Lucky.

Last week,  I didn't win a new car.
Didn't win restaurant gift certificates, or paid days off, either.
Or one of those really expensive, high quality coolers that promises to keep ice all... icey, for many days...
No reserved parking space, no 42" flatscreen...


(Sidebar.   Why do they still bother stressing that the TV is a flatscreen?  They're the only TV you can buy now.   Can't you just call 'em TV's?)

And while it's not yet official, I'd be shocked to find tomorrow that I won a 50/50 raffle, that's raising funds for a  co-worker whose wife went into labor 6 weeks early, while visiting her folks out of state, that last hurrah before parenthood.

Baby weighed three lbs at birth, and is still in the hospital.  I'm wishing them all the good luck one can wish upon another.

But as far as my own?

I do not win things.

This, you see, is how I roll.

Last weekend, I spent $2 on a square, and finally got 7 and 7.   Woot!!!!   And... four quarters of weird scores.  At least UofM lost....


You know those "you may already be a winner" messages, notes etc?
I get ones that say "Here are some things you already didn't win."
Kind of a waste of postage, if you ask me.

So, for over a quarter of a century,  I've been not winning at charity raffles, lotteries, black jack, and slot machines.  Most of the time it's for charity, so I'm just glad to contribute what I can toward a good cause.

I did win one raffle.  Once.   The grand prize.  I was the envy of a whole office building. At least a significant portion of it....   I  won a very nice set of golf irons.

I do not, oddly enough, play golf.

I can only hope that whomever re-won them at the charity golf outing to which I donated them, got more use.  I hope they walked away feeling, if just for a few minutes, like... a winner.  A lucky guy.

Oddly enough, I still feel like a pretty lucky guy.

Years ago, I caught a Master Angler size flat head catfish.
Damn thing was ginormous, took me a half hour to land.  

Pretty sweet, right?

But then you find out I was actually fishing for salmon.    And the reel I was using for the first time backlashed, and I had to spend a few minutes untangling it, and reeling it back up, and as I was doing that...I felt the fish hit.   Lucky, while unlucky, but got lucky with the unlucky part because I knew how to fix it, and then the master angler size inedible monster instead of a salmon.

Which, I found out years later, I might have a serious allergy to.  

I lost track at this point, but.... I think I was lucky.

I'm sitting here while my wife and daughter eat dinner.   My daughter whose sense of humor is becoming much like my own, and can turn a phrase perfectly, to my great appreciation.  She's amazing on, like... 17 different levels.    Occasionally maddening, but I've never lost sight of the fact that her mere existence on this planet.. lucky.

My wife who, while as equally or even more susceptible as I to the stress and uncertainty that have been our lives the last 2.5 years, has stuck it out by my side.  We're a bit singed, and scraped up, but are starting to appreciate that we finally are having the future we've been wishing for, since we moved back to MI.

Sitting in my 150 year old farmhouse, a bit beat up but beautiful and with an amazing history, watching them eat dinner because my post-work errands didn't take as long as my their post-school errands, so I ate earlier.    I got to sit in my chair and read a book for an hour.   On a weeknight!

I've got baby chickens flourishing on the front porch, that will be old enough to put outside soon, in time for winter.  We thought we were going to miss the narrow fall season on chicks, because of our full weekends of music festivals and northern island getaways.  I took a chance the day after we got back from the last weekend adventure, and... got lucky.
The store had said, weeks earlier, that they'd be done with chicks by then...
If we had not been able to get new chicks, we probably would have had to give our two remaining adult chickens away, as they, the two of them, are not enough to keep each other warm all winter.   They've little enthusiasm for the upstarts on the front porch, but they'll keep each other alive, come January.



So....  Tonite I'm reminded of fact that I do have decent, occasionally odd luck, at least sometimes.   It might be more subtle than triple 7 on a slot machine, or winning a new car through my work's United Way campaign, but I'll not turn up my nose at it.