Category Archives: 10 on Tuesday

Please! Don’t make me answer this!

It took me a while to think of 10 things to include for today’s list prompt – things I wish I liked – from Carole, mostly because I kept coming back to things that I don’t care that I dislike, like bananas and mornings. But eventually, I did come up with 10 things that I do wish I could enjoy. Here’s my list:

1. Talking on the phone. I have never liked talking on the phone (well, except maybe when I was a teenager) and current technology – text messages, email, social media, blogs, etc. – has allowed me to get to a point where I almost never use the phone. But realistically, there are times when a call is the next best thing to being there, and I wish I was better about calling people.

2. Exercise. No shocker here. I like almost none of it, and the few things I do (yoga, swimming, ice skating) I don’t necessarily enjoy enough to go out of my way to include in my schedule.

3. Rollercoasters. A developing plan by some friends to go to Kings Dominion this summer reminded me that I don’t like rollercoasters – or really anything else at amusement parks. I could figure out how to gut through my fear of heights if they didn’t make me so damn pukey. I am not especially prone to motion sickness in cars/trains/buses, but everything at the amusement park requires sitting dead still for an hour afterwords so I don’t vomit. Not fun. I’ll have a sno-cone and hold your purse, thankyouverymuch.

4. Fashion. I would like to care enough about clothes to always be in style, but it just takes more work than I am willing to give. Instead, I strive for (mostly) good-fitting, un-rumpled, and clean.

5. Costumes. So many of my friends love Halloween and events like the Seersucker Social that involve dressing up in costumes. I used to be fairly good about playing along, but the older I get, the more I am becoming an absolute crank about wearing anything other than “normal” clothes.

6. Lipstick & fingernail polish. Other people look so nice with lipstick and fingernail polish, and I just… don’t. I think I missed the day in “how to be a girl” training where keeping lipstick on and nail polish unchipped were on the agenda, because no matter how I try with either, it just never works for me, so I’ve mostly given up.

7. Winter. Given that I think snow is pretty and my favorite sport is hockey, I should like winter a lot better than I do, but it’s too cold and too gray and too wet for me to enjoy it.

8. Space. All of the news lately about the retirement of the Space Shuttle program and the first commercial spacecraft launch have reminded me that I am just totally disinterested in space (something I also recall whenever my nephews want to go to the Air & Space Museum). I am totally on board with space exploration being important, but I am so glad other people deal with it, because wow, it bores the snot out of me.

9. Sci-fi books. This is clearly related to the item above, but what interests me about this is that not so long ago, I would have said “sci-fi/fantasy books.” Over the last few years, though, because of the Harry Potter books, the Hunger Games trilogy, and  the A Song of Ice and Fire series (Game of Thrones, etc.), among others, I’ve actually come to like some fantasy novels – so maybe there’s hope for sci-fi someday.

10. Bike riding. So many of my friends love to ride and having Capital Bikeshare now makes hopping on a bike nearly anywhere super-easy, but I still just don’t like riding. I have horrible balance and spend pretty much every moment expecting to topple over and be crushed by a car. And that makes it hard for me to like it, unsurprisingly.

So, what activities do you wish you liked?

(A blogger I’ve been reading a long time, Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project, has a great post on this topic, and it includes one of what she calls Secrets of Adulthood: that, “Just because something is fun for other people doesn’t mean it’s fun for me, and vice versa.” So very true – and yet, sometimes incredibly difficult to acknowledge, on either side of the equation.)

I hope not all my baseball games are as wet as today’s started out.

I don’t usually think about the fact that the sites I look to for 10 on Tuesday prompts (Carole Knits and Roots & Rings) are written by folks in other regions of the country until a topic like this comes along. Particularly this year, with things like the cherry blossoms blooming so early, it feels like it’s been spring forever already. But, I still have plenty to get done before my summer starts in earnest – which is when I head off on a three-week vacation (family reunion in Cali, and then a cruise-land Alaskan extravaganza) in late June. My list isn’t all trip-prep, but some of it certainly is.

1. Finally get my LASIK surgery. I’ve got my pre-op appointment scheduled for Monday, so this will be happening soon.

2. Get a pedicure. This is one spring thing I usually do much earlier than this, but it has only recently seemed like sandal weather, even though it’s been pretty warm for a while. Or maybe it’s just that I can’t wear sandals because my feet look awful.

3. See “The Avengers.” This has been on my list ever since I heard that, not only is Robert Downey, Jr. starring in it, but Joss Whedon wrote/directed it. And as of today, I’ve got it on the calendar for a couple of weeks from now. Yay!

4. Get my hair cut & colored. Also already scheduled, but I do need to decide if I am sticking with the dark color, going back to something closer to my natural color (unlikely), or trying blonde again.

5. Do more cooking. I love spring because there are so many great, fresh vegetables at the farmers’ market, but I’ve been lazy about cooking. Need to work on that!

6. Watch some baseball. I’ve got tickets for two or three games before I head off on my trip. It’s not like I can give up sports altogether now that my Caps are out of the playoffs, right?

Which brings me to…

7. Watch some hockey. I am not as sad/bitter/disappointed in the outcome of the Caps playoff run this year (nothing like going in with low expectations; makes every game played seem like a gift) as I have been in the past, so I do plan to keep up with the games. I’m feeling optimistic about the Western Conference.

8. Finish getting my garden planted. I took care of most of my flowers and herbs back in mid-April, but couldn’t find everything I wanted (neither basil nor geraniums seem to be around that early) so I need to get that going asap.

9. Research and buy decent luggage for my trip. Both of the suitcases I currently own are broken, battered, and are in no way suitable for a three-week trip.

10. Start figuring out what to pack (and acquire whatever extra stuff I need). I’ve never been on a cruise before, I have no idea what the weather in Alaska is like in June/July, I am not clear how “rugged” the land tours and such will be, and I am determined to not carry a ton of luggage,* so I am going to have to be very strategic in my packing.

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* The godawful luggage experience I – and several others – had on the Egypt trip cured me of ever packing more than I can carry every again. Wondering now if I ever actually blogged about that… it’s kind of a funny story now that it’s two years in the rearview mirror.