Checklist

I have a small notebook always in my purse. Not an organizer. Not quite a journal. I suppose the nursing students call it a “Jot-Down Notebook”, but I’ve always had it even before I knew about “Jot-down-notebooks” and I’ve never been a nursing student, so I suppose it doesn’t quite fit that category either.

More like a tiny scrapbook.

It’s a small one. You know, the “ten-pesos-worth” type you see in a back-to-school sale at Carol’s. And although I wouldn’t be devastated when I lose it, or embarrassed when someone gets a hold of it, it is a keeper of my thoughts all the same. And not just thoughts. Text messages I think are funny. Short accounts of events in my everyday life I’d want to ponder on later in the day. Lists of things I need to do or get or buy. Doodles. Cartoon strips. BITAY games. SOS games (if you know what I mean). Newspaper clippings that catch my attention. I even have a plastic wrap taped in there somewhere from some candy from Japan, handed to me by a Pediatrician one toxic afternoon at the ER when she noticed how hypoglycemic I must have looked. I kept it because it looked like a little geisha with a nut for a head :). Come to think of it, I also have a sales tag stapled in there somewhere from a bag that same pediatrician also gave me when I graduated from their Internship Program.

Anyway, I have this noetbook. A sort of record of my daily existence.

And I haven’t written anything in it for a while now.

When I flip through the earlier pages, each page is jam-packed with sribbles and sketches and doodles and pasted pictures I tore from some magazine and some such stuff.

Things to do (there were a lot).

Dates to remember (there were a lot too).

Chapters to read (need I count those?).

And somehow, as I flipped through the pages and saw how the contents got thinner and thinner, I felt sad.

The kind of sad that gets you when you’re watching a sad movie and you realize you’re just a spectator.

It was just something I did back then to remind me of homework. To help me remember birthdays. To nail deadlines. To record thoughts.

Can you imagine how somehow, right under my nose, it has managed to transform itself into my life?

And if I look at my life through that window, it’s been blank for some time now. Except for the date. So in a sense, it’s become just a calendar. Where I count the days until the pages run out and it’s time to buy a new one.

And as if to compensate for my lack of a life, I scribbled down some inessential things:

1. Micheal Jackson dies at age fifty.

2. My favorite of his songs is “Childhood”

3. People call it a tragedy but nobody can deny that HE LIVED.

4. Farrah Fawcet dies too.

5. I only ever saw the Liu-Barrymore-Diaz versions of Charlie’s Angels

6. On the 29th, Jay becomes a priest, Toneng, Noel and Dexter become deacons.

7. My brother Johnny comes home for it.

8. Dad sends a cow to the seminary as a gift.

9. My room needs to be cleaned.

10. Bowie needs to be taken to the vet.

11. I have a craving for tuna casserole.

12. I think the AH1N1 flu virus scare is a little too overhyped.

13. Farmrown in facebook is a great game but it’s too slow.

14. I’m running out of inessential things to jot down.

15. I miss Dr. Chris
I suppose that’s what it was all along…

June 26, 2009