Archive for the ‘Home Life’ Category
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008
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| Above: Lulu bestows ardent face licks on ace contractor Roger "Butch" Molloy, one of the new best friends who’ve spent the last couple of months disassembling, then reassembling in different locations, the rooms of our humble abode. That’s plumber Mike Toniatti sitting and awaiting his turn on our sofa, which was returned to us from warehouse exile this weekend.
The renovation of the rest of our house almost finished now, with Evelyn’s room having been completed well ahead of the others so that she could return from Williamstown Commons to a bedroom built just for her.
We wish she could have enjoyed the room longer, but Eddie’s mom clearly loved occupying her bright new private quarters during the final few weeks of her life. She didn’t even complain about all the hammering and sawing that continued to go on just outside her bedroom door. (There’s something to be said for forswearing the use of hearing aids at critical points of one’s post-hospital recuperation.)
My attention now has largely turned, now that I’m finished cover art that I’ve been sweating out through thick and thin for the May issue of Commonwealth Club magazine (the member publication of the venerable public forum organization, Commonwealth Club of California), to finishing up the two talks I’m scheduled to give unnervingly soon—the first being at Penn State University (April 22) and the second being at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge (May 3), in whose Lit Graphic show some artwork from Stuck Rubber Baby (along with artwork by a lot of other graphic novelists) is still hanging. (See my earlier blog entry about that.)
If you’re going to be in either neighborhood on those days, do drop by. It’s so much more fun giving talks when someone’s in the audience!
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Posted in Home Life, Life & Art, Me, Me, Me! | 2 Comments »
Monday, March 24th, 2008
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| Evelyn left us this evening. She’s been very sick and it was time. We’re glad we have some really great smiles (see my previous blog entry) to remember her final days by.
She’ll be laid to rest next to Harold in Florida. Eddie and I will be flying to West Palm Beach tomorrow or Wednesday to prepare for her funeral on Thursday.
More news later.
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Posted in Family & Friends, Home Life | 12 Comments »
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008
Eddie’s mom has been back home for a couple of weeks now.
How’s she doing? Well, Evelyn’s got a lot more recovering to do in the wake of her recent hospitalization and subsequent stint in rehab, which can take a lot out of a 95-year-old.
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But she’s happy to be undertaking her recovery in the newly forged, bright blue bedroom and bath that was waiting when she walked in the door. And we’ve been fortunate enough to secure the tender and capable services of Deborah Rock of Deborah’s Home Care, who takes care of Ev’s needs overnight while Eddie and I grab the sleep we need.
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Yesterday Evelyn got a courtesy call from Luna Bemis and her mom Jessica, who along with Luna’s dad Andrew (who’s a fellow blogger; by the way; check out his ongoing commentary on movie matters at Cinevistaramascope) have been renting our upstairs apartment since last fall.
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While Luna was sublimely gregarious as a three-month-old when the Bemises moved in last fall, she’s been experimenting lately with a new, shy persona. As you can see, having a green stuffed toy close at hand in which to bury your face when a camera gets whipped out comes in handy under such circumstances. (Or maybe she’s just playing peek-a-boo with Lulu.)
In the privacy of her home, however, Luna is less camera-shy. In fact, she was happy to show off her excellent taste in literature for her mom’s camera a few weeks ago.
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And contrary to any suspicions you may be entertaining, Jessica insists that the picture was candid, not posed, and that Luna copped that particular book off a nearby coffee table strictly of her own volition!
Once she’s old enough to blurb instead of burble, I’ll know who to turn to for my books’ back-cover endorsements.
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Posted in Family & Friends, Home Life | 1 Comment »
Monday, February 25th, 2008
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See Lulu, watching warily three weeks ago…
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…as Eddie signs a contract authorizing ace contractor Roger "Butch" Malloy (click here to inquire about Butch’s services) to spend a few weeks ripping our house to shreds and putting it back together again with the rooms and walls rearranged.
At the end of it all lies a new bedroom and bath designed especially for Eddie’s mom Evelyn.
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| These will replace what has heretofore been our living room, on whose sofa Lulu is seen relaxing in the photo below, which was taken shortly before the destruction began. |
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Below: Same room, same corner, a few days later. Lulu’s sofa is now across town in storage, the carpet in a dumpster.
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Below: Same room, lotsa new lumber now. The walls of the new bathroom and closet are beginning to shape.
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Below: Although the heaviest of the recontruction slated for elsewhere in the house still lies ahead, it’s not too soon for carpenter Billy Langlois to bring the wall down between our dining room and what has heretofore been my workspace.
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Below: Lulu explores the suddenly airy space where my iMac, printer, scanner, work table, cabinet, three filing cabinets, four flat files, and numberous CD-racks have been residing for the last four years.
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Meanwhile, electricians Jim Boland and Brian Therrien are engaged in converting Evelyn’s former bedroom into what will soon be my new, relocated studio — around a dozen feet west of the old one.
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Below: And here I am moving my stuff into my new professional quarters. Out of camera range are about thirty boxes of books, comics, and video tapes stacked from floor to ceiling awaiting new closet space now under construction. The door to my new workspace will be installed later, once enough boxes have been cleared away to allow one to open and close.
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Below: Then there’s what for lack of a better term we call the "middle room," which is currently filled to the brim with furniture, books, and other items that have been displaced from the former living room as well as the eastern portion of this very room itself.
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And guess what? Soon everything you see in photo above must be cleared out to make the final stages of renovation possible. Where will it all go? Where will we eat? Where will we watch TV?
Uh… We’re working on that.
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For now, though, I can keep up with the Presidential campaigns without knocking anything over, as long as I don’t make any sudden movements.
Oops! What’s that crunching noise I’m hearing behind me even as I write this?
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Why, it’s yet another wall meeting its maker (or un-maker) at the hands of Billy Langlois!
And how is Evelyn faring during all this craziness? She has taken up temporary residence at nearby Williamstown Commons Rehab Center after a suspiciously convenient (and happily brief) hospitalization a couple of weeks ago. Once she has regained her strength she is (to put it mildly) eager to move into her newly created bedroom, where in the best possible scenario she will be able to shut her door, remove her hearing aids in order to obliterate all sounds of hammering and sawing, and pretend that everything is normal in the rest of the house until Eddie and I finally peek in to tell her that she can now make her way to the kitchen without tripping over a sawhorse.
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Posted in Home Life, Yesterday & Today | 3 Comments »
Thursday, January 24th, 2008
| Regular readers of this blog know that for a while we’ve had Eddie’s 94-year-old mother Evelyn living here with us.
It’s been an adventure, but those days are over now.
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| As of today, we have Eddie’s 95-year-old mother Evelyn living with us.
That’s finef-’n-ninetzik in Yiddish, according to Evelyn.
P.S. I just noticed that our haunting and inspiring woodcut print of Frederick Douglass is peering over Eddie’s shoulder in one of the photographs above. That’s the work of our longtime friend Ann Grifalconi, the Caldecott Award-winning children’s book author and illustrator.
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Posted in Family & Friends, Home Life | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, January 15th, 2008
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Above: "Cereal Lady" and Bazooka Joe,
two of this month’s newsletter offerings
I managed to put together Cruse Art Newsletter on time this week. Here’s me patting myself on the back for that.
Meanwhile Eddie and I are bracing ourselves for chaos as architectural plans are finalized for a home renovation project that’s going to turn our home life upside-down very soon.
See the room in the two photos below? That somewhat disorderly and yet homey living room containing a pleasant little old lady (that would be Evelyn, Eddie’s mom) and a serenely distracted dog (that would be Lulu the dalmatian) in full relaxation mode? Memorize what you see, because very soon this room in its present configuration will be history. Gone! Replaced!
Walls throughout our house will be ripped down; our entire configuration of rooms will be rearranged. Life in the Cruse-Sedarbaum dwelling will never be the same.
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| Instead, if all goes well, our home as reconstructed will be better suited for the 94-year-old woman who has recently become Eddie’s and my roommate. Our house as presently put together has been fine for Eddie and me during the three-and-a-half years we’ve lived in it, but what is safe and comfortable for us isn’t automatically so for Evelyn.
Eddie and I can get along quite easily without a bathroom that has an accessible shower, one that’s not a long walk through three dark rooms from where we sleep, and one that doesn’t include an illogical step downward at its entryway that is tailor-made to throw elderly folks with unsteady balance into a potentially bone-fracturing spill.
No, Evelyn’s needs are special, and we believe that the reconstituted house that we’ll theoretically end up with will make better sense for all concerned. We’re looking forward to living in it.
We are not looking forward to the weeks of disarray, dislocation, and debris-filled construction-work hell we’ll have to go through to get to it.
But hey! What’s life without a soupçon of gut-wrenching dread in it to keep us on our toes?
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Posted in Family & Friends, Home Life, Life & Art | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2008
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It’s a new year coming in, folks!
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Have a good one.
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Posted in Home Life | 3 Comments »
