Wishful Thinking {a guest post by karey of mackin ink}

so i was thinking and thinking and thinking about this post - probably far too much, but that's always the way i work when i really adore the friend to whom i'm giving my words - and maybe it was one too many viogniers one night, but all of a sudden i found myself all "forget wishing! wishing is for wimps!"

i said it way naughtier in my head.

but it's true, you know. someday, i'll have to tell you all the time i feel i've wasted on wishes. the months that added up to a full year that i wished my dad wouldn't die; perhaps i messed it all up with the one who's in charge of such decisions with my begging that he not suffer anymore. i can see how that would be confusing. then there was the matter of my sister. i don't need to tell that story again, but i will tell you this: my stomach muscles still remember the clench of wishing so hard that she'd get to stay with me forever. i still ache.

there are always silly wishes in between serious, at least one every hour in my head, from "i wish uncle sugar would make me a coffee" to "maison martin margiela...be mine" to "please please please let the girlies three be ok." i must spend that half-hour before they hit the door at the end of their school day waiting with a million wishes and wonderings about their someday lives. their someday health. their someday love. i wish it would all be perfect. in spite of all i know and all i've endured, i still make that silly wish that they skate through it all. unscathed and unbruised and unbroken. especially their hearts and hopes.

wishes can be pretty empty. they're like a bottle full of bubbles in a way, filling the air up around us with iridescent invisible circles that fly away and disappear a second or two after we've made them. no offense, but i've never seen a wish really do anything - like win a race or cure a disease or even make me thinner than that mom at the pool i kind of despise - except look pretty and make us gasp with the possibilities and then leave us wondering...what now?

wishes are good for one thing and one thing only. they make us realize, with the falling of a lash or the tick of the clock at 11:11, exactly what we want. and that, my sweet friends, is that. what comes next is entirely up to you or up to someone else or maybe completely out of anyone's control.

listen. i've made wishes on stars that exist only in my eyes, solitaire games, whether the traffic light would turn green in an even number of seconds, and the last red jellybean in the bag. and i'm still not the woman i'm wishing i'd be. still not the mother i'm wishing i'd be. still not the writer, either.

2012 is going to be different. kickass, for sure. i feel it in my bones. i'll still probably be wishing for everything to be all right - especially my girlies three - in between wishes that include that jerk mom at the pool, the size of my bum, my someday book, and just one more red jellybean - every day at 11:11 or even 12:12 if i miss it. but maybe i need to take better care of those little bubbles of mine. keep watching over them long after they pop. they're still there, you know. even when i can't see them so well anymore.

p.s. plus a white bikini for my move near bali.

wishes found here.  bubbles found here.

oh that karey, i always fumble for words after reading her perfect ones.  i'll never forget the day i discovered her blog.  she was on 'posting' hiatus, but i read every. single. word she had ever written within that magical space.  then one amazing day, my reader sparkled and shined...she was back!  since then, i've been begging for her to write a book, adopt me as one of her girlies, and just be that really cool writer friend i've always dreamed of having in my circle of life.