Check Lists...

When Brent was on sabbatical he wanted to help take care of the house so I wasn't stuck doing all of my normal stuff while he enjoyed nothing but free time. I know, I might just keep him.

Anyway...he wanted to help but he didn't know what to do when. I have a system. He knows that. On certain days I do certain things. So we made lists in the shared family folder. In the morning I would sit down and write up the list for the day and he would add in things he wanted to get done as well. Good system.

But here is where we differed. I would finish a chore and go to check it off and it would be gone. He had already checked it off. For a little bit I was like, "Wow...he's really paying attention to when things are finished and getting right in there to check it off!" But then I realized that he was checking things off as they were started, not when they were finished.

His logic is that of course laundry will be done when the first load hits the washer, it's been started it will be finished.

Ah sweet summer child...

It reminded me of when I discovered that he can see at night. Like clearly. I have astigmatism and so a light in the dark becomes a starburst. A light in the dark in the rain becomes multiple starbursts. I did not realize that it was my astigmatism that made that happen. I thought everyone saw lights like that and that everyone hated driving at night. He also had no idea that I saw lights like that and just thought I didn't prefer driving at night for whatever reason I had but didn't realize that it was because I was constantly driving in a disco.

The same way that we thought each other saw things the same way, he thought that if I started a chore it meant I'd finish it. I'm not sure why he thought that though. I mean he's lived with me for over 3 decades and I have not really shown that to be consistently true. There are plenty of times that at the end of the day you can see what my intentions were, there are cleaning tools spread all over the house with half done chores in their wake. But for him, started means it will be finished.

Why am I thinking of this today? Well because while I was making smoothies this morning I was tossing between two ideas for the blog. I had pretty good ideas for two different blogs and finally settled on writing one today and the other tomorrow. I was making smoothies though, not writing that was coming later in the day.

We are now later in the day and I have no idea what those two ideas were. None. Blank slate. Clean. Neither idea stuck around to be written. I should have taken a second and jotted a few notes down while they were in my head but I didn't. Because of course I would remember. Blog ideas started means blogs done right? Wrong.

Hopefully they will come back to me at some point.

I'm sure they were brilliant.