Crying over spilt lotion

Homemade lotion has become a staple around here.  I make a big batch every few months and the family uses it for both hair and skin. 

I've been planning for our annual trip to Sleeping Lady.  There can be serious chapping that results from the dry mountain air, all the snow play and soaking for probably way too long in the hot pool. So I thought to make more lotion today.  In fact, I mixed up a triple batch - enough to get our family through the next 2 months plus some to share with our homeschool buddies that will meet us in the mountains.

But disaster stuck! While the Kitchen Aid whipped the lotion to a fine silkiness, the spatula I had carefully balanced on the edge of the bowl slipped in.  Theo howled with laughter as the spoon splashed waves of lotion around the room and I scampered around frantically trying to turn the machine off - of course flipping it to high for a final tsumani-like wave before managing to get to "off."  When I picked the now extremely well-oiled machine up to clean the puddle of lotion from underneath it, I lost my grip and toppled the whole thing, spreading yet more oil around (to the tune of more tittering from the peanut gallery).

At this point, about 1/3 of the lotion remains in the bowl, 1/3 is in the trash and the last 1/3 is in the dog who enthusiastically help with the 2nd round of clean up.

After grumping and pouting around for about 30 minutes, I came back around to the project and added some peppermint oil for a seasonally-appropriate bright smell and feel. 

Turns out this batch is smooth and silky, not too watery or too think. And the peppermint makes it truly delightful.  I don't know whether to be delighted or even more grumpy that I wasted 2/3 of it on the floor and dog. Below are my notes for this batch.  I'm hoping getting it into bottles goes extremely efficiently and cleanly.

Peppermint lotion - normally makes about 48 oz
1/3 c TBSP beeswax
1/2 c grapeseed oil
1/2 c jojoba oil
6 TBSP coconut oil
4 c olive oil
2 c water
36 drops peppermint oil (put only in the remaining 1/3 of the batch)

- Heat the oils and beeswax over the stove until the beeswax melts and the oils are uniform. 
- Transfer hot mixture to Kitchen Aid and add the water (I boil the water so it mixes more easily).
- Run the Kitchen Aid for about 5 minutes to mix oils and water thoroughly. Wait 30 minutes and run again.  Do this a few times until the mixture has cooled.  Color and texture is light colored and uniform.
- Transfer cooled lotion into a large ziploc bag, snip a tiny corner off the bag and carefully pour lotion into bottles.

New bird: Varied Thrush

This morning while standing on the porch talking to a contractor, I spied a new-to-me-bird!  We saw lots of new birds in Ecuador, but I thought for sure I'd noticed and figured out all the names for the birds I see in Seattle.

It sort of looked like a robin-size wren with dark brown and clear yellow markings.  As soon as I'd finished my (now distracted) conversation with the contractor, I zipped inside to get my National Geographic Field Guide to Birds of North America.  Weirdly, it opened right to a picture of the bird in question - the varied thrush, the female.  It is hard to tell from the tiny map, but apparently Seattle is part of either it's year round habitat or its winter range. 

I don't know how I've managed 20 years in Seattle without seeing this beauty, but what a fun thrill to spot a new bird in my own yard. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a fabulous site about birds with great pictures, information and recordings of their sounds.  You can check out my new Thrush friend there.

Paper Snow Storm

I'm not sure who started it, maybe Theo or Rosie or perhaps me via a story I was telling, but this week we had a giant paper snowflake storm at our house.  The four of us spent hours cutting, chatting and strategizing about how to fold, how much paper to cut off and experimenting what what shapes we could make.

  

 

 

 


And like any true snow storm, there was some serious shoveling to be done at the end.

Good for public safety, bad for public health?

In the past few months, city workers passed through our neighborhood converting all the old florescent streetlight bulbs to new LED bulbs.

I became aware of this city program because one afternoon I curiously remarked about workers on our street and that night our bedroom was *lit up.* Honestly, seriously bright.  With the curtains closed.  As I moved through the house I realized every room that had direct view to a street light, be it just on the corner or literally the other side of the block, was now bright enough to read by.

This alarms me.  You know how I feel about sleep, already.  A big part of good sleep comes with keeping non-natural light exposure low. Even the tiniest amount of nighttime light impacts our hormonal systems, both sleep related and others.  While I can and will purchase black out curtains for the bedrooms to limit the amount of light seeping in, our city's cost reduction program will inadvertently mess with the hormonal systems of almost everyone in town.

And their dinner.  In 2010 I wrote this post about my concerns for the lettuce growing in a hydroponic farm I drive by. I know it seems silly, but there is plenty of research to show that every living thing needs rest (and dark) as much as it needs light to thrive and mature.  As I look out the window at midnight, each individual leaf of my basil is brightly illuminated.  This just can't be good for my garden.

I wonder, too, about general light pollution.  I know there are guidelines, maybe even requirements, about how much light a streetlight should shed into the surrounding area.  Searching around on the internet, I couldn't find any exact numbers for what constitutes light pollution, but I'm pretty sure illuminating the interior of my house qualifies for "light trespass."  I wonder what the NASA light maps would look like were every city to install these new LED bulbs.

The New Jersey Astronomical Association feels passionately about light pollution and links to some interesting articles about it. NASA is concerned enough about it for their astronauts to drop a hunk of change on biologically adjusted bulbs.  There turns out, even, to be a documentary about light pollution called "City Dark," reported on here by the Huffington Post. This problem of light pollution is not new, but I think it is probably also not on the radar of most public officials. Really, light pollution is neither sexy nor is likely to capture most people's hearts and imaginations.

Still, I have to feel for the City.  Here they've found a great new way to reduce costs and improve visibility for drivers and pedestrians.  They've eliminated the issue of dealing with the mercury from the florescent bulbs (though this may be more my boogey man than theirs).   City leaders are getting props for being cutting edge.

Jet lagged this week from our trip to Ecuador, the LEDs have particularlly been on my mind.  Waking up after hours of sleep, I can't judge based on the light streaming into my bedroom whether I've finally adjusted to the time change and slept in until 7:30 or if it is hours before sunrise.  2:30am LED looks exactly like 7:30am sunshine.

LEDs must be great for the budget and for public safety concerns. And I think they're equally bad for public health. I wonder how it will all work out.

We're back

Our trip to Ecuador turned out to be a great success.

Best of course, was spending of time with my beloved brother/the children's adored uncle, getting to better know his sweetie and meeting her 15 year old daughter, the children's first 1st cousin.  We also enjoyed seeing an entirely different culture and way of life, eating really different foods, 5 days of Spanish lessons (the children may have been horrified to find they weren't fluent at the end of the 10 hours of classes), a bird watching adventure, a week on the beach, staying 2 nights in a 200 year old Spanish monastery come hotel. Oh, and the fun and fascination of participating in a South American wedding that resulted in my brother becoming a married man!

The photo is one of our amazing science moments - straddling the middle of the world!

Adventures Galore!

Hi all,

The family and I are headed south to Ecuador for my brother's wedding and some serious homeschool fun.  I'll be back in December, hopefully with some amazing pictures and stories to share.

Talk to you then!
Sara

What sleep has to do with developmental attachment

One of my biggest soap boxes is SLEEP.  

I strongly believe, based on lots of reading and personal experience, that each and everyone of us adults needs at least 8 hours of sleep per night.  And that those of us with small children need to plan for 9-10 hours of sleep per night to make up for all the nights that doesn't go well. Heck, even for those of us with middle sized kids this is a good idea because I'm still amazed at how often I miss sleep caring for my children.

However, I've never found a direct link between my sleep soap box and my passion for development attachment.  Until today!  Reading an article on sleep by Chris Kressler (thanks J), I found this tantalizing bit:

          

      Insufficient sleep shuts down the pre-frontal cortex

Wikipedia explains the pre-frontal cortex:

The most typical psychological term for functions carried out by the prefrontal cortex area is executive function. Executive function relates to abilities to differentiate among conflicting thoughts, determine good and bad, better and best, same and different, future consequences of current activities, working toward a defined goal, prediction of outcomes, expectation based on actions, and social "control" (the ability to suppress urges that, if not suppressed, could lead to socially unacceptable outcomes).

From a developmental attachment perspective, the interesting part of this is that the pre-frontal cortex is where the brain mixes input.  In the same way information coming in from the left eye together with the right eye mixes in the prefrontal cortex to give us depth perception, the prefrontal cortex mixes our feelings for a deeper and more balanced experience.

I've always told people my being a good parent depends on me getting enough sleep, just because I know I'm too grumpy when I'm tired to be effective. Now I see that when I'm too tired, I've lost my mixed feelings.  I can't hold onto the "both and" - as in:

   I'm really tired so I hate everything 

AND 

  These are my dear delightful children for whom I want to be the warm and generous provider

It seems to me like almost everything in life links back, somehow, to developmental attachment.  Pretty cool!

Saturday is early bedtime night at our house - for both the kids and the adults.  Maybe you'll join us?