Rubber cement & Lillies

Isaac's Spring Break is half way over, I can hardly believe it. And it is by far the BEST school break he's had yet! I remember last year's Spring Break he had such a difficult time with the transition that there was alot of screaming and yelling in our home, and only 1/4 of it was from me (ya, I am one of the mean mommies who occasionally yells at her child when the need/desire arises). Since we live in a duplex, after last year's Spring Break was over I made a huge batch of treats and took them over to our neighbors with a note of apology as a peace offering... I hated listening to it in my own home, and I'm sure it wasn't pleasant for them either!

This year has been much, much easier and our "fun" thing for this Spring Break has been to redecorate Isaac's room with Speed Racer pictures. So today I got out the rubber cement and spent a good hour or so pasting and cutting these pictures to get them ready to go on the wall. And as I'm inhaling these fumes, the smell reminded me of the first time I ever smelled rubber cement. I was in the 3rd grade and everyone in our class had made these little books (I don't remember what was in them) but I remember the teacher using rubber cement to paste the pages and the SMELL! Our books were covered with sticky shelf lining paper, and I remember mine was a small blue & white print of some kind. But I remember that was the first time I'd smelled that odor.

So I started thinking about other smells and how funny it is that a smell can trigger an automatic memory of something.

I love day-lillies. They're so beautiful and cheerful! Many years ago I was in the hospital and I was horribly sick, and I was there for a week. My Grandma cut me some beautiful lillies from her garden and brought them in a vase and I had them put in a spot in my room where I could admire them. Unfortunately, in such a small room, the scent became so over-powering that I had to ask my sister to take them home, and so today lillies remind me of the hospital and lillies became one of my sister's favorite flowers. That sucked.

I love the smell of the beach, that fishy-salty smell in the air. It reminds me of all the happy family day trips we'd take as kids, having fun in the water, looking for shells, and finding cool things hiding in the tide pools.

I love my nose.