One More Thing

100 Things To Do Before I Die

Stuff that’s red, I’ve completed. If I’m really on the ball, I’ll remember to blog and link to it, too.

Stuff that’s blue, I’ve started. And stuff that’s blue with a line through it, I’ve completed but plan to repeat on some regular basis.

Wish me luck!

FAMILY & FRIENDS

• Have a third baby …and maybe a fourth
• Make an ethnographic family tree of immediate relatives, with photos
• Visit friends in Nova Scotia and Australia
• Be in a wedding party
• Care for a foster child
• Complete a birthday calendar and send a card or gift to everyone on it
• Do one mother-daughter and one mother-son event per year (2008: Emily -manicure/pedicure and lunch out; Jacob – trip to Boston. 2009: Emily: lunch and pedicure, Jacob – Museum of Science. 2010: Emily, Rhinebeck, Jacob – sleepover.)
• Get a reliable babysitter – or several
• Be the elderly couple holding hands in the mall

HEALTH & WELL-BEING

• Lose 20 pounds before next pregnancy
• Read books on spirituality so as to define my own beliefs
• Get adequate pain management for migraines and back pain [March 2008 for migraines, July 2009 for back pain]
• Join a gym (whole family)
• Get less-rare massages (2 per year) [2008: March… on the beach in Montego Bay, at new massage place in Dover November 2008. 2009: arranged for monthly massage after first trimester. 2010: health prevented this through most of the year, but maybe in 2011…]
• Find those shoes – the black ones with the strap and heel August 2009
• Buy a fallback dress for special occasions
• Have professional, artistic pregnancy photos taken

PROFESSIONAL, EDUCATIONAL, VOLUNTEER

• Get Mental Health Counselor license
• Research careers in sociology, criminal justice – consider PhD
• Open a B&B
• Research yarn shop operation
• Knit items to donate (12 per year) [2007: 7/6, 2008: 12/12]
• Retrain and volunteer at rape crisis center 2009
• Take a cooking class
• Organize a fundraising/awareness event for muscular dystrophy
• Volunteer at a soup kitchen with kids

CREATIVE PURSUITS

• Display knitted items in craft/county fair
• Design and publish a knitting pattern
• Knit a sweater that I would wear any day 2008: Elijah
• Knit a pattern from each book I own
• Make a blanket for each child, to be completed by age 18 (one block per year)
• Start travel scrapbooks for each child
• Catch up on general family scrapbooks
• Digitize photos (up to 2006)
• Write a book
• Design a way to display sand from each beach I’ve visited
• Take more videos (at least 1 per month)
• Update kids’ journals (3-4 times per year)
• Mosaic 2008: shell table
• Stained glass
• Make a working lamp
• Take a photography class
• Make-my-own beach glass

TRAVEL

• See the sunrise over the Atlantic [Jamaica, March 2008]
• See the sunset over the Pacific
• Visit each state [25/50] (airports don’t count!)
• Visit 6 continents [2/6] (sorry, Antarctica)
• Go on a cruise
• Take a long-distance train ride
• Visit each Canadian province and territory [5/13]
• Sleep in a castle
• See the aurora borealis
• Spend St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland

ENTERTAINMENT & RECREATION

• Karaoke in public
• See a live-audience taped show (Letterman, Jon Stewart, etc.) [The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, 9/24/2009]
• Go on an untethered hot air balloon ride
• Snorkel [Jamaica, March 2008 – blech!]
• Go white-water rafting
• Take Irish/Scottish step-dancing class
• Attend Renaissance Faire
• Swim with a dolphin [Jamaica, March 2008… 2 dolphins!]
• Play golf
• Appear on a game show
• Parasail [Jamaica, March 2008]
• Join any sort of team/regular event with Willem

MEDIA

• Transfer mix tapes onto iPod (Started to collect what’s available online; still need to find a way to transfer from tape to computer.)
• Sort out bookshelves – minimize, organize
• Read all of Jane Austen’s books [2/8]
• See 50 of American Film Institute’s 100 Best Films [20/100]
• Read 50 of Time Magazine’s 100 Best Novels [10/100]
• Get backstage at a concert
• Read five nonfiction books per year
• Reorganize Craft page and Blogroll [Craft page rewritten 10/4/07, Blogroll 10/25/07]
• Watch every major Tom Hanks movie in a month

COOKING & FOOD

• Make a family cookbook
• Grow a garden
• Make sauce from stuff I grew myself
• Make crème brulee
• Make pasta from scratch [12/2007]
• Make bread by hand
• Make General Tso’s chicken and pork fried rice

AROUND THE HOUSE

• Redo bathroom (NH house) [completed 10/7/07]
• Paint living room (NH house) Thanks, Willem!: August 2008
• Paint/touch-up exterior (NH house) July 2009
• Reclaim Dad’s room, recreate a playroom/guest room (NH house)
• Assemble a craft room
• Find dream house
• Plant a thriving blackberry bramble
• Plant a productive strawberry patch
• Plant a milkweed patch
• Buy a coffee table with big, deep drawers for random photos
• Adopt 2 kittens

CONSUMPTION & FINANCES

• Buy a hybrid car
• Stop using paper plates (except camping, parties)
• Stop using paper napkins at meals / make cloth [48+ napkins made]
• Get timers for kitchen/living room outlets to decrease electricity use
• Plant a tree for each Christmas tree we use (and make up for past ones)
• Own a Monet
• Start 529 plan for each child
• Pay off student loans