Around The House #2 - Smooth Suffering

This one's not really an alternative home remedy, as expected in the hippie sense... but it is a remedy of sorts, and a little alternative. Okay, maybe a lot alternative. But I love it.

The Russian mystic Gurdjieff said that addiction to suffering was the one he had the hardest time getting his students to give up*, and I can relate. I mean, we've got to struggle a little in life to make it worthwhile, right?

Well, I'm tired of fighting out there. I think I'll control how I receive my pain from now on, thanks. Conveniently, I've found a great way to get all the torture I could ever need in one place. I've also decided it's okay to relinquish my old quasi-feminist body-hair-for-the-principle-of-it stance, and give into my aesthetic enjoyment of hairlessness. (Hmm.. sorry, ex-boyfriends!) So,

Ladies, and deliciously metrosexual men, say hello to your new worst best friend:

The Epilady Discrette

Why sabotage success in your life because you have some subconscious programming that says you have dues to pay? Just take all that shit out on yourself with one easy handheld device, and be done with it. Nothing like ripping hairs out of their folicles, root and all, to put you in your place. Plus, you may just find yourself a little sexier, when you're done.

$35 on Amazon. Enjoy!

*Conscious Loving by Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks, pp.90

Around The House #1- Nix the Nagging Gnats

We have gradually found ourselves with a growing fruit fly infestation over the past couple weeks. The cloud of them that would emerge when I opened the compost bin wasn't so bad... it was outside, and good for a repulsed laugh. The ones in the kitchen were for the most part, mildly annoying.... until they got uppity. Once it got to the point where they'd wander from the kitchen and start jumping on the keyboard, leaving comments for their Myspace friends while we were trying to do homework, it was all too much.


I sat down with my good friend Google, whom, sadly, I spend more time with than any of my friends who are actually human beings.... wow....

Woops, sorry got distracted there. So my buddy Google and I went in search of non-toxic home remedies for this growing Drosophila problem (my friend also reminded me of this scientific name, I'd forgotten since high shcool.... awesome.) There were, as there always are, a plethora of answers, all swearing they worked, but after the number of home health-remedies I've tried and all the places I've put bizzare concoctions in my body to no avail, I was suspicious.

I went for the simplest first: a couple drops of dish soap, 3/4 inch of apple cider vinegar, let stand. Easy. I guess the soap breaks the surface tension of the vinegar, so the flies, who would normally land on liquid and be able to fly right away, end up meeting a blissful end of drowning in sweet beloved nectar. This is how one has to phrase an extermination when one is a hippie.

Lo and behold, it worked!! Check out all these little babies who we were able to help transgress into a higher life form:

Pretty incredible, huh? Highly recommended, next time you find yourself near-neurotic around your gnat nuisance.