1. Learn to play the freakin' guitar already.
2. Taste black truffles.
3. Meet Oprah and thank her.
4. Go white water rafting again. Maybe a girlfriend getaway.
5. Visit New York City for two weeks.
6. Build a self-sustaining healthy house on a plot of land large enough to have a big, gorgeous dog that never poops close to home, some sheep, a big garden, and fruit trees but close enough to other people that if someone came to murder us, there would be people to hear the gunshots. Yes, I think of these things. Often.
7. Publish a work of mostly fiction. Change the names and details of people I know such that they really have no idea I'm writing about them, the fools.
8. Go to art school.
9. Own a log cabin on a lake where you're allowed to shoot people if they seadoo. Because that's two sports in one: Cottaging and Target Practice. Equally stress relieving, I'd imagine.
10. Compost with worms.
11. Finish knitting Montana's baby blanket.
12. Travel Europe and Russia with Jude.
13. Throw a neighborhood carnival block party, raising money for a family in need or other worthy cause.
14. Somehow make international adoption easier. Get airlines to give free airfare to people who are picking up their international adoptive children.
15. Learn pottery.
16. Maybe do a mini-marathon. Note the hesitation.
17. Get nearly all my body hair lasered off. Celebrate with a naked stroll in a park. (Yes, that's a joke but I shouldn't have to say so.)
18. Learn to really sing.
19. Go scuba diving somewhere really colourful and take photos. And live to develop them.
20. Go horseback riding again.
21. Make pesto from scratch.
22. Make a stuffed salmon encased in pastry that's cut to look like a salmon.
23. Learn to really, properly swim.
24. Have an all-girlfriend canoeing-camping trip with someone who can play guitar. Woman with the longest leg hair the next day doesn't have to paddle back.
25. Memorize all the best Scrabble words and tactics.
26. Send my boy on a mission abroad and have him come home a man, in one piece.
27. Lead some kind of teen counseling sessions-- maybe for sexually abused girls?
28. Develop all my online photos with journaling comments before Facebook experiences a server failure or some equally horrific turn of events.
29. Live in Venice, Italy for a few months.
30. Grow peonies.
31. Learn to can my own fruits and veggies and then actually do it.
32. Visit Vancouver.
33. Visit the Salt Lake Temple.
34. Roll down grassy green hills in Ireland. Leave before I fall in love with some rogueish Irishman with THAT ACCENT! See how thoughtful I am, Jude?
35. Catch some fireflies again. Then let them go.
36. Catch some frogs. Then let them go.
37. Get my braces off. Celebrate by rubbing bread and carrots and salmon all over my teeth and then making out with Jude.
38. Get into really fantastic shape. Feel strong and healthy.
39. Become buddies with Julia Roberts and Jennifer Garner. We would totally mesh.
40. Replace my husband's suits and successfully condition him to iron his clothes and enjoy piecing together stylish outfits.
41. Write a song and sing it/play it for Jude.
42. Be in the chorus of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.
43. Finish reading War and Peace by Tolstoy.
44. Read The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens.
45. Have a house of mine appear in Canadian House & Home Magazine.
46. See a ghost or an angel. Anyone from another realm will do.
47. See Prairie Home Companion live.
48. See Jack Johnson play from the front row someplace intimate.
49. See Cathy achieve her dreams, however that happens.
50. Be so rich that I can give away money and help all the time to people who both need it and deserve it. Teach a man to fish and all that.
51. Buy a much nicer camera.
52. See Les Miserables live.
53. Learn Photoshop.
54. Get this house finished.
55. Enjoy grass and tree ownership again.
56. Visit the Great Wall of China and leave my name on it somewhere.
57. Become fluent in French.
58. Learn basic Italian.
59. Become fluent in sign language.
60. Become a pretty good chess player.
61. Memorize more jokes.
62. Remember history studied and study more.
63. Become more charitable in my heart.
64. Have an Etsy store.
65. Visit London, bump into Jude Law and have him quickly fall in love with me then turn him away because I'm married and Mormon enough to care that I'm married, which will only make him love me all the more, of course.
66. Design my own house blueprints.
67. Teach Daisy to read and watch her silently devour books.
68. Be in a musical/play with Daisy.
69. Take a hot air balloon ride only for a mile and only about 100 feet in the air because that's just crazy to risk your life like that.
70. Never visit Disneyland or Disneyworld. Ha!
71. Make healthy cookies I actually love. For my grandkids.
72. Learn how to break dance. Or at least do that move where you support your body just on your hands tucked under your belly? That move.
73. Hold a hand stand for at least five seconds.
74. Do a backflip. With a belt on. Tied to the ceiling.
75. Hear James Taylor play live.
76. Become friends with Rosie O'Donnell.
77. Be able to roll in a kayak.
78. Adopt some older children when my kids are older or be a foster parent.
79. Have some of my poetry published. Under a different name.
80. Have a butler's pantry right off my kitchen and have it extremely organized at all times.
81. Raise my children to be nonjudgmental, kind, good, humble, open-minded but critical thinkers. And happy.
82. See Jude write his book. Have it published.
83. Swim in an Italian grotto.
84. Host a dinner under a large canopy-like tree, with candle lanterns.
85. Be able to do one pull-up.
86. Meet Thomas S. Monson.
87. See my sister happy and well-off in B.C.
88. Meet my all of my virtual friends.
89. Teach my girls hand clapping games.
90. Sleep in a hammock in Hawaii with mellow island beat music playing and with the waves splashing in the background.
91. Go seashell hunting near the Bay of Fundy.
92. Take a cottage vacation alone where I can read, and paint, and write and sleep for 13 hours straight.
93. Be mortgage and debt-free.
94. Get Lasik eye surgery.
95. Hire a housecleaner and have her over twice a week FOREVER.
96. Since my house will be so clean: Have fresh flowers year-round.
97. Learn to juggle.
98. Join Toastmasters.
99. Learn to cook Indian.
I may have missed this somewhere but do you have thyroid problems? Whenever my TSH goes above 2 or 3 (which is still technically considered "normal"), I get really itchy all over, as well as tired and other stuff.
Posted by: Heather M | Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 07:56 PM
Yes, I do. But 2 or 3 is not considered normal at all. In 2003, I think it was, the American Society or Acadamy or whatever of Endocrinology recommended lowering the spectrum scale from 5.0 to 3.0.
:-)
Posted by: Natasha | Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 08:09 PM
Quickie search yielded this: http://thyroid.about.com/cs/testsforthyroid/a/newrange.htm
If your doc tells you you're normal, I'd get a new doc. I'm just a girl and I knew this information. If your doc doesn't....
Posted by: Natasha | Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 08:19 PM
What I would do for my eldest with his specific type of LD issues to sound things out phonetically like the mispelled section above. We are all fortunate for different things and we all have our struggles, and I have my list of both of those too, but your son's mastery of language (much like your own) is such a wonderful thing. He seems like such a sweetheart. (Well, I'm sure he IS a sweetie, and not just "seems" like one.) :-)
Posted by: JulesD | Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 08:33 PM
Yes, I learned all about that the hard way a few years ago after having a bunch of miscarriages while several doctors kept insisting my TSH of 4 was normal. I love that about.com website, it's amazing. Once I got medication to bring it down to 1.5, no more miscarriages (or itchy skin!). It took me a while to find a doctor who knew about those revised recommendations and as far as I know, in Canada, a TSH of 5 is still labelled normal by the labs. I just wasn't sure if you knew about that issue or not, it makes me so mad that so many doctors don't know about it so I try and tell people whenever I can!
Posted by: Heather M | Friday, October 23, 2009 at 11:35 AM
Seriously... you need to write a book with the funny things your kids do and say. Especially your tiny one... she kills me. I am calling her your tiny one because I am afraid I can only remember her real name and not her internet name. LOL
Posted by: Steph | Saturday, October 24, 2009 at 01:12 AM
@steph - that's hilarious. I can't remember my real last name half the time, I don't know how Natasha keeps them straight. And Mr. Valentine is now "Mr. Valentine"- we ought to just officially change our last name, lol.
He's very intelligent (& sophisticated humor for his age, too) - that's wonderful that they know french at such a young age. Think -- they might travel/live/marry in europe one day and would have better opportunities for knowing the language so well. AND bonus - you could go visit a lot. Or move there, too!
Posted by: gabriellevalentine | Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 12:56 AM