Down the Line by Fay Jacobs

Congratulations to kejaeck! She won a copy of Time Fries by Fay Jacobs!

Look who dropped in on this fine Sunday morning! Yep, it’s totally Fay Jacobs! I have to warn you all, I totally laughed out loud when I read her blog. Cover your keyboard if you’re drinking coffee.

Exciting times! Fay is giving away a copy of her latest, Time Fries (see the cover there?). Leave a comment and I’ll draw a winner this upcoming Friday, 2/14/14 (Hey! That’s Valentine’s Day! Sweet!)

In the mean time, here’s some happy linkage for Fay. Her website is HERE. Buy her books HERE! And hang out with her on Facebook HERE.

Down the Line
by Fay Jacobs

Hello, readers!

Fay Jacobs here, reporting from Rehoboth Beach, DE. I’m dropping by to tell you a little about my new book Time Fries! Aging Gracelessly in Rehoboth Beach. The gist of it is this: I refuse to act my age; I will not eat an early-bird special unless it’s called a Happy Hour Special; I am determined to travel and experience all that there is to explore, Medicare and creaky joints bedamned.

That’s why at age sixty-whatever I went zip-lining and down a gargantuan slide in a water park. How those episodes turned out is in the book. Oy! Let’s just say I was okay with both, but almost broke my hip at the water park’s Lazy River. It takes talent.

And as new retirees, my wife and I have downsized.

First we had to sell our house. The realtor said “You’ve got to unclutter this place and make it seem like a model home. All those bright colored walls have to go. The personal pictures, gone!

Okay, maybe the place did look a little like Spencer’s Gifts after a hurricane, but unclutter completely? We spent the first two weeks of June painting the walls beige. Gone are the flashy colors and walls full of family photos and memorabilia. Missing are the Schnauzer statues and geegaws. All the walls are now Sherman Williams Latte. And trust me, you need a double shot latte just to stay out of a coma in here. And we installed fresh, neutral blah carpet to go with the neutral blah walls.

So we moved into the RV on the driveway. Seriously, it was our only choice.

For one thing, prior to hiding in the RV, every time the house was shown, we’d leave and shop for things for the new house. Four thousand dollars’ worth of appliances later, it had to stop.
Secondly, it’s hard to actually live in a house on the market. We’d be eating lunch, a realtor would call, and unless we wanted the place to look like we fled one step ahead of the mob, it took a frantic effort to make the place pristine. Living in the RV was just easier.

Let there be light! Real estate etiquette says a home on the market should glow. Every time we exited it was like a bonfire, visible from the space station. You could have a Yankees game in there. It was our own personal Motel 6. We’ll leave the light on for ya. Also, the electric bill.

Blessedly, by the end of July, we had a contract on the old house and were up to our elbows spackling and painting the new one. We’d downsized by way of a yard sale, unloading Harry Potter CDs, Billy Joel and Beach Boys on vinyl, decades-old furniture (“The 80s called and they want your coffee table back”), the gently used lawn mower and carpet steamer.

Some friends and acquaintances think we are insane for giving up our home on three quarters of an acre in exchange for a partially double-wide, partially single-wide mobile home (trailer) in a community where we don’t own the land.

Hey, they do the lawn here. We’re happy as clams. When I saw the first leaf drop this fall I laughed like a hyena.

I also dropped my gym membership since this community has an exercise room with treadmills, bikes and an elliptical machine. It’s just as easy and a lot cheaper for me not to go to the gym here as not to go there.

In our quest to gild the turd, which was what I called the trailer on the day we settled, Bonnie installed ceiling moldings, all new light fixtures, faucets, switch plates and the like. What a wonderful difference! And she painted every single wall in the house, hiding the 1980s floral and speckled vinyl wall covering favored in that era.

We’d been in the house 23 days and to Lowes 27 times.. We’re there so often the hot dog man knows us by name and we are welcome to use the employee lounge. We are pleased with the progress and pooped at the same time. Somebody on the internet coined a word that describes our condition perfectly. Exhaustipated. Too tired to give a shit.

But we love our new home. And our new life.

So there are lots of stories in this book about downsizing, travel adventures in our RV, and our quest to turn back time and age gracelessly. That 2013-14 turned out to be a banner year for marriage equality in Delaware and across the nation made for good copy too. I got to stand on my soapbox and type – which has been a blast.

As for the book itself, as a publisher, it made me crazy trying to figure out how many “hard copies” to print vs. e-books. In the past, I’ve sold thousands in print and very few in e-book. But this is 2014…soooo, I printed a paltry 1000 books. And damn if they aren’t going like hotcakes! Seriously, the e-book is doing well, but I guess people still want print. I know I do…so there’s an expensive reprint in my future! Go figure.

And as long as I still have print copies on hand, following a time honored Women & Words tradition, one lucky reader of this column will win a book! (Jove, please tell them how! SEE ABOVE!)

So stay tuned for more stories – we are off to Florida for the first time as Snow Birds; We promise to drive over the speed limit and not leave our turn signals blinking for no reason. We’re back in Rehoboth come spring, and then to New Orleans for the Saints and Sinners Literary Fest…This year I am teaching a master class in humor writing. Now that’s going to be a blast for me and I hope for the class, too. If you love to write, published or not, consider attending Saints and Sinners in NOLA May 15-18….You’ll have the chance to go to classes, panel discussion and reading of some amazing authors and experience the joys of the French Quarter at the same time. Join me!

Or catch up with me in Time Fries! We should all be aging gracelessly ‘cause it’s more fun this way!