You’re Living in a Dreamworld

As I’ve said before, I can’t parallel park (am slowly learning!). I was reminded of this because Gotham Gal had a great blog post on Things Everybody Should Know How To Do and parallel parking was on that. My mom was big on practical skills as well and did her best to instill those in us before we left for college. “Elaine, what are you going to do when you get to college and can’t do laundry?” My Dad was a lot less worried about practical life skills. “Oh honey, you’re not going to take an art appreciation class? What will you talk about at cocktail parties?” I’m sure Dad would be happy to know I’m keeping up on my cultural skills more than the real world skills.

I’m still missing some (a lot) of those real world skills and am hoping to get in some during my upcoming month of funemployment before I leave for Europe. Some from Gotham Gal’s list and some I just need to know. These are life skills I’m missing that I should know:

• Learn to change a tire
• Roast a chicken (I have no idea how to roast a chicken. Do I need special tools?)
• Parallel park
• Open a bottle of wine without a fancy cork
• Learn CPR (my last class was in college)
• Learn to hem pants
• Properly iron (I can iron. But not really well)
• Properly use a hammer and nails (every single picture in my apt is crooked)
• Make a pie crust
• Grill a steak
• Take a good picture

She has waltzing on her list. No way I’m putting waltzing on my list. It’s a skill I really need but have no desire to gain.