Holly Northrop Blog

Over a week ago, Martha noticed a "thing" on Zoë's neck. A little pea-sized area of scabbing that upon closer inspection, (always a pleasure with this cat) looked strange. Not just a normal claw mark or scratch. We made the unpleasant decision to take her to the vet. The last time we took this cat to the vet, she had a seizure. That was two years ago. I figured that the only time Zoë was ever going to go back to a vet was when it was "time", if you get my drift.

But apparently I was wrong. Martha found a local veterinarian and made an appointment. Now the word local has a slightly different definition up here. In Columbia County, fifteen-minutes away IS local. I understand this and it makes sense. Fifteen-minutes along a backcountry road is nothing. The word local to me means that I should be able to walk to it. Not so. There is no vet in Hudson and so what? What's the big deal with fifteen-minutes in the car? Well, nothing unless you have a frantic cat pacing around counterclockwise behind your head and meowing with every breath it takes.

Zoë is totally crazy and never, was it more apparent then when she was in our Jeep. She meowed the whole way there, the entire time at the vet's office and then, the whole way back. Her meow is somewhat high pitched, and sounds similar to a whinny baby (i.e. Jasmine when she had colic). All I wanted to do was throw Zoë from the car and never look back.

But alas that is not what happened. After the longest fifteen-minutes of my life, we found the vet's office and parked the Jeep. We waited in the exam room for another small eternity while I kept spraying my hands with Feliway and then rubbing Zoë down. This would calm her down for roughly one to two-minutes at a time. During those precious minutes of silence, the air would lighten up and Martha and I were able to have quick slices of conversation. I even made a joke about how seeing how we were already there, maybe we just might want to go-ahead and put her down. I know, I know, not that funny but Jasmine would have laughed with me. Martha however, just glared at me. Humor, it's a funny thing.

So the long and the short of it is, Zoë probably had allergies. The vet gave her two shots of cortisone and charged us just under a hundred dollars. (Nice) With a wait and see diagnosis on our plates we got back in the car and headed home. For fifteen-minutes, I held my left hand twisted behind my back, shoved into the cage rubbing on Zoë's face whenever she would pace near me. It was kind of like being arrested. Chewing gum like a lunatic and bitching that I wanted a fucking cigarette, I counted down the minutes on the digital clock until we finally pulled into our driveway. Once we were all inside, Zoë ran into the bedroom closet and I took a Xanix. I didn't see that cat until dusk and that was all right by me.


FLIPPING AROUND TO NOWHERE
So much has changed in the past month. I have brand new computer that I barely know. I installed what I needed to make it so I could work from home. Did a super fast migration, so fast in fact that I forgot to migrate all my old email. I am finding that all that stored old email has yet to come in handy some three-weeks later. I've got email that has a dates from the 1990's saved. What the hell could I possibly want any of that shit for? I'm like an email pack rat.

I have a new office space that is still in shambles but functions. The thing about a new office space, especially one that now includes enough room for me to have a darkroom, is that it also becomes a time to evaluate the kind of work that I am actually doing in my office. Is this the type of work I want to be working on, etc. Am I writing enough? No. Am I shooting enough, no on that too. Well, just what the hell am I doing up here in my very own apartment? I spend a good chunk of the week on Voice stuff and not much else, because well, that seems to suck the little ol' life right on out of me.

But as I dream big and live strange, time keeps ticking away. Funny how that happens. Well, I'll have some time this week to sort stuff out while Martha is down in North Carolina. She'll be gone for a week and we all know what happens when I am left alone for that long. The crazies will creep over this house like well-fertilized ivy. I'll have days upon days without rational interruption to dwell on shit that is best left murky. It's either figure it out and find a new direction for myself or spend hours upon hours stoned and stuck watching Netflix Faith & Spirituality Dvd's. Or buying everyone I know a pair of these. It's so nice to see The Klan, er I mean the Christians are using the Internets, isn't it?

Anyway, aside from the new computer, and the new office space there is that whole oddly appealing small town I live in that I know next to nothing about. I'm so far out from New York City that I can't even get New York City news, something that I am still not used to. Not that local news has ever been all that great no matter where you live but I had been quite used to the general NYC rap-up of loathing at the end of each day.

But the local news up here is so thin that one night last week, as I was reading Wired it occurred to me that the 11:00 news had been talking about the weather for over four-minutes and there wasn't ANYTHING going on. No dangerous thunderstorms or crazy crap somewhere else in the world to report. Honestly, I'm not even sure just what the hell they were broadcasting into my bedroom because I was all involved in the article about the snarky folks at Pitchfork. What I do know is that when I started reading the article the weather had just come on and when I finished it, the weather was still on. I had to double check to make sure I hadn't changed the channel to The Weather Channel.

I guess from the News Producers prospective there isn't a whole hell of a lot to yack about up here, but hey I have an idea; the world is a big place and there is tons, just tons of stuff happening all over. I understand that the whole Iran, Iraq war thing is kind of a drag for those in the back of the classroom but for those of us down front, the local news is way too soft and forgiving on our looser president and the global economy.

So maybe they could talk about something else from somewhere else. Instead of four-minutes of clear skies and sunny days, maybe two whole minutes of global news might be kind of fun.

But what the hell do I know, I'm just learning to live here.

Well, Miss Jasmine is not only home from Oxford but back home at school. In one very short week, she will be a senior. Hard to believe but she managed to spend $3000 in three weeks and had an overdraft of $245 dollars in her checking account that she forget to tell me about for three days.

A friend of Martha's was telling her about how the new "real" age of folks in their early twenties is roughly seven years psychologically younger than their actual age. This is a result of a combination of things, but the general suggestion is the Political Corrective hallucinations of the school systems, resulting in a lowering of "The Bar" to the lowest common denominator, combined with the absurd coddling by the parents, to the general stupidity of the child's actual friends. So basically, I have a twenty-two year old who is going on fifteen. This sounds about right.

Twenty-one years ago when I was twenty-two, I was married, had a one and a half-year-old who was a total redheaded terror and I worked full time as a graphic designer. I received no money from my parents but Jim and I did get funds from his folks when things got real screwy. This was often enough let me tell you. But we mostly had them help us out with the big ticket items. They gave us the down payment on a Dodge Omni and a shitload of baby odds and ends. Overall, Jim and I paid our own student loans, car payment, gas, electric, phone, food, rent, and of course, daycare. My job covered daycare. That is how little I made.

Was I a fuck up? Well, sure, sort of. But not really. Jim and I certainly did plenty of stupid shit but most of it revolved around car care, stereo equipment and shithole apartments. Our cat never went to the vet until a month before we had to put him down but Jasmine never missed a doctor's appointment. Jasmine had a walker, top model that never tipped over but the unfinished wood floors in the apartment we lived in, used to give her splinters. So she had to wear her shoes in the house. All of Jasmine's clothes were low-level thrift store purchases except for those few strange lace dresses that my mom used to send once in awhile. I'm not sure just where the hell Jazz was supposed to wear that. Church? Yeah right.

But anyway, as life went on Jasmine's very early years were all about her. She was all WE HAD. And I mean that not so much as in the emotional way, but in the "everything around us is crap" way. Jasmine was the only reason to go to the store or to get a credit card or drive over to Aurora or to even live in Littleton for that matter, or to spend more money in general. Her existence pushed us further towards the middle of mainstream, something I have personally been at war with all my life.

In the beginning of her existence, money was spent on what she needed and then, once she learned to want, it became stuff she needed AND wanted. This child is crazy expensive. What do you think has been spent on Jasmine so far? The combined total, all parties, all sides of her octagonal family? A Million? Several hundreds of thousands of dollars, most certainly.

She was home last week and by week's end, I realized that I am pissed at the both of us. She is clueless and I am stumped. I keep waiting for Jasmine to 'get it'. You know, like... GET IT. Figure it out. And...well... she isn't. And well, it's my fault.

I think it's going to get real strange for her. Martha and I have less than a year to snap some perspective in that child's head. We have to. I just hope I don't have to become my father to do it.

Jasmine was in Europe on the day they discovered the plot to blow up ten or twelve transatlantic flights coming out of England. Her flight back to the United States was scheduled for 48 hours after a complete and total lockdown of all the airports within a zillion mile radius of the Atlantic Ocean.

I think Jasmine's entire trip on Saturday from merry old Oxford, England to Hudson, New York was a total of twenty-four hours, give or take an assortment of space outs and minute brain freezes that she surly must have had along the way. She started out on a bus ride to Gatwick airport, (she is so very lucky that it wasn't Heathrow) that was clogged with rush-hour airport traffic. Very late, she arrived at Gatwick with her baggy consisting of her passport, a piece of paper with our phone numbers on it and her wallet. In tow, she had two massive pieces of luggage that she waved goodbye to at luggage check and then it was on to a jumbo-jet airplane, for an 8-hour flight that, by the time it took off, was already three-hours late.

Arriving in the United States, she had by then missed her train to Penn Station and had to reschedule another one that left her with an hour layover in Philly's Penn Station (always a pleasure) and then another hour layover in New York's Penn Station (extra fun and freshly scented), very late on a Saturday night. In New York's Penn Station, she sat on the floor with her two gigantic pieces of luggage, her deodorant having given up several hours prior, staring at the track board, waiting for it to display the track number for her train and desperately trying not to fall asleep. At 11:45 pm (4:45 am Jasmine time), she boarded a train to Albany and rode for two-hours north to Hudson, New York where Martha and I picked her up at 1:45 am (6:45 am Jasmine time) Sunday Morning.

She had started this crazy pilgrimage in Oxford at 7:00 am, still drunk from the night before and ended up stinking up our car almost a whole day later. She never slept on the plane or the train and they did not serve ANY water on the eight-hour flight across the ocean. She had no iPod; paper; books; pens; music; no electronic devices whats-so-ever and not once was she allowed to use HAND SANITIZER. Are they trying to spread a pandemic? Bring it on you dumb, unprepared fucks.

Yuck.

But she is here, she is home and will be here for the week and the world is a very frightening place. Yeah, I know all about it but the idea of my child on an airplane on the day that Al-Qaeda decided to blowup people coming home, to America; to kill more Americans, freaks me out just a tad. Oh sure people are blown up every day in the name of religion or oil and I realize that statistically, there is little difference between my family and any family in northern Lebanon so why not blow up my kid? Who is to say? Why are we even dealing with this? Why is this becoming the only normal way to think? Why, as gas prices climb to the point where $5.00 a gallon will seem normal, why do we still have a president that SUCKS at foreign policy and continues to SUCK at foreign policy to the point that other people keep wanting to blow us up because he SUCKS SO BAD? Homeland Security my ass. I see him as the biggest threat to this country's ability to communicate and function in this world. Every time he fucks up, we, as in the collective we "The Nation", have to smile for the cameras, bend over and embarrassingly take it up the ass in front of all Nations. But Americans don't mind because they feel safer with all that extra security of forcing nursing mothers to drink their own breast milk in front of the armed National Guard.

Oh wait, that's right they hate us because we are free. Right. That is what makes them crazy for our blood in the streets. Right.

RUNNING WITH PACKS
I finally had a chance to do some serious walking about this little town I now live in. Even though we should have stayed inside and tinkered with countless things, Martha and I went for a major Sunday morning walk with the Polaroid camera. Then when Akash and Yasuyo arrived, we walked the whole length of the town, all the way down to the river. Shot some very fun very, odd photos and had good solid laughs, the kind that have been seriously lacking in my life. (Obviously) I think just having Martha and Jasmine home has done me wonders but the added laid-back company made it even better.

In less time then it takes to watch an episode of VH1s I love the 80's; Jasmine has managed to trash the entire second floor of our house. My office is full of crap; the bathroom is filled with odd personal product and things like a flat iron and a hair dryer are all fighting for space on a very narrow vanity. On my desk by the new computer is a bottle of OPI Nail Lacquer (Edin-Burgundy), a copy of the new GQ with "The Private Life of Justin Timberlake" bookmarked and underneath that is a copy of the new US Weekly with the VINCE PROPOSES! screaming headline.

Oh well, it's not as though the house was in perfect condition before she arrived. So much to do so little time to deal. All her shit is now mixed in with my shit so everything looks even messier then it did just the other day. I kind of feel like I have made no progress but I know deep down that is only an illusion. Plus, I kind of need to get out of the house with some family and friends for a few hours.

There is a rather large pet store that is just down the street from the house and I personally see that as more of a potential threat than living next door to the Happy Clown Soft Serve Ice Cream Stand up on RT 23. Currently, they have a gaggle of black and white kittens in there that would make even the blackest of hearts melt. It's sick and I should be forbidden from entering the store. Kind of like Tippy, the white and black cat that isn't allowed in the Muddy Cup Coffeehouse even though I always see her in there, napping on one of the many sofas. They even have a sign on the front door with her photo and underneath it, it reads; "Don't let me in!". I should hang a photo of me near the register of the pet store with the words "DO NOT SELL LIVE ANIMALS TO THIS CRAZY BITCH" plastered all over it.

This whole town has a cat thing. There are gangs of feral cats that roam around the town. There are about ten or so over by the hotel and then, at the other end of town, there are several more that hang near the train station. We have two that linger in our backyard and drive Zoë nuts. One is a big black cat who does not give a rat's ass about us and then, there is a cute tabby that appears to be pregnant. Oh Jesus, one way or another I see more cats in my life. I just know it.

Day two of my commute last week and I was ready to either quit my job or sell the house. Balls to the wall my total time is six hours a day, that's three hours each way. That is totally insane, this I know but I won't be doing it every day. I will only be going into the office probably two days a week but not just yet. There are still some technical things that need to be worked out. One being my new computer and the cable modem that is coming on Wednesday and the other is setting up an open connection between me and work. Characteristically, that has always been a problem between us, but technically, we should be able to work it out.

So for now, I make a pilgrimage that consists of an hour and a half car ride with Martha (the most enjoyable part of the trip); a forty-minute train ride through New Jersey suburbia and urban decay; a sweltering Path ride from Hoboken and then finally, a nice little sun filled ten-block walk to the Voice. Awesome and when I get to work I feel like I should be somewhere other than just the fricken East Village where everything smells like baked butt crack.

I go from fog and deer roaming around in a flowering meadow to masturbating homeless men lying in the middle of the sidewalk, foot traffic splitting around him like commuter cars moving around a stalled blinking vehicle. All that visualization within a three-hour span, no wonder I'm worn-out. I'm so fatigued I'm kind of numb to all of it. I have started smoking pretzels to psychologically make myself feel better. I have also invited the Starbucks monkey back on my back. Can't help it I need crack in a cup all the time now.

I want new pets, ours seem to be broken. Zoë is a total whack job and Lily is insistent on waking us up at 5am. Five in the fucking morning, people. She paces around our bed, the sound of her nails clip, clip, clipping on the hardwood, meowing a top volume (getting a nice reverb off the high ceilings) yanking us out of the deep sweet sleep that Martha and I crave. Once I get up, Lily then follows me everywhere, meowing all the way. She's like a whinny baby in a walker. Kind of like Jazz used to be, or just... kind of like Jazz. Kidding, I'm kidding.

It took Martha, myself, plus a last-minute maid hire, most of Saturday to clean out the old apartment. It wasn't that the place was so filthy; it is that management is so damn picky. They gave us a list of how much stuff costs. Everything from a $5.00 light bulb to repainting the entire apartment at "current contractor rates". Scary shit. We will be charged an arm and a leg. I know it and am just going to have to embrace it. There is only just so much I could handle cleaning and painting before I was either going to just throw the mop down and jump out the window or make Martha open the checkbook. How much do I have to pay to get out of this?

(YUNZ GUYS) CHECK MY MESSAGES?
Jasmine is currently supporting Europe's economy. She has spent, in one week mind you... $1200. She was supposed to make a grand last the whole three weeks. Europe is expensive and the dollar is shit, but Jesus Christ. She'll be home in two weeks for some down time, painting my stairs and general harassment on the parts of all parties involved. I miss her so much and can't wait to squeeze her. I just wish she'd get her fucking head around money. Well, she's got her head around it all right, it's just screwed on wrong. She went to Stonehenge on Friday, (hippie) and her and a gaggle of her friends went into London on Saturday. All in all she sounds like she's having fun and she's even managed to pick up a slight British accent. Marble mouth Pittsburgh with a British flair. Kind of like Madonna, Detroit chunk with proper pronunciation.

SNACKS THROUGHOUT THE DAY
Martha goes back down to North Carolina this week. She'll leave Thursday morning and won't be back until Sunday. She is leaving me alone in the house. Ahhhhh! It's fine, really. It's a little soon but fine. Cable should be hooked up in the bedroom by then and I already have my train tickets for work, (I get to take the big train!) cutting my commute down by a third, so as long as I don't have to deal with anything too nuts I should be fine.

Things are getting ugly for her folks. Dad keeps falling and mother creeps each day a little closer to the crazy glue. Denial is an amazing thing. Her father actually thinks that he should be able to start driving again; even after he fell off the toilet. My dad used to say, "It's hell to get old, Holly. Avoid it."

Okay dad, I'll make sure to slit my wrists before the age of fifty.

Anyway, while I do agree with his core thought about aging, I also know that it doesn't have to be so terrifying like Martha's parents are taking it. In many ways, I'm ready to go to a retirement community right now. Sign me up for meals on wheels and all day TV. I most certainly would not have to commute six hours a fucking day, unless it takes me that long to shuffle on down to the dining hall and back to my little room with Martha.