guilty by admission

i am a list keeper
i can't help it
i am what i am

i started keeping my "serious" lists
when i was pregnant for emma almost
(good god)
ten years ago...
i was going through a little bit of a rough patch
(heh)
to say the least
lets just say i was 24, pregnant and found out my boyfriend of 2 months
and father of my child was going to jail for possibly two years
heh heh heh
sooooooooo....
i moved out to the country where my parents live
and became a list keeper...
i painstakingly cut up a spiderman comic and carefully glued the pictures onto a
"red book of power" as i christened it
that became my book of lists

here is a list (heh heh)
of the lists that i keep:

what i want to read up on
children's lit/classics
movies i want to see
women authors
canadian authors
cds i want
books i have read since (christmas, we moved here, i started new job, etc)
music to check into
i swear i will never (hahaha)
references in certain books that i wanted to check into further (anne rice bio, sylvia plath, leonard cohen etc)
i want to own
quotes
awards
all works of specific authors (dh lawrence, margaret atwood, timothy findley etc)
(this is a goooood one and dates the book haha) movies i have watched on our NEW vcr hahahahaha
places i want to go
to do
i want
gardening books
good choices for bucket gardens (?????)
for emma jayne
things i want/need/would like to have
essentials for house
what i need to do
ask the health nurse
gifts for emma jayne
absolute favorite songs
romantic/touching/addictive
strong words
today i feel
baby names narrowed down
favorite lyrics
important to me
and last but not least...a cryptic heading of "remember"
underlined twice

so thats me in a nutshell
a list keeper

counting your heartbeats....

occassionally i get kind of panicky
and think that something might happen
to my husband
and i get short of breath
and sick to my stomach
and the only way i can calm myself down
is to lay my head on his chest
and silently
count his heartbeats...

my best friend told me today about a relative of hers
that went to the doctor for a checkup
and found out she had cancer
all through her
they told her it was too late to do anything
there was no treatment
there was no hope
she is 42

how awful would that be to know that you may only have
days
left to live, to be with the ones you love
and to know that the ones you love are going to be left behind
how would someone deal with that
how would someone cope
i just can't even comprehend

she has a husband and a ten year old son

it certainly made all of my problems annoyances irritations
and concerns
seem totally irrelevant
suddenly i was looking forward to being able to go and strip tiles off the floor...
and suddenly my daughter's recent i'm-trying-to-drive-you-around-the-bend-behavior
didn't seem all that bad...
suddenly
i was just happy that it was a sunny clear day
and that i was here to feel it...
funny how things put other things
into perspective...

i'm going to put my kids to bed
and give them some extra kisses...
and to count my husbands heartbeats