Note to Self: Make a List

September 22, 2008

This is not news.
I am methodical, organized, and multi-tasked. And like women everywhere, I too can begin by washing the dishes, leave the room to get another dish towel, and while I’m gone for 30 seconds-- finish folding the laundry, vacuum the bedroom floors, and clean the bathroom.
I am first born, and I am a list maker.
I make lists for the day and for weekend chores I want to finish. I have a pad of paper at my computer desk and one on my dresser just in case I think of something I should do and can't get to the mother list. I invariably, at any given time, have a list sitting on the front passenger seat of my truck of things I need to do in town and one for the things I must take on my next trip to my little village of solitude.
As back up, I have a file in my laptop's Office OneNote where I keep a computerized catalog of "to-dos," just in case.
Of note is that, thanks to Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, I've joined the ranks of tomorrow's overzealous onlookers who've started compiling a Bucket List of must do’s for this lifetime, before I'm reincarnated as a tree.
So far, I have eight things on my list including popular destinations like seeing the Grand Canyon.
But I left 'parachuting out of an airplane' off my list.
Now way am I going to purposely propel myself towards anything at a speed of 190 km/hr just to be able to say "I did that."
Anyway, knowing me I'd deploy the chute, make a wrong turn, and end up in Dryden.
Come to think of it, there's one instance where I will propel myself at high speed and that's at my husband when he steps off the plane at the airport in three months.
Unlike the movie's own list, I don't desire to see Rome or drive a Shelby Mustang. But Ireland and a Hummer would do just fine.
And of late, I've developed a palate for deliciously bold coffee and I'd love to sample some of the world's very best roasts as part of my Bucket List.
However, I am not inclined to try ‘Kopi Luwak,’ the coffee made from the pooped-out beans eaten by civets.
If I want to get that close to nature, I can do it in my own backyard where as recently as yesterday I forgot to wash my hands before eating lunch and in licking my fingers, thereafter remembered the toad I'd rescued from the canine brigade that had peed all over my hand.
As I await the frog flu, I shake my head at the oblivious child who wanted to be an animal doctor and thought she could raise the occasional stunned bird that hit the living room window of the house, by giving it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Bird flu anyone?
And if there is a coffee made from bear scatter or deer droppings, I just might be able to find enough ingredients around here to be a local supplier of that brand.
I worked on my Bucket List a few days ago, while on a hiatus to my little village of solitude, a place that at this very moment seems like overkill, given that I am in the presence of myself nearly all the time here at home.
No need to go away to do that, but anyway . . .
I was sitting outside enjoying a bonfire, when I put the half-cooked list down to tend to it and got too close to the flames while jamming another log in the brew.
A whiff of burning hair singed my nostrils and I dashed from the patio into the trailer flailing my arms at the smoldering patch I was sure to find when I looked at my head in the mirror.
Much to my relief, the only hair missing was what had been growing heartily on my fingers between the knuckles.
In my moment of relief, I was drawn to heed nature’s call and when I stood up and turned on a dime to flush, with it went the last 10 of Uncle Sam’s dollars I’d had in my back pocket. I dove to retrieve the cash as it dropped down with everything else into the loo’s holding tank.
I stopped short when I realized that if my arm got stuck in there, being alone, it would be days before someone would come looking for me.
I washed my hands and went back outside to the fire and my Bucket List, ripped off a corner of paper and wrote ‘Note to Self.’
On it I added ‘buy a lottery ticket and a wallet.’
On my Bucket List, on the chicken scratch side reserved for selfish desires I wrote ‘buy RV with bigger bathroom.’
I put the list down again and trotted off to rake up some old leaves, hoping to find more sophisticated ideas lurking under all the fodder.
All I stirred up was an angry nest of fire ants, which I flat-stared and continued to rake havoc on, all the while oblivious to “Sid Vicious” and his gang that had crawled up inside my pant legs.
Suddenly, I felt bursts of tiny, pinpoint pain going on where I couldn't see. I ran into the trailer contorting uncontrollably and jumped out of my pants to find three little ants clinging and biting maliciously to the skin around my kneecaps.
My Bucket List has ‘saving a species from extinction’ on it.
That’s doesn’t include ants, right?