My life is exhausting. It’s like some bizarre calendar-scheduling-highlighter-and-sticky note-obsession that will require electroshock therapy at some point. I have something like four calendars going all at once (and you thought you needed Happy Pills? Get in line, Sister). As if that alone weren’t sick enough, I’m compelled to fill them all up. An empty calendar is a sad Charlotte.
See, the problem is that there are these ridiculously tiny calendar squares that hardly hold a word or two, and I have my entire life recorded in that space, jammed in there like a fat lady in a bikini--stuff spilling out of the sides and over the top; it's an ugly sight to behold.
To keep it all straight I have developed a color-coded system.
My mother lives with us, so her business is written in red ink. Things like her medication schedule and doctor’s appointments and shopping excursions for supplies and when to order more medical supplies and when to refill prescriptions and when I did This Procedure and when I did That Application and when she had What Pills. Oh, and I track her blood pressure and SAT levels and pain medications in there somewhere too.
Then there’s black ink for work, where I have this strange part-time schedule that involves regular hours and filling in for my co-worker’s vacations, plus we have these flexible hours sometimes. It’s a mass of scribbling on the checkerboard of the calendar pages.
In bright green ink there is the rotating schedule for the nurse who comes to sit with Mother and Mother’s brothers and sisters who all come and sit when I need to get out and about. That’s crammed in there sideways sometimes actually written on top of other things.
We can't forget my personal stuff written in pink letters like meetings for the seventy different things I’m involved in outside and inside of church, hair cuts, scrapbook crops, baby showers, weddings, contractor meetings, WMU, and church.
And then there is the topic of the The Husband’s schedule, which is recorded in blue with mileage and meetings and outreach and deacon’s meetings and church events and who’s in what hospital and what they are having done to them or what’s wrong with them (no, I don’t write about all of your personal psychoses on a 1-inch by 1-inch square, so you’re secrets are safe--even if I did write them down, no one could read them).
And the kids. My Great God in Heaven, the Kids.
There’s so much of this business to write down that it’s written like a big explosion of ink. School parties and field days and field trips and report cards and parent/teacher conferences and orthodontist appointments and dentist appointments and check ups and illnesses and gymnastics and what-day-is-corn-dogs-because-you-know-I-LOVE-corn-dogs-mommy-and-can't-miss-it and art class and outings and play dates and birthday parties and who-is-going-where-with-whom-while-we-are-here-and-there-with-part-of-the-kids and hair cuts and, is that my eye twitching or did the power flicker on and off?
It looks like the Care Bears threw up on my calendater.
Then there are sticky notes layered on top of all of that mess with things like birthday gifts to buy and when to mail birthday cards and thank you cards and the next party invitations, and personal notes like "go buy stamps" and "pick up dry cleaning", and reminders for The Husband. (Incidentally, I don't have to make a grocery list, because I ALWAYS need something from the grocery store.)
Excuse me, Miss, but I need to find the section of the store where you sell purses big enough to hold a wall calendar. And I could use a huge change purse for all of those pens and highlighters. And I probably need to make and laminate a Key Code so that if something happens to me they can hire a hieroglyphics professor to decipher what in the world all of that text crammed into those boxes actually stands for. Come to think of it, I’m not sure what some of it stands for myself, so I need the dude’s number when you find it.
Does anyone know where I’m supposed to be right now? Clearly, I don’t have the free time to be writing this down.
I guess they are worth it. :-)
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