Pondering and Incursions in Everyday Ramblings

In front of this photo, the north half of my modest garden yesterday. You can see the cosmos are getting ready to burst into flower. They are quite happy. Did I mention this before, that my plot neighbor’s indeterminate tomatoes are a little out of control. Tis the way of neighbors…sigh.

Yesterday on my way down there, a young man on a motor scooter had stopped on the street next to me and was staring intensely behind me. He had his helmet off. (I was just thrilled he was wearing a helmet.) He asked what was going on and I turned around and the street behind me was covered in this billowing cloud of dark gray toxic looking smoke. It was huge an ominous and he was saying, “I am not riding into that!”

Later they closed the road off. It turns out it was a fire in a homeless encampment under the ramp up to one of our nearby bridges with burning trash and exploding propane tanks. Lovely. No one was hurt, but I think there might have been damage to the bridge.

Mrs. Sherlock and I didn’t walk today. She wanted to go early, both because of the heat and because Mr. Sherlock is trying to sell an old truck of theirs. I couldn’t go because I am on a committee reviewing resumes for our halftime office manager position. And because of travel schedules of the other committee members, we need to review them right this minute. Or at least comments were due by 9 AM. We are Zooming this afternoon.

The office manager position is the only paid position in our organization at the local level. Our President, Voter Service Coordinator, and Communications Director have all been working as if these were full time jobs. It is intense. My job won’t be quite that intense, but it is a lot on top of my teaching and other being in the world as a single person obligations.

Besides my learning curve on the position, I also need to learn how to be calm and methodical in terms of responding to the needs that are presented. I think I will be fine with boundaries and sticking to areas that are in relation to my position (the office manager deposits checks) but I do need to figure out how to get less frazzled when things come in from left field as they do.

I went to visit my neighbor this last week and her daughter. She is the woman that trimmed my hair in exchange for some seedlings. The three of us had a lively (and on their end opinionated) discussion on hair oil and scalp health. I had received as a gift a bottle of “Keranya Pure Black Seed Potent Hair Potion”, which is a combination of oils and natural extracts.

The instructions say that you should apply all over one’s scalp with one’s fingertips and rub the oil in for 2 – 5 minutes. It has a spicy natural scent and as one washes one’s hair after an hour the aromatics are manageable.

My neighbor told me in no uncertain terms not to rub it into my scalp. My scalp has been itchy as you know, age, summer, heat etc. They say that it gets in the pores and clogs them even if one washes it off. My hair is quite long now, and dry and it likes the oil. It makes it softer. They could see that it was softer.

What they said I need to do about my scalp is to get a shampoo with Tree Tea Oil in it. They said I could try a couple of different brands. I got the natural not as expensive one yesterday, except when I got home, I realized I had picked up the conditioner and not the shampoo.

There was a longish somewhat scientific explanation for all this that I kind of sort of understood. What I find fascinating is the opposition of the instructions I got with the hair oil and the strongly held opinions of two people totally immersed in the world of hair care.

I guess I will need to make my own way through this thicket of contradictions.

Perhaps I will craft an inquiry to Ishtar (or Inanna) the goddess of contradictory forces and connotations and accept the fact that in the long run all this pondering doesn’t really matter.

As is the case with so much disturbing news that has come down the pike lately.

It is all water under the bridge. A good thing after encountering a careless and terrifying fire.

Last updated July 20, 2024