My life list

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Maggie over at Mighty Girl is famous for her life list and she is encouraging us all to make our own. I've made a lot of lists in my day, but I tend to work on a year-by-year basis. A LIFE list? Like the REALLY BIG THINGS? It's a bit intimidating. But, here goes. And I fully reserve the right to add, edit and change my mind.

The Life List

Participate in a group art project

Have a goat

Spend Thanksgiving serving food to people in need

Raft through the Grand Canyon with my family

Take my kids to Yosemite

Write an honest novel that makes me proud

Learn to apply glamorous liquid eye makeup

Stay in one of those floating homes in India

Eat at the French Laundry

See Willie Nelson in concert

Sail through the Caribbean

Rent a house in Morocco for at least a month

from HERE

Take a tour of the White House while there is a president I like living there

Watch some big wave surfing in person

Sing karaoke with real passion and gusto in front of a lot of my friends

Take my kids to Buddhist family camp at Karme Choling

Go to one of those places where the water is electric blue and perfectly calm

Learn to surf, even a little

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Meet Michelle Obama

Start a tradition for just my daughter and me

Answer the Proust Questionnaire in the back of Vanity Fair

Attend a taping of Saturday Night Live

Take my step-father to see the Giants win the World Series

Throw a fancy, catered party

Start a collective office space for writers

Go to Savannah, Georgia

See a grizzly bear in the wild

Live in a house with fruit trees in the backyard

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Throw a kid craft party for no special reason

Take someone in

Discover my real hair color

Be perfectly coiffed from my toes to my hair for one day

Attend a black tie awards ceremony (National Book Awards would be nice)

Get tipsy with Ellen Degeneres

Impress the Mister with my athletic prowess

Surprise the kids with a giant birthday cake when it's not their birthday

Downsize

Attend the Canne Film Festival

Make a movie out of all the video we've taken of the kids

Now tell me some of yours.

Airhead

It's been an age. Thanksgiving came and went and I didn't even get to do one of those "what I am grateful for" posts.

Instead I cut both kids hair (an epic battle never to be repeated), wrote a "family beach towns" article for a travel magazine, ate oysters at Tomales Bay Oyster Company (Number 18. Check) and tried to make peace with my mind, which jumps around like a panicked squirrel these days, unable to focus on anything before darting off all wild eyed and nervous to store some nuts.

It's like this: I will think of something I want to tell the mister and by the time I get into the room where he is, like, say 1.4 seconds later, I've not only forgotten what it was I wanted to tell him, but I've completely forgotten I planned on saying anything at all. So then I start sorting clothes until the cookies catch my eye. Then I eat cookies until I realize the phone receiver should really be cleaned out with a toothpick. Then I clean the phone receiver until I remember that I haven't seen my red scarf in a while. Then I go looking for my red scarf....

You get the picture.

This is disturbing for three reasons:

1. I am too young to be losing my mind

2. I never really get anything done

3. I sound like Erma Bombeck (next I am going to be telling menopause jokes and elbow waddle anecdotes)

Only part of it can be attributed to overload. Yes, I have a lot of stuff stored in there (how many calories in and egg? 90. Annie Lamott's first book? Hard Laughter. Best coconut rice in San Francisco? Mandalay. Renegade Craft Fair? December 19. ) And my mental to do list is like a flotilla of random and unrelated flotsam and jetsam, but lots of people have a lot on their minds and manage to remember their thoughts for more than a fleeting second. But I...I, um, yeah...