Well, it was an interesting day, but not very productive. Early in the day I wrote a list of things I wanted to try to get done. There were about 11 items on the list. After running around all afternoon, I was able to cross off item #1 - and actually, it was only one part of several things that were involved in #1. Item #1 was: get some cardboard boxes to put my clothing into, and stack them up taped together with packaging tape, like drawers, and put my clothes into them.
Why would I need to do that? Because I threw away huge amounts of clothing when I destroyed it all in the 2007 contamination incident. I have only bought a couple of new things at Goodwill, and sometimes, I end up throwing those away too, although not very often, now that I know what NOT to do when the clothing becomes toxic. Anyway, I also threw away the plastic drawers from Wal-Mart that I used to have. If you got a spot of ephedrine on your clothing, then washed it together with a whole bunch of laundry, only to find that the entire batch was now covered with ephedrine, and then, it also got into the drawers where you put your clothing, you'd go nuts and throw everything away too. But that was a long story and I already blogged about it ages ago. It's probably back on my myspace blog before I started blogging here.
So I have been keeping clothes in trash bags and cardboard boxes. But I don't have enough cardboard boxes, and they aren't organized. I have things mixed together and I can't find what i need very easily. So I want it to look more like the drawers used to be: types of clothing are sorted into separate drawers. Right now, I have multiple boxes with garbage bags in them, and every garbage bag is a mystery - it might have socks, pants, underwear, or shirts in it, and you have to go digging. I don't have a lot of clothes now, but what little I have is a disorganized mess.
They have to be cardboard boxes, because I don't want to throw away another bunch of plastic drawers again, if I have any more problems. I want everything to be disposable for now. The carpet is the only MAJOR area that I was unable to clean, along with the trunk of my car, and occasionally, I get small outbreaks of contamination even now. This is a little-known, obscure subject: medicinal herbs, producing oils, which can contaminate nearby surfaces through direct contact, falling-off dried leaves, and also, possibly through the settling of volatile vapors. And the oils DO NOT BIODEGRADE OVER TIME. They remain active, although the oxidized forms might be slightly different than they were originally - but they're still 'medicinal.' And they are all transdermal, going directly through the skin - yet another obscure topic that it seems nobody else knows about. I grew a whole bunch of different (legal) medicinal herbs, or rather, handled them briefly before throwing them all in the garbage. So there are a variety of different drug effects that happen when I touch the contamination: pounding heart, pupil dilation, tachycardia, bradycardia, insomnia, hypersomnia, increased alertness, fatigue, antidepressant effects, lowered blood pressure, elevated blood pressure. Some of the drugs do the exact opposite of what the other drugs do. A lot of things that I don't want happening by accident.
Well, a customer was asking about apple boxes the other day, and I saw that apple boxes are sturdy and they have lids. I decided I wanted some of those. But I don't like going in to my workplace on my days off, because it's embarrassing to talk to all the people I know. 'What are you doing?' 'Well, I have to get apple boxes.' 'Why do you need apple boxes?' (Long story, don't ask, you won't believe me anyway.) So I made phone calls to other stores around town asking them if they had any apple boxes. Finally I found someone who did and was willing to give them to me.
So after troubling this person for a few minutes to get my boxes and load them into my cart, and expressing my gratitude for his taking the time out to help me, giving me something for free, out of courtesy - I had to throw them all in the garbage. After handling the apple boxes and driving home, I was hit with severe fatigue, and muscle weakness in both arms. I felt nauseated and wanted to sleep. I washed my hands thoroughly, and within a couple minutes after washing, felt much better. There was a tingling, tickling feeling in my hands. My arms continued to feel weak, but gradually improved over the next half hour or so. My throat and lungs also felt tickly and like I wanted to cough, every time I opened the boxes or moved them around and got close to them, if I inhaled near them.
I decided this has to be pesticides associated with the apples. Maybe not put directly on the apples, but around them and near them, and in the boxes. Pesticides are one of the worst chemicals that have ever made me sick: I was incapacitated for months because I put flea powder on the carpet when I lived in another apartment. Finally I vacuumed and shampooed the carpet and I got better very quickly. Total, overwhelming exhaustion and constant pain was the result of pesticides. It also causes involuntary trembling and shaking, usually the morning after being exposed to them, when you wake up in the morning and you notice your arms are shaking.
I forced myself to throw away the boxes, after all that trouble. I didn't want to do an 'out of the frying pan, into the fire' situation, of trying to find a place to put my clothes, only to trigger yet another contamination incident, this time with pesticides.
I decided to just go to a fast food place and ask for boxes. I had an idea in my head, which was that the boxes had to be whole and not broken down, not flattened. So I went to Long John Silver's and asked them for boxes. They had only just flattened them and taken them to the dumpster minutes before. I know how it is, that's something you do as soon as business slows down. So I left and I was discouraged.
'Discouraged' is a good word to use. I didn't realize it before, but it's dis-couraged. Your courage is gone. I felt a lack of courage. I was anxious and afraid to do something differently. I drove my car past LJS's dumpster, and saw the boxes all stacked up in there, but felt too embarrassed to just stop the car, get out, and collect them out of the dumpster. They were flattened, and I had this 'rule' in my mind, that the boxes must not be flattened. It was some weird rationale, saying that they would be stronger and sturdier if they were whole and had the original glue still holding them together. If I used flattened boxes, I would have to re-fold them and tape everything together and it would be less sturdy.
So I drove away, discouraged, exhausted, and I started questioning my rules. Rule: It's embarrassing, and forbidden, and you might get in trouble, if you go grab stuff out of the dumpster in broad daylight. Rule: Boxes must be whole and un-crushed, in order to be sturdy and to have the original box glue intact. But I was sick of trying and failing, and getting discouraged, and getting tired, and having so much time go by as I ran around all afternoon.
I broke both of those rules. Okay, flattened boxes. Okay, broad daylight dumpster diving. I drove to a McDonald's, where I felt comfortable and familiar, because I used to work for McDonald's (but not that particular one). So I grabbed a bunch of flattened boxes, while the people drove by on all the roads around me, and the cars went through the drive-thru, and everyone could see me, but I said, oh well. I need boxes badly enough.
Maybe I should go buy my own glue and glue the boxes myself... but yeah, that would probably be a bad idea, considering that glue usually gives off fumes, even the 'nontoxic' stuff probably. I'll just use tape. And it's a hassle to go out shopping for glue, when it seems trivial, and the tape is good enough.
Well, I forgot the other adventure, because it was actually unrelated, an intermission between several of those trips. It was after I washed my hands of the pesticides. I felt sick and exhausted, and wanted to just take a quiet walk outside by the pond. (And no, this 'ends in disaster,' as the title said, but it's not what you think. No termites were involved!)
So at the edge of the woods, I saw a fallen log, and wondered if I could find termites in it. I decided that termites and earthworms both seemed like good candidates for edible insect farming. I am not going to just go eat a bunch of bugs right this instant. If I ate anything, it might be just one, and then I'd wait and see if it caused any problems. I know I ate one of those little pillbugs, whatever they're called, that are gray and they roll up in a ball, when I was a teenager. It was bitter tasting, but I survived. I also might have eaten boll weevils that one time when they got in the raisin bran at my parents' house, before we noticed they were in there. (We all laughed later on because Granddaddy was visiting, and he ate the raisin bran every day for breakfast, and never said anything, and nobody ever really knew for sure if the boll weevils were in his cereal or not. By the time we noticed, it was too late. I'm sure my mom would remember that incident if I mentioned it to her. My brother might remember.) Eating bugs usually won't kill you, but I would want to make sure first.
Termites are eaten in other countries, but they are a different variety of termite, probably, not necessarily the same kind we have here. They contain fat, which is useful, because finding foods that contain healthy kinds of fat is not easy. If you think about a vegetable garden, if you imagine eating those types of foods - tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, squash, etc - it's all a bunch of extremely low-fat food. Those are the typical vegetable-garden foods, and it's not enough to give you a complete diet. And if you walk through the woods, and look at the trees and weeds and other plants, you don't see much high-calorie or high-fat food. So for self-reliance, or survival in an emergency (when your airplane crashes in the jungle, etc, etc), high-fat insects are important to know about. And termites are soft, whereas ants look hard and crunchy, LOL - I've never eaten ants and I don't like the idea of it. But I can imagine tolerating termites. (I don't think I've ever even had chocolate-covered ants or anything like that either.)
Well, I investigated the fallen log. It did have the tunnels filled with dirt crumbs, just like what I saw in the pictures of termite-infested wood. But there weren't any termites in the outer layers. I moved the log around and pulled off pieces of it. So as I was ripping apart this log's bark, I lost my balance a little bit and fell slightly sideways, and my hair dangled into a weed branch covered with burrs. The branch broke off and my hair immediately wrapped and tangled around and around it, as I moved and pulled away. The more I tried to remove the branch, the more the burrs tangled into knots with the hair. So I had to abandon the unsuccessful termite hunt, and spent about ten minutes removing burrs from my hair. I had to scrape them out by pinching the burrs between my fingernails. That bothered me, because the ends of my hair are already damaged, and I didn't want to rip and shred them any more. Discouraged again, I went home. But then I continued on the eventually-successful box hunt.
So after hours of random trips and running around and pulling burrs out of my hair, I did get at least a pile of flattened McDonald's boxes which I will put my clothing into. I haven't even begun the other ten items on my list.
(2. email betta: i have to respond to people's replies to my ad for the betta. 3. email 'suitors.' i have to reply to emails on the *cough* dating website, don't ask. i will blog about this subject eventually. 4. job hunt 5. defrost fridge - it still is stuck around 45 degrees according to that thermometer, but hasn't gotten any worse. 6. vinyl bed cover. the futon got contaminated during transport in the back of my trunk, so I am keeping it covered in vinyl. 7. ask for help again. (needs no explanation). 8. wash laundry. 9. call doctors. that is a frustrating project involving something peter needs to have done. 10. driver's license photo: i paid for the new license months ago, but never got the new photo made and the new license printed out. when i went there, the photo system was 'down' for no reason, and they said it might be down for a couple hours. so i just left. caution, if you ever go get a new driver's license photo made, they said that the system being down is actually a routine occurrence that happens ALL THE TIME and lasts for several hours each time. 11. buy sandals and shorts. i am going to get a second pair of sandals, and i will also start wearing shorts again, which i haven't done in years - the last time i routinely wore shorts was in college, in the early 90's. wearing shorts is a big deal. it will either be shorts or a dress, but the basic idea is that my ankles will be visible. this can only be done on days when i feel strong and able to endure the looks of shock, disgust, amazement, etc. or just, people looking at all, even without hostility - just being looked at. some days, i am not in the mood to be looked at over and over. but it's time to do this again.)
None of that stuff has gotten done yet.
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