The Buried Life...

My new favorite show is MTV's: "The Buried Life". It follows these four guys as they try to accomplish evey item on their "Before we die..." list. And each time they complete something on their list they try to help a stranger cross off something on their list. It's this very sweet and surprisingly touching show. It also doesn't hurt that the guys are too cute. Anyway, it's got me thinking about what I'd put on my list. They have 100 items; so here's mine.

1. get married
2. be a mom
3. visit every single country in Africa
4. create my own cereal
5. sing kareokee with jon bon jovi
6. write a book
7. get that book published
8. work on a horse ranch
9. kiss in the rain
10. adopt
11. tour the white house
12. meet nelson mandela
13. be interviewed by jimmy kimmel
14. see every continent
15. go to london
16. live in a small town
17. deliver a baby
18. have enough money to spend it without thinking
19. spend 1 month all by myself in some secluded, beautiful place and just think and be with God
20. be in two places at once
21. get a tattoo
22. write for a sucessful TV show
23. learn to play piano
24. learn to play guitar
25. dance all night long
26. spend the night on the beach
27. get to take a mission trip with all of my closest friends
28. invent something
29. time travel
30. do something truly artistic
31. help someone's dreams come true
32. go to walt disney world
33. stay in a castle
34. sit on a beautiful, rolling hill, while drinking something hot and wonderful, and just "be" in ireland
35. have a song written about me
36. pet a baby hippo
37. ride an ostrich
38. figure out a really great halloween costume and execute it beauitfully
39. live next door to tim and carlee
40. learn to sew
41. watch jay, jake, and patrick change the world
42. buy my momma a cottage by the sea, just like the Lupin Lady's
43. be able to finance all of my missionary friend's lives
44. have my very own, wonderful library
45. be a cartoon
46. have an occasion to wear a really fancy, oscar-type gown
47. get to play with baby farm animals
48. go fishing with barack obama
49. get to be a guest co-host on the view
50. pay off my student loans
51. have a real pen pal
52. swim with dolphins
53. see a superbowl live
54. go on tour with U2
55. become more handy
56. carve a cool piece of furniture
57. be on survivor
58. walk with daisy on a deserted beach
59. find out i had a long, lost, evil twin
60. scare my brother, like really bad, like worse than all the times he's scared me added together
61. go to tea with someone fancy and british
62. take sally to south africa
63. play paintball with the new england patriots
64. have a reunion with our saturday morning worship group (with phil leading worship for it)
65. fill a swimming pool with jello
66. beat kevin in anything fantasy football related
67. be really, truly surprised
68. never have to plan another one of my birthdays
69. come up with the world's best cupcake recipe
70. design a t-shirt
71. go on a roadtrip with matty, tyler, lala, and oliver
73. help with extreme home makeover
74. take beautiful photographs
75. get a puppy
76. have my own treehouse (and an awesome one)
77. have one new year's eve that lives up to the hype
78. find a way to thank all the people that have changed my life
79. get a better sense of direction
80. go to space
81. have lunch with all the captains of the enterprise
82. learn to sail
83. beat my students at stupid guitar hero
84. have a white christmas
85. be in a play
86. crash a wedding
87. see a real circus
89. sit in a pub, drink a beer, and watch rugby in london
90. learn to speak another language fluently
91. ride a train
92. stay in a super fancy hotel, in their fanciest room
93. see both poles, north and south
94. visit ernest hemingway's house
95. design my dream home
96. roadtrip across these united states
97. have a vegetable garden
98. ride a hot-air balloon
99. learn to bartend, and then get to do it for a night or two
100. spend a few days on a deserted island with someone i love

john hughes changes everything...

do you ever wish you could just be a character in a john hughes film? i do. a lot. his movies were just genius. the breakfast club, ferris buller's day off, pretty in pink, sixteen candles; that is a list that continues to define teen angst and love and figuring out who we are. anyway i've been in an 80's mood lately so i thought i'd post a little tribute.

a cup of sugar...

i usually hate baking. i find it tedious and constricting. i love to cook, but that's an entirely different beast than baking. there's a recipe that must be followed and the timing has to be perfect. all things i'm horrible at. but a few years ago when i started working with high school students i invented a game called "cookie points". basically i handed out points haphazardly and when a student reached a specific number of points i would bake them a batch of cookies. this did practically nothing for the girls, but the boys loved it! they would work so hard for the points. and in turn i spent a lot more time baking than i ever had before.

so here's what i'm learning: baking is constricting and there are rules and you can't just throw in some lime juice because you think it might add a bit of a kick. but baking gives you a different kind of freedom. as you knead the dough or whip the egg whites there's this knowledge that following the recipe is going to get you where you want to go. when i cook it's wild and haphazard. not everything i put in a pot works well together (although i must say i get it right 9 out of 10x). but with baking i can follow each step and trust that my pie will deliver. it's a nice thought when my world seems so out of my control.

so go grab a recipe and make a pie or some banana bread and relax in the knowledge that you can't screw it up... well, i mean you can screw it up... uh-oh...