Ivory Dish Soap

Yeah. It sucks major. I was trying to cut corners and save a couple of dollars by spending less on dish soap hoping I might be able to treat myself with a couple rolls of paper towel. To be honest, paper towel is a waste of money, waste or resources, but so nice on those rare occasions that you want to drain the oil off some bacon or wash a window. I rarely will splurge on paper towels for these reasons. I have piles of cotton rags, but sometimes when the urge for Lindor truffles is great, I will divert my sweet tooth with cleaning supplies. That being said, I got some Ivory dish soap for a dollar. I got home and proceeded to start washing the dishes only to find that I was able to wash only 1 dish before having to add more soap. It wasn't long before half my bottle of soap was gone and my dishes were still greasy. I looked down at my water sadly, my wrinkled fingers glistened with the grease from last night's pork chops. I looked up at my abused and overly squeezed bottle of dish soap only to read "Non Ultra." WTF? Who makes non-ultra anything anymore? Ultra is my cue to buy when it comes to cleaning supplies. My motto is to find that one cleaner that will kill you, then back off a little bit-perfect grease fighting formulation! What the truck is the point behind non-ultra? For that not-so-clean, clean. Eh. That being said, non-ultra Ivory dish soap is worthless, though I think the kids were able to pull off some bubble action with the remainder out in the kiddie pool. I went back to town and got my good ol' reliable Dawn with bleach. Yes, yes, it might not be as good for the environment as the previous weenie soap, but my dishes are clean dammit, AND I can redeem my foul choices by saying that I got a massive collection of old wire hangers to re purpose into yard art today AND i did not get those paper towels because in trying to save money, I spent a dollar extra. Jess 1, Mother Nature 2.

My kitchen smells like elder flowers. I have 3 pitchers full of cordial-in-the-making with only 4 days left in the soakie-transitional-steeping process. I know, you are on the edge of your seats with excitement. Will Jess' weed juice be a success?! Stay tuned for more on stuff-you-can-pick-out-of-the-ditch-and-eat. This will make me famous one day. Still no camera. Still on the table at the cabin. If my cohort over at http://themilkmanswife.blogspot.com/ would just post her pictures, we could do a tutorial on this. Hint. Hint.

That being said, I suppose I could put in here that I quit my job at DIT and am throwing down applications like a flower girl throws down rose petals at a wedding. 21 went out today and I have 4 tests waiting to be taken. I just can't afford to work for free no matter how much you say you love me. On the bright side, after 4 years of trying and waiting and wishing and trying and being turned down for employment at Webmedx, I finally, FINALLY tested and put in my application and got a email asking me to continue with the hiring process. I'm not in yet, but I am closer to being in than I have ever been before. YAY! Why so excited? Because Webmedx has a great track record, they pay really well, have awesome bonus incentive and shift differentials and this is the job they talk about when you read about being a MT and making 40K a year. This rules.

Um...what else? I need to finish my dishes. Aldi had blueberries for 99 cents a carton, so I bought a flat and plan on making some jelly or jam or something. I discovered veggie chips (other than potato chips) at the Grain Bin, which is kind of old news, but who knew you could make green bean chips? They are so good. I'm making some of those. Also, I see the thistle are blooming and I have a date with some nettle this week some time. More on that later.

Do the thing, do the thing!

Whew. Spent the day with my new bud Heidi. On the way to her house I got lost, then really lost and ended up at this guy's house with a pit bull that snapped at me when I let her smell my hand. Go ahead and bite me dog...I'm lost, make my day. I must be a scary be-hatch because she walked away when I didn't run away crying. Grrrr. Fear me. It totally worked out though, because while I was lost, I was stopping at every elder bush I saw like some people brake for garage sales, grabbing my Aldi bag and pickin' flower heads like a starving cow, coming out of the weeds with bugs in my hair, sweat dripping off my nose and elder pollen from my chin to my belly button. I was stripper hot. Meow.

I have a feeling I stank because one of the first things Heidi said was, "Do I stink? I think my pits stink." I of course took that as my cue to stick my nose in my own pit and take a good huff...yep, still standin' its you. Lol...I know your reading this.

We debated wild chamomile, walked through her wild garden, I pointed out contraband, she uncurled her curly willows, we picked sour cherries. All this while discussing family, sex and drugs. It was good.

We also made elder flower cordial! I'm pretty excited, though because of my lost camera, she gets to document the good stuff. For the record, it was my idea. Nah. We also put elder flowers in a cake. Seriously, there are like 2 main recipes for these flowers-why not cake? So, we put a full head of flowers in a cake and it was good! Like sweet tea. Gonna play with it some more, but I think there is room for WAY more elder flowers. I see elder frosting for on the elder cake with elder blossoms on top all pretty like. I'm kind of an elder ninja/cook right now.

Oh yeah. On the way home I was going 70 and got stopped by the County Mountie. Seriously, I had no kids with me, the tunes were cranked, the wind was whipping through my hair the elder pollen high...the freedom of it all overwhelmed me to the point that my foot just fell. He let me go with a warning. And here I half expected to get hauled in to the clinker because I haven't turned in Luke's school curriculum books yet...