You read and hear about those 'living the good life' -- doing something they love and that others love too. That would be good. For someone who only considered a job a paycheck at the end of the month, that would be a really nice spin on things.

After being a medical transcriptionist for nearly 10 years, overuse syndrome and general dissatisfaction with that career choice soon proved to be an opportunity in disguise. What is that old saying? When one door closes, another one opens? Indeed, it does.

It all came to a head one Christmas in 1999 when I tried (unsuccessfully, I might add) to follow a recipe in a book to make soap for Christmas presents. I grated up the Dove soap as the directions stated, attempted to melt it, and boy, what a mess that was. Ugly. That couldn't possibly be termed, even politely, as soap. This led onwards towards melt-and-pour soap bases. Cute soaps, but still I was yearning for something more.

A woman on a craft mailing list made soap. Better yet, she lived just the next town over from mine. Gathering up my courage meeting someone I had never met before, I watched the whole magical process take place. Magic in a crockpot? You'd better believe it! One batch led to another batch...and another. Experimentation & many bottles of fragrance oil later, I was making some seriously nice soap!

Having been burned by his mother's lye-heavy soap when he was a youngster, my father-in-law's regard for me made itself known as he asked all about the soap and took some bars of soap home with him. He hasn't used anything but my soap since.

The soap business can be feast or famine. Orders flying in like crazy, and you're struggling to keep up. Other months, it gets quiet, and you start reading the obituaries in the early morning paper to see if you've mistakenly been placed in that column.

There can be times when you think you've made the ultimate soap, and no one buys it. Or the soap you did really well with but didn't care for the scent - you sell out of that one immediately. The times when you're buying ads on some of the craft mailing lists, and the next minute, Seventeen Magazine comes a-calling wanting samples of your Choco-Lotta PMS Soap™ for their chocolate "17 for $17" splash page. (I had to listen to the message on the machine THREE times before I could believe it. I then had to listen to it again just to be sure!)