Saturday, September 19, 2009

100 things to do before I die

In no particular order.
  1. Clean the bathroom. (Some of these things I may do more than once before I die.)
  2. Vacuum the interior of my car.
  3. Pick up oil painting again. I last painted in grad school, 2002.
  4. Paint that picture I have been commissioned to paint by my mother-in-law.
  5. Hang curtains in the living room.
  6. Hang curtains over the French doors in the kitchen. A little privacy will be needed when the days turn darker.
  7. Learn Spanish.
  8. Live a year in Australia.
  9. Finish that one paper that's been listed on my professional website as "in preparation" for nearly a year now.
  10. Make applesauce.
  11. Can applesauce.
  12. Paint a mural on my bathroom wall. (I'm thinking some hills and trees in summer, with a gate, and a path leading up over the hill....)
  13. Paint a mural on Jonathan's bathroom wall.
  14. Plant a nectarine tree.
  15. Plant a Bramley apple tree.
  16. Store and bake Bramley apples all winter long.
  17. Buy and freeze a cow. Or maybe just half a cow. I've wanted to do this since my taxi driver in New York state recommended it in 2006. A greener way to be a carnivore.
  18. Learn to play that one Nocturne by Chopin on the piano. You know -- that one that I like.
  19. Obtain a piano so I can play the piano again. I've been holding out, hoping that my parents would let me take the one they never use. But I've about given up on my parents.
  20. Appreciate my parents more.
  21. Organize the wood pile in the back yard.
  22. Grind my own wheat.
  23. Bake my own bread with my own ground wheat. Maybe more than once.
  24. Paint the living room.
  25. Get my grant funded.
  26. Vacuum the living room rug. The new one.
  27. Organize my closet.
  28. Play more with my son. Unstructured play.
  29. Publish a novel. Before I lose interest.
  30. Publish more research papers. Before I lose interest.
  31. Buzz my head. Maybe during that year I'm in Australia.
  32. Get my bike fixed.
  33. Ride my bike to work.
  34. In the snow.
  35. Learn to ski.
  36. Before my son does.
  37. Make my students laugh.
  38. During the logarithmic differentiation lecture. (Good luck, eh?)
  39. Publish research with undergraduates.
  40. Supervise a master's thesis.
  41. Get tenure.
  42. With flying colors.
  43. Remember family members' important birthdays.
  44. In time to send a gift.
  45. Wear jeans while teaching.
  46. Make my primary children laugh.
  47. Read nonfiction. Work-related nonfiction counts.
  48. Take the family to Shakespeare.
  49. Purchase a loveseat.
  50. Design a perennial garden.
  51. Plant a perennial garden.
  52. And take out those really ugly evergreen bushes in the front yard. Who would plant those hideous things?
  53. Tame the raspberry bushes in the back yard.
  54. Take out the brambles on the east side of the back yard.
  55. Grow herbs.
  56. Use fresh herbs to cook a meal.
  57. Visit Oregon.
  58. Spend a winter weekend in Arizona.
  59. Visit my sister in Connecticut.
  60. Rake leaves.
  61. Walk often.
  62. Go a week without using the car. (Maybe that week after I vacuum the interior.)
  63. Support public transportation.
  64. Get a haircut. (Just a regular haircut -- not the buzz #32.)
  65. Spend a week in Orkney with the family. Tim and I spent a day and two nights there in 2003, and love-loved it. That's like loving it but twice as much love. I want to go back.
  66. See the Northern lights.
  67. And the midnight sun. (That means two trips to the far north at two different times of the year. Maybe I can pull them both into extended Orkney vacations.)
  68. Identify five constellations in the night sky.
  69. And identify five named stars. I know it's not much, but I'm going for realistic things here.
  70. Finish drying all those #*!@%$ plums.
  71. Help Jonathan to ride a bicycle. Safely.
  72. Reorganize my office.
  73. And get new office furniture.
  74. No matter how many people I have to call. Call them.
  75. Clean the fingerprints off the window on the French doors.
  76. Go one evening without getting cross during the bedtime routine. Just one evening.
That's it. I'm out of ideas. You may suggest items for the last 24 things I need to do before I die.

5 comments:

Troop 152 said...

77. list 24 more things. Since this counts as one, I guess you only need to list 23.

Mark and Emily said...

You are one ambitious woman! Good thing you've given yourself until you die to accomplish everything on your list...however, accomplishing everything on this list may cause your untimely death. Therefore, you should be glad you did not think of 100 things to do before you die.

Thora said...

I made a big list of a hundred things I was going to do before I died when I was fifteen or so. They included things like Biking across America, and publishing my memoirs. I think if I made a list now, it would a lot more accurately reflect things I both will be able to do, and will even want to do. (I have grown herbs - I have pots of basil and sage on my back porch. Now I just have to figure out how to actually use them).

Letterpress said...

Guess what? They all change as you get older. Some you won't care about anymore and can cross off without doing them. That's the great thing about aging. Who cares?

Fun to read, though.

Laura Dee said...

Wow! I also want to take out my paints (watercolour) more often (I'm averaging once every 1.2 years) and paint a large piece worth framing and hanging in my home. I've recently thought about getting a group of women together for a weekly Spanish/English night class, half of the time in one language and then the other. Would you like to fly down weekly for that? Of course, the free ones just a few buildings away from your work office would probably be of higher quality but perhaps not quite so fun.