Cat Lady

 Hi there. You know how people warn you that you could end up some old lady with cats? They imply it's some kind of horrible fate. Well, as I am that cat lady, I thought I'd share some insights. 

To begin with, never marrying does not mean being alone. For some reason, people seem to forget that friends, roommates, and other family members exist. You don't have to have a husband and your own children to have people in your life. There are plenty of ways for that to happen.

You get to live a life of quiet peace where you can pursue the things you wish to pursue. You don't have to plan things for other people or pause what you were wanting to do for other people or have your train of thought derailed by other people. 

The best part, though? It's the peace of mind. It's knowing you never have to wake up and realize your husband has been drugging you and then assaulting you in your sleep. You never have to wake up and find out your son not only drugged and assaulted someone, but that he was the 5th man to do so, watched the horror of what happened to the person they were assaulting, and instead of feeling awful and putting a stop to it, he participated anyway. 

See, that, at the end of the day, is the best part. While it is still possible something horrible could happen to me due to the decisions of another person, at least I am assured that it won't be people I trusted and maybe even loved.

I am free of that hell, and I am so deeply grateful for that. 

So yeah. Choose the cats. Choose the dogs. Even choose the bear. Honestly, any option is safer.

Scent Experiment IV: What We Learned in the Back of Legion Comics.

  When I was in elementary school, I was a big Legion of Super-Heroes fan. I did not just read the comics. I read the letters pages at the end of every issue. One reader once complained that even though the Legion had dozens of members, the stories always focused on the same small group. The editor replied that in any large collection, you always end up with favorites, and those favorites will be the ones who solve most of the plotlines.

Today I realized I have been doing the same thing with Problem Child, Montale Sensual Instinct. I keep reaching for the same handful of scents when I try to stack it. I keep hoping that maybe this time one of my favorites will behave differently. Adding one or two new scents into the mix does not change the fact that the favorites simply do not work with this perfume. They never have. I keep trying anyway.

So today I decided to break the pattern. I chose scents I almost never use. These were the forgotten members of my own Legion, the ones who rarely get any attention.

Mysterious: Sol de Janeiro Cheirosa 76.
Top Notes: Black currant, pear nectar
Heart Notes: Midnight jasmine, vanilla crème, lush freesia
Base Notes: Amber woods, caramelized patchouli


Everything about this scent is extra. It is lush and loud and indulgent. I like it, but it feels like something you wear to a party, and that is not who I am.

Genderless:Ellis Brooklyn Blonde Musk.
Top Notes: Bergamot, violet petal, and waterlily
Heart Notes: Sheer rose, white floral bouquet, and vanilla orchid
Base Notes: Upcycled musk, ambrettolide, and blond amber


When I first bought it, I worried the rose would smell too old fashioned. It did not. The real issue is that Blonde Musk feels formal. It is crisp and clean and reminds me of the way you style your hair for an interview at a very prim job. It works on me, but it is not casual.

Femme: Commodity Juice.
Top Notes: Raspberry pulp and strawberry
Heart Notes: Bulgarian rose and cyclamen
Base Notes: Rhubarb and amberwood

Juice is a red scent. It is red and wet and fun, but not summer fun. It feels like a winter scent, something you wear during the dark, freezing part of the year when you need to be reminded that there is more than gray skies and cold wind.

These are all scents I like, but none of them feel right for me at this moment. Because of that, they basically get ignored. I might use one on a whim on rare occasions, but usually not.

Provocative Problem Child: Montale Sensual Instinct
Top: Roasted Coffee Beans, mostly, with hints and suggestions of other things
Heart: Praline and Rose
Base: Amber, and Cedarwood

I had no expectations for this experiment. I had no idea what this combination would do.

The result was a 4.5 out of 5. It smells wonderful. The most surprising part is that it is the Montale that is making everything work. Somehow, all the problematic elements of Sensual Instinct are smoothing out the party energy of the 76, softening the formality of Blonde Musk, and giving Juice a late summer warmth. For once, instead of sitting on my skin and sulking, Problem Child is acting as the hinge of the stack. That alone is enough reason to repeat this combination. I am not only shocked. I am genuinely delighted.

A Case for Voting

 National Voter Registration Day is September 15, 2026.

Let’s talk about that.

I spent some time thinking about how to explain this in a way that stays politically neutral. This was the best metaphor I could come up with. I am not saying either party is mustard or Ranch Dressing. They are simply examples. And yes, I know there are more than two political options, but in the United States the dominant choices tend to fall into two broad categories.

Imagine you are having lunch at a table with nine other people. There are ten of you total.

A waiter comes over and explains the rules.

1. The table, as a whole, must choose either mustard or Ranch Dressing.

2. Everyone gets to vote on which one the table selects.

3. You do not have to vote.

4. But even if you do not vote, once there is a winner, everyone at the table must use the winning condiment. It will be put on your food whether you like it or not.

The vote happens.

Three people vote for mustard. They all have hot dogs and see it as beneficial. Two people vote for Ranch Dressing. Five people do not vote, including you.

Mustard wins with 3 votes out of 10 possible.

The waiter immediately begins adding mustard to everyone’s food.

If you happen to have something that WORKS with mustard, this is fine. It does not hurt you. But what if you have a salad, a taco, a slice of pizza, or a bagel? Suddenly you are facing a lunch that is going to be unpleasant at best and inedible at worst.

Now, maybe you are someone who dislikes Ranch Dressing on salad. Many people do. But even if you dislike it, you can probably admit that Ranch on salad is a much easier adjustment than mustard on salad. One is annoying. The other is a crisis.

Maybe you could make mustard work. Maybe you could not. But the entire situation could have been avoided if you had voted for the option that worked better for you.

This is the point. It is easy to feel apathetic or disheartened about voting in the United States. You might not like any of the candidates. You might feel that none of them represent your values. You might feel that everyone running for office seems bought, sold, artificial, or only there for the limited joy of being politically famous.

I understand that. Truly. But none of that changes the fact that even if you do not vote, you still have to live with the decisions made by the people who get elected.

And if you are someone who hates politics in general, that is an even better reason to vote. Voting makes the people in power extremely nervous. It is one of the most effective ways to unsettle them.

TL;DR Vote. Because no one should be forced to eat mustard on their lunch bagel simply because other people decided they should.

Scent Experiment III: Stacking the House

  Ahh yes, time for another attempt at making the problem child behave if I group it with the proper stack of other scents. So far we have had rather middling results. But I'm going with a very different approach today. We'll see how it works.

Problem Child: Montale Sensual Instinct Top Notes: Roasted Coffee Beans, mostly, with hints and suggestions of other things Heart Notes: Praline and Rose Base Notes: Amber and Cedarwood

I suppose one of the benefits of my quest to figure out how to best stack the problem child that is Montale Sensual Instinct is that even if I never figure out the best grouping for it, I will be rid of it quickly because it's so frequently used these days.

Today I decided to go with just one fragrance house. In a way, there was the novelty of seeing what three scents from the same house could do. On a practical note, there is also the fact that these three are my less aggressive but certainly also problem children.

The house we are using is MALIN+GOETZ.

Genderless: MALIN+GOETZ Dark Rum Top Notes: Bergamot, plum, and anise Middle Notes: Leather, rum, and vanilla Base Notes: Patchouli, amber, and creamy milk

When I was first introduced to MALIN+GOETZ, it was in the form of a Dark Rum rollerball. And I fell in love. It was truly one of the most heady and sensual fragrances ever to mingle with my body chemistry. I loved it and I wore it every day. It made me feel amazing.

The scent was rich and sexy. The scent was my mythologized and romanticized theories about the Lost Generation writers: intense brooding while trying to come to terms with a broken world through warm liquors, physical proximity, and very late nights.

Everything about this scent worked. It was gender-neutral but leaning masc in a way that made me smirk. This was the leather and rum mixing with the plum, anise, and patchouli. It was indulgence as a means of self-defense. That was evoked by the vanilla, bergamot, and creamy milk. It was a short story that would get a high school teacher in trouble if she assigned it, even though it never said anything explicit at all.

I loved it deeply from the start. It was a very me scent.

Because of this, it didn't last very long. I knew I had to replace it. Instead of just getting another rollerball like a practical person, I looked for what was available to me at subscription houses. When I got the chance to get the Dark Rum body wash, I selected it. The body wash was more subtle than the rollerball but still wonderful.

When I started Scentbird, my first selection was the Dark Rum spray. When it came in, it was rather disappointing. Something about the delivery process stilted everything I had loved about my other two methods of exposure to this scent. It felt muted. I tossed it in my perfume drawer and ignored it.

Femme: MALIN+GOETZ Strawberry Top Notes: sparkling bergamot, mara strawberry, pink pepper Heart Notes: jasmine petals, jasmine lactone captive, woodland greens Base Notes: cedarwood, oakmoss, captive musks, orris root

Side note: Captive in this case means it is an isolated molecule or ingredient that has been developed in-house and is copyright-protected and illegal if duplicated. This is a lot more boring than anything I could come up with. I was imagining scents that were somehow metallic or leather in nature due to bondage. But no.

Okay. What this should smell like: Strawberry should be sexy as hell. That top layer should really open with something fun. I usually have a great time with pink pepper. It is light and airy with a suggestion of red fruits, which should lend itself well to the strawberry. The strawberry should be amplified by the bergamot, which leans tart and almost citrus.

The middle highlight should be the jasmine lactone, usually a rich, creamy blend of fresh jasmine petals, juicy peach, ripe apricot, and coconut milk with a soft dairy warmth. This should suggest a nice strawberries and cream on your skin kind of thing.

And that base is my favorite sort of base with oakmoss, cedar, and musks. Orris root is rather purple in nature, but in a thick, buttery, almost suede way. Again, I should be getting wild strawberries and cream here.

The fact that this is a rollerball should have amplified that.

In reality, though, it did not. This ended up smelling like very little of anything. It is subtle. And honestly, too subtle for me. I wanted something that said, “Heeeeyy, yeah, fresh bowl of strawberries and cream here,” and instead got something demure.

We don't do demure in this house.

Provocative: MALIN+GOETZ Cannabis Top Notes: Bergamot, black pepper, and orange Heart Notes: Cannabis accord, muguet, and magnolia Base Notes: Cedarwood, patchouli, sandalwood, amber, and musk

The problem with this one actually isn't its fault. I received it in the midst of being extremely ill in a way that all external stimuli made me feel a great deal of revulsion. I smelled this, recoiled, and instantly got a migraine. This was not a great start to our relationship. I was afraid to touch it after that.

But I'm better now, so I can handle the scent with more ease.

The top here is citrus in a way that only openly admits itself once, the orange. But both bergamot and black pepper have citrus leanings. They are not only zesty but rather bright, though black pepper often has a more smoky dry down.

Cannabis accord is always a dice roll because it does not contain actual cannabis at all. It is a collection of ingredients meant to simulate cannabis, but of course that means different things to different people. Sometimes this scent comes off as skunky. Sometimes it is very green and herbal. Sometimes it is more woody or more spicy. It always depends on your body chemistry and the way the house blended it.

Muguet is also a created scent. It is dewy and green, like water on leaves in the woods. It is fresh and can suggest citrus but only on certain people. Magnolia is a soft white floral with a citrus back kick. Between the top and the majority of the heart, they were really stacking citrus around the wild card of the cannabis accord.

The base, again, is fairly good for me. Cedarwood, patchouli, sandalwood, amber, and musk. The patchouli and sandalwood can be risky but usually work out well on my skin.

What I hoped for here... honestly, I don't know. As you can tell, all of these were a gamble for me. All three of the M+G scents should have worked better in theory than they did in reality. My expectations for this were pretty low, but given that I could do Problem Child plus everything else from one house, I wanted to give it a shot.

Results: 4/5

You know what? This really worked. It only works because I can handle the scent of anise better than I can the taste of it. It also works because I am always deeply pleased when my scent edges hard toward masculine, and this certainly does.

I kind of smell like the chemicals in the air of a Hemingway relationship. Intense, tumultuous, deeply full of the potential for trouble.

The scent pleases me deeply. It is actually the happiest I have been with anything I've done with the problem child that is Montale Sensual Instinct. I will certainly repeat this stack, especially if I'm going to have an evening out.

Of note: My roommate walked into the room and said it smelled weird, like an herbal cleaner, not in an unpleasant way. Then the anise hits.

That is not how it smells to me, but it is information worth keeping in mind.

Scent Experiment II: The Hotel You Drove By

 Scent Experiment II: The Hotel You Drove By

If my more creamy, milky scents weren't going to fix the Problem Child, perhaps it was best to lean into what the Problem Child was supposed to do. Montale Sensual Instinct is an Amber Vanilla/Floral Gourmand scent that is supposed to evoke the more heady, intense, and intimate moments of life. With that in mind, I gathered up some scents that do the same thing to see if we could harmonize.

Mysterious: Nopalera Flor de Madera Top: Tamarind, Mexican Citrus Heart: Violet, Jasmine Petal, Vetiver Base: Musk, Cedarwood

Tamarind can go a lot of ways depending on the delivery. It is most often a sour/sweet note with a mix of lemon, apricot, and dates suggestions, and I certainly get that, even if it seems like a strange grouping. Mexican Citrus is usually a mix of limes from the region blended with citrus zests, which adds a more oil-leaning and intense sour to the mix. This is rather logical, really, with the tamarind.

The heart here is adding a pretty stable layer of green earthiness with the vetiver and violet, mixed with the indole from the jasmine, a chemical compound that adds a deep, sensual, and slightly rich, animalistic warmth. I tend to see this as an Earthing layer, toes-in-the-mud-after-a-rainstorm kind of layer.

The base of musk and cedarwood is common, but for me, pretty safe and predictable.

To me, Nopalera Flor de Madera smells like a secret you needed to know, always wanted to know, and now someone is holding your hand and easing you into the new level of knowledge.

Genderless: Riddle Original Base notes only in amber and musk

Riddle Original is a skin scent. It is a simple blend with a complex concept. Basically, you put it on and it marries with your body chemistry, highlighting the natural scent you produce on your own. Some people find scents like this too revealing. It makes them feel exposed. But I rather enjoy skin scents and will often use them for this layer of my stack.

Basically, what this means for the whole concept of this stack is that I am banking on the idea that amplifying my own chemical makeup can actually make the Problem Child work.

Femme: Confessions of a Rebel Get a Room Top: Forbidden apple and mandarin orange Heart: Clary sage and crisp cypress Base: Liquid vanilla, praline, and stripped-down woody notes

Did I put this on my selection list because I loved the name? Yes. Of course I did. How could I not want to own something that suggested a world of bad decisions and fun stories?

Okay, I actually looked this up because I side-eyed "forbidden apple" pretty hard. That sounded like marketing. Turns out this is a thing. It is supposed to be a dark, seductive, and spiced red apple note blended with warm gourmand sweetness and rich, boozy undertones instead of, you know, just non-forbidden apple. Mandarin orange is going to blend beautifully with anything boozy.

Clary sage can be a bit of a risk for some people, especially if people are like me and do not exactly enjoy lavender, as clary sage shares some of lavender's aspects. Thankfully, it doesn't really dwell there for me. For me, clary sage actually drifts down to something like a soft musky floral tobacco, which I enjoy quite a lot. Cypress is mossy and green, of course, but often rather inviting and clean at the same time.

One of the odd things about Get a Room is that it almost seems like the base and heart notes should be reversed. The dry down of the scent being vanilla and praline is rather different. Normally, people would structure things so that the base was the more woody layer.

The overall way this hits me is always exciting. Get a Room feels like a promise. Get a Room feels like a promise that makes good on itself, even if the pleasure is temporary.

Provocative Problem Child: Montale Sensual Instinct Top: Roasted coffee beans, mostly, with hints and suggestions of other things Heart: Praline and rose Base: Amber and cedarwood

We are already familiar with Problem Child here. My hope was that Riddle Original would give the Montale a soft, musky skin-scent base that helps neutralize powder and makes the coffee note feel more intimate. I thought that Get a Room, given that it brings the apple, the warmth, and the flirtation, would lift Montale while also leaning into its sensuality. As for the Flor de Madera, I counted on it to ground everything with dry wood and a quiet, earthy presence. In other words, a stack that creates a warm apple-and-wood scent with Montale’s roasted coffee humming underneath. I wanted it to feel like a private moment in a hotel room, something warm, close, and a little dangerous.

Result: 2/5

This smelled like... nothing. Somehow, everything canceled everything else out. There was a scent, but it was vague, vague... something, but I wasn't sure what, and it just sat there. This wasn't a memorable night of questionable but fun choices. This was more like scrolling through Netflix and never actually settling on anything. Somehow, I took a bunch of scents that evoked a whole lot of things and blended them into something that evoked... perfume, kinda/maybe.

I won't be repeating this stack again because there is absolutely no reason why I should.

Scent Experiment

 In a perfect world, or even just a practical one, it is probably best to only own perfumes you have actually smelled on your skin before buying them. In my case, almost every scent I own arrived through one subscription or another, which means I did not smell them or see how they interacted with my chemistry before they became mine.

Most of the time this has not been a problem. I have been fortunate not only to find things that were acceptable, but things that were genuinely wonderful for me. Still, I do have some problem children. These are scents that, for whatever reason, were sprayed a couple of times and made absolutely no sense to me. After that, they simply sat there, taking up space in my collection. One of them has a very cute container, which pleased me, but outside of that, there was nothing redeeming.

I do not believe in letting things sit unused forever. There had to be ways to make these scents work for me. I have not set many goals for myself this year, but I decided I would set one for September. I am going to learn to work with the problem children. I will learn to stack my scents in a way that allows the difficult ones to function on my skin.

I began with the most problematic of them all.

Mysterious Problem Child: Montale Sensual Instinct
Top notes: roasted coffee beans with hints of saffron, citrus, and cardamom
Heart notes: praline and rose
Base notes: oakmoss, amber, and cedarwood

I could have sworn when I first received this that it listed chocolate. Maybe I dreamed that. The thing is, I do not understand why this scent does not work for me. I love coffee beans and the smell of coffee. Praline should not be an issue either, since toasted nutty depth, brown sugar, and buttery warmth are usually pleasant. Oakmoss is standard and forms the core of chypres, which I am normally drawn to.

But this is not really a chypre. It is an amber vanilla pretending to be one.

I started thinking about what might be going wrong. Amber can be wonderful, but it can also smell like bad baby powder. If the praline leans toward almond, that can be powdery too. Praline can also introduce a caramel element that sometimes goes sideways. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the powdery nature was the issue. That was what I needed to neutralize.

My first theory was to tone it down by making the entire stack cream forward. Something creamy would harmonize with the coffee and hopefully override the powder.

Attempt 1

Genderless: Commodity Milk (Expressive)
Top: Cold Milk Accord
Heart: Warm Marshmallow and Toasted Sesame
Base: Mahogany Wood, Tonka Bean, and Musk

Commodity Milk is sexy. There is no other way to put it. It feels like the crackle of fire on a late October night while you sing Lou Reed songs and make s’mores at your backyard fire pit with the person who stayed after the party just because of you. It is that moment when you realize, as you do every fall, that nothing tastes quite like a melty marshmallow. My hope was that the cold milk accord and marshmallow would ease the Montale down, smoothing its harsh powdery edges and making it into something reasonable.

After that, I added two scents I trust.

Femme: Everenden Darling
Top: Strawberry, peach, pineapple
Heart: Rose, jasmine, muguet (lily of the valley)
Base: Vanilla, musk

Often when it comes to trying to tone down something powder-heavy, fruit is the way to go. The top of this, with three fruits, plus the vanilla base, looked promising. Darling, as I have mentioned before, is so good at lifting my mood. It seemed like the best bet for my femme layer of the stack.

Provocative: onekind Bone Flower

Top: Orange blossom and pink peppercorn

Heart: Tuberose, jasmine, and Turkish rose

Base: Warm sandalwood and patchouli

Sandalwood and patchouli are two of the best ways to deal with powder. Pink peppercorn was my secret hope because it brings a fizzy brightness that can wake up a dull or heavy composition. I was taking a risk by adding more rose, but the rose in these scents has never overwhelmed me.

Results: 3.5 out of 5
The stack made the Montale wearable. It was the first time I put it on and did not instantly feel the need to bathe. If I find no better solution, this is at least a solution. The powder element was still present, though. It lingered on my skin. It did not linger in the deeply unpleasant way it had when I tried the scent alone, but more in a “I can handle this until it fades” way.

Tolerable is not the goal. Tolerable is never my goal when it comes to scent. When I wear perfume, I want to feel amazing, not “reasonable ish.”

The month is young. The scents are plentiful. I will figure this out.

Late August Scent Stack

 The end of August is always a time ripe with possibilities. There’s the inevitable reflection on what one actually did with their summer (in my case, made art and dealt with medical issues), but also the rich, bubbling excitement that autumn will soon arrive. It’s a season of harsh days and slightly more merciful nights, when sleep comes easier and dreams feel deeper.

Sometimes when I build my scent stack, I plan it out. This usually happens when I know I’ll be out in public. One should, of course, be more responsible about scent in shared spaces, given how sensitive some people can be.

Other days, I let my hands choose for me, working off impulse and whatever thematic feeling I want my day to carry. Today was one of those days.

As always, I build my scent stack around four primary concepts.

Mysterious: Korres Kyma
Top Notes: Lime, mandarin, orange
Heart Notes: Marine, watery, pepper
Base Notes: Cedar, vetiver, nutmeg

Kyma is my foundation. It is the scent I always pull first. It’s the central idea everything else builds around. On me, Kyma is beautifully balanced, each aspect singing exactly as it should: citrus that yields to watery notes, settling into something rich, woody, and earthy.

Genderless: Sucreabeille Blood Drunk
Top Notes: Pomegranate, apple, black cherry
Heart Notes: Dark rum, dragon’s blood
Base Notes: Cherry tobacco, a hint of blood accord

The top notes are all ripe, red things. It's open, inviting, juicy. Dark rum and dragon’s blood add smoky elements, scents I find attractive on men, and as always, if I find it arresting on others, I find it arresting on myself.

The tobacco is the star, lending a depth that carries the whole stack into something cohesive.

Blood accord is an engineered compound meant to simulate the scent of blood. It’s a complicated addition, one many people would find revolting. To me, it pushes the copper forward as a metallic thread that gives the entire stack the balance it needs.

Femme: Evereden Darling
Top Notes: Strawberry, peach, pineapple
Heart Notes: Rose, jasmine, muguet (lily of the valley)
Base Notes: Vanilla, musk

My femme layer is always where I play with contrast. I tend toward gender-neutral, unisex, almost masc-coded elements because they please me, so this layer often becomes the space where I reach for my most femme-coded scents. With Darling, the strawberry is the hero and becomes an instant mood-booster that layers beautifully with the vanilla. The peach and pineapple are subtle but present, melding well with the musk.

The heart notes are unabashedly floral. One of them is rose, which can be risky because it sometimes reads Old Lady. But Darling is youthful enough that it never tips into that territory. It doesn’t make me suddenly want to go to a yard sale or anything.

Provocative: onekind Bone Flower
Top Notes: Orange blossom, pink peppercorn
Heart Notes: Tuberose, jasmine, Turkish rose
Base Notes: Sandalwood, patchouli

When I first tested Bone Flower, it reminded me of… something. I still don’t know what. There’s a memory buried in it that I haven’t unlocked, which is one of the reasons it stays firmly in the provocative category.

All three layers do different things. Orange blossom has heady, honeyed aspects, but mostly reads clean and almost soapy. Soapy, as always, is a risky part of the mix.Soapy either feels refreshing or overpowering. In this case, though, it's rather mild. It’s a white floral, generally friendly and approachable. Pink peppercorn is a gentle, fizzy spice that leans rose, giving the top notes a clean, energetic feel.

The heart is thick and creamy, with tuberose and Turkish rose bringing milky elements. Jasmine is musky, sensual, and powdery. And yes, powdery can read Old Lady, here it simply reads clean.

The base is the real risk. Sandalwood and I have a complicated relationship. I adore it except when I don’t, and when I don’t, I can’t even be in the same room with it. Patchouli is often abused and overused, ranging anywhere from “earth mother goddess” to “regretful music festival goer who has not bathed in six days,” depending on how soil-forward it’s behaving.

Bone Flower manages to harness both without causing me problems. It’s risky, but done well enough that I’m pleased with it.

The end result of the stack makes me feel full of mystery and potential. It makes me excited for what fall could bring. Kyma is my warm foundation. It is the heat of late August sun that seems unwilling to yield to cooler days but knows it must. Bone Flower and Blood Drunk mingle into something dark red, reminding me that soon the trees will be a multitude of colors and my days will be filled with the sound of them gently crackling in the wind. Darling adds a candied suggestion, a whisper that Halloween is on the way.

It’s a good stack.