nosy recommends: burt's bees baby bee multipurpose ointment

This smells so sweet! Not sweet like frosting, sweet like darling. Burt's Bees Baby Bee Multipurpose Ointment just smells adorable. It's light streaming in the open windows in the farmhouse bedroom where your white sheets were just air-dried the day before and the host, one of your oldest friends, left a little mason jar full of gummy bears on your bedside table (just the orange, yellow, and adhesive-colored ones). This tub's pudding is cuddly but not cloying, and comforting with a chewiness I associate with that tantalizing pull to bite the brand-new nub of pink eraser on a fresh yellow No. 2 pencil (it doesn't smell like that eraser, but like the feeling you imagine it will have between your molars). Even though I've learned that petitgrain is a bitter orange note, there's a homier smell I associate with the word petitgrain that comes to mind when I sniff this ointment. I would like to smell coumarin (one of the ingredients listed, along with shea butter, almond oil, beeswax, and coconut oil) and see whether the compound accounts for the dollop of countryside I'm getting, since its Wikipedia entry says coumarin is "readily recognized as the scent of new-mown hay," and is found in plants like tonka bean, vanilla grass, sweet woodruff, sweet grass, cassia cinnamon, Deers Tongue and sweet clover.

You can use this ointment, intended for babies' bums, however you might use Vaseline, and it's especially nice on rough heels (sandal season is officially over here in Cambridge) and dry elbows (the season for which is fast approaching). I mainly use it at night, but it's subtle enough that it doesn't interfere with perfume.

 "Mr. Autumn Man, enjoying a seasonal stroll." --The Onion 

Other things I recommend right now, from past Nosy Interviewees and from the planet: 

• Elisa has been doing some great perfume writing on her blog lately, on her new favorite leather, lilies, and underwear perfumes. I loved this line: "From a distance, the impression is not unlike my vintage Shalimar – a powdery floriental with a smoker's cough." Elisa and I disagree about Agent Provocateur, which she thinks goes from uptight to dirty, and I believe to be so raunchy in its opening that I leave a small grace period before leaving the house with it on. 
• Rebecca has a wonderful poem, "Self-Portrait at San Carlito," up at Verse Daily (and a book coming out in 2013!!!).
• Natalie wrote an excellent review of Zadie Smith's NW for Fiction Writers Review, and highlighted one of the book's best lines: "Overnight everyone has grown up. While she was becoming, everyone grew up and became."  
• FALL! I am definitely a shameless version of Ms. Autumn Woman, and if you encountered me on the street yesterday, you would have been subjected to a six-minute (minimum) reverie on how incredible fall smells and feels and looks. I like to celebrate its arrival with an annual reading of Colin Nissan's brilliant "It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers," and suggest you do the same, whatever the weather where you are.

fresh stinky links

Have some coffee; stay awhile.

• Don't miss past nosy interviewee Emily Gould's great essay on the beginnings of her scent quest and her appreciation of Perfumes: The Guide. I hope she bought herself a brand new bottle of perfume the day this piece posted. 
• Over at First Nerve, Avery Gilbert writes about the results of a Polish study called "Does Personality Smell? Accuracy of Personality Assessments Based on Body Odour." People sniffed slept-in t-shirts and could tell if the wearer was neurotic. 
• Ari of Scents of Self is hosting a perfume sale to benefit Refuge, a UK charity working against domestic violence. If you have perfume (or other suggested items) that you're willing to part with for a good cause, please check it out. 
• Orangette was already the source for my go-to granola, but tonight I tried this new recipe she recently posted. After just a few bites, I already believe it has unseated the standard and now holds the place of honor as the weekly granola around these parts. We'll see how it does with Fage. The olive oil, brown sugar, and maple syrup toast up the coconut and seeds so perfectly, and for the 45 minutes this is baking you will be in love with the smell of your house. 
• Not strictly scent-related, but I wanted to share with you some online treats from other past nosy interviewees:
• Natalie has coined a new, perfect word. 
• Preeta writes heartrendingly about immigration. 
• Rebecca has a new poem to love here. 

Nosy Interview: Rebecca Hoogs

 Rebecca pictured in The Seagull Nebula, © Michael Sidonio

Rebecca was my boss at Seattle Arts & Lectures, and though I am no longer paid to brainstorm with her, I still consider the activity one of the most valuable ways to spend an afternoon. You can buy Rebecca's chapbook, Grenade, at Open Books, and read some of her poetry here.

What do you smell like?  

Well, you can't smell yourself, or if you can, that's usually a bad sign, so I can only imagine the things I must smell like, which are the things I've come into contact with in the past 24 hours or week or life. Right now I probably smell like box wine and wet wool. I probably smell a bit like my cats and though I'm fond of how they smell, I know this is a bad thing. Luckily I'm not a spinster. I have a husband who smells like cats, too, so that must make it more ok. I probably smell like Tom's of Maine honeysuckle deodorant which I've used for so long I can't smell it any more but I can still smell the word "honeysuckle" which I love. I probably smell l like old house given that the one I live is was built in 1924; and spilt coffee, since I'm always spilling it on myself on the way to work as I attempt to drink it from a defective to-go mug; and cheese and crackers. I love cheese and crackers. Sometimes I might put on Tocca's Aqua Profumata, Amalfi, but then I smell too perfumey and will feel a little pukey if we drive anywhere. 

What do you like to smell?

I love to smell lilacs in the spring, and rosemary, especially when I'm walking in my neighborhood, and raspberries in the sun in the summer in a field. I love to walk into a house where someone has been cooking, and smell that. I love the smell of the heat traveling through the vents the first time you turn it on in the fall. I love the hot woody smell of a sauna. I love the smell of the Korean Spa in Lynnwood, WA. I love the smell of coffee in the morning, and especially coffee in Italy. I love the smell of Rome, the smell of heat and even the smell of garbage. I remember returning from Italy and being fond of the smell of Pioneer Square in the morning in the summer because it reminded me of Italy, and then realizing that was because the streets smelled like urine. I still liked it. I love other bad smells, like manure, because it reminds me of home and hay and the farm. I love the smell of hamburgers at a ski slope. I love the whooshy smell of a new can of tennis balls. I love the smell of new clothes. I love the smell of a vintage clothes shop, or any thrift store, which is the smell of the possibility of treasure. Which is also the smell of sadness. I like passing someone in a crowd that smells like an old boyfriend and being whisked back in time for a moment. Now you are making out on a horsehair couch. I like the smell of a fair: elephant ear, roasted corn, Gravitron grease, prize chicken shit. When I was a kid I loved the way my Cabbage Patch kids smelled, especially the preemies; I loved sweet plastic. There are so many smells I love: salt air, lake water, campfire, cedar wood. My husband. Home.