The Grass is Always Greener Anywhere but Here

I recently purchased my first 'antique' -- oil, that is.

I waited with bated breath for my little gift box to arrive.
Whoever coined the phrase, 'Great things come in small packages' wasn't kidding. They were probably talking about diamonds, but what I got, to me, is valued far higher than the price of diamonds. Fifty-plus year old sandalwood. I gave my 19-year-old son a sniff and he said, "Hmmm, smells weird. Makes me want to do something nasty in my pants." Gotta love that commentary. I also received three small decants of different antiques -- vetyver, geranium and Virginia cedarwood. It's kind of odd, but when I opened the V. cedar, I swear I'd smelled it somewhere else -- in another parcel from a previous buy. I dug around in my old apothecary bottles and found it. That smell invades the skin of old apothecary and perfume bottles. V. cedarwood was a very common component in 19th and early 20th century American perfumery, so it stands to reason the scent would saturate the corks and bottles in the apothecary.

No silver lining would be complete without its dark cloud. You know you're in trouble when you start buying lottery tickets when it's not something you ordinarily do. Or selling off your treasures on ebay, or wishing you could have won the two tickets to Italy on Top Chef. Fantasies, all fantasies. Like 'having enough time', and 'someday I will ****', and 'turning back the clock'.