Living Gratefully

I learned a long, long time ago that life and all its wondrous mysteries is a hot mess. There hasn't been a single decade in the history of mankind that someone wasn't wearing the equivalent of a cardboard sign draped over their shoulders warning the end is nigh. Not one. And where are we now? Well, we're still here, the world is crap, capitalists keep on taking, polluters keep paying bribes, liars continue to lie, and revolutions sprout up in the oddest of places -- but we're still here. I won't contemplate for how long because nobody knows. But here we are, so we might as well make it grand, and stop the incessant bitching while sitting on our thumbs. As my mama says, 'Shit or get off the pot!'

I'm gettin' off the pot.

For now.

Simple things cheer me. A squeaky phrase from a dozy baby's mouth, "Nammy, I love you", or a single sprouting lily in a long dormant plant, the scent of a well-used kitchen ~ sugar dust, grapefruit peel, pancakes with maple syrup ~ a great book that pulls you in and refuses to let go, feta cheese with shriveled Greek olives and hot salami for breakfast, a decent perfume review, Ana's soap gallery, a clean bathtub, mocking birds mocking the neighbor's mischievous cat.

Sometimes it's hard for me to see these things when I get distracted by 'the world'.

My normal routine has become to work in the studio in the mornings after I finish plodding through emails and orders and finally Facebook. It's at Facebook that the roller coaster ride begins. Depending on how it's left me feeling, I either go into the studio and really put my nose to the grindstone, or I tinker. Tinkering usually means someone's 'news' has left me down. But I have to admit that I've got the beginnings of a great anti-Facebook pelt growing -- some things manage to get to me, some things don't. Like that review. Ugh. Calling one of my creations an herbal 'thing'? It came off dismissive. The fact that I'm writing about it means it bothered me a little, but I must admit, not much. I didn't think about it all through the night wondering what I could have done to make this particular reviewer like it (me), I didn't dream about it, seeing my entire perfumery career come crashing down on me because of this one little review -- in fact, I didn't even think about it after I read it yesterday until this morning when I got on -- you know -- Facebook, where I saw it again, and my immediate thought was 'dismissive'. So I did too. Sort of. Not entirely because I'm writing about it. Okay. Now it's dismissed.

This is the second year in a million years that I've not had to deal with the back to school rush. I have no one rushing off to school! My 'baby', who will be 18 in September, is living with is father and he gets to deal with the picky-about-clothes and just the right notebook and stacks of forms and -- geesh. I really don't think I could do it again. It's all so fresh in my mind, those forms and buying all those clothes and school supplies and -- well, if you're doing it, I feel for you. Truly. You have my sympathy. Completely.

Now that the edibles I've been working on for the past week have finally been finished and packed, I can move on to something else. Soap perhaps. I'm home alone this weekend so maybe I can get something done. Work on that perfume again -- I have the musk accord finished up, and just completed the final touches on the 'fruit accord' I built for it, now I'm getting ready to actually put the whole perfume together. This is where things tend to get a little hairy. Sticking to the theme. I'm a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type of person, so sticking to a theme, well, that's a struggle for me sometimes. Wish me luck. I'm off to the studio to work (not tinker).