Dancing Brave

Final Tally: 60 in 1001

Well, it's over -- 1001 days in which to accomplish 101 things came to a close on Nov. 11, and I managed to plow just more than halfway through the list.

It was an interesting experiment. Much of my list was unattainable, unless I'd come into some money or properly planned things in advance. But I enjoy taking a look at the list now and seeing glimpses of who I was then -- what my idea of romance was, how much travel was a priority, which items reflect the things that just happened to be in front of my face at that time -- and how I'm really different in some respects and the same in others.

So let's take a gander at the damage. On their own clear merits I managed to finish 56 items out of the 101, but there are a few more that I think I can cross off in spirit, so let's tackle those first.

9. Write an original work of fiction. This can be a screenplay (not likely), a spec script (slightly more likely), or a prose story of any length (as long as I consider it satisfactorily complete, then it counts). The point of this item was to get me writing something either for myself or for publication -- spec script and screenplay were really only on there to give me more options; generally speaking I have never, ever wanted to write either of those. But when I wrote this list, GFY had only existed for four months or so, and wasn't really anything more than a fun and unexpected side gig. I never dreamed it would yield what it has.Jess and I got the book deal and our baby hits the world on February 5, which I think more than fulfills the spirit of No. 9 up there even if it doesn't count as fiction.

27. Spend the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament in Las Vegas. I spent the second week there, with my bachelorette party. Sort of counts. This note represented decadence to me -- the very idea that I could run off to a sports book and watch all the games all day, with not a care in the world. Well, last season, I got my first NCAA Tourney as a self-employed person, and watching it at home was every bit as satisfying. Doubly so because it was free.

43. Take my finished needlepoint canvas, which has been done for at least a year and a half, and get it made into a picture frame. Oooh, wait, this one I actually have done -- well, it's in progress, anyway. My mother's going to take it to her needlepoint people in Florida, and the canvas is winging its way to her now.

60. Bench press my body weight, either with a free barbell or on a machine -- but probably the latter, because I am a wuss and the other scares me because if I don't have a spotter I will probably drop it on my chest, and then I'm an instant Lifetime Television For Women cautionary tale. I have no idea how hard this will or won't be, either. This is a completely uneducated goal. This was one of my favorite stupid items. Because it begs repeating: SERIOUSLY, what was I smoking? But I realized that, although it is a TOTALLY different skill from being able to bench-press your body weight, I can maybe cross this off. Because since I made this list I have learned to climb up a stripper pole and, clinging only with my arms, release my legs and flip myself upside down and slide to the ground. Which is WAY MORE FUN than free weights, and also something I'm a lot prouder of being able to do. So let's go with this as another one I completed in spirit if not in letter.

That puts us at 60 items complete. Or, 0.05 things per day. And considering that there was a time I wasn't sure if I'd get up to 40, that's not too shabby at all. Well, unless I keep it in decimal terms. Five things every 100 days sounds a tiny bit better.

Okay, now let's take a gander at what I couldn't do.

As the clock winds down: 44 in 31

1. Change up my hair color. Right now I'm thinking of either bringing out more strawberry in the blonde, or going a dramatically darker red.

So, I've totally already done most of this, at least in spirit: I don't have the red I want, since my hairstylist doesn't want to get into heavy processing with my hair yet and red fades really quickly and sometimes not all that attractively, making for costly upkeep (or so I've read). But we've messed around with other ways of trying to achieve it and we're having fun playing. Last time it got a lot darker, but washed back to normal in about two weeks -- maybe still a shade darker than normal, but not enough redder. We'll see what we can pull out of the hat next time.

82. Go to the opera -- I saw the Baz Luhrmann staging of La Boheme when I was in New York in Feb. 2003, and it was great, but I don't consider it "opera" in the classic sense because the production was so modernized.

Knowing this was on my list, Kevin bought opera tickets as a birthday present, and we went in September. We saw Beethoven's Fidelio, which had some interesting pieces in it but whose story COMPLETELY falls apart in the second and final act. Although there is a whole song at the end devoted to how lucky men are who have wives as faithful and brave and amazing as Leonore, encouraging all men so blessed to sing with them, and I nudged Kevin in the hope that he'd join the chorus. He didn't. He claims he was singing along in his head. Right.

Like with so many things -- going to China, for one -- I wish I'd done this before things got so modernized. The subtitles are hugely helpful, obviously, as I would've had very little idea what was going on otherwise (well, I'd have gotten a grasp, I guess, but the jokes would've been impossible). But experiencing the opera when you had nothing to focus on but the music and the emotion would've been truly mesmerizing. Or so I tell myself; really, I'm sure I'd have been sitting there going, "CAN'T THEY HOLD UP FLASH CARDS?"

Travelogue: 46 in 54

2. Travel to a place where the language isn't as easy to learn: Anywhere in the Far East, for example, or maybe Russia.

In many ways, I wish I'd visited China ten years ago. The country it was then, as seen by my parents, didn't bear much resemblance to the way it is now; English was less widely embraced, construction and refurbishment was less widespread, and the nation didn't yet know that a decade hence it would be preparing to sit in the global spotlight.

Yet on the other hand, I'm thrilled to have seen Beijing as I did, in the throes of a transition as it prepares for the Olympics to arrive on 08/08/08 -- a date chosen for its numerical symmetry and the repetition of the digit that symbolizes prosperity.

This is an entry I had to wait to write for a while, but also one I dreaded tackling because there's no way I can say it all, recount everything, or fully convey what the trip was to me. Where to begin, I didn't even know. But, buoyed by a back issue of Sports Illlustrated about the Olympics, I decided to start there and see how it flowed.

47 in 82

24. Reconnect with three friends I've lost along the way, and maintain it for more than the span of a few idle e-mails.

Oddly enough, it was Facebook that did this for me. Someone e-mailed me and Jessica with the link to a GFY group on there, so I joined just to write a thank-you post and figured I'd never do anything with it. But suddenly, I got notifications that I'd been added as a friend by some folks from my high-school, and lo and behold, about 90 percent of my graduating class is on there -- plus some people from the years before and after.

Our 10-year reunion, I missed. My curiosity was potent but I couldn't get there, and had to make my peace with the fact that I might never find out what became of some of those people -- might never get to see how they all turned out, how they all look, how hard it is to see their old selves buried inside their new, adult ones. But now I've caught up with a bunch of them in the virtual world, and it's really nice. I can marvel at how grown-up they look compared to what pipsqueaks we all were at ages 15-18, and I can study the faces of their kids for traces of them, and I can see if what they do for a living matches what I knew of them Way Back When.

Then a couple ND people came out of the woodwork, and the whole thing inspired me to e-mail my old college roommate Sarah and try to rebuild that friendship. On the whole, I'm feeling pretty positive about it all, even if it proves more fleeing in the end than I'd like it to be. For now, though, I just like the feeling of having reconnected.

45. Eat a candlelit dinner with Kevin.

Since we're getting into desperation mode and there's really no reason why I haven't done this yet, I decided to create some ambiance Sunday night. We were cooking dinner together and enjoying a nice bottle of shiraz someone got me for my birthday; as I cleared the table I started staring absently at the candles and thought, "WAIT A SECOND. Why don't we ever use these? It's even on my LIST." So I set the table, swapped the empty candlesticks for the full ones on the mantel, lit them, and killed the lights. The whole thing was really rather relaxing while we ate, and as an added plus, the darkened atmosphere could be the new secret to the success of my unintentional "looks like shit, but it tastes great" approach to cooking.

57. Keep my bedroom floor uncluttered for a full two-week period. Sound easy? You don't know me.

I managed to do this while Kevin was gone. I kept telling myself it was all about me teaching myself better habits, so that when he came home, he'd be all impressed and we'd embark upon a new, tidier life together.

It's nice to dream, isn't it?

Actually, we've been pretty good about keeping the living room straight, and the kitchen has been mostly in order as well. Apparently, since we know people who come over are rarely in our bedroom unless it's one of our signature group orgies, we expend all our tidy energy on the common spaces and then are too tired to hang up our clothes. I'm trying, really trying, but some nights I just want to get into bed as quickly as I can, and screw hanging up my pants. Still, I got my two weeks done. They're there in my memory, shining like a beacon of what I could be if I consistently listened to the little voice in my head -- the one that sounds like my mother -- which tells me, "If you take two seconds to do it now, it means you don't have to do it later!"

Sigh. And she's not wrong. I AM trying. Let's just take the living room as a positive first baby step toward more permanent tidier living.

50 in 91

41. Read a biography.

I've had a Henry VIII biography kicking around my house for years. Thanks to seventh-grade English history and a mother who made sure I saw everything from St. George's Chapel at Windsor (where he's buried with Jane Seymour) to Hever Castle (the Boleyn family estate), Henry VIII has long been one of my favorite English kings --  not a controversial opinion, as he's one of the most visible, influential, charismatic, choleric, and ultimately memorable of them. But, sometimes they're that high-profile fir a reason, and he deserves his notoriety and infamy. Yet shockingly, this book I've had is so dry and dully written that despite multiple attempts, I can't get more than a few pages into it.

Fortunately, Alison Weir is an engaging writer, so I ripped through and thoroughly enjoyed The Six Wives of Henry VIII, which touches on the lives of each woman and of Henry VIII himself from start to finish, ably covering what made them each at times admirable, deplorable, unfortunate, reviled, and respected. Some of the stuff I remembered from class -- Anne of Cleves' embellished portrait and Henry's subsequent disappointment at meeting her after their betrothal; the legend of Anne Boleyn's "sixth finger" which was actually little more than a spare fingernail; the sweeping social reform begotten by Henry's simple desire to spawn a true male heir -- and some of it was great added detail, like dribs and drabs of Jane Seymour's true character and how much Katherine Parr did for making the truly educated lady a fashionable and desired thing.

Since finishing The Other Boleyn Girl, I'd been itching to read a non-fiction account of the time period because that one was both heavily fictionalized and only okay, and these people are interesting enough not to need the embellishments (like that Mary was younger than Anne and kind of an innocent; history indicates she was both the elder daughter and a notoriously loose woman during her time in the French court). Weir completely satisfied my yen for fact about a major chunk of one of that country's most fascinating ruling houses. She had me feeling really sorry for poor old Anne of Cleves, who didn't even know they hadn't had proper sex until her ladies in waiting started trying to press her for details for the grapevine. I'd highly recommend it.

Now my next dilemma is which of hers to read next. I've always had a soft spot for the story of the princes in the tower (imprisoned there, most historians agree, by Richard III, although there are arguments out there to the contrary), but I might flow straight into Lady Jane Grey and then Elizabeth I before backtracking. England has so many colorful characters in its history; I appreciate a writer who so ably knows how to paint their hues.

51 in 134 (yeah, RIGHT)

19. Attend the Sound of Music sing-along.

This past Saturday night, the Hollywood Bowl hosted this event after a year's hiatus, so I rounded up Jessica, Carrie, and Grant, we made a picnic, and we sang our hearts out and our throats dry. Well, except for Grant. He would only chime in on the goatherd number.

There's a print of the movie for just this occasion on which the lyrics pop up during anything that's sung. Not that we would need that, but hey, it was there. And so on a lovely summer night, the Bowl was packed to capacity with Sound of Music lovers of all ages (and genders -- seriously, there were some gay men, of course, but there were also plenty of straight men reveling in it all). At 6 p.m. there was a costume contest -- guest-judged by Charmian Carr, who played Liesl -- that went on until it was dark enough to start the movie, with people dressed as everything from "girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes" to "how do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?" to the Captain's whistle (this one was a legacy: the kid's father won two years ago dressed as the carburator the nuns pilfer from the Nazis) to the random lady who comes in third in the Salzburg festival and won't stop bowing, not to mention a bunch of goats and the pinecone on Maria's chair at dinner and, of course, the Baroness -- one impersonator of whom was a deliciously made-up gay man who, when host Melissa Peterman complimented him on his clothes, purred, "I have a FAAABULOUS couturier in Vienna." He sat behind us during the show and we were the only people who didn't boo and hiss whenever Baroness Schraeder spoke.

The event itself was the most wonderfully corny, awesome thing in the world -- better than I could've expected. Wild applause greeted the beginning (along with countless murmurs from people who didn't remember that the b-roll before Maria's opening song went on for quite so long; seriously, it's quite a chunk of travel porn there), the entire audience sang every single song and clapped when it was over, and everyone howled and whooped and laughed and screamed out little witticisms (some wittier than others) at all the right spots.

But what I loved most was how none of it was disdainful. Affection for the movie permeated the atmosphere even when we were being silly about it. And oh my GOD do I love this movie. I love Julie Andrews. I love Liesl's "Sixteen Going On Seventeen" dress. I love when sarcasm drips from Georg's mouth. I love saying "Georg." I love the nuns. I love the drapes. When I did my month in Europe four years ago, I went to Salzburg SPECIFICALLY to go on the Sound of Music tour -- we saw the gardens from end of the "Do Re Mi" scene (in which I was photographed skipping along with my arms outstretched, more or less as they did), the gazebo, the outside of the house and the river, the trees they climbed, the wall Maria walked along to sing "I Have Confidence," the church in which they were married... oh, it was fabulous. This movie meant a lot to me growing up, and man, I will always get teary when I think about Julie Andrews' voice being damaged now.

I didn't know how much I'd be comfortable singing -- LOVE the film, don't love my four-note alto of a voice -- but all those doubts dropped away during the intro and especially when we threw ourselves into "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?" I then sang every single note of every song as badly or as well as I could, in a head voice and a baritone and a hideous falsetto. And nobody cared. Somehow none of the din obscured the soundtrack, and honestly, I think people preferred it that we were all just screaming along to songs we'd known since we were wee. Because seriously, "Climb Every Mountain" is an apt name for that song, and if anyone HAD stood up and tried to belt it out in perfect operatic style, I think somebody would've thrown a shoe at his or her head and been all, "Bitch, don't EVEN think you can step on Peggy Wood." And rightly.

Of course, some idiot decided that a laser pointer -- five of them -- would be hysterical, and during the scene where the Baroness and the Captain break up, any time she was on screen her face was being scribbled on by little red dots. Which went with her fantastic red breakup dress, but still. Respect the Baroness. The way the word "Georg" drips from her tongue is worth it.

We, like so many others, brought a picnic: Jess made a divine chickpea salad, I made potato salad, and Grant whipped up a delicious chicken salad, all of which accidentally had ingredients that complemented one another and all of which tasted perfect. Carrie brought water, Diet Coke, and champagne in a can (complete with bendy straw!), and we finished it with lemon bars that were the perfect throat treatment before "Edelweiss."

The whole thing was so well worth it that I swear, we're going to get Jen started on the movie now -- she's never seen it -- so that she's familiar enough with it to come next year when we take Lauren (who was out of town and had to miss it this go-round). It's not the venue to see the movie for the first time, even with all the love oozing out of our pores, because people are cheering or hissing -- or barking "Rolf!" -- over half the dialogue. But it's just the type of thing she'd enjoy, as a lover of musicals, so Jen: Get ready. Maria and the Von Trapp Family Singers and all those Nazis are COMING, and you will be powerless against it.

Too Many in Too Few

Further Adventures in Futility...

4. Successfully give up potato chips for Lent. This means no cheating, no waiving Lent on Sundays, and no flaky definitions of what exactly constitutes a potato chip.

Oh yeah, baby, that's right: Done, done, and done. It wasn't as hard as I thought once I had a project, a deadline, that involved ceasing to eat them. It's when I CAN eat them if I want to that I have a hard time stopping. But, success. I am proud of myself.

Of course, I got home from Vegas on Easter Sunday and proceeded to devour what remained of the Kettle Chips I bought for my parents to eat while they were here. Those little greasy, salty nuggets of glory are tantalizing little bastards.

61. Fly first class.

My father used his air miles to fly us all to Vegas first class, because he hates flying and so when he has to do it, he won't go any other way. Well, unless they're going somewhere overseas, when it's prohibitively expensive. So although a 45-minute flight to Vegas wasn't quite what I had in mind when I wrote this, I made the list item itself beautifully simple, so therefore I have technically completed it by simply sitting in a nice big seat someone else paid for and having a soothing drink before takeoff.

54 in 222

The clock, she is ticking...

48. Take ownership and delivery of my piano, which is languishing in storage somewhere in South Florida right now.

She's here! She's a lovely, glossy mahogany color, and the reason she has a gender is because her name is Joanna -- cockney rhyming slang for "piano," and part of the cryptic riddle my Dad gave me in an envelope on my birthday when they bought her. She's wildly out of tune, not having been played in a decade or longer, but we can remedy that easily enough. Going through my old music was such a trip down memory lane -- I can't wait to play her again. I snuck in a practice rendition of Bach's Prelude I and Fur Elise, just to see how out of tune she is (the answer: wow) and my hands feel like big clunky mitts. It's going to be a long road back with her, but I can't wait.

49. Ditto for my Bar Billiards table.

This is in place in the Sultan's Lair, thanks to the muscle of Kevin and his friends, as it's made of slate and weighs about 350 pounds. But I think it brought my parents a lot of joy to watch everyone jump in and start playing right away. Kind of made their whole slog out here worthwhile. The table is so unique and it's a lovely antique to have, plus it looks stellar against the red paint. And Kevin's kind of addicted. It's a tough game to be good at consistently, and every time, it goes slightly differently for you, hence the desire to keep going and going with it because you feel like if you do that, you'll master it. And then it masters you.

98. Buy a piece of art, however small, that I want to display in my home.

A woman in my strip class is moving to Seattle at the end of the month, and when she gave me her card so I could contact her about her going-away party, I noticed she's an artist. So I poked around her Web site and liked what I saw; she let me come see her stuff in person after class, and I came away with two of her originals at a great price. We've seen each other almost every weekend for a year and a half in this class that's been amazing for both of us, so it's meaningful to me to own something of hers rather than just a painting I picked out at a store. I could talk to her about them, I can envision her creating them in her back room, and I could see her affection for them first-hand. She likes knowing her pieces have gone to a happy home with people she knows will love them, and even though we don't know each other that well in real-world terms, at the same time we know a side of each other that nobody else in the world knows but the eight or 12 girls in our Saturday family. I'm so happy I was able to fulfill this one in such a personal way.

87. Use the Rollerblades that are stashed under my bed.

And so I did, if you count giving them to Goodwill as using them. I do. I consider it "using them to give someone else great, deeply discounted joy." And isn't that the most heroic thing? Essentially, in choosing not to interpret this one literally, I have turned myself into a mighty philanthropist.

Must dash to polish the halo...

60 in 236

I had a very exciting realization the other day, pertaining to my "101 in 1001" list.

It concerns the following list item:

12. Forever break at least one of my bad habits, be it shallow or deeply personal. It could be picking at my eyelashes or biting my nails; it could be food-related; or it could be eradicating a mental demon. The latter is obviously not going to happen, but I put it on there in the hope that it might inspire me.

I have gone on the record as feeling like this item was a tiny bit lofty and pretentious.

Like I'm going to sit down one day and decide to break a bad psychological habit, and then poof, it's done. And where's the proof, anyway? "Uh, yeah, I stopped thinking bad things about my ass." Sure you did.

[...]

Also, at what point in the 1001 days can I accurately say, "I have forever broken this bad habit!" What was I thinking? Whose dictionary am I using that allows me to include "forever" inside a span of 1001 days? The J.Lo Glossary of Marital Terms and Conditions?

Well, as it happens, I think I can actually cross this off -- not because I managed to conquer any nagging old mental demons, but because I just realized it's been over a year since I stopped doing something I used to do, and not only do I not miss it, but I never made a conscious decision not to go back to it. Rather, it just sort of happened.

I no longer eat Pop Tarts every day for breakfast.

I love junk food, and I used to eat breakfast at my computer. I still do, actually, despite the fact that my office is in my house. It's just a habit, somehow. And when I worked off-campus, so to speak, I liked to keep my desk drawers full of easy, relatively non-perishable food to eat for the days (99 out of 100) that craft service wasn't refilled. Sometimes it was granola bars, but for the most part, it was Pop Tarts. Those sweet patties of tooth rot were my crack. I'd have both -- they are two to a silver envelope -- in flavors ranging from Brown Sugar Cinnamon to Blueberry to S'mores. They were hideous for me and I never really thought about it because my body didn't seem to care one way or the other.

But before my wedding -- like, a month before -- I decided to tune up by doing things that might be good for me. I quit starting my day with a Diet Coke (in my defense, I don't drink coffee, so it was my morning shot of caffeine), and I stopped buying Pop Tarts. Quit eating them for breakfast, relatively cold turkey.

And somehow, I've never looked back, which is weird because every April I'm the girl who starts counting off the days until the next Easter season, when I can again buy my precious Creme Eggs and Cadbury's chocolate mini-eggs. Sugar is not something I fear. It was while grocery shopping the other day that I realized I was breezing straight past the Pop Tarts for the millionth consecutive shopping day. I never thought about them any more. I made myself pause and scan them, to see if anything twinged inside me -- any kind of longing for my old breakfast pals -- and nothing did.

Somehow, I guess I accidentally cured myself of eating Pop Tarts every weekday morning. And I'd say that was a pretty decent bad habit to kick. Score one for the pretentious list items.

69. Get a bottle of vitamins and finish it without missing a single day.

Done! I got through a bottle of Skin, Hair, and Nail vitamins. And while I can't say I've noticed any particular betterment of my skin and nails, I am no longer obsessing about whether my hair is thinning. I am pretty sure this is just psychological, and that my hair has not thickened up any, but hey, whatever works.

28. Meet the Defamer and buy him a drink or five.

This is the one responsible for the ".5" that's been up in the header of all my other 101 in 1001 posts, and I can finally erase it. Jess and I had dinner with Mark and there was booze that we helped pay for, so I say it counts. Plus, it was really fun -- it had the extra benefit of being on my list, but we would've done it anyway.

I'm getting closer to the halfway point... too bad I have so little time left. How is it possible that I still have 60 more things to go? Sheesh.

62.5 in 349

I hate my list. It see-saws from being way too expansive to being full of lame filler. I'm totally doing a different one when my first 1001 days come up, so that I can take a whack at one that has a SHOT at being complete. There are a bunch on there I don't even want to do any more, either, which is awesome. But, they're on the list, so... sigh.

It's also worth nothing that I have one thing per 5.5 remaining days to complete. And it includes a LOT of traveling. This is such a doomed project. I love it.

44. Start wearing earrings more often.

Done. I bought some new ones and have worn them more often than I wore them before. Boring, but easily achieved. Can't believe it took me this long, though.

59. Buy the really nice, expensive flat-iron, because the Conair one I bought kind of sucks. 

Instead, I've made the Conair one work, so I'm going to cross this off and figure that making a sucky cheap flat-iron start to work on my hair is actually a better achievement than purchasing an expensive one, which would probably yield the same results anyway just to spite me.

66. Learn how to wear a second shade of eye shadow, so that I don't always look exactly the same when I get dressed up to go out on the town.

Did this in New York. I don't want to go so far as to suggest I wore it well, but I wore it, and that's all that matters here.

85. Write an angry letter to a person or organization that has wronged me in some professional sense. [I clarify because if, say, Lauren set fire to my car, I don't think I'd bother with an angry letter.]

I JUST finished this one -- we can't get DSL through SBC because of some strange confluence of factors, which I think involves our house being so close to the 323 area code that we managed to fall between hubs and so they just flat-out don't offer DSL to our square-half-mile of neighborhood. Totally annoying. So we cancelled our old account and took up with Comcast for a cable modem. Then, Time Warner bought out Comcast, at least in our area, and ever since then our service has been absolutely awful. It constantly goes in and out, or turns inexplicably sluggish, and it's been totally maddening. I get that some of this might just be the vagaries of cable-modem living, but we never had ANY problems with Comcast and the SECOND we switched, service got awful. What's even more annoying is that, to placate customers, Time Warner has offered a very generous ONE free OnDemand movie! Which is a GREAT $5 value AND very helpful for people like me and Kevin who don't actually HAVE Time Warner's cable TV service and therefore are unable use that terrible offer even if we liked it.

So, although it will do no good, I wrote them a cranky letter today and fired it off in a fit of pique. Take THAT, asshats.