nosy new year

My bottle acclimates to its Midwestern surroundings.

Happy New Year, nosy readers!  I wish you a 2012 filled with new smell discoveries as well as familiar or forgotten scents that make you swell with emotion.

The holidays were the usual sensory riot. I had a bit of a cold, but still managed to eat more than my share of cookies and breathe in some nice smells:  

• The smokiest scotch I've ever smelled (Pop, if you're reading this, what was that delicious scotch?)
• I drained a full sample of Sweet Redemption for my parents' annual holiday party, and people seemed more eager to hug me than usual (they lingered due to my fragrance rather than their scotch intake).
• I was so happy to unwrap a bottle (pictured above) of Un Bois Vanille (the ideal fragrance to spray on your wool scarf, and I agree it's perfect for layering) and a bundle of beautiful beeswax candles. Both will go a long way towards making the bitter Boston winter warm. 
• The weird, unseasonable warmth in Wisconsin meant that I could smell more manure than usual in winter, when the ground is often frozen. For reasons not exclusively olfactory, I dread the completion of a harrowingly gigantic factory farm under construction right off the highway on the route between my hometown and Madison. (The cows, I heard, are on their way from Nebraska in the new year. Not that I'd prefer Wisconsin cows meet their fate in such a place, but I'm puzzled as to why the Dairy State needs to import its livestock.)
• Alterra Coffee! I visited the main roasting facility on Humboldt, and wanted to set up permanent shop at one of the tables, eating pie, breathing in toasty beans, and talking all day with old friends. 
• A friend had a Mrs. Meyer's Iowa Pine candle going in her bathroom, and I was teased for emerging from the bathroom more than once exclaiming how great it smelled in there. The candle seems to be sold out all over, but I'll be keeping an eye for one out next winter.
• Oh man, if you're ever in Iowa, do yourself a favor and purchase some AE French Onion dip. You may be thinking, I've tried french onion dip in a tub before, and it's not that great. I agree! It usually isn't, but this stuff is so delicious that dipping your chip so deep that your hand comes out creamy is one of my family's most sacred holiday traditions. Viva Midwest!

stars! they smell just like us.

All week I've been wearing By Kilian's Beyond Love and I smell amazing. I'm like this buttery, floral angel of aroma just floating around town, upstaging even the lilac bushes and lilies of the valley. I suspect the only reason more people aren't stopping me on the street to ask why I smell so good is that they're weirded out by how focused I am on smelling my own arm.

I went to the Class Day ceremonies at Harvard today because I wanted to hear Amy Poehler speak (like every smart young lady in America, I am morally bound to support any event at which she is featured). The crowd was full of girls in bright, floral dresses, hair and skin and smiles gleaming. Poehler herself wore this gorgeous shade of saturated teal and a metallic blazer, bright as the blonde froth of her hair. There were huge Veritas flags strung up everywhere, and the trees in Harvard Yard were shedding the tiniest golden leaves, like tasteful, perfectly-timed confetti. A sucker for ceremony (even ones I am not a part of), I walked home feeling restless and nostalgic, optimistic but a little bereft.

The blue was much better than this.  © Reuters, via

Poehler told the students that if they could manage to add kindness and the ability to fix a tire to their existing smarts and bravery, they would just about be the perfect people (not just sweetness & light, she did flip off the kid who referred to her as the "blonde Tina Fey" at the start of his very funny speech). She was more earnest than any of the student speakers. She told them to put down their iPhones and look at people's faces. Her own face—not just that custard-colored hair—was radiant, but I believed her when she said she'd stayed up late writing her speech. I get the feeling that she is the sort of person who, even when exhausted, emits a kind of sunshine. She just seems so undeniably good. Though there is nothing goofy about Beyond Love (apart from its stupid-high price), it is also undeniably good.

My mom has said that if writing doesn't work out for me, I should try to become a scent adviser to the stars. (Is this a real job? Has anyone seen a "Scent Adviser to the Stars" offer intimate-seeming insight in US Weekly followed immediately by a disclaimer that they have never met, let alone sniffed, the celebrity in question?) If writing and manure-ranking both fail to keep me in perfumes, I'll start with Amy Poehler: Get your hands on some Beyond Love! No doubt you'll look adorable even with your nose buried deep in your own elbow crook.