Bucket List Update: Lots of Stuff!

Whew, ok… clearly I’m a little behind on keeping my 101 List up to date. I’m doing things that are on it without realizing it. I have quite a few done and I can’t be arsed to make a post for every one now after the fact, so I’ll just do one big post about them all to get me up to date.

19. Finally meet Sonya

Sonya is a good friend of mine that I first met online about two years ago.  She had contacted me after reading through  my blog as she was new in the Netherlands and going through a lot of what I did in the early years.  We quickly became friends when we realized it wasn’t just our expat status that we had in common, we were both into crafts, photography and other things as well.

We kept saying we were going to meet, but living on opposite sides of the country posed a bit of a problem.  Even though it’s only a little over two hours to drive, it still took some planning and this is why I added meeting her to my 101 list.  To make sure that at some point we stopped letting the drive get in our way!

Early in the summer, Sonya and I, together with our friend Candace, got together for a BBQ and finally all got too meet!  Since then we’ve all gotten together a number of times and I think the three of us can agree that we all wish we lived closer together!  We still make the effort to get together when we can though, and Sonya and her family even watched our dogs for us while we were in France.

I would post photos, but due to Sonya’s husband’s job as a top secret international man of mystery, that is not possible.  You will just have to use your imagination to see us together knitting, BBQing, talking far too much about 80’s TV and giggling loads.

88. Grow my own vegetables

Dude, I SO TOTALLY DID THAT!!  Thanks to Jenny, I can now officially say that I have grown my own vegetables!  I know my veggie files posts sort of died off but I did grow and eat both green beans and cucumbers!  My plants are now dead and gone, but dammit, I grew veggies!  I never was successful with the lettuce, it started to show promise there at one point but… no joy.

45. Find a doctor I trust

This one is a bit of a different situation, I am still going to consider this an accomplishment though.  I didn’t so much find a NEW doctor I trust, rather I learned to trust the doctor I have.  So, really I did find a doctor I trust in the end.  I know I’ve complained about him, but he did redeem himself.  There have been a number of scuffles between us over the years and most if it boiled down to the fact that he refuses to sugarcoat things or pull punches with me.  When I was feeling down and out, I really wasn’t up to taking it.  When he’d tell me flat out that I was too fat, or that a lot of my ailments are probably due to the extra weight, I’d get insulted and hate him for not finding other, easier to fix reasons for my problems.  That was my issue, not his.

He is the reason why I am where I am today. If he hadn’t given me that cold hard slap of reality, I probably would have continued to avoid the fact that I desperately needed to lose weight.  Now I am down almost 70 lbs and am still going strong. When I see him he is truly happy to see my progress and makes it clear that he’ll do whatever he can to support me in getting to my goals.  I may not always appreciate the tough love he dishes out, but I realize now that I do trust him. He doesn’t always give me what I want, but he gives me what I need, even if it’s a good swift kick in the ass. I’m thankful for that.

71. Re-organize blog categories and tags

This one actually took me a dogs age, but I did it!  I decided on 16 categories that I thought all of my posts could fit into, then left the tags more wide open. Basically less categories and more tags.  My whole category system was getting out of control.  This required me to go back into my older posts and edit them all, putting them into the appropriate new categories and adding the tags.  It was a pain but now the blog is more organized.  I don’t think it was a really super important thing to do but it’s just one of those OCD things I had to get done.

97. Clean out our storage room

This is one I really wish I’d taken photos of. If I had remembered it was on my 101 list I probably would have, but at the time all I could think about was getting it done.  It took my husband and I two days of basically pulling everything out of the room, putting it in piles of keep, throw away and sell … and a load of reorganizing when it all went back in.  The room was a disaster area in the beginning and it was basically just big wall of junk when you opened the door.  We managed to create a lot of space down there and are even able to easily get our bikes in and out when we need them.  Everything is put away in categories, like our camping stuff is all together, old clothes are together etc.

Granted, we will have to do this again in 6 months or a year, as the junk ALWAYS accumulates… but we did it this time and we did it well. I’ll just concentrate on that for now!

48. Get a 2nd opinion from a Fertility Specialist

I’m not going to get into the history of my issues with infertility, as there are bits and pieces about it to be found here on my blog if you want to go searching for it.  I also don’t think I will be discussing it in any detail over the next while either. It’s private and not something I want to put out to the whole world anymore.  Maybe one day I will want to write about this on my blog again, just to keep a record of things, but for now I’ll just say I’ve had my second opinion and leave it at that. So I can scratch this one off my list too.

73. Get prescription sunglasses

DONE!  Since getting glasses for the first time, I’ve missed being able to wear sunglasses.  I can see fine without my glasses as my eyes aren’t really that bad, but it’s just enough to notice. So if I take off my normal glasses and put on my store bought sunglasses, I can feel my eyes straining just that tiny little bit.  So between when I first got glasses almost four years ago until this summer, I just never wore sunnies at all.

When I went to pick out new glasses before the summer, the place I went to had a deal where you could get three pairs for €175.  So I got one normal everyday pair, one funky pair and one pair of SUNNIIIEEEES!  I was so happy!  I snapped this photo in the car on our way to France.  I wore them a lot there, but sadly haven’t had a lot of occasion to wear them here.  Stupid Dutch weather.

Now I have 2.5 weeks before I can scratch off this one: 13. Fly home to Canada alone. Cannot. Frigging. Wait!!  You can bet your ass I’ll be writing about that one!