Still here...

Catscankim · Aug 2, 2023

Hi all. I am still here. Just haven't made soap in a bit. I decided to stay at my job because they are my friends and I felt like I was abandoning ship when I should be there for them. One said "This place is going to burn to the ground without you". I guess that made me feel good lol. I gave a ton of notice, so I was still there for a bit, but I saw things just imploding before my eyes. Nobody knew what to do, nobody knew if they were supposed to bother me with supervisor stuff. Then the clueless ones (admin) started making stupid decisions."OK FINE I WILL STAY" LOL. Egads I have such a love-hate relationship with this place.

So that goes back to...I have no time for anything but this job. Again.

Been growing some stuff. I got ONE mango from my tree LOL. Its still young and I didn't think even one would survive, but it did. I got a bunch of papays that are so delicious. I must admit that I was never really a big papaya fan, until I grew my own, which I really only grew for the trees. So much better than supermarket papayas, but I am not happy with the weird bugs they attract. They taste like really sweet cantaloupe, if I get them before the bugs do. I have a bunch of pepper and tomato plants out there, but the heat has been so bad that I might need to restart for the Florida weather in the fall like everybody else does with these things. Tropical plants just go and go.

A sweet potato vine grew out of the compost so I let it grow. Now it took over the raised garden. Oddly enough, carrots love my garden. I planted a bunch, ate them, planted a bunch more...how many carrots can one person eat LOL. So This last round I cut up, blanched and froze them. Another odd thing that grew really well were brussels sprouts mmMMMmmmm. I had three plants so I ended up freezing a lot of those too.

My partner at work grew a "Nam Wah" banana plant. It produces 3" sized bananas. THEY ARE DELICIOUS. Very dense, very sweet and not starchy like store-bought bananas. One of these little ones fills you up like a regular banana. I told him that I definitely want one of the babies from that banana plant.

Henry is doing good. He is so smart, and so BIG!

Hopefully I will get back into soaping again soon. For the most part I just come home exhausted and just fart around on the computer until it is time for bed to do it all over again the next day.

Pic of Henry, Nam Wa banana, and papayas and Henry LOL

glendam · Aug 20, 2023

Henry looks so sweet and cute!
I am curious about those bananas, wish we could grow them here. With our heat waves even our grass is almost dead. I am also jealous about your carrots garden, you definitely have a green thumb!
Glad to hear you are doing good and thanks for the update, sometimes it is about the people we work with, everything else being equal.

Catscankim · Aug 25, 2023

I am on vacation!!! Finally!!! Nothing to do for 17 days. Literally worked for over a month straight with no days off. I might go to Philly for a little. No real plans yet. Maybe go up sooner than I planned because there is a storm brewing...Not afraid of the storm, but if the people find out that I am in town then they will try to make me come in.

Anywhoooo. My first days activities. I was like holy moly my sweet potatoes were taking over everything. Naturally I wake up at 5:10 am without an alarm. Like grrrrrr....really wanted to sleep in. But that's my up time normally. So I was out working in the garden by 8. I pulled up all the sweet potato vines, mostly because they were getting so huge. I found a few would-be sweet potatoes, so I was kicking myself for not waiting longer. I got all of the vines cleared and started pulling weeds. "what the heck is this" Its a huge sweet potato. Digging around and digging around....I have a full harvest of sweet potatoes. Well, five LOL. But five big ones and a ton of small ones.

I have a couple of moringa trees. Only one planted in the ground and it's only been there for a few months. But they grow huge quicklyl I kinda want to keep it short and bushy so I lopped off the whole top of the tree. So the next part of my first day off was drying moringa leaves and making moringa powder.

Not looking to sell it, but out of curiosity I looked up the price of moringa powder. It goes for at top price $19, low price (on Amazon) is around $6 for 8-16 ounces. I lopped off an entire top of a tree and had to dehydrate it in two dehydrators and came up with:

What the heck. I'm sitting here like this is a million dollar jar of moringa powder LOL. I think you need a whole forest to harvest from to be able to sell 1lb of moringa powder. I dunno. Again, I am not planning on selling it. I was just curious.

So the pupster. He is sleeping in bed with me now. And for some reason he thinks he has options and opinions now as well. So after sleeping with me for a week or so, I get up one morning and he decides he doesn't FEEL like getting out of bed. I get all ready for work and he still doesn't want to get out of bed. Fully dressed for work, I jump up and try to push him from behind, which didn't work. Had to wrap him up like a burrito in the blanket and pull the jerk onto the floor...three days in a row. He just doesn't want to get out of bed!!! I don't have pictures of this LOL.

Can jump about 8 feet high chasing the hose water, leap from the hallway onto the bed, but can't get off the bed 2 feet from the ground. I don't think so bud. And he whistle-whines, like it is too far to get down from. Seriously a good actor.

He does take well with being dressed up though. Don't ask LOL. Its a rain coat.