Avoid The Perfume Zone.

Do perfume departments scare you? They scare me. They're not laid out with any kind of sense, or reason, for one thing. Go to a department store to get perfume, and everything makes sense until you get to the actual perfume department, where suddenly there are no 90-degree angles, no carpet, no racks or shelves of anything you can pick up and see and price. Instead, everything is under glass, it's all laid out at weird angles and in circular styles, and you don't know where you came in or how to get out.

Then there's the salesladies: Wearing too-stylish business suits, with hair up severely, or too long and too straight, and they shoot in like guided missiles the moment you pause, and if you say something like "I'd like to see that bottle of perfume there," they steer you over to a giant gift package of three perfumes, a hand lotion, bubble bath, beauty kit, duffel bag and gift certificate to a local spa. $400 later, you finally stagger into the men's shoe department and thank God you're alive.

Those kinds of troubles meant that Sweetie rarely gets designer perfumes as presents, because I so loathe and fear perfume departments. But with "My Fragrance Room," an online source for discount designer perfumes, candles, lotions and other, similar goodies, I can get her those kinds of things and not ever venture into the Perfume Dimension -- and not get snookered into buying the SuperUltraMegaGiftPack when all I want is a bottle of perfume.

You know what I like best? They've got the prices right there for me to see -- unlike at the store, where I have to get the Perfume Ladies to unlock the cabinet and show me, and they give that little disapproving frown if I don't select the biggest one.

My Fragrance Room has all the kinds Sweetie likes, too, just sitting there waiting for me to click and buy and have them shipped to her -- and, if you're into that kind of thing, they do have the gift sets.