Holly Northrop Blog

Martha and I made a joint decision not to exchange gifts for Christmas this year. Reasons being, the most honest of all, we don't have any spare money to buy crap and no one has any spare hours in the already stuffed days of our lives to make shit. All of our money is tied up in a new roof and a new bathroom door, and not to mention the new insulation in the attic. Once all of those projects finish up, our savings will be depleted and I'll probably stop being so snarky at work for a while.

But, and the big but here is that I didn't seem to think through the whole emotional side of not having a tree or even opening one gift. It kind of feels like my first Christmas with Jim, and that is never good - although we at least had a depressing Charlie Brown tree. Martha and I didn't feel like fighting with Zoë over the tree. That cat is so crazy—she actually eats the pine needles. Eats them and then pukes them up all season long. She's so wild that I know she'd eat a plastic tree too, if I was ever allowed to buy my 7 1/2' White Spruce with Clear Pine Cone Lights Christmas tree. It has 1842 branch tips and she would chew everyone down to the wire.

Jasmine even bought a cheese log. Technically, it is a cheese ball, but no matter, it is still that port wine, nut covered crap that was the only gift from my parents that first year with Jim. I remember it came a few days before Christmas and I am pretty positive my mom spelled my new married name wrong.

Ah, well, no matter, try not to dwell on the dead in this season of...what? Santa?

Two of two toilets clogged up on the first morning that Jasmine was home. Martha woke up and immediately drove to the hardware store to purchase all forms of clog removal devices. Even after Martha aggressively plunged the toilet for several hours I had to call an emergency plumber. We were without a toilet for so long that Jazz had to go use the one over at the Muddy Cup when she woke up —further cementing our "Lame Christmas" status. I called several plumbers but everyone wanted crazy money to drive over here on Christmas Eve, never mind that it was only 10:30 in the morning. One place wanted $65 just to cross the Rip Van Winkle Bridge. Finally, Martha got a hold of the plumber who lives next door. He's never been very friendly to us but he did send two of his guys to deal with our troubles. They said he would bill us. Great. Hate shit that is THAT open-ended. Nobody signed anything, can't wait to see the tally.

No Christmas Kitty
In a super stupid misguided way of trying to do the right thing by imposing our will onto something that was doing just fine before us, Martha and I tried to save a cat. This shit all started last Tuesday when after our lengthy commute and just seconds from home, we came up over the hill to the view of a dead cat in the headlights. We began freaking out because we thought it was this one particular grey and white fatty that has been hanging out by our house since we moved in. I started feeding it, (yeah, I know, shut up) several months ago and proceeded to bagger Martha into letting me snag it.

Well, now we thought he was dead, and we both had probably one of the worst nights ever.

The next day wasn't much better and by Thursday I just wanted to stay home, clean and get ready for Jasmine who was due in later on that evening. While doing the dishes I looked out the window and out of the bushes plopped the grey fatty. I couldn't believe it. The cat that had been run over was another one, which I have seen walking around in the road before and thought maybe it might be, but honestly, I couldn't look at the dead cats face that night.

So we grieved for two days over a cat that was very much alive. I ran outside called him over to me and walked him into the sunroom. All of which he was very happy to do. I gave him food and water and then called Martha. "Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas" we said to each other and then made a vet appointment for later on that afternoon. I spent the rest of the day cleaning the house, and taking little breaks out in the sunroom/quarantine room.

After a few hours, he was not happy. He wanted to leave. Of course he did, who the fuck am I?

Martha came home early, we packed him up in the carrier, and into the car we went. This was the first big no. He didn't like the car at all. Even worse then Zoë. In fact, he was so loud and unhappy that I had to get out of the car at the stop sign. I totally blame Jasmine for this. Constantly meowing cats' sound like crying/whimpering babies with colic. This triggers a freaky reaction in me that causes me to remove myself from the sound. Saying I can't handle it is an understatement. The funny thing is that actual crying babies don't bother me any more then they bother all of us, but there is something in a cats' meow that sounds just how Jazz used to sound when she had colic and would sleep/cry all damn day and night for months on end.

Fascinating, I am just so smack full of mental illness.

Okay, back to the cat. So yeah, I jumped out of the car in the middle of the street and Martha had to drive him to the vet. Things got super tension filled and the vet ended up having to sedate the cat just to look at it. Great. We had him tested for Feline Leukemia, which he did not have. Aside from being five-years-old and covered in fleas, Martha found out that he had already been fixed. He really was someone's pet.

Great, super, fuck it he shouldn't be outside. Martha paid the $200.00 bill and put him back in the Jeep. Apparently, during the ride home, the carrier slid off the seat and he went head first into the steel grate door. This is when he woke up, fucked up and freaked out.

In-between all this shit, Jasmine calls me to say that the cab from Albany airport to the train station cost $50.00 and that she left her coat in the cab and she can't remember the name of the cab company. How can you fucking loose your coat? How is that fucking possible? And for $50 for a cab ride and then another $20 for the train? Jesus Christ, we should have just fucking drove up there. It's like twenty-five minutes away.

Martha drives the grey fatty home and we carry all seventeen pounds of him into the house. He's upstairs stumbling around when he decides to lean up against me and begin to growl. Just a little at first, and I don't think too much about it all. But then he starts growling more, as he was coming out of the sedative. There was no hissing, but a great deal of growling.

So then the conversation between Martha and I got seriously strange. It became apparent that we were not going to be able to keep him. I was afraid to even show him Zoë and Lily. Oh for fucks sake we were going to have to let him go. After some yelling, which I'm sure totally helped his over all mood, Martha and I walked him down the stairs, into the sunroom and out the door. I took him over to the back yard by the fence that he had plopped through some nine hours before. I said good-bye and he didn't look back.

This is like one of those dumb things that you only tell a few people and then try to forget about just how stupid you can be. Hey look at me, I'm super stupid!

Sunday morning when I was walking over to pick up Martha and Jazz at yoga I saw him sitting on the back porch, of the house that I have always suspected that he might belong to. It's about three house away, not nearly as far down as where the dead cat was, and let's not forget here a cat was killed that night, which is what started this whole shit. But anyway, I saw him and he looked over at me and that was about it. He didn't come running and probably won't for some time. I alien abducted him in an attempt to save him. Nice. I'm such a good neighbor.

Oh well, the neighbors have a perfectly healthy cat that isn't positive, and has been treated for fleas. Happy Holidays.

Ah yes, home. Back to my moldy basement and my weird little small town, where they say that the circus spends the winter. I'll believe that. Martha has had a chest cold now for about a week. Cough, cough, cough. Even the cats leave the room. She feels like total shit. Work has reached a new level of yuck and this Thursday is my forty-fourth birthday. Yep, yep. And there it is. If you want to do anything for me, buy a calendar. That's the best thing ever.

Jasmine's hamster died. Actually, I think we are all somewhat glad it finally happened. There was a moment over Thanksgiving that I thought I had killed Leroy. I know something happened to her (yes her, apparently there were some gender issues earlier on in this rodents life) and Jasmine said she never was quite right afterwards but at least it was a week and a half from the event so I could not be blamed directly for ruining Thanksgiving. Nope, not this year.

See, I wanted to hold her—the hamster. A simple request but Jasmine didn't let me know until almost the last second that she had not been picking her up for quite some time. She was old and moving slow and I thought a little love might be nice. I brought my face down to the bottom of the glass cage just as Jasmine was reaching towards her when I noticed that her eyes looked funny. I didn't think she could see anymore, it looked as though there were cataracts covering the eyes. Just when I figured out that Leroy might be a tad more out of it then any of us suspected, Jasmine touched her and she jumped a good seven inches straight up in the air, while turning around in mid-air she tried to bite her. It was all very Matrix like. When she landed on her wood shavings, she bounced once and then fell over on her side, coming to rest like the letter E. It looked like she was dead.

Jasmine ran over to the corner in the kitchen yelling, "Thanks a lot MOM!"

I just sat there staring at Leroy, waiting to see if she was going to move or if she was going to be dead on Thanksgiving, having it be all my fault, of course. My head was spinning with "oh fuck, oh fuck. Na, come on man not today, okay?" I look across the room at Martha, who by now was suddenly engaged in a magazine. After a few seconds Leroy's chest started moving up and down. Okay good, I thought at least she is still alive.

Leroy stayed in the dead hamster position for about an hour when suddenly we noticed that she was moving around in her cage, making her way towards the one corner she seems to favor.

I'm glad she lived past that event and even though Jazz said she was never really quite right after Thanksgiving, (honestly neither was I but for other reasons), she didn't die right in front of us. Instead, I think she had a heart attack, indirectly caused by me. Nice.

Good-bye Leroy, so sorry about all that, you had a great life. Um yeah.

In what was supposed to be a low-key Thanksgiving weekend with Jasmine turned into a total cluster fuck, consisting of hospitals; doctors; social workers; hospice workers and general frustration all wrapped in the cranberry sauce of sadness.

Martha's dad was admitted to the hospital the Wednesday before Thanksgiving with shortness of breath. After draining fluid in his left lung the word came back that there was nothing they could do, the lung was full of tumors, (as was Frank) and for us to come down and to go ahead and set up hospice care. However the fuck we were supposed to do that.

Before we could cut our visit short with Jasmine, we had to find someone in our little town of Hudson that could look after the cats. We didn't leave enough food out for an open ended stay away. Nor did we even begin to bring enough clothes. Martha called a friend of hers that have a part-time house in the next town over. They have two friends that actually live three houses away from us and while, yes we have met them once or twice, they have never been in our house. Martha called Paul and set up cat sitting services while we had a spare key made. We then sent the key overnight to people we do not know with hand written instructions on where shit is and what to do.

We left Jasmine, and drove ten hours south to Winston-Salem, NC, stopping every two-hundred miles for gas and a bathroom break. We had to be in Frank's hospital room by 4:00 for a family meeting with the cancer doctor.

We were only 15 minutes late, simply amazing if you ask me, considering I had us turn off the highway too soon, (the only map we had in the jeep was more of a general United States atlas thing). We drove in on a bunch of Appalachian back roads, in what I consider the first of many unnecessary tension-filled moments. But the doctor was late too, actually we were on the same time seeing how we followed him into the room.

While I am sure it cannot be easy to tell someone that they are dying and there is nothing that can be done, I know there has to be a better way then what happened next. The cancer doctor didn't want to say the "dying" word, and instead inserted all kinds of other words. When in doubt he would reference the word "Hospice", which neither one of Martha's parents understood what that meant nor was Mr. Cancer Doctor wasn't going to explain it to them either. Not talking about it probably has something to do with not giving up hope but you know what, if you are too PC with breaking bad news then not giving up hope leads to inaction, (especially with this crowd), which is the last fucking thing that needed to happen when the hospital is kicking you out.

All Frank wanted to do was go home; he didn't care or understand what was being said to him about hospice care.

Finally, after a bunch of phone calls, in-room meetings and the handling of Martha's mother, Frank was disconnected from the IV, given a script for some antibiotics, a mother load of Oxycoden and released from the hospital. After five days of lying in bed he could barely walk.

Martha's mother, ever so disgusted that we were there and completely resentful that Martha moved them into assisted living, was for the most part, cranky and thought we were pushy. This woman is going to be the primary care giver once we leave yet she can't really follow the simplest of instructions and has a bitch fit if she feels slighted. When Frank's tongue swelled up overnight, she bitched at Martha for calling the doctor the next day. Frank had horrible night sweats one evening last week and she told him to remember his prayers instead of calling the hospice number. This is the same woman that asked me, "Tell me dear, is Christmas on the 25th this year?"

Yep. It is that easy to land in the hands of the totally crazy as your guardian. Frank, I love you, good luck and please take the Oxy like Pez.

I spent five days on elderly time. Lunch at 11:30, dinner at 4:30 endless hours of just sitting; no reading, TV or talking, just staring into the air; or trying to remember how to add; or if you've taken your medicine; or what the emergency magnet on the refrigerator is for; or what fucking day Christmas is.

DRUGS AND A PUMPKIN MUFFIN
I could never work there, at the Assisted Living place. No matter how nice and clean it is and how adorable the apartments are. Christ, if I worked there, everyday at the end of my shift I would run screaming from the building to my beat-to-shit ten-year-old grey Buick, lighting cigarette after cigarette while pealing out of the parking lot, driving to the nearest bar, (probably an Applebee's) where the staff, without asking, would know what I drink.

Once seated at the horseshoe bar, encasing myself in the comfort of FOX News and classic rock, I'd drink myself stupid while hoovering my way through Boneless Buffalo Wings and a big bucket of Baja Potato Boats. Every night I'd finish it out with a helping of Triple Chocolate Meltdown™ and a pack of Marlboros.

The all day game of "Who is that? What are you talking about? Why is she on the phone? When is lunch?" every two-fricken-minutes would drive me to be a fat-as-fuck, two pack-a-day, alcoholic. I don't know how these people work there and I know that we, the collective, democratic we, will never pay them enough money to deal with Assisted Living Land.

I was under such odd stress that I would tell anyone who would listen that I wanted a cigarette and when Alison, Martha's sister would go outside to smoke, I would join her and stand an uncomfortable ten inches from her face. Interestingly enough, at the Assisted Living Home out in front they have several rockers and a full-blown smoking section, complete with elderly smokers, most of whom were women.

Once we left Winston-Salem, the overwhelming desire to smoke went away, and thank god as I was just about a day away from making some kind of screwy deal with Martha involving a carton a Marlboros and a case of beer.

We managed to bring home a piece of furniture from her parents' house that Martha had wanted to have but we could never figure out the logistics of it all. Now that we had the Jeep in town we put a beautiful chest of drawers in the back and covered it with a 5 x 8 oriental rug that Martha's mom gave us. At first glace it looked like a casket covered with a shroud. Actually at first, second and third glances it looked like a casket and there was nothing to be done about it.

We finally left Winston-Salem on Wednesday afternoon, deciding to split the thirteen-hour drive into two days. We drove for five hours north to a Hampton Inn in the middle of Virginia, where I THOUGHT we had reservations. We didn't because Martha never imagined we would make there. They were sold out and we had to spend the night at a fricken Best Western that was attached to a Perkins.

I didn't even want to walk up the outside steps to the second floor of the motel. My tired and over stressed mind kept replaying some very awful Ohio memories. Martha, ever the optimist, sweet-talked me with, "I'm sorry if this reminds you of your childhood. It will be all right, we are making NEW memories."

"I hate it when I know that I am going to be able to quote you." I smirked, dragging my suitcase behind me.

I was on edge the minute we stepped into the room, and I was convinced the place had bugs.

Unable to sleep even after a Xanax and a Benadryl, I was lying in bed with the lights off watching John Stewart fawn all over Tom Waits. I was clearly fucked up and enjoying myself, when out of the corner of my eye I notice a large black spot on an otherwise white lampshade, just a few feet from my head. Upon closer inspection, it moved and so did I. I jumped out of bed and ran, yes ran, over to the other side of the bed where Martha was out like a coma patient. I called her name and as her eyes shot open, she screamed at me, "My god Holly, what's the matter with you?"

"There's a big bug on the lampshade." I whined.

Glaring in my general direction because she can't actually see me without her glasses, she shouted, "Well kill it! What the hell is wrong with you?"

"It's big and I can't tell what it is." I yell back. This was true; it looked like a dino-bug. You know, been here about a million years before us and will be here a million more after we are gone. Those things creep me out. Plus, it was the size and shape of the toenail on my big toe.

"What the hell am I suppose to do?" Martha yells just as she grabs the yellow pages and from roughly ten feet away she throws it at the lamp. The shade goes flying off the lamp and the whole thing slams against the window, but does not break. I look down at the carpet and there is the bug - dead. I was laughing so hard I could barely say... "We're making NEW memories."

The rest of the drive home was long and for about an hour very foggy. Once home and semi settled in, Martha and I went out for a sushi dinner.

When we returned from a lovely dinner, our key didn't work—at all. Martha walked down the street to Paul's house but... he wasn't home. We had no choice but to break into our own house. I remembered that the window over the kitchen sick was unlocked. So there we were, standing on the slanted metal cellar doors in the dark with the wind blowing the gate door that is just out of backyard light range, clanging it around in the dark and heightening an already stressful event, I picked up Martha and shoved her thought the small kitchen window. She crawled into the sink and onto the floor and finally, we were home.