aardvark bids farewell

Dear Aardvark Essentials customers and fans,

Aardvark Essentials is closing its business doors. That is the Twitter, or nutshell, version of this letter. For the story version, read on…

Yes, I am closing my online lotions & potions business. I’d like to take a few moments to honor the things I have most loved about Aardvark Essentials and to offer you the last potions I have made.

Things I’ve most loved

You! You are the most loyal, playful and supportive group of fans and customers a girl (and an aardvark!) could wish for. I bid you farewell in my capacity of potion-maker, and look forward to saying hello again and again in my capacity of massage therapist, writer, and sister humanling making my way in the world.

The aardvark. You may recall that he came to me in a dream back in 2009, and would not leave me be until I payed attention. I told him, at the time, that I couldn’t do it alone and he said, “what about me?! I can be your business partner.” And that’s how it came to pass that me and an aardvark started creating magic potions together. He might reside in the realm of imaginary but he’s taught me so much. He is the calm to my freak-out, the cool to my hot-head, the collected to my scattered. And, wise as he is in animal-ways, the aardvark has taught me that the best way to take care of my mind is to pay attention and care for my body.

What’s that? You are wondering where he is now?

Ah yes, of course. Well, you know that he went back to Africa when I announced our potion sabbatical last June. Since then we have spoken –via imaginary Skype, naturally– and at some point it became clear that I wanted to keep having more time to write and he wanted to stay in Africa (Boston might have good take-out but we never did find a place that offered red ant nests). The last couple of months have been all about me getting comfortable with this big decision, while he satisfies his craving for red ants.

The joy and magic of creation. Sure, it was in my mind that ideas for potions appeared and popped, but the how of their creation, the what that they actually became, and the stories that went along with it all, always involved surprise. The potions that you have used and loved were so much bigger than I ever could have imagined. What I learned in this regard could be summed up as:

Everything has a life and a magic of its own. Even while it is through us –you, me, anyone– that something happens and its magic comes into form, we don’t, ultimately, make or control anything. To have gotten to have the mind into which potions appeared, I say, “Lucky me!”

Havi BrooksAt the Kitchen Table (2009-2011), a dear group of delightful, quirky and brilliant people who cheered me on and were my guinea pigs, seeing my potion-idea from its wee baby stage all the way through to 10 potions. You know who you are and, to Havi and to you all, I send you a treasure chest filled with kisses and wishes delivered by the handsomest pirate ever there was who is about to give you an enormous bow of gratitude on my behalf. (I recommend the view from behind!) To me he looks a whole lot like Johnny Depp. To you? I don’t know. Eye of beholder, and all that…

My friends, I think that about says it.

What comes next? you ask.

I have been clearing space and I am open to surprise, but I know that writing will continue to be a part of it. Also, my massage therapy practice very much continues. (I’d love to see you on my table! And yes, I will continue making and mixing my own creams and oils, and quite likely, potions, too. They may be available from time to time, locally, in my office).

I’d love to offer you first dibs on the very last potions I have made.

7 Sets of Potions

(only one of each set, available as is)

Playday: $60 (value of $82) —- SOLD
10 ml. Sassypants (pulse point potion)
1 oz. Sassypants (cream)
1 oz. Birthday Suit (cream)

Moonday: $64 (value of $86) —- SOLD
10 ml. Sassypants (pulse point potion)
1 oz. ChaChaChai (cream)
1 oz. Presence (cream)

Toosday: $78 (value of $104) —- SOLD
2 oz. Birthday Suit (cream)
5 ml. Losing It (pulse point potion)
5 ml. Second Wind (pulse point potion)
5 ml. Ease Please (pulse point potions)

Middleday: $54 (value of $72) —- SOLD
1 oz. Presence (cream)
(two) 1 oz. Sprezzatura (creams)

Foursday:  $70 (value of $96)  —- SOLD
1 oz. Sprezzatura (cream)
1 oz. Up ‘n’ at ‘em (cream)
1 oz. Second Wind (cream)
1 oz. Birthday Suit (cream)

Loveday: $32 (value of $48)  —- SOLD
1 oz. Night Queen (cream)
1 oz. Presence (cream)

Restday:  $32 (value of $48) —- SOLD
5 ml. Ease Please (pulse point potion)
1 oz. Presence (cream)

(Potion descriptions, here).

To order, here’s how it works:

1. You email me and tell me which set(s) you want. (First come, first serve!)

2. If the set is available, I will email you an invoice via PayPal.

3. You pay the invoice. (Even though the invoice comes to you via PayPal, you do not need PayPal in order to pay. Major credit card is fine.)

4. Once I receive your payment, I will ship you your potions within one week. (No extra charge for domestic U.S. shipping.)

That is all, my darlings.

Gratitude and wishes for every good thing to you,

Heidi

Apparently aardvarks take sabbaticals. Who knew!

Hear ye, hear ye!

The aardvark and I (in my capacity as the aardvark’s business partner, ahem!), will be taking a sabbatical starting on Thursday, June 7.

Sabbatical? What does this mean, exactly?

From June 7 through October of 2012, we will not be making or selling potions.

What’s that? But you need potions?

Fret not. We want to make super duper sure that you are well-stocked with whatever potions you need before we go, so please enjoy FREE (1st class) U.S. shipping and reduced international shipping rates for any orders you place between now and June 6. (And, if you are an aardvark observer, lurker, or stalker(!) who has been curious for some kind of ever, but has never actually tried a potion, now might be the time!)

A few words about the sabbatical: For many, many months (years, maybe) my heart has been telling me to write. (Sometimes it even wakes me up in the middle of the night –thankyouverymuch– to remind me of this). And for a couple of months now my body has been asking me to rest. So, for Heidi this sabbatical will be about writing, resting, pausing, sensing, daydreaming, nightdreaming and playing. After all, my favorite time of all times is summertime. (Please note, Heidi’s Table will remain very much OPEN for massage therapy during the potion sabbatical).

And what about the aardvark? Do aardvarks even take sabbaticals?

Well, Mr. Aardvark has never been a creature of many words, and, unlike me, never feels the need to explain himself to anyone –an animal trait I quite admire!– but apparently they do take sabbaticals, because when he and I put our heads together (actually, it was my head and his snout), we were in complete accord on this sabbaticalizing thing.

[Psssst... While I don't reeeally know, I do have a hunch that June 7 will find our Monsieur Aardvark donning his black bomber jacket, cap, and goggles (yes, the very attire he wears when making your potion deliveries) and taking that little propeller plane of his for a spin wherever in the world his fancy takes him, which, I'm quite sure --IF my hunch is right-- will include his native lands in Africa, because, as well as he feeds here in Somerville, Massachusetts, I know for a fact that he has never found a red ant or termite nest to feast upon to his liking in these parts.]

We do not have an exact date of return, but we expect to be back from sabbatical in the fall, probably October.

One last thing: During sabbatical there may be postings on Aardvark Essential’s Facebook Page from time to time, if nothing else than to talk about resting, pausing, playing, putting one’s feet up, listening to our animal-bodies, and whatever else strikes my fancy. I am not promising, but it is possible. Also, if I get any postcards from the aardvark, wherever in the world he is, I will for sure let you know about it on the Aardvark Essentials Facebook wall. (Go give the page a LIKE if you’d like to stay in the loop that way).

So, go! Order away! And enjoy free domestic shipping (and lower-priced international shipping)! Now would be good, because we don’t want you to forget and then find yourself potion-less. We are standing by, sleeves rolled up, ready to take care of you!

To rest, to renewal, and to doing what our bodies and hearts desire, whatever that may be…

Hugs and kisses from me (plus a sloppy slobbery one from the aardvark),

Heidi

P.S. Heidi’s Table WILL REMAIN OPEN for massage therapy even while we are on potion-sabbatical. (Email Heidi or call –617.297.2266– if you want to book a session! And yes, there are openings left this week.)

P.P.S. Favorite potions for massage at Heidi’s Table this past month have been Sprezzatura and the newest (and unscented) potion, Birthday Suit. Check them all out OVER HERE!

Red: A Story and a Birthday Suit!

Want to hear me tell you this story?
[haiku url="http://heidistable.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Red-Birthday-Red2.m4a" title="Red, Birthday Red"]

Yesterday I painted my nails red. Understand, I am not one to grow long nails, never really have been and certainly not now when I’d never want a client to feel anything even remotely like a long nail on a shoulder, on a back, or while I’m fulcrum-ing their head at that hurts-so-good spot where skull meets neck…

But, the other day, walking past CVS, I was taken back 20 years… And yesterday, on the eve of my birthday, my fingers practically begged me, “Please, can you paint us red?” I just had to oblige. Also, something about now must be reminding me of then…

I was living at 211 Beacon Street in Boston, in studio 3D, although I can assure you that the words “three dimensional” utterly belie the Lilliputian size of the studio I called home for several years in my mid 20′s. It was a shoebox of a place, with a ladder I climbed up to where my futon fit, just barely, in the sleeping loft a couple of feet from the ceiling… a place where you were likely to bump your head if your dared to stand up tall, and a place where, too many times to tell, something like a ceiling fell. Yes, that’s right, a ceiling.

Fairfield Realty was the name of the management company for the building of my shoebox studio, and for $475 a month in the Back Bay of Boston they would practically look you in the face, laugh, and proceed to tell you you were lucky —yes, lucky— which was shorthand for they’d not be fixing your bathroom ceiling anytime soon. Like I said, it was not a place where a girl could stand up tall.

But I had a friend. Her name was Katherine. She lived on Marlborough Street, a block away, in a studio with an actual bedroom and ceilings that didn’t fall.

“Waterstones later?” Katherine would ask.

“Yes!” I’d reply.

Waterstones was an enormous, three-story, palace of a bookstore in a beautiful, old, stone building on Essex Street. It became my second home, a place I could while away long New England winter weekend afternoons, a place where I could, for a few hours, not notice that it was dark:thirty in the afternoon and oh-so-cold and getting colder.

This is how it went: after a quick hi-how-are-you kiss in the lobby Katherine and I would split up to do a walk-through, each of us perusing our favorite shelves and sections, gathering our stack for the day. Mine would invariably include new fiction, or women’s studies, or poetry, or psychology, the latter to find out what the hell was wrong with me. Thankfully, at Waterstones I also met many poets, alive and not, and they made me feel understood in the way that even the most perfect psychological diagnosis never could. Discovering Letters To a Young Poet was like finding a pack of letters in a bottle just for me. Mr. Rilke got me. And there’s nothing like feeling gotten, nothing. Mr. Neruda had grown up in the very city I had in Southern Chile. He knew endless rain, the kind you could feel in your bones, and he talked about love being round like a watermelon. And oh but I wanted a melon like that. And on and on… At Waterstones poets became friends.

After our walk-through, Katherine —who, whatever else she may have ended up carrying, always had at least one book, if not five, from the Humor-Comedy shelves in her stack— and I would meet at our predetermined spot by the big comfy chairs by the windows on the third floor —choice #1—  or, if the window chairs were full, in the quiet corner over by psychology, sitting cross-legged on the floor —choice #2. And there we’d read the afternoon well away into the evening, every so often looking up to tell each other something we’d found.

Those were paycheck to paycheck pay the rent and just buy food kind of days, so I never did buy many books at Waterstones, but please believe me, dearest palace of a bookstore, that any extra money I ever had did go to you and I was heartbroken the day I went back to visit you, after I’d moved to a place where I could stand up, and I saw the closed-for-business sign on your front doors. My heart sinks all over again just remembering.

Often Katherine and I read until 11, practically closing the place down, but sometimes, getting back to nails, we’d hop across the street to CVS, the drug store, to try on shades of red polish. Usually it was at Katherine’s urging, but I can’t say she ever had to twist my arm all that much.

There we stood, making single streaks of red on our nails, trying on a million shades, until we found the one we liked. We’d leave the store, our nails looking like bloody zebras, but our hearts warm with laughter.

It’s my birthday today. Happy birthday to me! Many things have changed since those shoebox studio days. For one, I can stand tall where I live. For two, I do something I love. For three, there’s you, and this here me writing to you. For four… oh there are more, many more. And yet, some things about now are reminding me of then and, truth be told, it’s scaring me just a bit. So this here is me, ushering in a new life year in the spirit of red —kindness, laughter and friendship— on some gray-feeling days.

Also, I have a something for you. Presents! Wheee! In celebration of the color red and my birthday, I’d love to include a free 1/2 oz. jar of Birthday Suit in any order you place between today, Feb. 10 and next Friday, Feb. 17.

Birthday Suit? you ask.

Why yes! Birthday Suit is the name of the Aardvark Essentials healing base cream (the one all the essential oil potions come in)… People have been raving about its healing goodness… one client told me that it was actually helping his acne, another customer mentioned that her husband is using up her jar, and several clients have raved about how quickly their new tattoos healed when they used it. Birthday Suit is completely organic. So, go ahead and place an order for anything, and I will include a 1/2 oz. jar of Birthday Suit for you, on me. I mean, not ON me. On me, as in, free. Ooof, now that we’re clear about that—

P.S. I’d love birthday wish martinis and wish candles in the comments. Maybe you’ll tell me about your favorite shade of red. Or something you noticed today that gave you joy. Or something that moved you. Or, where you lived when you were 25. Or maybe you’ll pick a beautiful word, or make a bouquet of lines. Or tell me about your favorite bookstore. Or…

P.P.S. On Wednesday, February 15, I’m teaching a teleclass on Essential Oils. Check it out! (Hope to ‘see’ you there!)

Essential Oils 1-Oh!-1

Coming to a telephone near you on Wednesday, February 15:

Essential Oils 1-OH!-1
a teleclass taught by moi, Heidi Fischbach, wearing my
scent artist & mood detective scarf


Click on ze bottle to sign yourself up!

Are you intrigued about essential oils? Do you need a little shot
of confidence in order to start playing & experimenting with them?

This class is for you!

See you in class, I hope! (And if you want to take the class but can’t make the time, fret not: there will be a recording! Also, pssst, the cost for the recording and class material will be going up after February 15).

Have a question about essential oils? Share it in the comments below!

xo

Heidi

P.S. Sign up here!

On magic potions and getting through the holidays. Have a listen!

Last week my friend, channeling the voice of Maggie Smith and going by the name of Jean McGillicuddy, interviewed me about magic potions, what’s in them, why I make them, and about a Care Package I’ve made to help you get through this kuh-rayzee time of year.

We had great fun. I hope you enjoy listening! (Click on the Play button)

Heidi Fischbach from Aardvark Essentials
on magic potions and getting through the holidays

[haiku url="http://heidistable.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Heidi-Fischbach-from-Aardvark-Essentials.mp3" title="Getting through the holidays"]

To get your very own Care Package, go here:

http://heidistable.com/care-package/

(Even though Jean McGillicuddy is not my friend’s real name –she’s a bit shy– and even though LMNO is not a real radio station, I can assure you that everything in the interview is as I say. Well, OK, the elephant’s hoof on my chest? Metaphorical. But then, you knew that, right?)

My lemonade stand has grown up!

I begged. “Please can we sell lemonade, please?” My friends Cari and Jenny stood next to me, nodding excitedly.

Heidi's lemonade stand, circa 1976

Mom agreed.

We lived in Wheaton, Illinois, that year. A block from the railroad tracks. Trains in Illinois were looooong and came often. It was not unusual for cars to be stopped for many minutes. Often the waiting traffic would pile up for blocks past the front of our house. And if the insides of their cars got as hot as the inside of our station wagon, of course people would be thirsty.

Exactly two years ago, when Aardvark Essentials was just being born, my mom sent me this lemonade stand picture. Today it’s on my bulletin board above my laptop and it makes me smile. I still like stripey socks. And yes, I still take what I do verrry seriously.

Sometimes I go back and visit Heidi-of-then. I always buy lemonade from her. And I smile. Grin is more like it. I adore her. She reeeally wanted to be selling lemonade, but she also felt shy and self-conscious of the people stopped in their cars, looking over her way.

Before I leave this time, I hand her a potion.

She looks at it curiously and reads, mostly to herself, “Sassypants: “Turn up the volume on fabulous you!” She’s not sure what to do with it.

“It’s a magic potion,” I tell her. I also want to tell her she made it, that it’s ours and isn’t it just fantastic?!, but I don’t want to take the surprises of her life away from her.

“You can roll it on your wrists. People will think it’s a perfume, but you’ll know it’s magic,” I add conspiratorially.

“What’ll it do?” she asks.

“Oh, you’ll have to see. But I promise, it’ll be good, really good.”

The traffic has started to move. “Oh, gotta run! Thanks for the lemonade. It’s fabulous.” I hurry back to my car, turn to wave, and drive back to here. To now. To selling potions that she and I have made. We have gift sets! For the holidays. For you and your people. Come visit our potion store! It’s nowhere near the mall and we will never play Jingle Bell Rock. Promise!

Hocus Focus, Sprezzatura!

Have you met the newest potion?… No?!

Oh my! Come say HI to Sprezzatura!

“Spritz-a-whatta?” you ask.

Sprezzatura! Its tagline —Hocus Focus!— sums up what its magic is all about. I’ve been needing (and working on) this potion for a looooong time. Although maybe, true to its name, it will seem to you that I created Sprezzatura in a flash of ta-da!

I’ve been told that just reading Sprezzatura’s page is magical… Just imagine what reading AND experiencing the potion can do for you. OK then. Off you go…

Can’t wait to hear what you think!

xo
Heidi

P.S. When you’re over there be sure to press the Italian pronunciation button for Sprezzatura… I hope it makes you as ridiculously happy as it does me!

Hop on over to Cranky Fibro Girl’s blog. We got to be her “inaugural soothers”!

Hi. Heidi’s biz partner here, hoof-typing this note while she’s off getting her prebirthday day massage. (Yay! I am the happy when she gets a massage!)

I’ll be quick.

The snarky, sassy and always lovely Cranky Fibro Girl is starting a tradition on her blog. Wednesdays will be all about soothing. And on this first day of her series she has interviewed Heidi.

If you don’t like to know secrets, don’t read it. Because Heidi went and told the main magic in our potions. This morning I was all, “What! You go and tell our secrets without consulting your biz partner?”

To which she said, “Bite me!”

Really. I think she’s been sniffing a bit too much of our Sassypants potion. Cheekypants, more like–

Anyway. That is all.

Oh. The linky bit… almost forgot! Here you go: A-Little-Bit-of-Soothing-Wednesdays: Heidi and The Aardvark pay us a visit.

Tell Cranky Fibro Girl I said hi. I ♥ her!

Signed,

The Aardvark

P.S. If you’re reading this in a reader and have trouble with that link, just copy and paste this URL into a browser: http://www.jennyryan.com/?p=4869

C’mon over to the Green Room. At the Hopscotch Distillery.

Me and the aardvark are over there today, answering Eileen and Briana’s questions and sharing our best tips and kung fu maneuvers for creating things.

(Also, I tell a wee secret about how Sassypants came to be Sassypants).

I was interviewed! By a blonde chicken!

OK. Her actual name is Tara Swiger, and in addition to making and selling her own scrumptious-colored yarn online and at The Blonde Chicken Boutique, Tara also teaches people how to craft businesses that suit them. Which is what she interviewed me about!

We talked about the aardvark, and about juggling many balls of work—massage, potion-making, and writing—and about writing in one’s own voice, even when running a business.

You can read the whole thing over HERE.