Crazy Stable

Do you know how many years since journalism school that I have waited to write a headline like that? And it was true! Nobody got hurt, the lights are back on, but it was all way too much excitement to kick off February.

At noon or so, the lights started to flicker--hard. We've always had a few cranky circuits, but this was everywhere. Then, from down in the street, a concussive boomph, followed by car alarms going off. It's a funny thing, an explosion--the sound is pretty unmistakable. I ran downstairs to find acrid smoke and Roman candles issuing from the manhole cover directly in front of our house, and called 911.

 My mind kept rerunning our killer steampipe explosion here in New York last summer, and racing over what to do if I had to evacuate. Alone in the house, I got out the big carrier and rounded the 3 cats up into one room. Within about 2 minutes, Da Pride a Flatbush and at least one other company were at my doorstep with pikestaffs, canisters, axes, and a portable CO detector. After marching down to the basement and ascertaining that all was well, they waited on the porch out of the heavy rain for Con Edison to come and deal with what was apparently a fire in the buried cables. They were all absolutely adorable and some looked impossibly young; I offered them coffee, which they politely declined.  Gosh, I wish I could have made them coffee.

What followed was a Tale of Three Trucks. Con Ed arrived, in a zippy red emergency truck ; guys in lime-green suits lifted two manhole covers and were jolted by another pooooof of smoke. They dug around like dentists probing a filling, and assured me that they'll fix 'er up and we won't even lose power. Then--the power cut out, only in our house, not the neighbors'; turns out the damage down there was worse than they thought. "I know what you're thinking," said the taller of the guys in a lilting Jamaican accent, accompanied by a broad smile. "You're thinking, 'Why me?'" Uh-huh. It's beyond the power of the Red Truck, he tells me; they will have to dispatch the Bucket Truck, whose crew will hook up a temporary line to the streetlamp across the street. Okay, this works; we know, because back in the '80's, the local crack dealer did something similar after they turned off his power and boarded up his house.

As I waited for the Bucket Truck, I kept thinking of ways to pass the time, since my computer was, as the haiku stated, "but a simple stone." I could vacuum!--er, no. I could do some laundry!--ah, no. I could read! Not really; the house was sepulchrally dark on this dismal day. It was also preternaturally quiet; I became oddly aware of it around me as a big, inert wooden box, without its thrumming neurons underneath.

 Soon the Bucket Truck arrived, and the stringing-up of Crackhead Electrical Service unfolded: A line was run to the basement, lifted up to the lamppost, then swagged against the second floor of our house to keep it airborne.   

Meanwhile, down in the basement, a seasoned guy named Eddie spliced the line to our ancient electrical service box. Turns out that when the pseudo-electricians rewired the house 20 years ago, they never replaced anything beyond our exterior walls. The wires between the street cable and our box, Eddie said, were encased in "lead sack," something not commonly used after about 1910. Sounds about right; so our juice has been running underground on the original wires for a century. I asked Eddie if he and the other guys hadn't been breathing lead-contaminated smoke just now. He shrugged. "After what we all breathed on 9-11, y'know? What're ya gonna do?"

Finally, the lights came on, and it was clean-up time. Up comes a big tanker truck with a gigantic flexible hose and a smaller tank, labeled "fresh water." This is the manhole vacuum. (Oh, that phrase should get some good Google hits.) After the explosion, the manhole is full of mud and toxic debris; one guy shoots down pressurized water through a wand, while the other one sucks out crud with the monster vacuum. At this point, my inner 5-year-old simply surrendered to the oversized Tonka-toyness of it all.

All that remains is for Con Ed to schedule the surgery for installing new permanent line from the street to the house. They claim (I paraphrase) that this can be done laparoscopically, without an open incision in our hardscaping.  They also said we wouldn't lose power today. More on that as it happens, and more very soon on the Bizarro World of Wiring that Eddie discovered in the basement.

Many hours later, describing the day's excitement to Spouse, I said the words "emergency truck" and felt a wave of memory. When I was very little, somehow my dad and I developed a bedtime story ritual involving "Truck Stories." I would beg for them, and my father, the ultimate Tool-Time Guy, would weave a yarn involving lost kids, burning or collapsing buildings, gas leaks, and lots of fairly technical rescue equipment. He did tales about fire trucks and police trucks but my favorite of all was the emergency truck; no matter how much peril those kids were in, the guys would pull out some amazing gizmo and save the day. And then he'd kiss me goodnight, but I'd be too excited to sleep.

 Well, listen to that. Brazen squirrels have expanded their territory. They used to confine themselves mostly to the Roof Valley of Doom over the laundry room and a freeway along one of the kitchen joists; when we'd hear them scrabbling up there, we'd bang on the walls, clang pot lids, spray noxious things into the leaky-hole in the laundry-room ceiling, and so forth. (None of which discouraged or even particularly startled them, but it made us feel better.) But now, I hear them zooming around behind the walls of the third-floor study and guest room; the cats gaze fixedly at the walls in horror. Yesterday, one of the buggers was thrashing around not two feet from the back of my computer monitor.

This takeover has two causes, I suspect: One, there is a diving-board-sized fascia board hanging loose in front of the house, and I've even seen fluffy nesting material tucked into it. Yeah, we gotta get a guy to fix that, just as soon as we cope with the Christmas bills. Two, the blighters are proliferating. It used to be just two of them hanging around, Bagel and Smeagol (or, more probably, Mrs. Bagel).  The other day, as we pulled into our driveway, four of them lined up on the telephone wire like a conga line. If we cut the engine and sit quietly in the car, they gather on the fence and mock us; one actually leapt onto the windshield. It's like Hitchcock's famous sequel, The Squirrels. 

 And now, the last straw: They've been recruiting new settlers to beef up their population and help scatter and consume our garbage. How can we tell? The nearest colony of black squirrels we've observed is two blocks from here, in the Prospect Park South historic district. But today we saw our first glossy black newcomer, sunbathing arrogantly on the pinnacle of the garage roof. (Note total relaxation of backward-pointing hind feet.)

[You'd never guess that a friend gave Child a boxed Marx Brothers DVD set for Christmas, would you?] 

 My gut, that is...along with my sinuses, my ears, and everything else that isn't responding to an antibiotic after laying me low for the first 2 weeks of 2008. If I were a house, I would have radon and toxic mold, and probably some flaking asbestos in the bargain.

This fortnight of intermittent yuckiness and lethargy has been praticularly frustrating because of my resolution to "keep grinding" (as the estimable Mr. Pimp C would've wanted--see below), by forging ahead and repainting the long-delayed downstairs hallway, then moving on to Child's room. Delusionally, I pictured this all happening in January. Since New Year's Eve, we have purchased: Sudafed (after signing for it to permit our arrest if we turn it into crystal meth in our trailer out back), amoxicillin, Mucinex (such a charmingly named product, and totally useless), ibuprofen, lots of soup, and 247 boxes of tissues. We have not  bought rollers or even a bucket of primer, and my current stamina level would have me retiring for a nap after stirring the stuff. As it is, Spouse always has to paint the ceilings; I have an embarrassing, invisible, and mysterious condition called Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo, which causes me to keel over and puke if I work overhead or perform other triggering maneuvers. (Clogged ears can make this worse--oh, goody.)

(By the way, I am aware that all bloggers should have Voltaire's quote--"The secret of being a bore is to tell everything"--tattoo'd on the back of their mouse-manipulating hand, but if just one other soul gets the validation of discovering that BPPV is real and not just a swooning character defect, I will Not Have Blogged in Vain.) 

Anyway, do fellow housebloggers agree that being sick in a half-renovated house adds a certain je ne sais quoi (Voltaire liked that one, too) to the whole winter-viral experience?  I have observed these distinct Phases of Renovator Sickness, in descending order of severity:

Phase IV. "Thank God...have...working...toilet.  Must...reach...it."

Phase III. "Projects out there somewhere. Somewhere beyond this bed, but within this house. Eh--time for soup now, house can rot."

Phase II. "Oh, look, all the supplies for the project still sitting there. Um...nah. Gotta microwave some soup."

Phase I. "Maybe I will have a sandwich instead of soup. Hmph, where is the Phillips-head screwdriver? I could just, you know, take the hardware off."

I'm still stuck in Phase II, but sometimes something comes up to put it all in perspective and bust you back to Phase I--like learning that Bestfriend is having emergency surgery. Suddenly the primer, and the mucus, and everything else doesn't matter a damn. She's doing okay so far, but prayers are appreciated; as for me, I'm going to need to make and deliver some serious soup.

 Fresh air through open windows, like a crate of air-shipped grapefruits, has arrived to tantalize me with sensory suggestions of other times and places...places besides Brooklyn in January. It's about 60 degrees out there, and while I have a few bulbs left to plant, I've been actually afraid to go out in the garden, for fear of some permanent derangement that would result in my rolling in just-thawed mud like a retriever. (I am reminded of an English eccentric--surely one of the Sitwells--who had to be blindfolded while driving through particularly exquisite scenery, so as not to overexcite his delicate nervous temperament.)

But more than the feel of a temperate breeze, it's the acoustics of flung-open windows that make me ache with yearning for summer.  Along with a respite from banging pipes and hissing radiators, today has been a reminder of how muffled and isolated we become as we hunker down under winter skies. I hear the voices of children hooting at dismissal from the school across  the street...sirens passing...starlings whooping it up. The world flows in and out of consciousness on this vivid soundtrack, inviting me to come outside (or at least stick my head out).

Slamming our big old windows shut will hurt after today. After this "foretaste of Spring," there are, gee, only 8 more months of winter, right? I mean, at least 7 weeks of March, at least... 

Image: Edward Gorey, The Disrespectful Summons

We haven't had any Friday cat-blogging in awhile; and because we are all justified in being brain-dead by the end of the first week after the holidays, here is an utterly delightful glimpse of how it would look in the CrazyStable master bedroom if Lexi and Charlie combined their strategies and added a little more persuasion. Apparently one zillion people have loved this 'toon on You-Tube, but only here, in the domain of an intellectual-property wonk,  will you learn that it's by Simon Tofield of London-based Tandem Films, and used with his permission. "I plan to make a few more, so keep an eye out," he adds, "I hope they live up to the first one." Given his impeccable comic timing and gorgeous fluid use of line, that's a good bet. 

I think this 'toon, called "Cat Man Do," is something of an homage to Edward Lear and his cat Foss.  For a wonderful retelling of the story of the eccentric nonsense-verse writer and his stub-tailed companion, go here (and check out the lush and idiosyncratic writing of new-to-me bloggeuse Aubrey).