Day 54: 100 Goals

My high school psychology teacher assigned us to write a list of 100 Goals. I think she'd gotten the idea from Chicken Soup For The Soul or something. We had to write 100 goals. They needed to be specific. Below is my list. The ones in bold are ones I've accomplished. Italics are the ones I'm working on this year.
1. Give away a Book of Mormon to a person in all 50 states.
2. Perform in a play.
3. Hold a local, state, or national political office.
4. Serve an LDS Mission
5. Hike Mt. Timpanogas
6. Get my picture taken with Mickey Mouse
7. Stand on the shores of Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans.
8. Scuba/snorkel off the coast of Hawaii, Australia, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean
9. Go to the top of the Cologne Cathedral and the Eiffel Tower
10. Drink hot chocolate in the Alps in January
11. Buy a painting in Florence, Italy.
12. Read 100+ works of classic literature
13. Read a book in a foreign language.
14. Visit: Yosemite, Acadia, the Everglades, Carlsbad Caverns, and Mt. Rushmore
15. Take a church history tour
16. Kayak from Alaska to Mexico or Maine to Florida (NO desire to do this anymore. What was I thinking???)
17. Spend a week in Washington DC
18. Tour the Smithsonian and Holocaust Museums
19. Sail in the South Pacific (around Tahiti)
20. Go boating in the fjords of Norway
21. Visit the Rock of Gibraltar
22. Ride camels in Egypt.
23. Climb Mt. Kilimanjaro and visit an African game preserve
24. Go skiing in Vermont.
25. Go clam digging in Connecticut or Cape Cod
26. Go on a cruise.
27. Graduate from high school.
28. Graduate from college (Ba, Ma, PhD?)
29. Build a house.
30. Have a scholarship named after me.
31. Go to a running of the bulls in Spain. (not participate. view.)
32. Go to a performance in the Sydney Opera House and a Broadway play in New York and London.
33. Take a picture of a whale in the wild.
34. Shake the president's hand.
35. Participate in a Live Studio Audience.
36. Go to old friend's wedding receptions.
37. Build a tree house with/for my kids.
38. Stay at three nice hotels.
39. Own a horse, a cow, a sheep, some chickens.
40. Know the works of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, and Handel.
41. Read the great works of Austen, Twain, Dickens, and the Brontes.
42. Attend all the large LDS temples in the world.
43. Go to Europe.
44. Bicycle from Coast to Coast.
45. Go camping in the Redwoods.
46. Have a lot of kids.
47. Marry a returned missionary.
48. Live to be 100. (Again--no desire to do this anymore.)
49. Learn to crochet.
50. Make myself an outfit.
51. Swim in the Great Salt Lake.
52. Touch a seal, a dolphin, a manta ray, and a sea turtle.
53. Bag a photo trophy of 5 exotic animals in the wild.
54. See the Himalayas
55. Visit Asia (Shanghai, Beijing, Tokyo, Manila, Bangkok)
56. Visit/volunteer in an orphanage (Ghana, Romania, Russia, China)
57. Keep an ongoing journal and scrapbook.
58. Visit Stonehenge, the chalk cliffs, Cornwall.
59. Live in a tropical area.
60. Write a book.
61. Have foster kids in my home.
62. Gather honey.
63. Have my portrait taken in a field of wildflowers.
64. Take a tour of NASA.
65. Enroll in a dance class.
66. Learn to oil paint.
67. View a solar eclipse.
68. learn to fly an airplane.
69. Make ice cream with my kids.
70. Pull a great April Fool's Joke, just once.
71. Get up early to go walking.
72. Be a happy person.
73. Learn to do yoga.
74. Try sushi, caviar, calamari, seaweed, and pate.
75. Learn to cry.
76. Have an orchard with apricots, cherries, peaches and a berry patch.
77. Bottle my own fruits and veggies.
78. Learn to do a graceful 360 degree turn on ice skates.
79. Have poetry published.
80. Walk barefoot along the ocean shore in a cotton dress and a hat.
81. Watch the sun rise over the Atlantic and set over the Pacific on the same day.
82. Learn to take beautiful pictures.
83. Take a San Francisco trolley.
84. Go to General Conference in the Tabernacle.
85. Bond with my college roomies.
86. Take time to read to my kids.
87. Willingly learn to keep my room clean.
88. Snowshoe in West Yellowstone.
89. Learn to ski.
90. Cut down my own Christmas tree.
91. Play in the snow with my kids.
92. Have a butterfly garden.
93. Catch lobster off the coast of main.
94. Go to Disneyland or Disney World
95. Go to the zoo.
96. Have my own study/library.
97. Own a baby grand piano.
98. Write a letter to my grandparents.
99. Buy a trampoline.
100. Have a huge bonfire with my family.

So, that's 40 down. It's a really interesting exercise to do; the first 50 are easy, but after that?? Watch out. When I told The Spouse (then The Fiance) about this list he said, "I'm supposed to live my life following the whims of an emotionally unstable 17 year old girl?" Um. Yep.

Day 53: Bon Voyage

The Spouse is at the end of our bed, packing. I can hear rustlings of things as he folds, arranges, and re-arranges. Clothing (summer-type), gifts for his parents (candy-type), and other travel essentials. He's weighed the suitcase a few times already. Tomorrow night at this time, he'll be halfway across the Atlantic. This means a few things for the coming days:

1. I might get some really good blog entries written because I'll have nothing.else.to.do at night.
2. I might get no blog entries written because I'll be curled up in a ball on the couch watching various versions of Pride and Prejudice on repeat.
3. My kids will be eating a LOT of pizza.
4. I will not.
5. Something around our house is bound to breakdown, get sick, or blow up.

So, please, hands and feet inside the ride at all times. (Can't say I didn't warn you.)

Day 25: Uptown

I know, I know. I missed a day. I sure have a cute reason, though. Here's a picture of my baby girl, all hooked up to her EEG dreadlocks and looking mighty snazzy. (She hates them, but seems to slowly be getting used to having them.) With the pink tape to keep everything on and together, she kind of looks like a Christmas present.

We're at one of the gigantic hospitals uptown, which has a really wonderful children's hospital. (My other two kids came to visit last night and could've stayed a good loooooong while.) I feel so blessed that we've never had reason to come to one of these places with a truly *sick* or hurt child. We've had our encounters, like now, but we've never had to become intimately acquainted.

One thing that always amazes me about places like this, whether it was Primary Children's Medical Center in the west, the NICU at our local hospital, or this big children's ward, is how good the people are around here. From the nurses to the doctors to the child life specialists that bring mobiles and rocking chairs and make sure that everyone is happy. I know it's their job, and they get paid for it. But no one paid our neonatologist to sing to his patients, which he often did with a beautiful baratone voice. And no one paid our NICU nurses to cuddle our little girl when she was feeling sick. I appreciate how many extra-miles these people go in a day, just because of who they are.

Christmas is an especially great time to be in a hospital like this because people are stopping by and visiting. Yesterday we had some hockey players from the Charlotte Checkers bring tickets and stuffed animals, then Santa Claus with goodies and a gift, followed some girls from Girls on the Run brought handmade Christmas cards and a soft, plush gorilla. Right after they left, some volunteers came with their service dogs. It made my day so much brighter and less lonely, even if my baby is too little to really appreciate it.

So that's why I didn't write yesterday. Because I was sitting in a children's hospital, rocking my baby, and basking in the goodness of people at Christmastime.

Day 6: Fear Journal

For the writing exercise, I'm supposed to write down 8 fears. Then, I'm supposed to choose the one that stands out to me and write about it for a few minutes, before switching and writing about that same fear from a different point of view.

Note: I just finished the entry below. I didn't complete the exercise. I couldn't seem to do it. Somehow it turned from a "creative writing" entry to a very real journal entry. I'm going to post it anway--as vulnerable as that makes me feel. Maybe I just need to get it out there.

Eight fears...
Takeoff and landing when flying.
black widow spiders
undetected electrical fires
anything happening to any of my children
death of my spouse
bird flu
throwing up
deep water (not deep end of the pool deep. murky lake or ocean deep.)

Wow. Even making that list was hard. It felt raw. It felt difficult to say out loud--to write down for the whole world to see. I was tempted to write down laughable fears. There were some I couldn't even bring myself to write down.

Right now, I'm living with one of those fears every moment of every day. I have a baby on heart and lung monitors. I'm on edge at every second, poised to spring. I can't fall asleep at night unless I lay there and pray myself to sleep. Saying the same prayer, over and over and over. When I close my eyes, I can hear alarms going off. My back and neck muscles are wound up so tightly that they ache. Last night I walked into our room and the red bradycardia (decreased heart rate) light was lit, which meant that the monitor had gone off. And we hadn't noticed. She was fine and had self-corrected, but I felt sick. Suddenly, I knew I wouldn't be able to go to bed or sleep or relax. I put in an old movie and exercised my right to wake up my baby and hold her... hardly paying attention to what was on the screen, but instead feeling the rise and fall of her breathing. That motion--over which I have no control at all--rules my life right now. It is always with me. Always at the back and front of my mind. I wonder how much longer we will do this. I wonder if anyone at all has the answers that will help us. Our appointment with the pediatric neurologist is next week, but I'm bracing myself for more shrugs. More "I don't know"s. I wonder what I will do then. I feel like this fear steers the direction of my days, and I worry that it means I am lacking in faith. I guess I must be. Faith requires me to look this fear in the face in a way that I'm just not ready for. No matter how many times I tell myself that I am not in charge; that this is not my plan--my instincts lash out with how hard we fought to get her here. For how much faith it took. For how much it feels, true or not, that she is mine and mine alone. I worry that those things cry out "teach me a lesson", "humble me"... So I lay there at night. And I pray. Because it's the only thing I can do; pleading for mercy, and for justice. Both. At the same time.