My Missionary Work

Important Public Service Announcement

Must be my Catholic upbringing, but I’m really a missionary at heart and today will try to make a few converts re Bidets and Insect Shield (Permethrin). (I know, you thought I’d write about the Virtues of PV and living Off-Grid with a Wolf). I’ve previously espoused the virtues of 400% efficient Chinese Ductless DC Inverter Heat Pumps.

Bidets

You can find them online (note: I bought my last one as a gift NOT from Amazon whom I’m boycotting this year, so far 100% successfully). You can get them for about 30 - 40$ and attach them to your toilet in about 15 minutes. The benefits are:

• A clean butt;

• Hardly any toilet paper usage. The Bidet cleans your butt, and then you use just a bit of toilet paper for drying, and,

• that bit of toilet paper can go into a waste receptacle next to the toilet (maybe later into the woodstove) and NOT down into your septic system (very important for us folks without city water and sewage).

I would go so far as to say, if you don’t have a bidet (or two or three) in your home, you are just NOT civilized, plain and simple.

When visiting friends and relatives, I have often taken a bidet along with me and installed it. I now have many converts (and am thinking about starting a church; then people could make tax-deductible donations to support my missionary work).

Insect Shield (Permethrin)

In the spring in the forest here in Southern Indiana, a short walk in the forest outside my home might yield about 10 to 20 ticks on myself. And in the summer, literally 100’s of chigger bites. Since I’ve started wearing Permethrin-treated clothing in the Spring and Summer I get NO ticks and NO chiggers. And I don’t have to apply any chemicals to my skin. And the Permethrin is not at all harmful to humans (an extract from the Chrysanthemum flower). I guess insects just CAN’T STAND THE SMELL of it, though humans can’t smell it. I should probably add this factoid: it’s a 50 year old technology (well, neglecting all the people who for maybe 100,000’s of thousand of years knew about the Chrysanthemum flower).

Let me tell you this: this clothing has Changed my Life! I used to go visit relatives, and if I put on a bathing suit and went swimming, everyone would look at me and ask if I had leprosy or some other fatal skin disease with all the bites that I would scratch until they bled. Yes, I’d wake up at night scratching myself and my sheets would be covered with blood. Seriously, during Chigger Season I was afraid to venture outside! No more!

I can now safely venture outdoors into the forest where I live, while still living a Good Clean Hoosier Chigger-Free life. I call it my “space-suit”, and I never venture outside without it (and especially don’t forget the Insect Shield light hiker sox to be fully protected). Now, you city-folks may not have these problems, but, if you were to come visit me, you had better have a space suit. And while I have never once before advertised a product on this blog, I’m including the following information merely as an Important Public Service Announcement.

Important Public Service Announcement (i.e., where to get a space suit):

• Insect Shield — the REAL missionaries

• Craghoppers — I’ve bought a lot from them!

• And of course, searching on “Insect Shield” or “Bugs Away” you can find such clothing at other sites such as REI and very expensive brand-name [e.g., Ex-Officio] clothing with this feature.

• OR — for just 10$, you can send your favorite clothing to the monks and missionaries at the Insect Shield Monastery and they will treat it — good for 70 washes (which would be a lifetime for me!), and they’re cool: a pair of sox only counts as 1 item; or send 10 - 15 items of clothing in a bag for a mere 89.95$. Link: Insect Shield Your Clothes

I hope I have made a few converts today, and perhaps earned myself a higher place in Heaven!