Making lists

My husband is a list maker. I am not, especially. I will make the occasional abbreviated shopping list to include things that I wouldn’t normally need at the store (scotch tape, corn starch…) but generally don’t ‘list’ things that I will always need, like bread or milk. I make other lists when forgetting something will be particularly inconvenient (extra camera battery, phone charger etc. for traveling) But Mark makes list for everything.

Mostly, I suspect, so that he can cross things off.

If I DO make a list and then accomplish something that wasn’t actually ON that list, he thinks I should add it and then cross it off. And he is right about the satisfaction of all that, but silly in the actual implementation.

If I have a shopping list started, he will almost always add something to it. Often, though, I can’t read his handwriting. So I spend a lot of time at the store, digging for my reading glasses to decipher something that turns out not to be relevant, a 'telephone doodle' instead, for example. (He's a 'doodler' too, but that's another story.) Anyway, today I thought I was supposed to pick something up for him but I finally realized that it was just his list of exercises to do – push-ups, leg lifts…

Oh well.

Mark’s lists are very lengthy and very complete, and I love to read them. He knows this, of course, and usually has something in them pertaining to me just because he knows I will get a kick out of it. So, right along with ‘trim toenails’ and ‘clean cat box’ there will be, about number 47 or so, a line for ‘kiss Cathy.’

There are so many ways to make life interesting, aren’t there?