Holly Northrop Blog

The first night I was in North Carolina, I slept for 11 hours. Not straight through, I did get up three times to go to the bathroom, but the total bedtime was 11 hours. The only thing that made me get up was that I think my organs were starting to fail. I finally woke up with a splitting headache and lower back pain that felt as if my kidneys were shutting down. My brain having checked out for so long that the overall decision was made to power down. "She must be dead, shut her down!" I guess I'm exhausted because I also ended up taking a 2 hour nap the next day.

On Saturday at Wendy's while Gen was waiting at a table for us, Martha and I were in line sandwiched between a group of really white folks from the Bridges Church in North Carolina. They all had a Jesus saying on their backs and I wish to God (ha, ha) I had written it down, but the whole thing in general was so surreal, that I was absorbing other things instead of t-shirt slang. At the register was a seriously weird man in a Boy Scout uniform, which at quick glance looks like a cop uniform. Just something I noticed, that's all. He had moved off to the side and was watching the group of church people. He looked normal enough except for the uniform and the doughy smile he had on his face. He was waiting for one of the church folks to notice him. Finally, their eyes met.

"We're new in town," a churchwoman said.
"I know, I've heard all about you. We knew you were coming." He replied in a heavy southern drawl. He then removed a handful of business cards from his wallet and passed them out first to the adults and then to the children. The church folks then dug out their business cards and passed them along to the Boy Scout leader. I started to feel a little queasy.

Another church guy who was in line behind us was on his cell phone constantly. He was talking about the overall turnout of the carwash that they had just had. He had counted 26 cars but someone named Cory counted 50. Seems like a large discrepancy, it must be that Christian math.

We make it through the line and were in the middle of eating lunch; the Christians having made a nice large table for themselves over on the other side of the dining room; when Gen started telling a little Martha story.

"When Martha was little I took her to the doctor, oh what was his name? Oh well, never mind. Whatever..." she trailed off.
"Koons! Dr. Koons. Koons! Koons!" Martha shouted as if she was on a game show.
"Jesus Christ, shut up." I whispered to her as I look around at the staff of Wendy's.
"What dear? Oh right, right Dr. Koons. Anyway, I took her to the doctor and he put her up on the table and looked at her and said, 'That child is cross-eyed!' and I said 'She is not! She's beautiful!'"

There's Nothing Funnier Than People
So God was very much in the air and all around Winston-Salem. This trip was a God trip. I even wore my 'Jesus Loves Me' t-shirt on the last day, just to fit in. Gen turned to me in the elevator at the assisted living home and asked, "What the hell are you doing walking around with that on?" "Note the irony," I said. We all laughed.

I read an interesting little tidbit in the local Winston-Salem Journal. It seems that unemployment in NC is on the rise. The report cited two main reasons. One reason is because the housing prices are so much cheaper in NC then the rest of the country and folks are just moving to the state without any employable skills. They are unable to find jobs and end up on some kind of public assistance. (A personal fear of mine.) The second reason, one, which I found comical, was that most people could not seem to pass a drug test.

Favorite Gen-ism:
"I'm not anti-social, and neither are you," she said pointing her finger at me, "I just don't want to participate anymore."

He Showed Him How the Cow Ate the Cabbage
On the day we were to leave NC Martha and I got up at 4am and drove in the morning dark towards the heat lightening. Once at the airport, the very first thing we noticed was that our flight was the only flight delayed. The only one. The problem was that because of a 'crew issue' we were going to miss our connection out of Boston. On the way down to NC, we flew out of Albany to Boston on a 40-year-old plane no bigger than an MRI machine. They only fly that plane from Albany to Boston twice a day and we were going to miss the morning flight. The next one out of Boston was at 5:00pm and it was full. Everything was full. The guy tried every combination on every airline to get us to Albany. The only flight out of Greensboro was to LaGuardia. Now here is the thing, if you live here, or if you have had to travel to New York a lot, you know to stay the hell away from LaGuardia airport. Kennedy or Newark are the better choices, hell, Newark will fly in anything. But LGA shuts down on a whim.

"I'd rather shoot myself in the head." Martha told the Delta ticket guy and that about summed it up.

It didn't matter if Martha threatened suicide or not, we were going to LGA. Delta shuffled us off to USAir at the other end of the terminal. Once there, new tickets were issued, (last row, directly in front of the bathroom but hey they were together).

Because of the airline change, USAir issued tickets that, unbeknown to us as to the meaning, had four capital letter S's at the bottom. We found out what these meant at the Homeland Security part of the trip. Four S's mean …"that you have been Specialty Selected by your airline for Security Screening".

Ah man, fuck this.

Martha went through the machine first, Mr. Security guard noticed the ticket and yelled out "One female no alarm." They escorted Martha to her chair, asked her which containers' were hers and removed them from the X-ray machine, taking them over to the special screening table. It was all rather pleasant in that southern way.

Next I go through the machine, he looked at my ticket and yelled out "One female no alarm." Right out of the gate, (literally) they started shit with me. They told me to go sit in the left corner of the holding pen. I noticed that while they managed to grab Martha's purse and laptop, my purse and sandals are just sitting at the bottom of the conveyer belt where anyone can take them. So I don't sit down I yelled at them to grab my stuff. The security guy who was facing me and did not take his eyes off of me and kept repeating, "Ma'am please sit down in the left corner" and I kept repeating, "Could you grab my shit?" But he wouldn't look at anything other than me because I wouldn't sit down. Finally, a woman over by the X-ray machine figured out what my problem was and took my purse and shoes over to the special table along with Martha's stuff. Just as I sat down in the chair I hear the security guard speak into his walky-talky, "She's sitting down now." I got the feeling that I was minutes away from being forced into the chair.

At this point, a rather large woman came over to me and asked if she can pat me down. "What. Ever." I reply as I stood up and did the Christ on the cross stance. Up down and all around she went as I watch them dig around in my purse. All through my drug pouch, all around my camera and even swapping my baggie of trail mix.

They finally let us go, I grabbed all my shit while muttering dumb obscenities under my breath. It is not even 7am yet, fuck these people.

We walked down to our gate in a desperate search for coffee. We came upon a small coffee and muffin stand that was manned by a middle-aged Asian woman and an obvious stroke victim. Her face; contorted like an old racist Loony Tunes WWII character that they no longer air on TV; was exaggerated by the use of heavy makeup and her choice of a brightly colored floral dress and the constant utilization of the word "Honey", heighten an already overwhelming situation.

"Okay honey. You got it honey. Two coffee honey? That'll be $4.17 honey." I felt like we had stepped back in time through the David Lynch door.

The flight to LGA was on time and of little concern except for the poo smell coming out of the bathroom. However, once at LGA we spent 5 hours waiting for our 40-minute flight to Albany. LGA kept delaying the flight in 20 minutes increments. Or as Martha put it they were 'slowly trying to kill us'. It was here somewhere at LGA that my deodorant failed. But I was far from the only one in the room.

We arrived in Albany after 10 hours of traveling. It was 92 degrees and once we found the Jeep, we were unable to find the parking ticket. After bartering with the ticket guy in long-term parking we were finally on the road home in our Jeep, without air-conditioning. We will be traveling back to NC in about 6-weeks.

First off, this thing has to be the craziest thing I have seen on the internets in quite some time. Praise glory be to the meticulously passionate artist.

Our new stove still does not work. This deal of the decade has yet to do anything other then sit, extended out into my kitchen, for over a month now. All I can do with it is dust it. The repairman has been here twice and replaced three circuit boards and a sensor. Now he has ordered one more part and if that isn't it then he's going to have to pull all the wires out to see if there is a crossed connection. Of all the times of year to not have a stove, this is the best I suppose but I am becoming a little annoyed with microwaving water for my calm-me-down mint tea.

On the plus side we now have a fantastic new front door, complete with super cool screen door. On the day of the install, there was a massive thunderstorm with sideways rain and hail that blew threw the house minutes after the workman set the door in its frame. Nothing was holding it in, it was just sitting there when all hell broke loose. It rained so hard that our garage flooded. I have never seen the garage flood, the basement yes, of fucking course, but not the garage. This storm was so powerful that the basement didn't flood at all, it all ran off and on down the hill. It was crazy.

But now we have a brand new and ultra cat fascinating front door. The screen door is full length and for now we have the double-paned glass in there, so when the door is opened, it looks like the whole world is out there. The first few days the cats were afraid to go near it because it looked like they could just walk outside. I watched one of the neighborhood cats that I feed (the one we gave free healthcare to, who we have also named Big Grey Fatty) walk right up our front steps and bonk his nose on the glass. He was just going to walk in the house. Now, he sits out there on the stoop while Zoë sits in front of him behind the glass, doing this super disturbing little Meow Dance in front of him. It is kind of like her Crazy Sock Dance but way weirder.

I have found the perfect space in Hudson to renovate into a public gallery/live work space and I only need 100k to make the deal happen. Anybody, anybody? 40-50k down and 40-50k to repair. The place is on Warren Street in one of the best locations possible and is damn close to exactly what I have been looking for. Which is why I shouldn't look in the first place because I just might find it and then what? Built in 1872 and a whopping thirty-four years older then our 1906 house, it is twelve-feet wide and it needs a new everything. Heat, electrical, plumbing, oh and let us just say a new roof. How seriously interested was I? I went into the clay basement, that is how serious. I love dreams like these. Of course, dreams like these are one of the things that make Martha totally nuts, (that and living in a cat town) but she is the one who wanted to see it.

In all honesty, stuff like the little twelve-foot house makes me crazy too but only because it slams home the certainty that money does make everything happen. Without a bucket load of cash, you just end up driving up and down the thruway every damn day for hours on end in an SUV with no air-conditioning, stuck behind an opened-top, semi-trailer truck full of NYC dumpster trash, dreaming about things you cannot afford. But I suppose with a place like my little twelve-foot wide dream, in the midst of a total gut renovation, a broken stove and the realization that your ten-year-old calico is starting to totally loose her shit is the least of all worries.

New Staff Member
For the very first time in my life, I had a professional massage. I have always had issues around people I do not know touching me but after what happened at the Pain Management Center last Tuesday, I had run out of options. Tuesday's appointment at the PMC turned into a total shitfest. I arrived with chronic pain in my back and unable to even sit on the exam table. Obviously, the shots were making things worse; my back was now totally locked up and would not stop with the spasms. This had been going on for over ten days. I had already been seeing my chiropractor every other day for over a week and a half. I remember walking over to the PMC thinking that this was great, they could see and feel what was going on and most likely do something to fix me. At least this is what I thought.

Instead, what happened was a joke. They did nothing. I stood there and cried and the nurse practitioner just stood there and looked at me. While standing in front of an enormous poster for OxyContin, she said that the shots were supposed to have the opposite effect and that there really isn't anything else they could do for me. There is no alternative treatment for that kind of pain.

What, you mean "real pain"? I could not even get a muscle relaxant out of this bitch even though my back would not stop spazzing and I had tears, (real tears people) running down my cheeks. She told me to go get a deep tissue massage and to buy a Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulator (TENS) machine.

Now mind you I have two blown disks, a pinched nerve and Osteoarthritis in my neck. I have x-rays and a CT scan that show these things and she wouldn't even give me an aspirin. So having no choice other then to start over with another doctor, and plan an extended drive up to Canada, Martha made an appointment for both of us at Bodhi in Hudson. I have to say that it was pretty awesome. Martha went first, because deep down I am just a pussy, and after thirty minutes, she came out looking all sleepy and relaxed. So I took the plunge, got half-naked and got rubbed. At first I was a little weirded out, whenever anyone who is about to do anything to me, tells me to take a few deeps breaths and relax, well, that tends to have the opposite effect with me. I stiffen up and become hyper alert. What can I say, I am a damaged soul. Anyway, after a few minutes, I did manage to let it go and things went much better. So now, not only do we have a chiropractor on our payroll we have added a masseuse.

A few weeks ago, Martha and I bought a brand new, crazy comfortable, Stearns & Foster king-size bed.

Most of my life if I am at home and not on the computer is spent in bed. Not sleeping, but living. I live in the bed. Not only do I just lounge around and watch TV, I do all kinds of things. Things that according to some university somewhere, I shouldn't do in bed. But I have never been one for the rules, especially when it comes to rules about what to do in bed. In bed, there are no rules, unless that is what is desired, of course.

I read, work, surf the web, do my nails, eat, fuck, laugh, cry and tell jokes. I can destroy and mend relationships, plan vacations, listen to music, write, take pictures, make 3 out of 5 baskets and apply makeup. About the only thing I can't do from the bed is clean my house. I have conducted almost whole visits with friends and family from the comfort of my bed and I haven't even been sick.

When just Sheri used to visit, we would sit in bed. When Jazz is home, we sit in bed. Hell when Sheri and Jess came over, we turned the whole living room into one big bed and hung out in there.

The bed doesn't even have to be comfortable. Martha and I had a horrible futon that took up a whole quad of our tiny DC apartment. On my right side, I had the TV and the VCR and on my left, I had the stereo and my records. I could make tapes from bed and it was awesome. The kitchen in that apartment was less than 15 feet from the futon, and even though Martha and I had an old stainless steal kitchen table, we ate dinner in bed.

Some of my greatest dreams and most horrible nightmares have originated from that coiled encasement.

A brief bed history:
New York, 2007: The new Stearns & Foster costs more money then I ever thought Martha would agree to spend. The sheets cost more money then I could possibly go along with but because we bought a thick mattress, we need sheets with "deep pockets". I think we generally need deep pockets for almost everything, right? New iPhone or new sheets? Hmm...

Pennsylvania, 1998: The bed Martha and I bought nine years ago at Wickes Furniture for $1800. At that time, I never ever thought she would say yes to spending that amount of money on a bed. We even got a headboard!
Landfill: New York

Washington DC, 1994: Queen bed (where did we get this thing?) I have no memory of buying a bed but somehow Martha and I had a queen bed in the apartment in Capitol Hill, small fourth floor walk up in Pittsburgh and the house in Butler.
Landfill: Pennsylvania

Washington DC, 1992: The dark green futon. We drug this thing around from DC to Pittsburgh, to Butler, back to Pittsburgh and its final resting place in West New York, NJ. Everyone who had ever slept at our house, slept on the futon.
Landfill: New Jersey

Pennsylvania, 1991: Martha's old queen-sized martial bed. This bed was hard, like rock hard and I never liked sleeping in this thing, but when we moved in together, it was what we had. Interesting note, this is when I slept on the other side of the bed.
Landfill: Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania, 1991: The old double bed that Jim and I had. When I moved out of Nicki's apartment, I didn't have a bed. Jim took pity on me and gave me back our bed. Landfill: Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania, 1990: For a little over a year, I slept in a waterbed. It was awesome, always warm and only sprung a leak once when the two cats that Nicki and I had got into a fight on it and one of their claws popped a hole. I couldn't really live in this thing. Too wavy to do much of anything other then zone out on TV or sleep. Not my bed so not sure what happened to it.

Denver, 1983: A double bed that Jim and I bought at a yard sale for $50.00, complete with yellow box springs. The yard sale was just a block away from the apartment we had in Denver. So we paid for it, and then carried it home. Soon after, a friend of mine sold me her old walnut frame and headboard. At this point in our newly married years, we had a couch, a bed with frame, a kitchen table and even a coffee table. Soon after I got pregnant and by the time I was 6 months along, we had a huge yard sale and sold everything but the mattress, box springs and of course the stereo. Jim and I moved three times this year, as if we were running from the law or something. Jim took this when we split but gave it back to me only to bed sent to a landfill months later.

Denver, 1983: A twin mattress on the floor that Jim and I shared. It came with the apartment we rented and every morning I would wake up on the floor instead of the mattress. Landfill: Denver

Denver, 1982: A sofa bed, that came with the apartment we rented. We left; it stayed for the next tenant.

Ohio, 1982: A mattress from a sofa bed. This used to be my parents couch, so I was not totally wigged out. I had already logged a zillion hours on it watching Gilligan's Island and eating Doritos. Interesting thing about this three-inch thick double mattress, it was like sleeping directly in the floor. This is when we had a stereo in the bedroom, just a simple turntable, receiver and speakers, and then another stereo with the Kenwood receiver, turntable, speakers, and cassette deck in the living room. We had nothing else to our name except a cat, and some left over furniture from my parents.
Sofa with bed: Sold to a family in the Over-the Rhine area of Cincinnati, Ohio.

Pennsylvania, 1982: A double bed that came with the apartment that Jim rented. We left; it stayed for the next tenant.

Pennsylvania, 1980: My dorm room bed.

Pennsylvania, 1965: The twin bed my parents bought for me when I was 3, complete with French provincial head and foot board.
Landfill: Ohio

The Pump Don't Work Cause the Vandals Took the Handle
I had an interview the other day that was up by where we live and would be just a fantastic job to have. Seeing how it was so close to home, and scheduled for late morning, I thought, "hey, I'll take the train to the next town down (Rhinecliff) and then grab a cab."

This was a stupid idea.

Right out of the gate at the Hudson train station, my train was running 40 -50 minutes late. It was stuck behind a freight train somewhere near Syracuse. Super. I called, we laugh, I waited. The train arrived one hour and fifteen minutes late. I jump on, ride it for fifteen minutes and then grab a cab.

Now when I was at the Hudson station I called a cab to see how much it would cost, one-way, to take me from Hudson train station to the place I needed to go. $40.00 seemed like a crazy amount, considering by car, just driving down the road like a normal person, it would take me not quite 25 minutes.

I didn't think to ask how much it would cost from Rhinecliff to my interview, because it was just down the fucking road, but it turns out it isn't just any road, it's the road that Annie Leibowitz has her home/barn thing on and the same road where Dylan wrote about that handle thing. This cab ride cost $20.00. Now if I add the price of the ticket, $21.00 and the price of the cab, $20.00 together, well it would have been a dollar cheaper, an hour and a half quicker and overall less stressful if I had taken a cab door-to-door.

I had to do the same thing in reverse on the way home because I only had enough money on my to take a cab to the train station, and charge a ticket. I didn't have $40.00 in cash I only had $20.00. This station had nothing, no ATM and no food. They had a venting machine but I only had a dollar in loose change and water cost $1.50.

This train too was running late, but only by an hour. So I waited down by the Hudson river under the Track 2 canopy in the shade (thank god), where there was a delightful summer breeze that seemed to suspend the birds in mid-air.

I was:

• Out of water. Felt like a one bottle trip when I left the house.
• Out of film. Silly me thought only one roll would be enough.
• Out of money. Because I spent it all on transportation.

I had:

• No music. I failed to bring my iPod.
• Plenty to read but no patience.
• No gum.
• No food. I had yogurt in the early morning. What is this latest trend of me interviewing without any food in my stomach?

I did have cell phone reception but Martha was too busy to chat and Jasmine was at her brand new job at Staples.

Yes, that's right Miss Jasmine is now a member of the Staples organization. She works in the copy center and has to wear a red shirt and black pants. I bet she looks like a cute little locational pushpin. My hope is that she can claw her way up to middle management before the holidays.

Sometimes, I just can't seem to get into the rhythm of New York City. It happens. Things are just slightly off and you know it. You can feel it before it even really lets you know just how off it's going to get.

Walking to work last week, I came upon a construction area where the sidewalk was gone and a section of the street was being used as the pedestrian walkway. A little cement barrier was set up so that traffic could not just mow people down. At the entrance to the walkway I had to step out into the street because a delivery truck was parked at the opening. Two guys were unloading stuff from the truck. I looped around the one guy just as the M8 cross-town bus skimmed by me lightly touching my right hand. I shifted over just a little so as not to be run over and as I moved to the left, the guy who is unloading the truck grabs a big ice chest full of clear liquid, turns slightly to the right and dumps it all over my legs. I totally stepped into it. I am wearing shorts and flip-flops and that shit was ice cold. I freaked out, ripping my headphones out of my ears while screaming "WHAT THE FUCK?!"

He didn't see me, I know this, it was totally an accident so I'm not really bitching at him, and he's apologizing like crazy.

"What is it?" I questioned, looking directly into his eyes, my face mere inches from his face.
"What is what?" he looked at me, confused.
"What'd you mean what is what? What is the water? Is it fish water?" I said.
"No, just ice, see." He says as he pulls me over to the curb where there are big bags of ice already pulled off the truck and lying on the sidewalk.
"It's all good. Just water, I promise, feel good eh? Nice and cold. Nice and cold. Hot hot day, right? Just water, no worry."

I rolled my eyes and walked away. Yes, it did feel good except that my brain was convinced that it was acid water and I was going to end up with a weird rash or something. I get to work and wash my legs and feet with anti-bacterial hand soap in the sink. My shorts however will have to wait.

At lunch, while out shooting and walking down St. Marks I see a homeless guy a good half a block away from me. We are headed towards each other and I don't think to much about it except that I notice he is wearing a heavily stained light blue overcoat, he happens to be barefoot and he has eight inch drinking straws sticking out of both of his ears. Somehow, and I'm not really sure how this fucking happened, he walks right into me, or I walk right on into him, it doesn't really matter. We both misjudged and the end result is that we touched. Like touch touch. Like my hand touched his chest and I gently pushed off of him. My face was inches from the bits of NYC that were stuck in his beard.

I pulled away from straw man and immediately turned around, and walked directly back to work. Shooting is over, more anti-bacterial soap, water and hand sanitizer are in my immediate future. I am trying to cross 3rd avenue but while in the middle of the crosswalk, where there is plenty of room to move around, a Cooper Union student manages to get her pen caught in my hair as she passes by me. It flips out of her hand, (at least she let go of it) and around my head to my face, lightly smacking me in the nose. And again, I'm like "WHAT THE FUCK?!"

"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry." She cried.

I just stand there in the middle of the street, pull the pen out of my head, hand it to her and walk away.

Like I said, sometimes the rhythm is just a little off.

Prick Me, You Prick
You know what's funny? Not funny, funny but odd funny? When I was a kid, my mom use to take me to the doctor's office on a pretty regular basis. In my head, it seemed like a monthly thing but in hindsight, it was probably every six-months or so. But the general reason she would take me was to get a shot. Almost always Dr. Goodman would inject me with something, usually penicillin. Penicillin in the 60s was given out at alarming rates, at least by Dr. Goodman, and that's why I am now allergic to all cillins and sulfas. Much like Zoë's booster-induced seizures, I have booster-induced allergies and my guess is that a good chunk of the kids who grew up in Meadville do too.

From the age of around three up until around seven, whenever my mom would take me to the doctor I would ultimately flip out on her. I hated shots. I always ended up getting a shot and I fucking hated them. The minute I'd figure out we were going to the doctor I would start planning my escape. I can it trace back to this precise moment of my childhood as to where the fantasy of me jumping out of a moving car began. So easy to do then with no child locks, car seats or sober mothers. Hell, I wasn't even wearing a seatbelt. It is a fantasy that became a solid staple in my playbook until I left home. Jumping out of a moving car just to get away from my family. Tuck and roll.

Dr. Goodman had a home office. He lived in a very nice ranch house where the bottom part of the home was his office. The waiting room was always filled with a thick layer of stagnate cigarette smoke that would come to life whenever the door opened. Everyone smoked. My mom smoked, Dr. Goodman smoked and his wife (the nurse) she too would be smoking. Off of the waiting room were two or three exam rooms equip with metal tables, wooden tongue suppressers and plaid beanbag ashtrays.

When I was four I got the measles. According to my mom, I was very sick for days and days. My memory of this has always been condensed into those few moments when I was conscious. I remember the ice bath she gave me because my fever soared to 105 degrees and she was out of her mind with worry. I remember puking up ginger ale and saltines off the side of my twin princess bed and into the blue bucket that she usually used to mop the kitchen floor with. And I remember Dr. Goodman examined me from head to toe in my bedroom, just before he gave me a shot in the ass.

I was never safe, at any moment Dr. Goodman could show up with his little black bag full of needles.

After about a week of that shit, I was finally able to go to the doctor's office instead of him having to come to the house. My mom drove me down the street to his office and once inside I made a run for it. I ran all around their house, upstairs into the kitchen, around the dining room and into the master bedroom. It was freaky weird, with my mom and the nurse chasing me. My mom body slammed me by the doctor's double bed, shoving my head under the bed frame, where I saw the doctor's scared to death white poodle barking at me. Just as I looked into the little dog's eyes, the nurse came up from behind and jammed a needle into my ass.

Ah yes, memories. What has me thinking about all this is the current state of my back and the direction that treatment has taken.

I just had three shots in my back muscles. That's right, three of them. It fucking hurt and I had to sit there and take it. There was no running away because at this point in my life, no one would chase me. Only the pain would follow and I'm sick of the pain. I want to break-up with the pain. But sitting there, all bent over while two-inch long needles were slid into my back and buried into the tesre minor and trapezius muscles, I thought of Dr. Goodman, my mom and how I really, really wanted a cigarette.