Wow, Bob, wow.

Wow, I wasn't going to post this week, but I just have to stop by to say how much I heart ya'll, how amazing and supportive you all re and how glad I am that I have this blog.  Also here are a few fleeting perfume-y thoughts I had today:

* Bath & Body Works Velvet Tuberose is not as sucky as it could have been.  As tuberoses go, it's not a bad one for the novice to encounter, and might lead a body to something like Prada's tuberose, and then eventually to Fracas.

* Speaking of tuberoses, here's a little tip for you perfume sales types: don't try to sell me various versions of a note I've already told you I have a favorite of.  If I tell you I own and love pure parfum Fracas, this is not a sign to fling every tuberose-based scent at me.  Also, don't try to sell me every flanker variation of a scent if I tell you I own it.  Perhaps I am merely trying to demonstrate to you that I like things that aren't necessarily tuberose.  Though, thank you, incidentally, for the Prada Infusion de Tubereuse, since I liked it -- but generally DO NOT DO THIS (especially after I tell you I collect and review perfume!)

* I got some solid perfume for Christmas. I liked it so far. I think I'd like it even more a crazy locket (note to self).

* Also, check out this adorable little clutch I got today (see above). Anyone have suggestions on scents I could wear with an outfit that is seriously built around this?

You said you'd help me disappear, but that could take forever.

Dear Reader:


I am floundering.


It's sad. It's true.  It's what it is.  2010 is coming to a close; what do I have to show for it? I don't know.


I guess this is the hard part of being, for reals, a grown up.  I've always been going, going, doing, doing.  Cross some item off a cosmic list.  Making some haunting spectre's dream for me come true.  I turned to David about six weeks ago and said, "I think I've finally accomplished everything every dead person I ever loved really wanted for me.  Now I have to figure out, what the hell do I actually want for myself?"


And that's what I'm trying to do.  


I'm in the middle of a project I really want to finish, to the point that I sometimes feel irritated at the rest of my life for getting in the way of it.  I haven't really made any progress on a project I'm committed to.  My perfume storage is too small and cramped to be really effective, I've been sniffing but not really loving anything new, and thus returning over and over to the things I already have.  I've been neglecting this blog because I'm not sure what to say.  Any review I would have written in the last two months would have come out "meh."  I just haven't loved anything seriously, though I do want a bottle of Jo Malone Red Roses to layer with my CB I Hate Black March so bad my teeth ache.


I put off taking the bar until July 2011, though at this point I'm resigned to doing it so I can practice, even though at this point I'm pretty sure being a lawyer is just another thing I'm going to pass through rather than be.  I wish I could find a way to make the things I love -- perfume, and writing, and music, and story telling, and fighting for women and my own voice -- be what I do every day.  I like to think I'm working toward it in a lot of little ways, but I emphatically do not want to wake up an other five or ten years and still be trying to make other people happy.  I'm lucky in that David seems pretty cool with me never really knowing, to be supportive as I try and toss away various hats.  And my friends love me for who I am, whoever that is today, and that's lucky.  And I have John, who knows me, really only he does, and I will always have him, though his being in Iraq has been really hard this holiday season.  But I don't know who I am yet;  not really.  I have axioms.  I have codes.  I have rules and  theories, faiths and scars, expressions and philosophies, hand gestures and nervous tics, but I feel like a work in progress, all the time.


I just want to be me.  And for that to be happy.


I'm going to give myself the week of between now and 01/01/11 to sniff around and think and maybe listen to some music and make some notes and be inspired before I come back to you.  Until then, I love you.  I really do.


Thanks for listening.


~ Diana


"I want my chest pressed to your chest
My nervous systems interfere
Ten or eleven months at best
I think I'll wait another year

This weather turns my tricks to rust
I am a lousy engineer
The winter makes things hard enough
I think I'll wait another year."


~ "Another Year," Amanda Palmer