Self-care Saturday
Bought some jasmine essential oil, the bottle I have now is getting pretty low. I really like that brand Gya Labs; the bottles are a bit smaller than Aromatic Infusions', but the prices are so good that if it didn't have a lot of good reviews I would be skeptical. Probably a matter of scale.
Speaking of oil, I tried the monoi oil that sirena73 sent me this morning after I showered and it is wonderful. It's coconut oil that's had gardenia petals soaking in it, so not only does it smell amazing but it's very moisturizing. It soaks right into your skin, and not just the very top layer. And gardenia is in my top 5 of floral scents; they grow in Louisiana (we have bushes in the side yard), but because we're not a true tropical climate the blooming season is pretty brief.
Our hellacious Louisiana summer appears to have finally ended (although we'll probably get a spell of gross, muggy, 80-ish degree weather right at Christmas; on average I'd say actually November is cooler and dryer than December). So I re-started my subscription to the geocaching app.
Pretty sure this group of caches is new, I don't remember it being there earlier in the year:
I also started playing Neko Atsume again, a game that for some reason I associate with the holiday season. Last time I played it took me about... 6 months, maybe? to collect all the cats. I think they've added a couple since then, and there's new items in the shop, too.
I switched my car insurance, which will save me almost $50 a month, at least until they start raising it a few months from now, at which point I'll have to look for another policy. Even when you're a good driver--and I remind you that the accident that wrecked my Nissan was 100% the other driver's fault and I have the police report to prove it--between our shitty drivers and shittier roads in Louisiana, finding cheap car insurance is a never-ending game of whack-a-mole.
Gave in and started re-reading Peter Straub's Ghost Story, which I've been thinking of doing since I read that he died. I don't know if anxiety is just making it hard to concentrate or what, but I'm reading 3 new books right now and none of them are really doing it for me. If I hated them I'd just give up, but they're just good enough to make me keep going. My Name Is Red is full of characters endlessly debating about painting styles and whether certain types of art are blasphemous in Islam and people telling allegories about painting. It's very repetitious and feels much longer than it needs to be. 22 Murders reads like a blog post written by someone with an enormous axe to grind against the RCMP which, don't get me wrong, ACAB and all, but it wasn't quite what I thought I was getting. And Let The Record Show is just super dry, although I haven't gotten out of the intro yet and I hope it's more interesting when it gets to the actual oral history part. (I had originally planned to listen to that one on audio but changed my mind when I read a lot of reviews saying the content was great but the reading awful. Like "pronouncing words incorrectly" awful.)
Washed my big afghan so it will be nice and clean once it actually gets cold enough to use it.
Speaking of oil, I tried the monoi oil that sirena73 sent me this morning after I showered and it is wonderful. It's coconut oil that's had gardenia petals soaking in it, so not only does it smell amazing but it's very moisturizing. It soaks right into your skin, and not just the very top layer. And gardenia is in my top 5 of floral scents; they grow in Louisiana (we have bushes in the side yard), but because we're not a true tropical climate the blooming season is pretty brief.
Our hellacious Louisiana summer appears to have finally ended (although we'll probably get a spell of gross, muggy, 80-ish degree weather right at Christmas; on average I'd say actually November is cooler and dryer than December). So I re-started my subscription to the geocaching app.
Pretty sure this group of caches is new, I don't remember it being there earlier in the year:
I also started playing Neko Atsume again, a game that for some reason I associate with the holiday season. Last time I played it took me about... 6 months, maybe? to collect all the cats. I think they've added a couple since then, and there's new items in the shop, too.
I switched my car insurance, which will save me almost $50 a month, at least until they start raising it a few months from now, at which point I'll have to look for another policy. Even when you're a good driver--and I remind you that the accident that wrecked my Nissan was 100% the other driver's fault and I have the police report to prove it--between our shitty drivers and shittier roads in Louisiana, finding cheap car insurance is a never-ending game of whack-a-mole.
Gave in and started re-reading Peter Straub's Ghost Story, which I've been thinking of doing since I read that he died. I don't know if anxiety is just making it hard to concentrate or what, but I'm reading 3 new books right now and none of them are really doing it for me. If I hated them I'd just give up, but they're just good enough to make me keep going. My Name Is Red is full of characters endlessly debating about painting styles and whether certain types of art are blasphemous in Islam and people telling allegories about painting. It's very repetitious and feels much longer than it needs to be. 22 Murders reads like a blog post written by someone with an enormous axe to grind against the RCMP which, don't get me wrong, ACAB and all, but it wasn't quite what I thought I was getting. And Let The Record Show is just super dry, although I haven't gotten out of the intro yet and I hope it's more interesting when it gets to the actual oral history part. (I had originally planned to listen to that one on audio but changed my mind when I read a lot of reviews saying the content was great but the reading awful. Like "pronouncing words incorrectly" awful.)
Washed my big afghan so it will be nice and clean once it actually gets cold enough to use it.