I’ve been having a good week, and I thought I’d risk tapping into my limited supply of karma and buy a Powerball® ticket. After all, the jackpot is $320,000,000. Yup. You read those zeros correctly. Three hundred and twenty million buckeroos. In the next few hours before the drawing, I get to consider what I’d do with all those lovely dólares. 

Well. Let’s ponder this, shall we?

• I’ve already promised my cousin, animator John Weflen, that I’d take him to Disney World. We’re both adults, but damn it, there will be princess crowns and hugs from Goofy and cowering on the Tower of Terror ride. So there’s that. 

Haunted Victorian fixer-upper FTW!

• My mom and I want to buy the haunted Victorian mini-mansion one block over from where I live now and restore it. It has a coach house. We’ve already decided Little Bro can live there and have swingin’ parties. 
• I’d love to establish a nonprofit that assists gay couples and single women in adopting children, and one that provides and staffs full-fledged literacy programs in low-income schools in the U.S. I’d also like to fund a scholarship at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop for aspiring genre fiction authors. Because books are books, and writing is writing, and we don’t need any more snooty high-brows in the world.

The dream of writing full-time would come true, as would myriad other possibilities, like regular international travel, getting an Irish Wolfhound (what? I need a pet!), finally buying the Steinway rosewood baby grand I’ve lusted after for years… But most of all, if I won the Powerball, I’d make certain my family was looked after for life. Because family comes first, whether you’re a prince(ss) or a pauper.

Y’all will know if I win. My whoops and hollers will be heard from here to Houston.