Morgellons!

This is just what I was afraid of. Should have known petitioning and a letter-writing campaign wouldn't have such immediate results.

A few of you heard my story about the customer with the parasites under her skin that wouldn't respond to prescription treatments. The doctors had "never seen anything quite like it." Well, I was catching up on my Natalie Dee the other day and came across this comic:

"What's Morgellons?" I wondered...
A search led me to this website, which told me that Morgellons is a chronic infectious disease of unknown origin. Symptoms include "itching, biting and crawling sensations, “filaments” or fibers which emerge from the skin, skin lesions which range from minor to disfiguring, joint pain, debilitating fatigue, changes in cognition, memory loss, mood disturbance and serious neurological manifestations." The disease has been brushed off for years as delusional parasitosis. This is what the "fibers" look like magnified:

  After extensive tests on the fibers, "scientists, including a police forensics team drew a blank as to their origin, despite comparing them to more than 90,000 organic compounds. Meanwhile, at the State University of New York, Vitaly Citovsky, professor of biochemistry and cell biology, found that the lesions of Morgellons patients test positively for the presence of agrobacterium, a bacterium used in the commercial production of genetically modified food – but not normally found in skin sores."

FREAKY.

So I wonder if the parasite customer has Morgellons disease. No good.

On a lighter note, this is the reason I want to learn to embroider:

Yes, Christopher Walken. More cowbell.

Happy Earth Day.

We may as well acknowledge that we're all fucked. I don't mean this in the delightful sense of lovers...meeting in the middle of their hearts and minds and bodies, but in the sense that we're in far more trouble than words can say. Wild salmon are disappearing, as are great apes, coral reefs, native earthworms, wild forests, wild places of all stripes. Last week two more chunks of Antarctica fell into the sea. Dioxin contaminates polar bear fat, and it contaminates mother's milk. Three corporations control more than eighty percent of the beef market, and seven corporations control more than ninety percent of the grain market. Military scientists have placed computer chips in the brains of rats, and can force the creatures to go left, right, backward, forward by pushing buttons on keyboards...

We're fucked. We all know the numbers. We know that twenty-five percent of all women in this culture are raped within their lifetime, and another nineteen percent have to fend off rape attempts. Which means of course that unless one guy is excruciatingly busy, an awful lot of men are rapists...

We know also that 565,000 American children are killed or injured every year by their parents or guardians. We know, too, that there are more slaves in the world today than came across on the Middle Passage. And we know that in the 1830s a slave in the American South cost between $500 and $1000, the equivalent of $50,000 to $100,000 today. And now a slave costs about $50, making them not even a capital but a simple expense, to be used up and thrown away. 

We're fucked. 

If we're so fucked, one might reasonably ask, why not just go ahead and off ourselves?...the answer: life is good. Life is really, really good. Not mediated life. Not televisions, cars, stereos, jobs, professional sports, colognes, perfumes, skyscrapers, steel, asphalt, brick, mortar. But life. Waking up with the sun on your face. Tasting your lover's sweat. Stubbing your toe, petting a dog...helping your mother plant her garden, feeling your body grow heavy at the end of a hard day, and waiting to catch up to your dreams. But to merely reside in the sensual as the world burns isn't good enough. Nor is it good enough merely to mourn the losses both inside and out. Both of these are necessary, but not sufficient...If things are so bad, one can also ask (this time unreasonably, I think), why not just withdraw into the sensual, why not just party (or cry)? Because...this question reveals nothing neither more nor less than an inability to love. If you're in love, with your life, with your body, with your lover, with the tree outside your door, with the world that gives rise to all of these, the fact that we're all deeply, deeply fucked doesn't matter a damn to your actions: if you're in love, you act to protect your beloved. If we are to survive, we must recliam our planet from those corporations which-and people who-are destroying it. But even before this, we must reclaim our own bodies and our hearts from that same grasp. - Derrick Jensen, May 2002

[*photos from my Admirable things folder...found who-knows-where. Yours? Ask me to remove 'em or give you due credit and I will gladly do so. <3]

The past couple of weeks have been all hammock-lounging, Gibran and Psalms-reading, campfire smoke-inhaling, UTI-healing, whole wheat bread-baking, LOST theorizing, cat fur-wrangling, (gladly) pollen-sneezing, clutter downsizing, and plan-making. So the normal routine, plus a few seasonal additions..and the UTI brought on by too many ginseng root beers last week. (I knew better.) 

Four little tomato plants have sprouted in the container garden, plus about a million lettuce plants. The artichokes are hanging in there, but the wildflowers are looking a little floppy.

Last night Marvin and I went to dinner with my co-workers and a rep from NOW foods. They talked a lot about things that happened before Marv and I were born, but none of the terribly exciting topics. I zoned out and kept trying to remember what it was like to be an egg and a sperm and not a whole person, but failed. We left saying that it was time for our Mad Men marathon date, but it was loud in the restaurant and Louie's husband thought we sad Batman marathon. We didn't tell him otherwise.

Back to the hammock and the breeze.

LOVE,
Sarah.

P.S. - Andrea, I found ANOTHER band-aid in the pair of shoes of yours I inherited at the junk swap a couple of years ago. This makes, what? half a dozen band-aids out of a single pair of shoes! It's starting to get a bit eerie because each time I'm positive that I've gotten the last of the band-aids out...but then another one magically appears a few months later. Is it voodoo that youdoo?

Just the type of thing I would be excited about!

Sun Chips bags are now compostable.



Now if all the other snacks would follow...

I expanded the container garden yesterday! This summer we will (hopefully) be enjoying organic tomatoes & lettuce, Jerusalem artichokes, and catnip. I'm thinking about adding a bell pepper plant and some wildflowers and trying to guerilla garden in the alley with any of the tomatoes that germinate that I don't have room for in buckets on the deck.

That sentence contained far too many prepositions and these dolls are magnificent:

Images from cartbeforethehorse.etsy.com.

Also, I love going to yard sales on my lunch break. <3 Happy weekending!

Easter weekend.

It was lovely.
Egg dye & hunt with my parents.
Garden party with Shelly, Adrianna, and Mama Kathleen.
Word games & Scrabble.
Home town grocery shopping.
Native American things & coffee.
Yep.

Thursday mornings are now devoted entirely to housekeeping and working on projects since I don't go to work until eleven. I'm as happy about this productiveness as I am about SPRING.

I finally experimented with the detox foot patches. Here's what I've concluded: the patches turn brown/black when your feet sweat on them...the color is not caused by the removal of toxins. The patches turn the same color when held under the tap. But I don't think this necessarily means that they aren't capable of removing toxins from your body since sweating can play a pretty big role in the detoxification process. I didn't feel any different after using the patches, but I wasn't ailing to begin with. So the color change doesn't equal toxicity, but the patches work for a lot of people...just like the gunk in an ear candle isn't earwax, but tons of people swear by the candling process. (Internet research tells me that apparently some detox pads are complete hoaxes. Make sure your detox foot pad has some or all of the following chemicals: chitin, chitosan, vitamin C, silica, starch, and eucalyptus oil. Lengthier explanation here.)

If you need a new age hooey mythbuster, I'm your woman. Or guinea pig.

A good ol' American Double Standard.

More information can be found here.

See you kids later. I'm running away to the hills for some quality gardenin', birdin', catfishin', strollin', and barefootin' time.  Have lovely weekends!

Hello, bicycle legs.

Did you know that this is a week of miracles? Not only did Marvin learn how to boil water for pasta (haha), but a lady I know who has been very, very sick and mostly bed-ridden for almost a year is suddenly up and about and back to her normal routine. Majorly amazing.

I heard a mockingbird imitate a crow yesterday. I also had a nosebleed which reminded me of Katie (who always has nosebleeds and who I adore & hadn't seen since last fall) and then ran into her on the trail while riding bikes after work! We sweaty hugged. Little amazements.

I can't wait to try the bring-on-the-broccoli pizza that's on the cover of Vegetarian Times. My diet lately has consisted almost entirely of the following things: The Dr. Oz Smoothie, trail mix, apples, oranges, extreme veggie pasta, and Nutty Bars. It's a delicious life I live, but it's about time for some variety. And fresh greens.

Gotta get to work on a container garden...and gotta make a trip to visit this sweet little girl:

And her mama. <3

P.S. - I am quite envious of Vanessa who not only has TWO pet goats, but also recently got her creep on with Zooey Deschanel! Dang!