Shortcomings

A couple in northern Wisconsin won the $316.3 million Powerball. They decided to take a cash payout of $153.9 million instead of getting their riches doled out a few million at a time. They’re older. I get their point.

“Why didn’t we win the Powerball?” I asked my husband this fundamental, soul-searching question as we were driving our salt-encrusted truck through the downtown interchange.

“Because we didn’t buy a ticket.”

We didn’t buy a ticket. Why didn’t we buy a ticket?

We used to buy lottery tickets when we went to the PDQ to get beer. Did we stop buying beer? What has happened to us that we stopped buying lottery tickets but kept buying beer? What convinced us to eschew playing the lottery as if we were so intellectually superior and so well-comfited with our little annuities and whatnot? Were we too good to buy lottery tickets? Too full of ourselves? Did lottery tickets become the dream of people below our station?

Well, now, we have been left at the station. Left wanting.

I want to say I don’t envy the couple in northern Wisconsin, but I do. I want to be suddenly freakishly rich.

If I won the lottery I would give a lot of the money away, but not all of it.

I would buy a shit ton of things. And pay to have another shit ton of things done for me.

It would be a continuation of my fruitless pursuit of a worry-free life but way more gilded.

We are having Saturday night’s leftover Chicken Normandy for dinner with a fresh vegetable. Maybe roasted Brussel sprouts. And wine out of a box.

If there is enough left for a full glass.