A whole lotto nuthin'

Today my mother asked me, "Can we go to the store to buy lotto tickets?"

Seemed like a strange request, but I said that we were low on milk, so why not? We could got get some Lotto tickets.

Then she told me the really cool part of why she wanted to get the tickets. See, she had a dream last night. I totally believe in prescient dreams. I really think they are true.

Like this one time, I dreamed that my brother Norm took me and my friend Charlotte to visit some waterfalls. I was lying down in the back seat of his car on the way there. Charlotte lived in Hawaii; Norm & I were going to the UW in Seattle. Chances were slim this would ever happen. When I woke up, I thought it was a bizarre dream. But a few months later, Charlotte came to visit for a weekend, Norm offered to drive us to the falls, and I laid down in the back seat of his car because of some heavy partying the night before. So it came true! Doesn't that give you chicken skin?

While I was pregnant with Lil'T, I had another one of these dreams that just felt prescient to me. I was walking in the back yard of our house, which was a big yellow house, and the kids and my husband walked out. They were followed by a 18 month old toddler boy. He was wearing a yellow and gray striped play suit and little baby work boots. I thought, "Huh, I guess I'm having a boy after all. It's not a girl." And then out popped Lil'T from the house. She looked about 3 - 4 years old. She was dressed in lavender coveralls wearing heart or strawberry shaped sunglasses. Her hair was done up in 2 ponytails. She told me she loved me and then gave me a kiss, then followed her brothers and sister out to the yard. We don't live in a yellow house, but paint is cheap. If I do get pregnant again, I'll paint the house.

Anyway, back to my mom. She didn't dream about a winning lotto ticket exactly. She actually dreamed about buying a used Volvo from her friend's daughter. It was only 5 years old but it had 17,246 miles on it. That was what she remembered. So she figured, it might be a sign, right? Well, we went to the store and while I was checking out with our milk, she went to the counter where they sell the lottery tickets. There was a line building up behind her and it turned out that she was having the guy punch in the numbers individually, instead of filling out one of those scantron forms so you can do it yourself. When I approached the counter, she asked me for a number off the top of my head. She said she didn't have enough numbers. As we left the store, she said that she had only used the mileage from the dream so she was short 2 numbers. She used the 17, 2, 4 & 6. She didn't even use the 5 (from the age of the car).Well, I certainly couldn't have that, right? So we put the groceries in the car and the nice young (incredibly patient) man behind the counter gave us the forms to fill out her numbers. We still had to pick out an extra number, because you need 6 numbers.

As we were leaving the store, we started chatting about the dream again. Mom said, "I remember thinking, why does Phyllis's daughter's car have this sign on it?"

"What did the sign say, Mom?"

"Oh, it said $26,000. But it's kind of a high price, because it was a used car, after all."

Seriously, I think if you could have seen me at that exact second, I would have had my jaw on the floor. I told her that I couldn't believe she didn't mention the 26 before. And if we were off on the lotto ticket by the number 26, I'd have to eat my hat!

The nice young man behind the counter saw us coming, and without even greeting us, handed us the forms to fill out. Who knew that buying Lotto tickets could be such an ordeal?

Mom promised that after she buys her Volvo with her winnings, she'll pay off the mortgage on our house and those of my brothers.

And can you believe, as we were walking out of the store the very last time, she said, "Well, it was a lot to ask for a car from 2002."

Aaaaggghhh!!!

***Update: (12/11) We checked all of Mom's Lotto tickets and not a single one produced a winner. I know you're all shocked. But in her defense, she said that she didn't dream about a lottery ticket, but a car.