Lycorne

Okay, for a long time, I’ve slowly been trying to go green. While there are still a lot of things that need improvement in that direction, when I clean I now make my own green cleansers, and I use green dish detergent for the dish washer, and a green dish soap. I make my own facial cleanser, and use baking soda with spearmint oil to brush my teeth. I am using the greener alternative to the laundry detergent and spot remover, but I had old shampoo and conditioner I was using up. (And I’ve been using it up for a LONG time since I had purchased a very big bottle before I decided to go green in Kansas City. I had purchased a HUGE bottle of Aussie Moisture Shampoo when I was living in Prescott, WI which we moved out of in Jan, ’09. So as you can see I was using that bottle a LONG time.) I really liked how the Aussie shampoo worked with their 3 Minute Miracle Conditioner. I liked how the combination of them kept my long hair (okay it’s now below my waist in length when I leave it down) feeling healthy while cleaning them.

But even the Aussie shampoo had ingredients that really aren’t that great for you. So I had decided that when I finished the bottle I attempt to make my own shampoo. Well I finally finished the bottle, so it was time to live up to the promise to myself. For one shower/shampoo I found myself in too much of a hurry to find a recipe I liked and use it. So instead I used the Sauve shampoo and conditioner that my husband prefers which were on hand. I quickly remembered why I liked the Aussie 3 Minute Miracle Conditioner much better than the generic ones. My straight hair felt rough and almost frizzy like. It was also harder to comb and brush; I just really didn’t like how it felt. So I knew next time I would have to something different.

Online searching doesn’t yield many varieties of recipes, in fact I think there is only about a half dozen that are repeated on many, many websites. So I went to the library and picked up a couple of books again. I have used a few recipes by Janice Cox before and I liked them so I picked up a couple of her books, Natural Beauty from the Garden and Natural Beauty at Home. Inside I found a recipe that to me didn’t seem like a shampoo at all since it didn’t use any soap. The recipe was called Old-Fashioned Rosewater Shampoo, and instead it had something which I had heard for a very long time is a good conditioner for the hair, egg. Basically it uses rose water, apple cider vinegar and egg. (To see the actual portions please check out Natural Beauty from the Gardenby Janice Cox.)

I wasn’t sure how my hair would feel when I used the recipe. It sounded so strange to not have any type of soap in it. It certainly didn’t make any lather like most of us are used to when washing our hair. I massaged it into my scalp as directed and worked it through the rest of my hair. It makes enough so that you massage it through your hair twice, and I followed the suggestion of leaving it on 15 minutes the second time for more conditioning. Now I’m not sure if it was exactly 15 minutes. I just did my normal routine, wash my hair first and wash the rest of me in the shower while my hair is conditioning (this time with the egg mixture), then a final rinse just before I exit the shower. The only other thing I made sure to do was to rinse my hair with cool to warm water instead of hot. (I certainly didn’t want to end up with pieces of cooked egg in my hair, which I didn’t.)

While I wasn’t sure if my hair would feel clean after massaging this egg mixture into my scalp, it turns out that my hair/scalp does actually feel clean. I also like the feeling/texture of my hair after using this concoction. it was easy to comb out, and once my hair was dry it brushes easily. Now to see how long my hair feels clean after using it, since I just used to yesterday. I usually try to go 3 or more days before washing my hair again, so we’ll have to see how long this lasts. I’ll also have to see if I like how things work repeating this shampoo again and again. Sometimes you do need to switch up your cleaning routine, but I’ll know more later. I guess I’ll have to keep eggs on hand to clean my hair now….

Okay you may wonder why I when I haven’t used this site in almost 3 years I am now adding a recipe tab. Well basically it’s like this ….

Hubby is making a WordPress plug-in called Recipe Press, and when he’s done hopefully it will have the ability to create shopping lists from the selected recipes or user created menu(s). (Add customizable cookbooks, private notes, and a rating system for recipes and you’ll see that basically he wants to have the most functionality of RecipeZaar.) I’m going to support his attempt and hope that I will be able to do what I want with it in the end. The features I most want are the more advanced ones (or subscription based ones) on RecipeZaar but since I’m a SAHM and he’s only recently gone back to work, affording subscriptions aren’t the easiest thing to do right now.

Therefore I will slowly be adding the recipes that we normally use on a day to day basis in the hopes that eventually I’ll be able to use the software to plan menus and create shopping lists. I will also be adding the non-food recipes I am most likely to use or make ie … bath and body, and/or household cleaning.

I do know from experience it’s easiest to have just one nice and easy place to look for the recipes you want, and it’s even better if it’s quick and easy to find them there as well.

I know, I know it’s been ages since I last posted. Often I couldn’t think of much to say, or didn’t have time when I did manage to think of something I could post about. Some things that happened since my last posting….

Baby Shower: On March 18th, my sister-in-law, Kathy, and sister, Andrea threw a baby shower for me. The shower did go well, even if somehow the invitations didn’t include the information of where we registered. Family was wise though and we received many things that we’ll will be able to put to good use. Currently, I need to get stamps to send out the thank yous.

Bardic Madness: Shane and I went to an SCA event last weekend in Wautoma, WI. It was held at a youth camp there, and while we had intended to stay in the camper van, when we arrived they had a heated cabin with a free bedroom with a queen bed near the bathroom. Needless to say, we decided that would be a good choice and stayed in that instead. We also had a great time over the weekend and feast on Saturday night was wonderful. I ate too much, but it was worth it.

Most recent Midwife Appointment: I had a midwife appointment on Thursday. I am now 37 weeks along, and now will be having weekly appointments. While at the last two appointments the midwifes were sure the head was down, this one was not. She wanted me to have an ultrasound to verify it, but my appointment had been at 3:30 and by the time I actually saw her it was closer to 4. So when she went to try an arrange one,there was no one there to give one. Since it’s quite a drive to get to the clinic from home instead I will be having the ultrasound this coming Thursday before my midwife appointment. We do try to make our appointments for days we have other things occurring as well, and since we have plans for next Thursday evening in town that was our best choice for coming in.

Other tidbits: We are going to my family’s Easter get-to-gether at 1 pm on Sunday and then to his family’s at 5 pm. Though his family’s get-to-gether is going to be a bit smaller this since one of his nephew’s has Chicken Pox. That family will not be joining the rest of us. It’s for the best, even though I have had Chicken Pox it’s just so close to when I’m due and I really don’t want my baby to have possible exposure.

My mother-in-law has tried another guilt-trip for her not knowing the sex of the baby. A few days ago when she was talking to Shane she mentioned that she had seen this adorable purple coat, but “couldn’t” get it because she didn’t know if the baby was a girl. Umm, last I knew baby wouldn’t care what it was dressed in just as long as baby was kept appropriately warm. Shane attempted to explain it to me as, “well you wouldn’t want to have your daughter in a base-ball uniform.” Well sorry, I don’t want my son in sports clothing (or sportsman for that matter) either so that didn’t sway my opinion any. And while I may be strange, I do consider purple to be a neutral color since it is made from pink and blue. Or at least that is how I choose to look at it.

One thing I don’t understand about baby stores any more is their total lack of good neutral choices of clothing and other things for a baby. Sure most people take the option of knowing the sex of their baby before it is born, but not all of us want to know. Some look forward to the surprise. Personally I think, I will earn the right for a good surprise after going through labor. His family, my family all want a girl. Me? All I want is a normal, healthy, happy baby, which is what Shane says as well. (Shane does think it will be a girl, that I will share.) I will love our baby, regardless of sex. Yes, I have a personal idea of what baby may be, but it doesn’t matter to me if I’m right or wrong. We have names picked out for both sexes.

Actually I know I’m stubborn, and the more others wanted to know the sex of our baby the less I wanted to find out, let alone tell them. The more quilt trips extended family tried to put on me to learn the sex the more I felt the need to not learn the let alone share the information. And while recently I may have been thinking it would be nice to know, now I’m not going to find out even with having another ultrasound next week.

Today, I had an appointment to see the midwife. The visit went well, they aren’t worried that I haven’t really gained any weight, only around a pound so far. (I am actually slightly down from what I was after Thanksgiving, so obviously I ate more for Thanksgiving than I did for Christmas.) All she said was to make sure that I’m getting my fruits and vegetables. Baby was also extremely active while I was there. When the midwife went to listen to baby’s heartbeat, baby moved so much that in about 5 minutes or so she had to relocate the heartbeat 4 times. But the heartbeat was strong and sure (when found) and beating about 140 times a minute.

On the 23rd, we went to his nephew’s birthday party. Drew turned 10 and everyone had went in on purchasing him a bike for his birthday.

On the 24th, we had intended on going to my brother and family’s for the family Christmas Eve celebration. Unfortunately my nephew Max had the flu so we decided not to go. We ended up joining his sister’s family for a Christmas Lunch, (yes at his mother’s). After we had lunch there we stopped in for a short visit at Bill and Kathy’s. Kathy had made goodies for us and wanted to make sure they didn’t spoil before we could get together when everyone there was healthy.

On Christmas day, we slept in and had a leisurely day. We watched some tv together, played several games of Age of Empire II (yes I know it’s an older computer game, but we enjoy it). After about three games of that, we played Empire Builder (a board game). In the evening we played Trivial Pursuit DVD Pop Culture edition.

We had a small gift for each other, our big gift is a Pentax K110D camera. It’s a digital SLR camera that can use my older Pentax K mount lenses (with limited capabilities). It’s a good decision with the baby coming. Yes I know we have camcorders but they don’t take good stills. And as much as we will want video after the baby we will still want good still pictures as well.

While so many things went well that day, there was one down. At about 10 minutes to midnight we received a wrong number phone called. Which naturally didn’t make me very happy.

Then we received two more in quick succession at 3:50 am. When I answered the phone, I must say was annoyed enough to tell the person, that if they’re attempting to call someone at that time of night to make sure NOT to dial the wrong number. Luckily that was our last wrong number.

Unfortunately, they woke me up, and that’s when I started to become very uncomfortable with gas and such. So I decided to do something about it. I went and mixed up a bit of soda bicarbonate (aka baking soda and water), knowing that will normally make short work of gas. Unfortunately it was an extremely bad choice in this instance, as it did not sit at all well. Instead it turned my stomach to the point I was praying to porcelain as the saying goes. Unfortunately my hair wouldn’t stay out of the way so then I had to take a shower to wash it, before I could go back to bed. I should note that I didn’t have that icky acidic taste in my mouth, and I believe that was from the soda bicarbonate.

When next I woke (after finally going to sleep) I found that my supper just didn’t want to stay with me, what didn’t come up earlier was now running out later. So basically the 26th was spent taking it easy between trips to the bathroom and resting. Really didn’t feel like eating much, but made sure to get a large glass of OJ, some cottage cheese, cheese and crackers and as much water as I wanted.

Maybe stopping in at Bill and Kathy’s wasn’t a great idea in the long run, since I appear to have picked up that stomach flu from just that short exposure. Shane also had it as did my Dad and Chris (who had gone to Bill and Kathy’s and stayed longer than we did).

This evening I was reading some of the forums I’m in. In them some people are going through family crises with loved ones. While I try to wish them all the best, it reminds me of where I was a year ago. As I type this, 364 days ago, we were leaving the hospital for the last time and driving home.

While it was good to be with mother until the very end even if she was in a coma, it was also hard to say good-bye and know it was going to be the final one. Sure a few good-byes to follow (at the visitation, at the cemetery) but none were particularly easy. This year, we are having Christmas as Bill & Kathy’s rather than dad’s. It will probably be easier for everyone. Nothing would have made last Christmas easy, for any of us, but we survived it. Life always goes on for the living. The trick is to find the way to allow it to go on for you.

While it’s been not always been an easy year, we have survived it. Life will never be the same as it was before, but that’s to be expected. We’ve needed to find a new way to continue some of the traditions we’ve had for years. And we’ve found some, they may still be refined before they are considered prefect I’m sure, but we work at it.

What I’m regretting most of all this evening though, is that my baby will never know Grandma. Sure baby still has one grandma left, but it won’t be the same as knowing my mother as grandma. I admit there is nothing I could have done to change. I didn’t have any say in what happened to my mother. There was no way, I could have prevented her aneurysm from rupturing when I didn’t know it existed. Even if I had become pregnant last year after the wedding, baby still wouldn’t have known my mother. But none of this changes the fact, that I wish my baby could have grown up knowing my mother. While not the same as knowing grandma baby will be able to know grandpa. I am thankful for that at least.

Shane and I had a busy weekend or at least I would call it so. It started on Saturday with us having his family’s Christmas gathering at his mother’s. The party was to start at 1 pm and we arrived about 12:30. Since Karen wasn’t planning to serve any sort of meal at the gathering, we stopped on our way to eat at Taco John’s. It had been a while since we had last eatten there, so it was a nice change.

Earlier in the week Karen had learned that Scott and Charity wouldn’t be arriving until around 5 because Charity worked until 4. The time of the party couldn’t be pushed back until then because others had plans for the evening, Shane and I included. While the party was suppose to start at 1 pm, it was more like 1:45 before we started. The reason for the late start was that Steve, Angie, Cheyanne, and Cody were running late.

Karen believes in having each child sit in front of the tree to open one at a time, while she video tapes it, and order is either youngest to oldest or oldest to youngest. This year it was oldest to youngest. This year she had trouble with her video camera not recording properly. So she’s going to get a copy from Angie who was also taping it this time.

The only thing to note about the gift opening was that Shane played Santa by wearing a Christmas hat/ball cap, and handing out the presents to the kids. Well he wore the hat until he became too hot that is. Otherwise the children’s gift opening went as expected.

After the children’s gift opening we had the adult gift opening. I received a hand painted picture of unicorns on with a purple sky from Katie, (Shay’s gf) which I really love. It’s quite beautiful, and when we get a digital camera I’ll have to take a picture of it. Shane received a popcorn popper from his sister which is exactly what he wanted. Shane had Shay’s name and we had purchased a leather jacket for him. But Shane had decided that he wanted to try and play a joke on his brother. So it was boxed up in a 3 ream box for paper, with a ream of paper on top. Unfortunately Shay didn’t fall for it. I had Scott’s name, and we purchased jeans for him as he requested.

Shay and Katie were the first to leave, and then after a bit names were drawn for next year. Shane has Angie, and I have Shawnadee. A bit later Steve, Angie, Cheyanne, and Cody left. Around 4:00 – 4:30 Shane and I left, which was before Steve and Angie arrived but we had plans for the evening.

We headed to West Salem, for Neil’s operating session. Since we arrived early we ended up stopping at Furiture Deals and Steals. There we found two matching floor lamps that we liked. Since we needed a set for the living room we decided to pick them up. And we like how they look in the living room, and how they balance the light out so much better than the one floor lamp I had before.

Neil’s operating session went well, and we had a lot of fun. I ran through trains, and during the second half Shane dispatched. It really was a lot of fun as always.

On Sunday, I needed to do the bookwork for our local SCA shire. It would have gone much quicker if I had been able to find the forms I needed for printing checks, but I found one which worked in a pinch. I needed to get that done though before we went to the meeting at 3.

After that was done, it was time to go to Bill & Kathy’s, for Teddy’s party. The party wasn’t suppose to start until 2:30 but since we had to be someplace else at 3 we stopped in early for a bit. One thing I did learn is that I really haven’t spend enough time with my nephews. They are a bit shy around me so I’ll probably have to work on that in the future.

Once we left, we had to get something for the potluck for our SCA meeting. We ended up getting crackers to go with the meat and cheese platter we purchased. The meeting went well. On the suggestions of Chelsey we are going to be changing the format of the meetings and such a bit. Instead of having social hour and then meeting, we are going to flip that. Chelsey had been asking about how to up our membership with some other chatelaines and was suggested that we do things more frequently in garb and in public. So the idea is that we have the business meeting first, and then social time in garb and preferably with a theme (at least to begin with).

Our next meeting is going to be at Wedgewood Commons (not exactly public access friendly but we’ll use it as a practice run). The following meeting will be at LaCrosse Public Library so it will be more public access.

After the meeting we had more social time and enjoyed the potluck. I talked with a few about my ideas for new garb for me. Ariella pulled out some of her recent reference purchases and I enjoyed looking through the books. She also has a persona which is approximately the same time and locale as mine.

Once we left we did the rest of our Christmas shopping. It wasn’t that we had a lot of Christmas shopping left. We actually only had some of my side of the family left, mainly my nephews. We had planned on stopping at Farm & Fleet first, but they were closed by the time we got there, a little after 6 I believe. It’s the Christmas shopping season I had expected them to be open later than that! We knew what we wanted to purchase for Chris so we went on to the next store, and picked up what we wanted for Chris and then found presents for Teddy and Max.

We did have to call Kathy to find out if the boys already had what we found but they didn’t. While we were on the phone I found out how Teddy had liked his birthday gift, and I found out he was playing with it at the time. So apparently it had made a big hit with him. It was a metal Tonka dump truck, not one of those plastic things you find all over the place now. While we couldn’t find sturdy metal trucks for them for Christmas, we still hope they like what they’re going to get.

Well, I’m posting for the second time in two days, so I guess some might fall over in shock. If you do, be careful not to hit your head.

Today has been mainly quiet, I’ll admit that. Earlier I ended up going to town to get some distilled water for my plants so can hydrate them all in their new home. Earlier today Shane worked hard at putting his kitchen in order, (yes his kitchen not mine). I’ve spent some time on organizing the living room, but we still have a ways to go before all is done. We still don’t know where many of the things are going yet but we are slowly getting closer. We will have many totes to go through, and several to repack and put into storage.

Oh, and if anyone is really observant you’ll see that I have changed the weather info on my page, and now it not only fits into the column, it’s also for the right location.

I didn’t realize how long it had been since my last post, until my husband mentioned it last night. Today I looked, and my last post was the end of October. It’s not that a lot hasn’t happened since then, because it has. A glance at my husband’s blog has hit some of the highlights in our recent lives.

In November, we found a new apartment, and moved. Our new place is smaller than our last one, but we just couldn’t remain any longer with the cigarette smoke, no heat in one of the bedrooms, and a front door we couldn’t secure. Well, shortly before we moved out the landlord finally put a cheap sliding lock on the front door so it could be secured. It only took them 9 weeks to do that. We couldn’t afford to wait around until he finally thought about doing something about the cigarette smoke.

The new home is actually a townhouse, with the living room, kitchen, laundry in a half bath on the first floor, and two bedrooms and full bath upstairs. It means that baby and office are going to be sharing space for a while, but there weren’t a lot of options available in our price range.

Also in November of course was Thanksgiving. We had two large dinners that day. One on each side of the family, we had 29 on my side of the family and 17 on his. It was wonderful seeing my cousins again, especially Jean and her family. Unfortunately their trip up was quick because Scott had to be back at work on Friday. At least now they’re only one state away rather than on the West Coast, so it will be easier to see them more frequently.

Also on the 28th, I had my first ultrasound. It was really nice to see baby for the first time, and very reassuring to know that baby is right on track and doing well. We do have a VHS tape with pictures of baby, and plan on changing it to a digital format, but things like moving and income have been taking priority. Not yet sure if we’re going to put the video on the web, or if we’re going to make a dvd but we’ll do something with it, maybe both. And it was also good to know that even with Thanksgiving, I only gained about 1.5 pounds since my last visit 5 weeks prior.

We moved the last of our things out of the old place yesterday. Yah, nothing like waiting until the last day, but we kept delaying the moving of the 55 gallon fish tank, which we finally did about 6 pm yesterday. Anyone who’s moved a large fish tank knows it’s quite a big production and this one was less, but luckily Shane had a friend of his help with the moving of the tank an stand. Even without the fish and water it still weighted 100 lbs or so, since Shane had left the 50 lbs of river rock in the bottom.

We had to move the fish back into the tank quicker than expected since the heater wouldn’t stay submerged on the side of the tote we moved the fish in like it needed to. So basically we ended up filling up the tank with most of our hot water (and then cooling it a bit so it would be the right temp) and moving the fish right in. It will take longer for the tank to get properly established, but we have a biowheel filter that’s wonderful in helping it along. Besides we have real hardy fish, they have been through this a time or two before so it should be fine.

It’s hard to believe that this year is almost over, but it is so I’ll leave it at that for now.

Yes, It’s been a while since I last posted. Many things have happened since I last posted, but most of them are unremarkable. I had an appointment with the midwife on Oct 17th. The really wonderful thing that day was that we heard the baby’s heartbeat for the first time. She started out by saying that sometimes it can take a while to find where the baby is so that we could hear the heartbeat, but in this instance the baby was exactly where she started looking, so there was no hunting around for the baby. Early last week we took care of what we needed to at the Trempealeau County so everything is fine there too.

We moved here the end of September. It was at the beginning of October we met our downstairs neighbors. The downstairs neighbors are an unusual lot currently. When first met them we met Chris and Rosey. Chris is actually married to Tina, and Rosey is his girlfriend. Tina and left for Maine several months ago, and after that Chris had met Rosey online and she moved out here from New Jersey. About half way through the month, one evening Rosey became rip roaring drunk to say the least. She does not a good drunk make. When this happened Chris decide that he’d rather have his wife back, and a few days later she arrived back in town. Well, Rosey left for a few days, but since then has apparently learned she has terminal skin cancer and only a few months to live. Now she’s back living downstairs with Chris and Tina. Don’t ask me how they’re working it out, all I know is that all three are there.

What’s the importance of all that you wonder? Well the simple answer has to do with the fact that Rosey and Chris smoke. When there is only one of them down there, the smoking doesn’t seem to come up through the floor. But when both of them are there, Rosey especially, the smoking is simply awful. This is an older double-wide trailer house, that has been put on a basement foundation. While we’re not sure exactly where the smoke is coming from (we’ve attempted to seal off the basement doorway but putting up plastic and weather stripping) it manages to get up here and bother us. We’re not sure if it’s coming through the doorway, the floor (here is no vapor barrier and the false ceiling down below offers no protection), or if it’s coming up through the heating vent that was cut when they put the stairs in.

But when all of that is said and done, it doesn’t really matter where it is coming from, what matters is that the landlords aren’t willing to do anything about it. We’ve attempted for a month to get it contained, or seeing if the landlord was willing to do anything about it. Unfortunately for us, the landlords aren’t willing to do anything about it. Nor have they repaired the cut heating vent in one of the bedrooms. Nor have they fixed the door jam for the front door, even though the door can’t close or lock currently because the jam is too wide. As for the room without heating, the landlord has offered to purchase a space heater and deduct $25 a month from our rent. Sorry, but that’s not acceptable, while space heaters are safer than they used to be, they are still a fire hazard. And I know how much of a fire hazard trailer houses are in and of themselves. Generally if there is a trailer fire, it’s a complete loss, and we certainly don’t need anything to make it more of a hazard.

What does all this mean? Well basically it means we’ll be moving again, and it’s going to be fairly soon. We only learned yesterday, that they are going to do absolutely nothing about the smoke, and their idea of a solution for a bedroom without heat, is a space heater. It’s been more than a month since he was suppose to fix the door jam, and he hasn’t done it yet. So, while I like this place, and love the space we have for what we pay, it’s now time to look for something different. It’s not a fun process but it has proven to be a necessary one. Wish us luck!