Homework, Lesson Two: Oprah Is Not Research

I mentioned in my last post that I personally fall into the "work constantly" category. That's both a blessing and a curse. A lot of people find themselves in the "I'll get to it pretty soon" group.

I understand this, I really do. One of the big benefits of working from home is that you get to make your own schedule, and be your own boss. If you're not a morning person, and I most certainly am not one, you don't have to get started at 7 am. Heck, you don't have to start until 9 am. It's when you drift off to noonish that the trouble starts.

If you don't have a clear view of what the day entails and what the plan is, it's pretty easy to just check the television (or internet) before you start working. Since each television now has about a zillion channels, chances are high that you'll find something you'd rather be doing than recording your expense receipts for the fiscal quarter.


That leads to a day of watching old movies and eating bon bons with your feet up. We all need those days, once in a while. Pretty easy to take a second day, 'cause you're tired and you worked hard last week. Soon it's Thursday. Then the twentieth and you suddenly realize that you need to mail the rent check and you haven't done a damn thing all month. You can justify it all you want, but if you have to borrow cash to pay the landlord anything you say will sound like an excuse.

What you have to do, to be a success at this working from home gig, is to harness the power of inertia. It's pretty simple: bodies in motion tend to remain in motion. Bodies at rest tend to lay on the couch and eat Cheetos.


Try to plan ahead, to give yourself something to accomplish each working day. A scheduled task. You can watch TV after you finish, but you might find that once you've accomplished one thing, you're ready for a second thing. Just keep moving, and you're golden.

Homework, Lesson One; Jammies Are Not Sportswear

Well, not so much homework as working from home.

A lot more people are finding ways to work from home these days. I've done it more than once, in different jobs, so I thought I'd share some of the things I've learned.

There are a few different categories that your bad habits can fall into. The first one, my own personal trait, is the "working too much" slot. That's when you find yourself saying "oh, just one more package" and everyone else has gone to bed already because it's midnight.

First of all, I don't care how cute your jammies are. You'll need to take them off some time, and put on real clothes.


Sure, the mailbox is pretty close, but the neighbors will notice you running down the driveway in your onesie. And it does NOT look like a jogging suit, no matter what you've told yourself in the house. Yeah, it sucks up twenty valuable minutes. Get your butt into the shower and then put on some damn clothes. And comb your hair.


And like everything else I know, I learned this the hard way. It was years ago, and the details are way too mortifying, but when you meet the handsomest man EVER you don't want to be thinking "Did I shower this week? I don't think so. " and hoping to god that the wind doesn't shift.

I have soaping clothes now, and since I work with lots of oils and colorants they look like hell, but they're real daytime clothes. I look like hell, but they're not jammies.

We'll talk about schedules in another post. First, get dressed and have some coffee. And maybe some toast.

Have two cups. You're gonna be busy.

Fighting Boredom With Bacon

I spent most of the morning doing admin stuff for the business, while Jessie went on a job interview. Once we finished our respective tasks, I dragged him to the store with me so I could do a little shopping for photo props. That meant a trip to World Market.

I know you'll all be surprised to hear that I got distracted in the chocolate aisle. Not just distracted, but well and truly boggled. Mostly by this:Yep, you're reading the ingredients right.


There's no possible way I could pass up such a thing, of course. So I furtively shoved one into the basket and nonchalantly strolled up to the checkout line before Jessie could stop me.

It looked pretty normal when we peeled back the foil, so we each tried a small bite, and gave it an honest try.

Jessie carefully contemplated the flavor.

I'm not sure he enjoyed it all that much.

Anyway, here's our final analysis.

A tip if you try this candy: Keep something to cleanse your palate handy. Sandpaper works pretty well, especially with a nice Draino chaser. Bleck.

Please Stand By

So, we had some ongoing technical difficulties with our website. Until we get things fixed, we've changed everything over to the Etsy store for now. Which was a big pain in the butt because I have all the technical know-how of the average turnip.

This also gave me the chance to update the newsletter format - and it went out this morning. I think I managed to transfer all the subscribers over, but if I missed you, please let me know.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go break some stuff here at the house, too.

Signs of Spring

Guess what? I'm not cranky!

Well, not right this second. I was earlier today, and I'll probably get there again before bedtime, but right now I'm fine and dandy. And that's because, frozen though we've been, I'm seeing signs of actual springtime.

(Side note: yes, fellow Floridians, I have heard that this is the coldest winter in many many years and many of you are just as surprised as I am, but this is my blog so the only complaints that matter are mine. Plus we had to go buy long pants, so I'm all indignant about that.)

Anyway, in addition to my lovely live oak tree in the front yard, we have this fabulous thing:



It started blooming about two or three weeks ago, which bodes well for some nice warm weather to come along soon. I think it might be a crepe myrtle - if anyone wants to chime in and confirm it, or give me other suggestions, I'd be grateful.

And it's covered in gorgeous blossoms, though sadly no fragrance.


Whatever it is, it's gorgeous, and it's right outside my front door.

Today's Tip

If you are working with glue and glitter, the ceiling fan should remain in the OFF position.

Goddamn it.

My God, A Day Off

I've been locked in the soap room for a solid six weeks now. Except for the days I'm locked in the wrapping room. So I was really thrilled to take an actual entire day off.

Jesse and I are still exploring the area, so we decided on a drive. Bad dog-parents that we are, we took Bander to doggie day care for a bath and some baby sitting. Then we took off to take a look at one of the resort areas, Perdido Key.

Perdido Key looks mighty fine from the air, and not so shabby from the ground. It was a little surprising that the beaches were dead empty - even on a Wednesday in February, in California you'd never get an empty beach.

We were driving east (toward the top of the pic) along the water, noticing how we seemed to have the place all to ourselves. We'd gone out with some notion of getting lunch or something, but a lot of the restaurants were still closed, so we kept heading east until we crossed over into Alabama. (This includes driving through, I am not making this up, Floribama.) We finally paused in Orange Beach, Alabama, for coffee and beginets.

Beginets are one of my favorite things about living in this area so far. It's like a donut lived a saintly life and then came back as something better. And then that something better got deep fried and sprinkled with several pounds of powdered sugar. Jesse had never eaten a beginet, and kept arguing that we could get mayonnaise at home. I swear he goes deaf sometimes just to spite me.

So, I knew that beginets were delicious. What I didn't know is that it's not advisable to eat them in a moving car, and certainly not while wearing dark clothes. Because the minute that you hit a bump, this hot fresh delicious confection turns into Satan's Fritter of Doom and bounces out of your hand and leaves powdered sugar donut prints down the front incline of your clothes, so that if you go out in public for the rest of the day everyone will be able to look at your shirt and secretly condemn you for being a sloppy eater while simultaneously being jealous of the beginet that you obviously had earlier. Plus you attract ants.

We tried to get past the problem by eating faster. Bigger bites, simultaneously. Jesse found that his sugary bite glued itself to the roof of his mouth, rendering him unable to speak and warn me not to take a big bite. Which is too bad, because I took a giant bite and then inhaled or something and accidentally sent about six pounds of sugar rocketing up into my sinuses from the inside. If I had only had a blowhole I would have looked like Old Faithful.

We pulled the car over and got out, hoping to stop wheezing and finish our breakfast but the wind whipped the box top out of Jesse's hands and then plastered me with a drift of sugar from head to foot. We threw the damn things away.

We were stopped at a perfectly lovely state park but I was pretty bitchy about being lightly glazed so we didn't stay for too long. Approximately a nanosecond. But Jesse did take a photo to prove that we were there.

Anyway, we drove home, had a late lunch at a decent (but not wonderful) Mexican restaurant, and picked up the dog. He had been bathed and perfumed and smells like a big green apple with horrible breath. Plus we smelled like donuts but didn't bring him any so there's a sort of cloud of resentment and Jolly Rancher dog farts in the house now.

I think it's time to go back to work.

Another Thing That Irks Me

I suppose y'all thought that having no day job would cut down a bit on the things that got on my last nerve. Well, that puts you somewhere between "naive" and "entirely unfamiliar with my cranky existence".

OF COURSE things are annoying the crap out of me. Here's the one for today: people who list ingredients for products and include things like "love" and "good fortune" and "prayers" and other happy bullshit. Implying that their stuff is made with loving care and that everyone else's is made with .... lesser ingredients, certainly with inferior grades of karma.


Really? Because my products contain spite and malice. Actually, the body polish is full of loathing because it makes it much scrubbier. And my soap is made with ennui and angst, in alternating layers.


Tune in tomorrow, when I make bath bombs filled with formless dread and night sweats.

Hans Christian Andersen is a bastard

This post has been brewing for a while.


Before we left California, I was wandering through the mall and I stumbled past a kid's store that was playing some Disney music - earworms, every single tune - and included in the craptacular soundblast was some blathering from The Little Mermaid.

Man, did they change THAT ending.

This really shouldn't go in my mythology category, because by and large I'm interested in the old root tales, and The Little Mermaid was written fairly recently (published 1837.) But it's such a terrible story, and got altered so much, that I couldn't leave it alone.

The Disney line of bullshit is the usual one. Plucky heroine defies her parents in order to gain the love and attention of a prince. Things do not go her way until she learns a lesson and grows up a little, and then the prince comes to her rescue. They live happily ever after. Much singing and rejoicing.





We will gloss over my thoughts about the prince coming to the rescue, simply noting that it's a big lie and repeating it in every single story doesn't make it any more true.











And it's completely different from the actual story. In the written work, the mermaid falls in love with the prince and defies her parents. Things do not go her way, until the prince marries someone else and she dies. That's right, she turns into sea foam, and then into air, where she learns that if she is good and noble in the afterlife, she might possibly go to heaven. Screw her entire life, that's wasted, but hey, she might be able to have a soul. Someday.

Andersen also wrote The Little Match Girl, about a sweet and deserving urchin who starves to death in the snow while hallucinating that she might get a big warm dinner once she gets to - you guessed it - heaven.

A lot of his writing is about completely innocent creatures sunk in misery who will have a better life once they're dead. And there's a uniquely Victorian piety about the whole thing, like he's standing around moaning "won't somebody think of the children" when instead of writing and moralizing and babbling about them going to a better world he could have maybe given one of them a fucking sandwich except he was so busy praying that they STARVED TO DEATH IN THE SNOW.

Anybody who would offer a starving child a prayer instead of a bowl of soup is an asshole. Writing children's stories and pretending that dead children are better off is a whole new level of sanctimonious bastardry.



So. Hans Christian Andersen sucks. And yeah, I know he also wrote The Emperor's New Clothes and The Ugly Duckling and those are fine, but on behalf of The Little Match Girl, I hereby declare him a bastard.

On The Curing Rack

Well, I finally got the store open - last week - and of course now I'm behind on the blog. Damn, there really is no rest for the weary, is there?

I've been churning out lots of soap, though, and here's a preview of some things coming up soon - Arrogant Bastard, Gardener's Soap, Valencia, Carrot Citrus Ginger and Cucumber Mint.

More to follow soon, too!