An accidental theme

Flagstaff occupies the largest contiguous Ponderosa pine [butterscotch tree] forest in the world.


I tell you that to assuage your growing suspicion that life is passing you by while you read this blog. Occasionally, I will include redeeming bits of information to assuage you harder.

We follow an RVing page on Facebook who just revealed the two of them used 60 gallons (2-30 gallon totes) of laundry on a ten-day camping trip. Look, I'm no one to judge. Still, you can tell I'm judging a tiny bit, can't you? I'm a flawed individual, and these are clean, clean people. Maybe they are teenagers; that's the detail that would pull it all together.

[On the off chance you clean, clean people read this blog: just kidding! You guys were the nattiest campers in the park! You know I'm just jealous.]

Annie was explaining to the cousins that we don't heat up much water. Stove-top for washing dishes, and if the weather is hot enough we don't bother heating water for our showers, which we take using a lawn sprayer.  Lori didn't look even slightly shocked or horrified, but graciously offered us hot showers on the spot. I guess it's good that I didn't mention we were no-poo. That could have made inroads in her equanimity. I've got to admit, all that hot water was pretty great. Thanks!

Annie just read to me that it takes 37 gallons of water to make a roll of toilet paper. Can this be true?? You could shower for eighteen minutes with that much water, although that wouldn't be an effective substitute for an entire roll. I'll have to think more about this.

What happens when I think too long about toilet paper.

It wears itself out before nightfall, and then we're left in the dark.

 

Trucks have been porting these potties into the forest for days. What you may not see here is that they have all the doors pointed IN, so that they are INaccessible. Today, they began hauling them back out again, unused (as far as I could tell). 

These trees could be sold to make toilet paper.

My hooves do not fall through! Annie convinced me to try, and that's one more thing crossed off my Blech-it list.

This ends badly for someone. Enough said.

That's us! I obscured the license plates for safety.

That concludes today's post, which took one pint of water and a Coor's Light to produce.

Do we know you?

We've been thinking of Al and Karen today, because we're hanging out at Lazy Days, their favorite place.  It occurred to me that any of these folks we see around RVs could be bloggers.  Do we know you? Do we know you?  Five couples are seeking restraining orders, so we're laying low here at [a place we'll tell you about later] (which, by the way, is AWESOME).  I'm a little giddy from the free chocolate chip cookies in the lobby and the fresh coffee MOREPLEASETHANKYOU!!


We're taking the Driver's Confidence course at Lazy Days, so that Annie will finally stop martyring herself on the pale of pilot fatigue.  HA!  She loves to drive.  I'll never get the keys out of her hand.  It's okay, because I don't love to drive anything.


Little-known fact:  Seffner is not that close to the beach.  So, Annie hauled my whiney butt an hour west so I could dip my fat piggies in the Gulf of Mexico again.  Clearwater Beach seemed nice-but-busy, so we hit Sand Key County Park just south.




I've been away from Florida so long that I had forgotten how happy the beach makes me.   How happy does it make me?  It makes me pretty happy.

We got a car phone call from Alphonse and Bruno this week.  [Remember when saying "car phone" was like science fiction?] They made us laugh.  Made!

We thought of Maria and MaryGail a lot today, because we used our Dunkin' Donuts card, and because we checked our hotel for bedbugs.

[Maria travels a lot and taught us how to do that.]

The hotel we're at offers a water-conserving option to not replace your towels every day;  they call it "Save the World One Chambermaid at a Time," or something.   Annie and I plan to put a big ole dent in the world tonight by using 22 people's share of hot water.  Don't judge us.  You know why.

While you wait.

In-between talk of laundry and poop, meet HighlyUncivilized.  He writes a blog full of homesteading hacks and interesting conservation and environmental ideas.  Check out this worm tower - brilliant!

I've been trying out the no-poo lifestyle for about three weeks, and I would say it's generally a success.  I'm still using baking soda every time I wash my hair, followed by a thorough rinse, a spritz of water/vinegar mixture, and a second rinse.  I've read that many people don't use even baking soda after the transition period, but I'm still using it.  My hair is pretty short (max 1.5" after a haircut), and not oily anymore, so I don't have split ends or oily roots to worry about.  I don't style or blow-dry it.  It's free-range hair.  

The first time you try it, you will be weirded out by having no suds.  It will feel the opposite of clean.  Just give it a nice massage with your fingertips. [Do NOT use the plug-in muscle massager that promises to get the kinks out.  It's not talking about your hair.]

The only downside I see right now is sensory deprivation.  I'm used to my hair smelling like something - a tropical rainforest, a lemon grove, a rose garden - during and after its fauxpoo.  Not that I can get it to my nose to sniff, but it's just there.  Baking soda leaves me smelling like nothing, which is better than what I went in smelling like.  That might not be a complete bummer, either, because Annie and I have a hard time agreeing on shampoo scents, but we want something cruelty-free and preferably without SLS or parabens.  And cheap.  Can This Marriage Be Saved?   If we can't agree on a scent, maybe we can agree on having no scent.

Some of our face-friends read this blog, and I fear their fear.  If I weren't writing here, I wouldn't talk about my toilette at all.  If you're no-poo, do you tell your friends?  Or do you wait until they notice how environmentally-friendly, preservative-free, and frugal you look?

My two-pint shower.

This is a one-gallon lawn sprayer, like you might sling over your shoulder, filled with poison or margarita mix.  You might also rest it on the bench of your shower compartment, filled with hot water.  Different strokes.  I'm not here to judge.

I started out filling it completely with hot water, but by the end of my first shower I had half the container left.   

The next time, I filled it only halfway.  I got wet, I got sudsy, I got rinsed, I got clean.  It was the whole package.  Still half left.  

[PSA:  I just learned that suds have no connection to cleaning power.  I've been sold a bubbly bill of goods.]

Annie tried it, too, and declared it yucky.  And, no.  It's not wonderful like standing under endlessly hot water as though you were in a hotel.  It's wonderful like I don't have to decamp to go get more water.  It's wonderful like I feel and smell as though I just took a shower, because I did.

Have any of you gone no-poo?  I accidentally went SLS (sodium lauryl sulfate)-free when I started using Avalon Organics, and I know that my hair doesn't get as oily, and neither does my face.  I was crediting a phantom menopause, but after I started reading I took back menopause's credit and gave it to an SLS-free product.

I'm curious about no-poo, but a little afraid.