Now that I've found you...

I will never let you go...

A few years ago I found that the key to not missing doctor's appointments or forgetting hair appointments or showing up on the wrong day for staff meetings was to WRITE THEM DOWN. Not only is the writing down important, but writing them down in the same place. A place where ALL the stuff is written so you can check and say with authority, "Yes, the 15th is fine, as long as we do it before my 7:00 Yoga class."

I had a job long, long ago where we met periodically to discuss important things and then, at the end of the meeting, we would schedule the next meeting, and everyone (except me) would whip out an important looking calendar and murmur, "Noooo...the 13th, can't do it on the 13th, why not the 12th." Me? I just wrote the day they decided on a scrap of paper I shoved into my purse and prompted lost. Luckily, that job didn't last long.

So, each summer I haunt the office supply stores looking for the perfect calendar. Since I'm a teacher I need an academic calendar, otherwise I have to spend the first half of January digging up all the schedules of meetings I'm supposed to attend for the second half of the year and transfer them into the new book. Much easier to have a calendar that works with MY year. I need lots of room to write things: notes, addresses, phone numbers, measurements, reminders.

I love the calendar on the left, but it has a problem. It is too big for my purse. I tend to leave it in the car, so when everyone else is writing their appointments down and looking incredibly organized and professional, I'm still writing them on a scrap of paper which disappears into the bottom of my purse, lost for all time.

I found the calendar on the right in a bookshop in Boston. I really love this little guy. It fits in my purse for one thing. The other thing is that it has a blank page opposite each calendar page, so I have room to write notes about things I'm supposed to remember that don't really fit on the calendar page. I've got people's phone numbers and addresses. I've got the measurements for the quilt I left with the longarmer. I've written the list of things we still need to do for the Quilter's Day Out. I have the name of the lady who knows how to do short row heels, for heaven's sake. It's got a cute little ribbon in it so you can keep your place. It has a nice expanding pocket inside the back cover so you can save people's business cards or receipts or whatever.

It's called a Moleskine, by the way. Apparently it has a long and distinguished history among artists and writers. Seems a little small for that, but that's what the card inside says.

Anyway, the Moleskine went missing this weekend, and with it, my entire life for the next six months. At first I thought it had just gotten tipped out of my purse Sunday morning when we took my dad to the emergency room and my purse somehow ended up in the backseat of the car upside down. I searched the backseat more than once, but it wasn't there. (I don't know why I searched multiple times--if it wasn't there the first time, was it going to magically reappear the third or the fourth??)

Anyway, I spent a lot of time this week trying to reconstruct my life.

And then. And then? I found it right where I had put it last Friday night. I even remembered putting it there as soon as I saw it.

I did a little happy dance when I found it. Now I just have to hold onto it.