And thinking ahead

No, not the tiresome sort of  "how to I work it with the independent project in my one class if we have to abandon campus in September" contingency planning, but thinking ahead for things I want to do, if it's ever possible to do things again...

- Find one of those you-pick berry places and go when berries are in season, have my freezer all cleared out of junk so I can freeze a lot of fresh berries for the fall. (I am not big into jam making, and would rather have just plain frozen berries to eat)

-  Go to a bunch of museums. There are some scattered around North Texas I've never been to. Historical and science museums are my favorites, but art museums are good too

- Learn to spin, or at least have someone show me how spin on a wheel (I bought a drop spindle ages ago and could never get it to work for me. A wheel might work more easily). I don't NEED another hobby but it's something I've wanted to try

- Go somewhere with friendly animals that I can pet. Bonus if they are slightly "unusual" ones like alpacas. Though I know some livestock type animals aren't always friendly, even when socialized to be so

- Go to a good quality salon, get my hair professionally washed, maybe consult with the stylist to see if there's a shorter-but-not-boy-short cut that would work with my unruly curly hair, and get my hair cut shorter so it's easier care (and maybe disguises the fact that it's thinning a bit)

- Go to a really nice hotel, if such things still exist, and still do the services they did in the pre-COVID era, somewhere where there are interesting things to do, and go out and do interesting things all day and then come back and get ROOM SERVICE for my dinner so I can eat in peace and also not have to be out (as a woman alone) after dark in an unfamiliar place.

- Go antiquing again. Maybe even go to one of the big "markets" where there are a lot of sellers, like what Canton, Texas, has periodically.

- Go somewhere where you can try out a long arm quilting machine. I still have dreams of trying to find a place in my house I could set one up and buying one and having that as a retirement activity/career. Even if I just used it to do quilts to donate places.

- Go to a state park or some place that has nice cabins ("nice" = indoor bathroom and private accommodation) and stay in a cabin for a few days and just hike around.

- Get someone to drive with me (bad eyes for dark-night driving) and go somewhere REALLY dark at night with a good view of the stars so I can see more than the few very bright stars I can see from my own backyard.

- Go somewhere where there's nice wading (the lake here is pretty gross much of the summer; I'd want somewhere where the water was clean, probably spring-fed) and just go wading for a couple hours. I don't really swim much any more and I'm not big on the whole "sliding down rocks and winding up underwater" thing but wading that I could do in shorts and a t-shirt without getting my clothes or hair wet would be fun.

- Go somewhere that has a fancy afternoon tea. Though this would probably require someone to go with me, that's one of the things where it looks weird for you to go alone.

I don't know, I feel like a few of those things at least fall in the Not Too Much To Ask For Really category - like the wading or the night-sky thing. Or antiquing.

I hope it's not that much longer. You reach a point in this thing where it's hard to keep feeding off your good memories from the past, and where the things you hope for in the future feel too far off - it's like swimming across a lake, where you've reached the point where it's too far to turn back to the shore you left, but still really far to the shore you're heading out towards, and you just have to hope you can swim across the "emptiness" without getting a muscle cramp or totally running out of energy.