Check this off

I'm a list-maker. Every morning I look at my to-do, and every night I scribble the undone on a notepad at my bedside. Some items are pre-loaded everyday. Run. Laundry. Clean bathrooms. As soon as I check them off for Sunday I make a mental note to add them on Monday's list.

My daughter isn't a lister, but I wish she would be. All the "to-do"s scramble around in her head along with other pressing matters like deciding on the boyfriend-of-the-week, or overcoming the girlfriend-drama-of-the-day, or whether to flat-iron the hair or pull it into a ponytail. She doesn't prioritize like I do, and she doesn't demonstrate my discipline to tackle the big, bad and ugly items before kicking back for the leisure activities.

This is a constant tug-of-war. I want to manage things for her, but at age 14 she should be learning to manage for herself. So I sit in front of this screen at 7:30 AM on a Sunday, ironing for the week complete, cat litter changed, and dishwasher emptied, anxious for her to wake up and start checking things off. Heaven help me.