favorite smells

i have horrible eyesight, but have good hearing. i also like to smell things.

one of my favorite smells is after someone blows out a match. i guess it reminds me of happy times, when someone was celebrating a birthday and their candles were just lit. the after smell of birthday candles is also nice. sometimes when i'm feeling fancy i'll light a scented candle in the bathroom (cranberry chutney, for the holidays) and it's satisfying when i blow out the candle and the smell of the smoke wafts in the air. it's almost better than the candle smell itself.

i also really like the smell of finger paint. again, i think that just dates back to happy times when i was finger painting as a preschooler. i hadn't finger painted in years but when visiting a sunday school classroom a few years back upon a good whiff of the stuff i was suddenly flooded with a host of good memories.

baking pizza is also excellent, as is roasting coffee. fresh grass, new books, interior of my car, christmas trees, and candy corn are also among my favorites.

for awhile i was convinced that my roommate was making meth because of the strong smells coming from her room. i had mentioned the smells to my friend where he casually threw around the term "meth lab" and my imagination took it from there. it consistently smelled like paint thinner and other assorted chemicals. i neurotically dreamed up the many ways i would confront her as well as a few scenarios where her lab might blow up and i would have to use my emergency ladder to climb out of my room because the rest of the house had erupted into a big fat fireball. one day my paranoia got the best of me and i kind of pushed in the door into her room to peer inside and discovered that her meth lab was just a vast assortment of burning incense. fyi, i found out later from another friend that a hallmark smell of a meth lab is "really strong cat urine." i don't even know what that means. lab or not, her room is still not one of my favorite smells.

what is your favorite smell?