Do You Have Shopping Cart Anxiety? — Part 1
It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon when Amanda Worthington lay her life bare for all to see.
“It was the worst day ever,” she whispered tensely. “I was about to start my period, my boyfriend and I broke up the night before, and my sister called and begged me to pick up 10 two-liter bottles of Dr Pepper at the store for her kids’ soccer practices. I wanted to say no, but she threatened to tell our mother about the time I ate her lipstick.”
“Mom’s very protective of her lipstick,” Amanda added. “And it only happened last year.”
Despite Amanda’s terrible day, she found no care or kindness coming from her fellow shoppers that afternoon. “In fact,” Amanda says, “I felt like people were staring at me. Judging. Am I crazy?”
Amanda, a slightly pudgy hospice nurse, pushed a cart filled with a box of tampons, four chocolate bars, 10 two-liter bottles of soda, and 8 boxes of Hungry Man Salisbury Steak frozen dinners.
“Oh. The Salisbury Steak was for Mr. Vitols, an elderly man I shop for sometimes. If I don’t bring his Hungry Man, he waves his cane and curses me in Latvian,” Amanda added.
Hyssop Rediscovered – And a Mask for Your Gorgeous Skin
There’s this magical box that lives in my “crunchy corner.” In it are wonders ne’er before seen, like unicorns and fairies and men who ask for directions.
Just kidding, men. (You’d never fit in this box.)
Actually, what’s in this box are small baggies full of herbs and roots and flowers and resins. Every so often, when I go to our local natural food store, I’ll pick up an herb that I’ve recently learned about, but never worked with. I bring it home, smell it, touch it, and occasionally just toss it in the box and forget about it. Not for lack of interest, but more for an abundance of distractions.
You know how it goes. There’s always bread to be made, dishes to be washed, friends to be served tea, or cats to be dressed up like German barmaids. Priorities.
About a month ago, as I was planning a few of the plants I’m going to grow in my new rooftop garden, I ran into hyssop seeds. (Isn’t that just about the prettiest word you’ve ever seen? Hyssop. Hyssop. Hyssop.) And while I was familiar with it, I remembered that it was an herb I’d tossed into the box a few months before.
The Lean, Green Avocado Hand Moisturizing Machine Recipe
There are three things you’ll always find on the verge of going bad in my kitchen:
1. Sauerkraut, which I’ve made religiously by hand every six months for the last two years, and I’ve never eaten. I buy a cabbage, ferment it, and then forget that it exists. By “forget,” I mean ignore. The idea of sauerkraut is good in theory, but when it comes to actually eating it, well … my sock looks more appetizing. By “looks,” I mean “smells.
2. A quarter cup of homemade hamburger helper. We have “hamburger helper” every two weeks or so here, and no matter what, no matter how hungry everyone is or how full everyone is or how many dogs I threaten to adopt to eat our leftovers, we always have exactly one quarter cup of it still in the pan when dinner is over. It’s enough to where you feel a guilty pit in your stomach for even considering throwing it out. But it’s not enough for another meal for one person the next day. So into a glass jar it goes, and in the refrigerator it stays, for three weeks, until my conscience is clear enough to say, “Well, if anyone tried to eat it now, they’d just get sick. Even that imaginary dog. Might as well throw it out.” It’s a system; who am I to change it?
3. One mushy, brown avocado. If you want to ripen avocados quickly, you store them in your cupboard for two or so days. And then you take them out and cook with them, or put them in your fridge to slow the ripening process. Unless you’re me. Then, you buy three avocados, even if you only need two, and forget that there’s one in the cupboard for a week. Then, one day you’re filling your water glass, and a little voice from the cupboard goes, “Hey. Hey. If you don’t pay attention to me, I’m going to grow legs and hair, move to Portland, and start an indie band called mono:unsaturated.”
Yes. You can steal that band name.
Anyway, if you’re anything like me – although you’re probably not, because you actually eat your sauerkraut – you’ll have an avocado ready to go for this easy-peasy, food-on-your-hands, super mono:unsaturated hand treatment.
The Crunchy Day of Gift Giving and Radio Listening
I really questioned whether or not it was a good idea to run a coupon code for the “sales” days coming up here, mainly because we’ve been so busy with orders already, we have a hard time keeping up with it. (Believe me, my loves, I am NOT complaining.)
However, it IS the holiday season and I DO want as many of you as possible to give your friends, loved ones, and family members handmade gifts (even if they’re not handmade by you), so please, please use this coupon code before it expires. (And, if you don’t want to buy anything handmade from me, that’s okay. Just PLEASE peruse Etsy or other places this weekend for more sales from conscious small businesses. SO many amazing deals to be had.)
So … SAVE 20% today through Saturday at Crunchy Betty’s Natural Market. USE COUPON CODE GRATITUDE to save some dinero and give the gift of natural loveliness this holiday season (or just give it to yourself, doggone it). PLEASE read below for an important note about applying the coupon code (sometime Etsy’s a bugger to make sense of when it comes to coupon codes).
9 Pretty Simple Pimple Home Remedies
A few weeks ago when I was digging around for a post to “revive” from way in the depths of Crunchy Betty, my first thought was a very, very old post titled 27 Quick and Crunchy Home Remedies for Pimples. It’s a great post, full of fun little ideas for when you have a giant monster on your face and want to treat it quickly. I even used several of the ideas in the Simple Pimple Remedies section of Food on Your Face for Acne and Oily Skin.
There’s just one problem with it.
The picture I used to accompany that post is horrendous. Terrible. Horrifying. I have no idea what I was thinking at the time, and the only excuse I have is that I was a new blogger and thought “different” was cool. Well, that was very different. And the opposite of cool, which is technically warm.
So it was kind of like a creepy clown that’s been baked in the oven at 125 degrees for about 3 minutes. Yes. That’s exactly what it was like.
I will not post that picture here, because by gosh and all, I don’t want it haunting me for the rest of my blogforsaken life.
So, when I realized I couldn’t “revive” that post as is, I thought, “I’ll take a few new pictures for it.” And then I thought, “WAIT! I’ll pick out my 9 favorite, easiest, most effective remedies and just make a picture post.” And so I did. Funny how you get things done when you decide you’re actually going to do them.
So here you go. My 9 favorite Pretty Simple Pimple Home Remedies. Perfect for looking at, remembering, and pinning to Pinterest if you need extra help with the memory jogging. (To wit, nothing was more horrifying than seeing people pin that terrible picture with the post mentioned above. Let’s do it right this time.) Also, for those of you who’ve been telling me to get a Pinterest button, I HAVE ONE. It’s right there, kinda tiny, at the top left hand side of the post. Check it.
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