#1 on The List for both Helen and I was to buy 60 beads, one for each item on the list. Like an entry in a journal each bead would be added to the string as each item was accomplished.
After my Birthday lunch at Tracy Cakes we strolled up Montrose to” Strung Out On Beads” a most amazing and appropriate place for the task. An hour later we each had a special packet of colour coordinated beads, hand wrapped and sealed until the day we could start stringing. My hope is to one day wear them around my neck and bore all my friends and family with tales of why a particular bead was placed on the string.
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#33 Learn to Type (Disclaimer: this Blog was “hunt and pecked”)
The first time I knew that my mom was cool I was 6 years old. Mom was one of my Brownie Leaders in the late 1960's. Sometimes newsletters and parent notices and permission slips needed to be written, obviously this was long before personal computers were around. My mom would haul a heavy shiny black Underwood portable typewriter off the top shelf of the hall closet and set it up at the end of the dining room table. It was from the 1930s, extremely elegant like an antique car or pterodactyl. The rhythmic clicking of the keys hitting the paper was mesmerizing. It was magic to this six year old to watch all those words appear from moms fingers tapping at the keys.
Later in Grade 8 in 1972 I was faced with choosing "electives" for the first time. I knew all about electives because I had older siblings who had the independence to choose their own education pathway. I was determined to stand out in my decision, be unique, be my own person. God forbid I limit my horizons by taking a Typing Class and end up as a secretary!
I took Woodworking. I was the first girl in my highschool to take Woodworking. And goodness knows operating a planer, belt sander and band saw have taken me far in life. In my mind, avoiding the typing pool I felt as if I had joined the hundreds of highschool girls who marched in protest the year before that they should be allowed to wear blue jeans to school. I was a rebel.
Sometime in the 1980s I realised I had made the wrong choice. It seems that being able to type "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" 10 times a minute is a very useful lifeskill.
In retrospect it would have come in really handy for all those College course.
And now working in a hospital that no longer does paper charting I actually get a sore neck from constantly looking up and down at the keyboard and monitor doing eletronic charting. Hunt and peck, hunt and peck, sometimes hunt and peck, peck, peck. And a lot of time delete, delete, delete.
So one of the first things I addressed on The List: # 33 Learn to Type. It took about 6 weeks. No quick foxes or brown dogs for this girl though. I have Space Invaders instead. It really gets the heart racing , let me tell ya!
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#3 Take Vitamins
Centrum Silver for Women. It just seems like the right thing to do.