by “Don’t Panic!  March Will Be Back” Musette

March is finishing up some stuff that is taking up 10,080 minutes this week so I’m stepping into her Size Sixes (I’m 5’9″ tall and …well, let’s just say those boots iz squallin’!!!)

I lived in an urban environment for most of my adult life and never gave much thought to the good ol’ days – most cosmopolitan areas are constantly shifting so you don’t have much time to mourn What Was – besides, I have a really fragile visual memory that is only now allowing me to recall the visual past – I’m one of those people ror whom, if you knock down a building and replace it with another, in the time it takes for that new building to go up I’ve forgotten what was previously there (for awhile I’d forgotten that the Palmolive Building in Chicago still existed (I only saw it from Lake Shore Drive as a child, with its famous Lindbergh Beacon).  Sad, but true….but these past 5 years, writing for the blog and living in a rather static environment, has allowed my skittering mind to settle and reflect on a lot of my early sensory experiences.  Here are a few of them:

Thinking about the Palmolive Building got me thinking about toothpaste (don’t ask) – when I was a kid we used Ipana, which I loved (great taste!!) – then my mom switched us to Crest (ew).  I miss Ipana.  It always smelled – and tasted – like that intriguing Beeman’s Gum which I could swear came in tablet form, like Chiclets.  Am I making that up?  Anyway, I love the smell of both of those.   Does Ipana still exist? 

Nervine.  My mother suffered from depression and spent most of her waking moments in a otc-induced fog, to keep from killing everyone in sight.  This was in the 60s, so there was no Cymbalta – in fact, we’d not yet accepted depression as a chemical imbalance.  You had ‘nerves’, if you were a woman, and took ‘powders’.  My mother took Nervine.  We all knew to get the hell out of the way when she pulled that glass tube out of the medicine cabinet – but I always was fascinated by that glass tube, with those tablets…because they FIZZED!  I would peek around the bathroom door (I was 6) and listen for the plop! and fzzzzz!  and once, even sneaked my nose in the glass when she turned her back (it tickled).   To this day I have a fondness for effervescent tablets because in my house those tablets were a mysterious signal that everything would level out in an hour or so and I would get my mother back.  And dinner.

A-1 Salve (Wizard Products Co, Chicago).  Apparently this company got binked on several occasions in the late 40s by the JAMA Bureau of Investigations and the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act for misrepresentation (false claims!  can you IMAGINE?  what a concept!)  – but what did that matter?  My folks LOVED this salve, reputed to cure everything from eczema to ringworm and the corresponding sulphur soap, which purportedly killed everything in its path.  The petroleum base and rotten-egg sulphur smell equaled HEALTHY TIMES in our household.  I came upon half a boxtop, when I was clearing out my pop’s old meds cabinet and those smells came roaring back, just from the visual!  I’ve forgotten the scent of 90% of the ‘fumes I reviewed in the past 4  months – but A-1 salve?  Nevah!

Poly-vi-Sol. Brown bottle with bulb dropper.  3 drops on the tongue in the morning.  Is there any Boomer alive who doesn’t remember the smell and that weird B-vitamin taste?  But I don’t remember it smelling or tasting bad – just very vitamin-y.  And all my peers seem to remember it similarly.  Funnily, this current generation of moms (at least those on the blogs) seem to find it VILE!  Did they change something?  Again, for me, this is one of those ‘everything is totally okay in my world’ smells, unlike Cod Liver Oil, which smells like terror.  To this day.  Fish Oil tabs are my Cross To Bear now.

So….what are your Good Ol’ Days smells?  Mine seem to be all about dosing and slathering but ymmv – Perfume?  Food?  Patent Medicines?  Housecleaning supplies?? (my household madeleine  is Sprayway Glass Cleaner)  – would love to hear about them!  I have a buncho samples to give away, including Givenchy’s Dahlia Noir – I was going to review it but Robin @ NST did it way better here  - no reason to reinvent that wheel.  It’s worth a sniff and I’ll throw in a couple of other samps to a few winners via random.org

 Hooray! We are now officially “un-slabbed” and “de-podded”  and all our furniture is now back in our freshly painted, nice, clean house (at least until the toys, books, etc., start “multiplying” in the den – ha!). And our very large yard ornament has been hauled away, so we have our driveway back, too. Double hooray!

 After a chaotic and very stressful day or two last week while everything was being moved back in, this weekend I decided to treat myself to wearing the most expensive comforting scent I own, cost be darned. So what did I pull out? It was too chilly and fall-like for Le Labo’s Tubereuse 40, so I snagged my small decant of their Vanille 44 and spritzed with abandon. Its lush vanilla and incense soothed my stressed body and mind, and its rich aura made me feel pampered and self-satisfied as I kicked back in my cozy recliner with my favorite cup of tea (naturally) and simply enjoyed doing nothing for an hour or two.

 What’s your favorite “I deserve a treat” scent? What do you wear to reward yourself for a job well done?

The number above – that’s the tax deduction 30 Serges (Exports and Exclusives), plus about 100 more miscellaneous fragrances and other items will get you if you donate them to charity.

How do I know this? I found out about 2 weeks ago, finally, what my wonderful aunt did with my perfume collection and some other items I was forbidden to retrieve from her house. Now, I guess you can say I have “closure” of the situation since she threw me out over a year ago.

I’m usually not one to air dirty laundry, but since I’ve been through so much over the past few years, I thought, what the hell. I’ve lost everything so I literally have nothing left to lose.

The problem is, finding out that my treasured collection is gone forever has put me off fragrance. This is worse than going off meds or having a run of bad luck. Right now, I just don’t care what I smell like or what anything smells like. I even pitched what  few bottles that did manage to make it out of her house; I just couldn’t stand looking at them anymore.

So, for now, I bid you all adieu. I have no desire to smell anything and I don’t know when I will again. I know my attitude sounds defeatist and it’s allowing evil to triumph over good, but I am too exhausted, emotionally and physically, to keep fighting. The only thing I can hope for is that my aunt will receive some sort of karmic retribution for all the crap she’s pulled on me over the past couple of years. You know the saying: what goes around, comes around. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed, shall we?

I hope to see you all again before too long.

**Thanks to everyone who commented. I’ve always appreciated the love and support I’ve found here – now more than ever. I will be back. Oh, yes – I will be back!**

My son often enjoys sniffing my fragrance du jour. Sometimes he’ll see me with a vial or spray and say, “Whatcha putting on today, Mom?” And occasionally he’s  asked for one in particular.

So that got me thinking. We choose soft, fresh, light fragrances as starter scents for girls, but what about boys?

I see a lot of you out there, shaking your heads, saying, “No, no, no, not those dreaded Axe body sprays!”

But what would make nice (read: not overpowering) intro scents for our not-quite grown-up guys? And at what age or grade is it considered acceptable for them to start wearing fragrance?

Now my son is only 11, which, of course, is too young, but I’d love to have suggestions for when (and if) he does grow into it.

I gotta admit it peeps, after the past few weeks I am looking forward to a relaxing weekend of doing absolutely nothing. I’m tapped as far as a review for today, but next week, I’ll be raring to go with something.

I bought the September issues of Vogue and Allure the other day and was pretty disappointed in them. Not a scent strip to be had in my copies, not to mention not much worth reading. Anyone else feel the same?

I hope all the east coasters who were affected by hurricane Irene are returning to business as usual. I’m glad most of us got through the worst of the storm minimally scathed.

Enjoy this last holiday weekend of summer; post your plans, post the fragrances you plan to wear, or whatever you’d like.

Have a wonderful long weekend!