My day in lists

     I make a lot of lists. This will come as no surprise to those who know me well, or possibly even to those who are just getting to know me. Lists are useful in part because I will otherwise forget things I need to do, but also because they give me a sense of accomplishment.  Checking off the items on a list is proof of my alleged productivity, and on a bad day, I can include a few easy-to-accomplish items just to kick-start that feeling of having DONE SOMETHING. (You know, things like “Brush teeth” and “Make coffee” that normally don’t require reminders.)

(Blurred to protect me from potential embarrassment)

Usually my lists include things like:

• Pay Metfone (They text me when the internet bill is due and I have to go in person to pay it.)

• Fix ______________. (There’s often something that needs to be fixed: my moto, a broken light fixture, my laptop,  etc. When the list says I should fix something, it really means I should find someone else to fix it, because I hardly ever can do it myself.)

• Buy a new broom (They self-destruct after a few weeks, so they get replaced often. They cost $1, and they smell like a fresh-cut Vermont hayfield in July. I love the smell of a new broom.)

The other thing that self-destructs regularly are the mosquito racquets.
They're a little pricier at $3 each, but we certainly get our money's worth out of them.

• Buy phone credit. (Prepaid phone credit is the way it works here, and I find about I use about $10 per month. You can buy what you need at any little corner store - then enter the code into the phone and you're good to go. This is definitely one of those things that's way cheaper here than at home, considering our cell phone bill was close to $100/month at home.)

• Laundry (This could mean wash the laundry, take the laundry off the clothesline, call to have the laundry picked up, or go pick up the laundry.)

• Print photos (People seem to enjoy having copies of photos we take of them; I’m happy to oblige.)

• Blog (I even have lists about things that I intend to blog about, yet I hardly ever refer back to them. Sometimes I don’t even know what I was imagining when I write some of those prompts. On a list from last week, I found “Blog about cereal.” At the time, it seemed like a good idea, but now I can’t imagine why anyone would be interested in our obsession with finding good breakfast cereal for less than $8 a box. Although I must admit that it was pretty exciting last week when we found Lightly Frosted Shredded Wheat at the Lucky Mall for only $2.60 a box. We bought all of them, depriving all the other ex-pats in town from enjoying this bounty.)

JACKPOT!

• Meet ____________ at _____________. (Despite my earlier reporting on my introverted nature, there are a lot of social opportunities. I meet people for lunch or for coffee with some regularity. Sometimes it’s work-related, but often it’s not.)

• Water. (This used to mean go to and buy 6-packs of large water bottles. Now, thanks to the profound generosity of our friends Joe and Carol who gave us their water dispenser when they left town, it means I should send Sovann to go buy 20-liter bottles. The dispenser gives us instant hot or icy cold water, which saves lots of room in the refrigerator, and makes us feel very spoiled. And well-hydrated.

• Study Khmer (Yeah, I’m still trying, somewhat sporadically. If I don’t write the alphabet once a day from memory, I forget how. I may have to get it tattooed on my arm. )

• ATM (This means I should withdraw money. Thanks to the internet and online bank transfers and a host of other neat tricks, my brother transfers the rent payment into my account every month and I can withdraw here at no charge. How would it have been possible to live here 10 years ago with no such convenience???)

• Haircut. (I found a guy who cuts my hair for $2. The price is right, but he always wants to part my hair like Alfalfa from the Little Rascals. Oddly, I enjoy the experience anyway.)

• Buy RAID (We really only use it when we are suddenly and inexplicably swarmed by thousands of tiny ants, which happens rarely. Sometimes it’s just because they’ve found a dead bug in the corner somewhere and have apparently issued orders to the whole colony to come dismantle it and carry it back to the nest. They’re rarely in the kitchen and don’t seem the least bit interested in our food for the most part. Twice I’ve also found an army of the big red biting ants marching across the electric wires onto our balcony, but a half-can of RAID took care of that problem in a hurry.)

• Read (I have to put this on the list to remind myself not to waste all my free time on the internet. I worry about my short attention span if I can’t settle into a good book now and then.)

• “Do something creative.” (I’ve put this on the list several times lately, and it always gets moved to the next list because I can never check off the little box next to it. I suppose today I’ll let myself consider it done because I spent hours looking for and assembling good images and material to put together a health class for the girls at work. That’s creative, right?)

     The latest list I’ve started has two columns: Things to Bring With Us When We Go to Vermont, and Things to Bring Back When We Return. So far, the second list is much longer than the first. In between catching up with all our friends and family, I see some shopping in our future.

This is my favorite notebook for list-writing. The cover says:
"Our finest quality paper
ensures a smooth surface that is please to write on.
This is the most comfortable notebook you have ever run into
you will feel like writing with it all the time."
And I do.