We have done a really good job potty training Dagny. She is very smart, and has already learned that right after she pees on the carpet she needs to go outside for a second or she will get yelled at. She dashes right out the dog door as soon as she is done pottying now, whether there is anyone yelling or not. It's a pretty cool set up. We have also succeeded in teaching the girls how to keep their wads of long hair out of the shower drain, by sticking said wads to the shower walls and then throwing them away after. Somehow the throwing away part got lost in translation, so now our upstairs shower is decorated with multicolored wads of hair. It's pretty awesome, I am not gonna lie. Another great success story for me is the personal record I hold for most unfinished cups of coffee in random spots around the house. I have just barely edged out February of 2010 and I would like to credit the over sized wonderfulness of my new Pendleton mugs for this triumph. In my own defense, I will say that I actually found a half finished cup the other day and reheated it. Twice. And still never finished it. It reminds me of Grandma Schiffman and the perpetual cup of coffee in the microwave.

In other news, and in the interest of honesty, I would like to issue a revision to the facts set forth in my Holiday Poem: three out of four girls are rocking straight A's, and I will leave it to you to wonder who could be the slacker. Obviously this information wouldn't fit the smooth-flowing format of my poem, so I took a little creative license. And was guilt racked for two days. But now I have made my confession.

If my ramblings seem disjointed and incongruent lately, or even unedited, I would like to cast sole responsibility on a very small hairball who is constantly either eating Christmas Presents or running outside to celebrate her most recent urination, and the fact that I am forced to claw my way out of my Pendletony nest on the couch to save gifts and rugs. I might as well give up because I am mostly succeeding in forgetting about my coffee and I think the carpet is past saving. This would be cause for distress except I know that there is beautiful hardwood underneath that we are intending to convince the landlords to let us uncover as soon as Dagny is potty trained, but since the world may come to an end before then, I am not holding my breath. And no, that is not a reference to December 21.

Today is my day off. Yesterday I thought I didn't work until 12, but luckily I called in to double check, and found out that I actually worked at 10, which was precisely 20 minutes from the time that I called. Somehow I still got almost everything done that I had wanted to, except showering, but I just threw some jingle bells in my dirty hair and called it good. I have another long list today, at the top of which is finishing my coffee, and then beginning to pack the smallish things that need to go North with us for Christmas. -- Stand by, Dagny is eating the area rug.-- Anyway, I have been losing sleep over the thought that I will forget things like Mom's turkey roaster rack, or Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas (an absolute holiday requisite viewing, in case you haven't yet), or the stuff for Josh's tactical stocking that I have hidden in such an obscure place that I am not sure even I can find it. And by the way, yes, Josh has a tactical stocking, complete with molle strips and carabiner hooks. Obviously it will be filled with tactical tools. Like shot glasses. I have already conferred with Santa about this.

I also need to spend some time working on my eBay junk, shipping, measuring, messaging. One last push before Christmas, and every penny in the Paypal account means non-accountable spending for me! Or not. But I am doing quite well selling Victoria's Secret panties that I buy on clearance and sell for slightly over retail because somehow people who have figured out how to navigate eBay and set up a Paypal account haven't stumbled across the Victoria's Secret website. Hmmm. I am not complaining. --- Dagny is now UNDER the area rug. Trying to decide if it's worth unnesting to save her. Probably not. She can just chew her way out. ---

One major non-success in our life right now is that I taught Natalee and Aspen how to sew. How cute, you say. How mother-of-the-yearish of you and all that. It would be, but for the random misplaced needles I am finding on the rug, hanging off the coffee table, sticking out of the couch cushion just millimeters from Truck's elbow. I mean come on! Who leaves a needle on Truck's side of the couch! That's just mean! Apparently Josh lived as a child in a rental that had previously been inhabited by seamstresses of some nature who had a habit of dropping needles in the carpet. Several of these were relocated by various members of the Weston Family who would then have to remove them from metatarsal bones with pliers. This will not happen in my house. --- Dagny has weaseled her way on to the couch and is now chewing on the corner of my MacBook. --- So tonight we are going to have a needle safety debriefing, wherein I will pull gruesome pictures off of the internet of needle related accidents and strike a fear so deep in the girls that they will have to be sedated for Tetanus shots.

Well, I think it's time for me to go unpack the dog's stocking and dole out all of the chew toys we got for Dagny before she eats my technology. We are currently accepting donations of anything that you would like chewed up. And if you'd like a cold cup of coffee - stop on by!!

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

Things That We Are Good At

Things That Smell Good