How This Led to my Latest Souvenir

For years now I've depended on a trick someone showed me years ago that helps beat stress. Perfume. That's right. If you find the right smell, It can always calm you down. And even if you have to spend a bit of money on it, if it truly calms you down, I say it's worth it.

This all started back when I was going through my divorce. It was a tip a friend gave me for keeping focused on what was important and not just crying through the court hearings. And it didn't take long to discover that it works for a ton of other things. If emotion overtakes you in a meeting and you think you might lose it, just take a whiff of your wrist and you immediately calm down. It works when you are stressed in traffic and feel your blood pressure rising. And it even does the trick if you're next to someone who, let's say, had garlic for lunch and didn't brush their teeth afterwards. It's a great distraction. It seems to immediately redirect your focus.

So this past week, when I knocked my favorite perfume off of the windowsill in the wee bathroom in my wee house and it hit the stone floor and broke, I was a bit shattered myself. I mean the bathroom smelled great...but I knew it would mean having to find and buy more and that would take a week to get to. It was an odd swing...my blood pressure went up as it hit the floor and came back down as I reached to clean it up.

I was able to flip the bottle enough to save some of the precious contents. And there was enough left that I thought, if I could find a bottle to put it in It would last a few more months.

As I was passing through a little shop in town today I noticed a section of Galway Crystal and they had a beautiful little perfume bottle, the last of it's kind, on sale. So I got it and gently poured what was left of that golden fluid from the broken bottle into a keepsake of Galway Crystal that is as special as the perfume in it. It's just my latest souvenir. And because that wee bathroom doesn't have any actual shelves, I'm keeping the perfume on my bedstand instead.

I love when it when things work out.