luck be a lady

I just bought a lottery ticket and I won. My first phone call was to my cousin B. because a month ago while talking late one night snuggled in my down comforter in Virginia and her probably sitting on her back porch in North Carolina, I told her, "We need to get serious about playing the lottery. I mean, we need to get serious about it."

And we did. When I went to visit her two weeks ago we drove to South Carolina to pick up tickets. We were in line with about 20 other people on a Saturday night. Some were dressed for their Halloween parties. There was one guy with a pot on his head. It took me awhile to understand what exactly he was supposed to be. And then, when I did, I felt stupid.

My cousin's husband laughed at us while we piled in the jeep and searched for coins to use on the two scratch off cards we'd bought along with our Powerball tickets. "Whatever, you'll be laughing when we're millionaires." We didn't win anything with the scratch offs. I kept looking over my card again and again. I mean, I had paid a dollar for it. I was going to get all the entertainment I could out of it. Since it produced no wealth for me, at least there could be entertainmnet value. Unfortunately, the repeated stared did nothing to change the outcome. And the Powerball tickets weren't much different. In the middle of the night, after a raucous Halloween party and pre-pizza munchies, I checked the numbers and once again vowed that through staring, I would get my entertainment value. It didn't work.

Since then I'v contemplated stopping my the 7-11 on the way home and buying a ticket or two. "Just a scratch off," I tell myself because really, the megamillions odds are insane. I've avoided the urge until tonight when my gas tank was echoing from the lack of gas inside. So, I told myself that I'd just buy one scratch off, just to round off the $5 worth of gas I was splurging on. And then I filled up $8 and decided two tickets would make the perfect $10 amount. And then well, one of them became a Megamillions ticket because who can give up $310 million? I mean, WHO? And then I won. I mean. I won! I won a dollar. That's right a dollar. It was on my scratch off and the way I figure it, I just got myself another scratch off. Tomorrow, maybe I'll win two dollars. Here's hopin'.