Crazy Stable

Sometimes, it's the little milestones that matter. Today, on a grim February afternoon, after a long day for both of us, the Child and I shared a cup of coffee for the first time.  She has been working her way up to the CrazyStable Elixir of Life for awhile now, sipping fluffy dessert concoctions from Starbucks or Dunkin, but this was her first honest-to-God fresh-brewed cup straight out of the old Melitta pot. Plenty of sugar and half-and-half; she may outgrow that or (like Spouse) maybe not. It matters not; we sat at the big kitchen table, chilled and tired, and the caffeine flowed between us like a happy electric current. Suddenly, she understood...and I exhaled a wish for countless cups in many years to come, a river of mother-daughter java that could heal all wounds and mend all rifts. So far, she is not noticeably jittery; that's my girl.

 A note on the image: Trolling the net for a "vintage coffee" image, I fell in love with this antique postcard, (yours for 10 Euros), since it depicts the approximate age at which I began urging the Child to drink coffee (and offers a good role model for helping grind the whole-bean at a tender age). But "Graine de poilu"? I knew graine meant "seed" from my college French, and figured maybe it meant "coffee bean" that the tot was grinding into "juice for Papa" who was apparently away at the Front. However, a variety of online translation engines produced the following: "Hairy seed"; "seed of the hairy one"; and, my mains-down favorite, "the hairy one granulates." Finally I stumbled on the key to poilu: it's fond slang for a rustic French soldier from about the time of Napolean through World War I.  Presumably graine de poilu is an idiom meaning, approximately, "little shaver de Gomer Pyle," since the term crops up in other quaint-tots-in-uniform shots.  Folks, you cannot buy this kind of cultural literacy.

Every year they do this, but it never fails to touch me.  My little attempt at a "yellow garden" on the south side of the house never got its fall leaves raked off, but the crocus don't care; they just go for the light.

This little shrub, which I stuck in frantically before frost last fall, likes to leaf out very early, it seems. I forget its name; I usually do, which is why I will never make a good Plant Snob. I can't even remember common names, much less the Latin cultivar names that garden-club ladies toss around with abandon. This time of year, I just call most of my plants "Sweetie," as in, "Oh, sweetie, you're back!"

Crooning to my plants is much more enjoyable than thinking about the asbestos and the scary electrical service on life support in the accursed and demon-filled basement. So far, I've gotten two quotes from abatement guys, both of whom were highly recommended but seemed a little--odd. One recommended a halfway solution that I could afford; another insisted we had to scrape off every flake for twice the price. Needed this week: a tie-breaker vote and more research. Aren't I supposed to be sitting around sipping tea and pondering paint swatches at this point in our This Old House story? 

Courage doesn't seem a strong enough word for the blogger who called himself Brainhell. Diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) in early 2004, he documented his descent into near-total disability with ruthless detail, sardonic wit, keen intelligence and enormous heart.  (The tagline for his blog was, "What if they discovered a disease and nobody wanted it?" One of his sidebars was cheerfully titled, "So, You're Going to Die!")

BH leaves behind an adored wife and two young children, a devoted sister (nom de blog of Ratty), a bunch of good old friends, and a bereft cloud of blogosphere buddies.  Some left almost daily comments, especially as his posts became more labored and fragmentary; others, like me, mostly lurked, rooted, and prayed for a mystery man who shared with us his longest journey. None of us who knew him only through the blog had ever seen his face until after his death. He looks exactly as I pictured him--a soulful smart-ass with more guts than I can even imagine. His blog is possibly the greatest testament to the human spirit that the Internet has yet produced, a real-time defiant joy ride to the edge of life's cliff. BH died on February 2; my own courage having lapsed, I couldn't face the worsening news in recent weeks and didn't find out until I checked in tonight.

A friend of mine who doesn't share my passion for the Internet once asked, of blogging and message boards and the like, "Is that the thing where you talk to strangers?"

No. No, it's not.

I wish I'd done this, but credit must go to Gothamist, which reports that raccoons are overrunning our nearby historic Green-Wood Cemetery, "digging up the grass over graves, eating the flowers left by mourners, and even invading crypts to scavenge for food." (Are the mourners of Brooklyn going totally Egyptian and leaving snack offerings for their dead, or are these raccoons flesh-eating zombies?) The caretakers can trap them but the Center for Animal Care and Control here in Brooklyn won't take them, because they are not rabid, so the critters wind up just being re-released elsewhere in the cemetery. (It seems to me that if you fed a raccoon a peanut-butter-covered bar of soap and slipped it a Xanax, you could make a convincing case for rabies at the CACC intake desk, but I digress.)

I feel a bit jealous; we've only had one masked furry marauder in recent years, doing a tightrope walk along the telephone wires on our back property line. Despite being a few blocks from Prospect Park, we get infrequent visits, perhaps because the critters must traverse two truck routes to get here from the park. (I've seen stripey-tailed roadkill once or twice on Caton Avenue, our corner thoroughfare.)

Or maybe the raccoons are no match for our Tiny Terrors, who are not so tiny after gorging themselves on the contents of our garbage cans. Bagel and his clan are simply out of control. The day I photographed this glutton and his carbohydrate feast, I insisted to Spouse that lids go back on the garbage cans. I also wondered aloud about a possible connection between Tree-Rat Proliferation (up to six at a time sashaying across the garage roof!) and a curious absence of roaming cats on our property this winter. Several of our stalwarts, like Hercules the Squirrel-Slayer, have disappeared, and no new feral felines had appeared to take over the turf.

 Well, how about this: Speak it and they will come.  Some feline Curtis Sliwa must have put out the call for the Guardian Angelcats. The very next day, a dark tabby Tom appeared from nowhere, hollering for ladies with a lean and hungry look. Then a handsome polydactyl guy with a studded collar showed up to roll in the dead catmint. Then two more Toms slipped down the alley.  I haven't found any dismembered tail trophies lying around, but I haven't seen any gangs bigger than two, either.

Be afraid, Bagel. Be very afraid.  

The snowdrops are up in the back yard!

And so are a bunch of other guys, just barely! 

(I even got my hands dirty in the garden today; I discovered a bag of four pale-yellow "Gipsy Princess" hyacinths that I'd never planted, bravely sprouting in the dark, and stuck them in the ground. Global warming indeed, the ground wasn't remotely frozen even 8 inches down. I also filled the bird feeders, added to the compost heap for the first time in months, and tossed the Christmas wreath in the trash--exhilarating!)

 But the goodness doesn't end there. How often does the news of the day bring tidings of a monster fossilized toad called Beelzebufo? (Here he is shown with a very large contemporary toad and a pencil for comparison; the effect, to me, is an inadvertent allegory of a freelance writer facing her editor at deadline.)

 And speaking of fossilized toads, we learn that Fidel will be passing the torch of liberation to a new generation (or maybe just to his Beelzebuffish brother).   Out with the devil toads, in with the snowdrops!