Happiness Once Removed

There was a great line in the show Men of a Certain Age. Forgive me if I butcher it, but it goes something like this:
Happiness comes when you have something to do
something to love and
something to hope for.
I 'do' a lot of things.
I 'love' a lot of people, (and I love to do a lot of things, so I figure that puts me way ahead of the game)
But right now, I'd like to focus on the something to hope for part.
Hope.
Oy.
My debut novel will be out in Fall 2011, assuming I actually make those revisions. But for the sake of argument, let's say I do. And poof, my book winds up on a shelf at a store (yes, virtual counts) near you.
Then what?
While I wrote the thing, I was brimming with hope.
Hope to finish it. Hope to find an agent. Hope to master the revisions said agent suggested. Then hope upped the ante. Hope for a real live publisher to buy it. Which led to hope that I'd master the revisions said live publisher suggested.
And now that each of those hopes have been fulfilled, I'm left waiting for the big pie-in-the-sky hope that most authors dream of.
That someone actually buys the thing.
And by someone, I mean, lots of someones. Like, enough someones that I earn out that advance. Enough someones that the professionals invested in this project say, yee haw, I knew this book was a winner. Enough someones that bookstores sell out, need to reorder, advertise my book in their window.
Hell, enough someones that my book lands on the bedside stand of some fictional TV character. Like that Law and Order Detective, Mariska something. You know, the one who was conceived when her father raped her mother. Or maybe the blond wife on Modern Family. No, no, the girlfriend of Ray Romano's character on Men of A Certain Age.
You see my problem? For me, hope is crazy's cousin.
But not to worry.
Happiness just might be once removed.