The Madwoman and the Roomba: My Year of Domestic Mayhem
Written and Narrated By: Sandra Tsing Loh
Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
Started off haaaating it, full-expected to continue haaaating it, but danged if I didn’t wind up laughing so hard I cried, like, SEVERAL times!
Seriously, it’s like this see: The performance, from the very first words Sandra Tsing Loh starts talking, are waaaay over the top. AnNOYingly so. I mean, get over yourself. Add to that oh so clever writing, and I was gritting my teeth, so verrrrry sad that I had 8 1/2 hours to go; are you freakin’ kiddin’ me?!
But then she informs us that part of her spiel is that she’s a performance artist, and I sagely nodded: So THAT’S WHY she’s over the top; she’s performing this, The Madwoman and the Roomba, which I was disappointed (Again with the disappointment!) to discover was NOT a memoir of a hectic year but was actually a series of essays on her take on aging gracelessly (Which, I began to see, was where I started to relate). Nope, we don’t have a lot in common: I don’t live in a house (Currently in a pavement-swallowed mega-apartment complex), and no I don’t have kids (Phew!), but she got me on the midlife flab.
Yessss, I’m THERE!
That said, or adMITted if you will, I began to find myself nodding and then apPREciating the differences in our lives. Thank GOD I don’t live in a fixer-upper with a lawn that’s basically a rodent/insect-infested jungle; thank GOD my partner is NOT a practicing Hindu who invites a gaggle of touring monks over for a bed and breakfast (And a washing machine!); thank GOD my shy daughter’s only friend isn’t a 12-year old boy in Florida who texts me about low self-esteem, an out of control life, and Oh Noooo! Feel like harming m’self!
-AND-
Thank GOD I’m not throwing a fraught barbecue on the 4th of July jam-packed with a dog-toting woman, a sullen Eastern European, a feckless partner at the grill starting fires. Now THERE’S where I discovered that this was a gem I was listening to, and there’s where I discovered the brilliance of a performance artist delivering her own words. EVERYthing goes to hell in a handbasket, and when it all hits the fan, and people are screaming, and the woman from Sarajevo starts cackling about The American Apocalypse? Oh. My. Holy HECK! My husband told me to hush up as my gales of hysterical tear-filled laughter were upsetting his golf-watching. I had to pause to wipe my eyes, took a walk out on the pavement, started laughing and crying again to the point where “neighbors”, i.e. those booking it to their cars, were looking at me funny.
Dude, my tears were getting my kn95 wet!
Plus, Loh isn’t afraid of getting personal here, so verrrry personal, and she’s not afraid of adding poignancy to her essays. As 2/3rds of the audiobook pass, some very hiLARious parts, she starts coming to how she appreciates what her daughters have in their lives, how she wishes the best for them and is glad they’re NOT messed up by her own messed up life. And by the very end, she gifts us with a vision of her father’s life, her father’s quiet death. How there’s joy to be found in the passing of a loved one, how a memorial that starts with bitterness can be abRUPTly swerved back on point to being a celebration of a life well-lived rather than one where the warts are remembered.
I found some reviews that liked the funny parts but felt the latter part was hijacked and unfunny. But to me, that’s what I liked. It’s a reminder that life is full of goofy things, but there’s beauty in some of the quieter moments, that it’s okay to raise the roof on the profane, but you can still raise the roof in celebration of Life continuing to happen to us all. It was a touching way to end a totally skewed view of Life in Middle Age.
Oops, was that a Spoiler? I think not as this isn’t a story so much as snippets of a year, year and a half in the days and spoiled nights of a woman whose BMI unFORTunately starts tipping into Unhealthy, who might be happier single but then realizes that her Soul Mate would provide holy hell as he’s tooooo much like her, exACTly like her to be precise, and THAT’S NOT a good thing. A woman who isn’t afraid to damn Indian monks to hell cuz no really, spirituality is nice and all that, but it provides NOTHING when there’s a meeting with the IRS in the morning.
I can’t say aaaaalll of this made me laugh uproariously, but I CAN say that what made me laugh made me laugh hard. I came to appreciate the dramatic tones to everything cuz really?
Ain’t Life the most hilarious kick in the groin ever?!
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.