Time Management

There hasn't been much time the past few weeks to really get into formulating and developing new scents, not with school shopping, re-registering kids for school, a funeral and all that entails, temporarily losing vital materials for a project that's due next Monday and all the drama that went with relocating the materials, getting ready for the workshop, and . . . well, it's been hectic.

That outside project, the one in which I'm to create scents for candles using synthetics, that's been put on hold for a bit. The creatives in that project have been bumping heads, and it's sort of spilled over to what I'm doing for them. Not that I'm all that heartbroken over it -- after a while, like 5 minutes, I get sick of smelling the bland linear scent of white musk and raspberries! It also really brings home the truth that everything is scented ~ everything. Walking down the aisles in the stores, I can pick up scents and almost name them, even with this extremely limited molecule-synthetic nose-vocabulary I've developed. Especially the berry scented stuff (room fresheners, girlie eau de toilette, shampoo, conditioner, et al) ~ damn! Does everything have raspberry ketone and aldehyde C16 and nectayrl in it? And you can't really get those smells out of your sinuses right away. They follow your nose around and linger at its edges, the tenacious buggers. I was so frustrated with working with the synthetics that I almost made one scent out of two introductory scents the company wants for their candle line just so I could quit and move on to creating with naturals again. That didn't work. We've got two distinctive, yet in no way original, candle scents meant to mask the smell of burning and non-burning marijuana. Yeah. I said it. Super strong to cover the super skunk scent of ganja. Woot.

That other project, the one due on Monday, that one's been a bee in my bonnet for weeks. I got all the research done, it's putting it all together in a cohesive report that's really giving me fits. I used to be good at this stuff. About two kids ago. Before my brain turned to brie and was eaten by mice. I just need a few hours of uninterrupted time to pull it together and I'll have it done in no time. It's finding those few hours of uninterrupted time that will be the difficult part.

The workshop. I haven't written much about it because I kind of wanted to let it soak in, give it a little time to gel before filing my report here. It was, by far, the best class ever. For one, I was not even the slightest bit nervous. I just refused to think about it that way. I said to myself, "Those butterflies, that's excitement, not nervousness. You're excited to be teaching this workshop." And for once, I believed me! I was excited and it spilled over and touched the students, and they were excited too. The class didn't start as it usually has in the past, with me introducing myself in a stiff, my-head-is-too-big-to-fit-in-the-room kind of way, lauding my accolades like a some new age guru, testifying that I have vast amounts of experience which began with my first breath. No. Didn't do that. We just started talking. And talking. And before long, it was teaching and talking, then it was just full-on, here we are to learn, this is the meat of the matter, full-blown workshop. One of my main concerns for the day was the weather. August in Central Cali is notoriously sweltering. Temperatures of 100 degrees Fahrenheit plus are not uncommon -- in fact, they're expected. Unhappily expected, but expected nonetheless. Thankfully, it was in the low-mid 90's, with a heavy cloud cover, which, under different circumstances, would contribute to the humidity -- but for some reason, it wasn't that bad. It was warm, but also breezy at the nursery, which I think is at about 3000 ft. We were under a porch awning that was draped with wild grape vines, standing on cool terra cotta floors, with a pond of gorgeous pink lotus on one side, and a clear, unobstructed view of the Sierra Nevada mountains on the other. The day was perfection. And as I said before, I just flapped my yap about natural botanical perfumery, answered questions when they arose, and commented repeatedly on what a wonderful day it had turned out to be. If I can get one of the students to write a little review of the workshop, I'll post it or link it here -- another perspective is definitely in order, eh? *Student review here!

So now I'm off to try and get my daughter back into public school after a homeschooling fiasco last school year. The school district is -- well -- not the most sympathetic and may end up trying to send her somewhere else, like Moldova or the Republic of Georgia. She has a track record for being a bit rebellious. Hmm. Wonder where she got that from?

Have a great day, readers.