Power Tools and Pixie Cuts

First post. I'll jump right in here and tell y'all a little story about today's project, but I have to back up to get where I'm going, so stick with me. After having hair longer than my toddler is tall for the last twenty years or so, I decided enough was enough and got it cut last weekend. And when I mean cut, I mean cut. Like Samson and Delilah cut. Like enough for a new Cousin It wig. Like I cut off so much God would've accepted it as a substitute for Abraham's circumcision. Okay, well, maybe that's pushing it a bit far, but you get the picture. It's a precious little pixie cut now, if I don't say so myself.

Apparently, this new boy cut has brought about the desire to do other boy-things, as well, like play with power tools and wood. Now, that's not to say women aren't perfectly capable of using power tools with the best of them, but this woman isn't. I've used power tools for exactly one project in my life, which was a chicken coop I built last summer for my tiny backyard flock, and let me tell you...that is one sad looking chicken coop. But it gets the job done. After only five pounds of wood screws, half a tube of Liquid Nails, and a gallon of caulk, those chickens are warm and cozy in this frigid south Louisiana winter. But I digress.

Over the holidays, I sold my first handmade soap. It was a pretty big deal, and a pretty big turning point for me. I've always been a wee bit crunchy, and I've always been a wee bit crafty. I used cloth diapers, made my own baby food, mixed my own household cleaners. I spend days making the kids' birthday cakes - little fondant pigs and ducklings and chicks and sheep last year, pink caterpillars, purple toadstools, baby blue butterflies this year. But never before had someone expressed a desire to buy something I'd made. (Well, there was that one time when this freaky guy at WalMart wanted to buy my...ahem...services, but I don't think that counts.) And yet, here was someone offering me money for soap I'd had a grand old time making at home. It wasn't particularly special soap. I spent a fair amount of time on the project, simply because I was making so many of the little suckers, but I didn't kill myself. It was melt and pour glycerin soap in simple molds. It was, however, vegan, entirely cruelty-free (unless you count me forcing Thing 1 to help or Thing 2 to watch Diego while I worked as cruelty), and inspired by my lovely husband. As a long-time vegan, he suffered with store-bought (decidedly not vegan) soap for years. As a vegetarian, I'd been suffering with it myself because a) there are bunnies in that soap (okay, maybe not bunnies, but definitely some big brown-eyed cows, maybe even ponies), b) because, come on...like I can find vegan soap in a town where I can't buy Boca burgers or fresh asparagus, and c) despite the big bucks us teachers/grad students make, we can't seem to afford LUSH bars at $8 a pop plus shipping. And then one day, it suddenly dawned on me: Make The Man Some Vegan Soap. And so I did.

During the holidays, I had another epiphany as I was trolling the stores for inexpensive but thoughtful gifts for Thing 1's homeroom-art-dance-P.E.-science-computer-library-basket weaving-fly fishing teachers: Give Vegan Soap To The Teachers. (Okay, Thing 1 doesn't take basket weaving or fly fishing, but she has a lot of freaking teachers.) What was I thinking wasting my money and time and patience and sanity fighting the crowds at Tar-jay for candles and orange-scented antibacterial hand cleanser? (Hey. Take it from a teacher. We love the antibacterial hand cleansers. Your kids are great, but they're germy little suckers.) And so I did.

Fast forward a bit and one of those teachers is asking me to make some soap for her and...get this...offering to pay me for it. Pay me? You mean...you're going to pay me to do something I love? Pay me to spend a few hours fiddling with essential oils and infusions? Dude. I am on it like chickens on a cricket. Fast forward a bit more and she's telling me a local shopkeeper wants to chat with me about starting a local line of soaps for the spring. And so I did. Or am. Or something.

Which brings us back to the original point (sheesh...I promise, not all the entries will be this long): I can make soap. Cute, yummy-smelling, good-for-you, better-for-the-bunnies, cruelty-free soap, but I can not wield a power tool to save my life. My attempt to make my own wooden soap mold with a built-in miter option - one that results in those nice, normally-shaped 4 oz. bars - was not a success. It looks so pathetic, I won't even post a picture of it, especially since I broke the darned thing before I could finish it. (Probably because I was using two barstools as saw horses - don't tell my husband.) Yes. I broke the mold. But my peppermint patty soap smells great and works better, even if the bars are completely wonky.