Make a wish

I was invited out to a bar event called "Big Lug" by a couple of friends but bypassed it for something else -- cuddle time.

I have a good friend who is an excellent cuddler. And it's not even romantic cuddling as much as it's "friend cuddling." Just think of the episode of Friends where Joey and Ross fall asleep together on the couch and it was "the best nap ever" but it was awkward for them because they were friends (and of course male which means they're totally gay *laugh*). No...it's nothing like that for us...it's whenever things have been really bad or rough for either of us, we'll call on each other and we'll just get together and spend the night, curled up together so neither of us has to go through it alone.

It's something we don't abuse either. I mean there's no cuddling for the sake of cuddling but it's to be used on those times when we're going through a rough patch and don't want to go through a night alone. Sometimes we talk about it what's going on and sometimes we don't. We tend to let the person in need take the lead.

So last night I was the person in need and sure enough Rudy picked up on that and invited me over. We didn't talk about the situation which I think helped the most and we curled up in bed watching DVDs of Strangers with Candy before going to sleep.

Thankfully Rudy lives near my new work so I headed out from his place his morning and felt somewhat better about what was going on but knew that it was just the beginning. I passed by the fountain at the corner of 8th and Horatio and something compelled me to pull out a coin and make a wish. As I'm kilted today, I reached into my sporran and all I had at my disposal were quarters.

I thought better of it until I rememebred a line from a book I read as a child -- "From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil T. Frankweiler." In it, Claudia and her brother Jamie decide to run away and wind up spending night after night in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When they decide to take a bath, they hop into a fountain where they realize they can augment their meager income by picking up the coins that people have tossed in. Mixed in with all of the pennies and nickles was a single quarter. Claudia says something to the extent of, "This must have come from a poor person because only rich people have penny dreams."

Well...I realized I didn't have a penny dream/wish/whatever. In went the quarter with a wish attached to it. As I watched it hit the water and slowly sink to the bottom, I felt a bit silly for a moment. This was something I hadn't done in YEARS and only a child attaches wishes to throwing coins in a fountain.

But what I did realize after I was a few blocks away from the fountain is that the simple act of tossing a coin into a fountain gave me hope that I could get through this current stage no matter what the outcome.

My wish? That's between me and a 1984 quarter at the bottom of a fountain. I don't know if it will come true, but at least it's given me hope.