Moving Shit Around

 I don't know who knows, but I have a grandmother who has dementia. On Wednesday, we had to start moving some things into her new room at her new memory care unit. The skilled nursing place wasn't really taking care of her. Thursday was the day when she moved in as well with more belongings. 

At this point, I am livid. What was sprung on me is that I had to give up my tall dresser. Then I had to take apart my smaller dresser because I am supposed to get new dressers. If I wanted new bedroom furniture, I would have said so and got it. Does anyone know what it is like trying to move heavy furniture that you still want to hang on to and use? I don't think my mother quite understands the amount of time and brute strength it takes to move large, heavy pieces of furniture up and down flights of stairs.

Since I am functioning with two little nightstands that are covered with candles. I managed to do a little shuffling (used up) and crated a tiny space for 5 bottles of perfume that I did manage to liberate. Yeah, with how everything is, I can't get to 99% of my collection. I have Ubar, Lyric, Mitsouko, Courtesan and a bottle of Bath and Body Works Cucumber Melon. It's probably the oddest lineup that I have ever created.

Since I am dresser-less, I have to start going through the trash bags of clothes and figure out what I want to keep, throw out or donate. But that is going to have to wait right this second, I have a few other things that I need to take care of. What kind of sucks, besides having things being all over the place, it lack of access. I don't have the access to most of my perfume collection, I do have access but how motivated am I to move tons of things out of the way to get to what I am looking for. I don't like the fact that I don't have the space to burn candles safely. I'm not willing to risk setting the house on fire because one of the dogs knocked over a candle by either wagging their tail or roughhousing. 

Let's hope that I can find another perfume to add to that odd collection. I don't think my coworkers would appreciate Ubar or Mitsouko. I am not sure my parents would appreciate that either now that it's going to stay warm.

Saving Money Sucks...Kinda

Ever since I made the decision to file for bankruptcy, I have been making some strides in saving money. What is pretty much making me save money is the fact that it's in my best interest to get a lawyer for the bankruptcy. They know the ins and outs of this stuff and I don't.

Since tax day happened almost 10 days ago, I have only gotten my state refund and tomorrow I will getting the federal refund. In years past, I would have plans for that those refunds. Those plans were spending it but I had a plan to spend it on certain things. The first thing was to pay my cellphone bill and get some dog food and the rest would be spent on candles and perfume. But that's pretty much gone and the refund is going for the lawyer and bankruptcy fees. It is hard to see that money sitting in my bank account and I can't spend it. Well, I can spend it but it's not a very wise idea.

So this saving money thing kind of sucks. I've had to say no to a few candle sales, I've had to tell my perfume to buy list that they are going to have to wait a while. I mostly by passed the Sephora spring sale and only got a hand lotion and lip gloss. Yes, I want to get those things but I can't quite justify blowing any kind of money on fun things. I am allowing some fun things but I have to keep an eye on the cost and how often I am doing those fun things. I have had to restructure my grocery shopping and tried to cancel my Barkbox subscription. Barkbox is only allowing me to skip 2 months of Barkbox. I might not exactly be thrilled and it's on a couple levels. They made it damn near impossible to just cancel and not so thrilled not to see my dogs tear around the house with their new toys every month. But I think that it's mostly the little purchases that get me in the end. It's not like things were almost 10 years ago. I was working more and that meant that I had more disposable income and credit cards. And that was the beginning of many years of money mismanagement. And now I am paying for that 10 plus years of money mismanagement. I hope things will get a little bit better and I am able to ignore the Bath and Body Works semi annual sale. I would really like to finish off some of my candles before I get more of them.
 

BDK Tubereuse Imperiale Review

Since I went wild with Gris Charnel, I decided to test out another BDK perfume. Luckyscent was having a 10% off and free shipping on everything in their store, I made a jump for the Tubereuse Imperiale travel spray, even though I probably shouldn't have done it. It's not all that often that Luckyscent has a sale. I try not to regret things and I am trying to not spend money all wily nilly here, I have things that I need to pay for and I just have to spend less in general. But I figure for a grand total of $43 (tax included) for a 10ml travel spray, what did I have to lose?

It was my parents' 43rd wedding anniversary today and they decided that I was to tag along for dinner. I was thinking about wearing Tigress Musk but that wasn't exactly suited to the occasion but I wanted something a little different from my normal stuff. And after that 18 hour power outage from Friday night to Saturday afternoon, I was a little sick of CdG Kyoto.

This tuberose is a strange one. It doesn't smell like a fully mature tuberose bloom, more of a young bloom. It's like when a rose bud is just starting to open and give off it's scent. I did notice that it has a marginal green type of smell but also has a little bit of a metholated type of smell, like I smelled in Tuberose Criminalle. But there was something in the whole set up that reminded me of something else that I owned and I couldn't quite put my finger on exactly which one. All through dinner it was bothering me. Then it came to me, the supporting notes gave a distinct the form of the original Chanel Coco. As much as I do like Coco, it does have that 80's vibe to this. But if Coco were to be updated, I would like it to go more of Tubereuse Imperiale without altering it to the point of not recognizing it.

The tuberose does fade into the background but not fully into the background. The spices do come out to play a little bit more and since I am in the dry down, I am smelling a little bit of vanilla, it's not a whopping dose but it's in there. I applied this at 3 this afternoon and it's a little after 11 and it's slowly starting to fade. Personally, I would and will stick to the 10ml travel spray because I can't really justify a full bottle of this, even if I do like it a fair bit.
 

The Eclipse and Amouage Dia

 In spite of working Monday, I did manage to catch the eclipse. Working retail, I wasn't so sure that I would be allowed to see any of it. The store manager had said as long as we didn't have customers in the department or on the phone, we could watch the eclipse. Everyone expected the store to be a ghost town until quarter to 4. It was nice enough but I sure as shit didn't appreciate the idiots in the housing development setting off fireworks during it. Fireworks can be fun but even with the sun being fully covered, it wasn't dark enough for it. Maybe someone wanted to attempt some kind of cool pictures but the whole concept was pretty stupid (setting off fireworks). There was so much talk about this eclipse over the past year, I think that it wasn't really worth the hype.

Usually as a rule, I don't wear any Amouage offerings at work but Monday was a little bit of an exception. I had a wicked craving for it. I remember in my early days of perfume collecting, I wore the living daylights out of Dia. Now, not so much. While I still love the first 10 minutes and it's massive aldehyde blast, there is something that really starts to bother me after about 3 or 4 hours and for the life of me, I can't pinpoint where or why it bothers me. I would still like to give Dia 40 a go. 

But I have noticed that STC and TPC haven't been adding a whole lot to their stock or even replenishing things like they have in years past. I wonder if  inflation or shipping issues is to blame. That is probably part of it. I have to keep in mind that Amouage is a pretty expensive brand. STC hasn't had a sale in a long time, the last one was probably shortly before the pandemic and TPC had one at New Year's I think. But I haven't been buying decants all that often. Now is not the time to be seeking out decants anyway.

Getting Back to the Basics

Since I have made the decision to declare bankruptcy and working on scrapping together the money for stuff related to that, I am starting to get back to some basics. I mean really starting to get back to basics.

These past couple weeks have been really hard. Bath and Body Works had a BOGO candle sale and 2 of those 40% off everything in the store sales. I only participated in the first one and that was it and I did get a little bit and that little bit was no more than $25. I had to draw the line somewhere and what I want to start doing is start using up my candle collection. This spring and summer, I really want to make a dent in my collection. Spring is on the way and with working 3 days a week, I believe that I can make a decent dent in my 84 count candle collection. What is working in my favor is that even though there is that Bridgerton collection, I did get the Diamond of the Season single wick candle. If I am not to impressed with that candle, I don't think that I would be too impressed with the others. By September, I want to get down to under 60 candles. I figure with the the temps creeping up and the notion of being able to leave windows open, I can have 2 candles going at a time. If I have 2 candles going on at once, it's probably going to have to be the single wick ones only.

The only thing from Ulta that I am probably going to be buying are the Tula hair, skin, nail and gut health gummy vitamins. I have to remember that I am trying to save money to get rolling on the bankrupcy but I also have to really watch myself during the whole process. I don't want to get the stink eye from anyone and not have it go through. I want to able to explain everything that I can, even though the lawyer said that a trustee is really making sure that I am not hiding assets or money and that I really am broke.

Even though I am on a full bottle no buy type of deal I did partake in the Luckyscent sale but I had only gotten myself a travel spray of the BDK Tuberose Imperial and a rollerball of Clinique Happy in Paradise. Those are birthday gifts so those can be explained, I think that any gift giving that I do, has to be a modest amount. I am almost tempted to hang on to the Happy one even though I have so much of the original Happy as it is.

But where I have really gotten back to basics is with my perfume collection. I've started to really go back to wearing my Chanel perfumes and to a lesser extent, some of my Amouage perfumes. I've been wearing a whole lot more of no 5 and some Coco Mademoiselle. On days off, I have been wearing tons of either Lyric or Epic. But I am trying to see what full bottles I can use up as well. I think that it would be a pretty wise idea to see what perfumes that I can use up and make my collection a little smaller and a little more manageable. So I think that I should start to focus more on 2 or 3 perfumes and see what I can do with finishing some more bottles. But I think I am going to go with the smaller bottles first. I think that I ought to start using up my decants as well.

I do kind of hate having to watch the spending because I am overhauling my life due to money. I got depressed, buy this and you will feel better. I got bored or there was a good sale on something and I would buy something. It's the frivolous spending that gets me and that has to change. I have had to put up some boundaries with the people that I live with. Just because I work at a grocery store, I can't keep buying groceries for family members and not get the money upfront. The excuse of "it just popped into my head and we do need this" can't fly anymore. It's the little expenses that keep happening is wasteful and the wasteful spending just can't happen right now. But I want to see what I can do with the smaller changes right now.