LISTS WITH A LAUGH:

My compulsive list-making intensifies when I’m traveling — and then there are the recriminations (why did I go there instead of that other, maybe better, there?) Thank goodness the folks at Knock Knock ease the agony with a healthy dose of humor in their dozens of journals and organizing notepads. The 60-sheet, 9.5-inch by 8-inch Five Days a Week Paper Mousepad (or just pad pad), provides columns for Monday to Friday to-do’s, as well as smaller columns labeled This Weekend, Next Week and Snowball in Hell. Ramp up your pathological planning with the 4-inch by 6-inch Today’s Plan of Attack sticky notepad, which lets you organize your intentions under Most Critical, Would Be Nice and Not a Chance. Need a no-nonsense checklist? The 6-inch by 9-inch Pack This! Pad itemizes pretty much everything you could need on a trip, with blank spaces for additions (say, significant other, or perhaps insignificant other). My favorite product is the I’m Doing My Best Inner-Truth Journal, available as a 7-inch by 9.5-inch gut-spiller or a nearly identical, though less spacious, 4-inch by 5.75-inch mini-muse. You get 70-plus undated pages for crowing or kvetching (the Eiffel Tower is closed on X), along with sympathetic-ish daily quotes (from Jane Wagner: “A Sobering Thought: what if, at this very moment, I am living up to my full potential?”). Punctuate each day’s entry with a checkmark atop the illustration that best nails your “cup”: full, half-full, knocked over or broken.