Just give me a chance to prove I won't be a spoiled rich kid......

The title is a comment that has gone through my head more than once over my lifetime - especially this morning, while watching a "Behind the Music" segment on Leif Garrett.  He was a teen idol back when I was a teen.  (To be brutally honest, we're the same age, as I was born in May and he was born in November of the same year.)  Watching the details of the life he and other teen stars led, it's no wonder so many turned to drugs after having every minute of every day planned out for them, then suddenly getting dropped like a hot potato when the next big thing came along.....

I used to think that kind of life would be so much fun, so easy with all the money you wanted at your disposal, and all you had to do was hop up on stage, sing a few songs, and try to avoid the grasping fingers of frenzied fans on the way to your get-away vehicle.  Instead, to quote a line from "Some Like It Hot", the common sentiment from teen idols is: "I'm tired of getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop."

My husband and I joke about the fact that I play the lottery from time to time, especially the big Powerball jackpots, and we discuss what we would do if we won that much money.  Friends talk about fancy houses, swimming pools, traveling to every place they've ever wanted to see, and nice cars to drive.  Us?  We want a chunk of property with a lake or a pond, preferably one of the many we see for sale in the northern part of our state that sell as over 400 acres for less than one million dollars.  We want to have a central lodge house where friends and family can gather for group meals and fun times.  We want to be able to have small, rustic cabins tucked around the property, far enough apart that you can feel like you're secluded from all civilization while visiting with us, with solar energy as the primary source of power.  The cabins would be close enough to the water to be an easy trot to be able to put in canoes or kayaks to paddle around and get close to nature, but not so close that there would be any danger of polluting it.

The cabins wouldn't be for rent, but on a first come first serve basis providing that our guests can follow the simple rules we follow when we go out camping ourselves:
If you carry it in, carry it out.
Keep your cabin clean and, if possible, leave it better than you found it for the next person.
You break it, you replace it.

For our guests, it would allow a chance to unplug from their normal lives and reconnect to nature.  For us, it would be the kind of peaceful place we always seek out when we go on vacations.  The sounds we want to go to sleep to at night are the cry of the loon and the croak of the bullfrog.  The peace and quiet would allow for me to be able to concentrate my energy on the current work in progress.  For my husband, it would allow him to tie flies and fish until he's so sick of fishing that he'll beg to go into town to just do something different for a change.

And, should my career as a writer build while we live there, it would be so far off the grid that any fans wouldn't be able to locate me.....

Of course, I've never had the chance to prove that I would survive this way, but I keep saying that title line to the Powers That Be, hoping to prove to them that I wouldn't become a drug addicted lunatic should I be given a lot of money......