PRIORITIES

      You know there's an ad on TV these days featuring a character called "Mayhem" which I used to find amusing.  Not so much - since he's moved into our house.  Ever feel like you're wildly spinning your wheels but getting nowhere?  I set specific days on which I'm to accomplish specific chores - NO diversions. Discipline. Just one-foot-after-the-other kind of lock-step organization. Then guess I didn't do enough 'focus work' or maybe just didn't plan ahead.  Because I'm barely approaching specific chore #1 and it's time to start dinner.  Feel like I'm losing my grip.  Too many distractions; too weak; subconsciously piqued because TR is relaxing with a book before dinner-walk-dog-sip-wine-put-talking-heads-sports-on-TV time.

Bandito

      (And I refuse to be petty - who has time? - but as the restful eventide progresses for TR, the sound, no, cacophonic 60-cycle interference, increases.  TV volume: UP. Open-mouthed chip-crunching: louder. Not intentionally, of course.  But when that "Burrito Bandito" gets a'chompin', you need those visual quotes from the 'silents' or maybe a signing translator because you certainly can't HEAR the thing over the reclining rock-fall going on at the head of the bed. So big deal, you say.  Grab a book, do a crossword, whatever. Rest up before morning grabs you and catapults you into specific chore day # 2.  Better yet. Make a LIST. And I did.)
      I LOVE lists.  Actually, it's checking off a completed item that is pure nirvana.  It's gratifying and, just for emphasis - in case anyone NOT checking is taking a gaze break - I make it garishly dramatic. Use a squeaky fluorescent sharpie, pin an Italian flag - on cork board days - on the accomplished ONE, tap out a drum roll on the tile breakfast room floor.  And I've got two birds with one flourish.  I had success AND disturbed TR's ennui.  The ole one-two; or in his argot, the double play.  Yup.  I know some stuff, too.  In the athletic arena, if you will.  Even if you will not, that was the famous


Tinker to Evers to Chance

                                double play executed in 1910 when these three Chicago Cubs forced a New York Giant to hit into a double play. Symbolic today, like "smooth radio" or "fit as a fiddle" meaning a performance par excellance.  For me, it's just the ole 'chore-checkin'-chill'.  Now I don't have to tell you, dear reader, what you can get done when you know there's a giant, fat carrot waitin' for Mr. Ed when you've DONE it - if you get my drift.

      As productive as list-making, multi-tasking is yet another chore knocking-off enhancer.  And, unlike 'back in the day', we're given all manner of e-assists, like our smart phones and computers.  No more quills or carrier pigeons.  Just today I was working from my list AND multi-tasking simultaneously. Amazing!  
      (Well, there was one itsy snag.  I had finished packing two huge bags of clothes, shoes, etc. for the Veterans of the Vietnam War - a chore begun a month ago but I plugged - and reminded TR that tomorrow - 11/28 - was pick-up day. I was proud to see the effort he put into lugging these very heavy bags down the driveway and placing them on the road next to our mailbox. The boy's nothing if not patriotic.  Then he went off to watch beloved football with his sons, leaving the house blissfully unoccupied AND  quiet. 

      List check: fax doctor re: incomplete bone density report sent to ortho doc.  I scribbled a mini-list of info he'd need - dates especially - and got to the keyboard.  Calender at my side, I flipped back to October.  Appt. w/ him 10/27; bone density 11/08; appt. w/ ortho 11/10.  EYES TO BRAIN: Tomorrow is the 31st! Veterans' pick-up must have been Friday!  Have to call them. Number on the bags. I'll just walk out there and get the number. Another multi-task! Exercise plus airing out Mom's old winter car coat. It IS almost December.

      Back at my post, I called, leaving long, desperate-sounding message about getting pick-up day wrong-but-clothes-out-on-street-getting-cold-donees-need-them-p/s-call-for-special-pick-up. Back to doc's fax.  Typing the timeline, I double-checked the dates.  What ho! OCTOBER 31 was a MONDAY. Tomorrow is 11/28, the scheduled day.  Stop typing.  Dial, leaving a follow up 'silly-me' message instructing the sainted listener to just forget about my previous call.  Everything's jake. No joke, and I hung up SO thankful that TR wasn't going to hear "Would you mind bringing those bags back in?" Finishing the fax and making a copy for the ortho, I wondered what  listener thought of caller.)
      Somehow, putting all of this drivel on paper is therapeutic. There is no QUESTION but that daily life presents far more complicated 'to dos' than in the days of yore. And mine, too.  AND, I just heard from my dear friend KD yesterday - our B-day mother of seven, grandmother of seventeen?  She was a smidge melancholy because although Thanksgiving was wonderful, spent with her eldest and her offspring only, she missed 'the house' as she hung seventeen little stockings in their condo. No 'day at the beach'.  But she did add a chuckle-tag.  She and Will had gone up to Vermont, I think, to see one of their daughters receive the "Teacher of the Year" award.  At THE moment of presentation, Will jauntily whipped out his new i-phone for a 'Cell Phone Moment'.  Aim, click, shoot - a great image of Will's nose.  Where does it say "Turn the thing around, stupid!"?  I ask you.
      My Grandpa used to sing, "Ya gotta give a little, take a little", and my Dad's favorite saw was, "Ya live, ya learn, and ya die stupid."  So, I conclude that, as to priorities, I guess, "Everything old is new again." Think: "Plink!".
Later, Lorane. . . .