Things to Sleep On

OK.

Here we go into the third week of January and so far, of all the new habits that I am supposed to be forming, the only one that is sticking is the gym, and only because a Certain Individual challenged me (by accidentally pushing a button on his Apple Watch) to a fitness competition which I CAN NOT lose. But hey, one habit forming is better than none. I have been doing more reading... and a titch more writing, maybe this week will be the trendsetter for one of those. I will work on it.

I spent a lot of time last week that would have been well used reading some of my six-foot shelf of unread books or writing the next bestselling novel,  researching mattresses instead. I have decided that after 6 years of blaming poor fitness habits, being overweight, bad genes and a variety of other innocent scapegoats for my chronic back pain, that it's actually the relatively expensive mattress that I bought on an ill-informed whim 6 years ago to help with, you guessed it, chronic back pain. My bed is nice, but there are two things wrong with it: 1) It is as soft as a sea of marshmallows and 2) it's a queen size.

What could possibly be wrong with a sea of marshmallows, you ask? Nothing, unless it is a queen-sized sea of marshmallows which you are trying to share with a Certain Individual who finds his sense of self dead center in a bed, either for fear of falling out or relinquishing space to Anyone Else (namely me). He says it's about cuddling. I say it's about a space-scarcity mentality, and spend my nights gripping the uber-squishy edge of my 1/8th of the mattress, all muscles clenched in an effort to not fall onto to floor. So my back hurts. Or maybe the mattress and the Individual are just more innocent scapegoats, but either way, I need something bigger and harder. AAAnd that's what she said.

ANYWAY,  I've been looking/shopping/researching/testing mattresses for a couple of weeks, and the only thing I decided for sure was that there are far too many options. Even after ruling out a foam bed of any type and knowing I wanted innerspring, there were still too many possibilities. I ran into a serious case of decision paralysis after spending hours combing through online reviews, consumer reports, Facebook polls and reading the mattress propaganda shopped heavily to me on Instagram ads the second the slightest thought of a mattress flitted through my brain. I heard a lot of good feedback about SleepNumber, but I don't like the idea of one more electronically controlled thing in my room, and my current bed is a Tempurpedic (also popular, but expensive), which is wonderful, but this model is too soft. I filtered all of the input down to a handful of major brands based on overall reviews/price combinations: Avocado Green, Saatva and Simmons Beautyrest. Hard core Insta marketing and the hipster-esque image of Avocado Green spoke to me, moreso than the matronly tradition of a Beautyrest, but as far as price point, long term durability, and the best broad-spectrum comfort for a side sleeper with back issues and a bedhog partner, I kept coming back to the Saatva.

Lucky for me, my sister in law just bought a new bed from Saatva, which started the whole thought process, since I got to sleep on her old bed (a Beautyrest, which I liked) when I stayed at their house in D.C., and I also got to help usher in the new mattress via the company's free "white glove delivery," where two nice young men carefully squished the king-sized masterpiece up her barely queen-sized stairway, into the bedroom, unwrapped it and vanished along with all of the trappings of mattress delivery, the whole while a small dog with certain paranoid tendencies told them loudly that they weren't allowed in her mom's bedroom.

So after numbing my brain with 600,000 mattress options and at least as many opinions, I hit the SIL up for her three-week report on the new bed. She told me that my brother insists it's just like the old bed, only bigger, which sounds exactly like something my brother would say, but for her part, she was happy with it. Being one of the only first-hand, recent-experience testimonials, and because it was impossible to find any bad reviews on the mattress that she had purchased, and because a Certain Individual was absolutely done giving input on the matter, I decided to follow suit and ordered from the same company.

I will report back in few weeks about whether A) the back pain is any better B) the whole bed-switching process results in any new drama and C) whether the mattress and/or company is really as good as they sound. I mean, the pictures look amazing, and if you know me, you'll know that it's irrationally important to me that the mattress no one will ever see looks as good as it feels. In the meantime, if you are mattress shopping, I have all the latest info.

Things About Giving (Back)

So, here we are, 17 "shopping" days to go, and while I am sure that there are some of you that are far more responsible than I am, and have all of your Christmas Gifts already wrapped and under the tree, those of us who have been accidentally holding out for the just right thing might be stuck between a rock and a Walmart. God Forbid.

Shopping online is easy, fast, and you can find WAY cooler stuff that Wally world offers. I know that we already missed (on purpose) Cyber Monday, but most places online still have a few days left before it's too late to ship by Christmas. With all of those options, and assuming that you, like me, have no where local to shop, other than Walmart (God Forbid), here is something to consider: I have found that all of the cool things that I pine for online can usually be found at a site that gives back to the global community. Sometimes these are small businesses, sometimes they are charitable organizations. But if you're gonna spend online, why not make it count twice, right? So here are some of my favorite online places to shop, and some of the coolest stuff you can find... and incidentally, I know if I post these links, the ads on my blog will correspond. And that is awesome. 

1) SEVENLY . This place is the bomb. Each week they feature a new 7 day "campaign", where $7 for each item sold goes to a specific charity or organization. I have done some research into the company itself as well as the charities it supports, and you guys, it's legit. It is staffed by volunteers, so shipping is historically sporadic, but during the holiday season they have ramped up and introduced a 1-2-3 shipping policy, where Day 1 you order, Day 2 they process, Day 3 item ships. Which means you've got a few more days to get your order in before Christmas. They have a slew of awesome t-shirts themed around the movements they support, including Autism Speaks, Mercy Ships, and Show Hope, this week's campaign, supporting US adoptions for orphans in Asia. As if all of that wasn't enough, you can also buy really really awesome products from companies like Krochet Kids, who provide work to impoverished families in Uganda and Peru, to produce one of a kind crocheted goods. I have this hat. It is RAD. 

 They also sell Giving Keys, which make really cool gifts-that-keep-on-giving, and Pendleton throw pillow covers. Need I say more? Sevenly is an amazing way to get your holiday shopping done AND give back.

2) Bravelets.com - this website is pretty awesome too. For almost any cause you can imagine, you can order a very cool looking bracelet and $10 of the cost goes to the cause of your choice. You can even set up your own cause... one that is near and dear to me is the Wildland Firefighter Foundation, so I ordered the braided leather bracelet, knowing $10 went straight to WFF. And I love bracelets. Especially cool ones that mean something. Who can't stand a little reminder to "be brave"? I know I can.

3) TOMS.com - talk about writing the book on charitable spending, Toms might be one of the best examples of how to do it. Not only is all of their stuff RAD, as in, I want it all, but for every single THING you buy, they give one to a child in need - all over the world. I mean, how cool is that? And oh, by the way, they have coffee now. WHAT???? BRB, got some shopping to do. 

4) OK, so this one isn't a charitable organization, per se, but it is a very small business, and they sell SO MUCH COOL STUFF, including Krochet Kids knits, and other fair trade, locally sourced stuff. I found Pulp & Circumstance when I had a few hours to kill in the cute little town of Newberg Oregon. I could have spent hours in there. And then I found their website. I have been hanging out on there A LOT. Although I haven't ordered yet, this is the first thing in my cart:

I know that there a lot more amazing places to shop online, with a little bit of looking, and maybe the extra bucks you spend count for extra Holiday Goodness because you know they are well spent. I could keep posting all night, but honestly I got distracted by all of my cool links and need to go back to my browsing. 

Things To Avoid

I am writing words on a page right this very second as a last ditch effort to get out of cleaning my room. I hate cleaning my room. Mostly, I hate cleaning my room because someone went in there and basically threw up 17 tons of clothing all over the floor that I can't stand. It's all ugly clothes that make me look fat. Clothes that are stupid and uncomfortable and smell weird. And they're every where. Creeping out of drawers and sliding sneakily off of hangers to attack me when I try to find my cleanest dirty sweatpants. They're hateful clothes that snicker behind my back and whisper how much cuter they look on my 16 year old daughter when she was wearing them while I was out of town. And they're covering a disgusting brown carpet that Josh says he won't take out of my room until it's clean. A disgusting brown carpet that has ganged up with my old, hateful clothes to make me feel dirty and disgusting and like my Only Friends In The World are my sweatpants. I have to get in there and kick those nasty clothes in the bum so that I can get rid of the spiteful carpet that would make me hate my whole room if there wasn't a really comfortable bed in there. Actually sometimes I think I leave the horrible clothes on the floor, covering the foul carpet, just so I don't have to walk on it, I can just walk on the clothes I hate to get to the comfy bed. Or the sweatpants. But I can't avoid it forever, the carpet, and the clothes. I have to overcome it, so that Josh will tear out the gross floor covering and expose the asbestos linoleum from the 60s that he says will kill us if we breath the air emanating from it. I keep explaining that it can't be worse than the contaminated carpet, and I would rather die than wear any of the clothes anyway. Horrifically, I have to go in there and sit ON THE VILE CARPET to PUT AWAY THE HURTFUL CLOTHES to get anywhere in this life. Even to die from the asbestos. It's all up to me. My life is hard. And that is why I am typing.

When I opened up my eyes this morning, the first thing that crossed my mind is that someplace, there is someone waking up in worse pain than me. I congratulated myself on the habit that I have cultivated of comparison-gratitude, whereby I now instinctively turn my complaints into a pseudo-thankfulness. Psychologically, I am not sure that I am winning. Mostly because my second thought was that whoever out there woke up in more pain than me was probably suffering for some good reason, and nobly so, and I just have a stupid uterus. So then I thought that I should be thankful for even waking up, since some people didn't even get to do that this morning, and my shallow, selfish psyche instantly threw the pain and the mean clothes on the floor and the disgusting carpet in my face and made some snarky comment about how not waking up sounded somewhat pleasant, and at least those poor souls weren't in more pain than me anymore. Human beings are terrible people. Really we are. Here I am, whining about some moderate-to-severe chronic pain, and too many expensive clothes that don't fit on my too well fed body in my too-warm, if dirty and smelly house, and I can't really stop my own mind on a plateau of actual gratitude. Shame on me. I deserve to clean a disgusting room.

After all of that psychological, guilt-based warfare on myself, I decided to just stay in bed and play with Dagny for awhile. That seemed to help my general demeanor, as well as a bowl of slippery ripe peaches with heavy cream and some darn good coffee. I do have to pretend that this brown carpet isn't in my house when I eat and drink, or watch movies, or anything, otherwise it grosses me out and I want to just rip it out right now and die of asbestos poisoning. Can somebody tell Josh that nobody every died right-this-second from asbestos flooring? I am sure that is true but I lack the evidence to back it up. He is mostly concerned with the asbestos accelerating the acute case of high blood pressure and heart disease we both got when we sat in a car for a month on the last fire and gained ten pounds apiece. He doesn't believe me when I tell him that the carpet is contributing to my depression and nasty carpet has been linked to a high percentage of unexpected suicides. Much more dangerous than asbestos flooring. Plus the asbestos has cute yellow flowers that make me feel happy. At least I will feel happy when I die of heart disease and asbestos poisoning.

I really think that it's all of this BROWN that is getting me down. Seriously. I like brown, certain shades in certain contexts. But to be fair, everyone knows that we got rid of a certain Suburban once because the brown overwhelmed me and made me heartsick (which is like emotional carsickness). Now the whole house is brown. Brown carpet, brown walls, brown windowsills and couches and pillows and dogs and floors and paneling and tables and chairs and brown-brown-brown-brown-brown. I feel like I am drowning in dirty brown that smells like 4 dogs and teenage girls. It's too much. I am heartsick. No wonder I won't leave the house and I feel depressed. I feel brown when I walk outside and go to town. Everything is brown. I am brown. Even the deer in my front yard right now is brown. The layer of dust and mud on both cars is brown, and Josh doesn't support car washes that cost more than the loose change in the cupholder that you give to the youth group in the Safeway parking lot. It's because of people like Josh that youth groups don't do car washes any more. At 47 cents a car, it just doesn't add up. So our cars are brown too. And our porch. And even my coffee. And all of our furniture. The reason I like my bed so much is because it's red and green and yellow. And soft. Not scratchy and dry like brown is. I keep threatening to take a giant bucket of any color paint that isn't brown to all of these paneling walls, just to keep from going brown-crazy, and Josh tells me to just wait, he is sheet rocking them any second. If I would quit spending the sheet rock money on shoes. BUT THE SHOES AREN'T BROWN. Which is probably the biggest reason I got them. I just need less brown in my life. So I take a lot of naps. But maybe, if I go clean my brown room, Josh will let me asbestos-poison myself. Just maybe.

Things That Hurt

My  head. I woke up with a pounding headache that I blame entirely on a horrible dream wherein I was married to my ex-husband once again and we were moving into a giant weird house full of spiders. I was trying to run away with the kids but nobody could understand why I was so upset. I hate dreams like that. I wonder what causes them? I refuse to blame the peppermint candy ice cream I ate before bed. It has enough guilt to bear for the stomach ache that I fell asleep to.

I haven't had much to say lately, partly because I have been somewhat busy, making picturesquely imperfect (leave me my fantasies) gingerbread houses and homemade dinners, and starting loads of laundry which my Adorable Husband ends up following through to the fold an put away stage. And then when I sit down with my computer and contemplate something deep and profound to say, websites like Urban Outfitters and Victoria's Secret and Amazon all scream out to me with their amazing Holiday deals and I have difficulty focusing on anything except boots and things like that. And then there is the issue of the Very Cute, but Very Bad puppy who at this moment is shaking an unwrapped Christmas Present like a dead kitten in her little needle teeth. If I catch her chewing on something I can possibly live without, like an empty cardboard box or the car microfiber duster I paid $1 for, I let her be, since it's going to be that or something else. This morning she brought me first one, and when that was confiscated, the other red velvet shoe from my closet. At least she has good taste. And I will say the jingle bell collar was a wise investment since she is easily located now, wherever she is tearing up something that she should not be.

Right now The Avett Brothers are playing on 101.7, and sometimes I forget how much I love them. But the first strains of I & Love & You reverberate along with a chill down my spine and the warm fuzzy feeling of KNOWING not only them, but their songs, and their people, and the ideals that they champion in their music. Christmas Music is a nice little break from routine for us, other than Josh, who is already sick of everything except the California Raisins' version of We Three Kings, but I am secretly excited for January and making up for all this lost time with my boys.

This last few days, or week, or maybe even half of a month has been a little tough for me, on several levels. I've already done enough whining about the physical stuff, so I think I will delve into some internal stew that has been simmering since my Loving Husband, ever so tenderly, called me out on my bad attitude. Just when I was feeling all smug for my positivity and happy spirit, and self righteously condemning the pharisees who couldn't just catch the contagious joy that probably had something to do with an unbridled Holiday Shopping binge and endless espressos and parties and an excuse for a Whole New Wardrobe, I run face to face with the ugly truth of my selfishness. Why Josh couldn't just "get happy" was beyond my grasp, since the world is perfect and I have new skirt. When he finally got tired enough of tolerating me, he was able to articulate quite well, my self absorbed approach to life. The unfortunate thing about being married to Josh is that he is almost always right. He is graciously learning to allow me to be wrong from time to time without needing to crusade against my erroneous views, but in this instance, he was dead on and I was out of excuses. I was being shallow and judgemental and all of the things that I professed to loathed. So, in true contrition, I begged him for the grace to allow my little binge of selfish misbehavior continue until after Christmas, at which time I would become absolvent and depressed in response to the dire conditions we face in this life. No, but seriously, I needed a kick in the butt and I am thankful for a guy who can do it, even if clumsily, at least faithfully to me.

So I am still working through some of this inner process, which loosely translates to a mild slow-down in spending and more cautious approach to spousal reprimands and arbitrary judgements.

On another note - I just got called for an interview as an Emergency Room tech at the hospital. This is something that I will have to carefully consider. A grown up job with grown up side effects - like giving up fire season? But something that I would enjoy and would keep my mind and body active, and helping people... Pondering.

Things That I Concede

I have earned $2.86 so far from this blog. That makes me a professional writer, no? It is also the harbinger of wild financial successes in the future when somebody that has a lot of friends stumbles upon my incomparable writing skills and I become semi-famous. Because of this future success, it's ok for me to spend more money, right? Perhaps even money that I can write off as an "investment" in my writing? A certain loving husband chastised me when I used some perfectly edible food to stage some pictures that I took for a certain blog. The idea that perfectly edible food wasn't going to be perfectly eaten was more than he could handle, and he ended up picking the food off of the display to eat himself, lest it be wasted. Totally normal behavior for a husband, you say? Yes, unless that husband has a self-professed disdain for food in general and believes it is a "waste of time". Better to waste the time than the cheese garnish, I guess.

In addition to my impressive literary earnings, I accidentally picked up two hours of work yesterday when I showed up at the store on a day for which I wasn't scheduled at all. My wonderful boss let me stay and do some markdowns, which is one of my favorite things, since I can see all the amazing deals that I need to get, with the additional $4.00 that I was earning accidentally. Since Josh doesn't have any "big" or "steady" jobs right now, which means he half fills his days with hanging Christmas Lights everywhere except OUR house, and repairing 100 year old rocking chairs, I asked my marvelous boss if she could dish out some more hours to me. This was slightly puzzling to Josh since he knew even the part time work on my feet was making my pain worse, and cutting into my cooking time, but it all sounded very noble so he let it fly. Really the extra hours are my way of justifying my financial support of the store by purchasing pretty much every cool thing that is a good deal that we carry. I think Josh is getting wise to my ploy and I believe it is only a matter of time before he starts bribing said employer to write me out of the schedule. What he doesn't know is that I will probably just start hanging out there on my days off.

I guess if I was working less I could pay more attention to the ornaments disappearing gradually from the lower half of the Christmas tree that somehow magically wind up in tiny pieces on the dog bed. I could also spend more time on the couch, watching daytime TV since we got a set of rabbit ears, and maybe even vacuuming once in awhile, even though I swore I wouldn't vacuum since Josh won the battle and purchased an upright instead of a canister this time. I told him I wouldn't be caught dead using an upright, so he agreed to make the kids do all of the vacuuming. I guess that's a win for everyone, except the kids. I have to admit that the little vacuum we got seems to be pretty handy - down the road I will give you more feedback, once it has survived the Christmas Tree season and is still holding it's own. Other than the fact that is is navy blue and has a boring same like: Sanitaire System_Pro, I could almost like it. The handle folds down to make it highly portable and easier to park on the lower bunk bed of a 15 year old as a gentle reminder that she forgot her chore. After years of cleaning houses and using every upright vacuum that WalMart sells, I have a root of bitterness toward the gross smelling, ineffective machines. As if the broken down old Kenmore Canister with the electrical shorts and smoking powerhead was so much better, but for the first five years it was a good little beast. And at least IT was red. Really the question comes down to which machine disperses the smell of pine needles after vacuuming under the Christmas Tree the most efficiently. Someday when I am a wealthy author, I will have one of those gorgeous little Miele canisters that come in lovely colors with names like Nautilus and Olympus and almost make you think that vacuuming is sexy. But for now, Josh can win. I really have to choose my battles wisely, and I'd rather have a boring vacuum than one less Pendleton Blanket. I mean really.

Things That Are Expensive

I have a fetish. Maybe fetish is too sexual. It's really more of a naughty addiction, and only naughty in the sense that it costs money and makes my darling husband mad at me. I LOVE Living Social. Not in the "oh man, I love Bon Jovi!" sense, or "don't you just love Flavor Blasted Goldfish crackers when you are hung over?" but more like "Scott Avett could easily be the LOVE of my life. If he weren't married. And I wasn't, too. Obviously." Kind of way. It's that kind of LOVE. It's the love that compelled me to sign up Right Away for Living Social Plus, where you pay $20 and you get $25 in deal bucks which have to be used within that month on a Living Social deal, or you just pay $20 for nothing. I figured, having this fetish, that I would be spending the $20 anyway, and might as well snag that extra $5 for free. The only trouble is, I have impulsively, or (fair argument) COMpulsivley, bought enough deals on Living Social that they are now stacked up in my Voucher In Box, dangling over my head with the threat of expiration. For instance: We talked all summer about trying that Stand Up Paddle Board thing that is so trendy here. Weeks of the early summer drifted lazily by like the shirtless guys with ripped abs and the bikini clad supermodels on their easily guided 8 ft paddle boards, tempting me into a weakened state when Living Social offered an all day rental for like $20. I jumped on it. And then I left for a fire. And another, and another, until the allure of my all day rental of a clunky 12 foot board in the 40 degree water of the Deschutes River with frost on the ground and my pasty, white hasn't-seen-the-light-of-day knee-to-shoulder body region has become less than enticing. In fact, no thank you. Luckily, I am spared the agony of wasted dollars, letting the expiration of this adventure-in-the-waiting slip by, because I am so GOOD at Living Socially, that apparently at least three of my friends bought the same deal and I got mine for free. No harm, no foul, right honey? (*innocent grin)

In addition to the never-to-be-used paddle board voucher, I also have two different pre-paid, come-and-get-it opportunities to gorge on pizza. I love pizza. My all-time-weight-high does not. But I love pizza. One of our vouchers is for the bowling alley and includes bowling for 6 people. At $25, that was a steal, provided we use it before it expires next week. Plus the bowling will be almost like working off the pizza, right? I refuse to input bowling into my calorie counter app to find out how many calories bowling actually doesn't burn. The other pizza voucher is much more fun, because it includes two beers and doesn't provide the cultural stipulation that you really should Do This with your children, like bowling does. It's actually at one of my favorite pizza places in town, Little Pizza Paradise, which is why I jumped on the offer - that and the two beers. I'd like to fantasize about Thursday night football with my Darling Husband there, except the fantasy is overrun by his protestations that pizza gives him heartburn and he doesn't like beer. Dangit. Thursday Night Girls Football Night? Desi? Anyone? I will NOT let this voucher go unused! Or unappreciated. Little Pizza Paradise has great pizza, but more importantly, they make this Grinder Sandwich that I literally have dreams about. I think that is because I ate it one day at work when I was counting calories and was Extremely Famished since my yogurt had worn off at about 8:15 AM - That Sandwich not only blew my calorie allotment for the day clear out of the water, it was heavenly.

Another Living Social offer that I am suffering a mild bout of guilt for is the second $40 gift certificate to Angelina's Organic Skin Care. The first $40 (which only cost $20!!!) was justifiable, since I was planning to try her Coconut Bliss Masque anyway, but a tinge of peer pressure moved me right over the edge to the second one and now I will have $80 worth of locally made, organic skin products which are totally awesome and equally as hard to explain to my Sweet Husband. This MIGHT be because I was also bewitched by my buddy to spend slightly more on a regime of facials and face products than we just blew on a registered daschund puppy. I, personally, could never have imagined spending two car payments on my face, but somehow, in the heat of the moment, it just seemed right. As if that justification has EVER worked for anything. Except marrying Josh. It was kind of the same rational. So maybe I shouldn't judge it too harshly. Let's just hope that 6 months from now, when my new puppy is potty trained and we've finally been able to have the power turned back on, I will have a whole new face.

I am pretty excited though, looking at my voucher collection on Living Social, to realize that I also got my year long subscription to Cosmo for free (see, I have other smutty friends!) AND a customized phone case that I was feeling pretty guilty about throwing down $20 for. I am gonna keep pushing this Living Social Junk. It works!! (If you love me, buy my Living Social deals.) Maybe If I get enough free crap,  Josh will forgive my newly perfect face. I mean, we only had to sell SOME of his golf clubs to pay the phone bill. And he's got lots.

I'm not gonna lie. Living Social Might be a bad habit for me. But I will also say I have discovered some great local businesses and met some cool people through it. It's so much cleaner and easier than Do Local Deals and I think I will stick exclusively with LS for now. Especially since I messed up my username at DLD and can't ever log in. And I have that $25 in deal bucks to spend! Ooh, that expires soon, huh?

https://www.livingsocial.com go here. Check it out. Or at least definitely click on the offers that I buy so I can get more free stuff!!!

Things That Smell Good

Let me start with a disclaimer: I am a Scentsy Consultant. Maybe that's more of a shameful confession than a disclaimer. I am a horrible salesperson, just ask my husband. The whole idea of selling Scentsy was mostly just to pay for a tragic habit that I had formulated after my BFF introduced me to the divine smells several years ago. These little squares of messy wax transformed my chronically dirty house into a celestial palace, if you closed your eyes and just inhaled. After moving (many times) I realized that I was ordering all of my mess-masking smells online from a consultant I didn't talk to, and there was probably a cheaper way to do it. Enter the brilliant idea to become my own consultant. Realizing I had no friends here in Bend, there was a glimmer of an idea that maybe selling this redemptive stuff would make me instantly popular. As one of my long distance buddies pointed out, selling anything really isn't the best way to make friends, but I was really looking for an excuse to throw a great party. So I signed up, got all my cool demo stuff, scheduled a party and invited EVERY person I knew, local or not. It was Christmas time, so I went all out. $200 of food and drink and new decorations, prizes - the whole schlemiel. One person came. A neighbor. We drank all of the wine, plus a very dangerous concoction of assorted liquors. Between her kids and mine we pretty much ate all of the food, and needless to say, she won the prizes. It was fun, other than being sick for three days afterward, but I didn't sell a single splotch of smelly divinity.

Fast forward 8 months. I decide to have another go. For whatever reason, Scentsy is still calling me a consultant, which would be totally absurd except for my own personal orders have kept me just above the minimum required sales - the beauty of being a consultant is that I get 20% back off my own orders... One of the very weak justifications that I have been using on my Ever Tolerant Man. So my new and pretty much only friend Desi and I put together a party. I had introduced Desi to the money pit of Scentsy when I gave her one of my demo warmers for her birthday and made her smell every single sample scent I had. She was instantly drawn into the cult. We invited over 100 people to our party. This time, being disillusioned, I decided to spend most of the party money on booze, since if no one showed up, at least we would have fun. (Actually that isn't even true, since we used left over wedding wine :)) This time, Desi's sister-in-law showed up, along with 4 of her work friends. It was a smashing success, even though I didn't know any of them. 

Anyway.... all of this was the preface to what I really planned on saying. I like Scentsy. While I am a consultant, I know that there are many questions and controversies about the stuff and would like to lend you my totally biased and unfounded opinions. Let me break it down: (does that sound like I am listening to early 90s rap? Because I am.)

1. Smell: I love Scentsy's baked smells: Cutie Pie Cupcake, Sugar Cookie, Happy Birthday = YUM. I have developed a theory that if my house smells like a cupcake that I will not need to eat one, and 37% of the time, this rings true. That plays out as 37% less cupcakes consumed, so ultimately I win, right? I have yet to find someone who can't find some scent that they Absolutely Love. My sister likes Love Story, as do many friends. I like to mix smells, like Luscious Lemon and Cutie Pie Cupcake. 

2. Lasting Power: My biggest complaint about Scentsy smells would be the longevity. I did some research, and am currently conducting my own in-house study on which flavors or styles last the longest. Feedback online indicated that the spicy smells (cinnamon, clove, ginger) and some of the citrus smells seemed to last longest. It makes sense then, that my favorite of the Scentsy Man (is that kind of oxymoronic?) smells, Hemingway, has always seemed to last longer than my other fragrances, as it is kind of clovy and exotic. 

3. Availability: Another complaint I would have is scent availability, as it seems like just when I figure out what my Favorite Smell of All Time is, they don't have it anymore. This is usually circumvented by a biannual (?) Bring Back By Bar sale, where they have a limited production of popular discontinued bars, or by finding a similar concoction. Being that all sales are online, and I am too poor a salesman to order the newest demos, you're kind of shooting in the dark when you order blindly. But for me, that's part of the excitement of opening a box of Scentsy. (which, by the way, I am expecting any minute!)

4. Cost: I don't love the cost of Scentsy. I feel like it is a tad overpriced, and to be honest, I will only buy the stuff on sale, which isn't hard. I hope that as the company grows, we will continue to see a decrease in overall cost, but I am not holding my breath. It really is a luxury item, and as much as I love it, if things got tight for us, it would be one of the first corners I cut. My solution to this : stockpile. The downfall to that solution? See #2. Lasting Power - the bars lose potency with long term storage. Luckily, for you all, this is another in-house test I am conducting, since my stockpile is well underway and I won't use all of this stuff for a very long time. So stay tuned. 

5. Maintenance: Let me say this one thing: DO NOT DO WHAT I DO. I couldn't find specific Scentsy recommendations for how long you should leave your warmer turned on, but other consultants recommend thinking of it like a lamp: you have it on when you are there, using it, otherwise, it is off. I, on the other hand, leave mine on 24/7, which (here's another in-house study bonus tibit for you), a) makes your scent last a shorter time (see #2), and b) eventually kind of burns in a crispy wax residue that is hard to clean off. When I figure out how, I will let you know. I am lazy. This is no secret and should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me. When I change the wax, I do not pour it into the original container to let it harden. I know good and well that I would forget to pop it out and throw it away and then try to reuse it, wondering why my smells are smell-less! I do what you are NOT supposed to do and pour the hot wax onto a paper towel directly into the garbage can. I do not recommend this, but will continue to do it. Because I am lazy. I have a billion little Scentsy spatulas for cleaning the residue (note: this does NOT work on crispy burned wax scum), out of the dish. If you want one I will give it to you. Just find me. I probably have the messiest Scentsy warmers of any consultant alive. But they do clean easily and beautifully on the outside with a paper towel when they are warm.

6. Mess: Closely related to maintenance is dealing with the inevitable (unless you are over 40 and live alone with no cats, dogs, or loud music) wax spills and drips and slops. The beautiful thing about wax is that when it cools and hardens, it scrapes easily off of most surfaces. Unless that surface is unfinished wood. Perhaps it's needless to say that my antique dresser now has a smooth wax finish. Also: dyed waxes might scrape up, but if the colors absorb into, oh, say, caulk, or grout, etc, well, you'd better like pink. Or green. My plan is to avoid non-neutral colored waxes in the future. Which will be hard since Happy Birthday is Peptol Bismol pink. I will be working on solutions for this problem, as will my adorable and clever husband. Again, stay tuned. 

7. Safety: My husband, ever the safety expert (no really, he is a paramedic/firefighter, and I used to think he was exaggerating how much safety research he does, but he actually does), told me he read about a Scentsy related fire back east. I totally believe him, and have been extra conscientious about making sure to leave dirty clothes and junk mail piled in places other than right next to the Scentsy warmers. I did some research myself (this is usually to try to prove him wrong, but always fails), and did read a couple of stories about possible connections, as well as the results of Scentsy's own safety investigations into related events, and some independent tests performed with warmers. With newspapers wrapped around the warmer, and fabric draped over it, the temperature of these objects never reached 100 degrees, far from flammability levels. Again, I take, and recommend taking every precaution - well, ok, I don't always turn them off when I am not around, but I plan to start doing that! But I do keep flammable objects away from all of my warmers. It's just smarter. Not to mention when those warmers get bumped and slop wax, it's a son of a gun to clean up. 

Ok, so that's my 7 scents (hahaha) on Scentsy. I love the stuff, but believe it has it's downfalls. If you can live with them (I can), then it's totally worth feeling like you have a gloriously beautiful clean house, even if you really have pink wax in your grout and haven't vacuumed in days. 

Shameless plug: if you shop at my website https://predictability.scentsy.us/Scentsy/Home , my husband will like me better. 

Feel free to fire away with any questions and I will make up an answer for you! email: Bendability