My lucky weekend

[ppfuf]

 Friday night I found a dollar at the gas station. Saturday morning I found two $20 on Chestnut Street, behind the Trader Joe's. I used the dollar I found Friday to buy a lotto ticket (yes, I'm numerically illiterate, whattayougunnadoaboutit?) . I got three numbers and won $10, more than I've ever won on the lotto before.

I gave the $40 to the All Saint's food closet, because after I thought about it for a while I realized that I'm rich enough that $40 doesn't seem like a lot of money. There's been a cheque for $40 in my wallet for more than two weeks because I can't be bothered to go out of my way to the ATM to deposit it.

Much like the time I thought it was happy/important when everything in my house was clean, I began to wonder, when did I begin to think of $40 as not very much money? Back in 1991 I was living on Fremont Street and near that same Trader Joe's there was an abandoned quarter in one of the newspaper machines. I nabbed it and walked to the Safeway, where that quarter paid for several days of carrots and potatoes. They were having a root vegetable sale, like three pounds for a dollar.

Maybe I should complain a little less about having to be an adult. And maybe I'll use the $10 from the lotto to buy some ice-cream.

Comments

Past financial woes

[metageek.livejournal.com]

My lowest ebb financially was the start of the summer after junior year of college, when I stayed on campus instead of going home to my parents'. I had a job; but, at the start of the summer, I had a gap of three weeks before my first paycheck. After paying my rent (for the whole summer), I had $24. I had to figure out what I could eat for $8 a week. Answer: peanut butter on white bread, three meals a day. Of course, it helped that I didn't have any other expenses; the apartment included utilities, I didn't need a phone, and I walked to work.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

Ice cream, definitely. One Christmas when I was in college I went to the big family gathering, where, in a corner, was the traditional Card Table of Doom (where all the homemade fudge and pie and cookies were kept). At one point, I walked up to the Card Table of Doom, took a piece of fudge, and ate it. My three-year-old cousin gave me a look of outrage, and I looked back and said, "I can do that. I'm a grown up." It's good to be an adult.