To-Do Lists

I'm a big believer in To-Do Lists. The older I get, (meaning: the more forgetful I become at times) the more I rely on the To-Do List to make sure I get done what needs to be done. There's something imminently satisfying about checking off numerous items one has done during the day. Makes the day seem that much fuller and your time better spent. I tend to over enumerate too many items on one To-Do List, making a regular list much too long to accomplish in one day. So my To-Do Lists are usually week long lists with anywhere from eighteen to twenty-four items on them. My grandson, Charley, is a fan of my lists and likes to read off what Grandma has failed to do. I guess for him, that's more fun than what Grandma actually got done.

So two months ago, on one of my weekly lists, I wrote down "Get wireless connected to computer". We'd just gotten back here to the beach and had shut off our wireless satellite connection last February. A phone call and it should be re-instated, right? Not so right. Seven weeks and two days after that first phone call, I have finally got our wireless connection re-connected. The "Get wireless connected to computer" has been written and re-written on my weekly To-Do Lists, until I despaired of ever getting it crossed off. There were times I thought perhaps it was too lofty a goal and I should maybe better learn to live with the old "watch the paint dry" dial up connection. It took more than one phone call too. For a while I was calling the wireless satellite people up two or three times a week. They would give me varying degrees of explanations until I'd find myself spluttering incoherently at some stupid reason why they couldn't connect me sooner. On one of those days when I muttered in front of the grandsons that I needed to call the satellite people, Charley looked at me and asked innocently, "Are you going to get mad and cuss at them again, Mackey?" And I sheepishly answered, "I hope not!"

Well, the gist of the problem was a malfunctioning dish which the satellite people finally deemed a work order for a technician to come two weeks ago, so today was the big day. It took him all of an hour to replace the broken part and at the end of the job, when he called the wireless people he was upset with how little they said they would pay him. So he turned on me and announced that he was Never coming back to Dillon Beach again for another service job. And I apologized for calling him but told him he was the one the satellite people said I had to call. So finally, he took his rotten mood back to Santa Rosa with him and I was left (a bit shaken, I admit) with my computer now hooked up to wireless. And I can read my emails and send pictures without thinking that I am in a limbo of stagnation waiting.

And oh yes.... I was able to mark another item off my too long To-Do List. Who knows? I might actually finish all the items on a list one of these weeks.