Manly Bucket List

As many of you may or may not know the current month is November. Honest. And every November is the month of Movember. Unfamiliar with Movember? Well Movember is a movement to help raise awareness and funds for men’s health to fight prostate and testicular cancer amongst other things.

Typically how it works is men can register at the Movember website and declare that they are going to grow a mustache for the entire month to help raise money and awareness. It’s a fun way to help out a great cause.

Which neither Pat nor I are doing. But not because it’s not a great cause.

First off Pat already has a beard right now so I don’t know how that’s supposed to work and I pretty much grow a mustache every day which needs to be shaved before going to bed otherwise there isn’t enough room in the bed for my wife, myself, and my mustache. Think Tom Selleck multiplied by that other dude from Hall and Oates. No not Hall. The other dude.

But another thing that is currently going around the internet to help support Movember is the Manly Bucket List. The idea being that you do a blog post listing five manly things that you want to do in November or at least before you die. Pat and I can both count to five so this is right up our alley.

Amy from Kid-Free Living is the one that turned us onto to this so please go see her list too. Yes women can also have manly bucket lists.

I’ll start.

Christian: I decided to list things I want to accomplish in my lifetime instead of in the month of November since I’m way too busy right now to get anything done. This also makes it easier since I already have a bucket list of things I want to do before I die. Plus I’m a man so by default they are manly.

The only downside was that there are only two items in my current bucket list so I had to add three more. Here they are:

1. Visit every continent in the world (Including Antarctica).

2. Visit every state in the US.

3. Do the running of the bulls in the opposite direction.

4. Rescue a half a dozen people from atop Mt Everest without using any sunscreen.

5. Bedsex me lady underneath a grand waterfall as a chorus of trumpeteers are heard off in the distance.

Your turn Pat.

Pat: Dammit, I think I did it wrong again. When you mentioned that we need to do our manly bucket list things before the end of November, I thought you meant we needed to actually DO them...not just write about them.  

So I went ahead and did them, and have spent the last week wondering just what in the hell I plan on doing with my life NOW. I’m all down for men’s health, man, but they need to think about the resulting ennui and malaise and other depressing French things that come after doing everything you wanted to do with your life.

To be honest, they weren’t really that manly or that buckety. Here they are:

-I bought a drywall repair kit at the hardware store. Don’t assume I know what to do with it.

-I trimmed my beard. Twice.

-I sweated. A lot. Man sweat.*

-I chopped wood. A lot of wood. Into kindling. Kindling has been scientifically proven to be the smallest and most precise--and therefore manly--size of wood you can hew with an ax. And I did it!

-I continued to pay taxes and toil daily in order to provide for my family and stay up-to-date on my mortgage.

I know. Not too impressive.  

Okay, so I need another list, huh? No problem...I can do this. Five things I’m going to do with all of my testosterone-driven, prostrate-inspired, testicularly-fueled manly power before I die include:

1.  Go places and traverse them on foot--at least partly--in order to discover for myself and possibly the rest of humankind, the lesser known wonders of the world. Places like the hydrangea covered hills of the Azores. Places like the salmon-stuffed streams of the Kamchatka Peninsula (and, NO, I was not a RISK dork in college!). Places like the great rhododendron forests of Bhutan. Places like the dizzying food-courts of the Mall of America of Minnesota.

2.  Kill something and then eat it. Preferably something more challenging and filling than a rutabaga, trout or game hen.

3.  Run for something and get elected by a wide margin and fulfill most of my campaign promises.

4.  Build a house.

5.  Bedsex me lady underneath a grand waterfall as a chorus of trumpeteers are heard off in the distance, while a couple doing the very same thing looks over at us with eyes that say, “Man, they REALLY know how to do that!”

How’s that sound?

*This occurred mostly after activities like running or chopping wood, but to be honest, it tends to happen even when I’m just sitting still. Guess I’m a bit of a perspirer.