You forgot the part where she had to buy the cheap balloons because the money was a special allowance from a meager savings account

and how she had to have discolored frozen vegetables and sallow roast for supper one day because she couldn't afford to throw away the food in the freezer that was ruined by the colored water

and how the leftover balloons on the table reminded her of her deceased grandmother whose medical bills she still had to pay off and oh yes there was a bill due yesterday but work was stressful and she forgot because her boss made her stay late to yell at her for the accounts that didn't balance and how she stayed up late crying and was late for work the next day and was threatened to be written up

and how the few frozen spheres that did work melted during the day while she was away at her dead end job and looked like sad, pale patches of color next to the crumbling driveway with the car that's beginning to rust on it

and how, when she came home, she could only look at the pale spots and sigh, and wish she'd screencapped the Pinterest page on her aging computer with the CRT monitor because the letter in her mailbox says her internet was cut out again

and how the kids in the nice house next door wanted to make the colorful spheres too. And how they looked like the ones online and were perfectly shaped next to the paved driveway with the shiny sedan on it because they got to use the nicer balloons from Party City and the good quality food coloring that was actually what they normally used that their parents who didn't have to worry about their checkbook balance first when they went to the store bought for them

and how there was a snowstorm that night and the power went out and she just sat in the kitchen by the window in the pale moonlight drinking watery coffee trying to stay warm and looking at the colorful spheres next door, thinking about the job she didn't want to go to tomorrow but had no choice to go to because if she didn't she would be just like the pale spots of color on the lawn with the spots of rust and mud and—

—and be like a product of her circumstances. The spheres that never would have succeeded anyway, that were at mercy to the whims of temperature and sunlight and failure from the start and she, a member of the inferior working class and a victim of having to live paycheck-to-paycheck because of her circumstances, at the mercy of the forces of nature like sickness and aging and life's unfairness and having to stay mentally tough to stay afloat. She, conscious of her failures, anticipated the day she would melt too, bowing to temperature and fluorescent office lights and unfulfilled promises that had made her in the first place.

The power didn't return til the next morning.