valentina

I was petting Ella Bean, Basset Queen, because she was feeling a little needy. Ella is more or less a rescue dog, and she wasn't treated very well in her previous home, judging from the lump on her rib where it was probably kicked and broken. When she gets needy, I sit and pet her and talk to her for a while and then she just gets giddy and runs around like a maniac. She tucks her butt down, causing it to come very close to hitting the floor as she runs. Then she grabs a dog toy or dog blanket and drags it around or tosses it in the air. It is hilarious. Tonight I was petting her and she went into her happy dog frenzy. I wondered what dog toy was that red-maroon color and why she could so easily toss it in the air. It was a pair of my panties. She'd done a detour into the bathroom and with missile-like accuracy, dove into a pile of clothing that I was preparing to take down to the washing machine and grabbed my underpants. Then she played hide-and-seek with me, undies in her mouth. I finally retrieved them. Bassets are notorious for having an underwear fixation. One woman on a Basset list that I belong to told a story of signing for a package, while her Basset appeared beside her, toting a bra for the postman to admire. (Lucky it wasn't the perv postman, he would have taken it as an omen.) Anyway, I think this panty-stealing incident was in retaliation for my public airing of Ella Bean's fetishes. Considering I have now only revealed more of her fetishistic behavior, more punishment is certain to come my way.

I would say that all dogs in the Hound group and panty sniffer/swipers. I've been around Golden Retrievers and Airedale/Wheaten Terriers and Boxers, and the only undie bandits were the Hounds. Hounds are just plain goofy, I am convinced. They are the Jethro Bodines of the dog world.

Birthday girl Dawndie needs to do a little shoppin'! It's your birth month, you must buy yourself a gift or two or three!

Queen Mab is one of those scents that I was frimped about a year ago and refused to even test, because I was so easily frightened away by florals as a BPAL noob. With a year of testing and the discovery that florals need not always send fear into my heart, I ventured forward with the Mab. In the imp, it's rich and complex; there's a real depth to this fragrance. My body is a rose-amping machine, and I can tell there's rose in this blend, but there's so much going on that the intensity of the rose blowing up is held down. After a half-hour or so, the rose calms down (or burns off) and what's left is a very calm, sandalwood-skin musk smell with a basis of floral. I can't really pick one particular floral out of the mix, they all work very well in concert. Queen Mab is really very discreet and understated; it is not a girly scent, but rather one of a full-blown woman.

In the imp, Endymion has a nice pear whiff with a floral/soapy undertone. When it hits my skin, I do get a big hit of pear and lily of the valley for about 30 seconds, when the rose then takes over. Rose always takes over on my skin! Then, after about 10 minutes, it turns to a fabric softener smell. Not unpleasant, just soapy/fabric softener. This is how Dirty was supposed to smell on me, and it didn't. While a fresh soapy smell isn't especially my style, the scent on its own (without my skin interfering) would be nice either as a household scent or as a fragrance for dried flower petals. It's very lovely and feminine.

I love the garden! It's so darn cute! As are 'rents! As for that zucchini, well, it looks like you may have strained a shoulder just holding that monster up for a photo! I reminds me of fishing trip photos when guys catch the big whopper!

Every now and then, Ella Bean the Basset Queen will tend to Mugzy's front and rear ends (pie-hole and corn-hole duties) and then decide it's time to mount him. It's usually a half-hearted little humping and she either gets bored and slides off or he sits up. When she somehow gets turned around or is too lazy to head to his rear end, she humps his head. He sits up rather quickly, as you would well imagine. The most entertaining humping incident occurred once when Mugzy had rolled over on his back and I was rubbing his belly. I walked off only to have the Bassetress promptly pounce on top of him, much to his alarm. Her belly was right over his rear legs and when he let out a shocked little "Gnnnarfff," he kicked his legs up in the air. This feet were exactly under her belly and he elevated her off the ground for a little bit. It reminded me of a circus acrobatic trick. The looks on their faces were priceless. He rolled on his side and she rolled to the floor (it wasn't like he had her up that far) and she proceeded to chew him out. He stood up and walked off. This is primarily a dominance issue with Ella, who is utterly convinced she is alpha bitch over poor Mugzy. However, I know women who act this way -- seriously. My annoying coworker tends to be this way; she is normally loud and mouthy, an insane suck-up to authority figures, but will then abruptly do something really sexual in nature to certain men. Sometimes after she's gone on one of her power walk breaks and she's wearing a longer tent-like dress, she will go into a male coworker's office and, while leaving her dress demurely between her legs, will pull the sides up to mid-thigh. This woman DOES NOT have a nice figure. Whenever this happens, I go to a picture of a beaver that I have earmarked on Google, copy it and paste it into an email to him. The subject of the email is usually "LEAVE IT TO THE BEAV." He sits there as she regales him and hears the little "ding" in his inbox, and he knows that the beaver has landed. Another good friend of mine is also a favorite of hers; he comes down to do business with the guy who gets the thigh show. Her mode with this man is to walk in, yell "Hi MAN!" at him, then stick her tits in his face, back arched, butt hiked in the air. She's also been known to kick off her shoe and ask hin to look at her foot. Seriously. This is not a pretty sight, and I sometimes fear he's going to pass out or vomit. He tries to tell her to back off by saying things like: "You do not have to get in my face and tell me that story at such a level of intensity," or (sarcastically) "Thank you for showing me your foot," but it does no good. He usually calls me up later and says: "Why must she fucking do that to me every fucking time I walk in the door???" But I always think she looks like an uncute version of the Bassetress when she does this. Did anything like this ever happen on "Seinfeld?" My coworker needs help, and a lot of it, but our boss refuses to deal with her because he's simply not interested in a fight. An alpha male he is not. We sometime joke about him being the "anti-silverback" (silverbacks are often the alpha gorilla male) or "Mr. Loopner" (from Saturday Night Live -- Mr. Loopner was born without a spine). And what to me is alpha bitch-dom? I tend to look at the canine world and the true alpha bitch females that I've known. They usually don't have to display it in any manner other than a look or a turn of the head. If someone is too dunderheaded to get it, they simply display their teeth. Complete morons or very willful pack members get a growl or a nip. I am frequently convinced that dogs are apparently able to function at a higher level of subtlety than some humans.

No, but... there's a guy I work quite a bit who's an attorney. He's very very very smart, can have an wicked funny sense of humor and he could be really cute if a woman could get hold of him and tidy him up a bit. He looks more than a bit like a somewhat disheved, slightly older Christian Bale. So where am I going with this? He must have some sort of anxiety disorder, because his hands shake all the time and when he really gets wound up, he'll stand in my office and yank at the back of his underwear. I tell him to have a seat. Then he picks at his nose. I am not joking. I have several witnesses. Anyway, this guy once was eating popcorn and talking to me in the hallway. We have marble hallways and they get cleaned maybe once a week. He dropped a piece of popcorn on the floor and he PICKED IT UP AND ATE IT. Do I know the grossest people in the world, or what?

I wonder if Greta Garbo uttered her famous "I vant to be ah-lone"* comment because she was simply trying to sit in a coffeehouse and write in her journal without goofballs or well-meaning sorts interrupting her? Today I was sitting in Meadowlark, writing, when this old dude who's down there all the time stopped to ask me if I wrote in a journal every day. Well yeah... So then he had to tell me about his career as a journalist and then as an ad agency rep. There went 10 minutes of writing time. And I don't think I told y'all about the guy, a few weeks ago, who walked up to me and said "You look like a rock and roll girl..." Away he went on a story about the band Badfinger. According to him, it's a tragic, tragic story, apparently there's only one surviving member, two committed suicide, one "just died" and the surviving guy won't return this character's emails. This guy had aviator glasses that appeared to be relics from when Badfinger was in their heyday (early '70's, I think) and what I can only describe as a Prince Valiant haircut. He did make me think of Toni Tennile of the Captain and Tennile. I let him go for 5 minutes and then shut my journal and declared it was time to go back to work. You might suggest that I go to a different coffee house, but really, I am the least molested at Meadowlark. I used to go to a place called (imaginatively) The Coffee House, and there's a crazy guy named Alvin who goes in there. He's one of those brilliantly talented, smart, yet insane people. He came up to me and declared that in a former life, I was a Viking Queen. There was also the pervert mailman. He was one of those mensa-level IQ people who said the hell with it and became a postal employee. This guy was, at the time, in his late 50's and one day he felt compelled to tell me that he was having an affair with a disabled woman on his route. I nearly vomited. But later he told me (and a very appalled friend who had happened to join me) that this woman dumped him for a real boyfriend, and I was so happy for her. Then I went to a place called Coffee Culture. It eventually closed down. Bummer -- the best coffee in town. Terrance, the guy who ran it was a master coffee roaster, and a complete character in his own right. But it was great, because he was so odd that he scared off the really kooky people. He was a Vietnam vet, an old hippie and somehow knew how to freak out the freaks. But he didn't try to do it; it just happened. I remember the perv postman wouldn't go near the place. Terrance got a lot of business from women fleeing the perv's haunts. I did my best journaling there, because even when Terrance came over to talk to me, he'd have to stop whenever a customer came in. But I regale people at work with my coffee house stories and they love them. One coworker has declared me a "weirdo magnet." And I try to be philosophical, for if I get someone jabbering at me, I try to view it as probable fodder for later journaling efforts. And besides, what would I do with a vanilla life? *Why is it that when I write something in a Greta Garbo accent, it will remind most people of Governor Ah-nold Swartzenegger? Damn his Republican ass. And BTW, I still do miss that ol' poonhound, William Jefferson Clinton.

I put this in the thread about how you layer your BPAL, but I'm going to retell it here, 'cause we all know I love to layer BPAL and give results of the layering adventures provocative little names. This was a bit of an accidental layering -- I was emailing a friend trying to describe the smell of Cockaigne to her, so I did a fresh application on the inside of my left wrist. About an hour later, I decided to sniff Dorian, just because I do that to myself every now and then, and thought, oh what the hell, let's put a bit on. And without thinking (that happens a lot), I put it on the inside of my left wrist. Then I thought, oh yeeeewww, that isn't going to work, not one little bit. Know what? It's really nice together. The Cockaigne is sweet, sweet, sweet, and the Dorian gives it a zip. But let's consider for just a moment what I could name this blend... Hehehe! And I really didn't mean to blend those two scents so I could come up with some perverse notion for a layered scent name, really! Honestly! Not that the blend is a particularly ooh-la-la producer. Most people told me it was nice, very nice, pleasant, but not a show-stopper. But that's OK. because we needn't have every BPAL we wear produce a drooling, gobsmacked result, correct? There are times and places when even I wish to avoid that reaction. For example, when I'm walking in a coffee house and the dudes with the mullets are sitting by the front door. I've read on the forum that some women get the ooh-la-la response when they wear foody scents. Not me; the rousing scents to the opposite gender, at least on my body, are (in no particular order): 1. Smut, or Smut layered with O (aka Smut-O-Rama) 2. Snake Oil 3. Siren 4. O layered with single-note Tunisian Patchouli 5. Urd, but only every now and then Women tend to appreciate and comment favorably upon: 1. O, all alone 2. Siren 3. Snake Oil 4. Urd 5. Khajurajo 6. Dorian And if you were to ask me what smells the very best on me (to my nose), I'd pick: 1. O and Tunisian Patchouli 2. Underpants 3. Urd 4. Siren 5. Khajurajo 6. Snake Oil 7. Cockaigne 8. Smut I have really high hopes for Mme. Moriarity. I really do. She's in the pending order that is due to arrive next. Fingers crossed.

For me, O is the ultimate layering scent. I almost never wear O alone, I always use it to cut really strong scents. Sometimes it helps me get used to scents that I think are too strong at first, or it lets me tone down that scent if I want to wear it but I think it's too intense. I know O works with Snake Oil, and I'm guessing it might be very nice with Haunted? I've never tried Haunted, so I'm not sure. Do a search on the layering thread and see what other people are trying with Haunted... It's always amazing, what works, because some of the combos are counterintuitive!

I think three outstanding orders sounds about right, that's what I have going on right now! I ordered the Brides of Dracula, it sounds so good!

I recall when I was a noob, I checked my order in CCNow and it said "shipped," so I posted in the squee section of the forum that my first order had shipped. I got a fairly scathing comment in response to my post that I didn't know what I was talking about -- that "shipped" meant the order had been sent to the Lab, not that it had been sent to me. The post started out, "Sorry to rain on your parade, sweetie...." It was very condescending and was intended to make me look and feel stupid, which it did, at least for a while. Then I decided that the person who wrote it was simply rude. (BTW, this person isn't very active on the forum anymore.) Anyway, I know of what you speak, for I experienced it. There are ways to address issues other than slapping people down. The Lab is terribly clear about its shipping times in the front page of the site -- gently prodding impatient noobs to "read the fine print" is appropriate, but being snotty isn't.

Actually, if your parents were to move to the same city, they'd eventually stop treating you like an adolescent and you'd stop feeling like one whenever they put you in the parental time warp. Plus, knowing that she'd get to see you a lot, would probably make the SnarkMother ease up just a bit. That seems to be the case with a lot of parent/child dynamics that I know. And I'm old enough to have friends with kids who are growing up and out of the house, and I listen to my friends talk on the phone to their kids and I want to say: "Damn! Back off!" One woman in particular treated her daughter like a 25-year-old when she was 15, and now that her daughter is 20 and has moved out, she talks to her like she's 15. I don't get it, but then I'm not a parent. I was the youngest child by 10 years in my family, and I'm not sure my immediate family can yet accept that I'm an adult. I hope the visit ends placidly and sweetly, and whatever your parents decide to do, it's workable for all of you!

In the new GC release category, be sure to check out Cockaigne! I have been pimping that scent all over the forum today, but it certainly has its share of honey, for all those Poo Bear hunny lovers!

In the bottle, Midnight on the Midway is mainly a dusty, sugary floral. Once it's on my body, it initially turns into that same dusky floral with a bit of sweetness. I'd assume the night-blooming florals might include lily and maybe cereus, because it's sweet, but not brightly floral or extremely heady. I keep coming back to the word "dusky," because that's the mood of the floral scent that I'm picking up. This is the aroma that lasts for about an hour, and then burns off so the sugary incense kicks in. It is yummy! On me, unfortunately, my body eats up the sugary incense smell the way I'd eat cotton candy and it's largely gone after another hour. This is a dark, mysterious sort of scent with very intriguing layers. It really is like a darkened circus midway on a summer night, with the flowers in bloom and the overtones of the circus smoke and sugar lingering in the air. It's pretty, yet a bit foreboding and mysterious, and I love that; I only wish my body chemistry didn't do such silly things with the scent.

I mentioned this in my review of Cockaigne, but it's very similar to Monster Bait Underpants on my body -- not quite as edgy, but quite similar in the sweeter elements. If I took a dab of high-quality single-note sandalwood and put Cockainge over the top, I'd almost be at Underpants. For any Underpants lovers, I'd say it's at least worth trying an imp of Cockaigne, because it's yummy in its own right!

Here'a a photo of Puddin' Tom, the cat who came to live on my front porch. He's lounging on the bench, contemplating his next nap. As you can see, he's a little rough around the edges, but he's probably around 10 years old and he's earned his rugged good looks:

And the winner gets to stand up and yell: "CORNHOLE!!"

Before Ella Bean, the hound of the house was a deeply weird mixed-breed named Mischief, aka Mischief Luella, aka Missy Lu. She was part Aussie Shepherd, part Treeing Walker Coonhound, and she was very epileptic. She was on lots of medications to control the seizures, and being a tad druggy all the time only enhanced her natural oddness. I always said that she wanted to find sheep in trees or to herd raccoons. So confused. She did retain some of the acute intelligence of her Aussie Shepherd heritage, but it was tempered by the food-driven and general goofy tendencies of her inner hound. Missy was a lot like Pluto in the Disney Cartoons. She could flip anything edible off her nose and catch it, she would happily offer to shake hands in return for food, and her favorite command was "assume the position," whereupon she would roll over on her back. However, she was a patient old soul (the drugs probably helped -- notice the glassy eyes) and she used to happily pose for photos in all sorts of attire. Here she is, in attire fit for Mexican Independence Day.

The issue with the Puddin' integration into the rest of the household truly centers around Puddin's tendency to whomp the hell out of Ella Bean. He and Mugzy could keep a respectful distance from each other; the Basset knows no boundaries and she is also stubby enough to generally be at Puddin's eye level. She wants to stick her face in his, more out of pure curiosity than aggression, but he is having none of it. The assimilation efforts continue...

Today was a quieter day than yesterday, but then, how could it help but not be? I did have some other character at Meadowlark come over and bug me at noon. This guy is an attorney, about 60, has the worst effing teeth I have ever seen. They look like Keith Richards in his pre-veneers days. This guy was telling me he has a 10-year-old son, and I'm thinking, "who would have sex with you?" Now don't get me wrong, my taste in men is about 50 years wide and transcends ethnic and socio-economic boundaries. In fact, last night I was at the gym and listening to music, but I was semi-watching CNN. Who's the guy who does the mid-evening talk show, sort of politics, sort of entertainment? Is his name Glenn Beck? Is that right? Anyway, he was talking to a guy about space travel, and why this country had such a boner about going to the moon, then just shut it off. The man he was talking to was older, maybe in his mid-late 60's, but I thought damn it, that old guy is hot! I was getting worried about myself; in fact, I was almost ready to toss myself off a tall building, but then I figured out (because I unplugged my music and plugged the headphones in to listen to TV) that the older man in question is a former Apollo and maybe early Space Shuttle mission astronaut. He's been to the moon! And back! Who gets to say that and have it be literally true? While the media and NASA portrayed these guys as squeaky clean aw-shucks American-as-apple-pie guys, anyone who's read or watched "The Right Stuff" knows these were manly men, macho as hell, and some of them probably were rather white-hot stud muffins behind the scenes. (Or at least I like to think so.) And really, that was some wild-ass shit those guys were doing; the technology in the late 60's and 70's was pretty damn rough compared to today. It's a wonder they all made it back from the moon safely. Their balls were either brass or so big that they had to ride shotgun in sports cars. This one is still exuding testosterone, to such an extent that I could sense it over TV. All I could say was, hot damn!

I was late, as usual, for work (it's a slow time of the year and no one really cares), so I did my usual run to the coffee house. I was still in my weird semi-funk that started last night. So here's what happened. I got out of my car, and a guy who works at a store next door, who I visit with a lot, is getting off his bike. He's gay, but he's very sweet about giving his female friends compliments, so he started whistling and yelling that my outfit deserved a hug. So he ran over and gave me a hug. Then, sitting outside the coffeehouse, was one of the characters who frequents the place. This guy seems like a bit of a burn-out, although he bikes a lot and is pretty good shape, although he was sitting around talking to me about long-distance cycling as he smoked his cigarette. (People who do things like that crack me up, I think it's exquisitely amusing.) I don't know his entire story, except that he has been around and around and around. He likes to tell me that he's in love with me, which always confused me, because I was sure that this guy is gay, but I think the honest truth is that he loves everyone so much that he sleeps with men and women. He just can't help himself, you know. So much love, so little time... Last week he told me that his name means "wandering gypsy" in Czech (yeah, right) and now he calls me his "gypsy girl." So I've been called worse, and actually, I like that moniker. I noticed the barrista who normally works there in the early mornings was standing outside talking to someone in the parking lot. I walked in to find one of the owners there, in a very weird mood. He blurted out me that he and the barrista wouldn't be working together any more, because they just got into a big fight in front of customers. I tried to sympathize, but he was about ready to cry and he couldn't talk. I went back outside to talk to Mr. Wandering Gypsy, who is friends with both the barrista and the owner. The barrista then drove past in her car, stopped and yelled out the window: "Just so you know, I just got fired. Just so you know." I'm thinking, hmmm... I just thought you got moved to night shift, not fired. I think she'll still have a job if she wants it -- she was probably fired when she walked out, but the owner had started to change his mind and come up with other options. The Wandering Gypsy and I visited a bit and I discovered he's not the brain-dead slacker that I thought he was, he's just a character and a horny slut, but otherwise an OK sort. I went to work and he went in to talk to the owner and try to figure out what the story was regarding the firing and/or reassignment of hours. I got to the office to discover a phone message from a friend announcing that she'd spent $150 to purchase something from a dermatologist that's supposed to make your eyelashes grow. Then she called me to tell me the same thing one more time. Considering she called me about 5 times a day Monday through Wednesday to obsess about her job, this is at least a change. Do I ever call this woman and freak out about my problems? No. Then I got a phone call from a woman who used to work across the hall from me, until she had a stroke. Her optic nerve was affected and she sees prisms if she doesn't wear special glasses. I feel very badly for her, but she was a treacherous and difficult person to deal with professionally. Most people in this building stayed the hell away from her. I used to be cordial enough with her, and apparently she has decided that I am a good friend. That is so sad -- she had so few friends that someone who was merely polite with her is a good friend. She was upset I hadn't responded to her email from last Friday and wanted to make sure she hadn't offended me. I feel sorry for her, being stuck at home all the time, and I'm sure she needs human contact. I'll talk to her every now and then, just because if I were in the same situation, I'd want as many outside world contacts as possible. That's one of those things where I'll invoke karma, and say it just must be part of my karma. But. Le sigh. I get really tired of being a ray of fucking sunshine or a wailing wall. Nevermind that most of my troubles are things that I won't or can't share with anyone, much less acquaintances. And a lot of my troubles are so sterotypical that they embarass me. I would sound like a composite of the "Sex And The City" characters, but mainly Carrie. That alone could get me in a bad mood; can't I have more unique "issues?" I'm just joking here. None of us want to have issues or problems or ill health. I am Miss Crabbypants and this morning I've seen someone lose their job and talked to someone who can't see unless she wears special glasses to make the prism-vision go away. It is all a matter of perspective, I say, and yet... I still want what I want and I want it now. Waaaah! But I better not say that, I'll probably get it, and then ask "What was I thinking????"

Actually, Mr. Wandering Gypsy, who I talked to in the morning, is probably the grown-up version of Anthony Michael Hall's character in "Sixteen Candles." This isn't life imitates "Seinfeld," it's life imitates "Sixteen Candles!"