Coffee crisis

Household appliances and devices with any kind of mechanically or electrically driven moving parts generally have a limited lifespan. I have heard again and again that they are designed that way. When they start malfunctioning, unexpected things often happen, which can usually be worked around or dealt with in creative ways or just – gracefully or not – accepted.

No coffee in the morning is not one of those things.

Ever since our young coffeehouse literatus started drinking coffee at home and not just in cafes, the coffee issue has become a veritable minefield of potential conflicts. Of course, I can't complain too much, because Christopher gets up first every single morning and makes coffee and sets the table for breakfast for everyone before he goes to take a shower, and he done this every single morning (except when he is sick, naturally) since he was in primary school. This is a positively heroic feat. At some point, however, we had some difficulty convincing him that the jar of coffee beans does not magically refill itself, he has to tell us when we start running low on coffee. And he has to tell us that before breakfast the next morning and especially before the shops close in the evening before breakfast the next morning.

The next point of conflict was when he started making coffee for himself and his friends in the afternoon or evening, but they each only drank one cup and left half a pot of coffee to go cold and stale. Obviously we don't buy just any coffee, we buy whole coffee beans from the nearby health food store which stocks "fair trade" coffee from farmers' collectives in Latin America at "solidarity prices". Leaving half a pot of coffee to be poured away is not acceptable behavior.

We tried to explain to Christopher that he could actually make only half a pot of coffee with the coffee machine by putting in half the normal amount of water and half the normal amount of coffee (i.e. one coffee grinder cup instead of two – our current coffee grinder was not the most fortunate choice of available models). He didn't mind putting in half the amount of water, but he vehemently insisted that putting in half the amount of coffee made no sense. His argument for why this made no sense was not intelligible enough to me to be reproduced here.

Next option: we have an espresso/cappucino machine, which is slightly over-sized for what it actually does and how little it is used, but it is right there on the kitchen counter, because it is too big to be put anywhere else. Following a rather lengthy and slightly heated discussion about how Christopher thought the espresso machine should work and how it actually does work – it stopped working. The little red and yellow lights still blink importantly, it still makes convincing espresso machine noises, but it is only pretending to heat the water for making espresso. The water no longer gets hot. Having finally accepted that this is not, in fact, Christopher's fault, I realize that this is not really a satisfactory solution either.

The other day Christopher was making coffee – a whole pot again – to drink with a friend on the balcony, but when the electricity suddenly short-circuited I discovered that the coffee was all over the kitchen counter so that the machine's electrical cord was lying in a puddle of it. It soon became apparent that my explosion of wrath at that point was also misdirected: this was not Christopher's fault either. It turns out that the lid is somehow blocked, and none of my efforts to unblock it have been successful yet. Since this is an elegant modern model (Christopher picked it out at the time), where the filter hooks into the lid so that the coffe stays hot and it doesn't drip when you remove the pot, this is rapidly becoming a problem.

At 6:00 am this morning Christopher was defeated by the malfunctioning coffee machine. When I got up half an hour later, it took me some time to grasp what was missing (the smell of coffee), but I eventually managed to get the hot water into the filter so that coffee dripped out the other end into the pot. When Christopher came out of the shower, he said we need to buy a new coffee machine. That is not a prospect that I can cope with well under the best of circumstances, but facing an income-less summer now, I immediately rejected the idea and explained to him that we will just make coffee with an old filter that fits over a coffee pot, where you just have to keep pouring boiling water over it. Christopher found this idea completely ludicrous and asked why anyone would do that.

Why would anyone do that? What kind of a question is that? My son is obviously lacking an essential survival skill, and it is not even that hard or in any way unpleasant. As soon as I can locate one of the old filters to fit over one of the old coffee pots (of which there is no scarcity in our household), we will start practicing. I just hope Christopher can cope with that kind of meditative activity at six o'clock every morning.

However, the coffee machine in the office is fine, and Peter will be in Berkeley next week, so I can drink all the coffee there every morning without feeling guilty or having to listen to complaints about it.

Sixteen years - Happy Birthday Christopher!

This morning I woke up remembering how happy I was waking up sixteen years ago today. I had been in pain for months on end, because of the ruptured tubal pregnancy before, and it seemed an absolute miracle that all of that pain could have magically turned into this whole friendly little person.

Christopher was covered in dark hair when he was born – on his head, on his back, on the edges of his ears – but this crazy guy was born friendly. He was also born at the right time of the year to lead a charmed life: the end of May, when the weather turns sunny and warm and reassuring, people are shedding their winter clothes and becoming more open and relaxed, there is a whole series of public holidays providing a happy anticipation of summer holidays to come – and life is beautiful and good everywhere you look.

We took Christopher with us everywhere during the first two years of his life. Before he was a year old, he had been to London, Paris, Venice and many places in between. His teddy bear, that is still with him, joined him in Paris on his first trip there when he was only a few months old. And everywhere we took him, people welcomed him, were friendly, interested and kind – and Christopher responded the same way. That is the person he has always been.

Yesterday Jean sent a lovely column about living with teenagers, with which I completely agree: "Then, thank God, we grew up"

If we lived in the US, Christopher would be old enough to drive now. Here in Austria he is old enough to drink (legally). Sixteen seems like such an important landmark, and as quickly as these sixteen years have passed, I have the feeling now that I must treasure every moment of the next few years before he really is grown up and his life separates even more from ours. But at the same time, I feel very privileged to have shared his life so far.

Now father and son want to finish celebrating this day by drinking a glass of Guiness together, and they have generously invited me to come along.

Setting a date

After my visit to the eye doctor on Tuesday, I called the hospital where I had the operation two years ago, the same one where Christopher has spent so much time, but first they said they couldn't give me an appointment for the preliminary examination until mid-September, operation three weeks later. I was in shock then, because I couldn't imagine struggling on like this all summer and then not being able to work until mid-November.
Then Moni checked, because she works at the same hospital as a midwife, and they agreed to give me an appointment for the preliminary examination in mid-July, operation three weeks later. Still some time to wait, but a definite improvement.
The latest news is that I could go to a hospital in another town, where an old friend is now the head of the eye department at the hospital there, and I can have an appointment with him to do the pre-operation examination and the operation at the same time - within two weeks.
Two weeks is soon. Now I am about to panic.

My dim view of things

Even though I threw a fit on the phone the other day to convince my eye doctor's assistant to squeeze me in as soon as possible, rather than waiting another week for the appointment I made some time ago, somehow I was still hoping that the eye doctor would just tell me to stop being so hysterical and give me a new prescription for my glasses.
That didn't happen.
He did demonstrate to me that my current glasses don't provide the right correction – neither the "general purpose" glasses nor the "computer glasses" – for my right eye, where I had the cataract operation two years ago. This explains why my right eye is permanently strained. Even though it is difficult, however, at least I can still read with my right eye. With my left eye I can barely distinguish black squiggles that might be letters. The only way to correct that is with another cataract operation.
The eye doctor cheerfully assured me that this is not a bad thing, since the amount of correction needed can be better balanced with this second operation, which should result in a much more satisfactory improvement of my vision. In other words, eventually I should have an altogether brighter outlook on life. Eventually.
Today things look pretty dim.

No happy end for Romeo and Juliet

On normal school days, mornings don't work at our house unless the radio is on. Without the familiar rhythm of alternating news headlines and music, we all go into a sleepy daze and forget to keep moving. On good days, the music program after the headlines at 6:30 plays Tchaikovsky when Christopher finally comes out of the shower, and Christopher comes to life and becomes happy and relatively alert. No one knows why Tchaiskovsky has this effect on Christopher, but it always works. Bach, Hayden, Chopin and Beethoven are also good omens first thing in the morning, but Tchaikovsky definitely works best for Christopher.

One morning a few weeks ago, the composer of the morning was Prokofiev – and Patrick was suddenly positively electrified. For several days, Prokofiev was all he listened to. Permanently. He even managed to find the old "Peter and the Wolf" CD that the boys listened to when they were little and listened attentively and intensely to that again. Patrick hears a strong similarity between Prokofiev and Danny Elfman, his favorite film music composer, and he even discovered on the Internet that Prokofiev died only shortly before Danny Elfman was born, which might be regarded by some as a significant coincidence. When Peter remembered that the local state theater is currently running a production of Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet" ballet, obviously we all had to go to the theater to see it.

We had gone to see a very modern, slightly abbreviated but very intense version of Romeo and Juliet a few months ago at a small theater. As much as we were all caught up in it, when it was over and the lights came on, the first words out of Patrick's mouth were, "Why can't somebody do a version of Romeo and Juliet with a happy end?"

The production last night was beautiful. Despite the ugliness of this theater and our less than satisfactory seats, we all enjoyed the stage set, the lighting, the costumes, the dancing – and most of all the music. Then at the end, when Juliet wakes up in the crypt in this version, there is a brief moment of happiness before the poison Romeo has just swallowed takes effect. Suddenly I heard Patrick whisper next to me, "Maybe the ballet version has a happy end." It wasn't really even wishful thinking, since he naturally knew perfectly well how the story ends.

The same story has been told over and over and over again in countless variations for over four hundred years, and every time the story is told, people like Patrick start hoping against all odds that just this once it might all work out well. But it never does. There is still no happy end in sight for Romeo and Juliet.

Freedom on two wheels

Christopher has had a cold all week. Although he has required an alarming quantity of paper handkerchiefs and tends to appear less than normally intelligent when he is obviously not getting enough oxygen to the brain, it is just a cold and can be dealt with. In part, this means that his mother needs to tell him to wear shoes and socks instead of sandals, for example, but this is only mildly annoying, not a major crisis.

Having had this cold all week, at shortly before seven this evening Christopher set out to ride his bike to a nearby lake, where a group he knows is to play a gig at a BMX meeting. By the time he must have been about half way to the lake, the storm that has been looming all day finally broke. Since he has not returned, it is to be assumed that he is now happily sitting, soaking wet, in the muddy grass listening to the music with his friends. He might be dancing, but it is still a safe bet that he is soaking wet. He promised me that he would be home by one in the morning at the latest. The rain shows no indication of stopping any time before then.

Why is this necessary? Why did his irresponsible parents not forbid him to set out for the lake on his bicycle when he has had a cold all week and a storm was obviously coming?

Because he is almost sixteen, it is almost summer, he finally passed a test at school last week for the first time this school year (a 3 on his math test!) – and it is a new bike that he just got today.

His last bicycle was stolen almost two years ago. It was really his own fault, in a way, as much as anyone can ever be blamed for becoming a victim of crime. He rode his bike over to the Danube park to meet a friend, even though I told him not to, because he would not be able to keep an eye on it. However, the friend happens to be a very intelligent, interesting, warm-hearted, and also very pretty girl, who wanted to talk because she had just broken up with her boyfriend. That is a hard choice for anyone to make: be sensible and boring and walk to the park, or ride over looking cool on a good bike. "Sensible" is an attribute rarely associated with Christopher. This story did not have a happy end. He lost his house key, his bike got stolen, and he was thoroughly convinced that he will never find a girlfriend, because he is nothing but a "shoulder to cry on".

Last summer we never got around to doing anything about a replacement for his bicycle, because he was never out of the hospital long enough to need one. Although we had a long beautiful autumn, perfect for riding bicycles, he wouldn't have been strong enough to ride one then. Today his grandparents took him out to pick out a new bicycle for his birthday, and he proudly rode it home from their house, thoroughly enjoying it, coming in looking alive and alert and happy.

He is almost sixteen, it is almost summer, he passed his math test last week, and at long last he has freedom on two wheels at his disposal again.
Neither a cold nor a rain storm can be that important.

Patrick's pet chair

After such a long winter with so much snow, spring finally came a few weeks ago, bringing sunshine and warmth. So what do teenage boys do, when it is sunny and warm outside? Patrick and his friend Vedad started spending most afternoons playing pingpong in the cold dark cellar.

In the cellar one day, however, they found a miniature chair, which Patrick decided to adopt. Now Patrick and Vedad go walking around the neighborhood with the chair and a camera taking pictures of the chair (mostly with Vedad, occasionally with Patrick) in various places. It is a slightly peculiar activity, perhaps, but I could think of worse things for them to be doing.

Yesterday at lunch Patrick announced that he has decided to call the chair Francis, and today he put some of his pictures on line here

Brotherly bickering and general fluffiness

When the boys were little, sometimes they would be sitting peacefully across the table from one another, and then suddenly the mood would change and one would say challengingly to the other, "You're fluffy!" or something equally nonsensical. A full-scale battle would then erupt within the blink of an eye. I realized then that seeking to maintain total domestic peace and harmony was simply not an option. Sometimes their brotherly communication patterns appear to require phases of aggressiveness, just as they require unbearable silliness at other times. Then I remember a scene one Christmas (at Pat's house?), when Dad and Joe were sent out to the garage to put pegs in a pole to hang up the stockings. When they didn't return, I went out to see what was going on and found them sitting there at either end of this ridiculous pole arguing and bickering and complaining and calling each other names like a pair of kindergarten kids. Two elderly, respectable, grey-haired gentlement behaving exactly like my sons calling each other "fluffy". When I think about it, I can actually recall quite a number of scenes like that between Dad and Joe and even Uncle Pat, I think. That reinforces my suspicion that relationships between brothers who are close in age and emotionally close, but different in character, engender communications patterns that are not necessarily intelligible to anyone outside this little "brother world".

At the moment there seems to be a considerable amount of fluffiness at our house.

Patrick was not happy about my recent blog post crediting Christopher with picking up well before I came home from a party. He wants a public apology, because he says he was the one that took care of everything. I was all set to write an apology, but then I mentioned it to Christopher, who hotly insisted that he was, in fact, the one who picked up, while Patrick, he claims, just sat on the couch watching him and complaining about what Christopher's friends had been doing that evening. Then the story somehow became a bit complicated, as Christopher kept trying to deflect my attention from Patrick's complaints, since I was quite interested in hearing more details, but without straying from his account of Patrick "just sitting on the couch and comp..." When questioned about details, Patrick was not at all forthcoming either, but he stuck to his account that he had done all the tidying, so that I was beginning to seriously wonder what had really been going on that so much tidying was required.

In the end, it sounded as though The Cat in the Hat must have been here, rather than an indeterminate number of teenage boys.

But on the whole, it seems to make no difference whether it's a question of washing dishes, taking care of laundry, homework, visitors, why Christopher always needs to hug someone or how sarcastic Patrick is, or who has the salt at the table: somebody always seems to be fluffy these days.

Fortunately I know this doesn't last forever, even if it will probably go on for the rest of their lives.

Backs from Japan

When Peter came home from Japan, he brought these beautiful T-shirts for all of us. Christopher's says "Samurai", mine says "Ocean", Peter's says "Soul", Patrick's says "God".
Monami, if you are reading this, a special thank you from all of us (and your sweets were wonderful too).