Holly Northrop Blog

The idea behind going up to the new house every weekend until we finally move up there is so that we can take care of all the things that are so much easier to deal with when none of mountains of crap we own is in the way. Things such as painting and steam-cleaning carpets go much easier when the only hurtle you have to climb is exhaustion combined with lower back pain.

Martha found a very nice man to take care of our lawn until we either get it together ourselves or use him the entire time we live up there. He cut our yard last week and stopped by on Saturday morning to collect payment and work out a schedule. He was not what I expected at all, a retired caterer who now owns a small lawn care business with his wife and a full on supporter of America - with a big A. He wore a navy blue cap with the seal of the United States embroidered on it; a Homeland Security laminated picture ID card around his neck and his ring tone is the Stars and Stripes Forever.

His wife was a very thorough collector of 'incase of emergency' information considering it is just lawn care. According to her, she will laminate each card and he will carry them around with him while he is working on the yard. If he sees anything, anything at all, he is to call Martha and probably the National Guard just for good measure. I personally feel like we passed through a Homeland Security checkpoint. Our names have been entered into some database that's for damn sure.

But with a house there is a shitload of little things that we can't help but tinker with in the course of a day just because we are excited and slightly crazy. Things like cute new doorknobs and electrical faceplates break up the monotony of painting. One of the projects that we had wanted to do but thought it might be best to wait until we were in there was to flip the main bathroom door. The door opened out into the hallway instead of into the room. It bothered me and the visual reminded me of a handicap thing — not an idea I want to think about every day.

After steam-cleaning the second floor, Martha got a wild hair up her ass and decided to flip the main bathroom door. She forged ahead without all the proper tools for the job, we have but a small toolbox and the pounding and chiseling began. I stayed in her office and painted under a revolving ceiling fan, periodically checking-in to see how it was going. After a few hours, she had the door off; new holes dug out for the hinges and needed my help in hanging it. Trouble began when it was determined that the hinges were a mere 1/32 of an inch off and no amount of pounding was going to move either one of them. They would have to be unscrewed but before that happened, I wanted to see if the doorknob hole lined up, and so resting on one hinge we tried to close the door. This is when we discovered the real reason that the door was not an inny but an outty. The counter top for the sink, a very long and very attached Formica top extended the full width of the space, prohibiting the door from closing. We could, as I have seen in many a ghetto apartment I've had, saw out a square of the door to accommodate the counter top and live like white trash. Suddenly it all became crystal as to how things like that happen.

Opting out of hillbilly décor and going more for the open air idea, we now we do not have a door on the main bathroom and probably will not have that taken care of until after we are in. I have some fabric that I'm going to hang until we buy a smaller door, a 2 x 4 cut to size, additional crown molding and detailed instructions on how to install a new door with frame.

THE ART OF WASPS
A black wasp, the size of my pinky, flew into the second floor through a screen-less open window (a major security breach) and became disoriented and unable to get out of the house. I saw it when I went up there to dump the water from the carpet cleaner. Just as I was pouring a bucket of gloomy grey water into the bathtub, I noticed a black blur coming from the corner of my right eye. Deliriously tired from painting and the whole door thing, I didn't think too much of it until I turned to face that direction head on. That is when I freaked out, slammed the upstairs door, ran down the steps and straight to the doorless bathroom where Martha was taking a shower.

"Baby, there's a big black wasp upstairs." I said super fast to the mirrored shower door, noticing how old and idiotic I look up close.

"What?" Martha said.

"Baby, there's a big black wasp upstairs." I repeated while trying not to hyperventilate.

Long pause, "Okay, I'll go look."

After Martha gets out of the shower, I ramble on and on about the size of it and quizzed her like a five-year-old with an endless supply of 'and then what's' about how she is going to handle it. She didn't want to kill it, which I did not want to hear at all. A first, she grabbed a wooden spoon and was going to 'shoo' it out a window. Much to her annoyance, we went over how that was not going to work. The next and only idea was for her to smack it with a big brown bag.

While I remained freaking out on the first floor, the black spawn of the devil proceeded to dive bomb Martha upstairs. I am deathly afraid of wasps and the idea of one in the house just freaks me out beyond any rational. Hey, we all have our shit. Martha hates crawling bugs, so that's my job, spiders, things with a hundred legs, you name it. If the cats don't get it first, the job falls in my lap. But wasps are her job. She must kill it or I will not be able to let it go. Bees I can at least get my head around but wasps are evil. A major perk of living in the city is that the only bugs that live here are various kinds of roaches and big NY horse flies. I see it as a perk anyway. I do realize that the whole thing is disgusting.

After about twenty minutes of stalking the wasp, Martha lost him somewhere upstairs. We were on our way out to an opening of a local friend and all this goofiness had made us late. As we walked the eight or so blocks to the gallery, my legs so tired that I actually started tripping over my own feet, we noticed that almost everything in the little town of Hudson closes by eight o'clock. All but a few restaurants and the weird smelly bodega. Stumbling along Warren Street we finally arrive at the gallery; an old warehouse with four floors of a hi-brow action well underway. By this point, I was hallucinating and pretty much unable to participate on any form of adult level. When asked about the new house I responded, "We have a wasp on the second floor." That was all I could get out. That and a longwinded ramble about gallery spaces, shooting in Manhattan and dinner. Making friends. You know there are only 7000 people in this little town; I would like to try and not alienate everyone before I actually move here.

Martha's dad fractured his hip somehow (his swears he didn't fall) and Tuesday he had hip replacement surgery. I am glad that the surgeon decided to replace the hip instead of using the pin thing. The recovery time is faster, in fact, he should already be at the rehabilitation center, and the pain is less severe. So yes, in-between the already normal high anxiety of home buying, add in the stress of parental health issues and there you have Martha's general state of mind. She is holding up surprisingly well considering that her mom has now decided to act like a wild caged animal and lash out at her daughters. It has been an emotional rollercoaster that is far from over.

HOMO HOMEOWNERSHIP
Last minute reworking of numbers about drove me crazy. Despite both Martha and I being on the verge of total panic it all seemed to work out. There is nothing worse then the sight and sound of two lawyers franticly punching numbers into calculators searching for a seven hundred dollar discrepancy. Yeah, now that was a good time and the error did not work out in our favor. But we also had to pay the rest of this years city tax so we walked out of the closing having to shell out an additional eighteen hundred dollars. Not ideal, but for New York property, it could have been a blood bath.

So here we go, we now own a home. I signed away my life and got a 106-year-old farmhouse in return. It all surprisingly seems to fit.

Miss Simon and her gang made the trip down from Vermont on Friday to spend two fun filled nights on an air mattress in the soon to be horn room of our new house. Sheri came with the new girlfriend (Jess) and two huge boxers (Josie and Oliver). We had a lot of dawg in our house that is for damn sure. After the initial frantic excitement of meeting new people and a new house, the dogs (and people) settled down and the four of us painted three rooms in one day. I bet Jess had a great time, all we did was work like crazy and bitch about Martha's mother and fret over the health of her father. For big fun on a Saturday night, we drove up the road for some soft serve ice-cream. God, we are a drag. I am sure when we finally get up to Vermont, Martha and I will have to plow a field or something of equal value. We owe them big time.

The town is super cute and at every turn, I love it more. This kind of thing makes me nuts because the more I like something the more I look for the other shoe to drop. It's a fucked up way to go through life but good and bad are like hot and cold faucets on a sink. Either one is too much without the other to tone it down a bit. When things really suck, I am always looking for something good to cling on to and when things are going great, I get jumpy. So this whole buy a house, dad's in the hospital thing is strangely on track.

The living room, our bedroom and the sunroom all have fresh color on the walls and that has perked things up enormously. We still need to deal with the living room carpet (disgusting) and steam clean the other carpets; paint the hallway, the whole upstairs and Martha's horn room. The kitchen and about a million other things will have to wait until we are in there. The grass needs cut and not only do we not have a mower we haven't dealt with having someone come mow it either. Martha is going down to North Carolina to deal with her whack job family so it will be two-weeks before we are back at the new house. Already, we have suburban concerns.

THE PUBLIC KILLING OF AN ALREADY DEAD HORSE
What a week to be without internet or more specifically, what a week to skip work. I didn't see a TV, email or a web page for four days, and I gotta say I'm okay with that. So it was over the phone on Friday that Sheri told Martha about Erik Wemple. Holy shit. You know, I should have known that that meeting was too good to be true. Erik's introduction and the hour and a half conversation that followed was, what I consider, an actual high point when reviewing the last five months of this merger bullshit in my head. For ninety minutes, I actually started to believe that things 'might' get better. I should have known. He seemed like a good guy, he seemed like he wasn't a big asshole, any more or less then is required in this business. The New York Times wrote, "His resignation thrusts The Voice back into turmoil." You think? Can't wait to go back to work. Should be a gas. I told Sheri that I was just going to sit at my desk listening to Frank Zappa, pump out the queer issue, and try not to pay a bit of attention to anything around me.

It is official; we close on the house this Thursday at 3:00. Thursday, the check writing will be endless, even the lawyers have lawyers and everyone wants money. Martha will probably shut down before nightfall. I think the plan is to spend the weekend up there, alternating between tinkering and freaking out about the fact that we just bought a hundred and six year old farm house in upstate New York. Big, big Xanax day. The whole thing should be highly entertaining and costly. We need a huge bucket of money to fall out of the sky and land on us.

The new air mattress came and I have started to make a stack of stuff for the transport. We have roughly a month and a half to get out of our luxury hi-rise but before we can even move in to the new house a few things need to happen. The electrical must be converted to 200 amps, otherwise the minute we turn on a window air conditioner and a light bulb at the same time, we will blow a fuse and neither one of us ever wants to go down into the basement -ever. A third electrician is coming to give an estimate this week and from there, we should be able to pick one to do the work. Although, I think the one guy doesn't want to work with us because Martha said she really didn't understand why his estimate cost so much and she wanted it in writing because she felt like we were getting "fucked". He hasn't called back since and my guess is I'll never meet him.

We also want to paint and if you want to waist the day just thinking about paint, Behr Paint has just the thing. We will also be ripping up old mauve carpet in the living room and probably my office. The overall list of shit we want to do is pretty endless but it certainly is fun to dream. And boy do we have dreams.

Notes on Hudson from: chpartnership.com.
The City of Hudson (pop. 7,524), chartered in 1785, was the first planned city in the new United States. Until 1815, and again from 1830 to 1845, it was a center of the American whaling industry. As the railroad replaced river- and canal-based transportation, Hudson became a general manufacturing and retail center. Over the last decade, Hudson has reinvented itself as a retail and tourist center while welcoming new industry. Along Warren Street, the principal business street, are more than 40 high-quality antiques dealers, along with upscale restaurants and art galleries. Architectural gems from the Federal, Greek Revival and Victorian periods have been given new life. As the County seat, Hudson is home to the Columbia County Courthouse and several public-service agencies. The New York State Firemen's Home and the FASNY Museum of Firefighting are just north of downtown. The city's manufacturing sector ranges from furniture makers to high-tech plastic fasteners.

Like I've said before, we are moving from a city of eight million people to a town of seventy-five hundred, this should be interesting. The whole town of Hudson is roughly the amount of people I move through in a day. Between the subway, WTC walking from West 4th across NYU to the East Village, running errands at lunch up to Union Square and back down to Cooper Square then reverse that all to get back home, yep I travel around a lot of people in a day. No wonder once I get inside I'm not that willing to leave.

NOTICEABLY ILL
I see most of us made it through 666 day. Just more support for both of the theories that I hold onto. The first one is that this is actually hell and heaven is tremendously boring, but very, very clean. The second idea is an oldie but goodie, God is dead and so is everything else. Be still that old existentialist black heart of mine. Interesting that I alternate between believing that either I'm on the wrong side of the universal question or that it is all bullshit.

I had a headache for a solid week. Now that shit will make you crazy. Every day I would wake up with a throbbing pain behind my right eye that slid around the temple area to the back of my head. Throughout the day, I'd chew on Tylenol, and Sudafed Sinus until I became all shaky and weird. I had cottonmouth akin to an Ohio speed freak and chewed gum like a lunatic. I never realized just how neurotic I am until I started chewing gum. Anyway, I know it is allergy related but sweet Jesus. I almost passed out on the subway. It was the strangest thing. I was sitting on the train, and the guy next to me had iPod headphones blasting his useless brain to death, they are all morons I swear, but anyway, he kept moving to the beat which was driving me crazy , because I'm trying to read and he keeps jumping around in his seat. Somewhere under the Hudson, I start to get dizzy. I'm just sitting there getting dizzy. This is not a good sign.

I make it off the train and up the escalators, but by the time I travel to the top I am a cold sweaty mess. I know how I look because I've seen it before. My face I completely drained of color and I am drenched with sweat. I get outside and stagger over to the statue of the soldier with the bayonet stabbing him in the back and I sit down and immediately put my head between my legs. People walk by and pay me no attention what's so ever. This is fine with me but an interesting social observation I must say. So I sit there with my head between my knees desperately trying to trick blood back into my brain so I can walk three blocks home. Finally, after about twenty minutes I start to get cold because my shirt is wet and sticking to me. Nice. I pull it together and shuffle on down the road towards the apartment.

CATASTROPHE AS A HOBBY
This weekend was a strange one. It was probably our last quiet one for quite some time. Oh sure the normal cleaning and trash removal happened. We even managed to make it to a movie. Just coming off of watching The Grapes of Wrath Saturday night, Sunday morning, we sat through Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Pretty awesome stuff there Al. Highly disturbing and I was pretty much a weepy mess from the beginning. Actually, I was a weepy mess from the minute they showed the Oliver Stone preview of World Trade Center —a movie that I just don't think I can handle. If I can't watch a preview then logic would dictate that I would be a basket case if made to watch the whole epic. And come to think of it, why is there an epic at all? Why did Oliver Stone feel compelled to make this story about two Port Authority police officers who are trapped under the rubble? Who is it for? The rest of the world? Honestly, I can't see how anyone of us who where here that day could possibly sit through it. It would be beyond flooding. I can barely tolerate when the least little indication of 9/11 shows up in normal TV shows or movies. I openly flinch and wait for the moment to pass. I understand the idea of providing at least some context to a storyline but I feel very strongly that what I am watching is entertainment, not news and information so cut the grandstanding and get on with the stupid storyline. But to provide an Oliver Stoning of the WTC, where what is viewed in movie form as a true story of courage and survival seems like a complete waist of his privilege. He could have obsessed about so many other projects, like I don't' know, maybe global warming, or something boring like that.

People have started looking at our apartment. That means I have to let folks in. God how I hate that. Of course, I'm not going to be there when it all happens but I hate the idea of breeders with kids or trust fund snots walking their dirty city shoes all over our apartment. We are a no shoe home and it's just disgusting to think about what other folks might drag through here when I'm not around. If I keep thinking about it, I'm going to make myself crazy.

Anyway, we got a mortgage. Amazing. I'm in dept up to my eyeballs with student loans and a bank wants to give me more. And I say hell yes, that's the American way! So it looks like we just might close mid-month, two-weeks from now. The loose idea is to start spending weekends up at the house, you know, painting cleaning and moving the small stuff, getting ready to live there. It is easier to rip up carpet and paint a room with nothing in it, oh and rip up carpet we are so going to do. The living room has a nice mauve thing (We have a red couch.) that is so out the door once we buy masks, gloves and a crowbar. I don't care what is under there because we are going to put this down. Martha and I have been eyeballing the Flor product since the design show at the Chelsea hotel a few years ago. We had wanted to put it in that condo we tried to buy up in Union, god I am so glad we walked away from that deal. $325,000 indeed. It would have sucked and that monthly mortgage payment would be killing us by now.

The things I will miss about this apartment are very, very simple and obvious. I am three blocks from the subway and seven minutes from Manhattan. Can't beat that. But the real thing is this. Living eighteen floors above it all, every room has a wall of windows so the real reason that this apartment is awesome is the view.

Specifically on mornings where the fog has set in and the city is a ghost out my window. Before the rest of Jersey City gets up and makes it so noisy I have to close the window, I can hear the blow of fog horns from the cruise ships floating up the Hudson from out of the harbor. I've seen the QM2 a few times and I can't believe it floats. That thing is huge. So it the QE2. Even from my window those ships are so large that they block certain parts of the Manhattan skyline as they drift by.

But this place has never been very peaceful. There is always noise, construction, children, jackhammers or beam pounders and the sirens, Christ the sirens. The whole city around us is constantly humming. Last night fireworks went off just a few blocks from our building and lit up the whole sky. The view was amazing, front row to a great show. I have no idea why there were fireworks but they seem to have them quite a bit over here.

But honestly, aside from the stench from the neighbors cooking floating through the bedroom every now and then I really liked living here. It has been a good run of it.

IF YOU CAN'T SAY ANYTHING NICE
Work is weird, a new guy started and honestly I can't imagine what it must feel like for him. All around our department is just emptiness. It is almost like the scene of a crime, only well after the entire crime scene has been cleared. All that is left is that icky feeling that something bad happened in the spot you are standing in. I don't know, I'm just trying to be nice and not bring up any negative crap in front of him. So yes, I do spent a lot of time at my desk with headphones on avoiding eye contact.