You think scent is powerful for humans - all those evocative, time-warping Proustian Rushes and such? 

Maybe it was my mood: having just dodged the latest layoff bullet at work, I was feeling relieved and celebratory. But instead of heading for the nearest bar, I went to the Galleria to sniff the scents I hadn't yet tried. Nothing interested me at Neiman's so I walked down to Saks. 

But this time was different. This one hooked me immediately and wouldn't let me go. There was something so bubbly and happy and shiny about Essence - something that matched my mood - that I fell for it then and there. 

I spritzed it on my skin, walked around with it for maybe ten minutes, then went back to buy it. Thank goodness it only got better as time went on. I felt a little like Goldilocks, finding the chair, the porridge and the bed that fit her just right. 

How to describe it. Essence feels clean, yes, but in the way of sheets drying in the sun and wind, not that starchy, synthetic, fabric softener-clean. Aldehydes aren't listed among the notes, but Essence has to contain them. The fragrance triggers a memory of a pure aldehyde I got to experience once in a perfumer's lab. It gave the sensation of buttery champagne and brought a smile to my face. 

The rose note in Essence is dark pink-red, jammy and sweet. The iris adds just a touch - not too much - of powder. The amber is golden and doesn't smell like head-shop amber. I don't get baby-powder powder from the iris and amber, which in my case is a very good thing. 

And the musc. The musc is delicious and warm and sensual and blossoms on the skin. I am a big fan of dirty muscs, like Muscs Kublai Khan, but I also find this musc very satisfying. It smells different from other muscs and is somehow shot through with the heat of the Sun. It's as if it's been pre-warmed in preparation to be on your body. Yummy.

I wore Essence this weekend out in the country on a breezy day. We drove around for hours looking at bluebonnets and other wildflowers, getting out the shoot pictures of especially beautiful fields of flowers. 

When the wind changed direction I would get whiffs of the most wonderful skin musc. It felt very in sync with all the nature and glorious flowers around me, not synthetic at all. At first it didn't register that it was Essence, it was that naturally a part of me and my experience.

I find Essence to be infused with sunshine and happiness. And so for once, I can agree with the copy the press folk put out. Here's a quote from the press release for Essence:  " ...the purity of 'essence'...encompassing the sensuality of a woman with the radiance of sunlight." Yep, sensuality and sunshine, that's about it.

Alberto Morillas is the nose behind Essence, and I'd like to thank him for interpreting the marketing brief in this way. He's made me very happy. I also love the silvery bottle, which was designed by Ross Lovegrove.

Saks has the exclusive on Essence until April. You can read the entire press release about it right here.

Here in Houston, there is a street called Harwin where you can find almost anything at a discount, including brand-name perfume. This is where I met Venitta Baxter, in a narrow shop near the back of a nondescript strip of stores. 

You can't see Discount Perfume from the street, and the sign for the shopping center was torn up, so I have no idea how I found it that first time. But once I did I kept coming back for the deals, and because of Venitta. Because Venitta knew her perfume. 

That's the question we women have been asking ourselves for years. And now it seems Italian scientists have finally found the answer: rotten eggs.

Yes, the smell of rotting eggs - caused by hydrogen sulfide - apparently has a Viagra-like effect on men.

You can read more about this fascinating and fragrant finding right here, in the Sun.

(That's Peter Cat helping me out yet again on a photo shoot. He volunteered to do the sniffing!)

As the Black Death rages, a wealthy Jewish family hurriedly buries a cache of treasures. They know they are about to be expelled from their town in Germany - the townspeople blame them and other Jews for the Plague. 

They hope to return to their treasure trove, but never do. 

Nearly 650 years later, the family's treasure is discovered. Among the beautifully crafted items is a gold perfume bottle, designed to hang at a woman's waist. The bottle still contains a small wad of cotton. In the family's time it would've been saturated with scent. 

Buying perfume for Valentine's Day can be confusing for many of you. This morning I did an on-air segment for the Houston talk show Great Day Houston, in which I tried to make it easier for you to find the perfect scent (to watch, click on the Relationships tab, then choose All in the Family or Love & Marriage, and then scroll down the list of videos until you find Scent Signals). Here's some of what we talked about on the show, plus a whole lot more. Hope it takes some of the confusion out of finding a fabulous fragrance for your sweetheart.

Where do I start when shopping for perfume for my Valentine?

Knowing which perfumes or colognes your valentine currently wears is a great place to start. This can give you clues about other scents they may like. At the very least, you can replenish their stock or buy a more luxurious version of it. For example, if she would never treat herself to the pure perfume in her scent, you could. 

You can also use the notes in her favorite fragrance to find others. You can find out which notes are in a certain perfume by googling the name of the perfume along with words “perfume notes.” Once you know which notes are in it, you can bring that information to the mall and look for other scents with similar notes. 

When you google the scent, also take note of which perfume category (also called a fragrance family) it belongs to. Sometimes you can sniff it out simply by smelling the perfume, but not always. Knowing the fragrance family helps refine and narrow your search. 

For example, if you go in knowing you're looking for a floral-oriental with rose and jasmine at the heart, you can avoid wasting time on all the spicy, woodsy, green and gourmand scents. 

Conversely, if you don’t like the perfume your valentine currently wears, you can use the list of notes to help you avoid perfumes like it. Even better, just use your nose.

Should I go with what the “perfume ladies” at the counter recommend?

Sure, if you think it will smell good on your significant other. Which means you need to have a fairly solid idea of how your sweetheart smells - naked and scented. 

Just remember: the first thing the perfume ladies will grab, show and try to spray on you is the fragrance they’ve been encouraged to push the hardest that month. It is the one that will get them the biggest commission. Yes, they need to earn a living, but not necessarily at your expense.

If you don't think the perfume they're pushing will smell good on your loved one's skin, don't buy it. This is why the more you know about the way your SO smells and what smells good on them, the better off you’ll be. 

What should I do if I don't know all that?

Try to remember one thing. Perfume makers expect you to make an uninformed, snap decision. So they make the first few minutes of a scent – those few precious seconds right after it’s been sprayed – as alluring and enticing as possible. They want you to fall in love and buy it then and there. 

But here's the deal. Those first notes (they're called top notes) fade in about 10-15 minutes. And when that first thrill is gone, you can be left with something that doesn't move you in the least. Guess what. That's the part of the perfume you actually live with all day and all night (the middle and bottom notes). 

So take your time. Don’t make the mistake of only smelling a perfume for a couple of minutes. Give it time to develop on the tester strip, or even on your skin. Give a scent at least a couple of hours to show you what's it's going to do. 

You don't rush your lovemaking. Don't rush your perfume buying.

But it gets so confusing, trying all these different scents. 

Yes, it does. Here’s what I do. I spray the scent on a tester strip, wait, sniff, wait again, then sniff again. I do this for a few minutes. Then I put the tester strip aside and move on to other scents. If, after a few minutes, I like something well enough on paper, I will try it on my skin. But I try to limit the number of scents I apply to my skin. Two on one arm, two on the other. I've done more and gotten totally confused. 

If you don't want to try anything on your skin, that's okay. It usually helps to smell perfume on skin, but if your body chemistry is a whole lot different than your sweetheart's it may not help you at all. Just write down the names of the perfumes on the tester strips so you can keep them straight. 

Then go do the rest of your shopping and revisit the tester strips toward the end of your shopping trip. You will probably find that one of the scents now appeals to you more than the others. And it may not be the one you expected. Can you imagine smelling and enjoying it on your sweetheart? Congratulations!

Should I buy something I like, or a fragrance I think my valentine will like?

Some guys and gals know what will smell great on their loves. Some don't. For those who are clueless, here's an idea. The next time you smell something you really like on a friend or a stranger, find out what it is and remember it. It's as good a starting point as any. 

I always tell women to wear what makes them feel sexy and confident, because we women are so much in our heads – if we don’t feel good about ourselves, it shows. And men like confident women, so you want to wear scents that make you feel great. He will pick up on it. 

That said, the fragrances that turn US on aren't always the ones that turn GUYS on. So what is a guy to do - should he buy something HE likes, or something YOU like? 

Guys, I suggest buying something you would really like to smell on your gal, something you think would make her feel wonderful and sexy and special. Something you would like to smell on her (and you) all day and all night.

The worst you can do is buy something your sweetie doesn’t totally love. It will still be okay, because the perfume will have come from you, and that is enough to make it special.

Is there any way to get a good deal on perfume? 

Yes, there is. We who live in Houston are lucky to have a street called Harwin, where there are many discount perfume shops. The two I shop at are Discount Perfume and Perfume Time. I’ve found that they have the “real deal” and a decent range of scents - even some hard-to-find and vintage fragrances. You can save quite a bit of money shopping there. 

You can also save a lot of money shopping for perfume online. If you email me, I can tell you how. ((scentsignals@mac.com))   

What’s the bottom line?

For me, the bottom line is that scent is a fantastic adventure. Have fun with it. Go perfume shopping together. There are far worse ways to spend an afternoon. Or bring home samples and try them out on each other. 

My valentine says the best perfume is the one that gets all over him when he and I snuggle. He's absolutely right. Because I love it when I get his scent on me. 

So go out and find something you'd like to smell on your sweetheart and on yourself. Then get to snuggling!

Happy Valentine's Day!

For a while now, I've been toying with the idea of writing about beauty and aging. As a woman of a certain age, moderately vain, and involved with a younger man, these issues stare me squarely in the face every day.

Each day is different. Some days I remember who I am and realize that how I look is just a part of what makes me "me." I am able to make peace with the changes I see in my body. I thank God for good genes and for the many blessings in my life, including when I was born. I feel good about being me.

Other days I find myself loathing every line, sag, and spot, feeling energetically shriveled, and even worse - ugly. I hate these days. It takes a lot of energy to fight these feelings, and sometimes I just want to curl up in a ball and cry instead. 

Where do these feelings come from? What standard of beauty am I holding myself up against? Is it valid? Am I too hard on myself, or not hard enough? Am I seeing myself through my eyes, or through the imagined eyes of someone else? Who or what is this internal critic, and why is it so harsh?

I know I'm not the only woman who has days like these. But I didn't realize how serious the problem was until I read this column by Janice Turner in The Times.

Here's a humorous, pointy, and extremely eye-opening excerpt:

"While there is much anxiety about how teenagers are rendered anorexic by size-zero fashion plates, older women are reckoned too sensible to be sucked in. Except that according to the Mental Health Foundation a quarter of British women aged 45 to 54 suffer from depression, up by a fifth in ten years. That same age range has seen a rise in alcohol-related deaths and has become the principal female suicide flashpoint. Now I'm a hyper-sceptic of all gloomy stats, but separate studies in Australia and America have uncovered similarly deepening pools of midlife female misery.

Little wonder, perhaps, in this most cruel and judgmental of decades. Once a woman of 63 embraced elasticated waistbands: now she is supposed to despair because she can't rock a red bikini like Helen Mirren.

Once there was little you could do to hold age at bay: now the possibilities are infinite - so what's stopping you then, slattern? The current ad campaigns offer a tantalising deal to fiftysomethings: you can remain visible, as your mother never was, admired and lusted after, you don't even need to lie about your age, but only if, by means of self-punishment and perpetual vigilance, you never grow old."

That last line is a killer. You can be visible and desired - as long as you never look old. Ouch. 

Well, at least there is some recompense in growing older. We women of a certain age are no longer as likely to take other people's crap without saying something about it, and we are also happier sexually. 

"But this week I read a report that proclaimed women have “the best sex of their lives” in their forties. At first I snorted at yet another weary attempt to sex up older women, as if - like Madonna proffering her crotch to the cameras - knowing we are still foxy is the only way to prop up our self-worth. Yet the report suggested that why older women get happier in the sack could be chemical: as our production of caring-sharing oestrogen diminishes and we start pumping out stroppy testosterone, we suddenly start to put our own needs - sexual and otherwise - first. So it seems this being less nice is caused by growing a teeny bit more like a man."

Turner goes on to make the point that women of a certain age should be hired for important positions in government and business because of all the good things we bring to the table. Why aren't we? Good question. Do we need a touch more testosterone?

Ack, I think I've grown weary of worrying about how I look. Looks are so surface, and I've always been more interested in what lurks beneath - in what gave you those looks, how you earned them. So I'm not entirely convinced that I want to write about beauty and aging.

Then again, I may decide to take on our assumptions about beauty and aging and turn them on their heads. Yes, I think that's more likely. 

I'm going to leave you with one last, great line from Turner's column, in case you don't take the time to read it (though you really should). 

"Instead, let us grant women an age armistice, when they cease to be judged on appearance but for who they are. How rarely they get the chance, how magnificent when they do." 

If you've been watching television the past week or so, you may have seen a tall, willowy blonde named Whitney Casey promoting her just-released dating guide The Man Plan: Drive Men Wild-Not Away. She's been everywhere, from The Today Show to The Howard Stern Show, talking it up.

As far as wearing something my mother or grandmother wears/wore? I totally do that - from Carven Ma Griffe to Chanel Cuir de Russie. All I can figure is, whoever edited the chapter must've made up the quote and snuck it in.   

My advice? If you can rock a vintage scent, you go rock it, girl. You can quote me on that.

The other little problem is on page 71. It's something I tried to correct when I proofed Whitney's copy before she sent it off to the editor. Alas, my correction didn't take. Instead of spelling the French word "sillage" the correct way, they've spelled it "silage." 

So, instead of referring to an ephemeral perfume trail, the book instead refers to fermented, high-moisture fodder for cows and sheep. Fragrant, I'm sure. But not what I had in mind. Although I must admit, it is amusing to contemplate the sillage of silage.

I realize many of the impressionable young things reading the book probably won't know the difference. I just wanted to set the record straight for my loyal readers and for all of the perfume lovers among us. The rest of the information in the chapter is, I believe, good, solid advice for perfume novices. And I am very happy to have such a wonderful platform in which to present it. If I can help form some positive perfume-wearing habits among the masses, then Yey, Me!

Keep your eyes and ears peeled for Whitney. She is on a whirlwind publicity tour and may be coming to your city next. I just saw her yesterday here in Houston, and she is tired but very, very happy and excited. And she has every right to be. She has the number-one dating book on Amazon, and it's been out for less than two weeks. I wish her all the best (and hope her editor will fix these tiny things when Whit's book goes into reprint!).

Perfume is just not that important. I know that sounds blasphemous to many perfume lovers. But having kneeled at the perfume altar for years and then, for various reasons, been yanked up and away from it, I feel qualified to make such a claim. Because it's true.

Perfume is a luxury. A deliriously wonderful and intoxicating luxury. Be glad for it. Revel in your indulgence of it. Suck up those delicious molecules with abandon. But don't think your perfume collection will actually matter when things get a little rough. You will be able to leave perfume behind in a heartbeat when you are called to focus on truly important matters like the well-being of you and your loved ones.

This morning I was surprised and delighted to see that Scent Signals is one of the blogs nominated in the Fragrantica Blog Awards. The purpose of the contest is to support the creative work of bloggers, and to award those blogs the fragrance community likes best. The contest is sponsored by perfume.com.

A reader, Maryel, apparently thought enough of Scent Signals to nominate it. Bless you, Maryel. You made my day! If you'd like to vote for Scent Signals (that would be cool), you can do so at the fragrantica.com site.