Purchases

One of Mama Kat’s writing prompts for this week is to write about a recent purchase. Like I said last week, I was seriously considering getting Apple AirPods Pro once my vacation allowance landed in my bank account. At the time, I had not yet seen the payment details of it, so I was still unsure I’d get it at all, or how much I’d get.

By Monday, my payment details from the benefits authority arrived in my government inbox. I wouldn’t be getting the money until Friday, but on Wednesday, I was so excited I decided to buy the AirPods anyway.

I ordered them from Bol.com at 1PM Wednesday. They gave me the option of selecting to get the AirPods delivered the same evening, so I was like: “Yes please!” Unfortunately, my screen reader wouldn’t let me toggle the button, so I got a staff to do that for me. My brand new Apple AirPods Pro arrived at 6:30PM that evening.

I struggled a little to get the AirPods connected and the medium-sized earmuffs felt uncomfortably large to me even though the fitting test on my iPhone said they fit. Then I struggled to remove the medium earmuffs and replace them with the small ones, but my staff eventually found out how to do this.

The AirPods came with a wireless charging case. As is the norm with current Apple products, they also came with a lightning to USB-c charging cable but no charger. I have an iPhone SE 2020, which still came with a regular USB charger. For this reason, I wondered whether I could charge the case with my iPhone charger or I needed to buy a USB-c charger. It might be faster with that one, but my iPhone’s charger works at least.

It also took me a little figuring out where the force sensor was located and how to use it. Once I figured it out though, it’s really intuitive. It works similar to the home button on my iPhone, really. I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to take incoming calls using just my AirPods, but today I found out I can.

The AirPods Pro have really good noise-canceling, which was one reason I wanted the Pro ones specifically. When I have noise cancellation on, I feel quite well shut off from my surroundings, even when I’m not listening to music. When I do want to hear what’s happening around me, I easily switch to the transparency mode and can hear everything just fine even while still listening to music.

I originally wanted the AirPods so that I can fall asleep while listening to soothing sounds, for example from the myNoise app on my iPhone. That, unfortunately, isn’t working yet, as I haven’t found a way to make the AirPods feel comfortable when I’m trying to sleep. That might be a good thing though, as I have no idea whether the AirPods will really be able to withstand a sleeping me. Overall, however, I really like my new AirPods.

One of Mama Kat’s writing prompts for this week is to write about some of your most recent purchases. I don’t purchase lots of things usually, but over the past month or so, I bought a few lovely things. Let me share.

1. Essential oils. Okay, I can’t stop talking about those or so it seems. I purchased four new essential oils a few weeks ago: lemongrass, white fir, ginger and lavandin. I now have 28 oils in my box and it has room for 30. That being said, I’ll likely remove my field mint essential oil from the box, as its scent is very similar to peppermint. This leaves room for three more new oils. I’ll probably purchase grapefruit, cardamom and vetiver essential oils soon. The cardamom one is usually very expensive, but I found an online store that sells a 10ml bottle for €12.95. That probably seems expensive to most people who aren’t into essential oils, but it’s really affordable. Of course, it’s probably not the highest quality EO, but as long as I only use it in my diffuser, I don’t care.

2. Bath and body product making supplies. About four weeks ago, I ordered a lot of new bath and body product making supplies. I ordered sweet almond oil, coconut oil, cocoa butter, shea butter, Dead Sea salt and some soaping colorants. Last week, I made my first product using the new supplies: bath salt. I also used actual essential oil in it. I normally don’t, because undiluted essential oil isn’t usually skin safe, but lavender EO is safe to use in bath products.

3. A talking scale. Two weeks ago, I finally bit the bullet and ordered a Medisana talking scale on Bol.com. I’ve been wanting a talking scale for many years. I did for a time consider buying a non-talking scale that connects to my phone, but then I’d have to look into the app’s accessibility first.

The scale I got isn’t officially calibrated and that’s noticeable, but I don’t care. I don’t really need to know my exact weight (it’d probably frustrate me to know). Rather, I want to know whether overall I’m losing or gaining weight over time.

4. Books. Most of these aren’t purchases, in that I didn’t pay for most of the books I got. One is though. Yay, I got A Life Lost by Cathy Glass as soon as it came out yesterday.

5. A YouTube Premium subscription. I finally had had it with all the advertising inbetween and sometimes in the middle of videos. I’m currently making use of my free trial month, but will likely continue with the subscription.

What have you recently purchased?

A Recent Purchase: Apple AirPods Pro

My Most Recent Purchases