100 things to do before I die (1)
Posted 25 March, 2008 in life shiz
I ripped this off from Mighty Girl again. I should seriously pay her for all the ripping off I do. Or maybe just buy her book.
1. Walk along the Malecon, that street in Havana where the waves sometimes break over the sea wall.
2. Learn how to stunt drive.
3. Get a permit for a concealed weapon. (Not that I would ever actually carry one - but no one would ever expect someone like me to have such a thing, which amuses me. See that little bobo white girl over there? She’s packing heat!)
4. Upholster a really complicated piece of furniture from scratch.
5. Make something complicated out of wood. (Like a working refrigerator, or a robot. No, not really.) Sand it and stain it, then use it regularly.
6. Become fluent in Spanish.
7. Learn how to do various styles of dance with a partner. (Hopefully O, but if he is not into it, then any gay man will do. I am taking applications.)
8. Go back to my middle school in England and take pictures. (They probably redid it so it doesn’t look so much like Dotheboys Hall, but I am sure some of the original Lord-of-the-Flies-type atmosphere remains for me to document.
9. Drive the same route my parents took when they brought me back to the aforementioned school on Sunday nights. Just to exorcise a few demons.
10. Live on a canal boat for a month or so.
11. Take various train rides across America.
12. Learn how to silversmith.
13. Learn how to blow glass.
14. Do some heavy construction stuff with mechanized equipment, possibly involving a tractor, or even better, a wrecking ball.
15. Implode a building. (I will probably never get to do this, but it would be so fucking metal.)
16. Find people whose stories you wouldn’t think deserve to be told, and tell them in such a way that other people will love to read them.
17. Own a dog, or several. (Hopefully O will cooperate with me on this one.)
18. Eventually, once again be able to touch my knees with my nose. (Once this damned zygote decides to vacate my torso.)
19. Learn how to sing, for reals, with training and everything.
20. Sew myself a really beautiful dress.
21. Go on safari.
22. Stay in that ice hotel in Sweden. (Or maybe just briefly check it out. I may be too much of a pussy to actually spend a night in it.)
23. Get published.
24. Get really ridiculously in shape.
25. Make a quilt.
26. Teach my kid the art of cheerful cynicism - i.e., most people suck, but there’s no need to be bitter about it.
27. Find some suet somewhere and make jam roly-poly, and some dumplings too.
28. Go to Iceland.
29. Spend a substantial amount of time in Leeds.
30. Learn to ride a bike. (Don’t laugh.)
31. Run around on the beach with my kids.
32. Make something incredibly cool out of garbage. Like this, for example. Then, if I decide to sell it, I won’t charge a price as retarded as this guy is charging.
33. Let shit roll off my back more.
34. Eat all the food in my kitchen pantry that’s been sitting there in cans and bottles seemingly for eons. (First, make sure it hasn’t been sitting there for actual eons, otherwise I may poison myself.) Don’t buy any more pantry-stored stuff till I’ve eaten everything in there.
35. Bone up (huh huh) on UK geography - it’s pitiful how little I know.
36. Have a house with a hidden room or a secret passageway/staircase.
37. Live in a brick house.
38. Live in a stone house.
39. Learn how to draw, so I can draw cartoons that will at least marginally look like what I’m intending to portray.
40. Embark upon a project with some friends that takes us a long time, requires manual labor, and leaves us all dirty and exhausted. Renovating a house or an apartment would be a good one.
41. Drive as little as possible - even though I love to drive, gas prices are gouging my ass, which is also getting fatter the more I drive and the less I walk.
42. Find some way to get my children a good education.
43. Visit my relatives in Australia.
44. Make my living as a writer.
45. Hang out with bears at the Russian River. (Human ones.)
46. Eat more vegetables.
47. Go to Morocco.
48. Write and do other creative projects for myself, rather than always thinking about how I’ll market them and what other people will think of them.
49. Go to New Orleans.
50. Eat pasteis de nata in Portugal.
51. Hang out in John O’Groats for a while. (Not the breakfast place on Pico - the top of Scotland.)
52. See how much of my stuff I can sell without really missing it… and see how much money I can bank from doing it.
53. Run around in the Catacombs.
54. Work for Cesar Millan and his giant pack of dogs at the Dog Psychology Center. (He doesn’t have time to hire or train people, though, sadly.)
55. Drive down the Seven Mile Bridge to the Florida Keys.
56. Galapagos, bitches! (I’m pretty sure those two words have never before been used together.)
57. Visit that Russian family with the fishing cat.
58. Pretend I’m a Mongol warrior.
59. Ogle some Faberge eggs.
60. Get a really bitchin’ tan for the last time in my life. I’ve given up tanning due to a. being so white that it takes me a year to get any kind of color anyone else would see, and b. fear of skin cancer, but I just want that last hurrah.
61. Go to Taos, New Mexico.
62. Be able to say, “You should see the other guy,” and not be joking.
63. Stay in a working lighthouse.
64. Have my friends Isabel and Andreas show me around Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.
65. Ride the Orient Express.
66. Ride the Trans-Siberian Express.
67. See the All Blacks do their Maori dance before a rugby match.
68. Drive on the German Autobahn. Perhaps I am too much of a pussy to do this, in which case, O can drive and I’ll sit in the passenger seat.
69. Sit in the cockpit of an Airbus A380 as it takes off.
70. Find more nonsensical things to mock, such as this inexplicable item on some Net denizen’s 100-things list: “change something in Poland for better, maybe get rid of two ducks for example.”
71. Own and operate a cattery.
72. Have access to a group of hard geezers whom I can call upon to defend me or to threaten my enemies whenever I might need them to do so.
73. Learn how to fix a car.
74. Never stop finding unintentional spelling and grammar errors funny, such as this double whammy from another 100-things list: “Drink in a dark, smoky martini lounge preferably dressed as a gangster or mole.”
75. Finally find time to teach myself how to play bass really well with a pick.
76. See England win the World Cup. (Also to see pigs fly, the cow jump over the moon, snow fall in Hell, and so forth.)
77. See Leeds United back in the Premiership. (See parenthetical note on number 76.)
78. Find a physical activity I love so much that it becomes effortless to keep fit. (Cue sex joke here. Boioioioioing!)
79. Go snorkeling without being afraid that the mask won’t work and I’ll breathe in a whole shitload of water. (See? I told you I am a pussy.)
80. Hear my kids say that Mom’s cooking is the best.
81. In order to make this goal possible, actually cook more often than once every couple of weeks.
82. Be a more attentive friend.
83. Once, just once, give a real verbal smackdown to someone who deserves it. And don’t feel bad afterwards.
84. Discover how to eat chocolate in moderation.
85. Drive a tank. I will probably ding it up, but that’s OK, because it’s a tank.
86. Find a way to get into the wind farm that sits outside Palm Springs, and run around in among the windmills.
87. Successfully grow gardenias and freesias.
88. Float in the Dead Sea. (Bonus: good for psoriasis!)
89. Chill on Punaluu Beach, the black sand beach on the Big Island of Hawaii.
90. See a live boxing match in Las Vegas.
91. When I’ve gotten as much use out of my car as possible, give it to a stunt driver and watch him drive it off a cliff. Or have some SFX guys blow it up on a film or TV set. (I tried to make my dad help me do this with my last car, but he gave it to charity instead. Can you imagine? Charity! Pshaw!)
92. Have an experience that convinces me that the supernatural isn’t just a load of shit.
93. Witness my child make an incisively witty remark.
94. Spend the summer in Svalbard, Norway, where the sun never sets for like 4 months. Try not to go completely, gibberingly insane.
95. Hang out with the seismologists at the California Institute of Technology, especially that awesome Kate Hutton lady, during an earthquake.
96. Fly so high in a fighter plane that I can see the curve of the earth. (And try to ignore the fact that I have crapped my pants while doing so.)
97. Go fishing. I’ve never been.
98. Chillax under some baobab trees in Madagascar.
99. Have someone send a helicopter to come get me and take me somewhere posh.
100. Get super old and crotchety. Shout at people from my porch. Hit young men with my handbag. Be a horrible little old lady, and have lots of fun while I’m at it.