I made moussaka for dinner tonight and it was yummy. I can't eat lamb unless it's ground up and heavily spiced (I don't like the way it smells), so normally if lamb is served at my house, it's because I'm cooking Greek or Indian. For a white woman in Nebraska, I tend to do better at ethnic than whitebread meat-n-taters-midwestern.

I am re-testing La Petit Mort and I have determined that myrrh is my nemesis. It goes powdery on me every time, damnit! I am also going to try something that has ylang-ylang in a different combination. I've always assumed that I didn't like it, but I'm beginning to think in another blend, it might work. This last order of mine -- 13 and an imp pack -- wasn't one of my greater success stories. I'm glad that I ordered imps and not bottles! But BPAL, when it works, really works. I went to Omaha yesterday to buy some Arcana soap at Magical Omaha, and I picked up some of their scents for a friend. The owner gave me a bunch of Arcana samples, and they don't work on my picky body chemistry. None of them. But like I said, when a BPAL works on me, it's beyond glorious, and I'll take that any day.

I think that men are somewhat predictable creatures, especially the ones in my general age range, probably because I've simply been dealing with them for so long. But younger guys, I don't get them. There's the young guy at work (25 or 26) who very earnestly flirts with me, although we all know he's just a little poonhound. The senator he works for isn't much better, so my friend Ron and I call the young staffer "little dog" and his boss "big dog." Little dog has been emailing me lately, just being friendly and chatty, but his notes read like he's using a thesaurus for every other word. He's trying really hard, it is kind of sweet and I'll give him credit -- he's a bright guy, and I think he likes having a conversation about something more than drinking beer and watching football. I'm good practice for him, because some day he's going to meet a smart woman in his age range who can have conversations about things he talks about when he visits with me. I think he's afraid to show younger women his more intellectual and artistic side, and that's sad.

Then there's a guy who works at the health club I go to; he's the weekend front desk person. I think he's a grad student, so he's early 20-ish. His parents are professors, he's really smart, kind of chunky-but-cute, very friendly. Or, I should say, he was very friendly -- he spent a ton of time talking to me a few weeks ago and was trying to get me to take tai chi at the club. He already does tai chi, but wanted to try a different instructor, since he'd never taken from the guy who teaches at the club. I'd taken a session with this instructor, and while the guy knows his stuff and is very nice, he is almost incomprehensible as a teacher. Anyway, the front desk guy and I got into a big discussion about eastern disciplines and I gave him the name of my yoga teacher and told him to call her if he ever wanted to drop in on one of her classes. I told him I just didn't have time to add a tai chi class to my schedule. All was fine until about two weeks ago -- now he won't look at me, just types in my member number when I give it to him, halfway rolls his eyes at me when I walk through, and acts like it's a relief to see me leave. I want to say, "Pardon me sweetie, but WTF?" All I've ever done was be polite to him and chat with him a little bit. Christ, I'm old enough to be his mother, maybe he figured that out, but there's no need to act so strangely.

But you know, maybe he's nuts, or maybe he now has a girlfriend, so he's rather immaturely blowing off everyone that he used to get attention. It's really sad -- sometimes I think my intentions can be misinterpreted simply because I try to treat people as actual human beings. I work around the legislature and I'm fairly immune to being treated as a cog in the machine, as a means to an end, but there are times when a thank-you would have been nice, and then there are the times when a thank-you or a simple acknowledgement meant everything in the world. So I try to be genuinely cordial and polite to people; that's all. Everyone deserves that much, and it is a goal of every day of my life, although I forget about it entirely too often.

I was telling a friend the other day, I read things that I wrote when I was much younger and think they are alarmingly rational, considering what an interpersonal pinhead I used to be. It would be OK to be physically younger and cuter again, but hell, it's true -- I'd never go back to being younger because never again do I want to be that much of an emotional retard. Nor would I want to return to dealing with younger guys who were even bigger 'tards than me. Not that as people age, they necessarily mature emotionally, but a few do, and damn, they come as a relief.

All of you who are young and self-aware, you're pretty amazing. There's quite a few of you on the forum, showing you are smart about more things than how to smell really, really good.