Laurie Writes

I moved! Check me out at my new site...

LaurieWrites

posted by Laurie @ 11:09 PM

Joanna has a meme here.

posted by Laurie @ 9:40 AM

Olfactory Memory. How weird. I'm sitting at my desk, and I remember a smell. It smells like hot lunch at my kindergarten - a private school I only went to for one year, but seems to have made an impact on me. I don't have very many early memories. People recount memories from when they were younger than 10 in minute detail, and I feel very inadequate, as I have only flashes, if that much.

I wonder what made them stick?

Anyway, I don't remember where we ate hot lunch in this school, or what it was, but for a split second I remembered this SMELL, which I can only associate with this school. The elementary school I attended from 1st through 8th grade was Catholic, and poor, and we brown-bagged it, except for once a month hot-dog days. Imagine having a hot-dog day now. It would be impossible. Eat a plain dog - no low-sodium, no turkey dog, no tofu-dog options - with a Coke in the old-school glass bottle and a princely choice of Cheetos, Doritos or potato chips - and like it, kids. Or, perhaps more to the point, "like it, parents." It was a nitrate-laden nightmare, and we lived for it like fiends.

So I'm wondering now, why I remembered that smell today of all days, 30 years later, and more importantly, why it imprinted itself then? I remember other smells - my Nanny in church, who smelled powdery mostly when she hugged me to her as she sat in the pew while everyone else but us went to communion. ("Why don't you go to communion, Nanny?" I'd ask, every week. And every week, she'd say, "Because I said "BASTARD" and didn't go to confession.) Crayons everyone remembers because they're still around. Play-Doh. Duh. That's a tough one. But hot lunch when I was just a bitty thing of four, always the youngest in all of my classes? Weird.

posted by Laurie @ 9:21 AM

April 12, 2003

Today was such a gorgeous day, and I'm so sure that there were so many other things I could have done with it. There was a park somewhere calling my name....or a beach or something. Instead, I stayed home. It's likely that I needed this weekend, this weekend of absolute nothingness. There has been too much "somethingness" going on all day, every day, lately. And to actually have the afternoon free to take a nap today was golden. So I can only hope that there will be other sunny days, soon, that I can get out into and experience full-on. Hopefully, not alone.

I am getting most tired of these pop-up blocks, these fat billboards that attack my screen every few minutes, sometimes one on top of the other. The other pop-ups are annoying, of course, and even with the stopper software I have, they keep coming. These center-of-the-screen squares, though....the devil. One that comes up repeatedly says, "From Skinny Person to Fat Person", usually quickly succeeded by a thinner rectangle that says, kindly, "Dear Insecure" at the top! Who writes this stuff? Why does it appear on my computer screen all day? Maybe this is the message from the universe to GO OUTSIDE!!!!!!!!!!

Perhaps.

Anyway, this is my blog experiment. My name is Laurie, and I write. This is another outlet for me, and, like most things in my life, I have no plan. We'll just see how it goes this spring.

And now, in spite of my nap, I am yawning again and have freedom to sleep in a quiet house. Therefore, that's what I'm going to do!

posted by Laurie @ 9:08 PM