Second hand Vapor, o my!

Is second hand vapor harmful to bystanders? Well, if it isn't harming the primary user....This seems to me to be the hard fact right in front of all eyes, and yet, scientists in their University closets churn out all sorts of interesting "facts" that I, as a primary user and hardcore non flashy economical vaper consider to be pure B--sh-t. (Oh yes, and this is my now once a yearly crabby little post about what matters the most to me at this moment in time.) If the mixture that is inhaled is toxic, I would most assuredly be dead already. As it is, I have not had one single chest cold since I started vaping rather than smoking. I mix my own ejuice that is 70% VG/30% PG and I have been healthier and breathing easier than I did for my entire life before. That is no exaggeration, but switching to vapor is not the only variable in play. I also shun pharmaceuticals and consume various herbs daily. The only thing unhealthy with me is my joints and entheses. I was diagnosed with asthma once as a child, and I had to use an inhaler for many years as an adult. I was told I would need it all my life & I have proved that to be a solid lie. I am just one subject, and I do encourage the study of other subjects to see how they are doing. The inhalation of propylene glycol is definitely not for everyone. Some can be sensitive to it. For people with such sensitivities, secondhand vapor may pose a problem.  I firmly believe that the hype surrounding second hand smoke and vapor is a smokescreen geared to distract people from the pollution being belched forth by various industrial operations found in every city, and indeed, our own transportation systems. Why worry about a little secondhand when you have a refinery or some other mass manufacturing operation on the outskirts of town? Our atmosphere is global, so isn't it possible that we share the same air pollutants with China? The wind blows everywhere. 

If Kratom is Deadly, Why am I still Alive?

Here we go again. I and many others may lose a great herbal ally. The FDA is trashing kratom, flooding the places of power and influence with misinformation. Allegedly, people die from using kratom, get liver damage, become addicted, etcetera. Well, that information is worth less than the contents of a full septic tank. In 2017, I ate my preferred strains of kratom on a nearly daily basis, depending on the severity of my arthritis symptoms. It helped. Maybe it only helped from a phytonutrient and psychological ceremonial perspective, but it helped. I also happened to have a liver panel test done, and guess what: It was NORMAL. Am I an addict? When my pain and swelling levels are down, I don't eat kratom. I also do not notice that I haven't! If I skip my morning coffee, I get a fierce headache and feel draggy and weird. In the reports of deaths from kratom use, there are also other substances found, including antidepressants. Those FDA approved poisons are both addictive and deadly! So, why then are these pharmaceuticals not being blamed? Follow the money, and you will find the answer. I do follow strict rules when I use herbs. I never mix herbs with pharmaceuticals. I am also careful about which herbs I combine. My overall health, other than the arthritis has been excellent! When everyone around me is suffering with colds, I usually never catch them. I did get a sore throat for one day this past year, and it was gone by the next. I killed it with raw garlic and a strong tisane. I did have one ragingly bad headache this past year. It was accompanied by a total pain in the neck and was most likely due to the arthritis. It passed with a couple nights of sleeping without a pillow, and some gentle exercises. I do have what seems to be a stubborn patch of psoriasis by my elbow. It's par for the course, and I mostly ignore it. I care not a fig about personal beauty, and my animals like me regardless of my appearance. 

Tiny new Vape Gear for Me, wah.

Alas, after a year of faithful and satisfying nicotine delivery, one of my Eleaf iPowers croaked in a very un dramatic fashion. I really loved the iPower and am rather depressed that it is no longer made. Same goes for the cheap and easy Reaper tank from Ijoy. I still have one working iPower, and one good coil for my Reaper tank:

Glah. All I want is my fix of sweet sweet calming pain relieving nicotine in a fairly non harmful yet satisfying delivery system that won't break my miniscule budget. So, I had to invest in some replacement stuff that was semi comparable, I hoped. I found a super tiny bit of equipment called the Eleaf Icare. Do I like it? Hmm. Putting it together was a total B-#@! for my stupid arthritic hands and fingers. Mostly, it was the taking the tank out that caused major cussing, and finally the employment of pliers within rubber gloves. It's tiny and my pinch/grip powers are almost non existent these days.

Finally, after a fight, I got it put together and filled with my homemade Bananas Foster (Flavoring from Nicotine Labs) ejuice which is 24% nicotine, 70% glycerin, and 30% propylene glycol. I must say, the little thing hits pretty darn good! I'm probably going to make some 50% propylene glycol juice just for it because I'm fairly certain it's little coil wont last long with higher glycerin juice. I got this little ICare for under $20, and it's discrete potential is worthy. Two top fill ports make it easy to refill and hopefully, I wont have to replace the coil within a week. I like tiny vape devices, never mind that I can't see them clearly without reading glasses. 

And then, I got my sweet sweet new baby for under $40: The Eleaf Pico. This is my first device that comes without a built in battery and of course I have blow up in my face paranoia. 

This little device is capable of much more than I will ever demand from it. I'm not out to blow huge clouds that obscure my children and grandchildren. I'm never going to build or use fancy coils for it. I put this little rascal to purpose today, and it is working just fine on it's lowest wattage setting with the sub ohm coil that came already installed, and, since it is, I will most likely stick with that. The Melo tank that came with it is pretty much as easy to deal with as the Reaper tanks were. After my friend's mod meltdown, I have serious battery fail paranoia, so I will most likely remove the battery and put it in the garage before I go to sleep each night, and I will most definitely be careful about where I source my batteries. The instructions with this little mod say to get a battery that has a discharge rate greater than 25A. If you are an ex smoker like me and interested in staying that way, these two devices might work for you too. Another thing that will most definitely help is embracing your need for nicotine, and accepting that you may have to make your own juice with high enough levels to keep you from needing a cigarette between vapes. I have met a lot of people that do both, and most are vaping low level nicotine ejuice. How long will these cheap new devices last for me? Let's see!

Avoiding Non Productive Doctor visits

I have lived with constant pain since 2013, and I rarely seek medical help. I have never gotten any firm answers, and I have never gotten any long term relief or any sort of cure, so, what is the point? I always ask myself these questions when I am dealing with a particularly bad episode of pain: Will the two to three hours I spend on a trip and visit to a doctor (This includes travel and waiting time) result in a guaranteed imrpovement in my condition? (Which, by the way, is some form of arthritis according to the last doctors visit.) Will I end up hurting worse after the visit than before due to the rigors of simply getting there and the things that may ensue from being there? Will the doctor want to stick me with a needle? (I have a pathological fear of needles that I have lost my control over.) If I am prescribed a pharmaceutical, will it improve anything, or will it add to my problems? Some people power through initial adjustment periods to new pharmaceuticals and do indeed feel better. Experience has taught me that this is not for my body. Have I done everything for myself right here at home that I can possibly think of doing? Hmmm. This one can be endless and multifaceted depending on how creative I get. I believe that my arthritis is actually not all that bad, after reading numerous accounts of the struggles of others. I believe that I can keep on existing and doing what I can do without taking hours away from time with my family, projects, and Netflix in order to obtain a more definitive diagnosis and a treatment regimen that might very well make my quality of life much worse. After all, I am writing this, despite my sore wrists and hands. (Typing peckishly is ever so mush better than trying to write with a pen!) After I write this, I am going to immerse myself in pleasantly hot water for some home hydrotherapy, and I am going to eat 1/4 teaspoon of some nice Bali kratom. I am going to wash the kratom down with some ginger infused iced tea. I believe this to be equally if not more effective than 800 mg of Naprosyn, and so far, I have not suffered any side effects that make the treatment as unpleasant as the pain. I have put my tolerance threshold for seeking more medical care as this: If I cannot find a way to void my bladder or bowels unassisted, If I cannot find a way to feed myself without assistance, If I cannot keep from screaming from the pain when I try to move a limb: Then somebody can call an ambulance. Standing up to pee doesn't count, yelping from brief pain spikes doesn't count, and having only one hand to eat with doesn't count.  Waking up in pain every single night from my annoying spine doesn't count. When my feet act up, I avoid walking and standing outside of my little job, and that is life. It's the treatment that works. When my feet subside, which they still do (and I am VERY grateful) I use them more. Not everyone with these ailments can manage them like this, and I am grateful that I can. My garden is not so big, but it is full of butterflies and bees and hummingbirds. My herbs have grown wild and rampant through less harvesting, and it is good that I can pick them as needed.  I don't have to be pain free to teach Algebra and Zoology, etc. to my daughter. I just have to be pain tolerant. My condition is mild. I am grateful and I will spend my time wisely.

Sustainable Swiffery

Who loves Swiffer mops? I do in some ways but in others I find them highly inane. The Swiffer is principally designed to keep you buying. Just mop with the convenient little pads and throw them away to take up space in your local landfill, just pop in another container of cleaning stuff when the old is empy, and add a bit more to the local landfill. What a win! (NOT!) Have you cast aside a Swiffer when it ran out of accessories, lacking the desire to go buy more? I am ashamed to say that we did several years ago. How about those Swiffers that you can buy with the pre-saturated cleaning agent pads? Oh now that's a deal, isn't it? I don't think so, but there is a way to make your Swiffer keep on giving without demanding a periodic tribute in the form of branded accessories:

The key is having rags that fit into the punch holes. Ha! No more wasteful tossings! True, it doesn't look as cute and streamlined as the branded presaturated pad, but I can use and re use this old scrap of sweatshirt with my own desired cleansers. The Swiffer is now useful indefinitely! Tell me, who hasn't done this?

Parsley & Dill Potato Salad

I'm not usually a big potato salad fan. Potato salad is highly variable and subjective! But..I have a very lovely crop of Italian parsley this year, and a not so abundant crop of dill that is imminently going to seed. I also happened to have a small bag of store bought potatoes that were in danger of being ignored until unpleasant changes occurred. The only kind of potato salad I have ever almost liked is the kind with mustard and dill, so I decided to use up some potatoes before they became unpleasant, along with as much fresh dill as I could harvest and some parsley for an unusual twist. The result has been favorably blessed by my daughters and mother, so I will share the gist of the recipe, as I eat some more myself. (Usually, I eat potato salad only once, as a sort of obligatory exercise at social functions in order to avoid rudeness, but this batch is..pretty darn good!)

So here goes, and tweak to your own personal desire:

Boil about 6 or 8 potatoes until a fork goes in with a teeny bit of effort. (you want them firm enough not to disintegrate under running water)
Boil 3 eggs until cooked firmly while you are boiling those potatoes

chop 1/4 cup of celery, 1/4 cup of green onions and 1/4 cup of dill pickles (improvised because I found my dill relish to be opened already, 3 years old and doubtless stale)

Go pick your parsley and dill, wash it and tear it into enough small bits to fill 1/8 cup or so. (If you have more dill, by all means, use it!)

Mix 1/2 cup mayonaise with 3 tbsp prepared mustard (you can adjust this to your own preference) and 1/4 tsp dry mustard

Now, your potatoes and eggs should be done so: Peel and dice your potatoes into chunks. Do the same to your eggs, except chop them a little finer.
Put them into a container and sprinkle salt and pepper on them. If you are shy on fresh dill like I was, now is a good time to throw in a generous amount of dried dill. I probably tossed in at least 4 tsp of dried dill. Add everything else and mix without squishing your potatos. Sprinkle with paprika and quickly stuff it into the refrigerator before your family members eat it all while it is still warm! Traditionally, this stuff is supposed to be served cold but half of mine disappeared as soon as I declared it mixed!

How Totally Stupid!

I have a particular loathing of unthriftiness. No, I'm not so bonkers on thriftiness that I rinse and re-use my paper towels, but I sure will turn a jelly jar into a drinking glass, and I absolutely get a kick out of recycling our spent aluminum cans for garden money. A  despicable waste of resources caught my eye today in the form of "school lunch shaming". This apparently is the symbolic classist act of tossing a freshly made tray of the already not very appealing and largely inadequate school food into the trash because it is discovered that for whatever reason the student in question cannot pay for it. Meh. No one should have to pay for the stuff anyway! Yes, I am appalled that rather than just give the gross stuff to the hungry and forced to eat lunch there student, the obviously irrationally minded lunch personnel chooses in some instances to toss the horrid excuse for a meal into a space consuming situation for the local landfill. Meh. Geh. What makes that better than allowing the stuff to be consumed by the originally intended recipient? Who can possibly benefit? Clearly, it is a nasty little mean spirited power trip of the shamefully worst kind. If someone worked for me and did that, I would fire them with a large fanfare. If someone that worked for me presented this as an acceptable policy, I would fire them with great pleasure.  It takes a particularly weak minded form of stupid mean to throw little childrens food away in front of them and their peers. We need to fire the people that allow these policies, and the people that enact them. I would be willing to make a guest B-tch appearance just for the sheer pleasure of being the one to point the finger to the exit and say the delicious words, as a civic volunteer.