100 Things To Do Before I Die.

                       

I love wagons. Station wagons, hay wagons, but most especially bandwagons. And the "100 Things to Do Before I Die" wagon? Possibly my most favorite of all. Here it is, in all its glory, the ultimate list. I have been salivating all over myself in anticipation of this, which has made it a messy three days. 

I'm cheating a little because I've already done a few of the things on the list, but I figure, everyone needs a head start, right?

Give me a hard time in the comments, if you like. Peanut gallery. You know who you are.

100 Things

1. See the Northern Lights
2. Dance at a Honky-Tonk.

3. Have a mushroom species named after me. Preferably not one that grows on poop.

                                    


4. Make street art.
5. Organize an event for a cause I'm passionate about. Like dangling prepositions.
6. Visit India.
7. Live my life according to my role models: Auntie Mame and Mary Poppins

.
8. Get to the top of an indoor climbing wall.
9. Start a perfume blog.
10. Always look for the good, the funny, and the kind.
11. Two words: Simultaneous. Orgasm.
12. Grow our own vegetables.
13. Bake cookies for a neighbor.
14. Buy a home.
15. Visit the Galapagos Islands.

16. Swim with some dolphins. (Isn't this a requirement of ALL life lists?)
17. Make a souffle.
18. Complete my midwife training.
19. Train trip across America.
20. Have a million dollars in the bank.
21. Go see Willie Nelson live in concert. (Note: I would totally hit that. In a second.)

22. Visit Madagascar.
23. Inspire a painting.
24. Get a Ph.D.
25. Learn how to prune.
26. See Bonnie Raitt live in concert.
27. Bike or hike around the perimeter of Ireland.

28. Have a year-long spending hiatus.
29. Pose for an arty nude photograph by a professional photographer.
30. Try stand-up comedy.
31. Get published in 100 magazines.
32. Record my grandparents talking about their families, historical events, etc.
33. Was the age Christ died. I'd like to live past 33.
34. Give someone away in a wedding ceremony.
35. Be able to do 5 real push-ups.
36. Crochet an afghan.
37. Inspire a poem.
38. Finish my silk quilt.
39. Read all the books I already own.
40. Write 1000 fragrance reviews.
41. Learn to ride a horse. Maybe not this one.

42. Publish (at least) 5 books.
43. Learn to ride a motorcycle.
44. Take a photograph every day for a year.
45. Read all of Italo Calvino.
46. Develop a consistent yoga practice.
47. Make living with gratitude a reflex.
48. Smile at more people on the street.
49. Wander in a field full of fireflies.
50. Be smashingly interesting.
51. Become really, truly fluent in Russian.
52. Learn to juggle.
53. Memorize 100 poems.
54. Go on a road trip with no particular destination.

55. Send something to Postsecret.
56. Sew myself a beautiful dress.
57. Have a mad tea party.
58. Host Thanksgiving dinner for anyone who wants to come.
59. Make 1000 paper cranes.
60. Inspire a song.
61. Visit all 50 states.
62. Take a creative photobooth picture every year on my birthday.
63. Learn to play pool like a hustler.

64. Make a red velvet cake.
65. Get a lap dance.
66. Take a dance class with Ilya.
67. Sneak into 4 movies in one day.
68. Visit Grasse and walk around in Chanel's jasmine and rose fields.
69. Have a custom perfume made.
70. See the desert in bloom.
71. Get it on in some library stacks a la Atonement.

72. Go on a mushroom hunt at least once a year.
73. Own a Jaguar. Pretty sure these are the sexiest cars ever made.
74. Donate my hair to Locks of Love.
75. Look for ecstacy and transcendence.
76. Never be afraid of success.
77. Work at a Texas birthing center.
78. Teach Creative Writing at a major university for a year.
79. Draw one self portrait every year.
80. Have 15 minutes of fame.
81. Grow zinnias from seed in memory of my grandmother.

82. Buy something from Bottega Venatta. I love everything they make.
83. When in doubt, stand still.
84. Laugh so hard I cry.
85. Throw a pot on a potter's wheel.
86. Spend more time looking at the sky.
87. Write a wildly successful self-help book.
88. Listen to my body more carefully.
89. Make it to Ilya's and my 50th anniversary.
90. Read all of Tolstoy's novels.
91. Be the best dancer in the room. Even if I'm alone.
92. Be loud, be proud, accept my lot as the cat lady.

93. Have 2 kids? Have any?
94. Buy an incredibly comfortable mattress.
95. Know when to be extravagant and when to be humble.
96. Get 1000 visitors to my blog in one day. (Record so far: 100.)
97. Look under the hood of my car and know what's wrong. Or right. Positive thinking!
98. Open a press/magazine to support short-shorts and prose poetry.
99. Love my life.
100. Always be adding to this list.

10 Things that make me Happy

1. This print of a polaroid by the lovely Spaniard Urizen Freaza. I bought it from Etsy, a brilliant place to pick up art on the cheap.  Ilya absolutely hates it, but it makes me absurdly happy-- of course, as I'll be posting other works that I've bought, it will become clear that anything with additional wings makes me absurdly happy.

2.Did you know, that when you open a Breathe-Rite strip (ie those snore strips) in the dark, their adhesive makes blue crackly light? This has brought me the first real jolt of unexpected joy in a long time. Not to mention it cuts down on A Certain Famous Poet's less than lyrical night-time sound effects.

3. Scented candles. This has been a life-long obsession, but some weird hoarding instinct has always prevented me from actually BURNING them, until the last six months or so. I credit my friend Chrissy's lesson in ambiance-- which basically consisted of plonking a bunch of candle holders down and lighting a match. God bless her.

3.. Self-help books. These are less the "I'm Okay, You're Okay" sort (incidentally, my father's Most Life-Changing Book, which should come as no surprise to those who know him. Or me.), but rather, the "how-to-live-life" sort. For example, I just picked up (at no small cost) Colin Cowie Chic: A Guide to Life as it Should Be, a book in a faux-alligator cover, which presents such titillating tidbits as "Lighter colored cigars usually taste milder than darker ones, though there are exceptions." I find this kind of advice comes in rather handy at the most bizarre moments.

4. In general, I consider myself pretty much the opposite of vain. But I keep growing out my hair, which is higher-maintenance than the rest of me put together. Honest. In the time it takes to comb, wash, and condition my hair, I can shower, shave, eat breakfast, learn to paint in encaustic, and find the cure to eczema. Why don't I cut it? Cause it makes me happy. When I'm not combing it, or washing it. Or not washing it. Or bitching about it...

5. Organizing my clothes by color. Even if they're on the floor.

6. Shelfari.com  There is a longer post to come on all the reasons I love it so, but moving books from "Books I'm Reading" to "Books I've Read" once I've finished them is almost as satisfying as reading them in the first place.

7. Hershey's Dark Chocolate Brownie Mix, WITH walnuts, people. One of my prouder moments in becoming an adult is realizing that baked goods without nuts are like... like... Othello without Desdemona? Why is that coming to me now?

8. Whole classes devoted to reading one author. Although this can be a really exhausting proposition, it's always been the most profound and wonderful experience at the same time. I'm taking a whole class on Faulkner right now. I'd always meant to read Faulkner-- I love the Southern Gothic aesthetic, and two of my favorite authors are Flannery O'Conner and Eudora Welty, both Southerners writing around the same time Faulkner did. So it was Time. And it's been a really fantastic, if devastating, experience-- as Faulkner is a really fantastic, if devastating, writer. 

The last class I remember taking with such a focus was my "Plato" class in high school, with the crankiest professor on earth. He could pull his lower lip a full six inches away from his face-- it was horribly fascinating. He assigned a one-page summary of each of Plato's dialogues, and I turned each one in, written in 2 point font. He read them all with a magnifying glass, commented on every one, and gave me a Classics prize at the end of the semester. I still dislike Platonic philosophy, but at least I can talk about why. 

9. Mock orange in bloom. It's possibly the world's most perfect scent.

10. This blog's 12 day anniversary! It's small steps, people. Small steps.

3 Wishes

I've given a lot of thought to what my three wishes would be if a genie popped out of, say, the vase I picked up from my last trip to Goodwill. There are a lot of reasons for this, I'm sure, including a passionate love for fairy tales, fantasy novels, and men in parachute pants. So, after at least twenty years of mulling over this question, I'm ready to reveal my three choices:

1. I wish to be able to change shape into whatever animal, vegetable, or mineral I desire. (This requires amendments)

• I have to be able to change back!
  
• There have to be some  formal words to think or say aloud in order to do this, lest, you know, mid-coitus, the image of a porcupine should pop into my head and my husband would end up doing some SERIOUS explaining in the hospital.
  
• I need to be able to change from one shape into another without going back to my intermediate human shape.
  
• When I change back into a human, I need to be wearing the same clothes and retain whatever objects I had with  me before I changed.
  
• I need to be able to retain my human brain and consciousness in whatever shape I change to, even if it's a flea, or say, a diamond (a diamond shape would actually be really useful if say, a piano was about to fall on your head.)
  
• I also need to be able to retain the abilities and instincts of whatever animal I change into. It wouldn't be much help to change into wolf form and then not be able to run because I don't know what to do with my tail, or into fish form without knowing how to breathe through gills. 
  
• I also want to be able to change my human shape. So I could be a man, or a child, or an old woman, convincingly. Even better, I should be able to know the things a helicopter pilot, or doctor, or painter should know, if I change myself into one.
  
• I should also be able to wish to be myself, but in a different place. So this takes care of teleportation, basically.
  
• I have to be able to retain the memory of being whatever I change into, and what happened while I was in that form.
  

2. I wish to have the power to know the answer to any question. (This is another one that can bite you, so more amendments).

• Again, there have to be some sort of magic words uttered so I don't find out things I'd rather not know, which seems to be the fate of many people who receive this wish. I don't want to KNOW everything, I just want to be able to find things out.
  
• I want to be able to find out not only factual things, but also more subjective things. For instance, it would be very helpful to know what the best way to go about getting someone to give you something.
  
• I want to be able to forget anything I need to.

3. Free the genie. Duh.

I'm fairly confident these are the best wishes ever. Shape-shifting is awesome-- I can experience anything, from flying to deep-sea diving to watching my neighbor's HBO. Knowing anything I want to know could take care of me for the rest of my life-- in trouble with the law? Instant blackmail! Need money? Find some local buried treasure! Want to cure cancer? Bingo. And if you're tempted to ask a question you know you shouldn't (does he really love me, what do my friends find most annoying about me, what am I really like?) you can forget about it. And everybody knows you're supposed to free the genie. If you think you know different, you obviously haven't read  "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye" by A.S. Byatt, and if you haven't already, you should. 

Anybody think they have better wishes? Or think I left something incredibly important out of my amendments?

10 Reasons you May not want to Read this Blog.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I've decided to reveal ten strange things about myself right away. Just so, you know, everyone gets it right from the start.

1- I love mushroom hunting. LOVE it. I don't even eat most of the mushrooms I collect: I just like finding them. I think this has something to do with an overly goal-oriented type A personality (edging into an "A-" lately...). I get bored just wandering through the woods; I need to be LOOKING for something. Plus, mushrooms are just... neat-o.

2- Obviously, I get a thrill from itemization of any kind. But more particularly, I love the lists you get when attending summer camp, or conferences, or going off to college for the first time-- "What to Bring." For instance, I saved (!!) a list from Camp Bernadette, a Catholic camp I attended for three damp and miserable summers, attempting to read Diana Ackerman books (about nature!!) in kayaks, deep right field, and while standing in line to practice archery:

1. Enough t-shirts, underpants, shorts, and socks for two weeks

2. A pair of closed-toe shoes

3. A pair of jeans for horseback riding

4. Toothpaste and toothbrush

5. Flashlight

6. Sunscreen

7. Bug repellant containing "DEET"

8. Although toilet paper is provided, some campers may wish to bring their own. [!!]

It still gives me profound satisfaction.

3- I have a preternatural ability to match colors. And I love to do so. I have actually selected from a bin of Granny Smith Apples the ones that best matched my chartreuse chairs.  

4- I wear underwear underneath pantyhose. (And am incapable, almost, of propriety. So be forewarned!)

5- I rarely buy tissues, but when I do, they MUST be Puffs Plus with Lotion. My Mom totally wouldn't buy them growing up, and although I've outgrown eating all the sugary cereals she wouldn't let us eat, I will NOT compromise my philtrum!

6- I have the world's narrowest, longest, flattest feet (microcosm of a macrocosm, as they say). I HATE shoe shopping, and when I find shoes that fit, I buy many pairs. Also: I never wore shoes without socks until a couple of years ago, when I realized how dorky it really looked. Especially with pants that are too short. Which almost all of mine were at the time.

7- I am flexible enough to sit cross-legged, then lay all the way back. I actually sleep this way most nights. I worry about this, since it is bad for my knees. I'm trying to train myself out of it. On another sleeping note, my roommate in boarding school once told me that I always slept with one arm over my face. This was untrue (I did that in the morning because she was so noisy and I wanted to indicate that I was still asleep), but I was so delighted that someone noticed something like that about me, that I started to sleep like that all the time.

8- I'm a vegetarian who loves meat, and doesn't think killing animals is wrong. I'll spare you the specifics, but I do it for environmental reasons.

9- Although it's not particularly strange to have a favorite number, I do have one. Ten guesses what it is!

10- I don't know what date my husband and I got married. Neither does he. Sometime around January 15th, we pull out the old marriage certificate and double-check. 

So put that in your pipe and smoke it.

P.S. I cannot vouch for the palatability of this CD, only the coolness of its cover design. Buy it here.