Listless

I've never been one for making lists and while it's certainly easier at times to have one, I like to strain the brain a bit instead of using a cheat sheet. For example, I will see something in the grocery store and make a decision on the spot to have pizza for dinner. Like today I saw the dough and I thought that would taste good. Okay, then I need cheese. I know, I'll make a BBQ chicken pizza, so I need BBQ sauce, and the challenge is to keep remembering all the ingredients I need and actually make it out the door with them.

Then, start adding meals to that. Okay, those hamburger rolls look good, let's have turkey burgers this week for dinner too. Well, that means I'll need onion and some type of flavoring ... hmmm. Then maybe a chicken dinner, so add to that. I find that it turns me into a bit of a muttering fool as I wander around repeating over and over all the things I need while at the same time putting things into the cart that I don't need.

That was my first stop today, Trader Joe's, which is really far away and I never go, and therefore I just bought things randomly. My next stop was the health food store because I needed some superfoods. OH NO! They didn't have them either. What is going on? Why can't I find chia or cacao in this damn state of N.H.? It is bloody frustrating. I have to order them online now, which is aggravating because I need them NOW. And while I was looking for MSM, somehow I became distracted by my growing anger that they didn't have what I needed, and I forgot it.

And that was just the beginning. I drove right by the bank where I needed to make a deposit. How the hell did I do that? Then in Concord I had to stop for my face stuff, and while I was at the counter paying, I suddenly had a flash that I was out of the toner, because I saw it smash on the tile shower at the cottage on the Vineyard, weeks ago. Yikes. Couple of hundred bucks later, I was on the road back home without a handful of things I needed.

Would a list have helped? Well, I am sure I wouldn't have forgotten the bank. But the other day I made a list of things I needed to take to the lake and when I pulled it out of my pocket at the store, I realized it was not the list, but the recipe for margaritas I was making. I had to really tug at the old brain cells to try to remember what was on that list. In fact, to this day I have no idea what happened to that list, nor if I even got everything on it!

I hate errands, and lists imply errands, so therefore I don't make them. I know some people like to go out on their errands and check them all off their lists and then they feel a great sense of accomplishment.

Not me. I'd rather figure out a way to live without the things that would make it on a list. Like last night, because I had no desire to go to the store, I said we had enough bread for grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. We had enough for two sandwiches, and there were three of us. Peter opted for cereal, so it worked out.

Did I buy bread today?

Bread isn't really that good for you. It's over-rated. So is milk. I hate staples -- or those things that you run out of constantly and you believe that you need them. I don't think that is necessarily true. I don't think we really need much of anything. So therefore, we don't need lists. We can just wing our way through (though damn it I have to drive to Manchester to go to the bank this week, which is just plain so out of the way it's not funny.) But I'll make the most of it and do something else, maybe go visit my parents or even go to the beach.

The worrisome part of that is that I might just forget to go to the bank.

Oh well. I did remember all the ingredients for pizza, so we'll have that for dinner tonight. At least that is on my list.