I was packing for our recent trip to Mexico when I found the old tube of VO5.

"Do I still have this?" Apparently, I did.

Even though my husband, Peter, and I had moved a year ago, a lot of forgotten salves and soaps and lotions of various types had made the move with us. They sat in storage in the bathroom, pretending they had some reason to exist. I decided to do something about it.

"All the misfit and forgotten products are coming to Mexico!" I announced.

There was the expensive moisturizer I'd picked up when I was in Europe. It smelled funny and had a weird texture, but I felt guilty throwing it out. There was a giant bottle of body lotion I'd been given by my sister-in-law, Shelley. There were a couple smaller bottles of various things, and there was an ancient half-used tube of VO5. They all went into my suitcase, and off we went.

My plan worked exactly as I hoped.

Peter started using the peculiar-smelling European lotion. He claimed it had no smell at all -- but that's Peter for you. I started slathering on Shelley's lotion, but was distressed to see it was not soaking in. Finally, in frustration, I got out my reading glasses to see what this stuff was made of.

"Body soap" it said, plain as day. "Well. That explains it!" The lotion was demoted to the shower, where it did just fine for its intended purpose.

But the biggest surprise was the VO5.

It was in a metal tube with the paint peeling off and I had been moving it around with me since before my grandmother died 15 years earlier. My father's mother swore by VO5.

"It's not just good for your hair!" she insisted. She said it was good for scratches on wooden furniture and dry cuticles and many other uses I've since forgotten, which explains why I'd been hanging on to this tube for 20 years.

In Mexico, with nothing else to tame my frizzy, fly-away hair, I finally tried it.

The VO5 was terrific. And the scent brought me right back to my grandmother. I remembered the smell of my grandmother's hair as clearly as the cherry almond-scented lotion she used. The tiniest dab kept my hair in order and the tube lasted well beyond our trip to Mexico.

"I've gotta get more of this!" I declared when I got home. That's when I read the awful news.

VO5 had been discontinued! I found a few opportunistic folks selling tubes for $30 apiece on eBay, but other than that, it seemed to have disappeared.

"Oh, no!" I complained to Peter, who pays no attention to this kind of thing. (He thought the body soap worked perfectly fine as lotion, to give you some idea.) But a quest for a lost product is exactly the sort of challenge Peter loves.

"You can't find it anywhere?" he asked.

"No!"

The next day, Peter found some.

It was still available after all, and at a reasonable price. I immediately ordered a lifetime supply.

When it arrived, it was not in a metal tube; they had switched to plastic a long time ago, so my 20-year-old tube was probably a lot older than that. But the consistency and, most importantly, the smell, was exactly the same.

I saw my dad that week, recovering from his pacemaker surgery.

"Guess what I found, Dad?"

"What?"

"VO5!"

I dipped my head toward him in the hospital bed.

"Doesn't that smell remind you of grandma?" I asked.

My dad smiled.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon's memoir is called "Blue Yarn." Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION FOR UFS

My husband, Peter, and I went to our first concert in the park last night.

We brought our folding chairs and ate food from the food trucks. The weather was perfect, and the music was good. But upstaging the band were a pair of juvenile squirrels in the trees overhead, challenging one another to feats of greater and greater daring. I half expected to have an adolescent squirrel land in my lap.

It had been a long day.

We had just come from the funeral for one of Peter's cousins, who died of ALS. It was a somber occasion, as he was an otherwise healthy man who, until recently, ran marathons and taught classes and painted brilliant Western landscapes. Now the world -- and his family in particular -- was poorer for his loss, and I was feeling a little down.

Before going to the concert, I went on my usual walk and called my old friend, Andrew. He was in a bad mood also. Andrew has been working on a fantasy novel for years and just heard about someone who sold a similar novel for an astonishing sum. When he read the description of the book, he thought it sounded terrible.

"I wouldn't touch that book!" Andrew told me as I walked. "It sounds just awful!"

"Aren't you glad a fantasy author is doing so well?" I asked. He grumbled. I told him how I had attended two funerals in the space of a week, and it was wearing on me. This is what you do with old friends -- he brings me around when I am grumpy, and I do the same for him.

Then Andrew told me about an interview he'd recently heard with the former bass player for the Rolling Stones, Bill Wyman.

Wyman is now 85 years old and, when talking about his most cherished memories, he said, "These moments are there to be caught but you're bloody lucky to catch them." Andrew liked the quote so much he wrote it down, so I did the same.

"The moments are meant to be caught," Andrew said, "but we have to do the catching."

Just then, I noticed that some of the lilacs in the shade were still blooming, their unmistakable fragrance thick in the humid air. I admired the golden retriever passing on the other side of the street, his tail swishing cheerfully back and forth. I realized how something as simple as catching the scent of the last lilacs of the season or the sight of a happy golden retriever's tail took the act of noticing.

"We have to reach out and catch the moment," Andrew continued. I noticed that I was feeling less sad. I could tell Andrew was less grumpy.

Sitting under the trees at the concert, I thought again of how quickly the moments pass -- how fast the spring has gone, how the summer will be over before I know it, and how the years fly by. Reaching into the stream of time and catching a moment is not easy. I am, indeed, "bloody lucky" to catch them.

At that moment, one of the daredevil squirrels overhead took an outrageous chance and leaped to a slim branch in a nearby tree -- really no more than a twig -- that was clearly dead and had broken off from the larger branch.

"He's going to fall for sure!" I said as the squirrel clung to the branch, which swung once like a pendulum before he leaped a second time to safety. And he was gone.

"Bloody lucky squirrel," I thought, filled with admiration.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon's memoir is called "Blue Yarn." Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION FOR UFS

I've been under some stress lately.

I've written a novel, and now I have to wait to find someone who thinks it's worth publishing. (I happen to think it is, for the record.) So, while I wait, I get more and more nervous.

I know all the standard advice for this, and I try to follow it. I try to get plenty of sleep. (But how am I supposed to sleep when I don't know what will happen tomorrow?!) I try to eat healthy foods at healthy times. (But how am I supposed to avoid snacking at midnight when I'm roaming around the house like a nervous ghost, unable to sleep?!) I listen to guided meditations where this super-calm voice tells me that "everything is happening in perfect timing." But this meditation was recorded years ago, and there's no telling if the timing of things might have changed since then (what with the pandemic and all), and I realize I haven't heard a word she's said for the last several minutes.

I told my doctor I was stressed, and she offered me some sort of serotonin pills, which do absolutely nothing as far as I can tell, so I forget to take them. I could reduce my coffee intake but, come on, I don't want to be stressed and dead, so what's the point in that? I try to read books, but I start to wonder who published them and how long the author had to wait before they were published and if they went crazy in the meantime and if they had some sort of secret edge and how could I get that edge and then I notice I have not read a single word. No. The only thing I've found that really helps to calm me down is shopping for dresses.

"Do you need more dresses?" my husband, Peter, asks.

This is such a silly question. Of course, I do not need more dresses. The truth is, I don't even buy that many dresses. What I do is go to my favorite online consignment shop and look at dresses. OK, occasionally one of them makes it to my house. But that is not the point. It is the focus; it is the hypnotic quality of looking for the perfect white dress. This is very calming.

"You already have a white dress," a buttinsky voice in my head points out.

"Did I ask you?" I reply.

Obviously, I don't have the particular kind of white dress that I am looking for now and, whose business is it anyway, if I want to buy a $13 white dress and own two totally different white dresses! I could be roaming the streets looking for hard drugs in my current state of mind. Instead, I am stuffing my closet with white dresses which, it is true, I might not wear that often -- if at all.

But that is why dress shopping is so alluring. It has almost nothing to do with the dresses.

Shopping for dresses allows me to imagine where I would wear the dresses, and the places I imagine I would wear them are all pleasant places. They are evenings out where I am not stressed -- parties and celebrations and gatherings of friends. These dresses remind me that these things have happened and will happen again, and this current period of sitting in my pajamas in the middle of the night eating snack food is temporary.

Life has its ups and downs. When things are calmer, I plan to wear a lovely new white dress.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon's memoir is called "Blue Yarn." Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION FOR UFS