Note to self

Did you know that it’s really easy to make your own meatballs? You probably did know that. But I didn’t, until today. For some reason, I had always been afraid to make meatballs, so I just made sauce with meat in it, and that was what we had with our spaghetti. But today, I found a recipe, and decided to make meatballs. And it was astonishingly easy, and they were very good. The End.

Were you waiting for me to turn that into some kind of lesson about overcoming fears or leaving comfort zones or some shit? No, sorry. I have nothing for you but meatballs. Slightly too-spicy but very delicious meatballs.

*****
When I say that it was easy, I don’t mean that it was fun. Rolling meatballs is like making cookies, and I hate making cookies. And I’m terrible at quantities, too. I had two pounds of ground beef, because the recipe called for one pound, and I wanted to make enough to freeze, so I wouldn’t have to roll meatballs again. But then I looked at the two pounds of meat and I thought that it wouldn’t make nearly enough meatballs to serve everyone and then have enough left over to freeze. And I was wrong, because two pounds of ground beef turns into a quantity of meatballs best described by the measurement “shitload.” Look it up. It’s somewhere between a buttload and a shit-ton.

*****
That was yesterday. My kids are still talking about those meatballs. A culinary triumph. Today, I went to an after-work happy hour, and then to Barnes and Noble to pick up a birthday present for a three-year-old girl. I’m sure she’ll get lots of toys, so I bought her a lovely hardcover copy of Anne of Green Gables. It’s so pretty that I was tempted to buy a copy for myself.

I bought a notebook instead, because my current notebook is almost full. I’m picky about notebooks, and I usually like the selection at Barnes and Noble. But I skip the Moleskine section. Moleskine is full of itself. They lost me when they introduced the silly Evernote thing and the $179 pen. I do like their bright, hard-cover notebooks, though.

Barnes and Noble also carries Leuchturm1917 notebooks. These are like Moleskine notebooks for people who don’t think Moleskine is hard enough to pronounce. I liked their red cover color, too, but they only had the red one with graph paper. So no Leuchturm1917.

I was tempted. The red cover is very nice. 

The clearance section had what appeared to be lots of options, but the selection narrowed after I ruled out the ones with the inspirational sayings on the covers, and the obviously ugly ones, and the ones with the hand-tooled leather covers, and the ones from the 300 Writing (Creative/Sketching/Drawing) Prompt series.

No. 

I mean, I’m writing about shopping for a notebook. Yesterday, I wrote about meatballs. I don’t need writing prompts.

Among the remaining notebooks, at least half were bullet journals. Bullet journals are a big trend now. And because this trend combines technology rejection in the name of “authenticity” (use real notebooks with paper and real pens, not electronics!) and consumerism (not just any notebook and pen--THIS kind of notebook and THIS kind of pen!) and social media influencers (hundreds of Instagram-filtered notebook photos accompanied by multiple hashtags), it is an easy target for mockery.

Silly as it may be, though, I’m not going to make fun of bullet journaling, because if I’m being honest (and I’m always being honest), I really love the whole idea. Bullet journals are neat and pretty, two of my favorite characteristics of anything. Do a Google image search and see if you don’t want to stop what you’re doing right now and make a beautiful bullet journal. I do. I mean, what am I doing, anyway? Writing about meatballs? I could be bullet journaling.

But I know myself. My handwriting is appallingly bad, and I doodle, and I write in the margins, and I scribble. Notebooks, in fact, are my only refuge of untidiness. Notebooks and my sock drawers. Marie Kondo didn’t get to them yet. So my bullet journal wouldn't look anything like the ones that litter the Pinterest landscape. I'd feel like a failure.

Or worse. Because it's just as likely that I'd start bullet journaling and become compulsive about it, and then it would become another chore that I have to do every day. As I said, I know myself.

I saw one very nice-looking bullet journal notebook and was still tempted to buy it, bullet journal reservations notwithstanding. The notebook was covered with cellophane wrapping with a paper band for the price and brand name. "For the iist-makers and note-takers," it read. Well that's me, right? I spend a good part of my life taking notes and making lists so this notebook was obviously meant for me. But the back side of the wrapper also had a little illustration of the notebook pages and they were way too complicated. A dashboard for your notes. That’s too much to do. It’s too much work. It's the compulsivity again--give me a notebook page with seven different sections dedicated to specific content types, and I will feel compelled to use them appropriately.

Simple on the outside, complicated on the inside.
I'd have needed a training class to use this notebook effectively.
Ain't nobody got time. 

Assuming you’re still reading this, at what point did you thank God you're not me? Was it the part about thinking that two pounds of meatballs wasn't enough to feed four people, or the 45 minutes of deliberation over a notebook?

And that's a slight exaggeration. Maybe 20 minutes, or 25 at the most. After no more than 25 or 30 minutes, I picked a "modular" notebook with a very lovely soft blue faux leather cover. It's modular because it comes with three interchangeable and refillable inserts, so you can have blank paper for drawing if you draw, and graph paper for graphing stuff if you do that, and lined paper for writing. I will use all three of the inserts for writing, with a few doodles here and there, and then I’ll get more inserts because the cover really is so pretty that I’ll want to keep using it. And it’s an unusual size, compact but much longer than wide than most notebooks. It’s very well suited to both lists and notes. It has a clear pocket in the front for business cards, and a clear zipper pocket in the back, where I can keep my little ruler (neat underlines under dates and list titles being my only concession to neatness in my notebooks).

*****
The notebook is just right, and my notes are very neat and well-organized, as they always are during the three- to four-day notebook honeymoon period. The inside of the notebook will soon be a jumble of scribble, comprehensible only to me. And that’s the way I like it. And now it’s time to cook dinner. I have a new perfect-for-weeknights chicken recipe that looks very promising. If it’s anywhere near as good as the meatballs, then maybe I’ll have to use one of the little notebook sections for recipes. Maybe I like to cook now. I have a new notebook, so anything is possible, anything at all.