Robin at Now Smell This asked me after my first Santa Fe post whether I had managed to “go home again” with any degree of success, having been away for so long and given my high hopes for my revisit. I’ve given that question some thought, and this is my answer.

On Sunday in Santa Fe, deep into a conversation with an old friend as I parked my cheesy rental car, I got out and locked my keys in the car while it was still running. In my defense, I’ve been driving for 30 years, and this is the first time I ever locked my keys in the car. So I called AAA, and hung out to wait for their arrival (hot tip: telling them your car is still running gets you expedited service). As I sat there, various strangers came by, laughed with me about my predicament, and tried to figure out how to break into the car. A nice man named Larry hung around for awhile and kept checking up on me. Someone else offered to run into the store we were in front of and get me a cold drink. Because, you know, I’d been sitting awhile in the sun.

When I go to New Mexico I have to dial my friendliness way up and massively dial down my aggression. Yes, of course there are things I can complain about related to the Land of Enchantment, and if I were there for six months no doubt I would. But a visit of a week allows me to pretty much focus on all the perks and skip the downside.

Having left almost a decade ago, how was it going back? Was it like going home? Well, no. The most important difference is the lack of framework; I was just another dopey tourist on vacation, taking up a parking space and looking for the best hike on the ski basin road. I wasn’t living there. I wasn’t shaping my day around my kids’ school hours and my work hours, trying to squeeze in a run to the grocery store before picking the kids up from daycare. For the first two days, I admit: it felt very strange.

And then it all became better. Because I realized, and this is a little sad, that in many ways I was appreciating Santa Fe more as a visitor. For much of the time we lived there I had two small children, and a job with long hours. I struggled, as many people do, looking for that famous life/work balance. Most of the time I felt like I was failing as a mother. I had a great career going; it was my parenting that could have used some improvement. And I’ll be honest, that struggle seemed particularly ironic in a city where many people had gone to retreat from their fast-paced lives somewhere else. I had the scenery, but the kicked-back lifestyle often eluded me.

On this trip, I took care of some business we still have there. But the rest of it was given over to pleasure. New Mexicans/Santa Feans are sensualists, one of the great good things about that place that I miss so much. There is time for an excellent meal, for chatting over the wall, for a cerveza and listening to music. There is time for a hike on the Borrego Trail, followed by a lunch you packed yourself, taking in the satisfaction of a long hike, to be followed later on by a brutal/wonderful massage in the building that used to be the grocery store. I scheduled various activities with various friends and not once did it cross my mind to make a backup plan in case they found themselves working late or otherwise confounded by a change of plans. Nobody apologizes for making time for their own pleasure. Feeling good is supposed to be part of your day, if you’re living your life right.  People in New Mexico laugh a lot, and I laugh right along with them.

I came home (wait for it!) with a rested spirit and a renewed sense of purpose, and really – what more could you want from a vacation to anywhere? (Full disclosure: I also came home with tacky souvenirs and an entire extra suitcase of frozen Bueno green chile.) I got to be nice to people who were nice to me, and I’m going to hang on to that feeling while I clean up the joint around here and get some work done. I think I’ll burn some pinon incense and recollect that giant blue bowl of a sky. So, from me to you, with no irony and snark, for just this once – peace, and I’ll be back to sniffing soon.

Canyon Road, Santa Fe: blueberrycreek.com

I’m not dead – just off to Maine. Which some of you would say is the same thing … well, I’m back now, anyway. In my haste to pack the Ship of Fools and prepare for a trip during which I wouldn’t be online — including getting all those lovely folks to cover my posting days — I forgot to let more people know about my departure – and my apologies to those of you I worried with my unannounced absence.* We drove, which was less crappy than I’d anticipated with six of us and the dog in the car. I appear to be raising a brood of decent travelers.

The great thing about being in Maine with the things we can’t do (no phone, no internet) is all the things we can do. We stayed in a cabin so close to the water I could hear the waves lapping the shore. We slept with the windows open, under extra-large heavy duty wool blankets. It fogged and rained and sunned and I didn’t care. I built enough fires in our small wood stove that the Big Cheese took to calling me Jack London.

It’s not like I’m some outdoorsy gal. The great thing about not having any pride in that department is, I can ask advice and experiment with impunity and feel no shame. I have that geek curiosity. We were staying at a camp, with a lodge and other outlying cabins, and so I asked folks about the tides, lobster pots, bears, and the amazing, hard-core gardening going on there. How do you eat a lobster? How to cope with the wind and tide in a kayak? What’s the best way to build a fire in a stove (as opposed to a grate in a fireplace)? Can I bank the coals and/or work the draw to a degree that I don’t have to start from scratch twice a day? I had a little ongoing contest with myself to see how little kindling I could use.

I kayaked. A lot. Kayaking is the perfect boating exercise, as far as I’m concerned. Rowboating is a hell of a lot of work, sailboats are tedious with all the prep and rigging and what have you (although I’m happy to sail as long as someone else is doing all the work, and we did sail, it was a magnificent day, and I loved it). But a kayak is a one-person moving meditation. It’s silent. I don’t need, or want, help. I got a two-person boat so I could take the kids out, but I could also go out by myself and haul as hard as I wanted to, out to an island and back. The water’s so cold it’ll kill you eventually, or so I’ve been told, so I never got too far out. We saw harbor seals, and the porpoises came so close to the boat you could hear them blow. The kids just rambled around with their cousins and built fairy houses out of moss and sticks and waded in the cove on low tide. I taught them the fine, lost art of s’mores. I read a lot of books. We saw two black bears and plenty of mosquitos.

This is where I’m supposed to be moving on to sticking in a quickie fragrance review, and I fully intended to do that. Having written the above, though, I’m going to blow it off and address something else. Tasha Tudor died while we were up there, and my sister-in-law and I got into a friendly argument/discussion about Tudor after we read a brief article about her death in the Wall Street Journal somebody’d left on the front hall table. Now, let me emphasize here that neither of us knows anything else about Tudor other than what was in the WSJ (although I’m now going to get a biography), so our disagreement was philosophical rather than fact-based, if you follow me.

Tasha Tudor was born in the early 20^th century (1915?) but loved the 1830s and, as a young adult, went “back to the land” and lived on a farm, eventually in a house her son built by hand; she raised four kids in a New England farmhouse with no electricity or water. She wove her own fabric and dressed, if you have seen photos of her, like a woman from the previous century, which I suppose I must have known on some level but never really thought through – in long dresses and lace caps. She was twice divorced and lived, as far as I know, on the earnings from her considerable output of books and illustrations, which are charming, idealized stories and images of hearth and home. (BTW this is off the top of my head, feel free to correct factual errors.)

Anyhow – Kate was mildly horrified by all of that, as outlined in the WSJ, although she’s as fond of Tudor’s works as I am, which is to say: very fond. She though Tudor must have been nuts, and it bothered her to think about what it was like for Tudor’s children, being raised by a woman who seemed determined to live in the previous century.

And I found myself arguing with her, because I was … well, strangely charmed. There have been times in my life when I thought how appealing something like that might be. Okay, not as hardcore as Tudor (we’re not taking water and electricity off the table) but – I don’t know. To go put on a bonnet and a long skirt and chuck the TV and get the hell out of here.

But what does that mean, exactly? Let’s posit for this discussion that Tudor had enough independent wealth from her books that she could garden and weave and etc., but nobody was going to starve to death in a harsh winter if her cows died or whatever. On some level she had the comfort of choice – she could go buy food and provisions if she needed to. I’m not talking Back To The Land in a life-or-death way.

So, if you could have the fantasy, would you? Would you go move to (pick one) a rural Connecticut farm, or near a deserted beach or island, or a ranch in the scrub in New Mexico, assuming you had enough income that you didn’t have to bust your behind making the thing work for your survival? You could grow some stuff, but you could still drive to Kroger’s? What if you had kids? What about those renegade Mormons in Texas? Separate from issues you may have with some of their religious/lifestyle choices, and I know that’s a huge hump to put aside, is it wrong for their parents to raise them the way they do? No sugar, no TV, praising the Lord and respecting the elders? Living in some ways like it was 100 years ago? What about the Amish? How much of an obligation do parents have to put their kids in the swim of 2008?

I’m not trying to provoke anything here. This just happens to be a topic I spent several hours thinking about, alone, over the course of my vacation. What does it mean to leave? To opt out? To go to the ranch or the convent? Is it play-acting? (Heck, isn’t it all play-acting?) Do you have the right? What about people who don’t have the choice, like your children? On a lighter note, am I the only middle-aged woman who’s looked at re-enactment clothing online and fantasized about buying myself a calico dress and an apron and moving to just outside some little town, just to hear myself think? And would I die of boredom in five months if I did?

Okay, I have a pile of work on my desk (typing this Monday) I haven’t done, and I need to get on it. I won’t be hurt if you punt this post; I’ll see you tomorrow or Thursday for perfume.

*This doesn’t belong in this post, but it’s so long at this point I’m sticking it in anyway. Some of the rest of you probably read the New York Times magazine article a month or two ago about Emily Gould the gawker.com blogger, and how she also had a “private” blog, and how all her general snarkiness and over-sharing the personal details of her life eventually converged into something that blew up in her face. Separate from the specific people and details involved, reading the article got me thinking – hard – about how and what I share on here. Writing helps me think, and I like to write about all sorts of things, and this is my writing outlet for the time being. But I worry sometimes – e.g., what if someone reads my kid-related stuff and uses it as some sort of ammo that I’m an unfit mother? What if I embarrass my kids? I have already been startled a couple of times by the discovery that some of my kids’ friends, and the occasional teacher, and even some adult acquaintances of mine, lurk on the blog. Where do I draw the line? In the end I didn’t have much sympathy for Gould’s predicament, but parts of the article and her thought processes felt uncomfortably familiar. I am still trying to determine – in this brave new world of online information – where the boundaries are, at least for me.

photos: Buckethead and yours truly in the kayak; Diva’s photo of a daisy, and maybe I should get that girl a camera, she’s got an eye; Hecate and our sub-standard poodle, Kai; Tasha Tudor image from WSJ article; how I gained 5lbs. in one week (the lobster rolls and onion rings from the Bagaduce Lunch, which btw just won a James Beard commendation, only they didn’t go to the ceremony because it was their daughter’s high school graduation and who the heck is James Beard, anyway?); Diva takes the tiller on God’s perfect day sail.

About the time most of you read this, we’ll be on a plane back for the United States.  Forgive any typos and misspelling because I’m in a hurry to make sure I get this posted!

Where did we leave off?  Oh, yeah, right before we pilgrimmed to Cascia.  St. Rita hums - that’s the best way I can put it - and in all the best ways.

Leaving Cascia, our GPS plotted us a course to Todi.  When it insisited I drive down what looked like stairs in Cascia, I knew we were in trouble. I dutifully followed the directions, bumping down the stairs, and then it gave us a left turn onto an almost single-lane sorta paved road going straight up a mountain, with a sheer drop-off on the right and no guardrail.  Um.. have we ever mentioned my vertigo and fear of heights?  I can deal if there’s a guardrail or if I’m driving on the inside lane, but driving on the road ahead of me had my heart racing and my little fists clutching the steering wheel like it was my grip on sanity. The boys kept offering to have me pull over (where?!?!?!) and they would drive, but I told them I couldn’t sit on the passenger side of a sheer dropoff either.  After about 10 kilometers of that, I finally was  breathing somewhat normally and dealing as best I could.   The mind has a way of starting to block out what is terrifying, which is handy.  This route took us through more windy, obscure mountain passes than I thought existed.  A couple of hours later, it dumped us out on the highway going into Todi.  Simply.not.fun.  But an excellent method to cure me of some of my fear of mountain driving.  By the time we drove into Orvieto to the train, I was passing cars on windy mountain passes.

And here we are in Rome. All my life I had heard of Rome cab drivers, that they are crazy, drive crazy, just close your eyes when you get in a cab.  My suggestion when our train got into Termini was to take the Metro to our hotel, which a metro stop was really close by, we had a map, it would have been perfect.  No, the boys wanted the “convenience” of a cab.  I had major doubts, but…. we hailed a cab.  Any of you ever play the Grand Theft Auto game?  The boys couldn’t figure out on the drive over whether to jump out at a stop light in terror or take notes on his driving technique for GTA4.  I was terrified, so I just blocked it out and didn’t look.  Now, we gave him the address of our hotel, but I guess he decided just taking us to the other side of the Tiber was good enough, and he basically dumped us out there, indicating Viale Vaticano and gesturing up the hill.  Well, hell, I had no idea where we were, and maybe it was around the corner, and then he just threw our bags out and sped off.

Where were we?  We had no idea.  Luckily we had the GPS, which we pulled out, only to find we were still about a kilometer from our hotel, So we walked there, dragging our bags and hot butts behind us.  

St. Peter’s Basilica (again, we don’t have pictures yet, no SD card adapter for this computer) is… hmmm, I don’t have words. It is a place you can see thousands of pictures of and still not get it.  It’s just a place you have to go inside of and see. I could have easily spent a couple of days just in there.  My not-so-little nontourists at least let me spend an hour before they jetted out.  

Wednesday, tour of the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel. Sistine Chapel…. meh.  Kidding!!!!!!!  It is truly a work of art on a scale that you just have to see.  Paying for the tour was worth it, just the little asides on how it got done, the politics between artists, but seeing it is something you have to do if you are anywhere near it.   

Follow-up for the afternoon was the Coliseum.  Holy Emperor, McFly, I’m sorta moved that I was standing on some of the same spots that people stood almost 2k years ago.  Rome is full of that, excavations, bits of stone buildings.  Rome itself?  Yikes, it’s a dirty fright of a city, but I get its magic because I want to come back, but only for a day or two at a time.

These places are like Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon, if you’ve never seen them, you take the “idea” of them for granted, but once you go in person and see how truly vast or rich or beautiful they are, your perception of those terms are changed forever and some of the significance of your life is both dwarfed and magnified. 

Now it’s a good night’s sleep and home.  How I long for home. My own bed, unlimited coffee in the morning, my dog, my books, my kitchen I never use.  It has been a wonderful adventure and one I would do again.  Taking a trip like this with your grown children is a treat - you learn about each other in ways you would have never done in just daily living.  By the end of three weeks, we are now picking apart how each other eats or clacks a fork on teeth.  It is both frazzling to nerves and endearing.  We’ve learned how to be more patient with each other because the world’s a big place out here and can be lonely and scary unless you have some people to laugh and share it with.

Thanks for sharing this with me.  Ciao until next week!

1. Don’t overpack.  You wind up living on about 1/4 of what’s in your suitcase. I’m only bringing that 1/4 next time and washing it in the sink. It’s not that I packed that heavy, but…. everything weighs more when you are dragging it from train station to rental car agency to airport to hotel, etc.
2. See Rule 1.
3. Read rule before I left that says, “there are two kinds of people who go to Europe - those who pack light and those who wish they had packed light.” Brilliant Boys actually took this saying to heart, after I told it to them, and packed light. Their suitcase isn’t full and weighs almost nothing.

So… Avignon. Well, I wish we had rented the car here.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but there’s not a lot to do?  Outside the city would have been great, seeing the lavender fields and some wineries, but I just didn’t want to mess with parking, narrow city streets, astronomical parking fees.  Now I wish I had.  We meandered up to the old Papal Palace, which is big, but all the guide books say not to bother going inside, it’s empty.

Checking in with the boys –  Harry says best part of the trip so far:  Castles!!!  Alex says the best part of the trip so far:  Beautiful women and beer.  Harry concurred.

What I’ve noticed: 

1. The lack of loud laughter in public. I’m so used to that around my house and with my friends, not to mention that I’m a pretty loud laugher, and it just seems strange with all of these outdoor cafes not to hear boisterous laughter around a pint or two during the day.  Is that true most places in Europe? 
2. Every metro official I’ve met thus far claims not to speak any English.  Oh-kaaaay.
3. Even people who speak very little English are very kind to us non-French speaking yokels, and correct our bad French gently.

Things I need to know:  Has anyone been to the Pratesi Outlet Factory outside of Pistoia?  If so, can you really get the sheets for about 1/2 price?  Just need to know if it’s worth the drive from Florence.

So we wound up with a couple of days of nice slower downtime, which we needed, the slow intake of breath before the more adventurous Italian leg of our journey.  Okay, I’m out for the day… something I ate upset my stomach, and I’m just out of steam.  Miss you all!

Isn’t there some sort of law that nobody should have to live in hotel rooms with boys?  I’ve somewhat insulated myself from my sons’ messiness with a big house, confining the limits of leaving socks draped over chairs and boxers under chairs to their own rooms. Living in a hotel room with them?  Eh, not so fun.  I mean, they are a blast, but I’m not enjoying wading through piles of their clothes on my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Paris was… well, Paris.  My boys, as it turns out, are only tourists when they want to be.  Waiting in line to go into St. Chappelle is a big no, but waiting in line to get inside an old Chateau with turrets way up high is a big ole yes.

Another interesting fact — men and women shouldn’t be in the same car together when the chick is driving in a foreign country for the first time, the boys are navigating and, well, all hell breaks loose. It went something like this:  Harry has the GPS - for which I am eternally grateful that we had that or there would have been one or two young men now walking down the side of a road outside of Tours looking for a phone to call home to their father - and he thinks I am a terrifying driver, which I am not, but I am a cautious one and a tidge distracted in a new place with new driving rules and also, might I add, very narrow streets, and my depth perception pretty much blows.  Just the drive from the rental car place back to the train station (did I mention how much I love trains?  why can’t the U.S. get a good train system?  I would take it everywhere, screw the planes, it’s just not comfortable or fun, but trains…. ah, yes) was traumatic.  I was ready to kill him, and he was being snarky and mean and condescending, none of which are normal modes for him, except when someone else is driving that he thinks isn’t driving up to his standards… he who has had his license for, what, two years?  Anyway, no less than three times before we got a kilometer outside of Tours did I want to just dropkick his butt out of the car. His brother, who started his own commentary in the back was next on the list, but he was quieter. My mom and my aunt thought I did great.  So we had a “Come to Jesus” meeting once we got to the hotel that was along the lines of “You may not talk to me that way…. ever… or you will just be dead, and yelling at me and telling me I suck as a driver does not instill confidence in me… and roundabouts aren’t normal in Colorado, and I’m being cautious and I’d appreciate you saying ‘right’ or ‘left’ instead of ‘there’ or ‘this’ or ‘that.’  It’s more instructive, not to mention helpful.” 

What has come out of all that after three days of driving in the Loire Valley?  Thank God we have a GPS that we take with us everywhere.  Our new code phrase for “Blew it,” is “recalculating,” but it must be said with a slight sigh and world-weary tone like the lady on the GPS who pronounces General Leclerc as geneerallllek-lerk.  We think Chateau are super-fun. It’s even more fun when you can’t get into one and spend an hour walking around the entire outside of the walls and moat-that-now-is-a-big-old-garden, looking for a way up and over, only to come back ’round the front and find the sign we should have read at the beginning… you know, the one in front of the now open front gate that says their lunch hour ends at 2 and they re-open for business.

Yeah, we.are.brilliant.

The smell that I’ll remember forever is the climbing roses outside of our hotel here in Amboise and… well, everywhere! They are in full bloom and magnificently perfume the air.  Did you know they grow so much better next to a stone wall?  Well, yeah!  so now I’ve decided I need to build a stone wall around all or part of my backyard during the landscaping I’m doing in July.  The boys have offered to build it (I’m anticipating we get a one-foot start before I call someone to come finish).  It will be perfect for yellow roses.  Who says you can’t bring some of your vacation home with you?

The picture at the top isn’t one we took, but it is the old chateau at Amboise that we can see from our hotel window, with the Loire River out the other windows. Our USB/SD card adapter FUBAR’d before I could get my first picture uploaded, and finding another one of those has been impossible thus far - if we get one, we’ll be uploading hundreds of pictures.  Tomorrow we are on a train for Avignon.  Miss you all!

Today we’re cleaning off the porch. It seemed like the right time – June the first, and the first real day I’ve felt like it was warm enough to want to go sit out there and read.

Any of you all have a porch in a seasonal climate? Then you know about the annual ritual of the spring clean-off. I grew up in a D.C. suburb in a little brick house with no air conditioning, and the porch was the center of our lives in the summer. For any of you with Tara-like delusions of grandeur regarding the word “porch” – y’all are thinking of a … veranda. Heh. Our porch was an 8 by 10-foot slab, with screens we had to repair every year and a door that went to the living room. We ate on the porch at a wood picnic table – my sister and I fighting over the bench, my dad and mom on each end in aluminum folding chairs. When it got hot enough, my dad dragged up the army cots from the basement and we slept on the porch rather than die upstairs. I can still remember those still, close, unbelievably humid summer nights, drowsing in the heat listing to the crickets and night bugs and watching the fireflies dance.

Southern heat is a force to be reckoned with, and you either spend your waning energy despising it, or you learn to love it, or at least live with it, like someone you found yourself married to for decades without quite understanding why. Porches are perfect for all sorts of things – book reading, lounging, napping on the couch. Beer and lemonade taste better in 90-degree heat with your feet up, it’s been scientifically proven. A glass of white wine on the porch in the evening is a fine way to end any day. Your children are more beautiful in the candle-light of a late dinner on the porch. Look, they say, look! There go the lightning bugs!

My sister and I grumbled and whined and fought our way through eighteen years of cleaning off that porch – the sweeping, the bugs, the hose. Now we do it for my dad, who has a new aluminum chair this year (the webbing wore out on the old one) and likes to set a spell out there. He pretty much decamps to the porch in the summer, to read the paper and eat peaches at the picnic table.

My husband is still gone, so this morning I rounded up my bevy of helpers and we divided the duties for cleaning our own porch, which was everything I wanted in a porch as a little girl – wood, raised, with steps to the yard, lattice underneath, tall screens to the roofline, wide and deep enough for a wicker couch and chairs and a table big enough for summer dinners for the six of us, plus maybe some guests. The floor was green with pollen and left footprints when you walked across it. We swept (spider webs, dead flies.) We vacuumed (insect carcasses, birdseed). We scrubbed. We dragged the furniture out on the grass for “an airing” in the sun.

That feeling. Isn’t it funny? The way happiness can bubble up inside you on a hot day like a cold spring you thought had quit running, or at least had gone underground long enough you could no longer remember quite where it is. Sweeping and sneezing and ragging my kids about their lame vacuuming efforts, and watching the twins wash each rock in our sea glass and shell collection in a bucket in the sun, I popped the cap off a Heineken and thought, if I manage to live long enough to be old and feeble and on my deathbed, and someone asks me, do you have any regrets? When were you happiest? I hope my mind can reach back to that day on the porch.

PS Yes, that’s my porch.  That’s the photo from last spring, but it looks pretty much the same — except my fragrant Summer Wine climbing roses are twice as big, I’ve got to lash them to the pillars again.  And the scent for cleaning off your porch?  Guerlain’s delightfully summery Eau de Fleurs de Cedrat.

There is something almost soul stealing about long flights. You start the trip so excited… then the excitement gives way to zombie-like lack of sleep and exhaustion from changing planes, schlepping luggage, never drinking enough fluids, meandering around soulless airports, seeing what quickly seems like the same faces over and over and over again until you pretty much hate all humanity, if you believed they were human… or that you were still human.

And my butt! Can anyone ever invent a bottom cushion for an airplane seat that doesn’t create pressure points that just make you want to cry after three hours?

Compound that with taking one 18-year-old and one 21-year-old with you for their first trip to Europe and you get… it was great! From their lack of sleep and drooping eyes to their horror at whether they would survive the ride through Paris to out hotel, their first cup of coffee at an outdoor café in pouring rain while we waited for our hotel room to be ready (is there a conspiracy that most flights land you in Paris between 6-8a and no hotels have your room ready until 3 p.m.?) Letting them go off to explore so the 18-year-old could drink his first legal beer. Even watching him fall asleep on the couch in the hotel lobby and softly snoring, much to the hotel staff’s horror, was priceless. There is nothing better than taking your kids to Europe for the first time.

Now it’s 1 a.m., I’ve managed to get maybe 8 hours sleep in two shifts, and I’ll manage to get another 3-4 before we start a big day tomorrow, and it is raining buckets outside. My snazzy internet card that was supposed to work internationally is… well, not. I’m hoping it will find its signal somewhere, but if it can’t find one in the middle of Paris… well, I think AT&T oversold me on this card. Tomorrow it will be a mission to find a cyber café so you’ll actually ready this post on Thursday.  Hey, mission accomplished, the cafe next to the hotel has a wifi spot.

But what do you contemplate at 1 a.m. Paris time with the sounds of rain outside your window? (And which makes me laugh after reading March’s post about cheap bangs for your buck from yesterday) Shalini. At my son’s graduation, I wore Apres L’ondee pure parfum, and my sister was sniffing around and saw my bottle of Shalini and does the… “Whaaat’s thissss??!?!: that just unnerves me so. She spritzed it, and I remember just how beautiful it is… and more expensive than any perfume should ever be. It’s a ridiculously priced perfume… beyond ridiculous. All day, I kept smelling the most ephemeral and gorgeous smell. I knew it wasn’t me, though I did smell great. I finally figured out it was her. Tuberose wrapped in sunshine. We went to the driving range the afternoon of my son’s graduation, and I kept whiffing that smell. For some reason, I always thought it disappeared or was too light on me. Oh, no, not true, it haunted me every second of the day, wafting over from the one spritz on her neck.

First thing the next morning, I had my own on so I could haunt myself. It is lovely, and there really is nothing else that smells like it. Beautiful, buttery sunshine, that’s my best description. It’s still priced obscenely.

And what perfumes do you think I brought with me to Paris? Nada. I still don’t know why I didn’t even bring a decant or two in my suitcase, but maybe it’s just time for a three-week perfume holiday, and the only smells I’ll write about are the ones I smell during our trip.

Today’s smell is rain. CB does some scents that come close to capturing it, but he gets more of the earth in the rain. Rain itself is like no other smell. It slices through all the other smells around you and somehow makes them better without completely obliterating them. And thunder? Can I tell you? my idea of heaven is thunder and lightning rolling across a night sky. I used to lay on on my daddy’s truck on the farm when I was a girl in Kansas, watching thunderstorms roll in, the air ionized, bolts of lightning dancing sometimess up and down and sometimes just in the clouds, staying far above us. And the smell… Lord, that is the smell I want bottled to take with me everywhere.

Tomorrow’s adventures is some sight-seeing, though we may need an umbrella or two. Notre Dame and St. Chapelle if the rain keeps up, and probably just some aimless meandering around the St. Germain district after that and a visit with my Uncle and his family. I can’t wait to see my son’s eyes as they take all this in for the first time. Yes, there will be pictures, and check for me on my photoblog, the link is on the left.

Xo y’all!

My brother has presented me with a challenge, so I, of course, turn to all of you to see what I’ve done so far and to see if you have suggestions or additions.

Tom opened up a bar and grill recently, which is is doing an amazing business in a tiny town in Kansas called Hoxie - everyone loves his food because he’s a great cook - and he barely has time to sleep, though he is as happy as a clam,  It’s one the most fun place in the town world to go — one of those places where everyone does know your name and people talk all around the room to everyone in the restaurant instead of just across their own table.  I attribute that atmosphere to Tom’s personality, which is outgoing, brash, irreverent, and he’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever known. The logo for the bar is “Beer, Burgers and Bullshit,” and that pretty much is just the way it is. He does look a little like Sam Elliott, but don’t tell him I said that because he has a monstrous big ego that needs no further feeding and watering.  He calls me lil lil sissah (as opposed to my big sister, Shirley, who is just lil sissah), and he is generally a charming, unrepentant rogue… and he will take that as a compliment.  Of course I adore him.

Success has its problems, though. Tom would like to get rid of the Eau de Grease scent that often follows him around, and he also likes to think of himself as a stud (*shrugs*).   He wants me to put together a “Sam Elliott Sampler Pack” full of all the scents I think Sam Elliott would wear, which would then be perfect for him.. I want it to be a wide variety of types, like some musk, leather, smoke, etc. This is what I’ve got so far, please let me know if you think one of these doesn’t work or if it needs something that I’m just not thinking of:

• Serge Lutens Musc Koublai Khan - it’s pretty likely he will sniff this and say something about it smelling like his pair after he’s been working all day (the language would be much more frank and graphic than my delicate version), but I think if he waits 30 minutes, he may find himself liking it - or not, but I have to be there when he tries it.
• CB Musk Reinvention - I’m iffy on this one. It will either be a big hit or a big miss, but I still think he should try it just so I can get a read on what his skank tolerance is.  Since I grew up with him and worked on the farm with him and he rubbed his sweaty armpit on my head, I’m thinking his skank tolerance has to be high.
• Etat Tom of Finland - I just think this is great smoky leather scent. Since his name is Tom, he’ll like that, too, plays into his ego to wear a scent with his name on it.
• Annick Goutal Eau de Fier - This may be uncomfortably close to the smoky bar and grill smell.
• Knize Ten - Great, classic leather, plenty rugged
• Caron Yatagan - why not?
• Helmut Lang Cuiron - iffy on this one. It’s a little less rugged, but could work great for his more refined moments, if he had any.
• Ormonde Jayne Ormonde Man - for special occasions, if he ever gets an evening out or just feel, well, um beautiful for the night, in a very manly way, of course.
• Parfums de Nicolai New York - because it is subtle and beautiful and perfect.
• Le Labo Patchouli 24 - sorry, every guy on my list gets this to try. It’s mandatory, they may hate it, but I don’t care, they have to sniff it.
• Hermessence Vetiver Tonka — again, always on any guy sampler list because I think it’s elegant and addictive.
• Hermessence Poivre Samarcande - great peppery scent
• Montale Black Oud — Needed an oud in here for him to try and see if he likes it, might as well start with the killer.
• Elternhaus kowtowingtoeveryreligiontothepointthatitsoffensive thing or Mark Buxton 03 from Biehl - Despite the goofiness of the Elternhaus, I think it’s a great incense, as is the MB03 from Biehl.  Both Mark Buxton, who I really ought to marry.  Does anyone knows if he plays on my side of the playground?
• Cdg Incense — can’t make up my mind on this. Thinking no on Avignon and Kyoto and leaning towards Zagorsk for the woody elements, which will cover a woody scent as well

Then I have a bunch of follow-on scents, depending on what he liks here. So…. the thoughts?

Before I put in this post of March’s, I don’t have that good of an excuse, except real job demands are interfering, but should be abating tomorrow, and I hope to get something written then.

From March:

We are in the midst of the Big Cheese Family Reunion, months in the planning. There are 17 people staying here right now, half of them children. If you dropped by you’d think I was running a wildly creative but extremely disorganized preschool, staffed by loud men with drinking problems.

I am cooking food in what I think of as diner quantities. Breakfast: 4 lbs of bacon, 2 dozen eggs. And that was just for the GUYS. (What perfume goes with the smell of bacon-saturated clothing? Chergui. No, seriously.)

So. No perfume blogging. In fact, no computer time, period. I have some notes, but just can’t get a decent perfume post together. I hear these people are leaving Wednesday.

In times like these, I hit the Apres l’Ondee pretty hard. It doesn’t seem to offend no matter how much I dump on, and it comforts me, although right now I’d take a Valium if I could find one.

In lieu of a regular post, here’s a link to a story in the Washington Post called Appealing to the Senses, about the new high-tech marketing approaches of creating scented packages – new scented inks, for example, or scented drink-through bottle caps that improve the customer’s perception of the taste. Interesting stuff.