My house is clean, so now I am obligated to sit in it for a day or two without touching anything so it lasts a little bit. I can destroy a kitchen with lightning speed, faster if I'm soaping, so I've had to comfort myself with inspecting my avoidance batches from yesterday. One is not even worth taking pictures of; it's a swirl which is attractive enough but has little to distinguish it from the crowd, like a frat boy in khakis and a blue blazer crowding a street corner with 20 other khaki-clad blue blazered boys, just in slightly varying sizes. Meh.

My Spinal Swirl and I have advanced in our relationship. I wasn't entirely able to see past its oddity yesterday but after unmolding it and taking a look at the back, I am taking a rather ridiculous amount of delight in it. I'm not even certain why I am, if I'm truthful, which I'm not always but am now. It feels a bit like a sin to enjoy one's own soap in such a way, like I'm prideful but that is not the feeling in it, and seriously, getting a kick out of a soap can't possibly qualify as a Seven Deadly, can it? I can't explain why it has caught my eye or what I see in it. It will continue to morph, or at least it had better, to a nice medium brown because the brownish yellow of jaundiced pee it has right now cannot continue. It is true love, you see, when I can enjoy it despite its sickly parchment tone next to the delicate pink of healthy child cheeks. Tomorrow this may all pass, as the fumes of cleaning solutions clear.

I just realized that I made three soaps yesterday. It took me a moment to mentally locate #3, which is on top of the fridge, keeping a low profile and trying hard to not look cluttery. It wasn't a terribly exciting soap either but hopefully the colors will start to pop and it will be able to hold its own. They can't help it if they are wallflowers. I made them so.