(Not) Trespassing: Come on an Epic Adventure

Read between the lines.
I (don't) trespass, in fact I (never) jump fences because of an overwhelming urge to just see remnants of lives lived, private yet abandoned places, land, plants and trees. Since I have (never had) a habit of trespassing and I know it is against the law I have found a way to see new things without ever doing something bad.... properties FOR SALE!

So here is a first in a series of "(Not) Trespassing" posts I'll be doing, showing the empty places no longer wanted (but for sale) that I find.... (if you are interested in any of these places to buy, please e-mail me privately because otherwise I am keeping their locations a secret.)
.You are at the gates of 1.2 MILLION dollars. I know, that is alot of money - and so my search goal was just to walk the well graveled road till I reached the inevitable McMansion, oogle over the things rich people buy and wish for their giant track of land (for conservation purposes) and then move along back home....
I wound up a road so much more level then my own driveway, seeing lovely wishie flowers, wildflowers, trees, and some flat spots of forest before it opened up to a cleared area- a scene made for a movie. Pond, sculptures, landscape, putting green, and lay back chairs with covers on them (which happen to look like cocoon coffin pods planted by aliens....) ......
But maybe it's just the part in the movie when the southern characters have the really nice wedding.
I got SUPER excited when i saw bunches of HUGE fish in the pond, stocked heavily with brown speckled trout and Kio ! I wanna put fish in my pond now :)
Moving along above the creek fed pond is the golf lover's putting green --- cause gawd knows ya don't wanna get outta practice while away from home (why anyone would live away from this place I have no idea!) Between the fish and all the dandelion greens, you could live in a tent right there all summer long.
I walked along toward my goal but something unexpected happened... MORE then once too....

FORKS in the ROAD(s)!!! Knowing how much it costs to put in a road I had no idea anyone on earth would put in not just 1 or 2, but 4 roads leading every which way on this 50 acres of land. So much so that when all was said in done I walked a good 3-4 miles total. I assumed the biggest main house was at the upmost top of the ridge, so first I chose to follow the highest path.
But part the way up I found this first ---->

Structure #1 :::: The BArn as BiG as a House

I was not entirely convinced this barn wasn't actually a house disguised as a barn - for one it is way bigger then my house I live in, the condition was spotless and flawless and my imagination wanted those big ole' barn door shutters to swing open to reveal BIG beautiful windows and glass doors, holding amazing personal treasures to peek at. I mean, the barn did have a direct TV satellite dish right next to it (see lower right corner)!!! And unless their horses are enjoying reruns of Mr.Ed up in there, it didn't really make sense to have that technology....
But Alas.... a back window revealed the view to a kill, as in kill joy --- nothing in there at all really. Not even Mr. Ed.

The WALK continues winding upward :::::

I will admit here my inner struggle at looking at million dollar properties. I have to continually take myself out of judgment, out of the rich VS poor thoughts - trying to not make lists of my likes and dislikes rather then do what I came for which is the sheer joy of exploring & discovering (um, for sale real estate that is... ehem.) As my search for the McMansion went on, my swimming memory of the 1.2 million dollars given in worth to this place, curiosity about the people who once bought and loved this place --- just when I wanted to hate rich people for no other reason then I can't afford to buy this land I came upon something uniting.

Pet graves. Everyone and everything became equal again.
I gave a nod of recognition and moved on and on and on AND ON (ya get tha' picture!) - the road was beginning to look less cared for, the middle had not been mowed. I was determined to find a house up on the ridge though... just like the old locals say "the rich out of towners build high as they can on a hill where the weather and wind is worse. Local folk know to build down in a cove where you are protected." So up I went following whims, stereotypes and the overgrown path...
At the top ----->

Structure #2 :::: Most Beautiful (and high voltage) Lookout Cabin On Earth

Just when ya think you know what you will find... something ordinary, something mundane yet new...
instead I found a treasure of a lookout tower/cabin that was so natural, so authentically built, so full of love, family, parties, joy and craftsmanship I seriously almost cried. It took my breath away to find something so down to earth, downright earthy and unexpected. It looked like it had been hand crafted by my very own dreams.

Only problem... shit was surrounded by a solar powered Electric FENCE!
So i walked around the steep edges, carefully taking each step so that if I slipped I wouldn't hit the electric fence. Even every piece of furniture looked as though gnomes of the forest, bears and creatures from fairy tales had made them... it felt only remotely human.
Taste of THE VIEW from the edge of the lookout :::::
I was proud. I walked way far to find this thing.
Revisiting old forks in the road on my way back down the mountain led me to....

STRUCTURE #3 :::: The Rustic Log Cabin

This one did not strike me as full of lovin' energy, but still had the authentic and cozy flare........ i knew it was still not the main house. And all the shades were pulled down.
Am I weird for being totally creeped out by this tiny handmade chair (below)? It is the perfect size for gremlins (the children and the monsters)!! Maybe it was cause i looked at the chair right after reading the odd "I love My Uncle" written on the chalk board -
ok, horror movie script writers go get started....

And now for the Fake Animals and Birds Expose' ::::::

Yippeeee ---> I got pictures of almost all the large fake creatures except for the the fake wooden bear which was detained behind the electric fence and lookout screen....

Which are Adorable or Creep-a-delic? You decide!

Structure #4 :::: Dat's NOT A MC Mansion House

The moment I was waiting for, the "Mc Mansion" I expected to find at the end of the long and winding road (not at the top of a mountain) was not a MC-Fugly giant house after all, but a roomy cape cod modern farm house... one that held some treasures that I was surprised to see through the spit shined glass windows.
Like handmade tic-tac-toe! (I sooo need to start making these!)
and a collection of all the things i LOVE to collect in nature... like someone read my mind, took my love of all things natural and put them in jars behind a glass wall where I could not touch them. Someone invaded my dreams and made it look scientific, untouchable and important. Beautiful.
Bones, skeletal leaves, feathers, unusual sticks, bee hives etc....
******
(Not) Trespassing was all worth every second of adventure.
plus, I made some really nice friends along tha' way....

So glad you could join us!

XOxoox

For My MCS Peeps: This Is Progress!

People who have never experienced a chemical injury or some kind of health breakdown that causes a person to get Multiple Chemical Sensitivites may find this post a little weird... So be for-warned, let your judgments and confusion take a nap while ya keep on reading.
For those of you who have MCS, ya might have to let your judgments go too, cause I am about to talk about the most hotly debated and taboo topic in the MCS crowd - and that is about healing & possibly being cured. Yeah, i said the "C" word, and now I am gonna tell you what I really think....

Some of us who developed MCS know exactly what happened, you might have been exposed to chemical in your workplace and then watched your health take a spiral into a housebound hell, you may have been renovating your home and didn't recover, you may have been a gulf war veteran who was lied to until recently about pills you were administered, or a 911 victim...... or maybe an average person like me who was exposed to various things over time and happen to have an auto immune disease that caused enough damage to make the normal body functions take a dive 6 feet under.
However you got to the stage of MCS, no matter how hard you had to fight to be understood and never truly were by everyone... there is also this point of acceptance and letting go - letting the label of being "sensitive" be as big a deal as having brown hair.

Over the years my symptoms of MCS kinda took up and down dives, with being only generally sick when going into K-mart (who isn't sick in that place?), or when exposed directly to fresh paint, or loud amounts of perfume. These things bordered on normal, and didn't stop me from at least hanging out at thrift stores. But nearly 5 years ago I got pregnant, and very sick - when I lost the baby my mild MCS turned into raging impossible to deal with every smell makes me wanna pass out and kill people so I must hide in the woods MCS. It was so intolerable that I could no longer drive without having seizures, I could not stand for my X boyfriend to come home from the store and get near me with his smelly clothes, I could not hang out with or visit any other humans, or go anywhere in public. After nearly a year of this kind of hell-ish reclusive life, I ventured out....
I didn't go sticking my head inside of paint cans or huff glue, but I decided if the world was going to kill me, then Fuck It! Let it kill me while I am living my life and doing what I want --->
I started off slow and made small goals. Each time I reached a small goal (like buy a lottery ticket at a gas station 2 blocks away), I would set the bar higher and further till I was working on a more functional level. 4 years later.... look at the picture at the top of this post, that is me AT A PARTY that included alot of people, bon fire, some people smoking ect....

Two things I noticed over these years :::::

1. MCS is not in your head, people react to nasty shit in our environment as a natural part of our body's function.
2. I (my body) was so used to reacting, there was some auto-anxiety involved... not 'in my head' but anxiety that was learned and out of control. Anxiety bad enough to be confused - like was it a symptom or anxiety causes me discomfort?

The reason I bring this up is cause there are a few things I have done over the years that I believe have helped me improve. I am not cured, but since I am always on a steady upswing and will never give up I thought I would just jot down the things I felt were helpful to me - no matter how controversial they may be (and knowing everyone's body will need their own personal combo of things to heal!)
1. I got on the macrobiotic diet. I did not eat bad before that, in fact I have eaten all organic & whole foods long before health problems, but this diet has some really helpful ways to keep your foods appropriate for your ailments, the seasons, your body tempature, and healing in general. Over time I branched out and added back in some whole foods not strictly on this diet, but ones that help improve my energy and give me a greater variety of nutrients.

2. I got outta my head. This one will undoubtedly make some people with MCS upset cause it's not a head disease, but with any health problems sometimes the best thing we can do is get the hec outta our own way and STOP for da' love of gawd thinking about sickness, what causes sickness, how we got sick, being mad we got sick, blaming the world we got sick... ect (you know the thoughts I am talking about!) I had to start thinking about life and my dreams, and not about "sickness" stopping my life.

3. Risks. I am not recommending anyone with MCS do anything to put themselves in harms way, but for me I had to take some risks to find out what my real limits were. With all the other helpful things i was doing for my health (clean house, clean diet, homeopathic detox, being nice to myself) there would come a time when new limits needed to be tested if I was to ever be able to branch out and do anything beyond my own backyard. Each time I took a successful risk (no matter how many were unsuccessful) I was able to do that much more and that did wonders for my mental health too.

4. Homoepathic/Medicinal stuff. I tried about a billion things, but the only stuff I used that worked for helping de-tox my body in a gentle way were homeopathic pills for kids (Newton brand) and eating shittake mushrooms (takes out heavy metal and junk real gentle, easy and tastes good too!) I don't like taking pills, of any kind and I did best when I stopped taking all the pills recommended to me and just took the one homeopathic or nothing at all.

5. I got a therapist! Hell yeah I did, because being sick is not easy to deal with and it turned out I learned amazing skills and coping methods that reduced tons of stress in my life and I only had to go for a short period of time before i learned to support myself emotionally and forgive and live again. What I learned in therapy about how to deal with being sick, rolled over into every relationship for the better.

6. Exercise!! No matter what, even if it's hard and makes ya fatigued. I did this even when bed ridden and at my worst, getting the body moving and the blood circulating is your ticket to wellness.

7. Nice Home Environment. It never needed to be the Taj Mahal for MCS'ers, just had to not be freshly painted or super disgusting - I moved around more times then I can count on two hands and generally my house plants cleaned the air good enough each time. The really important part for me was not living right in a city (too much pollution), to have fresh air outside, to open my windows, to walk in the woods, to grow my own food, and have animals around me.

8. Brain re-training. I KNOW, this is the one people in the MCS community have been either seething with hate over, praising, arguing, or banning... but I tried it. Let me just tell ya'll, i didn't even watch all the CD's for the Gupta Program but only up until the specific exercise to re-train your brain and I started doing the exercise immediately everyday. Did i do it like 20 times a day like he suggests? NO way maybe like once a day... nor did i do any of his meditations and all those suggestions on how to breathe cause I already had enough self help like that in my bag of tricks. But when I had a majorly bad thought about being sick, or bad symptoms I did the exercise and then moved on. Brain re-training helped me, I can't put my finger on it but once i started thinking in a positive direction and got my brain outta auto-sick mind my bravery and ability to do things doubled up ten fold times 100!
This method has helped me tons with my newest challenge, and that is I am trying to learn to drive a car again after 5 years of being home bound! (See pic above!)


I remember when I could not breathe in a small enclosed space with any other human unless they were totally decontaminated, chem free .... but this picture below is me and my dad recently in my bathroom hanging a mirror together and the only reason my face looks like it does is cause he was calling the mirror a "f-en bastard" and scaring me with his perfectionism. :)
I am not in perfect health, I still have trouble breathing in certain places, I still feel ill to smell the fragrance detergents, I still know I am not reliable or well enough to go out and get a regular job .... BUT i am much more functional. Functional enough to begin enjoying my life again and I wanted to put this out into the world - for those with MCS or any disease do not give up, ever! The body always is working towards healing itself, the body always wants to get better and so do you... do not give up on the miracle of healing - even if it's slow and takes many years. Just know none of ya'll are alone, I am over here at my little cabin in the woods believing everyday that we all can be healthy - no matter what anyone says!

Xoxoxo

DIY: Non Toxic Wood Oil Part 2 (The Floor!)

BEFORE PHOTO:

This is my bathroom floor before putting on the natural wood oil recipe I made - the wood is kiln dried hickory planks that were locally milled and deeply on sale...If ya need the wood oil recipe, click HERE for Part 1 I posted earlier today---> cause this now is Part 2, and all it is about is my extreme excitement and OCD about how I could not stop putting this amazing wood oil mixture on everything in my house! I couldn't stop cause not only did it smell delicious but it also looked beautiful (I mean, don't oily wet lookin' floors always look so good?!)
Armed with a pot of the natural wood oil and a organic cotton rag I was ready to start rubbing it in. During this process I thought possibly one of those sponge mops would be alot quicker, and at least a good buffer for after the oil is put on....

But I did this by hand, totally Mr Miyagi style "wax on wax off danial son!"

In my bathroom I laid it on extra thick and waxy because I didn't want the water from the tub or sink to penetrate the floor - you can see in the pic below the difference between the finished wood and the unfinished dry wood. The oil brings out all the wood's character, grain and color, artistically speaking just that look is worth all the effort.
Once I got finished the bathroom, I was on a roll! I put on some more of the mixture to be heated up (walnut oil, salt, bees wax, apple cider vinegar) and then It WaS ON !!!
I went right out the bathroom 'door' (i haven't got around to putting up my door yet), and proceeded to oil the kitchen floor too.
Then the OCD my mother instilled in me (AKA- don't ever quit in the middle of a project or activity) kept me going right out into my living room...
And going......... (like, who could stop when it's looking that good and the fear of it drying totally uneven kinda haunts your inner wanna be perfectionist!)
Eventually I made it across the entire house and let myself off the hook, to do my bedroom tomorrow instead. The hardest part of this project was moving stuff on the floor outta the way and the thought of moving the sofa I sleep on made me rather go cook dinna' instead.

The oiling part, though = majorly fun to watch, a little like magic. ;)
XoxoxoX

DIY: Natural & Non Toxic Wood Oil

BEFORE :

Here is my kitchen counter (made of unfinished hickory wood planks) before applying my wood oil recipe...

In order to prevent alot of staining plus possible mold and mildew growth on the unfinished wood, especially during the summer months I decided to 'stain' or oil the wood with a natural recipe - one that was 100% non toxic, that would not out gas, and would be safe for those people who are sensitive to the chemicals in commonly toxic wood finishes.

SUPPLIES :

• Bees Wax
• Walnut Oil
• S alt
• Apple Cider Vinegar
  

• Knife
• Stirring Spoon
• Pot to cook it in
• Rag, sponge or some type of tool to rub the oil into the surface

The first thing I had to do was cut a portion of the bees wax off, which luckily my friend Gabi gave me the awesome tip to heat up the knife first then cut into it "like buttah"...
Mine was super thick so, I had to re-heat it a few times until about 1/4 of the pound of wax broke and I had the perfect piece to add to my recipe.

NOTE: I recommend using bees wax and not a white food grade wax because of the coloring when it dries, and general coloring added to the recipe. Bees wax is also easier to work with and has a good smell!
ADD TO THE POT:

2-3 cups Walnut Oil, 1/2 cup Salt, chunk of Bees Wax, teaspoon of Apple Cider Vinegar... And bring to a boil till the wax is fully melted into the mixture and stir occasionally.

This is totally experimental amounts - if you add alot of wax the mixture will become so wax-y that it will be too thick a coating on the wood... if anyone has 'buffing tips' for a more wax heavy mixture please share!

After the wax is melted, rub it into the wood while warm...
Rub the wax in a buffing fashion, and be sure to not drip too much or lay it on thicker in various places... when using a mixture with wax you do have to be conscience of layering it evenly.
Looks awesome and smells edible.... but it could use a little extra buffing ---> so i am looking for suggestions of what would be a good material or tool to use for buffing this kitchen counter?
In the meantime, I LOVE it!!! I love it so much I can't stop putting that stuff on everything wood around the house. :) The bathroom floor is next!!!

Kiss This HOuse BEAutiFUL!
Xoxoxo

Tiny Green Moth & a WTF Bug

This tiny green moth up top is so small, I left the nail head in the bottom right hand corner of the picture for a size comparison --- but it's vibrant green color is one similar if not exactly the same as the giant beautiful Lunar Moth. I have always wanted to get a picture of one of these, and although the picture did not come out as crisp as the photo OCD maniac in me would like ... it's still too cool not to share!

AND then THIS guy below ?!?!
What is he? I only got one picture of him before my phone rang and I went running to it like a girl - I ran back and he was gone. :( Is this what people call a weavel, the thing that eats your dried foods?
I am beginning to notice many types of beetles, insects, spiders and bugs here in Luck that I have never seen before, and I look forward to seeing them (and sharing them with ya'll!) all through the warm season.
Xoxo

Identity Crisis: Who is this Black and White Beetle?

Meet Mr. Rodeo! This little beetle just kinda appeared in my organic garden- although nothing is really growing yet I wondered if Mr. Rodeo was a beneficial, neutral or an organic garden eatin' bug?

I call him Mr. Rodeo because of his chiseled, hammered, gorgeous black and white pattern on his back that reminds me of fancy leather cowboy boots. Underneath his armor were some red-ish tinted wings. He wasn't too shy, too fast, or sketchy - in fact Mr. Rodeo was easy going, slow and seemed like maybe he wasn't in any rush to protect himself from predators - but maybe that's cause most critters won't eat a beetle in these striking and poisonous looking colors?
Can any of ya'll help me identify this pretty lil' guy?
Xoxo