It’s Saturday night, and I’ve decided to have another cup of coffee. If you’re thinking Coffee? At night? Surely you’re having Sanka. Perhaps you’re making Postum. No. Actual true coffee. I can drink the stuff until 9 and fall asleep at one, and that’s been the way of the world for a long time. I take out the metal basket for the K-cup, sighing, knowing that grounds will soon be everywhere and that too is the way of the world. I pound them out in the garbage. I rinse out the basket. I add the water and grounds, and push the button.

The Keurig K-Cup Mini Mate makes half a cup of lukewarm coffee.

This is a known issue, as they say, and means that there’s a bubble trapped in the water system requiring me to put it over my shoulder and burp it, or the needle has some grounds in its point. I bang it up and down to move the bubble along, hold it upside down to drain, then I clean out the needle with another needle. I dump out the grounds and wash the basket and add water and coffee and push the button.

The Keurig K-Cup Mini Mate makes half a cup of lukewarm coffee.

I was seized with a terrible rage. I unplugged the unit and put it in a grocery bag and went down to the trash chute and sent it down to its demise.

I felt better. Yes, it was an expense. But at least I bought it from the joint account, so technically, I’m only out $31. (It was on sale.) I got out the backup Keurig and made a cup, going through the same basket-banging and hosing of the sink and the like, thinking: these are made for disposable plastic cups that are sealed, no muss no fuss that’s the point, but I’m not paying $14 for 20 cups of bad plastic coffee. I’m done. I’m just DONE with these things. I’m done with muss and fuss and I am going back to drip, and the whole Hip New Place Bespoke Coffee Paradigm is over.

Now to find a good carafe-based coffee maker. I went to Target’s site, but it wasn’t loading. Errors. Okay, lost a sale, off to Amazon. I told myself I would take advantage of all my recent experience with buying things from Amazon, and would only buy something substantial, a quality item with a good name. Krups, right? There’s name that inspires trust. Don’t worry, we didn’t shave off a P after the war, completely different company. I’ve had good luck with Krups.

There was a smaller unit, five cups, for a reasonable price. To my surprise, almost 20% of the reviews were one-star. A lot of people complaining that Krups has gotten cheap. Bad coffee, shuts off too soon - goes cold after an hour. Really? Huh. Similar reviews on other Krups. Amazon decides to throw me some suggestions, and I have to laugh. A year ago I might have bit. Now I know.

		Look at that thing. I would have never bought it, because while it has a certain retro nostalgic appeal, there’s something about the word NOSTALGIA in plastic script that gives the game away. And you know it bites the wax tadpole. You know the reviews with either be five-star LOVE IT ADORE IT SO CUTE or one-star “sparked, smoked, caught fire, customer service no help, warranty period is five days” and sure enough.
		The copy is just brilliant.

I ended up with a Cuisinart. When I get new kitchen items now, they’re all Cuisinart. They’re solid. I furnished Fred Base One on the economy model - I was trying to dress a set for a play that hadn’t been written yet - but now I know that you absolutely cannot stint on anything that’s plugged in or has a handle that is connected to something else or moving parts or has to be assembled.

Oh the things with which we fill our mind to drive out the other things

Or compensate for the fact that there’s nothing there at all

I spent Saturday night printing out things to put in frames to hang on the wall. The bathroom, as noted before, was redone. I like it. The pictures will be a nice addition, except . . . I like the spare white walls. I do. I like just using the TV as an enormous picture frame for various images, and the moment I get everything in frames I know I’ll balk and want something else.

Thing is, we had perfect pictures at the old home. Simple and absolutely perfect for the room and the style. I never tired of them. The new owners believed likewise, so they bought them.

That’s right. My old house has the old furniture and the same pictures. It’s still there, with alterations of course, but it’s as if the place was so perfect the new inhabitants couldn’t conceive of a different arrangement of objects and images.

Saturday afternoon I hit the gym early and did extra treadmill, and was tired by two. Decided to take a nap ahead of schedule, because of course why not who cares no one to notice, go ahead. Birch settled into his little den in the closet, and I fell straight asleep. Woke with a start with the distinct impression that I had been . . . hugged. In the dream. A hand on my back pressing close. It was nice. It was a part of daily life, once. Even during the six months of hell. No more; hugs are done.

When I was fully awake I began the home improvement work, this being the weekend. I put up the mirror, completing the pointless entryway tableau. Then I assembled one of the olive trees. As readers of the Substack know, I have two. Figured I’d put one in the corner by the bedroom door. It did not work there. It looked like I’d posted a guard. If it had been real I’d have put it in front of the window, but I don’t want to block the view, and so it stood away from the window as if hiding out from some Stasi agent who might be looking up and taking notes. It went in the office, where it’s in a tight corner but brings some nice compression to the room.

I have never assembled a tree before. It was easy. The various limbs were numbered with stickers. We used to have actual plants in the old house, and she used to water them and spray them to keep the mites off, and I’m sure they somehow cleaned and filtered the atmosphere and generally lent life to the rooms. The pots were big and heavy and fit the decor, of course. Perhaps it’s fitting I have something in the office that’s not only dead but was never alive.

Today in the elevator I got down on Birch’s level and just gave him a hug and scritches and he nuzzled me and sighed.

Ah! Hamburger Saturday, though. It was delicious. I froze the second one instead of plating it for a lifelong helpmeet with a warm fresh bun, and there was a small divot for Birch as well. He got that after the walk, with his phenobarbital. The vet has recommended dropping the Keppra, so we’re off that.

He hasn’t had a seizure since we moved to Fred Base One.

He should be having a breakthrough once a month. He should be getting worse, if the brain tumor grows. He hasn’t.

And sometimes I wonder: what if it was all a reaction to the free-floating emotional maelstrom? She was stressed about getting the house ready for sale and winding up her career; I was stressed about the end of the marriage and being kicked out of my home. What if that gave him seizures?

No, it doesn’t work like that.

A million years ago we were in an emergency vet office in the dark of night waiting for the doc to come back with news, and then we took him home and he trotted to his bed as if nothing had happened, and we faced the stark fact of another common death added to our immediate future, and she said “I’m glad we’re going through this together” and she hugged me, a hand on my back.

I wonder if she’s reading this now. She didn’t before because she didn’t have time, and it “wasn’t something she was interested in. I wonder if she’s reading and she’s surprised at what it is. It’s always been this.

In keeping with our Monday tradition, which became a "tradition" for reasons I can't recall and probably don't matter, we continue with our Monday trademark. For this year we'll do 1936.

		From the Gristede Brothers, water name to sound as if it comes from a brook in a dale, I suppose.

I was surprised by this, but I'm not from New York.

Charles Gristede and his brother Diedrich came to the United States from Germany in 1888, found work in grocery stores, and in 1891 opened a tiny gaslit store at 42nd Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan. This site was then far uptown from the central shopping area, but close to housewives who walked or rode in private carriages to the store. A second store opened in Harlem—then a middle-class white neighborhood—in 1896. The business flourished and expanded.

That's one way of putting it.

1930!

Again, not a review, but a brief look at a bygone paradigm: DRUNK SWELLS.

The fellow on the left is Roland Young,, known for Topper movies - always dependable. Wry and mild.

The typical music room of a rich couple at the end of the boom:

Rich people decor includes a pointless array of cut glass:

There's philandering and upper-class shenanigans, and it's all leading up to this.

I had to upscale this a bit, since the copy's quite murky.

What a world!

There's much dancing, and here our fun begins.

Electric Man gets the party started:

But uh oh. UH OH

The dirigible is unmoored and toss'd in the heavens, throwing partygoers into the maelstrom. Note the brilliant escape mechanism:

You can see why DeMille had a reputation.

Don't worry, everyone's okay!

I

n fact we have comedy galore as everyone parachutes into unusual places.

By the way, that's this actress:

Lillian Roth. She's great. She's fun. Alas:

The sudden death of her fiancé in the early '30s drove Lillian over the brink. She found that liquor gave her a calming sensation, which led to a full-scale addiction. Marriages, one to renowned Municipal Court Justice Benjamin Shalleck, came and went at a steady pace. There would be six in all. Her career deteriorated as she spiraled further and further down into alcoholic delirium.

But she pulled herself out of it, made a comeback and wrote a book. Did it sell?

Brother, did it ever.

But wait! There's more! Matchbooks and the free Substack.

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