(I wonder) What am I doing here?

I finally decided to take a bit of my own advice - after living on the Wet Coast for many years, I ought to remember that you just can't wait for the rain to stop in order to go out, or you'll never leave the house! So I tell my students often...but often fail to remember myself. This weekend, though, the stakes were high, as it was the last chance we'd have to go to Playland - something I've never done, for all that we can hear the screams from our place.

There was a rainfall warning in effect today, and I was quite disappointed. A timely tweet from beentsy, though, hinted at blue patches and lifting clouds. I knew it was probably too good to be true, but I jumped at the chance anyway. Mr.Q was unceremoniously rousted from his sleep, rain jackets were donned, and we headed out into the day.

See, here's the thing. There's kind of this wee fad of "bucket lists" going on. And you may have noticed I kind of like to jump on fun bandwagons. So I did up a "40 by 40" list - giving myself a little over 2 years to see what I could accomplish. A lot of it is pretty banal, really - but it makes me happy to have goals to cross off my list, and a reason to do things I would otherwise have a tendency to put off. Like taking French lessons (I now meet with a private tutor once a week and mangle the language with great abandon!) - so easy to say "I'd like to do that, someday." And then never really bother getting around to it.

I gave myself a lot of lee-way with the list - items could be small-but-meaningful-to-me (making a perfect pie crust! or at least a decent one), or big and highly unlikely - zip-lining and para-sailing will likely never happen, and I won't really feel like my life is meaningless if they don't. But - what the hell! You never know, right?

Well, one of the things on my list was to ride the wooden roller-coaster at Playland. Considering that ferris wheels freak me out, that's a pretty big step. But dagnabbit, I was determined to make it happen! So, today, it did. Along with some other fun rides, too! Even ones that made Mr.Q a little queasy (the pirate ship was SO MUCH FUN! I couldn't get him to go on again, sadly!) and a few milder ones in between, to give my tummy time to settle. (Word to the wise: greasy breakfast before a rollercoaster? Bad Idea!)

Some highlights from the morning...no pics of me on the coaster, as I had my eyes screwed shut the whole time, and may have blown out Mr.Q's eardrums with my screaming...but I did it! (I also kicked his arse at Whack-a-Mole & won myself a stuffed wiener dog...Hah!)

I had a really long nap when we got home!

(And the ferris wheel at the end? Totally not scary at all!)