Flood Times Two

 Last year, in case you missed it, the river decided to flood and it picked about the worst time of the year to do so. With the King fishing season effectively killed by our oh-so-smart fish and game regulations, lodges  now only have half a summer to really make a living. My boss had just stocked up for a full house for the rest of the season and then the water came up and kept coming up. My boss was forced to cancel all his bookings, and then there was all that food. It was really a sad situation for him. 

This year during the vast part of King season, it was clean up from the mess. The floor in the lodge needed to be fixed and the cabins needed to be washed down from top to bottom. My boss and the guys got the floor fixed. Then they moved on to fixing the yard. It was a lot of hard work, but the guys were real troopers and they worked very hard. 

Fast forward to the almost end of this summer fishing season and it was booming. We went through three chefs and the girl who was supposed to take over my job couldn't function without the direction of her boyfriend (one of the chefs), so I ended up working the whole summer - so much for my retirement plans. So the fishing season was a success and we were in the process of shutting down when the weather turned against us. It dumped three or four inches of rain upriver from us (I forget how much exactly), snd so the river started coming up. So, shutdown was put on hold while everything was put up high. The water came up maybe a little higher than last year, but only by an inch or so. So, here we go again. The only difference being the timing. Unfortunately, there was no time for more than a cursory cleanup this year. Last year, they had time to pressure wash the mud out of the buildings. This year, there was no time for more than shoveling out the lodge. 

Over the years here recently, I've been convinced that they've gotten good at weather control. They need to stop. Their weather control is killing the economy of this state. Last winter, it rained almost all winter. We'd have had six to eight feet of snow if it had come down as snow, instead, we had six to eight inches of ice on the ground. I even had to get ice cleats so I could walk across the yard. Sigh.

Making Candles

 I finally got around to making candles again. I love to reuse the wax I accumulate, and I buy new scents to add to them each time. I have small plastic bowls that, once filled, hold enough wax to make the perfect candle. Melted, I pour that wax into a baker's quarter sheet, and when it's trying to solidify, I roll that up around a wick. 

A while back, my son gave me a bunch of white candles. You know the kind. You can easily find them on the shelf. They were 3 or 4 inches across and a couple were maybe 8 or 10 inches tall and the rest were like 4 inches tall. They burned just fine, but I worried about the drip because I didn't have a dish that would fit them. At any rate, I decided to just melt them down and the next time I made candles, I'd turn them into the kind of candle I like. 

That day finally arrived.

So I started by counting my little bricks of wax and cutting 31 wicks, then I thought I'd start with that pretty white wax. Now that was a mess. 

As it turns out, those candles were dripless candles, and dripless candles have an additive that makes them melt at a higher temperature. I had to look that up. That also meant that the wax was more brittle. I tried mixing it at half and half with some of my older wax, but that wasn't good enough. I had almost given up on that white wax, but I've been using I/3 white wax along with 1 whole old wax brick. It's been harder to roll that candle because there's more wax and it will cool on the bottom and top and still be mush in the middle. I've managed. The first couple candles are kind of ugly, but they're still usable. 

My older wax was starting to look a little muddy, but now, with some white mixed in, they're a nicer color. So far I have 3 greens, 2 light reds, 2 bronze, and a brown. 

Since each candle is the volume of 1.3, the resulting candle is thicker and barely fits in my candle holder. hahaha Also, I have 9 finished, and 10 more to go. That will leave some of that harder wax left over for the next round of candle-making. 

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Life with a Lab

 Today it warmed up to above freezing and was even raining off and on since yesterday afternoon. I'd been waiting for it to warm up so I could snowshoe the hill down to the boats and create something of a solid pack in preparation for running a snow machine down there. At this point there way not enough snow to even bother. 

I made the hike using my husband's new/old snowshoes that I'd finally bought binders for. He bought those snowshoes years ago, probably shortly after he got out of the army, or he found them in the Army/Navy store. Whatever it was, it was a long time ago. Last summer I found some military binders for that kind of snowshoe on Amazon and I broke down and bought them. Not long ago I put them together and tested out the lengths by putting one of his boots in one. 

Well, today, this is what I used. The only difference was, I used my shoes rather than wear my boots, because it was plenty warm out there and I didn't want my feet sweating. I didn't even wear socks, though maybe I should have. Those binding were a little loose, but they hung onto my shoes just fine. 

So I went down to the boats and back and didn't take the dog because she makes it her personal goal to stay within a foot of me and I didn't want to face-plant because she insisted on walking on my snowshoes. And when she's not doing that, she's running and even blitzing up and down the trail, trying her level best to brush past me as close as she dares, and if I happen to be off guard, she might bodyslam me - she's managed to knock me down twice since we got her. Telling her no or quit or stop all means to try harder in her brain. Believe me, I've tried my hardest to discourage her doing that, but for the most part, she either doesn't get to go or I carry a big stick.

So anyway, I made the trip, and when I got back, I kicked off the snowshoes and walked up to the awning outside my husband's window and knocked. He got the hint immediately, and he let the dog out. This is a game we play frequently "Find Mommie". Most of the time she will look in all known places I might go, and when that doesn't pan out, she'll use her nose. Honestly, I didn't think she'd even get out of the yard, especially since I knocked into my bear-alert wind chimes and made a racket. She didn't give it a single thought, she just blasted down the trail.

As soon as she was out of sight, I came around and on into the house. I have no idea how far she went, but I suspect she went all the way, or very nearly. Of course, I was now hidden in the house by the time she blasted back. Once here, she looked with her nose and still didn't find me. I was just short of being tackled when she finally found me. My playing hide and seek might be one reason she hangs so close to me all the time, even here in the house. 

The New Wood Stove

Summer before last, our sons got together and bought us a new wood stove. It was supposed to be a surprise for their dad. Unfortunately, they didn't really understand what to get. They both knew what our old one looked like, but there were no others like it at the store. What they did have was the best and latest designs made by people who had never needed to rely on wood heat for a single day in their lives, nothing more than the occasional campfire, that is. 

Our old stove had seen some better days. It was starting to leak around the edges here and there and one leg could fall off, but it stayed there if you didn't bother it. The leaks, we calked with some stuff that was made for that, but that was starting to crack away. No biggy really. It worked. The shelf up inside was there to keep the heat from shooting directly up the pipe. It did its job, but it also would catch whatever fell down out of the pipe, and if it collected enough, it blocked off the flow. That shelf could be lifted out, but I didn't know that for most of its life. On hindsight, I probably should have left it out, but it wasn't in the way in any other way than to catch ash. After it broke, I couldn't get the rest of it out.

I was in on the secret because the boys knew they couldn't pull it off with both of us oblivious, not while one was out here and the other one was in town doing the shopping. Anyway, part of the conversation on what to buy involved how big the house was. What they ended up with was this little baby stove that looked so cute, but it was supposed to be able to heat up a house this size. It does, but it takes forever to get it there. 

That salesman must have seen my son coming from a mile off, and he sold him the smallest thing possible with all the fancy bells and whistles imaginable. He really took him for a ride and a half. This cute little stove is good enough for a weekend cabin that's about the size of a postage stamp. Relying on it for actual winter heat is a whole other issue, especially when the outside temperatures are hanging out at minus temperatures Fahrenheit. There has been more 0 or colder temps this winter so far than I can remember.

So what is the problem with this stove? To begin with, those fancy bells and whistles don't work. Well maybe they do a little, but not enough to make them worth the extra expense. There's like three teers of creosote reburners up inside. Now, don't get me wrong, creosote is some nasty stuff. It can eat your stove pipe from the inside out. The trouble is, the stovepipe gets eaten out anyway sooner or later. 

When we built this place, we used the heavy insulated pipe from probably about four feet from the floor to all the way up through the roof. The creosote ended up nearly closing it off and we had no way of chipping it out. All the things we bought that was supposed to dissolve that just didn't. 

We swapped those out for galvanized pipes a few years ago, and they lasted a year. We then swapped those out for steel pipes, but they didn't last much longer. Now, we have double-walled welded pipes and a new stove. The problem with all those reburner levels is that they take up space. Not only does the firewood need to be like four inches shorter, they can't be any bigger than my wrist or there's no room for more than like four or five pieces. This morning (and yesterday), it took four hours before the stove was producing enough heat to start bringing up the temperature in the house. Night before last, I didn't stuff the stove in the middle of the night, so it was completely cold. Last night I did, and I probably should have done it twice last night. This morning, the stove was still warm to the touch, but it still took four hours of burning before it got too warm to touch and thus started actually heating the house. Thanks to all that useless clutter up inside, we almost need to stuff the stove every hour or so. If it gets any colder, we'll need to sleep in shifts - might need to anyway.

Another thing that's wrong with this stove is the fact that it leaks worse than out old one. We almost need to pull the whole thing apart and put that spun glass cordage into every seam. Unless it's cold, and the stove is roaring, smoke leaks out of every seam, or it produces no heat at all. The worst part was the flu in the door can't be shut down all the way, which makes it impossible to run a little kindlin fire on those morning when it's just a bit nippy, but we don't want a fire all day long. 

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Arizona

  

 

 

Arizona is a unique place. I grew up in Eastern Colorado in an area called the sandhills, and there's plenty of sand dunes to earn the name. I always thought I lived in a desert, but it doesn't really compare to here. Spring in Golden Valley AZ is really kinda pretty, though it has been a very dry spring so not all the colors are showing up; I'm told the valley got its name because of the profusion of golden flowers when they bloom. There is, however, more color than I recall back home. I haven't been there in a long time and last time I was there it was really dry and dead looking compared to what I remember as a kid. However, there, there was sagebrush, yucca, and prickly pear cactus (with yellow flowers, I'm told), and some pretty good grazing for cattle in between. Here, though I see cattle here and there, I have no idea what they eat. Where they are, it is generally open range to a degree, so I think they allow more acreage per head than at home. 

The ground here is compacted rocky debris from the surrounding once-upon-a-time mountains with very little topsoil, though I don't understand why there's no topsoil to speak of. Maybe it all gets washed away with the flashfloods that happen when they do get rain - no idea. But there are lots of interesting bushes and scrub trees and such. 99% of them are covered with thorns, some form of sticker, or are pointy. Others produce some form of burr that might not actually stick you, but they get into your clothes and are hard to get out again. The rest is a very low, very dry, scrub grass that's just barely hanging on. Maybe if there was a little more rain, it would be greener, but it has rained only once since I've been here and then it was only for like five minutes. 

There are some green lawns here. We go to the park every few days for softball practice, and there's green lawns all around there. Of course, they are maintained by automatic watering systems, which turn on probably every night for a few minutes.

One thing I find odd is how few homes bother with a maintained any kind of lawn. The other day we were in Kingman AZ for a couple appointments for the baby that were a couple hours apart. We killed time by having breakfast in a restaurant in between and I don't remember where else we went - a store I think - before going to the second appointment. Those two appointments were not at the same place. At any rate, we were driving around town on some of the back streets to avoid the highway and its traffic. I was stunned by how many homes had graveled yards. It was nice-looking, and most of yards were like postage stamp size, which would have made mowing annoying, but all gravel? I have to say, those people must not have had any kids or pets - you can't really play on gravel and letting your dog poop there would be just yucky. I think I spotted only one or two yards with grass (green) and one I noticed with a more natural growth (meaning the dry scrub grass found everywhere else). I'm not sure if that was watered, but I don't think so. I'm not even sure that house was lived in.

The days are already reaching into the 80s and the nights are not getting quite as cool, but the wind, while annoying, keeps it from feeling quite so hot. I admit to avoiding the sun, but I can't really do that at the park. I can only say that I haven't sunburned yet, and I really kind of expected to. Still, though I find it pretty and interesting, I am not a fan of Arizona. Last time I was here it was winter, and while cooler, it wasn't much better. For me, I would wish for the wind to just go away. All that's left for me to experience here (I think) is one of those heavy rains that cause some of the flooding I've been told about. Some of the back roads have signs warning of possible water over the pavement, but I have yet to see such an event. 

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Homemade Soap #4

Rethinking can sometimes bite me. You'd think I'd learn, but I'm always rethinking something.

Last year I only worked the last 10 days or so and no one used those nifty little soaps I made - sigh. This year, I only worked like half the year, but that's okay - I'm getting too old for this job, plus, I really wanted to welcome my new granddaughter into the world. She was such a tiny doll and she liked to curl up on my tummy, but once again I digress.

As I took over the cabins, I discovered that no one had used my soaps and I had more sitting at home, and no room for them here, so they stayed there. As I worked, I thought on display. Since I was still working on those last soaps from my very first efforts, I was still working on square bars, and they stood up nicely beside the little bottle of shampoo (I think it's like 3 oz, but don't quote me on that). So it would stay on it's side, with my handwritten label in plain view, I angled it slightly with one edge against the wall of the cabinet (there is a nice little cubby perfect for this display) and the other edge supported by the shampoo bottle.

It's this display that I was considering. Throughout all my soap making, my goal was a small bar that was oblong - rather like the bars you buy in a store without any indented stamps or fancy shapes - just rectangular and nice looking.

But...

Looking at my display, those bars that were smaller would have looked really small, and I didn't think there would be enough room to write my label. I thought about this issue all summer long as I worked through my soaps. Finally, like maybe a month from the end of the season, I made my decision. If I remade all those smaller soaps, aiming for the larger size, I would end up with less (in number) bars. (Remember, I had 3 bins that each held 36 bars, and thanks to no one else using them, they were overfull, which is why my most recent batch stayed home) I went through all those bars, wrapped the next 36 bars to pack into the now empty bin. They'd been curing for 2 years now, so I was confident that they would be fine next year. I even taped them closed and wrote my label on them. With luck, the next girl would see the label and know to use them - with luck. Who knows, maybe I'll be there next year, but I'm not planning on it - not much anyway.

End result of removing all the smaller bars, what was used this summer, and what I'd wrapped up already, left only one bin of extra soaps to cure for another winter.

To make sure I would fill my block mold to the brim, I allotted 3 pounds of soap to a batch. Following my tried and true recipe, that meant I would need to add 1.5 cups of water to the shredded soap. So, my jar that I melt my soap in doesn't hold 3 pounds of shredded soap, I mean, it's close, but I didn't want to pack it in, however, after adding the water and starting the heating, it wasn't long before I could pour the rest of the soap into the jar.

Making homemade soap in this manner has always been a learning curve, and I think this effort is my best yet, but I'm getting ahead of myself. At 3 pounds of soap per batch, I ended up with 5 big blocks. Each block yields 12 bars. Not a bad haul if I do say so myself. It kinda reminds me of my very first effort - I'd hoarded so many used bars of soap, which is why this whole adventure got started.

I did something different this year - ever so slightly. This year like 99% of all the soap was my recycles being recycled again. Last year all the full sized Dove bars that had been used had also been thrown away. They were gone from my shelf and just plain gone - what a waste. I hate waste. Anyway, what I did different was melt the soap until the water I was melting it in actually bubbled. Before I'd only waited long enough for the soap to be stir-able - not that the soap got any thinner, but it appears as if it did more melting. Before slivers of different colors from different kinds of soaps could be seen. This year, there's still some variation in the colors, but my efforts to use white bars seems to have made a difference. They're all a creamy color now (not counting a speck or two), and I think they'll cure a lot nicer too, but only time will tell there too.

Another thing I did different was to turn all the soap into my 5 blocks (5 blocks = 5 days), and then on day 6, I started to slice them into their 12 bars - one per day - the oldest one first. You get the idea. Before starting the next bar, I put the last ones down into a square bucket (My husband had weedeated a hole in the bottom, so it was worthless as a water bucket. It was going to get burned, but I'm glad I was able to repurpose it. Between the layers of soap, I put cardboard cut to fit. When all 60 of my bars were in the bucket, the last cardboard square was level with the very top of the bucket.

My plan at this point is that I will let them sit like that until somewhere around the 1st of next month and then I will trim them up and shave off the rough edges - make them pretty, you know - and then put them back in the bucket to cure for the rest of the winter.

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Update October 4

So I prettied up all 60 of my bars and ended up with a whole lot of shavings, so I decided I'd melt them into bars. I figured if they were on the small side, I'd just recycle them with next year's project. As it turned out, they were a little smaller than the others, but still square, so I'll give them a few days to dry and then pretty them up too. Two more layers of soap in my bucket will make it too full, but I'll think of something. I'm eyeing a brown paper bag to see if I can decrease the space between layers, but we'll see. 

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Summer in a Hurry

 Let me start this by announcing that subscriptions by email are going away sometime in the middle of this summer, so if you subscribe to any of my blogs, you will no longer be getting those cool emails when I post something. I have no idea if it will be replaced by something else - we'll have to see.

Now on to my post

Less than a week ago temperatures were reaching 0F or colder over night, but the longer days, they were getting into the 30sF and 40sF. For the last few nights, it's not been getting below freezing at night, so it has become time to start worrying about the boats. The goal for today was to go down and shovel out the last boat we pulled, which happened to be the lowest on the bank (easier to launch, you see)

Needless to say, it didn't go quite so simply. 

We headed out knowing the snowmachine trail was going to be soft, but not too soft for the machine. Even going down our hill wasn't bad. Everything was going pretty much as expected all the way until after my husband dropped me off by the boats and headed on down to the river to turn around.

Herein things started to go bad

As soon as my husband hit the bottom of the ramp, soft snow to the side of the trail grabbed a ski and sucked him off the trail and onto his side. I was still putting on my snowshoes, but as soon as I got them on, I headed down to help him. That ramp is a mite steep and I knew it, but I hoped the claws on the bottom of my snowshoes would help. I also had my shovel to use as something of a crutch. That got me about three quarters of the way down when I slipped. I tried to jog ahead in hopes of keeping my feet under me. Needless to say, I sprawled on my face - not hard - I didn't hurt anything - just kinda humiliating - good for a laugh. 

I helped dig the machine out enough to get it mostly upright while my husband unhooked the empty sled (we were going to pick up some firewood on the way back to the house). He dropped the hitch pin into the sled, but I didn't know that. While he was making the loop, I went to roll the sled off the trail so he could get by (bye bye hitch pin). Now he tells me. So, while he goes back to the house for the smaller machine (easier to haul around if needed), and a new hitch pin, I make like an archeologist and go scraping for the missing pin. I finally found it - yay! just as he was showing up again.

He comes down and almost does the same thing as last time, this time aiming directly at me though I was standing off the side of the trail behind where the sled was now. He didn't really get stuck, but he might have if he didn't have to stop. I get me and the sled farther out of the way, and he goes out to do the loop again, this time finding water, but he didn't get stuck in it. He stops at the top of the island so he has a better run at the ramp up off the river, so I push the sled to him so we can hook it up again. The hardest part of doing that was my snowshoes, the sled slid along just fine. 

We get everything hooked up and he takes his run, and the crust - what there was of it - breaks out from under his machine and he gets stuck almost at the top of that ramp - damn!!!! We have to get that machine back down, turned around, and make another run after all our holes are filled in - sigh.

That nice little machine came sliding down that hill just fine after we lifted it out of it's hole. My husband's knee took some painful punishment, and my snowshoe punched down knocking me down almost behind it. I put my other foot on the machine to keep from getting run over, but I got pushed along a few feet anyway. I felt like a turtle on my back at that moment, but it was kinda funny. I just lay there for a few minutes catching my breath and trying to figure out what I could do to get my feet under me again. With my feet slightly higher than my shoulders, it took a little planning. That's the bad thing about snowshoes. I'm glad they were the little ones. I like those. I now have a new bruise on my back hip from when I ended up on the sled's hitch. No biggie, but both of us are getting pretty tired, and we still haven't even gotten to the chore we came down here to do.

We pulled the machine back until we ran out of help from gravity and out of oomph to pull with. Then my husband went to fill in holes while I packed a space wide enough to pull the machine around on. 

Sigh - definitely running out of oomph. 

We got the machine turned around - eternally grateful it was as little as it was - and then he made a run for the ramp without the sled - - - and made it, though it was a close one. 

Next order of business was to go dig up a rope so we could pull the sled up.

We made our snowshoed way over to the boats, going the easy way, which required walking around the back end of our big boat, only to be reminded that there's not much ground behind that boat. No real problem, just shovel some snow into low spots and pack it down. Not bad really. Just running out of ju ju. We worked our way around to the rope we were after; it led from the boat we were going to shovel out to the front of the big boat. I got it all uncovered, but a part of it- about a foot or so - was frozen to the ground, so that rope wasn't going anywhere today. It's uncovered; the snow will melt that in no time at all.

We wended our way back to the snowmachine, and while I was catching my breath, my husband was taking off his snowshoes. As I was taking mine off, he decided to go after the sled and just push it up. It's not all that heavy, and it slides well. The issue is the hill. He gets it most of the way up the ramp, and I'm hurrying to get my shoes off so I can help. I have to dig my heel in, but we get it up, and then we get it hooked up - sigh - almost over.

Not so fast. 

We have an almost switchback on our trail going up that hill, and guess what, he couldn't make the corner. I make my slow way up behind him and hold the brake while he pulls the front over back onto the trail and then the back of the sled over in the other direction. Then it's the rest of the way up the hill - sigh. 

Because it was the little machine (and because I didn't want to walk another six steps), I decided I could ride in the sled, sitting on my snowshoes. It worked just fine.

As I sit here typing this, I feel like I'm about 100 years old. My legs are still stiff from the other day when I hiked down the trail in my snowboots to help my husband cut a tree off the trail - that was the firewood we picked up. Only four rounds and a few sticks - I didn't get there in time to help, and I've been stiff ever since. 

Summer is looming - I really need to get into shape - sigh - not today. I've had enough exercise for one day.

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Making Beds

 I wasn't back to work for more than a day. People left and my boss and I decided to turn over a cabin to make future incoming guests easier to manage - using this cabin meant that I wouldn't have to rush a turnover in another cabin, and if cancelations happened and we ended up not needing that cabin, it's easy to break down and the laundry is all done.

So, I go in intent on needing to make only the one bed - a double, not that it matters - and I look over at the bunks. This cabin has two sets of bunk beds and a full size bed. It being so late in season, upper bunks have already been wrapped up and put away, but the bottom bunks were still made.

Mind you, I'm picky about appearances, but there was only a couple weeks total left in the season, so I was willing to overlook the style of those who worked in those cabins before, but, picky me, I decided I'd just tweak those two beds so they looked more like the one I was getting ready to make. Whoever had made them before liked to fold down the comforter, blanket, and sheet about 18 inches or so and tuck everything in all around. I always hated tucking in the comforter, because once it's out again - in use - the edge is all wrinkled, and untucked, it covers up some of the roughness of the bed frames. Another thing I used to do was iron out the wide hem on the sheets and pillowcases, because at some point in their history, before I worked with them, they crinkled up - some worse than others. My hope was that those crinkles would eventually iron out, but they never did. Laying flat, however, looks better. For just a few more days, I wasn't about to dig out the iron.

So, I was just going to spread up that fold and go back to making the original bed.

Now, mind you, when you pay anywhere between a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars to stay at a place where you will be sleeping in a bed, the last thing you should expect to do is to remake the bed so you can actually sleep in it. 

The moment I moved those blankets, I saw that whoever had made that bed before didn't give a damn about the guests that would be staying in that cabin. It made me wonder how many times she had done this very thing. It kinda made me mad, but looking back, I should have expected something of the sort because I'd already discovered a shorted blanket on another bed. Rather than spread the blanket out properly, it had been folded in half. It would have been fine if the guest was a child. An adult would have had cold feet, being left with only a sheet and the comforter to cover them. 

But back to this issue.

I grabbed those blankets to smooth them up and discovered that they only went so far as the wall, and carefully so, which pissed me off even more. I turned to the other bunk bed and discovered the same thing. Carefully smoothed to pass a casual inspection until someone sought to get in. The comforter was wide enough to nearly reach the floor once untucked from the front. Each layer was lined up to the wall as if they'd used a ruler. Not even an inch made it around the far corner of the mattress. Double my work if not my laundry. 

Sigh

Now I had 3 beds to make, but at least the end product was the way I liked it and my picky self was happy (short of the ironing).

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2020 - The Year of Changes

 Thanks to this most wonderful pandemic ravaging this world, I've been out of work all summer long. I go back tomorrow for the last days of the month - its something, but not exactly what I planned.

Being out of work this summer has kinda been a blessing. For starters, I managed to blow out my knee somehow just before coming out and snowshoeing around made it worse. Even now, it still bothers me, especially walking over uneven ground - ground slanted down is the worst. So, sitting around all summer helped that a lot. I would have had to quit, and I really didn't want to.

Another problem with me going to work - all our boats are giving up the ghost. Well, not all, but you get the idea. Last fall - oblivious to the future, of course - we had our two best running boats pulled out by a lodge owner who does that for $300 a year (winter) per boat. Not bad, they'd be back in the spring and we'd have our boats back in record time.

Then came 2020 

Then came Covid

The owners of that lodge still have not been able to come here, let alone out here to run their business. It is only thanks to the fact that locals who come down once a week to look after the place that one of those boats was launched. Not the one I usually drive. I wasn't going to work so I didn't really need it. Besides...

We had my old 'sports car' boat. Last year the steering cable broke, but we could put a tiller handle on it to steer it - so we did, but then the throttle cable was acting up worse than usual so my husband grew concerned about that, and then, last time we drove it, it wouldn't start (it has a key start, and there was nothing). Turns out it didn't recognize that it was in neutral, and if it's not in neutral, it won't start. Good thing my hubby was along - he could use a rope to start it. 

We also had a little 15hp we bought from those same lodge owners to troubleshoot, only now it runs worse than when we bought it. Correction, it ran okay when we got it, just not long enough to get me to work. No idea why. So there it sat. Now, after having sat for several years. it hardly starts at all and won't keep running. Kind of a mess.

That brings us to the one we had launched. A compression test says that it's really really low on both cylinders. I can't start it anyway. So, now that I'm going to work, my husband has to take me. Fortunately my boss brings me home. 

I was going to apply for retirement after this summer anyway.

And therein is another issue.

It would seem that the social security people think that everyone has loans so they use those loans as a means of identifying people. So, when I try to apply online, they ask me if I have these two loans and for a selection of choices for how much those loans are. Since I haven't had a loan for like 40 years or so, my information doesn't agree with theirs so I can't apply online. I might have to go to town this winter just so I can use my phone. Time will tell - sigh.

Not really a good year for me, but I suppose it could be worse.

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My Lazy Thyroid

Last winter, as it happens, we had the necessary paperwork so we decided to see if we qualified for VA benefits. As it happens, since both of us had served in the Army, both of us qualified, and since my summer job wage isn't all that impressive, and since my husband is unemployed, we qualify for 100% coverage, to include transportation to and from appointments. (We'll be testing that this winter)

Anyway, as part of our initiation, I got a blood test, and, other than being otherwise healthy, my thyroid was a mite lazy. I think they started me out on the lightest prescription, and after another blood test, they were happy with my numbers - woohoo. Now I get to take a pill for the rest of my days. That's okay - it's just a little thing, but I have to take it first thing in the morning, and then not eat or drink anything except water for half an hour - so much for my cup of coffee first thing in the morning.

However, I may have discovered my magic pill, just as I wanted. I had hopes that it would indeed be magic, that all my extra weight would melt away and I would get down to an ideal weight. Ah, but it didn't work that way. Hopes not withstanding, I knew it was doing something because I stopped gaining weight. I was 217 pounds when I weighed in for my physical, and that's where I stayed, not counting a slight monthly fluctuation. Even though I'd stopped bleeding every month long ago, my body still did it's water retention, making me tired once a month, and then I would get rid of it a few days later. I gained almost five pounds during that time, but then I was back down to 217 pounds. Well then, that was an improvement at least. Putting on a pound a week (or so) all winter long, and then being unable to get rid of all of it during the summer was getting very old. My new hope was that I might lose my summer's weight and not gain it back during the winter.

Update:

As of the third week of October - almost two months into my winter's non-working schedule, I have yet to gain a single pound - I'm thrilled. I started my summer at 217 pounds, give or take one or two pounds, and I ended the summer at 196 pounds. I need to get down to 190 before I stop snoring, but this is a good start. I'm thrilled. Best of all, I can eat again - within reason. I still eat not so much potatoes, but I can enjoy homemade bread and homemade cinnamon rolls now. I keep my indulgences to a minimum, but it's still kinda nice. Oh, and corn. I like corn, but since my husband can't eat the vegetable, I don't order it. I did, however, order some popcorn. I really like popcorn. I have missed popcorn.

Can I do the same next year? I certainly hope so. I do intend to try. It will be so nice not to start my summer feeling like a whale. Being out of shape is bad enough.

Update #2 - second year:

Went back to town for another winter and the flight thing didn't work quite as we'd been led to believe. I just love how they tell you bits of information only if you wring it out of them. My son paid for our chopper flight in, but we were able to get reimbursed for that, so, woohoo for that. What they didn't tell us was that we had to go back within 30 days to get the return flight paid for. I asked specifically about staying for several months and they said it was cool, just let them know. Ggrrrrr Even though we had more appointments just before coming out, they refused to pay for our flight back home because it had been too long. 

Anyway, as to my thyroid issue. Blood tests said my thyroid was lazy again, even with my nifty little pills so she increased the dosage. Sigh. Anyway, after taking that pill for like 3 months, I decided to quit entirely and stop taking them. My body has a bad habit. It tends to do the opposite of what medicines are supposed to do. I notice it most when I take pills that might make me drowsy. I got a pretty big buzz after taking Tylenol with Codeine when I had my wisdom teeth taken out. The thyroid controls not only weight but also energy. Supposedly, with it working properly, I should have lots of energy (which would also help me to burn off fat). However, I felt kinda tired. Nothing major - I wasn't exhausted, and I do like to sleep. Maybe I'd have noticed nothing if I was working, but thanks to this virus, I've been home. The thing that confirms my decision was that I actually felt better after I stopped. More alert. It will be something I'll talk about with my Dr. next time I see her. I tried sending a message, but I never got a reply. It is my belief that my slightly lazy thyroid is what it is, and it will refuse to be corrected. To keep trying to mess with it is to dig a danger hole I may never be able to get out of. 

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Homemade Soap #3

It's still a learning curve, but I'm getting better. Two pounds of grated soap + one cup of water is still an awesome mix, and it makes a nice sized bar.

Last year I ended up with two short batches of shavings and bars of Dove that I was reluctant to mix together. I probably could have, but my bucket was already full. At work, it turns out that we go through 36 bars of soap (give or take one or two bars) during the course of the summer months. most of them are used, but a small handful are taken. Coincidentally, the little baskets I store the soap in holds 36 bars of soap. Now, remember, my first batch of soaps I had trouble with the wrapping molding or soaking up the moisture and becoming unsightly. This year, I was still replacing some of those wrappings, so I decided that I wouldn't wrap the soaps I made last year. Those soaps sat in my bucket all last winter (I think I rearranged them a couple different times just to let them breathe); they also stayed in my bucket all summer long. Near the end of this summer, I now had two of those baskets empty.

As I was thinking about moving them, I decided I wouldn't wrap them even after them sitting out for a year. I figured I could wrap them as I put them in the cabin. Using the wax paper I'd bought to keep them from sticking to each other, I packed them into their little baskets. It turns out that even though I packed them laying down, at six per layer, with a little space between each bar, those baskets still held 36 bars. The bars in my bucket (I'd never counted them) filled those two empty baskets plus a little in the next basket. Next summer, I'll be using up the last of my already wrapped soaps and getting into some of those unwrapped soaps. That problem solved.

Back to the results of this year's recycling of soaps.

The first thing I did was weigh my two partial bags and fill them up to two pounds. That left me with enough to make a third batch, and a fourth batch that was like 1.5 pounds. I added the trimmings from the first batch to that fourth batch. The bars I got from that first batch were the perfect size; they actually looked like small bars of soap, being rectangular in shape. I really liked that. Since I wasn't packing the bars into my bucket again (not nearly enough to bother with a container so large), I was packing them back into the OxiClean box I'd brought them home in.

My second batch - well - I should have kept the trimmings for next year, but I decided I'd just add them to the third batch. That was a mistake, but only when it came to the size of the bars. I had to add another half cup of water to the shavings to make them more manageable; the extra volume of soap made the mass something like bread dough. When I got it into my mold, there was more than it could hold - not a lot more, but more. I was really tempted to trim the resulting bars down to the nice size my other two batches turned out to be, but really - chalk it up to a learning experience. I did not trim those bars - they are square, but they are nice and they will do. Next year I won't weigh my batches until I'm ready to cook them up. That way my two pounds will be assured, and I'd only have one bag of leftovers.

My fourth batch did the same thing my third batch did. Too much for my mold, but it is what it is. Next year, I anticipate it working out perfectly. Well - one can hope.

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My Long Day

Thursday, May 30, was a VERY long day for me. Our flight was booked for 1:00 departure - we were going home. I was ready, but at the same time, not. Going meant no more grandbaby, it also meant going back to work, pretty much all at once. Very little adjustment time after traveling.

This wasn't at all like last year where a chopper left us right here in the yard. Not like last year at all.

We went to town this year to help my son so he could start some schooling - that fell through, but we were there. I took the opportunity to order a copy of my military DD 214, separation papers, and by coincidence, I had my husband's there too. On a whim, we decided to apply for VA coverage. Up until now, we had no medical coverage. I won't go into the nightmares Obamacare gave me. Come to find out, we were fully covered, to include transportation to and from our home here in the middle of nowhere, and that includes helicopter cost too. You wanna talk about what kind of load that took off our shoulders - HUGE.

Now that we were involved with VA, we both had our rounds past a Dr. Mine had to do with my thyroid, which they found to be a little underactive - now I have a pill to take every morning. My husband has had a lump on his scalp roughly the size of a small grape, and during his examination, they found two more that just small ones that had yet to bubble up. The two were removed during another visit right there in the office, but the Dr. wasn't comfortable doing the same with the big one - it might be something different. So he scheduled him for a CT scan and a follow-up appointment to go over the finding - surgery for it's removal would be later.

Now, understand, time for us to get home before breakup, before it was no longer safe to travel on our river home, was running out, so I called transportation and asked after them helping us with that chopper flight since they hadn't brought us in. We either needed to cancel all those appointments and go, or if they could help us, we'd stay. They assured us we were covered, so we stayed. Sadly, I didn't write down the name of the guy I talked to. Six weeks later, long after things were all going to hell (as far as the river was concerned), I called again to take them up on their offer of help with that flight. We even canceled the surgery, to plan it for next winter, because it was getting so close to breakup. We really wanted to be here to be able to take care of our boats if needed - sometimes the water comes up violently during breakup.

SO, I called VA transportation and asked to book our flight, only to be told that, since they didn't bring us in, they could't justify taking us out. Now this logic escapes me, but they have their rules. I've been dropped off by my son, confident we'd be able to get transportation back to his place, and they would have, if we'd made the appointment to do so 48 hours ahead of time, but they wouldn't do the same with a flight, Course, I didn't think of that detail then either. I'm just not very good at this. Anyway, I was assured that I would be fully covered from now on, and we will have more appointments next winter, so we'll see how it all works out.

SOOO, since the chopper was out, we were stranded until several items fell into place

#1 we had a driver to take us to the airport
#2 we had money for the flight - we did
#3 we had transportation from where the plane landed home.

The first one came about fairly easy. Once we booked the flight, either my son or his wife could take us there. The last part wasn't so easy. Our first effort to arrange our ride home failed as my neighbors were both in town. A week later, several options for transportation came together.

#1 My boss would be arriving out there the same day
#2 One of my neighbors had just returned home
#3 The lodge owner where our big boat was stored had just come out a couple days earlier. 

The third option was by far the best for us.

Thus begins my VERY long day.

My morning alarm goes off a 6 AM, and I usually turn it off and get up maybe a couple hours later. This time, I woke up at around 5, and couldn't stop tossing and turning. I gave up at 5:30. All our stuff was already packed, so I went out into the living room and found my kindle, but I couldn't concentrate on that either. My computer was all packed up too, so I couldn't do anything much on line either. I ended up reading assorted articles on my phone, using up about a third of my battery - so much for coming out with a charged phone.

We didn't go anywhere until around 9. The plan was to hit Fred Meyers and then Costco on the way to the airport, there were some groceries I wanted to bring out. In the end, I decided the trip to Costco was irrelevant - I only wanted the powdered milk they have there. We didn't want to get a lot of things, not knowing what we'd find when we got here. Our worries about whether a bear had broken into the place or torn up the freezer were uppermost. Our worries about whether our house had withstood the earthquake had been alleviated a couple weeks ago when another neighbor sent me an email after flying over - our house was still standing - what kind of chaos awaited us inside was still to be discovered.

Since it was only a little after 10, and since it was a while before we had to get to the airport, we went back to the apartment for a cup of coffee. I was specifically avoiding coffee because it tends to go right through me.

We left for the airport at around 11 - we were all starting to doze off. So my husband and I wandered around the airport until near 1 I think - I was no longer watching the clock. We landed out here and we got our big boat in the water with happily very little trouble. We loaded up and we were on our way.

Thus ends the easy part.

We parked and unloaded our stuff into another boat still on land - it was starting to try to rain so we covered it. We had to walk the quarter mile or so home with what we could carry and get either the 4-wheeler going to come back with the cart. My husband carried his backpack - it was heavy - I carried the gallon of water we'd bought. Ack - I was SO not ready for that hike. I was already tired. We had a cup of coffee and a sit down.

As it turns out, though the 4-wheeler started easily, the mud on our trail caused us to opt not to use it, however there were some things that simply had to come home without much more delay.

I took the cart down and brought back the food and our computers, as well as the tool bag so we could get it ready to use the next day. It was a fairly heavy load, and I was already tired. Needless to say, I stopped many times to rest. When my husband saw me, he came to help push. It was a big help. I'm sure I would have rested at least two more times before actually reaching the house - and that was within less than 100 yards.

I don't know what time it was when we finally settled down for the night, but on my last legs, I fixed supper and sat down to get my computer logged into our satellite system (my phone too), and to eat my supper. Come 8 PM, I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. I went to bed, half expecting to wake up at some point during the middle of the night - I didn't.

We got up at 8 this morning. My body so very sore. It would seem that I managed to lose nearly 10 pounds yesterday. Woohoo. Most of that was constipation and water weight likely brought on by stress. I don't stress much - I'm not a worrier, but I'm no spring chicken either, and for the first time all winter, my feet were swelling, which added to my pain in doing all that walking yesterday. I've gone potty like four times since hitting dirt here - my, how exercise will get the plumbing moving.

So now, my little boat is in the water, though we have yet to start it - we couldn't find the key. Anyway, we got brave enough and took the 4-wheeler down, since the cart did so well. We should have brought the cart anyway - it would have allowed for fewer trips up that hill carrying things. Ugh, but at least it was only up that hill and not all the way to the house and back, at least two trips that way. Three trips for me - the last one for my plants - and two trips for my husband - he struggles with that hill too - and we were all the way home.

My body is still sore, but I'm a lot less tired today, then again, I did get a 3-hour nap today too.

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Homemade Soap Second Edition

I learned a few things last year. I solidified my recipe into something that has worked well so far. All my Dove-only bars failed miserably even though they passed the first two rounds of inspections. By the time I had brought them to work, they had continued to shrink and develop cracks as they dried, so they went directly back into my bucket to be redone this fall.

Since there was roughly ten pounds (I was just guessing by volume. I didn't weigh any of it) of Dove soap already waiting for recycling, I decided to buy some soap to be used to that end. There was no way I would acquire enough soaps through the summer to add to them. At first, I thought my recipe called for three pounds of soap, and that I would be having two pounds of Dove to one pound of whatever else. Turns out my memory wasn't so accurate. It would have to be half and half. I found Ivory soap on Amazon - pretty much the cheapest on the market, I think. Anyway, I ordered twelve bars of Ivory with aloe - sounded good to me anyway. Aloe is good for your skin and the bars were white. Turns out twelve bars wasn't enough, so I have three pounds of Dove soap that gets to wait until next year. That's okay. That still leaves me with ten batches to do this year.

So what am I doing different this year? Last year, I wrapped my bars after a couple days of drying - one day as the block straight from my mold and another day after they've been sliced into bars. That third morning, I'd groom the bars to make them pretty and presentable, and then I'd wrap them in typing paper - it's what I had and it looked nice - then I packed them into my bucket. It seemed that I wrapped them way too soon. Later (I forget how long), I decided to check my soaps and discovered that they were still damp and the paper had soaked it up, and in some cases they had molded. No damage to the soap, but the paper certainly wasn't presentable any more. I didn't learn my lesson. I rewrapped those soaps and repacked them into my bucket. When I got them to work, I needed to move those soaps to the shelf where they would be available for use in the cabins. Lo and behold, still some of those soaps wrappings had molded again. After rewrapping again, after all summer, it would seem they were finally dry enough.

This year, I'm not wrapping them at all this winter. I got some wax paper and I'm layering the bars between the the paper with spaces between them. I hope it works - it should - I have my fingers crossed. Maybe early next spring I'll wrap them. As they are packed now, taking the bucket to work would damage them unless I'm really really lucky. Maybe if it was only a car ride to work, but there's a trip with a four-wheeler and then a trip in my boat.

So far I have three batches of nice white bars and one with a blue cast to it. The rest will be shades of light brown - lighter than last year.

Last year, after going through everything I'd brought and discarding the warped, cracked, and broken ones, I had three baskets of like thirty-six bars each. I used one basket. When all is said and done, it looks like I'll have several years worth of soap to use, and in the future, there won't be more than three or four batches to do each year. Maybe not even that much. That's not counting the three left over batches I won't be able to do this year. So, I anticipate having to do half as much next year as I did this year.

There she blows. I'll be sure to keep you informed of future developments. Stay tuned.

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The Weight Loss Battle

Ever since coming to town, I have been searching for the magic formula to help me lose weight. It has to be something simple, because I'm doing all the right things that should result in at the very least no weight gain (well maybe with the exception of hours of aerobics). I shouldn't weight 215 pounds, having put on nearly 20 pounds since the end of my work season. 

The first thing we tried is breaking out the juicer and him teaching me how to juice. It's something I can't do at home, but it was worth a try to help me lose weight - nada. Next my son bought a NeutraBullet blender - he'd been wanting one since his old one broke. Still nada on the weight loss, but they both contributed to my decrease in desire for good old fashioned red meat. 

Most recently I've been battling heartburn - something I battle most every winter when I get over 200 pounds. It seems like everything I eat gives me heartburn, like I just ate a bowl of oats, and I think I might be ramping up to some heartburn - sucks. I'm drinking water in the hopes of heading it off. Over the last week or so, I've discovered that yogurt and bacon (baked on a rack) doesn't give me heartburn. I need to go get some more bacon. Too bad I can't get yogurt at home, except during the summer. It just doesn't keep very long.

Now that I'm in town, my son and I have been doing some experimenting and some research. We've discovered that niacin helps to clean plaque out of blood vessels, which in itself improves circulation. This might address my swollen feet when I get too heavy. That has not been a miracle cure, but the issue has improved. I'm also taking horse chestnut pills to help with my swollen feet - mind you, they don't hurt, they just look like balloons. Niacin also helps with depression (something I have no trouble with, but I have friends who do so I'm sharing). According to the YouTube thing we watched, these guys (doctors) have been successfully treating cancer and the really bad depression with mega doses of vitamin C and Niacin respectively. Both you cannot overdose on. One of their stories about niacin was this severely depressed woman who had a family with children. She took tons of medicine to address her depression, and the best she could manage was to come out of her room to sit in the corner of the living room, facing the corner. She started taking some niacin as prescribed by her doctor, but it wasn't having much of an affect. She went off the deep end and tried to take her life by overdosing on the niacin. Lo and Behold, the depression just vanished. NO OTHER ADVERSE AFFECTS WHAT SO EVER. She joined her family at the dinner table and everything. Of course she needed high doses of niacin to continue that level of interaction, but I think she went off all her other medication. I'd have to watch the show again to be sure. Look up Food Matters on YouTube and search for Drs. Abram Hoffer, Andrew W. Saul, and Harold D. Foster.

Another thing we discovered is iodine. Iodine is in salt, you say, but we learned that THAT iodine is among the poorest kind. Iodine targets the thyroid which, as we all know, does whatever it does to regulate our weight among other things. I am pretty sure my problem may well be genetic, but that doesn't mean I can't fight it. I ordered Survival Shield iodine from Amazon yesterday and will start taking it next week when it gets here, so wish me luck there. HOWEVER, in doing some of my homework, I discovered that it can also address depression. According to everything I looked up, Iodine deficiency is the fastest growing epidemic in the country, and maybe the world, because of the growing popularity of sea salt and such.

My getting iodine from my salt certainly has not helped me. I have, all my life, been a salt-aholic, frequently licking salt from the palm of my hand as well as dousing everything I eat. I love the taste of salt. Not long ago I heard about the high mineral content of Himalayan salt, so I went to the store and bought a grinder. Suddenly, I find myself actually needing to remember to salt my foods. The craving is just gone. That iodine I mentioned above comes from the same source and is the cleanest in the world. Iodine is found in kelp, but thanks to Fukushima the ocean is becoming increasingly radioactive, not to mention the rate of pollution. Iodine also comes in the form of a tincture, but what they mix it with to make it a tincture is one of the things that inhibit it's affects. I'll have to watch the YouTube things again, but I think I heard there that the fluoride and the chlorine added to our drinking water for very good reasons also messes up our thyroid. 

I came across this website - EWG's Tap Water Database - that shined a rather freaky light on what actually is in our water. Just enter your zip code or scroll down and click on your state. You'll get a list of cities where water is provided from, just click on the one closest to you. Of course, this site is there to sell you water filters, but since they suggest all brands, I don't think they're too biased, especially since they refer you to Amazon for the most part. I'm happy to say our water seems to be pretty clear. There's a little runoff affect, and in my opinion, too much chlorine, because I can smell it, but some of the other things I saw were truly shudder-worthy.

That is the sum of my experimenting and research to date. Wish me luck in finding my magic pill, or drop, or whatever. I SO want to permanently get rid of all this extra weight.

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And Baby Makes Three

I came to town last November so we could be there to help out when the new baby came, and to be a little moral support for the new mom and dad. When labor started, I was there for them, and I must say my daughter-in-law was a real trooper about the pains. She just kinda stiffened up and went all quiet for a bit, and then it passed. Boy, I could tell she was just all-around uncomfortable.

Some hours later, the doctor was starting to get concerned; there just wasn't much progress and momma was getting very tired. They gave her something like an epidural to numb all the pains and let her sleep for about an hour. When that didn't help much, they called in another doctor who had small hands, thinking the baby was facing the wrong direction now, but that didn't help. Their next and last choice was to try pulling. That sounds terrible, and I was really getting worried. The things I'd heard about pulling were just plain scary. The modern version was this small suction cup they stick to the head; it allows them a small amount of control from the outside. Still no luck.

I became truly frightened when they said C-section. This was way out of my experience. I've never known anyone who had one. I so wanted to watch over my girl, but I wasn't allowed. Only daddy could go with her. In one way, I was glad something could happen now, and that experienced doctors could handle the situation. I wasn't really afraid for her safety, but this is surgery, and God forbid, things could still go wrong, but after 12 hours of hard labor, it was good to have an end in sight.

Waiting in the room really sucks. I wished I could watch, even through the window in a door or something, just to keep an eye out, you know, but I had to wait, and I had to wait without really knowing how long I would have to wait. Yeah, they told me about it would be less than a half an hour, but I couldn't see it. So like twenty minutes later, my son comes for me and we go meet his brand new son.

The surgery went well, Baby was really stuck due to all the work they tried to get him born natural, but they got him unstuck and out safely. Momma was still getting all put back together, but she was doing just fine.

In the nursery, Baby got weighed and measured and tagged and labeled, and then, because he was pretty gooey, he got his first bath too. Then he was put in his first diaper and wrapped up like a baby burrito and handed over to Daddy. Then it was back to the room for us to wait for Momma.

He was such a bright baby, looking around at all the brightness and colors. And then he sneezed and scared himself. He might have had a bit of a headache too, but he just looked so surprised at his little explosion, and then he started to cry.

Momma told me once she was hoping for blue eyes and blond hair like Daddy, but we both told her there was like 0% chance of that. So, he is the first dark haired, dark eyed baby in my family. I have a brother with dark hair and eyes, and I have a sister with not so dark hair and eyes, but  their dark is an Irish dark. Momma is from the Philippines, so it's a different kind of dark. Most of my family is average for the Midwest - some shade of light colored hair and light eyes.

Since then, I have been totally enjoying watching him learn. He just turned a month old and already Momma and Daddy are totally wrapped around his finger. Momma does all the good things like nice warm titty and nice soft pillow and warm. Daddy gets the other end and deals out a cold wet wipe and a dry diaper, but he's got a nice warm chest to sleep on once in a while. I think Baby likes to listen to their hearts.

Already, I can tell he's getting stronger as he kicks and wiggles and squirms. He's also starting to do more than just holler for food and then sleep. He's starting to look around and play a little. Today, while laying on the floor (something I suggested), he almost rolled up onto his side. Couldn't quite stick it though.

I've proven useful a time or two with a willing lap and a rocking chair. Baby eats like he's got a hollow leg, so he gets a bottle or two of formula every day too, and sometimes I get the pleasure. Unless I'm actually babysitting, I'll let Daddy do the diapers though, Mmuahaha. I am having such a great time.

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Soap

For forever, I've wanted to learn how to make my own soap. I mean, it goes along with the whole 'off the grid' thing. Ever since working at the lodges (I think) I found it nearly impossible to throw away those uses bars of soap. The lodge buys brand new soaps and I put them in the cabins. The guests might take like one shower before they go home, and there's that used bar of soap. I certainly can't leave it there for the next guy to use, so I would take them home. Over the years I managed to accumulate a lot of soap of all kinds.

Here recently, like the last four years, the owners of the lodges have bought Dove soaps, the full sized bars. Sigh, yeah, I brought them home. Throwing them away is such a waste of good soap.

This summer, I decided to buy a soap mold. Not one of your little pretty one, just something functional. I wasn't interested in anything fancy. I just wanted to consolidate all those bars of soap I'd accumulated, not that I knew what I'd do with them when I was done, but still...

I was looking at the stack of soaps I'd accumulated at the lodge one day, and I decided I'd ask and see if I could do the same for them. My boss's wife was thrilled with the idea, so I took a bunch of those soaps home. There's still more there on the shelf, but there was only so much room in the box I was using.

I used all the odd soaps I'd accumulated as my learning curve, and worked my way through six different batches as I experimented with how much water to add to how much soap, and then what size bars to cut. It was an interesting experiment.

My recipe for this was: 2lb grated soap to 1C water

I decided to wrap them in typing paper sliced in half - It's what I have here. Since I made no effort to match up colors, my end product ended up shaded from a pale green to a pale beige, and since the soap never totally dissolves, there are flecks of actual color in there. I'm certain, over time, as I continue to recycle them, the flecks will fade. Keep that last statement in mind as you read on.

So, now that I think I know what I'm doing, I move on to the box of Dove soap. Now these I wanted to look nice, and by coincidence, the mold kit I'd ordered came with a straight edged cutter and a waffle edged cutter. I figured I would use the waffle edged cutter for the lodge soap. Just a little fancier than your plane block of soap, you know.

My very first batch of Dove soap, and I knew everything was different. Then I remembered that Dove soap was different; it contained lotion, so I was forced to start my experimenting all over again. Two pounds of soap and one cup of water produced something like whipped cream only thicker. Everything before had been much thinner and I could pour it. This would never pour. Cautiously I added more water, but nothing much changed. Finally, at two cups of water, I didn't dare go any farther. I scooped it out and pressed it into my mold, hoping to get it into all corners. Hoping it would work.

It did, I thought. My mold looks like a five pound block of cheese, though maybe a little thinner. So once that set up, I started cutting. My idea of using the waffle edged cutter meant that I generated quite a bit of scrap, and yeah, I couldn't throw that away either.

I didn't have any trouble with the original soaps, and I didn't count how many batches I did, but eventually I came around to using the scrap pieces. Now here I ran into more and more trouble. The soap refused to hold together. It crumbled and cracked easily, and many times it would come apart as it was drying. This concerned me, so I went back to those first soaps, and discovered several of them (probably my first batch with too much water) had shrunk, warped and cracked. They were no longer pretty.

The first thing I tried to do to solve my problem was to go back to the straight edged cutter, but I got no better results. Out of every mold, I was doing good to get one or two usable bars of soap. The rest broke and crumbled as they were being cut. I even stopped adding water since I thought that might be the issue, but I got no better results.

Finally I decided to get back with my boss's wife and ask her if she minded my mixing some of those very first soaps in, explaining that the color would no longer be white. She wasn't the slightest bit concerned about color. This thrilled me. That meant that I could use all that soap I'd made at first. All I had to do was go through them and make them pretty enough to use at the lodge.

I used up all the Dove soap, mixing two pounds of Dove with one pound of other stuff. I increased the amount of soap, reasoning that they weren't as dry as originals - it seemed to work well that way. Ever since I switched back from the waffle edged cutter, I decided I'd bevel the edges of the bars in an effort to make them look more finished - prettier, so as soon as all the Dove was used up, I decided I'd re-recycle the rest of them, so they'd be uniform. Yeah, I'm weird like that. Almost immediately, I changed that. There wasn't anything wrong with them; they just needed to be prettied up.

Some of those original soaps, I knew I'd have to redo. One batch was cut all wrong and another was too soft. Unfortunately, since I'd marked my batches with a marker, the ink had bled through onto the soap. I couldn't have that, so I sorted them out for recycle.  I ended up with two full batches of those. The rest just needed to be cleaned up and beveled - there was probably about two full batches of those. My last batch was all the trimmings and shavings I'd accumulated. When all was said and done - the project for this season finished - I had an entire square bucket full of neatly wrapped soaps. Now I need to find something better to wrap them in as well as a suitable label.

It was a very interesting project, and I'm pleased with the results.

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Summer's Over

Yeah, my summer is mostly over. Leaves are turning and berries are ripe. It smells awesome out there, like over ripe cranberries (high bush) and rain-washed whatever. The weather was truly odd this summer when talking about river levels. I finally made it to work on the first of June - it sucks that I missed two weeks of work. Because of that there were things I normally do that I skipped this year. I can wash walls next year - people aren't allowed to smoke inside anyway.

Water levels remained medium low all summer long, but as time passed, it became increasingly clear that water levels were rain dependent rather than snow-melt dependent - which is really out of the ordinary. Fortunately there was enough rain to keep the rivers full enough for me to drive to work. I drove a jet-drive through most of the summer because, at first, the water was really scary-low - meaning that gravel-bars I know to exist were sticking up, and some of them were very nearly over my head. Islands that I normally see were small mountains. There was one thing good about seeing the water that low. I learned that some channels where I'd driven for years, had moved, and some gravel-bars had grown (or seemed to have done so).

Other than water levels, which increased slowly, but steadily, my summer went well. I was able to devote time to my gardens, and got plenty of complements because of that. I met some great people, and even sold a couple books. I also passed out a few business cards, so with luck, I sold a few more books that way.

In other news related to work, I bought a soap mold. It has always been very nearly impossible for me to throw away used soap, so over the years, I've accumulated quite a few. The last lodge I worked at and now this one both use Dove soap, and I was stacking it on a shelf in the laundry room. It really rankled that they'd all been used only once or twice, some maybe a little more. They were full sized bars - it was such a waste. I did a little research and discovered that Dove makes half-sized bars, and my boss's wife was able to find some in town. Even so, it was a waste, so I kept those too. When I told her I would take her soaps and remake them into smaller bars, she did a little searching and found some fish-shaped molds. I haven't seen them yet, but then I'm still learning how to do this recycling of soaps. I took all the random (other than Dove) soaps and am trying to refine a recipe. My first effort was a bunch of unmeasured soap that I'd grated up years ago and put in a big glass cooky jar to this end. In a bigger pot (think double-boiler) I tried to melt the soap. The recipe I found online said to add a little water, so I did, adding a little more until the soap started to get soft. What was on the surface of my mass kept cooling to clumps, so I spooned it into my mold and tried to smooth it out. The result cooled quickly and I was able to cut them into blocks, trimming away the ugly edges to be added to my next batch. They are not pretty as far as color, and they are inconsistent in shape, but they are usable bars of soap, so I'm happy. However, my effort taught me that I needed a better recipe.

On to my second effort. I found a recipe that called for 2 cups of soap to 1 cup of water. My stumbling block was, how do you measure out 2 cups of soap. So I did the next best thing, I changed the volume measure to a weight measure. 2 cups is 16 oz or one pound so I weighed up 2 pounds of soap bars and started grating. When I bought my mold I thought I read in the questions or reviews somewhere that it holds 5 pounds of soap, and my first effort didn't fill my mold quite full. So I figured I'd aim for 4 pounds of soap, which (according to my recipe) called for 2 cups of water. I grated up my first pound of soap and added it to my cookie jar and after I added my 2 cups of water, I realized that there was no way my cookie jar was going to hold 4 pounds of grated soap. Cringe. I wanted to drain away that water, but didn't. I should have, but I added another pound of soap and proceeded.

This time, my concoction was more like what they said in the recipes in that I could pour it. It was thick, but was it thick enough? Time would tell. I did learn that 2 pounds of soap is the max my mold will hold. I let the block cool over night and it was solid enough to take out of it's mold, but it's still kinda soft. I cut it into some bars, discovering that my cut was thinner than I like, but it is what it is. Now those bars are laying out on a cooky sheet. According to my research, it's not uncommon for bars to cure for up to a week. Cross your fingers. Worse case scenario, I redo. I still got more soap to experiment on before I get to my boss's soap. I'll figure it all out.

In the mean time - On the first of August, my son who lives down in Arizona came up to visit and go fishing. He brought his two kids, his girlfriend, and her son. It was awesome. They stayed for two weeks and went fishing every day, bringing home nearly 18 fish every day. I also showed the girlfriend how to can fish. I canned up a couple batches to make room in the freezer, but starting a load after I got home from work meant staying up till near midnight. Needless to say, I only did enough to make room.

When he left, my son took a hundred pounds of frozen fish home with him as well as a case of canned, and my freezer was still stuffed. Three days after work was over, I started canning fish. Last week, my other son came out to help pull boats again and he took home 4 cases of fish. I am finally getting to the bottom of the freezer. I have fish thawing out here in the house for tomorrow's canning session and three more bags in the freezer to go, and I have six and a half cases of fish done as of today. That is more fish than I've canned up in a very long time.

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Worries Come True

Be ware of rant - sorry.

In an earlier post this last winter, I complained about the lack of snow. I mean, this is Alaska. We're SUPPOSED to have tons and tons of snow every winter. When we first moved out here, it was common to truly avoid stepping off the packed trail unless you had snowshoes. If you stepped off the trail and went in only to waist deep or so, it was considered a low snow year, but still no great cause for worry.

Then Vice President Al Gore, apparently a fierce environmentalist, came to power in 1993, and it suddenly became all the rage to clean up the world. I followed this - kinda - there was really no avoiding it, and to a certain degree, I agreed with the concept. It's only right to take care of our world; it's the only one we have. I do my very best to make sure my little piece of it does not collect so much as cigarette butts.

But then clean-up evolved from global cooling in the 70s to global warming scare it is today. But since I see no sign of coastal cities preparing for those drowning years, I have always had my doubts. And since my life is so weather-dependent, I do try to keep up as much as possible.

The trend I've seen here is that the winters seem to be warmer than what they were say 30 or 40 years ago, but for the most part the temperatures seem to follow a normal path through the winter. Maybe some winters are slightly warmer than others, but then some winters were also slightly colder than others too - over all, there was no change that I could see.

Then Obama came to visit our state back in August of '15. Of course it was all over the news, and in reality I was really ashamed of our president. To be seen standing with two girls, he and both girls holding up fish, but he using thick rubber gloves? That is not a picture to make me proud. The man is a wimp. I don't have much respect for him, but that's not the issue of this post. Then in September of that year, he was on the Bear Grylls survival show where his greatest risk was to drink a little glacier water. I mean, it was almost an insult to the show. The point of the show was to discuss how badly the glaciers were receding. That show, and every other documentary I have ever watched to date involving either the glaciers receding or the polar icecap breaking up, failed miserably to convince me that there was an issue.

To me, the issue with the ice cap can be directly blamed on the fleet of ice breakers they use to keep the shipping lanes open. And glaciers - well, they come and go with the season just like they are supposed to do. Now, don't get me wrong, some glaciers aren't doing so well, but all things change. No. The trouble with the glaciers, and by weather-related connection, the ice cap, is directly related to precipitation coming down as snow. As long as there was enough snow, the glaciers would do just fine.

But those seeking to further the global warming/global change issues can't have status quo when it comes to snowfall in Alaska. That would not further their drowning of coastal cities agenda. I believe Obama managed to accomplish two things during his visit. One was to somehow force Alaska to sign up for his health care farce - we had been holding out until his visit. Another was to look into the glacier issue.

He was not gone from this state for even a week when jets started flying over in force, and they were flying over in a grid - a very obvious square criss-cross pattern. I drive to work in a boat. the sky is wide open to me. I saw this with my very own eyes. The next day or two, and more or less from then on, the air stank.

Now cloud seeding has been around for years. They started trying to modify the weather down in the mid-west way back in the 60s, and they wanted to enhance snowfall in the Rockies too, all in an attempt to replenish the reservoir under the whole nation. Rivers were drying up, and nearly all the farms now used sprinklers to water their crops. The whole country was drying up. Was it working? I don't think so, but what do I know.

What they did up here - with such stinking concentration seemed to do one thing. We had a nasty flood that fall - the worst I've seen for over twenty years. The damage to the area was extensive, but we recovered. We washed the river mud out of our building and we repaired the damage, and we carried on. That winter we still had about 2 or 3 feet of snow here, but other damage had been done too. For the first time in a while, the Iditarod Sled Dog Race was forced to start in Fairbanks due to lack of snow. It's happened in the past - no biggie. Life goes on. So what if several businesses, who'd spent thousands of $$$ to get ready for the big race, lost out on all that income. My life is not the only life that revolves around the weather. For that race to start in Fairbanks two years in a row, due to lack of snow, is unprecedented. Those weather-control dudes had to have been having a field day, celebrating with champagne and caviar.

Thanks to stinky air all through the summer last year, we here on the river were blessed with not just one flood, but four. Lodges were forced to ship guests to town and some closed early. At the lodge where I work, my boss remained open, but he was calling guests right and left, telling them of the issue and offering to rebook them for next year - their trip had already been paid for so it was covered. Again, mega loss of business, but the global climate 'change' was paramount. They simply had to starve those glaciers until they went away.

Now, thanks to all their efforts, and more to the point of this post, I should have been able to go to work on the 15th. Take a look at those pictures. See all that sand and where the water is? All that sand should be under water by now, or at least very close to it. Spring melt off almost always causes a near flood to start with - it makes launching the boats easier. This year, even after the ice in the rivers had gone away, there was not enough water to even float a boat, let alone go anywhere, and here it is, very nearly a week later, and I'm waiting for the water to come up. Don't get me wrong, it was coming up a couple inches a day until day before yesterday when it rained. I was lazy that day; I didn't go check the river in the rain. I went yesterday instead. Much to my dismay, the water went down a couple inches. Now, to add to my dismay, last night it frosted. Frost here tells me the mountains are still frozen. At this point that is my only source of river water.

I can see making it rain on dry farmers, but the agenda here is purely political and it makes me want to shoot someone. I am so angry about this, and I feel so impotent.

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Global Warming Hoax

Before you get your hackles all in a burr, no, I haven't read up on all the latest studies. In fact it's been a long time since I looked into the issue at all, shy of watching the occasional TV program on the issue. All I know is what I can see right here at home. Is the world warming up a degree or two a year? I have no idea. It doesn't seem like my winters are getting any shorter or warmer, but what is happening is someone (and I do mean a person or persons) is trying to alter the weather patterns, and for us here in Alaska, it's not a good thing. We aren't a farming state suffering from drought. That's not to say we don't have farms here in Alaska, we do, though I couldn't tell you what is grown.

What's been happening is (or seems to me like) they (the elusive they) are seeding the clouds now two falls in a row (at least), causing it to rain buckets from roughly August through September. Now that is normally our rainy season so no one will take much notice, but lately, I've been worrying that all our precipitation is falling in liquid form and not so much of the snowy variety.

For two to five years in a row it has flooded dangerously here - not at my house; I live up on a high hill - but down on the river damage to the lodges is becoming of great concern. Too high a cost to keep repairs up and businesses will close (and I will be out of work). The last lodge I worked at is losing their front yard by the foot and very soon the river will be running under the lodge itself. Need I speculate for you what will happen to that lodge then? Already some of their buildings are on state land behind them. They just can't move back any more. The lodge where I work now is still recovering from the flood five years ago as they continue to work to replace floors and jack the guest cabins up out of the mud. Admittedly, some of those projects are things that should have been done years back, but that flood did other kinds of damage too. Next summer I'm going to need to take a scrub brush to some lower walls. Wood grain hangs onto silt pretty well.

Back to the farce of global warming

Rain in the fall is a norm, but I will bet that it probably messes up the harvest, especially if it comes down like twice normal. That's not the issue. You see, their whole proof is based on the receding glaciers, and if you think about it, it's snow that created glaciers, and it's snow that maintains them, so if it doesn't snow, the glaciers run out eventually. So it equates that if you can suck all the precipitation out of the air before winter sets in... Well, you see what my logic is. I don't pretend to know anything about weather models, so I have no idea how it all works. I just know what I see, and this is what I think.

For two winters in a row, we've gotten a pitiful amount of snow. This is Alaska. Our whole winter is geared toward winter sports and activities. There's the Iron Dog, and the Iditarod. There's even a winter biking race on the river and a I think there's a hiking thing as well. That's not to mention entire businesses geared to promote and support play. If snow goes away, all that goes away too. Though it might seem kind of funny in a way, I'm sick and tired of hearing how everyone down in the lower 48 is getting the feet of snow we are used to while we eek out an inch or two. It's December. It's after Christmas, and we have less than a foot of snow on the ground. Once was the time when this much snow was already on the ground by the end of October and four to five feet of snow was on the ground by now.

So, next time you hear about receding glaciers, look into how much snow has fallen in the area as opposed to how much rain has fallen earlier in the season.

Oh, and the seeding thing - I know it's seeding and not just random jets flying over because random jets flying of is just that -> random. Seeding - especially like we've been getting lately, is planes flying in a grid. Yes, I really mean a grid - multiple planes flying back and forth in one direction, and other planes flying back and forth in another direction. By the time they're done the sky looks like someone strung a pig wire fence up there that slowly dissipates. Oh yeah, and the worst part about that is when that crap reaches the ground, it stinks.

Once upon a time the air up here was actually sweet smelling. It's been months and months since the air has smelled like that.

Now, the really concentrated seeding - when I finally put all of this together - happened like three days after Obama toured the state last year. I know that this whole global warming thing is a multi-million dollar thing, so they gotta keep it going somehow, but they really need to lay off. Give us back our snow. If the globe is warming up a little each year, it will happen one way or another, but putting an entire state out of business can't be a good thing.

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