I-Pad for Dummies

Half way through the day when you realize you’re probably NOT going to do all you'd hoped to do it’s good to drop back and make a list - because it helps. I  was ready to throw myself out the window for all I couldn’t seem to get started on – until my gaze fell on my mate’s bureau and this dumb jokey gift I got for him, just because I’m a typical American and easily beguiled.They call it a Boogie Board™ (lame name. Brookstone!) and it’s little more than an Etch-a-sketch only not as hardy. It has an LED that sort of illuminates the writing surface but not all that well. And it says right on it when the battery runs out you just throw the whole thing away, but still: it did help me raise my spirits.First I took pictures of myself holding it, then I wrote on it and took pictures of what I wrote.Here you will see my food intake for the day. (It’s a thing we Weight Watchers people are doomed to do 24/7. It’s WORSE than watching your liver get plucked out by birds every day and having it grow back every night.)  Then I made that comforting list and just look at all I was going to do, calling carpenters and eye doctors and massage therapists; putting a walnut stain one old piece of furniture and applying the finish to another; making the homemade soup and going to buy more firewood;  running on the goddam TREADMILL and blogging and all that before dinner because I know I'm no good after dinner.I did some of this I guess though nobody got any homemade soup, that's for sure. And for the first time in a long time I didn't get the old blog post thought up in timely fashion.But just making this list -  here seen at an artsy angle like the Prologue of Star Wars - made me feel better and there’s the real distinction between us and the animals: not the ability to accessorize as that Clairee says in Steel Magnolias but the ability to do very little actual work in a day, then sit down and draw up a list to that makes you feel that very, very soon you really WILL do it all.