filigree_shadow

I haven't reviewed this one yet, so I'll review it now in anticipation of getting one of the resurrected bottles. I've been wearing Glasya for about five hours now on both wrists. The left wrist smells like a sultry civet*/musk/patchouli combination, and the right wrist smells sweeter and doesn't have the civet. It seems like the civet is noticeable only on the left wrist and the ylang ylang only on the right one. (Not sure why different wrists with the same scent smell different... maybe I started with more lotion on one of them or something.) There's a little bit of rose on both wrists too, but not a lot. To be honest I can't smell any dragon's blood at all. It's mostly dark, musky, and sensual -- the rose is there and gives it a slightly feminine quality, but the civet turns it a little naughty. I think this is definitely one of the sexiest BPAL scents, and to me it feels like luxury. Like an indulgence. It makes me think of a gorgeous, sexy woman who knows she turns heads. I really love it. At this point my imp is at least two years old, and I can't wait to get the new bottle to see what it smells like before it's aged. I have a feeling I'm not going to like the fresh version quite as much as I like this imp (Glasya has a few notes that always seem to get better with age), but it'll be interesting to find out. *One little disclaimer: Civet always smells good on me.

I've had a horrible migraine today. I wandered out of bed for a bit here and there, but mostly I've been trying to stay as quiet as possible. However it seemed to be waning around 8:00 or so, so I decided to take a nice warm bath. I figured that since it was a special occasion I'd bust out the expensive bath products and use the last of my LUSH Christmas Kisses bubble bars -- one and a half of them (I have a big tub). So I crawled in, deployed the bubble bars, and before I knew it the bubbles were arching over my tub in a humongous mound. Light was glinting off the bubbles in every direction, making me feel like I was snowblind. Bubbles, thousands of them, were popping and fizzing in my ears. (Did I mention I have a migraine?) The scent, which I normally love, was WAY too strong for me today. But by then I felt trapped in the tub under all those bubbles, and I didn't want to waste the last of my bubble bars by getting out of the tub, so I forced myself to stay in there until I couldn't take it any more. When I was ready to get out I had to call my husband to help me because there were still so many bubbles that if I got out I'd have bubbles all over and they'd get on the floor and on my towel. I wanted him to rinse me off with water while I was still standing in the tub so I wouldn't be bubble-covered. He came in, and I looked down because I was embarrassed of the situation and wanted to hide my face, which is when I noticed that the water was cherry red because I had used so much bubble bar. So there I was, already irritated and upset because I'd made my headache worse, when I realized that I probably looked like a giant piece of fruit trapped in a tub-shaped cherry jello mold with whipped-cream-like bubbles everywhere. And I'd just invited my husband in to witness this spectacle. I told him about the bubbles fizzing and light glinting and how I used too much and now I felt like fruit in a jello mold and I was nearly crying... I'm not sure that he understood what I was talking about but he tried to be very sympathetic and helpful. He was also trying not to laugh while he was rinsing the bubbles and drying me off, but a few giggles escaped. The whole thing must have been quite a sight. This is my first bath ever that was torture the whole time and ended in humiliation. He told me that I shouldn't feel bad since I had a life-long run of successful baths and only one failure so far. Somehow that didn't make it better.

I can't believe that I didn't think of how sparkly the bubbles would be in the light before I got in the bath. I normally never think about them being shiny, but holy cow, it was like there was a disco ball in there. It was terrible! And the scent... I don't think I'm ever going to be able to smell anything that smells like those bubble bars again without feeling sick to my stomach. I'm glad that my husband is so easy-going... it didn't take long before I was laughing about it too. If he would have come in and been mad about the bubbles all over that would have made it 10x worse.

[instead of posting in the H&EE thread, I told people there that I would write my opinions here instead.] Very brief background if you have no idea what's going on here: Heaven & Earth Essentials is an etailer that sells perfume oils and bath & body products. The owner's name is Michele; her account name in this forum is anxious1. She has been a member here since November 2005. The thread for her business was started here in January 2006. So, let me give you a hypothetical scenario. How well do you think it would go over if a new BPAL competitor joined the BPAL forum and almost immediately asked what the most popular BPAL scents are? And what if she also asked how people were getting a hold of unreleased BPAL scents? I bet people might think that was odd -- if they knew she was a competitor. However in this scenario, the new competitor hasn't revealed herself as a competitor yet. She has only said that she is the business owner of an unrelated business and a LUSH fan. OK, what if she then started buying a whole bunch of BPAL bottles, and then she resold them to BPAL fans on the BPAL forum for a profit. Say you look at her sales post in March and you see FORTY-THREE BPAL GC 5mls on her sales post for $14 each. Think that would go over very well? Yes -- you read that right. A BPAL competitor making money for herself off of BPAL products directly under the nose of the BPAL owner. Not only that, but you happen to notice in someone's post from April that this new competitor was also putting samples of her own oils in with the BPAL packages she sold to people. How about if she then started talking up her own company on the BPAL forum, communicating directly to BPAL customers about her own business. She was answering questions about her products, telling people when their orders shipped, and announcing new product updates on her site. (You are aware that running the BPAL forum takes money and time. You think it's strange that this competitor is allowed to use the BPAL forum for free as her own personal communication tool for her business.) Say the forum administrator warns the new competitor a couple of times that she's breaking the etailer rules -- which are outlined clearly for all to see -- but the new competitor doesn't change her ways. The forum adminstrator then makes her customer service posts invisible and restricts her access to some of the other parts of the forum. The new competitor says it was just a misunderstanding on her part. Keep in mind that until this new competitor had her access restricted, she had access to all the members' posts about which scents they liked and didn't like. Just like any other forum member. She had access to etailer threads of her other competitors, where she could see what people liked and didn't like about those businesses as well. [ETA: please see shriekingviolet's comment below for a correction about the above paragraph.] When people on the BPAL forum ask the new competitor about her ingredients in her oils, the new competitor says in one case that she has made a couple of mistakes on her site and that she doesn't really use a Chocolate EO; in another case she said that she uses real ambergis. At that time, she also had Lily of the Valley EO and Lilac EO for sale on her site -- but you've been reading this newsletter, which contains some conflicting information. A little bit of foreshadowing here: Later, in a post in another thread, she says she's been a "perfumer" for 20 years. You might wonder how a "perfumer" with that much experience would mix up what's an essential oil and what's not, or how a person with so much experience in the field could possibly not know that real ambergis is illegal. Then this competitor comes out with a new perfume that is remarkably like one of BPAL's most recently released AND most wildly popular Limited Editions. She mentions that she "has been told" that her version has more buttery vanilla. She says it's a coincidence and nothing more. When asked about her ISO for that particular BPAL LE only a few weeks before her own very similar oil was introduced, she changes her tune and admits that she did in fact try that BPAL oil (she hasn't just "been told" about it), and she says she wanted more of it because she liked it. She claims that her version of the scent had been in the works for months. Just coincidence, she said. During the blow-up about this remarkably similar product, the new competitor states that she loves BPAL and respects Beth, and in fact she only wears Beth's oils and not her own. You can't help but notice that for all her proclaimed love of BPAL, this new competitor has up until that point posted exactly one BPAL review in the forum, and it was to say that MB Closet smelled like cat pee. In a discussion about using stock oils in scents, the new competitor calls herself a "perfumer" and says "I don't do dupes and I don't relabel." Yet when you look at her site you see a dupe of LUSH's Karma right there! And say that BPAL has been doing, oh, I don't know, a special Limited Edition scent called "Cinco" on Cinco de Mayo for the past two years, and suddenly this new competitor comes out with her own product called "Five" especially for Cinco de Mayo too. But she says, once again, that hers has been in the works for a long time and that it is merely another coincidence. Finally, the forum administrator of the BPAL forum comes into this new competitor's thread to explain that the new competitor's account has been suspended because she broke the forum rules by creating a duplicate account. She used the duplicate account to get around restrictions that were placed on her first account so that she could snoop about BPAL's business and BPAL's fans some more. The administrator can prove this with IP addresses showing duplicate accounts accessed from the new competitor's home and work. (And your husband is a Database Administrator, so you know perfectly well what IP addresses are and how they are logged.) The administrator also says that the new competitor has been borrowing a friend's login to browse the BPAL forum as well. She says she was posting under the friend's login as well. At this point, how many people do you guess would be big fans of this new competitor and unwilling to believe that she has exhibited some shady business practices? You guys, Michele has done every single one of those things and they are all recorded in the BPAL fan forum. Check her posts. It's all right there. (Except that her customer service posts in the H&EE thread were made invisible, so I'm just going off memory there.) I swear to you, I am not making this up. Every single bit of information in that huge "hypothetical" scenario above came from Michele's own posts and the H&EE thread. All I did was put it in one place. Please note that you can look at all her posts yourself by going into her profile (anxious1), clicking on Profile Options, and choosing the View Member's Posts option. This is all right there, out in the open for anyone to see. So here are my major concerns: - I don't like re-selling BPAL for profit in any case, but I think it is especially reprehensible behavior for a BPAL competitor. Bad form. To the nth degree. - On top of that, I think that slipping some samples of her perfume oils into her BPAL sales packages is... well, I want to say it's a dirty trick, but I'll leave it as just saying completely disrespectful and inappropriate. - She was not upfront about her status as a BPAL competitor when she joined this forum and started asking questions about the most popular BPAL scents and how people get a hold of unreleased scents. That's called market research. This tactic in particular makes me angry. I did not write my reviews and posts here so that a BPAL competitor could come along and use what I've written to think up new ideas to make herself money. I resent that. - I might have bought her story about one "coincidence" of copying BPAL. Maybe. But two? Nope. Fool me once... - Someone who supposedly has 20 years of experience with perfumes really ought to know what's an essential oil and what's not. She also ought to know that real ambergis is illegal. I don't believe she's telling the truth about her experience. Also she claimed to have a Lilac EO (and a couple of others). I don't believe she's telling the truth about her ingredients, either. - She refused to sell her products to olympia301, citing oly's post in the H&EE thread as the reason why. (Oly questioned a couple of Michele's ingredients.) Nobody, and I mean no one, should get retribution from an etailer for comments they make about that etailer on bpal.org. That's just wrong. By the same token, people who consistently post glowing remarks about the etailer in bpal.org should not receive preferential treatment by the etailer. - She used bpal.org as a free service to communicate with current customers and answer questions of potential customers. No, wait, I should clarify that. It was free to her -- but it was not free. Someone was paying for it. The fans of her competitor were paying for it. The only thing that stopped her from using it for her own purposes was having her account restricted. Just asking her to stop didn't do the trick. Michele has said several times that the reasons for issues with her were misunderstandings or coincidences. I just flat-out do not believe her. She said she is the manager of a Fortune 500 IT department, and she owns her needlework business as well as her bath & body business. Clearly this is not a stupid person. I think she knew exactly what she was doing when she came to the BPAL forum: She was reading all our posts and finding out which scents we like best and why. She was studying up on other etailers and their products. She was noticing how much money people are willing to spend on perfume oils and on bath and body products. She was buying up Beth's oils like mad and then just sniffing or testing them and re-selling them for a profit. She found a HUGE potential market here -- not to mention free market research -- and she exploited it. In my opinion, that's the bottom line. She saw what was going on here and decided she wanted a piece of the action. Let me draw some comparisons between Michele and roostersgrrl. Both of them: - Tried to come off as BPAL fans in order to be welcomed into the community. - Were secretly (or not so secretly) using this community to pad their own pocketbooks. - Hawked their own wares to BPAL fans inside the BPAL community. - Claimed innocence and misunderstandings whenever anyone brought up issues with them. - Showed a blatant disregard and disrespect for the Lab. - Had nearly every mod breathing down their necks at every turn... which they used to try to convince people that they were being unjustly persecuted and singled out. In roostersgrrl's case there was a very good reason for that attention from the mods -- don't you think it's likely that in Michele's case there's a very good reason for it too? I look at that H&EE thread, and I see red flags everywhere. Warning sirens screaming, horns blowing, the whole nine yards. And I'm quite sure that the mods know a lot more about this situation than they're telling us. Roostersgrrl got basically exiled from the community for what she did, but people are still buying Michele's products and talking about them in bpal.org. A lot of people have said things like "well, that's between Michele and the mods" and "whatever else she does doesn't matter because she's nice to me." That's exactly what people said about roostersgrrl too, you guys. I said those things. Then later I felt like a schmuck for having been duped by roostersgrrl. I don't want that same sort of thing to happen all over again -- a lot of the people who post in the H&EE thread are people I like and care about. I think Michele is pulling the wool over their eyes, and it bothers me a lot. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe the mods are wrong, maybe everyone who has noticed something fishy about Michele is wrong. But there are quite a few of us who feel this way. So do I have too much time on my hands and should I get a job in a research library? PROBABLY. However, I'm not posting this for my sake. What I want is to put this here so that in the future someone won't end up in the situation I was in with the roostersgrrl fiasco: "Why didn't anyone tell me about this stuff?!?" Here it is. I'm telling you. If it seems like I'm singling out Michele, it's because I visit this site every day, and I read a lot of the threads. I haven't noticed any other etailer behaving like Michele has. Not one. She's the only one who is doing this. I don't have a problem with her products -- they're not for me, but I'm not going to say that no one could possibly enjoy them. That's just not true. Plenty of people like them a lot. What earned Michele my criticism isn't her products or her company -- it's her behavior here in her competitor's fan forum. If she had never come into this forum, I probably wouldn't have ever said a bad word about her.

tamburlaine & Inanna9: I'd love to respond to both of you in detail but I've got an anatomy paper that has to be finished in 30 minutes. (But I'm here anyway because I'm pretty much sick of writing about retinal pigment epithelium. Bleah.) In short: No harm done. Also, it's hard for me to know what someone means when I have never met the person and I'm not familiar with her mannerisms -- I tend to assume that other people are just like me if I don't know any better. Some of the things that other people think are perfectly acceptable in conversation are things I'd never say unless I was really mad or if I was trying to be catty. So when I see those things, all I have to go on is what I would mean if I wrote those things. But often it's not what the person meant at all. Anyway, I know this isn't on topic for this blog entry, so I apologize for that. But I'm always interested in discussions about communication. Much more interested in that than in retina anatomy. Sigh. However, duty calls. Back to working on the paper...

Nah. Never mind. I wrote something here but I changed my mind. Let me just take this opportunity to remind anyone reading my blog that this is an emotional topic that has upset many people, and attempts at humor can be easily misinterpreted. Also, personal insults are really not cool. I don't go into other people's blogs and respond to their posts in a condescending tone, and I definitely appreciate the same courtesy. Most people who have responded here have been quite considerate with their replies, so thank you for keeping the conversation civil.

Well, I guess I should say that even with all the stuff I wrote in my post, I don't think Michele is a bad person. As a couple of other people have written in their blogs, she was probably just using the sort of business practices she's learned in the corporate world that she's been a part of for so long. I don't happen to like those practices, but some people have posted in my blog that it doesn't bother them and they don't see what the big deal is. Also, not everyone here gets as upset when other business owners are disrespectful to Beth as I do. Plus... how well do you really know anyone you buy from? I mean, for all I know maybe the owner of Arcana Soaps or Ava Luxe (I've bought from both of them several times) is in here looking at all the posts too. Maybe one of them is selling somebody else's oil on eBay for an even bigger profit than what Michele was selling BPAL bottles for. Who knows? Maybe the only difference is that the other owners didn't post here. I honestly have no way of knowing. I don't and won't think anyone who buys products from Michele is wrong for doing so. You know, there are several people who have said that Arcana oils seem like poor quality to them. And I bet they probably are. I mean, they make soaps with those fragrances. I doubt that they use really high quality ingredients for a soap fragrance. But I like several of them. They may be poor quality, but it's my choice to spend my money on them. If someone said "Hey I just found out Arcana uses oils that cost like $2 for 100mls and are totally cheap!" I'd think, "Hmm, yeah, well I thought that might be the case." And then I'd order another 10ml of Devilish. It's your choice to spend your money on whatever you like, and I don't think you should worry about what anyone else thinks of your decisions.

"Spread bile." Interesting choice of words. You know, I was quite careful to include in my original post only what Michele herself wrote and did here in this forum so that my opinions would not be viewed as merely malicious gossip. If Michele didn't want people to notice what she was doing in this forum, she should have been more careful.

I didn't say she was doing something illegal. I specifically avoided talking about the IP infringement issue that was raised in the H&EE thread because I don't know anything about law. I just pointed out what Michele was doing, explained how I interpreted it, and said I didn't like it. OK, so having said that, I wanted to thank you for posting your reply here because you brought up something that I should have clarified earlier. I make purchase decisions based on factors that are important to me, but I know that the same factors are not important to other people. I don't think those other people are wrong or dumb. I'll give you an example: I have shopped at OfficeMax twice. Both times the sales clerks were rude. When I complained about it to my friend Lynn, she said, "Oh, I could have told you that. I never shop there any more." At that point, I wished she'd told me that before I ever set foot in the OfficeMax. If I had known her opinion beforehand, I would have just driven the extra mile to Office Depot and saved myself some frustration. On the other hand, my friend Ron shops at OfficeMax all the time and doesn't care one whit about the personality of the sales clerks. Do I think Ron is dumb for shopping at OfficeMax? NO. Not at all. But what I'm looking for in a shopping experience is what Lynn's looking for. We like to be treated nicely. Ron doesn't care about that, he just wants the best prices. With my original post, I was trying to put my experience out there for other people to see because I didn't see the entirety of Michele's post history until after I'd bought from her twice, and at that point I regretted ever spending money at her site. I was hoping to save like-minded people the same frustration. I didn't expect everyone to agree with me, and as you can see from the replies to my post, not everyone does. That's fine with me. However, if anyone reading it IS the type of person who would be put off by the same things that put me off, I thought it was important to let them know my opinions and why I feel this way.

Okay, as long as you realize you don't need to leave. See, the problem is that you're taking this issue personally, and you're obviously very emotionally involved. But you can't come in here and be that upset because eventually you're going to upset me, and then I'll fly off the handle, and an enraged filigree_shadow is not pleasant for anyone. (Trust me.) Also, it seems like you desperately want people to agree with things you say, and when they don't you raise the same point again to see if you get any takers the second time. Not saying I blame you for that, but when I feel like I'm reading the same thing over and over I stop paying attention to it. In this blog you've disagreed with nearly everything I said, you tried to poke holes in my logic, you've called me out on pedantic details that were really too trivial to matter, and you said that my arguments don't make sense. In the H&EE thread, you said you don't think I'm right. I get it. You don't need to say it again. And by now I'm willing to stipulate that whenever anyone new in this blog brings up something else that casts Michele/H&EE in an even remotely negative light, you don't believe it and you don't agree. (ETA: I was using the legal definition of stipulate there, in case that wasn't clear.)

In what way is that not an announcement? I was even using your word. I did read what you wrote in the Official WHY Thread, and it was about freebies. And a lot of what you have written in this blog has been stuff that you have already said in the H&EE thread. If you've already said something somewhere else, you don't need to re-state it here. Assume that anyone interested in this discussion has seen it. This blog does not need to re-hash every piece of drama from the H&EE thread and elsewhere. You don't need to censor yourself, you need to tone it down. That's all I'm asking.

PK, I'm not really interested in listening to the same thing from you over and over. You've had your say. Repeatedly. I don't know when you decided that this H&EE issue is your personal fight with the entire forum, but it's time for that to stop now. Don't post again until you have something new to say. And yes, I feel that I am perfectly well within my rights to say this since you took it upon yourself to make an announcement in one of your earlier posts here that you don't want any more people coming into the H&EE thread to stir up drama. You don't even own that thread. But this is my blog.

PK, I'm trying really hard to be fair. I am. Believe me. I feel like I'm at a poker game and I'm the only one who knows that the cards are marked. It would be very difficult to try to play that poker game fairly when you have access to information that others don't have, and when you can't tell anyone else what that information is so that everyone would have an equal advantage. Since I came forward with my opinions of Michele/H&EE, several other forumites have told me about their personal experiences/conversations with Michele. I'm trying really hard to NOT let that factor into my opnions... but I'm failing miserably. I'm afraid I'm just not objective any more. I know too much now, and there's no way I'll ever be able to give Michele a fair shot at redeeming herself, no matter what. I think that at this point it would be dishonest of me to continue participating in this discussion, so I think I should recuse myself. I have said that my opinions of Michele were based on her own posts and her own public words, and that's not true any more. I hope that you will all understand.

Also, I wanted to mention something else regarding this issue and this blog entry. I am INCREDIBLY impressed with the thoughtful and mature responses I have gotten, both in this blog and in PMs. Seriously. One of the reasons I got so attached to this community is the level of fairness and understanding found in the members here, and I am beyond delighted that even when it's been put to the test, that maturity level is still there. I haven't gotten a single insulting, flaming, hate-filled response... and to be honest I was pretty much expecting it. Thank you.

PilotKitten, Your personal experience with Michele has guided your opinions of her and helped shape your idea of the kind of person she is. I have no problem with that. I hope you understand, though, that my experience with Michele has been a lot different from yours.... which is why I have a different opinion. On the issue of selling BPAL for a profit... of course lots of people sell BPAL in the forums. The difference I was trying to make clear with that example is that MICHELE IS A BPAL COMPETITOR and the rest of us are BPAL FANS. Please just think about this for a second. I have no idea whether people sell stuff on Michele's forum because I'm not a member there (I'm not an H&EE fan, so it would be pretty strange for me to join the H&EE fan forum)... but I want you to think for a second how you'd feel if Beth was over in Michele's forum selling Michele's own products for $2 more each than what Michele charges. For one, I have a feeling that Michele wouldn't stand for it for a second, and I also have a feeling that people who feel loyalty to Michele would be incensed. That's exactly what's going on here. This is the BPAL fan forum, Michele is a BPAL competitor, and I am loyal to BPAL. I'm not demanding that you agree with me, I'm only asking you to understand why I feel this way. That's all. Regarding the rest of your comments, especially the comparisons to olympia301 -- Michele has established a pattern of behavior that makes people not trust her. Oly hasn't. For me, that's what it boils down to. If Michele wanted to be treated with respect on her competitor's fan forum, she should have been more careful with her behavior here. She invited this criticism of her, in my opinion, with her own words and actions. Please notice that the owners of Ava Luxe, DSH, Wylde Ivy, Arcana Soaps, etc. are not in this forum stirring up drama and then complaining that they are being mistreated. Only Michele has done that. And I don't need or want to get Michele's side of the story because by this time I am personally convinced that it would just be lies -- what's the point of hearing someone's side of the story if you already believe going into it that whatever it is it's not true? (And again, that opinion is based on her pattern of behavior in the past.) Also I want to point out something here that people who are Michele's fans seem to be forgetting: This is a forum for BPAL fans, created by BPAL fans, and paid for by BPAL fans. This is NOT a generic non-company-specific bath & body message board. Not even in the Retail Therapy section. First and foremost, everybody here is a BPAL fan. That's why they came to this forum. As far as I'm concerned nobody should be a bit surprised if direct BPAL competitors are scrutinized here more carefully than other members are. As for the Voodoo Punani/Thirteen issues, I see your point. I don't agree with you, but I do understand why the feel the way you do. Look, with my post, I was trying to explain to you why I think she is not trustworthy and why I think people should be careful doing business with her. If you've considered everything and you think she's a great person, that's fine. Really. If you're happy with her and her products, that's cool with me.

I had a Far Side desk calendar in the 90s, and this particular one was my favorite: It was drawn in quadrants, with people saying "The glass is half full," "The glass is half empty," [insert the one I can't remember here], and the last guy with his hands on his hips in a very Larsen-esque fashion saying "Hey, I ordered a cheeseburger!" I ripped out that one and stuck it to my cube wall at work. Several months later I went to my sister's office to meet her for lunch and she had the exact same cartoon stuck to her cube wall. Heh. I thought that was funny.

Awww, I'm sad that this drama is making you feel bad. I'm not sure if you read my blog entry, but I hope I'm not responsible for you feeling that way.

Thanks for your comments -- and thank you for reading what I wrote, to anyone who has read my blog entry but hasn't commented. I certainly do not think that anyone is in the wrong for buying Michele's products. I ordered from her myself. Twice. But that was before I looked at the entirety of her post history here and not just the H&EE thread. I know that a different person could look at exactly the same set of posts and form an entirely different opinion. Interpretation of any post is up to the reader. That's why I posted my opinions and my interpretations here rather than in the H&EE thread.

Argh, it's been a crappy week. Sort of. Mostly due to this damn cold. I hate being sick. It makes me mad to be sick. I don't know how to stop getting angry about it, but I wish I could. I think that if I spent my mental energy concentrating on getting better rather than perpetuating my foul mood I might recover more quickly. I am the whiniest, rottenest, most annoying sick person you've ever met. But! At least it's starting to go away. Probably by next week I'll be fine. And next week is more important than this week because next week it's my birthday. Ye gods, 35 years old. Holy crap. Wasn't it just a few weeks ago that I was 25? It sure seems like it. I remember once when I was little complaining to my dad that time goes so slow (when you're little the time just drags on and on until the fun things happen), and he got this funny smile on his face and said something like, "When you get older, it'll go by a lot faster." As usual, Daddy was right. One of the things that bugs me about being this old is that I have just started to realize that I can say things like, "Yeah, but that happened 20 years ago" to my friends from high school. Twenty years ago. TWENTY. I'm starting to remember 30 years ago with increasing clarity. I don't feel old when I look in the mirror, or even when I overhear teenagers talking and their inane conversations drive me up the wall. I always thought that would make me feel old, when I realized that I didn't have anything in common with teenagers any more. But nope, that's not it. It's that I used to feel like I had so much of life ahead of me. Now there's a huge swath BEHIND me, 35 years' worth... that's what gets to me. Don't get me wrong, looking back doesn't make me feel like I regret anything. I might not have the life I imagined I'd have, but it's pretty damn good. In fact as I've gotten older I've taken care of myself better -- I actually look better now than when I was 28. I'm definitely more financially comfortable. And I'd like to think I'm wiser, too. All in all not too shabby. Anyhoo, enough of that. Mostly I wanted to write about my week, so I don't know how I ended up with that birthday-related nostalgia. This week, I submitted two more Trick or Treat pleas. I was really hoping to be able to do four, and hopefully (maybe) get all the different ones, or at least have something to swap for any I didn't get. But it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to afford one more submission before the deadline. Alas! I keep telling myself I have too much perfume oil as it is -- I need to do a serious reduction of my collection. But I've been at this BPAL thing for 8 months now, and the oils are still coming in at a much faster rate than they're going out. The good news is that I haven't been buying from eBay in quite a while; mostly I'm just ordering from the Lab. The bad news is that the reason I don't want to buy any of the older scents is because I've already tried nearly all of them. And now I'm tired and I'm going to bed. Good night!

I'm going to see the Pet Shop Boys on Friday! I haven't seen them since the Performance tour in about 1991.

It's nobody's business how you handle your finances, and it's definitely no one's business to tell you you're doing it wrong! I would have been highly irritated if someone had tried to tell me I was less married because I don't share all my money with my husband and vice versa. I tried the combining money thing a long time ago. It sucked! My ex assumed that all money in the combined account was HIS, even though I made twice as much money as he did. He even said something like "Man, being married is great! I never used to be able to afford to live this well!" No shit. He put me in the poorhouse. I will never do that again. I know a lot of people prefer the combined way, and that's just fine for them. I wouldn't try to convince them otherwise. But for me? No way.

This is very floral, not that I was expecting anything different. Mostly I smell lily with a bit of lilac. At first it's quite a lot stronger than I prefer for a floral, but it gets softer as it dries. It gets a little bit green, too. It's very pretty, one of the nicer floral scents I've smelled. It doesn't suit me personally because I don't wear perfumes that are this floral, but I think it's very well done. ETA: I feel like I need to add something to this review, four days later. I've worn White Moon three times since writing that first review, and I think I like it more every time I wear it. It feels odd -- even my husband commented that it's a strange scent for me because I don't usually smell like flowers -- but I'm drawn to it. I just keep wanting to put it on. ETA #2: Confessions of a White Moon junkie: I have worn this at some point in each day since my last ETA. I am starting to worry. I am not a floral person, yet this is the only thing I want to wear. I think I'm going to have to hide my bottle.

I made the awful mistake of returning to MySpace after an absence of several months. The MySpace group for my little group of college friends apparently had people flocking to it in droves while I was away, and now it's full of people I knew 15 years ago in college. Clicked on the picture of a girl who didn't like me because she thought I caused her boyfriend to break up with her. She's gorgeous now. Clicked on the picture of a guy I dated on and off for a few years but lost touch with. He's a damn fine-looking man. Clicked on the picture of a guy who was full of himself and was a dick to me. Still looks like he's a dick. Clicked on the picture of a guy I dated for a couple of years. He's been hitting the gym. He never looked that good when he was with me. And what do you see if you click on my photo? A dumpy-looking middle-aged woman with a stupid hairstyle who has gained 25 pounds since college and looks like a mess. Niiiiice. I was feeling pretty embarrassed about the whole thing and ranting about it in an exaggerated fashion to my husband -- he pointed out that it is impossible for everyone I knew in college to be better-looking now than they were then. I know that. It's not everyone. Just everyone I dated. And the girls who were catty to me because I went out with the lovely sensitive goth boys that they were all swooning over. I would not be at all surprised if some of them looked at my photos and thought, "HA! She got fat and ugly. Good." I usually don't think I look that bad. I think for whatever reason people often tend to be close to people who are more or less at the same level of attractiveness, and in my current circle of RL friends I don't feel out of my league with any of them. But when I was in college, I paid a lot more attention to my appearance. (These days I'm lucky if I'm wearing two shoes from the same pair half the time.) If there was such a thing as a beautiful people goth/skater clique at my university, I was probably in it. Those people wouldn't give me the time of day right now. They don't let you back into the beautiful goth people club if you gain 25 pounds and move to the suburbs. In a couple of days this probably won't bother me any more, but right now I'm unhappy that I thought I was comfortable with my appearance and where I am in my life right now... and apparently I'm not. Apparently I am embarrassed by it. This revelation is unsettling to me.

I was just thinking earlier today about how I used to think about blends/notes back in February when I was waiting on my first imp packs from the Lab. I read tons of reviews and entered comments into my spreadsheet like "A lot of people say this smells strongly of jasmine. I don't know what jasmine smells like though." I do know what it smells like now (in perfume, anyway)... along with a slew of other things, many of which I'd never heard of before. Benzoin? Neroli? Tonka? I would have guessed those were pharmaceutical products. But anyway, I remember reading reviews in which the reviewer described the exact notes she smelled in order from the wet stage to drydown, and I thought that this forum must be full of bizarre people with strangely precise noses. But with a little practice, I turned into one of those bizarre people too. A few of my friends/family think I'm absolutely nuts to have about 600 samples and 200 bottles of perfume. They point out I can't wear it all. They scoff at the money I spend. I point out that my husband has several boxes of comic books he never reads and spent a lot of money on. This happens to be what I like to collect. I get as much enjoyment from a truly beautiful scent as I get from a really good book -- just in a different way.

A bright citrus scent, but it doesn't smell acidic. More sugary than acidic. It is crisp and clean smelling. There's something almost creamy underneath the citrus, too. I know that other reviewers have gotten a lot of lime out of this, but I'm not getting solely lime. I don't know enough about perfume to know whether lime is a top note, but that's exactly how it always acts on me -- anything with lime in it smells strongly of lime for the first ten minutes and then it's gone. The citrus scent lasts long enough here that I know there's another citrus note in Detox too. Not sure exactly what it is, but it's not yuzu. (Yuzu SHOUTS on me.) Maybe grapefruit. Anyway, I do usually like the lime blends because they are the softest citrus scents. I don't like anything too sharp or strong. I think Detox is my favorite Panacea blend.