Writer and his wife watch a triple-feature on TV from bed during staycation. Photo by Nancy Fox.
We reveled in our fantasy.
Instead of deck-lounging in San Anselmo, our minds rocketed to Zanzibar, the semi-autonomous part of Tanzania in East Africa that’s housed humans for 20,000 years.
Why there?
God knows, since neither my wife nor I’d ever thought of going there — even when playing “let’s pretend.”
The mental trip was a lot cheaper than real airfare, of course.
And we definitely needed a break, fast approaching total pooped-outedness because of our typically intense, neurotic scheduling.
“I haven’t spotted a native all day,” I mused aloud, “but I have noticed animals nosing around.” Three deer-in-residence that devour whatever flowers dare pop up in our yard were grazing only a few feet away.
I had no clue what they were fantasizing.
Our compulsiveness made us set rules even for last month’s “impromptu” four-day staycation.
We’d monitor but not answer phone calls and emails. Nancy wouldn’t work on her upcoming piano-and-patter performances, nor I on promoting my book, “Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer.”
We mulled taking our dog, Kismet, to a West Marin beach, leisurely buying pants at the Northgate Shopping Center, taking out mu shu from Ping’s in San Rafael.
No deadlines. No schedule. No pressure.
The first morning, I asked our Zanzibarian chef to scramble eggs, with diced onions throughout.
When done, I said, “My compliments to the chef.”
“Thanks,” he replied.
Funny how much “he” resembled my wife.
The eggs were perfect. But we decided we’d prefer eating out most of the time, as if we were in a faraway Airbnb instead of at home in Marin County.
Relaxing has never been our long suit, though.
In fact, years ago I tried pulling off a Do-Nothing Day. It lasted under four minutes, after which I found myself checking 13 bookmarked news sites, exercising, phoning my daughter in New York, walking our dog at Drake High, helping Nancy unclog a filing cabinet, hauling a box to our storage shed, writing to an agent, and crafting a column.
We did better together.
One day we even watched a triple-feature in bed.
Best was “Alive Inside,” gifted us by Nancy’s Sausalito cousin, Laura Scott — a documentary about personalized music on iPods breaking through the solitary confinement of nursing home patients with Alzheimer’s and dementia.
It made us weep.
And rush to our checkbook.
The film also made me again appreciate Nancy’s shows. She regularly plays in memory-care and other senior facilities — geographically spread from The Redwoods in Mill Valley to Atria Tam Creek in Novato.
For years she’s told me of residents exiting almost catatonic states to tap their toes and fingers, swing their arms and mouth words from once forgotten tunes.
A two-way blessing, indeed.
Our second staycation day included laughing and crying at a Fairfax matinee of “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” and slowly strolling downtown in San Anselmo.
That was followed by a day of Nancy dipping into Ann Patchett’s anthology, “This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage,” and my reading Roger Ebert’s autobiography, “Life Itself” — books with mega-positive messages.
But our best “go-nowhere day” was the one in which we went somewhere.
Unscheduled.
We rode past Fairfax and San Geronimo through manifold tunnels of trees to South Beach, where we watched huge waves blithely erase both human and dog prints from the sand for hours.
And we topped off the jaunt with an elongated outdoor lunch at Perry’s Inverness Park Grocery while watching sheep across Sir. Francis Drake Blvd. that were even more tranquil than we.
Wristwatches seemed wholly out of place.
Though we did make it through the staycation without working, we also re-discovered our love for — and addiction to — the endeavors that comprise “our revolving-door lives.”
Well, to be honest, we almost made it.
Our final staycation hours were corrupted by a computer glitch on my iMac.
I gave myself papal dispensation to work it out.
Nancy and I chortled at my obsessiveness — and copped to preferring the excitement of fifth gear to the stability of first.
But even if we never repeat our four-day experiment, we at least learned we can take time off from overload.
Maybe half a day.
Or an hour.
Hey, watch out Zanzibar, here we come again.
Contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net or at www.vitalitypress.com/
