Bucket List

First of all, I hate that term, bucket list.  How did that become so popular?  Things to do before you "kick the bucket."  Please.  I mean really.

I subscribed to Rachel Ray's magazine mostly because I had some bonus points from something else I bought.  It's mostly too frou-frou for me; I mean, who keeps oak bark twigs or eggplant root just lying around the pantry?  Or else every recipe involves about 256 steps.  Who has time for that?  Well, maybe Martha Stewart.

But the most recent issue has a bucket list challenge.  I've actually done a lot of these things and other interesting things in my life.  Get wet at Niagra.  Check.  Jumped out of an airplane.  Check.  Driven through a redwood.  Check.  What else is on Rachel's list?  See Alaska's Northern Lights.  I would check except it was overcast every night I was in Alaska.  And Manitoba.  Eat a fish you've caught yourself.  Visit North Pole, Alaska.  Take a bite out of Route 66.  Have a drink at a hidden bar.  Check check check and check.  Go on a pot sticker crawl in San Francisco's Chinatown.  Semi-check.  Rachel Ray recommends three restaurants for awesome pot stickers in San Francisco's Chinatown.  I love pot stickers and I love San Francisco's Chinatown.  I may have to make a trip to combine both.  I've been to or through all 50 states, visited eight foreign countries on three continents.  I've had awesome corn soup at a Chinese restaurant in Winnepeg.  I've see polar bears close up in Churchill, Manitoba.  I've stood at the highest point in North America in Barrow, Alaska.  I've stood at the westernmost point of England in Lizard and the southernmost point in Land's End.  I've straddled the prime meridian in Greenwich, England.  I rode a camel in Africa.  I got sunburned in Spain, where I also rode a burrow.  I've swum in the Pacific Ocean (Hawaiian side) and both sides of the Atlantic.

There are still things that I want to do before I die, though.  I've wanted to do these things for a very long time.  (I refuse to call it a bucket list.)  And I've told very few people.  Before now.  I don't know why--probably from some misplaced sense of fear of mockery leftover from high school.

I remember having four significant things on my "Someday List".  That's what I call it.  As in, "Someday, I'm going to..."  I can't remember one of them now, so I guess it wasn't so important.

1.  Learn to blow glass.  I've always liked those frilly, fancy knick-knacks that they sell at the mall and tourist-y places like Old Tucson.  I had almost given up on this dream/goal because blowing glass is very hot work, and heat is not friends with multiple sclerosis.  But I've found out there are sort of at-home kits that use propane that maybe I can look into.  And there's a glass gallery right here in River City and a friend of mine blows there.  Maybe I'll get to do some yet!

2.  Play the marimba.  When I was a preschooler, my babysitter was my "third grandmother."  I even called her Grandma Olsen.  She had a marimba, and when she played it, it was like an angel choir.  It was even more special because we kids (her real grandchildren and I) knew it was not a toy and we were not allowed to touch it.  That same marimba belongs to Grandma Olsen's daughter now, who still plays it in church some day.  I've offered to buy it from her when she doesn't want it anymore.  She will entertain the idea if none of her children or grandchildren wants it.  I'm counting on them not wanting it.

3.  Have a wax portrait of myself at Madame Tussaud's.  (They don't call them statues.)  I LOVE wax museums, ever since we went to one in Washington, DC, in 1965 as part of our World's Fair vacation.  Madame Tussaud's is the best, and it's on my must-do list every time I go to London.  Or New York.  Okay, so haven't done anything splashy enough to warrant a likeness in wax in the best museum ev-ah.  Yet.