10 Things I Wish I could do…
Thought I’d give a run at this meme:
1. Get a pilots license and fly a plane — just a small one, fixed wing. Took lessons once and have 9 hours of flight time.
2. Speak a foreign language. I took three years of high school French. Two years of college German. One year of college Latin. I also know a handful of words in Russian, another handful of Swahili, four or five in Japanese, and one in Klingon. I’d just think it would be really neat to be able to communicate with someone else in their native non-english tongue.
3. Be able to fix things. I can add oil, brake fluid, and water in the appropriate places in the car. I can, if I have to, change a tire. But I’d love to be able to actual fix an engine if something happened to it. I learned most of what I know about engines from the guys my brother hung out with when I was a teen and from flight school. But what about the washer’s motor or the dryer or the dishwasher. These shouldn’t be such mysteries.
4. I’d love to be able to play the piano. I’ve got one in the living room. We bought it when we got the house. The owners gave us a deal because they didn’t want to move it. I got books on how to play. I can even read music since I was in a band, in glee club, in an A Cappella choir, and played clarinet for years in Jr. High and High School band. But finding the time to practice and learn two-handed playing rather than plincking out single notes is not yet something I can do.
5. Be able to plan a garden, take care of it for a whole summer, and gather the bounty. Note there are parts to that list. I usual get things planted and then life gets very, very insane and busy and the rest of it goes kabluey. We usually get some stuff but not as much as we should if I really paid attention.
6. Finish what I start. My name is Gayle and I’m a starter. I start all kinds of projects. I sometimes even finish them but mostly I get into a project a fair distance and just get bored or put it aside and out of sight out of mind. I’ve been working on finishing unfinished projects and have completed three over the last six months. Of course, I started three other projects too.
7. Clean the house without the threat of house guests dropping in. With limited time I just don’t see the sense in it. The house won’t be condemned by the board of Health but it won’t pass the good housekeeping seal of approval either. Someday I hope to be able to afford to have someone else clean it for me. Meanwhile, it’s good enough but every now and then I dig in and do a complete yearly top-to-bottom but it’s not yearly.
8. Visit Antarctica — read books and it sounds like the closest I’ll get to an alien landscape unless I visit the Arctic but with all the melting going on that might not there long enough for me to get there.
9. Finish at least one of my started novels. Again with the startitist.
10. Greet each day and each minute as a special bit of time that will never come again and not waste it. Yeah, right. I’m learning to appreciate so much more than I used to but living in the “now” is difficult. Even when we try very hard we’re always think about the future (tomorrow) or the past (yesterday).
What 10 things do you wish you could do?