a writing exercise

1. Write down the first word that you think of, right now, and write about it for five minutes. Stop, at five minutes on the nose, mid-word if you must.

2. Take the last letter of the last word (or half word) that you wrote and think of a word that begins with that letter. Write down that word and write about it for five minutes.

3. Repeat step 2 as many times as you feel necessary to get the creative juices flowing.

smell
i think often about how certain smells are associated with certain times of the year or even certain times in my life. the hard part is that i usually can't recall them on command, and i couldn't tell you off the top of my head which smells come with each season. but every once in a while a scent will hit me, tickling my olfactory sense and triggering some memory, whether vivid or faint.
like, the smell of coffee reminds me of walking into disney's california adventure, which is a place near and dear to my heart. and, for some reason, it always smelled like coffee when we walked under that golden gate bridge.
or, yesterday, as the clouds rolled into provo to signal impending rain and that clean muggy smell permeated the air, i was again flooded with images. of carefully sidestepping big gushing crawling slimy worms that confetti the sidewalk. or of curling up in my bed under my big green fluffy precious moments blanket, good book in hand and fuzzy sock on foot. the smell of rain means a bath for the world.

if my doorbell was like this, my feelings would be more certain

world-d-doorbell
pretty much since we moved in seven years ago, our doorbell at home has been on the fritz. this isn't too distressing, by any means, because the previous owners had one of those really annoying melodious doorbells--ding dong ding dong, ding ding ding dong. my first instinct, when i get to a door, is to knock anyway. knocking can be loud, i grant you that, but it is mostly relegated to the door area. the doorbell, however, is more intrusive. when you push it, you know there is a little box situated somewhere in the house that will probably wake up a baby from a nap or something. my little brother's twerpy friends used to come to our door seeking him out and, instead of knocking like polite little boys, they would ring the doorbell incessantly. my feelings about doorbells are uncertain.