Me 'n Marvin

I have to say that I’m doing pretty well with the whole New Year’s resolution thing. Yes, I realize, that it has been a mere 19 days so far and that there are hundreds of days remaining, but 19 days is a substantial chunk of time and I’ve made great strides in furthering my resolution.

A brief recap for those readers who may not be reading EVERY SINGLE word of EVERY SINGLE post: Essentially the resolution is to be more social. At times I say that the resolution is to be more open, to make new friends, interact with more humans more often or to go on at least one “hot date” each month. To be perfectly honest, the last morphing of the resolution is really just motivated by a number of hot little tops coming into my possession this past fall. I don’t know when my last “hot date” was (have I ever had a “hot date”?) and it isn’t usually the sort of thing I’m looking for, but it seems such a shame to let the things go to waste. How sad to relegate them to the bottom of the drawer or a life of hidden undershirt-ed-ness? But even if I did have a “hot date” would I have the courage to wear one??? We may never know…

But back to the resolution. This means not retreating into my crosswords during lunch or dashing off directly after school every evening. It also means accepting invitations to do things and even – gasp – reaching out to people who seem interesting or fun or whatever-else-that-is-appealing. In the spirit of my resolution I’ve joined a Dodgeball league, invited myself to a stranger’s house to watch the Rose Bowl, allowed a massage school classmate do a session of an alternative form of healing with me, stayed late after school, reached out to strangers about playing tennis, gone onto Match.com (and met up with a nice and interesting person because of it) and have some tentative plans to go over to a classmate’s house. Tomorrow I plan to invite another fellow-student who lives near me to practice on each other. Not earth shattering, but I normally wouldn’t do any of those things, so it is progress.

The highlight, however, is my friend Marvin. I met Marvin a week or two ago during lunch. It was gorgeous out and I was consumed by a need to wander around outside and take my meal in the sunlight. I was sitting on one side of the street and he was sitting on the other. I didn’t really take much notice of him at first but after a while realized he was looking at me. We just sat there looking at each other for a good ten or fifteen minutes doing our respective noon-hour things before he sat up and said “hello.” I said “hello” back and he walked right over. We had a nice time. He is very attractive, listens really well and was quite affectionate (in a platonic, friendly sort of way.) I went out walking around again today and ran into him in the same place. He immediately came right over and sat down with me and I think we may try to meet up around lunch once a week or so when it is sunny out. That he is a cat doesn’t infringe on the depths of our friendship – in fact it probably deepens it. I took this picture of him with my phone the day we met.