County Fair and Perfume

So I am working most of Labor Day weekend. I worked yesterday, today and Monday and since I am going to my county fair tomorrow, I got to thinking of which perfume do I want to wear.

Every county in Ohio has a county fair and they can be very different. In rural or more rural areas, it's about farm animals and 4H. More suburban areas it's more about arts and crafts, and rides. My county fair is all about 4H and that is where I am going. I plan to eat a fair bit of fried food and look at all the animals that the kids in 4H raised. There are a couple barns that I do avoid because they make me sad. The beef barn is one of them because I know most, if not all of the cows in the beef barn will be slaughtered on Tuesday. I don't go into the pig barn for the same reason but maybe not so many. Maybe because I didn't grow up on a farm and that is why I get so sad. For farm families, this is a normal thing. But if you didn't grow up on a farm, things like this aren't a normal thing.

I am still working on using things up or just plain old using things up. But the culling of my stuff isn't easy because part of me thinks about the money that was spent. But if the body care stuff smells off or is separating, it goes in the trash. I am going to have to look at if it isn't opened and I don't want it, I will donate it and it won't be money wasted so much. But let's talk about what I am thinking of wearing tomorrow.

Normally I do wear something from Andy Tauer and I am thinking of sticking with Andy Tauer. It's either the discontinued Noontide Petals or Au Coeur du Desert. I might go with an Avignon route. There are other perfumes that I can wear but the later two seem to be the best suited for the county fair. It's fall and I am slowly switching to my fall perfumes and Au Coeur du Desert seems to blend in a little more with the smells of the county fair.
 

Back from Vacation

 

So Tuesday was my first day back from vacation. It wasn't a great vacation, let alone good. Between my mother repeatedly calling from the hospital either wanting clothes or just angry calling, it was marked by appointments or visiting my mother. So it was not very relaxing. I have a little under 3 weeks to go before my next vacation. I enjoy taking most of my vacations a little later in the year.

I wore a few of my perfumes that I don't exactly get to wear too often. I was wearing more of the bombastic perfumes like Lyric, Number One Intense and Nuda. I figured that if I am going to be on vacation, why not wear my louder ones and it wasn't hot and humid so a louder perfume was and is easier to wear.

Was I able to make progress with my candle collection? The only progress that I was able to make was finishing that Winter candle from Bath and Body Works and start a Sun Drenched Linen from Bath and Body Works in single wick form. I was hoping to make more progress with that but between all the appointments, phone calls and other bigger projects, it wasn't really possible to do.

Even my Kindle was being an ass. I wasn't able to watch Prime Video for some reason and after talking to Amazon, I had to do the option of last resort and that was resetting my Kindle to factory settings. Let's just say that I wasn't to happy with that. I could have used my Fire stick but with my mother always calling or the appointments, the Fire stick was a bigger pain in the ass for pausing movies and shows that I was willing to go through.

So now, things are getting a little more back to normal. The only things that are different is how my mother is still in the hospital and we have a holiday weekend coming up. I am planning to go to the county fair on Sunday and eating a bunch of junk food and seeing the animals. I do not plan to go with one of my friends though. He is more interested in a certain section of the fair with the folks that take pictures of wildlife. I have no problem going over there and looking at the pictures and talking to them for a couple minutes. I do take issue with the fact he wants to rush me through so he can do nothing but deep fried Oreos, eat from the Italian food stand and see if there is a way he can get business for his photography stuff. So he seems to take away the enjoyment from anything because he wants to use certain events to see if he get an opportunity to make money. I asked him once if he can just enjoy fairs and festivals with friends and family without looking for ways to bullshit or bully his way into some kind of minor side hustle. If he wants to keep friends and family in his life , he has to give it a rest. I want to enjoy small things like that. I have enough problems and want to try and enjoy something, even if it is something small.

Subscriptions

 

Every so often, I do look at subscription services and if they look like they might be worth the money, I look for a free trial. It seems like I have become more aware of subscription services. I have been a Prime member since the beginning of time and ever since Amazon stepped up their game with Prime, I started to take notice. Then it was Barkbox and my dogs love their Barkbox. Wal-Mart Plus is questionable and I am debating on if I should discontinue the Wal-Mart Plus since I don't see any worthwhile benefit to it.

For a while, I have been taking a look at the Sephora same day delivery subscription. When it was offered for free around Christmas, I decided to give it a whirl to finish off a Christmas gift. While I didn't subscribe to the free 30 day trial then, I kind of liked it but it saved my bacon on Christmas Eve and I forgot about it. But a few days ago, I decided to give it a go. I was completely out of my retinol and was almost out of one of the shampoos that I like and figured what do I have to lose? While I ordered the shampoo and retinol, I threw an Infusion d'iris travel spray. My order arrived pretty quickly and I was impressed with that. Even though Ulta doesn't offer a same day delivery subscription like Sephora, I can order at 6am and I might not get it until 7 or 8pm. So it is Sephora for the win for prompt delivery.

After 30 days, I will have to make a choice on if I want to keep the same day delivery from Sephora. At the end of the day, it would only cost me $50 per year to keep it. I don't think that that is a bad price for what is being offered. If you are a huge Sephora shopper, I think that this is a pretty good deal. I am becoming a bigger Sephora shopper than I have been in the past and I do think that this would be worth the $50 per year. If my math is correct, you would only have to use it 7 times before it pays for itself. On Sephora, same day delivery is $6.95 per delivery.

It's getting to the end of August and normally, I have already hit the threshold to keep my diamond status with ULTA but I am only 27% there. So I am probably not going to hit that by the end of December. I am only $60 from maintaining my VIP status on Sephora for the next year.So with the same day delivery subscription, Sephora is starting to become a little more of my go to for some of my beauty needs. Now if they sold Lush and have No. 5 in extrait form, I would be a fairly happy camper.

The 2nd Vacation

Yesterday was the beginning of my 2nd vacation of the year and began with a shaky start. My mother is in the hospital yet again. It seems like with every medication change something seems to go wrong and she ends up in the hospital. I am thinking of she might be more sensitive to medication changes and yesterday's visit wasn't great and it looks like today will not be a great day to visit. So I will stay away today and take care of things at home, like grocery shopping since I am just about out of quite a bit of things.

But being on vacation means that I can wear what perfumes that I want. I was starting to get a little aggravated at wearing Cheirosa 62 for the days that I work. So with yesterday being my first day, I wore Nasomatto Nuda. I was game for a massive jasmine bomb and I am thinking about wearing Lyric today and haven't worn that in a while or maybe Jubilation 25.

What I am hoping to do is to burn a couple candles this week, granted that the only things that I can't miss is my dog's surgery tomorrow and my dental appointment on Thursday. The dental stuff is just a cleaning and nothing major. If they want to do any kind of fillings, it is going to have to be a no. It's not so much about the money but it is supposed to be just a cleaning. The last time I was at the dentist, it was supposed to be checking how I was healing and they checked that but decided to take care of a small cavity. I just don't want to spend any more time in the dentist chair than I need to.

But back to the candles. Every time I make any kind d of promise, I back slide a little bit. I have used up 3 candles and then Bath and Body Works has some kind of promo. I took advantage of their BOGO candle sale and had to replenish my Honeycrisp Apple candles. I did want to get a couple more but it wasn't exactly a great idea. And yesterday, there was a promotion for the foaming hand soaps and I used my reward for a Sweet Whiskey single wick. The apple candle I got is only available in 3 wick form. So it is back on the bandwagon of no buy for candles right mow.

My big annoyance for the past few days was my Kindle. Everything except the Prime Video app worked and worked just fine. I did just about everything except the restore to factory settings. I was hoping that customer service would have a different solution nut as it turns out, it was the only solution. But when I did the factory reset and went through the whole rigamarol of putting in the WiFi password and entering my Amazon imfo, everything on my Kindle works just fine at the moment. 

So now it is off to get a shopping list together and get the said shopping done.