Looking for a Message

I was never one of those soccer moms sitting around the coffee shop on a Wednesday morning with a group of other moms, all of us in running shorts and ponytails. Talking about how overbooked our kids are for the summer. Instead, I use to be a lone photographer/writer who sat at a table nearby soaking up their conversation like a sponge.

On this day, I may be sitting at a table nearby, but I am only half interested in their conversation. I am busy reviewing the images I have taken so far for the morning with my camera.

For my outing this week - Exercise No. 26 from the book Shooting with Soul - A Message from the Universe. I am searching for a message from someone, anyone.

INSTRUCTIONS

• Photographing messages from the universe is a simple and soulful process. First and foremost, you need to slow down enough to notice what the universe has to offer you. 

The universe is saying it is raining, go sit in the coffee shop and have a snack. Forced slow down.

• Once something catches your eye and touches your heart, pay attention to how the light looks in that environment. Make sure that the message is clear and not obscured by shadows or glare.

No worries there since it is gray and overcast, not a chance of a shadow or a glare.

• Eliminate any clutter from the frame that might interfere with the main interest of your shot and focal point -- then shoot away.

I don't like cluttery frames, so I will be good there.

On the practical side, this should be an easy exercise. I love words. I love typography. But I don't put a lot of stock in messages from the universe. But yet, I do believe that nothing happens "out of the blue".  Maybe that is my way of being comfortable with messages from the universe.

Insight from this lesson

I loved doing this lesson, compared to the first one, while I was doing it. But I find in my contentment with the lesson it is harder to shape fresh insights about photography and about myself. Apparently, I need frustration and angst to write a good story.

Listening Without Judgement

I spent three days up north this last week. My husband had to go for work, and he invited me along. Of course, then he grumbles about how he has to work, while I get to drive to all my favorite places, photograph my favorite buildings, and drink wine by the lake on a beautiful early fall afternoon.

While up north, I planned to do the second of five Listening exercises:

"Seek out a public or urban environment - a local coffee shop, a busy street corner, your rooftop. Again, for 10 minutes listen to the sounds around you. Try to take it all in, with equal value, without judgement. What do you notice?"

I planned to do this at the coffee shop where I wrote the very last Coffee Shop Chronicle in the series, way back in April of 2015. Surely, one of the mornings it would rain while I was up north, it was in the forecast.

The mornings generally started cloudy with a hint of the promised rain, but usually by nine o'clock the sun started to peek through. Then the rural farmsteads of Leelanau Peninsula called much louder than sitting in a coffee shop.

As luck would have it though, I had to meet my husband on the last day at a coffee shop in downtown Manistee. His sales rep. was dropping him off and I would pick him up to begin our two hour drive home. I arrived early, exhausted from my morning of photographing farm buildings and wandering cold, windy beaches. Since this coffee shop also serves sandwiches and soup, I figured I would eat lunch there and complete the listening exercise at the same time.

When I use to write the Coffee Shop Chronicles, I engaged in two creative skills - observation and eavesdropping. So I guess listening has been a bigger part of my writing life than I thought.

The hard part of this exercise is the No Judgement, that's all the Coffee Shop Chronicles were was judgement, yes funny judgement, but judgement all the same. And as I sat down with my bowl of Pasta Fagioli soup, two ladies at the other end of the shot-gun style cafe did nothing to help me let go of it. They were sitting next to each other at a small round table each talking animatedly on their phones to other people.

I really wanted a table in the window, but both were full. So I sat as close as I could hoping that eventually one of the gentleman would leave. As I was eating my soup, one of them got up, but he was just going to get a refill on his coffee. What I noticed about him was his camouflage shorts and his camouflage Crocs.

Just as I was finishing my soup, the quiet guy directly behind me at the other window table got up and left. I quickly gathered my purse, phone, tiny notebook, empty soup bowl and scooted over to his relatively clean, empty table. I wanted to make sure to beat the two ladies sitting at the table next to me, in case they had the same idea.

I brought my empty soup bowl to the dirty dishes pan, returned to my table and readied myself for ten minutes of judgement free listening.

I set the timer on my phone, cradled my bent head in one of my hands, and closed my eyes. These are the things I heard:

• The radio - I did not recognize the song. 
• The two ladies just below me talking to each other.
• The buzz of the cooler holding bottles of pop for sale that was right behind the two ladies.
• Ice being scooped into plastic glasses.
• The voices of the two girls working behind the counter.
• Camo Croc guy behind me snapping his 3-ring binder shut.
• Clink of the dirty dishes being taken out of the bin.
• One of the ladies below me telling a story about somebody knocking on her screen door and she demonstrated by knocking on the wood table.
• Pans banging behind the counter.
• My pen tapping on the table as I was getting anxious for the ten minutes to be done.
• The whoosh of the front door opening and closing. 
• The building of steam for the latte machine.
• Me chewing a potato chip.
• Chair legs scraping across the wood floor.
• The two ladies getting up and leaving - I could hear much better once they left. 
• The ding of my timer going off. 

The ten minutes really went faster than I expected. I did feel a little weird trying to sit there with my eyes closed, although I kept my head bent most of the time.

I was surprised at all the sounds I could pick out, given that the ladies' conversation seemed to be the predominant noise. The only sound I was wrong about was Camo Crocs guy's 3-ring binder. It was really a three-hole punch.

Up next is Exercise Number Three:

Find a natural/green space within your town or city - a public park or garden or a tree in your yard. Close your eyes and listen for 15 minutes this time. How is the quality of sound different in this location compared to the location in exercise #2?

And I thought ten minutes was kind of long...but...I do have a place in mind.

The Hour of Homecoming

From the moment we came over the rise, on the roller coaster road that is M-109, in the heart of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, I knew I was home. Above us stretched a bright blue sky, on each side of us were sun-bleached sand dunes with tufts of beach grass sprouting from them, and ahead of us sat the most photogenic weathered white barn I had ever seen.  I wasn't a photographer then, just a snapshot taker. I didn't know anything about good light or bad light, composition, POV, the golden hour, ISO; it would be another fifteen years before those words would enter my vocabulary. I just knew I had to get out and take a picture with my pocket-size Fuji film camera.

I have lived in Michigan all my fifty years, never living farther than twenty miles from my childhood home. Somehow though,  I knew that this "up north" place, three hours from where I grew up, was where my heart lived. For twenty-five years I have been trying to figure out what it is about this place, why it captivates me so. With each return, I dig a little deeper into it and into myself.

Our family of three opinionated adults and one sassy golden retriever, just returned from a week of vacation in this place of homecoming.

Vacations tend to fall into one of two camps for me. Either they are vacations of adventure, where I have to figure the place out, consult maps, make wrong turns, get yelled at. Or they are vacations of discovery, where the place is already understood and instead I have time and space to explore who I am in it.

We tend to stay in the same small area every time we go up north, either nestled on the edge of a small lake, or the edge of a golf course. This time, our daughter, one of the opinionated adults, convinced us to try someplace new, father north than we usually stay, located in the middle of farm country, open fields on every side, a step out of our comfort zone. This put me farther from the places that I always photograph, favorite places, another step out of comfort.

Having learned the importance of the "golden hour", I was up before the sun every morning. The sassy golden retriever, hearing the creak of the wooden floorboards, joined me. I would put on my winter coat, my warm paisley rain boots, secure my headlamp to my head, and open the back door to the frozen landscape. We would crunch through the refrozen snow, climb the rise to the west of the house, and wander along the ridge line. He would pretend to track wild animals until he finally did his business. Then, we would turn back toward the warm glow of the house so he could eat and return to bed with my daughter. I would make tea in the white mug I had claimed for the week, write in my journal, then gather my camera gear that was waiting by the door, and head out into the predawn light to scrape the ice from the windows of my car.

To be continued...

Part Two of this will be next week. I have too much I want to say for one post, and too many photographs I want to share. Until then here is a short film of our first day of vacation, you can get a good sense of the farmhouse and area around it.


Leelanau - April 21, 2018 from Sarah Huizenga on Vimeo.

The Secret Life of Sadie Powers

Prompt: Citrus

August 2015, I participated in Susannah Conway's August Break, a published list of daily prompts meant to build community on social media. You were suppose to take a picture each day that somehow symbolized that prompt and then post it on Instagram or FaceBook. Always the overachiever, I decided to take the list and do thirty-one days of self-portraiture photography.

Prompt: Sweet Delights

My blogging adventure began after taking the NOW YOU e-course on self-portrait photography, that was six years ago. My personality is not one that should like being in front of the lens, although INFP's top two professions tend to be writer or actor...hmmm. I chose photography in the first place, for my life after work, so I could be behind the lens. But something from that very first class sucked me into this creative, alternate world.

Prompt: In the Distance

That August, I fell head-over-heels in love with the challenge of story creating, finding my best body angles, mastering focus, and scene set-ups. I gave the series it's own hashtag #herlifeinvignettes. I began to think of myself as a character.

Prompt: Notebook

One morning while writing in my journal, my character suddenly had a name...Sadie Powers. I have no idea where it came from. I don't know any Sadie's or anybody with the last name Powers, but Sadie Powers it was.

She seemed to come to me as a muse, a cross between my favorite great-aunt Viola and Vivian Maier, the reclusive street photographer, who I had recently learned about. My great-aunt instilled in me a deep fascination for an earlier age, a love for unique(old) places and things, hard-to-find treasures. Vivian's photographs emulated that era of curiosity for me. There are actually a lot of similarities between my great-aunt and Vivian Maier, both never married, both were devoted to children, both loved to travel, both documenters of a vanishing time through collecting memorabilia and photography.

Prompt: Two

Initially, I thought I was suppose to write a book about Sadie and her adventures. But, if I have learned anything about myself in the last two years, it is that while I am capable of writing, I am not capable of sitting for long periods of time at my desk. For over two years, Sadie has been patiently biding her time.

Since I began making short films at the beginning of this year, Sadie has snuck down out of the attic, ready to start her adventures once again.

The following is Sadie's film debut...


Idle Hour from Sarah Huizenga on Vimeo.

 It will be interesting to see how her story unfolds...

Prompt: Close Up

I have returned to prompt lists found on Pinterest, hunting down costumes and props, and developing the story.

Simple Truths

"Creativity embeds knowledge so that it can become practice. We move what we're learning from our heads to our hearts through our hands. We are born makers, and creativity is the ultimate act of integration -- it is how we fold our experiences into our being. Over the course of my career, the question I've been asked more than any other is, "How do I take what I'm learning about myself and actually change how I'm living?"...after lots of research and interviewing hundreds of creatives, I've come to believe that creativity is the mechanism that allows learning to seep into our being and become practice."                                                                          ~Brene Brown

Simple truth: When I feel stressed or overwhelmed in my everyday life, I seek solitude and calm in my creative life.

For the last two weeks, I have been feeling a little overwhelmed. My kitchen has been in chaos. The choices for countertops and backsplash have gone so smoothly, but we are faltering in our flooring and lighting selections. Lighting is difficult to envision. Certain fixtures look tempting when hanging amongst hundreds of others in the store, but by itself in my unfinished kitchen, held up by my husband's hand above the peninsula, I am less sure if that is THE right one. There has been plenty of buying and returning in the last couple of weeks.

Simple truth: Because of this sense of feeling overwhelmed, I have been unable to do any filming for the past two weeks. The films I make require planning and storyboarding. This is something that comes fairly easily when my mind isn't overloaded with utilitarian decisions.

Simple Truth: Instead of filmmaking, it has been easier to grab my camera, jump in the car and go on a photo adventure. This leaves the planning and shot list to chance and happenstance, instead of placing the burden of more decisions on me.

Simple Truth: If I don't have an idea for this blog space by Thursday, there will be no blog post on Sunday. I work better being early instead of late.

Simple Truth: I am not afraid to try new things until I find something that works. In the spirit of trying something new, for the month of March, I am going to try and find my inspiration spark early in the week.

Sunday afternoon I sat down with my new book, Just Write One Thing Today - 365 Creative Prompts to Inspire You Every Day, flipping through the pages looking for inspiration. A couple caused small stirrings of interest, like: Flavors - Write down five of your favorite drinks, or Old Watch - Describe an old watch that has been covered in cobwebs in a box in the attic. Both of those could have been fun, but just not quite the right one. Finally on Day 280, I found the one that I couldn't stop thinking about: Evergreen Forest - Imagine you are in an evergreen forest. Describe the sights, smells, and sounds of your surroundings.

Monday morning, I loaded my tripod and camera into the car before the eight o'clock hour and set off for the Spruce Loop.

Simple Truth: I am a beach shooter, not a forest shooter. I love negative space. I had to work harder to find it in the tangle of trees.

Simple Truth: If you have made it to the end of this post and all you remember are serene, morning-lit pictures of an evergreen forest, that's alright. I take the photographs to share with you, but I write the words for me. I have taken what was in my head, used my hands, and moved it to my heart.

Do you have an evergreen forest where you could go for a walk this week?

In Other News...

For all my angst, the kitchen is actually coming along well. The countertops are in, and I LOVE them. The tile backsplash is up and I LOVE that too. The cabinets have been "refreshed" and look brand new again. Not bad for thirty year old cabinets. I spent Tuesday and Thursday painting over the Robin's Egg Blue the walls use to be. They are now a very neutral Alabaster. Outlet covers are still in the deciding stage. Flooring has been decided and I will get that ordered this week. The lighting saga continues...

Serendipitous moment at the grocery store this week. My path crossed with another blogging friend who I have never met before. She is @kateterhaar on Instagram. We have been friends for years on FaceBook and Instagram. She is originally from where I live, and happened to be in town for a conference and to visit with her sister. The chances of both of us being in the produce aisle at little past eight on a Friday morning are pretty slim. Meeting Kate felt like talking with an longtime friend.

Happy adventures this week my friends!

Washed Ashore

I am a great collector of photography challenge lists on Pinterest, and every time I discover a new writing prompt book I have to buy it and add it to my ever growing collection. What I have yet to find is a book or list that combines both a prompt for words to write and photographs to compose in one neat package.

Last week I bought this book after looking through a few pages and liking the prompts that were listed in it. I can tell that I haven't been writing much lately, because I am overusing words like beautiful, wonderful, fabulous, and joyful. As a creative who enjoys writing, I can do better than that. So I bought the book with the intention of getting back to a daily practice of fifteen minutes of wild writing. If you are wondering what wild writing is, you can read my post about it here. I am not good at too many long term sustained practices, but I am good at returning to practices such as wild writing, photograph class lessons and such.

The prompt I chose to write about on Tuesday was this one: Washed Ashore - Write down five objects that might be found washed up on the seashore lakeshore. I have spent enough time photographing at my local state park where a plethora of items wash up on the shore in any given season, to have a pretty good idea of five things I could write about. But...I am someone who would rather be out adventuring than sitting at my wintertime desk and thinking up found items to write about. I wanted to go out and find those five objects.

Since the tile guy was coming on Wednesday to put up my new kitchen backsplash, I figured that Wednesday would be a good morning to go to the beach and photograph washed ashore treasures. Once a level of trust has been established with your tradespeople, being in the house while they work is about as uncomfortable as sitting in your underwear watching paint dry. You don't want to talk to them, and they don't want to talk to you. That level of trust has been reached with my kitchen people, so I left Dave to cut and apply tile, while I went to the beach.

Tuesday, after I had written for fifteen minutes on Washed Ashore, and decided that I wanted to go to the beach and photograph the five items, I remembered David duChemin's photography class The Compelling Frame. The last time I worked on a lesson was December 10, 2017. This knowledge is easily obtained when you date your homework.

I had left off on Lesson Six - Perspective and Exploring POV. It wasn't that I didn't want to do the lesson. What I wanted to do was the lesson outside. In December, January and February it has been too snowy and cold to be outside for any period of time long enough to photograph objects from at least six different angles. Wednesday's forecast was partly cloudy and mid-40's. With the proper clothing and gear, I could easily spend an hour or more at the beach laying on the ground, shooting from above, from a distance and up close.

I have also learned to throw my expectations to the wind. What I want to find and what wants to find me are often two very different things. I am always blessed when I let things find me.

With some clever creative thinking I have been able to make my own exercise combining words and photographs in a refreshing new way.

Scene & Story - September 2017

September marks the start of my favorite season ~ the Learning Season. I never enjoyed it as a kid, but I loved it as a mother.

I was not an outstanding student, especially in math, there I slipped to the bottom of the pool; but English, English was my life saver. I understood and excelled in reading and given time, I probably would have excelled at writing as well.

When September started this year, I felt compelled to get back to some writing exercises. I scoured my board on Pinterest that held photography/writing prompt lists and picked the one that felt right. Conveniently it was a September Photo A Day list, but I picked it because I loved the first prompt - Music. On September 1st, I sat down at my desk with my word and revived a writing exercise I learned a couple of years ago when I took Laurie Wagner's writing class Telling True Stories. The writing practice is called Wild Writing, fifteen minutes of continuous writing on your chosen word or phrase, pen never leaving the page. Don't try to make sense or correct or edit yourself, just write.

I spent the first two days writing about how I didn't want to write, how I would rather go check the laundry or wash the dishes. In the final two minutes, I would write something about Music. On the third day, I had cleared all that other junk out of my head and could focus on writing something about music. I stuck with the topic day after day as more and more memories continued to emerge. The best one was remembering music class in elementary school, and the blue milk crate that contained the fun instruments like finger cymbals, maracas, and my favorite - the little silver triangle with the silver striker. I even remembered my music teacher's name, which led to a Google search. I learned she had passed away in 2008, had never married but was an awesome aunt, and spent most of her years teaching 2nd grade, not music.

While I dip my toe in and out of writing, I remain fully submerged in photography, so I thought it would be fun to find a little silver triangle and striker and have my daughter hold it so I could photograph it to go with the story I was writing. Of course, I couldn't have a brand new triangle, which I am sure I could have easily found. Oh no, I needed a vintage silver triangle, so off to the antique store I went, and after five antique stores I still hadn't found one.

About this time an email came into my inbox from Laurie Wagner. She was starting a brand new, self-paced e-course called 27 Days of Wild Writing. A daily video with a daily writing prompt for 27 days. Well sign me up, I wasn't getting very far on my own. I am currently on Day 19 and when I finish, I plan to start all over again. What I wrote last month on a prompt will be completely different than what I write this month. That's the beauty and the frustration of life, it is always changing.

So what does the photograph at the beginning of this post have to do with this story? Absolutely nothing, or maybe everything...

An InLinkz Link-up

The Coffee Shop Chronicles - A New Beginning

It has been two years since I wrote my last Coffee Shop Chronicle. New coffee shops have continued to sprout up everywhere. Two new ones have opened just this year in my own town, that adds to the three, non-chain fabulous coffee shops we already have.

I happen to be sitting in one of these new coffee houses as I write this. Today is Monday, June 19, 2017 and it's my birthday. I am still one birthday scone away from that momentous half century mark, not that I am terrible worried about it. My forties have been adventure filled, I expected nothing less from my fifties.

Being a Monday, I should be getting groceries and catching up on laundry, but it's my birthday and those things can wait until tomorrow. Instead I started my day with birthday love from my family, a walk at the beach, and then an hour long massage. And now here I am, at The 205 Coffee Bar, preparing for a return to The Coffee Shop Chronicles.

I have no idea if I will be able to write these stories again, even though many things have been pointing in this direction the past several months. I am afraid, afraid that the stories that once were so popular amongst my readers, will not be the same. But they can't be the same, I am not the same, a lot of life has happened in two years. I am a different writer than I was two years ago. I must remember; you can never go back, your only options are standing still or pushing forward. I chose forward.

Recently, I read an article in the Spring issue of Artful Blogging by Nicole Knutsen, titled Playing Shop Girl. In the article, she has me imagine my blog/website as one of many storefronts on internet Main Street. She asks the questions: How would you design it? What would you sell? Who would be your customers? Those questions got my creative mind churning. These were questions I had read before, but I always struggle with the answers. My stumbling block is what to sell, selling not being my focus. I started making a list of answers to these questions, and suddenly it became clear. Just because it's a storefront on internet main street doesn't mean it has be a retail gift shop.

This week I am beginning to build my website. I have known for a while that I have outgrown this space. As I continue to receive publication writing requests, I need more than just a blog, I need a website. The new site will be paisleyrainboots.com, I bought the domain name last night. While I can't serve you a cup of freshly brewed coffee, I can design a website that feels like a coffee shop. A place with industrial concrete floors and a gallery of my painterly altered photographs on the white shiplap walls. Large, reclaimed barn wood harvest tables with maps spread out over them will fill the middle of the shop.  We will gather around those tables planning adventures together and sharing stories. At the far end of the room will be a large, field stone fireplace surrounded by leather couches and comfy chairs. On one of the couches will lie a floppy-eared, furry friend, ready to listen to anyone's troubles in exchange for gentle strokes of the fur (I know you can't have dogs in places that serve food, but it's my coffee shop). This will be a place to return to again and again, a place of creative inspiration.

The new website will also be the perfect place for the return of The Coffee Shop Chronicles, stories from other coffee gathering places as I work to create my own virtual coffee shop. Eventually this blog will move there too, because I am nothing without my photography. It will be hard to leave this place that I have called my creative home for the past five years, so many stories of life, growth and loss. There will be a link to here on the new website: My Blog - The Early Years, because I can't let it go completely.

I will keep you posted when the new website is up and running and the first new Coffee Shop Chronicle is ready to be published.

Scene & Story - April 2017

Everybody's doing a brand new dance, now.

(Come on Baby, do the loco-motion)

I know you'll get to like it if you give it a chance, now.

(Come on Baby, do the loco-motion)

The song comes on the radio and I can't help singing along. Not out-loud of course, but mouthing it with all my might.

Today feels like a good day for antiquing. The rain has finally stopped, the sun is shining. I am on the hunt for things that make me happy. 

I am wandering the aisles of our local antique store. Fascinated by the items that find their way to vendors' booths. There are the objects I remember from my childhood; the avocado-green bun warmer my mom always kept our hamburger buns in, the black metal lunchpail with the silver ribbed thermos that my dad carried to work everyday. I wonder how these memories can be antiques, but then I remember that I am almost fifty, and these items were around before I was. 

I am on the hunt for a couple of specific treasures. First is a table for my daughter's dining room, we just finished painting the room, and now she is extra aware of how empty the space is with the much lighter color on the walls. She is anxious to get a table so she can stop eating her meals on top of the cabinet that covers the radiator. There was a time when I couldn't drag her into an antique store, who would want to buy something old and used. But now she understands the quality and craftsmanship that went into those old pieces. Her Pinterest boards are full of timeless antique objects. With age comes wisdom.

The second treasure I am hunting for is something I am always hunting for: green depression glass plates. I saw some once being used in a coffee shop and I fell in love with them.

There are a couple of table possibilities here, so I snap pictures with my phone and text them to my daughter. There is nothing else to do with that now, except wait. 

I am in the last aisle at the last booth and there in the open display case are two green, oval depression glass plates with matching cups. I lift them out and hold them in my hand, they are perfect. I look for a price, both on the plates and on the cups, no price. Then I see six more oval plates on the bottom shelf of the case, maybe they have a price, no such luck. One of the owners walks by, I stop her and ask about the price. She says, "Oh that gal is here today, I'll go get her for you." Hallelujah!

The booth owner comes to her space and I show her the plates and cups. She says, "I was just using those for display since there are eight plates but only two cups, I didn't think anybody would buy them." The cups are a bonus to me, I want the plates. She says, "I will gladly sell them to you, if you don't mind not having all the cups. How about $20 for the whole lot?" Sold!

Come on, Come on
Do the loco-motion with me

**In April I participated in Susannah Conway's April Love. I am also doing the #the100dayproject - This year I am doing 100 days of writing prompts. This photo and story were from the April Love prompt Patterns.

An InLinkz Link-up

Make A Wish

Can you make a wish in a fountain that has no water? Is it the water that makes a wish come true, is it the penny, is it the fountain? Or is it the person who believes in magical things.

Standing with penny in hand, ready to throw, I ponder this thought.

The fountain in front of me is filled with last autumn's leaves, crumpled candy wrappers, and pennies from the past, but no water. Will adding my penny make any difference?

What things will I wish for if I throw my penny?

I wish...
--to stop trying to figure out either/or and be content being both a photographer and a writer
--for a long and happy marriage
--for my daughter to find someone who cherishes her. Don't we all deserve that?
--to travel near and far
--to have a dog like my dear Scout again someday
--to have a cottage on a small lake with a dock, where magical things happen
--to be involved in art retreats for women

We don't get all our wishes, and some of our wishes will change over time, but we must keep collecting those pennies and tossing them in fountains, whether they have water or not.

Pleasures

I type the word Pleasures into the search bar at the top of my Pinterest page, a little afraid of what I am going to find. My writing directive for the day is Pleasures, and my notebook of pleasurable ideas is a little soggy at the moment, so I thought I would look and see what brings other people pleasure.

I click enter. The first photograph is of a well thought-out picnic on a riverbank; on a salmon-colored tablecloth sets a wicker picnic basket with a french baguette peeking out the top. There is another baguette on a wooden cutting board, partially sliced. There is a stack of salmon-colored salad bowls awaiting the freshly torn lettuce in the serving bowl next to them. Multi-colored cherry tomatoes sit on a cream-colored snack plate. Six glass jars hold various salad toppings. Salmon-colored linen napkins, along with real silverware are ready and waiting to be used. I find pleasure in this idlic scene, especially if someone else made all the food and laid it out for me.

Continuing down the page of pleasures, I see there are mostly pictures of food, apparently food brings a lot of pleasure.

Then there are fuzzy, yellow ducklings walking in a line down a perfectly mulched garden path, lush green grass on either side of the pathway. That would bring me pleasure too until one of the ducklings poops on the perfect path and ruins my photographic moment.

The next non-food photograph, sort of, is of three kids sitting on the tailgate of a vintage, red delivery truck, half slices of juicy, red watermelon in their hands. Their faces and shirts are amazingly juice free.

As I look at all these flawless photographs, I know that none of them would be the things that  bring me true pleasure, except maybe the picnic. But mine would be paper plates, plastic silverware, an old faded quilt, plastic red Solo cups filled with a favorite white wine, and plastic containers with fresh pasta salads from a local deli. Sitting on the faded, old quilt would be my husband and myself enjoying a perfect date day.

Lists

When I am feeling stuck I like to make lists. They bring a sense of calm and order to my life. There is something about writing my tasks down, getting them done, and crossing them off, that gets my life flowing again.

I have recently started a new weekday routine. I make two lists each morning. The first is called Domestic Tasks and the second is called Creative Tasks. On each list I write down things I would like to accomplish for the day. I usually start with creative tasks because I am my most creative in the morning, and I feel better about those nasty domestic tasks if I have been creative first.

I know there are apps on my phone for this kind of list making, but I prefer making my lists on separate small yellow legal pads. Writing in pencil, numbering each task and when it is completed, crossing the task off with a colorful Sharpie marker. Both lists sit at the end of my kitchen counter so I have to walk past them numerous times throughout the day.

Lately the Domestic Task list has been longer than the Creative Task list. At first I thought it was because I was letting the Domestic list rule, but then I realized I have actually been accomplishing many of the things that have long been on the Creative list. Now I am doing things that should have been part of my daily routine all along: writing, photographing, walking, art journaling, selecting photos to be printed. I am between photography e-courses at the moment, so I don't have to add daily assignments to the list, but I have finished all of the work in both of my recent on-line courses thanks to my Creative Task list, something that rarely ever happens.

They say it takes twenty-one days to form a habit. I wonder if that is longer when you take weekends off. Weekends are just for fun.

**Reminder - The next Scene & Story blog link-up will be this coming Sunday, April 2. Wondering what Scene & Story is? Visit the last link-up here.