Perfume: The Bi-Annual Insanity

I'm noticing that my perfume acquisition comes in cycles. I suspect that they're six-month cycles related to season changes. (And, no, I'm not a psych student, but I did recently see Beer Bad. Hence the phase names.)

Id: First, there's excited, happy exploration. Sometime after the halfway point of the Warm Season or the Cold Season I start to develop cravings for scents of the season that's coming.

I send off for samples and samples and more samples. I buy bottles, preferably bottles that I sampled thoroughly last year, but sometimes just because something was pretty and my purse was dangerously close to the computer.

(Note to self: Always keep the purse in another room, preferably somewhere where you have to pass a witness who knows darn well why you've gone to fetch it.)

This phase is fun, but expensive.

Ego: Then comes driven exploration.

I keep reading descriptions and reviews and forum posts and ad copy. And adding things to my shopping cart and taking them out again. And debating whether the greater utility of an eight dollar 1.5ml sprayer from The Perfumed Court outweighs the lower price of a four dollar 1ml vial from LuckyScent and, hey, does Aedes have samples for that one, and what's the perfume house's policy on sending out samples?

My mind is a hamster wheel. I want it. I shouldn't get it. I might not wear it. I'm not made of money. It might go away. I want it. Just buy it. How much is it?! Is it any better from The Perfume Shoppe? What's the Canadian exchange rate? Remind me, do I have to pay customs?

This phase is not nearly as expensive, but also not nearly as much fun. It's also characterized by denial, because didn't I just say in my sampling post a few days ago that I was free of the "must try everything!!!" drive? Ha. Just look at my Perfumed Court cart.

Superego: Then comes the (temporary) release from the drive. This is the moment - and it happened twenty minutes ago - when I realize, "I don't have to buy another drop of perfume as long as I live."

Now I'm not saying, mind you, that I won't buy another drop. I certainly will. I'll buy quarts, if not gallons. But I don't have to. I could stop right now, for ten years, and still have a more diverse perfume collection than just about anyone I know in real life.

I can just wear what I have. Velvet Gardenia is going away? I have Tubereuse Couture. Feminite du Bois in the original formula is leaving? I nabbed Theorema.  I don't have Bandit? I do have Daim Blond. So there.

(Clip Show Warning: Excessive use of internal links. I'll try to get a grip.)

This phase is the most relaxing, and the least expensive. But it's not the most fun.

Now, this is the first year that I've been blogging, so it's the first year that I've documented this process. But I do remember experiencing it at least twice before.

I predict that I'm going to keep halfheartedly looking at my Perfumed Court cart, and that I'll send off one last order this winter, possibly in the next couple of days to give myself toys for the holiday. But then I suspect that I'm done with the obsessive acquisitions until, oh, late March. At which point I should probably bury the credit cards until June.

I'll still be posting. And reading. And urging people to sniff things. It's not like I've been taken over by aliens. I'm just relaxing a little - I hope.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.