I was sitting down, taking a break from the three hours I spent cleaning out all the window installation dust and post-holiday party debris from my living room, and I was appreciating how good the room finally looked. I had to wipe down all the surfaces with oil soap before I could rearrange the furniture to compensate for the gap left by the now incinerated Christmas tree, because every bit of that room was covered in a fine white powder. But once it was sparkling clean and reset, I felt the muscles in my stomach relax, and I thought about how nice it was to feel settled. I am happy in this house. I leaned back in my chair, crossed my legs, took a bite of chocolate, and wondered out loud to my husband, if we were to win a share of that history-making lottery jackpot, do you think we'd feel like we had no choice but to move? I really didn't want to. Move, that is. I'd love to win a share, although I don't know that I'm so greedy to want the whole thing. It seems like a lot of pressure. The Mr didn't give me a clear answer about moving. Something about the fact that the odds were so horrible against us winning that he didn't want to waste the brain energy even imagining it.
When pushed, he said moving would depend on how many strangers just walked up to our door demanding a piece, which would most likely happen to any winners whose name was a part of the public record. Can I just offer this advice? If you or someone in your family is among the winners, please, for the love of kittens, would you seek professional advice before you claim it? Don't go running around telling all your neighbors, or think about what you're going to say on television when you win? You don't want people knowing who you are. You'll have every nut case in the country coming out of the woodwork, claiming that you owe them money because they emptied their life savings into tickets, and somehow it's your fault. If you win, just keep it to yourself until you've got legal protection in place for your finances and your family. And if it's someone in my own family who wins, can I be present when you talk to the tax lawyers and financial advisors, just to verify that they act in your best interests?
We have been slowly chipping away at the entire series of the Walking Dead that we recorded from the latest marathon. It started at the very beginning, so I was able to go back and see the first two seasons that I missed entirely, and the few episodes of later seasons that I skipped somehow once I got interested in the whole thing. As of yesterday, we're caught up to where we started catching all the episodes, and today we got to one of my least favorite installments. It's the one where Darryl has been separated from the entire group, and was picked up by the band of miscreants who, in Dungeons and Dragons terms, I would describe as "lawful evil." One of their inviolable rules is that if you want something, you get it by saying "claimed" out loud. Then all the other men have to abide by your vocalization. It's like calling the front seat of the car when you're twelve, but expanded to marauding men. These guys arrive at an abandoned auto shop, and they decide to sleep in the broken down cars. As Darryl walks around to each car, some jerk behind him yells "Claimed!" and he keeps walking, until there are no cars left. So he settles down to sleep on the floor, refusing to play this schoolyard bully game. When that episode ended, we took a break and took the dogs to the bark park. We had been there about forty-five minutes when a brindle-coated dog named Rufus arrived. They'd run in circles a few times with that new arrival, but my three had run off to greet a Weimarainer who just came to the gate with his ball toy when Rufus' human came running toward me yelling, "No! No! Don't! Rufus!" I realized that through the thick layers I was wearing against the cold, I had had no idea Rufus was peeing on my jeans. The human was mortified, apologizing profusely, while Rufus ran off to play with the rest of the dogs. I turned to the Mr and said, "I've been claimed." I couldn't help but laugh at the timing.
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