Holly Northrop Blog

Oh September, why deviate when we have such a good thing going on?

We need a new roof. Now when Martha and I bought the house we knew the roof was old. Like 30 years old. Then we just found out via some chalk writing down in the basement that a new roof was put on our house in 1964. Okay, well I had been hoping to ride out the winter, sock away a few bucks and then in the spring get a new roof.

The house has other plans.

We have a leak and from the looks of it is has been going on undetected for quiet some time. So now we get a new roof. Whatever right? I work for the house so the house can work for me. I'm just glad it did not start dripping in my studio.

We seem to be playing a great deal of the "What the fuck is that?" game lately. I am actually thinking about having a side site dedicated to weird bug of the day because at least once a day either Martha or I see something on or in the garage, or near the sunroom door that is completely unidentifiable to either one of us. It isn't as though we have a degree in Entomology but some of these things I don't even know what their closest domestic cousin might be.

So to date the biggest freak out horror fest that we have seen happened around 4:30 Saturday afternoon. We had spent the day running around Kingston spending money we don't have on things like rugs and a new mattress pad. The sole reason we went to Kingston was to stop in a Lowes and set up a time to have a contractor come out to look at the roof. After a hundred dollars at Target and another hundred at Bed Bath & Beyond, we finally dealt with the general indifference to women of the Lowes staff and set something up.

We get home, drag all our shit inside the house and after about an hour we both settled down enough that Martha starts dozing off on the couch. I'm kind of tired but not really, so I get up thinking that I might go upstairs and write. I stop in the kitchen to grab some water to look out at the backyard with the pretty sunbeams drifting through the trees when I notice an exceptionally large number of gnats flying around. Like a lot. So I stood there, over the sink trying to focus my eyes a little better when I notice that in addition to the gnats I see this other larger bugs flying from what appears to be up out of the ground. There were quite a few of them taking off into the sky. So I move closer to the window to try to figure out where they are coming from when my eyes refocus on the bush that is directly in front of the open kitchen window. The bush, which is about the size of my entire body, is alive with insects. Millions, and I do mean millions, of bugs are crawling all over the bush. They look like flying ants but they also look like termites. What ever they were, they were technically a swarm hatching out of the bush and flying into the sky.

I have never seen anything like it in my life. Well, maybe on one of the Discovery channels specials on the bugs of the Amazon or something but not within a few feet of my head.

I jerked back from the sink and stood in the middle of the kitchen for a few minutes, not quite sure just what the hell to do. This swarm of bugs isn't inside the house, as far as I can tell, and they do seem to by flying away from the home. The bush they are hatching out of has been dying and well, I guess I now know why. If they are termites, I do live in a wood house on the edge of the woods...

I go into the living room and there is Martha all puffy cheeked and asleep on the couch. I touch her leg to wake her up while saying; "Baby, there is something crazy happening in the backyard." She gives me the 'you're the crazy thing in the backyard' look and says; "What are you talking about?"

"Get up you gotta come see this." I say as I point her towards the kitchen.

She shuffles half asleep up to the kitchen window, pauses for a few seconds while the magnitude of what she is seeing sinks in and then...

"Oh my god. What the fuck is that? EW! What the hell, Holly? Oh my god!"

"I don't know what it is. I don't know what they are." I said while scratching my arms and legs. My physic is totally taking a hit on this shit.

"That's it, I'm calling Orkin." Martha announces as she marches off to the living room looking for her cell phone.

She called Orkin in Albany because the local office was closed, Homeland Dan (our lawn guy) and then the cell phone number of the local Orkin guy who came around here about a week ago to talk about the spider problem.

Homeland Dan said he'd be by in the morning to cut the grass and remove the bushes. He also told us that we need to relax and that we will get through this.

I figure we just need to "get through" the first year and then maybe we'll lighten up a little. That is what it was like when we first moved to New York. The first year was tricky but then things chilled out, or rather we became numb to the insanity of NYC. Now we just need to get numb to natures insanity.

I spent the majority of last week working on a 911 package for work. The Voice is doing a piece that I can honestly say I am proud of. Been a few months since I've felt like that.

But what all that meant was that I spent three solid days either looking at photos of the Twin Towers falling or I was down at Ground Zero with my camera, shooting everything from tourists to the actual pit, via the Path train. Instead of walking through the space like when I used to commute through there, I had to linger around the edges of the fence and shoot photos. All around me was a massive photo exhibit (complete with minute-by-minute timeline) that folks were driven to with the customary display of astonishment or boredom on their faces. Ground Zero is a fucked up tourist destination. Aside from the obvious reason that it is a fucked up tourist spot, there is no food or water, no bathrooms or even a place to sit down unless you want to sit right on the sidewalk. There are no trees and the whole area is void of any life except of course for the commuters, tourists and Port Authority workers. But I did notice a bunch of rag weed growing over in the southwest corner of the pit, so life is returning I suppose.

The WTC site is full of life, but lifeless.

Prior to my being down there for two days straight, I had been holdup in my little town in the woods for six solid days. I had very little human interaction outside of the sushi place and the chick at CVS. Thankfully, because I've lived here for so long, I know how to shove hysterical emotion deep down inside me, only to have it come out at odd and inappropriate times of course, but that's my problem and I've learned to deal with it. I had a job to do and there was no time to flip-out with a bunch of untamed emotions.

They say that what happened on 9.11.01 was the largest man-made disaster ever. Except for the Ice Age, I'm thinking that every disaster is man-made considering how we manage this planet. Just about everything the goes wrong is our fault.

Like most folks who were in New York City five years ago, I chose not to go into work on Monday. I was in Manhattan on the one-year anniversary of the whole thing and that was about as fucked up as anything can get. All the stores weren't just closed, they all had flags or signs of remembrance hanging in their windows. The only thing that was open besides The Voice, was Ground Zero. I was also in the city two years ago when the fucking Republicans had their convention here and used New York City as a political backdrop, while behind the scenes the city was in lockdown. Step off the sidewalk and you just might be arrested.

This year I just don't want to play. I'm good thanks and I don't want to think about it any more.

NATURE OR NURTURE?
Martha had the windshield replaced and it cost a little under $300. About half of what I thought it was going to be. It was beautiful but after an hour and a half drive in the country on a Friday night, it is now covered with bugs and looks like every other windshield around here.

Saturday, Lily went to the vet and it turns out she has fleas. So that means Zoë has fleas. So we are currently undergoing 'flea treatment'. Fantastic. We had an Orkin guy come out on Saturday to look at the spider problem that, honestly I have never, ever seen anything like in my life. Thursday morning Martha and I woke up and noticed that everything and I mean EVERY THING in the town of Hudson was COVERED in spider webs. There were webs all over the bushes, trees and fences. The stop sign at the end of Union Street and 3rd was covered in a web that was bigger than my upper torso. I am NOT KIDDING. Even the power lines, you know where the birds sit, were incased with web work. The spiders had a busy night that's for damn sure.

No we didn't have spiders in the house, which is all I really care about but even I was a little shocked. Martha was totally horrified. We live in spider town.

So we thought the Orkin guy might have an idea or two as to WTF is up with the spiders, plus we wanted him to check out a wasp thing we got going on. He said the spider phenomenon is actually a good thing and that they come out in droves after a long rain. Spiders keep the bugs down, blah, blah, blah. By the time he got to our house most of the webs in the whole town were gone so it was kind of hard to stress the complete coverage we had but he is a local and has seen it all before. We were more of show to him than anything going on in the woods.

While he was at the house, a green garden snake slithered across the path to my front door and appeared to slip down a hole into our basement. So we made the Orkin guy go in the basement. He doesn't think the snake went in but he did find a salamander down there. And again, we heard how now salamanders are a good thing and they keep the bugs down with that whole food chain thing. So my question is this; will the snake eat the salamander? Where do the cats fit into this? They suck you know. Our pets are broken and have no idea how to actually kill even the simplest bug so just what do you think is going to happen if a garden snake crawls upstairs and sticks it's tongue out at them. I'll tell you what would happen, Lily would run to the highest point in the house never to be seen again and Zoë would shit herself. That is what she does when she is terrified. She poo's.