Soaping

I've been going buts because I want to make my hand made soap again, but it's pretty expensive, and I don't want to end up buried in millions of bars of soap because I can't use it up fast enough.  I do that.  I have a drawer of nothing but hand knit socks completely separate from my regular sock drawer.  How many feet do I think I have?  lol  Anyway.  I let my soap cure for 2 months after I make it, so I promised myself that I wouldn't soap again until at least the last batch was fully cured.   So every 2 months I have personal permission.  I'm due again on June 20th, but I'm not sure if I'm gonna do it.  I need more supplies, and it's gonna cost 20-30 dollars after shipping and all, and that is money that I really should be spending on getting my credit card debt down.  (My car is paid off now, so the goal is to knock down the credit cards so I can move on with my life!)  I've been trying to satisfy my need to soap by watching youtube videos of other people doing it.  There's one lady who I really love watching, her name is Holly, she is a stay-at-home mom who soaps as a hobby.  She'd like to sell, but isn't sure she'd make enough profit to cover the expense of the insurance you need to have.  I am totally jealous of this woman.  She does not make any money herself, so her husband makes enough that they are comfortably raising their 3 children and she still has enough money to make soap at least once a week.  And she buys all the extra special stuff and dodads and contraptions and molds and oils, and she has a stock of colors and fragrances that she always has on hand.  She makes really cool soap, usually in loaf molds, which I really want to try, but do not have the mold for.  I've done 2 batches so far, one espresso chocolate and one tuberose moss.  I use silicone cupcake molds because I already had them and don't like them for baking anyway.  Plus it makes really nice individual soaps without me having to cut bars and all.  Holly has a blog and a youtube channel, and Anne Marie from Soap Queen even reads her blog, which pretty much means that she is a soap superstar.  She keeps talking about fellow soapers and the soaping community and other people in her area and online who she is great friends with and talks about soap all the time with.  I don't know anybody else who soaps.  Just he lady at the farmer's market, who inspired me to start soaping, but she has no idea who I am.  I want soaping friends and I want to be able to make soap whenever I want and just give it away and I want to be a soap guru and make beautiful stuff. 

Lactose!!

I've always had a bit of intestinal issues.  My dad has chron's disease, which almost killed him a few times, but he's good now.  I have some form of colitis, possibly ulcerative I'm thinkin, and two other small colon issues that I'd rather not name because they have bad connotations and everybody would go EW! or TMI.  I am also lactose intolerant, which it took me eons to figure out.  Not sure why, you'd think it'd be easy to link up, eat dairy, get sick, lactose intolerant.  Just somehow never made the connection.  But I finally got it, and I have been feeling MUCH better now that I know what to avoid or take a pill for.   I've been just avoiding for the most part because I hate having to shell out for the stupid pills.  But I am super excited about how many lactose free things Kroger has started carrying recently.  There's Lactaid milk, which is regular cows' milk without lactose, and then the artificials, (rice milk and soy milk).  I never just drink straight milk anyway, and all of these taste good to me on cereal and such.  The Lactaid milk has been in the clearance section the past few times I've been in, which worries me, cuz it means they're not selling enough of it before it gets outdated, and if they're losing money on it they might stop carrying it.  It is more expensive than regular milk.  But anyway, there's also Yoplait lactose free yogurt, in fewer flavors than the regular kind, and most are fruit which I don't like cuz I hate the slimy chunks and pieces, but there is vanilla, and I can put my own stuff in it, and it's the same price as regular yogurt.  And there's Breyer's lactose free ice cream.  Only in vanilla, but still, pretty exciting.  Yay for dairy I can eat without taking a pill or having gut wrenching pain.  :) 

Kennywood!

My dad decided he wanted to "ride a roller coaster one more time" before he DIES.  Yeah.  Like he's 90 years old or something, or has terminal cancer.  Ridiculousness. Anyway, he asked if I wanted to go to Kennywood with him, and of course I was like YEAH!  Trips with my parents are always something I jump at cuz they pay for everything and I don't have to drive my car, so it's pretty much the only way I get to go anywhere with my financial situation right now.  So me, Dad, and Joe (brother) went to Kennywood.  We stopped in Washington, PA for doughnuts at the Donut Connection.  They have these "honeydew" doughnuts which are awesome.  They're basically a cake doughnut with glaze.  Sounds plain, but lemme tell ya, completely delicious.  I drove the whole way up and back, and I gotta say it was a small nightmare.  Definitely coulda been worse, but yeah, we had to go right into Pittsburgh, and then on the way back Mapquest had the directions to Red Robin all wrong, and then there was construction and it was 1 lane going through Fort Pitt Tunnel. Drivers in Pittsburgh (or any city) are A-holes.  They drive bumper to bumper like crazy people and will not let you merge unless you about hit them with your car and just horn your way in.  I hate it.  And the streets in Pittsburgh?  It's like, I don't even know what it's like.  Nothing makes sense, and it's so easy to get lost, and every street has like 20 lanes, and it seems like usually I'm on the wrong side of those 20 lanes for the exit that I need to use!  lol  But Kennywood itself was great.  I didn't think so at first.  We went on the Jackrabbit and I was like, I just don't think i like roller coasters any more.  After the first time on the Racer I was thinking, it's not unbearable, but I'm still not loving it.  But by the end of the day I was psyched about the whole thing.  I think I just have to get desensitized to it all every time I go to an amusement park, cuz this is the way it usually is for me.  And I never get so comfortable with it that I'm willing to go on the big coasters, or ones where you go upside down and stuff.  I'm too big a chicken.  My favorite ride is not even a coaster, it's the Wave Swinger, which is a bunch of lawn chair lookin' seats hung from chains, and it lifts you up and spins you around.  I think it's great, but lots of people hate it cuz the ride looks fragile, like the chains might break and send you flying 100 feet into concrete or something.  But I'm sure if that actually happened they'd take the ride down, and at big parks like Kennywood and Cedar point they test the rides often and make sure they're maintained and safe, so I'm not worried about it.  Red Robin was awesome.  Thick burgers cooked the way you want (medium for me!) and lots of topping combinations.  I like their Blue Ribbon burger, but this time I got the Whiskey River, which is marinated in a whiskey sauce and has fried onion straws, bbq sauce, mayo, and the usual burger toppings.  SO GOOD.  I want a Red Robin in our area.  Or a Ruby Tuesday's.  I mean, I like Wendy's and all, but there is nowhere close to get a really really really good thick burger.  

Work vent

Been in a crappy mood the last couple weeks.  Right now I'm thinking of like 9,000 things to talk about, and I'm not sure where to start or how to organize everything so my posts aren't a mile long.  Let's see... how bout work?  Ok.  So my boss went on vacation last week, and she's had to spend a lot of days at the Steubenville store because they just lost their manager and have no idea what they are doing.  Our district manager's husband has colon trouble of a life-endangering nature, and so she's been all worked up lately.  Our OTL (I don't know what that stands for, but she's basically the only person at our store who has a clue, cares, and gets stuff done) her husband had triple bypass surgery and she's been out for a while.  So yeah, Angie (boss), Liz (OTL), and (I like to flatter myself) me, are the 3 movers and shakers who really get the most done and know the rules and what needs to happen.  And they both left me.  lol  I gotta say it hasn't been as bad as I was expecting, and definitely not as frustrating as it's been in the past under similar circumstances, but still, it's not fun.  I've been working my tail off, and I feel like the stuff that I'm immediately responsible for has been getting handled well, which is awesome.  And the other girls haven't been doing too badly on the whole, but it is frustrating to work with them sometimes.  Some of them are SO unorganized, and they can't remember how to do things half the time.  Usually I just try to ignore it and do my own thing, but it's annoying when I can't do what I need because I have to watch the floor while they finish up paperwork, or I have to pick up a plan-o-gram or a sale set when someone else started it, because it's like stepping into chaos.  It seems like they just don't think in an organized way, so everything they do is unorganized.  Things get left half done, and I dunno, stuff like, instead of pulling all the clearance, marking it and taking it to the clearance section before they start to set a plan-o-gram, they'll pile it all in a cart or basket and end up running out of time and leaving it for someone else to deal with.  When they do sale set they don't have just a "done" and "not done" pile, they have 60 piles of signs, and so when I step in to help I'm like, ok what's been done here? And they're not even sure themselves half the time.  Why are we checking the same things twice instead of just having 2 piles & no confusion??  So ok, this post was basically just a vent for me, and I'm sure nobody's thinking, "wow, this was fascinating!"  LOL  Oh well!