Things About Hosteling

In all fairness, staying in hostels was probably my favorite part of the trip to Brazil. For all of my grown-up complaining and fit-pitching, I can't help but smile when I think of the people and the things that I got to experience in hostels.

New Year's Eve on Copacabana!

Our first Hostel was in Rio de Janeiro. In case you don't know, Rio is a city of 6 million people, which is about 5,999,627 more people than I am really comfortable sharing a zip code with at one time. Our Hostel was located in the Santa Teresa neighborhood, known for it's colorful and artsy culture and the perpetual party atmosphere, which is obviously why I desperately needed to stay there. Because parties. Until at least 9 PM. We shared an 8 bunk room for 5 nights with 6 boys that rotated in and out like migrant shift workers from various continents. There was finally one other girl from London there, a bronze-skinned bohemian beauty who flitted in and out like she owned the place, which, if you consulted any of the 20-something international romeos in our dorm, would be the general consensus.

January 1st 2017. The aftermath. (the shirtless dude on the beanbags in the corner is the hostel owner

I was without question the oldest person in the hostel, which I would estimate houses anywhere from 20-75 people on any given night. I was also the only mom. Being a mom has it's definite advantages, as a few of the kids will respect your age and sleep needs by tiptoeing quietly around the darkened door room after 9 PM when I usually holed up in my bunk for the duration of the night. Halle was able to take full advantage of the perpetual party atmosphere and hit up some of the street parties and famous Cachaça bars and Samba joints.

One night, a friend of the hostel owner who was a Syrian refugee cooked dinner for the entire hostel - some amazing rice and beef dish with peanuts and I don't even know what. But it was really good. That night I stayed downstairs with all of the kids and drank caipirinhas and Antarctica beer like it was going out of style. In case you were wondering, a caipirinha is a traditional Brazilian cocktail made with limes, simple syrup and Cachaça, which is a spirit distilled from sugar cane. And it's delicious. I might have had a dozen or two during my stay.

The best part about staying in hostels is, hands down, the super cool and friendly people from all over the world that you get to meet and subsequently, hang out with. In every hostel (we stayed in three) we got the best tourist tips, sometimes tag along local guides and help getting everywhere we wanted to.

The second hostel that we stayed in was in the middle of the Mata Atlantica Rainforest, in a little hippie beach town called Trindade, and couldn't have been more different from our urban hostel in Rio. We spent the one day that we had in Trindade hiking to beaches that were squirreled along rustic coastal trails, slip-sliding in our Havianas in the mud from torrential downpours that happen at least once a day. While we were there, we sat out one of the awesome storms in a great little restaurant with good local beer and an American classic rock cover band. In the meantime, back at our hostel, the wood slat bridge that spanned the small creek between the main hostel lodge and the bunkhouse where we were sleeping collapsed when one end of the bridge support sloughed off in a miniature land slide. The minor catastrophe also cut off the water supply to the the entire hostel which meant that we were relegated to drinking the cheap beer on hand at the hostel. It was a super fun night, like camping with cousins when the power goes out. We played UNO with some kids from the Netherlands and I am pretty sure I didn't win.

I would tell you that the last hostel we stayed in was my favorite except that I really like all of them for different reasons. Green Haven Hostel in Ubatuba (yes, it's a real place) was located directly across from a big beach where giant, lifted tractors drive out into the surf with trailers to pick up boats that come into the bay. Ubatuba is the surf capital of Brazil, and while it took a little doing to find the "best surf beach", we finally did, and Halle got a lesson while I soaked up the last full beach day that we had in Brazil. It was exactly everything that I imagined Brazil would be. Turquoise water, crashing waves, and beautiful bronzed bodies of all shapes and sizes. And then we went back to the hostel, where they hosted a killer Brazilian barbeque and partied all. night. long.

Hostel living certainly isn't for everyone. In fact, I am not sure it's even for me, but it was a memorable experience, every sleepless night of it. Halle was insistent that the night that we spent at a hotel robbed us of the cultural experience that a hostel provides, and while I enjoyed the "private" bedroom and a bathroom and shower all to myself, I have to admit that I missed the adventure and intrigue of sharing a house with 50 strangers from all over the world. Even if I was the only mom.

Things That Trouble Me

So here's the thing. I got my self in trouble with that last little gem I wrote, and have decided henceforth and forevermore that I will only write about myself. Ok, myself and my boy. And maybe my kids. Especially my kids, since they will always be mad at me no matter what, and my boy, since if he is mad at me the only person that really cares is not even a person, but the puppy Dagny, who will be distressed that she can not reach both of us at night when he is sleeping on the couch. Any way, I need to limit myself to poking fun only at people within my immediate circle since theirs are the only responses I can reverse manipulate and control.

So about myself. This is actually an excellent time to say something about myself, and that is this: I am in a TREMENDOUS amount of pain these days. Like, take the pain I was at last year around this time, twist it, bend it in half and stomp on it and you'd almost be there. Sometimes I think I must be faking how much pain I am in to myself, since I still manage to muddle through work, but then I realize that I haven't made my family a decent meal in Many Days and I know it must be for real. I try not to whine, but this usually results in me glaring angrily at people who have no idea what they did to piss me off. I have discovered, in this last 14 months of almost constant pain, that being crabby and snappy doesn't solicit me much sympathy, but people are much more likely to do nice things for me, like heat up my rice pack, or get me an ice water or a shot of whiskey, if I am very sweet in spite of my pain. Especially Josh seems to respond ever so much more gently when I whisper sweetly that I love him but I am hurting like a son of a chukar. Another indicator that my pain is not pretend is the impulse I have had in the last several days to actually post a prayer request on Facebook. I mean, who does that, other than... oh wait, only talking about me. Luckily I have enough pride and dignity to not admit my need for intercession and so I just go on suffering. Mostly I was concerned about religiously discriminating against my wildly varied list of friends, since I don't have any idea how to ask a Buddhist to intercede, or a Hindu to Hind or A Zenist to Zen, and I was concerned that the responses on any such status would cause the next religious crusade and it would be all my fault. I have enough guilt to deal with, like for never cooking decent food for my family anymore. I just don't need that additional burden.

Another thing that would, at any other time in my life be kind of a big deal, but since I am in pretty much a steady 8/10 on the pain scale is somewhat muted in importance, is the fact that I married the Grinch. This is huge cause for concern when one realizes that the entire point of living for 365 days a year is that 20some of these days in December are jam-packed with warm fuzzies and ginger bread and wrapping paper and all kinds of wonderful, superficial things that remind me that I AM LOVED. I understand the crisis of commercialism in our culture, and the perversion of the true meaning of Christmas, which was actually some fertility ritual... but for me, every bit of the Christmas that we celebrate here in the good old, spoiled rotten USofA, represents the people that I love and that Love me. Family, Friends, Present, Past, even Future. I cannot get enough of the feeling that every silly Christmas carol and Jingle Bell connects us all to a common theme of WANTING happiness for each other. I do go a little overboard on presents, because I FINALLY have an excuse to give Everyone In the Whole World something that I just know that they will love. And I know that every time they see it, even if it is to put it in a yard sale box, they will think of me (hopefully with some guilt in the yard sale scenario). Josh is insistent that none of this is the true meaning of Christmas and that we should be ashamed of our superficiality. Technically, he is correct, as usual. But I can't help but thinking I am somehow failing in communicating the depth of my desire to just love on every body this time of year. In a nasty turn of events, it happens that my love language is gift giving, and somebody gave me an excuse. This is quite unfortunate for my honorary Jew of a husband (he has been legitimately dubbed this by our close Jewish friend) who prefers to make layaway payments on our monthly groceries so we don't have to spend over $50 at one time, regardless of what we have in the bank. I appreciate his budgety sense of propriety, and the balance he brings to me, most of the year, but come Christmas, I have run into the ironic coincidence that he has more or less run out of work, and every present I buy becomes the incarnation of a power bill or a tank of gas. It's a perpetual conflict for me as I look longingly at my online shopping carts and frantically search retailmenot.com for coupons for my favorite websites to somehow justify the piles of boxes on our porch. We tend to find ourselves at odds every so often these days, and if he could only be human for a moment and figure out how much fun The Holidays are, presents and all, we would get along ever so much better. :) It doesn't help that both of our older kids are on an ungratefulness campaign to become Snottiest Offspring of the Year, and he is desperately tired of being argued with and chastised by two know-it-alls in Converse and Bobby Pins. I get that. I really do. They really deserve coal and switches these days, but I am fairly certain that at 15 and 16, I didn't deserve much more, and it was about that time that I was surprised with a green leather coat that was the answer to all of my childish prayers. Obviously since my Wonderful Husband was the picture of a perfect youth, he not only was never mouthy and insolent, but he also never got a Christmas Present after he was 10, which resulted in his pragmatic approach to a giftless holiday. Maybe I will get him counseling sessions disguised as golf lessons for Christmas. That might be the greatest idea I've ever had. Other than rolling the gingersnaps in sugar AND cinnamon before baking (this turned out to be delicious).

So, back to myself, my earnest goal is to have a real dinner in the crockpot before I leave for a long day of work, and to spend all 8 hours brainstorming a way to pay for more and more Christmas presents that will have no ramifications on our heating bill. Obviously I need a raise. Or to take up knitting. I had great intentions to make most of my holiday gifts this year, but all of my creative fantasies were dashed with the onset of a nearly full time job and the allure of a couch that has been sitting lonely without me all day long. Oh yeah, and finally finishing Battlestar Gallactica. Fantasizing myself as Starbuck is a nice switch up from Angelina Jolie, and also makes me feel less guilty for drinking and acting insanely.

I would like to add, lest I frighten off even more friends than my last spew did, that in spite of my pain, I am still quite happy, and intend to stay that way, in spite of my status as Mrs. Grinch and the stress of hiding online purchases. I love this time of year, and not even snotty teenagers or fiscally responsible husbands can steal away the giddiness of waking up to a glowing christmas tree, the smell of pine needles in the vacuum, and a puppy chewing on ornaments that date back to the late 1970s. I love my family, my friends, my puppies, my job, my whole life. If I have to hurt a little to pay the bill for having this good then I guess that's ok. This is heaven. All we're missing is snow. And some home cooked food. And more presents.

Things That I Miss

It's The Holidays. There's pretty much nothing about The Holidays that I don't love, unless you count little squabbles with a "somewhat petty" husband about the cost of Christmas Gifts and Holiday Feasts, or not having enough leftover stuffing to really feel quenched. But overall, I just adore this time of year. This year is nice, because for whatever variety of unjustified reasons, and a healthy dose of prozac, I am overall, as happy as I can remember being. Maybe it's the ridiculous puppy that wakes me up in the morning chewing on my arm - or was that my husband doing a zombie impression? Or maybe it's the smell of Peppermint Dreams, which may be my newest Scentsy favorite (call me shallow). Or maybe it's sorting out 17 boxes of glorious Pendleton Blankets and being able to tell the story behind each one because I am totally geeking out and reading the blanket books in lieu of Wisdom Searches every day. Sorry Dad, but Proverbs got worn out. Anyway, I am content, but not in a things-are-ok way, more content in a things-are-warm-and-fuzzy-and-even-if-you-are-a-little-bit-of-a-jerk-it's-nothing-a-gingersnap-latte-won't-fix kind of way. The one pang of sadness I have is for the friends, and the family that I haven't or won't see this season. I miss my besties from back home, even though back home is really here, now, I miss lunch (and breakfast) at the Mustang Grill, Karaoke and crispy chicken salad at the Whitebird. I miss sledding with 20 people and hot chocolate and snowplowing down sheep creek road in a pickup. I miss dark nights on friends couches with cheesy movies and doing dishes in hot sudsy water with my best friend. I miss BBQed turkey and Backwoods Cigars. I miss hockey practices, hockey games, expensive Canadian Lattes that have some magical ingredient I still haven't found anywhere else. I miss my kids still thinking everything was cool, instead of nothing is cool. I miss making chai lattes every morning to be picked up en route to work by only the most privileged of friends, who probably didn't even like chai but liked the excuse to stop by. I miss so many things, but look forward to recreating some memories with new friends, like smashing together Gingerbread Hovels and stacks of hundreds of puffy sugar cookies in indeterminate shapes. I can't wait to cruise Bend looking for the BEST Christmas Lights and fight with my teenagers over who gets to wear the cool snow pants. I am excited to go snow shoeing at night, in the dark, seeking out a bonfire with the aid of a warm thermos full of hot cocoa and schnapps. And I am excited to go home and visit at least some of my old friends. Some places you can never really go back to, and that's ok, I've still got the smells and sounds and warm fuzzies in my head. But dropping in at Christmas for a hug and a frantic download of community gossip is enough for now. I can say that my Auld Acquaintances haven't been forgot - but I'll still raise a cup of kindness for Auld Lang Syne.

Things That Smell Good

Let me start with a disclaimer: I am a Scentsy Consultant. Maybe that's more of a shameful confession than a disclaimer. I am a horrible salesperson, just ask my husband. The whole idea of selling Scentsy was mostly just to pay for a tragic habit that I had formulated after my BFF introduced me to the divine smells several years ago. These little squares of messy wax transformed my chronically dirty house into a celestial palace, if you closed your eyes and just inhaled. After moving (many times) I realized that I was ordering all of my mess-masking smells online from a consultant I didn't talk to, and there was probably a cheaper way to do it. Enter the brilliant idea to become my own consultant. Realizing I had no friends here in Bend, there was a glimmer of an idea that maybe selling this redemptive stuff would make me instantly popular. As one of my long distance buddies pointed out, selling anything really isn't the best way to make friends, but I was really looking for an excuse to throw a great party. So I signed up, got all my cool demo stuff, scheduled a party and invited EVERY person I knew, local or not. It was Christmas time, so I went all out. $200 of food and drink and new decorations, prizes - the whole schlemiel. One person came. A neighbor. We drank all of the wine, plus a very dangerous concoction of assorted liquors. Between her kids and mine we pretty much ate all of the food, and needless to say, she won the prizes. It was fun, other than being sick for three days afterward, but I didn't sell a single splotch of smelly divinity.

Fast forward 8 months. I decide to have another go. For whatever reason, Scentsy is still calling me a consultant, which would be totally absurd except for my own personal orders have kept me just above the minimum required sales - the beauty of being a consultant is that I get 20% back off my own orders... One of the very weak justifications that I have been using on my Ever Tolerant Man. So my new and pretty much only friend Desi and I put together a party. I had introduced Desi to the money pit of Scentsy when I gave her one of my demo warmers for her birthday and made her smell every single sample scent I had. She was instantly drawn into the cult. We invited over 100 people to our party. This time, being disillusioned, I decided to spend most of the party money on booze, since if no one showed up, at least we would have fun. (Actually that isn't even true, since we used left over wedding wine :)) This time, Desi's sister-in-law showed up, along with 4 of her work friends. It was a smashing success, even though I didn't know any of them. 

Anyway.... all of this was the preface to what I really planned on saying. I like Scentsy. While I am a consultant, I know that there are many questions and controversies about the stuff and would like to lend you my totally biased and unfounded opinions. Let me break it down: (does that sound like I am listening to early 90s rap? Because I am.)

1. Smell: I love Scentsy's baked smells: Cutie Pie Cupcake, Sugar Cookie, Happy Birthday = YUM. I have developed a theory that if my house smells like a cupcake that I will not need to eat one, and 37% of the time, this rings true. That plays out as 37% less cupcakes consumed, so ultimately I win, right? I have yet to find someone who can't find some scent that they Absolutely Love. My sister likes Love Story, as do many friends. I like to mix smells, like Luscious Lemon and Cutie Pie Cupcake. 

2. Lasting Power: My biggest complaint about Scentsy smells would be the longevity. I did some research, and am currently conducting my own in-house study on which flavors or styles last the longest. Feedback online indicated that the spicy smells (cinnamon, clove, ginger) and some of the citrus smells seemed to last longest. It makes sense then, that my favorite of the Scentsy Man (is that kind of oxymoronic?) smells, Hemingway, has always seemed to last longer than my other fragrances, as it is kind of clovy and exotic. 

3. Availability: Another complaint I would have is scent availability, as it seems like just when I figure out what my Favorite Smell of All Time is, they don't have it anymore. This is usually circumvented by a biannual (?) Bring Back By Bar sale, where they have a limited production of popular discontinued bars, or by finding a similar concoction. Being that all sales are online, and I am too poor a salesman to order the newest demos, you're kind of shooting in the dark when you order blindly. But for me, that's part of the excitement of opening a box of Scentsy. (which, by the way, I am expecting any minute!)

4. Cost: I don't love the cost of Scentsy. I feel like it is a tad overpriced, and to be honest, I will only buy the stuff on sale, which isn't hard. I hope that as the company grows, we will continue to see a decrease in overall cost, but I am not holding my breath. It really is a luxury item, and as much as I love it, if things got tight for us, it would be one of the first corners I cut. My solution to this : stockpile. The downfall to that solution? See #2. Lasting Power - the bars lose potency with long term storage. Luckily, for you all, this is another in-house test I am conducting, since my stockpile is well underway and I won't use all of this stuff for a very long time. So stay tuned. 

5. Maintenance: Let me say this one thing: DO NOT DO WHAT I DO. I couldn't find specific Scentsy recommendations for how long you should leave your warmer turned on, but other consultants recommend thinking of it like a lamp: you have it on when you are there, using it, otherwise, it is off. I, on the other hand, leave mine on 24/7, which (here's another in-house study bonus tibit for you), a) makes your scent last a shorter time (see #2), and b) eventually kind of burns in a crispy wax residue that is hard to clean off. When I figure out how, I will let you know. I am lazy. This is no secret and should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me. When I change the wax, I do not pour it into the original container to let it harden. I know good and well that I would forget to pop it out and throw it away and then try to reuse it, wondering why my smells are smell-less! I do what you are NOT supposed to do and pour the hot wax onto a paper towel directly into the garbage can. I do not recommend this, but will continue to do it. Because I am lazy. I have a billion little Scentsy spatulas for cleaning the residue (note: this does NOT work on crispy burned wax scum), out of the dish. If you want one I will give it to you. Just find me. I probably have the messiest Scentsy warmers of any consultant alive. But they do clean easily and beautifully on the outside with a paper towel when they are warm.

6. Mess: Closely related to maintenance is dealing with the inevitable (unless you are over 40 and live alone with no cats, dogs, or loud music) wax spills and drips and slops. The beautiful thing about wax is that when it cools and hardens, it scrapes easily off of most surfaces. Unless that surface is unfinished wood. Perhaps it's needless to say that my antique dresser now has a smooth wax finish. Also: dyed waxes might scrape up, but if the colors absorb into, oh, say, caulk, or grout, etc, well, you'd better like pink. Or green. My plan is to avoid non-neutral colored waxes in the future. Which will be hard since Happy Birthday is Peptol Bismol pink. I will be working on solutions for this problem, as will my adorable and clever husband. Again, stay tuned. 

7. Safety: My husband, ever the safety expert (no really, he is a paramedic/firefighter, and I used to think he was exaggerating how much safety research he does, but he actually does), told me he read about a Scentsy related fire back east. I totally believe him, and have been extra conscientious about making sure to leave dirty clothes and junk mail piled in places other than right next to the Scentsy warmers. I did some research myself (this is usually to try to prove him wrong, but always fails), and did read a couple of stories about possible connections, as well as the results of Scentsy's own safety investigations into related events, and some independent tests performed with warmers. With newspapers wrapped around the warmer, and fabric draped over it, the temperature of these objects never reached 100 degrees, far from flammability levels. Again, I take, and recommend taking every precaution - well, ok, I don't always turn them off when I am not around, but I plan to start doing that! But I do keep flammable objects away from all of my warmers. It's just smarter. Not to mention when those warmers get bumped and slop wax, it's a son of a gun to clean up. 

Ok, so that's my 7 scents (hahaha) on Scentsy. I love the stuff, but believe it has it's downfalls. If you can live with them (I can), then it's totally worth feeling like you have a gloriously beautiful clean house, even if you really have pink wax in your grout and haven't vacuumed in days. 

Shameless plug: if you shop at my website https://predictability.scentsy.us/Scentsy/Home , my husband will like me better. 

Feel free to fire away with any questions and I will make up an answer for you! email: Bendability