Speaking French, Making Crackers, and Twirling Swords

I would say that about once a week I decide on some new goal.  These goals are the very definition of “all over the place” and can be anything from an entire new life plan (my favorite!) or something much smaller like, “learn how to make bread” (DONE!)  For some reason, I am very single-minded in my pursuit of these things, and so the ones that can’t be accomplished in some immediate fashion are usually regulated to some ever evolving list which is then put into a folder and probably then lost. 

I like doing this (not the losing the folder thing, the picking of hobbies/events/defined goals and then working at them until they are done thing.)  Honestly, I’m not exactly sure where this tendency of mine stems from, but I don’t mind it.  I never really thought of myself as all that odd, but this weekend I was reminded that I spent more than a few hours of my life learning how to twirl batons (and for some strange reason – swords), a childhood attempting to out-read anyone I knew (and win every elementary school reading contest available to the point that I was the victim of a teacher-led charge to remove me from the reading contests and entered into a special “Kristi-only” reading contest where I had to beat my previous record every month.  It was lame.), a year of college talking a bunch of 20 year old girls into training for a marathon (and becoming the self-appointed training czar, forcing everyone to wake up before football games and run gazillions of miles), and the more recent attempt to knit/sew everything in the world (that is an exaggeration.)

Now, you would think that writing all of these down would cause me to realize that I am, in fact, a crazy person, and that maybe I should be a little bit more normal and just pick one or two hobbies (or none!), but no.  In fact, even while Brittany and David were laughing at the random things in my life that I have been obsessed with at one point or another (sword twirling was especially hilarious, apparently), I was too busy focusing on the fact that they are taking French lessons and how I have always wanted to learn French (Spanish – I’m done with you!  You are too hard, and I hate you.) to notice.  And now I have a blog to publicly display my new goals with – so I am going to do it – it is all just so exciting.  So, here you go, new things I would like to conquer and put a little K (for KRISTI not KNIGHT) flag on (to show I conquered it.  Like an explorer.)

1)  Finally move somewhere that does not have an X in the name (that was a round-about way of saying, “not Texas.”)

2)  Learn how to make crackers!

3)  Use only public transportation for one week, or better yet, ONE MONTH!

4)  FINISH GRAVITY’S RAINBOW!! (gah.)

5)  Take an in-depth cooking class and figure out how to actually cook rather than being a recipe reliant non-cooker.

6)  Make a quilt.

7)  Stay in the Ice Hotel and be a cocoon person.

8)  Learn French (specifically learn the correct way to say my old last name, Dansereau.  Actually, that is still my last name, as I have not yet made the trip to the social security office in order to change it.)

9)  Sew an article of clothing that I would actually wear.

10)  Take a long vacation to Europe.  (this one was caused by David and Brittany.  My bank account says thanks a lot.)

I limited myself to ten, and that was pretty difficult.  I just wrote them as I thought of them, so I wouldn’t really say that “learn how to make crackers” is ahead of “stay in the Ice Hotel and be a cocoon person” (it most definitely IS NOT.)   I’m not sure what it says about a person if they tend to view life as a series of conquerable to-do lists (I bet it isn’t good), but I’m ok with that.  I mean, I can twirl swords.