My Un-Bucket List

You know the Bucket List?  The list everyone is supposed to make of all the things they want to do before they die. Where did this name come from? I’m guessing the concept is a combination of the  Honey-Do List (things we want someone else to do before we kill them) and the rather odd euphemism for dying:  Kick the Bucket. This is purely speculative on my part.

I’m uncertain of the origin of kick the bucket. Maybe Shakespeare?

Swifter then he that gibbets on the Brewers Bucket.  [to gibbet meant to hang]                    ~ William Shakespeare, Henry IV

Anyway, I recently read about a guy who just marked the last thing  – number 1000! – off  his bucket list. At 28, his life is fulfilled… But that’s not my point.

It started me thinking. People are always sharing their bucket lists – some are empty of all but wishful thinking and some are so full they’ve had to switch to a barrel.

But, how often are we really honest about our Un-Bucket list? That list we all have of things that we’ve done that we’d hoped we’d never do, or at least, that we’re surprised we’ve done, and we’re not even dead yet.

In a spirit of light-heartedness and minimal self-revelation, I’m sharing my list (this may require additional posts at some point). Keeping it simple, this list is composed entirely of things I never thought I’d do as recently as just one year ago:

1.  Go to jail to get  finger-printed

2.  Become a Gate Guard in Texas

3.  Consider my new single-ply toilet paper to be thick and luxurious

4.  Kill spiders with my naked fingers (being very arachnophobic, I usually just do this when I mistake them for the beetles that drop down from the ceiling into my shirt)

5.  Rip off my shirt (hoping no one comes to the gate right at that moment), throw it on the floor and stomp on it to kill the odd array of bugs who’ve begun co-habitating with me

6.  Eat breakfast at 11 at night while watching Good Morning America

7.  Talk to the animals in Doolittle fashion: buzzards, cows, armadillos, donkeys, raccoons etc…

8.  Look forward to winter

9.  Live someplace where we’re all speaking English but between the drawl and the chew, I still have no idea what is being said and hope that smiling and nodding is universally appropriate

10. Remove drowned cockroaches from my freshly washed towels

11. Discover I’m a random dyslexic

12. Put Tabasco on my french fries because Sonic Burger (forget McDonald’s), doesn’t have ketchup

13. Quickly forget Sonic Burger and realize that, in small towns, all fast food is requires hot sauce

14. Throw bowls of water on calves who eat my satellite cables, wheel covers, septic hose etc…

15. Recognize people by their license plates and their tattoos

16. Deem any temperature with less than 3 digits, quite comfortable

17. Consider creating caliche art

18. Play Angry Birds on my phone at 4 a.m. while listening to, but not watching, re-runs of Cheers, which I like simply for the theme song

19. Take a shower 7  3 times a week because it takes 2 days in-between to recover from the 2nd degree burns caused by the perpetually hot water

20. Make people spell four letter words for me like TOOL and CAN’T  because I think they’re saying TOE and CAINED

That’s just the tip of the bucket. I’ll add another 20 some other day. Until then…

The driver’s lament: The sun has riz, the sun has set, and here I is, in Texas yet.

Angry Birds

Angry Birds are everywhere. They may not be much of a factor in your life, but they’ve become a huge deal in mine!

In Angry Birds, players control a flock of multi-colored birds that are attempting to retrieve eggs that have been stolen by a group of evil green pigs. On each level, the pigs are sheltered by structures made of various materials such as wood, ice and stone, and the objective of the game is to eliminate all the pigs in the level. Using a slingshot, players launch the birds with the intent of either hitting the pigs directly or damaging the structures, which would cause them to collapse and kill the pigs. ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angry_Birds

Angry Birds has been sweeping the nation  world since it’s advent for Apple in December of 2009.

If you know about Angry Birds, there’s no need to explain more and if you don’t you probably aren’t all that interested.

Before I elaborate on my relationship with Angry Birds, I need to add some disclaimers.

I’m not a gamer. When I bought my Verizon Droid very smart phone in 2010, it came with 3 games – Tilt, Bejeweled and Angry Birds, none of which had I even heard of. Tilt was pretty easy to master, so I moved on to Angry Birds. At that time I was a manager at a beautiful resort on the Oregon Coast. Because I was the front desk supervisor and guest service manager, I was always pleasant – always.

At the end of the day, I would go to bed and play Angry Birds. Maybe there was something cathartic about pulling back a virtual slingshot and flinging birds at walls of wood and stone and ice to kill green pigs.

I was on level 5 when, after moving to Texas to become a gate guard in the wilderness, I had to switch to a less smart AT&T phone which not only didn’t come with Angry Birds, but for which the app wasn’t yet developed. Clearly not a student of the game or of the strategies, I never did know why the birds were so angry.

I have a different phone now which is only slightly smarter and I did recently buy Angry Birds for a couple of dollars. I haven’t played it much since I had to start at level 1 with my new phone,  but I did find out why the birds are angry. Somehow the green pigs (which have only heads – and sometimes helmets, but no legs) managed to steal the eggs (which are golden) from the birds. This, understandably, made the birds very mad.

As unlikely as the scenario might seem, the task was no doubt made easier for the pigs by the fact that the birds are wingless. Fascinating concept: disembodied green pig heads stealing golden eggs from wingless birds.

All this leads to my latest personal crisis. The local feral pigs have taken up serious nighttime screaming. This starts sometime after midnight. They rotate with the coyotes. This was already semi-creepy. Then about 3 nights ago, around 2-3 a.m. a persistent thumping ritual has begun, moving back and forth across the RV roof.  We’re sitting in the middle of absolutely nothing, unless you count the giant alien weeds.

It’s a LONG way to a tree and the ladder is too high off the ground for a raccoon. I’ve seen some bats at dusk but unless they’re also forming a Union, I’m left to conclude that the screaming pigs have managed to, once again, steal the golden eggs, causing very angry birds to flock to my roof.