Thanks-Weekend-Giving

My long Thanksgiving weekend began on Wednesday afternoon.  They let everyone leave at 3pm and I jumped at the chance. 

I was feeling a bit off on Thursday morning, but I couldn’t put my finger on the reason until Mrs. Ender started cooking.  You know that hot metal smell that you always get the first time you turn your furnace on in the fall?  Well, you get a similar smell when you turn your oven on after a long period of no use.  Maybe my headache made the smell seem stronger than it really was–I do get very sensitive to smells when I get a big headache–or maybe the smell made my headache worse, but the end result was the same, a giant headache before the Thanksgiving festivities began.

The timewarp might have been partially responsible for the headache.  There I was, sitting in my recliner reading the paper while The Parade was on TV.  I looked up and felt like I’d been tossed back into the 80’s.  Power Rangers.  Do kids today even know about Power Rangers?  After I got over that timewarp, I looked up again in time to see the Pokemon balloon.  Pokemon, Power Rangers?  My internal calendar got whiplash.

We were planning on a late dinner because step daughter and her kids were going over to baby daddy’s mother’s house at midday.  That gave me a chance to lie down and hope the headache would ease.  They all arrived about five and although I do enjoy seeing them, I think that Mrs. Ender had expectations of a Norman Rockwell type dinner that just weren’t possible with a two-year old and a newborn.  Dinner was chaotic, and that wasn’t just my headache talking.

We kept D (grandchild #1) overnight and he was both amusing and amazing the next morning.  From his playing with a basket full of blocks, it’s obvious that he is well along with learning his shapes, he knows triangle, rectangle, circle and oval (!!).  What two-year old knows oval?  He also recognizes some of his numbers; three, eight and six were no problem, but he wasn’t sure that a five wasn’t a six.  We weren’t asking him to identify either shapes or numbers, he was doing this as he pulled the blocks out of the basket.

The next morning I went off to the stores in spite of, not because of, Black Friday.  I picked up five pounds of lard at the Grand Mart and then I stopped at Staples to get a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking for just $39.  I want to give speech recognition a try, but the regular price of $99 was too much for a look-see.  I also got a desk toy of skeeball inside a clear plastic ball for Mrs. Ender for Christmas and a pack of neon colored Sharpies to mark CDs and DVDs.  Then I stopped at Whole Foods to try to snag some Palm Oil (storebrand Organic Vegetable Shortening), but that stuff seems to fly off the shelf whenever they get any in stock.  Instead, I picked up some roses for Mrs. Ender and a bottle of Castor Oil.  The lard, palm oil and castor oil are all soap making materials.

I don’t think I did anything else on Friday, except nap and try to recoup from the headache.

Saturday was a fun day.  I have a cousin that has a "place" on the bay.  He has taken responsibility of continuing the tradition of an annual TurkayBowl football game(s) around Thanksgiving.  Food and lots of beer are the other staples of the event along with really loud and very friendly catching up from the last time everyone saw each other (early September).  I opted out of the actual football game, but I lent a hand at pulling the goalposts into position for the point-after attempts.  Lots of offense, not so much defense.

My mother had originally declined to drive down to the gathering but Mrs. Ender helped her change her mind by suggesting that we not drive "all the way home" that evening and spend the night in Annapolis, instead.  She grabbed a couple of rooms at the Waterside Marriott at the super duper discount associates rate of $29/room, so the deal was sealed.  It’s only about 45 minutes from Annapolis to home, but it was kind of nice to spend the night and the next morning in Annapolis.

On Sunday I finally got to but the lard and castor oil to good use.  I was finally going to follow the receipe for clear soap.  Soap, by nature, isn’t going to be clear, but you can get pretty close depending on the type of oils you start with and the extra steps you add.  Harder oils (i.e. palm oil and coconut oil) make cloudy soap and any mixture that includes much water will also not be clear.  I used lard, castor oil, coconunt oil and gold soap coloring and prepared it using the hot process.  As soon as the soap was ready for the mold–and while it was still very opaque–I added nearly 10 oz of grain alcohol.  This really broke up the soap and it was mostly clear.  The alcohol was followed by 8 oz (1/2 pound!) of sugar.  I’m not sure what the sugar does chemically, but it certainly takes the soap the rest of the way toward clear.  I poured the soap into my 3lb mold and although the top layer turned opaque it was easy to see that the rest of the block was golden clear. 

I took the block out of the mold this morning and I peeled down the paper liner.  It looks like a glass of beer with a very thin head.  Clear and golden on the bottom with a thin layer of opaque white on top.  I’ll cut the block into bars when I get home this evening and I’ll be able to see just how clear it really is.  I don’t know if I’ll cut off the opaque part and leave just the clear part or just leave it like it is.  I suppose I can make that decision in a couple of weeks when it’s had time to dry out further.

And that’s about all I did this weekend.

Ender is out.