Without Dash

There is always “The List”, says my friend. She even pronounced the capital ‘L’. “And you are on the bottom of mine”, was my answer.

She knocked on my door two days earlier and surprised me with a visit. Of course, I knew that she was in the country, but I did not expect a personal visit. She must have lots of peole to visit during her holiday, but apparently I was somewhere at the top of her list.

We were sitting on the beach together and tried to have a conversation in between running after her 15-month-old son, who tried to run into the waves. I was remembering the days that my daughter was unstoppable, and mentally preparing for the days that daughter no 2 will walk on endlessly.

With kids between 1 and 2 years old it is so hard to accomplish anything when they are awake. And during that short afternoon nap, all you want to do is crash down on your own bed. But you cannot. Because there is The List. All mums know what I am referring to. Today, someone told me “why don’t you do that when she sleeps….”. Well she clearly is not in the know of The List.

I’m talking about the (hated) to-do-list.

Things that seem most impossible to achieve with a toddler around, or things that have become really urgent after postponing for ages, are on The List; mopping the floor, ironing your husband’s shirts, making that important phone call to the bank, cleaning the bathroom.

Other characteristics of The List are:

• It is always in order of importance, while actually everything on the list should be done before the end of the day.
• It is always impossible to reach the end of the list, because it keeps building up like a game of Tetris.
• The bottom of the list actually does not exist, but should contain things that you ‘want’ to do instead of ‘have to’ to. No point in writing it down, since you never get there anyway. But in your mind it says something about friends, emails, haircut, movie, magazine, etc.

And so it happens that emails get a reply after a month, and blog posts are now written by hand whenever it comes up in my mind, to be typed over ‘when she is sleeping’ and I reach the bottom of the List. And no one is offended, because it is all us moms can do.