I realize that nobody is holding their breath waiting for a post from me so this postcard isn’t so much to inform you that I’m hopelessly busy and will post as soon as I have both something to say and strength left to work on saying that but rather to share that I miss you.
How is your year so far? Is it better, worse or the same as usual in terms of free time?
With love,
Undina
Image: my own
Last year in December I told what I thought was the last part of the Orange Cats in My Life series. I haven’t opened a new chapter since then – it’s still just Rusty who is everything I’ve ever wanted from a cat (though I wish he’d stop eating plastic because it gets really tedious trying to keep plastic-free all spaces accessible to him). But recently I realized that there were more sides of my obsession with cats that I haven’t covered in either those posts about real cats (Found and Lost and Those that have just broken the flower vase…) or imaginary ones (A Grin without a Cat and Love from the First ‘Awww…’). Hence this interquel (it seems to be a real word; I found it while trying to figure out if there was a special term for a story that was a sequel and a prequel at the same time).
***
For many years, while we couldn’t get a real cat, I was drawn to a cat theme in… everything. It doesn’t mean that anything with any cat depiction would do as some non-cat people seem to think (we all like perfumes but there are perfumes and there are perfumes – right?) but I had accumulated a number of cute Christmas ornaments, toys and jewelry featuring that object of my affection, which definitely exceeds any “civilian” person’s interest in felines.
Visual art isn’t something that is present in my day-to-day life. Two-three exhibitions per year at the local museums, three-four hours or until I get extremely bored (whichever comes first) at various museums during vacation trips and an occasional article in New Yorker magazine – that’s the extent of my interest in it. My house is decorated with a couple of enlarged photo prints, two paintings given to me by my father, who knows much more about art, and several ink drawings created by my friend many years ago. From time to time we would visit an art fair or, while on a vacation, walk into one of those galleries that seem to be so popular in all the touristy locations. But most of the objects offered there I cannot classify either as art or even suitable décor pieces – so mostly those visits had an alternate motive of warming up or cooling off (dependent on the weather at the location).
The gallery on the Big Island, in addition to a nice cool environment had also an extra attraction: a large selection of fine and costume jewelry. And while I was killing unswimmable scorching hours searching for a gem (figuratively speaking) among the offerings my vSO was browsing paintings. I do not remember if it was the only work of that author in the gallery, I don’t even know what exactly it was – an oil painting (most likely) or lithography, but it immediately captured our attention.
Nazran Govinder, The Shining Sinners. We spent some time dancing around this piece. We almost bought it. But none of us had ever heard of the author; we’d never bought any art before, so we had no point of reference to figure out if the price was even close to be right (around $800, I think). We didn’t have a smartphone or even Internet at the condo back then to do a research. So we arrogantly decided we would do it once we were back at home. Worst come worse, I could always call the gallery and buy it over the phone…
After we came back, I read more about the artist, realized that I previously saw some of his sculptures at other galleries, decided that I wanted to get that painting (and maybe one more), got distracted… By the time I started actively looking for The Shining Sinners the author had suddenly died at age of 44. You can probably imagine what it did to his work. I couldn’t believe that I, all by myself, without reading somebody else’s reviews or articles, discovered an artist, whose paintings I liked, and I missed the chance to buy the piece that I really liked.
***
Once a friend of mine sent me a link to the perfect pair of boots. She said she thought those were made for me.
What happened next is hard to explain. They were on sale for $100. By Nordstrom. With free delivery & return. They had my size. But I didn’t know the brand (do you see the pattern?) and I thought that maybe I should look for them in a store… By the time I figured out none of the stores around carried Camper (the brand), the boots were gone. I knew everything about them by that time but it didn’t help. I searched all online stores – no luck. I set up the recurring search on eBay – nothing but a misrepresented pair in a bad shape that I bought and returned. I even wrote to Camper Customer Support recently to ask if they ever plan to re-introduce the model – they don’t. The only positive outcome from that experience is that now I and two of my friends who were following my fiasco remember it every time we are about to postpone a purchase that might not happen later. There’s a rule called “Julia’s boots”: buy first, have doubts later.
***
Wouldn’t it be appropriate to round-up the topic telling the story of a missed perfume opportunity? I can’t: not only there are no cat-themed perfumes that I let slip away (like those on the picture below that I borrowed from The Scented Hound’s 2014 Holiday Gift Guide) but I don’t have a single regret about any perfume. It’s not that there are no perfumed I wished I could get now that aren’t available – there are plenty of those. But none of them fits the bill of “could have but haven’t.” What about you? Were there any perfumes in your life that got away?
And since it’s almost a New Year Eve here, Happy New Year to all my friends and readers! Be happy, be healthy and let the missed opportunities in your life be only of the caliber of those in this post.
Happy New Year from me and from the most important orange cat in my life.
Merry Christmas to all my friends and readers who celebrate it. Have great time with your families, loved ones and friends.
*
Also please join me in wishing Happy Birthday to Rusty – our wonderful Christmas cat who turns six.
Undina
After complaining in the recent post about hardships of my office life I decided to offset it with something positive.
Every year we do something special for Halloween. This year we decorated the office using the chosen theme – Ghosts.
For the Halloween day we are doing our traditional office potluck lunch and as a joke will have an improvised Ghosts Bowling.
Also we hold a Halloween Nails contest. The rules were as following:
For the Halloween Nails contest you should paint/decorate at least one finger nail (and up to 10; toe nail designs will be disqualified) with any Halloween motifs – colors, patterns or images. You should do it yourself – so no professional applications or industrially produced full-nail stickers, wraps, etc.
Office voting is still going and the winner will get an official prize during the lunch event. But I decided to show you all the designs and ask to vote (you can click on each to see a bigger picture). My co-worker whose design collects the most of your votes before the end of Sunday will get a surprise prize from me on Monday.
Will you guess what design is mine?
As to perfumes (a perfume blog, I know), I want to participate in NST’s Friday community project “wear your quirkiest or weirdest or spookiest fragrance.” I’m sure when I read perfumes others had chosen for that day and their reasoning I’ll find at least a couple I could have worn but as I went through the perfumes I own I didn’t find any that felt “quirkiest or weirdest or spookiest” so I decided to follow our office’s theme and wear Escentric Molecules Molecule 01 – a ghost perfume from my parfumista horror story.
Happy Halloween!
UPD: Thank you everybody for voting! My co-worker whose nails design got the most votes (#10 – 5 votes) will get dark chocolate truffles as a prize.
Not a single person guessed my number but I won’t read too much into it. My design was #6:
And now it seems like the unraveling has started too soon,
Now I’m sleeping in hallways and I’m drinking perfume
And I’m speaking to mirrors and I’m howling at moons
While the worse and the worse that it gets.
The only reason I’ve chosen that song and this quote, as it shouldn’t be hard to guess, was it mentioning perfume. Neither I share this song’s sentiment in my day-to-day life, nor it felt like that in the warmth of the October night on the winery courtyard while we were dancing to the music of Dawes and drinking… no, not perfume but a very nice Gundlach Bundschu Pinot Noir. We even got a couple of rain drops, which I tried to pitch to my vSO as a promise of an upcoming less dry winter – just to make him feel [even] better. I don’t think he bought it. But we both enjoyed the show and it was he who brought that perfume line to my attention (live rock performance isn’t the best way to listen to a song for the first time).
I like this acoustic performance of the song When My Time Comes much more – it’s more comprehensible.
Perfume for the night – Jo Malone Saffron. For an outdoor concert I could easily get away with a bolder choice but I had to be mindful of a friend who thinks she has issues with perfumes. So I dabbed just a little of it on my wrist. It was pleasant and didn’t clash with anything (or anybody). But I would definitely prefer it sprayed. With abandon.
Image: my own
“What perfume are you wearing? It smells great!” – I asked a flight attendant on my way to Maui. He seemed pleased by the question and told me that it was a custom blend made for him “by this great lady from Oakland.” He also told me that it was a very potent and tenacious perfume oil (“because it’s all-natural, you know“) that required only a tiny drop of it (he wore it on the neck below the collar line) to last for many hours – to that I can attest: I kept smelling it every time he would walk by. Later he brought me a note with the perfumer’s name and phone number. The scent was beautiful amber – completely wrong for Hawaii but perfect for the chilly flight.
We landed and the summery tropical atmosphere took my mind off ambers and fall on the calendar. As we were driving to the resort where we rented a condo, my vSO drew my attention to the words on a dashboard of our car and asked if I thought it was a sign.
We followed the instructions but this time (unlike the previous Hawaiian vacation) our residence didn’t come with a ginger cat and the only feline we encountered during our vacation was scrawny black cat hunting a lizard.
Choosing the right time to go to Hawaii is always a balancing game for me: I love swimming in warm ocean so if we go too late it might start cooling off (back to the temperature that most other people consider good for swimming) but if we go while water is still perfect by my standards, the weather is too hot for anything else but swimming in mornings and evenings. Last year I didn’t get to swim as much as I wanted to so this year we decided to err on the side of caution. We succeeded so to speak: we went a week earlier than we usually do; water was great but hot humidity kept us inside most of the time that we didn’t spend swimming or snorkeling. I still can’t complain: we’ve got to read, watch some shows from Netflix and just relax. And a view from our condo was very picturesque.
Maui is my favorite island: its flora is more tropical than volcanic Big Island’s but at the same time it’s more developed than Kauai. The downside of the larger tourist population is a much poorer selection of tropical fruit at the local markets. But don’t worry: we didn’t go hungry. Or thirsty.
Even though we didn’t move around the island much we got enough of the true Hawaiian flavor – tropical plants and fish, ocean sunsets, tropical penguins… Yeah, I also had to do a double take when I saw them first at Hyatt’s lobby pond. But they didn’t look psychotic so after some deliberation we decided not to look further for zebra, lion and hippo.
Usually when I travel I do not take any perfume bottles bigger than 10 ml. But I make an exception for my vacations in Hawaii: I always bring my 50 ml bottle of Estee Lauder Bronze Goddess. It has previously traveled with me to Big Island and Kauai and this year it came to Maui. I think I gave a hotel maid a good story about “those crazy tourists” by putting the bottle in the fridge (I noticed that the box was rotated after her visit so she was clearly surprised to see it there). It felt extremely pleasant and refreshing to spray it all over my body after taking a shower.
I hope you didn’t think that I brought just one perfume for the whole week on Maui. It was a single full bottle. But in addition to that I packed some travel bottles, decants and samples. As I usually do for vacations, I didn’t bring any new scents for testing – just those that I previously wore or at least tested and thought they would be nice on a tropical island.
Do you want to know how many perfumes I had with me on Maui this year? Take a guess in your comment (without reading responses from others). As a prize for the closest guess without going over I offer a small bottle of the custom blended oil perfume, with the story of discovering which I started this post. After coming back from the trip I contacted the perfumer who makes it and we’re trying to work out the ordering process (it is a very small company). I don’t have it yet so I have no idea if I like it on my skin but I thought that the story itself and the joy of smelling it during the flight were worth ordering two bottles – one for me and one as a prize for this guessing game. If there is more than one right answer I’ll let Rusty to pick a winner. The game is on until I publish the revealing post.
Images: my own; new header is created from a gift picture I got from Asali (The Sounds of Scent) right after my first swim in the ocean. If you haven’t done it yet, check out her blog for wonderful illustrations to her evocative perfume reviews.
A reminder: you still have until 11:59PM PST on September 29, 2014 to enter into the draw and/or participate in the poll for this month’s statistics in hajusuuri’s guest post Make Way for hajusuuri – Perfume Shopping in Boston
Yesterday Hugh Laurie (aka Dr. House) told me: “You smell great.“
Ha! How great would that have been if I could just stop right there? Of course, he didn’t tell it to me personally. While opening his concert with The Copper Bottom Band at the outdoor stage of the Montalvo Arts Center at Saratoga, Hugh Laurie said referring to performing in the daylight (citing from memory):
You have no idea how unnerving it is being able to look out and see all your faces. Not that you have unnerving faces — not at all. In fact, you are uniformly chiseled and well moisturized. And you smell great.
I would love to say that Fleur de Chine by Tom Ford that I wore has contributed to the collective perfumed aura at the concert but in reality the wonderful aroma that filled up the evening was coming from a couple of big linden trees in bloom. It was … breathtaking.
House M.D. is one of my all-time favorite TV shows. And the main reason I went to the concert was to see Hugh Laurie live. I got much more than I expected: the concert was glorious and Mr. Laurie was charming, witty and scintillating. He plays piano and guitar, sings, dances tango and drinks whiskey (he said he’d invented the tradition for the band: mid-concert they were served a shot of whiskey – right on stage).
If all that weren’t enough for me to be completely enchanted by the artist, there was more: during the concert Hugh Laurie made my vSO laugh several times (which doesn’t happen too often!). Also he invited me for a dance of Argentine tango… Wait… That part wasn’t real. I went to bed thinking about the concert and this post and in my dream Hugh Laurie and I just happened to be at the same milonga. Cabeceo, I nodded, he smiled – and we started dancing. None of it – dancing or dreaming about people I do not know – happens to me too often. But that was how much that performance influenced me. See the tango that made such a strong impression on me (video isn’t mine):
Image: my own
Finally it’s raining! Who would have thought I would be that excited about gray sky without a single ray of light coming through the clouds! I feel very peaceful and calm – as if the rain washes away my stress from the work week. A purring furry ball on my lap intensifies the effect. I do not need to be anywhere. I do not have to do anything. I can just relax and enjoy an almost colorless watercolor wash from my window.
I hope your weather cooperates with your plans this weekend.
With love,
Undina
Image: my own
… all animals are divided into one of 14 categories:
– Those that belong to the emperor
– Embalmed ones
– Those that are trained
– Suckling pigs
– Mermaids (or Sirens)
– Fabulous ones
– Stray dogs
-Those that are included in this classification
– Those that tremble as if they were mad
– Innumerable ones
– Those drawn with a very fine camel hair brush
– Et cetera
– Those that have just broken the flower vase
– Those that, at a distance, resemble flies
J. L. Borges, Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge
I do not like kittens. It’s not that I have a dislike for them but I don’t get that well-studied feeling of cuteness overload when I see kittens in real life or on pictures. I love mature cats. So when a new management of the complex where we lived changed the rules allowing small pets, on our trip to the shelter we intended to offer our home to a 1-2 year old cat. The only other requirement I had at the time was that it had to be a male cat.
All cats we saw that day were either much older or females. But I think we looked like people who were seriously going to get a cat so shelter workers kept showing us all the cats they had there not paying attention to my insistent “young but adult male cat.” And then we saw Him.
Four months old, playful and not in the least shy kitten had no objections to us picking him up and petting. And he was white and orange and resembled a little our first cat (see Part I: Found and Lost). And even his name on the cage’s label – Rusty – was reminiscent of that first cat’s name Rizhik (not surprisingly since words used in both languages were intended to describe the exterior). We just couldn’t leave without him.
When we got home, I told Rusty another requirement I had in mind: I would not have a cat who doesn’t like to be petted or sit on my lap. I even threatened to take him back to the shelter if he decides to be too independent. Either he took the warning very seriously or we both just lucked out but whenever I sit down Rusty almost always comes to me.
“Medium hair orange tabby” it says in his official documents. Judging by his look and behavior there was a Maine Coon climbing Rusty’s family tree at some point. And nine out of every twelve months in the year I really want to invite the kind person who thought of that “medium hair” joke. Rusty’s hair is everywhere!
Even though from the beginning we were feeding him cat food, he doesn’t discriminate: cat food, human food – food is food – and it never stays in his bowl for longer than 2-3 minutes. And he never stops foraging around hoping to find anything edible we left unattended. Rusty is so strongly food-motivated that he would do tricks for treats: “Sit“, “(another) Paw!“, “Down“, “Up“, “Jump“. Also we suspect that eating for him is a social interaction as well: both my vSO and I love fruits and Rusty also developed taste for some of them. He loves (as in actually tries to pry them from my hands) oranges, peaches and apricots.
Before we got Rusty, my vSO and I had two favorite Dunoon mugs (different shapes but both with cats on them). For years, unless we had guests over, we would drink everything only from those mugs. While I managed to train Rusty in many areas (for example, not to wake us up in the morning) there are rules that he refuses to follow. Rusty knows that he’s not allowed to be on counters and tables but every time he hopes to find there something to eat or wants to annoy us because he thinks we’re withholding food beyond the allowed schedule, he keeps jumping to where he’s not supposed to be and then plays “dead weight” when we try to remove him. My favorite mug has become a casualty in one of those battles. Since I couldn’t replace it (retired pattern) my vSO out of solidarity (and not to lose it as well, I guess) retired his mug into a cupboard.
Same as my other favorite cat Garfield (see Part II: Grin without a Cat), Rusty doesn’t like spiders. He hunts them and eats them – if he can get to them and if they are not too yucky. Otherwise he attracts our attention to them meowing loudly and gets a treat for each spider. Rusty also gets a treat for each “Awww…” (see Part III: Love from the First ‘Awww…’) or other expression of admiration from my readers for his appearances in my perfume pictures.
Since the age they told us when we adopted Rusty was approximate, we made a decision that he would be our “Christmas cat” and we celebrate his birthday on Christmas Eve. This year he turned five. As a birthday gift he got a new cat bed. I was afraid he wouldn’t like it and had an elaborate plan of pretending it was something I brought for myself to sit on… I didn’t get a chance to play it out: Rusty loved it immediately and he slept in it through almost the whole day.
My vSO found a back-up for his mug under the Christmas tree so his favorite mug came back from the retirement. And this concludes the Orange Cats in My Life series. In January I will go back to my kind of perfume-related posts with Year 2013 Entertaining Statistics.
Happy New Year to all my friends and readers!
Images: my own
For the first time I heard this carol many years ago in the Victoria’s Secret‘s TV commercial for one of their perfumes – Dream Angels Heavenly. Since then they’ve used Carol of the Bells in several ads with nauseating texts on top so I’m avoiding those now. But that first one that featured only instrumental was magical. Back then I didn’t know what it was but I liked it immediately.
Music isn’t a part of my day-to-day life. A couple of headsets you’d find in my household are those that I use for Skype meetings and a noise cancellation travel headset, a birthday gift for my vSO from me. From time to time we listen to music – on long car trips or during parties – but I may go for weeks without playing a single song.
But for a month every year I become a music fan: on my work commute instead of talk shows or news I listen to the Bay Area Official Christmas Music Station. I love Christmas music and do not mind listening to numerous versions of The Little Drummer Boy again and again.
…
You know literary technique “his version of the story – her version of the story”? One of those in our family involves me remembering that my vSO stumbled across a Pink Martini CD while suffering through my shopping at Nordstrom. He insists that it was a more manly neutral location – at a Starbucks. Wherever it was, Pink Martini became one of our favorite groups. I bought all of their CDs. We went to five of their live shows. Some of their songs are original but I like them mostly for finding and performing songs from different parts of the world, in different languages and music genres.
Even though I’ve known for a while that Carol of the Bells was created by a Ukrainian composer based on a folk chant “Shchedryk” I haven’t heard the Ukrainian version of it until three years ago when I bought Joy to the World – a Christmas Music CD recorded by Pink Martini.
Are you still waiting for the scent part? Alright… While many perfumes bring out various memories and associations, the reverse approach rarely works for me: I always have a hard time scenting movie characters, colors or moods. Selecting the song was easy: I think Carol of the Bells is one of the most beautiful Christmas songs, it moves me every time I hear it. But when I tried to match that intense, slightly disquieting and unsettling music piece to any perfume in my collection I failed. And then I thought of a different type of fragrant product that I had in my collection probably from the time I heard Carol of the Bells in that commercial: a Shimmer Body Powder scented with another Victoria’s Secret’s perfume from the same Dream Angels collection – Halo.
While giving a perfect long-lasting shimmer to skin, Halo powder has a very light scent of that perfume, which doesn’t interfere with wearing any perfume of my choice. And since there are not that many occasions for which sparkles on my skin are suitable (mostly I use it for winter holiday parties) my wand will last for many more years. And now every time I wear it, no matter which perfume I choose to complete my outfit, I will think of a beautiful Christmas carol that came from the same place as me and found here its new home and a new holiday to celebrate – as did I.
Merry Christmas and Happy Winter Holidays!
Read other song-scent pairings in The Scent of Music joint blogging event:
Undina's Looking Glass 