Life, Near-Death and Chanel No 18

Oh, Posse….

It has been such a rollercoaster ride these past few weeks; I think (pray) we’re coming out of it but it has exhausted me to the point where I had to take a couple of days and just Sleep, lest I drop stone-dead.  Barbarians at the Gate, folks buying canoes while the floor is on fire, holes opening up in the ground beneath my feet (literally.  we have a small sinkhole in the side garden that is just freaky – apparently a lot of the old homesteads around here have former cistern runs and, 50 yrs later, those runs are collapsing and lawns, shrubs, bulbs disappear into these holes, like that hysterical scene in 2012 (which hysterical scene?  they were ALL hysterical)……you know, the one where all of Santa Monica is heaving up and out into the ocean, with planes slamming into newly-formed mountains and billions of tons of fiery earth slithers into the Pacific…yet the sky maintains its serene, hazy, Southern California blue……… it’s just weird like that.

Life is Uncertain.  El O.   He’s fine.  But talk about …well, talk about serendipity. And the Universe cutting us a break.  When it comes to helmets I’m a Snell Head.  99.9%, El O so isn’t  into helmets and when he does, he usually wears some stupid novelty helmet that will probably cause more harm than good.  Late for a 7hr ride to some stupid rally, he couldn’t find his stupid helmet so he grabbed MY helmet.  My. Snell-approved. Helmet.  When he went down, at 50mph, he was wearing that helmet.  He is fine.  He owes me a helmet.  May I just say how freaking grateful I am that I’m not getting reimbursed via his life insurance policy?   I now get why people say ‘if you died I would be so mad I would KILL you!’.  LOL!  He’s fine.  And so am I. But it was a scary reminder to live every moment.

So it’s been weird.  So I’ll bet you think I’m going to beg off with some lame-o excuse about NO PERFUME REVIEW.  And you just might be right…except…I’ve been experimenting in the Chanel Box.  And I have fallen in love with  Chanel Les Exclusifs No. 18.   I confess to not having known a thing about this one – I got a decant as a gift and I actually thought it was mislabeled (18, 19 – easy enough to do).  Finally got around to trying it and..well, yes.  I fooled around and fell in love.  Evanescent as the rest of the Exclusifs line, nonetheless it has this oddly haunting, vaguely fatty green quality to it that stays in my olfactory senses long after the actual scent is gone.  ‘Fatty Green’ sounds pretty gross but…it’s like the cucumber oil that so slightly emanates from the best, crispest pickles.  And speaking of pickles…it’s got that very faint pickle-y tinge to the rosy, floral heart that keeps it interesting.   For a minute I thought it resembled my other favorite, 1932 – then I realized I was mis-smelling: it’s way less cologne-y than ’32 – No 18  is a distant, nodding cousin to Chanel No 5 perfume (for the oil) that’s been spilled on a wooden picnic table where someone made a halfhearted attempt to wipe up spilled pickle juice.  Sounds insane.  Sounds awful.  I assure you, it’s not.  I thought this would be one of those ‘try it so you can talk about it’ – and instead, it’s turned into a scent I’ve reached for every night for the past week.    I can’t afford the luxury of an evanescent scent but if I were a rich man (deedledeedledum)  I would buy this just to scent my sheets and curtains…and me!  

Oooh!  What I Just Read and LOVED:  “Where’d You Go, Bernadette?” by Maria Semple.   She wrote for ‘Ellen’ and ‘Arrested Development’.  I thought it was going to be hipster-ironic and silly.  Heh.  Read it.

And go try some No 18.   It’s really lovely!