All of our diet dilemmas … SOLVED!

It's not what we eat, nor how much we move. It's not low-fat, no-carb, sugar-free. It's not going to a gym, a yoga studio or a track. It's simply this:

WARNING TO US ALL!!!Shampoo Warning!
I don't know WHY I haven't figured this out before now.
I use shampoo in the shower!
When I wash my hair, the shampoo runs down my whole body, and printed very clearly on the shampoo label is this warning:
"FOR EXTRA BODY AND VOLUME."
No wonder I've been gaining weight!Well, I've gotten rid of that shampoo and will now start showering with Dawn dish soap instead. Its label reads:
"DISSOLVES FAT THAT IS OTHERWISE DIFFICULT TO REMOVE."
Problem solved!

I saw this on Pinterest the other day and had one of those Oprah aha moments. Or maybe it was a haha moment. At any rate, Dawn dish soap is a staple of all the make-your-own-cleaning products blogs, and it's frequently recommended for felting wooly things. And now: A weight-loss aid! (Would love to know how their PR people positioned the product to be so perfect for so many things.)

The first batch of yarn auctions on eBay ended yesterday, so I'll be busy-busy this morning getting packages ready to mail. All but two of them sold. My PayPal account is fattening up, and that's not something I plan to remedy by cleaning it with Dawn. Heh.

So many of you have commented about the drought you're experiencing; I feel kinda bad for posting a photo of my ripe tomatoes. The drought is a lead story in today's New York Times. It's affecting the majority of the United States – even West Virginia is characterized as "abnormally dry." I think the saving grace here has been the late-afternoon pop-up thunderstorms. We don't get one every day, but we've been blessed with a little bit of rain every other day or so for the past couple weeks. It got pretty dry the week after the derecho hit us; the remainder of July has been tolerable. I've only had to water the container plants, not the big garden. But there's no such thing as climate change. Just sayin'.

The NYT story points out that drought conditions will most certainly affect food prices next year, with an increase of four to five percent on staples like milk and meat. This would be a good time to stock the freezer – and then hope the electricity doesn't go out again. If it ain't one thing …

Cut off

When our electricity went out late in June, my husband was forced to stop watching the news. I haven't regularly watched cable or network news for several months now, and am much happier for it, but he missed it.

At first.

And then he didn't. As the hours stretched into days and then into more than a week, we found ways to keep busy and entertain ourselves that didn't include television. We got up at sunrise, worked on clearing trees most of the day, took naps, read books and magazines, ate simple meals and fell into bed as darkness fell.

A comment yesterday from Kathy kind of slapped me upside the head: While we suffered from the storm, we have absolutely not suffered from drought this summer. The big weather story prior to the derecho was the Colorado wildfires. Had I not been cut off from the outside world, I would have learned that rain hasn't fallen in many other parts of the United States in far too long. This map shows the location and severity of dry conditions throughout the country.

I feel so badly for those of you with withered gardens. One of the great joys of my day-to-day life is putting a meal together from vegetables I've picked that day or preserved and stored in the pantry. I'm not a survivalist, not by any stretch of the imagination. But growing some of our own food is one of those self-sufficient skills I really appreciate. (Today's agenda includes making more pesto and canning some salsa – I rarely have tomatoes, peppers and onions ripen all at the same time, but this year it's a summer miracle!)

The other "cut off" subject around here is our trees. The four pines are just stumps now, thanks to Simon, our Amish neighbor, and his chain saw. There's still a lot of hauling to do, but the big job is done. We're debating about whether to have him take down a couple more of the standing pines, to open up the view, but I think we'll leave well enough alone. The remaining trees block the late-afternoon sun fairly well. Being cut off from that heat source is truly a blessing this time of year.