ROUTINES

C is for cookie, coffee and Cindy.

6 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "C is for cookie, coffee and Cindy."

I didn't write in my Fortune Cookie journal all summer except maybe once. With Michael home and he and the Cabbage doing daily chores, I didn't have a reason to get up early on Saturdays. They got the grocery shopping done on Fridays. If I got up early on Saturday mornings it was to go to a yoga class. Which, I am not going to lie, was real nice. I'd get up early enough to shove a breakfast bar in my gut and then scooter out to one of my favorite studios. Sometimes I'd have coffee or juice with a yoga friend after class. Sometimes Michael would meet me for brunch someplace and then we'd spend the rest of the day scooting around town. Now that Michael is back in school, we are back to our normal routine where I get up early Saturday morning and do the grocery shopping while everyone still sleeps. 

Trust me when I say that I do not mind spending my Saturday mornings this way. I prefer to do the grocery shopping early and alone. No crowds and I spend less money because I only buy what's on the list. I go to Heirloom and order a breakfast sandwich and a cup of coffee. Then I sit at the counter and take my time sipping coffee and writing in my journal while nibbling on my sandwich. I do a bit of people watching. I do a bit of watching some of the employees roll out dough or measure sugar. I dance a little in my seat to whatever music happens to be playing. Mostly, I write. This is good because I need to be writing somewhere since I don't feel like writing here too much lately. The thing about the Fortune Cookie diary is that it's fiction and a story that I don't have to finish. Even if it turns out to be a total shit story, it is still serving a purpose. The Fortune Cookie diary forces me to use my imagination. It exercises my brain. Photography forces me to see things differently while writing forces me to think things differently. 

I worried when I sat down to write in the journal after spending the summer away that I would struggle. I thought I would just stare blankly at the page and listen the gears in my head clink and screech while trying to turn on rusty pinions. I felt for sure that this was an exercise I would not easily be able to pick back up. So I was surprised to fill up that page and wrap the text around the edges. I was surprised at how easily the story came to me and how I wrote so quickly at times that the words are illegible. It felt good. It felt right. And I know I'm not writing anything spectacular or profound. I am just writing a scene, a moment and I'm trying to really put an effort in describing that scene. Those gears start moving and I almost believe that I truly am a creative kind of person. I think for a moment that I could be an artist.

I think to myself that you can take the girl out of the liberal arts college but you can't take the liberal arts out of the girl.