No Use Crying Over Spilled Lattes

Life’s been hard of late.  I won’t bore you with the details, but today I took a break from a demanding day to go out and get a badly needed double latte.  Ooooh it was so good.  So milky and delicious.

I was headed back to the office to do something harder than I wanted to do. Way harder than I wanted to.  I was walking slowly, trying desperately to avoid my future.

Going to the office and facing my problems was too hard. It was way easier to start sobbing and bemoan my life.  I sat down on the side of the road to really give my sob it’s due and call my mom. My mom’s great at both answering the phone and talking me off a cliff.

The phone’s ringing and then Mom’s there, listening to me sob and asking me what’s wrong.  At that exact same time some guy comes up and is like, “Oh no!  Are you okay?!!”

I try to get the guy to go away…”I’m fine.  I just called my mom. She’ll help me.”

But the guy won’t leave. It turns out he needs to give me a hug and send me “strong thoughts” and coincidentally ask me for money so he can get some gas and keep his car from being towed.  Well, I get him to quiet long enough so I can actually talk to mother, during which time he heads off to find me kleenex.  It wasn’t Kleenex as much as a paper towel, but it was sure nice of him to bring it back for me.

So there I am, on the side of a busy street, sobbing on the phone to my mom and here’s my guardian angel letting passers by known that I’m okay and he’s taking care of me.

Eventually it’s time to get off the phone.  I get off the phone.  My latte is there waiting for me to take it back to the office and face the music of my day.

I feel a little better. My guardian angel needs to make sure that I know he’s got my back and that also he needs me to have his.  His back costs two gallons of gas, roughly priced at $10.  I pull out $10, slowly, trying to give him less, but eventually obliging his needs.  I needed to get to work, after all.

Money in hand, he’s excited to go attend to his car. But not until after one last hug. It was a pretty good hug, to be honest. But the farewell embrace was not without disastrous consequences.  No, it wasn’t.

Somehow…in some way…that farewell embrace knocked my latte off the ledge. There was my liquid courage* spilled all over the sidewalk.  Just blocks away from work, I had no choice but to forge ahead, with no latte and no more tears.

*the daytime variety, that is

When was your last really good cry?

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