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Daily Gratitudes
Natasha at 10:49 PM in A.D.D. Friendly, Bookish, Mothering, Stuff to ♥ | Permalink
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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 back flip. 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.
A plastic bin! Why didn't I think of that! I use a file, which by grade 6 is huge, and by grade 12 is unwieldy. And lots of things can't go in the file.
I agree that lots of our kids' art we can't save, but the days...I'm not so sure I agree with him. Many days are routine, but we can usually find something to savour in each day. Our memories are imperfect in mortal life, but after this life, we will remember it all, and I believe that will be one of the joys of heaven - our perfect memories of all the good times. (assuming, of course, that we have fully repented, and we do not have "a bright recollection of our guilt", because it is removed by the atonement of Jesus Christ).
These days it is often Mark making me laugh, that adds joy to my day and saves it from the recycling bin. Or Robin playing the piano. Or talking with Heather or Katie on the phone, and with my grandchildren.
btw, your daily gratitude idea has taken root in my journal. Thanks,
Susan
Posted by: Susan | Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 07:40 PM
Hey, thanks for your thoughts, Susan.
"Unwieldly." "Taken root." I like.
Posted by: Natasha | Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 11:22 PM
You are adorable! Just sayin'.
Posted by: Rich | Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 11:58 PM
Now I feel guilty, I've been snappy and act so put upon with my daughter lately, I'm really trying to enjoy her and the moment. She found a photograph album the other day, one from when she was born, all perfectly sequenced and ordered. I could hear her telling the cat, "that's me in the hospital, that's me and the nurse, that's my mama" The guilt washed over me, I don't have any pics all sequenced anymore, I want to remember everything...
I've been trying to save her stuff too, I'll figure out a way...it doesn't seem important, one piece of paper, but she changes so much in such little time.
Anyway I like that. :)
Posted by: Amanda | Friday, November 13, 2009 at 12:55 AM
Rich: *blush*
Amanda: *tear*
Posted by: Natasha | Friday, November 13, 2009 at 09:17 PM