wishes

"Dear eyelashes, wishbones, dandelions, pennies,

shooting stars, 11:11, and birthday candles,

DO YOUR JOB (please)."

-unknown

Question: What kinds of wishes do you make on birthday candles?

I thought this quote was fitting both for valentine's day and the week that I take the Boards (and for all my wonderful friends who also take the boards in the next week or so). I had a conversation with a friend on probably my eighth birthday where she told me that when she blew out the candles at her birthday, she made 2 wishes - one that was so big that she felt like she needed to just send it out into the world as often as possible, and one that was about something that she could almost entirely do on her own, she just needed a little itsy bitsy push of luck to top it off and make it great. I thought that sounded like an awesome idea and since then, every time I get to make a wish - I make two. which is totally against the genie-in-a-magic-lamp rules, but since it's pretty rare that I get to wish to genies, it's become a tradition.

AND it goes right along with a piece of advice from my dad's "backgammon theory of life" (more on that in a future blogpost):

"just put yourself in a position to be lucky"

because that's all you can do, right? the rest is up to wherever those wishes on candles, pennies, and shooting stars go...