Happily Domesticated: Musings on life, love, parenthood, malfunctioning appliances and marital bliss
Kevin Cummings
Humor Essays
[rating: 5/5]
Available in...
• Kindle
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Also in paperback

Some time ago, I asked humorist Kevin Cummings if I could interview him on one of my blogs. He agreed, and also sent me a personally autographed copy of Happily Domesticated (and I also sent him one my books in return). I enjoyed his book, and now I follow his humorous-essay blog religiously. So you can see, when it comes to reviewing this book, my opinion is obviously skewed.

So this morning, running late again, as I rushed through my shower and shave (Ow!), I tried to think of something useful to say about the book. It took me some months to finish it, because I’d pick it up when I was down, read one or two chapters, and that would lift my spirits. Kevin made me laugh sometimes even as Dave Barry does—which says something—and even after I set the book back down, it made everything seem funnier. I finally finished it last week, just in time to begin a memoir about post-traumatic stress disorder, which I promptly laughed at. (I guess I should’ve smoothed out the transition between those two books a little.)

The book contains 54 essays, most of them previously published on Kevin’s blog and podcast, except for a dozen pieces from a newspaper humor column he used to write. He talks as a typical middle-aged male about a variety of topics, including marriage, children, health, home, and garbage disposals. Basically, Kevin gives useful advice on all the major issues that face middle-aged men today.

But what if you’re not a typical middle-aged male? What if, for example, you’re a newlywed, 20-something woman? Well, you too should read this book, because it will warn you what to expect in the years to come. And maybe if you’re lucky, you can get out before it’s too late.

I have up at BeTheStory.com a blog conversation with Kevin Cummings, humorist and author of the new book Happily Domesticated. We talk about his history as a writer, his writing process, and (of course) his book. He does most of the talking.

One of the things that I admire about him is that he keeps to a regular deadline, and has been successfully doing so with his blogcast for almost 3 years. I’ve never been able to keep to regular deadlines for any length of time. For me, deadlines go something like this:

1. There's always more stuff to do than you have time to do it in.
2. "Well, I'll do the best I can."
3. Crash. Burn.

So for me, the issue is prioritization and effectiveness. Schedule only the most important things, in small chunks, in order to get them done by the deadline. And I actually did that successfully during my last “normal” job, and then carried some of those practices into my consulting work, and even for limited stints in my own work. For example, that’s how I completed the first Abe’s Turn book, by publishing regular episodes.

I have the pleasure of welcoming humorist Kevin Cummings to BeTheStory.com today.

Hello.

As you can see, what I’ve written is in italics, and what he’s written is in normal type.

Today, we’re going to talk about humor, about writing on a schedule, and about his new book Happily Domesticated, just released and hot off the presses.

So, Kevin, I understand that, even though you’ve been blogging only since 2006, you’ve been a humorist for quite some years.

If you define “humorist” as “smart aleck," I’ve been a humorist most of my life. I’ve also been a writer for pretty much the same time. In elementary school I loved to write stories. Since I was a science fiction fan, I wrote a lot of really awful, derivative science fiction stories.

At the same time, I’ve always been big fan of written humor. I grew up reading Erma Bombeck, Dave Barry, and Pat McManus. When I was in college I dabbled in some humor writing, mostly leaning toward broad parody. As far as I knew there was no market for that kind of material, so that was just something I wrote to amuse my friends.

(So you can see what he gets out of it. The pleasure I get out of it should be equally as obvious.)

This piece was originally published on November 9, 2007, and I reprint it here, because I so thoroughly sympathize. (God yes do I sympathize!) (With the fact that no one listens to him either, not with the cat.) You can catch the audio version here.

-TimK

A Well-Run Household

You see them on TV all the time; houses which are nicer, cleaner, and more attractive than yours the same way a runway model is more appealing than any member of the 1972 East German Women’s Swim Team. The camera lovingly pans around showing scenes of impossible beauty like an elegant kitchen filled with matching dish ware, a living room in which the furniture does not appear to have been purchased at a trailer-park tag sale, and (most incredibly of all) a bathroom in which the towels not only coordinate but are hung neatly on gleaming towel bars instead of being heaped on the floor. When you see a house like that you’ve just to ask yourself, What do those homeowners have that I don’t have?

The answer is simple.

A small army of production personnel including three professional designers and an uptight director known in the television industry as “Hansel the Fussy.” Before the cameras are even permitted on the property, the house is completely remade from top to bottom.