Traveling While Married Now Available in E-Book
Mary-Lou Weisman’s hilarious collection of essays, Traveling While Married, is now available as an e-book! The book traverses a lifetime of travel-a-deux, from honeymoon to elderhostel. It features illustrations by New Yorker illustrator Ed Koren. To celebrate the new e-book edition, Mary-Lou Weisman shares her adventures of traveling while married . . . to a BlackBerry addict.
This past spring, after fifty mostly happy years of travel with my husband, Larry, we nearly broke up over his insistence upon bringing his BlackBerry with us on vacation. Ever since that holiday- wrecking device was invented, we’d been vacationing as a ménage a trois: me, Larry Lawyer, and Mistress BlackBerry.
There we’d be, cruising the Seine, touring the ochre caves of Rousillon, or canoeing on Jasper Lake, and there she’d be, vibrating incessantly in his pants. As soon as he could, Larry would attend to his email, thereby guaranteeing more emails, until he was spending the entire vacation in the parallel universe of his office, and so was I.
During our 2010 vacation to the Canadian Rockies, I finally put my foot down: I would no longer tolerate her constant interruptions and demanded that he limit his BlackBerry use to one hour a day. He couldn’t do it. I might as well have asked a chain smoker to limit himself to one cigarette after dinner.
When that effort failed, I proposed to keep the BlackBerry in my purse, and hand it to him once a day. Forget it. I’d turn my head to look at a moose, and he’d be riffling through my purse.
So, this past April, as we were contemplating a trip to Amsterdam, I played my ace. “I am not going if you bring her.” With unflattering reluctance, he chose me.
But could I trust him? Since I was dealing with an addict, I called for an intervention. Together, we visited his secretary and his assistant. Together we agreed that they would screen all his emails. In case of a genuine emergency they would call him on his international cell phone, which had no texting capacity.
I now had everything I wanted, but I still wasn’t satisfied. I worried about vacationing with a cold turkey, high text-tosterone BlackBerry addict. Would he hallucinate and hear that infernal machine buzzing in his trousers the way an amputee feels pain from a phantom limb? And, most worrisome of all, would he take his frustrations out on me?
Happily, none of my fears were realized. Larry’s addiction seemed to have disappeared without a trace into the cyberspace whence it had come. From time to time he would flip open his international phone for nostalgia’s sake and allow himself a quick hit of its dull yellow light, but essentially he was cured.
On Day One he thanked me for putting an end to his addiction. He was a free man, a happy man, a grateful man. I told him how thrilled I was, too. On days two and three, I again asked him if he wasn’t, in fact, delighted to be BlackBerry-free. He assured me that he was. On day four, I couldn’t resist querying him again.
“Isn’t it a pleasure not to have that damn BlackBerry interrupting our vacation?”
“It would be even better,” he said, “if you weren’t addicted to reminding me on a daily basis about what a good time we’re having.”
–Mary-Lou Weisman
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Overall Score
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Sic Mary-Lou Weisman on any or all of life’s irritations and they become funny. How does she do that? As it happens, many of the same things that drive her crazy drive me crazy, so I’m grateful.
This story of how the Weismans got to travel Black Berry free, is emblematic of the author’s wit, insight, and style. The original book is very clever and some of the essays are side splittingly funny. Essays on packing or on forgetting will strike a resonant chord with all travellers or people over 50. Anyone who has not read this book is incredibly lucky to be able to access it as an E-book.
ENJOY!!!!
Mary-Lou Weisman does it again! Just like the essays in the book, her newest observation of traveling while married manages to hone in on a familiar experience with original wit and wisdom. Here’s wishing the Weismans many more years of travel together and all of us the privilege of watching from a safe and amused distance.
By revealing the Blackberry as a sexual obsession (a vibration in the trouser!!) Mary-Lou Weissman has again shown us why she is the indispensable companion as we travel through life or overseas. Now we understand why men gaze lovingly at those hand-held devices while sitting in great restaurants across from their loving wives and girl friends. Freeing Larry from the information lust that had him in its grip also showed her compassionate side. Yes, she’s one of the funniest writers I know but though Traveling While Married was always a must-have item in our back backs her insight into the underlying attraction of the Blackberry may save many marriages and is sure to make travel more of a pleasure for both spouses.
As with everything that Mary-Lou Weisman writes, the Black Berry addiction update to Traveling While Married hits home with witty accuracy. The book has the true marks of a classic: as long as couples continue to travel together, it will ignite sparks of recognition and delight.
I so loved reading the book which, with delicious humor and insight, reflected so many of my experiences as well. I have given it as gifts to everyone I know. And now there are new essays to savor…lucky us!
Right here is the perfect website for anyone who
really wants to understand this topic. You understand so much its almost hard to argue with you (not that I actually would
want to…HaHa). You definitely put a brand new spin on a topic that’s been written about for decades.
Excellent stuff, just excellent!