I smell a rat. And the wind is coming from your direction.

I would like a signature scent. Not one that says, "I just ate a Grape Now-n-Later," but a signature PERFUME.

My mother-in-law always wears Opium, which is really a problem. We try to drag her out of those Opium dens so easily found in Michigan’s suburbs and get her into rehab…no, no. She wears Opium PERFUME, and it is so her signature. Ain’t no way I could smell it and not think of her. Similarly, in 7th grade I broke my wrists and couldn’t go to gym class, so I got to spend that hour in the counseling office every day (which I highly recommend, kids who hate gym. SO worth it). The 7th grade counselor wore Youth Dew, by Estee Lauder, and to this day I can smell it as she would waft past me.

Now, here’s the problem. I don’t really like any perfume. I do not want to SMELL like perfume. I want to smell sort of clean, which I never am, and sort of fresh, ditto. So why I think the solution is in a perfume is beyond me. But I continue on.

The perfumes I do sort of like are Aliage by Estee Lauder, Cristalle by Chanel, and Green Tea by Elizabeth Arden. All of them are green, fresh scents, according to the people who decide these things about perfume. But each one of those starts to smell weird on me after a minute. It’s like for a moment I smell all fresh and clean, then suddenly it’s like someone threw a pepper mill at me. Or I got ground under a pepper grinder. Or Peter Piper started picking pecks around me.

What I am trying to say is these scents get… peppery on me.

Being the vain person with too much time on her hands that I am (and there was a simple, easy beginning of a sentence), I started looking on line for some help. One may wonder why I didn’t spend that time researching, say, a solution to global warming or something. Maybe after I’ve found my signature scent.

Anyway, here is what I have to tell you. Go to parfumsraffy.com. They did not pay me to tell you this. But they should.

If you can’t find a scent you like, this site is helpful in two ways. First, they describe many of the perfumes out there. (Go on the site, and on the home page, on the right-hand side, go to fragrance descriptions.) So, for example, my Aliage? It has peach, citrus and greens as the top notes, then jasmine as a middle note, and so on.

(Top notes are what you smell when you first put it on, middle notes are what you smell awhile later, and bottom notes are what your bottom smells like. Again. I kid.)

Now, my Cristalle? Top notes? Greens and citrus? Guess what’s in the middle? Jasmine again.

This is helpful because it gives me a distinct idea of what exactly I like in a perfume. It is more specific than me going to the perfume counter and saying, "I like green scents." Now I can tell them I like citrus, green, and jasmine. Or, I could peruse parfumsraffy’s site and look for OTHER fragrances that have these notes.

The other reason I like this site is because they will create a scent for you. Now, a few years back I did this on a now-defunct website. They asked me many questions about what I liked in a scent (for example, they had me rate scents in order of appeal, and the list had things like fresh-cut grass, biscuits with honey, and spicy tea). This company made me the best perfume I have ever had. Ever. And it smelled just as I wanted it to. Then I used up the bottle and went to look for the site and it was gone. Which is the story of my life.

Parfumesraffy doesn’t have a cool questionnaire like that, but they do have a list of notes that you choose from, and you can get a sample for a dollar, or throw caution to the wind and have them make you a perfume for $39. Which I am going to do. Which will be another post.

Smell ya!