I have found aromatherapy to be an invaluable tool with our pets. We have miniature horses, an adorable dog, cat and 2 silkie chickens and our latest edition 5 big chooks, whom are laying almost every day. you cannot beat  your own chickens eggs, they are so yummy & of course their diet will have an impact on the quality.

I find that our horses respond very well to alternate medicines. I have personally treated our horses for wounds, punctures, agitation( when they moved from the city to the country), ticks, and colds.  Horses are easy to work with as they will soon let you know there likes and dislikes when working with essentials oils .

Because many essential oils have the same therapeutic properties we will always have a few to choose from when treating specific condition’s.

One of my horses at a young age developed warts on his nose! Poor darling when one first appeared I thought it was a tick and tried to pull it out! you can imagine the response I received. Well once he had forgiven me which didn’t take to long I was able to apply tea tree directly on to the wart. I applied tea tree a couple of times a day and approximately 2 weeks later they were gone.

www.aromatiqueessentials.com.au

Coconut oil is my favourite oil to use on it’s own.

Why?    It absorbs very easily and doesn’t leave a greasy feeling like other vegetable or carrier oils.

How does it absorb so easily?       Because it has a small molecular structure and therefore can easily absorb into the skin within a fews minutes.

Why should you use coconut oil?    Coconut oil has many benefits to the skin. It is also recommended for it’s nutritional benefits as well.

What does coconut oil do for the skin?   It is very nourishing leaving your skin feeling soft and silky, I recommend it for dry, cracked or sensitve skin condition’s.

Coconut oil can be used for wound healing, acne, insect bites, stretch marks, eczema, and it also protects the skin from the sun. I recommend it for sunburn as it has a cooling effect on the skin.

I love using this oil in the winter as my skin tends to be dryer.

Pet Care- Skin allergy related condition’s in dogs is very common,  Coconut oil is excellent to add to your dogfood to help with symptoms for example dry itchy skin.

By adding essential oils, this will potenise the action and have a very beneficial product for many different conditions.
to view my products got to

www.aromatiqueessentials.com.au

Job-hunting students are being warned by universities against paying for services to help get them internships…. From BBC News. Full story

This site may contain information about: children education. The blog is also related to: lessons.

Bailey Island, ME. June 20, 2009.

Scar

Across the earth across
my hands
open, old, and deep
a forgotten time

once there were fresh buds bursting forth
once this wound was not a wound,
but a beginning
a birth and becoming

and now the pebbles scatter, freckles across
boulders shaken to the core
can I break through their dark solidness?
through the scar?

beneath,
where I dare not go
where the rawness remains
anxiety, newness

the opening of eyes, rimmed with phlegm and trickling tears
an infant
the child of the universe
was this me? it wasn’t, was it?

because here I am, kneeling in dust, fingers curled over the edge
of the earth
peering into depths so dark
my eyes fail

to open this past, I need to feel,
to reach my hands down and in,
and touch the warmth
the magma singeing the center

still I hover at the edge
of the scar

This is another poem from Leslea Newman’s workshop at the Write Angles conference.

Remember a few.. Days ago when it was still all about being so skinny you could be tossed across the lawn with a funnel on your head like a lawn dart.. Or when your so skinny your arm could be used as a pool stick? Now, do you ever notice that now in music genre’s it used to be rap it really was.. But now it’s more metal.. You gotta look, the bigger guys and gals.. Not that you want to come up and just bang them but im saying.. Look at pop icons.. If you’re not stick skinny on stage then you’re torn up by the press.. OMFG SHE GAINED A POUND IS THE STAGE GONNA FALL OVER?! Well no, of course not, there is so much pressure on these people to perform it’s funny. But now as I go through these genre’s more and more.. Call me what you want but im a metal head, anyways, you look on the stage and you see these “fluffy”  guys on their and their just loving life, just doing what they want, when they want to, it’s about just making people go crazy and just love the tunes.. It’s not a beauty contest! It’s about the art. Personally you look at some of those guys up there, they put themselves through shit but they are there for the fun.. Im really glad 50 cent can bench 3 dudes and flatten a penny with his ass checks that’s really cool in all and i’m glad Oli Sykes can make a girl so excited she dumps the 2% fat special ordered not to hot not to cold mocha all over her, seriously dudes, props all around. I just really have to give it up I really have to give it up to people who can put themselves out there and say hey world I am who I am, fuck you, im about what I like to do, I look this way, maybe im not up to your “standards” but im doing what I wanna do. That takes talent, for that I take a bow to you all. Anyone who can get on camera and not be afraid to take off their shirt for kicks has greatness all over them for how judgmental this generation can be.

Get the hole truth about the ABCs:

Get the hole truth about the ABCs:

Get the hole truth about the ABCs:

I can’t get you off my mind.
You sit there, on a shelf of my thoughts,
Stirring my heart, causing it to jump at awkward moments.
I can’t say your name,
Not out loud.

My face flushes like a 1,000 fires and my heart beats as wild as my feet wanting to run towards you.
I can’t say your name.

I read your words, over and over again.
Until my heart is numb to them.
Sinking in the pain of “not being”,
Slowly, surely,
deeper into my soul where I can’t escape your face.

I long to know what it’s like to press my face against yours.
To know your breath across my skin.
To see your eyes filled with mine.

You say, “not now”
So I wait.
I’m not sure how long I muster the strength to keep you deep within my soul.
How long is too long when you can not satisfy that desire,
That need,
That hope.

Will I wait forever?
No.
I will, however, soak up this injury you’ve afflicted to my heart and let the wound pour sweet.
I will relish in the slow pull down until I find solace in “not now”.

I’ve been looking in the mirror a lot, lately.  Not because I love to look at myself.  It’s more of a self examination…and it’s been kind of scary.  That lump of fat in my midsection…yeah, I can do without that.  The fat reminds me that I’ve become too complacent with my state of being, being lazy, even looking for opportunities to be lazy and ways to avoid working too hard.

I have a few scars, too, most of which you cannot see.  Those scars remind me of things I’ve done in the past, and I have to admit that I have done some things I’m not proud of; scars from battles won and lost…mostly lost because I made a poor choice.  Once in a while the scars get the best of me, and the pain from the old wounds will come to the surface.  If I let myself, I will scratch the scar until the wound reopens and begins to bleed again.  I have to remind myself that the scar is there because the wound is healed.  I need to leave it alone.

When I see the fat and the scars in the mirror, they are reminders for me to be a better man today than I was yesterday; to be more careful in what I do.  I need to stop enjoying the “all you can eat” buffet of His grace and mercy and go out into the world and share what I have with others.

I like the analogy in James 1:22-25 about the Word of God being like a mirror.  It certainly shows us our flaws, but some simply walk away and ignore them.  We must examine them and be determined to correct them.  If we do so, then according to Hebrews 4:15-16 “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

I am so thankful for His grace.

This time it’s different.  I didn’t mean to say goodbye.  God is a door toward which the wind takes us.  Open it.  He is a gate.  Beyond the gate another gate until you reach the last.  Finally, when you least need it, the thing you couldn’t have asked for comes.  It feels strange now to accept it.  To look the man in the face and say, God bless.  I knew it was a wound.  Still, custom makes men say terrible things.  But not so when he wants to be useful.  Then he is dangerous.  Then he might offer his life.  It might have been a gift if I were able to accept it.  Thank you.  Thank you.  And then, Goodbye.  When I was young I used to sing a song about forgiveness.  Now I want to know the other word for paradise.

A few weeks ago I attended the opening of Saad Quereshi’s group show at Aicon Gallery London. Saad is a young, Pakistani-English artist whose highly-conceptual work is both rigorous and well crafted. He was extremely grateful for his parents’ support of him pursuing a career in art which I found endearing.

Click here to read Kavita Ramdya’s article “An Alien Artist”, a profile of artist Saad Quereshi.

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“News India Times” November 20, 2009

“An Alien Artist” by Kavita Ramdya

Saad Qureshi is easy to pick out in a crowd. At “Wound”, an Aicon Gallery group show, Saad sticks out: he wears immaculately-white high-top sneakers two sizes too big for his feet. Saad’s sneakers are the discerning feature of his “artist costume”, an outfit that must have taken him a week of internal to-ing and fro-ing plus phone conversations with friends for him to pull together. He wears the multiple layers indicative of his current status as an art graduate student at University College London’s Slade School of Fine Art including a white shirt, red tie, purple cardigan and black jacket. His hair is tussled and he isn’t clean shaven, giving him the appearance of looking disoriented from having just left his art studio for the first time in days.

The young Pakistani artist furtively scans the gallery while speaking to friends, family and associates, giving the feeling that he is half present in all his conversations. However, when speaking with him, I have his full attention. What I quickly realize is that for all his posturing as iconoclast, he is not immune to the guilt young South Asians feel over rejecting more practical vocational choices (e.g. law, medicine, business) for embarking on a creative career as an artist. Saad describes how his parents, although initially unsupportive of his artistic interests, started to come around when his school teacher, Mrs. Robinson, explained to them that Saad was a “chosen one”. Now, he continues, his “parents are 200% behind me” and “would do anything to help me in my career”. Saad’s parents surface again and again, so much so that I begin to feel like I am his shrink rather than an Arts Op-Ed columnist. Alternatively, and I wouldn’t put it past Saad whose youth is a powerful cover-up for his shrewdness, he may be planting material on me that he knows a South-Asian reading audience subscribing to “News India Times” would find endearing.

Saad Qureshi, despite his formulaic style and earnest concern for his parents’ approval, is an exceptional conceptual artist. Not only is his work well-crafted and of the highest standard of quality, but its themes and concerns are relevant and timely. When he tells me that he works constantly and needs to be coerced into leaving the 24-hour art studio to eat and sleep, I am not surprised. His work is the conceptualisation of issues of immigration, terrorism, and victimhood, all as current as the daily e-mail alerts I receive from the “New York Times” and “Washington Post”.

Qureshi has two qualities that will stand him in good stead as he moves forward in his career. First, he is prolific. Second, his work is a response to his personal experiences as a young Pakistani growing up in the suburbs. However, these personal themes reverberate on a global scale: the alienation and marginalization he captures in his sculptures and on the canvas also speak to the current political climate with regard to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the proliferation of racism.

Jagroop Mehta, the gallery’s Sales Associate, explains how a collection of black, life-sized alien figure sculptures symbolize marginalized societies. On a more personal level, the black sculptures refer to the artist’s adolescence while living in the suburbs, where he felt like an outsider. When I ask Qureshi about his tribe-of-aliens sculptures, he refers to Frantz Fanon, a black, mid-twentieth-century French post-colonial philosopher whose writing serves as the intellectual backbone in Qureshi’s own work. Fanon discusses how the “other” is only a different version of oneself. After learning the intellectual underpinning of Qureshi’s work, I silently applauded his ability to inspire repulsion and intrigue in the viewers of his sculpture collection. He successfully mirrors the viewer’s own grotesqueness by drawing his or her attention to the quality of the “other” in his works.

In addition to the alien-like sculptures, a collection of Qureshi’s “edge paintings” are in the show. From a distance, the pieces look like fresh, egg-white canvases waiting for the artist’s attention. However, upon closer viewing, Qureshi has meticulously painted, drawn, and “scrap-booked” in marginalized figures on the edges, where the canvas bunches up and threatens to be overlooked rather than on the smooth, white, fresh surface. The scrap-book nature of the canvas’ edges is a result of Qureshi’s use of multi- media. Along with drawing and painting on the canvas’ edges, he also utilizes photographs and currency to convey concepts around “the other”.

When asked why he refrained from utilizing the medium of the canvas in a traditional way, Qureshi describes his frustration with painting: “I felt restricted, like painting was a limited medium… I discovered the edge of the canvas instead.” He goes on to describe his images threaten to “slip off the canvas” and Qureshi’s role as the artist is to “catch these images before they fall into oblivion”. Niru Ratnam, the gallery’s curator, describes how despite Qureshi’s age (he is not yet twenty-four years old), the artist’s installation works “are conceptually very well developed”. The use of Fanon and Qureshi’s ability to discuss his work on a theoretical level are testaments of the thought process he puts into his art.

Ivan, an art student enrolled in the same program Qureshi is finishing his studies, rejects the notion that his friend is a painter. Instead, Ivan describes Qureshi as a “designer” who “arranges things”, designing canvases like Tom Ford would “designer jeans”. Although on the face of it, Ivan’s comments might seem unfriendly, in the context of looking at Qureshi’s painstakingly-detailed work, one quickly realizes how much of his art is based on the conscientious placement of details.

Clearly a workaholic, Qureshi is managing well during a defining moment in his young career. Currently his work is showing in a well-respected gallery while he is still completing the final year of his Master’s degree. Finally he has just finished filming what I am guessing is a reality television show on BBC2. Throughout the private viewing of “Wound”, my ears pricked when scattered associates referred to a television production of some sort which incorporates various young artists including Qureshi. The production is not meant to be public, but then artists are not known for their ability to keep secrets.

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“So didja get it done?” He drawled, his feet resting on the table and scattering documents to the floor.

 “It’s complicated.” I replied, grimacing and clutching my shoulder.

“You got shot, didn’t cha? Should’ve known you’d fuck it up.”

“I said it’s complicated!” I slammed the table with the fist of my good arm and winced anyway, pain jolting up my spine and throbbing in my shoulder. He laughed and spun in his chair, letting his feet fall to the ground.

“I’m sure where you come from gettin’ shot is all complicated and fancy, but down here it’s nothing a shot o’ whiskey and a pair of pliers won’t fix.” He grinned and winked at me. “Oh and, bandages o’ course. Lots and lots of bandages.”

“Where’s the Patcher?”

He stood up and walked lazily to the door of my office, swinging it open and continuing to smile. “Don’t know. Should be ‘round here though, I’m sure if you look for him he’ll pop up. And maybe if you say please, he’ll patch you up.”

“Fuck off and die Indi.” I snarled, but he shrugged it off and nodded.

“Love you too newbie.” And he was gone, leaving the door wide open behind him. I cursed and slammed it shut, rattling the windows and drawing a few curious glances. I didn’t have to wait long for Patcher, thankfully. He whispered into the room and I didn’t even notice he had entered until the door clicked shut behind him. Damn, he must’ve been a helluva agent back in the day.

“What the hell happened to you Grayson?” He muttered as he ordered me on the table and cut my blood-soaked shirt sleeve off.

“Fucking security. They were showing the new guy around. Caught me by surprise in a ventilation shaft and a lucky bullet clipped my shoulder. Don’t know if it grazed, hit or went right through.” Patches tut-tutted and examined the wound. I did my best to not scream like a little girl, though at times I may have failed, my memory is a bit hazy from all the pain. All I know is that the bullet had lodged itself in my shoulder but it hadn’t caused any serious damage to the joint, which was a relief. It was embarrassing enough to miss the target and break the contract in my first month at the job, but to have everyone know my shoulder was shattered would be beyond embarrassment. It would mean the end of my job, and possibly even my life.

No-one quits from The Umbrella, after all. Not unless you retire.

“There, all done. Shoulder should be good as new within the week.” I sighed in relief and stopped clenching my teeth.

“Thanks Patch.”

“My job, my job. Any other bodily ailments?”

I thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, there is something else. But, um, please don’t tell the others I’m asking you this.”

Patches sighed, then nodded as well. “Fine fine. What’s the problem?”

“Well, when I was running from security, I rolled my ankle pretty bad. Can you take a look at it?”

“Sure sure. Let’s take that shoe off and have a look, shall we? Left or right?”

Sugar is a somewhat magical substance. In all its many crystalline and syrupy moods it gives us jellies, and taffies, and candy canes, and fudge. These days, we don’t often worry about spoilage, so its easy to forget that sugar is also an excellent preservative. Fruit preserves and candied fruits last a long time; the sugar draws moisture out of the microbes that would make the food spoil.

None of these uses would suggest that we could use sugar in the arsenal against injury and bloodshed. Yet just such a use was discovered among German surgeons during the early days of the first World War:

…it is said that many of the wounded have been cured by dressings of ordinary granulated sugar, the compresses being changed every second or third day.

Actually, it kind of makes sense. Sugar would impede the growth of infectious bacteria, just as it discourages the growth of spoiling bacteria in food. But Confectioners Journal offered a more metaphysical explanation:

Sugar is always vitalizing and it seems logical that it should purify and heal when thus applied externally.

And there was a suggestion for a new candy product:

One of these days our confectioners may be found turning out sugar plasters.

Candy band aids sounds like a great idea. Imagine how much easier it would be to sooth little Suzy’s scratched knee if you could offer one bandage for the knee, and another to suck on!

One final thought: Of course, salt would have the same effect. But in addition to the general non-yummyness of salt band aids, it should be pointed out that packing wounds with salt sounds like it would really hurt!

Source: “Sugar as a Life Saver,” Confectioners Journal April 1917 p 65