Is This You? The intricate art of listing everything

Have you seen the ads on TV for a new refrigerator you can use to make your grocery list? Then at the store you just call up your fridge on your phone and voila! There’s your grocery list. I’m not sure I want to give my refrigerator that power. Think about this. Just how far are we away from our appliances telling us what they will and won’t tolerate from us mere humans. Huh, I think there was a movie about just that action. If you didn’t see it, trust me, it didn’t turn out all well and good. So I think I will continue to be my own listing agent.

I make lists for so many different things I have a list spot on my kitchen counter. Sometimes it looks like a herd of butterflies have gathered at a water puddle and are flitting all their colored wings because of all the different sizes and colors of paper that are haphazardly strewn around that spot.

My listing self started to show up some years ago. I used to be able to keep everything in my head and never miss a detail. I was able to get all the groceries, stuff for DIY projects, get the tires rotated, pick up cleaning, bring home fast food orders four people had asked for and they were all different, remember all the birthdays that were coming up for the next three months and have enough memory left over to spare. Not so much now. Now I have to write down if I took my vitamins in the morning so I don’t go back to the bottle so many times I begin to look like Popeye. Toot, toot.

But there’s a list I really enjoy making. It’s my grocery list. You have to be in just the right mood to make a good grocery list. Not too hungry and not too stuffed after a meal. My refrigerator and freezer need to be about half full to make a good grocery list. There’s such a delicate balance between having what you need and having enough to feed an army that a well written list will be a masterpiece of needs and wants.

I wonder if I’m the only one while making a grocery list, travels the aisles of a grocery store in my mind and sees the variety of stuff. That works no matter if you’re going for a big load of groceries or you just found a recipe for stuffed goat gullet and you need goat cheese, mint jelly and a grand bottle of sherry. You can see all those things and know just what aisle you need to visit to hunt and gather and get back home to make that yummy goat gullet.

Yes, grocery shopping is an art. But shoe shopping. Now there’s a hunt-and-peck shopping experience. Whether you’re male or female, if shoes are on your list, you have your work cut out for yourself. Yes, yes, maybe women are a bit more finicky, but men are just as shoe challenged as a woman may be. Why, you ask? So glad you asked. I can only offer this as proof. Have you seen the pages and pages or rows and rows of hunting boots available to choose from? Not only are there different heights of boots, but then there are lace up, Velcro, speed laces. There are boots made of leather, kangaroo, alligator, and buffalo. And colors or water proofing in varying levels.

See what I mean? Putting shoes on your list may make your list short, but it doesn’t mean your shopping will be a short run. Get it? Shoes ... run? Anyway ...

As listing goes, I enjoy making them. If done just right, it makes me feel like I have shopped and not spent a dime. Try this little mind game if you have an inkling to and see if you don’t get something from it. Grab a pen and a little tablet and write a list of things you need at the store. Then add to the list things you want at the store. Over my listing lifetime, I’ve found just writing down I want a big ol’ box of frozen taquitos and all the stuff to make guacamole to go with them usually feeds my hankering for those taquitos or whatever my mouth tells my hand to write! OK, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. That’s how I got the taquitos in my freezer.

Trina lives in Eureka, Nevada. Share with her at itybytrina@yahoo.com. Really!