It is a dark and stormy night

The perfume review I planned for today of a Kilian something or other will have to wait. I'm just not in the mood. Today's explosive thunderstorms are good for my soul (except the part where I was driving through the edge of one earlier this evening). It's an oddly calming weather.

I'm not going to rehash the subject of comfort scents. It's been done enough and I'm not feeling any of them at the moment. The perfumes I've been wearing the last week or so had to provide strength and resolve more than comfort and my choices have surprised me. I mentioned earlier today that last week sucked major monkeys. One of my older cats, Thomas, died on Thursday night after a year of living with lymphoma. We knew it was coming and he passed away at home, which is a slightly better option. But the days leading to it were very difficult. If that wasn't enough, on Saturday afternoon we took Giselle for her yearly shots. By that night she developed a high fever. Even though we knew it's a fairly common reaction, the Blond and I have a low threshold for these things right now, so we rushed her to the emergency clinic, where a well-meaning Doogie Howser, DVM wanted to test her for everything under the sun and preferably admit her for at least 24 hours. Seriously. While neither one of us plays a vet on TV, we knew all she needed was an IV of fluids. It's us who could have used some serious medication, but I'm pretty sure young Doogie wasn't authorized to prescribe any.

Giselle is alright, of course. The IV took care of the fever and by the time we brought her home on Sunday afternoon she proceeded to eat her weight in Royal Canine and then chased the other cats around before cuddling with us for the rest of the night.

So what perfumes did I wear throughout the turmoil? Oddly enough, non of my comfort scents. Instead, I turned to classics with a steely backbone. Chanel 5 in every formulation but mostly vintage extrait helped me not just keep going but also keep up appearances. Chanel 22 (current version) at night provided a little more softness and lulled me to sleep without coddling. A fairly recent love, Givenchy Insense, was another good choice (Luca Turin said this one is melancholic and mysterious), despite (or because) its masculinity. Vintage Miss Dior, both EDT and extrait, accompanied me throughout the weekend.

Today I've been in the mood for iris. I played with several of the ones I have, but now that I'm cuddling with my fluffy gray Peter who's purring loudly in my ear (the Blond has Gracie on his lap), I wish for a bell jar of Iris Silver Mist. It just goes well with the mood and the weather. Tomorrow I might go back to my Guerlains or maybe a Tauer that would make me feel like myself again, but tonight it's still dark and stormy, so I'm going to rummage through my vintage bottles and wear something appropriate to bed .

Photo of a thunderstorm over Northern NJ by quintanomedia.com, 2009