Living Self-Sufficientish: An Update

I’m still living my self-sufficientish lifestyle. Well, sort of. The soap is still made of oatmeal (or hemp; or baking soda; or baby Indian tears). Lemons are still my shampoo of choice, and the toilet paper is recycled (by some large company, not directly by me because that would be gross). I bought a new razor the other day that uses disposable razor heads so that I’m not throwing away an entire disposable razor every few months. Also, the new toothbrush rocks as well as the toothpaste. In all honesty though, VSC makes a much better toothpaste blend than I do. Also, for the first time, I used the soap beads in the laundry. They were stinky before washing, but left the load smelling fresh and clean.

To be honest, I must admit that I have made a few mistakes along the way. As an example, I got a pedicure and it was LOVELY. Petite Asian women (probably being paid far less than minimum wage and originally shipped to the U.S. to be sex slaves) massaged my calves, buffed my feet, and shellacked my toenails in wonderful, Opi Cha-Ching-Cherry nail polish. They even used the hippi repelling blue glow of a UV bulb to dry the polish. My toes sat under the blue glow for about 15 minutes while I read an article in Oprah’s magazine about “4 Eco Friendly Destinations”. Here I learned about “The Good Hotel” in San Francisco where you can pay $99 on a weekday to stay at the hotel and “Just pick up the orange phone in the lobby to connect to the non-profit One Brick, which matches visitors to short-term service gigs”. You can imagine the stony glares I received from the other saloon visitors when I laughed so hard I snorted.

I also went to see Craig my fabulous gay hair dresser. Craig is very “pro-product” and I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was now washing my hair with baking soda and lemon juice. It would have most certainly killed one of the little fairies that live in Craig’s blow dryer. Did you know that a gay hair dresser’s blow dryer is full of little fairies that beat their wings so hard, and so fast, a cool forest breeze then blows gently through your hair? Yes, I am ashamed to have kept a secret from my hairdresser, but it really was for the best.

Finally, today is house cleaning day. Armed with my baking soda and trusty vacuum cleaner I will attack the floor rugs. There aren’t any hints in my “The Humble Art of Zen-Cleansing: Clean” book on dusting. So I may end up spending an hour on the internet trying to come up with an eco-friendly dusting solution. Yes, I’m sure you are thinking, “Just use a rag dumb-ass”. However a plain old rag does not leave the house smelling fresh and clean! Without the smell of clean there really isn’t much of a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day.