COVID and Returning to Work

Since my drain is out, sometime next week I am returning to work. I am not sure exactly which day would be the first official day but I have to return to work. Technically, I probably could have stayed out longer but my bills and bank account won't let me. The next time that I might see some kind of money go into my bank account would be the 5th but a small amount though. I do have some in my bank account but I do need to make that money last until I know for sure. I might not be thrilled about going back to work but I need to. Living is expensive and I would like to finish up Christmas shopping. I have only a couple people left to shop  for and a paycheck or two will help out.

Ever since my mother passed COVID to my dad and I, my sense of smell have been curtailed. I can't smell much of anything. Once in a while it will be like I never lost my sense of smell but other times I won't be able to smell a thing. I have a hard time with smelling my strongest perfumes. I was wearing Lyric and could only smell a little bit of it but couldn't smell much. Truth be told, I am pissed that my mother didn't get her boosters like she was supposed to and had to get COVID when I had my surgery and my dad and I let her know that we were pissed because we were put in a dangerous spot. I am hoping that I will get my sense of smell back sometime soon because I want to start wearing the things that I love and to actually be able to smell them. So as it stands, I will be sticking with Chanel no 5 and hope that my sense of smell comes back. I do have things that I want to try out and review.
 

Guerlain Habit Rouge Vintage EDC Review

There was a bit of good news today. I had my post op appointment today and managed to get the drain removed. The doctor did note that my skin was becoming irritated with the surgical tape and there was some irritation around the drain site. But she said all that would heal up because she is removing the drain. Now I can get in and out of chairs and my bed without discomfort. I still need to take it easy. I asked if I can go back to work with restrictions and it looks like I can start doing that. I just can't afford to stay out of work too long. Some paperwork was goofed up with corporate and I won't get the sick leave pay for a while due to the holiday and all. Now I can start getting more thorough showers now that my incisions are mostly healed up.

Since my surgery, I haven't exactly wanted to wear some of my old favorites like Lyric. I don't want any kind of associations of pain when wearing Lyric. So I have been wearing tons of Chanel no 5 and Infusion d'Iris. Both of those are a little more soothing and have bottles upon bottles of both of those.

Since I was starting to get a little bored with Infusion d'Iris and Chanel no 5, I wanted to test out something new. Tom Ford's Black Orchid was a bust and this time, I went with Guerlain Habit Rouge in vintage EDC form. I was poking around STC and somehow ended up browsing vintage stuff and stumbled upon the vintage version of Habit Rouge. So naturally, it went into my shopping cart and went back to browsing STC. I mainly was on STC to get a small decant of Rose de Nuit. Did you know that Habit Rouge comes in parfum form? I didn't and had to throw a decant of that in my shopping cart as well. With those 3 decants, I hurriedly checked out before I started to add more to my shopping cart. I was finally able to finish off the last tiny bit of the STC gift card that Portia from the Perfume Posse sent me when I won some sort of give away.

So I was needing a break from my normal stuff and took a little bit of a chance and sprayed on the vintage Habit Rouge. I had remembered the lemon, dusting powder and a halfway decent staying power. I had a hard time with the lemon then but I have always had a hard time with citrus. The biggest thing that I noticed was there was oakmoss. Actual honest to goodness oakmoss. Nothing made today with actual oakmoss, just some kind of moss variant. While I was loving the oakmoss, I was quite loving the lemon and the dusting powder note. Like I have already said, I always had a hard time with citrus, especially if it is sharp or has a powdery element to it. Habit Rouge combined both of it. Besides the oakmoss, what kept me fulling hating this was the leather. I do love leather in perfume, while most of the time I prefer a plush leather, this is more of a butch leather. I didn't fully realize how well oakmoss proper plays well with leather.
 

Tom Ford Black Orchid Review

Okay, I am a little less than a week out from my surgery and still pissed that I have a drain. My post surgical appointment is on Monday and I am hoping that my drain can be removed on Monday.I want to start being able to sleep on my right side, be able to take a shower normally and not have to deal with all of these extra steps. I'm tired of how the area around my drain in sore and I am tired of how the bandages and tape pull on my stomach. I just want to resume more of my normal activities.

I don't have a whole lot going on in my extensive free time. Since both of my parents are home, I haven't been able to burn any candles. Last Monday was the last day that I was able to have a lit candle and with the potential of having some minor winter storm, that means that we might lose electricity and that means I will have a candle going. It would probably be when the sun starts to set then will I have a candle going. I keep hoping that for once, I will be able to polish my nails while on a vacation. Every vacation I do keep meaning to do that but something either comes up or I just forget about it. So maybe this time around, I will actually do it.

Since I have all of this free time, I decided to give Tom Ford's Black Orchid. Sephora was having one of  their sales and I decided on getting a travel spray of this one. Sometimes I do feel like I do give Tom Ford's line up the short end of the stick. Tobacco Vanille is a little to powerful, Bitter Cherry would have been great if it hadn't been for the prominent tonka note. So I figure that I would give one last shot.

What got me to get a travel spray of Black Orchid was the fact that I was pulled in by the product description by rum soaked. Let's just say that there is nothing rum soaked in Black Orchid. It's a whole lot of nothing to my nose. I get an aquatic jasmine/tuberose thing with hints of vanilla and maybe some patchouli. I thing Tom Ford said that this is elegant or classy. Considering what Tom Ford's ad campaigns are, I would not consider this classy nor elegant. I think Black Orchid just sucks.

For the price of Tom Ford offerings, I do expect better. If you are going to charge Amouage range prices, I do expect a hell of a lot. I expected something boozy, more full figured, a little more fleshed out. Not something thin and watery smelling. While Black Orchid did have lasting power, there would be no way that I can spring for a full bottle. At this point, I don't think that I will be buying anything more from the Tom Ford line, I don't think that I would even get decants of this line up.
 

 

Well, It's Gone

Welp, my gallbladder is now a memory as of Wednesday morning and right now life sucks. Besides my gallbladder being full of stones and sludge, the stupid thing was inflamed along with my liver. so now I have a drain coming out of me. It's not a small drain at this stage. It's a long ass tube with a bulb at the end. Funny thing is that any kind of bile or fluid is supposed to be going to the bulb. But right now, any kind of fluid that wants to come out, seems to come out around the base of the tube near an incision. I am debating on if I should be concerned or not. I am not smelling anything foul, seeing pus, not having uncontrollable pain or fever. Maybe the tubing is either blocked or maybe got dislodged. I will call the doctor and see what is the best way to handle this. It hurts to cough and it hurts to laugh and I don't even want to contemplate the pain if I have to sneeze.

What I want most is a shower though. Any kind of bathing that I have been doing is some spot washing. Washing my forearms, face and neck aren't exactly cutting it at this point.Bending over is pretty scary and a little on the painful side and the medical people don't want me to have a lot of water on my abdomen quite yet. Tomorrow will be the day where I actually put cling wrap over my stomach and see if I can clean myself off a little better. I want to really wash my hair and face. I honestly think that the tubing could have been a little on the shorter side of things. I think a plastic cup and a bucket would be the best thing for me. Let's just hope when I change the bandage to my tubing I can actually fit some kind of more thorough cleaning without someone having a fit.

I haven't been so interested in perfume the past couple days even though I did wear the smallest dab of Chanel no 22 parfum on the day of my surgery. I just applied it on the inside of my ankle. Some women don't leave the house without lipstick, some have to have earrings and I am one of those who has to have some perfume before I leave the house (most of the time). As soon as I get a better self care regimen down, I can really start to feel better.

Today, I had to order myself some pajama pants that don't exactly look like pajama pants and some slide on shoes because I know that eventually I will have to leave the house and all the shoes that I have have laces and if I can't tie my shoes because I can't really bend over to do it, what good are they? The pajama pants look like something that I would be able to wear out of the house to do errands and not look like a slob. If I can avoid looking like a slob in public, I will surgery or not. I honestly didn't really think the whole wardrobe thing out before my surgery. What was the point of getting clothes and shoes that I might not have really needed? So let's hope that what I ordered arrives soon.
 

Cellphone Upgrade and Other Stuff

 Yesterday was the day that I got around to upgrading my cellphone. My Galaxy s10 was starting to get a little funky on me and off to the Verizon store to get a new phone. I forgot how much of a pain in the ass getting new phone can be.The Verizon store that I normally go to is usually pretty empty but my dad and I didn't exactly want to wait around until noon for the Verizon store closest to me to open at noon. So it was the next town over that was open a little earlier. That Verizon store was a little on the busy side. Maybe because people were taking advantage of the trade in deal. I know that my dad and I were taking advantage of the trade in deal to. The only caveat was that I had to upgrade my cellphone plan to a 5G plan. I am not a fan of paying at least $50 more per month and the whole cellphone business has gotten really stupid. No matter what carrier you go to, the plan alone isn't as cheap as they used to be. Cellphones aren't as cheap as they used to be. There was a time that you didn't have to buy your phone, let alone pay for an upgrade when it came time to renew your contract. Now you have to pay for your phone outright or a payment plan tacked on to your cellphone bill. Verizon is really starting to push these little add-ons. For an extra $10 per month, you can get a streaming subscription or whatever else is available. I do not watch videos on my cellphone. But my dad and I spent an hour and a half getting new phones and setting them up. My dad got a little confused when the bill came due. Yes, you have to pay a little something upfront when you get new phones. I am dreading the next cellphone bill due to activation fees.

The phones that my dad and I went with were the Samsung s24 phones. We are already familiar with the Samsung line. I could have gone with the Galaxy flip smart phone but I know that I would bust that in a half an hour since I am a retail employee and like most retail employees, I carry my cellphone in my back pocket. I am not thrilled with resetting passwords on my phone (I do tons of online shopping among other things) but I am enjoying a brighter screen and a bigger screen.

Since I am going in for surgery on Wednesday, I am trying to get as much done as I can before I go. Tomorrow is the day that I find out what time my surgery is and when I have to be there. In some ways, I hope that my surgery is really early. Early as in I have to be at the hospital at 5am. The reason is that most surgeries have the direction that you can't have anything after midnight. So I wouldn't be able to have a cup of tea before my surgery. I would only be able to have a sip of water when I take my medication. Only a sip because they want an empty stomach for surgery. The whole reason why I want to get as much as I can done now is that I won't be able to do it after my surgery.

Thus far, I have slowly been working through my way through my candle collection and current candle is the Bath and Body Works Diamond of the Season from their Bridgerton collaboration. Diamond of the Season is a dead ringer for Sunshine and Daffodils from Bath and Body Works. Since I am going to be off for a while, I can work on using up more candles. I have no idea on why I want to use up more candles if the Bath and Body Works Candle Day is coming up. I have enough saved up in gift cards to get 3 candles, maybe 4 if I play my cards right. But we shall see how that goes.

Coming Down to the Wire

In a little less than 7 days, I will be having gallbladder surgery. I keep thinking if I should honestly wear perfume the day of my surgery. The last time I had surgery to have 8 teeth removed, I wore perfume but this time it's a little different. The first time, it was my teeth and this time around it is going to be on my stomach. If what I am reading is true, it's no lotions or perfumes. But I am thinking of the tiniest smidgen on my ankles.

Will I be going for heavy hitters like any of my Amouage offerings or some vintage Mitsouko? It's going to have to be a hard no. The last time I had surgery I wore Chanel no 22. I can't help but think that it might work better this time around. When I wore no 22 for my teeth, there was only the EDT version and the parfum hadn't been released yet. Since I have the parfum version, I can put the smallest dab that I can on my ankles. I could go the Sarrasins or De Profundis route but I honestly don't think that it would fully work. Sarrasins is too much of a slutty, leathery jasmine but actually De Profundis might work but I am not fully sure I would want to wear De Profundis for my surgery. At this point I am limiting myself to perfumes that I can dab on my ankles. I am sure that I have a few others that I can use as well but I have so many strong perfumes.

Another option for me is maybe a dab of no 19 extrait. Less is more at this point when it comes to the day of the surgery. It's a different version to the title of Why I wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy type of deal. Worst case scenario is that I don't wear perfume but instead of my ankles, I might just go with in between my toes. What I am looking forward to is being able to wear what I want when I want. Maybe I won't be wearing so much no 5. There is the other option of that is exactly all I will wear while on medical leave even if I don't wear anything on the day of my surgery.

 

It's My Gallbladder

I thought I was making some kind of progress with getting better with my stomach problems but apparently not. I ended up in my local ER Wednesday night instead of the one a half an hour away. I wasn't exactly in the mood to deal with this crap again of waiting for hours after a blood draw to be seen. I managed to be taken back, have a blood draw, urine test and was examined all within 15 minutes. The nurse that was doing the examination had said that it was probably my gallbladder and ordered an ultrasound. The biggest thing is that I was given pain and nausea relief and I wasn't waiting for hours and not have anything done except a blood draw. The ultrasound had confirmed that my gallbladder was the issue. I was given scripts for pain, nausea and directions for a surgical consult. I made that consult before I left the ER. So Monday afternoon, I go for that consultation. The total time that I spent in the ER was probably 3 and a half hours. After complaining for around a year, I am happy to have some answers. My endocrinologist and my regular GP had pretty much decided that keeping an eye on it was the only thing to do.

The hard part is just managing the pain and nausea. Before the medication, I couldn't eat period without vicious amounts of pain that would last for hours. Now I can eat a little more but I am kind of limited and will be limited for a while on what I can and cannot have for a few weeks. It will be a very bland, low fat diet and I am not looking forward to that. But I am looking at a month with less than $75  coming into my bank account per week for about a month and I am seriously not looking forward for that part.

Monday is the day I will know if I am having surgery and what type of surgery. I probably will not be wearing any perfume if I have to go the surgical route but I am debating on wearing either no 19 extrait, no 22 extrait or Iris Silver Mist. I want something that is subtle but with a little bit of backbone. Dabbing make most perfumes more subtle. The only one that might be kind of comforting is no 22. I will have plenty of time later to wear what I want.