Utterly Odious!
Do you remember way back when Meredith was collecting soaps?
Yeah, me too. I loved those days. Our house was filled with soap! Meredith smelled great! There's nothing annoying about a kid who claims that Irish Spring is her best friend!
Sadly, Meredith has stepped away from her soaps and has now entered the nauseating world of magazine perfume samples.
And just so you know: Perfume Shop has replaced Freeze Tag as My Least Favorite Game Ever. (Freeze tag leaves me slightly winded. Perfume Shop finds my bowels attempting to disengage. And I know you don't want to know that. But now you do. April showers bring May flowers!)
I have never been much of a perfume fan. The only thing I spray on myself is watered down Bath and Body stuff. (Incidentally, my natural body odor is Burnt Toast. I don't reek of it, but if you stick my forearm up to your nose and breathe me in, you'll definitely crave a knife for scraping followed by a jar of apricot preserves.)
Anyway, now that our house reeks of perfume samples (She has 23! Thanks for sending them in, Relatives!), I've been walking around in a dry-mouth haze--constantly battling with my innards, who are practicing for an explosive and badly-timed hoedown.
That whole Love is Patient, Love is Kind thing I mentioned last time? Yeah. That definitely applies here, too.
Submitted by
Jenn
at 3/31/2008 10:25:07 AM- The only thing worse than getting magazines stuffed with perfume samples is walking through the cosmetics section of a department store and everyone wants to spray something on you.
Submitted by
LFM
at 3/31/2008 10:36:10 AM- please do not tell my daughter (who is not yet old enough to have this hobby) about this when she is old enough to have a hobby!!! I can't walk through a department store on the perfume hell floor because I wind up all cross eyed and my sinuses scream from the depths of my nasal passages to stop. the. torture and my mouth tastes like flowers and fruit and whatever else they put in perfume to make it gross. I feel bad for you, i truly do, just don't tell my daughter, okay? :-)
Submitted by
Zoot
at 3/31/2008 11:13:14 AM- Oh. My son started wearing cologne this year and it's making me crazy. He says his girlfriend, "Loves it!" so I'm not allowed to complain. But it's killing me. If there were 23 variations? I might move out.
Submitted by
Surcie
at 3/31/2008 11:22:05 AM- "you'll definitely crave a knife for scraping followed by a jar of apricot preserves."
Hilarious. This is what I love about your blog.
Submitted by
Courtney Watson
at 3/31/2008 11:30:52 AM- Reminds me of the smell of "Girogio Beverly Hills" and "Baby Soft". The magazines of my childhood reaked of those.
Submitted by
Carroll
at 3/31/2008 12:28:56 PM- FINALLY, a worthy cause for which to pony up some perfume samples. Come on, Internet. We've all got four or five lying around someplace, right? Think how deleriously happy that little girl would be to get her VERY OWN MAIL!
(snerk ;-)
Submitted by
FP
at 3/31/2008 12:36:13 PM- Kathy--I'm really lobbying for the soap. I'm even walking around with a bar of Dial and a hope that Meredith still sees me as a hero.
Jenn--Truer words have never been spoken.
LFM--I'm with you. I *hate* the cosmetics department and those poor women who are paid to spray.
Zoot--Tell me he's not using Drakkar Noir. That's what the boys in my high school wore. Of course, that was twenty years ago...
Surcie--You're so nice. But seriously--if we ever meet, you really should smell my arm. Is that weird?
Courtney--I forgot about Giorgio! Oh my God. My eyes are watering at the mere thought of it.
Carroll--Those, my friend, are fighting words! If you're brave enough to send more samples, you better be brave enough to deliver them in person! (And then I'll forgive you and take you out for lunch or something!)
Submitted by
Susan
at 3/31/2008 1:28:27 PM- As someone who can't wear perfume because they give me headaches AND considering that you suffer from migraines daily, I feel so bad for your poor head. I hope you can find something else for her to collect. How about Webkinz? Webkinz are nice. Yeah, my daughter has probably 20. Probably a drop in the bucket for some but seriously, she needs another stuffed animal like I need a hole in my head.
Submitted by
Carroll
at 3/31/2008 7:10:13 PM- Oh, I so *wish* I could take you up on that offer, Angie. I'd even go buy a bunch of fashion mags just for the samples if that's the excuse I needed to stop by your 'hood. Why is it that folks on the outer edges of the country seem to get visited so much more than folks in the middle, anyway? It's really rather rude to just fly right over all you middle-americans and not even bother to wave. Sad :-(
My all-time favorite kid collectible is bottle caps. Small, easily portable, and SO amazingly fun to play with. Years after our kids left home when I was working in a 3rd grade classroom, I brought in my older son's collection of bottlecaps. (Two full popcorn cans!) I asked the kids if any of them had bottle cap collections or had played with them before, and none had. So we dumped them all out in the middle of the floor and *instantly* the most amazing thing happened. No matter how you look at 'em, bottlecaps are a pretty gender-neutral item, right? Well, right away the boys indiscriminately grabbed big fistfulls and began seeing who could stack the highest tower. Pretty soon they began sorting the caps and making "graphs" -- lining up all the Bud Lights, the Millers, the Cokes, etc. to see which brand there were the most of. The girls, on the other hand, gathered around in a circle and began picking curiously through all the caps, looking at the special designs on some of them, and before long one of them said "Let's make a city! The lady in the long dress can be the schoolteacher and we'll make a shiny school around her with all these silver ones. The one with the paw print on it can go in the zoo..." In 15 minutes they had cooperatively laid out a hospital, a zoo, a school, a bus stop, and a store, all populated appropriately while the boys were still off on the other side of the room *competing* to see whose pile was biggest, whose line was longest, and how they could knock things over to gain an advantage over their friends. It was absolutely fascinating.
My son and his friends had only ever done the graph thing before, with perhaps an occasional piling session.
Women -- the foundation of civilization!
Hmm...is there a word limit for these comments?? Mayhap I got a bit carried away here. I do love the memories your blog brings back to my consciousness though. And trust me...someday when Meredith is collecting oh, say *boys*, you will look back on this particular collection with much fondness :-)
Submitted by
Alli
at 3/31/2008 7:30:42 PM- Yep, that's a migraine waiting to happen. Take her to the candle store for some nice smelling votives, w/o matches of course.
Submitted by
The Simple Family
at 3/31/2008 9:28:47 PM- WE collect feathers. Lots and lots of teeny tiny pink feathers that OH MY GOSH IF THEY GET LOST WE ALL DIE.
I kind of miss Meredith's soap days. Those were the best.
Submitted by
You can call me, 'Sir'
at 4/1/2008 8:47:27 AM- For the rest of my life, I vow to use 'explosive hoedown' to describe any sort of gastrointestinal trauma.
Submitted by
Dancing Kami
at 4/1/2008 1:07:24 PM- Bring back the soap-loving-Meredith! Maybe intice her (spell check, intice, intise?) by taking her to the Galleria to that home made soap place and have her get a fun kind with pieces or chuncks of goodies in them...or a toy in the middle she can get when she's used all the soap? She's going to have to go back to her trusty soap ways to wash off all the perfume ads. I haven't worn actual perfune in years because of my sinuses and allergies. Good Luck with this phase.
I used to horde those miniature Avon lipsticks as a kid. (I'm pretty sure I put them on my "drag" Ken dolls.)
I'd take the soap over perfume samples. Those things are a migraine waiting to happen.