My original post for this week was a furious rant about how I created a race of man-eating dragons as an outlet for my ongoing rage against humans. What can I say? I live in North Carolina, and (perhaps you’ve heard) we’re up to our eyeballs in bullshit these days. But after I read the finished post, I deleted it. Considering how nauseated I am by the amount of hatred being thrown around on the internet, I figured I could suck it up and keep some to myself.

Instead I’m going to tell you my answer to the common icebreaker “What would you do if you won the lottery?”  The last time I was presented with that question was during a staff meeting, and since I was in a room full of social workers, answers centered around making large donations, volunteering more, and opening new shelters, community centers, etc.

This was my answer: “I want to live at one of those wildlife sanctuary places when you get to bottle-feed snow leopard kittens and hug rescued lions. How the hell do people get to do those things? Anyway, I know it’s possible because I’ve seen videos of people doing them. So that’s what I would do: go somewhere where I can snuggle giant cats.”

And that’s the truth. I want to hug a lion. I don’t even care if it eats me afterwards because really, what a way to go.

But if I never find myself in a wildlife sanctuary paradise, I’ll be satisfied with the occasional smooch from a baby goat.

Or some more run-of-the-mill, yet still lovely, dog and cat snuggles.

Ahh. Envisioning my future as a lion-hugger was much better for my heart and mind than the curse-laden missive against Pat McCrory (although I still believe he’d make a better pile of dragon dung than a governor). Sometimes it’s hard to stay in the light, isn’t it? But I do know that’s the path to positive change, so I will do my best to keep on it, as hard as that may be. And I wish you all a perfectly wonderful, leopard-kitten-feeding, baby-goat-kissing kind of day.