My birthday is July 20. I have a little more than a week to finish doing 75 things of 75 repetitions each.
I'm doing well. I know I'll finish. I won't even have to work hard to fit everything in. This is what's left:
(1) String 75 beads. The only thing hindering me is to decide already what I'm going to wear to my party so I can make beads to go with it. One dress would take beads in reds and purples, the other beads in blues and greens.
(2) I have to cook 5 more new dishes. I have ingredients for a salmon spinach phyllo pie from The Folk School Cookbook, from the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina, that my sister, who teaches calligraphy there, gave me for Christmas. I'll make that dish tomorrow, along with toads-in-the-hole, a British sausage-and-popover breakfast dish from the same cookbook. I'll make two other new dishes next week and a new cake for my birthday, and that item will be done.
(3) I need to stretch and dance uninterrupted for 75 minutes one of these days soon.
(4) I need to do 6 more yoga poses. I have certainly done more than 75 different yoga poses this year, but often by the time I get home from yoga class, I have forgotten their names. A few months ago, my sister Sharon helped me make a list of 40 poses I knew I hadn't yet done. Since then I've been religiously recording them. Six more could be done in one yoga practice: crow, suptavirasana, vasisthasana (side plank, in two variations) sitting twist, high lunge, and high lunge with hands overhead.
(5) I am still writing down something or someone I'm grateful for every 4.8 days. The latest one was "for young people who love farming." I did an interview for the Applegater the other day with a young woman who raises pigs and goats for profit. She did a WWOOFing program in Spain and Portugal for a couple of years, then interned at an organic farm in southern Oregon. She wants to do everything "right." She had a wonderful attitude towards her animals. She scratched her pigs on the head, laughed at the piglets, and picked up a duck to take it out of the pen. I am, yes, grateful for people like that.
And that'll be it: the end of the 75s challenge for my 75th year.
I've invited 75 people to my birthday party – more than 75, really, hoping to come close to having 75 people here. The theme of the party is "75," obviously, I guess, but my idea is that people who come to the party will begin to understand what I've been saying all year – "75 is a big number" – by bringing something "75" to the party (e.g., 75 pieces of chocolate to share, 75 fortunes to give out) or doing something "75" (e.g., jumping rope 75 times, keeping a ball in the air for 75 counts – things I'll have available at the party). I'll let people take home one of the 75 pieces of driftwood on which I wood-burned 75 different words and one of the 75 cards I made. I'll have the lists of 75s I've made – 75 favorite things, 75 places I love, 75 memories of other people, 75 botanical species on one hike, 75 prayers for the earth and humanity, 75 favorite books, 75 thank-yous to individuals who were "there for me" during difficult times in my life; 75 pieces of music that moved and delighted me; 75 new words added to my vocabulary. Guests can look at the books of 75s: 75 poems, by various poets, about aging; 75 favorite hikes I've done (with a photo for each); 75 people who have accomplished great things after the age of 75. They can read my 75 poems of 75 words each (with a few exceptions: poems I wrote before I upped the ante by making them 75 words each). I'll have my collage of 75 pieces on display, as well as the knitted piece created with rows of 5 knit, 5 purl, to a total of 75, and the quilt of 75 squares and the embroidery of 75 stitches. I'll have an altar of 75 pieces. I'll recite a poem of 75 lines ("Frost at Midnight," by Samuel Taylor Coleridge), and I'll have my flash cards of 75 languages available for guests to choose one and at some time during the party come up to me and ask me to say, "Hello. What's your name? Good-bye" in that language. I can do it.
July 20. Fifteen days. I'm in the home stretch.
No comments:
Post a Comment