Kim Wills

Ok, "first world problem" here, but I wanna cry!! I've been on Facebook since 2007, and I now feel like I'm being "forced off", or maybe forced to put the app on my phone, which I will not do. I get on FB on a browser on my laptop. I don't want it on my phone for 2 reasons:
1 - It will spy on me
2 - It would be too easy for me to use it
I want to use it intentionally, when I'm home and I have to sit at my laptop.

So here's what it's doing to me (sometimes):
1 - Telling me I can't post my reply because I've posted too much and I appear to be spam. This is ridiculous because sometimes it's my first post of the day and there is no way I posted too much.
2 - Telling me "try again later" when I post replies, and then it will never post, even if I posted elsewhere (so it's not my connection or anything).
3 - When I click the title of a group to go to it, I get "page cannot be loaded right now", preventing me from going to it.
4 - Sometimes I go back to find a comment I wrote, and I can't find it.

It is sad and frustrating when I take the time and thought to help people, or encourage them, and I write something of substance only for it never to get to the person I want it to. I've wasted time, energy, and my thoughts and my caring.

5 - And NOW, today, it started telling me (once in a while) to verify my identity using my phone (via their app, which I do not have on my phone). I think the previous things didn't frustrate me enough so now it's being obvious: "PUT ME ON YOUR PHONE OR YOU CAN'T USE ME".

I am really mad right now, and really sad. I did not post inflammatory things. I did not talk about politics. I was in groups with similar interests & issues that I have. I gave great advice, I was always encouraging to others, and I asked real questions and thanked people when they tried to give me advice. Oh, I was in a homesteading group there which is starting to keep repeating the same dumb posts yet it wouldn't approve my legitimate question about a hand pump well (and a few others). Their repeated questions seem suspicious like they might even be Ai, and it's often questions about prepping, which makes me wonder if they are information-gathering questions and the whole group is a sham, or turning into one.
Is that crazy of me to think?

I feel like Facebook is morphing into a robot, with its tentacles separating me from my family and friends on there, and now interjecting blockades here & there.
I just realized I wrote in the past tense about it, I guess because I fear I will be forced all the way off any day now.

It's how I keep in touch with family and some friends, so it's actually quite emotional and I will feel cut off.

Dorothy, Sorry about your hip! I wish you a speedy recovery!

I realize that this video will not help if someone has broken a bone, but if anyone has trouble getting up off the floor and is not injured, check it out! This doctor gives 4 methods of getting up, and suggests practicing them (along with some related exercises at the end of the video) every day, in order to prevent not being able to get up.
Do your sit-ups and squats, everyone!

https://youtu.be/J1JfWe1YL-U?si=aBrBd96Zkx1nQ2Qe


And here's me doing a hip exercise that I would teach my tai chi class if I had one. (haven't taught much since the pandemic)
It's slow & can be done at any level. It's good for flexibility, strength (if you put your feet farther apart as you get better), moving lymphatic fluids (the opening & closing part I talk about), and coordination (many things are going on at once).

https://youtu.be/Y3BZDP2h8NQ?si=RXKX3FZQrcq7LA_U

I wonder if it's lovage, which is edible and has white umbel flowers.
Just wondering, if you don't know what it is, how do you know it's edible and Scandinavian?

Re: MEDICATION  dispensing...
Our local pharmacy offers the free option of pre-packaging each month's pills in little blister packed trays. It's labeled with the date and times you should take them. I got them for my stepmother; they were a little tricky to open but scissors did the trick. They can be peeled if you can use your fingers well; I could do it easily but she could not. The plastic packaging could be considered wasteful, as it becomes trash, but of course we can all weigh the pros & cons for ourselves (or for our older loved ones). If your local pharmacy doesn't do it, larger ones all do.

The pic I'm attaching is not mine; I got it off an image search, from a website that trains healthcare workers (so I assume the patient info is fictitious). I'm just clarifying that I'm not exposing anyone's medical info.

I just read that about 10-15% of the world's texts have been digitized, and not all of that is available to the general public. Some requires pay, such as some scientific journals, as an example.
Also, there is much knowledge that is not in text, it's in people's heads.

It may seem like the internet is infinite, but I wonder how much is redundant? You only need one web page to explain how the heart pumps blood, but I bet there are thousands or millions of attempts, as parts of larger learning materials for different audiences.

Derek Thille wrote:Kim, my only concern would be with ensuring the stumps don't sprout like a coppiced tree.  From your photo, I'd consider cutting the stumps closer to ground level.  If the stumps were living when cut, you may also want to consider drilling down into them to aid rotting - if the trees were already dead, I'd be less inclined to deal with it.  It almost looks like the smaller multi-stemmed tree could be in the way (that could just be an illusion though).  If it is, you could curve your hugel to go around it.

Is that area treed enough for the hugel to be in full shade?  A bit of a rhetorical question, but you'd want to match your hugel plantings to the amount of light you get.  Another consideration is the land orientation - frost will want to move downhill, so you may want to consider whether or not you might create a frost pocket up against your hugel.  I didn't do a good job of that placing the one I built this year and a pumpkin plant paid the price.

Good luck.

Thanks for all those thoughts. The stumps were definitely alive when cut about 3-4 years ago, and they have not sprouted by now, so I guess they won't.
I see how drilling holes or cutting them more could be helpful.
I think the thin trunks we're seeing are all individual saplings, if I remember correctly. Hmm.
The area is in shady woods on a hilltop. I want to grow medicinal forest herbs, and if I need to protect them from deer I was thinking that it's way less fence to enclose a hugel than the same area of flat ground. I figure I could get 2-3 times the surface area.

Thanks again!

Ellen Lewis wrote:Years ago.
Made a heap of branches, centered on a stump, edged on short side by wood rounds set on cut edge.
Had no turf, tried to put mud & seeds on it. Sides too steep but roughly worked. Short-lived clover & buckwheat, soon reverted to nasturtium & pellitory. Never worked for vegetables.
Rounds were stable & rotted away nicely.
Branches are the favorite thing of bermuda grass & poke. I tried to consolidate them as they broke down, but they didn't break down much.
The shade & moisture of the branch pile helped the stump begin to bear mushrooms & now it's almost broken down enough to remove & use the hole for planting.
It's dark out now, so no picture.
Just looks like a weedy mound anyway. 12 or 18 inches high.

Hi! Are you still here?
I searched for stumps & hugelkultur and you're all I found. I was wondering how your stump-pile worked out. Did you ever add more stuff to it? Is it now just barely a lump? How many years before you couldn't tell it was a stump anymore?

I have some stumps in my woods, in particular I have 2 near each other so I thought of making a hugel bed in between them (including on top of them). My logic says it would be a fantastic idea because the stump is still "alive" down underground in a way, drawing water to it, possibly. Or at least holding a lot of moisture. But before I go through the trouble I was hoping for anyone with experience to chip in either for or against it. Maybe there's some decay issues I'm not aware of.

Sadly, due to some timber theft, I am left with about a half a dozen stumps and piles of smaller decaying wood that was too small for them to take (About the thickness of my arms & legs). I get upset when I walk through and see it, so I was thinking that making some of it into something useful would help me feel better. I guess it sounds like I'll be doing it anyway, at some point... but still wondering if there's anything to consider, using stumps.

Thanks to anyone who can give input!

M Ljin wrote:A bit different from baby talk, but I have heard say that the old regionalism for chimney here is “chimbley”. Apparently that’s a common enough dialectical form but I’ve yet to hear anyone use it seriously.

I knew I heard that somewhere! Took me a while, but I found it in print. In How the Grinch Stole Christmas!!
Here is me, my actual self, reading it on video to send to my granddaughter a few years ago. I thought Dr Seuss was just taking liberties rhyming it with "nimbly"; I mean, he outright makes up words. But I guess it was a "real" word! I'm glad you mentioned it!

Fast forward to 5:00 for the page with the "chimbley".

Anne Miller wrote:No baby talk here, though I had a friend when she wanted a favor she would say

`Will you do me a Flavor` instead of favor ...

I've heard that one from several people throughout my life! I just asked my husband about it because I know he has said it. He thought it was from an old ice cream commercial but I couldn't find it.
I did find:
- Ellen DeGeneres does a game with her audience called Do Me a Flavor where they guess if an ice cream flavor is real or not.
- Lay's is doing (did?) a campaign called Do Me a Flavor where they asked the public for potato chip flavor suggestions.
But I feel like I've heard it all my life, which dates back before those 2 things.


My son had trouble saying "K" so words like cookies and doctor kit came out as "too-ties" and "dot-ter tit"
I'd get to see a good laugh (or a suppressed one) when I'd send him over to a guest to say "do you want to play with my dot-ter tit?" and they'd have no idea what he meant.

He also couldn't say refrigerator for a while so sometimes I still might say "fridge-ee-ator" to him.

Oh, and a pharmacy we'd pass by when he was learning to read was called Peter Pan Pharmacy. He'd say Peter Pan "Price-mary". So sometimes I'll say price-mary instead of pharmacy.

Kit Collins wrote:.....
One disadvantage of soap-less living is that I don't exfoliate as much. I guess soap might soften the skin so that the outer layer rubs off more easily. Just rinsing and light rubbing with water doesn't seem to accomplish this unless I do a long warm soak. So when my skin starts seeming too "thick", or looks a bit grayish, then--the next time I take a warm bath or a hot shower--I will rub my arms, legs, and face with, say, a towel that is a bit rough. That'll get the excess skin off, so I feel "baby-fresh". Might help to have a little strainer in the tub drain in order to catch and discard the skin bits.
.....

I use a body brush. I have a hand-sized oval one for my whole body, and a smaller one with a pumice on one side and a brush on the other for my feet. Once in a while I scrub my feet really well, and then while my cuticles are still soft I push them back with my fingernails. "Pedicure" done, lol.

Baking soda and vinegar hair:
As for my hair, lately I've been using shampoo since I moved and didn't have my usual toiletries with me, but I'm going to start my favorite method again:
In the shower, I put about a tsp-TB of baking soda in my hand and drizzle some water on it, making a paste. I rub the paste onto my scalp. It feels rough; definitely something to get used to. I rinse it out. Then I pour a 1/2 inch of apple cider vinegar into a cup, add shower water, and pour it through my hair. I leave it while I wash my body, then sorta-kinda rinse it out. You can leave it in; it won't smell once your hair is dry either way.

I have a transition period when I switch off shampoo, like some others said, where it feels sticky or weird. My advice during the first couple weeks is to NOT wash it (I mean even with the baking soda and vinegar; never use shampoo again) unless it visibly looks greasy. Bear with it and only wash it if you'd be embarrassed to be seen, lol. After 2-3 weeks I fall into a natural timeframe of washing it about twice a week.

PS - Don't use the baking soda labeled "Fridge and freezer". It is a lot more coarse - as coarse as salt - and doesn't turn into a paste as well, and feels like some of it stays on your scalp.