Rambling: Braaaaaaains!

I get bored easily.

There's a theory that people with ADHD don't just have a problem with attention, but also with rewards. Brain rewards. As normal people work on a task, the "gratification/pleasure" circuits of the brain provide reinforcement even before the real-world reinforcement of a completed task is reached. So all those people who sneer about will power and staying on task may just be people who have a functioning brain reward system that agreeably gives them intermittent mental biscuits for working on a task.

This suggests a model of the brain that's disconcertingly...well, not random, but driven by semi-random events. It's as if our brains are Rube Goldberg machines that just happen, due to millions of years of evolution, to end up with the ball bearing dropping on the cymbal and waking up the hamster--or whatever the machine's supposed to do. A tiny failure in adjustment and the ball bearing just falls into space and the hamster keeps on sleeping. Or, as seems to happen in my brain, the hamster runs through the maze chasing shiny cheese when he's supposed to be exercising on the wheel, or vice versa. Except that an ADHD-brain-hamster would never exercise on the wheel. Because it's boring. Cheese, on the other hand, is tasty. (Reward.)

This post is not primarily about ADHD or staying or task or any of that stuff. It's more about that reward system. My brain seems to crave rewards, and it increasingly seems that it's worthwhile to arrange rewards for it. A while ago, I posted that my perfume shopping moratorium seemed to produce a creative depression, and in fact a mild general depression. I proposed that regular perfume browsing was giving me a dose of dopamine and keeping my brain on a contented creative even keel, and that eliminating that browsing threw all that off. Actually, it's more specific than that--eliminating browsing with the option of purchasing threw all that off.  No purchase option, apparently no reward in the browsing. Returning to a situation where I was allowed to buy perfume, even if I bought it very rarely or in fact just considered buying it, got the creativity back online.

Which is...weird. And leads me to wonder what other activities might have a non-obvious brain-feeding reward.

Because I suspect that there are any number of them in my life. In fact, I suspect that I'll find that most of my habitual, comfort habits are about feeding happy neurotransmitters. Remember when I discovered that most of my lifelong snacks were tryptophan-rich foods combined with the carbs that are needed to help tryptophan-rich foods produce serotonin? Yeah. Does perfume itself, sniffing it and wearing it, help straighten up a brain that's on Tilt? Does reading? Forum posting? Writing?

Why is it that I can do boring repetitive tasks for hours in the garden once I've dragged myself out there? I love sewing and cooking, but I have to push myself through the boring bits; I don't have to push myself through the boring bits of gardening. And the rare occasions when I can just sit and stare, mindlessly, without doing things, without thinking through things, are usually occasions when I'm staring blankly at leaves and plants. If my brain isn't driving me to go get it a biscuit, dagnabbit!, then I assume that it's somehow already getting fed.

It's a puzzlement. I was hoping to end this post with some sort of conclusion, but, well, apparently not.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling:

Remember where I claimed not to believe in writer's block? I'm not-having it again. I can write. I wrote a couple of paragraphs about sewing patterns. And cloche hats. And the nice camp shirt that I saw on someone. And how I want a camp shirt pattern. And it was all really boring, so I deleted it. I'm restraining myself from deleting this, because, as I said, there is no such thing as writer's block. Nope nope nope. So I'm just going to keep writing.

Part of the problem may be that my head hurts. I don't know if it's about sleep or caffeine or heat. Or if I'm working up to a migraine. Whee?

Um.

Or it may be junk food deprivation. There are Thin Mints in the freezer in the garage that I'm not eating. And I'm imagining Pringles. Or Andes Mints. Or pound cake. I used to make pound cake from the recipe in a 1970s-era Joy of Cooking. It was really good. I want some now.

Um two.

See, I'm trying to refrain from eating sugar. It's resulted in losing a fair little bit of weight, very much to my surprise, because I've never really lost weight on a diet before. Though the weight loss might be coming from the fact that I'm no longer drinking a fair fraction of a gallon of milk every single day. I miss milk. It was my mood medicine. Now I'm getting my tryptophan from sliced turkey and raw sunflower seeds.

Um three.

There is no writer's block. Really. No such thing. Figment of the imagination.

I've been thinking of gradually learning to make all of my clothes. Except for underwear and shoes and raincoats and hats. Not that I wear a lot of hats. Did I mention the cloche hats? Ah, yes, sort of. And I wouldn't make T-shirts; I'd replace them with something else. Like camp shirts. With dropped sleeves. I'm having trouble with sleeves.

Oh, and socks. I'm not going to be making socks. Or panty hose. OK, I'm going to be making clothes that can logically be sewn out of woven fabric. Not including blue jeans. All those layers of denim are too hard to sew through.

Um.

That is all.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: Scentless Saturday, and Whining

The garbage disposal is broken and not draining, meaning that the sink is nonfunctional five days before Thanksgiving. Himself made a flurry of phone calls and drove out to get a new disposal and we should have a sink soon, but it's worrying as the dishes pile up.

On the same drive, we took my Mac in to get it fixed, because it broke and now I'm writing this on the very old one that has a battery that's good for about forty seconds because I abuse my batteries. So I'm tethered to the wall.

My head hurts and my sinuses are cranky and I feel like I'm catching a cold and the Co-op no longer carries the chewable echinacea pills that used to make me feel better when that happened. Or used to give me the delusion that I felt better, and that's almost as good. So I'm chewing Airborne zinc tablets with echinacea instead and they taste absolutely dreadful. I want my old echinacea tablets. Now.

Monday we have to drive out and get a turkey. Sunday we have to find the cooler to put the turkey in. We may or may not have guests for Thanksgiving. The house is a mess. I'm pretending that we know we have guests, because I want the motivation to make it not a mess. I don't have the faintest idea what to give anyone for Christmas.

I'm way way extremely very much behind on NaNoWriMo.

The weekend is already half over and I didn't relax yet.

Morning Glory no longer has fried chicken on the menu.

I'm almost out of milk.

These are all minor trivial fiddling little problems, but I still want to take a nap until everything shapes up.

Image: By Osm agha. Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: The Moratorium, Shopping, and My Brain

In February, I started the Perfume Moratorium. I was worried that my perfume experience was being consumed by the shopping end of the hobby--pricing, budgeting, filling and clearing online shopping carts. Dithering over buy decisions--is Heeley Cardinal redundant with Serge Noire? If I buy Din Dan will I have too many citrus perfumes? Would buying Tihota be grounds for having me committed? And budgeting decisions; I made the "one bottle per quarter" rule and promptly "borrowed" up to... is it just 2012?

I wanted to take the buying option off the table. I imagined six months of happy nibbling at the collection. I would wear neglected scents for days on end, and really get to know them. Empty vials would pile up as I worked through the sample backlog, savoring each scent without worrying about remembering them for a buying decision. My reviews would be uncontaminated with purchase dithering or budget whining. It would be a commerce-free creative scentopia!

Yeah. Not so much. I slacked off on the SOTD posts. I stopped reviewing perfume. My sample box went unopened for weeks at a time. I abandoned Basenotes. I kept reading perfume blogs, but mostly just to keep up with the bloggers' lives, rather than their perfumes. I stopped regularly wearing perfume.

And I didn't just stop perfume blogging. I slacked off on garden blogging, too. The fiction vignettes petered out. The random babbling about chocolate and fried things slowed down. My film festival posts were less extensive enthusiastic than last year. For a while, I wasn't doing much reading. My plant breeding and selection plans came to nothing.

Now, you could argue that all of that suggests a general lapse of creativity, maybe a low-key depression. That would make sense. But I don't think it's true. It feels as if perfume purchasing, perfume interest, and then all aspects of creativity, fell one after another like a series of dominoes.

And then the moratorium ended--I didn't buy much perfume, but the option to buy returned. And I started reading more. And posting more. And my interested in the garden perked up. And I started wearing more perfume. And I can feel the reviews bubbling up. All the dominoes popped back up, like Weebles.

My creative enthusiasms have always waxed and waned in bursts, triggered by nothing identifiable. For a few weeks or months I'm interested in everything, and then for a few more I'm interested in nothing at all. I don't like it, not one bit; I hate the "off" periods.

I demand an explanation. Or at least a theory.

So I Googled.

I found more than one article that assured me that shopping produces dopamine--and (bonus!) endorphins. Seeing something new and novel, finding a bargain, anticipating hunting down some new possession and dragging it home to the cave, feeds your reward center. That may be how shopping addiction happens. It's probably also behind the acquisition side of hoarding. Sadly for the shopping addicts and the hoarders, it's the anticipation that gives you the high--actually getting the item back to the cave does you no good at all.

Have I mentioned that I think that I have ADHD? Have I mentioned that ADHD is said to be a defect in the brain's reward center? And I've definitely mentioned that I have hoarder genes. I think that it's not entirely whacky to theorize that my brain might be particularly sensitive to dopamine levels.

And, of course, dopamine and endorphins are also associated with creativity.

So... you see the puzzle pieces of the theory? By declaring the moratorium, did I cut myself off from a highly effective method of self-medication? When I browse through LuckyScent et al with at least the possibility of making a purchase, does that feed my brain things that it needs?

Wait. Wait a minute. I just said this. I just said this. Five posts ago, I said "I have a hoarder id, and sometimes I need to feed it..."

That post and this post are saying the same thing, aren't they? Sure, that one was about bribing my brain so that it doesn't turn me into a hoarder, and this one is about feeding it for creativity, but it's the same food, and the same howling brain, isn't it?

Huh.

First Image: By Debbie Mc. Wikimedia Commons.
Second Image: By Quatar&Me. Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: Decluttering and taking candy away from my id

So, we did some decluttering today. Mainly, we dug into the bookshelves and ended up with stacks and stacks of books to sell to the used bookstore--I'd quickly estimate a couple of hundred. Added to that is a foot-high stack of old Threads magazines to give away, if I can persuade someone to value them as much as I used to. The same for several dozen issues of Fine Gardening, though those are just going to spend an afternoon at the foot of the driveway with a Free sign, and will end up in paper recycling if no one takes them. There's also a boxful of assorted magazines not worth trying to find a home for; they're going straight into paper recycling as soon as I work up the energy to go outdoors.

That's after several boxes of clothes that went to the Good Will a week or three ago. Oh, and a large armchair donated to an organization that had a place to use it.

In the garage are two bins of assorted cables and power cords, and at least one more box of books, and two or three boxes of stuff that we intended for a garage sale but might just give away, now that we're past garage sale weather. In other words, stuff is leaving.

But I'm still not satisfied. I want to get the whole house down to a neat, sparse, minimalist level Right Now This Very Minute If Not Sooner Please! And then I want to be done. I need to accept the reality that it doesn't work that way. Two of the decluttering lessons that I never quite seem to absorb are (1) if it took decades to acquire, you can't get rid of it in a day and (2) decluttered never stays decluttered. The only way to keep a house in reliably good shape is to keep stuff flowing out the door, every single day, or at least every single week.

I also continue to deny facts about myself and my Stuff habits. For example, I buy books like magazines. Oh, not all the time, but there are times, especially when I'm traveling and have no access to a library, that I buy a book because I need want something to play with and cheer me up right now. And then I deny that this is what I've done, because it seems like such an unforgivably wasteful thing to do.

If I go all logical, I can tell myself that it's not that bad. A softback book often costs less than going to a movie (and having a Coke and popcorn), and it generally provides more than two hours' worth of entertainment. If I look for more examples in the travelling context where many of these books are purchased, the book is often cheaper than even one drink from Room Service.

What I need to accept is that it's entirely possible for me to buy even a cooking or sewing or gardening book (reference books that I'd normally expect to keep permanently), play with it for a few hours, and then lose interest in it within the month. At which point I should give or sell it away rather than letting it sit around gathering dust in the hope that I'll get my money's worth out of it. I already got my money's worth, when it made me happy on a stressful trip. There's no point in trying to make it work overtime.

I may have mentioned that, years ago, I used to do the same thing with Playmobils. You know Playmobils? Those happy friendly little dolls and all the places and things that you can buy for them? Some of them are oddly frightening places and things, for a children's toy. I'm used to kids playing with guns and monsters, but an ambulance complete with a prostrate (but still smiling) Playmobil child on a stretcher, complete with an IV? Meep.

Anyway, I love Playmobils, and I most love unpacking them and putting all the little pieces together. Once that's done, much of the charm is gone. Years ago, after a bad day at work, I'd sometimes drive to the hobby shop and buy a smallish Playmobil toy, take it home, unwrap and assemble it, and pose it on a shelf somewhere. And then ignore it for the subsequent decade. I finally gave them all away (Didn't I? Is there still a bookboxfull somewhere?), but it's relatively recently that I realized that those Playmobils earned their keep in the first day of ownership, and there was no logical reason to hang on to them rather than passing them on to someone who would proceed to pass them on to small children. To me, a Playmobil is like a cocktail, only cheaper; it improves my mood for an hour, and then it's used up.

Now, I'm not writing this post to advocate the purchase of durable or semi-durable goods, only to treat them as extremely temporary entertainments. But I think that it is important for me to acknowledge it when, despite good intentions, I do exactly that. One thing worse than a disposable culture is a disposable culture that refuses to dispose.

As I've said many times on this blog, I have hoarder genes. I have a hoarder id, and sometimes I need to feed it books with pretty pictures, or brightly colored socks, or that Playmobil desert kit with the vulture (Always wanted that one! Why haven't I bought it?), or a bottle of perfume that was less than carefully considered. If I don't give it a snack now and then, it's likely to lock the ego in the closet and leave the superego whining ineffectually in the middle of the set of Hoarders.

Or something. You see what I mean? My strategy, unstated until now, is apparently to feed the id, wait until it's looking the other way, then box up its toys and send them to charity. It's not the most efficient strategy, but it seems to keep things under control.

Picture of Playmobil hot dog vendor: Wikimedia Commons.

Blogging: Blogging

What's the deal? Why aren't I blogging? What? What?

Maybe it's that no-new-perfume-until-August thing.

Maybe I need a nap.

Maybe it's insufficient milk.

Maybe it's too much caffeine.

Maybe my brain was stolen by aliens.

Maybe it's a Communist Plot.

Maybe I sent my brain out for cleaning and forgot to pick it up.

Maybe I never wrote all those posts and they were all a delusion.

Maybe it's not possible to garden and blog in the same week.

Maybe I really am posting but then it's wiped from my memory, like those critters on Doctor Who.

Maybe I'm a squirrel.

Maybe the earth is flat.

Maybe all chicken was replaced by Soylent Green.

Maybe maybe.

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.

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.

Whine: I'm not ready

I'm not ready. I'm just not ready.

To return to the real world, that is. Work. Phone calls. All those loose ends that were temporarily boxed up at the end of December. And the worries.

It's not that I have more worries than most people. But that's not helping, right now, as my brain is howling, "I don't waaaaaaaaannnnnnaaaaaa!"

My brain wants to stay right here with the computer and the blog and the books and the DVDs and the Christmas music and the chicken wings and this precise spot on the calendar. Passing time? No. Work? No. Responsibility? No. The weekly GTD review? Good heavens, nooooo!

I'm not ready. I need to be ready by Monday.

I'd better stock up on milk.

Edited to add: I wrote some complete nonsense on the other blog, and now I feel better. I lack logic.

Image: By Vask. Wikimedia Commons.

Ramble: Tryptophan Girl

I touched the top of a package of chicken a few hours ago. And I haven't washed my hands yet.

How is this meaningful? Well, I worry. A lot. I spend most hours of most days with one worry or the other either front and center in my brain, or waiting in the wings, merrily waving every few minutes to be sure that I can see him.

I recently realized that most of the foods that I crave and have thought of as "my foods" all my life--milk with various starchy junk foods, sunflower seeds with oversweetened iced tea, peanut butter and jelly on squishy white bread, turkey sandwiches on similarly squishy white bread, and, of course, chicken (usually with rice) are packages of tryptophan-rich foods plus carbs. Which, according to Google, help produce serotonin. Which is good for reducing worry cycles.

Oh. Now you tell me. So I've been self-medicating all my life? No wonder I'm round.

And, yes, I wash my hands too often, and I check doors, and I worry about bigger things that are harder to see as irrational and I demand that other people reassure me about those worries. OCD genes flowing down the family tree. Further Googling tells me that the cycle of obsession leading to compulsion leading to following the compulsion leading to temporary relief is, in the long run, about as addictive as a smoking habit. Every time I comply with a compulsion, whether it's washing my hands or demanding reassurance or rehearsing all the details of "did I do that right?" in my mind, I'm training my brain to demand another fix.

I think. This is, admittedly, all coming from Google. But the respectable-looking sites all seem to agree: Complying with those compulsions is not only bad in the moment, because you wasted thirty seconds running back to check the door, but they're bad in the long run, because you train your brain to demand the comfort of the compliance, like a baby who never, ever seems to be able to get himself to sleep without help.

I don't know what I'd recommend for the baby, but I think it's time to let my brain cry it out. I've kept a conscious level of control of the little OCD rituals--I won't let myself wash my hands or check my doors more than I did last week or last month. But that just seems to let the worry emerge in areas where it's less clear that I'm being irrational, and that's worse.

So I think it's time to stop merely holding my ground, and start making progress. No more washing my hands for no good reason. No more checking that I've locked the door--never, not even once, has it turned out that I hadn't locked up, so the check is clearly irrational, even if my mind is gibbering at this very moment that it's not.

And when those big, less defined worries come up, the ones where it's less clear that I'm nuts? I think it's time to accept that someday, before I die, I might actually do something wrong and somebody might actually be mad at me. But that the consequences will probably be less than the consequences of spending my entire life with the worry of the day tapdancing in center stage. So, no more making absolutely sure that I've done every conceivable thing to resolve the issue, no more rehearsing the details over and over in my mind, no more endless impossible-to-satisfy quests for certainty.

Now I'm going to go drink a vat of milk and eat a cookie or three. I'm not giving up the tryptophan yet.

Image: By Unisouth. 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.

SOTD: Tubereuse Couture and random randomness

This was lovely today, but a little over-sweet. I think that it's not a late summer scent.

Um.

These are the days when I wonder if this daily blogging thing is an altogether good idea. I wait for clever ideas, and they dance determinedly out of reach.

So, hey, I'll ramble about ideas for ideas.

Sometimes I go to Wikimedia Commons and click the Random File button a few times. Today, I learned that there's an entire category called "details of typewriters". Aren't those keys up there lovely? They remind me of a film that we saw at the Ashland Independent Film Festival a year or three ago, called "Manufactured Landscapes" - except that the typewriter keys are lovely and happy, and the landscapes in the film were often lovely, but often horrifying at the very same time.

Sometimes I go look at other people's blogs. Today there was a lovely post on Scent Self about Joan Holloway from Mad Men. And one from Notes from Josephine about the puzzling phenomenon of those Tauer perfumes that absolutely everyone loves. Except, apparently, Josephine and, by the way, me. But even if I'm inspired by someone's post, stealing that idea for my own blog seems Wrong. So I finish up entertained but no closer to my own post.

Sometimes I ramble about a recent discovery. For example, I've always loved sunflower seeds; I crack and eat them like a crazed squirrel. I recently learned that they're rich in tryptophan - as are milk, chicken, turkey, peanut butter, and other foods that I eat, or have eaten, with gluttonous abandon. I wondered about potatoes, and I read that they help a desperate brain absorb tryptophan. So it appears that I've spent a lifetime snacking for serotonin - the stuff that trytophan turns into.

And eventually I tell myself to post, already. That time has come.

Image: By Kolossos. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: None, and loss of chocolate

I'm taking tomorrow off; the weekend is already here. That's the good news.

The bad news is today's realization that I need to reduce, perhaps eliminate, my consumption of chocolate. Yes, chocolate. This isn't about health - that probably wouldn't stop me. It's about happiness. Specifically, it's about caffeine.

Caffeine doesn't keep me awake, it keeps me nervous. It makes me into one of those people who checks to be sure that the faucet isn't dripping, when it's never dripped before. Who locks the door, checks the door, heads for the car, returns, and checks the door again. Who checks three times to be sure that the envelope is sealed, before putting it in the mailbox. Who wonders what the grocery clerk meant by that offhand remark. You know, those people.

I've always had a tendency to be one of those people, and keeping that tendency under firm control is a priority. Checking the front door lock twice would be tolerable if it stopped there, but I've never trusted that it would stop there.

So the caffeine had to go. Coke and Thai iced tea and other full-strength beverages went away first. Then I switched to decaf iced tea at home, while still drinking the regular stuff in restaurants. Now, the regular stuff has to be carefully rationed even in restaurants.

Yesterday I had two glasses of chocolate milk. Today, I can feel the nervous. Chocolate has to go.

Grumble. I've still got fried chicken, right?

Image: By Danielle Tsi. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Lancome Sikkim (Quick sniff)

I've mentioned the Lancome La Collection, purchased so that I could smell Climat. I also loved Mille et Une Roses. Today was my first sniff of Sikkim.

I can't make up my mind.

According to Perfume Posse, the notes are aldehydes, ylang ylang, bergamot, galbanum, gardenia, thujone, carnation, jasmine, narcissus, orris, rose, amber, castoreum, leather, moss, patchouli and vetiver. Whew.

I loved the top notes - aldehydes and galbanum and a mix of florals. This phase was old-fashioned, yes, but the kind of old-fashioned that qualifies as a compliment. Stylish. Vintage suit. Utterly assured. The stylish aunt, the one that you aspire to be when you get older, and then you realize that you could wear her scent right now. This is the closest that I've come to appreciating the value of aldehydes, rather than just tolerating them for the sake of other notes.

But in a few minutes it shifted and became the bad kind of old fashioned - headache inducing powdery aldehydes. A powdery aldehyde carrying a beautiful note can be a glorious thing; one carrying nothing is just olfactory noise. Sikkim dropped the galbanum and flowers on the floor at this point, and became noise.

I lost track of it at that point. Three or four hours later, I remembered to sniff again, and found that it had quietly improved. The powder is soft and pillowy now, and it's accompanied by something sweet and smooth - the narcissus? The gardenia? That's all dusted with a veil of moss, enough to keep it from being girly-pretty.

So, a lovely beginning, a headache-inducing middle, a quite nice end. I still can't decide.

Review Roundup: Now Smell This and Perfume Posse and Fragrantica and Yesterday's Perfume.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: None. Again.

Again, I wore no scent.

Again, I drank too much milk.

Again, I didn't read a book.

Again, I didn't wanna get up and start working this morning.

Again, I wanted to just take a nap after work.

Hmph.

Image: By Broc. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: None

No perfume! Again! Oh, noooo! And if I put a bunch on now, in the evening, Himself will sneeze, and so that seems mean.

However, I have mint chocolate candy and milk. So I'll be happy.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: None. And what about spring comfort scents?

Today has been characterized by:

• Stress.
• A vat of milk.
• No perfume.

I wondered why I was wearing no perfume, considered the stress, had another glass of milk, and realized: I have no spring comfort scents. And had another glass of milk.

I don't want to be challenged by my perfume today. I'm sufficiently challenged by the project that I'm working on and the meetings that I'll be attending tomorrow.

I want a quiet scent. A sitting-still scent. I have those for winter: Cadjmere. Sutra Ylang. Just Breathe. New Haarlem. Un Crime Exotique. Patchouli 24. Art of Shaving Sandalwood...Oh.

Huh. Actually, I guess I could be wearing Art of Shaving Sandalwood right now.

But all the same, I have a whole brigade of comforting winter scents, while in the spring, everything but Sandalwood is Bright and Bracing. I need something quiet. Peaceful. Comfortable. I need something else that goes with rumpled, untucked white linen.

The two Malle scents that I just posted about are possible candidates. But while I go get some more milk, would any of you fine folks care to suggest others?

Photo: By Stefan Kuhn. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Art of Shaving Sandalwood

Today, I'm grumpy, cranky, and stressed, so I'm wearing one of my primary comfort scents, Art of Shaving Sandalwood.

There's something odd about this fragrance's comfort scent credentials, though. When I'm in a reasonable mood, I don't find this scent particularly relaxing. It's only when I'm stressed, head-exploding stressed, that it does that job. Then, it makes me think of polished wood and pleasantly rumpled white linen shirts ideal for napping.

So today it's perfect, though I don't actually get the nap. However, I'll also be consuming a vat of milk, to finish the relaxation job.

Review Roundup: Is here.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.