friday five: bucket list edition

At RevGals this morning Singing Owl writes: Four days of being mostly in bed with a really bad case of flu (do not worry--I will give no detail) has me pondering the fragility of life. LOL! Death, however, has been cheated in my case and I am up and taking nourishment. In that vein of thought, do you have a "Bucket List"? In other words, from the movie of the same name, five things you want to see, do, accomplish, etc. before you kick the bucket?

This is something to which I haven’t really given a lot of thought. But for the sake of playing along (and hey, why not think about it?) here is what today’s list looks like:

1) I’d love to see the Grand Canyon. I’m not really a desert person (though I came to appreciate it after a trip to Israel), but the magnificence of this place calls to me with increasing frequency as I get older. I don’t think it’s the aging part of aging, if you know what I mean, but the maturing. I have a deeper appreciation for so many things as I trip over life or it splashes over me.

2) Visit Cantabria on the north coast of Spain. I discovered this gem quite by accident one day, and fell in love with its geography. It strikes me as a kind of blend of Switzerland and Scotland. I'm a landscape girl, and the more dramatic a landscape, the better for me. Like a carrot on a stick. Gotta go!

3) Learn how to paint watercolor. It is my favorite style of painting—I love the capacity for intense or muted color, and softened edges that invite the viewer into a gentler world. I took a course some years back but didn’t learn how to paint. The instructor was more interested in giving us assignments and correcting or admiring our work than providing us with the tools to take us deeply into the art. Melrose is the perfect place to paint, and it is a lost opportunity whenever I am there.

4) Build a klatch of friends who gather regularly for good times and even better relationships. The great disadvantage of changing geographies in one's life is the lack of history one has in a place. When I lived in St. Louis people had grown up together, been in each other's weddings, knew all the same people (for better or worse). I don't regret having lived in different places, but I lament the impact that has had on long term relationships.

An annual trip would be nice…

5) Take an Alaskan cruise with my husband. I've been on one cruise in my life, and that I took with some friends a mere ten days after Ken and I were married. We joke about how I took our honeymoon without him, but he has a tender spot around the fact that we haven't done something like that together.