A Walk

My darlings!  I’d planned to write a long, thoughtful post on Arpege – and I will – just not this week.   It’s been an… odd.. week, fraught with anxiety, which is bizarre because NOTHING ‘bad’ happened.  I think it just might be post-‘you’re okay/everything is okay’ weirdness.  To wit:

1.  I had my one month followup to the surgery – turns out I am ahead of the curve, recovery-wise (imagine that!) and I can resume light exercise beyond the elliptical (still no core work for at least the next two weeks – MD said he trusts me to listen to my (literal) gut and make smart decisions (which I shall attempt to do).
2. All my logistics (current projects are persackly where they are supposed to be – DONE!) Logistics drive me mad – all my attempts to ‘manage’ freight/delivery goes right out the window the minute it gets in the hands of the actual freightline.  Grrrr.
3. Weather is halfway decent (no ice, just a dusting of snow) So……huh… wonder why the vague unease…I figure it’s probably that cortisol dump – it’s been a whirlwind of vague ‘fight or flight’ re the surgery and to have it now be…nothing? The Return to Normal that is always an adjustment from the holidays?  Who knows?   Anyway,  since I didn’t feel like going to the gym a second time yesterday, I took a walk.  About 1/4 mile trek around my neighborhood.  It was ffffreeezing! cold, which I wasn’t expecting (it was above freezing but damp with a 25mph wind – I took one step out and turned back around a grabbed a hat!).  Saw these fiends
   

   FIENDS!!!

   and it wasn’t until then I realized it’s been ages since I’ve been on a walk!  My foot and leg are feeling so much better, post-surgery (apparently my U was the size of a 4-mos pregnancy, which might’ve had something to do with All That Drama.  So!  More Walking!  And I label geese ‘fiends’ because they are strong, mean as snakes, especially when they have goslings (which these fiends do not – at least not right now) and they will not hesitate to attack you   (years ago I nearly got my leg broken, riding my bike near a clutch of them and their baby fiends).  …I need to walk more because they’re on the street right behind me.  I hear them daily but don’t think I’d ever seen them.  Doesn’t matter – they’re still fiends.  Fwiw they weren’t any happier to see me than I was to see them.  Fiends.

Perfume for a walk in the cold:  it was an odd (but deliberate) choice: vintage L’Aimant parfum.  L’Aimant was Coty’s aldehydic offering (it was launched 5 years after No 5) with a creamier base than No 5 (my opinion) – it was my mother’s preference over No 5 (she had that whole ‘whorehouse on payday’ response to high end perfumes, not realizing that back in the day, Coty was high end).  My perfume is ancient and in excellent condition… but the creamy base and (possibly) thinner concentration of oils (v. No 5) was no match for those vicious winds.  I have tried several iterations (all vintages) of L’Aimant in extreme cold, and it… well, it just gets beaten up.  No 5, on the other hand, just says ‘hold my coupe’, punches the cold right in the throat and grinds her stiletto heel in its eyeball (and isn’t that a visual for a weekday post)

We’re betwixt and between with outdoor smells right now – the earth is still asleep, even though the snow and ice are all gone (and it’s mid-January in the Midwest!  we could be under 3 ft of snow tomorrow) – it’s just … neutral right now.  I would say it’s odd but it’s probably normal… and I’m the odd one.  😉

Back home… walking through the DR I kept wondering ‘what am I smelling?’ – it was that beguiling, vaguely loamy-green sweetness that plants give…but I don’t have any actual flowering plants right now.  But I DO have flowering bulbs.

…and omgosh!!! such a fleeting, stunning fragrance, all the more surprising as I’d had a group from the persack same bag, same bowl, in my bedroom – and never got even the merest hint of scent.  Huh.  but I ain’t mad – also, like a lot of bulb-type scents I’ve never found a real example of it in perfumery but that might be because I have a difficult time holding onto the scent, let alone parsing it.    Interestingly, the scent is more pronounced when I come in from the cold (no doubt Diane Ackerman has some scientific reason behind this.)

I’ll tell you what I’ve been eating but don’t blame me if you fall over from boredom:  I’ve been eating salad/scrambled eggs (not on the salad), salmon (on the salad) and a squickton of those NutThins… and that’s about it.  TMI (though I suspect you all know this) I made sure to front-load (and then continue) as much fiber and water as possible, post-surgery and since my workouts were diminished (and I still get so damb TIRED) I didn’t want to add anything overwrought (pizza?  Nahmgood) to offset the balance.  I am so BORING right now.  But I haven’t hurt anybody and I am not dissolving in a puddle of tears.  So… WIN!

So.  What’s going on in your world?  Have you settled back into post-holiday normalcy?  Whatchawearin’ perfume-wise?  Any ideas for paperwhites in perfumery?