Earlier this year I went on a sort of perfumery craze. I bought 50+ vials of (mostly used) perfume oil blends that originally came from a smallish perfumery that specializes in “formulating body and household blends with a dark, romantic Gothic tone.” Who could resist perfumes named after characters in Othello, and other famous writings and legends and things? After testing 25 of them and finding none I really liked for more than a day or two, or my favorite lasted a month or two (I’m not a perfume person, generally), I put them away and they’ve sat on my shelf.

So today, in getting ready to leave tomorrow, I found a little container of vials in my purse and I decided I ought to switch some out. So, to make this lengthy explanation come to a close, I took some out of the *big box* and I am wearing Phantasm, which smells like lemon cleaner (mmm!), and of which the site claims, “This delicate, spectral perfume gives rise to an eerie distortion of of the senses. Green tea, lemon verbena, jasmine and neroli.”

Maybe next I should try Pirate’s Plunder - “The scent of a pirate’s bumboat, overflowing with stolen wares: tea leaf, cassia, cinnamon bark, clove, allspice, sandalwood, tobacco, peppercorn, and nutmeg.”

The descriptions are making me like my little boxes of ‘fumes all over again;

TEMPEST
A crisp ozone-tinged breeze. The scent of the first gentle rain before the storm.

ANTIQUE LACE
Nostalgia encapsulated. A soft, wistful blend of dry flowers, aged linens, and the faint breath of long-faded perfumes.

Unfortunately, Pumpkin Queen - The Glorious Grand Dame of the Pumpkin Patch! Regal Egyptian Amber, red ginger, orange peel, mandarin, cardamom, fig leaf and warm pumpkin. - smelled just like a cheap candle on me the last time I tried it, and I’m afraid that bad scents by any name are just unpleasant.

One funny thing about perfume oils is that since they are not fixed in alcohol, the scent can change drastically from person to person, depending on their chemistry, and it even changes on a person from week to week and from month to month. Or it can go wonky from you being on particular medications. Another problem - probably my biggest peeve with perfumes - is that it can smell different to one person’s nose than another’s. Which means you could be walking around smelling quite stinky to those who get close to you (and hopefully you are not so drowned in the scent that even those 10 feet away can smell you), and smell perfectly nice to your own nose. This experience is *much* ingrained in my mind - I can never wear any perfume without being warned by brothers that I stink. They hesitate to sniff at it in the bottle, even, as if it were some kind of vile rot. Even the ones that smell like roses!

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Now, as to not spend a whole post on perfumes, the news on packing is that I’m just about done. It feels odd to have nearly all of my stuff together, with no cables missing for my cameras, and a fully functional laptop (unless you count the battery lasting only 5 minutes). Maybe I’ll update with a picture of my packed bunk after we leave.

Posted by Bonnie under Uncategorized