It's A Disaster, Part 43

First things first. If you don't already read this blog, you should do. It's quite funny and contains the ramblings of someone who may or may not be my aunt. I shall refer to her as Mrs H for ease of typing and to keep you in the dark about whether or not we're related.

And now the really good bits - what you've all come here to see - the part about sense and sensibility and soapmaking disasters.

Last Monday started like any other normal Monday at our house, which basically means that after Mum stomped on the kitchen floor to wake me up and I ran up from the basement wondering if the house was on fire, we had a delicious breakfast of biscuits and tea and other unconventional things before the phone rang and the birds started screaming while I wondered if I had anything due at the library as I ran upstairs to brush my teeth and stick my favourite torturous rubber band into my mouth.

Mum got off the phone and informed us that Mrs H was coming over to make soap with her for the first time ever. That'll be exciting, I thought, and wondered what would go wrong.

Whatever I might have come up with, it was absolutely nowhere near anything that actually happened. What follows is the story of two women and a creative and clever Ashira who thinks anything is fair game to blog about, especially anything I do with my mum and Mrs H.

NOTE: If you're someone who is about to attempt soapmaking for the first time ever, please read this version: We melted the oils and lye together and added pretty smells and poured it into a mold and then we had coffee. The end.

If you are an accomplished soapmaker who wants to be immensely entertained by the true-to-life version of the tale, read on.

--Note: I have not made any of this up. If you don't think it's all possible, you probably don't know us. Actually, some of the dialogue here is just narrative, but all the funny bits are more or less true.--

"First you mix the olive, palm, and coconut oils," Mum said as she weighed the oils and poured them into the massive cauldron that is her soapmaking vat. They didn't catch fire. I looked on in proud admiration of my mother's oil-pouring skills.

"Now we fill this massive bowl with ice and stick this jar in," Mum continued, and did so, emptying half of the ice tray in the process. I grabbed a few wayward chunks and tossed them back into the bowl.

"Now we add the lye crystals to some water." All three of us donned the most attractive safety goggles in the history of the earth and giant brightly coloured safety gloves. Mrs H and I looked on in admiration of my mother's lye-pouring skills and did not die in a horrible caustic incident even once.

The oils got warmer and the smouldering lye jar got cooler. Eventually they were similar in temperature enough to pour together, and my mother did so with great skill. She removed the pot from the stove and got out a handheld mixer.

BRRRRRRRRRWRWRWRWRWRWRWRWRWRWR went the mixer, and the soap-in-progress got mysteriously thick and yellow.

Eventually it was the consistency of pudding, and even though I wanted to eat it I didn't take the chance, but it did make me hungry. Mum poured some yummy smells into the pudding-soap and gently restrained me from trying to lick the edges of the pot.

Then the time came to pour the soap into giant PVC tubes. There was a hole in the bottom of the tube cap because last time we made soap we had to drill it in there to release the vacuum. Mum covered the hole with freezer paper and poured the soap.

At the same time, by some odd coincidence, a puddle of stuff that looked remarkably like pudding began growing on the floor underneath the tube. I was just beginning to wonder about the exact odds of this happening when it hit me: that was the soap. I acknowledged the fact rather loudly and suddenly and everyone looked down.

We stood there in shocked silence for a moment and then Mum moved the tube and scooped up the pudding with a red spatula.

"Why," she wondered out loud, "did it do that?"

We took off the bottom of the tube and looked at the freezer paper. It was remarkably intact. We could have entered it in a dog show had it more resembled an actual member of the canine family.

"There's no hole," I said.

"There's no hole," Mum said.

"There's no hole," Mrs H said and we looked at the paper for a while.

"Right then," said Mum; "we'll have to put a different cap on the other end and try again."

She prepared a second cap, stuck the tube into it, and sprayed Mrs H with a lot of caustic yellow pudding. We took off the top cap. The soap stayed where it had been instead of falling to the new bottom of the tube. Mum poked her trusty red spatula into the soap goo and I was just wondering if she was going to drop it into the tube when the pudding went SCHLORP and fell spectacularly into the bottom of the tube.

We laughed about it for a while and then Mum put a cap on the top of the tube and wrapped it in a lot of towels to keep it warm before sticking it in the Soap Corner.

"Now," she said, possibly quite dramatically - you can read it that way if you so wish - "it's your turn." She turned to Mrs H.

Dramatic music may or may not have played in the background.

"First I fill the bowl with ice?" Mrs H picked up the massive bowl and, after receiving a nod from Mum, began filling it with ice and plopped in the jar.

She set the bowl on the table and asked me if I wanted to make some coffee for all of us. I gladly accepted and ground up some beans.

"I brought some beans," she said just after I'd finished, and I ground those up too. We have two coffee presses, so I put some beans into each and said we could compare the two types of coffee. I threw some water in the microwave. Actually, I filled a glass pitcher with water and put it in the microwave. Then I turned the microwave on and walked back to the soapy fun.

By now they were measuring out olive and palm and coconut oil. They put them into the pot and didn't turn on the stove, but that was intentional.

"Now I measure out these caustic crystals," Mrs H said and grabbed the bottle of crystals with less caution than was probably advised by most people more cautious than her.

She poured the crystals into the red cup and poured that into the glass jar of water. We all oohed and aahed and watched the water heat up and smoke. Mrs H stuck a thermometer into the jar.
Now the coffee-water was hot enough to use, and the microwave let us know that rather suddenly and I hurried to take out the pitcher. I filled the small coffee press and then the large one, found the lids, and put them on. I set a timer for five minutes to let the coffee brew while I watched the soap process.

Five minutes later, the oils were heating up and the lye was cooling down. The timer rang, and after turning it off I pressed down the filter on the small coffee press. Moving to the large one, I pushed it halfway down and stopped.

I wouldn't have stopped had the press not suddenly exploded before my eyes in a spectacular display of a caffeinated version of Niagara Falls, which I have never seen personally but understand is rather like a large waterfall.

Mrs H's coffee-crazed Bichon Frise hurried up to the coffeefall and attempted to lick it up before she was pulled away. I stared at the coffee press for a while and wondered why it had suddenly exploded into three separate pieces. So did Mum and Mrs H.

I started laughing a bit nervously and got a towel. Tossing it onto what must have been the nineteenth Great Lake, I loudly and profusely claimed innocence as to what had just happened. Then we cleaned up the mess and went back to soapmaking. After pouring out cups of coffee from the small and functional press, I went over to see how the lye was doing.

Then I was distracted: someone brought in a catalog we'd just received. It had scrapbooking things in it, and that reminded Mum of a film she'd just seen, so she told Mrs H about it.
"It was good," she said, "but it made people from here seem stupid. And it made fun of scrapbooking."

We both expressed our distaste before immediately switching to a humourous and possibly slightly offensive rendition of a New York accent for some reason.

"Lara," I said, attempting to mimic Alex West from Tomb Raider, "I said fwoaty paunds a cwoaffee beens. And ya put in therty-nain. Ya fiard, Lara."

This display of extreme randomness is the kind of thing we say every day for some reason. Don't ask why. It just is.

Then Mum asked Mrs H how the lye was doing in matters of temperature, and she checked the thermometer and gave us a number. A few seconds later she gave us a different number.
The temperate kept going down.

"It's dropping," she announced, and Mum went over to see.

"That's not possible! Look how fast it's going down," she gasped. I stood on in proud admiration of her ability to talk while gasping - for some reason, people in books often do this as well.
I came over to see just as Mrs H was lifting the suddenly empty glass jar out of the bowl.
And all three of us stared in utter dramatic disbelief.

"WHAT." This was the first thing out of my mouth, and it had a period instead of a question mark because I was just that shocked.

I still remember the look on Mrs H's face as she asked almost indignantly - "Where did it GO!?"
We were quiet for a moment. Then we broke out simultaneously in cramp-inducing laughter.
"The JAR," I managed to squeal. "The bottom fell out!"

We laughed for a while more and then Mum picked up the bowl and poured the slightly caustic lye-water-ice into the kitchen sink, carefully on the lookout for the bottom of the jar.
"Where's the bottom?" she asked, and eventually she found it lurking beneath all the water. It did not actually fall into the sink and go down the drain. (I think I may have been applauding about that.)

Take TWO. Mum got more ice out of the nearly-empty ice tray and got another jar. Mrs H picked up the jar, set it on the scale, and poured in some water.

A large miniature waterfall erupted over the countertop.

"Wrong jar," we realised at the same time.

Sigh. Take off the jar, fill the water pitcher, put jar on scale.

VWOOOOSH. Another waterfall.

Mum picked up the bottomless jar and chucked it in the bin. Pick up JAR WITH BOTTOM, put jar on scale.

Finally we managed to get some water into the jar. Put jar in bowl, tip in lye crystals.
Somehow the soap was finally finished - surprisingly, nothing caught on fire. As far as we know.

I don't think anything else too horrible happened after that, and now the soap is happily curing in massive PVC tubes (with solid caps on the bottom) in the Soap Corner.

All's well that ends well. Unless you manage to burn out your eyes with lye in the process, in which case you won't be reading this so it probably doesn't apply here.