Could be my future......

How's this for another idea?  Besides the traveling guide for the best Motel 6 and Super 8 and other cheap motels, it seems time for a book about my adventures as a smart, funny, well-read, hard working, experienced, reliable, mature, responsible 60 year old woman who can't find a job.  Instead of becoming depressed and morose and contemplating jumping off the bridge, I have made the most of the situation and have taken either to the road or to random beds that people have offered me.  Now, let's be clear that there are no other people in those beds, one does not want to be compromised in one's integrity about getting those beds.  But still, I am sure there are many women like me out in the US that have been laid off and who cannot find jobs because they refuse to color their hair. I don't know what the rest of them do, but I doubt that they are all traveling around with their small dog, sleeping in cheap motels or at friends' houses.  I would assume most would have moved in with children or old parents or friends, not taking to the Interstate Highways, driving 550 miles a day down lonesome road and happy about it.

Perhaps my traveling adventures are not as boring as those of Rick Steves (yuck) nor as well-written as Anthony Doerr (incredible) but there might be a place for me in travel literature after all.  I could be the older version of Frances Mayes, except instead of getting to travel to Tuscany and buy a villa, I get to drive around in my car and buy nights at cheap hotels!  Seriously, I think many people would buy a book like that.  How many of us know rich people who can hang out in Europe and sleep with brawny construction workers at their soon-to-be restored Italian villa?  Not so many.  On the other hand, how many of us know out-of-work people who are doing what they can to get by, struggling to pay their health insurance?  Many, many more, of that I am sure.  

Polish up the prose, get some more adventures under my belt and sell it as a book.  I might need an agent, (suggestions, anyone?) but unless my biscuit business takes off (and it might, last night I made bite-size versions and they were delicious) and even if it does, that's part of the adventure as well.  The bookstores are full of memoirs from people telling about their sad childhood or their life with their dying parent or their drug-addicted child.  How about a memoir of someone who has long ago gotten over her crappy childhood, who has worked her entire life, who has two awesome adult kids and who hits the road, living on small money, Luna Bars, fruit, peanut butter, canned tuna, water, whiskey and wheat bread?  Wouldn't you want to read that story?  I would.

Cooper, obviously standing on a motel rug, looking unsure.

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