Last night was a late one - I finally went to bed at 7:00 am.  The only reason I would ever stay up that late ws if my degree depended on it.  Embarrassingly, it kind of does.

In order to graduate I have to make up math credits I didn't do in high school, including Algebra and Geometry.  It was difficult for me then, and it's difficult now.  I sometimes even think I have discalculia.

Either way, the university does't care.  I've withdrawn from this algebra course twice before.  If I don't get it this time, the community college where I'm taking the class (for much less money than the uni) won't let me do it again .

I've heard the about how math is  "just another kind of lanuage", how it supposedly uses the same part of our brain as learning to speak another tongue.  Erm... bullshit.  I have no difficulty learning other languages.

Last night I actually made progress in realizing that half the battle is studying and paying close attention to the steps.  That's the secret of math whizzes, I think.... they like the rules, the order, the steps of math.  Maybe personality-wise, it is comforting for algebra types to have a set of rules and parameters for everything.  For me it equals fail... numbers and letters do not belong together!!! 

But for the purposes of getting my degree, I'll play along the best I can.

The only thing I feel good writing about (i.e. I don't feel guilty writing about it in lieu of doing homework) is perfume and related trivial matters.  So, i guess I'll start there:

I began my love affair with scented things long ago.  I loved fragrance, but being stuck in a tiny town on the Plains left me with relatively traditional choices...  Think Jovan Musk, Debbie Gibson's "Electric Youth" and something called "Le Fleurs" with this ornate, baroque-style eighties packaging (yes - cherubs everywhere). These choices were as unexciting and tame as the town I grew up in.  Thus I discovered scented oils at the tender age of twelve, experimenting with witchy scented stuff in the confines of my bedroom.  The parents are frighteningly Catholic, to them there was nothing acceptable about ordering from companies with names like 'Madame Gaia', 'Eye of Horus', etcetera.  Had I been born fifteen years later, might I be an angsty emo teenager?  *sigh*  Wonder, wonder.

After a healthy decade and a half break from oils, I recently discovered Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab last April.  I fell rather hard for BPAL initially, mesmerized by the seductive descriptions and art that is infused into their work.  Other perfumeries have danced with my pulse points since BPAL, including Blooddrop, Sage Machado, Heaven and Earth Essentials, Cobalt Blends, and Arcana, to name a few.  My obsession is constantly teaching me about not only my nose, but about the necessary connections between scent, mind and spirit.  Stay tuned for a series of reviews, rants, and involuntary manic deviations from the perfumed path, while I carve my virtual siggy into the trunk of this here tree.

~+~+~ stella
~~~