One) Ice-cream eater.

Yes, a very realistic goal that one could definitely accomplish based on the daily. Clearly, as this goal did not require the upmost of thoughts, she moved ahead, satisfied.

Two) Already her palms began to sweat. Somewhere between the last bite of her popsicle and the one sided parenthesis, she struggled with the demons inside that threaten to extinguish any morsel of one's hope or self-worth. Think, think, think...

Damnit.

2) Looker at the clouds by day and the stars at night.

See, overcoming challenges WAS possible and, she added with a sly grin, she'd come up with something of a feat. Not everyone could say they hold both a day AND night job! Well, number 3.

3) Drinker of water (and other liquids, obviously). Now she really felt like she was selling herself short, but one cannot overcome desperation without fumbling with the bra strap for a bit. She was aimlessly walking on the edge of the cliff, except this time, she wasn't looking down and she wasn't stepping away. Too many hours had been wasting cautiously cocking her head towards the furthest part of the crust only to casually look away, pretending she wasn't all that interested in the unknown, the exciting after all.

4) Reader! This was good. Not too far-fetched, everyone reads, right? She wasn't claiming to be the next big, oh wait, is there any person who achieved fame based on the quantity of materials they had read? Probably not. And, point made. So, she would read. Labels, signs, books, magazines. Good, good... Oh, God. Had she really just called herself a "reader" because she was guaranteed to browse magazines? The desire to call herself ridiculous was easing up, persistently, like that damn skirt she had worn the other day. The little bugger just wouldn't stay put and try as you might, or empathize to the extent of your capabilities, and you will probably never accurately imagine the extent to which an unfitted, or rebellious to gravity, skirt threatened this girl's perfectly upbeat outlook on that day. Anyways,

Number 5!
Such a great number. The day of her birth and meaningless besides. She would make this number important, relevant. Option five would be, well, something terrific, really great, she would come up with an option both plausible and enticing. So. Life-long, committed non-smoker? Too hypocritical. Tattooed body, vowing to never regret those three works of art, even when she was old and gray, at the age whenever every "well-meaning" soul told her she'd regret them? No, too abstract, too condescending for such a youthful state in her life. Strike two, but fortunately, this girl was accustomed to the rules of the game (they were her own, in perspective). She would be cultured.

Wow. That came out of nowhere, she sat back reflecting. Up until this point she thought only crap was capable of fumbling from her mind, or so it had seemed up to this point. However, this one, she quite liked. It fit. A guarantee she felt comfortable offering herself up to because she felt quite certain it didn't mean altering any aspect of herself she knew, up to this point and it carried with it a wisp of optimism, a promise she might shine up and stare into every now and then. It also meant she could mine a little deeper into a tavern she stumbled on a few years back, it was a place in her center that was positively delighted with all the subtle differences between her and him and us and them. With the same flowers that grew in Rome, but also at home. With the smile of the child on the metro abroad, that brought the same smile to her lips when she walked into her sister's home and saw her nieces and nephew watching their mother cook. She found love in every crevice of the world and she felt confident that if one of her life's options was to seek out and appreciate cultures, as she had done up to now, well then, that was one option she was happy to include.

Phew, number six. A silly number, in her mind. So close to sex that she often felt like exclaiming that she had a sex-pack of colas at home and sex toes, instead of five. See who would be turning her down after those statements! Who was she kidding, sex was too often floating around in her mind and there really was no reason to relate the quantity with the action, their middles were completely different. Sex, six, six, six, six. Six languages. ATTEMPTED languages, that is. Very closely related to five, but more, as sex often is.

Seven! A faithful drinker of Sprite, as opposed to Seven-Up. Honestly, who are those makers of 7-Up and who do they think their fooling? Too incredulous and inflamed with indignation to stop and consider the absolute foolishness of her own to let this make her list of life options, but then again, at least she had something to be faithful to near the top of her list.

Eight) She promised herself to absolutely, always love her mother. The woman had given her her lips, her life and her button nose. She had inspired her at a young age to not give a rat's ass what anyone thought, even though the reasons for this determination were somewhat fuzzy in both of their thinking. It didn't matter. Her mother's life was full and her beauty only became fuller with age and she was pretty sure that number eight was an option she might always live up to, no matter what lay ahead.

Number 9) A little crazy. If she could commit to this number, she thought, life might actually be a lot simpler. She did this test on herself every once in awhile actually. You see, our girl had this habit of caring too damn much what others thought, at times. So, to push herself out of herself she would think of the most obvious flaw that one might carry, unsuspectingly. Like, a huge splot of brown right in the middle of her pants and then she would walk around with head held high, smiling more at passer-bys with the knowledge of her secret game and less to do with her actually joy at their brief, much too meaningless interaction. Number nine looked feasible and not too harmless, it had potential anyway.

10. Quite a serious number, in her opinion. Even as we aged, the double digits carried with them a certain coming to age type of importance. And, now? What would number ten be to her? She felt that same fear of failure creeping into her vain. Was this, a list of nine articles, half absurd, half absolute regardless of effort, be the result? No. No, she reminded herself. No more backing down because the fear flared up. What a bunch of rubbish and an idea she would never put up with if a friend or loved one or stranger, for that matter, felt the pangs of its existence.

On a dime then, what would she wish for? To push herself this time, she would claim, no more giving up. Enough of it. If one has the stamina enough to form a dream and voice an aspiration that revealed itself to one in the whisper of a dream of as the rainbow after the storm, then she was done being the one to dash her own hopes. Not that she wanted to do much editing or constricting on her list, but as this was the beginning and her whole life was going to be a seemingly large commitment she would place a sort of lax approach on this item. It must be any fully-developed dream or goal and once it was there, once the heartbeat was felt for example, there would be aborting. Well, she always responded to sternness.

On to eleven. Eleven eleven, send a wish up to heaven. That is what she heard, anyways, from someone who quite believed in the positive ramifications of this action and she had been quite fond of this certain person, so it only seemed fitting. Dear Lord, she'd wish, whenever she spotted this duplicated number on the time.