A Thank You, and A Christmas "Buy This" (or A Trip Down Amy's Olfactory Lane)

First off, I want to thank everyone for your kind comments about my last post. I hope you each know how much those words mean to me! My mom is out of the hospital (although they still are waiting for test results and still aren't sure what is wrong) and I think the return to normalcy will hopefully keep Dad's "incidents" to a minimum. But really---thank you.

In the mall I go to most often, there's an enormous Bath & Body Works. I swear you can smell that scent of a million different soap/lotion/spritz flavors halfway down the mall. Whenever we walk past it, my kids invariably stop, sniff, and then beg to go in to wash their hands. As there is no other experience in the world that has them begging to wash their hands, I usually say yes. But, since it's Christmas, I went there by myself this week, for stocking stuffers. I promised I would only buy stocking stuffers. Only stocking stuffers. Nothing else.

Yeah right.

I have this problem in that store: so many things smell so good. THERE. But once I get my purchase home, far too often I discover it's "too" something---too fruity or too sweet, too powerful or too an undefinable something. And then that damn expensive (to borrow Kendell's description) soap/lotion/spritz/body butter (on sale this week! Buy One Get One Free!)/lip gloss/body cream/glycerin soap sits in my growing collection of TOO something (and thus used only once or twice) scents in a bin under the bathroom sink.

So I've learned to be careful in Bath & Body Works. There ARE some scents I don't like---the ones that smell like food. I obsess about chocolate enough already. If I smelled like it I'd never get it out of my mind. The brown sugar or gingerbread or caramel ones smell yucky to me. And then there are the scents that I associate with certain experiences so strongly, I either don't want to disrupt the association or I don't want to remember it. There's the country apple, which IS the smell of Nathan's delivery and hospital stay and newborn days; likewise the mandarin orange, which is the same for Kaleb's newborn time, and I smell them to remind myself how it felt, but I don't want to actually use them anymore because I want them to only smell like Nathan's newborn days or like Kaleb's. Did that make any sense? I don't buy the association scents because I don't want to disrupt that memory. And then other scents are so associated with negative experiences, I can't stand them. Not because of how they smell but because of the memories they bring back. Like the sweet pea---can I just say how much I used to love that scent? I went through a phase as a child when I desperately wanted my dad to plant sweet peas in our flower beds (something he never did). I was so excited when they came out with it in lotion form! But alas, I received a whole new package of it on the Christmas before I started student teaching, so now it's associated with anxiety and exhaustion and terror and that dang student who was determined to make the creepy-old-lady student teacher cry (he never managed it, by the way). I will NEVER buy the sweet pea. So at least some of my choices are narrowed down. I hardly ever make an impulse buy. Instead, I make myself try a scent out first--- sometimes five or six different times before I buy it.

But this week I walked out with a total impulse purchase along with my stocking stuffers (despite my NOTHING BUT STOCKING STUFFERS mantra): Very Festive Pomegranate. You know I have that emotional response to pomegranates, but this doesn't really smell like the fruit. Or, it's just vaguely fruity. Definitely not TOO fruity. With cinnamon undertones. But the thing I love the most is that it also has a vague pine-tree smell. I used it today for the first time and...yum. Jakey even told me I smelled good when I hugged him goodbye this morning.

And dang if he isn't right. I think this one will never see the dark recesses of the "too something" bin underneath the bathroom sink! Definitely a Christmas "Buy This" recommendation.

Comments

[Wendy Reed]

Soooo happy things are better for you today!

And oh man B&B is HEAVEN! :o)

[Jane]

Glad things have improved from yesterday. I can so relate to the scent and evoking memory relation.

[Lorrie]

You sound much more happy today, and more in the Christmas spirit!
I'll be shopping some this morning, might just have to stop by and take a sniff of that scent! Have a good day!

[Liz Ness]

Hmm...sounds like it smells yummy! Might have to try that one (I'm usually so sensitive, become a sneezing mess, but that one sounds like it might be right up my alley)!