Though life is slowly getting back to normal, I fear I may have lost one old habit forever – writing everything down in My Book. A little over a year ago I couldn’t survive without it because it told me exactly what I was to do and when, like a nagging mother.

It began in my early twenties when Very Best Friend and I both had our very own little black books because neither one of us wanted to stay home on a Friday night.  Our little books were exactly that – a book full of hot young men’s phone numbers, though actually My Book was brown. I’m into fall colors.

As we matured, got decent jobs, and even got married, our little black books were replaced by My Book. A place where we wrote down all appointments, children’s activities, lunch dates, plus kept business cards and most anything else we needed.

Going to a Day Runner store always offered up a multitude of calendars including a plethora (I just love that word) of daily, weekly, monthly and yearly calendars. Plus all sorts of useless info like time zones for every country, Metric System equivalents, and international dialing codes. I swear, I’ve never figured out how to call anybody in another country, which is okay because it seems everybody I know is in Texas.

For our first books, VBF and I settled on the 9 X 5 size because we thought it was more ladylike. Her cover was blue fake alligator and mine was a deep red fake leather. And we kept everything in there. The world as we knew it would end if either of us lost Our Books.

As we matured and got better jobs with more responsibility, we both felt it necessary to buy Our Books in the 9 X 12 size. The more important we were, the bigger Our Books.

VBF chose REAL black leather for hers and I went with REAL brown leather because I still love fall colors. I can remember several different occasions when we would be chatting on the phone in the car on our way to our jobs and VBF would wail, “Oh no! I left My Book at home. I have to go back and get it!” And she would because our days were so packed, My Book was the only thing that could get us through all those appointments.

But then came those pesky calendar appointments that people started sending via email. This caused Very Best Friend and I to have some serious conversations. “Are you going all electronic and (shudder) leaving your book behind?”, I queried her one day. “No, I’m double booking,” was her reply. She was accepting electronic calendar events and then writing them down in Her Book just to be sure she didn’t miss anything.

I just accepted those email invites and then missed all sorts of meetings because they weren’t in My Book.

But then came COVID and My 2020 Book went out the window. I had no more appointments. Nada. Not even a doctor’s appointment or dinner with Rod Stewart. I simply stopped using My Book. Still, I did have a few things to remember so I bought a giant wall calendar and started writing things on it. You can’t really get more than two events a day inside one of those little wall calendar boxes and, frankly, that’s the way I like my life now.

I think VBF and I are going to have a My Book bonfire this year and just embrace electronic appointments, though I’ve gotten pretty fond of that gigantic wall calendar staring down at me and laughing at all the details of my life. I guess now I have My Wall.