.  after spending all of our savings hauling our behinds across the country, the well, she’s a-goin’ dry.  if i can spent $1.50 on a big box of baking soda and a few bucks more for a gallon of apple cider vinegar and have that last me three months, that’s more money for groceries and rent.  plus, the fact that both things are technically food items means that the good ol’ state of maine will buy them for me.  hooray for voting democrat!!  but seriously, this is a big step for someone who used to shell out bank for good shampoo!

so here’s what i’m doing:  no shampoo, no conditioner, just a wash with 2T of baking soda dissolved in 2c water followed by a rinse with 2T apple cider vinegar in 2c water—then a cool water rise to wash out the vinegar.   according to the authoritative voice that is you tube, this works.  now here’s the drawback:  nearly everyone says that there’s a week to month-long “adjustment period” during which your hair basically looks like crap.  the reasoning behind this is that the continual stripping of hair through shampoo use makes some folks’ hair produce way too much oil to try to compensate.  in the same vein, folks who condition like crazy may have drier hair because the scalp doesn’t think it needs to produce as much oil.

science calls this “negative feedback”—when the body experiences a lack, it cranks up the juice, and likewise, when there’s too much of something, the body backs off in an attempt to even it out.  think homeostasis.  so no ‘poo throws a wrench into the gears because while your scalp is still trying to compensate for your dreadful chemical shampoo habits, you’ve all of the sudden stopped using it.  it takes your scalp a while to realize this, so your hair can either go through a super-oily period or a super-dry period. (super oily here!).  “they” say that this is temporary.  we’ll see how long i can hold out.  the end effect is supposed to be softer, shinier, more style-able hair.

i’m still a skeptic, but at least i’m an adventurous one!

so instead of installments, i’m thinking that this is going to be one long post. i’m going to come back and edit it every couple of days to let you guys know how my month of no ‘poo is going.  i’ll date each entry so you’ll know what’s what.  if you want a before picture, go to facebook.  i’ll give you an after picture in the post, and i promise to post pictures even (especially) if it turns out horrible!! so here goes!  i have to back up a bit, because technically, i’ve been no ‘pooing for two days already.

days 1-2:  today and yesterday, i went a little rogue with the experiment because technically i hadn’t committed yet.  i hadn’t bothered to check people’s recipes, so i’ve just been massaging baking soda paste into my scalp and then rinsing with a big splash of vinegar in a quart jar of water.  right before i started the post, i figured out how people were actually using the baking soda (dissolved in water) and i noticed that they weren’t using very much vinegar at all.  starting with day three, i’m going to use the formula that i wrote in the post and see how that works.  hair today is definitely funky—very piece-y and a little oily/waxy feeling.  on the positive side, it holds great in a bun! lol

days 3-4:  figured out that dissolving the baking soda in water is definitely the way to go!  i added 2T to 2 cups of warm water and stirred it to dissolve completely.  i did the same with the vinegar in a separate glass and took both to the shower.  the baking soda water was far superior to using a paste—not at all gritty, just smooth and silky.  i poured it through my hair, making sure to hit all parts of my scalp, then i massaged it in and let if for a bit.  i rinsed it with water then used the vinegar rinse, letting the vinegar sit on my hair for a few minutes before rinsing.

a word about rinsing here—-hot water and alkaline substances (an alkaline is a base, as opposed to an acid) both open the hair cuticle, which is not really something that you want.  this can cause damage  and makes hair frizzier.  for this reason, you always want to follow the baking soda (alkaline) with vinegar (acid) and a COOL water rinse.  you’ll notice after you do the vinegar and a cool rinse that your hair feels slick and silky—that’s because the cuticles are closed and your hair is protected.

so back to results—my hair wasn’t at all waxy and piece-y like it was in the beginning.  instead, it was clean and had lots of body.  one development i don’t really like though is that my scalp is peeling.  this could be two things—either buildup gunk is coming off, or the baking soda is over-drying my hair.  i guess we’ll see soon!  i’m going to try a honey and essential oils treatment soon—hopefully that will help bring blood to the surface and alleviate the peeling.  i’ll let ya know how it goes.

day 5:  last night’s honey treatment was great and it stopped the peeling/itching.  i mixed honey with a few drops of tea tree oil, carrot seed oil, and rosemary oil (horrible smell combination, but great for scalp health) and painted it on at my roots.  i wrapped my head and left it on for an hour and then did the BS & AVC wash as normal.  this morning, my hair is still clean—i’m usually a grease-ball by the next day!  impressed so far.

days 6-9:  nothing much to report besides the fact that everything’s still going well.  i’m on fall break, so i’m washing my hair every other day.  oh!  be careful with hot oil or deep conditioning treatments!  i put a teaspoon or so of jojoba oil on my hair last night as a leave-in treatment, which is normally fine because i shampoo it out the next day.  the BS & ACV isn’t nearly as stripping as shampoo though, so after washing today, i’m still a little oily.  maybe the answer for deep conditioning is to do it and then use an organic shampoo once every week or so.  who knows.  for now, onward with no ‘poo.

to be continued….

autumn in maine (pics)

here are some pictures from pie tree apple farm and from the fryeburg fair.  i wanted to have a nice portfolio of autumn foliage pics, but the weather stayed so warm and wet that we didn’t really get the typical stunning shades of orange and red.  lots of leaves are still green, and others have fallen off.  maybe next year!

i'm not used to always seeing mountains in the distance. i could get used to this!

pie tree orchard

organic apples ready for picking

tasty! they make them into pink applesauce here by leaving the skins on

ripe and ready

plantlets and their support stakes

sunflower field 🙂

apple blossom honey in the making

apple nest

amazingly delicious; possibly carb coma inducing

our csa basket occasionally features frankenveggies. one week, we got a batch of carrots that could have doubled as bludgeons.

mini donkeys at fryeburg fair

mini horses sleeping standing up

sweaters with legs

prize-winning veggies

first-place cabbage

this picture doesn't do them justice. these pumpkins weighed almost a thousand pounds each

sagging under its own weight

beautimus cabbagy thing

jams, jellies, chutneys, pickles, relishes

stephen and goat

thousand-pound momma pig

ate too much.... must...sleep...ZzZzzz

6 foot tall rear end on that ox!

yipe!

mainahs!

scary fair food! i think the deep-fried kool-aid was the worst

sampling scary fair fare---deep fried oreos

plain oreos are actually better!

'nuff said

at first you think you'd love to ride it; then you remember that 10 hours ago it folded out of the back of an 18-wheeler

don’t know nothin’ bout birthin’ no babies!

i can’t believe that it’s the end of october and i haven’t blogged since the end of august!!  i feel almost like i’m coming up for air for the first time all semester—graduate school weren’t nuthin’ compared to midwifin’.  where to start?

school is going really well.  the classes are set up much differently than your typical college schedule, and i’m finding that i like it a lot better this way.  we have several classes that we complete throughout the semester, and rather than having them an hour a day several days a week for the entire length of the semester, we have them as full or occasionally half days, scattered about, and some of them run the length of the semester while others last only 3 or 4 days.  it keeps things new, and it lets us really dig into the topics that we’re talking about since we have all day.  we’re there from 9 to 4 (not bad!) and we have an hour-long lunch in the middle of the day.  with all of the farm goodies that i’ve been bringing home, i always have something tasty to eat.

a lovely life-sized wooden statue at birthwise. it was rescued from life in a birth center closet because someone there thought it was "obscene"

our classroom is very non-traditional as well.  we have tables set up in a horseshoe facing the instructor/overhead/chalkboard.  it’s good to have a combination of the circle dynamic and the forward-facing thing going on all at once.  the only problem that we have is a little bit of overcrowding.  for a long time, we had 17 people and 16 chairs.  the last person in either had to sit on an exam table at the back (so fitting!) or had to get a cushion and sit in the middle of the horseshoe.  we called it being “the pickle.”  one day we asked heidi, the school director and our a&p teacher, why there weren’t enough chairs.  she just smiled and said that by this time in the semester, at least one person has usually dropped, so it’s never been a problem.  (the second years are down from 18 to 10 people already!) apparently my class has some major staying power 🙂

the school has such a wonderful feel to it because it’s in a sprawling centuries-old brick house.  the classroom has high ceilings, and all the nooks and crannies are filled with art, photos, wall-hangings, anatomy torsos, pelvises, baby dolls, and fake bellies for palpation practice.  affirmations and inspiring quotes are stuck to the walls on little pieces of paper with type-writer font, and the back of the classroom looks like a high-volume clinic, with four hand-me-down exam tables, calico curtain partitions, sharps containers, gooseneck lamps, and mismatched stools.

it’s an interesting feeling to be so invested in what i’m learning for once.  when i was working on my graduate degree, i liked what i was doing because i enjoy reading and am a pretty good formal writer, but it didn’t really mean anything to me—i wasn’t invested in it.  i didn’t wax philosophical for hours off the clock about jonson’s unnerving juxtaposition of sex and god or bloom’s theory that post-enlightenment poets were crippled under the anxiety of influence.  who cares, really?  fun stuff to talk about (then and now!), but hardly a deep-tissue soul massage for me.

check out this blog and support some fantastic film-making!

midwifery is different.  developing my own personal philosophy about birth and women’s reproductive health matters.  giving women the opportunity to take charge and own their births matters.  improving the united states’ dismal birth statistics matters.  mastering both the spiritual art and the evidence-based science of midwifery is something in which i am truly invested.  and good thing, because man, school is life-swallowing!!  the reason that i’m actually getting to sit down and write this is that it’s fall break.  i have mountains of things to do to get ready for the week back at school, but at least i don’t have tests to study for, projects to finalize, or class to attend.  i have plenty of time to get done what i need to get done, so i don’t feel bad taking some time to type.

so far, i’ve taken and finished history and politics of midwifery and professional issues:informed choice.  i had a leg up on the politics and history because i’d spent so much time studying that for my women’s studies classes in grad school.  it was really great to add more current information though, especially about midwifery in the 1980s and 1990s.  informed choice was awesome.  even though it was a short class, it’s insanely important for everything that i will do as a midwife.

so you know when you go to the hospital and they chunk that huge stack of papers at you that you have to sign but no one will explain to you?  that’s an informed choice document—or one that’s handled very unethically i should say.  informed choice documents describe certain procedures, give the risks and benefits of the procedure, give alternatives to the procedure with their risks and benefits, and provide any other pertinent information about hospital protocol.  as a midwife, i’ll be writing documents for things like hiv testing, vitamin k injections, and first trimester screens, AND i’ll be sitting down with my clients and going over everything with them.

damn skippy

***PLEASE KNOW THIS!!  if you’re ever in a situation where you don’t have time to read the informed choice document at the hospital, know that before you sign it, you can write anything on it or amend it in any way.  going under for surgery at a teaching hospital?  write “NO PELVIC EXAMS” on the first page; otherwise students may use the fact that you’re, umm, unable to refuse when unconscious, as permission to practice their pelvic exam technique.  i’m not making this up!  (read on abc news: “students perform pelvic exams without consent”) other things you can write include “no students,” “do not disturb me at night to take my temperature every hour,” or “no unnecessary students/interns/staff admitted to my room”.  remember that, no matter how much a hospital my bully you, you are in charge!

ok, off the soapbox.

so i’m also taking the human body for midwives, which is like an a&p class with pregnancy and newborn-specific information added.  it’s very interesting and tremendously intense.  over the course of 11 classes, we’re learning all of the body systems in detail plus genetics, nutrition, and metabolism.  thankfully, we have a study guide (in its 142 page glory) and we’re tested on 20-30 pages of it every two weeks or so.  i’ve made a’s so far (birthwise a’s even, which means above a 93!) but the studying is really intense.  i couldn’t do it without stephen, who tirelessly quizzes me on page after page of information.  we have our last class week after next—last test, class presentation, and done!  i’m presenting on gm foods.

the other tough class that we’re working on right now is normal prenatal.  it’s ridiculously fascinating!  in addition to learning about maternal and fetal development, healthy baselines, and charting, we get to do skills practice like venipuncture and finger pricks.  i still haven’t actually gotten blood from anyone yet (sigh), but i did get to test my glucose on friday—a stellar 87!  that class is another tough one to study for because it is so much information.  i’ve done well in it so far though, and i have two or three more classes to go.

check out the project "stirrups and stories" for some pretty powerful photos. http://www.stirrupsandstories.mosaic globe.com

the big bad class for most folks (in the beginning anyway) was physical assessment.  this is the class that gave folks a little anxiety, and the topic in question is one that has elicited many, many “WHAAAAT??”s from other people in conversation.  at birthwise, we learn pelvic exams—on each other.  i was a little anxious about this one at first—not so much about being a guinea pig but about practicing an exam on someone.  for so many women there is so much anxiety around pelvic exams, and i felt like it was a tremendous responsibility to do as good of a job as i could.  thankfully, my first one went well, albeit a little fumbly.  it took until about my third to really get my technique down and know that i wasn’t going to injure someone though….lol.

until you’ve got the hang of remembering everything that you have to do in what order, it’s really more complicated than it seems at the gyno.  add to that the fact that we’re supposed to be learning a script to go along with it, and it’s quite a challenge.  you have to be careful what you say and how you say it—when you’re nervous, this is tricky!  the thing i like the most though is that midwives, unlike a lot of obgyns, really try to include the women as much as possible.  we give clients mirrors and they get to sit up during exams.  ever seen your cervix??  it’s amazing!

the other classes we’re taking right now are group process (a counseling skills class) and skills practice (just what it sounds like).  we’re staring normal labor and birth when we get back from break, and i’ll be taking good grief, prenatal massage, and placenta medicine as one-day electives in november.  in december, we have periodic exams that will cover all of the skills we’re learned plus all the material from normal prenatal and normal labor and birth—-and then a whole month off!  i think i’m going to hibernate.

all in all, school is great.  i’ve really found my place.  the teachers are great, my classmates are amazing each in their own ways, and i’ve managed to keep my head above water so far.  three days of class generally means an additional three and a half days of homework, but i’m making time to veg with stephen, cook some good food, scout around town, and watch plenty of mad men and dexter.  life is good.

to be continued….

 

an interesting week (or, “COME ON, irene!!”)

*written on wednsday, august 31st

i write to you today amidst mountainous translucent ruins of plastic bottles and awash in the lingering smell of rotting produce.  the sink is full of every dish we own, and tea-lights in all manner of harvesty smells litter nearly every surface that can hold them (as well as some that probably shouldn’t).  but i’m on cloud nine—-“why?”  you might ask?—–because i just flushed my toilet, and it didn’t cost me $4 to do it, nor was the water painstakingly drug in from the lake.

but let me back up….

on sunday, hurricane irene rolled through town.  the storm itself was fairly lackluster (some rain, a few really big gusts of wind punctuated by the sounds of cracking and falling trees deep in the woods—they’re not built to handle any wind here), but just a few minutes into the beginning of the hurricane (a tropical storm or less by the time it made it here), we lost power, along with nearly the entire city of naples.  i was in the shower at the time, so i hurried to finish before our less-than-predictable hot water ran out.  power outage is a pisser, especially when you don’t have much to do but read.  i had meticulously planned my reading schedule for the week; in order to get ready for my first day of class, i was going to re-read two books that i’d read earlier in the summer.  i figured that it might mean some late nights, but after getting a grad degree in english, i figured two books in three days would be a breeze.  the books, peggy vincent’s babycatcher and barbara katz rothman’s laboring on were to be the topic of afternoon discussion on day one of class.

the exterior extent of our irene fun

it’s really a bummer when the power goes out, but living in tornadoloosa for a decade taught me how to cope with 12 hours of no internet or tv (ernie: “hey, wanna play a record burt?”, burt: “errrrrrrrniiiiiiiiiiie!!”).  nothing prepared me for my next find though.  about an hour after the power died, i went to the sink to wash my hands……and nothing came out.  well water, apparently, is dependent upon power (SHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!).

so you know how the first day of class is kind of a big deal right? (has been since kindergarten when choosing that crucial stirrup pant/hairbow color combination was key to starting the year off right!). well the hurricane hit on sunday and class was going to start wednesday.   certainly, i thought to myself, this power outage couldn’t last until then.  not possible!  certainly i wouldn’t have to come to school on the first day with dirty hair and in an outfit that had been chosen by feel not by sight in my dark-at-6am livingroom closet?  HA! oh but i would.

apparently the town of naples is eagle-scout-ready to deal with all manner of blizzards and winter snow storms, hustling to get power back on lest residents freeze to death.  summer, on the other hand, is another story entirely.  back in alabama, we had the tornado thing down to a system.  when something hits, power trucks from all over the south come pouring in to help around the clock until the work is done (much like, i imagine, happens with blizzards in the north).  when a hurricane hits maine though (i suppose because it is so rare), clean up is sllllooowwwwwwwww.  whenever we were out and about during the early parts of the week, scavenging for food and charging our phones in the car, we heard it through the grapevine that it was going to be so-and-so number of days until the power came back on (2? 7? 10??).  we saw new parts of town light up every day, but for stable road, it just dragged on and on.

you know, i dislike shopping at walmart pretty strongly, what with their gender discrimination and their small-business-strong-arming, but stuck where we are, out in the boonies, it was just about our only choice for storm supplies.  we drug in on monday and picked up gallons and gallons of water, loads of tealights (flashlights and plain emergency candles were sold out of course), and some food that we could eat out of cans. (yay for amy’s organic chili!).  the tealights really came in handy.  every evening, we both set up little reading stations—stephen lined candles up on my wildflower guide and put aluminum foil behind to shine the light forward at his book.  hunched at the table by candlelight, all he really needed was a quill and a tonsure and it would have been perfect.  i was on the couch with more aluminum foil directing the candlelight over my shoulder at my class reading.  so much for two books in three days!

bathing was ok.  we managed with spit baths and bottled water for rinsing hair.  it was the toilet issue that REALLY blew.  advice alert!! get a low-flow toilet if you’re ever in the market.  seriously—this thing took four whole gallons of water ($4!!) to flush.  i think we only got 8 gallon jugs, so we learned really quickly that that was not a sustainable way to go about the toilet thing.  stephen wound up tromping down to the lake to fill up jugs—a backbreaking but cheaper alternative.

so back to school.  there’s an apartment at birthwise that some of the first year students live in.  it’s pretty massive, and birthwise advertises that other students can stay for $20 a night on a pre-arranged, as-needed basis.  birthwise never lost power, so i figured i’d call up there and see if i could pay the $20 and stay the night before, or even just pay and come take a shower that morning.  nope.  the front desk lady said that “everyone was in the same boat” (not true), so i couldn’t come.  luckily, one of the gals that was staying at the apartment invited me over that morning as a “guest” so that i could indeed enjoy a hot shower.  i don’t think i’ve ever appreciated a shower that much in my whole life.

(added later)

so power came back on on wednesday evening and all of our problems were solved.  (all but the huge disgusting mess of dishes and the fridge full of dead food).  i flushed the toilet twice just for the hell of it.  something inside me jumped up and down, clapping its hands like a moron as the water swirled away and the tank started to fill again.  don’t get me wrong—i love primitive camping, but when you don’t have enough light to even make sure that your stirrup pants match your hairbows, you can really feel screwed.

to be continued….