I had such a deliciously clever plan. It was so cunning, as the saying goes, you could pin a tail on it and call it a weasel. We were given a prompt last week for writers group to come up with a list of unique life hacks, and the prompt was intended to be serious, non-fiction, real-life things that we actually do to make our lives easier. Well, notorious smart-ass that I am, I wanted to make mine into a fictional story, as my current challenge is to improve my fiction-writing skills. I wanted them to be like Columbus' rules in Zombieland (e.g. "Rule #1 -- Cardio"), but I didn't want it to be a total rip-off of that. I tried to come up with my own hook, and as I drove to pick up my Rotary buddy who needed a lift, the song "Life During Wartime" came on the radio. Hm, I thought, that might be the angle I wanted. Write fiction of a family preparing their bug-out bags for a looming threat of war, or even put them in the process of grabbing the bags to run. I didn't want to be too depressing about it, and I didn't want to be hyperbolic about the current geopolitical state of panic, so I thought perhaps I'd invent my own war. A water war, maybe, spawned by a sudden increase in the rate of climate change. I imagined a character based on myself, and what I would be placing in my end-of-the-world kit. I imagined my own daughters as teenagers, and how they would tease me for my choices. "Seriously, Mom, the world is about to crumble around our ears, and you are making sure you have enough toilet paper?" Yeah, that would be me. I buy the mega-packs at Costco, and when I'm down to 9-10 rolls left, it's full-out panic time, and I go shopping. It's something I've wondered watching Walking Dead. In all of their scavenging, how come you never see them risking their lives through walkers to bring home a big pack of Charmin?
But the story. I never did write a single word of it. I had company this afternoon. Daughter #2 came by with a Valentine's gift of angiosperms (2 pots of yellow mums, a purple salvia, and a coral bells, all of which need to be put in larger containers and set in sunny windows for 2 months). We hung out and talked and caught each other up on politics and pop culture. (She doesn't watch broadcast television, so I had to make sure she saw Melissa as Spicey. If you've seen it, you know exactly what I'm talking about.) I had so much fun entertaining that I forgot about writing, and by the time it was 6 o'clock, I knew I was too tired to run out to group anyway. Now I don't know whether I should still try to write the story. I think it would be funny, if I could flesh it out a little beyond the skeleton of an idea. I just need to think of more than one trick, one thing to put in that bug-out bag other than TP. Or is that the gag.... That's all she wants?
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