It's official, I still know how to make soap. Once could be luck, twice even but third time is always the charm & my third batch of basic soap came out brilliant. I popped it out the mold yesterday & I'm looking forward to working with it on Saturday.The Clove/Chef soap I had mentioned earlier still needs work.I re-melted it & mixed in more basic but it got all fluffy & thick. When I took the bars out of the molds there were air pockets the size of Tic Tacs©. Not pretty. Like I said first time might be luck. My Coriander/Jasmine Oatmeal soap came out perfect. Good for me. You too if you want one.

I'm going to make more lip gloss today. I'm almost out. My lips get so chapped in winter & radiator heat doesn't help any. Seems no matter how much water I put on top of the radiators it's never enough. My humidifier struggles just to keep my tropicals happy. One thing I've noticed since moving to New England is a loss in my legendary sensitive sense of smell. I could pinpoint any smell, disgusting or divine. I could recreate perfumes relatively accurately & translate that into fragrances of my own. I once discovered a huge nest of dead rats in a music club where I used to work. The rats were decaying right under the stage & no one else could smell it. I don't consider that a feat of olfactory prowess but more of….oh gosh, I don't know….a regular sense of smell. Detecting a skunk 5 minutes before anyone else was the downside to this power. I am a bit anxious about getting back into the soap making game because I have trouble deciding if an herb has gone stale now that my sinuses are all dry.

Here are a few possible solutions to this dilemma:

1. Buy several more humidifiers

2. Become dependent on nasal spray

3. Follow my recipes & hope for the best.

Actually, using saline to hydrate my nose might not be the worst thing. I only worry coz I remember what it felt like when I did this during the time I used cocaine. Blech! I knew I would miss the humidity of the South I just didn't know the sacrifices that would go along with it. I was expecting to regain my senses when I quit smoking. July 17th 2009. Yes…thank you…thank you. But alas, no change except now the smell of cigarette smoke makes me gag.

Thanks for listening.Gotta go now. The sheets don't iron themselves.