Dear Journal,

I'm at my parents home in Cape Cod, MA sitting on my childhood twin bed and I don't think there's a bed more comfortable in the world. There's something about the childhood bed that is incomparable. I think they could market "childhood bed" as a product, and when you order it, they could call your mom and find out the exact specifications, including the pee stains on the mattress.

A few days ago, I got back from a West Coast run in Seattle and San Francisco and I moved out of my apartment with one unique detail: I didn't look for another apartment. I moved out with no plan. I just got sick of living there and decided to leave. Let me give you a little background. I've had this apartment in Manhattan for a few years. It's a little bigger than my body. And it's so small, that I had no premeditation in my move. The walls just closed in one day and I left. I walked outside and the building residents were having an open BBQ in the courtyard. For a moment I was worried that they were celebrating my departure. But I shared a beer with a few people I had never met. And I thought, "Maybe I should have made an effort to socialize with these people." And then I made some excuse to leave like I would have if I had ever made an effort to socialize with these people.

So I rented a van and I drove to my parents' house, which was great. They say you can't go home again. I disagree with these people because"¦uh"¦I went home again. I arrived around midnight on Friday and I'm sitting with my mom and dad in the kitchen. My dad is the kind of guy who gets mad a lot but isn't even sure why. He'll be like "Dammit I'm eatin' pretzels." Since the day I was born, my dad has been searching for the portable phone. He's always like "where's the damn portable phone?" So my mom has always had to find the portable phone. And then when I was in high school, they invented that page function to locate the portable phone and I got worried that maybe they would get divorced. On the divorce papers where it says "reason for divorce," he'd write: "I found the portable phone." But it never happened. They've been married 40 years, they've been through hundreds of portable phones, and I think part of it is that she's oblivious to how angry he really is. My mom is very smart but has certain blind spots. Like I had her fax me something once and she called me up and said could you fax that back? That's my only copy. And then she always says the names for things slightly wrong. When I was a kid I had this friend named Adam Howarth and she used to called him Adam Hovarth. And I'd go mom, "It's Howarth and she'd go "right, Hovarth." And when you live with someone who's so confident in being wrong, after a while you go "maybe it is Hovarth."

But my mom is amazingly charitable. She works with a great charity called Big Brothers and Big Sisters. And I've always wanted to help out, but I'm so often on the road that I think I'd be useless. So I'm thinking of starting my own charity. It's called Distant Cousins/ Annoying Uncles. We just kind of show up once in a while and get in pictures and steal your ice cream and then have awkward conversations in the kitchen about your mom and then we leave.

So that's the deal with my parents, and we're sitting around the kitchen table and my mom goes, "Mike, I have to tell you something. I gave the comforter on your bed to the homeless."

And I said, "Mom! I AM HOMELESS."

So that's where I am. I'm sitting on my childhood bed. And I think the phrase should be "You can go home again, but with modifications, like, for example, no comforter." I'll be here for about a week and then I'm off to do shows in Nashville, Boston, Houston. So don't be surprised if I show up at your doorstep and ask to crash on the couch. And dammit"¦I'm eating pretzels. And that concludes this week's entry in my Secret Public Journal.