things that have recently made my life easier, by pen

1. Organizing my Inbox. This is totally a big *duh* on my part, because I have several folders in addition to the Inbox, I am an Organizational Addict, and yet never thought to create separate folders for frequent email contacts. Instead I just let the Inbox fill up, and when it got out of control, with say, several hundred emails, I went through and deleted a bunch. A bunch of dam work, and I ended up deleting and/or losing stuff I might have wanted in the whole ghastly process. The other day I made all these new folders, and now I've got just a few emails in my Inbox? Best organizational decision, possibly of all time.

2. A lap desk for my laptop. J.Lo decided I needed one, because I was using a pillow to rest my laptop on out in the living room, and setting one's laptop on a pillow is apparently akin to holding a pillow over its face. You will slowly smother it to death. My laptop's been acting wonky, anyway, slow and feeble and something's wrong with the jack, but the lap desk totally helps, keeps the laptop breathing and my skin from melting off.

3. Scheduled posting, by Blogger. This Blogger feature where you future-date your post and it will automatically publish was first available in Draft Blogger, but is now available in regular Blogger. You just change the time and/or date of your post, and click "Publish" as usual. Ingenious.

4. Spray sunblock. It's a watery (but very effective) version of sunblock that is easy to spread over one's children. I had purchased some last summer, but it came in a pump bottle that takes a fair amount of pressure to operate, which is difficult with lotion-y fingers. The new pump sprays efficiently and effectively with minimal pressure, and the lotion itself goes on in a jiffy. Three of us can be out the door in less than 10 minutes. *Just don't use it on your face, it does tend to run into your eyes.

5. Wonder paper and markers, by Crayola. They're markers and paper that only work with each other, so the tiny people under your employ can use markers to their hearts' content without getting it all over your furniture and walls. The only problem is when you run out of paper and the poor kid is using Wonder markers on plain paper, not understanding why her markers aren't able to draw pretty pictures anymore. Sure, it's a tad pricey, but that's what grandmas are for.