receiving visions

sometimes i close my eyes and pretend i’m dead and can’t tell my friends i care about them or hang out with my siblings or draw or get high or jerk off or eat a perfect mango or see a sunset or write in my journal or post on tumblr or listen to music or read or write or anything every again and everyone who cares about me has to deal with my death and i can’t even tell them that i miss them. and then i imagine through some miracle i get another chance at life. and i open my eyes and realize that i’m alive again!

2. Scene from the 1947 film, It’s A Wonderful Life. George leans against the bridge railing. “Please, I want to live again. I want to live again,” he prays. He drops his face to his fists. “I want to live again. Please, God, let me live again.”

grate a single 4oz bar of your favorite soap

boil a gallon* of water

slowly add the grated soap to the water, stirring constantly

stir well, until soap is completely dissolved

let cool, stirring occasionally to prevent it from setting up

using a funnel**, pour an appropriate amount into a liquid hand soap dispenser, to use in the kitchen or bathroom

store the rest in a well-cleaned gallon milk jug

congrats, you’ve made a gallon of perfectly good hand soap! i made a gallon of this soap at the beginning of the year, and at this rate it’ll last me well into next year. it’s a fraction of the cost of store-bought, and it uses a fraction of the packaging too, meaning less waste! this also cuts down on the carbon emissions of shipping (any time you buy a liquid product, most of the weight & volume is just water, making it unnecessarily bulky and heavy to transport. if you can buy a dehydrated, solid, or powdered version, you should.) 

*a gallon per bar has given me a pretty thick and gelatinous liquid soap. you may be able to get away with more water if you’d prefer a runnier soap. the consistency may also depend on what kind of bar soap you start with

**if you don’t have a kitchen funnel, i highly recommend getting both a small-spouted one for pouring into very narrow bottles and a wide-spouted canning funnel for jars. the latter has been probably the most unexpectedly useful kitchen accessory i’ve ever gotten.