Product Plug

I almost don't feel like this is the place to plug a product, so excuse me as I veer away from what one might label as 'the norm' for this blog.

I'm an eczema sufferer, and I've spent the past two years trying to find a product that does something to soothe the itching rash that, at times, wants to take over my entire body. I did get some relief from my family's naturalist doctor: http://www.bestnaturaldoctor.com/ He found a cream for me that contains calendula, but it's so far out of my price bracket, that I could only use it once.

Luckily, I recently came across a Honey & Calendula lotion by Kiss My Face that does the trick at half the price. I'm plugging it here because it is a natural product.

Did I hear someone say, "So What?"

The next time you pick up a lotion, read the ingredients it contains out loud. If you stumble in your pronunciations, you might want to ask yourself what exactly is in that lotion your using. See, the thing with the chemicals that most manufacturers put in their products is that they're often created in a lab somewhere using various materials that have to be fabricated. This means that extra resources are being expended (because you'd be surprised at he petroleum products involved). On top of that, consider the fact that this is something that you put on your skin. It's not like the polyester pants you throw in the washer, or the plastic sunglasses you paid $200 for. This is something you slather on your flesh to help it... not poison it. One of the things I noticed with eczema was that usually, the more weird shit that was in the lotion ingredients, the worse it would make my skin. For instance, I can officially no longer use self-tanners for the shit they put in them to dye the skin.

If you don't believe me, Kiss My Face is also disseminating it's own 'propaganda':

"The molecular structure of essential oils is very close to that of the fluids and oils of our skin, accounting for our skin's natural affinity to them. They are readily absorbed and penetrate to the deepest skin layers. Regular use of essential oils in skin care has been proven effective in helping correct problems such as wrinkles, excessive oiliness, dryness, blemishes, and tone. Essential oils have the capacity to promote the elimination of dead cells, regenerate new ones and to prevent the growth of harmful bacteria."

If this interests you, I've found the product in local natural food stores and various other retail stores which carry "Kiss My Face" products. I believe even Giant carries it in their grocery section. You can also find the specific lotion I'm touting at: http://www.kissmyface.com/natmoistpages/natmoisturepage.html - third one down on the left = Honey & Calendula.

Anyway, you can now return to your regularly scheduled blog entry.

Vacation

I'm just going to mention here that I will be keeping a Vacation Blog while visiting relatives in Alabama for anyone who happens to peruse this blog. It will either be extremely boring or riddled with humorous anecdotes and quotes.

I'm hoping for the latter, myself.

Oh yeah...

And here are a few snapshots I took on the 16th of June. I woke up at 5AM and just couldn't go back to sleep. The location is Codorus lake at the marina.

Continuing... like I never left off.

I have houseplants, but I hardly consider them pets. For some reason they always seem to multiply. Every time I see one I adore at the home improvement store, regardless of time of year, I have to purchase another one. Now I've got them littered about the house in various pots, and I'm constantly forgetting to water them.

I have two cats too. I do consider these pets, though they spent the vast majority of their time lounging around in a few spots - a little like the house plants, if you ask me, only with the added chore of the litter box.

It's summer now, but I can think back to the winter, to the several feet of snow we had this year and remember how I relished these houseplants, the two cats, for offering me my only taste of nature indoors.

I've decided to continue this blog though the summer semester of Nature Writing is over. I managed an A, but I still don't think I've said enough. In the next year I'm going to continue to chronicle my run-ins with nature. This could involve my houseplants and cats in the winter - fair warning - but it will also involve my garden through the seasons (including the strangely shaped cucumbers we just picked) and it may include a few observations made on my family trip to Alabama in a few weeks. You might want to expect descriptions of mosquitoes as big as birds.

Either way, this little blog isn't quite over yet. I cannot say the blogging will be as frequent, but it will continue. Let's just say I'll make the effort of one post a week.

Roadkill Chronicles: Bird Kill

Birds are the extreme sports enthusiasts of the highway. It never fails. Whenever I’m driving anywhere, I have at least one bird who wants to tempt fate by nose diving somewhere in front of my car. I hold my breath every time. It’s not like I can swerve out of the way, I just have to hope this particular robin or starling has timed his performance perfectly.

Usually, the bird extends his wings and alights just a few inches or a foot away from my vehicle. A few times, they’ve even dropped a not so pleasant bird-bomb on my shiny blue car. That’s always a lovely addendum –insult to near injury.

Some birds fail as acrobats on the road, however; their lives ending in one of two ways. The first involves the bird hitting the windshield. While this is horrible as a driver, since one thinks the fowl is going to come straight through the glass, and one find oneself ducking although he is fairly well shielded by the vehicle. I can’t count how many times I’ve preemptively ducked behind the steering wheel because I fear the mourning dove is going to come through the windshield and smack me in the face in a bloody, feathery Alfred Hitchcock nightmare. If the bird hits the windshield, though, normally all one sees is the look of death at impact with perhaps a few twitches or some flailing as they go up over the glass to disappear behind the car or get hit again by the vehicle which is tailgating. If the other vehicle hits it, I just don’t feel as bad because I excuse myself –it wasn’t my car that finished the job. These are the bird corpses one sees flattened to the pavement with one wing up waving at passersby.

The more exciting death is actually more akin to an explosion. It’s not quite like the vaporization I have mentioned earlier, but it’s not entirely dissimilar either. Birds are small, light, and it’s not quite as surprising when they explode on the grill of one’s car (unlike the aforementioned deer which is large and meaty and, well, I’m sure we’re both still working on erasing those mental scars). It’s actually a little like a surprise party or a pillow fight. OK, perhaps not so exciting as a surprise party, but all one really sees is a great poof of feathers after one hears the twang of the bird hitting the grill. Depending on velocity and location, these feathers can come up over the windshield –momentarily blinding the driver –or they go under the car in a spray making the car look like it hit a star in a Mario game, though one doesn’t become invincible.

It’s an interesting affect, and I think a tribute to life. I mean, if I had a choice, I’d like to die like a daredevil and explode into a bunch of confetti, myself when I go. It has a startling affect, but for some strange reason, isn’t quite so gruesome as the unexplained vaporization kill or as sentimental as watching a pet kill.

Yeah, when I die, I want to blow up like a pillow stuffed with firecrackers.

Roadkill Chronicles: Unidentified Vaporization

My first year of college was in a small, private, liberal arts university in North Carolina. It’s a long drive from Pennsylvania, and most of the trip was spent on I-81 going South through Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia. For the most part, it’s really a rural highway in large sections of Virginia –in fact, one can take 81 to the Blue Ridge Parkway easily as they intersect.

Between timing exits for a gas and restroom break (as not every exit along 81 has such relief, especially in the first part of Virginia), I came across a smear in the road. At first, it was difficult to discern what the smear was. There were several feet of a deep red color with a few bits and pieces of something that looked almost as black as the asphalt of the highway. For a few miles I had to conjecture over whether or not a bucket of paint had fallen off a truck or if this really was what I thought it was—blood. And if it was blood, where was the body? This was Virginia, not West Virginia, had someone managed to hit dinner, stop, pick up the kill and run home to cook it? All of the ideas buzzing through my head were a little unsavory and I managed to miss my exit. I had to drive another fifteen minutes ready to piss myself before I got to an exit with a bathroom –the urgency with which I needed to urinate made me forget my pondering altogether.

In the year I spent in North Carolina, driving back and forth for breaks, I came across several of these haunting ‘smears’ going north and south on I-81. It wasn’t until I was out of college that I actually witnessed the event that leads to these artful smudges of red in the highway –and it wasn’t on I-81 either. I witnessed the event on I-83 heading toward Baltimore.

I was in my little Toyota Matrix, having a conversation with my passenger who was anticipating another great Orioles game when I recognized that a large 18 wheeler wanted to pass me. He was heavy on my tail, so I glanced in my rearview mirror and shifted over the right lane of the highway (using my blinker –something that is otherwise optional in the state of Maryland). This speeding truck increased speed and sped by me –I turned and rolled my eyes at my passenger –apparently 10 over the speed limit isn’t fast enough for some people. And that’s precisely when it happened.

Out of the corner of my eyeroll I saw a doe bound, no –not bound –throw herself in front of the truck. At least, I don’t think I saw antlers, but it was so quick. Who could discern if it was doe or dog or horse? What I could not miss was the explosion. I’m not sure if I saw or heard it first; there was a loud bang, like the sound a jet makes when it breaks the sound barrier, and then an detonation, like fireworks –a blast of red and flesh and bone and obliteration airborne. Tiny little pieces of what once was doe splattered up and out and under the truck. It was no longer a deer, it was ground venison meets Mac Truck grill.

“Holy Shit!” I managed to say to my passenger who had not even been looking at the truck, but managing his cell phone during the previous conversation, “Did you just see that?” I somehow managed to not wreck my own vehicle as I witnessed it.
He didn’t. How could he? It happened so fast I was in disbelief of what had occurred. Had I really just seen that tractor trailer hit that deer? Was it just some sort of special affect? I wanted to turn the car around; I wanted to stop even though I was going 70 mph.

Dumbstruck, jaw half agape, I continued to drive while my passenger tried to wheel around in his seat, fighting the seatbelt in order to catch a glimpse of what I’d just witnessed. “What?” he said. “What was it?”

But it was too late to explain. I’m sure the deer felt no pain, though I don’t know what terrible travesties in her life had led her to choose such a suicide. After all, stepping directly into the path of that 18 wheeler could only be construed as such – it certainly couldn’t have been an accident.

And the fact that the body of the animal had been obliterated meant there would be no horrible burial or that no other deer would have to see the body and go back and tell the others what happened to Faline or whatever her name was. She’d simply disappeared in a flash of flesh.

Of course, now every time I’m driving down the highway I find myself trying to close my eyes when I have to motor over a great big red-tarnished patch of asphalt. It was a hell of a lot better when I didn’t know what caused it. Ignorance can sure be bliss sometimes.

Hashawa Observations IN CLASS

There are two catbirds which zip above my head. I’ve chosen a small break in the trees to rest and observe. At first, I thought they were both announcing my presenc with their cat calls, but then I realized there were precisely two. What I thought was the catbird’s harassment was really them courting each other between two trees. They’re a beautiful gray color, the color of dark storm clouds, not mottled or patchy, but solid, like a steel guard.

In front of me stands the skeleton of a pine. The bark is starting to peel from the offwhite bones beneath like paper or dead skin, revealing the smooth wood that looks just like bone.

To my right, I hear a gentle whisper of a call which I cannot identify in the bushes. The two catbirds call in such a fashion that it is difficult to identify what the you-who sound might be.

And then there is a third catbird. I wonder if perhaps I had disturbing a next. They have me surrounded -one chirping incessantly behind me, another to my left and one to my right. I think if I listen closely I can hear a woodpecker in a tree top, but over these catbirds, who can hear anything? Is it just in their nature to harass? Are they Hashawa’s jesters? Are they the centries wom I must impress to observe another other natural occurrences? There’s no fooling them now that they’ve spotted me. I think they’ve even chased off all the other birds who might share my company. They’re getting so close, I think I might just start to take offense out their yelling at me.

I’m just sitting here, after all. I want to yell back at them as they scream and yell at me “HEY HEY HEY!” But if I do, I might miss something, like whatever it is that whistling a you-who to me. There are two of them -coming from two different sections. I think maybe they are tormenting me too, like some horrible game of marco-polo. I think they’re red-winged blackbirds, but I can only guess.

And then I hear a frog, but at first, I thought it was the growling of my stomach or a mourning dove, but it became clear it was coming from in the marsh. It must be a frog. And then there is another … woooahh—awooo… deep and low.

They’ve got me surrounded. I’d better give up soon or face the agony of defeat which constitutes as arms pocked with mosquito bites.