Monkling’s Blog

There is a new member of the family. Here he is with his baby sister and big brother:

Baby sister is not going to be around much longer. She has this battery problem - even if it’s turned off, the battery totally drains after a day. Big brother doesn’t belong to us - he is a work laptop. Obviously I was in dire need of a new mobile device.

Then came the huge question: What would I buy? The handheld PCs like the IPAQ in the photo are very easy to carry around and this one has wireless capabilities but try reading a web page on it. You need those glasses that magnify everything. Laptops are good for traveling except they’re on the heavy side unless you want to spend $34,325 for the ultra thin ones.

Then I saw this baby which is referred to as an Ultra Mobile PC. It weights 1.5 lbs., it has wireless & Bluetooth, and it runs Windows XP Tablet edition which means I can load anything on to this machine.

Why should you care about my new toy? Because it means I can blog & check email no matter where I am - as long as I can get Internet access. Yep, no matter where I go, ya’ll are going to be with me.

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Let’s define the word “weekend.” Pretend your son says he will be home on Labor Day weekend. How would you define this?

A. He will be home from Friday until Monday.
B. He will be home part of the weekend.
C. He will only be home 1 day & plans on driving right back the following day.

How many of you picked C? If you did, you know my son better than I do or you’re just a real good guesser.

Being somewhat slow & stupid, I thought he would be here for the entire weekend or, at least, for most of it. I thought, “Gee, wouldn’t it be nice to have the family over since no one really got to say good bye to him before he left for D.C.” I then invited people over for Sunday. When I shared this with the boy, he informed me he had planned on leaving on Saturday but now he supposes he’ll have to stay until Sunday and people better come because he doesn’t want to stick around just for me.

And following up on yesterday’s UPS rant, the guy claimed he attempted to deliver the package. I called and said, “Uh, no. He parked the truck and then he left without even getting out.” They sent him back & I got my package. From now on, if at all possible, I will have to specify that I do not want anything sent via UPS.

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We went away overnight - thus the late post today. (I didn’t think it would be a good idea to publicly announce there was an empty house here.)

So there we are on the Belt Parkway, driving home. Miraculously we did not hit any traffic. Not on the Belt, not on the Staten Island Expressway, nothing. Now why we couldn’t have that sort of luck while we were in Atlantic City at the slots… Oops, getting back to my story, we were driving home this afternoon when I saw this sign:

Now I’ve seen signs that say “Deer Crossing” and “Moose Crossing” and “Goose Crossing” but this one is just a wee bit vague. Just what sort of wildlife lives in Brooklyn? And why don’t they specify just what may or may not be crossing the highway?

In other news, did I mention I hate my UPS man? I’m expecting a package. He attempted to deliver it yesterday but since we weren’t home, there was just a little note. The note was supposed to say when it would be re-delivered. It was totally useless. There were lines on it that meant nothing. A call to the office got the information that it’s on the truck and supposed to be delivered today. So why did the guy park outside and then leave without bringing me my package?? Clearly we are home. The front door was opened. I am not a happy camper.

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I told you the day was almost here. In my never ending quest to rid the house of stuff in anticipation of someday being able to sell the place, part of my mission is to use up or throw out whatever I can. This includes boxes and containers filled with lotion and soap making supplies. First we did the lotion. Now we move on to soap making. I know you were all anxiously awaiting this day!

Making soap is a bit more complicated. This isn’t any old melt & pour operation. Nope, we go the whole way with using oils and lye. Now I know back in the day, when women used to do this all the time, they used animal fat. While I have no objections to eating meat (unless you want me to cook rabbit), the idea of washing yourself with animal fat sorta grosses me out. (I know this is illogial but hey, I can’t be logical 100% of the time.) Therefore, the only stuff I use is vegetable based: coconut oil, palm oil, cocoa butter, shea butter, stuff like that. All of this gets measured and melted.

While that’s sitting on the stove, out comes the distilled water and the lye. I keep the water in the refrigerator and even with cold water, the lye solution heats up to over 140 degrees.

Doing the lye is the fun part because you have to be real careful not to breathe in the fumes or splash it on yourself. Otherwise you’ll end up searing your lungs or needing to wear a mask like The Phantom.

Then you wait until both the oils and the lye mixture are around 120 degrees. You pour the lye into the fats and beat it with one of those stick blenders until it looks like pudding. Sure it looks good but trust me, you don’t want to taste this stuff. Not if you ever plan on tasting anything else ever again.

Then you pour it into the molds and cover it with plastic wrap. In addition to the plastic wrap, it gets covered with a blanket so that it can stay warm and continue to turn into soap but if I took the photo with the blanket, you wouldn’t be able to see anything.

Being obsessive, I like to do a little ph test. The initial tests always show a very high ph. This one is about a 10.

That means if you try to wash yourself with this stuff, it will not only get the dirt off but it will take a layer or 2 of your skin off, as well. A couple of days later, the soap comes out of the molds.

This time, the ph has dropped way down. It’s about an 8 here. Neutral is 7 and it’ll test at that within a week. You could probably use it at that point but I usually cure it for at least a month. The longer it’s cured, the harder the bars are.

Next week we’re going to have a new contest here. I think I may decide to award a bar of homemade soap as the prize. I know it’s not much of a prize but it’ll last longer than just 15 minutes of fame.

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Yesterday was the big 50th birthday party for my brother in-law. I’ve been very excited about this for weeks because, for once in my life, I knew what I wanted to buy as a birthday gift. This is a very rare event. I never know what to buy anyone.

I also suspected my sister & her husband would not be too happy with what I wanted to buy, not because he wouldn’t like it but because it’s on the expensive side. Being brilliant, however, I thought up a way to get around that - I asked my brother & his wife if they wanted to go in on it.

Yesterday afternoon we stuffed our faces with way too much food. Then came the birthday cake. By that time, I was getting very impatient. At one point my sister in-law, Adrian, asked, “What if he doesn’t open the presents when we’re here?”

“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’ll make sure he does.” I then informed Jim that he had to open up the presents after the cake because those are the rules. Luckily no one asked to see the rule book. I keep a close eye on the cake eating, waiting for Jim to finally finish. The second he was done, I told him it was time.

Naturally he opened up our gift last. Adrian & I are practically jumping up and down, waiting for him to get to ours. Finally he started opening it while we both had our cameras aimed at him. There it was! A brand new, super cool digital camera!

As someone else said yesterday, “Welcome to the 21st Century.”

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I am so glad I don’t have young children because with all the commercials on TV advertising drugs, I know I’d be getting asked questions like, “Mommy, what is ED?” In my opinion, there are way too many drug pushing commercials.

Yesterday we were at the nursing home visiting Frank’s mom. Theresa came with us & Frank’s sister and her husband were there. The TV was on & there’s a commercial for a drug treating restless leg syndrome. The drugs used to treat that also are used to treat Parkinson’s. The only commercials I’ve seen are for Requip, a drug Frank used to be on. This one was for Mirapex, which he is currently taking.

“Look, Honey!” I told him. “I never saw one for that drug before.” Everyone in the room watched the commercial. As it got towards the end, they start talking about possible side effects.

“Contact your doctor if you experience increased gambling, sexual or other intense urges.”

I burst out laughing. (Prior to this, I had never heard of any side effect other than the gambling one.) Theresa looks horrified and says something like, “I really didn’t need to know that!” Frank’s sister & brother in-law focus on the gambling part of that.

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Theresa was telling me a story the other day about a conversation a group of her friends had. I decided I need to share it here because, like her 1 friend who lives upstate, most of you probably never met the Sharpener Man.

Her friend runs his own lawn business during the summer and one of the old ladies he works for gave him a bunch of tools that belonged to her husband. He was telling the group that he needed to get them sharpened.

“Why don’t you get the Sharpener Man to do it.”
“What is a Sharpener Man?”
“You know, he drives down the block and rings a little bell just like an ice cream truck. Everyone runs out into the street with their knives and tools and he sharpens them.”
“Uh, I have no idea what you are talking about.”

A few days later, we saw one of the trucks on our way home from the nursing home:

That’s about the only truck left from my childhood who still comes around along with the ice cream trucks. When we were kids, aside from the milkman, we had the fruit truck (”Water-meloon! 3 cents a pound!”) and the ride trucks.

Oh, and on a totally different subject, Theresa had a picture on her camera of Steve getting ready to go back to school:

This is only a small portion of his stuff. The rest of it is in the car already. That crucifix in the background is the one I cleaned for him. You can’t really see how clean Jesus is but look at that wood shine.

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Today’s post has nothing to do with soup but since we are talking about bowling and since I like the song 1985 by that group, I figured what the heck.

Theresa is all moved in (yes, amazingly the 2 car loads of stuff did fit into her room) and the nights are quiet around here. Last night, after we got back from our trip to the nursing home, I plopped onto the couch to watch TV but nothing was on. Not even the Yankee game. I yelled over to Frank, “Hey, want to bowl?”

That did not mean going to an actual bowling alley. It meant putting on the Wii. I love that thing. And I’ve gotten halfway decent at using my left hand to bowl and bat.

With the Wii, you can make little people to represent yourself and once you do that, it keeps track of all your stats. While Frank was at work one day, I created his little person. It’s pretty cool because you can select from a variety of facial features. This is what Frank looks like:

When the kids saw his character, they were hysterical. “Mom, he looks like a convict!” Personally I kinda like Frankie’s look although I did tell him he could change it. So far he’s kept this. I guess he likes looking like a convict.

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If this was winter, you might think I was going to complain about being outside for too long & that I was cold. You would have guessed wrong.

Today it was time to get a hair cut & get rid of the gray. You may recall me talking about the place I go to get my hair done and how the topic of death seems to come up a lot. As I’m sitting in there today, there was a discussion about a frozen hand.

“You had it in the freezer?”
“Yeah.”
“And there were fingers missing?”
“Yes. Someone broke off all the fingers except for the middle one.”
“Do you know who did it?”

The conversation went on like this for a while. Meantime I’m wondering whose hand was in that freezer and why. Eventually it dawned on me that they weren’t talking about a real hand but an ice hand. This was confirmed when they explained the hand to someone else.

“I told him to take one of those rubber gloves, fill it with water & stick it in the freezer. I didn’t think he’d actually do it.”

I have visions of Halloween around here. If we do anything, I think there will be a red hand floating in the punch bowl.

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