COFFEE KLATCH FRIDAY

COFFEE KLATCH FRIDAY NOVEMBER 4, 2011
Thank you for visiting us in Coffee Klatch Friday.  Our hostess is Vicki and the topic she has chosen for us to discuss this week is “Our Bucket List”.  I think most people understand that that is a list of things we’d like to do before we ”Kick the Bucket”, metaphorically speaking.  I think this idea originated from a movie of the same name.

An explanation is needed because I have had to adapt the topic for it to apply to me.  I wrote a blog a while ago about my bucket list while I think I was in my late 60’s.  I can’t recall what all was on it, but I do know that I managed to accomplish everything but two things. 

One was to learn to swim, and the other was to pet a tiger. The learning to swim I have had to abandon as I have developed a very stubborn kind of vertigo and just to go in the water now is not an option.

However I have still not had the chance to pet a tiger, although I have made a few enquiries about it.  Seems most animal places are very reluctant to let humans interact with their wild animals. But I am not giving up on that one.

So the first 5 items on my list today can be considered truly part of my bucket list:

1.  To pet a tiger – or a lion

2.  To finish revising my full length children’s mystery story which I wrote in the early 70’s “The Mystery of the Carved Seagull”.  It was once within a hair’s breadth of being published by a well-known publishing company.  They kept it for a full year and then their final reader/editor turned it down and actually returned the manuscript personally to my home with one of their editors who was full of apologies for keeping it so long only to to reject it!  I should have sent it out again immediately to another publisher but I was very new to writing and quite discouraged.  But there is still hope!

3.  To bring myself up to the technological age by learning to text – or getting a phone on which I can do this.  When we had our major electricity blackout a couple of months ago, I, along with many others, realized that in a widespread emergency, cell phones are of no use because everyone is trying to use them and the access becomes clogged.  But texting still works.  Living in earthquake and wild fire country it’s really a necessity if you need to let your family know that you are OK .

4.  I have lost 30 pounds this year and I intend to keep it off.

5.  I will continue to blog for at least another year.  I am coming to the end of my fifth year. 

Now the amendment to my list:

THINGS I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE DONE, IF I’D HAD MORE THAN 

ONE LIFE

6. I would have happily enjoyed teaching in the Christian school on the island of Chuuk in Micronesia for a good many years.  I have been there several times and once conducted a seminar for the teachers at the school. It would have been a wonderful and challenging life.

7. I would have LOVED to be a great opera singer or classical pianist.  Too bad, -- just isn’t my gift!

8.  I would have loved to go back to my village of Flamborough on the East Coast of Yorkshire and lived there in order to see village life through the eyes of an adult.

9.  I would have loved to be an animal trainer and behaviorist and maybe work with someone like Cesar Millan. 

10. I would love to have won a lottery so that I could give a million dollars to that school on Chuuk; a million dollars to Tyndale University in Toronto, Canada where I started my long road in Christian education when it was still Toronto Bible College; and a million dollars to Cliff College in Derbyshire, UK where through their evangelistic ministries I became a committed Christian believer, (and also met my husband). The money would be to help these institutions continue faithfully in their mission of training young people.  If I happened to have any money left over I would first use it to establish a way of taking care of the needs of my husband and I in case of need for long term terminal care.  THEN if I had at least a million dollars left over I would give all that was left to the US government to help pay off our national debt!!


My favorite candy is Cadbury's chocolate flakes often stuck in an ice cream cone.  I will see if I can find a photo, but I need to post this now as I am late (some nagging problems kept me from the computer).

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