Well, We Ripped Out the Floor

So I altered the title.  Because most of my entries in here seem to be about our conversion to an off-grid way of life.  Maybe now when people read this, they'll know what most of it is about.

So, yesterday, Randy and I tore up the floor of the gypsy wagon.  Randy sawed up large chunks of it; I carried the chunks out and cleared out the insulation underneath.  The previous owners, upon realizing that their floor was rotting out, simply covered it in glue and lay a new floor on top of it.  How very... special of them.

Of course, our gypsy wagon's changed hands plenty of times.  Maybe they just did the quick fix to get it sold to the next unlucky pair of hands to take charge of it, before it was then transferred several more times before we got a hold of it.  I know I need to fix virtually everything about it, but I still like it.  For now at least.

Stepping across those beams felt a little bit like being in Raiders of the Lost Ark.  I was relatively sure I'd go plunging through the floor at any minute.  But anyway--

I reread the instructions for yogurt making and I'd like to give it another try.  Wish me luck.

I also read this article on glass jars which suddenly makes me want to get my hands on even more mason jars than the ten or so I've got right now.  So far, I've used glass jars as--

~drinking glasses
~vases
~containers for many random collections of objects/insects
~yogurt-making jars
~tincture-making jars
~containers for perfume
~sprout-growing jars

But there are so many other uses.  I'm particularly excited by the idea of using them to hold leftovers, since plastic containers can make the inside of a fridge get so ugly so fast.

I'd really like to get my hands on a notebook to write down all my recipes and ideas, too.  Computers (and websites) always seems just a little bit unreliable.  It's too easy to lose a web-page in the massive overflow of information.  Or have my computer break down.  Or anything else I haven't thought of yet.

But now, I'm rambling.  I'm going to read up on making something interesting, artistic and useful.  And I'm going to crochet something while I'm doing it.

Sprouts! (And, of course, nice-smelling hair.)

So the thyme and the Italian and Genovese basil sprouted yesterday morning.  I was shocked, because I'd expected a much longer waiting period after planting them in the little egg carton I had them all nestled into.  By the end of the day one of the oregano plants was peeping its tiny head into the world as well.  I'm very excited.

Yesterday was definitely a day of... something.  DIY-ness?  Crunchy-ness?  Sadly, I haven't really researched what people call what I'm doing so much as I've just been doing it.

For example.  I've been doing the no-shampoo thing for perhaps a month so far.  But I missed the way my hair used to smell when I poured half a gallon of conditioner into it every morning (and never rinsed it out).  So yesterday morning, I researched the ingredients of my one of my two homemade air fresheners a little before spraying the stuff directly into my hair.  Now, my hair smells awesome.  (And it's a pretty color, too.  See?)

So then, since I was feeling inspired (and my skin had been dry for days) I tried using coconut oil in place of lotion.  I honestly think it works better.  No, that's not just my "it's good for you, so it must be better" side talking.  I mean that I always hated lotion.  It left this sticky residue stuff on my skin that left me feeling like I needed a bath.  But the coconut oil just seemed to absorb into my skin, leaving it smooth and soft and healthy-feeling.

Yay.  And then, because my mother-in-law had a bag of kale that was going to go bad, I made mixed berry/orange/ginger/kale smoothies.  And those were pretty good.

So yesterday was a good day.  I did healthy things.  I tried new things.  And my plants started sprouting!  All totaled, it was a very good day.

That evening, a final thought crossed my mind before bed: in our purge of excess belongings, I've been careful to keep a hold on a single bag of stripper gear.  A just-in-case bag.  One pair of dance shoes, a few outfits, some makeup.  I realized now's probably the time to go through that bag and let of the final vestiges of my stripperdom.  I think that stage of my life just might be done for good.

My new job will be to publish my (damn) novels and garden organic food so as to save us money by cutting our grocery bill as much as possible.  Knock on wood, but I don't believe I'll be returning to the strip club.

Honey and the Proto-Potty

So I made a toilet.  I got tired of not having a composting toilet, and I haven't been able to build one yet because I haven't had the materials I always thought were necessary to build a composting toilet.  I had the five gallon bucket, and I had a toilet seat we'd salvaged from the trailer, but I didn't have any wood to build a box to put the toilet seat on top of.  So on Friday (I think) after my fiance left for work, I went through several scraps we'd saved from the trailer, looking for something-- anything-- that could be used to build the box for a toilet.

Ultimately, I didn't find anything there.  Instead, I kept walking past this lovely old chair I'd taken with me from my hometown in North Dakota.  I think the rest of the table set it originally came from was lost in a complicated storage-space-management fiasco.  Anyway, the seat of the chair had long since been torn up by the claws of the cats who had since been de-clawed (for this and other reasons).  My fiance and I, who have been purging ourselves of unnecessary possessions (all that junk we own and never use) were just about ready to toss this chair along with the rest of our un-donateable junk in the trash.  And that was when I came up with this idea:

Isn't it lovely?  Okay, if you're thinking to yourself its one of the homeliest things you've ever seen, you won't be alone in that opinion.  However, I think it holds potential.  I tore the ripped-up cushion out of the chair and sawed a round hole in the wooden bottom of it and secured the toilet seat onto the seat of the chair.  I still need to find a way to secure the bucket in place underneath it, but for all intents and purposes, that is a primitive but functional composting toilet.

I call it the Proto-Potty. :)

Anyway, having made this, I think I have a few more ideas of how much space we'll need for the bathroom part of the trailer, which I find very exciting.  I have this idea about the sink we salvaged from the trailer that I need to try out.  It might work out.  It might be a disaster.  As with all the new ideas I try.

And speaking of new ideas.  If you haven't heard of Crunchy Betty yet, it's time I introduce you.  I've been reading her blog like crazy, and today I finally decided to try one of her blackhead treatments.  It's method number two from this page.  I steamed my face for ten minutes (because I have acne) and then decided to try patting my face with honey because I had honey on hand.

I didn't really think it would work.  I thought it would be like most of those blackhead treatments you hear about where you try it out and it doesn't work but if you think about it a lot, you realized your skin at least feels a little softer so it wasn't a complete waste.  Because that's how all these "skin treatments" generally affect me: "I guess it might've helped a little?  I guess?"

So, you can imagine my surprise-- my outright shock-- when it actually worked.  I watched all the blackheads peppering my nose burst open and drain out like magic.  I didn't have to squeeze them or anything.  I just patted tacky honey on my face and they burst.  Like Magic!

I couldn't believe it.  My face looked so beautiful afterward.  And there was an actual, genuine noticeable difference.  So, yeah.  I have to make some Parmesan flax seed crackers for my fiance and I.  We've been eating a lot of awesome vegetarian food lately.  I must post recipes.

Until then, hope everyone's doing well.  :)

I Get Craftsy When I'm Nervous

So we moved.  And moving is stressful.  No matter how organized or well-planned or easy (and this one was easy) it's still stressful.  I've even got the stress acne to prove it.

It's been wonderful at the new place, but as part of getting settled in, I've noticed myself producing a flurry of new recipes for everything under the sun.  I tried making yogurt.  That didn't work.  I've got two different times of homemade air-spray room fresheners stewing.  I made a kitty-litter air freshener out of lime flesh and salt.  I made beet hummus ( try it, it's heavenly.)  I made parmesan flax seed crackers to go with it.  And that was just yesterday.  I also made zucchini slices with pizza sauce and toppings spread over them.  Ate the last of that this morning.  I made salsa.  I'm growing scallions in my mother-in-law's window.  I made... something else.  I don't remember what.

We got seeds in the mail, so I'm probably going to go through those and figure out how much space each plant will need in our garden and how many of each plant to grow.  I think I want an indoor tomato plant, too, because I want to eat fresh tomatoes all winter, too.  Hopefully the scallions grow.

Maybe I should start knitting?  I saw a beautiful diy fire pit that I could totally make for perhaps $30.  Of course, before I do any of that, I really, seriously want to build my composting toilet.  Seriously, I want this thing.  Bad.

Right now, though, as I've run out of funds for the time being.  So... that's that for now.

P.S. Finally got some pictures up.  The first one is me draining my vanilla clove air freshener through a coffee filter.  I later ended up spraying this stuff into my hair to make it smell pretty.  It's awesome. :)

This second picture is both my air fresheners sitting in jars.  The one on the right is a citrus vodka mix that's still steeping.  (It started out smelling like vodka and ended up smelling like oranges.)  The one on the left is the vanilla clove.  I don't think the picture does it justice.  It came out as this beautiful amber liquid that shone very prettily in the morning light.

"...and that was when I realized I was a hippie." Part II

So, things have lulled.  We aren't lost in the whirlwind of moving.

Yesterday, we dug up some bamboo that had managed to form a little patch in the ditch across the road.  The ground was rocky, but I think we got a few decent root balls.  I've got some in a planter next to the trailer with a little solar lantern hanging next to it.  It's pretty, and it makes our little husk of a trailer seem homey.  It only takes one potted plant to feel home. LOL

My fiance made me this wonderful vegetarian dish for supper yesterday, because he's fasting and I've had too much meat lately.  In fact, lately, I've been reading up on raw food meals.  They just look good to me.

When I went to brush my teeth, I realized that I've been brushing my teeth with neem paste instead of regular toothpaste.  After reading up on soapnuts/soapberries I looked up a website where I can order seeds to plant a few of these.  Because I want to wash my clothes with golden berries.  It might be a bad idea.  For all I know the berries are even more toxic than the shit they put in detergent... yeah, right.  Who am I kidding?

I'd like to make some castille soap, but that's going to probably be a later project.  For today I'm going to make seasoned roasted cauliflower for my fiance and figure out what I want to do with myself in this new place.  I need to make yogurt soon.  So, if I've got enough money to buy both cauliflower and a gallon of milk, we might have some good yogurt soon.  So long as I can find a place to let the bacteria grow.

I guess I'll take a portion of today and go through all our packed-up belongings and start putting things in a donation pile.

And I need to exercise today...

Anyway, this is probably a very confused post.  The title refers to the fact that I'm once again noticing how very unconventionaly my life's become.  I'm very happy, but I wonder at just how very far I've strayed from "normal".  It's been so many little changes.

What would normal people think of a woman who washes her hair with apple cider vinegar, hates wearing makeup, prefers raw food to good ol' steak and potatoes, plans to build herself a composting toilet, wants to grow most of her food in the field next to her in-laws' house, and plans to give up most of her earthly belongings and live in a 17x8 trailer?

Have I gotten weird yet, or am I still halfway between here and there?  Does it matter?  I didn't do any of this to challenge society.  I did it because it seemed right for me.  It seemed right to my fiance, too.  Either that or he's just a very supportive, loving partner.  LOL.  Either way.  It's all good. :)

"...and that was when I realized I was a hippie."

In the chaos of loading all of our belongings (packed carefully away in boxes) into the van that would transport them to our new home, my fiance and I were both repeatedly impressed by how much stuff we have.

We'd already decided to discard or store away the majority of it.  There's not enough room in a trailer for all our junk.  If you've ever seen a cluttered tiny house, you'll know why we're resistant to letting more than what is absolutely necessary enter our future home.

Both of us have remarked at this point on what a cleansing experience it will be to let go of all the material excesses we've been carting around all day.  We don't need this much stuff.  In fact, it's downright embarrassing that we own so much stuff.  What's the point in having boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff, up to the point that we don't even know how much stuff we actually own because it's all been buried under more boxes of other stuff?

So we'll be garage-saling and ebaying and craigslisting away a lot of our excess stuff.  I look forward to this process.  I think my fiance does, too.  At first, it seemed frightening.  Get ride of that leather jacket I've never worn?  Get rid of that electric fireplace that cost me all that money even though I've only used it twice?

And then it just seemed like a relief.

And that was when I realized I've become a hippie.

It's been over a month since I've washed my hair the traditional way.  (Which isn't to say that my hair is dirty.)  My wishlist on pinterest is dominated by essential oils.  Just today I told my fiance we should give patchouli a try.  I want to buy lemon oil to keep away the spiders and lavender oil to spray on my clothes before I go hiking (to keep the ticks and fleas away).

I want to grow my food this summer.  I want it to be organic.  I want to harvest the seeds so I can replant next year.

We want to live off-grid.  Way off-grid.  We want a solar- and wind-powered house.  I want to turn our black water into manure that I can spread in the vegetable garden.  Today, when it rained, I looked at my future in-law's house and thought, "I wonder if they'll let me set up a rain barrel?"

I don't think any of these things (or even all these things in concert) necessarily make me a hippie.  However, I don't think the majority of the conventional/mainstream, non-hippie world will be able to tell the difference.

So that's that for now.  And now I need to read about organic soap nuts.

Moving

So, I haven't written in forever.  I need to take down the note that says I'll post something new every Thursday. At first I did.  Lately, I haven't.

Today, we packed all our belongings into vans and moved out of the apartment.  The cats are still recovering from the shock in the attic of my in-law's house where we're staying for the time being.

Now that I'm finally closer to the trailer (so I don't have to spend $20 in gas every time I go out to work on it) I can hopefully get some real work done on it.

In other news-- my fiance's parents have set out a plot of land for us to garden.  I don't mean garden as in a couple tomato plants and maybe a flowerbed, either.  I mean a GARDEN.  This plot looks like, maybe, a third of an acre.

So... expect posts on organic gardening.  (And wish me luck, because I'm not sure I won't kill anything I plant.)

Moving Prep, Death and Taxes

Well, it's Thursday, and about a month before my end-of-stripping due date.  I'm so broke.

So, to take stock of this week.  I tore apart the closet and put the vast majority of my clothes in storage, leaving out a few that I plan to take to the gypsy wagon.

I started writing a new book yesterday.  More of a pamphlet, really.  Anyway, I plan to publish it as an ebook and use it as an experimental how-to-sell-books-online kind of book.  It shouldn't take much time to write.

Yesterday, still frustrated in my never-ending quest for the perfect purse, I broke down and sewed one.  I'm still getting used to it (every purse has a breaking in period) but so far I like it well enough.  I think I should have sewn some cardboard into the lining to make it a little firmer, but as it is it's nice enough.

The living room is full of boxes.  And I need to work tonight because it's the first and the rent is due.  It will be the last time I have to pay rent, though, so that's exciting.

Less exciting is the fact that I still have to pay last years taxes and the taxes from the year before that.  And I need to find a new tax preparer because the lady who did mine last year charged me over $500 to do my taxes.  That's almost half as much as I owed in taxes to begin with.  So, yeah.  I'm pretty sure I got ripped off that time.

It's amazing how many people will try to rip me off once they find out what I do for a living.  I'm pretty sure this year I won't say.  I'll just tell whoever's doing my taxes that I'm self-employed and I have zero business expenses and my only deduction is the 500 freaking dollars I spent having my taxes done last year.

I'm tired of being broke.  I'm really, really tired of taxes.  It wasn't such a huge deal when I was employed like everybody else.  You take the form.  You fill out the form.  You do a little math.  You're done.  Now, I'm technically self-employed and there are so many freaking pieces of paper I'm supposed to be accountable for.

I feel very helpless at tax time.  There's more information than I know how to compute so I'm at the mercy of someone else to put it all together for me.  Then I have to pay out lots of money that I don't have on hand because I only ever seem to earn enough to live off of.  And then, if for whatever reasons the government decides there was something wrong with all the math and paperwork which I had hardly any control over to begin with, they'll send me threatening letters and harass me to give them yet more money.

Furthermore, no one seems to understand this conundrum because they only have to fill out W2s.  So every year everyone else is asking me why I never get money back, and I'm always explaining to them that my taxes are very different.  Instead of getting money back, I'm expected to somehow raise several hundred dollars which I then give directly to the government.  And that number changes from year to year.  One year it was $4,000.  Another it was only $800.  Everyone says there must have been a paperwork error on the $4,000, but is the IRS ever going to give me that money back?  Sure as hell they're not.

More likely than not, they'll notice that discrepancy someday and assume that I'm just lying about how much money I earn, and rain hell down on me while I huddle in my little trailer and wonder where the heck I'm supposed to get yet more money to give the government.

So there.  That's my rant on taxes.  I'd be so freaking happy if they just simplified it all down.  You earn X which means you pay Z% of X.  So much better than getting calls from my freaking accountant.  "Now are you sure you didn't use your phone at all to contact your customers or place of business, because we could deduct that for you."  For the billionth time, no!  Don't you people charge by the hour?  Stop asking me this.