Nothing like starting the New Year by looking back, way back. What I find looking back is looking, looking, LOOKING. It seems that I spent a lot of time looking for something I need and I can’t find. Looking for my glasses only to find them around my neck when I no longer need them. By that time I’ve gone on to look for my knitting needles. That becomes very annoying when I had them five minutes earlier, just before the couch ate them up. I look for my shoes when I need to get dressed. I look for my car keys when I need to drive to the store. Sometimes I look for my check book when I get to the store, not to mention the list I made of things to get. I look for the leash when it is time to walk the dog. The old Grand Dame, Grandmamma lets out a soft chuckle from her post in the Swamp.

“If your head was not on your body, you’d be looking for that.” That always was her standard reply. My kids remind me that I had a better one. When they were looking for something, I felt they needed.

“If it was an ice cream cone, you’d found it by now!” My daughter reminds me.

Looking back at looking for things I can’t find is entirely of my own making.

“A place for everything and everything in its place”, my mother used to tell me.

Of course, there was no problem with a place-for-everything. When I took the kids on an extended vacation, I had my driver’s license in my purse. I have yet to figure out how that driver’s license made it back to Springfield long before I arrived there.

Of course laws about where to keep the driver’s license in order to produce them when a polite officer requested to see them (there were those little incidences that had to do with going at the right speed).

As I grew older or, shall we say more mature, there was that thing called multi-tasking. That required having things needed for multi-tasking. The computer taught me a few things about that. It is not possible to keep up a running conversation on the phone and at the same time keying in the correct amount of signs, letters and number for an e-mail address. Something always gets forgotten and the computer is unforgivable about that; polite but unforgiving. One of my friends still wonders how I managed to send an e-mail two weeks after I just knew I had posted that e-mail.

But this is a new year and time gets more precious the older you get. Date lines come and go and I found out that I haven’t even started to write that little column. Gerry and I were talking about that. And I believe I reiterated that in the year to come, I shall be writing one column ahead. I love Faye and I hate to leave her on that date-line day without a column.

No specific new year’s resolution this year, but a firm commitment when it comes to daily tasks, like making the bed in the morning and cleaning up dirty dishes at night. Like making sure I wrote down the dates of things to do and places to be. That way I won’t wind up promising to be in two places at once.

Those were the things I talked about to Gerry on the phone. Of course I was just a tat ambitious. I put down the phone using the speaker phone as I carefully brewed that afternoon-cup-of-tea. And so I picked up the tea and the two biscuits and cheerfully explained how efficient I could be. I almost made it to the front room when I heard a faint voice in the distance saying: “You’re fading away!!!”

I was still talking to my cup of tea. Multi tasking only works when the teacup serves to hold the tea and the phone to hold the conversation.

I think I’ll work on changing habits one habit at a time. And when my friends tell me of their own little mismanagements with words or memory or time or place, I’ll just say politely: “Been there, done that; “ I just don’t want to do it as often as I used to.