Today the cowboy and I spent time trying to find a publisher, agent, or other soul who might be interested in reading and publishing the results of our many hours of work. But I think I figured out the difficulty of finding one of these souls.
The first question on the interview was “What do you write about?” Now that’s a hard one because it changes from day to day, week to week, basically I write about nothing, at least nothing of consequence. Great authors write about world-changing events like John Steinbeck, writing about the Great Depression in The Grapes of Wrath, or Idaho’s own Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See about WWII, or Dr. Phil’s many books about food, life, and living. Even Louis L’Amour with his cowboy stories included a love triangle with a horse, pistol, cowboy, and an enemy all vying for the lovely Miss Molly who works at the general store. Then you have Gail, writing about people of a certain age, trying to do certain things, that don’t necessarily work well. Try and fail, that’s what we do. Like remotes. And technology. And remembering “the way it used to be.”
It’s my belief that things worked well, in the era of “The Way It Used to Be.” Maybe that should its own era, you know the Boomers, the Millennials, the Generation X’s, and Generation Y’s. I apologize if I left out an era, but they are probably too busy to read my blog, as they think of some other technology that I will need a new and longer password for to write or read this blog. Passwords used to be four letters, yesterday I had to create one that looked like Mulligan Stew, of course with numbers and special characters, but not all specialized characters because the #, !, and % weren’t accepted. I digress.
So then, I started thinking of “the way it used to be,” and have developed a sort of list. Some good, some bad. Like outhouses, those were bad. Smelly, too. And playing outside used to be a good thing, until the dermatologists got ahold of it and now it’s bad. Cataract surgery, which is the BEST thing. I can see a spider on pine needles a mile away. Passwords fall in the category of the worst things and are the pits. I hope someone smarter than I can figure out a way to get rid or simplify them so we can return to four-letter passwords, “the way it used to be.”
There are a few things that have remained constant throughout my lifetime. Like running water. What would life be without it? Some gadgets, too, like thermometers and garbage disposals and electric drills. Recently I rediscovered an old pleasure, dressing by the stove, that is pure pleasure, warming up your clothes and your body, turning around and getting a blast of heat and smiling at the smell of freshly washed clothes, warm against my skin, closing my eyes and remembering those days long ago in front of the old wood stove in Emmett, getting ready for school.
The cowboy is writing more and has people snapping at his heels to go faster, which is fun. He writes about “the way it used to be,” like chasing the “widder woman” down the lane. I don’t know if that’s the way it used to be or still is. I’m on the alert, though.
Cowboy just came in and said, “Hot tub is ready, all the snow is shoveled so your little tootsies won’t get too cold”. Oops, with the temperature hovering about zero, I think I had better start to sneeze and cough so I can stand by the fire, dreaming of “the way things used to be.”
