The Current State of Affairs

On Friday, the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade. These conservative judges said that Roe v Wade was unconstitutional and the decision should be left up to each individual state. The problem with the decision going back to the individual states is that half of the United States will have either outright banned abortion or put severe restrictions in place. 

I'm not understanding how the Supreme Court can rule that Roe v Wade is unconstitutional but hold the case of Buck v Bell constitutional. Buck v Bell was a court case giving license to forcibly sterilize the disabled and people of color. Yes, if a judge decides that I am "feeble-minded" I can be sterilized without my consent. This is what disabled women, like me, fear. That kind of loss of autonomy. The autonomy to have an abortion if I needed/wanted one and the ability to have children if I chose to have them. 

This whole thing makes me wonder what next will be considered to be unconstitutional. My right to vote? My right to have a bank account or credit card in my name. It wasn't until the late 70's or early 80's that a woman could open a bank account, credit card or get a bank loan without a male relative's signature. It wasn't until 1993 that marital rape was a crime in all of the 50 states. 

Pleasures Body Lotion and Amouage Honour Bath and Body Stuff

 While I was on vacation a couple weeks ago, I kept meaning to post something but never seemed to come up with anything. If I did think of something, I forgot, then time really got away from me and now we are at the end of the month. And I don't really talk too much about perfumed bath stuff. I managed in the past couple weeks to start using Estee Lauder Pleasures body lotion and Amouage Honour soap and body butter.

I don't really get into bath soaps and lotions too much any more. In high school and when I went to college, I loved body washes and lotions. When I fell in love with something at Bath and Body Works, I had to have the matching body wash, lotion and mist. Back in the late 90's and early 00's, Bath and Body Works was cheap and cheap was my budget. 

Since my perfume collection has grown, my bath collection didn't. Most of my perfumes don't have bath and body lines, so regular soap and unscented lotion will have to do. Chanel, Clinique, Estee Lauder and Amouage are the only ones that have a full bath and body line. Truth be told, that suits me just fine. I don't really need tons of bath stuff since I am trying to use things up and get rid of things.

When I was testing the Pleasures body lotion, I wasn't expecting to be impressed with it. Until I was impressed with the body lotion. I was expecting it to be either not moisturizing enough or too heavy. I was also expecting it to be either overwhelming with perfume or bear no resemblance to Pleasures. It was the right amount of perfume and moisturizing enough without being too heavy. I have dry skin with really scaly elbows and my elbows need all the help they can get. When you spend almost sixty dollars on a lotion, my expectations are a little higher than what I would spend at a grocery store for some lotion.

It took me forever to finally open and use the Amouage Honour woman bath stuff but I finally did. I can never make up my mind on if I like or love Honour woman. Honour woman can be equal points of love and annoyance for me. Honour woman was the last Amouage that I really paid attention to. I didn't pay too much attention to Beloved. I think that was when Amouage was really starting to release tons of things at once and it got to be too much for me.

Amouage packaging has always been on the decadent side but Amouage is a house that knows that if someone is going to spend the money, the details of everything matter. When I opened the bar soap, it was the engravings on the soap that really wowed me, just that little detail amazed me. Yes, the little decorations will wash away but it is still awesome. The bar soap didn't really lather up too well but I have the same issue with my Epic bar soap. The body butter was mostly decadent but in terms of moisturizing properties, it wasn't moisturizing enough for me. It definitely smelled like Honour but I found the smell to be a little too dense.

What I have noticed is that it is harder and harder to find Amouage bath and body stuff. I am having a harder and harder time trying to find Epic, Lyric and Memoir in bath and body stuff. I think even Amouage might be having problems too getting  supplies in to make these things. I am running pretty low on Lyric and Memoir bath and body things. I'm hoping that I can start replenishing my stock soon enough.

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.
 

Rien by Etat Libre d'0range

So my parents are leaving for their vacation tomorrow and they booked a really early flight out. After reminding my mother for the better part of 3 or 4 days, to start getting ready packing wise, she is now panicking. You've known about this trip for at least 2 weeks and now it's come down to the wire. All in all, I can't wait for them to leave. Most of the groceries that I need have been bought and I just need to get milk and some dog food. I am looking forward to having an empty house and then I can burn all the candles that I want and which ones that I want with nobody complaining. But let's get to doing a review since I haven't done one in quite a while.

A couple days ago, I decided to take Rien by Etate Libre d'Orange for a spin. Let's just say that this is not my thing. There is something about it that just doesn't agree with me. Some have pegged this as a chypre, some as an amber perfume. I do have a great liking to the point of love with chypres and a dislike for amber perfumes. My nose says that this is more of an amber. I get the rose, I smell the incense, tons of patchouli and an overload of amber. But one of the things that I am picking up on is some kind of coconut vibe and I have no idea where that is coming from. All that I can say is that it just doesn't work for me because it smells like an amber mess on my skin. I will admit that I just don't like this one and I am hoping that I can like one perfume from the Etat Libre d'Orange line and I'm hoping that I will like Jasmin Et Cigarette.
 

Travels

My littlest nephew has a birthday on May 1st and my parents are traveling to California to go celebrate. In spite of a larger tax refund, there were bills that I wanted to pay off and that cash is gone. I'm trying to be more of an adult and hold off on fun stuff and trying to get myself into some better financial shape. Yes, I want to travel but there are other things that take precedence.

Since my folks will be out of town, I am starting to get some of my shit together. I am making a rough draft of any kind of groceries that I might need. But I won't know more until closer to when my folks leave on what I need. I do have some plans to do some projects but nothing major or terribly important. It's mainly things that I want to get done without someone breathing down my neck.

Yes, I do plan to use up some of my candle collection and I am trying to figure out which ones I want to use. I plan on shooting for 8 or 9 candles to be used up. I am trying to make some kind of progress on culling my collection just because I want some kind of space. I am trying to keep with a resolution of using stuff up or just getting rid of it. 

It will be great to have some alone time. Time to burn whichever candles that I want, wear the perfumes I want and not have anyone complain about them. Now I just need to get through the next two weeks.