USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii. At Pearl Harbor, the USS Arizona suffered direct-hits from four 800-kg bombs dropped by high-altitude Japanese Kates and the remains of over 1,000 crewmen are still entombed in her hull. Even today, droplets of oil still leak to the surface.
http://pearl-harbor.com/

I don’t know why I am in such a pensive state of mind today.  I’m remembering Pearl Harbor on this anniversary of “a date which will live in infamy.”  Usually I see Dec. 7 on the calendar and I may or may not attach any special significance to it.

Years ago I toured the USS Arizona Memorial in Honolulu.  The visit was profoundly moving as I stood right over the ship that is the grave for over 1,000 sailors and watched the oil slick that is still slowly seeping from the hull.

War really is hell.  I am glad that I do not have any first-hand knowledge of it.

But with all of the ominous rumblings throughout the world, I sometimes wonder how long I will be able to say that.

Moving right along to happier topics, I have all the clothes packed in the Casita for our upcoming trip.  Now all that remains to be packed are toiletries and food.  I’ll go ahead and get the canned and packaged food packed later today.

After I get that done, I want to give the entire house a deep cleaning since we plan to be gone longer than normal this time.  Our plans are to leave December 15th.

I bought a Passport America membership last night.  That will open up a lot of options for inexpensive camping for us.  I absolutely adore the woodsy, rustic, remote Federal campgrounds we usually stay at.  But sometimes I’d like a break from them and would enjoy staying closer to civilization.

Of course, there are a lot of RV parks in Florida that don’t honor PA — or that don’t honor them in snowbird season.  But there are a surprising number that do.

Also, now that I know I can safely leave both Sunny and Sheba in the trailer for a couple of hours, we’ll have a lot more freedom this trip.

Tinycamper’s little apothecary 🙂

I wanted to report back to those who are curious about how my home remedies turned out.

The frankincense and myrrh balm does seem to have helped.  My thumb joint  is not as swollen and tender to the touch as it was.  But that could be for any number of reasons.  The flare-up could have run its course and calmed down naturally.  I could have an over-active imagination and it could be the placebo effect because I wanted it to work so badly.  Or it may actually have helped.  In any case, it feels better now than it did last week.  😀

I made it in little 3/8 oz. plastic jars I got from Amazon.  A normal salve base is one part beeswax to 8 parts oil (like olive oil — I used almond).  However, the essential oils are so thin and penetrating that the normal recipe turns out almost liquid.  I tried again with a 1 to 4 ratio and it was still semi liquid after adding the esssential oils.  I’m thinking that maybe straight beeswax with that unusually high proportion of essential oils might work.  In any case, to the salve base in the little jar I added 25 drops (1/4 teaspoon) each of frankincense and myrrh essential oils.

The results of the sleeping aromatherapy trials are much the same.  I do think they help me fall asleep.  It could be that I expect them to help, therefore they do. It’s so hard to quantify things like that.  Lavender helped.  Lavender and marjoram helped more, I thought.  Clary sage and marjoram was better.  I finally concocted a recipe of several essential oils that are supposed to promote sleep and I thought that was a lot more effective.

For those who are curious, I ended up with:

10 drops Roman chamomile, 5 drops clary sage, 5 drops bergamot, 5 drops marjoram, 5 drops frankincense, and 2 drops ylang ylang.  I bottled it in a little 1/2 oz. dropper bottle — again from Amazon.

But then last night I couldn’t sleep and nothing helped!  Also I have been breathing so many essential oils lately that they’ve triggered allergic reactions.

So be very skeptical and try at your own risk.  🙂