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.

The Kids are Reading My Diary Part Two

So far only my oldest kid has begun reading the 30-volume diary I offered them all last week. She's really enjoying 1980, she says. She loves meeting our whole same cast of characters younger. It's how we all felt 20 years after the first Star Wars when all of a sudden here came a prequel with this hot Obi Wan Kenobi all  young and wrinkle-free. Or like when Godfather Two came out and instead of Mumbles Marlon as the Don  we had Bobby DeNiro, fresh from his bad-boy role in “Taxi Driver.”I know they're a tad worried about what they might learn there but they shouldn’t be. Everything I was ever writing I was writing for them, before I even met them or saw them in my dreams.Plus there's no whining in these volumes - except maybe about the time their dad just went to CVS for my birthday and got me jumper cables and a can of 3-in-1 Oil. I still remember sitting on the back stairs at midnight that night, sobbing and pulling my own hair and ah the drama of the young!  Still, how would any young mother react when her husband said in the course of the fight that really it was silly to make a big deal of birthdays?Today I'd be able to see that he was just feeling defensive and on the ropes.  Also today if he said something like that I’d laugh right out loud and quick as a wink reach into my handy memory-pack for some nice vintage example of his own emotional vulnerability. Then he'd laugh too.  We’re such pals now we've grown almost fond of one another's foibles and blind spots.So “Relax,” I would say to my kids.  “The diaries are just a series of funny tales with you guys at the center” And also, “Remember when you were small and it was just us five,  in that little 'house' we called our family? Remember a few years down the road when we began adding 'rooms' to that metaphorical house and the family started really growing?”Yeah. I'd say that. And I'll say to you guys now that when I look at these lively young faces above and below all I can think is I wish I had written down more.