The Sunday Morning Muse, Sunday, December 2, 2012

The rain and 60 degree temperature today is really going to clash with the Christmas music. That said, I won't really complain all that much. I am musing about what it will be like here maybe a hundred years from now when I am long dead and this is beach front Pennsylvania property with Tampa-like Winters. The rising of the ocean water from the melting icecaps and climate change is going to be a big real estate boon for my

neighborhood someday. But I won't be around to see it. Sigh.

I didn't hit the Powerball this week. Strange but unlike past Powerball fever frenzies, I didn't spend more than five minutes dreaming about what I would do with all that money. Instead, and maybe I'm getting jaded and older, I spent more time pondering how the heck I'd resolve the practical mess that comes with that amount of winnings. A million or so? Manageable. Hundreds of millions? I'd have to call Romney and ask how I can stash some of it in the Cayman Islands and how best to set up trust funds and such. He has time on his hands right now, I'm sure he would help. I'd probably have to start with a lawyer.  A pretty good one.

Expensive. I don't know any good enough to help me. I'd have to find someone to recommend one and I don't have any rich friends. 

You see where this is going?  Suddenly being rich is a big jolt of reality. After you buy a new house, a new car, take a vacation, and come back home, you have to decide what the hell you are going to DO with all this money? It can take over your life. Perhaps that is why my automatic first response when anyone asks

me what I'll do with a lot of money, I say I'll build a moat.  I need to preserve my solitude. Keep space for myself to think. Maybe even ban Christmas music from that space for all but two weeks of the year.