Eureka!

I found it!!

My calendar, subject of a massive search-and-rescue mission these last few days, was discovered this morning in the bedroom of one Billy Bird, 17, lying amid a stack of school papers and a bunch of folded laundry that should have been put away days ago.

When asked for comment, the calendar said, "Oy vey! You would not believe how often she misplaces me. Will someone please help this woman????"

Maybe I Should Do Like That Guy in Memento

I was born about 100 years too late.

I mean, I know they didn't have air-conditioning, or phones, or non-animal transportation back when everyone lived in a little house on the prairie, and that would be tough. There'd be no television, which would mean no Bravo, which would mean I'd never have learned that the Real Housewives of New York City make the Real Housewives of Orange County seem like simple God-fearing country girls. And I couldn't have a blog. So yes, all those things would be drawbacks.

But 150 years ago, life was a lot simpler. Sure, I'd have a lot to do, but each day would be pretty much the same. Get up with the sun, milk the cows, get the well water, feed the younguns and the varmints and the menfolk three times, wash and mend in between, go to bed about 8, and get up the next day and do it all over again. What I wouldn't have had back then is meetings, or appointments, or carpools, or freelance deadlines, or schedules.

And here's why that's important: I WOULDN'T NEED A CALENDAR.

This is on my mind today because I have lost mine. A few days ago I began to have the vague sense that my calendar was missing. Now I've looked everywhere and it is Officially Lost.

If you want to feel like a loser in a 24/7, multi-tasking, use-your-time-wisely world, just lose your calendar. It's speaks volumes about your ability to cope.

It's like publicly acknowledging that at 48, you still haven't quite gotten the hang of tying your shoelaces or telling your left from your right.

It's like saying "You Who?" when people are talking about YouTube.

It's like walking around with your skirt tucked in the back of your pantyhose.

It's also scary. A few of the dates that were written in the calendar are also floating around in my head. But as I've already written, my cranial hard drive is already full. I really need to be able to delete those dates from my brain files, or else something important, like my address or my shoe size, could fall out my ear at any time. But a lot more of those dates never spent five seconds in my brain. They went from the pen to the calendar, and that was that. Who knows what appointment I may be missing as you read this.

I suspect this happened last week when it rained in my dining room. I had to move everything out of there in about three minutes, and it's not all back yet. My guess is that my calendar was lost in the shuffle that day.

So tonight, I have two wishes. One, of course, is that I find the calendar. (April is a lousy month to try to find a new one.)

The other is that all those women I've volunteered with, who insist that I'm "so organized!", would finally get it. If I'm organized, Paris Hilton is Nobel Prize material.

And if I can remember when our next meeting is, I'll tell them.

Only the Lonely Notebook

It is difficult to imagine a person who is less adept at both technological matters and self-promotion than your Betsy. In a slam to feminists everywhere, I scream for my menfolk the minute I encounter a frozen computer screen or an unruly mouse. Given its reliance on computing thingies, blogging comes only slightly more naturally to me than does tap dancing. Nor am I much for begging people to read me. Yet I realize that if I remain my only reader for much longer, my time would be better spent telling my stories to myself while I fold laundry. Therefore, with this post I am stepping out of my comfort zone by participating in Works for Me Wednesday, a weekly tipfest involving both technology and Emptying Our Nest promotion sponsored by the kind hostess of Rocks in My Dryer.

Comical as it may seem, I occasionally have a stroke of organizational genius, and one of them is this: The Notebook. Every few months I grab several cheap-cheap-cheap full-size spiral notebooks at the grocery. That's where everything, and I mean everything, goes. Need some Comet and a couple of shallots? I write them on the running grocery list. Need to remember the confirmation number for our rental car
reservation? I jot it down in the same notebook. Want to drive myself insane with a list of everything I need to do for the next six months? I put it in the notebook.

The key to this is to USE ONLY ONE NOTEBOOK AT A TIME. This is based on the amazing organizational principle that it is easier to keep up with one of something than several of something. (You have perhaps noticed this when you take children to the mall.) When you fill one notebook up, start another, but keep the old one and put dates on the front of it. That way, next year when you need to remember the name of the gutter-cleaner-outer you heard about last week, and all you can remember is that you heard it around the same time you gave the cast party, and you know that was in February, you'll have a general idea where to look. If you are tidy, perhaps you could put the notebook in a special Home for Notebooks. That, however, is not the Bird way. Mine stay in the Notebook Pile, which is right next to the Newspaper Articles to be Clipped Pile on top of the desk in the kitchen. All I know is It Works for Me.