How can the wipes possibly be worse than the control? They are seriously stiff. You would think with the amount of soap and scale that came off in solution that clearly they would be softer when dry. This is quite curious.
What we have learned:
Clearly we must cut back on the soap because there is residue being left
A vinegar rinse may or may not be a great idea.
Science does not always go as planned.
Could it be that we just need several washes for this to work properly? I shall go ahead as planned and do a vinegar prewash with a low-soap regular wash plus calgon for the normal laundry. I am hoping that over time this will all work out. There is not a good way to maintain a control group of, say, towels and a testing group so I will just have to hope that over time I will see a difference. I may keep one of my control baby wipes in a segregated place, so I have something to compare to. Hopefully in a month I shall be able to update on any progress.
So we live in France and have extremely hard water. I don’t know if it is because we are surrounded by mountains, in the land of Perrier, or what, but it is hard hard hard. At first, it was just annoying because everything was stiff. Now things are getting to the point where Girlie’s wipes can be used to construct a doll house. Seriously, I tried to blow my nose with one of those things and thought I was going to tear my face off. So… time for some science!!
I had done some research on doing laundry in hard water and bought myself some Calgon. It has been about a week and while I feel like this is helping not create further problems with the clothes that are new, the clothes and towels that are already compromised are not getting better. More research was done. Basically I need to reverse the build-up and damage that is already done. I have taken 11 of Girlie’s blue terry cloth wipes for this experiment. One is sitting on the counter as the control cloth, the other 10 are being put through the wringer. I filled a large bowl with really hot water and 1/4 c white vinegar. I dunked the 10 cloths in and BAM! The water turned completely opaque and a tiny bit of suds was observed. I would say we have some build-up. I squeezed the cloths a bit and then discarded the water. I refilled the bowl with the same mixture and now it is soaking for 1.5 hours. The water is only slightly non-translucent this time. Once the 1.5 hours is up, I shall wring out the towels and hang them to dry. Once dry, I will compare to my control towel. The hope is that this solves all my problems and that for the next month or so, every time I do laundry I can just soak the load in vinegar before washing (with less soap). We shall see.
First observations:
After soaking for 1.5 hours, there is still a slight bit of residue in the bowl. This is clearly good progress and I can now state that there is clearly a build-up issue. The washcloths are all hung in front of the fan to dry. Hopefully by this afternoon we can compare to the control sample to see if there is a marked difference between the two.
It is just about 15 months since I had Lilo. Most of my weight gain was baby and fluid, so it was pretty easy to get back to my normal weight. I think my clothes started fitting again around 4 months out. Some of my shoes and skirts actually fit better since my feet grew just a hair and my waist is 1/2 an inch bigger than it was. I stopped nursing about a month ago, so now that my calories are no longer needing to feed another human, I decided it was time to get into shape.
Exercise has never been my strong suit (you can ask my sister about that). I have lots of hip issues, so high impact is already off of the table. Swimming would be great, except I freeze in the pool, so that kinda defeats the purpose. I did yoga for a while in graduate school. I really like yoga as a practice. It tones, it gets your heart going, and you can do most of it lying down. Score! However, after a while, I was ready to progress to the harder asanas, but then my hip issues rear their ugly head again. I am too advanced for the beginner and some intermediate classes, but have no where near enough flexibility for the advanced classes. It would seem that the perfect exercise for me is a moving target.
Now that summer is here, I can hopefully get my bike dusted off and do some leisurely peddling. That is not really going to help me in the toning department, but it is a start. It would be really nice to find something that will get my arms and tush looking nice, do something about this mommy-belly pudge that I have now acquired, but do it all without causing me to loose weight. Tall order, I know. For now, I shall just keep doing pushups, situps, and squats in my living room and hope inspiration strikes.
Some things are hard to shop for as an expat. BBQ sauce is one of those things. This was ok for the first two years we were here because it was not like we could get a brisket anyways. After two years, though, the yearning became too much. I had a craving for a chop baker (which is a baked potato, sour cream, cheddar, brisket, and BBQ sauce) and though rumsteak would suffice for a brisket substitute, there was no way around making the sauce from scratch. I scoured the web for favorite recipes. I combined some, threw out others and then just kept adding things and tasting the sauce until it was perfect. This sauce is not hot and spicy (so if you are looking for a 5-alarm fire, you are in the wrong place), but it is super tasty. Eman even likes it. Bon Appetit.
Jenn’s BBQ sauce
Mix all ingredients into a saucier and let simmer for 1.5 hours. It keeps for about a month or so.
1 c ketchup
1/2 c water
1/4 c rice vinegar
1 tbsp golden syrup
1/4 c brown sugar
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp dijon mustard
1 tbsp Worchestershire sauce
1/8 tsp paprika
1 tsp chili powder
1/8 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp tamarind
1 whole clove of garlic
1/4 c Au jus
Notes: Golden syrup is like corn syrup, but made from cane sugar. It has a nice flavor, but you can probably substitute corn if you cannot find it. The dijon mustard should be strong. If it is not burning your nose when you eat a spoon of it, you may want to add a larger amount or some mustard powder. Don’t bother chopping the garlic or crushing the cumin seeds. The flavor comes out just fine after cooking for that long. Finally: the Au jus. I always seem to make the sauce the same day I am cooking meat of some kind. If you roast the steak, just reserve 1/4 c of the juice and add it to the sauce at the end. If you are not cooking meat, then beef stock should work.
I have been applying for jobs in the San Francisco Bay area. There is one in particular that I am super excited about and they should totally hire me, because I would be perfect for it. Knowing that we are probably going to move in the next 2-6 months, I am starting to organize the house for the upcoming ‘expats return home’ extravaganza. Last time we moved it was quite hectic and we really ran out of time. This time we have a toddler added to the mix, so I want to get things started. So far I have two of our seven ‘rooms’ organized. (I say rooms in quotes because, honestly, our apartment only has three rooms, but I section them into seven parts for living, cleaning, and organizing purposes). I started a list of all of the stuff I need to sell. If anyone in the Geneva area needs about 80 empty DVD cases- let me know. It looks like I might have to find a place to recycle them.
Now that Lilo is a bit bigger and quite interested in nature, we have been exploring more of our local SwitzerFrance region.
Artsy lake photo with the new Sony Nex-5N
We walked along the lake in Montreaux and checked out all the nice flowers in bloom. It has been pretty rainy here, so the flowers are busting out everywhere. There was also lots of topiary. Some of just random flamingos and such, but most were characters from Barbapapa. Mamouche was super excited about those.
Twiggy flamingo
Besides the flowers, spring is the time for Caves Ouverts here in SwitzerFrance. Luckily, I stopped nursing a baby one month ago, so this shall be my first proper wine tasting in the 2.5 years that I have been here. I shall try ALL THE WINES! I have to make these next few months super awesome because it looks like our sejour as Expats is soon coming to an end. I have started applying for jobs back in San Francisco and hopefully one of those will pan out soonish. Luckily, we still have family over here, so we don’t have to do everything on our list right this moment.
After a long blog and knitting hiatus, lets see if we can dust off the keyboard and get typing.
Note the super nice short row cast on.
I have been catching up on my knitting and started a few new projects. The one I am most excited about though is the Epic Sweater Coat. I had swatched with the yarn I dyed in the previous post, but the yarn was just not going to work with all these cables. It really lacked in the definition department. I have decided that the awesome stash of alpaca I have would be better served as a blanket and I can still use the techniques I learned to dye the yarn. I scoured ravelry for the best yarn to make cables and found Quince and Co. Osprey in the winesap colorway. You can see in the pic above that this yarn is cablelicious. This pattern was really tricky to start. Lots of crazy chart symbols (which make sense once you get the swing of it) and lots of frogging for the first hour or so. I did manage to do a really nice short row cast on. This solved two problems: 1) where in the heck to cast on and maintain the pattern WS? RS? and 2) got rid of the stair-step cast on, thus making picking up stitches later easier. I think I ripped the cast on three times because picking up short row wraps in the middle of a cable is not something I have experience with. All in all I am super excited about this project. It has been a while since I have knit something where I have actually screwed up this royally just trying to wrap my head around the instructions. So far so good though.
Tomorrow I shall get y’all up to speed on my job search, what life is like with a toddler who has learned to say ‘no’, and the upcoming caves ouverts. For now though… I have to get back to python and my genetic mating algorithm.
The tulips are out; the cows are back. Since I am more or less back to my normal size again I got to spring all of my dresses and skirts from their attic imprisonment. LL and I got all cuted up and met the Captain for lunch.
She turned 3 months old on Sunday and she has changed so much! She has started cooing along to the guitar when I play for her. She is also working on grabbing objects with two hands. This weekend’s excitement was playing at the table with an avocado. Textures are fun. She is still eating ’round the clock. We are now at a minimum of 2 hours during the day and stretching between 2-3 hours between feeds at night. I am sure in 3 more months when we start solids that will all change, but for now I am settling into this routine. At least she seems calmer now that I can anticipate her hunger before she gets upset.
It has been fun to watch her go from a helpless, flailing (albeit cute) mass, to a happy, smiling, interactive infant.
Today we are supposed to list a song you hate. Hate is a harsh word. There is not really ‘a’ song I loathe with the fire of a thousand suns, but there are several that make me want to find a mute button right quick. This is especially true for artists who think very highly of themselves and whose videos have them traipsing about as if they believe you want to jump their bones right then and there. I have a newsflash for you: if you have to try that hard to seem sexy – you are doing it wrong.
It was hard for me to whittle down the list of awfulness. I could have picked songs at random from such bands as the Insane Clown Posse, Korn, or Slipknot (incidentally the guitarist of this band invited me to a concert in Austin back when I was in college, but that is neither here nor there), but seeing as I don’t like this entire Genre of music I don’t really have much opportunity to pick a song I hate from the vast catalog of scary metal music.
Instead, I chose to pick a song that I run into on a regular basis, which makes me lunge for the remote. It was a close tie between this guy Mohimbe and Inna (all three of which think they are God’s gift to our species), but Colonel Reyel has been on heavy rotation in the countdowns. His song ‘Celui’ combines the use of third grade creative writing-style lyrics with heavy use of autotune (not for artistic reasons as I can tell, but because dude can’t sing) and a smattering of hand gestures and scenes that make me stop watching the video because I am embarrassed for him. He reminds me of a 13-year-old girl who gets gussied up and tries to hit on college guys. You just cringe knowing how awkward it all is.
Somehow his new song also made the top 10. I am wondering if Virgin knows that there are other songs out there that are more worthy of a countdown spot?
There is a fun little game going around facebook called the 30-Day song challenge. I am playing it there, but I thought I would bring it over to the blog as well (in the interest of having something more interesting to talk about than just feeding and changing an infant!).
Day 1: Your favorite song.
This song gets me to the core. It is at once crushing, uplifting, and beautiful. It is a song for imperfect people. Many versions of the song exist, sung my many different artists. I like the Rufus Wainwright version the best (followed closely by Jeff Buckley’s version). It makes me confront my many mistakes, but realize that I am a broken person, living in a broken world, but still able to give the most I can give to the equally broken people whom I love.
