This weeks @bloghomework is our favorite scents and I was surprised at how many thoughts jumped into my head. My body has a difficult time processing scents, sounds, and well.. pretty much everything. Really, this just means I'm a bit oversensitive to smells and sounds and all that. With patience, my favorite scents have come to overpower the sensitivities, at least most of the time.
I've loved the smell of fresh brewed coffee ever since I can remember. When I was really young, I could (and did) sleep through pretty much anything: car crashes, hurricanes, cats attacking my face in my sleep, etc... My parents tried all kinds of tactics to wake me up, but nothing worked.. until the day my dad finally starting brewing coffee at home rather than buying it on his way back from the gym. I wasn't allowed to actually drink coffee until many many years later, but the rich, warm aroma would fill the house every morning and I would jump out of bed, run to the kitchen and beg my parents to let me try it. My mom was convinced I would hate the taste of coffee, since she and my sister preferred tea, so the answer was always no. That is, until my dad drove me to a summer camp without my mom in the car to stop him. Maybe he felt better that my first "coffee" was a Starbucks frap, but I was hooked. My mom was mad when she found out, but pretty soon dad would brew extra coffee for me, mixing in the cream and sugar so it would be ready for me as soon as I wandered into the kitchen.
Eventually, after moving out and away from both of my parents, I realized that if I close my eyes while the coffee brews I can still see myself as a little 8 year old, begging for coffee even though I was much too young to start. I can see my dad buying me my first coffee, or brewing it at home and mixing it for me with mom's mini-glare behind him. Sometimes I think it's silly to associate coffee with so many memories.. but I think I prefer it this way. Every little flash of memory from the scent of ground coffee beans is exactly what makes it so special to me.
I know it isn't just one scent, but to me bakeries smell like perfection.
As a child, I loved the aroma that would follow when passing the bakery section. Fresh baked cookies, newly decorated cakes, and soft warm breads were always being made. A few years ago, I started baking just for fun. I would find a bunch of recipes through StumbleUpon or Pinterest, wait for an event to come up, and use it as an excuse to bake. I started with a loaf of cinnamon apple cider bread, made by hand for Thanksgiving, and continued on to make mostly cupcakes. Pretty soon I realized it wasn't just one scent that had lured me to the bakery every time, but the collection of them all. I could smell the sugar being mixed into frostings, the yeast preparing for breadmaking, and the cupcakes or cookies fresh out of the oven. I moved from FL to CO to attend baking school. It threw me off a bit that there was a culinary class in the next kitchen, so the smell of chicken or fish would sometimes find its way into the mix. When it was just my class working on our baking, though, I was in scent heaven. We would work in groups on different projects so there would be cookies, cupcakes, pies, and sauces all being made at once.
My boyfriend introduced me to marijuana because he knew about my migraines and thought it could help (It wasn't until much later I opened up about all the other problems it can & does help me with). I'll admit, it took me awhile to get used to the many smells that weed can have. At first, it was too strong (as I've already mentioned.. super sensitive to these things) and too earthy. Over time, I realized I was less and less overwhelmed by the smell of even the more earthy strains. I also realized that all of my previous bad experience with the smell giving me worse headaches was actually because the idiots I had been friends with only had access to mucchhh lower quality. Seriously people. Quality matters.
It's been approx. 2.5 years since I started, I've had a variety of different strains and tried them all kinds of ways (joints, blunts, vaporizing, dabbing, homemade edibles, store-bought edibles). I've discovered a few favorites that I keep going back to (namely Master Kush and Purple Eurkle) and I honestly love the smell of most strains. To me, the smell of weed is almost as calming as smoking it.
