We were airborne by the time I made it to the New York Times Book Review and found my mood elevated even higher by my discovery that the Times had seen fit that very Sunday to give Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home its due.

And that was just for starters. Eight days after Sean Wilsey’s aforementioned piece in the Book Review ("a pioneering work…" said Wilsey) there came a second review of Alison’s "Family Tragicomic," this one written by George Gene Gustines ("painfully honest and richly detailed in words and images…") for one of the same paper’s Books of the Times columns.

If you read my March 13 blog entry you already know that I’m firmly in the "Hooray for Alison" camp, and — given the heightened mainstream awareness of graphic novels that has taken place during the eleven years since the Times oh-so-cruelly ignored Stuck Rubber Baby (brief pause for envious teeth-grinding on my part) — I’m not surprised in the least by the widespread accolades garnered by Alison’s book. If any comics artist has even been overdue for general acclaim, it’s the talented Ms. Bechdel.

I would be embarrassed, of course, to own up to even a miniscule degree of professional envy if Alison didn’t admit to similar feelings toward herself. In a profile of Alison written by Hillary Chute in this week’s Village Voice the creator of Dykes To Watch Out For muses, "It’s weird because I’ve been publishing books for over 20 years [and] nothing has ever gotten attention like this. So, in an odd way, I feel envious of my own self. It’s like, how come nobody paid any attention to me before? Is my comic strip worse than I thought? Or is this book better than I thought?"

Yesterday I heard from my French pal (and Wendel translator) François Peneaud, instigator of the Gay Comics List, who tells me that Alison’s book is gearing up to make waves on his side of the Atlantic as well. "I’ve just learned that Fun Home will soon be published in France," he tells me, "and that it will be serialized this summer in a left-wing newspaper, Libération. Which is absolutely great, because a lot of people who don’t read bandes dessinées [That’s French for comics — H.C.] will see it."

François has wasted no time in composing his own online review of Fun Home, by the way, a review capped off with a link to the fascinating video of Alison’s working methods that is currently housed on the book’s promo page at Houghton Mifflin’s web site.

It’s a choice look at the artist at work in her lair. And while I’m fascinated to learn that some of Alison’s secret drawing tricks are almost as peculiar as mine, my favorite moment is a moment of deft synchronicity between Alison and her cat, who clearly has learned from experience how to safely step off of a desk’s surface into what would be, absent Alison’s perfect timing, thin air. You’ll see what I mean if you watch the video.

Our pets come to know us so well. And we them.

Engineered as it is to accommodate consensual iChat conversers and occasional curious infants, Photo Booth cannot cope well with a recalcitrant canine who has no intention of relaxing for a portrait session while being hauled into view against her will.

But as of this week Eddie and I have at last secured an appropriate replacement camera (a Canon PowerShot A540, for the buffs among you) with which to document Lulu’s soulfulness at will.

Whew.

We have actually been a couple for more than 27 years, of course. But 2004 is the year that’s inked on our marriage license, which means that, for people of a certain institution-cherishing mindset, two years ago is when our couplehood really got rolling.

Still, Eddie and I are the greenest of newlyweds compared to Hesh and Ev Sedarbaum, the folks shown in the photo below, who this weekend will celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary down in Florida.

Hesh was preparing to turn 95 that very weekend and Ev was 91. At those advanced ages they could have been forgiven for simply afixing themselves to the nearest Floridian rocking chairs and sending a card. But instead they made the trip. Without thinking twice. Our marriage was an important family occasion.

As spring chickens each edging into his sixth decade of life, neither Eddie nor I can claim to be "returning the favor" by heading to West Palm Beach to help the old folks party in honor of their seventy years of couplehood. The rigors of our trip won’t compare with the rigors of theirs. Still, we will be away from home for a few days, and I figure I should mention it to you so you’ll know why this blog has gone silent.

I can’t resist noting that — by virtue of Ev and Hesh’s heterosexuality — they were not for even an instant transformed into unmarried singles when they crossed state lines two years ago to attend their son’s wedding. Eddie and I, on the other hand, will stop being married while we are down south.

Our marriage vows notwithstanding, we will involuntarily become "single" again — although we will certainly not have divorced and will be no less devoted to each other while in the Sunshine State than we are here in Massachusetts.

As paradoxes go, it would be nice if the foregoing were a stranger one. But our weekend of quiet marital whiplash is commonplace for lesbian and gay married Bay Staters. While in Florida Eddie and I will simply be experiencing the everyday reality of life as it’s lived by second-class citizens in today’s America.

Eastern Massachusetts accommodated them by demonstrating how we do torrential rains and dangerous flooding on this end of the continent.

After boating by automobile through Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire, and other points northeast, they paddled toward Eddie’s and my neck of the mountains.

So, being old friends of mine, they chose the Boston Seafood Restaurant here in North Adams as their source for the fried clam strips their taste buds had been yearning for. (Eddie took the snapshot above, as you may have suspected.)

A good time was had by all. And that’s todays news from Lake Northadamsbegone. Now back to the freelance job that’s bedeviling my Sunday morning.

So with life at the Cruse-Sedarbaum household returning to normal now, what’s on my plate today?

Well, as is all too typical in the freelancer’s life, I’ve got an overflowing platter at the moment after months of slim pickings.

(1) In an hour or so I’ll be on the phone with an editor in my hometown of Birmingham about a one-shot educational comic strip I’ll be doing for a public health magazine down there. I’ll share details once the project congeals.

(2) Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be meeting with marketing folks from a prominent corporation for whom it looks like I’ll be doing a series of webcomics showcasing the excellent attributes of the company’s products. Strictly commercial, this endeavor, but it could be fun and it should pay better than my usual fare. Once again, it’s too early in the process to talk specifics, but my fingers are crossed that this will permit Eddie and me to finally get the crumbling cement steps in front of our house repaired.

(3) Then there’s the two-page comic strip I’m working on for the first issue of the North County Perp. It will not be pleasing to George W. Bush (as if he cares what some two-bit fringe cartoonist in the Berkshire hills thinks about his presidency).

And of course, the lawn needs mowing again.

Nina stopped being unknown to me when I met her at the 1989 edition of Comic-Con International in San Diego. I quickly learned that she is among the funniest cartoonists around, male or female. Just root around in some out-of-print bookstore bins until you find Nina’s Adventures, the Pentshack Press collection of the comic strips she was knocking out back when she was content to let her drawings sit in unmoving, hilarious grandeur on pieces of paper.You’ll be rewarded for your industry. (There are some online samples of Nina’s old strip here.)

Nina switched her sights to animation a few years ago and has already created some short-form Flash masterworks. Now I’m on the edge of my seat waiting to see Sita Sings The Blues, the full-length labor of love she is slowly creating bit by bit in her Brooklyn apartment.

It’s still years from completion I know, but the teaser clips viewable on her web site give a glimpse of the magic to come.

Now I see that she’s auditioning voice actors for Sita. That makes the project seem yet one more step closer to reality. She needs investors to help her move forward on the movie, though, so if you’re rich, run put some of your smart money on Paley. (And if you’ve got any left over, I could use a few grand myself.)

And speaking of my own petty needs, I know that some cynics among you may suspect that I’m raving about Nina today only because she wrote glowingly about Stuck Rubber Baby in the Nina’s December 29 entry of her blog. Hey, Nina’s and my mutual admiration society goes way back and transcends the blogophere by light years. Besides, I can’t help it if we both have discerning taste!

…So, we’re sitting there (sez Grady via email this week) and naturally the avalanche of "Brokeback Mountain" jokes came out. Somewhere in the rattle of the conversation, I heard something about [Birmingham’s iron ore-rich] Red Mountain.

So, I said, "Well, it’s really good that they didn’t set the movie on Red Mountain, because if the Christians heard that it was about a homosexual relationship between miners, they’d really blow a stink."

Well, the conversation didn’t exactly snap into silence; it rather dribbled rapidly there. The pause grew long, I smiled and looked back at my work.

It took at least two more seconds, before someone said, "I got it!" At last, it got a good laugh.

But the fun part for me was waiting for them to figure it out.