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Fragrances of the Week

• Bath & Body Works Vanilla Noir
• Lattafa Pride Raw Human
• Lattafa Ramz Lattafa Silver
• Bath & Body Works Inner Angel
• Body Sprays: Lattafa Asad, Bath & Body Works Inner Angel, Bath & Body Works Marshmallow Pumpkin Latte
• Body Wash: Bodycology Cozy Fireside S’mores
• Shampoo: Suave Tropical Coconut
• Lotion: scentXscent Solar Flare Sunset Samba Body Butter

I almost worked against myself with my fragrance selections this week.  I had assumed that Ramz Lattafa could carry the weight of my daytime needs, while Vanilla Noir & Raw Human would be good options for evening wears.  I had misjudged the notes, thinking Ramz Lattafa’s citrus open would feel fresher than it did.  That fragrance is cozier than that, the lavender and vanilla really making it better for relaxing than for working.  Inner Angel is spicy, but bright enough to mix in.  Still, spicy isn’t my favorite option early in the day.  And the Ramz Lattafa increasingly felt like an early evening fragrance at best.  Everything was a bit too deep overall, even though I enjoyed all of the individual scents.  

The Asad deodorant spray was a lot better this time than when I paired it with Lattafa Ameer Al Oud Intense Oudh.  Those two enhanced one another in strange ways, but as a base layer for this tray of evening fragrances, Asad worked well.  The body sprays I layered on top this week, Inner Angel & Marshmallow Pumpkin Latte, likewise were too heavy as my only options.  Marshmallow Pumpkin Latte isn’t too strong at this point; it’s several years old, but what remains is sugary sweet.  Like with the perfumes, there wasn’t really anything to lighten things up.

Vanilla & leather was an interesting theme for my week, but it lacked the playfulness I prefer in my selections.  Vanilla Noir should have been swapped out for something brighter and fun, like Al Rehab Dalal or Art Al Zaafaran Turab Al Dhahab.  This might have been a perfect week for Turab Al Dhahab actually.  It can be a little plasticky, but it is both vanillic & bright.  Missed opportunity.  Another option would have been a marshmallow or cotton candy body spray to liven everything up.

I followed some advice and experimented with antiperspirants this week.  I don’t actually have much issue with body odor, but I wanted to test out some things I had read.  I avoid using most products because I don’t like the residue on my clothes and I think it feels weird on my body throughout the day.  Of course, that sometimes means having to shower more often.  Using a combination of Bath & Body Works Mahogany Teakwood stick antiperspirant and Lattafa Asad deodorant spray, I applied just before bed.  I did not apply following my shower in the morning, but I did lightly spray the deodorant spray once I had dried off.  Honestly, this might be the best advice I’ve followed in a while.  It did a couple of things.  Even after working out, I didn’t feel slimy in the way sweat can make me feel.  Not at all throughout the week.  But more importantly, I got that benefit without any residue on my skin.  I was washing that off in the shower, but the antiperspirants were in my skin for the day.  It all also made my skin feel smooth and I felt like it smelled better.  I’ll keep trying that technique out, maybe switching to a stick with no scent to see how it affects things.

New acquisitions this week: Eves St. Claire Pineapple Papaya Shampoo; Personal Care Coconut Vanilla 2-in-1 Shampoo & Conditioner

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Where Is Everyone?

One of the biggest discussions over the past few years has been the simple question: where did everybody go?  I really felt that today during my walk.  It’s a Thursday afternoon, it’s October.  Where are the people?

Guthrie isn’t the largest town, but it’s large enough.  And I know that online shopping continues to take away our shopping centers, our downtowns, or common spaces.  It seems like there needs to be some sort of reckoning.  A reset.  A coming back together.

One of my concerns about Guthrie before moving here was how hateful the town is, a perception I was able to garner easily by paying attention online.  But in reality, I haven’t met anyone who is remotely like that.  There have been a few who are almost certainly conservative-types, but nobody has been overtly unpleasant.  In Glencoe, I almost always encountered people like that.  There, it seemed like it could be hard to find chill people.  But like always, the Internet is not a window into reality.  It’s a curated lie, sometimes one that makes us feel better and sometimes one that makes us feel worse.

I think some of that online perception could be changed if people would get out of their houses and be in their communities.  Just around me in my own neighborhood, most of the people spend a lot of their time outside.  Neighbors aren’t interacting with one another, but everyone is familiar with one another.  There is one exception next door to me.  I see them only when they are getting in the car to go somewhere or getting out of the car, having returned from somewhere.  Otherwise, they don’t seem to be as out and about as everyone else.  I like that about this neighborhood.  Everyone sees their neighbors.  It’s harder to hate people you know.  Now maybe we all need to start talking, although it is nice to go outside and read a book without everyone in my line of sight feeling the need to say hello.  Sometimes, presence is enough.

I’m rambling.  Downtown needs more life.  Everything needs more life.  Maybe it’s bad actually to buy anything online.  I’m guilty.  We all are.  Maybe culture will shift back to community.  Maybe everything will die and the only options will be online shopping.  We will see.

[Walk #352, 2.62 miles]

• Location of Walk: home to downtown, Guthrie, OK
• Magpie: red foam clown noseContinue Reading

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Doing Some Calculations

I could not sleep last night. I tossed, I turned, I paced, I sat up… It was around 5am when I finally got a little sleep, but I woke up a couple of hours later. I forced myself to go back to bed, but only after determining a few things about the day. First, I was not going to Stillwater like I had hoped. Second, I was not going grocery shopping. Third, I wasn’t even sure I was going to get a walk in. I did do some upper body exercises and got some movement in generally, so I did get all of my rings closed pretty early. I felt good about that.

I watched a movie this evening, Devil’s Partner. Even though I hadn’t slept much, I still felt restless and feared I would struggle again tonight. I left to go up to the park at 9pm, hoping to get in about a mile. Sometimes that is all it takes. By the time I reached the park and did one lap, I was feeling like going a full 3 miles. So, I went downtown and back. That route is exactly 2.5 miles, so if I either do 2 laps at the park before or do 1 going and 1 returning, I can easily get 3 miles in.

I could feel my body’s exhaustion, but it also felt nice to get the steps in. I was struck, as I sometimes am, by how easy the walk actually felt. I’m thinking about looking into abandoning “consistency” in my walking times and replacing it with fitting in an hour at times when I often have one to spare. Early mornings are always great because a walk gets me going for the day, but I often have an hour or so in the evening when all I am doing is scrolling social media. I’ll realize at some point that I’ve been doing that, having no memory of what I was just looking at. While that is how I keep abreast of current goings on in the world, it is just a way to give myself anxiety. Spending that time walking would be better.

I don’t know if I will be able to commit to two 3 mile walks everyday, but if I get into it, maybe I can do some sort of schedule that both gives my body a rest sometimes, but also allows me to get in more steps. And when I say schedule, what I mean is saying I want to do two separate walks in a day, but fitting them in when I’m feeling bored or whatever. If I do four days of two walks & three days of one walk, with the option of taking one of those days off entirely, that increases my walking for the week significantly without feeling overwhelming. That is increasing from seven walks per week to ten or eleven, with eleven the preference. That would increase my average exercise minutes from 60-70 to as much as 102 (daily average). It would also increase my daily distance walked from 3.50 to about 5.50. It seems so easy…too easy. I worry I’m trying to add too much, but I really need to be moving my body more.

I’m exhausted. Mentally. That was a lot of rambling. I should sleep.

[Walk #351, 3.12 miles]

• Location of Walk: home to downtown, Guthrie, OK
• Magpie: orange silk flowerContinue Reading

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Coming Together in the Heat of October

If I can just continue making that loop my routine, I should be okay. It’s amazing how much a little pain can change things. When I had to take a few days off from walking, I felt incredibly discouraged. It was so frustrating to not be able to get in my steps, but walking today without pain made that hiatus worth the frustration. I just have to remember that when I start feeling any sort of pain, it is important that I stop pushing and let myself get the rest I need.

It was another warm day, too warm for mid-October. I do feel more accomplished on warm days, returning home absolutely drenched in sweat, but I am ready for things to start cooling off. I’m afraid it will be so fast when it does happen that I’ll be a popsicle, but we’ll see what happens!

In some ways, I feel like my life is starting to come together. Im some ways, I feel like things are just as unravelled as they’ve been for two years. There are so many things to do, and I still feel mentally drained most of the time. I’m being patient with myself. I’m not against anyone’s clock. The only thing that matters is relaxing and enjoying the ride.

[Walk #350, 2.57 miles]

• Location of Walk: to downtown & back, Guthrie, OK
• Magpie: chandelier piecesContinue Reading

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Knee Pain Subsiding

I have retuned!  After a bit of freaking out about my knee, I decided to take a few days off and rest my knee to allow it to heal like it needed to.  Today was the first day without a sharp pain, so I went for a walk.  There is a slight dull pain and tightness still, but that only prevented me from pushing myself too hard.  I took it nice and easy and only did the loop to downtown, under the bridge, and back.  That is exactly 2.5 miles.  If I’m up to it, I’ll get in the last half mile later this evening.  We’ll see.

The International Bluegrass Festival was at The Cottonwood Flats over the weekend.  It made for a lot of traffic in the area, but sadly it was just far away enough that I couldn’t really hear any of the music.  I suppose next year, I could walk up there.  There have to be people hanging out in the areas nearby to enjoy some free music.  I can’t afford to actually go in!  The park was filled with RVs packing up and heading back to their lives.  It looks like it must have been a good time.

Changes happening tomorrow at my house!  I’m finally implementing my weekly schedule.  I had wanted to start 1 November, so I’m doing it a little early.  I’m sure it will be rough at first.

[Walk #349, 2.51 miles]

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In Defense of Fragrance

I recently read an article about the recent boom in the fragrance market.  In the article, the author posited that this rise was at least partially due to Covid-19 and how people in isolation had forgotten the natural smell of other people, so a market rose up to meet the demand of people not wanting to contribute to those odors.  She also touched on the classist and potentially racist associations with scent.  While it was all very interesting, I think I have a different take on it.  

Granted, my own family has a long association with pleasant fragrances.  My great grandparents’ homes were the last I can remember that smelled neutral, except for the bottles of perfume in the bathrooms.  By my grandparents’ generation, potpourri and air fresheners had taken over their homes.  But that is not because some of those things didn’t exist before.  Potpourri & incense have been used since antiquity to scent homes.  But my great grandparents were all farmers, practical and poor people for whom these things would have been a luxury.  When I recently inherited a few of my great grandma Daugherty’s things, I was even surprised to find that she had a few Alfred Hitchcock novels and an apricot scented candle in an apricot shaped pot.  This kind of frivolity goes against my perceptions.  The candle had never been burned, and I can imagine my grandma just lifting the lid and getting a little treat of apricot fragrance to lift her spirits.  And although she was poor, she wore perfume.

In my grandparents’ homes, everything smelled “nice.”  There was lemon scented all-purpose cleaner, pine scented floor cleaner, scented fabric softener, and even sometimes a pot of spices on the stove, the scent wafting out into the house.  Neither home had scented candles regularly, but there was scent.  My grandpa’s bathroom smelled strongly of Old Spice and Irish Spring, my grandma’s of Tabu and lotion and the gentle scent of soap from the bowl of rose shaped pieces arranged in a bowl on the counter.

The home I grew up in had its own strong scents.  My mom loved scented candles, and she’d light them when she came home from work, so when we arrived from school there would be one in the main bathroom, one in the kitchen, and one in her bedroom.  There were different scents in the rooms, all seasonally appropriate, and as you walked from room to room, the gradients changed and it would all make the house feel all the more cozy.  She too would sometimes have spices going instead of a kitchen candle, and while she had potpourri throughout the house, it was rarely strong enough to contribute.  We did not have laundry scents; my dad’s sensitive skin required unscented products.  But my parents both wore perfumes: my mom had a selection of various options and my dad primarily wore Brüt, then Aspen, the Le Mâle.  Our shoes weren’t allowed in the house, and my mom would spray them with Brüt on the porch.

In the 1990s, Bath & Body Works opened and my mom’s fragrances became those offered in their lotions and body sprays, which largely replaced the need for as much perfume.  She would smell like Pearberry, Coconut Lime Verbena, or “Gingham.”  I have two brothers, and as each of us started puberty, the Brüt we shared was replaced with scents that were more individualized.  My grandma chose mine, giving me a bottle of Tommy by Tommy Hilfiger, which is how I smelled though high school and college.  My older brother received Abercrombie & Fitch’s Woods, but I don’t remember what he used before that.  I also don’t remember my younger brother’s fragrance preference, but knowing him he likely used what my dad and my grandpa used.Continue Reading

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Even More About This Knee

I rested most of the day, keeping my leg elevated, but I was feeling pretty good, so I went for my daily walk this evening.  My pace is very slow.  I am being too cautious about walking on my left knee, and that caution is causing more problems than it is worth.  I got in the full 3 miles, and will less pain than yesterday.  I’ll see how tomorrow goes, but I will only do the walk if my knee is up to it.  If it is in pain, I’m going to do some upper body cardio exercises and let my knee have a full day of rest.  

I need to lose weight.  Why can’t I figure it out?  I’m trying to be less annoyed about it all today.

Guthrie was teeming with life today, and I loved it.  There were several people at the park, people walking and biking all over the neighborhood, lots of people downtown.  It felt alive.  If I can get this knee sorted, I’m really looking forward to being a part of that.

[Walk #348, 3.06 miles]

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