This Blog is Free. Thank God.

Since I’m too broke to travel, I’ve been spending most of my free time hanging out at the Nap Castle, attending to money-saving tasks like posting stuff on Craigslist and taking naps and accompanying Frida on arm-stretching tug-o-walks around the ‘hood. My one indulgence this month was the Northwest Comedy Festival at the Mount Baker Theater, which was a gigantic break from worrying about money and picking up dog crap. I was also introduced to the absolutely hilarious troup Sidecar, now my three favorite people on the planet.

I’ve been low-budget-finishing my Anne Frank Room, the 10x20 space above my garage that with one more coat of paint, some carpet, and a heater, will be my new writing studio. Before James drywalled it, the room looked like it does above. It's looking more finished (and smelling a little fumey) now that I've painted it. Stay tuned...the next blog post should feature the "after" photo!

I figure that I've painted about 80,000 square feet of wall space in my home-owning life, and every job has been made easier by David Sedaris--I've listened to all of his books, some more than once, while painting. Besides the fact that laughing out loud is free and it makes jobs go faster, another advantage is that I've come to associate painting with humor and specifically with Sedaris, making painting something I now dread at least 37% less than emptying the cat box.

This is probably the first post I've written specifically endorsing an audio book, but if you're going to enjoy David Sedaris, the very best way to do it is to listen to him read his own work. Writers who read their own stuff--especially humor--always sound so much better to me than audio books read by actors. Writers know their own words, the places to emphasize ideas or phrases, and best of all, their comic timing is perfect. Actors reading other people's books always sound like they're trying too hard to be dramatic or entertaining.

In the Anne Frank Room this weekend, I listened to Sedaris's latest collection, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, and it eased the tedium and helped me ignore the lack of heat.I've spent so many hours hearing about him and his family that it feels like I'm being kept company by a a cast of friends while I work. Every Sedaris collection, and this one is no exception, features self-deprecating tales of his past and current life. The best thing about his writing is his ability to transform universal scenarios with such fine, personal details--his parents leaving him and his siblings in the care of an eccentric babysitter for a week, for example, in "The Understudy." I know I've had a weird babysitter before. Hell, I've probably been the weird babysitter.

One of my other favorites is "This Old House," about Sedaris's time as a tenant in the boarding house of an eccentric "antiques" collector, a woman who also rented to a schizophrenic man and shared Sedaris's love of the past. Since I'm now sharing my own home with renters (neither of whom is schizo, as far as I can tell), I can see myself as my roommates might--or as they might someday, if I continue sharing my space until I'm as old and crusty as Sedaris's landlady. Since my current housemates are awesome, that wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Given the current economic struggles many are facing, it's a good time for therapeutic projects: scrubbing out the refrigerator, yardening (I recent ripped out some ivy and scrub encroaching on my lawn...it felt fantastic) and maybe, if you can afford it, brightening a gloomy space with a fresh coat of paint. If you don't have the energy or inclination for those, reading is free...and fun.. and your three-year-old nephew will love it!

Enjoy Yourself. It's Later than You Think.

It may seem like a weird time to think about road-tripping, given that the weather is still unpredictable, the roads are in wintery disrepair, and most of us are still months away from anything resembling a vacation. And yet, what better conditions for fantasizing of a get-away? Before I built the Nap Castle, I owned (moment of silent remembrance) the Vanbulance, a fully-equipped Volkswagen camper van; a dream-on-wheels that was going to take me across the country during the summer of 2007. I had a map in my office stick-pinned with destinations, a book about natural hot springs I planned to visit, and a list of people I hoped to see and books I wanted to read along the way. Very little of it came to fruition--I lived in the van for a week during construction and spent a night at a campground where my next door neighbor and his buddy peed on their campfire to put it out. I now must live vicariously through the road-trips of others.

In Michael Zadoorian's new novel, The Leisure Seeker, John and Ella Robina, a long-married couple, take off in their aging motor home to travel Route 66 from Detroit to Disneyland. But this trip, unlike many others they've endeavored is unique: it is positively the last one they will take together. In their 80's, the Robinas are both suffering the cruel effects of old age. John is in the middle stages of Alzheimers, experiencing fewer lucid moments each day, and Ella is stricken with rapidly progressing cancer.

Against the wishes of their children and their doctors, Ella and John kidnap themselves from their hospital beds, forgo further treatment for their ailments, and traverse onward to live out their last days together on the road.

What follows is more than the travelogue of a trip--it's a scrapbook of marriage and family, and a very funny one at that. As they journey westward, the Robinas encounter typical vacation woes: mechanical problems, criminals, bad road conditions, and crummy food (John has a penchant for McDonalds). But their trip is far from usual; in addition to the usual discomforts, both are increasingly ill abnd forgetful.

But the hazards of the road, their illnesses, and their children's worry don't stop the Robinas from continuing their journey and they definitely don't stop them from maintaining the status quo of their marriage: some bickering, a lot of humor, and a deep affection for each other and their shared history.

While I don't necessarily want to travel the country in a 1970's camper van with a crabby old man who wets the bed, I do want to grow old like the Robinas do: with a sense of independence and adventure, and a goal to make the most of the last of my life.