Sezzle and Getting Older

I don't know how this got to be somewhat of a financial review spot. I still am not in with PayPal, Klarna or Affirm and I am okay with that. But somehow, Sezzle decided that I would be worthy enough to be able to use $150.

Let's just say that it works like Afterpay and Zip or like any BNPL service. Like Zip, you do have to pay a $4 finance charge. With Afterpay, I am not spending $4 to use the platform and maybe be able to use the limit I have been given. So, like Zip, I can pay some bills with it, if I am running short of funds but it won't be something I would use often.
 

Getting older sucks. At the ripe old age of 42, my knees are starting to bug me and I am not thrilled with the prospect of having to make a doctor's appointment for knees that hurt. But I fell on one knee and that one really isn't getting much better. Nor am I thrilled with the idea of having to make an appointment for a dermatologist for getting some skin tags removed before I start picking at them. I am not going to worry about my hair turning gray but I do want the hair on my chin to disappear and will look.into that nut that isn't quite so important.

Getting older sucks when one gets excited about finding really good deals, especially online for very basic stuff like toothpaste or shampoo. And I have taken to deal shopping for stuff like that. Since I put discretionary spending on hold, I have to get a little bit excited about something.

It was either Thursday or Sunday, I wore Epic 56 from one of the two dabbers that I have. When I visited my mother in the hospital that day, she said that I smelled really good. But for a good long while, I couldn't place which perfume Epic 56 reminded me of. Then it eventually came to me. Epic 56 is a fancier version L'Air du Desert Morrocain. It has been a while since I have worn the original Epic and LADDM but I am sure that the original Epic would be the same thing.

Shopping

I have been working on curbing needless shopping, especially when it comes to things that I do not need. Let's say it is really difficult to do. I have made progress but I did back slide on that a little bit. My mother ended up in the hospital on Friday night and they say she might be coming home on Thursday. So I did back slide a little bit and after looking back on the past month, it is starting to look like it's been marginally more than a little bit. 

The things that were on the excessive side were those two Luckyscent orders. One was the Hiram Green sample set and the second order was the spray decants of the two new Andy Tauer releases. The Bath and Body Works order was on the excessive side too, in its own way. I didn't need that single wick candle or those three hand soaps. They might have been on sale but I still didn't need them. I am having a hell of a time trying to use up what I already have. I am hoping that I can make progress on the candle that I started three weeks ago.

The past Prime Day, I was getting some of the essentials. You know, the boring stuff like vitamins and toothpaste. So I did find the vitamins that I really wanted and used my gift card for that and a set of jasmine and gardenia candles. Those two candles are little and would make either a house warming gift or a birthday gift. The good thing is that I haven't hit up Ulta or Sephora. I know that I am probably going to lose my diamond status at Ulta this year and I am okay with that. I will just have to remember to use those points before the end of the year.

Since I am getting back on track, I have to really behave these next few weeks. I have a vacation coming up and I want to make sure that I do have some kind of fun money for it. On Sunday, I did.notice that I was getting low on the chai reach concentrate. When  I was starting the checkout process, there was something that popped up about bed sheets. I do need some bed sheets but it wasn't that night on the priority list. But I did cave and got some new bed sheets in black. I don't know what possessed me to chose black, but I did.

The only good thing right now is that I haven't gotten a full bottle of anything at this point.

Amazon Prime Day 2025

Since we have gotten through another Amazon Prime Day, I have some thoughts on Amazon. Amazon used to be a website that used to sell only books way back in the day when online shopping really wasn't much of a thing. So I have been shopping from Amazon for quite a while. Eventually, Amazon became this huge thing.and I became Prime member. Back in the day, I would have to wait the better part of a week before I got my books and it was the shipping cost was atrocious but as online shopping evolved, so did Amazon.

For quite a while, I was a Prime member off and on but for the past couple years, I have stuck with Amazon Prime. With how much Prime shows I watch and how much my dad likes the 2 day shipping, it's worth it. But for the past couple Prime Days, I haven't been too interested. This year, I did spend a little bit but not much. I ordered a 4 pack of spearmint tooth paste, 2 bottles of hair and nail vitamins and a video game for my dad to give on his birthday. Do you know how hard it is to find spearmint toothpaste? It is pretty difficult. When I got my package, the game and toothpaste were correct but what I got instead of the vitamins that I ordered, I got Poo Pourri. That is nowhere near what I ordered. I chatted with Amazon and wondered how vitamins and the Poo Pourri were similar. I got a refund via an Amazon gift card and I didn't have to return the wrong item. I can use the Poo Pourri as a gag gift. I did have to download a couple songs that I was thinking of getting.

But last week, I did get some things accomplished. I went through all of my clothes and got rid of what I didn't want and organized the rest of it. Do you k ow how hard it was just to even get started on just my closet? It was rough. It was a grand total of three and a half black trash bags of clothes for donation. I wasn't quite so willing to go through my makeup and perfume to see what can be either donated or possibly sold. I did find a place that will accept the candles that I do not want but I do have to sit down and really think about what needs to go and what stays.

 

Lush Sleepy Review

 

Since I have used up my Lyric hand lotion and shower gel, I decided to start something new in terms of body stuff. I still have the Lyric body butter and even though I don't have a lot left, I am hoarding it. Right now it's the Lush Sleepy shower gel and body lotion.

I do have the Lush Rose Jam body wash but not the lotion of Rose Jam. I think that Rose Jam has a gift set on ULTA and I will eventually check it out but right this second.

I had a dentist appointment on Monday and wanted something a little more calming. Going to the dentist is always rough for me because it never seems to be good news when I go.

Sleepy is a lavender dominant line up but it's nothing to loud. Sometimes lavender can be loud but Sleepy is not loud in anyway shape or form, it is soothing. I can't say that it made me sleepy but made.me feel calmer. I did find that the body lotion felt a little greasy on me for a good long while. The greasy aspect took me by surprise because my skin is really dry and sucks up lotion like it is going out of fashion. Sleepy is a little loud when I first apply it but quickly calms down. 

For a while after my dentist appointment, I had the bright idea or remembered the bright idea of layering Sleepy with Jicky. Jicky is a slutty lavender bomb. I couldn't find my spray bottle of the edp but found some last dregs of a Jicky extrait that I had gotten at Saks Fifth when I was first starting out in my perfume journey 15 years ago. Granted that this was a sample of what was the current extrait at the time.  I don't even know if Guerlain still makes the extrait of anything anymore. Let's just say that the Jicky extrait that I had and Sleepy play together beautifully. This combo is something that I would do again when I find my full spray bottle of Jicky or just say to hell with it and pull out my monster bottle of vintage Jicky. My monster bottle of vintage Jicky is probably the last time that Guerlain had the tear drop bottle of anything. Now I am wondering if Iris Silver Mist would play nicely with Sleepy.

Many Things and Some of it Bad

It's been a rough few days in my neck of the woods. On Thursday, we got a phone call from my grandmother's memory care letting us know that she did pass between 6am and 7am. We are just waiting for the doctor to sign off on the death certificate before we finish planning the funeral. Her death wasn't really a surprise between her dementia and her kidney disease. 

But this got me to starting think about what I need to wear in terms of clothing but I started to mostly about which perfume to wear. I have more of what I want to wear in terms of clothing. The choices are Jicky, Infusion d'Iris or De Profundis. Even though I have a mini of Calvin Klein Euphoria but I think is inappropriate even though it was my grandmother's signature perfume. 

Since I have a dentist appointment today, I decided to give Lush's Sleepy body products a go. Wanted something a little more soothing for today. With the whopping dose of lavender, I am thinking that this one can be layered with Jicky since Jicky has a huge lavender note. I figured that why not give layering a go. I haven't applied Jicky yet so I can't tell if that combo is any good. When I get around to using some Rose Jam, I can probably get away with layering it with Lyric. Eventually I will report back and see how it goes.
 

All Sorts of Things

I kept flirting with the idea of doing a post (if I hadn't already), of what I would like to see in parfum form. Not seeing Chanel no 5 parfum in stock online got me to think on that a little bit. You very rarely see parfum version of anything anymore. You might see extrait de parfum once in a while with niche but nothing else. Amouage did have the parfum version of some of their line but but that was mostly done away with and they now have the Exceptional Extrait line up. Intense version of any perfume is pretty meaningless to me. I want the ritual of a splash bottle of parfum version.

The two perfumes that I would like to see done in parfum form would be Estee Lauder Pleasures or Clinique Happy. Pleasures does come in an intense version and I haven't smelled that yet. I don't want to go back into the habit of blind buying again since I have pulled myself out of that recently. Estee Lauder and Clinique have the means to do something like this but they don't. Maybe something in the original formula doesn't translate well or they think something might not be good enough for even just a holiday run. I don't know which one I would get first if that happened because I am sure that they would be more reasonably priced that what Chanel would sell and maybe a little bit of a bigger bottle.

It looks like Andy Tauer did release another limited edition after he released Nexin. This one that he just released, was sold out when I got to the website. I wasn't looking to get a bottle, I was interested in the price, the concentration and how big the bottle was. I did notice a price increase on Andy Tauer offerings but I did notice a price hike on other perfume line ups. The price hikes on groceries is a little rough but seeing bigger price hikes on everything else sucks. I have enough perfume perfume to last a few lifetimes but I still want to try new things.

One TV show that I have watched ever since the beginning is Call the Midwife on PBS and the 15th season will drop sometime in 2026. I just found out that season 15 will be the last season and we will be getting a prequel. I am sad that Call the Midwife is ending but I did notice that the quality of the show has gone down in the past few seasons. Too many new characters were introduced and left fairly quickly with little to no explanation. I did noticed in the past season or two is that there have been a couple episodes that were very nitty gritty like in the first three seasons. I think that that should have been my first inkling that there really might not be a whole lot of time nor life for Call the Midwife. I did notice the past season when one of the main characters that has been there since the beginning was absent for a couple episodes, and she was in every episode before. So after Call the Midwife is finished, it will be mostly Grandchester and All Creatures Great and Small of my TV watching.

Starting to Get Somewhere

I am typing this on my Kindle since this is the only technology I have that is still working okay for the most part.So I view it as getting somewhere since I kind of gave up on the home computer for now. I am not so willing to even attempt trying to blog on my cellphone.

I am not fully sure on what happened with my mother and why she was having a meltdown. But she has been in the hospital since last Monday and she is coming home tomorrow. So that means that I have to get a little more serious with the cleaning right now. I am just taking a little break before I hunker down to get going on the last little bit.

 What I did was refreshed the bottles of perfume that I have sitting out. I was a little tired of looking at the bottles that I had out for weeks but not really wearing. There are some that remained. I kept Lyric because I still wear it quite often and no 5 edt and the parfum  version. I still have loads of no 5 that I really need to get working on to thin that part of my collection. What changed was I put away what I wasn't really wearing and pulled some new ones out. I pulled out some Epic and Ubar along with a bottle of no 19 edt. We are going to have loads of 90+ degree temps next week and want something a little cooler but has some kind of backbone. My bottle of Charles 62 has remained due to this be my current work go to.

One thing that I am looking forward to is either a full bottle or travel spray of something from the perfume house called Headspace. Portia from Perfume Posse was having a drawing and somehow managed to win. I am not one who wins anything in any drawing too often. I am perfectly happy with a travel spray, especially since I have never tried anything from Headspace. There are just so many perfumes houses and perfumes and I can't get to them all.