My Other Journals

If you're Mormon you keep a journal. Or, you have guilt about not keeping a journal.

I do keep a journal, which is full of Deep Stuff. And I have this blog which is full of Stuff That is Not So Deep, But Funny.

And then I have the notebooks, which are both Deep and Funny as well as being completely insane. The good stuff is in the notebooks. When I die you should rush to my place and call dibs on them because they are GOLD. I keep notebooks around because I need some place to dump all the left over stuff in my brain. And I have the World's Worst Memory so when someone tells me something, if I don't write it down in one of the notebooks it's gone forever. If I tell you I'll remember something I'm totally lying to you. Make me write it down.

Anyway, the notebooks. I have filled up dozens of them over the last 15 years of carrying them around and they're stashed away in a drawer somewhere. I was going through my partially used ones on Monday to see if I could transfer any of them over to that drawer and then I got sucked into reading through some of them. Minutes of fun! What I love about them is that there is absolutely no order. You could flip through them and find book titles, observations on people I see in public, craft ideas, blog post ideas, long division, funny words, directions to a friends house, doodles, scribbles, recipes, phone numbers, a list of all the countries in Africa*, quilt designs, notes on Sunday School lessons**, drawings of mustaches and birds and birds with mustaches, book ideas for when I finally write the Great American Novel, half written letters to friends***, sad little blurbs when I'm feeling depressed, movie times, gift ideas for Christmas, the price of bananas, websites I need to visit, quotes from books****, names horrible parents have given to their poor children, bad poetry, grammatical errors I find on signs, really deep thoughts, really silly thoughts, sometimes mean things that I'm ashamed of and want to tear out but, you know, posterity, and what-not, people I need to write letters to and the offenses they have committed, things I would buy once my WB shows up, and countless shopping lists that always contain at least three of the following items: bread, milk, party favors, eggs, yogurt, deodorant.

I realize that they seem like junk to most people, but they're like little spiral bound treasures to me. And I like to think that someday in the distant future an anthropologist will get her hands on them and will write an award winning thesis on the magnitude of my seemingly large and life altering glandular condition, because seriously, deodorant is on like half of my shopping lists.

*Fact: When I get bored I list all the countries of Africa starting in Egypt and working my way south in a zig-zag fashion. Someone, please stuff me in a locker or something.

**Although now I have found the perfect notebook for Sunday School lesson preparation and I have stockpiled them for future use. Lots of sheets inside, sturdy ring binding, durable covers, not too big, not too small. Perfect. You can get it at Barnes and Noble for about $5. It's black with "notes" written on the front. Dear B&N, if you had put the Perfect Notebook on your website I would have linked to it and my tens of readers would have put a dent in your stock. Your loss. Love, Rachel

***Rac, there are like 50 of these for you. I should just tear them out and send them to you for a laugh.

**** Example of one I found in the notebook in my purse: From Jane Eyre, "'Come, Miss Jane, don't cry,' said Bessie as she finished. She might as well have said to the fire, 'don't burn.'" I jotted it down because I like to think that Charlotte Bronte knew what it meant to be an Uncontrollable Crier, like myself.