The longest night and cheap laundry

Well, that was harrowing.

It's winter in New England already, which means the start of power outage season. Oh, who am I kidding? That's year round.

If it rains, the power goes out. If it snows, the power goes out. If it's windy, the power goes out. If it's the nicest day you've ever seen, the power will probably go out.

It's not even that the power goes out, it's that it stays out for days and weeks. Season after season, massive power outages. You'd think they'd work harder to build a better infrastructure, but no.

Luckily, I live in a heavily populated area so we get priority- we were only without power for 17 hours. Some places mere miles from here are expected to be without power at least a week.

Last night we read scary stories by candlelight, and Anton only set himself on fire once.

And drank. Of course. Isn't that what everyone does when the power goes out?

I was resigning myself to weeks. months. years. without power and making plans on which cat would be eaten first when all the lights suddenly came on and I may or may not have yelped.

Anyway.

Before the six inches of heavy wet snow that brought down our power, I was sitting down to write a post about my newest obsession: homemade laundry detergent.

I'm not a fan of most commercial detergents- most conventional cleaning agents give me hives for some dumb reason; just walking down that aisle in the grocery store turns my skin red and blotchy. So, I usually use something like 7th Generation or Ecover and what ever granola crunching brands there are. They're great, but they are pricey.

Random clicking on Pinterest lead me to someone's fancy homemade laundry detergent, and more searching from there found the easiest recipe.

I knew that I've seen most of those ingridents at the grocery story- in the midwest at least. We went to Target, then Home Depot, then Lowes....without finding anything (well, except for the Oxyclean and Purex, but I didn't want those). Finally, the Ace down the street had the Fels Naptha soap and at least knew what Borax was, even if they didn't have it. Then, to the grocery story and sure enough- both washing soda and borax, side by side in the laundry aisle, and cheaper then I've seen anyone talk about. So hurrah.

The actual making of the soap was quick and relatively painless, with the exception of grating the soap- I made three batches so I wouldn't have to do that very often. Anton tried grating it with a hand grater for about  2 seconds before realizing how long it would take and we put it through the food processor. And that was it. Maybe five minutes all together.

I did a test load of laundry last night (pre-power outage) and...they were clean, albeit a bit soapy still- I have a HE washer and I think the tablespoon of this particular mix is still too much. I'm going to halve it next time and see what happens. Other than that- it's friggin awesome, and cheap, and my next goal is to perfect the dishwashing detergent recipe I found. Hurray frugality! 

No time to wallow in the mire

I've been home on sick leave for the past week and a half, but I've only been up to sitting up for maybe the last day or two. I don't recommend getting surgery in your abdomen region if you plan on doing things. I kept being told recovery was going to be so quick that I'd be bored and begging to go back to work. First of all, anyone who knows me knows I would never beg to go back to work. I go back only resigned to my fate, but never eager. Second, I was lucky enough to develop post-surgery anemia which slowed me down quite a bit- even without the medication I've been on, standing for any length of time would make me dizzy and winded. Standing. Add that to the pain heaped with pain, and it's been a pretty crappy week and a half. The only positive (which,was the goal, really) is that it has seemed to solve the problems I was having pre-surgery. So YAY.

My big plan for the obligatory two weeks off of work was to write, write, write. I keep saying what I need is a few weeks away from work to recharge so I can actually focus on writing, but I was overstretching it thinking I could do it while cut up. Today was the first day I actually pulled out my notebook, but I didn't write anything new. I did start typing the current draft, which is smart considering how many times I've misplaced my notebooks the past several months- even left one at my grandmother's when I visited in August.

I had a list of goals I wanted to do before I turn 30 in a few months- several of which I've actually accomplished, a few I won't be able to (thanks to my body turning on me over the summer. Jerk body. At least that is sorted now.) but one I'm going to be very fucking angry with myself if I don't manage it is getting this fucking story to the point I'd actually start looking for an agent or trying to shop it out to a publisher myself. I have wasted too much of the last decade half-assing and dreaming, and the time to hesitate is fucking through. 


Not that this particular story has been in the works for 10 years- last 3 in bits and pieces. I just get frustrated at myself for not having anything to show for the past ten years of my life. I've done nothing, contributed nothing.

I have three more days left until I have to go back to work, and then NaNoWriMo rolls around again. For whatever reason, it was very helpful last year (10th times the charm?) and I'm hoping the same holds true this year. I might even go to some of the meet ups this time if only to have some one to read for me. I love my family but they're not exactly the people you go to for constructive criticism.