How Do I Love Thee?

As most everyone who knows me knows, I just adore the truly hideously stinky stuff. Choya loban, for example. Even my friends who love the stinkies as I do have a hard time with this one. I really don't see why ~ it's divine!

I had the opportunity to use a bit (I do mean a 'bit', too, as this monster essence will invade, conquer and destroy anything you put it in if you're not being frugal) while blending a perfume I had planned to name -- well, you don't need to know that. Turns out my intended name choice went the way of the dodo because what I ended up with was more autumn~y and floral than what I'd anticipated, as if you'd awoken to mum baking buttery raisin and cinnamon scones and the scent of late season roses wafting through the open windows. And the choya loban, with its deliciously ambery essence hovering beneath these other scents ~ ah! Adds just the right amount of warmth and sensuality.

Then I went trippin' off to the perfume counter at the local chee-chee, high-dollah boutique and found Youth Dew Amber Nude. Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit! There was the choya again, all nekkid and stuff, and more likely as not synthetic. Eek! But damn! I was all blissed out over that crap, making the Estee Lauder perfume-counter-lady nervous. She was so gorked, she rushed to get her little note book, y'know, the one they train with that tells them the notes in the 'fume, and she read the note's list as she walked backwards -- away from me. I don't think they tell them what's synthetic and what isn't. It's sort of like what you'd get from Scent Direct when you request a geneology of a perfume ~ just notes but not ingredients. I kept saying 'benzoin' and she kept saying, 'oh, no, amber'. Whatever. Maybe a short course in natural perfumery could help these poor perfume counter folks.

At any rate, do the choya loban. Will at Eden Botanicals' has the stuff. I suspect my little quarter ounce bottle will last me until I'm dead. It gets an 8 on the SFS (Stink Factor Scale), because it lacks the gross-out, rankness of say -- butt cracks.