This is the saddest column I’ve written this year. Here is a list of the many things I won’t be doing this summer with the $590 million bucks I did not win on Powerball this week.

This has been very painful for me, because unlike yourself and other more stable, realistic folks, I was really counting on it. I could feel the money in my hand, see it on the bank statements.

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I had everything going for me. While in the back of the house digging around for loose change in the laundry basket, I found my old fortune-telling ball, the kind you shake and then turn upside down. The first time, it said, “Try again.” The second time, I closed my eyes and made my wish that I would winthe $590 million lottery.

The answer came up, “Your deepest wish will come true.” That would have been good enough for my Uncle Jack, about whom Aunt Rose said, “He never had an angry word for anyone and never drew a sober breath.”

So it was good enough for me. So I went to the store with the loose change I found to buy an avocado to brighten up the leftover salad from last night, and Emily, the beautiful young girl at the lottery counter, suggested that I buy an entirely new Powerball ticket and use her birthdate among the numbers. I considered this to be a surefire omen, so I did.

To add a spiritual power, I said ten Hail Marys like I did as a boy when I confessed to Father Keating that I had accidentally looked up Mary Aubuchon’s dress. Now I was ready to win.

I lost. Somebody in Florida won instead. Aunt Mamie once said that the Blessed Mother only answered the prayers of drunks and fools.

So here are a few of the things I dreamed of buying this month: The first thing was, of course, to ensure my family’s future by giving them all 10 million bucks. This is a sure bet, because those who would have drunk it all or spent it on the ponies are all dead. The smarter ones are on my list. She, who is wiser than I with money, reminded me not to include her in the ten million number, as by law she was already entitled to half of the $590 mil. I asked her if she had her own list compiled. She replied that one fool in the family was enough. Then I went online to find out who Gov. Chris Christie’s fat surgeon was who tied his stomach. I am not a fat man, but I do have this Irish belly, and it would be nice to lose some weight without giving up Ben and Jerry’s “Karamel Sutra” ice cream. I want to be thin when I die.

Then I planned to take she, who only thinks of others, to the Leahy Clinic in Boston to seek some better solutions to the pain in her neck, even though she claims to know who that is. While there, I would have some work done on my neck and around my eyes, because I plan a return to my acting career in Hollywood, and I want to look better than Bobby De Niro. It will be much easier now for me to get some good parts, as I can buy the studio.

In addition, I would plan and pay for my oldest daughter’s upcoming wedding. She claims to have it all under control, but now that I have more money than her and her fiance, I’m sure she would not object to renting the entire Greek island of Karpathos for the day. I bet I can get a great rate because Greece’s economy is off the rails, and besides, everyone likes a destination wedding.

I had planned, upon winning, to have the troublesome trees around the house cut down and to find a final solution for the water in the basement. Then I thought how silly that was as I planned to buy a mansion on the coast with a large boat and a state of the art chicken coop.

But now the jig, as they say, is up. Somebody in Florida is going to own that mansion, the chicken coop, and have the bags under his eyes fixed. Oh well, back to the laundry basket. There’s got to be another half a buck in there.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer