The to-do list I write for myself at the beginning of each week includes some items that I know I have to do every week, plus any special tasks for the current week. I try to keep the list under one page, but I try to have as many items on it as I can fit on a page. That's so I get the pleasure of crossing off as many items as possible. Some days, in fact, I add an item just so I can cross it off. It gives me a sense of accomplishment. Crossing items off the list can be more fulfilling than actually completing the tasks they represent.

Today being Friday, the to-do list should be all marked up so it looks like a done-that list. In truth, only about half the items are crossed off. The rest will go on next week's list.

But I felt a special satisfaction today because I fielded a curve ball and hit it out of the park. (Wait, that's not right. I fielded a bad-hop grounder and hit a curve ball. No, that's two things. Maybe all I did was hit a mid-range jump shot. That's still pretty good, though, right?)

Let's try that again. The Boss called this morning in a tizzy, which isn't unusual for him. He's working on a bid and needed a state certification that I had allowed to lapse in January. I didn't exactly admit that to him. "We might have dropped the ball," I said. (That's as elaborate a sports metaphor as he's likely to grasp.) By the time he told me how badly he needed that certification, I was in as big a tizzy as he was. It's kind of scary out here on the ledge with him, and I made the mistake of looking down.

Anyway, I started noodling around on line, trying to figure out how big a hole I'd dug for myself. I stumbled upon a way to re-certify, but I needed information from our tax returns, which I didn't have. Oh, the wailing. It wasn't until the Boss was forced to dig through tax records for the last three years that his tizzy got amped up to a snit. At one point, in the middle of a conversation, he told me, "I'm going to have to hang up now. I'm getting upset." Sorry, sez I. Bye.

It took some time for him to cool down enough that we could talk again. I suggested that he call the accountant and have their office fax me the pages from the tax returns that would give me the answers. He did, they came through, and about five minutes after that we got the renewal of the lapsed certification. It's good for two years. By then, we'll have had other tizzies and snits and we'll have forgotten this episode.
----------

The old oak in my yard.
----------
But that was it for me for the day. All of this was done by noon, and I hadn't even showered yet. I like to ease into my mornings and get most of my work done in the afternoon, but I convinced myself that this was already a full day's work. That's when I took another look at the to-do list and decided most of the remaining items could wait until next week. Besides, it was a Friday, and everybody knows you have to ease into the weekend by sloughing off on Friday afternoon. (That applies even if, like me, you work at home and spend most of the weekend catching up on things you've sloughed off during the week, and trying to make next week's to-do list a little shorter.)