My Bucket List

Tonight my dad and I watched "The Bucket List." Jack Nicholson. Morgan Freeman. Two of my favorite actors ever in a movie with a fabulous message. Basically, don't wait until you're dying to do what you want to do. Sort of. Or maybe your impending death should be the cause to make you not take things for granted. Either way, I've lived like this for a long time - my mother doesn't really like it or understand it, but she'll get over it. I try to live my life as if today were my last day, and I try to live my life as if I have all the days I could ever want left. I try not to let anyone tell me what to do. I try to do the best I can. I try to be helpful and kind. I try to be happy. I try to make others happy.

After the movie tonight I was inspired to make my own bucket list - with some of the same things from the movie, most of them different. There is an additional feature on the DVD on how to write your own Bucket List. Turns out, the guy also wrote a book, called "The Bucket Lists." This is going on my Amazon Wish List.

There is a line in the movie about when you get to the Gates of Heaven, they ask you two questions: Have you found joy in your life? and Have you brought joy into the lives of others? That's what I want my bucket list to be about - the joys of life. Of course, because I'm young I also want to accomplish a few things, but mainly, my life is about the joy.

I've decided that I've already done some of the things that need to go on my Bucket List, so they are included but are in italics to indicate that they have been completed. For the most part, I have completed them but would love to continue doing so or do it again. So here it is:

Carla's List of Things to do Before She Kicks the Bucket:

*Get my book published.
*Fight for civil liberties for all human beings.
*Travel with friends.
*Find people to experience my bucket list items with. Find more people.
*Watch my brother get married in the state he was born in.
*Travel to Europe with Dad and Darin
*Laugh until it hurts.
*Cry until there are no more tears.
*Experience the world through the eyes of a child.
*Be a bridesmaid or a maid of honor.
*Be a bride.
*Find someone who loves me for me and wants to do my dishes.
*Go to Louisiana and see my father's hometown.
*Visit my mother's hometown again. Invite her to go with me.
*Find the courage to tell all the people I love that I love them.
*Go to Kaui'i at least one more time.
*Meet Robert Harling and have him sign my copy of "Steel Magnolias."
*Carry around all the cute small purses I own - AKA carry less shit around.
*See New Orleans.
*See a show on Broadway.
*Be honest about how I feel.
*Raise more money for Great Strides than the year before.
*Help find the cure.
*Go to Disney World with my friends.
*Organize my life.
*Be a role model.
*Get a tattoo.
*See Tibet.
*Splurge.
*Get a manicure and a pedicure.
*Get a massage.
*Go to a Hispanic country or Miami and dance Salsa Rueda in a club.
*Keep learning.
*Take a college final. Just one.
*Visit L.A.
*See Seattle.
*Travel to Sweden.
*Drink a Pina Colada.
*Get Caught in the rain.
*Feel the Ocean.
*Taste Champagne.
*Make love at midnight in the dunes of the Cape.
*Find the one that I've looked for.
*Make our escape.

There are probably a million things I would like to add, but this will do for now.