By Nicole

If I have never before mentioned my passive aggressive love relationship with lists, then I have been keeping a sordid secret from you all. I make lists for just about everything.  Shopping, to do, to pack, to make, menu planning, baby names.  You name it, I have probably listed it.  Sometimes I make lists and check them off as I complete them.  Sometimes I do a whole bunch of stuff and then write up a list of what I actually finished just so that I can cross off everything.  Tonight I am planning on making a list of all the things I want to accomplish this weekend.  One of the things on my list will be to make a shopping list.  It's a sick   helpful thing.  Really.  What feels better than to be able to track all the things you have accomplished?  Or to at least get down on paper all the things you need to accomplish so that they will quit rattling around in your skull and fighting your optic nerve and medulla oblonga...

Does everything take longer after you have kids?  Well, I guess I should have enough kids by now to know that the answer is yes.  Yet sometimes I still fall back into the habit of underestimating how long things really will take. Case in point.  I put off grocery shopping this weekend until I could drive into town (the "town" where we shop at Costco, WalMart, Safeway, etc. is an hour away) when it was still mostly light out and the roads wouldn't be totally icy.  Sunday afternoon was really my only time.  When I started out the morning trying to get ready ahead of time for church and still walking in late, I should have known... We finally got home from church ( I had to stay late to tape labels on my Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes that I had procrastinated on) and settled in the car to drive to town at 2:15ish.  We didn't make it to Costco until  almost 4 because I had to stop at the bank and check the oil.  The car was dry (I driv...