It was fun while it lasted

Surprise!  Blogger added some new themes so I took this one. 

I like it, but let me know what you think.  I like playing with templates. 

Years ago, right before Ron's accident, I decided to take my soapmaking retail.  I bought a domain name and downloaded Star Office.  Star Office had an HTML editor, which I used to make a pretty decent website. 

I wonder if Star Office is even around anymore.  I always found it easy to use.  I didn't have a retail site, just a promotional one.  I was going to have photos of coconut palms, and a photo of a grease dumpster.  You have seen them behind restaurants, waiting for the renderer to come pick them up.  I was going to have the comparison: my soap, coconut palms.  Commercial soap, grease dumpster with roaches on it.  Feel free to steal this if you are a soapmaker. 

A couple of things happened.  We hired a woman who turned out to be deeply troubled.  She told Ron she had auditioned for a porn movie, and her father was a pimp.  She was always complaining about the other girls. 

I made soap and brought some to work for the girls.  Since the woman in the above paragraph had young nieces, I made sure to tell her this was soap for adults, not to use it on children, they might have an allergy or something. 

What did she do?  She went home and gave the kids a bath in the soap!  She came in the next day raving about the soap (the first time we heard anything positive from her), but I was pissed.  She did the one thing I told her not to do.  I did not give her any more soap. 

I was worried about liability issues.  If someone had a problem, they could sue us.  Me, rather.  I would also need to get a sales tax permit and all that if I were going to get serious about selling.  I would need a venue to sell. 

Sales were so bad in the deli, I had to come in and help.  I was working a lot of overtime and I had little to no time to make soap anymore.  So the soap business kind of fell by the wayside. 

These days, I might make some soap for family and friends, not to sell, BUT I have three VERY nosy cats.  I would have to lock them up while I made the soap, and then I would have to keep them away from it while it cured.  I would also have to buy new supplies and download some kind of spreadsheet program because I need to use formulas to calculate the lye and all. 

It was fun while it lasted, though.  It was always so fun to see the moment in the chemical reaction when it "saponified" and turned into a thick pudding.  I had to pour it pretty quick after that because it set up fast.  It was a lot like cooking. 

You have to be careful, though.  Lye will blind you, burn you, and cause you a lot of pain if you are not incredibly careful with it (which is why I would need to lock up the cats, dogs, children, etc.).  It can be messy, you have to use various oils and an appliance (something called a stick blender, but you can get one at Walmart for $20) to formulate the soap. 

Here's the page that got me started, if you are interested.  It is a lot of fun. 

http://www.millersoap.com/  Just scroll down for all the links. 

Today.  I woke up at 4.  I was very tired, as I had a hard time falling asleep last night.  I reset the alarm to 4:40 and went back to sleep with Biscuit. 

I got up and did my usual morning routine, except for my God Time, which I did later.  We went to work. 

The boss was supposed to come and take two dead bill changers away, today.  However someone hurt his back and that is not happening today.  We went in, basically, for nothing. 

We did have the repairman come in and swap out the locks, though.  We didn't want to send them back with the "good locks".  We put some cheap basic locks instead. 

He also had a look at the bottled vendor, which was making funny noises.  He addressed that too. 

We stocked and I got sandwiches.  I stocked them. 

Pretty soon all done and we came home.  We had a good ride home. 

Then I took a short nap.  I got up late (I had meant to get up early and do my God Time, but I was too tired), and got ready to go. 

We went out for burgers.  Actually, I did.  Ron had eaten himself sick on leftovers, earlier.  He just had a drink while I ate. 

We came home and I finished doing the first load of laundry.  I did my God Time.  I just need to feed the cats again, before I go to bed. 

Tomorrow should be an interesting day, too.