Must Stop.

Thinking poorly of myself. Must stop saying negative things about myself, as if I'm agreeing with what I think you think, because odds are, you're not thinking that at all.

I'm a work in progress.

So I've been on this kyphi kick lately, if you hadn't noticed. One of my biggest hurdles with building kyphi(s) is finding a source of great quality pine resin. None of them smelled quite right, and one even smelled like poop. Straight up, bear in the woods poop. I'm beginning to wonder now if that is in fact what it was after all. So over the weekend I had the opportunity to go wild-harvesting, and did I. I found the mother lode of all pine resins near a high mountain lake where the trees are frequently bruised and bumped by careless boaters parking their empty boat trailers, thus leaving the tree wounded and oozing delicious and lovely *gulp* sap. For some reason, I don't like calling sap sap. My son was wild harvesting with me and kept saying, "Hey, there's a good bunch of sap on that tree," to which I'd reply, "Resin! It's resin, not sap." I just don't like that word 'sap'. Sounds too ordinary for what was were carefully coaxing off the coats of these trees. In the end we managed to walk away with nearly a pound of resin which smelled like no other resin I'd ever experienced coming from a pine tree-- I'd swear in a blind test this resin was benzoin, Sumatra, cinnamon and vanilla notes dominate -- it's weird but oh, so lovely.

Also harvested a handful of Douglas fir tips for drying and crushing into incense. Now I should look into restocking all the other resins necessary for kyphi and start a new batch. I have been commissioned, so to speak, to make a batch of balsam fir soap. A few weekends ago I went to Morro Bay, CA and found a lovely little soap and body care apothecary called Babylonian Soap Co. run by a sweet woman whose name escapes me, but who looks like a cross between Bette Page and Morticia Addams -- if you ever visit their store, you can't miss her -- she's bright as sunlight -- anyway, the soap shop had so many different types of soap 'flavors' it was really hard to choose one as a favorite (I ended up with three bars), but I distinctly remember having lustful thoughts about a particular fir bar. I had spent my limit and couldn't get that one, so I'm doing the next best thing -- making my own! I may even toss in a few of those Douglas fir tips for a bit of scrubbiness.