sun's up smells

Rwanda is making an early bird of me.

Mwaramutse neza from Kigali! The best things I've smelled here so far (besides my beloved tree tomato) include: herbs from the garden in our yard (basil, lemon dill, and cilantro), still-steaming rosemary rolls and sweet carrot bread made by my bread-baking marvel of a housemate, and the dirt roads after it rained. Here are some smells I've enjoyed reading about:

• Aaron Paul on his Breaking Bad co-star, Bryan Cranston's, smell: "To be honest, he smells like a freshly bathed unicorn on a summer day in Barcelona." 
• My friend Stephanie Santana's excellent close reading of We Need New Names: 

  NoViolet Bulawayo’s debut novel We Need New Names ends its first and last chapters with the same sensory detail: the alternately ‘dizzying’ and ‘delicious’ smell of Lobels bread. It is a smell that wafts through otherwise macabre scenes. In the first, a woman hangs dead in a tree and the smell is only imagined, as Darling (our narrator) and her young friends anticipate with delirious joy the bread they will buy by selling the dead woman’s shoes. In the last, it is a real, overwhelmingly delicious smell that accompanies the death of something that the children were looking for and wanted desperately to find. In the simple smell of fresh-baked bread we find joy, hope, death, desire.  

• I've been meaning to write something about the farts and hearts of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, but Willa Paskin said it all on Slate: 
  

  Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, TLC’s divisive reality hit about the antics of an energetic, self-identified redneck family, begins its second season on Wednesday night. To celebrate the show’s return, TLC has wedged scratch-and-sniff cards into issues of People and Us Weekly, and will prompt viewers to use them during the show’s premiere, possibly scratching to sniff bad breath, fish, rotten milk, a baby diaper, a fart, or maybe something more pleasantly aromatic—cheese puffs? The scratch-and-sniff is a goof that sounds about as enjoyable as eating the snot-flavored jelly beans from Harry Potter, but it effectively establishes just how the producers want us to feel about 7-year-old Honey Boo Boo and her family: that they are totally fun and totally gross. I’m with them on the former, but it’s the producers who are gross. 

•  Charles Baxter, on his writing routine, in the Daily Beast: 

  I work during the morning. I pace; I stare out the window. I sit with my head in my hands. If I can feel myself breaking out into a sweat, particularly from my underarms, and if I give off a noticeable body odor that even I can smell, I know the writing is going well.

smells like teen mom

 Leah & Amber and Farrah & Sophia and Tyler & Catelynn and Bentley & Maci

Farrah 

Sickly sweet perfumes, fruity-floral body sprays, and Victoria's Secret lotion--too much of all three. Antibacterial gel from a pump. Packaged foods. Tomato sauce. Sweet baby powder. Wood cleaner and the dry hay smell of the underside of an oriental rug. Hair product and lycra. Laundry detergent. Paper towel. Sometimes plum. 

Maci 

Ointment. More fruity floral perfumes, maybe some citrusy ones, too (ck one would suit her). Cut grass and other lawn smells, dirt and gravel. Denim and sweet lotion. That awful ex-boyfriend of hers probably smells amazing to Maci, and it's probably a challenge for her not to lean in and smell him when she puts their son in his arms, forgetting for a second what a jackass he is, until he opens his mouth. Then whatever he smells like, looks like, doesn't matter, he's brick for brains, and mean. Old gum and chewing tobacco. The new car smell of his truck preserved with the help of a rearview mirror ornament in the shape of his own fine face. 

Catelynn 

When Catelynn's fiancé Tyler interviews for a job at a local pizzeria, he's asked why, if his five-year plan has him graduating from college, does he want to work at this dinky pizza place, and he answers that he loves pizza so much. The owner protests, But you're too skinny! Tyler laughs, No, I love it! I eat it all the time. He smells like teenager deodorant and mint and clean sneakers. He also tells the owner, You gotta start somewhere, right? And when Tyler later gets the call saying he got the job, he beams and claps his hands together and says: I'm excited because I just love pizza so much! (Adorable.) So Catelynn and Tyler's apartment smells like day-old pizza. Oily cardboard, parmesan sprinkles, bits of garlicky crust. Warm.

Amber
Flypaper and vinyl, crumb-y carpet, self-tanner and all the associated products meant to elongate its cling. Mascara and huge plastic cups of soda, gone flat. Damp winter coat and aloe vera baby wipes. That one sad candle that Gary bought Amber when he tried to win her back in an earlier season, when he brought takeaway Cracker Barrel meatloaf and the scented gift-shop candle and set them up on a table in that terrible hotel room. And Amber said, Mmm, that smells good, Gary, and it was, as it always is, very difficult to watch.