48 Crash! My Bucket List for My 48th Birthday

So tomorrow (Tuesday, January 6th) I will be 48 years old.

As this birthday began to make itself visible in the horizon a month or so ago, I found myself eyeing it suspiciously, even fearfully. 48. Four dozen years. Only two years away from the half-century mark.  Jeez, I’m old.  I’m so old I’m - *gasp* - middle-aged!  (Consider the Suzi Quatro song from which I borrowed this post’s title, with her snarling put down of the stereotypical male midlife crisis: “You've got the kind of a mind of a juvenile Romeo/And you're so blind you could find that your motor ain't ready to go...”  Ouch!) 

But, as the day has drawn ever closer, I changed my stance and decided to embrace it.  Sure I’m older, but I've had many truly wonderful experiences during my 48 trips around the sun.   I figure I’d like to make it to 100, and by that measure I’m not even halfway there!

Many folks have their lifetime bucket lists – the things they want to do, see or experience before they die.  Since I have already declared 2015 to be the First Annual Year of Bryan (first of many – I’m going to 100, remember?), I have put together my bucket list not for life, but for this 48^th year!  So here are the 48 things I want to do, see or experience before 49 shows up in 365 days.  Some are musts, some are wants, some are hopes and dreams – but all are actually doable.  I figure I will check in here at the blog about once a month and let you folks know how I’m coming along.  And please, if any of you wish to help out on any item on the list, by all means speak up! The First Annual Year of Bryan is for all to participate in and enjoy!

In no particular order:

1.       Lose 48 pounds (4 pounds a month is very doable, I figure)

2.       Develop weekly exercise program (get off my butt and move!)

3.       Complete 1967 baseball card set (already in process!)

4.       Front porch painted (desperately needed)

5.       Deck repaired/sealed (desperately needed)

6.       Learn to drive (this would be a major accomplishment)

7.       Convert vhs collection to digital (already in process!)

8.       Convert album collection to digital (already in process!)

9.       See One-Eyed Doll in concert again – this time as a VIP (my favorite current band – if you read this blog you know that! Kimberly and Junior are awesome folks, but to get to hang out after a show with them would be amazing!)

10.   See Sparks in concert (my two all-time favorite bands are Bow Wow Wow and Sparks.  Got to see Bow Wow Wow in concert, but not Sparks…yet)

11.   Visit the beach (it’s been years since I’ve seen the ocean)

12.   Truly return to regular blogging schedule (I keep trying!)

13.   Start my own podcast (have wanted to do this for awhile now)

14.   Write a book (I keep trying!)

15.   Learn to cook pastitsio (I am spoiled by the annual Greek Food Bazaar here in Lancaster; I will learn to cook this dish well!)

16.   See Mount Rushmore (one of our country’s sights I’ve always wanted to see in person to truly take in its scale and majesty)

17.   Travel out of the country (I've never been – not even to Canada or Mexico)

18.   Attend a murder-mystery dinner  (they always seem like fun)

19.   Host a cookout (something I've wanted to do for as long as I’ve owned the house)

20.   Enroll in a beginner yoga class (ties into the earlier exercise thing)

21.   Get back on radio in some way (used to do radio in college and loved it – and miss it!)

22.   Try again to reconnect to Shillington, PA (I blogged about discovering that a childhood best friend had passed away in this post.  Something is still nagging at me to find a way to reconnect to someone from that era of my life.  I’d like to follow that urge and discover why – where will it lead me?)

23.   Volunteer (I want to find some way to give back)

24.   Take an improv comedy class (I have always been impressed by those who can do improve well; I’d like to see how well I could do at it)

25.   Research family tree (already in process – wonder how far back I can go?)

26.   Spend one full week "off the grid" (one week with no internet, no iPhone, no Facebook…)

27.   Cut debt load in half (already in process, I am pleased to say!)

28.   Create a passive income source (sure would help with the debt load)

29.   Taste a truly expensive scotch (just to see how truly different it is from the stuff I can afford)

30.   Host a game night (I love Wil Wheaton's “Tabletop” YouTube series – I’d love to have a group of friends over for a board game or two like that)

31.   Host a movie night (have a group over to watch a couple of my personal faves)

32.   Attend a storage auction (I’m a sucker for those storage auction shows on TV!)

33.   See the Grand Canyon (another one of our country’s sights I've always wanted to see in person to truly take in its scale and majesty)

34.   Drop grudges (some I have held for too long. I want to learn to forgive)

35.   Speak before an audience of 1000 or greater (ah, the great fear of public speaking!)

36.   Be onstage (sort of ties into the item above, but maybe as more of a baby step: just get onstage, even in a non-speaking role, just to put myself in front of people)

37.   Learn to juggle (it always looks like people who can juggle well are having a blast!)

38.   Prepare my will (I may plan to make it to 100, but sometimes the Universe has other plans.  Best to prepare)

39.   Be a part of a flashmob (have wanted to do this for some time)

40.   Take a hot air balloon trip (seems like it would be both peaceful and exhilarating)

41.   Have a real lobster roll from Maine (can’t get ‘em much fresher, I’m told)

42.   Take a coast-to-coast train ride (what better way to see the country?)

43.   Learn CPR (just think I should know in the event of an emergency)

44.   Fire a gun (for the experience)

45.   Visit a zoo (loved the zoo as a kid; haven’t been to one since I was a kid!)

46.   Learn to play the harmonica (for those days when I get the blues in my soul)

47.   Get a professional massage (I’m told it’s wonderful)

48.   Cook every single recipe in a cookbook (just start at page one and work my way through!)

Lima Beans for My Birthday

My brother and I each have somewhat bizarre senses of humor, as anyone who knows either of us can attest. Anyone who knows both of us can tell you that putting us together results in a combined humor that is odder than the sum of its parts. But there are few out there who would fully understand how a bag of frozen lima beans had us both in tears laughing this weekend.

There are only two vegetables I will not, cannot, eat: brussel sprouts and lima beans. I know that they are good for me, packed with nutrients and antioxidants and vitamins and a bunch of other good things. Unfortunately, when Mother Nature packed all that healthiness into them, she found no room left to add things like flavor, enjoyable texture, or anti-gagging qualities. Any other vegetable you put in front of me, I'll eat happily. Asparagus, spinach, turnips, peas, corn, carrots, collard greens - all yummy in my book. Heck, I'll even eat okra and smile (I did live in the South for a while)!

My brother has considerably lower tolerance for vegetables than I, so lima beans are high on his "will not eat" list as well. In fact, this whole story begins with him sharing his dislike for the little green horrors with his in-laws, declaring them so vile that, at Christmas, he'd rather find a lump of coal in his stocking than lima beans! Sure enough, come Christmas day, his in-laws, who have become accustomed to his odd sense of humor over the years, delivered to him a Christmas stocking containing a bag of frozen lima beans.

After the merriment had subsided, he suddenly realized he was stuck with a bag of lima beans! He certainly didn't want them, his wife wouldn't eat them, his in-laws didn't want them back. Who in their right mind would? The things are atrocious! Over the next week or so, he asked friends and neighbors if they wanted the lima beans. Everyone responded the same way: "EWWWWW! YUCK!!!" Resigned to his fate as owner of the lima beans, he put them in his freezer, where they would still be had I not opened my big mouth.

Because my brother's birthday is Christmas Day and mine is January 6, and because our parents are divorced and Dad lives about an hour away, it has become tradition that we signal the end of the holiday season with a combined Christmas/New Year/both of our birthdays celebration with Dad. This year, it turns out that this holiday celebration was not the last of the festivities; a combined birthdays dinner with Mom will close out the holidays this time around. But, Sunday was Dad's day, and since I do not drive, my brother and his wife were going to be picking me up to head west to Dad's place.

The phone rang around 11:30 Sunday morning. "We're on our way to get you," my brother reported.

"Alright, I'm ready!" I replied.

"Do you want us to wait until our birthday dinner with Mom, or should we bring your birthday presents along today?" he asked.

Sensing an opening for one of our standard phone routines, I again replied, "Alright, I'm ready!" In fact, as chance had it, that phrase perfectly answered another question or two that he asked, so I declared "Alright, I'm ready," the most handy phrase imaginable; that it could be applied just about anytime.

"OK," he smirked, "how about if I bring you a bag of frozen lima beans?"

I paused for a moment, and then, not knowing that he actually HAD a bag frozen lima beans (Why would he? He hates them as much as I do!), I foolishly decided to call his bluff: "Alright, I'm ready!"

I should know better. I really should. When we were kids still living at home, there was the day he triumphantly marched into my room proudly carrying a shoebox containing somewhere around $35 in assorted coins and dollar bills. "This is all the money I've won off of you in the past year!" he grinned. As brothers often do, we'd bet on things - a quarter here, a dollar there, oh-come-on-double-or-nothing - but whereas the money I would occasionally win would be soon spent on baseball cards or candy or something, he won more often, and had been saving everything he won from me solely for the enjoyment of rubbing my face in it A YEAR LATER! This was no rookie I was dealing with.

I lost this bet, too. Amongst my birthday presents sat a bag of frozen lima beans.

As I picked it up and realized what it was, my brother just started laughing. What else could I do but laugh as well. Dad looked at both of us as though we were crazy, but once the story was explained, he had to laugh too.

So, the bag of lima beans now resides in my freezer, and I am resigned to be their keeper for the time being, until I can find either a willing recipient or an unwitting soul to pass them along to.

Any of you out there have birthdays coming up?