If I Had 200 Million Dollars

If I won the Italian mega-lottery, these are top ten things I would do:

1. Quit my job. No offense, colleagues, but when I'm sitting on an egg that big, I see no need to heed the alarm clock every morning. If I have to have a job, I adore the one I’ve got, but I’m not super ambitious so if I don’t have to have one I’ll be off like a whore’s pajamas. I’m not a person who would lie on a fainting couch and eat bonbons all day, fanning myself while my man-servants fetch me mint juleps and piña coladas; I would be busy each and every day, building things, making things, traveling, socializing. OK maybe not that last one. I won’t be a lazy rich person, just one with few external demands on my time.

2. Have a larger house built. My house is terrific. I love it to death – we bought it when I was 26, we were both broke, and it was like a palace to us. However, when we have houseguests everything in the house has to kind of jenga around a bit, as we have limited space. If we ever have kids, we will have to forego houseguests, or relegate them to the basement. If we have more than one kid, they will be sharing a bedroom. Admittedly it’s a really large bedroom but still, I am hoping for either two girls or two boys. Said larger house will be timber-frame or log, on a huge piece of land, too, on a private road, with a gate, because humans irritate the crap out of me. We would have a separate garage and an enormous vegetable garden to which I would dedicate all my time between May and October. We would also have an orchard where I would grow perfect apple trees, grapes (for wine, duh) plums, pears and lots of cherries. We would build a big giant log fence – really tasteful and attractive – and hide all of our junk behind it because every house has a junk pile.

3. Invest in help. I would like to have a live-in housekeeper, who would be dedicated to pet-hair-removal, floor washing, kitchen cleaning, and ironing (this could be a full-time job), and a handyman on call. I would have the new house professionally landscaped, or hardscaped so I can do the gardens myself.

4. Build a tasteful cottage with tons of glass, pale wood, solar panels, and a bad-ass dock. On 31-Mile Lake.

5. Buy a pied-à-terre in Austria. My in-laws (well brother-in-law + family) live in Graz, and it’s the most gorgeous town. We would go there for a month or two every winter and just ski the alps, eat strudel and shop. I would pay to have my fear of flying miraculously cleared up, or just pay for drugs to knock me out. Rosie would fly on her own when pet airways decides to develop service to Europe.

6. Get a few more dogs. Part of my huge property would be fenced, so the dogs could play all day long, and we would have a giant bed so they could all sleep with us. Rosie would be queen, and would get to pick out all the other dogs. With 200 million do you think I could afford to have Rosie cloned? In which case, we’d have Rosies running around for all eternity.

7. Give cash to my family. Sorry this is number 7 – I meant for it to be higher up there but all the shopping got more tempting. I’d give you all a wad, pay off your mortgages and other debts, get you fancy cars, buy you some fancy cheeses etc. Maybe we would all go on vacation to our pied-à-terre in Austria some winter. Also you could all buy really fancy shoes. My immediate family would live on our huge acreage, so we would have a compound that’s guarded against the world. My dad would have a workshop for all his crazy projects on one end of the compound, and my brother would have a state-of-the-art garage for his projects on the extreme other end of the compound, and they would each have their own set of tools so nobody would have to borrow anything from anybody. My mother would have a posh sewing room with a terrific view but she wouldn’t ever have to sew anything she didn’t want to. She could lay on a fainting couch and eat bonbons all day if she so desired. My brothers-and-sisters-in-law-and-nephew would have a fund set up so they would never have to pay to visit us again.

8. Open up a shop. For something to do, I would open up my own shop. Maybe. I’d sell homewares that are both new (chosen very carefully through my travels) and stuff culled from garage sales and fixed up, etc. Rosie would come to work with me every day and be the shop mascot. I’d hire super reliable help to work whenever I don’t feel like it. Secretly they’d be irritated by me and my erratic hours and my jumpy dog but they wouldn’t be able to show it because I’d be the rich boss-lady – not a tyrant, just powerful – and because they’d be the only retail employees in town with a health plan. I wouldn’t worry too much about the profits, because I have 200 million dollars.

9. Pay to have kids. ‘Nuff said. Wait I’m already doing this.

10. Give to charity. I would give a lot of money to the Humane Society, local no-kill animal shelters, and cancer research. I would set up a fund to help people pay for veterinary treatments for their pets and for a free spay and neuter program in my area. I would set up a turtle rescue operation that works to save slow-moving turtles from being hit by cars during mating season.

So basically I want to become a kooky Martha Stewart. With this list, I am also hoping that there will be enough money left over (100 mil or so) that I can hire a trusted advisor (I already know someone so I'm ready) and set up some investments that will allow me to live off the interest for the rest of my life. I don’t want to eat caviar for breakfast, but neither do I want to worry about money ever again. I don’t think this is too much to ask.



Oh and a footnote: we've entered Rosie in a photo contest and we're rallying the vote, so if you feel like moseying on over to their site and voting, we're #8. Go Rosie! http://lowdownonline.com/photo-contest-aug/

How I spent my summer vacation

OK I’m back. Once again, I departed on a summer vacation with a list of things to do as long as my arm, and once again, I did many of them but not all. I return to the land of the living with the homestead in good order, ready for a happy onslaught of company at next weekend’s family reunion.

I would like to share a few things with you all. The first one is a phenomenon I like to call ‘Vacation Hair.’ My once-fabulous haircut, dubbed the Bonjour Baby! by my hilarious hairdresser Azra, went through the vacation hair translation machine and came out comme ça:

What people at work don’t know about me is that I often wander the earth looking like that. If they ran into me in my town one day, while they were enjoying a day of sightseeing or something else genteel, and I was running into town for a jug of milk or something, they would not have stopped to chat. They would likely not have recognized me.

The biggest undertaking of my two-week vacation was to build railings onto my new deck. I had the crazy plan to use cedar and galvanized steel cable, and people doubted me (I’m not naming names) but I think it turned out ok for a home-made jobbie. Even the guy who built my deck was impressed, and is off to go put steel cables on HIS railings, the copycat. So I present to you a visual tour of my railing installation project:

There were several underlying themes to my holidays: the rain (almost every single day), the hair (see above), some medical experiments (no animals were involved), lots of cleaning, which made absolutely zero difference ‘cause the house is still a mess, and I am now convinced that Rosie speaks English. Well, understands English – more work is required to get her to speak it. We spent so much time together, she’s probably jonesing as badly as I am right now. At least I hope she is. She’s probably catching up on her sleep. We spent all of our time together, as she became like my little shadow, following me from room to room, sleeping wherever I was working. We spent good quality time together, me and Rosie, and we are now closer than we’ve ever been. I now officially love her TOO MUCH.

I went to the land with my brother and the septic folks to talk about my BIL’s cottage, I went to the land for the afternoon with my girlfriend Fiona and Rosie, and we went this past weekend for the first overnight stay at our cozy cottage. We had our neighbor friends up on Saturday with their dogs and we had a lovely time, basking in the first really nice day in a long time. We floated on air mattresses, ate chocolate chip cookies, and then when they left hubby and I took Rosie fishing. She’s not a good fisherman, Rosie. She thrashes around in the boat. She threatens to jump in the water at all times. It’s so not relaxing. Eric still managed to catch two fish, one of which became the dinner that we ate at 10:45 pm (damn campfire cooking!) in our trailer, by the light of two tealights. We learned that we need to improve the lighting in our trailer.

Sunday a.m. we built a little deck off of the front of our trailer, using pre-cut boards taken from our old deck at home. A little bit of recycling DIY. Another fun swim (Rosie has the air mattress all figured out now. She rides it on her own, all four paws up, standing on it. I have now purchased her a boogie board so fun pictures will come, I am sure of it.) and then home for a day of normalcy before the back-to-work bug hit.

All that surfing makes her sleepy.

I should be in that photo, spooning her and smooching her ears!

And now, I am back at work. I have a bit of a tan. I feel like a caged wild animal, but at least my hair has been tamed.