Mommy and Daddy Are Home From, Um, Work!

The two hard-working Nuyoricans came home from San Juan yesterday. When they texted that their plane had landed and that they were heading for the LIRR to grab the train to Brooklyn, Isabella took her chair and set it outside to wait at the fence, after she and Bobo got their sign ready.




During the day, Duck and Plot walked around NotThatClinton Hill, checking out the beautiful old homes on the Brooklotniks' presumptive new block. Brooklyn is gentrifying rapidly from the East River, which is to say the first communities have hipsterfied first. Williamsburg, on the water, is like the Hollywood Hills now, if the Hollywood Hills had Hasidic housing projects, and if Williamsburg had mansions instead of renovated and idiotically-priced ex-tenements.

Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill and Fort Greene, the next communities inland, have followed. But it's somewhat earlier in the process for NotThatClinton Hill, so the Historic District is still filled with the original buildings and probably the same tenants who have lived there for half a century. These houses below are right next door to what will perhaps be the Brooklotniks' new apartment building.





Walk further East, towards Bedford Stuyvesant or Crown Heights and it starts to look a little like parts of Oakland, or E-Park in the old days, which is to say there is more industry, or buildings that used to house industry, with a few smokestacks on the horizon, some of which actually have smoke coming out of them instead of being used as an architectural feature. The brownstones are a little narrower, and maybe a little dingier, but obviously and inevitably they are all poised and waiting for the urban homesteaders who come before the gentrifiers and hipsters. One of the buildings Plot and Duck passed on their walk East yesterday was The Graham Home for Old Ladies.



At some point during the last century it became a brothel and remained one all the way until the 1980s, which is a thought for you to consider, if your idea of an old ladies' home is bingo and quilting.



Isabella was very excited to see her Mommy and Daddy come home, but perhaps less excited to see that Papa and Bobo haven't had their deflating tubes activated so they could be stacked in the closet and stored for next time. But this is temporary. As Ducknik says, Belly is so extraordinarily verbal that older folks tend to forget she is only two and a half and that sometimes her emotions lead her to say things that she doesn't mean, but that just came to her busy little brain.

Plot and Duck have loved every square second of being surrogate Big People and can't wait to do it again. As hard as being a parent is, that's how easy it is to be a grandparent. And it's not because of the spoiling, which you don't do any more than you did to your own kids, but because there is no emotional baggage of discipline attached, which is to say the grands have been here before. We know it doesn't matter if she doesn't eat what's on her plate today, because she'll make up for it tomorrow. Parents can't see as clearly, because they're still relatively new at the game.

And it's also obvious that The Great Designer made cats and children small because if they were bigger their parents wouldn't have a chance.

It has been thunder-storming like crazy since the middle of last night, so The Great 5Head called a car from the local car service to take her and Belly to Tiny Steps Day Care today. The car service is out on Fifth Avenue -- a small building where the same small army of Puerto Rican guys stand around all day drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and making jokes in Puerto Rican, which is probably Spanish but you couldn't prove it by Plotnik.

Today Plot and Duck will head into Manhattan for the first time since they've been East. They may hook up with PD at the end of the work day and then P and D are having dinner tonight with their friends Linda and Ron on the Upper East Side. It is wet and dreary outside now, though, so for awhile the forecast calls for drinking coffee and reading the Times.