The Thirty Before The Dirty Thirty

30 is not the new twenty. Twenty is hiding from the streetlights with a lit joint tucked between fingers and smoke trailing behind your bootcut jeans. Twenty is covering your knees with skirts. Twenty is asking an upperclassman to buy you a bottle of cheap vodka on their trip to the spirits store or sneaking sips before bed from your parents’ liquor cabinet on summer break. Twenty is believing that you’ll be happily married by the age of twenty-eight. Twenty is for emotional breakdowns that have you bingeing on double orders of fries and double fisting Red Bulls. Twenty is for convincing yourself that he is the one.

Thirty is for acceptance, adventures, and appreciation (and apparently alliteration!). With that said, let’s get ready to bring in the next milestone with a big to-do list. Inspired by my wonderful and detail attentive cousin, Isa, who made her own fabulous list of things to do before she turned forty, I am making my own list. 

Here it goes. Two years to get it done. 

1. Go fishing on the Cape. 
2. Drink bourbon on Bourbon Street.
3. Stay at the Taj Boston Hotel. 
4. Drink champagne on a rooftop overlooking a city. 
5. Do yoga for two weeks straight. 
6. Take an art class.
7. Take a writing class.
8. Eat fried eel again at that small restaurant in Cabo Verde.
9. Eat gnocchi in Italy.
10. Visit California and eat an In n’ Out Burger.
11. Go on a vineyard tour. 
12. Swim at the Colonnade’s rooftop pool. 
13. See a drive-in movie.
14. Ride in a convertible.
15. Get my driver’s license. 
16. Buy something from Chanel. 
17. Get a piece published in a magazine. 
18. Go on a second, third, and fourth date.
19. Drink a cup of coffee in the rain in Seattle. 
20. Go to a Broadway show.
21. Dance until the sun comes up.
22. Ride a bike in the city. 
23. Snorkel.
24. Bake an elaborate cake.
25. Buy a DSLR.
26. Walk all of Central Park.
27. Visit the MET. 
28. Buy lunch for a stranger.
29. Go to a ballet.
30. Go to a Bruins’ game.