Crazy Stable

The rain is gone, at least long enough for the now-spongy house to start drying out a bit. Good news on the leaking trusty-Kenmore-washer front: Noble Plumber Vinnie sent one of his nicest and smartest emissaries, who reported that it was just glop in the trap; to clean it out in our tightly-configured laundry room, he had to move the dryer, and while he was it it, he shop-vac'd out pounds of dryer lint. So perhaps the leaking washer saved us from eventual immolation by combusting dryer lint. And gosh, the floor looks clean after I mopped up a sludge tide of wet lint. Did you know that wet dryer lint lumps look like tiny drowned mice? And yes, I realize that we are much more fortunate than, say, the residents of Lambertville and New Hope, two towns full of delightful old homes that are rumored to be inundated.

This week's protracted deluges have left us with a sense of relief, since they brought several of the Four House-Horses of the Financial Apocalypse close enough to feel their cold breath on our necks:

1. The Felling of Rootbeard the Ent (est. cost if done electively, $10,000; if done post-catastrophe, up to the insurance company)

2. The Roof (est. cost of new tear-off and replacement: as high as $40,000)

3. The Death Wave of First-Generation Appliances (all now alive well beyond their expected life spans: washer, dryer, fridge, oven, cooktop, water heater)

4. The Exterior Paint/Shingle Job (est. cost if done right, about a billion dollars).

We are so far from being able to pay for any one of these looming monsters that there's a certain peace involved. We will put them off indefinitely until Something Awful happens, and then we will do...something. As our equally house-challenged neighbor Mr. Dominique used to exclaim in his rich Haitian accent, "It is in God's hands!"

He sent from above, he took me,

He drew me out of many waters.

He delivered me from my strong enemy,

and from them which hated me:

for they were too strong for me.

             --Psalm 18:16-17

...this time, in the second-floor laundry room (seen below).

The day started with a loathsome trip to the basement to throw bleach in the remaining Roto-Rooter puddles (and open the windows so the dank dungeon could start drying out, something neither Spouse nor Roto-Guy had thought to do). Finally, with some surcease of rain, I eagerly started doing the piled-up laundry...because, since the laundry-room ceiling has been leaking in earnest, I am now unable to do wash when it rains. (Unless one's idea of the "rinse cycle" is roof tea dripping on clean wash.) After slipping on a puddle, I sorrowfully noted that there was a slick of water under the trusty Sears Kenmore. Damn, how did roof tea escape the foil roasting pans and get under there?

But no, it was a Third Manifestation of Bad Waters: The trusty Kenmore is now refluxing water from its drainpipe. Damage to the laundry room is the least of my worries (it's already a mess from the roof leak)--but this is a potential assault on the spanking new plastering job directly beneath, in Nice Tenant's apartment. After applying sopping rags, I placed a call to our Noble Plumber, Vinnie, who will come at 7:30 tomorrow morning to diagnose.

Maybe it will be some minor thing, or maybe the Kenmore's day has come. Either way, it disturbingly illustrates a phenomenon long observed here: the Evil Interconnectedness of Things. The tiresome cliche for this phenomenon, "it never rains but it pours," may be apt, but it does not address my paranoid convictions that the CrazyStable is periodically possessed by squalid little domestic demons working in concert. Historically, one such unholy alliance has been observed between the automobile and the boiler; one seldom malfunctions without the other joining it. (Presumably, when the transmission conks out, the car murmurs incantations from the driveway into the basement, bewitching the ignition switch or some other critical component to join it in sympathy and really wipe us out. Or maybe the boiler does juju on the car.)

This week, we see a clear example of an evil swamp spirit, conjured perhaps by the recent torrents and nurtured by the awful humidity, invoking floods all over the damn house. I half expect brackish water to start pouring out of my hard drive. I had somehow pictured this week devoted to gardening and iced-tea-quaffing, as opposed to marsh-mopping and bleach-tossing. 

 

Lady, come from that nest 

Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep: 

A greater power than we can contradict 

Hath thwarted our intents: come, come away.

Romeo and Juliet, Act V, Scene III

 

 Image: the Midgewater Marshes. By way of: The Thain’s Book: An encyclopedia of Middle-Earth in the Third Age

 

 

 

 

 

...but that is sometimes how it seems. Like last night...as guests are leaving after the final festivities of Child Birthday Trifecta, a familiar pong wafts up to the nostrils. Eau de basement...oh, da basement. Yes, the mysterious hole in the floor, the portal to hell, is brimming with sewer water--has, in fact, overbrimmed all over the place.  So at midnight, we call Roto-Rooter, and the Roto-People, incredibly, can come during the night. (For an extra $60.) At 3 a.m., a salvific man with a Roto-Thingie is clunking down the cellar stairs. 

You know, our veneer of civilization is awfully thin--as thin as a sewer pipe. One clog and we're suddenly  unwilling brethren with the favelas, with Cite du Soleil, with the whole Middle Ages...because our waste will not simply go away. And you don't know gratitude until a man comes with a big machine and makes it go away again.  He performs ghastly rituals in the bowels (yes, indeed) of the house, and then comes the glorious cry: "Flush, and keep flushing!"  Yes, sir, as long as you say, sir!

And then there is the bill...this time, almost $500. Not just because it's Roto-Rooter (they're not cheap, but they have been very good to us, much better than "Acme Rooter" or other imitators)...no, adding insult to injury, it's because the man had to use the super-duper Roto-Thingie. And why? Because the Ent has invaded the pipes again. Yes, Rootbeard, the five-story silver maple that towers over the CrazyStable, has struck again. In his implacable thirst, he destroyed the house's original clay sewer main with his steel-wool mat of probing rootlets, which reduced the lumen of the pipe to a sclerotic few inches' width. Back then, it was Roto-time every few months. Then, at least 10 years ago, we forked over an unimaginable $8,000 to have the entire pipe excavated with a back hoe and replaced with a supposedly root-proof sewer. Haha, Rootbeard, take that! Suck water from the topsoil like a mortal tree! (Shown here, Rootbeard's better-known cousin. All images: www.lordoftherings.net.)

But the Ent has prevailed. Roto-Man (using the bad-boy cutter) produced a wiry mat of roots bigger than our hands, which had been clutching at our effluvia.  Now we are instructed to resume regular use of the root-killing cocktail down the toilet--a chemical whose labeling implies that it will destroy aquatic life as far away as Nova Scotia.  Don't get me wrong--I love  Rootbeard and his vast canopy of green, which obscures our view of the ugly public school across the street and cools our breezes.  I even forgive him for harboring Bagel the Squirrel and his kin, who use the Ent's branches as a freeway between acts of vandalism. But turning the basement into the Dead Marshes again?  If you see me tree-hugging anytime soon, look closer...I will be beating my fists on the trunk and uttering oaths involving chain saws and lumberyards.

Dateline Miami...Seven knuckleheads (who sound like graduates of "Rex Kwan Do" in Napoleon Dynamite) are accused of plotting to blow up the Sears Tower.  But a phrase jumps out at me from the AP  report:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales stressed that there was no immediate threat in either Chicago or Miami because the group did not have explosives or other materials it was seeking.

"This group was more aspirational than operational," FBI Deputy Director John Pistole said.

It's worrisome when a quote about would-be terrorist "bungling wannabes" (as they were also described ) reminds you of yourself...yet this seemed a strangely apt description for us as renovators. We aspire; boy, do we aspire. I subscribe faithfully to a glossy niche shelter mag called Old House Interiors, from which I tenderly clip display ads for antique doorknob warehouses, millers of barnwood planks, and purveyors of lace swag curtains. We take house tours. Back in the day, we took courses, too--woodworking, plumbing, the works. 

 

But operating? That's another matter. Doorknob-and-plank money is usually in short supply, as are time, skill, and energy.  (But distractions are plentiful, especially given the glut of fascinating things to do here in Brooklyn.) This past week, I have felt especially like a BW (bungling wannabe). The Child's birthday has come around and with it a round of visits from family and friends. They'll notice some changes, by God: We have stripped some paint off the front door, so it is now piebald, and we have removed the dangerously malfunctioning bathroom doorknobs. (Easier than facing the sad but inevitable day when we would have to remove the molding and take the door off its hinges to free a trapped guest.) 

 

So, not much operating...but the aspirations persist. And while the house (like the cake in that awful song) may soon be melting in the rain, tonight there was a mad solstice celebration of fifth-grade graduates in the garden, dancing wildly to ABBA in a soft summer shower and waving armloads of lavender and yarrow. Earlier, before pink-iced cake and Twister, the Child took her party pals on a tour of the vast and raffish recesses of the CrazyStable; I winced, imagining them recoiling after the tidy perfection of their own civilized homes, but was gratified to hear "cool!" several times. Admittedly, it was the kind of "cool!" uttered when you tell your friends your father is a warlock or your mother gives tattoos for a living, but "cool" it was. 

So maybe, on some level, we are already operating, and I am just aspiring to the wrong things.

 

At Rex Kwan Do, we use the buddy system. No more flying solo. You need somebody watching your back at all times. Second off, you're gonna learn to discipline your image.  -- Napoleon Dynamite 

It is possible that our bucolic locale on the distal side of Prospect Park is far enough away from downtown Brooklyn to avoid living in the glaring malignant shadow of Bruce Ratner's proposed skyscraper nightmare, but I'm not so sure.  If you read only one thing about the Atlantic Yards development controversy in downtown Brooklyn, read the open letter to architect Frank Gehry by Brooklyn author Jonathan Lethem in yesterday's Slate.  A sampling:

Your signature buildings elsewhere suggested that Brooklyn might be beneficiary of a single rippling arena, a kind of Guggenheim of basketball. I know that's very much what I was expecting, with great curiosity and good cheer, when your name was announced in connection with this project. I suspect that many locals, not having seen or heard descriptions of the towers, still believe that's what they're getting. Imagine their horrified surprise when they wake up one day to find a phalanx of towers instead. My suspicion is that persisting with this work means you'll be remembered in New York City for a scarring struggle, resulting (I hope) in failure—or, if you build, a legacy of vituperation and regret. Your prestigious presence in this mercenary partnership reminds me of Colin Powell giving cover to the Cheney-Rumsfeld doctrine: If he's on board, we're meant to think, it can't be as bad as it looks.

 

Lethem, author of The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn, is no dilettante showboating his social conscience; he's not averse to development, or even a giant arena. But he lays out in devastating clarity the awfulness of this plan, and scores a few points about Gehry and Ratner that I've never seen made quite so well. Lethem "gets" Brooklyn, and makes his case with passion, decency and common sense. Bravo.

Context is everything. [Opening line of Motherless Brooklyn, Vintage Contemporaries, 1999]

Like a match struck in a darkened room: [Opening line of The Fortress of Solitude, Doubleday, 2003]