When I read Nicole’s 30 Before 30, I started thinking about what a list of my own might look like, so I drafted a post and have been updating it over the weeks as things occurred to me.

I turn 32 on July 17, so here is a list of things I’d like to accomplish before then. I went into this deciding that fewer than half of these could involve spending any money whatsoever, and keeping to that was surprisingly difficult!

I’ll repost the list every month between now and then with items removed once I accomplish them.

Original list:

1. Get married
2. Plan wedding parties
3. Finish wedding website
4. Visit parents
5. Build vegetable boxes
6. Re-pot and fertilize indoor plants
7. Plant herbs
8. Plant flowers
9. Get patio set so that we can eat dinner outside on nice nights
10. Build sandbox for Milo and pals
11. Go down a dress size
12. Do yoga at least three times a week
13. Sign up for charity work
14. Donate dead car to charity
15. Make five year career goals with micro-goals to work on now
16. Don’t say anything negative about anyone for at least one full week: friend, family, acquaintance, celebrity, no one. Then try to increase that to a month.
17. Go to the hot baths with the ladies
18. Take Milo to the coast for the day
19. Have a family picnic at the Arboretum before magnolia season is over
20. Go on hikes at least twice a month before it gets too hot
21. Bake for friends
22. Host a dinner party
23. Try a vegetable, plant, or spice I’ve never tried before
24. Perfect a Thai drunken noodle recipe
25. Cook Matthew a meal of all his favorite foods
26. Paint the kitchen nook
27. Touch up the border of our bedroom
28. Paint and assemble our headboard
29. Sew bedroom curtains
30. Figure out clothing storage solution that will work
31. Put up up blackout blinds in Milo’s bedroom for naps
32. Edit and upload a few of our videos that are sitting on the hard drive

So far, I’ve accomplished:

1. Get married

exchanging vows

Yup!

2. Plan wedding parties
3. Finish wedding website
6. Re-pot and fertilize indoor plants
7. Plant herbs

Let me know if you’ve made similar lists!

2009 was just pretty much the worst, am I right? I don’t remember discussing this while it was actually happening, but that now seems to be the general consensus among my friends and acquaintances. We’re glad it’s over, and even though nothing changed between December 31st and January 1st, it just feels better to be in a new year. It just seems like we can put all of that behind us now. Right?

I am not really one for resolutions, but I do enjoy goals, so here are a few goals which I have for the coming year or so:

Get more fit. I don’t really mean “lose weight” here, although that would be nice, I mean increase my overall fitness. This is a goal I’ve been working on for over a year now, and have made tiny little micro-steps. Right now, I walk 3 miles on the treadmill 4-5 times a week. Ideally I would like to get to the point where I can walk/jog a 5K without burning out. I have toyed with the idea of signing up for one in late Spring/early Summer just to give myself a goal. Are there any Portlanders who might want to jog a 5K with me in a few months?

Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal

Learn Spanish. I just want to understand what’s being said to me, and maybe squeak out a few sentences in reply. I don’t want to become fluent. Lately I’ve been thinking that I should read childrens’ books in Spanish, specifically the Harry Potter series, and plod through them slowly. I ran this by my fluent-in-multiple-languages, Romance-Languages-degree bestest pal and she said that she thought it might work! It’s worth a shot at least. I don’t live in Texas anymore, where being conversational in Spanish would have actually been handy, but I’ve wanted to learn Spanish for a long time, and can’t afford the cost or time of a class or tutor.

our backyard

Work on the garden & landscaping of the house. The current landscaping of our house is: there is none. None at all. Our house has nothing in the way of curb appeal, and the backyard is sizable but completely vacant. At least we have a clean slate rather than having to undo another person’s gardening decisions.

the morning after Matthew proposed

Finally figure out the wedding stuff. Matthew and I have now been engaged for two years, and we’re no closer to having a wedding planned than we were when we got engaged. The thing is, we are in a really tight spot. We want to pay for the wedding ourselves, but we are broke. We want the wedding to be intimate, but we want our family and friends to all be there, and our combined immediate families alone total over 30 people. We want the wedding to be in Portland, because this is our home, but 85% of our guests would be coming in from out-of-state, so we have to give them plenty of time to order tickets and make arrangements. And finally, we face the ultimate tough point: we want a wedding that reflects who we really are and who we are is…not very wedding-y. Even the weddings on the indie/offbeat bride websites make me cringe—but only when I picture myself in them! I appreciate that they’re the perfect weddings for the people involved, but so far I haven’t seen one and thought, “Oh, that would be totally right for us.” For all of these reasons and more, we have put off and put off making any real decisions. Now we very much need to get married for the tax and insurance benefits, and we have no idea how to resolve any of these issues.

So those are my goals, or at least the ones I feel comfortable writing about on the internet. Tell me what you’re working on!