Prairie Days

I would love to live back in the day before grocery stores. Where you had a goat and made your own cheese and bread (from the wheat you grew) and saved all your own veggies that you grew and had chickens and pigs and just provided all your own food. I’d miss running water, but I’d love to have a composting toilet. I’d miss TV, but my husband cracks me up so much, and we’d be so busy with life tasks anyway. And there are books! Wood burning stove, great! There are a lot of things that would be lacking, but so much of our life that we leave outside would still be the same…the birds, the wind and the sky. The stars and the sun. The bugs and the plants and the mice and rats. Some things we’d rather pretend aren’t still there, but they are! And they have their place, whether we like it or not. You can spray, poison and kill but they’re out there and they’ll keep coming back.

I think most of the items of convenience I could find a reasonable substitute for, trash bags, Tupperware, to-go mugs, even cars (I’d have a great horse!) but you know what I’d miss? Sharpies! Yes, the marker! They are so handy for so many things! You know you can write on something and then get it wet, take it anywhere, leave it in the basement for years, and you’ll still be able to read it and see what’s in that jar, or bag, or container. Yes, if we were shot back to the prairie days, I’d want to take a sharpie! Oh, and probably toilet paper…that’s a pretty good invention, too!