A tribute

Harley Waldrop was a true Alaskan. He would disappear for a few weeks. Then reappear and act as if he'd never been gone.

He was a poster child for the old saying of when someone was full of piss and vinegar.

Mostly he was our friend. The friendship between Harley and my husband started in Friona, Texas in 1971.

Long before I'd ever meet Harley, I'd heard about him. Then one day, when we had our shop in Homer, this old hillbilly waltzed in. Harley didn't recognize Roger, nor did Roger recognize him. But they talked. And talked. And talked. They learned they'd both lived in Friona during the same time. They learned they'd both worked at the same place at the same time.

Roger told him a story about this guy he used to work with. The guy was jumpy and when Roger was very new to the job, someone poked this other guy in the ribs. His arms flew out and he punched Roger. Roger's pretty small. For years I'd heard about this huge guy that punched him.

The guy in our shop just stared at Roger. "That was me," he said. Almost thirty years later and their friendship was renewed, far away from Texas.

Harley was a great friend. During our darkest days, when we thought Roger wouldn't be with us much longer, Harley was only a phone call away. When I needed help, or just a break, Harley was there. There wasn't anything he wouldn't do for Roger.

There wasn't anything Roger and Harley wouldn't fight about. When the two of them got together, they sounded like an old married couple. I'd sit back in amazement, wondering which one would drive the other one crazy first.

Harley disappeared a few weeks ago. He called Roger and said they needed to do a little adjustment at the hospital. When we didn't hear from him we assumed it was another one of his walkabouts. He was very famous for his walkabouts.

We learned today that Harley left us Sunday.

Godspeed Harley. You were the best pain in the ass I ever had the honor of knowing and calling my friend.

Roger misses you. I miss you.

Give Barbara a hug for us.

A very productive day

I made a batch of lip balm and two batches of lotion. Roger claimed the first batch of lotion. So, I tried a second recipe and made a second batch.

The adult daughter wanted to make a batch of lip balm, a batch of lotion, and a batch of soap. I created the recipes, asked her what essential oils she wanted to add to them and let her make the batches. Okay, I hovered over her while she made the lip balm. Then I let her make the lotion sticks on her own. (That was the one where I picked the scent, because I wanted a lotion with a purpose.) We both made the soap. I had her measure out the oils and melt them. Then I measured out the lye and mixed it with the water. I poured the lye water mix into the oils, got them stirred some and let her finish stirring.

She brought the mixture to trace. I added the coconut milk. After it was mixed in with the saponifying oils, she added the essential oils while I stirred them in. Then she helped me pour it into the mold. Once it was in the mold, I popped it into the oven. It has finished its time with the oven going. I'll leave it there until morning to let it finish saponifying. Then tomorrow we'll take it out of the mold and cut it into bars of soap. Yay.

I'm only working a couple days a week at the hospital. I'm not complaining. The five days a week, plus coming home on weekends and trying to make a weeks worth of products was really wearing me down. This way I get to actually work on the business, too. Another yay.

Besides making several batches of product, I finally took the time to create a price list.

I'll probably make more lotion and balms tomorrow. Maybe another batch of soap, but I really don't know what I want to scent it with, so until I figure out what aroma I want, I'll hold off on that.

I have to work on Thursday, so I really want to have an easy day tomorrow. Getting up at 3 a.m. is a pain in the butt. Staying awake all day is even worse. The four hour drive gets old pretty fast.

At least it's only temporary.

Gotta run. So much to do. So little time.

I can't believe this...

I spent about four hours driving today. Two hours to get to work, eight hours of working, then two hours of driving home.

I must be insane.

I took several bars of soap to work with me. Let me back up. I kept all my recipes on the computer. When it died, it took most the recipes with it. I have all these soaps and I don't remember what oils, additives, etc., that I added to each bar. Therefore, I can't put an accurate label on a lot of them. So, I can't market them. I also can't use that many bars of soap in my life time.

What can I do with them? Give them away. Some of them weren't good enough to sell anyway. They were experiment bars. They're good soap, but not great soap.

So, I was going to share with my co-workers. Well, before I pulled out the soaps, I learned one of my co-workers has a homeless shelter. I gave the whole bag to her. I told her that I have more where that came from.

I think I'll package some up this week for the women's shelter in Homer, too.

Finally, I'll get some space back so I can fill it up with more soap.

Computers

They're great when they do what they're supposed to do.

They're horrible when they die and take six years of information with them.

If you happened to send me an email at the link associated with this page, it's gone. It disappeared with family pictures. Every bit of my writing. Every bit of information I had for the soaping business. It's gone. In a void.

If you try to email me at any address at jodypryor.com, it won't work. I'll never see it. By all rights those addresses should have disappeared long ago, but they're still there. As long as I had the laptop working, it was fine. I could access it. But I have no idea what the passwords are to those emails, so no I can't get to them.

There is only one email address that works. I hate to post it here. If you know my first and last name, you can figure it out. Put a dot between my first name and my last name. I use gmail.

Jack, please send your info to me at that address. It won't disappear when computers die. At least gmail stores things forever.

That's life on my end.

And not one word of profanity. Amazing. Simply amazing.