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.
Cute. :-) The Adam and Eve one is funny.... chicken and egg. I can tell you're feeling better which is very good. Glad to see you back.
If there was a heaven, then there would be meat if you wanted meat... isn't that the point? But it's not real meat, more the universal idea of meat. Kind of an ethereal version of Aristotle's theory of Universals.
That being said... No belly buttons, because no Adam and Eve. And no Heaven means no meat, poop, garbage, or recycling.
And that's the world according to me. :-)
Posted by: JulesD | Wednesday, November 04, 2009 at 09:56 PM
I've thought about this too. I sure hope there's food, because I love eating! (Especially steak and chocolate, but not together) However, it doesn't seem like we'd be able to go up to a cow and heaven and chop off its leg to go make a steak, because it'd have a resurrected body and I don't think you can do that to a resurrected body.
I'm holding out for filet mignon trees.
Posted by: Dave D | Wednesday, November 04, 2009 at 10:36 PM
Filet mignon trees. Boy, I'm an easy laugh. I'm still chuckling at that. *blushes*
Posted by: Natasha | Wednesday, November 04, 2009 at 11:53 PM
I think Adam and Eve may have belly buttons just because we are all created in the image of God. Unless it's considered a scar that none of us will have when we're resurrected with perfect bodies. But somehow, I think it's a kind of symbolic thing that we will still have, and if we have them for a symbolic reason, then Adam and Eve must have them, too.
As for eating, yes, I think we can eat. When Jesus returned to visit the disciples after he was resurrected, he ate fish with them, so our resurrected bodies must be capable of eating. But whether or not we will NEED to eat, and what, is another question entirely. I'm kind of thinking it might be stuff like manna and honey, you know? Which, I like bread and honey, so not too bad.
Garbage and recycling? Well, IF there's garbage, then there MUST be recycling, but if we're eating manna that falls from the sky, we won't need a whole lot of packaging, will we? And that's mostly what garbage is these days: packaging for us to buy things that people used to produce and store themselves.
Posted by: Chrysta | Thursday, November 05, 2009 at 06:58 AM
It wouldn't be heaven without chocolate -- I'm just hoping for paper plates!
Posted by: LaurieBee | Thursday, November 05, 2009 at 09:42 AM
1) Yes. 2a) Yes; 2b) Won't speculate. 3) No.
Succinct enough?
Posted by: Jared | Thursday, November 05, 2009 at 10:24 AM
Adam and Eve could very well have belly buttons because we're made in the image of God and Jesus certainly has a belly button and all that. But maybe they don't, as like a mark of being the FIRST PEOPLE. Wouldn't that be cool?
I don't see how it's at all possible that we will eat meat in heaven. Animals will be with us. And... we can't kill them anymore than we can kill each other. So, we better be really happy with fruit.
And then will our bodies use up all the nutrients completely, so there's no waste? Even all the fibre will just... disappear?
I don't see how there'll be garbage, really.
Posted by: Natasha | Friday, November 06, 2009 at 12:18 AM
Belly buttons for sure; our bodies evolved from primate ancestors; everyone has a mom, came out of a placental sack, including Adam and Eve. Being our "first" parents can mean a lot of things, but our bodies are clearly evolved, kin with all other life forms on the earth, unless you believe in a Tinkerbell god that has a pretty cool magic wand. I don't believe in magic (aside from being a good illusion).
As to how our bodies function as perfect beings, hard to say. If we consume perfect ambrosia that is perfectly assimilated, then maybe just sweet-smelling farts? :)
Posted by: Rich | Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 02:05 PM
>>Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?
They certainly did. Eve would need to pass her navel genes on to her progeny. Same with Adam. Nothing was left out. They even had umbilical cords. They didn't know about cutting them off at first, and walked around that way until Eve ate the forbidden fruit, her eyes were opened and she realized that wasn't too fashionable.
>>Will we eat in heaven and if so, a) will we eat meat, and b) will we poop?
We will eat in heaven, but vegans go to the other kingdoms. D&C 84:58 says "That they may bring forth fruit meet for their Father's kingdom; otherwise there remaineth a scourge and judgment to be poured out upon the children of Zion." The Joseph Smith Translation of that verse corrects the Hebrew to say "That they may bring forth fruit and meat for their Father's kingdom..."
As for going #2, Jeremiah brings the point home quite well: "My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war." (Jer. 4:19)
>>Will there be refuse in Heaven?
Leviticus 26:31 alludes to the unheavenly nature of garbage. God said to Israel: "And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours." That's a kind way of saying keep that stuff as far away from my Celestial Heights as possible.
Posted by: Preston | Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at 04:49 PM