Emus and Other Natural Remedies

The entire subject of natural remedies and aids to healing can really be a tangled forest of information to find your way through, as I have discovered. For example, one of my cousins, who is very knowledgeable about natural remedies, sent me an email saying that someone she knew had recommended using emu oil on the “nether regions”. EMU OIL? Where in the world do you get emu oil? The zoo, perhaps?

Another cousin of mine who is into this stuff wrote in and said that emu oil could be purchased at health food stores, or one could get their own emu and “render” it at home. I guess you could order one over the internet and have it delivered to the hotel…..First of all, though, I had to be sure what an emu actually was, other than a “crossword puzzle” animal. Sadly, animals like emus and okapis are often relegated to “3 down” or “4 across”. If they are in a zoo somewhere they are “filler animals”. Those are the animals you have to walk by to see the exciting animals – the lions and tigers and gorillas and such.  They never put all the good animals together because if they did, then they’d have half a zoo full of lonely cross-eyed antelopes and animals that look like failed genetic experiments pressed desperately up against the fences looking for human contact or escape.

Anyway, thanks to the internet, it was not too hard to determine, although one of my older cousins who is here keeping me company swore it had hooves and fur and spit and guarded cattle ( she is from Texas and a lot of things in Texas fit that description). I did think briefly about getting an emu and tying it to the bushes in back of the hotel courtyard and having it voluntarily drip oil into small blue bottles from under its wing or somewhere. Then I saw a vision of Mike Neder’s face when he heard about my emu, and I quickly discarded that idea. I also was afraid that “rendering” might mean something more drastic and I have ENOUGH barnyard karma as it is! A couple of my nieces have emailed me some sources for the oil which sounds much easier, so I think I will get some – I am fascinated by emu oil now – I just hope it comes in a bottle that says “no emus were injured in the collection of this oil”.

The Karma Hotline

I have been giving some more thought to this idea of “instant karma”. and I decided that perhaps I needed more specific information on exactly how this might work. I began my research by seeing if Barnes and Nobles had a book entitled “Karma for Dummies”. They did not, but they did have “Buddhism for Dummies” and it has a chapter on getting your karmic act together. I clicked on it but it would not let me read it online, so I guess I will limp daintily over to the bookstore later today and read that chapter standing up.

I was thinking that for someone like me, who is already “waist deep in alligators”, (an old southern saying) there should be a Karma Hotline you could call. It could be set up electronically so that your call could be routed to someone depending on how big a Karmic boo-boo you’d committed, sort of like, “Press 1 if you only thought about doing something mean to someone, Press 2 if you have acted on your thought only once, Press 3 if you do mean things a lot, Press 4 if you have done some really serious mean things, like cheating on a spouse or stealing,  Press 5 repeatedly if you know you are in deep karmic doo-doo” – you get the idea. Then you could be connected to Depak Chopra, or Louise Hay, or the Dalai Llama, or maybe Oprah. I’d love to talk to Oprah about this! I don’t know if she knows a lot about karma, but I know she’d be sympathetic and would probably have some good ideas……….do I sound desperate? I think I am desperate – I keep seeing all those little 4-H projects lined up, looking at me with those soulful eyes…….

Barnyard Karma

I have now had 12 days of radiation so I am a little over 1/3 done! Yea!

White counts and platelets have stayed up;  thanks to all of you who are sending them – it is working! The “netherlands” are once again ablaze and complaining loudly. Hopefully we are incinerating what needs incinerating and nothing else.

As I sit here thinking about this in the middle of the night (yes, the sleeplessness is back), I find myself contemplating the concept of Karma. I have long thought that there is something to the idea of Karma. We joke about it sometimes, but I have thought it made cosmic sense all along. However, I also remember that someone told me that right now, we are in a time of “instant Karma” , meaning that instead of you “reaping what you sow” in another life, you may get it back in your face right away. An alarming thought, especially for someone in my situation who is experiencing something unpleasant at the moment. I can’t help thinking about whether this could be the result of something karmic. When I put that thought with my condition, I have to wonder if perhaps I have been a “flaming a–hole” somewhere along the way. I can think of a couple of events where I might have earned that designation, maybe……perhaps…..and then, suddenly, I am struck dumb with the realization that there is another event that fits this scenario perfectly, but it would involve “barnyard karma”. Is there such a thing? What a truly terrifying thought!

I will spare you the details, but when we moved here 20 years ago we were “city slickers”and I wanted us to experience animals and farm life. Makes some of you cringe to hear me say that, right? Well it does me also, now, but then I was an animal neophyte except for dogs and guinea pigs so we got chickens and ducks and turkeys and sheep and pigs and horses. I wanted a cow, but Mike put his foot down about the cow, (lucky for the cow), but we had everything else I could find and drag home. Anyway, one of the turkeys bunked in with the chickens for some reason (chickens are mean little buggers, by the way) and the chickens picked on him, literally, slowly, pecking his rear end to the point where it looked seriously messy and painful and I worried that it was infected. (Why the turkey let this happen we will never know, but rumor has it that turkeys are not terribly bright…..). Now I was a mother, and we all know mothers can touch all sorts of disgusting substances, but I was not the turkey’s mother, so I couldn’t see me touching the turkey’s “nether regions”( or him letting me, for that matter), so what to do?  I had a brilliant idea! You know that stuff you spray on sore throats to deaden them, Chloraseptic spray? I thought I could spray it on the turkey’s distressed area and it would deaden it and disinfect it at the same time, right? The part I forgot was that it takes about 30 seconds after the spray goes on that it deadens the area, and before that it burns raw areas like fire. I did not remember that until I sprayed the turkey, at which time he screeched an earsplitting screech and launched himself into the air like a rocket! He eventually did return to earth, but he was even more odd than he was before and ran from me whenever he saw me.(Turkeys obviously have some memory.)

So you can see how this event could fit my situation like a glove, but if there is such a thing as “barnyard karma” I could be in serious trouble here. Am I going to get some sort of karmic payback for all those cute little 4-H projects that went you-know-where? GOOD GRIEF………..I’d better make a pot of coffee – I may be up for a few more hours doing a list of “barnyard karma” possibIlities I need to clear WITHOUT DELAY, but how do I do that? I guess I’ll have to “wing it” (sorry, but I couldn’t resist a little “barnyard karma humor”!)