Marking Time

It is New Year’s Eve day and 2006 is coming to an end. It can be a reflective time. Looking past at the year and recognizing meaningful times and how those times affect the rest of one’s life. That’s nice.

It can also be a time to look forward and set goals. Make a game plan for the coming year. Set points of achievement. Plan to replace bad habits with good habits. Out with the old and in with the new. That’s nice, too.

However, I am neither reflective nor a goal-setter. What this day means for me is that I need new calendars.

I have several calendars in my house. I have large monthly wall calendar in the kitchen by the phone so that I can make appointments and write them down. I also have a weekly calendar at my office desk for the same reason. There is a problem involved in this when I use one calendar when making an appointment and the other calendar when I look to see if I am free at a certain time. But I try to keep the two calendars in sync.

My kitchen calendar has pictures for each month and they need to be somewhat aesthetic in nature. Picking out a calendar means that I have chosen what to look at for an entire year. Therefore, picking out a calendar can be daunting. Do I want puppies? No. Kittens? No. Waterfalls? No. I wanted something colorful but not garish. I wanted something pretty without being overwhelming. I wanted peaceful, but pretty. I found one that is pictures of beach chairs set by the shore. Beautiful without garish.

But since I use the calendar for more than a picture holder, it also has to have dates large enough for an old coot like me to read and have enough space with each date for me to write in information as needed.

My weekly calendar has been a problem for most of the year. It didn’t fit nicely in the space I wanted to keep it in, so I had to rearrange my entire desk to make room. There were pretty pictures, but I rarely saw them because the book was half hidden. It also started with Sunday rather than each week starting with Monday and that got to be a problem when I wrote information in the wrong space. This year I have a smaller, no pictures, fits where I want it week by week starting with Monday calendar. There is enough room to write in information as needed, if I can remember to co-ordinate it with my other calendars.

I also go through most of this process for a small wall calendar in my office. I don’t care so much about the space for writing, but I need to know what day/date it is rather frequently while sitting at my computer. It is easier to look up than to mouse over the time and get a date. This year I will have pictures of restful porches.

Chairs on both calendars. I must hope to sit through the year.

Then I have a day-to-day calendar with some informational message or some such thing for each day. Since I love trivia, I usually purchase that type of page for each date calendar. But I tend to forget to tear off a page now and then and so I need the wall calendar to see how far behind I’ve gotten.

My sister sent me a smaller page-a-day calendar all about sisters. It is the size of a normal Post-it note pad and each day has a quote about sisters. I love quotes as well. I will think of my sister each and every day – well, at least those days that I tear a sheet off – for an entire year. It’s not that I don’t remember I have sisters each and every day, but this will be a gentle and constant reminder of how much I am loved, and even better, how much I can love in return.

Now isn’t that a nice way to plan for a year?