Wildest Dreams

One of the things I like about knitting (Oh would you stop!? This isn't going to be about knitting. Get your hand off that mouse!) is that when I'm working on a project that doesn't require that I pay devoted attention to it I have the opportunity to let my mind wander, mostly about offbeat things I would like to do or experience.

~ I'd like to have free access to the White House. Not because I want to hang out with politicians because mostly likely I probably wouldn't. I'd just like to be able to wander through it. I've been in the White House a few times, even times without a tour when I was with folks that worked there, and it's always fascinated me. I love the furnishings and the decor and I'd love to do things like watch the volunteers decorate it for the holidays or be in the kitchen. Sit in the Blue Room with a book or find where all the secret passages are. Run around the Rose Garden or watch the tour groups pass through. I'd like to be known to everyone and completely tolerated because they know I'm not interested in state secrets as much as I'm interested in the history of that house. And if I happen to run into a head of state as I stroll around I promise not to ask for an autograph.

~ It would be good to be filthy rich and travel to less than common places. Fly to Azerbaijan or Slovinia. Stay in a beautiful place and with the guidance of a native just look around to my heart's content. And I'd like to take a car tour through the US. Get a fabulous car and then take all the time I want driving from the east coast to the west and cover as many states as I could cram in. No time limits and no interstates - just wind from one place to another.

~ I'd like to have a job where all I do is read books. Remember Robert Redford in "Three Days of the Condor"? I am not a spy. I just read books! We read everything that's published in the world. And we... we feed the plots - dirty tricks, codes - into a computer, and the computer checks against actual CIA plans and operations. I look for leaks, I look for new ideas... We read adventures and novels and journals. I... I... Who'd invent a job like that? I don't know if I'd want to necessarily do it for the CIA but to just read books and maybe tell someone about what's in them sounds fabulous.

~ I wish I'd had a job where I didn't have to be at a certain place at a certain time all the time. Where everything revolved around me being in place all day long. Every job I've ever had was like that - everything was tied to time. It doesn't matter what job it would be - photographer or musician or private investigator or maybe a CIA book reader - but to have the freedom to get up and go out and then return when I wanted and not have my whole day revolve around a clock sounds good to me.

~ Wouldn't it be great to have every single thing you wear made specifically for you? Everything - from underclothes to shoes to jeans to sweaters to hats to coats - every single thing you wear to have been custom made for you. To have everything fit exactly right and be exactly right for you in terms of style.

~ I'd like to have an amazingly talented photographer take my portrait. I used to wish that I could have my portrait painted but I'm more intrigued with the idea of a photograph. Not necessarily one that would make me look beautiful and glamorous but instead one that would really look like me. One that I would see and recognize immediately as the person I know myself to be.

Me in those custom made clothes.