Crazy Stable

The Child's "midwinter break" has been hell on wheels--literally, since the car has turned on us. It is now the Demon Car, shuddering and passing out in dreadful places at unholy times, racking up towing fees after Shackleton-worthy waits for tow trucks, then sneakily pretending to be perfectly okay as the mechanic coaxes it to exhibit its symptoms. Fine. We'd been thinking about leasing a new one, anyway...now that's definite. But...paying off the "negative equity" on the car loan (don't you just love that concept? So CrazyStable!) will eat the money allocated to replace the downstairs hallway floor.  The Overarching 20-Year Plan calls for honey-colored wide-plank reclaimed-wood floors, like this. The Short-Term Solution To Lessen the Horror called for painting the (crappy busted-up dark-red-painted) parquet with a bucket of grey porch paint. Frankly, it's a surprising improvement.

(Here is phase I, including a thoughtful exit path; phase II covered the path, too. And here is the Ragdoll cat whom I forgot to imprison, washing alkyd-based paint off her toe tufts. The scene was one 0f such madcap paw-smearing frivolity that I half-expected to turn around and discover that Spouse had turned into Dean Jones in some forgotten Sixties Disney flick--"That Dumbass Cat," perhaps.)

Now,  I know what you're thinking...Does painting an oxblood-red floor grey really help when the walls are Band-Aid pink and the trim is a color best described as, say, "Shrimp-Bisque Bordello"? The truth is, this front hallway paint-job affair is the absolute nadir of our long and fraught relationship with paint-color chip-strips. We keep looking at magazines, and getting ideas.  Occasionally, they work very nicely (as when Spouse insisted on a deep-blue contrast wall in the sky-blue guest room upstairs; it rocks.) More often, we are left wishing we'd stuck with Navajo White (as in our bedroom, which is pinkish with some sort of greenish trim). As for the Shrimp-Bisque/Band-Aid thing here, well, I can't even imagine what we were thinking at the time. I seem to recall it being very important to "pull out" some colors from the stained-glass window lights; these colors do not appear in them. Maybe I thought it would be "warm and welcoming." Maybe the spirit of Yetta's Pink Palace was trying to reassert itself.  Maybe we spent too long in the hardware store before lunch, and were mildly hypoglycemic by the time we decided. I dunno.

Anyway, Spouse is peeved about repainting it so soon, and about admitting mistakes in general (once he admits them, he tends to excessive self-mortification). I say, get out a bucket of primer and let's move on. But to what? Several of my friends are Swatch-Women--you know, those exquisitely choosy ladies who will drive workmen mad until they get exactly the right shade of whatever, and that's why their houses are gorgeous and not Band-Aid-colored. The Swatch-Women all say, go bold. Deep, saturated colors make a statement. Spouse used to agree, but now says he will recuse himself from the deliberations so that the next disaster, er, decision, can be all mine.

I don't think I want to go the "deep saturated" route. What this whole front-hallway-painting dilemma really involves is a desire to exorcise Chang demons. Our first interior glimpse of the house, when Chang was selling it, was of this center hallway--a dank, dirty-white corridor with a blood-colored floor and no daylight, because in a boarding house everybody keeps their doors shut. It reeked of sorrow and pity and stale cooking grease. What I want--what would erase that doom-laden entry--is purity, sweetness and light. In magazine pictures, what best evokes this (for me, anyway) is pale butter-colored walls with white trim. Not all that creative--in fact, a mere notch in originality above Navajo White--but "safe" from egregious color delusions and still warm and welcoming. The colors that come closest on the nifty click-and-paint Benjamin Moore website are "Moonlight White" and "Little Dipper." I've gotten some sample bottles in very similar hues, and will share the results of the experiment soon.

Meanwhile, the dried-blood-colored floors and bannisters have gotta go. Twenty years is long enough to kid ourselves that the paint is actually a good "temporary protection" for the wood floors from any eventual demolition. And that is why, for Lent, I have decided to take up stripping!

Brooklyn dreaming beats California dreaming--look where the Child and I went sledding yesterday, right here by Prospect Park's Peristyle.  We can actually see this incredibly cool little structure from our front porch; as the late afternoon sun fell across the hillside, we were the only ones taking advantage of the slick downgrade. I turned around to look into the park, and a flock of gulls arose from the lake behind a scrim of black tree branches, leaving a swan tooling along in their wake--it actually took my breath away (that and the 20-degree wind).

In summer, this hill is covered with barbecue party-makers, bikers, and skateboarders, all cheerfully oblivious to the fact that Olmstead and Vaux probably would have been horrified by the 1904 addition of this neoclassical intruder to their masterpiece, which was conceived in the mid-19th century as a pristine faux-woodland with rustic structures and quaint naturalistic follies. Here's some heavy-duty architalk on the little gem from an Aussie named Tom Fletcher, who edits a cool site called nyc-architecture. 

…the Classic Peristyle, below South Lake Drive and across from the east end of the Parade Ground…consists of a low platform and a colonnade, with square corner posts and alignments of Corinthian columns between, four in each end and ten on the flank. The supports are of limestone up to the capitals, which, with the entablature, are of whitish terra cotta. Architrave blocks are wedge-shaped, like voussoirs: of a flat arch, and the frieze is filled with a continuous relief of luxuriant foliage. Attic blocks, on axis with the columns, and intervening balustrades surmount the console cornice. The Peristyle sometimes is called the Grecian Shelter, which is a misnomer inasmuch as all of its features are in the Renaissance manner.

Yeah, we hate it when they mix up Greek and Renaissance--just another hazard of sledding in Brooklyn! (Along with totally not knowing what the hell a voussoir is...)

Last week was a somber one in the CrazyStable, because the time finally came to euthanize our oldest cat, Raffles.  His story I have told; he was our oldest guy (at least 16), and had gotten skinnier and less continent (in ever more unpredictable and creative ways) for many months with no apparent slacking-off in energy or joie de vivre. Above, his last portrait; below, just last Thanksgiving, seeking turkey molecules in the sink.

(A dry-chow boy all his life, and our only non-glutton, he became an avid table-scrap scavenger as he grew more wasted.)  Poor fellow, we gave up on various medical interventions, which seemed only to burden him, and just took up all the rugs, put down lots of newspapers and old sheets, and waited for him to tell us when he was Ready. That day came last Thursday, when he finally seemed tired and confounded by it all, although his marvelous ready purr never left him. Our beloved vet Dr. Dendtler gave him a dignified end in our arms, after we kept him plied with chicken tidbits in the waiting room.

His bony little frame is now interred in the garden, and over it I will plant the first spring pansies I can find at the greenmarket. (We can also start to ponder the replacement of the downstairs hallway flooring; Raffles and his renal failure made us very glad that the splintered and unsalvageable parquet was destined for a dumpster anyway.) So that leaves Lexi the Gorgeous Ragdoll and Cocobop the Grey, who will be joined by as wee and fuzzy a new sibling as we can find at the animal shelter, after the elapsing of a Decent Interval.  He or she will be wonderful, but there's no such thing as a "replacement" when it comes to animal friends--not for that zany checkerboard of a face whiskering me awake in the morning, nor for his jaunty ear-swiveling, tail-bobbing, or curious occasional "announcements" in moments of stress (including, the Child insists, "uh-oh," "help me!" and "Wowee-wow-wow!")

In honor of Raffles, who delighted us by "brisking about the life," here is an excerpt from "My Cat Jeoffrey" by Christopher Smart, a friend of Dr. Johnson's who wound up in a lunatic asylum (no wisecracks, please), where he penned this lovely ode to a comforting feline companion. (My book-arts mentor Malachi McCormick offers a gorgeous little volume of this poem in a hand-made calligraphy book, seen here.)

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having consider'd God and himself he will consider his neighbour.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger...