look ma, no _______!

Hey — look what's missing! (besides a couple months worth of blog posts...) You're not sure? I know it's been a while since I posted a picture of our trash on the web, but look carefully: there are some conspicuous absences from the trash heap – nine to be exact.

Any guesses?

That's right! We finally found a way to get rid of our, ahem, spare tires (some of which, interestingly, seem to date back to a time before tires really had treads...) What's the big deal, you ask? Mainly that New York City's sanitation website says that tires cannot be included with household trash. It mandates their disposal in specified disposal sites which are, of course, never named. Or indicated anywhere else on the site. A fairly involved google session turned up nothing. Likewise a call to 311.

In fact, the only general tire disposal policy we have seen in effect involves driving to a less desirable neighborhood than yours and just sort of letting them bounce out the back of your truck ....or older model Toyota. (Actually, a neighbor of mine suggested that I could get rid off ALL my unwanted debris just by bringing it to the housing project on the other side of the park... He did say to do it at night, though.)

Mary Beth and I were on the verge of adopting just such an eco-friendly approach when I finally found a tire shop (look for a painted yellow tire in your neighborhood -- the seemingly vacant lot behind it may actually reveal itself to be a rubber-based commercial enterprise) that was willing to take tires -- for a price. On wednesday mornings, they said, a truck came by to take old tires at a cost of $2 per. Now, no one seemed to know who owns this truck or where the tires go next... Most likely they go to the housing project, but at least by paying somebody something we're supporting local business, right?

Anyway, this morning when I woke up a little early because of the time change, the perfect thing to do seemed to be to text Maureen, borrow her sweet station wagon, and load the tires up (remembering to bounce them on the flat side a few times to expel the fetid water inside!) In the end, I was done inside a half hour I think. Or four months and a half hour... TCOB in a flash!

be with you shortly...

Just after the last post a month or so ago, my computer went down — and stayed down. Against the odds, it's back from Apple in fighting trim. Stay tuned!

back on the blog

Folks, it's been a while. Turns out a renovation takes a whole lot of energy (whodathunk?) and we haven't had a ton left over for other things.

Sorry, what's that? You think you saw us on TV at the US Open the other night? Well, I mean, yeah. I mean, duh... It's pretty obvious that the order goes 1) Tennis; 2) More Tennis; 3) Dear God, more tennis? 4) The place we are supposed to be living right now; 86) Blog. Right? Thank god I've made it through the other 82 priorities (i.e. tennis matches...) and finally have a chance to update you all. (btw, I'm assuming there are, like, thousands of you reading this blog, and have duly disabled the "comments" feature so as to insulate myself from possible disappointment...)

So here's what up: we moved out of our apartment. We moved in to...drum roll...not the new house at all but the far-far-too-kindly-offered front room of sister Maureen's apartment, a.k.a. 984 Metropolitan, a.k.a. my ex-apartment. It is, I have to say, looking quite a bit finer than when I lived there, if a bit empty without a certain 4 foot inflatable platypus on the mantle piece (friends of the platypus [F.O.P.s]: having made it all the way to Scotland and back, the I.P. finally gave up the leaky ghost in a trash heap at the front of 27 Kingsland. R.I.P. big weird buddy... Actually, come to think of it now, Maureen's dog Violet looks kind of like a platypus. And a billy goat. And a cat. And she is definitely almost as indifferent to my presence as if I was inflatable...) Meanwhile, our worldly possessions went into storage exile across the street: a 10 x 10 x 10 cubicle packed more densely than some really dense things I can think of. Maybe Joe Wilson (R of South Carolina)'s head? Okay, not quite that dense...

We are hanging tough, but only because we have to. There is electricity and a functioning toilet (hallelujah!) at the house now, but it is still a dusty nightmare – very much a "work site" and not a "living space". We've got this weekend to change up... We've got some of the upstairs primed. Now we just need to choose a paint color — piece of cake...

Luckily, we started on this project a while ago. I think possibly Mary Beth started it before we even saw the house... Anyway, we spent a few hours in Lowe's and Home Depot and got to a decent place with our mood board color sketch for our lovely Florida, I mean Brookyn, home...

Trouble is, you may notice, the overall color feel is one thing, while the exact shades of the colors is another. Three yellows is probably two too many. Locating just the right green is also befuddling.

Especially when I realized that I was partly trying to recapture the faded memory of the green that was in the bedroom of the house where I grew up. Wonderful and tricky to think that colors are like names and carry the emotional resonance (is that a nice way of saying baggage?) of all our previous encounters with them. Yep — piece of cake...

the estate

You may have guessed (or hoped...) from these early pictures of our little dream castle that no one had been living in it for some time, and that the previous occupant had been somewhat impaired or infirm. That is the case – we bought the house from an estate.

From the very beginning, there was a question about the straggling odds and ends of this estate. Between the first time we saw the place and when we closed on it, the executors had managed to remove some of the larger items. There were no longer beds and dressers in the rooms for instance. But the property was not exactly, as they say, broom clean...

Some items were small and had a kind of thrift store novelty, like the tie collection

Others were a bit bulkier

In all fairness, I should disclose that we (possibly only I – though I swear Mary Beth and I talked it through at one point...) waived the broom clean clause in the contract in exchange for a $400 credit. We had gone on New York City's department of sanitation website and it turned out they would take almost anything away provided you could get it to the curb. I figured some sweat on my part – even with an appliance handtruck – would effectively pay for a whole dumpster's worth of construction waste, which the city would not take. Plus – and this is the part I feel some shame about – Mary Beth and I, inveterate yard/tag/estate sale hunters, would get a chance to sift through what was left: a chance at gold.

There were some choice pieces, if you're into that kind of thing – though, if you're not, I can't say I recommend it.

c'mon people – a life preserver? You can't make this stuff up...

Power this baby on, they're landing on the moon!

When there was stuff we really didn't know what to do with (car door?!?) – well, that's when we turned to (one of several) neighborhood Bubs.

So, um, handy to have junkies in the hood... yeee.

Actually, Mary Beth and I worked hard to comply with the d.o.s. rules for disposing of this handsome harvest gold frigidaire

– we diligently scheduled our appointment so the CFC's could be controlled and collected. We labored in hot sweaty darkness to crowbar the doors off so no neighborhood kiddies would play inside and asphyxiate. Needless to say the fridge never made it that appointment. It was gone before the night was out.

Wish I could say that about everything else, but I can't.

neighbor dave

A few weeks before we closed, mama Kennedy and niece Quinn came to visit. Everyone liked the little park in front of the new place.

Luckily, we had no keys yet and so were, um, unable to show them what some might fairly call the appalling interior of our little dream house. However, as the ladies were taking in the handsome exterior from the sidewalk, their scrutiny and admiration did not pass unnoticed. Even a slightly dazed next door neighbor, Dave, thought they might have more than passing interest in the place and introduced himself. The daze, he explained, was because his second baby had arrived only the day before. Whew!

Even delirious, Dave was extremely friendly and offered up his business card with the name of his documentary film company. His day job, though, he explained, is as an electrician.

An electrician! What could be luckier for a couple whose new fuse box – yes, actual glass fuse box – looked, well, like this...

eek!

Well, it turned out that what could be even luckier was that Dave and his family moved into their place about three years ago and did the exact kind of renovations that Mary Beth and I are doing now! He invited me over to see some of the improvements.

For instance, where we have a concrete slab with weeds in the cracks...

Dave has...

Where we have a filthy pepto-bismal special...

Dave has...

Where we have...

Dave has...

If that ain't food for thought...

Oh, and Dave's looking for work...

back story

Mary Beth and I didn't go out looking for a house — it pretty much found us.

Back in March, Mary Beth was on a morning walk kick: she'd get up with the sun — sometimes even with the rain — and meet sister bear Maureen at the little park halfway between our apartment and hers. Doing doughnuts around the park, she noticed the sign. In fact, she recently exhumed the photo of it she took from her smartphone.

I think I must also have noticed the sign some time while prowling for parking or walking Maureen's crazy dog Violet, because I knew what she was talking about when she mentioned the place. We should look it up or give the mysterious Manuel Vargas a call, we thought. Just to see.

Eventually, MB found out out online what they were asking for the place — and that pretty much seemed like that. Another nail in the coffin of the sustainable city-living dream... How on earth can a couple do it if neither one of them is a banker or lawyer?

I, predictably, gave up hope. Mary Beth, predictably, didn't. She looked in at the listing every so often and one day came back with the news that the price had dropped – a lot. Huh, we thought. But there was a lot else going on. There always is, right?

We missed one open house we thought we might get to, but then somehow found another when we weren't looking for it a few weeks later. Was it a good sign or a bad one that the thing was still on the market? Hard to tell in These Troubled Times... It was the very end of the day, and the lady realtor running the open house was heading home, but she gamely let us look around before she left. This is what we saw:

In a word — wowzah.

But maybe you're not wearing your toby+mary beth goggles?

Maybe this is more like what we saw...

Love at first sight!

we're in!

Okay, the much promised blog is up! Time to catch you up on what's what... Or at least what's what with us in our tiny little corner (okay, middle of the block, if you must) of the borough.

We closed on our little lady two tuesdays ago (July 14th) in one of the most Brooklynified events we've ever attended – except that it happened in Queens (at the fabled Bulova building, for those acquainted with an ersatz landmark). The closing really deserves its own post. And so does the three month ordeal leading up to it. But, as you know, the ancient greeks thought the best way to start a story was to start it after it already started... Plus I've been having a little – or even a lot – of trouble with the #$%&! javascript for this blog (we've basically agreed to disagree for the moment...), so we're already almost two weeks in.

So Voila! Here's what went down last week (so to speak...)

And here's how it happened:

No that's not me – I'm behind the camera. More about that and other things later...