On being read to...

Yesterday, on the way down to see my mother (just over an hour's drive on the highway) I started listening to the audio book of  Sue Monk Kidd's "The Mermaid Chair."

Lovely book. When I got home last night I was reluctant to stop, I wanted to go driving on into the night, being read to.

It's been years since I was read to. I used to love it when I was a little kid, but the moment I learned to read that was it — I 

wanted to read everything myself. Pure impatience. I could read much faster than people could speak it.

But so

me years ago I discovered audio books. I was facing yet another weekend of scraping wallpaper and paint off the walls of my entryway/vestibule. It was the devil's vestibule — every time I'd tackled it, I got sick with the 'flu or a bad cold. That vestibule just didn't want to be fixed! 

For some time I tried to bluff that my decor for it was the "distressed look" but it had gone from being distressed to being in downright agony and shrieking "torture!" and it was time to bite the bullet again. I'd already spend several weekends on it and this was a long weekend — Monday was a public holiday. Everyone else I knew was going away on the last long weekend before winter, but my only plans involved getting this wretched job finished, if it killed me

. 

There were 3 or 4 layers of wallpaper, and each one had been painted over (why???) at some stage and then papered again. (again 

why???)

So using the steam machine didn't hav

e the magical results it did when I'd taken the 1970's glowing metallic medallion featu

re wall off the lounge room wall, or the 1960's frolicking donkeys off the study. Believe me, I'd tried everything the guys at the paint shops could suggest. I don't know what they'd put on those walls over the years, but it was made to stay. The only way to get rid of it was the endless peeling and scraping of shreds. And when that was done, the wall needed to be sanded back and the many cracks and holes filled and then an undercoat put up before I could paint. So a long weekend of drudgery stretched before me.

I made my usual visit to the library during the week and the audio book section caught my eye. There was a book by a favorite author on it that I hadn't read. I checked the catalogue, and all the books by her were out, so I looked at the audio version and thought, why not?

Smartest th

ing I ever did. On Saturday morning I started the scraping and when I stopped for a morning coffee (feeling as though I'd already spent half a day at it instead of just a few hours) I remembered the audio book. I dug out my portable CD player, put the first cd in and resumed scraping. By the afternoon, the book finished and I looked around and was amazed at how much I'd done. And so painlessly — the time had flown. So I jumped in the car, belted back to the library before it closed, and grabbed a bunch more audio books to get me through the rest of the long weekend.

By the end of the weekend, the vestibule was all done, and I'd even managed to wash down the wall in preparation for the undercoat of sealing paint. And although my arms and shoulders were aching, I didn't feel as though I'd passed a weekend in endless drudgery, I felt instead as though I'd been naughty and spent an entire weekend reading. It was wonderful. 

The following weekend I listened to more books as I painted. The surface was still so bad a normal coat of paint would show up every faint pock mark, so I ragged it (painted on the paint roughly and while it was still wet, blotted it with a rag) and I really loved the textured result. That's it behind the tulips.

The most fantastic thing was that the nasty, dreary job not only had a great outcome, but that I'd felt like I'd been given a treat by having all those books read to me. And because the selection isn't huge in my library, I tried some authors new to me and found some I really liked.

So now, whenever I have a mundane household task to do — cleaning out cupboards or regrouting tiles or whatever, I grab an audio book. My hands are perfectly capable of carrying on and getting the job done while my brain is in the world of the book.

And lately, as I've been driving down to see Mum more often, the stories not only make the time fly, they're a comfort. These days I'm not so impatient and it's such a treat to be read to.

So what about you? Do you like to listen to audio books or have someone read to you? Or if you still prefer to do it all yourself, where's your favorite place to read?