Ooo-eee ooo-ah-ah, ting tang Walla-walla bing-bang

A few weeks back,* Luke told me that if he lived in the middle ages, he'd want to be the village baker. He likes the idea of waking up in the wee hours of the morning to bake big loaves in a stone oven. When he lived in Guatemala, there was a baker in one of the towns that was a good example of what he has in mind: a fat man with strong arms and a big laugh.

*On a side note: I have no concept of time. Anything that was longer than a week ago is "a few weeks back." It could've been two weeks, it could've been six months. I don't know.*

When he asked me what I would be, my first thought was of taking the job of midwife. But I should leave that to someone who actually likes birth, and not just the idea of liking it. The job I would really choose is the herbalist/medicine woman/witch doctor. I like learning about herbs and plants and mushrooms- edible things that can be foraged, medicinal properties, etc. It would be fun to have a job of it (and if I was the baker's wife we could combine the two and give medicinal breads).

For my friend Drew's birthday I got to play medicine woman, and made him some tinctures. It was fun to research which herbs I wanted to use, which medicinal properties they had, etc. I ended up making a St.John's Wort tincture for mood elevation; nettle tincture for colds and hay fever; and a sleep tincture using chamomile, spearmint, lavender greens, and lemon balm.

 

 

As I do any time I want something to have a cute label, I asked Luke to do it.

Also for his birthday I finished his Christmas present that I never gave him. It's a magic bag. It can hold his tinctures, stuff for reiki sessions, books on shamanism, whatever. The front of the gray linen bag is embroidered with wheels ("chakra" means "wheel") with the corresponding color and number of spokes for each chakra. The crown chakra is represented by a lavender lotus (just to make it more interesting and because I was not about to embroider 960 spokes). This was a fun project. Though I don't believe in chakras the same way Drew does, it was fun to learn about them and the ideology behind taking care of them. And it seems like something a witch doctor should make, right?