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Life Menu

Here it is-my Life Menu! I have been working on this for quite some time, as a part of the Path Finder course I took this fall.  Let me say, each item on this list makes me want to run out and do it. Right. Now. I know that some of it I may never get to do (I do not have a bottomless bank account) and some of it I may complete this week.  But these are not finite things.  This menu is a living, breathing document.  I can add to it and take away from it.  And that's okay by me.  If I never get to own a salt marsh cottage, I won't crumble up and die.  But if I do, I'm totally down with that.  I think it is like Karen said so often-there is magic in words.  And by putting this list together, it does feel magical.  I had a quasi-list before.  I had forgotten about it.  When I dusted it off, I was shocked at how much I'd been able to cross off!  So, as I complete items here, I promise I'll fill you in.  And if I get close, I will update you as well.  If you want to do any of this with me-let me know!  From running through a corn maze with us to teaching me to drive a combine through a farm field.  Who knows where this crazy journey of life will lead me?  I think it is fitting to publish my life menu today-on my birthday.  No day like it to add a new path, right?


1. Create my own recipes I can put in a food journal to pass down through generations
2. March in my college alumni band
3. See the monarch butterfly migration
4. Take a decadent spring break with my husband
5. Create a separate journal of family recipes
6. Restore an American Muscle Car
7. Become a certified master gardener
8. Write a travel book about the Midwest
9. Roadtrip all 50 US States with my husband and son
10. Learn the art of beekeeping
11. Raise laying chickens
12. See Tina Turner live
13. Attend a Presidential Inauguration
14. Road trip major college football rivalry games
15. Visit the Ukraine/Welsh/German towns of my ancestry
16. Pay off our house
17. Attend a family reunion
18. Make a memory quilt for our son
19. Return to Europe with my husband
20. Renew our wedding vows
21. Learn how to throw clay pottery (and make mugs!)
22. Learn how to weld
23. Make glass ornaments at Christmas with my husband and son at the Toledo Museum Glass Pavilion
24. Solve a corn maze without a map
25. Take cello lessons
26. Do the dance from the end of Dirty Dancing-with the lift
27. Attend high tea in England
28. Re-trace LM Montgomery's footsteps on Prince Edward Island
29. Drive a combine
30. Win a blue ribbon at a county fair
31. Tobogganing at the chutes with my husband and son
32. Attend a bottling party at Middle West Spirits
33. Learn how to drive a motorcycle
34. Ride in a hot air balloon
35. Sail (not motorized) the islands of Lake Erie
36. Jet ski
37. Go to a Hawaiian luau in Hawaii
38. Take a Mark Twain Mississippi riverboat cruise
39. Take my husband on an Out of Africa trip
40. Be an extra in a movie
41. Ride in the Goodyear Blimp
42. Do a Christmas Basket for a student anonymously (w/one BIG wish-list item in it)
43. Leave baked goods for a neighbor 
44. Send a care package to a soldier
45. Sponsor a veteran for Honor Flight
46. Help build another Habitat House
47. Pay someone's toll on the turnpike
48. Leave unsigned thank-you notes in mail boxes 
49. Have a family charity we donate to each year
50. Put together a bucket for ISOH-IMPACT with our son and have him deliver it.
51. Leave flowers on someone's doorstep for them
52. Fill an expired parking meter.
53. Bake goodies for work and leave them in the break rooms.
54. Sponsor someone to take the Path Finder Course who may not be able to afford it, but who could use some awesomeness in their life!
55. Make blankets for our county sheriff's domestic violence unit and have our son go with me to drop them off.
56. Leave encouragement notes in students' lockers when they need them.
57. Purchase a cap/gown/tassel for a student who may not be able to 
58. Give hugs
59. Create a card file (birthday/anniversary/etc) and fill it. Send cards to those family and friends we love.
60. Take my husband on dates 
61. Bake bread for a family receiving their Habitat Home
62. Host a grown-ups only open house when the bar is finished-with a dress code and swanky cocktails
63. Buy a fantastic hat and attend the Kentucky Derby
64. Go dancing in a honky tonk bar
65. Meet women I admire and take them out for dinner-Karen Walrond, Maile Wilson, Sally McGraw, Elissa Stern, Jeni Britton-Bauer
66. Have a family photo shoot done
67. Knit something useful
68. Attend the Mighty Summit
69. Stand atop the Eiffel Tower at night with my husband-then take a cruise on the Seine River
70. Visit the beaches of Normandy
71. Visit the Rosie the Riveter memorial
72. Take a photography class
73. Host an grown-up New Year's Eve party-cocktail attire, balloons, streamers, sparkly dresses and music
74. Fly in a Learjet with my husband 
75. Sit in the dugout seats at Progressive Field
76. (stolen from Karen) Drink a glass of wine in each of the top 10 wine making countries in the world-Italy, France, Spain, Australia, United States, Germany, Argentina, Chile, Portugal, South Africa
77. Learn how to make our own sausage using local meat.
78. Take one photograph every day for one year of a particular object (i.e. barn, house, fence, tree)
79. (stolen from Maile) Learn how to work our Mac, iPads, iPhones better
80. Work from home as a free-lance writer, PR & Graphic Design consultant for schools
81. Take the Nooks & Crannies tour of Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens
82. Tour the White House

83. Own a salt marsh cottage in Georgia
84. Live in the mountains of North Carolina
85. Hike part of the Appalachian Trail
86. Learn to ride horseback
87. Ride a train coast to coast in the US
88. Build a wardrobe that I adore
89. Audition for a symphonic chorus
90. Read Pride & Prejudice
91. Learn to play the guitar.
92. Ice skate in Central Park with my husband and son
93. Have red hair
94. Get my grandmother's engagement ring restored by a jeweler who fixes antique jewelry
95. Stay at the Plaza Hotel with my husband in the winter
96. Make homemade jam without using pectin
97. Do a summer tour of major league baseball parks
98. Throw a bash with a band
99. Ride the Cuyahoga Valley Railroad
100. Restore an old schoolhouse into a home