Vacation Time

It's vacation time for me right now. It's a week of pretty much lounging around and not doing a ton of stuff this week. Mostly playing Xbox, maybe going to see the new Downton Abbey movie and might go to the old Mansfield Reformatory.

For a while I had this seasonal allergy that turned into a cold and now turned into post nasal drip. With that going on, I hadn't wanted to really wear perfume. Well, I really couldn't with my asthma kicking my ass. The only perfume that I could really tolerate was no 5 edt and at points, that was a bit of struggle. If I tried to wear perfume, any perfume, there was a very real chance of an asthma attack.

I haven't been been burning my candles and I was hoping for a while that I could start up again. There is someone in my household that started to develop hives and candle burning pretty much went out the window. Said person is still getting hives and I am thinking that my candles are not the problem. The reason why I really wanted to burn some candles is just to create more space in my room at this point.

There isn't a whole lot going on in the perfume front for me. There isn't a whole lot of room in the budget for perfume at this point and I've kind of went nuts in terms of perfume this quarter. The only thing perfume wise that I've gotten was decants of Epic 56 and Honour 43. I might regret that purchase in a way. My love for Epic Woman is well known and I do have a liking for Honour Woman. But we will see how that goes.  In ways, I kind of hope that I don't fall in love with either of them due to the cost of a full bottle isn't what I want to spend and no decant places really carry decants. I was lucky enough to nab decants of them at TPC but I haven't seen any decants in other places. Spending $500 on a bottle of perfume is a little rich for my blood. I mainly stick to the discounters for Amouge perfumes. If Amouage had Lyric as an exceptional extrait, I probably would be really screwed since I adore Lyric.

Let's Talk Afterpay

 Here is something a little different. It seems like layaway has grown up or at least changed a little bit. Klarna, Affirm and Afterpay is the new credit/layaway type of deal. The retail scene has changed over the past 30 years. Online shopping, recessions, credit card meltdowns and now the pandemic has changed things.

For a while, I kept seeing Klarna, Affirm and Afterpay being offered when I've been doing some online shopping. I've always been a little curious on how those things worked and what they were. After checking them out, I liked the concept of them. I'm working of paying off credit card debt and trying not to use credit cards so much. It's not an easy thing to do. But I was ready to give Afterpay a shot.

Outside of an initial down payment of whatever I am buying, I have 3 more payments to make every 2 weeks before whatever I bought is paid off. The first place that I tried out Afterpay was Ulta. They were running some sort of sale type of things and I decided to bite the bullet and just try it out. I figured that if I didn't like Afterpay, it wasn't a huge deal, the balance wasn't huge and it would be paid off fairly quick. Yeah, I had bought another bottle of Chanel no 5 and something else that I really needed. After I made my initial payment, what I ordered was shipped to me. Layaway used to be that you had to pay the entire balance off before you could get your items. Afterpay doesn't work like that, after the initial payment is made, said item is shipped. I did like that aspect and I also like the e-mail and text reminders of when the next payment is due.

Besides Ulta, FragranceNet and Luckyscent both offer Afterpay and I think that I really shouldn't have looked to see who else might offer Afterpay. I think that it would make things a little easier to spend way too much money but I am working on using Afterpay sparingly. I will admit when Christmas rolls around, having something like Afterpay as another form of payment might come in handy. Especially since Afterpay doesn't charge interest and only an $8 late fee if you forget, even with reminders. I haven't forgotten payments but I was curious in the off chance that I forgot or a big bill just popped up. Even though my limit is up to $600, I do have the chance to have that limit increased but in my case, that might not be the wisest thing to do but if I ignore that and not use Afterpay too much, I think that it won't be a huge problem.

The Same Stuff Over and Over Again

My mother cut her California trip short and is now home. So much for some of the projects that I had planned to do. Three of the candles that I had started, refused to stay lit and in the trash they went. I have already finished 2 candles yesterday and will finish 2 more today. I have no freaking idea on what candle I am going to start now but that's okay at this point.

I was none too happy when I found out that a trip was cut short. I had made a decision to redeem most of my Ulta rewards points and get a bottle of no e Eau Premiere and another bottle of no 5 edt. I figured that it would arrive before my parents came home and they wouldn't see any kind of packages and gripe about it, even though I redeemed my Ulta points for them.

But I noticed something. There are some perfumes that I buy over and over again. No 5 in many of it's concentrations, Mitsouko, vintage BaV, Amouage Lyric and Epic seem to be the ones that I have the most of. I will admit that after no 5, I haven't gotten the other ones listed in quite a while. But with vintage Mitsouko and BaV, I haven't been prowling E-Bay for them. Amouage is getting harder to find a discounters and my beloved Deneuve has gotten so stupidly expensive, especially for minis. So no 5 it is.

I do wish the no 19 was a little more widely available and if Ulta carried it, I'm sure I would have stocked up even more. But Ulta and even Sephora mostly focus on best sellers but that seems to be most department stores that focus on things they know that they can sell pretty easily and even with my healthy supply of no 19, I don't reach for it often enough. I really ought to start wearing some other stuff that I have.