Holly Northrop Blog

The reason my surgery has been moved to Friday is because of one person. One doctor, my Endocrinologist, whom I tried for three weeks to get a hold of but he never returned my calls. Finally, my M.D. got in touch with him a week and a half ago. He said that my medications were fine and that he didn't need to see me and good luck with the surgery. THE DAY BEFORE MY SURGERY, that fucker call the hospital saying that my surgery needed to me postponed because he wanted me on yet another drug.

From then on, shit hit the fan and at one point, I was on a 4-way conference call with Martha, my M.D. and the surgeon. My M.D., who rocks so hard, negotiated with the hospital for me to have the surgery on Friday as long as I take these bright red pills that not only fuck me up like crazy, (they are tranquilizers) but also have the unfortunate side effect of plugging my sinuses up like cement.

I have fired my Endocrinologist and I am actually considering filing a complaint against him.

Sheri is here until Sunday, Jasmine has the entire week off and I am too wasted do anything. So now, Friday is the day. Yeah, right.

RAMBLE ON HOME
Okay, here is the deal. I am supposed to have surgery this Wednesday at 10am. We shall see. My doctors have increased my medicine again to the point where I am now a walking zombie. It is a little tough to do anything and that includes staying awake.

Going to work last Friday, after spending hours at the hospital, was a HUGE mistake. A mistake that I fully did not appreciate until it was way too late. I was only at The Voice for three hours and that was three hours too many. I was spent before I got there and only kept walking down the street towards the building because I had to go to the bathroom. I have a lithium shuffle in my walk now and crossing a street is down right dangerous. Hmm, the idea is that I am going to work on Monday but then I'll be off the rest of this week and then the next. I just don't have the days that I need, to take the proper amount of time off. Fucked up isn't it? I wasted all that time in February for nothing.

Energy comes in spurts with no indication of duration. Saturday, Martha helped me shoot the West Village for The Voice. We did it early and it all worked pretty well until a headache took over and my right eye kept going in and out of focus. So we called it a day and when I finally got home, I slept for three hours. Sunday, I didn't get out of bed until almost 4:00. I like to lie around just as much as the next lazy fucker but even I know how ridiculous all of this is.

Last week was all the doctor prep work: blood, urine, EKG, psychological work up (shocker, I passed), etc., and while the ramp-up is quite impressive, I am hesitant to get on board with the program. I just don't trust that it will happen. The hospital is pleasant and everyone is all about the operation. I am a special thing so it is all very "watched". The good news is that I am to take Valium from now until the minute they knock me out with anesthesia. That works for me.

Karen, the bug-eyed women who is the Head of Anesthesia at the hospital, went into graphic detail about what all is going to happen to me and from the sound of it; I am going to be completely violated. I will have a central line, a catheter and a breathing tube. My heart, lungs and brain will be continuously monitored by state-of-the-art equipment. My blood pressure will remain the constant topic of conversation in the operating room. Afterwards, Martha and Jazz can come to Intensive Care to look at me and try not to flip out, (good luck with that) but hopefully, I won't be in there too long. If the doctors fuck up and there is a problem, I'll be in there for a while. Yet, if it goes well, I'll be in a shared room, lying on my right side, trying not to dry heave and white knuckling my self-inducing morphine drip. Hopefully, by dinnertime, someone will give me a Jell-O cup to lick.

I have a few concerns. Well, I have about a zillion really, but one of the big ones is that, while they may take my left adrenal out, that still might not fix the problem. I might have another pheochromocytoma somewhere else. I could wake up from surgery and still have all these fucked up symptoms. I have been sick for almost two (2) years; I do not even remember what I am supposed to feel like. The last time I felt normal was when I was smoking and that cannot be right. Or maybe it is. Maybe I am just one big hunk of white trash and I am supposed to smoke two packs of Marlboro a day, weigh 235 pounds and drink a fifth of whiskey every two days. Maybe, by fucking with that winning formula four years ago, I altered the core of my Ohio raised DNA.

Of course, the other big worry is that they just might kill me on Wednesday. A valid concern, but a highly unlikely outcome. My freakazoid M.D. did the risk factor and I am at a zero (0) for something bad to happen. But, that chart she used didn't have my disease on it because it is so rare. (In the general population, 0.001 - 0.01%, I think I have better odds winning Mega-Millions.) Yes, yes, I know, zero (0), but it still does not make the 'kick the bucket' idea leave my troubled mind. Then there is the fear that it will be called off again because of, well, God only knows what but I am sure it would involve another scan.

Jasmine's friend Patrick arrived on time Thursday night despite oversleeping and missing his first bus out of the tiny PA college town he was stuck in for the summer. He managed to bum a ride to the next town over, where he was able to make his connecting bus. There was panic and tension in the air via Jasmine's cell phone Thursday morning, but she remained the calm, levelheaded one. I know, go figure, right? I must say it was impressive to watch. She made me leave my own office because I was making her nervous. Funny, I never think about that. How could I make someone else nervous when the entire world makes me nervous and twitchy?

Patrick spent all of his money on the first day here. It was kind of like when Jasmine got to the beach last summer and rode the boogie board all day long. By dinner time, her legs were mush and she was sun burnt like a five-year old brat, which by the way, was also her mood. The next day, she had to stay inside and could barely walk because she had shin splints.

Ah, yes, memories.

Jasmine, being the most excellent tour guide and obsessive nutbag, took Patrick bong shopping in the West Village, apartment trinkets and fabric shopping in Chinatown, Sushi in the East Village and bright lights and a movie (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) in Time's Square, all in one day. She came home with nothing but still managed to spend all of her money. Patrick came home with a green glass bong as long as my arm.

Okay, here is how Jersey, New Jersey is. The Chart House is a real nice place. It is on a pier over the Hudson and has an amazing view of Manhattan. If you eat there, you will spend roughly, $50.00 per person. Now, I understand that it isn't Manhattan, but for that kind of money one would expect a little bit of dress up from the customers. The five of us looked like movie stars compared to the rest of the room. Or as Patrick said, "We look like we have money." This made me laugh and stuck in my head as something that I just might want to look like more often. Face it, looking rich works.

For me, a clear indication that things are not quite right is when I find myself in the top tier of ANYTHING. Like a well-manicured lawn with weeds every eight feet, Saturday fuck off clothes and casual dress peppered the dining room of The Chart House. Not only were some men not wearing jackets, they were not wearing ties either. I saw women with no makeup and scrunchies in their hair. Some folks didn't even look like they had washed from the days running around. Two of the worst fashion nightmares that night were completely ridiculous. I saw an overweight Jersey girl wearing (very short) silk basketball shorts and a matching colored tank top. And no, it was not a J-Lo thing. It was an "I'm a lazy slob" thing. However, it was the guy with a bright orange tee-shirt with the sleeves torn off that really had my eyeballs. Once the sun went down, I did not notice my fellow diners but for about 30 minutes there, it was a little difficult watching some of those Garden State hillbillies run around the room.

Okay, enough, I'm done. Dinner was fantastic and between Martha, Sheri and myself there are probably over a hundred photos of just Jasmine. That child has had a personal photographer all her life. The flash on Martha's camera kept blinding the staff whenever they walked by and when Jasmine pointed out the we were annoying the people around us, Martha blurted out, "I don't give a shit, if someone wants to pay my bill then I'll be happy to stop."

Present giving is always a gas and this year Martha and I bought Jasmine an iPod. Now, all summer Jazz had been convinced that she was getting one so, in an attempt to throw her off that trail, Martha bought her a Mrs. Potato head. It is roughly the same size box so we thought it might be fun to fuck with Jazz a little. But she had none of it. In fact, she didn't even flinch when she tore off the wrapping paper. She opened the box and proceeded to "assemble" Mrs. Potato head right there on the table. So Martha made the long trek out to the valet parked car to get the iPod (we weren't sure how all of the whole present thing was going to work) and Jasmine played with the potato pieces while her Lava Cake candle burned.

The iPod was a hit and so was all the Emily the Strange paraphernalia and Sephora gift card from Miss Simon. Sheri's gift to us was a big help out on the dinner. Thank God. Martha pointed out that we ALL benefit from the fact that Sheri doesn't have children, yet.

So there was 21. Five days of celebration should be enough for her to remember her 21st, hopefully.

SUNDAY DRIVERS SUCK LIKE US
Getting Patrick out of here was even more panic filled then his arrival. Less than fifteen minutes away from Newark Penn Station, Patrick announced from the back seat of the Jeep that he didn't have his bus ticket. Something about it still sitting on top of the stereo or some such crap. It was 12:50, his bus was to leave at 1:35, and we had already been in the car for twenty minutes. Upon hearing this, Martha pulled a fast run around the block and we got back on the 1 & 9 headed towards home, except it wasn't really the 1 & 9 because coming out of Newark is a very different thing then going into Newark. Instead of highway travel, we were jammed up in local road traffic and not real clear as to where we were going. All we knew is that we had to get back to the apartment and grab that ticket or we were fucked.

Fighting our way through Harrison, Kearny and all the nice little dead body drop-off sections of Jersey City, we finally came to a road we knew. Only then, did Martha's Grand Theft Auto abilities kick in. She opened it up and I helped navigate. From the backseat, Sheri screamed while text noveling notes of terror to someone on the outside. Jasmine and Patrick laughed, bickered and cried out in pain as we slammed over potholes.

We raced all the way through Jersey City, past the old apartment where we almost ran over a realtor standing in the middle of the street holding white balloons and an Open House sign. We flew past the stupid mall and all the families with strollers, rushed by Queen Latifah's recording studio and snapped, like the tip of a whip, around the corner to our apartment building. Martha stopped on a dime and Jazz jumped out of the Jeep and ran into the apartment building, hopped on an elevator and rode up to the eighteenth floor.

Three minutes later, she came running out with the bus ticket in hand and dove into the back seat. Martha hit the gas, whipped the car around the block, up to Grove Street and straight down Erie, past the old apartment and back on the 1 & 9. In seconds we were back over the toxic swamps of Jersey headed towards Newark, it was 1:15. Panic set in when it occurred to us that we just might not make it. If Patrick were to miss this bus, we would have had to drop Sheri off at Penn Station for her train at 2:00 and then immediately begin chasing the bus to the next stop in Stroudsburg, PA.

At 1:25 we went the wrong way past Newark Penn Station and had to drive three blocks out of the way to find the proper One Way street to go back down to it. At 1:30, we pulled into the entrance to The Hilton, which is directly across the street from the bus terminal. We all jumped out of the Jeep, threw Patrick's luggage on the ground, hugged him and then Jasmine walked him over to the bus area, put him in line and told him not to move until his bus came. All of us got back in the Jeep and drove around The Hilton entrance to look for parking so we could walk Sheri to her track. We found parking but upon realizing it was $10.00, we drove slowly around to the very same Hilton entrance and this time we let Sheri out of the Jeep, kissed her and said our goodbyes.

Leaving Penn Station, we went the wrong way towards the 1 & 9 and ended up at Newark Airport, but by that point, no one cared and once we saw the airport, we knew where we were and how to get home from there. At 1:45 Martha, Jasmine and I were riding over the big black 1 & 9 bridge headed towards home. The car was quiet, our land speeds had returned to normal and I slipped into a small coma.

I have now worked every weekend for the past four weeks and I guess you could say I am a little over it. Granted, three of those four were photography based, which is always better than just about anything on the planet. If I would have had to work on Siren again this weekend I would have slit my throat but being forced to joy walk all around Herald Square, (complete with street fair) on a Saturday afternoon was depressing in and of itself. At least I thought it was, but as I found out later, the true meaning of hopelessness lies somewhere between the 4th and 5th floors of Macy's department store. Yup, Jazz and I went there in search of Birthday Dinner Clothing. That was the deal I made with her for being photo bitch on Korea Town. Martha was sick, so Jazz was up, and if she could help me out, then I would let her drag me through Macy's, Urban Outfitters and whatever else she thought necessary. Oh yeah, I had to buy her lunch too but we all need to eat, right? Besides, when I buy lunch I ONLY by Sushi, so I win.

Anyway, clothes shopping in Manhattan, no matter what store, is like a bitch slap from Size 0. Man oh man, the twenty something floor where Jasmine's loser generation shops, is loaded with such head fucking horseshit and relentless pounding beats, music videos, and random bursts of glitter, that I felt like I was inside a drag queen's dressing room five minutes before show time.

Disco hippie sluts shuffled aimlessly about the isles while clacking on neon cell phones and screaming at each other various narratives of the word, no. "No! No Way! Oh My God No Way!" ...and so on. That was all they said to each other, over and over again. I thought that they were just fucking around so I watched them for a few minutes and they were really communicating with each other - somehow. At that very moment, I wished to Christ that I had had a stun gun on me.

Urban Outfitters wasn't much better except that Jasmine knocked over a headless mannequin that hit the floor with a really loud bang and I took a photo of a pair of yellow underwear.

But the real issue here is that Jasmine's Birthday Dinner has been causing us both a great deal of stress. Jasmine's dress up clothes are in storage and she has nothing to wear and I really don't either. Martha is all set because she has a real grown-up job and has real grown-up dress clothes, where as I can/do wear my 'Jesus Loves Me' T-Shirt, grey sweat pants and flip-flops to work. (Now there's a reason to keep I job, I'll tell ya.) I have a few things that are nice but honestly, they've seen too many funerals for me to want to drag them out on Jasmine's 21st. What's more, a little color might be nice, eh?

Saturday shopping was a bust so the problem was still very much alive on Sunday. I suggested we cancel or at least pick something scaled back seeing how a big expensive dinner is costing us more than just the dinner, which Martha is already starting to have chest pains over. Jasmine suggested Chilli's - can we just once, not be such hillbillies? Even if we make Jasmine's friend from college order only from the child's appetizer menu and drink nothing but table water, it is still going to be a crazy money dinner.

But you only turn 21 once, well, at least most of us do, and we should try and make this a swanky thing that Jasmine can then spend the rest of her life trying to obtain for herself, on her own. Right? Besides, it's not a five star place and it certainly isn't Manhattan. It could ALWAYS cost more, baby. It could always cost more.

So Sunday Martha, Jasmine and I spent four hours at a fucking mall in Jersey where Size 0 is routinely used for dusting rags. Martha got red Pumas (not dinner related) and Jasmine got a pair of black pumps that are going to pinch the shit out of her feet. Then, we went upstairs and completely lost our minds. Martha bought two pairs of pants and I got a pink and black poodle skirt with an enormous amount of silver sequence on it and a black sleeveless top. I look like I am ready to go to The Hop and I love it. Jasmine got a lovely black shawl, (yet another one) and a green sequenced camisole with a built in bra that is so strong I would swear the thing is bulletproof.

We then did a total Martha thing and had our eyes examined. Not our brains but our eyes. I haven't had one since I was 17 and guess what? I have perfect 20/20 vision, although it is time for me to start using reading glasses. The whole frame thing was fun, but just about everything makes me look like a cranky schoolmarm. The doctor dilated Martha's pupils and she looked like she was tripping her tits off. Turns out Martha has 20/400 vision and it is time for her to move on up to a progressive lens. The other word for that is a bifocal - for those of us who grew up in a harsher, less politically corrected era. By this point, Jasmine was cranky and sat in the waiting area of the eye doctor eating nachos and bugging whichever one of us wasn't in the exam room about new blue Puma frames for her glasses.

NEXT TIME, WISH FOR A BAG OF MONEY
Ah yes, but the week ahead. Let us see. Jasmine's birthday is Wednesday and a card from Grandma has already arrived. I have the ingredients ready for one of my insane chocolate cakes (with sprinkles). Patrick arrives sometime on Thursday via Greyhound and Miss Simon floats in on Friday. Shit, that reminds me, I need to buy Drano.

I also need to wrap the presents and clean this here shit fest of an apartment. This mostly involves sucking up massive amounts of cat hair. Jasmine found a five-foot wooden easel (about a $500 value) in the trash room on the way back from the grocery store Sunday night. This is a great building for trash-picking; these people are rich and lose interest easily. Backing up here a minute, Jasmine asked me a few months ago for one of three things for her birthday; a personal PlayStation, an iPod or an easel. So now, she has an easel that is currently being stored in our bedroom, 'cause why? Because we are out of room in the rest of the apartment and the last bastion of free space had been the hallowed master bedroom. Unused electronics, two coffee tables, various end tables, bookcases, and now a wished-for easel, fight for floor space with the rest of our lives in the two other rooms. Six more weeks of this, and we will probably bust out of the walls and into the adjoining units. We officially look like an apartment full of hoarders, yard sale crazies, eccentric folk artists, possible thieves or as I like to answer to any multiple choice query; all of the above.

There is no way to describe the absolute joy and jubilation that comes from knowing that Jasmine's PET scans are all clear. I didn't even realize just how fucked in the head with worry I truly was until the word came that she was fine. I started to cry at my desk at work. Tears of relief. Then, within two minutes I suddenly was exhausted and in dire need of a nap. But, in the middle of a newspaper deadline, I stayed chained to my desk.

Jasmine is learning the fine art of first apartment furniture gathering. She has already snagged an end table from the clutches of the trash room and then, last Tuesday, she found herself with a day off, wandering around Macy's furniture liquidation sale. She bought an entertainment stand for eleven dollars. That's as good as any yard sale or Goodwill. I have trained the young grasshopper well.

The only catch was that she had to get it home all by herself. So, she carried it through Newport Pavonia mall, drug it on the Light Rail at rush hour and then walked it three blocks to the apartment. There really isn't any place to put this 4ft by 2ft thing so it is currently shoved up against the window in the living room. There really isn't any place to put anything in this apartment and we don't have a storage space. We have eight weeks until move out and the stacking of crap has already started. The office is a disaster zone.

Plans are in the works for Miss Jasmine's 21st birthday. They now include a fancy water front dinner at The Chart House and she is busing in college backup in the form of a boy from PA to help her celebrate. Oh sure, Martha, Sheri and I are just great and all but we tend to wrap it up kind of early. We'll get tired and cranky and the talk will turn into a three-way mom fest with no end in sight. At least with one of her own kind around we'll instinctively back off, not so much to save Jasmine but more of a not letting the others see how ridiculous we can get.

But yes, back to the idea of company in our cramped little domicile. He is gay and will be Jasmine's roommate next year. Horror of horrors we are having a boy in the house. Hmm, does it count if he's gay? Well, the cats will let us know.

CUT ME OPEN
Well, hey what's this I see? A surgery date has been confirmed...and why, yes, it looks like...July 27th at 10am in the morning they will be taking my left adrenal gland out. We shall see. I have to jump through all those hoops that I jumped through in February so let the games begin. I'll believe it when I wake up in the hospital doped up and hallucinating. At least all this time has made Martha and I deal with some adult stuff like Living Wills, Power of Attorney and the all-important Last Will and Testament. Hey, they are going to put me under so we had to go there. Thank you to Olivia for the use of her super cool Notary stamp.

AMERICA: THE MOVIE
Why has 60 Minutes been nothing but reruns for the past several weeks? What the fuck? Isn't there ANYTHING to report on? I mean the whole cancer sniffing dog thing was cool but honestly, they should be ashamed of themselves for phoning it in like every other news and entertainment program. What about Sandra Day O'Connor? (This country is so fucked) What about Live 8? What about the Increase in the Number of Documents Classified by the Government. Or National Organization for Women pissing and arm waving at Bush over abortion rights. It's not just 60 Minutes either. Dateline and 20/20 are just as useless. I don't get it. How can so many of us not care? My own newspaper has turned into something I no longer recognize. The Village Voice is not what it used to be that is for sure and the word "evolve" isn't what I'm thinking of. The right is the new left and the true left are a bunch of sky is falling fruit loops.

What? Everything is fine, the economy is great; don't worry about healthcare, or jobs. Where's my fucking iPod? Katie Holmes said YES! "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." -George W. Bush, Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005

And you know, Freedom ain't free, biatch.

EVERYTHING ABOUT ME SAYS GO AWAY
Sunday night, a little after 5:00pm and I had the apartment all to myself for about the two hours. Jasmine was at work and Martha was out doing the most social of activities. She was golfing with two other lesbians. As predictable as that is, it is just as unpredictable that I won't play along and be the fourth wheel on the lesbian golf cart. I'm just not that kind of girl, although I happen to like a girl who is a golfer. I love to nap to golf and I really do dig Annika. But it's more than just golf that I won't partake in. Martha explains it away with excuses that I'm not very social and "that's okay", which, I suppose, it has to be.

She and I had a conversation about how if anyone ever needed a mentor in life it was I, because almost everyone I've ever known has turned up full of shit and exclusively self motivated. I did have a teacher once, senior year of high school that I trusted and gave me basic life stuff. She was part of that new Hippie way of Team Teaching and insisted that her students call her by her first name, which was Cindy. She treated all of us like adults, even if we fucked up and skipped class to go smoke dope in the parking lot. At the time, I thought she was cool because she was the first adult to vocalize to me that my mom was probably insane and not to pay too much attention to her. But, by that point, it was a little late in the game and I was out of the state of Ohio within three months, regardless of whatever horseshit my mom pulled. I would have thumbed to college if I had needed to. My mom hated Cindy and constantly told me so, but it was the only time I ever got straight A's in high school.

This was also around the same time that I met a girl that was a little older than me named Jenny. We both worked the nightshift at Frisch's Big Boy and became fast friends. She lost her right eye when she was a small child via her little brother and a tree branch and she now had a glass eye. One slow night when I was bored out of my skull I asked her if I could see it. She responded by popping it right out of the socket and holding it up in front of my face. Both of my eyes shifted focus between the marble eye in the foreground and the dark hole of her eye socket in the background. From that moment on, I thought she was the coolest girl I'd ever met. That single act of unconscious behavior blew my mind.

Ah yes, but that was a hundred years and countless buckets of whiskey ago and unfortunately, the basis of my bullshit detector rests somewhere within the seeds of my youth. Over the years, I have met some of the finest folks under the strangest conditions and I have watched some of those same folks turn the strangest. It really is tragic when you fail to live up to someone else's expectations.

Whether its lovers, family or friends, you think you are all on the same page but then the page changes and you realize that some of those that you love can't keep up. You recognize that they are in remedial reading and stuck on junk that was never who you were in the first place. Or maybe who you were for one day, on acid and walking around with a camera but not who you are all the damn time. But in their head, that's how you have been filed so now you are stuck living out somebody else's absurdity. Oh sure, some fake it real well and a have glazed over understanding of the words that are coming out of your mouth. They fake it until they can't follow along anymore and either walk away or blame all their heartache on you. Others act out in aggressive deeds of hostility in the hopes of showing you just what an asshole YOU are. That is when you start to realize that blood is thinner than water and everyone is apathetic unless it directly relates to themselves.

Ah, I have a point in there somewhere but who cares.

Yeah, so that is what I did when left alone. Write and listen to my new Say Hi to Your Mom CD. (Everybody send love to Eric in Brooklyn.)

Fuck it, and chalk it up to being so fucking overworked that I'm nuttier than normal. Siren is so up my ass that all I dream is green. Let's just say that this year is particularly painful and I spent the majority of my 4th of July weekend working on it. I like the site though but I am also fried. I keep telling myself that it is for the greater good of the collection of hours and another portfolio piece. I'm collecting my overtime to cash out for my surgery. It would be nice to use that instead of ALL of my vacation time. We do have that beach house thing in October that I daydream about daily. Last week was just downright ugly with the Union threatening to strike and then pulling me into there little circle of strange. That's right, I'm now a Union employee. God help us all.