25 Things to Do (or Not Do) Before You Die

Today is my birthday. I'm 65. It's kind of a big deal, because I can now start drawing on my pension from Condé Nast. I only worked for Condé Nast for five years, so my pension is pretty small, especially when you compare it to my heating bill, but we seniors know how to stretch a dollar. For example, if I go for the lump sum, I could buy a tiny little house and have a tiny little electric bill to go with my tiny little pension.

Building a tiny house is one of dozens of items on my retirement to-do list. I revise this list at least once a week. I make big plans, little plans, half-assed plans, genius plans, and really stupid plans. Sometimes I write them down, but mostly I just think them, often when I'm supposed to be doing something else, like the laundry.

Besides designing and building a tiny house, the following items have also popped up, at one time or another, in my retirement plan:

1) Open a guesthouse for writers.
2) Write a series of novels about a travel writer who solves crimes.
3) Run for president.
4) Start a commune.
5) Make a giant wall hanging out of Grandma Tucker's doilies.
6) Transform ancestral portraits into Pop art.
7) Study Latin dance.
8) Learn to play the ukelele. Write songs.
9) Commission a series of ceramic doorknobs.
10) Become a patron of the arts.
11) Learn woodworking.
12) Learn metal sculpture.
13) Give up travel writing.
14) Give away everything I own, one object at a time, so that other people don't have to pick up after me when I die.
15) Make a burn pile out of everything I own and set a match to it.
16) Grow my hair long.
17) Shave my head.
18) Become an exercise instructor for seniors. Wear cute gym outfits and have fun music.
19) Get French drivers license.
20) Make a series of quirky lampshades out of old junk.
21) Read the history of France in 20 volumes (in French, of course).
22) Adopt a refugee family.
23) Walk across America.
24) Walk across Vermont.
25) Become a tour guide.

Obviously, I can never do all of these things, even if I live to be a hundred. Welding? Musical composition? Lampshades? I mean, seriously.

Today, instead of writing another chapter of Kidnapped in the Kasbah or composing a ukelele song about these happy golden years, I am going to rearrange the living room furniture (again), take a long hot shower and squeegee the sliding door in the new bathroom, and schlepp the taka-taka down to the scary room where they keep the trash bins. I will also spend a not unreasonable amount of time worrying about Patrick, who has gone into Paris all on his own, with only his cane for support. Probably he will come back with a birthday present of some sort. It will probably not be a ukelele.

Above: One of dozens of unidentified portraits collected, saved, and mostly labeled (but not this one) by Mabel Lamb Tucker, my grandmother.