Move Over Proust, Aromatic Advertisements Are The New Madeleines

August 7, 2014May 6, 2021 / Ally Bean / 25 Comments

I DON’T KNOW THAT I can adequately answer the question posed below, but I can tell you about what happened to me yesterday when one of those aromatic advertisements fell out of an Ulta mailing and landed on my lap.

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I WAS SITTING ON THE screened-in porch, glancing through the mailing, when an aromatic advertisement for Donna Karan’s newest fragrance, DKNY MYNY, plopped itself down on me.

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I DIDN’T THINK A THING about it. I grabbed the aromatic advertisement intending to put it on the table beside me, but I stopped mid-movement when the scent immediately reminded me of being a little girl.

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I WAS PULLED BACK TO decades ago when my family lived in an urban apartment above my father’s medical practice. At that time, my mother always wore one particular perfume, Ma Griffe, which– oddly enough— I remember as smelling like this new Donna Karan fragrance.

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SO I BEGAN TO WONDER what was in the new perfume that reminded me of my mother’s perfume. A quick check of the two fragrances at basenotes gave me my answer: both scents have Galbanum top notes [a fresh, natural “green” scent]; Jasmine middle notes [a sweet, intense “calming” scent]; and Vanilla base notes [a warm, boozy “comforting” scent]. Now how trippy is that? Hmmm?

Sunshine, Paperweights & The Magic Of Perspective

June 10, 2014January 28, 2021 / Ally Bean / 16 Comments

I noticed that in the late afternoon the sun shines into our dining room through the French doors. I have a paperweight collection on a table that happens to be in the path of the sunshine.

When the light passes through the paperweights it makes beautiful patterns on the wall. The patterns are easy to see, weirdly shaped and fun to capture with my camera.

On a whim I adjusted my camera focus to distort the sunshine as it went through the paperweights and I found something different to see. Something vaguely familiar, yet unique. Proving once again, that what you see is all in how you go about looking at things.

Let’s Talk About Cowinkydinks

March 4, 2014July 29, 2015 / Ally Bean / 19 Comments

So here’s how it all happened.

I went to the grocery to pick up a few things for dinner. Me with a list, even. Rather clued into what was going on around me.

As I was walking into the lobby of the store I thought that I recognized another woman walking into the store. I wasn’t sure at first, but I thought that this woman was my R.A. during my sophomore year of college.

At a small liberal arts university nowhere near here. About eleventy hundred years ago.

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As she was grabbing for a shopping cart and turned toward me, I realized that she was, indeed, my R.A. in college, who I hadn’t seen in decades. So I exclaimed her name. Loudly.

Fortunately, she didn’t seem fazed by some crazy woman, moi, shouting at her. And in fact we began to talk. After a few minutes of re-connecting in the lobby of the grocery, she suggested we meet for lunch.

Which we did and had a great time of it. We even plan to get together again next month to continue the conversation.

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This would be the end of the story if it weren’t for the weirdest coincidence that happened later in the day. While at lunch my former R.A. told me that she had grown up in a town that I’d never heard of before, a small town in the next state over.

That evening Z-D came home from work and told me that he had to get up early to drive to a meeting somewhere he had never been to before.

Where was he going? To a little town in the next state over where my R.A. had grown up.

Now what are the odds of that?

Regarding Sweetness & Light For Valentine’s Day

February 13, 2014August 29, 2018 / Ally Bean / 14 Comments

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. Here are five links of sweetness and light to put you in the right frame of mind. Enjoy!

√ Fall in love all over again… with puppies. Watch commercial many times. Feel all warm & fuzzy inside. [Which TV show used this music as its theme?]

√ Remember how much you loved the romantic movie You’ve Got Mail. View the movie’s original promotional website. Allow its simple charm + your memories of the movie to make you smile.

√ Bake some Mini Cinnamon Rolls with Maple Icing. Be overwhelmed with happiness upon tasting them. Try not to eat them all in one sitting. So good.

√ Print a few free Valentine’s Day cards to give to your sweetie + friends + family. Remember to give yourself a card, too. Just because.

√ Take a look back in time when a girl’s dream was to have a man sweep her off her feet. Be amazed by what good-looking, athletic Douglas Fairbanks, as Zorro, could do.