what I really want to do is make perfume

Instead, I’ve done the following today:

1.  cook and pickle three pounds of beets
2.  bake a plum crumb cake
3.  fry up a batch of black beans
4.  groom Daisy with the furminator brush for a half hour (we yielded two cats’ worth of hair)
5.  prep a sack of peppers for pickling
6.  cook a batch of Spanish rice
7.  cook a pot of black beans for future dishes

All the while, the dude is,

1.  doing dishes (two days’ worth, bless his little pointed head)
2.  doing laundry
3.  charging his car battery off one of our solar panels and whinging that the starter might be toast in his buttless wondercar
4.  rewiring some stuff so we can run the kitchen radio solely on solar

We did the farmers’ market this morning.  One we have never been to.  Hence the beets.

I think I do more work on Saturday than I do during the week, sometimes.  I have to bake bread later, because I’ll be baking something else in the oven at that time, and why let the heat go to waste, eh.

We are very determined to make the most of our energy consumption when we do consume it, in our little abode.

At this point, the only things not running on solar in our apartment are: light fixtures mounted into walls and ceilings, the fridge, the computers, the tv.  We don’t watch much tv.  Everything else can be run off a solar-charged battery charger he actually got for the car battery when it craps out.  The bedside lamp in the bedroom was converted to power a LED harvested from another gadget, and is powered by an obsolete cell phone battery he figured out how to charge with a little solar doodad meant for charging a car battery from the dash.

We even solar-charge our cell phones with a rewiring trick.

But, I want to make perfume.

I even had a dream about a blend as I was waking this morning, with pomegranate absolute, some oleander, and jasmine.  A bunch of screaming divas distilled into a bottle of fruity floral fright, in other words.

He wants something made w/ the beautiful lavender concretes I got from Marcia a couple weeks ago, being a lavender kinda guy (me, I’m just pleased I can use him as a test subject).

The cats don’t give a rat’s patootie so long as they’re fed at regular intervals and one or both of us plays with them a couple times a day.

But, I want to make perfume.

Maybe tomorrow.  I hope!

what do you seek in a professional org?

I renewed my membership with Co-op America this morning. Mostly to not lose my momentum with them. Secondarily because they do good work and have the best of intentions and I want to see them continue to grow; I originally joined them when they were still a good bit smaller and were just learning to vet memberships over the internet. I did not renew one year because I blew a hefty chunk of change on holiday advertising that didn’t net me any traffic or sales. When you’re a small-fry you have to write off some things, and in that instance I just shrugged and called the advertising several years of membership. And then chalked it up to experience.

But they have some flakey tendencies that continue to dog them in the customer service area, and I brought these up with the membership services person who sent me a reminder email to renew. She was pretty gracious about it.

Having worked in non-profit myself, I know that a lot of things go by the seat of one’s pants. But ultimately your dues-paying members are your bosses, en masse. Ya gotta listen to them.

It looks like they finally listened to member complaints about the list-serv. That’s a start.

Good org, but still a diamond in the rough. And they’re still learning what works and what does not. And I say that in the kindest way.

Check ‘em out if you’re looking for a natural-flavored org to join that emphasizes member networking, social responsibility, and other good stuff.

Trade orgs are a hard row to hoe when you’re a small business which is subject market fluctuations, the vagaries of consumer spending habits, and the like. But I continue to maintain a few memberships hoping that over the long haul my dollars are supporting something that is ultimately supportive of everyone else following their bliss. Not just me.

can you sign the petition, please?

If you haven’t already.

I posted about the FDA Globalization Act of 2008 previously.

Here’s your chance to get active, eh.

In a nutshell, the current draft of the Act spells business closures for most small businesses who move under a certain volume, annually. It is in essence an income stream for an agency that has proven time and again to not serve the public interest, to not protect the consumer, and to be in big pharma’s back pocket. The Act is about monopoly. In this case, the companies that small businesses like myself laughingly refer to as “the Big Boys” will wind up being the winners.

Anyway, Donna Maria runs an org I belong to, the Indie Beauty Network. And she put a petition up on the blog for the org. She used to be a corporate attorney, but is now in the business of helping small businesses get ahead and stay ahead, and just follow their bliss and live creative lives that are lucrative.

If you’re so inclined, I’d strongly suggest you sign the petition. And if you blog as well, and think it’d be a good exercise to post about the topic there, go ahead and permalink her blog link. She’s got a video up that addresses the Act as well, and is hoping to get 100,000 signatures (you are welcomed to embed and link to the video from your site; I cannot figure out how to do this at the moment, so I’ve only got the petition URL linked right now).

Link and petition, here.

Thanks for reading.

okay, so it’s not 33 1/3, it’s turned up to 78 speed

That overused phrase about being as busy as a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest kind of landed on my head like a piano falling out of the sky, yesterday.

Busy much?

Everything was at standard 33 1/3 rpm during the Mercury retrograde, I felt kind of like some strange slow motion thing happening in the external sense, where I had infinite time (and it was normal-paced) in the internal sense.  I got a ton of stuff done and had plenty of time in which to do it.

Monday morning I started wondering if someone had put the record on, but switched the speed to 45.  Okay, so it’s Beethoven’s 6th Symphony, the opening strains.   Orderly, a bit twee but who cares and why be cynical.  But a minute into it, I’m listening to something straight out of the Looney Tunes music archive (Carl Stalling was a genius); everything is sped up, and I’m panting to keep up.

Well, this morning, the symphony is now thoroughly a silly symphony and is turned up to 78
(uh oh, this is where I confess to playing my grandma’s 78 records on a console record player - I guess I’m dating myself; just call me an old 36 who still owns records…)

I have to do the following today:
create a press kit (well, edit the one I have)
take more product photos
finish trying some blends from an experimental group, and then review all of them
laundry
dishes
a focus group
mail some orders
pack and mail some more orders
maybe fix my bike, again
update my site

That’s after my regular job.

The cats watched me fly around the house this morning.

“Do you think she’s going to feed us NOW?” chitters the little one to the big one.
“I dunno”, chirps the big one.  “Let’s follow her around to remind her to feed us.”
“Yes! And I’ll find something crackly to chew on to get her attention before we start following her!” squeaks the little one.

So I had an entourage for an hour this morning.  And they didn’t quit shadowing me after I fed them.  When I took a moment to clean the litterbox, they were waiting right there to bury treasure in the thing.  Thanks, kids.  When I tripped over my own feet hauling out the bike and dropped my helmet, they were right there behind me waiting to almost get stepped on.  “HISSSSS!  SPIT!” sputters the little one.

I just want to make perfumes and get on with my life.   It’s hard to just do that this week.

mother’s day, and remembering

Mom’s been gone for 20 years.

There were a few things she liked, that still make me nostalgic when I smell them.  Windsong eau de toilette.  Devon Violets (this was something she started wearing when my great grandma was on the decline).  Plain lavender.  I remember her wearing patchouli when I was just a little kid, it was golden and floral and magical with her chemistry, but she totally disowned it when I was old enough to know about perfume, saying it was a part of her past best forgotten.  I never knew if she was referring to my dad, or her brief time in the hippie counterculture, or if it was just too painful thinking about how she wasn’t able to complete college during that era, or what.

I will never know if this is how she pictured my future.  And I will never know if she approves of my creative life.  I have a pretty good feeling she’d be okay with it, but she’d be kicking my butt to gain more momentum, and maybe I’d have enough of that by now to leave the IRL job and just pursue aromatics full time.

I’ve been toying with making something to commemorate her, for a couple years, but the time is never right for that.  It’s still not right.  Maybe in a few years.

The BF was supportive today.  He’s not in touch with his parents at all.  So, it was happy mother’s day to me, from the furkids (one of whom gifted me with a pre-holiday puddle of puke last night, when she inhaled some halibut too fast).

I dabbed on a bit of diluted gulhina attar and went about my business today.  Honestly, it’s just another Sunday.  I haven’t had a Sunday with mom for 20 yrs and 2 wks.

I miss you, mom.

aromachology in action

I live near a steel mill.  For years, I had no idea one was located in town, because I’d never lived in the neighborhood near it.

It was the smell that I noticed, after some years.  And that’s another topic entirely, but the neighborhood associations are in a lawsuit w/ the mill because of the fumes, anyway…

The smell this morning, that was hanging heavy in the air like a storm cloud, was of floor wax!  And it was floor wax I’ve not smelled since I was 14, and walking through the lobby of the Berkeley Community Theater.  Here I am walking down the street and bam, it’s 1986.  I think it was the last day of summer, and all the new students were being herded into the lobby to prepare for the nightmare that was called ’self-scheduling’, back then.

I even remembered the smell of the mimeographed handouts the class counselors gave us.  I guess that makes it a two-fer?

(In the meantime, it looks like the neighbors have to keep a ‘nose out’ for hot floor wax odors, in addition to the burning pot-handle stink.  Gah…)

not an allergy, eh?

I got a copy of the book Luca Turin authored with Tania Sanchez, Perfumes: The Guide, and I was reading it on the train last week and happened upon a passage about sensitivities and allergies versus just disliking something.

Apparently a headache does not an allergy or sensitivity make.  I am not sure I can believe that, given what happens if I work with oakmoss for long periods of time.

Oakmoss is this mainstay of base accords in perfumery, mind you, but if I’m around it too long I start to feel like there’s a little cranial construction guy in a fluorescent orange safety vest wielding a large hammer in my frontal lobe.  Knocking me between the eyes from the inside of my skull.

And I actually like how it smells, thankyouverymuch.

File under, ‘ya can’t believe everything you read’

(The sensitivity to oakmoss is nothing new, and it didn’t come out of working with the stuff directly.  It’s always been there.  And for the record, massoia does the same thing to me, but I don’t like its odor profile at all.)

technical difficulties

Sometimes I wonder if I was born under a bad sign or something.

My page is temporarily down. The webhost has been contacted. I haven’t threatened anyone yet, but who knows what the day will bring.

What is really stupid about the whole thing, is I was updating the blankety blank page and ftp overwrote and deleted a metric ton of file directories.

So, please bear with me as I work this out.

Muchas gracias!
Sara (who in her next life, would really like to outsource all this web-authoring stuff)

If you need to reach me, my yahoo email addy is functional: lobelia2001@yahoo.com

chocolate season is upon us!

Well, very nearly.

I visited the Global Exchange website to see what sorts of Theobroma cacao goodies they’d be offering up this holiday season, and it looks like truffles thus far.

You might say I have chocolate on the brain.

Holiday soaps are currently in production at some stage, being it firming up for unmolding, curing, waiting to be cut into bars.  And I did two chocolate batches because the one I did last year came out good.  This year it’ll be a chocolate mint and an orange chocolate w/ a hint of coffee.

Scharffen Berger chocolate is my pivotal ingredient in these.  Their ‘bittersweet’ baking chocolate, specifically.  Some soapers like to add cocoa powder.  Others prefer working with cocoa absolute.  I like to add the real tempered thing.  It seems to lather a bit less brown than the powder does, and I don’t have to worry about solubility and residual alcohol making a batch emulsify too quickly.

And I’m contemplating another chocolatey perfume.  You’d think three would be plenty, but had some odd dreams about coming up with one based on chocolate with green tea, another based on chocolate with lemon (lemon, sadly, is such a fleeting top note that I generally don’t work with it), and then a third based on chocolate and cepes absolute (I think this was a reworking of a leather accord I made based on these a couple years ago, possibly).

Soap-cutting starts tonight!  Yes, I procrastinated some.  But this is better than last year’s timing.

*off to get some coffee, and to see if I still have the stash of cocoa powder to kick it up a couple notches*