My World With Words

Today’s Bloganuary prompt: “What would you do if you won the lottery?”

Well, I’ve written about this before in two previous posts, so excuse me if I’m repeating myself. The simple fact of the matter is, I don’t want to win the lottery. Maybe a million dollars. That would be about what my financial experience could handle.

I have a co-worker who dreams of winning big–like the two billion dollar winnings. “Oh,” she says, “I’d spend it on homeless animals, and my daughter wouldn’t have to work.” What she doesn’t realize is how difficult it is to manage large amounts of money. I tried telling her, and her response was, “I’ve got a good accountant. She does my taxes every year.”

The sheer naivety of that statement tells me she’d be one of the 70 percent of lottery winners, including those who win tens of millions, who end up bankrupt within five years. Most winners aren’t good financial planners, and many see their winnings as endless. Fortune magazine described it as seeing those millions like Monopoly money.

I should add here that my co-worker is currently in bankruptcy and has a terrible history of money management. Winning big wouldn’t change that.

Friends and family members will sue for a portion of the winnings, and don’t think that a baseless lawsuit on their part means you’ll win. Scammers come out of the woodwork. Greed can become the law of the land. In short, winning the lottery creates more problems than it solves.

It makes you a target.

So what would I do if I won the lottery? I don’t play.

Image Credit: © Minerva Studio–stock.adobe.com

I hope you are happy and healthy and enjoying life. Have a fantastic day and a marvelous year! Take care,

Love, Belinda

Image Credit: © yournameonstones–stock.adobe.com

Today’s Bloganuary prompt is “Write about a few of your favorite family traditions.”

Jiminy, I can’t think of many family traditions, let alone favorite ones. We celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve, a tradition that started when we lived in the same state as both sets of grandparents and had to divide our time between the two families. Actually, it may have started in my Mom’s family when she was growing up, perhaps for the same reason. At any rate, when we moved to another state, we continued with the Christmas Eve celebration, although Santa came during the night, filled our stockings, and left one big gift.

My maternal grandmother was a notoriously bad cook, but there was one thing she made well, and she made that every Christmas Eve. I’m ashamed to say I can’t remember exactly what it was, some sort of beef sandwich, I think. She served it with mashed potatoes that my grandfather made and creamed corn from a can. My mom hated that meal, but I kind of enjoyed it.

In sharp contrast to her mother, my mom was an excellent cook, a gourmet cook, really. Never did her talents shine quite as bright as on the Thanksgivings of my 20s, when my stepdad was alive and shared in preparing a meal. They loved to invite people who had nowhere else to go for the holiday, including a family of Russian immigrants. There were three of them, father, mother, and daughter, and I loved talking to them. They didn’t like to talk about Russia, but the daughter, who was about my age, was a great conversationalist and we always had something to chat about.

My mom was also a talented seamstress. Back in the day, girls were required to wear dresses, and she made several for both my sister and me at the start of every school year. We’d go to the fabric store, pick out the patterns, then select the fabric we liked. I remember then we’d have to wait while Mom found the thread, zippers, buttons and everything we needed for those dresses, and that got a little long, even though she did her best to speed it up.

When we were very young, she made some matching dresses for us, but as soon as we were old enough to display our very different personalities, she stopped doing that.

So I guess we did have a few family traditions I remember fondly.

Image Credits: Santa in his sleigh © vectorfusionart–stock,adobe.com; Santa © Елена Фаенкова–stock.adobe.com; Sewing © Vladimir Polikarpov–stock.adobe.com

(Today’s Bloganuary prompt is “what do you do in your leisure time?” which is remarkably close to the prompt of just two days ago, “what do you do for fun?” So I dug up this post from 2017. I tried reblogging it, but since I already had done that when I posted it on another blog, I couldn’t do that here. So this looks like a fresh post, when it’s really several years old.)

More than 40 years ago, I was watching television with my dad and getting a little agitated.

It had nothing to do with my dad, who clearly saw the source of my problem, even if I didn’t yet. “This is such a waste of time,” I moaned. “I feel like I should be doing something productive.”

My dad suggested doing something creative. “Like what??” I wailed. “I need to relax. I just don’t want to waste time while I’m winding down.”

His suggestion stayed with me, however, and somehow, I landed on knitting. I found a yarn store with an owner who would teach you to knit if you bought yarn and supplies from her, and my journey began.

I still have that first sweater, one of the few I made from acrylic yarn. After that I decided if I was going to spend the time knitting a project, it was going to be with quality yarn. The highest quality I could afford.

Over the years I’ve made some close friends through my knitting, many of them the owners of the yarn stores I frequent. Eventually I began to knit store samples — for store credit — to supplement my yarn budget.

When my niece and nephew were little, I made them dozens of sweaters. In fact, I had just finished what turned out to be everyone’s favorite baby sweater when we learned my niece was on the way. I’d started that project months earlier because I thought it was special, knowing the right baby for it would come along someday.

I don’t typically make anything on spec, although I usually have a few things lying around for gifts. Last year, a young friend of mine moved from Little Rock to Appleton, Wisc., and obviously she was going to need a hat. I had the perfect toque for her, just calling her name.

My mom has so many hand knit pieces in her tiny apartment she doesn’t know what to do with all of them. That includes a half dozen pairs of slippers made from a pattern I designed and named for her. (You can purchase the pattern for Kim’s Slippers at Ravelry.com.)

The only drawback to all of us? Ironically, the creative endeavor I started so I’d be productive while watching television has resulted in me watching more TV than before. If I’m knitting — and I’m always working on something — that damn set is on.

Image Credits: Knitted background and retro TV set–© Bigstock photo; Knitting needles, baby sweater, slippers © Belinda O; Knitting illustration © dariaustiugova–stock.adobe.com

Today’s Bloganuary prompt: Name an attraction or town close to home that you still haven’t got around to visiting.

As you might have deduced if you saw my post yesterday, I’m an indoors sort of gal. I don’t go much for the big outdoors, at least, hiking in it. Which is too bad in some ways, because the area around me has many beautiful hiking trails.

I don’t mind walking. When I lived in Minnesota, I used to walk around some local lakes on a regular basis. But a dirt trail where the path is uneven, perhaps narrow, and full of ticks? No way.

I confess, it’s the tick thing that really keeps me away. There a millions of them around here, and I have several friends who suffer from the consequences of a tick bite. There’s one disease (I can’t think of the name of it now) that makes you allergic to mammal meat. You can eat poultry and fish, but no beef, pork, and the like.

One of my friends also has celiac disease, which requires a gluten-free diet. And the tick disease is so strong in her she can’t have any dairy products. Which makes me grateful, very grateful, for my health and the very few dietary restrictions I have. For whatever reason, I can’t eat mushrooms or white chocolate. Both make me very ill. However, those are easy foods to work around.

By the way, possums eat ticks. Heavy volumes of them.

So I don’t want to limit myself anymore because of a tick. I’ll get my walking in. It just won’t be on the scenic trails around me.

Image Credit: Hiking trail © Gajus–stock.adobe.com, Possum © geoffkuchera–stock.adobe.come

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