California ground squirrels and rock squirrels chew up rattlesnake skin and smear it on their fur to mask their scent from predators, according to a new study by researchers at UC Davis. Barbara Clucas, a graduate student in animal behavior at UC Davis, observed ground squirrels (Spermophilus beecheyi) and rock squirrels (Spermophilus variegates) applying snake scent to themselves by picking up pieces of shed snakeskin, chewing it and then licking their fur. Adult female squirrels and juveniles apply snake scent more often than adult males, which are less vulnerable to predation by snakes, Clucas said. The scent probably helps to mask the squirrel's own scent, especially when the animals are asleep in their burrows at night, or to persuade a snake that another snake is in the burrow. full story

These squirrels are amazing: hot tails and perfume!

From the The Universal Household Assistant or What Every One Should Know (1884):

Things to try. — Try popcorn for nausea.    Try cranberries for malaria.    Try a sun-bath for rheumatism.    Try ginger ale for stomach cramps.    Try clam broth for a weak stomach.    Try cranberry poultice for erysipelas.    Try a wet towel to the back of the neck when sleepless.    Try swallowing saliva when troubled with sour stomach.    Try eating fresh radishes and yellow turnips for gravel.    Try eating onions and horseradish to relieve dropsical swellings.    Try buttermilk for removal of freckles, tan, and butternut stains.    Try taking your cod liver oil in tomato catsup, if you want to make it palatable.    Try hard cider -- a wine-glass three times a day -- for ague and rheumatism.    Try taking a nap in the afternoon if you are going to be out late in the evening.    Try breathing the fumes of turpentine or carbolic acid to remove whooping cough.    Try a cloth wrung out from cold water put about the neck at night for sore throat.    Try snuffing powdered borax up the nostrils for catarrhal "cold in the head."    Try walking with your hands behind you if you find yourself becoming bent forward.    Try a silk handkerchief over the face when obliged to go against a cold piercing wind.    Try planting sunflowers in your garden if compelled to live in a malarial district.

From the The Universal Household Assistant or What Every One Should Know (1884), posted at the request of kitsunekaboom

Ringworm — remedy for. — When the disease does not come from direct contagion, children are generally in a poor state of blood, and good living, sea air, and tonic medicines are of great benefit. The following application will frequently be found of much service: Wash the part effected with a little lemon juice; then rub in with the finger a little gunpowder which has been bruised in a mortar. Do this gently about twice a day. Be very careful not to make the skin sore.

From the The Universal Household Assistant or What Every One Should Know (1884):

Household Hints. — Do not deposit wood ashes in a wooden vessel or upon a wooden floor.    Never use a light in examining a gas-meter.    Never take a light into a closet.    Never read in bed by candle or lamp light.    Never put kindling wood on top of the stove to dry.    Never leave clothes near a grate or fire-place to dry.    Be careful in making fire with shavings, and never user any kind of oil to kindle a fire.    Keep all lights as far from curtains as possible.    Always fill and trim your lamps by daylight, and never near a fire.    Good nice pie-crust can be made by always observing the following rule. One-quarter of a cup of shortening to every cup of flour used; to be mixed as dry as possible with cold water, and mixed only with a knife.    Take sweet butter only for baking purposes, and never fail to thoroughly beat together your butter and sugar, if you would be sure of good results in cake baking.    Have metal or earthen vessels for matches, and keep them out of reach of children. Wax matches are not safe.    Ground mustard mixing with a little water is an excellent agent for cleansing the hands after handling odorous substances.    Cut hot bread or cake with a hot knife, and it will not be clammy.    Salt extracts the juices of meat in cooking. Steaks ought therefore not be salted until they have been broiled.    In boiling dumplings of any kind, put them in the water one at a time. If they are put in together they will mix with each other.    Do not cut lamp-wicks, but trim them by wiping off with a scrap of paper.    Never boil vegetables with soup stock, for if you do it will certainly become sour in a short time.    Boil your cream for coffee, and see if the coffee will not taste better, as well as keep hot longer.    Pin-cushion covers made of cheese cloth embroidered and trimmed with lace, wear well and keep their looks.    Some one says that leaves of parsley, eaten with a little vinegar, will destroy the odor of breath tainted by onions.    Hot liquid lye is recommended for removing obstructions in waste pipes. Or let the potash dissolve over night in the pipes.    To wipe dust from papered walls, take a clean, soft piece of flannel. Of course it must not be damp, but the dry flannel will remove the dust.    Varnish the soles of your shoes, and it will render them impervious to dampness, and will also make them last longer. This is a good plan.    Clean the mica in stove doors with vinegar. Take clinkers out of stoves by putting a few oyster shells into the grate, when they will become loosened, and may be removed without injuring the lining.    Save the droppings from spermaceti candles, tie them in a cloth, and keep to smooth rough flat-irons.    Never starch napkins.    An old black bunting or cashmere dress may be made to serve a further period of usefulness by being made into a petticoat.    Between two evils choose neither.    Writing a will does not shorten life, and yet many men fear it will.    Save old suspender rings, and sew them on the corners of kitchen holders to hang them by. It will be easy then to flip them on to a nail, and they will not be so likely to get lost.    Powdered borax with a little sugar, blown into the cracks and crevices with a small bellows, will drive away house-ants.    Have a high stool in the kitchen to sit on when tired, to continue your work if necessary. Perched on its top you can wash dishes or iron with ease. A low stool placed on a wooden chair forms a substitute, but a poor one. A soft sheep-skin mat is restful to stand upon.    There is nothing better for cleaning brass or copper than coal ashes. They are also good to scour knives and forks with. For tin, whiting or fine sand is best.    To cleanse jars or jugs or any earthen vessel slaked lime is good, or warmed lye.    To keep a stove smooth, take a coarse and pretty large piece of flannel, roll it hard, and dip it in fine sand. Proceed to rub your stove whenever you are through cooking. Almost any stove will look better for being done the same way occasionally. Boiled starch is also very good to keep a stove looking well; put it on where it will not burn off — around the back and sides where it doesn't get very hot.

From the The Universal Household Assistant or What Every One Should Know (1884):

Health — secrets for. — First, keep warm. Second, eat regularly and slowly. Third, maintain regular bodily habits. Fourth, take early and very light suppers, or, better still, none at all. Fifth, keep a clear skin. Sixth, get plenty of sleep at night. Seventh, keep a cheerful and respectable company. Eight, keep out of debt. Ninth, don't set your mind on things you don't need. Tenth, mind your own business. Eleventh, don't set up to be a sharp of any kind. Twelfth, subdue curiosity.

I love the last one: Trust us, you really don't want to know.

I've had several people complain about my appearance, saying something must be done. I look to ratty, my clothes are often tattered. I should die my hair or at least brush it more often. Wear lipstick. Do something.

However, I like how I look. I feel comfortable in my own skin. I've stopped trying to fit into a mold or a subculture. I'm exploring my own ground. And while I may get a little down about my weight now and again, I'm finding peace there too. I don't want to go back to being the bulimic stick I was years ago. I might be "overweight", but I'm pretty healthy (well, except for the falling down/seizure/twitchy/dizzy/whatever the hell they are spells).

I don't mind that people think I look like some "crazy woman". I am a crazy woman. I embrace that. It took me a long time to be comfortable in my skin. To be comfortable being what I am. I have come to realize of late that beauty is not about who or what you are, it is about not fighting who or what you are. I'm letting myself be me, and I like it.

I am not saying that there isn't room for improvement or bettering. While I have come far, I have a long way to go still. But as I move ahead I want to add more than replace. I no longer don't want to be me, and those who want me different will have to get used to that.

I haven't fallen down once since the rapture I experience a little over a week ago. Not once. Something was awakening. The unwinding of the Kundalini. I have noted much symbolic significance in what I have called my cane. It is more than a cane, it is my staff. I realize now that I did not need my staff because I had trouble walking, but that I had trouble walking because I needed my staff. Now I have found it and seen what it is, I do not need it to walk around, but I do need it for my journey. It was meant for me.

I have come to see my staff in the form of a serpent, the handle being the serpent head. The serpent is not an animal I would have picked out to associate myself with. The squirrel, the skunk, the Canadian goose, and the raccoon. Those have been the animals I have felt kinship with. But now I walk a new path. Not really new a new path, as I've always walked my path, it's just I realized before that I was walking.

----

Today is the first day I have been able to take my staff outside since I sealed it with polyurethane 6 days ago. I put the coating on it so that I would not have to worry about taking it outside in the elements. I was worried that snow and rain would take their toll on it, and it would not be long before it crumbled of rot.

Putting the polyurethane on proved to be more adventure than I had anticipated. More accurately: putting the polyurethane on the staff was easy, getting it off myself was difficult. I don't have any paint thinner, and not much else works as a solvent for polyurethane. I tried water and soap. I tried rum. My hands were sticky and the stick was spreading. The brushes I placed in a plastic bowl of soapy water and I hope that they are still able to be fully cleaned when I do get paint thinner. However, my hands and my arms were my more immediate concern and I lacked the correct solvent.

It then occurred to me that there was another approach to solve the problem. I needed the polyurethane would take hold of rather than something that would take hold of the polyurethane: flour. I worked the flour over my hands and arms and between my fingers letting it form a thick paste with the polyurethane. That paste I could then simply scrape off my skin. It worked, and I am now free of the stick of the polyurethane. I will, however, make sure I have paint thinner on hand if I try this again, so that I can do the clean-up the proper way.

i want to feel the blade against my skin
i want to see my blood
i want to feel the pain as i pour alcohol over my wounds
they get a much nicer shade of red that way
i want take pills and pills
and more pills until i sleep forever
i just want this all to stop
i want it all to be over
i don't care anymore
but tonight
tonight i will get drunk
and yes i'm going to be getting drunk to be self-destructive
i don't care
anything is better than my head
switching channels
constant screaming
i can't shut it out
i can't do this much longer

i feel like i'm hopelessly broken
i hate me
i'm shakey all the time
i'm on a thousand meds
i cause emotional pain to those around me
i want to die
but i'm afraid
sometimes that fear goes away enough to let me try
i'm cold and scared
i'm lost
i just want this to end
these loops leading nowhere
i built this maze too well
i can't find my way through
it hurts
it hurts
i want the pain to stop
get out of my head
stop shaking
fucking stop shaking
get a fucking grip
maybe i need to be institutionalized
but i don't want that
i keep typing the same thing
day after day
i'm getting nowhere
fuck this
let it stop
i want to reach for a blade
feel it on my skin
i want anything
to just stop this
nothing works
there is no solution
i'm trapped in a web
a maze
and a riddle
i keep going down the same paths
there has to be an end
a way out
let me free

The gnomes have stolen my purse. I need my purse. They are getting really annoying. When I catch them I'm going to make some gnome-kabobs. I'm going to skin those little fuckers. They best be getting out of here. Grrrrrrr...

After I left Harvard Square, I met riga_mortia at her house. I'm blessed to have gotten to spend another wonderful night with her. I’m blessed again to have gotten to sleep next to her yet again. The best, most wonderful sleep. I’m yet blessed again to have had her make me breakfast in bed in the morning. I’m so completely in love with her.

She is beautiful and wonderful and wounded and fighting all at once. She’s amazing. She inspires me. She, too, is a broken angel, but she’s still flying. Somehow. The thunderous storms still sometimes come to batter her. The viscous winds still sometimes knock her to the ground. But, she is still flying. Through it all, with tattered wings and shattered bones and bloodied flesh, she still flies. She is still radiant.

I want to cut again. I already did a little. The last cutting wasn't pure. It was tainted by thoughts of food. I don't want to cut over food. I have better cutting to do. Pure cutting. Let my blood flow, because the pain heals me. The ugliness complements my ugliness. Let me bleed. Let my skin break. Let me feel my pain on my arms and my leg. Let the torments of my soul come forth onto my flesh. Let it.