Lists

It is very rare that even my nearest and dearest friends manage to out-do me on the list-making front. I am queen of the lists. I list everything. Sometimes I make lists about the lists I need to make. Or make lists the sub-part of other lists. Occasionally they even hyperlink.

Lately my new thing has been post-it lists. As an added advantage, I am able to post these on my wall, and then change them up as things take priority without the necessity of revising the old list (or even more soothingly, rewriting the whole thing). This also helps to make what is a potentially classy office into something reminiscent of those horrible cubicles that my undergrad classmates slaved away in somewhere in San Fran during the dot.com boom.

They also creepily remind me of the time my sister decided to write a funny "Ode to E." to cheer me up and stated that I would climb the corporate world post-it by post-it. Unfortunately, she was wrong. I am climbing nothing but my wall in order to find an empty space where I can put yet another post-it.

The worst is, my lists are so focused on detail that they actually take longer to write than to perform. For example, an item on my middle school personal hygiene list was "Let liquid deoderant dry." Fortunately, I followed that item with activities that did not involve exposing non-dried liquid deoderant to any surfaces so at least there was some logic involved.

I am perfectly aware that list-making is a sign of OCD. I am also aware that most people with OCD accomplish a whole hell of a lot more than the people who point that out. So, suck it.

However, no matter how pathetic my lists have been (attributes of the man whose child I wish to bear, sordid side jobs that could help me pay off my student loans, people who probably want to sabotage me), I recently found one that made me feel a hell of a lot better. It was posted on a friend's refrigerator, and listed her New Year's Resolutions. She was quite discomfited that she left it there for all to see. We, her honored dinner guests, were delighted.

The list was written on the reverse side of a sheet pulled from a Far Side calender. And from the ragged handwriting and spelling and grammatical errors, she was probably three sheets to the wind when she wrote it.

The first entry was : "Drunk less."

The next (and last) entry was "Get disabillity insurance."

Hm.