family

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s Free Comic Book Day.

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STK525975Late yesterday afternoon the UPS left leaving an envelope whose contents — “Superman: Last Son of Krypton” and “Beware the Batman” — sent me rocketing back to my childhood.

They’re two of the books to be given away tomorrow for Free Comic Book Day 2013. Every first Saturday in May the comics industry gives away millions of titles for free at comic shops across the country.

Some 4.6 million comics will be handed across counters this year, which is a 30% increase over 2012.

Comics have moved beyond the POW! ZAP! these days. SpongeBob Squarepants has his own comic series. So does “Sesame Street.” The wildly popular series “The Walking Dead” began as a comic book, although purists would probably call it a graphic novel.

The free-comic lineup is quite the mixed bag: books based on the usual superheroes like Superman, Batman and The Hulk, plus titles whose heroes range from Judge Dredd to MegaMan to the children’s book character Pippi Longstocking. (Go here for a full list of offerings.)

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Giveaway: A book all young people should read.

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th-1Know someone who’s graduating from high school or college in the next few months? Have I got a grad gift for you.

Zac Bissonnette’s “How to Be Richer, Smarter and Better-Looking Than Your Parents” would actually be good for any young person who’s flailing around right now. Say, someone who finished a degree in December but hasn’t been able to find himself, a passion or even 40 hours of work per week.

The author was 23 when the book was published — and it wasn’t his first book. Slacker.

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Say what needs saying, before it’s too late.

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thYesterday DF’s father died. I am so, so glad that it happened after DF’s recent trip down south to take care of business. Now his father’s widow, who’s 95, won’t have to stress out over death-related details or to face her late husband’s very disorganized papers.

No, DF did that for her – with complete transparency – because she was too busy coping with the impending loss. I’m glad he did that. I’m gladder still that he was able to say some things that needed saying, while his father was still able to hear and to respond.

Please, please do the same – before you miss your chance. If something needs saying, then say it.

Their relationship was not ideal, but DF made a conscious choice to put aside rancor and say, “I love you unconditionally.” As in, no conditions attached to his statement:

  • No recriminations.
  • No asking “why?”
  • No demand for closure.

That last is counter to pop-psychology tenets, but not everyone needs or wants it. A therapist I know once said, “Closure is overrated.” I think I know what she meant: Those openness-and-healing talks aren’t necessarily a panacea.

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Let’s talk about dying.

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thI picked DF up at the airport last night. He’d spent nearly a week in the Lower 48 dealing with his father’s end-of-life issues. Hospice is now involved and his dad is being made comfortable. He feels extreme weakness but no pain and is receiving oxygen as needed.

DF spent most waking hours slogging through reams of paperwork and bushels of belongings. Bank, insurance and health records were every which way. The power of attorney (written some years back) turned out to be problematic so DF had to get it rewritten, re-signed and re-notarized.

One agency wanted to know the names of all doctors his father had seen in the past two years, and guess what? Nobody knew. Heck, there wasn’t even a record of the defibrillator he’d had implanted.

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Wedding bill blues.

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thQuick question: Would you spend almost three-fourths of your annual income on one party?

Yeah, me neither. But some people will spend that much – or more – on their nuptials.While researching a wedding article for MSN Money Frugal Nation, I learned that:

  • The average wedding cost $28,427.
  • The average income for a U.S. resident is $39,959.

Do the math.

Incidentally, that average wedding price does not include the cost of a honeymoon.

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The $10 wake-up call.

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thEarlier today a guy knocked on the Phoenix home where my daughter and son-in-law live. He said he’d just lost his job and would be willing to do their yard for $10.

Scam, right?

Wrong. He did the work. Before getting paid for it. And no doubt he was surprised by what happened next.

“We gave him $20 because, uh, we prefer not to go to hell” is the way my daughter described it.

Apparently some of their immediate neighbors have no fear of everlasting immolation, though, because they took the guy up on his $10 offer. Which brings me to the point of this mercifully short screed:

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An anomaly worthy of praise.

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I’m sitting near a blazing fire watching Chamber of Commerce snow fall. The flakes are fat and fluffy and seem to dance on their way down, the way the bits of white inside a snow globe frolic back and forth before settling.

The house is perfumed by the corned beef simmering in a Dutch oven and by a batch of kale and sausage soup (heavy on the potatoes, moderate on the garlic and with a judicious amount of Frank’s Red Hot pepper sauce). If I concentrated, I could probably scent the last of the homemade yogurt that I drained through a cloth-lined colander a little while ago.

But the dominant fragrance is of freshly washed laundry hung on racks set up between me and the fireplace insert, which is cranking out so much heat that the clothes and towels may be dry before I finish writing this.

Domestic contentment – made even more delightful by the fact that it is shared domesticity. When DF got home from church (he’s the cantor for 8 a.m. Mass) he dove right into chores: two loads of laundry, putting the corned beef on to cook, cleaning the tub, general tidying. I can track his progress by the whistling or occasional scraps of song he emits while moving from job to job.

Where was I? Cutting up soup ingredients, placing some vegetable scraps into the freezer for making stock later on and relegating others to the compost, putting the yogurt into a container and storing the whey in a jar. Oh, and smiling. Smiling.

I love a man who whistles while he works. And I especially love a man who doesn’t regard the domestic arena as expressly female.

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Order up at Cafe Awesome.

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thBefore I moved back to Anchorage I often took my niece and her two boys out to eat. I still do, sometimes, but lately have been focused on setting aside dollars for a trip the four of us hope to take this summer.

One recent Sunday when DF had business out of town I invited Alison and the boys over. I knew I’d need to feed them but our kitchen is stocked for frugal grownups. What did we have that would appeal to a couple of hollow-legged boys?

Then I flashed back on a game my daughter used to play: “Dinner and Movie.” She’d make up a menu based on what was in the fridge and we’d play restaurant, then watch something I’d videotaped (remember videotapes?) or just watch TV.

Thus was born “Café Awesome.”

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Some things are worth the cost.

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thApparently I was out of my mind when I booked my recent trip to the East Coast. My return schedule last Friday was Philly-Chicago and then Chicago-Anchorage. The option of flying directly to Anchorage vs. a stopover in Seattle or Salt Lake City felt like a grand piece of luck.

And it would have been, if the flight had left on the same day. However, it left at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday.

I wanted to do a series of forehead-plants into the drywall. Instead I sighed, shrugged and started looking for a semi-affordable hotel near O’Hare.

The old me would have done those forehead-plants.

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