HM Forks It Over

Whew! I'm exhausted. Spending money is such hard work.

We bought a new mattress and box spring combo today. I think that after 17 years, the old one was just sick and tired. While at the mattress store, we sat on some furniture that I liked. After an argument on whether it would fit, HH measured our humble home after installing the new mattress. It was just as I had said. To the inch. I TOLD you women can measure better than men. HH had sworn that the loveseat of the new sofa suite was 6 feet long. I declared it to be 5 feet. The salesman got a tape measure, and proved that it was 64 inches. Which is 4 inches over my estimate, and 8 inches under HH's estimate. I win. Anyhoo, upon measuring that area at home, he found that it was exactly 64 inches. Heh, heh. So he went back after bowling and bought a sofa, loveseat, a coffee table, 2 end tables, and 4 pillows. OK, they tried to tell him the pillows were extra, but when he said he would walk over that extra $30 above what he offered them, they threw them in.

Now we have to stop spending the money that doesn't grow on trees. We had a bit left over from Christmas, and HH got the same bonus as the last 4 years, and I won that $1000...but now we have to stop. Even though I would like a nice Berber carpet one of these days.

HH made us all go to town for the mattress quest. We had to pick up #1 son's glasses. He loves them. He has worn them all day. I told HH I'd drive myself back to town for my PowerBall ticket for tonight. I consider him a dark cloud of bad luck hovering over my head. He stopped and told me to go get it, so I did. Never mind that he parked that Ford F250 4WD with the off-road package at a 45-degree angle. I have trouble getting into that beast on a level playing field. It has those pipe kind of running board thingies. When I get out, it bends my knee too severely, so I generally stick both legs out and drop, without stepping off the running board. This added about 2 feet to my drop. Or so it seemed. HH said, "I'll back out when I see you coming, so it's level." Yeah. Right. HH is like Lucy promising Charlie Brown that she won't move the football. So I came out, and there HH sat. "Oh. I didn't see you." Duh. I hoisted myself up Ford Everest and winched the door shut. I'm surprised I didn't tip the whole truck over during my entry. That's how steep the grade was. I suppose the mattress counterbalanced me.

I did not like getting those tickets with HH. I rarely do it. He is OH SO NOT lucky. I got 5 scratch-off tickets. Every last one was a loser. Darn that HH! I went back to bowling to pick up The Pony, because he's not much help in loading sofas. I told him we'd stop and get a few more scratchers. We still have winnings left from several months ago. I got 3 scratchers. The first was a loser. Then second won $10. The third won $100. That's my Pony! OK, so I spent $56 to win $110. I'm still ahead. I haven't Even-Stevened yet. And I still have my nest egg of past winnings. For those who tell me they never win on scratchers, allow me to give this advice: don't go anywhere near HH. Oh, and buy the $10 tickets, which have a chance of winning of 1 in 3.33. Those others have a 1 in 5 chance.

For those who tell me they never win on scratchers, allow me to give this advice: don't go anywhere near HH. Oh, and buy the $10 tickets, which have a chance of winning of 1 in 3.33. Those $5 and $2 and $1 tickets have about a 1-in-5 chance, and the pay-offs are smaller. So you could spend $10 on 10 $1 tickets, and have a 2-in-10 chance of winning. But you might only win the minimum prize of a ticket. Or two tickets. On the $10 tickets, the minimum prize is $10. It's playing the odds, baby! Any Mabel can tell you that.

I'll leave you with that advice. Don't be callin' me to be your Gambler's Anonymous sponsor, by cracky!