Oh, what to do, what to do…. Turns out I always have too much to do on any given day.  So much stuff to do, I feel like my head will implode if  I don’t write it down somewhere.  Bombarded with chores, appointments, sports practices, classes, trips to Target and on and on. Oh, the inanity! So, what do I do? I make to-do lists, of course. Nothing says “procrastinating loser” like a to-do list. I am a Virgo plus I have OCD, so by default I have to make lists. I even have lists that have listed on them “see other list.”

Within my increasingly aging brain rattles anything from “Julia–dentist thurs @ 9 am” to “milk, bread, coffee” to “lose 10 pounds!!!!” I have to get this stuff out, so naturally I write it down. (Julia might make it to the dentist on time and we might have coffee in the morning, but the losing of the ten pounds never seems to happen. Maybe I’m tricking myself into thinking I’m taking action just because I wrote the words down? Or maybe the extra exclamation points mean I’ll have greater success?)

What’s amusing about to-do lists is I usually have about 10 or 12 little lists going at once. I find them scattered everywhere, crumpled up in a drawer, stuck under a magnet on the fridge, on the floor with my son’s drawing of a dinosaur scrawled across it. Most of the time I stick them in my jeans pocket and find them in the dryer days later, all faded and torn. And I’ve noticed all of these hundreds of to-do lists that I’ve made over my lifetime all amount to the same general things, over and over. Apparently I need to buy more milk, bread and coffee. You’d think I’d remember these items after all this time.  Or my lists always have a just out of reach  huge goal, like getting my master’s degree or losing that same damn ten pounds.  But yet, I still continue to write it down. My husband has never made a list in his life.  He just “does” things, go figure.  This is why I love making lists, it takes all the pressure off of me to actually do anything about it, at least for a little while. Which reminds me, I need to grab a pen and write down: post blog, pick up some more milk and lose…five pounds, yeah, five will work.