The First Ozarkiana State Fair and Barbed Beecue Competition

Short Fiction Inspired by & Review of Demeter Fragrance Library Mesquite

The First Ozarkiana State Fair and Barbed Beecue Competition was the hot topic of colony discussion for weeks. When first proposed by The Founders Council, the idea seemed absurd. None of the settlers had ever actually been to a State Fair; none of them had even been born on Earth.

After a month of debate, though, most Ozarks were swayed by the members of the Council who spoke with passion and longing for a return to the traditions of their Earth-born forepeoples, who had died on transportation ships over one hundred years earlier, but whose stories had been passed down to the first Ozark settlers through their letters and journals. “This is why they were required to keep journals,” Mr. Poincey said, shaking a weathered elctro-tablet in his hand. “So that we might know what it meant to be citizens of Earth and carry on their traditions in the new world.”

So much had been lost in the efforts to resettle Earth’s population in the face of increasing geothermic instability that little remained of Earthian history. The settlement ships had been packed with essentials for survival. Other than the recollections recorded by that first generation of travelers and the digitized archives of music, art, and literature, not much of original Earthian culture survived.

Complicating things for the descendants who ultimately settled on Ozarkiana was the fact that much of their library and museum records had been lost in entirely when the Alexandria mainframe of their ship was damaged in an asteroid storm, destroying the storage drives intended to provide the surviving humans, now scattered far and wide among the stars and with limited ability to communicate with one another, with a blueprint for human culture.

The Ozarks, as citizens of the newly christened Ozarkiana had come to call themselves, were forced instead to rely on the journals kept by various individuals who made up the first generation on the settlement ship along with stories told and retold as they were passed down through the successive children and grandchildren who spent their entire lives on the ship during the trip, dying before the colonists reached a planet suitable for settlement.

Like the most massive game of telephone in humanity’s history, the stories had been altered and misremembered down through the generations. No one had any certainty the State Fair planned for Ozarkiana would be anything like those of Earth, but they didn’t seem to care. Other than Settlement Day, an annual day of thanksgiving for finally locating a habitable planet, it was the first time the Founders Council agreed on a settlement-wide holiday, to the great relief of Ozarks everywhere.

Plans were made for entertainment and games and other distractions, including consumption-related competitions. Transition off the ships and into settlement had been challenging, but few aspects had tried the patience of Ozarks everywhere as much as efforts to feed themselves. Traditional planet-bound methods of food preparation were lost during the settlers’ travels, everyone subsisting largely on the algae-based nurtino packs grown in large crates on the ship at zero gravity. The algae packs had little variation in consistency or appearance, and a bland taste that was tolerable if nondescript in its lack of discernible flavor. The settlers had come to call the algae packs chexin, which they understood to be the name of an Earth-based food that could be cooked a variety of ways and made to taste like almost anything based on its consistency and lack of individual flavor. Before making its final descent into the planet’s atmosphere, the Council implemented plans to store enough chexin to get the settlement through its first two years if the Ozarks ate only enough to survive. Beyond that, they would have to relearn how to cultivate their own food and hunt the animals native to the planet.

Once the settlers made it onto the surface and secured their needs for basic shelter and safety, cultivating local food stuffs had been the first order of business. Much of the energy of the settlers was poured into determining which native plants and animals could be eaten without detrimental effect, and these explorations were furthered by the seemingly endless search for rediscovering methods of food preparation and the cultivation of what Earthians had called speeces, which were used to flavor and preserve food stuffs. More than one Ozark had fallen into a fitful sleep filled with gastronomical discomfort after second sundown to dream fondly of the days when a belly full of chexin was a foregone conclusion.

The primary focus of the Fair, as everyone understood it, was eating the fair itself. There had been some heated debate on whether that meant all the decorations and structures were required to be edible, but ultimately this was deemed too difficult and time-consuming an Earthian concept to attempt the first year. Instead they turned to one of the things every descendant of Earth, no matter how far flung or temporarily removed, knew to be true of their forepeoples – they loved a competition.

So it was that Mrs. Norlina De’Lanta watched as her husband, Tallenassie, pulled on his finest jumper and headgear in preparation to leave for the Fair. Mr. De’Lanta was a prominent member of the Founders Council and had been selected as one of the judges of the premier consumables competition, which was understood by Ozarks to be known as a “Barbed Beecue.” This Earth tradition seemed to involve capturing and killing a small bird known as a bee, which was then hung on a barbed hook and cooked over a fire made of the large square black seeds of flowering cue plants.

Having none of these original Earthian resources, the Ozarks who made up the Fair Foods Committee had come up with as close an approximation as manageable. Entries were to be made up of the cooked flesh of the various indigenous animals, which had been either rubbed down with a dried mixture of roots or stewed in a plant paste, and cooked in small earthen containers over a fire made of the hard bark of a large native shrub Ozarks called meskit. The bush was so-named because the plant stems were coated with a thick sticky substance that stuck to every stray hair or fiber and required the use of a sterilization kit to remove the mess, but made for a long, slow-burning fire during cold nights.

For many of the dualinal days and unolunars since the announcement of the competition, the residents of Ozarkiana had been out trapping and hunting and cooking, trying to perfect their own receipts and math-oods of Barbed Beecuing. The winner would not only have bragging rights for the whole of a double sun turn, but their entry would be replicated in Aluminal Yurts across the settlement. They would become, overnight, a yurthold name.

“Are you ready to go Nor?” Tallenassie asked as he pulled the door open.

“I’m coming Tallen,” his wife said, hefting a large box over her arm. “I was making sure we didn’t forget any of the ingredients for the ply competition.”

Tallen scratched at his bread, frowning. “I still don’t understand why our ancestors would cook the bulbs of sweet plants and then spread them over flat pieces of wood.”

Norlina shrugged. “Maybe Earthian wood was edible. Either way, I aim to come home with that blue gibbon. I could use a helper monkey around here.” Tallen took the heavy box from his wife and she pulled the thatched door shut behind them.

. . . . . .

Six anxious orals later, when the second sun of Ozarkiana finally sank beyond the jagged-edged muttons of North Horned-Eyes-On, Tallenassie De’Lanta sat in front of the large audience, preparing to taste the maiden entry into the First Ozarkiana State Fair Barbed Beecue competition. Tallen shot a nervous look at Councilors Saffana Tennosey and Coalumbria Districk, his fellow judges, before gamely giving the audience a wide smile and biting into the first dish, a piece of rawlshide that had been prepared in the approved method for competition. Following Tallen’s lead, the other two judges shoveled in a bite of the entry and chewed at it vigorously.

The audience leaned forward, holding their collective breath as they waited for the judges’ pronouncement. Swallowing hard, Tallen and his fellow judges bent their heads together and whispered intently before picking up the small talk-extender to describe the item to the crowd.

“After consulting with my fellow judges, we would describe entry Number One as follows: though the texture is a bit chewy, the overall flavor is a deep smoky one that is not only pleasurable but reminds us, undoubtably…” Tallen looked toward his fellow judges, who nodded in smiling approval. “Of chexin.”

The crowd erupted with wild cheers.

Mrs. LaClette's Roses

Short Fiction Inspired by & Review of Demeter Fragrance Library Pruning Shears 

     “I do not like it.”

     Snick, snick, snick! went the pruning shears in Mrs. Lureen Ann LaClette’s gloved hand. 

     “Well, Momma, you don’t have to like it,” Ruby said with a sigh. “Because it’s happening whether you like it or not.”

     Snick, snick, snick! was the response.

     “I just do not see how he can do this to me,” Lureen heaved dramatically, wiping nonexistent sweat from her brow with the back of her glove.

     “He’s not doing it to you, Momma. He loves her. He wants us to meet her.  I think…,” Ruby hesitated. “I think he’s gonna marry her.”

     Lureen whirled around mid-snick! “He will do no such thing!” She panted.  Turning back to the rose bush, she freed the fallen stem she’d left hanging half-trimmed with another loud snick! and placed it in the top of the large basket on her arm before moving to the next bush. 

     “Momma, what exactly is your objection to her, anyway?” Ruby asked hesitantly, fearing the next thing to get deadheaded in the garden would be her.

     “She’s just…” Lureen spluttered as she went at the next bush with the shears like an angry badger after a piece of good wood.  “She’s not like us.”

     “Meaning…”

      Lureen looked at her daughter in exasperation. “We do not know this girl.  She is not from around her. Who are her parents? What do they do? You know she’s not even Baptist? Your brother is bringing home a Catholic girl, Ruby Mae. A Catholic.” Lureen spit this last bit like the very word left a foul taste in her mouth, attacking the bush renewed vengeance.  

     “First of all, she’s not Catholic.  She’s Lutheran.”

     “As if, that makes a difference,” Lureen muttered.

     “Well,” Ruby said evenly, “I suspect it does to the Lutherans.”  Lureen shot Ruby a traitorous look, but Ruby ignored her. “Secondly, of course she’s not from around here.  He went to school over a thousand miles away.  Did you really expect that when he met someone they would come from a family down the block?”

     “I don’t know what I expected,” her mother huffed, moving across the broad walk to the next section of the garden where she began to maim her fourth flower bed of the afternoon. 

     Lureen Ann LaClette’s prize winning roses were legendary in Meridian, Mississippi, and her garden was her pride and joy, having won every floral and landscaping distinction in the state, including an unprecedented three straight titles as Reine de Roses from the Ladies Auxiliary of the Lauderdale County Beautification Society.  The fact that Lureen had cut more flowers in one afternoon than she probably did in the previous month was a true testament to how much Jonah’s announcement he was bringing a guest home to meet the family had shaken her, and Lureen Ann LaClette was not a woman whose feathers were easily ruffled.  Lureen prided herself on being as perfect a representation of good Southern breeding as her roses, and she’d raised Ruby and Jonah to follow in her elegant footsteps. 

     Ruby suspected she knew what was really bothering her mother, but she didn’t want to be the one to bring it up, so she quietly watch as her mother went on massacring the rose bushes.  Perching primly on the edge of the wrought iron bench nearby, Ruby examined her nails and waited.  She knew eventually Lureen would work herself up into a tizzy and confess all, no matter how indelicate, and it was better that happen before Jonah and his girlfriend arrived. In fact, Ruby felt confident that in approximately three-two-one—

     “And,” her mother spun around to face Ruby, pruning shears waving wildly, “she’s going to be an architect!”

     Ruby stifled a smile. “What’s wrong with that?”

     “What kind of girl wants to be an architect?” Lureen demanded, pointing the shears at Ruby for emphasis. “And not wants, dreams! Jonah said she’d always dreamed of being an architect! What kind of little girl dreams of being an architect instead of a princess or a ballerina?”

     “One that wants to build things?” Ruby asked blandly and her mother narrowed her eyes in response.  “So she wants to be an architect.  Momma, who cares?  She’s educated and she’ll have a good job. “

     “Which means I’ll never get any grandchildren.”

     Ruby rolled her eyes. “Momma, that is the craziest thing you have said yet.”

     “No, it is not,” Lureen threw down the shears in a huff, and they stuck in the ground blade down perilously close to her shoe.  Lureen didn’t notice. “Girls with career don’t want to be mothers. They’re making their husbands stay home. I saw it on The View.”

     “Don’t you think you should wait until you meet her before you decide if she’s good enough to be the mother of your grandchildren?”

     “I don’t have to meet her, Ruby Mae,” Lureen wailed, hand pressed over her heart in true Scarlett O’Hara fashion. “A mother just knows.” 

     Lureen flung herself down on the bench next to Ruby as if the weight of her burden were too much to bear any longer.  “I just don’t know,” she heaved wearily, looking at Ruby from the corner of her eye to make sure her daughter was watching, “what I did to deserve this.”  Lureen rolled her eyes heavenward as if accusing God himself of personal betrayal.

     “Momma,” Ruby said, trying to hide her exasperation, “why don’t you just say what’s really bothering you?” Lureen responded with an innocent, questioning look. “You don’t like where she grew up, do you?”

      “Ruby Mae!” Her mother said, glancing around as if someone might hear them.  “How can you say such a thing?”

     “Because it’s the truth and you know it!” Ruby said pointedly.

     “Alright, fine,” Lureen replied.  “You’re right. I’m sorry. I know it’s old-fashioned, but that is how I was raised.  I just never expected that when your brother finally brought someone home to meet the family he’d be bringing – a Yankee.” Lureen whispered this last bit as though it was a dirty word and deadly disease all in one.

     “Jesus Christ, Momma—"

     “Ruby Mae LaClette!” If Lureen could make herself pass out for dramatic effect, this would have been the moment.

     “I’m sorry, Momma.  I’m sorry.  I apologize, Lord, for taking your name in vein,” Ruby said grumpily, but her mother continued to look thoroughly scandalized. “It is two thousand and eleven.  Two THOUSAND and eleven.  Being born north of the Mason-Dixon line is not a crime.  It never was.  I love you, but if that is what is really bothering you, you have to get over it.” Ruby looked at her watch. “By my count, you’ve got about ten minutes.”

     Ruby stood up to leave, feeling she’d done her part to spare her brother and his girlfriend the brunt of her mother’s theatrics, for which Ruby felt her brother owed her greatly. 

     “That’s not the reason,” her mother said softly, and Ruby looked down in surprise.  Lureen Ann LaClette, who had not cried even at her own mother’s funeral two months earlier, had tears in her eyes. 

     “Then what is it?” Ruby narrowed her eyes, expecting her mother to come up with some last ditch crazy reason to dislike a girl Ruby suspected was probably very nice if Jonah thought enough of her to bring her all the way from Chicago.

     “What did I do wrong?” Her mother sniffed, gazing forlornly at her gloved hands.  “If that’s the kind of girl your brother wants to spend his life with, then what must he think of me?”

     Of all the possible ways Ruby had expected Lureen to make this all about her, this had not been anywhere on the list. “What do you mean, Momma? Jonah loves you. We both do.”

     “I know that, Ruby Mae,” her mother said as Ruby took her seat on the bench again.  “I know you love me.  I just worry your brother may not…like me very much.  Or maybe his friend won’t.” Ruby opened her mouth to protest, and Lureen shook her head as she pulled off her gloves wearily. “I didn’t go to college.  I never worked.  I never left this house, except to take you and Jonah to school and your lessons."

     “And we appreciate it, Momma,” Ruby said, taking her mother’s hand in her smaller ones.

     “I know, Baby,” Lureen patted Ruby’s hand.  “I know you do.  But I’ve spent my whole life being a wife and a mother.  I’m proud of the job I did raising you kids with your daddy gone for work all the time.  But I’m an old woman now.  You kids are grown. And all I’ve got to show for my life is this big empty house and my roses.” Lureen looked down at the basket, only now registering with horror the amount of stems she’d cut. 

     “Momma,” Ruby said, squeezing her mother’s hand to draw her attention away from the flowers.  One crisis at a time, Ruby thought. “Just because Jonah may someday marry a girl who wants to work and have a career doesn’t mean we don’t realize how lucky we are to have had a mother as dedicated as you. And we're not for sure that Jonah’s marrying her.”

     “He’s bringing her home,” Lureen said plaintively and Ruby sighed in response.  “I just don’t know what I could possibly have to say to a girl like that, Ruby Mae.”

     “Just be nice, Momma.” Ruby patted her mother’s hand. “That’s all Jonah wants.”

     “I’ll try,” Lureen said with all the enthusiasm of a kid on the way to the dentist.

     “Momma?” a male voice called from inside the house.  “You out here?”

     “Well, try harder,” Ruby hissed to her mother, standing. “Because here they come.”

     A tall athletic boy strode into the middle of the garden, followed by an equally tall, willowy girl with long brown hair walking uncertainly behind him.  She carried her large purse carefully with both hands, as though trying to protect the contents from being squashed or damaged.

     “Jonah!” Ruby exclaimed, throwing her arms around her brother to cover her mother’s slowness to greet them.  “And you must be Emily. I’m Ruby, Jonah’s beautiful and talented sister. I’m sure he’s told you all about me.”

     Jonah smirked. “About how you can’t carry a tune in a bucket and constantly trip over your own two feet?”

     Ruby slugged him good-naturedly in the shoulder. “Lies,” she whispered to Emily.

     “Hey Momma,” Jonah said, stepping around Emily to hug his mother.

     “Oh, my baby boy’s come home!” Lureen cawed, hugging him tight in her thick arms and swinging them both back and forth. Jonah extracted himself from the prolonged hug, and took a step back.
     “Momma,” he placed a hand on the small of the girl’s back and pushed her forward, “this is Emily Smythe-Owens.”

     “It is nice to meet you, Mrs. LaClette,” Emily said, shyly extending her hand. 

     Lureen hesitated, and Ruby gave her mother a sharp look, then looked pointedly at Emily’s hand.

     Lureen seized it with an energy that was just a little too rich to be genuine. “It’s nice to meet you…Emily.  I hope you’ll enjoy staying with us.” Ruby frowned behind Jonah’s back, but Jonah didn’t seem to notice.

     “Momma, do you have any empty pots?” Jonah asked. “And some soil?”

     Lureen shot him a perplex look. “Of course, Sugar.  What size do you need?” Lureen turned toward the small storage shed in the corner of the sprawling yard where she stored various gardening implements and supplies.

     “Something small,” Emily said, reaching into her large purse and pulling out a crepe myrtle clipping, which had a plastic baggie full of water rubber-banded tightly to the bottom. “I want to pot this clipping and see if I can get it to root.  We don’t have crepe myrtles at home and it’s hard to get it to grow in our climate, but I’m hoping I can get it big enough to transplant in a pot back at school and then give it to my mother for the holidays.”

     If Ruby was stunned, you could have knocked Lureen over with a feather.  “Do you like flowers, Emily?” Ruby asked with eager interest. 

     “Of course she does!”  Jonah hooted.  “What would you expect from someone who’s studying to be a landscape architect?”

     “A landscape architect?” Ruby raised an eyebrow at her mother, who looked equally surprised.

     Emily nodded.  “I've loved plants and flowers since I was a little girl. I’m hoping to design public parks and botanical gardens someday like Beatrix Farrand.” Emily squinted in the direction of one of the rose beds.   “Are those hybrid teas? I don’t think I recognize all these varieties.”

      Jonah smiled at the girl, and his eyes glowed with affection. “My momma has the best roses in all of Mississippi.” He turned toward Lureen, and look he gave her was equally admiring. “Don’t you, Momma?”

      Lureen Ann LeClette glowed positively pink with pride. “I don’t know about all that,” she demurred with obviously false modesty.

      “Would you mind giving me a tour?” Emily asked.

      “Darlin’, it would be my pleasure,” Lureen said sincerely as she took Emily by the arm and began leading her around the enormous backyard.

      Ruby collapsed onto the bench in relief as soon as their backs were turned.

     “What’s your problem?” Jonah inquired, taking the seat next to her.

     “Never mind,” Ruby said to her brother as she threw her arm across her face. Going twelve rounds with her mother always wore Ruby out. “Turned out to be nothing.”

      Jonah chuckled, stretching his arm across the back of the bench behind her, the picture of relaxation. “That’s your problem, Ruby.  You can make a mountain out of a mole hill.”

      Ruby dropped her arm from her face and fumed at Jonah, who took that as the sign to make his exit. “Don’t worry about it.  It’s not your fault.” He said as he headed off toward the corner of the yard where his mother and girlfriend were deep in conversation. “You’re just like Momma.”

Lucky.

Short Fiction Inspired by & A Review of Demeter Fragrance Library Fresh Hay

I didn’t go with him that night to get lucky.  I wasn’t interested in a hook-up, a one night stand, the potential of a new friend-with-benes.  That Elvis song, “One Night With You”? Never had any appeal to me.  I’d waited much longer than my friends, who had given into to the overload of teenage hormones or the ease and convenience of the college overnight while I was still in the library studying.

After that, the opportunities for getting skin to skin with a stranger declined exponentially. It wasn’t something I was looking for, and definitely wasn’t worth spending my nights getting sweaty in meat market bars. I went to school, I went to synagogue, I went home.  Lather, rinse, repeat, ad nauseum, ad infinitum. Several years out of college and through my first year of law school, I had good grades, lots of friends, and I’d never been kissed.  Not once.  Not ever.  The longer it went on, the worse it got.  How do you tell someone over dinner on a first date that if they expect the night to end on the doorstep in a warm embrace, it will be a new experience for at least one of us?  Take it from me: when you’re twenty-seven, it’s not a conversation that goes well.

 So how did I end up rolling around in a stall full of hay with a man I barely knew? It started with a childhood wish – to have my own horse.

It was stupid, I guess. As a little girl I’d lived in the city in a sixth floor walk-up.  I was raised among concrete and weeds with few friends and absolutely no pets, due to my mother’s alleged allergies. I wasn’t even allowed to have a fish.  Growing up surrounded by giant buildings, I always thought of a horse as the ultimate symbol of everything I didn’t have – a majestic beast to ride over the wide open spaces of the Wild West, where no one’s stereotypically neurotic Jewish mother demanded you keep every piece of clothing pristine, never roll around in the mud (“Germs!”) or run through the rain (“You’ll catch your death out there!”) or sleep outside (“Only homeless people sleep outdoors!”) or keep an pet at all, much less inside the house (“Filthy creatures!”) No, nice Jewish girls did not go on dates with boys their mothers didn't know, did not wear pants when a freshly pressed, modest-length skirt was available, and they did not spend their time with farm animals.

I lived at home when I went to CUNY so the ban of all things that flew, swam, or otherwise moved on four legs continued.  Then when I moved out on my own, I stayed in the city in an even smaller studio than the cramped apartment I’d grown up in where my landlord was even more anti-animal than my mother.  Of all the things denied me as a child and all the 'good' habits encouraged under my mother’s watchful eye to the point that I perpetuated them even after I left her house, the “no animal” mandate seemed the one that made the least sense objectively, and therefore was the one the universe continued conspiring with my mother to keep.

Which I think is how I ended up as an intern on an organic farm in Eastern Oregon after spending a year studying at the only law school in America with a specialty in animal law.  I might not be able to have a pet, but by God I was determined the rest of the world would be welcoming of all things scaled, feathered, and furry.  I committed to my first year of law school and first summer internship with a frenzied energy I was sure would sustain me, and subsequently petered out somewhere around the first July day the temperatures closed in on a hundred and even the air seemed like it was dying of thirst. 

I’d taken the internship on a working farm that was part commercial venture, part co-op, thinking of all the animals I’d be surrounded by and all the different aspects of working and living with animals I’d be able to absorb in three short months, which was one of the weakest parts of my animal law resume.   Too stubborn to quit and too embarrassed to admit  how at completely useless I was at manual labor, I tried and failed each day to be a help to the farm. Overcome by my own ineptitude at last, I sat in one of the clean stalls in the large barn that afternoon, hiding from the heat and the experienced farmhands who endured my feebled attempts with little grace while I cried.

I’d been up since four and it was late into the afternoon when I finally broke down. The string of long days of physically demanding work had worn me down to a pitiful nub. Twenty-seven years old, and I’d never yearned for my overbearing mother more.  I longed for her to swoop down on me, demand to know what on Earth I was doing in my filthy farm clothes, and then drag me back to Brooklyn. I was so absorbed in my Fiddler fairy godmother rescue fantasy, I didn’t hear Cooper until he burst out laughing.

Pulling my pride up around me, I yelled at him, which just made him laugh harder, until he was doubled over and wiping at his eyes.  I tried to get by him, determined to pack my things, sell my car, and be on the first flight back to New York and Brooklyn Law where I belonged, but he kept blocking my exit.  When he finally collected himself, he dragged me through the barn to where the horses were boarded. 

I kept asking myself why I didn’t leave as I watched him lead one horse, then another out of the stables.  Truthfully, I was taken with the horses, and by the way Cooper handled them without a word, using various clucking and shushing noises along with his hands to communicate with them.  The first was a solid black horse with a superior air, and I could tell by the way it snorted and shook its head every time it looked in my direction that it knew I’d never been this close to a horse in my life.  The second, though, was a tall and lean horse the color of dark honey with a long blonde mane.  Cooper saddled both horses as I stood uncertainly near the large open doors of the barn, shifting my weight uneasily from foot to foot in my uncomfortably new boots, trying to decide if I should stay or go.

“Here,” he said finally, drawing the word out in his wide mouth as he gestured for me to come over to the second horse.  I dithered, and he pursed his lips, gesturing again at me insistently.  I stumbled over to him. Cooper grabbed my hand in his and dragged it down the brown horse’s long forehead.  The horse snorted in a friendly way. Taking the cue I kept stroking, and it nudged me with its muzzle encouragingly.

“She likes you,” Cooper said just behind my ear. Any other time I would have been nervous to have a man standing that close, but I was so enamored with the horse I barely acknowledged him.

The horse was beautiful.  She was everything I'd ever wanted in an animal, but I knew immediately she wasn’t a pet.  She was a companion.  You could see it in her eyes, in her movement, in the way she encouraged things she liked and shook off things she didn’t.  Lost in my first genuine interaction with the kind of friend I’d longed for as a little girl, I was more surprised than the horse was when Cooper lifted all hundred and sixty pounds of me like I was a bag of potatoes off the ground and placed me in the saddle.  Throwing my leg over out of instinct more than anything kind of knowledge, I teetered in the seat. Cooper smiled at me and handed me the reins, then walked over and hopped onto the broad back of the black horse like it was as natural as breathing.

Giving his horse a gentle nudge, Cooper headed out of the barn and toward the open land beyond the small paddock nearby.  With only the tiniest bit of encouragement from me, my horse walked smoothly after them, carrying me along as I awkwardly bounced around on her back.  As we reached the edge of the residential portion of the property, Cooper and his horse stopped short and my horse cruised to a stop next to him, as if by silent command.

“You’re having a hard time,” Cooper said unexpectedly.  I turned to look at him, shielding my eyes from the sun which was still bright despite it being close to seven o’clock in the evening.  “But you got a lot of guts for trying this in the first place.  I like a girl with guts.”

               

I swallowed, too stunned to say anything.  Cooper hadn’t said more than “Morning, Ma’am” and “Evening, ma’am”  to me since I’d arrived.  I knew he’d been working at the farm for about eight years, hoping to save up the money to buy property of his own one day.  People on the farm said he was hard working and had a good head for numbers, so they suspected he’d get there eventually.  Beyond that, I didn’t know anything about him except that his neck had a perpetual sunburn and he didn’t seem to own anything that didn’t look like it had faded from about a hundred washes.  To say I was stunned that this man had taken it upon himself to drag me about five miles on a horse into the middle of East Oregon Nowhere and give me lecture on my character was an understatement.

My horse, apparently, agreed with him, snorting and nodding as he spoke. “You’re working too hard, and you’re not working smart. Every now and then, you need to take a break. I see the way you watch the horses and I figure you’ve probably never touched one, let alone ridden one. I thought, before you bolted back to the city, you should probably try it once.” He turned his head toward me, squinting as if he was waiting for confirmation.

It was presumptuous, arrogant, and condescending.  Unfortunately, it was also true.  I flapped my trap open and shut once or twice, trying to think of a retort.  Finally I gave up.  I’d already made up my mind to leave that night.  What was the point in arguing?

“What’s my horse’s name?” I asked instead.

“That,” he said gesturing in my direction, “is Sweet Pea. She’s a Tennessee Walking Horse. They make better pleasure horses than work horses, but she's a good girl and right now she’s about as much as you can manage.”

Never one to back down from a challenge, I frowned at the characterization, both of me and my horse, who I already felt protective of.  Cooper ignored me. “And this here is Lucky,” he said, patting his own horse, who shook his head in a haughty manner at his name. “He’s an Arabian and little too strong for you to handle.”

“Like you know what I can handle,” I muttered, then felt the color drain from my face as both Cooper and his horse shook with laughter in response.

“We’re gonna keep it pretty slow, but if you get scared, just pull on her reigns,” he said demonstrating. “You don’t have to pull hard. Sweet Pea’s a good listener; she’ll stop right away.”

“What are we doing?” I asked, wondering what I had let this stranger get me into.

“We’re gonna go for a ride,” he said simply.  Then he urged Lucky forward, and took off without so much as a glance back in my direction.  I sat uncertainly in my saddle as I watched his figure growing smaller in the distance. 

Sweet Pea turned her head to eyeball me, and I could see the mixture of excitement to run and disappointment in me as a rider all over her pretty face. “All, right,” I said weakly, gripping the reigns tightly in both hands.  “It’s your show.” Sweet Pea needed no other encouragement, and took off after Lucky and Cooper at a slow gallop.

We spent the next two hours running in circles all over the hills and plains around the farm.  By the time we finally made it back to the barn, my back was aching and I thought I’d never walk right again, but I practically floated above my saddle.  Riding Sweet Pea was by far one of the most exhilarating experiences I’d ever had.  I’d felt completely connected to my environment – to Sweet Pea and the rhythm of our synchronized movements, to the earth underneath us, to the wind flying around us.  The world was brighter, the air smelled richer, and I felt free.  For the first time in my life, I’d been truly alive.

Cooper helped ease me down from the saddle and held me until my wobbly legs found purchase.  I tried to step away from him, but my muscles gave out beneath me, and Cooper grabbed me and held me up. “You’re like a new foal,” he chuckled.

I made my way back over to the empty stall where he’d found me and collapsed onto the large bales of fresh hay as I watched him water and rubdown the horses.  After he’d finished taking care of them and putting our bridles and saddles away, he came over and sat down next to me.

“Thanks,” I said with weary wonder, and he nodded with signature stoicism. Looking at him, I wondered if there was a picture of Cooper in the dictionary under the idiom “strong and silent type.” It was mostly dark in the barn, the only light from a single overhead lamp that threw long shadows in the center of the room but left the corners dark. 

The quiet stretched out around us.  I could sense Cooper getting ready to leave, but I didn’t want the magic of the evening to end.   It was as if every cell in my body still vibrated with the thrumming beat of the horses’ hooves, and that energy was the life force contained in all the atoms of the universe.  It made me feel bold and reckless, as wild and impetuous as the breeze blowing across the valley. 

In the eight years since that night, that’s the only explanation I’ve come up with for what happened next, which was entirely my doing.  I could blame it on the way the light highlighted the blond streaks in his hair or the way the shadows played across the planes of his face. I could blame it on the fact that I hadn’t eaten in fourteen hours and had spent the entire afternoon getting a terrible sunburn and possibly heat stroke.  I could blame it on the music of the night and the sweet smell of the hay clinging to the warm air around us. I could blame it on the fact that I could barely move I was so stiff from riding for the first time, and my legs were made of jelly and every part of me was simply too tired to leave the barn.  But the truth is, I’d had the best time of my life with a man I barely knew to speak to, and I didn’t want it to end.

So I kissed him. 

 . . . . . . 

“And that, my dear,” I said, as I pulled the last cookie sheet from the oven and placed it on the cast iron trivet on the kitchen table, “is how a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn ended up a part-time country lawyer and mother of three beautiful girls living on a farm in Eastern Oregon.”

June grabbed a cookie off the sheet before I could stop her, juggling it to keep from burning her fingers. “So that’s what Gramma Esther meant? We live here because daddy got you his horse?”

“Yes, Sweet Pea.” I said, trading her a cookie from the cooling rack for the hot one in her hand and kissing my six year-old daughter on the head as she shoved the entire thing in her mouth. “Because I got lucky.”

June scrunched her nose as she thought about it. “I shtill don’t get ith,” she said, crumbs falling out of her mouth.

“Don’t worry, Sweet Pea. Someday, you will,” I replied, laughing to myself as June grabbed another cookie and ran out of the kitchen.

Jen says.

Short Fiction Inspired by & A Review of Demeter Fragrance Library Dregs

Jen is standing on the trunk of Cal’s car, and he is really pissed about it. Jen doesn’t care. Three sheets to the wind on some of the foulest red wine I have ever had the misfortune to taste, Jen needs a platform for her latest magnum opus, a free form poem entitled, “Why Rivers Cuomo is a Total Douche.”

Jen says Rivers is a sexist pig, and if you don’t believe her you can read that Sady Doyle piece that proves it. Jen says she already knew everything Sady said, like way before Sady did, but that’s okay, Jen still loves her anyway.

Jen says she can see the skepticism on my face, and I try hard not to roll my eyes at her as she stumbled over to point to the exact location of said skepticism. Jen says it’s somewhere around my eyebrows. Cal tries to persuade Jen to come down, but she isn’t fooled by his faux concern that she might fall and knock her teeth out.

“Stop crying about your car,” Jen says, and Cal winces as the broad trunk of his ’69 Pontiac GTO, which he spent most of the summer and every penny he made mowing lawns painstakingly restoring, flexes under her weight as she stomps around. “You’re such a materialistic bastard,” Jen says, cackling. “This is no longer a symbolic representation of your masculinity! I appropriate this giant phallic instrument in the name of the oppressed! This is the Peoples’ car!”

Cal stares at the ground, really regretting that he agreed to buy us booze with his fake ID. I can’t say I blame him.

Jen shakes the bottle in my direction, offering me more of the foul wine. I can see crap floating around in the bottom of the bottle, and I shake my head at her with a grimace. Shrugging, Jen throws her head back and drinks deeply from the bottle. When she pulls it from her lips, her mouth is red ringed, like a kid with a grape popsicle.

All the sudden, I see a flashlight moving fast in our direction. Cal panics, and tells Jen he knew he shouldn’t have listened to her when she suggested we drink in the high school parking lot because it’s the last place anyone would think to look.

Jen says Cal shouldn’t be so uptight as she launches herself at him, half-jumping and half-falling off the trunk. Cal catches her right before she hits the ground to prevent her from landing, as expected, face first. Cal pulls her upright and suddenly they are almost kissing. I blush and turn away, wishing I wasn’t there.

A voice calls out “Hey you!" and we all recognize it as the old school security guard, Stan. "Stan the Man," Jen says giggling, and pulls away from Cal, who stands frozen in place, arms still wrapped around the space Jen occupied. The fog is so thick it creates a barrier between Cal’s car and Stan, but as soon as he sees the distinctive Pontiac, we’re all doomed and we know it.

Jen says, “Come on, Cal,” throwing open the passenger side door and flinging herself into the back seat. Cal and I spring into action on her command, running for the open door. He jumps in and slides across the seat and I follow, barely pulling the door shut when he guns the engine, tires squealing against the asphalt as we pull away.

“Do you think he saw us?” Cal asks, and I shrug. If so, I know we’re screwed. Cal is a nice guy, but he’ll fold like a house of cards if they ask him who was with him tonight. It’s too bad, too. If he was the type to lie, Jen probably would have kissed him.

Jen says nice guys finish last, and with her, she means it.

Jen wraps her arms around my neck from the backseat, and I pat at them as she sticks her head over the seat between us. An old Jane’s Addiction song comes on the radio, and Jen mumbles along, making up her own lyrics to make the song about her. I laugh as she sings loudly in my ear, ignoring the off-key parts and the nonsensical words she adds because she’s too drunk to think of real rhymes.

“You’re the best, you know that?” Jen says, planting a wet kiss on my cheek. Cal can barely keep his eyes on the road. Waves of jealousy reverberate off him and into me and I feel angry at Jen because she always says that, and I know she doesn’t really mean it. Not with Cal; not with me.

“I love you,” Jen whispers, resting her head sleepily on my shoulder and closing her eyes. I can feel her breath against my cheek, and the foul wine smell on her breath should repulse me, but it doesn’t. Like everything else about Jen, I think it’s weirdly beautiful.

“I love you, too,” I mutter, resting my cheek against her forehead.

Jen doesn’t say anything.

I wish she would.

People Who Don’t Know Nothin’ ‘bout Hurricanes Call Us Crazy

Short Fiction Inspired by & A Review of Demeter Fragrance Library Salt Air 

I knew I should have left. Most people left the peninsula days earlier, when the first warnings came out. The big one was coming. It was a topic often belabored during hurricane season in these parts: a hundred year storm. Over due by almost a decade, the weather men, the politicians, the local LEOs were all clear on one point: if you’d never evacuated before, now was the time to start.

A Galveston, Texas cemetery
flooded after Hurricame Ike.

The stories of the last one were famous. The dead floating up out of their deluged graves, the wooden caskets suddenly buoyed by the onslaught of water, six feet of  storm soaked earth nothing in the face of the swirling currents washing through the city. Those left on the island who survived never got over the terrifying sight of their dearly departed coming up out of the ground and parading through the streets, a sure sign that if you’d made the choice to stay, you were already dead.

Issac’s storm wiped out the island, turning a bustling gem of a city into a waterlogged ghost town that had to be rebuilt from the ground up, literally. After the storm, the city brought in tons of earth to shore up the water fronted edge of town, covered the area in six foot tall slabs of concrete to create a wall between the residents and the sea. The dead were no longer buried in wooden crates; they were stacked in mausoleums or cemented into the ground, a pledge to returning residents that such horror would never befall the city again.

Except now it was.

The new storm was set to wipe out the town again, perhaps forever if it was as bad as anticipated. The news people said anyone who hadn’t left either had a head full of delusion, a love so strong for the city they’d rather die there than contemplate living anywhere else, or was certifiably insane. There was no two ways about it, said the radio and tv folks. Staying in the city was a resignation of your life to the Fates and the Furies.

Knowing all that, I still stayed, and I wasn’t even in the city. Given how dire things were on the main island, staying on the long narrow spit of land that made up the peninsula I lived on was more than pushing your luck; it was a death wish written on paper, stuck in a bottle, and cast into the sea begging it to claim you. Some people went for death by cop; this, quite simply, was death by hurricane.

So what was I doing here? Watching the hundred year old pear tree in the yard next to the rickety house twist and sway in the increasing winds, even I couldn’t say. If I had to put my finger on it, though, I’d have said because it was the only place I’d ever known peace and happiness and love, and if it was going, then maybe I didn’t want to remain in the wake. Looking at the peeling wall paper and fading paint, I knew the little two bedroom house wasn’t anything much to look at. Built on stilts with a room downstairs that various male relatives had talked about finishing but never got around to, it was a crazy place to ride out waves estimated to top well over the second story.

The kids had said as much when they’d called, pleading with me to head to Houston. They’d begged, but I knew they were all too far away to get here fast enough to force me out and I wasn’t having any of it anyhow. First of all, I didn’t have a car to get there, because I couldn’t drive after my cataracts developed, and I wasn’t about to go begging strangers for a ride. I had more pride than that. Second, I told them what I told them every single time a storm came. I’d made it through the ones that had come before; I’d survive this one. I wasn’t about to leave my home and all my worldly possessions abandoned for looters to get at if it took me too long to get back to the peninsula.

But it was more than that. I’d buried my first dog in that yard, and squinting into the wind, I could just make out the little row of stones shaped in a cross where his bones laid. I’d had my first love in that rickety house, I’d unexpectedly given birth to my first baby in the old claw foot bathtub, and after the kids had grown up and moved away and the old neighbors had sold their houses to summer people and my husband of thirty years had up and died on me too old to remarry and too young not to be lonely, this house was all I had.

Standing on the porch, I curled my gnarled fingers around the banister that encircled the balcony, and let the wind slap me in the face as it pulled my wispy white hair out of its bun. Looking down at my hands, I could still see the ghost of younger ones in their place, and I wondered when so much of my life had passed me by, like sand washed out to sea. Everyone I loved had left or died. I was eighty-one years old. I loved my house. It was all I had left.

Inhaling deeply, I caught a whiff of the storm wind pulling the ocean closer and closer to the bay side of the peninsula, where the house sat waiting to make a last stand, and me with it. The air was so salty it stung my nose and eyes, and the brackish edge told of all the driftwood and kelp and sea creatures being dragged in along with those thousands of gallons of water, pushed harder and closer every passing minute.

Looking up at the sky, I said a prayer to God. If this is it, Lord, then you can take me. I’m ready. I just want to know that the last thing I’ll remember is this place – the way it felt, the way it looked, the way it smelled. If you gotta take me now, then I’m leaving this world knowing the last thing I’ll ever see will be my home.

Nodding as if in agreement, I wandered back inside. I couldn’t hide in the tub because I’d filled it with water in preparation for the storm, so I curled up on the floor next to it with a blanket and a book and waited for the beginning of the end.

A single surviving house in Gilchrist,
Texas after Hurricane Ike.

Three days later, the house and I were still standing. Rumor was only about ten houses in our little town had survived more or less intact. Mine was one of them. 

 When the search and rescue people brought me a little prepaid cell phone with some groceries almost a week later and I called my daughter, she burst into tears and yelled for a half hour that the next time she was coming down to drag me out if she had to, but she wouldn't let me take that kind of chance again. She’d been sure I was dead. I told her to hush, that I knew enough about living and dying to know that if it was my time, no amount of her caterwauling was gonna change things. The good Lord would take me when he was ready, I told her. And apparently he wasn’t ready yet.

He took the pear tree, though, and I was awful sorry to see it go.

A week of Demeter Fragrance Library Reviews, with a Twist

Reviewing perfumes that veer toward ultra-realism is tough because if it’s done right, it smells like the platonic ideal of the thing it’s supposed to smell like. If it’s done badly, well, it smells nothing like the thing you think it should. So it’s tricky, reviewing ultra-realist perfumes. I think Christopher Brosius takes a good tack on the expectation game by telling the consumer the story of what he thinks the scent smells like. It creates a scent from his memory, which means it isn’t necessarily going to be yours.

Demeter Fragrance Library goes the other direction by asserting the thing is what it says it is (for the most part). Salt air is supposed to be salt air; vinyl exactly what the name says in the title. This is a risky maneuver on Demeter’s part, because if the first scent of theirs you try smells like you think it should, then you’re sold on the line, and much more forgiving of the miss here and there based on that first bull’s eye. If that first try is a miss, though, you may dismiss the line completely.

Luckily for Demeter, I never give up on the first try.

This isn’t say that that Grass, which I reviewed here, is a bad scent. It’s not even to suggest it doesn’t smell like cut grass. It mostly does. However, there’s another aspect floating around in there that makes it not quite grass. I liked the experience, but Grass, well it wasn’t the droid I was looking for.

Because these scents are, for the most part, what they purport to be, I'm taking a different tact this week.  I'll tell you what the scent is like when worn, though that part will be mostly self-explanatory.  I'll also tell you a story.  Sniffing some of these scents evokes the idea of a place or circumstance  so strongly, you just find you want to write about it. Thus I decided I would.  This week you get a handful of short fiction/perfume reviews, courtesy of Demeter and my crazy brain.

I hope you find it entertaining.

~ People Who Don’t Know Nothin’ ‘bout Hurricanes Call Us Crazy - A story inspired by Demeter Fragrance Library Salt Air.
~ Jen Says. - A story inspired by Demeter Fragrance Library Dregs.
~ Lucky. - A story inspired by Demeter Fragrance Library Fresh Hay.
~ Mrs. LaClette's Roses - A story inspired by Demeter Fragrance Library Pruning Shears.
~ The First Ozarkiana State Fair and Barbed Beecue Competition - A story inspired by Demeter Fragrance Library Mesquite.

And she was lying in the grass, and she could hear the highway breathing.

Scent Spotlight: Demeter Fragrance Libary Grass, also PRIZE DRAW and head-to-head scent delivery method comparison.

In case you missed it, we've been experiencing some technical difficulties here at Feminine Things, which are hopefully now resolved. Also, life has been crazy, with the moving twice and being short staffed at work. But enough about the bad; let's focus on the good in life. And in my world? That means the perfume.

I bring you a strange challenge today. I was talking on twitter to Victoria and Carrie (and I think Gaia as well) about Demeter Fragrance line. I love the CB I Hate Perfume line, and Demeter is Christopher Brosius' former employer. I had never tried Demeter scents and, given the low price point, asked what people thought before I went nuts about bought 10-15 of them unsniffed. The general response from the tubes – great scents but not terribly long lasting, better suited for room sprays than perfumes.

Considering my purchases and related powers of acquisition, I noticed in my dithering of do-I-or-don’t-I that Demeter added a perfume oil version available in a rollerball. Would a perfume oil last longer, as advertised, and fix the major criticism of the line? Or perhaps the alcohol based spray or splash was fine, but needed the spray-until-wet technique I learned from Mals at Muse in Wooden Shoes? Only one way to find out.

So I did exactly what any truly insane perfumista would do – bought the same scent twice in both forms.

Yes, that’s right. I couldn’t buy two different scents because I wouldn’t truly be able to tell if the scent lasted longer because it was stronger or I noticed it more or the method of scent delivery (oil roll on vs. alcohol spray) was the better choice. Nope, the only option was two buy two bottles of the same scent. I managed to pick up a 15ml cologne splash for $6 and the 8.8ml roll-on for $10, so for a whopping $16 plus shipping, I got my mad wish, though I admit that the entire over-the-top endeavor is probably inspired by my most recent Top Gear binge.

Random thoughts about grass...

After scrolling through the extensive list of Demeter scents and considering everything from Basil to Birthday Cake to Salt Air to Mulled Cider, I finally settled on, of all things, Demeter Grass. FN1. Yes, Grass. What can I say? It’s summer and I love a good freshly mowed lawn. The description, which is lengthy, is as follows:

Playing in it.......lying on it......or even mowing it....Grass smells wonderful. Centipede grass, the most widely used lawn grass in the southeast United States, has something of a romantic history. Around 1918, the U.S. Department of Agriculture sent a Dr. Meyer, a plant explorer, to China in search of plants that might be economically useful. Tragically, before his return home Chinese bandits killed Dr. Meyer. His suitcases arrived in the U.S. where a collection of seeds was found, including a packet of Chinese centipede grass seeds. That packet of seed was sent to a USDA experimental station near Savannah, Georgia. In the early 1920's, Jack Renfroe took four sprigs of the grass to his father, Mr. Riley Renfroe, who had a 400 acre farm near Quitman. Three of those sprigs survived and were planted in a pasture. In 1950, Ray Jensen, a soil scientist for the USDA, visited the Renfroe farm to make a soil survey. Although 96 years old, Mr. Riley Renfroe wanted to accompany Jensen on the survey. That evening the two settled down to a wonderful southern dinner and that is when the story of the centipede grass on the Renfroe farm was told. Ray Jensen had just finished building his home on 20th Street in Tifton, Georgia. Mr. Renfroe insisted he take a pickup load home with him for his yard, where Jensen planted all the grass. The following year Jensen contracted Mr. Renfroe to produce centipede seed from the 40 acre pasture he had developed from just three live sprigs of the Chinese grass. Ray Jensen had a vision to produce and sell this wonderful grass and seed and offer it as a foundation to southern homes and businesses. From China to Washington, DC, to Savannah to Quitman to Tifton, to the entire southeast and beyond, from one small packet of seed and three live sprigs, today centipede grass can be found on lawns and ornamental turf areas around the world. In Demeter’s Grass Pick-Me-Up Cologne, we have captured the freshness and sweetness of a lush green grass pasture, much like the pasture that Mr. Riley Renfroe planted with centipede grass from those three live springs over 80 years ago.

...contained in footnotes below.

First let’s talk about the scent. I grew up playing and lazying about on those fabled lawns of the American South and I know that smell, so familiar it plays on repeat in the memory of summer when I think about my life. As a ‘grass’ scent, let me say this – the scent itself is wonderful. It does smell like fresh cut grass, but less like the real deal spread between the fingers of your outstretched hand and more like an intense sculpture of grass, or like a wild Van Gogh-esque painting of fresh grass. It is a very sweet grass, and almost has a little bit of a soapy edge, but is really quite beautiful. My friend, Kate, said she thought it was more like clover, and I can see that.  For someone who wasn’t sure if they liked scent, or thought all scents were too “perfumey” this might make a good offering, though I can also see some critique of the scent reminding folks of a clothes detergent, as I suspect that this is what they’re always aiming for when they aim for grass or nature scents. I also want to say that this isn't so much real grass as the intense experience of grass, like grass as one might imagine experiencing it on a perception altering substance. FN2. I give the scent itself a solid 3.5 to 4 nods for originality and closeness to reality.

But to the more important question, in a head-to-head scent off, which lasts longer – perfume oil or alcohol splash, and how long is that, exactly? Here are my totally subjective findings.

The cologne splash lasted longer than the perfume oil on me, though when I first applied them, the oil was stronger on my skin. The dry down between the two, at least for Grass, was virtually identical, so you’re going to get the same ride either way. The cologne splash lasted a little over five hours in the slightest lingering, slightly longer than others warned me. The oil lasted even less than that, only about three and a half hours, which really surprised me, particularly when it started out so much stronger. Either way, a disappointingly short skin life.

Hmmm... grass...

Just to give it a last run, I took the splash and stuck some in a sprayer, then sprayed until wet, and that got me to almost seven hours, though it was very weak by then, and you’d go through a bottle pretty fast to use that much. Plus, it sprays on so wet you’d need to apply it before getting dressed so it didn’t run all into your clothes. In other words, it takes work to make it last, and even then it’s not a scent you'll still be catching whiffs of at the end of a full day.

So is it worth it? Well, I guess that depends. On the one hand, the scents aren’t going to last long in any iteration. On the other hand – so cheap and so many options! And on the gripping hand, some days you don’t want to wear the same scent for your morning and your evening plans, and in those cases this is a fine option. For a mere $18 you could go through three scents in one day. I don’t recommend the line for those looking for a ‘signature scent,’ but for those who like to play with scent wardrobe, for the price of one $60 scent, you can have ten completely different ones here. That makes them not only a fun addition to my extensive collection, but a great source for assuaging impulse shopping and stocking stuffers.

Which brings me, finally, to this: Your August prize draw. A bit late, sure, but here nonetheless. Winner gets my extra roller ball of Demeter Grass, a $10 gift certificate to Demeter Fragrances which is almost enough to buy you a 15ml cologne splash of your choosing and cover shipping within the U.S. (sorry, international readers, you’ll have to pay a little more for the shipping) and of course, a mix CD made by yours truly.

To enter, go to the Demeter Fragrance site (which is not AT ALL attractive, but at least appeals to the utilitarian in me), look through the list, and tell me what you might buy if you win!

Open to all readers anywhere, and very excited to hear your thoughts.

To enter please post by: 12:01AM, Monday, August 22, 2011 Pacific Standard Time.

"And she was drifting through the backyard...
And she was taking off her dress...
And she was moving very slowly...
Rising up above the earth...
Moving into the universe, and she's
Drifting this way and that...
Not touching ground at all, and she's
Up above the yard...
and she was."
"And She Was," Talking Heads

______________________________
FN1. I actually changed my mind so many times that I would have sworn to you with the delivered box unopened and in hand that I'd bought Salt Air, because I love going to the beach and do that a lot during the summers here, but apparently I changed my mind at the last minute. I think I decided I had a lot of 'beachy' scents already. I honestly don't remember. Now that I've been convinced it was coming, though, I want it. And I did just get paid today...

FN2. Not that I would know anything about that. It just seems that way, like when you look at a Van Gogh and you think, "Whatever he was on must have been wonderful!" or look at a HR Giger and think, "Holy Jesus, keep whatever he was taking away from me!"

I bet David Lynch could even make this
creepy...oh, wait! He did! In Blue Velvet!

FN3. I just want to make a note that there are a creepily large number of photos that turn up when you google image search "girl laying on grass" or even "person laying on grass" and you can make out the individual's identity in every one. Apparently artsy shots of obscured human figures on grass are not common, and now that I think about it, would probably come out looking sinister in a Lynch-esque way.

FN4. The Demeter description reminded me. I had this friend once who did her thesis on the history of the American lawn and how it's basically an environmental catastrophe as well as a socio-cultural catastrophe since its inception in the 1950s, single family homes destroying urban centers, creating horrible gridlock, and social isolation for women of the Feminine Mystique variety. It made sense, but also made me a little sad. In the way I tend to festishize small town Americana, I do love a good village green...

FN5. Does anyone else think the invention of astroturf was basically a one of the plastics/petroleum industry's most horrible ideas? Like terrible bad?

FN6. Ditto for golf courses? Does anyone else start ranting about how much they hate golf courses every time they drive by one?

FN7. Who knew I had so many thoughts about grass, lawns, and grass/lawn-related things?