Holly Northrop Blog

A woodpecker has moved into the neighborhood. He's hammering away at something across the street. I can't tell if it's someone's house or a tree that is his construction zone. It's pretty cool to hear the tat, tat, tat every few seconds. It's cool because it's across the street and sort of a muted sound by the time it reaches me. Closer, it would drive me crazy as most things do when they get near me.

Because the Earth is attempting to rid itself of the parasite known as Homo sapiens, the weather here went from 40° to 70° in a day. So it was no surprise that a big black wasp somehow got into the house, specifically the darkroom. I was the unfortunate one to discover this. According to Martha, I turned into a basket case, which I am sure is the correct assessment given my behavior. It is however also unfortunate that she said this to me, instead of muttering it to herself under her breath. But in her defense I do tend to become emotionally unhinged at the strangest things.

Interestingly enough, the phrase 'basket case' originated in WWI. It was used to describe solders that had lost both their arms and their legs and had to be carried around in a basket. It is only recently that it is used as a description for someone who is losing his or her shit.

Learn something new everyday.

One funny thing about the whole wasp episode was that Martha was just getting ready to take a shower when I freaked out. Because she is awesome and the one to kill flying things, (I kill the crawling things) she walked up the stairs, naked except for her glasses and a pair of socks. The wasp was in the window right behind the new Irish Shamrock that we had just bought exactly two days prior. I have to hang these plants or Lily mows them down like grass. They are beautiful and I love having them in the house. She killed the last one we had in the high-rise so I was thrilled to have a new one.

When Martha fired off a blast of Raid Earth Options Wasp & Hornet Killer, she not only sprayed the wasp but nicely misted the plant.

Me: You sprayed the plant!
Her: Did you tell me not to spray the plant?
Me: No but we just got it.
Her, sort of yelling at me: Did you want me to kill the wasp or what?
Me: Man that shit stinks.
Her: I think it smells nice. Kind of lavender.
Me: Yeah, poison lavender.

Monday the exterminator was at the house and I just loved it when he told me that I needed to calm down. He was here for about an hour and it was much like therapy as well...therapy. Considering that I haven't been in two weeks, it was a deeply needed session. At least he's a nice guy. I should have made him some cookies or something.

Wednesday, I had my rescheduled doctors' visit and here is what I learned. If you cause me pain and then leave me alone in Hoboken for too long, I WILL go to the record store and I WILL most likely buy something. I bought the new Breeders and I managed to find it in a more reasonably price vinyl then I was finding in New York. Considering that I bought The Song Remains the Same in 1976 for a whopping $7.00, $12.00 for a new record today isn't that crazy. Plus, it comes with a free digital download. It's like getting two records for the price of one. I couldn't afford not to buy it. At least that is what I told Martha. But she has a soft spot for The Breeders so she wasn't too mad at me. Anything to stop me from talking about wasps or Jasmine, right babe?

Finally around midweek, Martha was able to escape my madness by traveling 700 miles south to the other side of the crazy coin, and spend three days with her mom. This trip was to be a little different because her sister, her niece (complete with husband and one-year-old baby in tow), were meeting her there. I managed to get out of that shindig because I had to deal with some gallery stuff. Besides there were already too many people planning to shove their bodies into Gen's tiny overheated apartment. It would look more like an intervention then a family visit, (sort of like the same thing I suppose) but anyway the deal breaker was a crying baby added to the mix.

Been there; done with that, I'm out. Instead of messy diapers and constant whining, I get to hear about Jasmine's logistical problems with dropping the Jeep off for a checkup because the person that was supposed to drive is on acid and can't drive her back from the dealership. I guess it is better then her telling me that she's on acid and can't drive the car.

This is what happens when you let them live, teach them to walk, talk and wipe their own ass. That talking thing was a big mistake.

With Martha leaving on Thursday, I was alone for three and a half days. Gone are my 'whoop-whoop' days, that is for sure. But I did notice that once I'm alone I immediately revert to my old sleeping patterns. Staying up until two or three in the morning, waking up at seven and then napping around three, it was classic stuff. It's amazing how living with one person who is relatively normal; sleeps normal, eats normal etc., how living with that person changes my sleeping regularity. When she's around I seem to stop being so weird.

All I know is that our big fat bed sucks without her in it.

Jasmine and her friend Weber came home for three nights and two days and my god I am exhausted. As is always the case with Jasmine I did more in two days then I do in a week. Sometimes I do think that she is trying to kill me although not intentionally more like on a subconscious level. Weber had the sweet set up. She got the upstairs, the queen size air mattress and the studio to hang out in. Jasmine got the red couch in the living room with two cranky women in the next room.

The first day they were here, we toured the spooky Hudson Library, went to the mall, Home Depot, walked around Olana and ended the day with a sushi dinner and a trip to Happy Clown for some soft serve.

Day two Weber drove into Jersey City, (two blocks from where we used to live) so I could pick up my 15 x 40 print. About every hour or so on the way down the Thruway, I would coat up with Tiger Balm in Weber's car. I am so good at applying Tiger Balm that I can even do it while crossing a street, never missing a step. So the all day glazing went on without a hitch. My back only started to really give me trouble about the last two hours of the ride home. Considering how things used to be, I'll take two hours of a little back stiffness any day.

After picking up the print, we drove on over to Newport Mall and witnessed all the horror that is Newport Mall and parked the car. We jumped on The Path to the World Trade Center where there we 'ran into' Weber's sister. New York is like that, you just run into people all the time. It's super weird.

Anyway, after that we went to lunch and dug around in the dirty vinyl bins of record stores; where I would like to point out here that I was in three record stores and did not buy a single thing, even though I have been wanting to buy more vinyl. But the prices on new vinyl is through the roof. $30.00 for Nick Cave, $20.00 for The Black Keys and on and on.

After the record thing, we walked down to the Asian Mart on Broadway and Canal; pushed our way around the store and then out Canal street to the subway. We then reversed the order of the whole day by jumping back on The Path. It was at that moment that I realized that my deodorant had given up and I stunk. Actually all three of us were kind of ripe but I was by far the worst.

We rode The Path back to the mall where we hurried back to the car before 6:15 because the price of parking went from $10.00 to $22.00 if we didn't clock out after six hours. After some ridiculously tense moments at the parking machine, we made it with roughly fifteen minutes to spare.

Once in the car we crawled our way through Jersey City to Hoboken to Edgewater, (stopping at Whole Foods naturally) and then on to Fort Lee, under the GW Bridge and onto the Palisades Interstate Parkway. I was eating sushi in the backseat when we merged on the I-287 which fed us onto the New York Thruway were three hours after leaving the mall, we finally pulled into our driveway.

Jasmine brought with her from school an enormous painting (4ft x 3ft) of two cherries on a black background. There is really only one place it can go and that is over my photo table. No place in the house can you get far enough away to appreciate it. She did it in squares, not as crazy as Seurat but more of a cubist grid thing. It's all pretty cool and I love to see her painting, plus she has one of the best signatures I've seen in a long time.

Zoe was a complete and total bitch cat the entire time Jasmine and Weber were here. Not only did she attack Jasmine on the stairs with some kind of midway standoff; she attacked Weber when she bent over to pet her. That monster cat smacked me with multiple jabs and then bit me when I was petting her in the window. Jesus Christ she's a drag and I will NEVER have another calico no matter what. All that red hair just makes them crazy.

Big fun news: I was accepted into two (2) shows last week. One is up here in Hudson at the Limner Gallery for a show titled 'Art Biologic'. The opening is May 3rd, 4-6pm and the show runs to May 24th. I have one piece in the show that is a little different then I usually hang. Come on up to Hudson if you want to see some art. It's First Saturdays' and all the galleries will be open late.

The other one is in Johnson City, Texas for a show titled 'Urban Ambience: Scenes from the City' at the Watson Studio Gallery. The opening is April 19 and runs until May 24. I have two pieces in this show (#42 & 43). So if you are in Texas...

And then finally I am in a current show in Jersey titled: 'Is it possible to make a photograph of New Jersey regardless of where you are in the world?' (Great Idea) Link is here but know that it is a rather large .PDF and takes a few minutes to fully load. All the photos are awesome and my piece is on page 19.

Busy, as a beaver, yes I am. I am submitting to three more shows, and well, we will see how that all goes. A while back Martha joked, but half-seriously, that I should get an intern. As truly funny as that is, she's kind of right.

Some friends of ours just had their first baby. Well, probably their only but anyway, they are brand new parents and congratulations to them. Welcome to the rest of your life.

Speaking of forks in the road, (or is it in the head?), Jasmine comes home for a quick weekend visit. She's going to play Photo Bitch for me on Saturday while I shoot a dear friend of mine and his fiancée in various locations in Manhattan. Should be fun and exhausting at the same time, hence the need for Photo Bitch. Jasmine is bringing a friend, (Weber) so the Photo Bitch has an assistant.

I get to use Martha's new camera. It is a digital world after all but I'll still shoot a few moody black and white holgas because that's just the way I am: moody black and white. Oh and the new printer came and man it is beautiful. Just simply stunning. Thanks babe.

When you buy a house, it never stops. The siding people have to come back to finish up the shit they should have done in the first place. There are holes and some of the siding trim is popping off. Needless to say we are not happy and I think if one more thing goes wrong, Martha is going to file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.

The floor in the sunroom is buckling. Not sure why or what the fuck is going on but I can't wait to find out. If we don't fix it, pretty soon we won't be able to open the door.

Our taxes went up again. This makes the umpteenth time they have raised them and so far, our tax bill has tripled since we moved here two years ago. We are going to have to file a grievance, (that should be fun) but how in hells bells can it be normal to pay $8,000 a year in taxes?

And you know it you love it, the wasps are back. The bug guy will be notified. Those bugs are straight from hell and for whatever reason they love our house. I did however find some sick comfort in watching them build a massive hive in our neighbor's attic. They work with military precision. Martha said we should send them over to Iraq. While I shouldn't have watched it, (the hive is about thirty feet from our kitchen window) I couldn't look away. It was like the live National Geo channel.

And while I'm thinking of nasty wasps; worrying about speaking badly of a former employer is not such a problem when that employer is doing just a fine job all by himself. I'm just so very, very glad that I no longer work for them. It would be too embarrassing to say, 'Oh yes I work for this racist, good-old-white-boy Arizonian jackass, who while excepting and award, had no problem using the "N-word" in front of a room full of Professional Journalists.' Reporters who report, and did report and in some cases even video taped the whole nasty event. This is the same ignorant jerk who just one week prior to shooting his fat mouth off received an Civil Libertarians award from the ACLU.

Wow, and wow. Old news, seeing how it happened last Thursday. It has already circled the blog world about a zillion times, but the whole thing just makes me sad. I have a real problem when a former employer drops the "N-word" on camera and gives a snarky apology as an afterthought.

Jasmine called me the other day and opened with this.
"Hi Peanut."
"I just saw someone get hit by a car."
"Again?"
"Yep, she was lying on the ground with a pink blanket covering her..."
"Her head?"
"No, not her head, not her head."
"Where are you? Are you ok?"
"Yeah, I'm driving back home. I was hungry and I wanted to get something to eat."
"I don't know what to say, Peanut. In all the years I've been alive I've never seen anyone get hit by a car, and with the company that I used to keep you would think that would have been a common occurrence. I've been on this planet twice as long as you have and you've seen it twice."
"She was on a bike. Her purse was twenty feet in one direction and she was lying in the middle of the road."
"Oh my God. That's horrible."
"All this just proves that I need to get out of this town."
"Call me later if you want to talk about this more."
"Ok. Right now I'm going to go home and smoke a bowl."
"I would too, Peanut, I would too."

All day last Thursday, I was fighting with the Voice and their wacky math of severance. They say one thing while I have something very different in writing. After an all day affair of rapid emails, general frustration, back pain and that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, I think we finally might be on the same page. Well, at least we are down to a few days discrepancy instead of several, several weeks.

God, I want them to go away.

I rarely talk about pussy here, oh sure, in private conversation, but hardly ever here. Unless of course, I am talking about our cats or my ex-husband, (Oh stop.), anyway last Friday I had a gynecologist appointment in Hoboken. Now, this is a big fucking deal for me to get to, quite the pilgrimage you might even say. I live upstate and well, he is in Hoboken, some two hours away. The funny thing is I really don't care for my doctor that much. Well, it is not him it is his goddamn staff. They SUCK, especially that blonde one. I've been putting this whole appointment off for months. He has to do shit to me that I do not particularly care for but this is the main reason I still go to him. My mom had uterine cancer when she was 58 so I get that extra special scraping that honestly, I cannot take enough Xanax to make better. I know because I have tried to Xanax it all away before.

So after an hour and a half driving through mist, rain and fog and a forty-minute train ride I finally arrived in Hoboken. My appointment was at noon but it was only 10:00. With not enough time to go into Manhattan, I decided to stroll around Hoboken for a while. I had an umbrella but it was misting, more like a spritz thing going on then umbrella weather.

I started out by walking around the waterfront area. The fog and mist was so thick that parts of Manhattan were lost in the sky. It was pretty cool and I took a cell phone photo and emailed it to Martha.

I've been doing that every now and then. While I'm out and about I shoot a cell phone image of something pretty and send to Martha. To Jasmine I send shots of Sushi just because I'm a bitch.

Anyway, after that I walked up Washington Street to Dunkin Donuts and grabbed a cup of coffee. Having nowhere to go I decided to sit down and enjoy the coffee instead of walking around with it. While sitting there in the quiet of pastries, a woman came running in holding a Dunkin Donuts bag. She walked right up to the counter, interrupted the current sale and demanded her money back because they had charged her for two muffins instead of only one. She didn't want two, she wanted one.

So the cashier, who was in the middle of helping a customer stopped ringing him up and closed the cash register. Instead of finishing with him, she proceeded to loose herself in how to do a refund. The guy is just standing there while muffin lady was pushing him off to the side. His coffee and donuts where now on the counter in front of muffin lady.

After five minutes, (five minutes was an awfully long time to watch this shit unfold) the cashier figured out how to refund the wackjob muffin lady her two dollars. The cashier then took the extra muffin out of the bag and put is back in the basket for resale.

This is where I stopped drinking my coffee.

Wackjob muffin lady obviously touched the muffin and just where the hell have her hands been. The pastry had left the store and who knows what could have happened to it. She could have dropped it on the ground or any number of unsanitary things could have happened to it, but the cashier put it back on the shelf.

The cashier then turned to the guy who by now is beyond pissed, and started to ring him up again. The problem was that she had already rung him up and taken his money. She hadn't given him his change back and she cannot remember what the total was or how much money he had given her. He kept telling her that she was to give him seven dollars and forty-seven cents back but she did not believe him and could not figure out how to fix the problem. She was the only one there and there was no manager.

She put a tainted muffin back on the shelf but wouldn't give this guy his change back.

I stood up, threw my full cup of coffee in the trash and left the store.

Avoiding any and all humans I walked down Washington Street trying to convince myself that I had not been poisoned or that I was not going to be sick.

After walking that off for about six blocks, I loitered in front of Maxwells, slowly reading the upcoming shows and shooting photos. I walked back out to the water, finding a new park that has been built since Martha and I lived in Jersey City. It is right on the water in front of a massive high-rise. "It is certainly nice to be rich" I said out loud to nothing but the seagulls.

Finally it was time, or close enough to the time to where I could go into the doctors office and wait in the waiting room.

I walked in and noticed that the waiting room was only slightly full with four pregnant women hogging up two seats apiece. I see that blonde girl is still there, her overuse of Cerulean blue eye shadow announcing her well before the sight of her snarl. She is in her resting position when I walk up to the glass to check in.

"Hi, Holly Northrop for noon."
"Who are you seeing" There are three other doctors in the practice.
"I give her the name of my doctor."
"I can't find you here."
"I have a noon appointment, I'm about a half hour early but I should be on the list."
"Oh, right we didn't call you because we didn't have a number for you."
"What?"
"The doctor had three woman go into labor this morning. All of his appointments have been cancelled."
'What?"
"The doctor isn't here."
"A phone call would have been nice."
"We don't have your number."
"What do you mean you don't have my number? I've been a patient here for five years? How the hell could you not have my number?"
She opens my chart, studying it for a few minutes.
"Well, what is this 518 number?"
"That's my fucking number!"

Behind me I felt the weight of expectant motherhood shift uncomfortably in their seats. By now I'm starting to push my face though the little eight inch sliver of glass that is separating us doing my best to resemble Jack Nicholson in The Shinning.  'HERE'S JOHNNY. I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just gonna bash your brains in.'

"And this 917 number? What is that?"

"That's my fucking cell phone. The same number I've had for eight years. What the hell is wrong with you?"

It was at this point another staff member came over and told the blonde girl that she would handle this. Blonde girl raised her French Tipped fingers up in the air, (the universal 'whatever' sign), pushed her chair away from the counter and walked away.

The new nurse apologized repeatedly, made sure she had all my numbers in the computer and rescheduled my appointment for two weeks from now.

I walked out of there, slightly calmed down but still snarling and snapping at the air. I was surely alarming small children and the elderly. For fucks sake, I could be home instead of walking around for the next four hours in the mist.

Somewhere in my walk back to the Path station Jasmine called me. I knew the results of her Spanish test were due that day. Spanish is one of the reasons that Jasmine has to go to summer school. This child cannot learn a language.

"Hi mom!" she's all perky and shit.
"What did you get on your test?" I said with such flatness that she immediately asked me what was wrong.
"Nothing is wrong. What did you get on the test?"
"Um, he didn't grade them yet."
"What? Jasmine I am in no mood."
"He didn't grade them yet, he said Monday."
"Jasmine, just fucking tell me. Don't fuck around just tell me." I am yelling at her while walking down Frank Sinatra Drive. It's a good image.
"MOM! I'm telling you the truth. He didn't grade them yet."
I hang up. I guess we'll find out on Monday.

After Jasmine, I crossed back up to Washington Street & headed towards Tunes. Goddamn it, I'm going to the record store.

I was there for an hour digging through bin after bin of used vinyl records. It's probably the best therapy in the world. I ended up buying two Monkees records. One I have, but it is almost unplayable and the other I've often wanted. Yes, yes The Monkees, Monkees. Whatever, don't judge. I almost bought Joe's Garage, Green on Red, and a few new things, but Martha would have lost her shit with me. No matter how bad my day is, it is never worth it to piss her off by overbuying records.

Somewhere around 2:00 I went into Manhattan to pick up three rolls of color film, some over-the-counter medication and snag a bottle of my favorite ginger dressing. I walked the long way to everything and before I knew it I was running late. I need to scurry to get back in time to catch the train to Suffern. All day long I had nothing to do and then suddenly I was going to be late.

After being outside in the mist for six hours I officially had an Irish Fro. Every single hair on my head had its own curl and desired direction, completely unrelated to the hair next to it. Sitting on a crowed path train I could feel the guy next to me trying to push my hair out of his space. If I turned to look at him I could feel the girl on the other side of me jump because the back of my fro was touching her. I know I'm not gross but to them I am. It's an interesting sensation and even worse on New Jersey Transit, where we were all packed into the cars like dozens and dozens of eggs, each in a seat and no spare room for frizzy red hair.

And just to make looking for a job even more challenging, my email has been randomly deleting itself for the past three months. I don't know why and I'm not even sure I've fixed the problem. So if you've sent me an email and feel that I've ignored you more than I usually do (because I am totally dysfunctional), call me. The 518 number or the 917, you have them, right?