I Like This Calendar, Too

At the beginning of every academic year I usually buy a new calendar so that I can note all the important dates through the following June. Younger members of the family, whom one would hope could do this for themselves, swear that they aren’t allowed to write anything but homework assignments in their daily planners.

The handiest format to manage multiple schedules is a grid with space for each family member. I’ve complained in the past that most of these calendars feature dancing hippos, as though someone managing three or more schedules was in fact childlike.

I’m pleased to announce that yesterday I found a dignified new calendar with spaces for five people’s schedules. The Day Runner Mom’s LifeTracker™ is blotter-size, with 3 1/3 x ½ inches to each person’s daily appointments.

Instead of balloon and candy corn decorations, it sports a tasteful abstract chocolate brown and sage design. In other words, if I had to manage multiple schedules at work as well, I wouldn’t be ashamed to put this calendar on my desk.

Also, it has an absorbent finish instead of a glossy one. Glossy paper looks prettier, but only until I forget how slowly it absorbs ink. Then I turn over the page before the appointments have dried, and I smudge the entire month.

My sole quibble with the LifeTracker is that it only runs through June, 2011. Usually academic calendars run through the end of the following year. If I end up loving it, I won’t mind going back to the store next summer, but I would have appreciated the flexibility to procrastinate a month or two.

Like the Post It Weekly Planner pictures and product information about the LifeTracker are hard to find online. I like to think that’s because it’s such a hot new product that Mead’s web designers haven’t caught up with the product designers.

A word from the calendar aficionada: if this sounds good to you, I advise you to get your Mom’s LifeTracker early. Last year another Mead product, the five-star flex hybrid notebinder sold out in August and wasn’t available anywhere until October.