And Yesterday Infects Today

[arkiewriter]

Yesterday was an utterly shitty day, on more than one count, mostly work-related. Today is not starting off any better, despite it being a special day in our household (shhhh! hubby's having a BIRTHDAY today

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[arkiewriter]

There is a store in L.A. called Black Broom that carries some oils. I think there may be one other, in Rhode Island. Other than that, no, they are pretty much online only. You can buy from the website or from folks at the BPAL forums. Some forumites will offer up partial imps extremely cheap so folks can test out a scent before committing to buy a 5ml or 10ml from the lab's website.

To me, part of the fun has been experimenting. I know instinctively things I *won't* like the smell of... but have taken chances on others. I've had the "OMG, get this OFF ME!" reaction (Fire of Love, which contained Civet and I smelled like a baby diaper in summer heat... ugh!) and the "I've died and gone to heaven!" reaction (Milk Moon, Dorian, O...), as well as the... "eh, nice enough, but what can I trade it for?"

For example, for the Milk Moon spritzer, I traded an imp of Samhain, which didn't perform well with my body chemistry (smelled okay in the bottle, had a rank sour segment in adjusting to my skin chemistry).

I've had others that I wasn't impressed with in the bottle (Dorian for example) that really loved my skin and I can practically bathe in it.

I've figured out notes pretty quickly that I love, tolerate, or hate... it's easy to screen them out because there is such a wide variety. I am still mourning the sandalwood mess on my skin though - it is in so many oils that sound perfectly lovely if not for the one pesky note.

Someone compared it once to "baseball cards for women". I liked that description. ;-) My kids think I should start mapping where I'm trading from/to. I think I'm up to about 15 different states now!