SOTD: Dirt and grime

Saturday was Scentless Saturday. I spent a good deal of it cleaning out the greenhouse and the shed. They now contain far fewer spiderwebs, though I never did get around to cleaning the shed windows.

What, you may wonder, is with the itty bitty posts? I'm trying to get back into the blogging routine, so I've declared a temporary guideline of "post something!"

Image: By Roger McLassus. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Mulch

OK, this is straying away from the perfume theme. I'm obsessing about gardening lately. I have more garden space, though only temporarily. And an itty bitty greenhouse--that's permanent. So the most exciting smell I'm experiencing lately is the dusty, damp smell of mulch and potting soil as I walk into the greenhouse and shut the door.

I'll be back to perfume soon, no doubt. Meanwhile, I wonder if Christopher Brosius has ever considered creating a Garden Shed perfume?

Image: By QuistNix Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: None. And ramblish rambling. And a discovery.

I didn't wear any perfume today. I'm not sure why not.

I just finished Dakota, by Martha Grimes. I can't decide if I'm perfectly happy with it as a novel, or if it's too focused on its animal cruelty message to qualify as a full novel. Either way, it's making me think about becoming a vegetarian.

Am I serious about that? Apparently not entirely serious, because I fried chicken wings today. On the other hand, the book didn't address chickens; the food-animal scenes were about pigs. Pigs are supposed to be smart. Social. Intelligent, possibly more intelligent than dogs.

I would probably be happy enough to give up bacon in exchange for chicken skin, but that still returns me to the ethical issues--is it just plain wrong to eat meat? Is it OK to eat meat but wrong to eat the factory-farmed meat that's almost all you can get at the grocery? Sure, the labels claim that the chickens, for example, are "free-range", but as I understand it, all that means is that they were allowed to wander around in a crowded building rather than being kept in a tiny cage; the space-per-chicken isn't exactly generous, and they're not contentedly gazing up at a sunny sky.

I once went on a long Google search to find some sort of cruelty-free certification for meat, and a way to buy meat that qualified. At the time, I found a certification but failed to find a source for the meat, but that could have changed...

Hey. Wow. Yes, something has changed. Organic Smart Chicken is certified humanely raised? When did that happen? I am well and thoroughly surprised. I assumed that if I did find a source of humanely raised chicken, I'd have to pay a small fortune for it and quite likely mail-order it frozen. But, no, it's right down the street at the Co-Op and it's... well, it's not cheap, but it's not bad.

Wow. This is cool.

OK, ramble over. I'm going to go read up on precisely what "humanely raised" means.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Milk

OK, it's not so much a scent as a quest. Milk, milk, and more milk. I'm stressed. Also, stressed. Plus, there's the stress.

Things are changing. Things are uncertain. It's not as if the possible consequences of the immediate uncertain-changey things are all that bad--it's not death, or bankruptcy, or starvation, at least not unless I take the worst cases to wacky extremes. (I'm good at wacky extremes.) So I feel like a wimp being so stressed. But all the same, I don't deal well with change, and I deal less well with uncertainty, and there's a big bag of both of them, and you see what I mean? See? See? Am I making sense here?

Also, I went looking for a cow picture for this post, but the cows all looked so sad that I started thinking that I should go vegan and stop drinking the milk. This is bad.

Image: By Hokkaid-man. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Scentless Saturday!

Today was mostly laziness. And two hot chocolates. And two chicken wings. And some Pringles. And there's a cherry turnover in the kitchen.

Dairy, protein, fruit, vegetables, carbs. Y'know, nutrition.

Really.

Image: By David Monniaux. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTDays: Lots of none. And scent and creativity.

It's been a stressful week, and only now, as I bask in the weekend break, did I really notice that, oops, I've been falling down on the SOTD.

However, the perfume log is: None (Wednesday), and none (Thursday), and also none (Friday) and for a change, none (Saturday). I might have worn something today, to go along with the basking, but it's Scentless Saturday.

So, back to my burbling about writing dry spots, it appears that the grumpy moods that go contrary to creative expression also go contrary to the wearing of perfume. I find this puzzling--the perfume aspect, I mean. The fact that I don't write when I'm grumpy isn't puzzling. Writing involves being open to my thoughts and feelings, and when my thoughts and feelings are cranky and worried, I prefer to hide from them and drink milk.

I would like to break this habit, because for all I know, maybe I'd do my best stuff while cranky. Certainly some of my favorite fiction scraps from The Other Blog (like this one or this one or this one) tend to be on the bitter side. And, yes, I do see the other rather obvious theme between those three scraps, but, well, that's a subject for another post.

But why don't I wear perfume when I'm grumpy? Perfume should bring pleasure. I certainly gulp milk and eat junk and watch television and read easy-to-chew and amusing books at those times, so shouldn't I also pursue perfumey pleasure? But aside from scented baths, I don't.

I find myself remembering that somebody (Who? I forget.) said that scent is a direct path to memory.  Does scent make a person open to their thoughts and feelings, whether they like it or not? My bubble bath scents are old friends with well-established associations, but my perfumes always have an aspect of the unpredictable in them--placidly pleasant perfumes don't do anything for me. Maybe when I'm in those bad moods, I don't want to risk whatever a good perfume might dredge up out of my mind.

It's a thought.

Image: By Matt Reingold. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Nothing. And gluttony. And we were not vegetarians.

Himself and I have been tired and stressed lately, so we chose to celebrate Valentine's Day with low-stress gluttony at Smithfield's. We got the charcuterie board as our appetizer, which, when added to our entrees, allowed us to rack up the following list of animals sampled:

• Duck
• Lamb
• Chicken
• Rabbit
• Cow
• Pig

There were also white beans, sunchokes, pickles, and other real live vegetables. Yum.

Image: By Egan Snow. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTDays: None. And laziness.

I'm unscented. Been that way all day.

I could climb stairs to become scented.

Or I could have an evening nap.

I suspect I'll be going with the second option.

Image: By MarmadukePercy. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTDays: Mostly none

I'm back! I slacked off for three days, but I'm back!

Thursday? No perfume.

Friday? Amouage Lyric Man. I had big glittering expectations of the Lyrics, and I just find them to be Perfectly Nice. Lyric Man is a pleasant rose/citrus that I don't find to be particularly masculine.

Saturday? No perfume. And we went to The City. And I didn't go to Barney's.

Gulp.

But we ate lunch at the best restaurant on the world (the house on Grant), and saw Clybourne Park at ACT and enjoyed some of the nicest sunny weather we've seen in a long time. It was a fine, fine day. And I'll definitely be wearing perfume tomorrow.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: None again. And firming up that resolve.

So, a while ago I discussed the possibility of (gulp) refraining from perfume purchases for six months. After thinking it over for a while, and not buying any perfume, I think that I'm going to do that. (That is, no bottles or decants. Samples? Free-for-all. So the reviews will continue.)

No perfume until August 2.

Gulp.

I'm saying this now because I anticipate being in Barney's this Saturday. And near the Chanel boutique. Where the small bottles of Les Exclusifs might be. So I want to make this resolve all public-like: No perfume purchasing above sample size. None. Zero. Not any. Nope nope nope.

Gulp.

Image: By Mark. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: None.

So. This writing thing that isn't happening. What's the deal?

I could, in theory, just ramble on without any subject--which is what I'm doing right now, can you tell? Except, I look around for inspiration and the lack of subject persists.

Did you know that Wikimedia Commons offers a "random file" option? When I'm trying to write my one-hundred-words-a-day of fiction, another thing that I haven't been doing, I sometimes use that for inspiration. For example, I just encountered a really terrifying dorsal view of an ant. A few dozen images later, and I see a giant ice cream cone apparently dropped on a building. Then a whole lotta bacon, sadly un-crispy. And then a gif of a rotating brain.

I'm vaguely stunned, but not so much inspired.

I think that it would be handy if the "random file" feature could accept search terms. So that, for example, I could get a random cat picture.

Sometimes I search for the obvious and get a surprise. For example, I just searched for "baby chicks", expecting the cute and fluffy, and got the cockatiel chick that's the picture for today's post. He is cute, I think, in a spiky and alarming sort of way.

So. "Just write something!" has failed to produce brilliance, but I'm posting anyway. And that is all.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: None

Again, I went unperfumed. And I went to the dentist.

Whine.

That is all.

Oh, and there's a longer whine on the other blog. Without any scary dentist content. In case you were worried.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: None. And seasonal shifts. And poultry skin.

I seem to have suddenly--and temporarily, I'm sure--lost interest in perfume. I theorize that this is day length--it's cold, but days are getting longer, so I'm being reprogrammed to want warm-weather perfumes, but I don't want them yet. It's just a theory.

Actually, I am craving scents, but they're not scents that my collection offers me. I want the brown-butter dusty scent of the cepes note in Aftelier Cepes & Tuberose, but without the sweet tuberose. And I want the scent of garlic. And crispy chicken or duck skin. And bacon. I want smoky meat instead of smoky sweetness or just plain smoky smoke.

Salt, smoke, butter, and crisp fat. I don't think that the perfume world has anything for me right now.

But I still want to buy perfume. Badly. I want to select it, and click the Buy button, and wait for the package to come, and have the unwrapping ceremony. But I don't want to wear it.

My brain is confused.

Image: By Evan Swigart. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTDays: Uh...

So what did I wear Thursday and Friday? And Saturday?

I'm pretty sure I wore nothing. I'm not sure why. Especially since Friday there was #fumechat (woohoo!) and surely I'd want to smell like something?

But I didn't smell like anything. But the chat was great--thank you so much, everybody that came! Remember, every Friday at 7pm Pacific, 10pm Eastern, and, yep, a European time is needed, too.

My brain is, at the moment, a ball of fuzz, so that is all. But we went to the movies, so I may be posting about that later.

Image: Jorge Barrios. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: None

I flew today, so in consideration to the Potentially Allergic, I went scentless.

Now I wanna buy perfume. This is a very dangerous reaction to a single unscented day.

And that is all.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: None and None

Oh, dear. The lack of perfume is continuing. Now, Saturday is Scentless Saturday, so that's according to plan. But I'm not sure how Friday went wrong.

There's always Sunday.

That is all.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: None, and Various

Wednesday was busy and scentless day.

Thursday, I tried Lostmarch Din Dan, and got distracted before I could respond with any more than, "Ooh! Lemony!" Then, when the citrus faded, I put on Feminite du Bois and remained oblivious to that, too.

Maybe tomorrow I'll pay attention.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Wha?

There were yams.

Then there was turkey. With a lot of garlic. Six heads? Ten heads? It was Himself's recipe, I was just the helper.

Then there were gravy and carrots and brussels sprouts and chestnuts and cranberries and banana bread.

And other folks brought potatoes and potatoes and other root veg and pie and tart and salad and bread and stuffing and tiramisu and I'm forgetting things because there were even more dishes than that on the table.

And we opened wine, and then we opened more wine.

And we forgot to eat the yams. But that's OK, because I can eat them all.

And I need a nap.

Image: By Valerie McGlinchey. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: None. Well, except for brown sugar and butter.

Candied yams. NaNoWriMo. Turkey legs. Housecleaning. Plumbing repair. Snow!

It's been a busy few days, vacation or not. I've been slacking off on my perfume babble. I will, I hope, be back into full communication tomorrow.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: None

Thursday and Friday were busy and scentless. And I don't think I made any NaNoWriMo progress, either. And Friday I ate potato chips and milk for lunch. And I didn't post Thursday at all.

Gracious living and creativity are just not happening right now. And Saturday's looking a little busy, too. But (bwahaha!) next week is a whole week off. So we'll see if things improve.

Image: By Glane23. Wikimedia Commons.