so, how does an action figure plan her impossible day? how does she prioritize all of that action, and order it just so, to make it from the bedcave to the blogbridge, through toddler forest and laundry swamp, around the steaming catlitter pit, over employment bluff and on to the peaks of packed and ready? i’ve never seen an action figure make a to-do list. neither the superheroes nor the superhilarious pop-art figures i’ve posed in embarassing yoga positions have ever whipped out a pile of post its, a ring bound notebook, or (blech) an Outlook Task List of Doom. they don’t do it in my real life fantasies or onscreen. perhaps i’m not looking for the right thing…perhaps they have an unacknowledged line to the “cloud,” whatever that really is, and it feeds them all of their regular and spontaneous engagements through effortless, thought-based communication. perhaps they’ve had it for quite some time without mentioning it…maybe they take it for granted…maybe it’s a sister benefit for action figure credit union members.

i still need a to-do list and on this particular day, i need a list of the lists i need. yeah. it will all happen somehow, i know. writing here this morning is an effort to inspire myself and lower the risk of a hair fire. conditions are highly favorable…pretty much all week. in preparation, i’m polishing my Zen-plated shield and collecting jokes and deep breaths with which i can mark my trail. later i will follow them back to my bedcave in time to rest for tomorrow’s intrepid adventures.

i’m a little envious this week of the action figures who can fly themselves instead of using mass transit. i’d take that low-emissions invisible plane any day of the week…or try the cape thingy if i thought that would work…and if i had that thought while not substantively altered. there is some foreshadowing of a possible overbooking problem on the last leg of my commercial flight home…plus, if i could get a designated pilot, i could still sit back and enjoy a cloud-top cocktail…call drinks from invisible liquorette bottles.

i’d like to see how other action figures handle scheduling, if they handle their own at all. the nature of our lives requires spontaneity, flexibility and periods of extended energy. how do they pull it all off, and since pulling it off obviously qualifies as its own superpower, why hide it? why isn’t there some caped crusader at the Hall of Justice with a powerful “E” for Efficient or Executor or Effin’ Organized emblazoned on her chest shield? you’d see her strike through a lifetime of chores in a single sweep of Sharpie, knock procrastination from power with a death ray of accomplishment flashed from sparkling eyes, fit “me-time” and exercise into the most hyperbolically full calendar.

writing that i realize it sounds like a pretty boring power…at least from a spectator’s point of view…but as i stare down into a villainous valley of expectations, deadlines and timekeepers, i have to say i’d be encouraged to discover that superheroine, who obviously supers out remotely, which is why you never see her killing time in the Hall of Justice break room.

action figure daughter is now calling plaintively from the dark of toddler forest. it’s time to get my lists on…over my big-girl superhero underwear…part of the uniform, not an underoos set.