A good calendar is hard to find.

I finally, finally bought a calendar yesterday. I'm weird about calendars: I manage to be incredibly cheap and spur-of-the-moment about them (i.e. I refuse to spend time or money), and yet I'm also absurdly picky, so that I show up at the kiosk in the mall on January 2 and wonder why they only have cocker spaniel calendars. I also can't handle being without a calendar, in the same way I hate not wearing a watch: someone says, "Let's get together on January 16," and somehow in my calendar-less state, I have no idea when that is. Next week? A month from now? For all I know, they're making a date for 2009, and I won't show up anyway. I'll just be wandering the streets of Oakland, not having any idea who I am or what I'm supposed to be doing. This is what a calendar is preventing.

The past few years have been easy, calendar-wise. Every year, my friend Al buys me an Orlando Bloom calendar and marks it up with a "thought from Orlando" (this is being generous to him, this attributing of actual thoughts to him) for each month. It's been awesome. Everyone loves the Orlando calendar. Apparently, though, poor Orlando ceased to be hot sometime in 2006: she couldn't find him anywhere ("Not even Wal-Mart! In Puyallup!"). So: no pirate-elf-men for me in 2007, which is not exactly getting things off on the right foot, now, is it?

I actually already had a calendar, hand-made by the lovely and exotic Teri with pictures of all of our friends. Everyone's birthdays are included, and everything. I love my Teri calendar. But that's my kitchen calendar, and for whatever reason, I can't live if I don't know what day it is in the living room. I need two calendars.

I almost bought a Georgia O'Keefe calendar when I was in Tacoma. I like Georgia O'Keefe. A lot. I like the images she uses. I like the colors she uses. I even--truth be told--like the whole botanical/anatomical thing. But I had to ask myself: was I ready to commit to flowers that look like genitalia? For a whole year? In mixed company? I decided to wait on it and buy it in the Bay Area, and took it as a sign when I didn't find another one here. I also came perilously--perilously, as in I really truly almost bought it--close to buying the world's most bizarre and disturbing calendar: ferrets acting out scenes from famous movies. It was so creepy, so unnerving, that I almost had to have it. I'm seriously still thinking about it with a mix of regret and repulsion. Hey, I'm still thinking about a calendar I didn't buy, like, three years ago (Sloane Tanen, and it's the little yoga-chickens with their feet in the air that make it art). This is serious business.

In the end, the ferrets lost out to a perfectly prosaic Fun with Dick and Jane calendar. Mostly, I like the production values: the colors are nice and they match my apartment; it's modern-vintage; everything's in English, French, and German. Also, it came with stickers, which apparently I haven't outgrown. And it won't give me ferret dreams.

It's going to be a good year.