My Bucket List

Gosh, I feel like I haven't posted for ages - and it's true I haven't ! I was reading Warren's tablefortwocookbooks.blogspot.com site where he did an excellent post about a Bucket List. I left him a comment and went off to ponder what my own Bucket list would consist of..

Since the age of 16, I always had a life plan. Get my A levels, go to university, be a highly successful 'success' at something.. who even knew what back then ? I studied French, German and English and then what did I do ? Journalism you might think ? Law ? NO. Computer Science with French.

So, what did I turn into ? A French-speaking, part-time working Computer Analyst (I actually just wrote Analust - I think I prefer that word actually!) Well, was I ever going to become anything else after that ? Where was I ? Oh yes .. with one child, a husband and a seriously contradictory running / chocolate addiction.

I always thought I would be a traveller, and that I would travel for my work, and for a while I did, but livivng out of a suitcase is not all it's cracked up to be. I love travelling, and I have travelled to Canada, to the US - New York, Florida, Charleston, Michigan, California.. a little in Europe - Brussels, Paris, Bonn, Colgone, Frankfurt a little in the Mediterranean - Spain, Canary Islands, Cyprus... but so many more places I want to go and see, so many !

SO ! What am I waiting for. Let's dive right in.

1) Go to India. Trouble is I'm a little worried by stories that people have told me about their experiences. Both Cupcake and I love all things Indian, or the gloss and shine of India as witnessed on television and in the media. I guess it's not all like that, but I want to go and see for myself and practise some proper yoga there and really get a feel for the place.

2) Take the plunge, now that Labour of Love is no longer 'indoor camping' and take a couple of girlfriends to France and just chill. Done

3) Complete an MBA program by my 30th birthday, whilst juggling a full-time job and a two-year old. Done

4) Move house. Not necessarily to somewhere bigger... Firstly, just somewhere different. I'll be honest, I'm bored with where we live now. As a child, I was used to moving frequently, as a student I became even more nomadic. Then, we bought a house and I stayed in the same place.... For. Thirteen. Years. For me, that's about eight years too long.

5) Stop worrying about what other people think of me when I have no control or contribution to their thought process. Allow them to live with their own fallacies. Done.

6) Plan and create a really lovely garden (in my new house - see no. 4). A little bit like Fiona is doing at http://www.cottagesmallholder.com/ Boy, am I loving some of the projects they have going on !

7) Allow myself to indulge my Francophile side, even when in the UK - Ha ! That means, listening to the French radio, going and seeing some serisouly (yes, I meant to write serisouly) dodgy French films, reading my '101 French Idioms' and actually cooking something from my latest cookbook 'La Rousse Gastronomique' (translated version, unfortunately).

8) Get a flippin decent haircut. My hair is thick, wavy, long and brown, because of this I wear it long and all one length. I lead a busy life, so I don't have time for colours that will fade and grow through, I rarely get to the hairdressers so I can't have a style that grows out.. I can't have my hair short, because it's so wavy it just look strange, and no two hair days are the same. Yes, I really need 'hair help', and a decent flippin haircut.

9) Run a marathon Booked for this October but if BB gets a place in his Ironman that same weekend - guess who has to defer ?? Er, ponder, ponder ... it's not going to be BB is it.. ?

10) Quit facebook - basically as lovely as it is to stay in touch, it's a time waster, when I could be doing something I really enjoy like my blog. Done

11) Use my MBA for something other than thinking 'Well ! If I were the boss, I would be doing A, followed by B, with a little dose of C, and a sprinkle of D. That WOULD work'.

12) Leading nicely on to ... giving it another try with the cake/food idea. Everyone that eats my food loves it - well, except for that time that I made some sort of BBQ'd chops for a couple I barely knew and well, they were slightly overdone and maybe dry(ish), and little did I know that she had just had a gastric band fitted. Ten visits to the bathroom later.. was it the food ? Was it the gastric band ? You know what ? I don't even want to think about it.

Other than that, everyone loves my food and thinks I should be a professional cook on some level. When the Chef job came up at work (in the work canteen, well more like a posh canteen ..), more than one person said to me 'Chef's job's up - that's your dream job'. Funny. Defintely a scratch that needs another little itch.

13) Change job. There I've said it. I've worked at the same place for fifteen years this year... The problem is that it's a great job with great people - why would I leave ??

14) Walk the Great Wall of China.

15) Walk the Appalachian Trail whilst wearing The Appalachian Trail t-shirt that my friend Antonio gave me many years ago.

16) Visit Washington during the Cherry season. I love cherry blossom.

17) Travel to Edinburgh, see the city and catch up with an old school friend who now lives and works there.

18) Go to Rachael Dobson's grave and pay my respects to her and her father. My beautiful friend who sadly passed away aged 29, just months after her dad. Lovely people, greatly missed.

19) Learn Arabic in homage to Rachael who was a linguistic miracle and, of course, a fluent Arabic speaker and expert on the Middle East.

20) Be myself, not the person I think I should be, or the person that I think others want me to be.
     Just Be Me.

Well I could go on, I haven't mentioned visiting Australia, or spending more time with my mom and sis, or finally finishing Labour of Love, or having a massive party very, very soon .. but I won't.