Magickal Realism

First, I want to give a shoutout to clevergirl on Etsy. Her super-awesomeness went out of her way to send me these 2 ml vials, and I am plotting now for something interesting to do with them/fill them with:

Today is the last day of Nablopomo, and hopefully I’m sliding in to home with all 30 required entries. I’ve enjoyed getting this blog off the ground, although there are a few things I’ve learned:

1. The breadth of the blog topic makes it nearly impossible for me to blog ahead of schedule like I do in Fat Chic. Although there were a couple of entries I tossed off due to illness, those immediately bankrupted my “toss off” subjects. Most of the time I write from notes I’ve taken at other times, with one screen open to my public library databases and another to relevant Internet resources.¹
2. The cold/severe hiving outbreak I had this week was a setback in my physical, business AND blogging life - and while I wasn’t stressed out over blogging, I did have to consider it as a possible priority to set aside.
3. Blogging may not have journalistic standards, but it’s still very important for me to be careful and correct in what I say; even careless comments tossed off in jest will be visited upon and confronted. And I should know that - I have a degree in journalism! (That I don’t use… but that’s another issue).

And I’m just thinkin’… given that this is something where you have to show results daily, rather than every couple of days, it might do better in a different month from Nanowrimo. There’s another 30 day month lying around year, somewhere? Right? Like June, maybe?

But beyond Nanowrimo ramblings, today was one of my monthly play dates with my buddy Joel. And we did what we usually do on play dates: since Joel actually enjoys driving, after our typical lunch at a Nepalese chai house, we went to whatever whimsical place struck my fancy that day. Today, it wasn’t whimsy so much as business needs, guiding me, so I showed Joel my favorite Arabic and Indian grocery stores, located in Central.

If you ever come to Minneapolis, once you’ve got your Walker Art tourist thing out of the way, and you’ve done that annoying Mary Tyler Moore thing with your hat on Nicollet Mall, go check out the ethnic grocery stores in north Minneapolis and in Saint Paul. Hmong, Arabic, South Asian - it’s a festival of everyday exotics. The spices these shops can obtain are fresher, stronger, and lower cost than what you get in a bix box American grocery store. There are more oil choices, and I can stock up on sunflower and almond oils that also happen to be organic for a third of the price I can get it from some of my suppliers (sometimes I can get a further discount, depending on how brave I am about attempting languages not my own).

And the real treat for me is hidden at the back of the store, with the soaps and henna boxes. Sometimes, if I’m very lucky, I can find such treasures as oud, or offering waters scented with pomegranites, or some of the richest olive oil you can possibly taste on this side of the Atlantic. Today was not an oud day, but I did score some Egyptian kohl liner², and several small flavor treats I’d been waiting to try.

I also found a few scents to test. Out of curiosity, I picked up some sandalwood oil from the Indian grocery store. One whiff told me that whatever it was, it sure wasn’t real sandalwood, and smelled very powdery on me. I’m not really sure what it was - it’s still unidentified - but whatever it is, it’s not sandalwood It also led Joel on a bit of a research binge, since he wondered if it was actually some other part of the plant other than the bark. It did, despite everything, pass the burn test - it doesn’t leave a rubber trail upon burning - and while that’s no guarantee it’s natural, that puts it in the “plausible” column. But I’m not about to use it in any of my sandalwood fragrances. And while I did unfortunately have to set aside an amber as clearly synthetic, I did find a surprising floral among the ones that I purchased.

I also decided to try out a few of those flavoring agents I see from time to time. While I wasn’t hopeful for a natural effect - the ingredients did read “essential oils…fragrant chemicals…” after all, I thought perhaps the fragrant chemicals weren’t synthesized. So I tried the burn test.

Now I’m going to be vary wary of ANYTHING that says “artificial flavoring” because whatever’s in them would give me marshmallow nightmares. Yipes!

Still, I have quite a few goodies and base oils to play with now, from coconut oil to fresh cardamom. It’s going to be a winter for whipping up. Now let’s see about getting me that heat gun…

1. Anyone who thinks that library research is obsolete also thinks Google is a fullproof research tool. Check out some libraries and really research a topic sometime - it’s a whole wide world of information technology you could only dream of from your desktop. Unless, of course, you’re a lucky schmuck with university access, like me. [↩]
2. which earned me a dirty look from the checkout girl, since in our city only certain types of women line their eyes [↩]