“Do you think it would help if I got two calendars?’ I ask Matt.  We are at Borders, and I am making my annual visit to the calendar aisle. Matt looks at me rather exasperatedly.  If rolling eyes made a sound, he would be making it.  

The yearly calendar expedition is somewhat of a joke, for as far back as I can remember I have been unsuccessful at keeping a calendar.  The calendar that I need, no one designs. I need one that allows me to view the month as a whole, fulfilling that strong need of mine to see the bird’s eye view of my schedule, but that allows me significant room to jot notes into individual days. I need it small enough to transport easily, but big enough to make me feel that the days might expand at my command.  I want pretty pictures.  I need random blank space to jot down miscellaneous thoughts that don’t have a deadline or even a date attached, but will of their own accord provide the thread through my weeks and months.   I don’t need the days to be divided into neat hours, like birds on a fence, because I never structure my life that carefully.  My life is already overly organized by regular appointments or, more specifically, by lessons and rehearsals.  I don’t need to write down that I see Ellie on Mondays at eight in the morning, or that George comes at 3:30 on Thursdays. What I need to write down are the extras:  the extra lessons or rehearsals or doctors appointments or coffee dates with friends that fill out the rest of my hours.  There aren’t many extras in a week, filled already to capacity with my work life, but still I need somewhere to write these things down.  

Some years, I have bought a blank book and created by own calendar, which only made me the object of ridicule when I would take it out in front of colleagues and friends.  
Last year I tried one of those monthly calendars that hang on the wall with pictures of cats sunning in the Greek islands.  At the very least, I thought it would make me happy to look at these photos.  It has, but it hasn’t solved my scheduling problems, because the calendar stays at home, while I often need to make appointments when I am out in the world.  Countless times I have gotten home, gone to write down some lunch or hair appointment and found that I was already busy on that date and had to start over.  Hence the thinking that maybe two calendars would solve the problem.  One monthly calendar with pretty pictures of the Greek islands (I do like the Greek islands….), and a smaller one organized by weeks to carry with me, but with enough space to write down things as I need to.  With this plan, I’d also need to carry a blank sketchbook, not for sketching, but to scribble down miscellaneous things as they come to me:  grocery lists, phone calls to make, the opening sentence of an essay.  It’s all very complicated, and evidence from years past tells me that this new plan may be futile.  Chances are that, come March, I will once again be flying by the seat of my pants.

For a man whose home is also his wife’s place of business, my husband is generally good-humored.  Although our house is not large enough to have a separate studio, the front part of the house opens into a sunroom, where students can wait before their lessons begin.  The piano is situated in the front corner of the living room at the opposite end of the house from the television.  After work, Matt can come into the house through the back door, start dinner, watch the news, or work on the computer and read while I finish up my evening lessons.  Most of the time it works just fine.