Guest Editorial: Oldie's Obsession

[The following guest editorial was written by my dear wife, Kes, who, upon being asked to write an article, immediately struck upon this tribute to an embarrassingly obsessive tic of mine. Enjoy. -Old]

Jeff once eluded to the note taking master in a past blog…well that, folks, is my husband. Now you will say to yourself, "Well sure, I write lists and take notes to help myself remember things" …but I think that the note taking abilities of my husband, better known as Old on this blog and to friends, is quite an incredible skill of his. It is rare to be hanging out with Old and not have him break into a search for a bit of scrap to jot something down on…in fact it has become an integral part of his way of being.

I would like to share some of these amazing notes/lists that I have managed to collect.

Who knows what these refer to! But Old apparently knows, as I recently watched him jot them down into his little black book of notes…yes folks, he keeps a little black book full of notes that are organized and neatly printed, unlike the scrappies (my fond name for his notes) he takes on the daily. Mind you, this transfer of scrappies usually takes a full evening, since he takes so many notes in a week's time…it could be a full time job.

Now many of you know that we are having a baby soon---3.5 weeks to be exact (if baby Jasper comes on time) and this was a list of things that Old wrote recently. I think he partly feels as though we are dying when the baby comes…the list is titled “Do Before I Die.” One thing I want you to notice is the line that says “finish road trip journal”...that is because we took a 6-month roadtrip after graduating from college (over 5 years ago), and he took diligent notes which he then had to transfer into our journal…tedious and, well, unfinished, of course…but the notes live on!

To exemplify Old's ability to save his scribbles for future writing projects, here is an example of notes from December of 2007 that were taken during one of his great PDX adventures: SantaCon. They still have yet to grace the pages of Tales From The Stump. So my question to Old is, why spend such time on notes that may never be published?

Old leaves notes on everything...newspaper corners, receipts, empty or full sugar packets, plant leafs, basically any flat surface…making my life of discarding scraps of paper a dangerous one such as this reciept that if I had not closely inspected would have been recycled. The other side of this obsession is that Old has a thing for pens. We have an entire drawer in our desk chock-full of pens, 10'' deep, no exageration...and if Old can't find his pen that he keeps in his pocket at every waking second of the day, he becomes quite distraught.

One good thing I can say, is that he's responsible about taking notes. If he's driving, I'm frequently asked to take notes for him, rather than him texting or note taking while driving, like many of our friends do. [She's refering to you Jeff, I'm sure. -Old]

One day Old called me and told me about his great new sleeping plan as a way to save time on his life (again, I think this stems from our baby coming soon and his unconcious "we are going to die" mentality)…here are the notes that he presented to further his description of this new sleep plan (mind you this plan lasted about 2 days)….

For a year we lived with opposite work schedules and notes were our lifeline…but to this day
he still takes diligent notes on what he does on the daily when I'm away.

More recently, I realized how vital a part of our life his notes are when he presented our 3 year plan to me on this note below...and, my friends, that is how we ended up pregnant…

But best of all are his notes that he takes/keeps for this blog, which sit in the untouchable cubby next to the computer, piled about 3 inches thick. Some day, if you are lucky, you may get to read about all these scrappies…that is if he ever gets around to it.

Long live the master note taker/list maker!!!! For without him, life would be a day of bland minutes simply passing by…