Today, I recycled some cardboard boxes and I went through the mounds of papers that were magneted to the fridge, recycling the expired memos.

I talked to my friend, Isabelle, on the phone today and she told me about a dream she had the other night. In her dream, I had won the lottery! However, instead of being ecstatic, I was in existential crisis. SHe said that in her dream, she came upon me sitting head in hands, bemoaning the fact that there were so many things in the world that needed that needed fixing. "How will I fix it all?" I was crying, "How did I get saddled with all this responsibility?"

What's really funny about this is that over the weekend, I got into the "What would you do if you won the lottery?" conversation with K and J. They were of the mindset that they would engage in endless consumerism for things that nobody in their right mind would ever want or need. (They've been watching a lot of HGTV lately, with the shows about people who redo their bathrooms for $150,000 or build a $75,000 treehouse in the back yard for your kids to play in) I said that I have no desire for a stone fireplace next to my toilet and that any hut designed for a hobbit should stay in the Shire. I'd buy some things, of course, like a place to live and some nice hiking apparel. I'd do a lot of traveling. And I'd make sure my friends and family didn't have to worry about money. But building a 7 million dollar pirate ship? Nah!

Then the conversation turned to charity. Who would we give money to? How much? Why? K came up with some weird formula for figuring what we could spare for charity. I came out to something like we'd need at least 100 million dollars for ourselves before we could even think about charity. J and I were incredulous. Then the two of us had almost the exact crisis that Isabell had dreamed about. We concluded that its a good thing we hadn't won the lottery.

Are we lucky or what?