connect. the. dots.

i'm trying out this new blog project that i saw on kim's blog and i'm planning to play along. basically a girl named Maegan at this blog hosts The Sunday Creative. She gives a one word topic to use as a creative prompt to do with whatever you like. this is great way to get your creative juices going!! definitely similar to things i have done in college or at second city to get ideas out there. (try it out!)

this week's topic: connect

have you ever noticed how a small thing such as the smell or sound of something can connect you back to a vivid moment in your life?

the biggest connection like this for me is music. no matter what i do, certain songs or bands connect my brain to either a person or time in my life. sometimes the associations are really random though. listening to u2 always reminds me of driving to work at 6am to Brookshire Brothers working in the Deli (yes probably my least fave job) because that summer i listened to a ton of u2.

but an even more odd connection....

during the summer sometimes i will get a whiff of gasoline but not the car kind, the kind of gas smell from a boat.. you know the smell? kinda mixed gas/oil? well not only do i like this smell along with regular gasoline (which i know is weird) but when i smell this i am always brought back to all the summers growing up we spent at Livingston Lake... so i googled some pics of Livingston Lake and was excited to find some of the memorable sights.

we sometimes would sit on the sidewalk in folding chairs fishing. mom and dad loved fishing really early with "stink bait" that literally smelled like $h!t. what was it made of?

i distinctly remember how excited i felt every summer the first time i saw these, but i also distinctly remember the feeling of leaving day. of packing up the travel trailer (yep we didn't really rough it from my memories, but when i was younger we stayed in tents) and the disappointment that summer was ending.

yep. CHOMP!

the broken bridge on the trails!

THE island!

the phone booth that i'm pretty sure Brandee & Ali used to call boys from :) i'm pretty sure i called Chad and Ashly Mc both from this phone and maybe even Ben later in high school.

i find it so fascinating that merely a whiff of something can bring me right back and connect me to these memories and so many more about the lake. playing dominoes, spades, speed, gin rummy, old maid, go fish... knee boarding... the bike trails!... learning to water ski... dad cooking eggs and bacon outside--i swear those were the best eggs and bacon i have ever had in my life... (oh snap that makes me hungry) the hot lifeguards at the pools... having to rinse off in the locker room showers before we could get in the water at the pool...??? why is that by the way??

sometimes the way i hear a makeup compact close makes me think of being lil and waking up to the sound of my mom putting on her makeup in the morning...

today i was thinking about how i had to pee at work and said in my head "i need to kill a mosquito" which shocked the heck out of me because thats a WAYYYY old inside joke between joe and i that i literally haven't thought about in a year or years. basically i was on the phone with him once and killed a mosquito and flushed it down the toilet but all he heard was the flush and didn't believe me that i hadn't just peed on the phone with him... random

summer always connects me back to thinking about Student Life Camp along with about a 100 songs from the summer of 2007.

drinking an appletini always reminds me of my first visit to PF Chang's ever when my friend Alissa turned 21 and i took a sip of her appletini and it burned my throat going down. of course now every time i eat at PF's i remember going there a lot when i visited Birmingham.

the smell an older air conditioner makes when it first turns on (i guess this is a freon smell i dont know) always makes me think of being at my Maw Maw's house and eating those strawberry candies wrapped in the paper that looks like a strawberry. Ali and i recently saw the sugar covered gummy orange slices and i remembered she used to always have those too!

my old apartment in austin always reminded me of the funky place bruce willis has to go back to in Pulp Fiction because his girlfriend forgot to grab his dad's watch when she was packing for their escape... haha.... so you get that i lived in a crappy apartment i guess eeep! i didn't really care honestly.

it is fascinating how much our past and present are connected whether we want it to be that way or not.

cheers!

m.