How I Learned to Love My Juicer

1. Line the pulp bucket with a (grocery) bag
         Problems: Every part of this machine gets coated in vegetable and fruit pulp, which will dry into vegetable and fruit cement if you don't thoroughly clean it immediately. Also, the pulp bucket is a pain in the butt to get clean. Also, I like composting... but I don't really like traipsing outside in the dead of winter after every single time I juice.

         Solution: I line the pulp bucket with a grocery bag. After juicing, the not-yet-full-of-pulp bag-and-bucket go in the fridge. For me, the bucket fills up after making maybe 5 or 6 drinks (so a few days' worth). So that works out to 1 trip to the composter instead of 6.

2. Clean the entire juicer before drinking the juice
          As I noted before, every single part of the machine gets covered in goo. Coming back to clean it later will just feel like punishment to your future self, and you'll stop using the juicer altogether.

         It doesn't take that much longer to go on and wash up--from start to finish, I can take out everything, make my juice, and have it all cleaned up in 20 minutes. And I swear my juice tastes better when there aren't dirty juicer parts in my sink.

3. Start with apples, trust the apples
        If you get super excited your very first time and jump straight into making a quart of celery-carrot-spinach juice, you will hate yourself. The idea of liquid vegetables is great; the reality is less glamorous.

        Let's be real: Americans are used to very sweet drinks. So ease yourself into it. Start with just making apple juice. Love how wholesome it tastes. Pat yourself on the back for your healthful choices. For subsequent drinks, think in terms of using apples as your base and adding in some vegetables. Your palate will get used to the different flavor profile, and soon you'll find yourself enjoying a sweet-potato-spinach-cranberry-carrot nightcap like the crunchiest hippie out there.

Don't say things on facebook you wouldn't actually shout in the public square

One of my elderly, distant relatives (a Texan) just shared this gem on facebook:

ANYthing is better than a Kenyan Muslim and a jerk..."In God We Trust"! 

I can't even.

I mean, I was amused at the handful of Willfully Ignorant on my friends list who shared the "That Joe Biden is just rude." rallying cry. That was cute.

But really? Really?

When's the best season to prune a family tree?



Also, while I don't think the other presidential candidates appreciate being referred to as "things," can I request that the State of Texas offer this particular person a ballot where the only option is "Lamp"?
Please and thank you.

I'm a very rational person; All my mental processes are mathematical.

Men in military uniform + babies and/or small animals = I die.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Of course this one always wins out as my favorite, with or without a kitten:

Some kind of perfect storm

So I may have been inspired to discover a great new thing. Here are the contributing factors:

1. When Charles' job doesn't have him in a coal mine, it has him in a man-run (ie, never thoroughly cleaned) metalworking shop. He comes home in varying degrees of filthy 5 -7 days a week.

2. Removing said filth requires lots of soap and lots of scrubbing

3. Ergo, in our house, we go through soap/bodywash like it's going out of style. Seriously.

Edit: 3a. Coal dust is so infectious that even the process of removing it turns bars of soap downright gross after just one use.

This leads to the first piece of inspiration:
4. It's a whole lot more cost efficient to turn bar soap into body wash than buying pre-liquified shower soap.

(I used the above-linked recipe for general proportions).

So I nab a bottle of glycerin & a bar of Yardley Oatmeal & Almond and get to making my giant pot of soap-snot. Using a food processor to grind up your soap makes the whole process take just a few minutes. Yay!

5. I could have quit at this point, but now the oatey-almondey smell has been diluted away (something to do with that 10 cups of water), and my finished product smells... not-that-great.

6. I found in my cabinets part of a container of rolled oats that was Best Before August 2011 and an open bag of almonds Best Before August 2010.

Clearly we're not doing much oatmeal or almond consumption round here.

Cut to the chase:

Ground up almonds, ground up rolled oats, some steel-cut oats for texture (they don't really grind), and a splash of homemade vanilla extract turned kind-of-gross feeling Soap-Snot into Aesthetically Appealing, Almond-Oatmeal Exfoliating Body Wash.

I figure this gallon-ish of soap will last us a few minutes.

In the meantime, I need to figure out how I'll spice up the next round I make with a bar of Yardley English Lavender....

On The Name Issue

This page of articles is amazing.
I don't think I've ever identified more with someone else's personal account, let alone a group of people.

If you know my family, you know I come by it honestly.

So I'm engaged to be married. (Which is awesome)

At first, I thought that maybe I'm just a very private person, because I didn't feel the urge to run around telling everyone I saw.

Then I realized that I just can't abide dumbass questions. After hearing something truly moronic uttered, my ensuing inability to produce speech while my brain tries to process said extreme departure from rationality is a total buzzkill to my betrothed high.

The conversations (this has happened multiple times. seriously. I'm not kidding.) go exactly like this:

Me: (showing engagement ring on finger)
Dumbass: So does this mean you said yes??

What I'm tempted to say: Well, actually, I said no. I'm just wearing the ring because I'm part ferret and like stealing shiny things.

Response I actually produce:

The Tale of Little Buddy

A stranger came into our house.

We found this out,
and groused and groused.

I wouldn't be involved
with a "sticky" or a "snappy"
So we acted quite evolved
and got a humane trappy.
~~~

So at 4:30 this morning, love of my life Charles comes barrelling into our room & turning on all the lights to show me that after two nights of nibbles, our Hav-a-hart trap had successfully secured our unwanted visitor:

...And then he heads out for work, leaving me to go back to sleep with a very unhappy rodent trying to make its noisy escape in the next room.


Unfortunately, we've been having snow for a few days and it's currently below freezing outside. So neither Little Buddy nor I would be getting any immediate relief from each other.

But I'm not about to leave him in a metal box indefinitely. "Do unto others" and all that.
So, I empty out my craft bin:
and cover 1/3 of the bottom with potting soil (LB or one of his friends had been digging in my potted herbs, so this makes perfect sense, right?),
1/3 with shredded newspaper (yes, I tore up newspaper into little bits with my hands),
and the last 1/3 with flat newspaper.

I figure this at least ups the comfort factor from "Cold Bare Metal".

Now since I don't know how long it will be before I find a suitable, not frozen/flooded place to release him far enough away from here that he won't come back AND I have no intention of putting my hands even close to inside his halfway house once he's in there, I need to make sure he won't starve or dehydrate.

So lined up in little piles around the edge of the flat newspaper, Little Buddy got:

Plus, his own water dish:

Now, I would have said that the walls of his halfway house were high enough that he couldn't get out. But I was not aware that mice can Jump. And I don't mean cute little hippity-hops. I mean Olympic-level atmospheric body hurdling.

So I closed the lid in the non-locking way so that air would still flow, but considering his determination at flinging himself heavenward, I also opted for adding a metal drying rack and my financial records binder on top for absolute security. And then I draped the whole situation in towels with the fantasy of creating calming darkness.

I've only heard him chuck his body against his roof a few more times, and there have been some occasional munchy-crunchy noises, so I'm assuming he's found his temporary prison acceptable.

**********************

Edit: LB was successfully released later that afternoon in the forest by the lake at the public park about 2 miles away.

He of course spent the entire drive over chucking himself against the top of his box so that I had to drive with on hand resting on the lid.
Thankfully, he did not ironically break his neck before I could let him go free into the wild.