Month: February 2019

Just some advice. Don’t ever buy anything that says, “unscented” on it. I made that mistake and discovered that there is no such thing as “unscented”. All that label means is they didn’t add a scent to it. I thought, well that might be good, not to be overpowered by an added scent. So, I bought it.

I’m talking about hairspray here. I don’t care how you feel about hairspray.  I live in Florida and I need it! Most women, perhaps men too, suffer from crazy curly hair in humidity. Me, just the opposite. I look like a half-drowned puppy, so a little hairspray to keep my bangs from drooping into my eyes like an English Sheepdog is necessary. But unscented hairspray doesn’t mean you smell nothing. It means you smell just the ingredients they put in it. So I looked. Just what am I smelling, because it smells awful!!!

First is water. That’s probably not the culprit. The second ingredient is Dimethyl Ether. Ether! Isn’t that the stuff they use in spy movies to knock someone out? Actually, that might be the offender. I did a little checking. That’s the propellant in aerosols, but it’s also the stuff that makes up biofuels. A little heads up on that would have been good! Unscented would mean I smell like gas! Then there is a long list of other stuff I have no idea what it is, and unless you’re a chemist, neither do you.

Toward the lower third of the list is, “Fragrance”. Well, that’s a little vague and since it is clearly printed on the front of the can, “Unscented”, why is one of the ingredients, “Fragrance”? Is fragrance even an ingredient? According to the dictionary, Fragrance is the quality of having a pleasant scent. I don’t think “quality” and “ingredient” are interchangeable words. And if the maker of this so-called “Fragrance” thinks it is in any way pleasant, they have serious sinus issues!

Way down at the bottom of the list we have White Lily Bulb Extract, Green Tea Leaf Extract, and Rice Protein. Okay, I don’t know if this combination just smells bad, or there is really not enough of them to push through the other 13 mystery ingredients to make a difference. Perhaps their presence here has something to do with hairspray, and not an attempt to add a scent to an unscented product. That’s what “Fragrance” was for.

When you buy anything from flowers, to fruit, to houseplants don’t you smell it first? Our sense of smell tells us we’re walking through a beautiful flower garden, or someone is having a barbecue. We can smell the aroma of pine needles warming in the sun, and salt in the ocean breeze. Smell also warns us of a fire, or a gas leak, or rotten eggs. So what made me think to buy unscented hairspray? From now on it’s nothing but rose, or lavender, or citrus, because unscented is really not unscented and smells more like that ethanol we talked about earlier, or perhaps worse, that mysterious “Fragrance”.

I am getting ready to publish another book and was looking through boxes of photographs for the ones I was hoping to use. Yes I said boxes. I have eight or nine photo albums, not including my wedding album, and the rest of my pictures are in plastic boxes. Some day I’ll get around to putting them in albums, or something better than just tossed in a box. I can also pretend I’m going to organize them, but probably not! If they get put in an album I’ll raise my arms in victory! However, the subject at hand is not organization, but identification.

Whoever said that a picture is worth a 1000 words did not anticipate boxes of photographs with nothing written on the back to identify where we are, or when we were there. Most of the time I could tell who it was of. Obviously I know my own children, though it would have been nice to know how old they were in the shot, instead of having to guess. I did run across a picture of a German shepherd that I have no idea who he is, or to whom he belongs. All I know is, he wasn’t mine.

Remember back to the days of film, which is why we have all these photos, Wal-Mart would offer double prints for the price of one. Great idea! The grandparents would love to have this picture! Perhaps, but probably not all 36 images on the roll! While looking through handfuls of snapshots I’m wondering if there wasn’t a mistake made, and Walmart actually printed quadruple pictures, or did we actually take four photos of our son and daughter singing the same verse, in the same song, in the same Christmas pageant? I swear I ran across a dozen images that were nearly identical! I could have culled through them and thrown the copies, and near copies away, but then what are my kids suppose to do when I die? This will make them wonder what craziness drove me to take so many pictures of exactly the same thing, and give them something to talk about. I’ll be sure to leave a note in the box, because you know that’s exactly where they are going to be, letting them know their dad was the one with the camera. Blame him!

But, it really wasn’t pictures of people that was the huge problem, it was the scenery pictures. With nothing written on the back, mountains are mountains unless they are extremely identifiable, like the Grand Teton, Half Dome, or Everest! A mountain meadow is a mountain meadow, and if you think they look different in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, France, or Italy, you would be wrong! It doesn’t end there. Beaches are just as bad. Now there is a little hint that comes with beaches. If the water is a blue-green you are probably looking at white sand in shallow water, so Florida, the Bahamas, or the Caribbean. If the water is dark blue it’s probably California, or Hawaii. Waves most likely indicate ocean, and flat probably a bay, or the Gulf. However, I caution everyone on the use of such words as always and never, because there are “always” exceptions to “every” rule and you could really be looking at anywhere in the world.

So, here I am with three boxes of “Where was that taken?”, and “When was that taken?”, along with “Why are there 25 pictures of my kids diving into their grandmother’s pool?”. Digital may help, but if my phone is any indication, probably not. I flipped through the other day and saw six pictures of my granddaughter sitting in the rocking chair we gave her for Christmas, and another four of my grandson reading a book. Which ones should I delete? None of them! They’re adorable! Now, to figure out how to add not a 1000 words, but perhaps 3…Who, when, and where.