18 millionth new favorite website

http://www.itslikespiders.com/

I watched two videos and both blew my mind.

Cute song with art by same dude, "I Wanna Be Famous."

Music to my ears

I was just walking back from lunch, and I saw a family walking toward me. Mother, father, two very young children in a double-wide stroller. The little girl on the left, about three years old, was singing, "Shot through the heart, and you're too late!" Yep, that's my kinda little girl.

It's o-fish-o at last

Remember I said I was distracted by something going on in my life so I didn't have the energy to write very much? I can finally tell you why.

We're moving August 1 to St. Augustine, Florida.

It's been a big secret because I didn't want to jeopardize my current job or make any waves until things were more settled. Well, my boss finally knows. It's all complicated how it worked out, but I literally said to her, "I've been holding my cards pretty close to my chest; are you ready for me to lay the whole truth on the table?" She said yes. And she was actually relieved that my suspicious behavior wasn't her or the department's fault, just a quirk of fate that Team Wy is leaving Chicago.

I'm scared. I already love St. Augustine, but it's a town of only 15,000 people. Chicago? Over two million. Sure I've lived other places that were smaller than Chicago, but I consider Chicago my adult home. I was a child in Kentucky, but I came to Chicago straight from my undergraduate degree and really grew up here. I learned to be an adult in Chicago, and this city is a big part of my adult identity.

If I felt like it, I could get Korean barbecue at 2 am here. In St. Augustine, the bars close at 1 am. Granted, I rarely stay out until 1 am, I've never actually gotten Korean barbecue at 2 am, but there's lots of things in Chicago I do often that I won't have there.

Really, it's the museums I'll miss. It's the sidewalks downtown full of people rushing to eat lunch in their hour break. It's the fashionable ladies, the radio stations that always know what I want to hear, the ethnic neighborhoods that take me to different countries without going more than five miles from my home. It's the anonymity. Knowing I'll never see someone again so I can create my personality however I want for those five minutes we interact. It's the smelly subway system that can take me to two airports from which I can go anywhere in the world.

It's my friends, my community, my source of inspiration.

But I'm ready for a smaller town. I'm actually quite tired of how difficult it is to live in Chicago. It's epic to go to the grocery store, where it's crowded and understocked. What I dislike most about Chicago is that everything is so used. Everything's been walked on or touched by countless people. Nothing is fresh. No matter how many power washers and street sweepers the city employs, nothing is new. My seat on the train? Has it been peed on recently? The door handle coming into work? At least 3000 other people touched it this morning. The bathroom at my favorite Indian restaurant? No one has cleaned the walls in a dog's age.

The last time I visited St. Augustine, at a bar my friend told me, "The bathrooms are pretty questionable here." I laughed. It was cleaner than any bar I've ever been to in Chicago.

And that's what I want. A new place, a clean place, a beautiful historic place, a small place, a new community, a new way of gardening, a new ecosystem. And I'm getting that.

But I'm still too busy to blog much as we prepare for the move. Sorry about that. Soon I'll be back from my mental distraction. I'm thinking of you often, though I write too little.

Lessons in love, via e-mail

I received this quote via e-mail subscription service this morning:

"The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to
give, not our kind. -Mignon McLaughlin, journalist and author (1913-1983)"

I felt illuminated reading that. I wasn't easy to love this weekend (not that I often am). Bristly and withdrawn, I cursed at old ladies in parking lots and loudly criticized a father's parenting skills inside a computer store. Matthew asked me, "Please don't be so angry any more." It required frozen custard to soothe my prickly soul.

But love. It's true about loving someone. Though I've been with my husband ten years, I never would have understood McLaughlin's quote before. I love, but not always the way I want to give my husband love.

Put a bandaid over my mouth

I overlook the glaring gaps in my personality. It’s my warped self-perception mirror—everyone has one—but sometimes a moment of brightness illuminates the rusted spot and I see the flaw for what it authentically is: an accident in my personality.

My friend at work just told me, “I wore a bandaid on my face and no one said anything to me about it. You know why? It was a Thursday and you weren’t here.” She was teasing me, pointing out that I point out the obvious, but it was true. If I had been there, I definitely would have asked about the bandaid.

“But I do it out of love!” I called after her.

“I know you do, and it’s out of love that I tell you that you do it,” she replied.

It’s true that if I inquired about the bandaid on her face I would really mean, “Are you hurt?” I wonder if I say it that way though? I think I do. And my friend, saying she tells me what I do out of love, I think that’s her way of saying, “I wouldn’t tease you to your face if I actually thought you were a jerk.” And she’s right. Who but the most unloving would point out someone’s flaws in a jeering way?

I think “accident” is the perfect word for gaps in my civility because they’re unintentional. They just blossom like sprongy moss in the dark corners, sending out spores. The spores populate in my mouth and exhale, “What’s that bandaid on your face?” It’s completely unconscious. I’m not aware of the annoying statement of the obvious mold, it just happens sometime. I like to think I’m naïve, not willfully stupid.

I prevented a crash of word mold onto someone’s shoes just a few weeks ago, and I was proud of myself for being mature.

I stepped into the elevator, and there was already a man riding in the car. I’m always curious about the people in my building and what offices they work in, so I gave him a casual lookover. Honestly, he was one of the best-dressed men I’ve ever seen. His suit was cut of smooth cloth so exquisitely—like nothing I’ll ever afford—and he looked crisp and perfect. I started at the collar of his shirt, looked at the perfect drape of his shoulders, the fall of his waist, and the delicately diveted cuff of his trousers --- and then his shoes.

His shoes were equally perfect in appropriateness to his suit, but they were the largest shoes I’d ever seen. The man stood quite petite, not much taller than my 5 foot 2, but his feet were of an extraordinary length. The shoes must have been custom made, or else I couldn’t imagine how any shoe would ever fit those long, thin, narrow feet.

My thoughts raced frenetically over the accidental words I wanted to say, “Those shoes must be custom!” “You have the biggest feet I’ve ever seen!” “I love your suit!” “How can you walk with those giant feet???”

And … I said nothing. I thought, “Remember how much it hurt all through childhood, every day of your life, when you tried to shrink and not get noticed, praying that this would be the day that no one looked at you and made fun of your huge nose? Remember that feeling of dread? Remember the horror of being physically different? That guy went through it too. That guy’s big nose is his big feet. He’s heard everything you could possibly say, and all you could possibly do is hurt him and remind him of every time he was teased for his giant feet.”

And … I said nothing. The light of self-perception opened, and I held in the accidental spores of incivility. I looked back up to his face, into his eyes, and smiled, sincerely.

I’ve always regretted that I didn’t tell him I loved his suit. And that I didn't point and say, "I have a big nose."

Floridian foliage

I just went to Florida to visit a friend for a weekend. We had a fab time, and I got to meet all her friends and rock out with them. But what really slayed me was the Florida flowers.

These photos were taken in Chicago's Garfield Park Conservatory:








In Florida, they were growing like gangbusters in everyone's front yards. My friend didn't notice this as exceptional, but I wouldn't shut up about it (surprised, I know). I kept pointing, "Look, look! I totally just saw that in the botanical garden!"

My friend said, "Oh, hmm." Eventually she warmed up to my enthusiasm and just laughed at my awe over Floridian flora.

Killer inside me

It seems like it's been a lifetime, but, ten years ago, my last college roommate was asked to make a cup that you couldn’t drink from as an assignment for her ceramics class. She started out with slabs and made a triangular wedge instead of a round cup. She put a crooked base on it and poked holes in the bottom so liquid would run through. Now, here’s the oddest part of the piece, she put multi-level wedged spikes all around the “mouth” of the cup. My roommate crafted a seriously intimidating undrinkable cup—maximum security all the way around the brim.

I saw it, and I asked, “What is that thing?”

She explained the assignment to me. Then she said, “The funny thing is that the cup is supposed to be a metaphor for sexuality.”

I gaped. I had never seen my roommate more aptly symbolized ever. She was bristly, topsy-turvy, and odd-ball, but those were the same qualities that made her friends love her.

At the end of the semester, the professor said it was his custom to keep one object from every one of his students. He irked me at the time, but my grown-up mind has decided it was to prepare budding professional artists for giving up what they loved to their buyers and galleries. He chose my roommate's undrinkable cup. They even argued over it, saying how important it was for her to keep it, but in the end she surrendered it to him

The undrinkable cup took up huge residence in my mind, spreading out and resonating over the years. At odd moments I find myself imagining my own undrinkable cup, and what it says about me at the time.

Today I had a vision of my undrinkable cup. A replica of a Greek wine goblet, on a tall spindle with a large, wide dish and handles at either side. The Greeks decorated the interior of their wine cups with heroic or erotic images. One image was Hercules striking down the Amazon Queen by thrusting his spear through her breast, straight into her nipple. I always hated that image, and it made me want to cry when I studied it in art history. But my undrinkable cup, my Greek wine goblet, The Amazon Queen towers over Hercules and pinions him through the loins. Holes on either side of the image would drain the wine, so no one could obscure the power of the Amazon Queen.

My vagina is killer.

Apple Green -- ha ha ha ha hah!

You Are Apple Green

You are almost super-humanly upbeat. You have a very positive energy that surrounds you. And while you are happy go lucky, you're also charmingly assertive. You get what you want, even if you have to persuade those against you to see things your way. Reflective and thoughtful, you know yourself well - and you know that you want out of life.

What Color Green Are You?

#1 is the most inaccurate, stupid thing I've ever heard to describe me.
#3, "get what I want"? Sure, I get what I want, because I take a birdshot approach to life and something I like is gonna make contact.
#4 if by knowing myself well means I know I am not upbeat but uptight, wound-up, and neurotic.

Although I do love green apple flavor candy. Yum!

My Odessey

I’m feeling my Odysseus today. Remember that scene where the crew gets stuck in Polyphemus’ cave? I feel kinda like that today. Like I might get eaten. I totally want to tie myself to the belly of the cyclops’ sheep and sneak my way out of the cavern. I know I’d make it.

Sorry Team Christine's Angels

You regulars may have noticed I'm writing slower than usual. I'm on a little mental hiatus while my brain adjusts to some new things. I'll come back with more tales of karaoke and bad lyrics, don't you fret. And in a couple-few months (that's how real Chicagoans say it) I'll explain what all the psychological hub-bub is about. In the meantime, I'm thinking about you and taking notes on what I want to say in the future.

More hair failures

Martha Plimpton was like IT after “The Goonies,” right? She was everywhere and in everything in the 80’s, and lord god did I want to be her. She was a pre-teen superhero of my desperate aspiration.

She had those short pixie cuts that I think she’s reverted back to after experimentation with Drew Barrymore locks. My mom chose my haircuts when I was a kid, and she chose the pixie cut for me several times in grade school. Atrocious. They never came out right and they hurt my already negative social status something fierce. I was lower than zero.

I remember that once my mom took us to JC Penny’s for a hair cut, trying to be thrifty, and my haircut came out so butchered that my mom had to surrender and take us back to the more expensive salon to fix my hair. Random bits stuck out all over the place. I shudder just remembering how much I was taunted for that hideous haircut. And in retrospect it wouldn’t have been so hard to fix if anyone I saw had had any skill.

I tried to Martha Plimpton it anyway. I remember seeing her in a magazine at my friend’s house, and Martha had her pixie cut parted on the right side of her head so far the line was practically drawn just over her right ear. I wanted that. I wanted to turn that bad haircut into Hollywood 80’s glam. So I tried it.

I used a similar method as the basketball hair umbrella incident. I parted my hair all the way on the right, bent over sideways to the left, and slimed half a mousse bottle over the exterior of the part to get it nice and flat.

I had the good fortune to try my new method on a weekend and wear it to my friend’s house. She asked, “What are you trying to do to your hair?” But she wasn’t actually that mean about it.

“I’m trying to look like that girl from “The Goonies.”

“Oh. It looks kinda funny.”

In the Kentucky summer heat, my coiffed hair melted under the noon sunlight. Slowly, the forced over fronds drooped to the right. It was like an ugly peacock unfolding gradually on the right side. Every so often, a layer of hair would break free and drift down by gravity’s pull to where it naturally belonged. Onion skin by onion skin, the stinky stuff fanned over, so that I had a small bush on the right side of my head and my regular flat hair on the left.

It’s a shame I didn’t have Martha Plimpton’s Hollywood stylist. I could have looked kinda cool. If you could have overlooked everything else about me that was totally lame in grade school.

"My momma told me not to use it!"

My mom didn’t teach me how to style my hair when I was in middle school. She never taught me how to style my hair at all, actually. She’s going to hate this, but I still have a tiny little half-ounce of resentment toward her inside me.

All my middle school friends seemed to have such magically perfect hair while I struggled to get my annoyingly plain, straight hair to do anything cool. My mom told me, “I would have given anything to have straight hair like yours instead of curly. I used to iron my hair flat.” My mom was into sunny-side-of-life morale boosters more than practical advice.

I tried replicating my friends’ magnificent hair on my own. And did a horrible job at it. I used half a can of Aquanet per application, but still my hair fell flat and lame. How did the other girls manage to look so chic? (If by “chic” I reinterpret hair history as being redneck Kentucky fashion with huge bangs and wavy, poofy long bits.) Mine was limp, flat, dull.

My bleakest memory of hair disaster happened during a middle school basketball game. My first boyfriend was going to be there, and I wanted desperately to impress him with perfect, magnificent hair. I prepped for hours before the big event. My method: I flipped my head upside down and sprayed my hair on the bottom with a liquid pint of Aquanet. I stayed that way while it dried. I waited, blood pounding in my ears, until at last the foundation layer had dried. I then sprayed another pint of Aquanet shellac over that. It took forever to dry.

At last I flipped my head up, and there, I had it, full hair with body. What was actually happening, however, was an umbrella effect. The rigid frame of plastered hair on the bottom was supporting my stalk-straight hair on top into and outward fan. That was good enough for me.

I arrived at the game, and my girl-rival who was after my boyfriend sneered nastily, “How’d you get your hair to do that?”

I answered, “It took an hour to do so don’t touch it.” I didn’t know she was insulting the umbrella-ness of my hair. And it turned out that gallons of Aquanet and basketball just don’t mix.

As I played and got sweaty, the hairspray goo re-liquefied and crept down my neck in sticky trickles. I swiped my neck with my hands, leaving them flaky and sticky, which should have helped my mad basketball skills except that I was the world’s crappiest pre-teen player ever.

The umbrella hair system broke down as the Aquanet dissolved. I ended up with spikes of hair frames separating from one another and creating gaps in between the hair armatures. The previously fanned, unsprayed hair slipped into the cracks of the fan, and I was left with straight hair flowing in between hair-sticks of shellacked do sticking at 90 degree angles from the bottom of my scalp.

Can you envision that? I only sprayed the underside of my hair, remember? It was beyond hideous and profoundly embarrassing. It really looked like a sprung umbrella sticking out from my flat hair. I made another player give me a rubber band for my hair, but the rigid bits were not really cooperating with going into the ponytail, while the limp bits seemed to be surrendering from apathy. I could hear the stiff bits crackling as they snapped in halves and folded into my ponytail. Now I had broken umbrella arms sticking out from a limp tail.

After the game, the rival sneered at me again, “What happened to your hair, Christine?” I finally knew I was being insulted, and I wished to fall into a pit in the basketball court and disappear forever. Of course, I was never that lucky, and instead I had to sit with them in shame while they sniggered at my miserable hair.

It’s ultimately for the best that I couldn’t style my hair; I don’t have any of the embarrassing middle school photos that could have haunted me. Instead I have emotional scars but great, timeless photos. I’ll settle for that.

A brief history of song lyrics I don’t know

In reverse chronological order:

I don’t get really picky about the music that plays in my car, except I prefer oldies, classic rock, pop, and new wave. If I can find a station playing any of those, no matter how much I dislike a particular song, I’ll listen to that station until commercial break. The catch is, lyrics confuse me.

Take for example No Doubt. Their lyrics aren’t particularly complex, right? Wrong. I still couldn’t understand them until my sister tried to persuade me I was wrong. I later received confirmation when I saw the actual lyrics on a karaoke screen.

My version:
“I’m walkin on the spider webs...
No matter who calls,
I scream my balls off!”

These lyrics made sense to me for two reasons. For one, she was as wild and predatory as a spider, crawling across her web sinisterly. I thought this fit her image as “not just a girl.” “I scream my balls off” meant that she was tired of distracting or irritating phone calls. No matter who called her, she was frustrated by the ringing phone because it intruded on her predatory spider-webbing. Brilliant lyrics to sing along with in the car because I liked screaming my balls off too.

My illusions about her bad-ass-ness were shattered when my friend sang along to the verses on the karaoke monitor:

“I’m walking into spider webs...
No matter who calls,
I screen my phone calls!”

Screening phone calls? Walking into spider webs? That’s passive. That’s avoidance. That’s not proactive screaming and crawling, it’s nuisance stalker evasion. Lame-o. Totally disappointed in that No Doubt chick.

Now rewind to a classic rock Eric Clapton staple that confused me (until last Sunday, amazingly).

“Won’t you be my four-legged woman?
I’ll try to be your four-letter man…
Rebel man, rebel man, rebel man.”

I always wondered about the animal reference to four-legged-ness, and I wondered why he wanted to be a letter-jacket jock—that’s so high school lame. And then rebel man? How can he be a letter-jacket varsity jock and be a rebel man? And why does he want to be a varsity rebel to her animal-ness? I sang along anyway, thinking classic-rockers got to take poetic license that regular people didn’t have to understand.

Last Sunday, I was playing a radio really quietly while I worked, just to have a little company while I was alone in the library. “Rebel Man” came on the radio. With the volume way down, I suddenly heard, “forever woman,” "forever man.” Mind opening. Still a pedestrian and lame song, but at least I know what it means now.

“Won’t you be my forever woman?
I’ll try to be your forever man,
Try to be your forever man.
Forever man, forever man, forever man.”

More wacky Christine-isms later. I’ve still got two more gems.

Sinister

I don't usually get the "Mondays." My work week starts on Sunday, and it always feels crappy to work Sundays, so I get "Sundays." The lord's day of rest is my day of feverish Sunday archiving. Not really fun.

But today somehow I have the "Mondays." You know what I mean, right? That weekend funover that blahs out into Monday's return to drudgery? Right? I feel that today, because it feels like I'm stuck in a trend of things going wrong.

I felt groggy and confused when I woke up this morning. I would have fallen over when I got out of bed if my dresser that is piled with clothes on top of it hadn't caught me in a soft, vertical landing. Thank goodness I'm a total slob. Then my leak proof coffee mug leaked all over me. And following that the only hard boiled egg left in the cafeteria was cracked to smithereens and soaking in standing water. OK, I'm betting the rest of my coffee and some bacon will set me to rights.

I sit down at my desk. Sinistrodextral is the way English writing moves from left to right. Somehow, my brain is dextrosinistral today, moving from right to left. I tried to type "red," and it took so much concentration to write "r-e-d" and not "d-e-r" that I wonder if my case of the Mondays isn't making me stupid. More stupid. Stupider. Dumber than usual. Mildly learning disabled. Something bad related to dextrosinistral.

This exercise in blogging (and the caffeine kicking in) is turning my brain left side to right. I think I'm recovered enough to work normally now.* Thank god my workload on Monday is always light. I can't start at the back of the papers to be archived and work my way to the front. It would be sinisterly dextrosinistral.

*I proofread this twice before I ended up with the final draft. It contained crazy mistakes, so obviously I'm still not sinistrodextral enough to be equalized yet.

Bad dreams, forgotten

I had a waking dream just as I was drifting off to sleep last night about the worst job I could imagine having. I remember thinking, “Man, I am so going to blog about that terrible imaginary job tomorrow,” and then zonking out. I don’t remember any of it, except I think I had to hold pebbles in my mouth. I’m not really good at holding pebbles in my mouth, which was part of what made it the worst job ever.

Telefun

This morning, on my way to work, I got one of those rare treats that only someone who’s a total bitch on the inside actually enjoys overhearing. A woman who I don’t like or respect, but whom I see all the time was on the phone, shrieking hysterically, “What? Does he think I look stupid? I mean, come on!” She was even accenting her telephone tirade with forehead clutching.

Glorious. Me, muttering under my breath: “Yes, you do look stupid.”

Then a tiny part of me felt bad because maybe she isn’t stupid, and I’ve just misunderstood her all along. Maybe I should have given her a chance to prove how not stupid she really is. And then that tiny part of me died as the rest of me—the bitchy part—laughed and remembered how stupid I really think she is.

B-to-tha-izzack

This makes my blahg SO much more entertaining.

My new(est) obsession

Hooping. Grown-up hula hooping. I'm taking my first class on Thursday, and I can't wait. I wish today were Thursday and not lame ol' Wednesday!

Watch some of the hooping videos on the link above. I'll let you know when I can do the hoop headstand, but don't hold your breath or you'll pass out from waiting.

Seasonal memories

My grandmother wanted me to paint yard sale signs for her. As the artistic one in the family, she thought I should be the one to make creative yard sale signs to stand out from the neighborly competition. I whined and procrastinated. I was at that age where I hated doing anything for anybody, especially something SO beneath my talent as a yard sale sign. Finally, my mom sat me down and made me do it.

They were cleverly designed signs. I planned big, block letters with jaunty slants, and I chose eye popping contrast colors to make the sign really bounce. Neon yellow and true blue. Perfect.

I was given two poster boards, which I think was actually one large poster board cut in half to save money. My aunt was thrifty like that.

First I painted the blue block letters “YARD SALE” and an arrow pointing right. Then I meticulously outlined every letter and the arrow with the neon yellow. Masterpiece. Glorious pop art yard sale sign.

The next sign I painted in neon yellow with the arrow pointing left, and blue outlining all. Pop! More artistic brilliance elevating the mundane. The opposite arrows were genius on my part, because no one instructed me on where they presumed the arrows should go. But I knew the plan was to put signs on either end of the block, so the arrows had to point in separate ways to point in to the sale. Brilliant foresight, little Christine Wy.

My aunt left to hang the signs. My mom pulled me aside, and said in her most apologetic and simultaneously accusatory voice (imagine her as precursor to Marge Simpson), “Christine, you did it wrong. The arrows point in the wrong directions your aunt said.”

Smack down on my genius. “What?”

“The arrows were supposed to point down the street, instead they point out. Your aunt just drew over them with a black marker.”

Smote my pop art signs! “But they were designed to go at either end of the street! They were designed to point in from two directions!”

“They were the wrong directions sweetie.”

Being 14 and unable to communicate rationally, I stomped off. All they had to do was switch the signs. I couldn’t believe the whole arrow concept was just gone. They patronizingly accepted my brilliant signs because they had no choice, they asked me for the sign commission, and that was what they had to work with, smiling grimly like I had messed up something simple yet again.

I worked a card table at the yard sale. I didn’t get much action. I sat and sketched in a notebook, scenes that I imagined from Pink Floyd songs. The neighbor boy had a painful crush on me. It hurt me that he followed me like a ridiculous fawning puppy, like all those stupid oldies songs I heard, “Puppy Love,” and it annoyed the crap out of me that I couldn’t shake this kid. My defense: talk so obscurely over his head with teenage angst that he’d leave me alone.

“What are you drawing?”

“A man and a woman in a fishbowl trying to get out. It means ‘fuck all that we gotta get outta this.’”

“Huh.”

“They’re trapped in their small world and they have to escape to real life, the real life beyond all this.”

“What are you doing tonight?”

“I’m going to ‘Rocky. I can’t wait to get out of here and see my real friends.”

“Oh! ‘Rocky!’ I love that movie! Dunh, du-du-du, dunh-du-du, doo doo!”

Oh god, not that “Rocky.” “Rocky Horror picture Show,” doofus. “Whatever,” I rolled my eyes. I slammed down my sketch pad and walked away. He followed. And now he had a tail of friends younger than him following too.

“I have work to do,” I growled at him, and stormed inside my grandmother’s house via the back door.

I didn’t sell anything. I had a horrible time. Nothing went the way I imagined. I imagined being the creator of brilliantly arrowed signs and charming customers as the bohemian girl with long hair and peasant skirt. I wasn’t any of those things. Instead I was bitter and angry and hid in my grandmother’s toy room reading children’s books.

After all, I was a teenager. In the words of Bart Simpson, “Making teenagers depressed is like shooting fish in a barrel.” I was one sad fish.

Too sweet to be cold

Visiting the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in 2003, the Demeter fragrances exhibit captivated me. I smelled grass, I smelled mildew, I smelled tomatoes, and I read the story of how each fragrance was inspired and came to be. What subtle genius would take the most fundamental smells of my childhood and create essences that fired memory neurons I had long forgotten? I remembered my father’s failed vegetable garden that continued to sprout wild tomatoes after we abandoned it. I remembered the corner of the basement where my grandfather built his tool shed and workshop where I smelled mildew. And the smell of freshly cut grass brought back more memory than I can list, like watching clouds and listening to the neighbor mow his lawn.

In the gift shop, I wavered between buying the scent Gin and Tonic and Snow. I decided Gin and Juice was too naughty for a southern gal like me, and settled on Snow.

Snow was never quite right for me--though I liked the smell well enough--it just wasn’t snow. Snow smells crackly like ozone, it smells cold, and it smells like the absence of scent because it drapes every scent-giving thing in fragrance-retarding ice. To me, snow smells like absolute zero, a fresh scent palate.

Demeter’s Snow was sort of ghostly sweet and gentle, but not frozen enough for me. Oddly, when I sprayed it on, the scent evaporated quickly, and I smelled like regular musky me again. I thought it must be a joke, that snow is ephemeral and melts quickly, but then I thought I’d been duped by a museum fragrance that couldn’t withstand real wearing. And after living in Chicago for so many years, I know that the zero smell is what is really ephemeral about snow, and that quickly it smells like oil and dirt and garbage--probably all are Demeter scents, but not my preferred olfactory stimuli.