A Right to Revel: Bucket List Addendum

I feel like there will be a good hearty handful of these added in the coming weeks/months/forever. Firstly, because my original bucket list was made in haste and never revised. Secondly, because (and as always) my flakiness knows no bounds and I can never figure out what it is I want my life to be and so I just plan on doing everything. Good theory, no?

Ok, on to the title. I wish to add the following as #s 52 and 53 respectively:

· Read and watch all of “the classics.” Confession: I’ve never seen A Streetcar Named Desire or Casablanca. I’ve only seen parts of Meet Me in St. Louis but never Citizen Kane, or any of the good ones really. I know Gone with the Wind back and forth, upside down and sideways, word for word. It’s my favorite movie of ALL time and has been since I was tiny. I believe I was the only 5-year-old in existence to sit through the whole thing completely enthralled and then want to watch it again immediately after. I’ve been to the Margaret Mitchell house in ATL and I collect copies of the book (I have a copy I bought in London, one from the MM house, a copy from the 1940s that belonged to my Nana, and I’m on the prowl for more). I’ve even seen the West End production of GWTW in LDN (even though it was AWFUL). At any rate, the rest of the classics are simply off my radar and I am ASHAMED. It’s nothing short of sinful that watching/reading the classics is not part of my daily routine. I sure fill my time with plenty of other junk. (Junk tv, junk literature, junk movies, etc). I admit that I tend to get stuck in certain genres of everything, and never get out. Change + Melissa= stubborn and competitive bedmates. I never can make things easy for me. Enough rambling.

The first classic I’ll watch will be Breakfast at Tiffany’s because it’s on my mom’s Netflix queue and it’s easily accessible. The first classic book (was) Gone with the Wind. Notice how I wait until now to confess that, until two weeks ago, I had never read it. I’m minimizing the shame of this because it’s just too much to bear. I’ve read my fair share of classic books, so I just tacked this on to the bucket list number to make sure I keep up the practice. The next book will be… ummmm… Anna Karenina because I actually have it and have begun to read it countless times and it’s time that I make myself do it. There.

· Become a picker. Like, American Picker style. I’m about to start habits of rifling through abandoned buildings, scouring flea markets, crashing barn demolitions…. You don’t even know. I want old stuff. The more the better. My Uncle Jimmy has been digging up artifacts since as far back as I can remember. He has a whole room in his house dedicated to his findings. It was always a special treat to visit his “bottle room” when I was a kid, and you know what, I still sit in wonder at the sight of any kind of pure old junk. It’s gonna happen. I came across these old bottles the other day. They were just lying on the forest floor of the woods surrounding my house. Who knows what else is out there…