I don't wear deodorant. Have I mentioned that here before? I don't really know how common this is, though HSBF says she doesn't wear any either. I don't smell. I'm almost 100% positive I never do, because I think if I did, my sister would never let me hear the end of it. Katie's nose is incredible--she can smell if a restaurant serves truffles the minute we walk into it, and it repulses her. Personally, I can't smell truffles like that, though my dad says he can too, so maybe it's inherited. Suffice to say, her sense of smell is strongly developed, and I don't think she'd consent to being in the same room with me if I always smelled of BO.
But because I don't wear deodorant, I almost always wear perfume of some sort. I prefer sharp, clean scents. One of my favorites is Demeter's Gin and Tonic, which is sharp and tonic-y, just like an actual gin and tonic, though I think it has a really strong lime component. In general, I do stick with food scents--cookies and cakes and candies--like vanilla, which is one of my favorites. I've had the same bottle of Fresh brand vanilla cologne for years and years and years, and it never gets old. It's actually rather heavy, though, so I wear it sparingly. The other scent I'm crazy for is peach. I can't get enough of peach perfumes. I'm always hunting down new ones, and looking for something unique. My newest perfume (and most favoritest now) is a vanilla peach perfume, which is absolutely perfect in its combination of peach and vanilla, my two favorites. I think I might need to go get a few bottles to have on back-up, because what if the maker (can't think of it now, would know it if I saw it) stops making it? Quel horror.
I do switch it up though, and on Sunday past, I decided to finally try a spray or two of the Vanilla perfume I bought when I bought the vanilla peach. It was instantly a mistake. I don't know if it's because it was cheap (Demeter's perfumes are cheap, though, too, and those are fine.), but it was awful. I think it wasn't a pure vanilla scent; it must've been cut with some cheaper floral. I cannot abide anything floral. Certain scents in perfumes--roses, gardenia, lavender--go so far as to make me nauseous if they're too large a component of the perfume. Other floral scents just mildly bother my nose. But in general, any floral scent is enough to give me a mild to severe headache. (And actually, though I love fresh flowers, I don't like them to be strongly scented. I much prefer flowers with no scent, like my lovely late summer brain flowers. Can't wait!) So anyway, this vanilla perfume, which I think was one of those frenchy-named brands, had a rather strong background scent of flowers. Indeterminate, though it was one of those that really annoys my nose and head. Also, and this is possibly the greatest testament to my avoidance of floral perfumes--it gave me a rash! A rather itchy, red bumpy icky thing on the spot I'd sprayed it the closest. Yes, even my skin rejects floral scents.
I think the moral to this story is that if you're going to buy me perfume, stick to peach, citrus, or fresh laundry scents, with no HINT of floral anything. If it's got a floral undertone, I won't go near it. (Consequently, by the way, this leads to my near total avoidance of those perfumes that are sold on department store counters. I know those are very nice, very expensive perfumes sometimes, but I can rarely find one that doesn't have some hint of a floral. I end up mostly wearing esoteric brands, things you find in specialty beauty stores, or European things I find at small, indie shops. But don't think that equals cheap. My last two perfume finds, besides the cheapy icky vanilla/floral one, were expensive as hell.)
Here's something else, unrelated. If you're on the Ike, and you want to reach Mannheim in the time allotted by the little signboard at the start of the expressway, you better drive like a bat out of hell until traffic seizes up. You gotta go at least 15 over the speed limit to make those times. Seems like they might want to up the times by a few minutes every morning, just to make people's expectations more realistic. And by people's, I mean me.
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