Late to the Party

At least ten years ago, my step-daughter-in-law jumped feet first into the essential oils business. She became a representative for doTERRA oils. I don’t know if she still is a rep, I haven’t seen or spoken to her in over a year. No big drama, we just live almost 80 miles apart and she has her life and I have mine.

My husband sees and talks to his son as much as possible but…there you have it. I did communicate with her via FB until she deleted her page. That was a surprise but again, we were never close enough for her to confide as to why she deleted it.

To be honest, I kind of thought the essential oils craze was just that, crazy. Or, if not crazy, a little hokey. K insisted that the use of essential oils in a diffuser had ‘cured’ her children of asthma. I mean, come on. I don’t think it works that way. But whatever, you do you.

But anyway, when I started my current job (about a year and a half ago for anyone counting) I couldn’t stand the smell of the office. It was awful.

It smelled like old cigarette smoke. It was probably 'just' the smell of welding dust. There are a lot of welders in the production part of the building wehere I work. Whatever it was, it was nasty and most days in those first few weeks, I had to change clothes the minute I got home and sometimes, I needed to shower to get the smell off me.

So, I did what one does and got an essential oil diffuser. I didn’t get it because I’d suddenly developed asthma. I did it because my sense of smell was affected by chemo and it was incredibly sensitive. I figured if nothing else, diffusing oils would help the office smell better. It couldn’t hurt, right?

Almost immediately, the office did smell better. I got all kinds of comments on how great everything smelled. Yay!

So this past Christmas, I gave Alyssa a diffuser for her bedroom. She diffuses lavender in the evenings and orange throughout the day.

Then…her room smelled so nice that I decided to use the $40 Meijer gift card given to us from Tom’s sister and bout another diffuser, this one for the master bedroom. And now, we diffuse a lavender blend each night. It’s lovely.

And…I currently have eleventy billion (or, you know, like, 16) bottles of essential oil in one of my desk drawers at work. I mean, you never know what kind of mood I’m going to be in each morning. Some days I might want clarity. Others I might want immunity. There are days when I want a pure oil like peppermint and others when I want a blend like Joy.

I haven’t gotten to the point where I’ll rub peppermint oil on my temples rather than pop a couple of Excedrin when I have a headache but that might be right around the corner.

Or it might not. Trust me, I’m not going all crunchy on you. I have no plans to stop shaving my right arm pit.