Holly Northrop Blog

What would the three day Memorial Day weekend be without a little home renovation project? For about two years now, Martha's office has been one of many official Black Holes in the universe.

Working within the tight budget of Martha's mind, we managed to paint, rip up nasty blue carpeting and order appropriate office furniture. The cats had been using her office as a vomitorium so I didn't' even like walking in there with shoes on. That's if you could make it in. Things were so bad that you could only make it a few feet in the door. This isn't entirely Martha's fault. We've been using the room as a dumping ground for stupid things for months.

The first day we spent just weeding and digging the room out. All the crap that she is keeping was moved to the kitchen with some spillage into the living room and bedrooms. I guess what I'm saying here is the house is pretty much trashed. We look like we are moving but without any idea on how to move.

Right out of the gate on Sunday morning, Martha attempted to pick up one of our four TVs by herself. She made it about two feet before things went weird and she fell to her knees with the full weight of the TV landing on her thighs. She almost fell over on her back with the TV on top of her, but somehow I managed to grab the TV, rather precariously with my left arm. She looked like a weightlifter that can't pull that bar up past the knees. She's going to have a nasty bruise.

After painting two coats and the room still has a slight blue hue to it. We ripped up carpet and all the carpet tacks, nails and the nailed wood strips around all the corners and walls, all the while moving three very heavy pieces of future around a small room. We rolled and bound the carpet and moved it to the garage. We vacuumed up thirty or so years of dirt and then washed the floor.

Add in there a trip to Home Depot for more paint and two outdoor solar lights; lunch at the diner; the installation of a new mailbox (with the help of a neighbor) and some light yard work that involved planting six new plants and the installation of the new solar lights. By that point, I was so exhausted and numb with pain that I when I dropped a crowbar on my pinky toe and it didn't hurt nearly as much as it should have.

It wasn't until the sun was setting Sunday night that Martha said she wanted to kill me and go lay on the couch and order pizza.

As of Monday, we were almost finished with just the closet carpet to rip up. My legs feel like I have been lifting cars and my back is threatening to paralyze me just to save itself.

Later on in the week, a new desk unit and bookcase will arrive, just waiting for some more backbreaking assemblage.

In other news, the Jeep needs a new transmission, which is not that surprising seeing how is has 130,000 miles on it but it's just more of an expense that none of us were prepared for. It's still cheaper then buying Jasmine a new car or another unknown used one. You are just buying into someone else's nightmare and I'd rather stick to my own scary monsters.

So Martha sent of a bitchy email to the Waldorf=Astoria and guess what? They apologized repeatedly and offered us a free night in their Luxury Suites. We only had the deluxe room before. The Luxury Suites sounds like there might be more then one room involved. Woo hoo!

What can I say about a week that started with a grand wedding in Manhattan with a deluxe suite at the Waldorf=Astoria, and then ended up with a 4am visit to the Emergency Room of Columbia Memorial Hospital?

Talk about a slide.

Thursday, Martha came home from work early complaining of some serious stomach pain and body aches. By 3am, things had deteriorated so horribly that we went over to the hospital. Ok, here is where I will admit that I suck; she drove herself but, but, but, I DID DRIVE BACK.

I know, I'm horrible but if it's anything, I think I'm getting it. My glands are swollen and I feel like ass.

Once at the hospital they took a bunch of her blood, hooked her up to an IV and gave her three shots. Blood work came back with nothing out of the ordinary and after three hours, they sent us home. Friday sucked, Saturday pretty much sucked but by Sunday she was on the couch, surfing the web and waiting for me to make her breakfast, seeing how she hadn't eaten anything outside of Gatorade, toast and rice since Thursday night she was pretty hungry. I think she just might make it.

In the 'I can't stop laughing at you' department, the last man standing on Survivor Island: Voice Edition, quit last week and who could blame him. The Voice is such a sinking ship that I'm amazed he found a life raft. The department has now shrunk to one person who hasn't even been there a year. In two years, there have been fifteen people who have left the web department.

It's funny after the wedding last week and seeing a good chunk of everyone I used to work with, I realized just how horrible the last two years my life at the Voice were. I used to work with some truly awesome people. Somehow by the end, I had to deal with a know-it-all from Boston who really didn't know too much at all; a total (and I do mean total) jackass who was never really able to make it in New York but seems to be flourishing in Phoenix; and the final entry in the trifecta of shame, a backstabbing two-faced son-of-a-bitch.

Anyway the wedding and a weekend in Manhattan were both fantastic. It was Martha's birthday and we decided to live a little and get a room at the Waldorf for two nights. But alas, the Waldorf did not impress Miss Harvey. She started making a list almost immediately.

Right out of the gate the big screen LCD Samsung TV didn't work. Only one channel came in but at least it was golf. While waiting for the TV guy, we lost our minds, eating $14.00 cashews from the mini-bar and $8.00 mini sized Evian. After that, if I even went near the mini-bar, Martha yelled at me.

In room internet was not free but $10.00 a day. The Waldorf is part of the Hilton Honors Program, which is what The Hampton Inn in Winston-Salem is and where they have FREE in room internet.

We could get free internet in the lobby with all the other travelers hogging up all the plush seating and electrical outlets. This idea sucked and we only checked email once over a three-day period. Kind of freeing actually. We squirreled away around a corner and sat on an eighty-year-old marble step that leads up to the Grand Ballroom, right before we left on Monday morning.

We ordered room service only once and after $30.00 for a pot of coffee and a bakery basket for breakfast, that too went on Martha's list.

But the real unpleasant thing was that our air conditioner did not work. The first night there was rather stuffy. Upon leaving in the morning to run errands and walk around Manhattan, we stopped off at the concierge to ask if someone would look at it.

"Which room? The living room, one of the bedrooms?" he asked.

We just looked at him. Martha laughed and said. "THE ROOM. There's just one room."

We walked out of the hotel into the beautifully sunny, cool and breezy day of midtown and not even twenty feet from the doormen a homeless guy walks up to Martha and asks her for money.

"No, sorry." she said.
"Hey, I went to Kindergarten with you." he replied laughing.
I laughed too, because it was kind of funny. He then looked at me and we both laughed.
"That's just great." Martha said.

We ran errands, picked up film, stopped at Blick, had a little Mudd Truck coffee, and walked up to A.I Friedman, before returning to our stuffy hotel room.

"That's it; we are going to open the window." I sighed. It had the suicide locks on the sides so we could only pry it open the allotted seven inches. The fucking thing was so heavy and awkward that it took both of us pushing up while clamping down on the locks.

"Jesus Christ, the only way anyone could jump out that window is if they were anorexic." I mumbled.
"...and if you're anorexic you're not strong enough to open the window." replied Martha. We both busted out laughing as the breeze and sounds from Lexington Avenue filled the room.

The Waldorf is ridiculous in all the wrong places. Clusters of tourists, (some fat as fuck and some just rich as fuck), wandered around the roped off area of the Famed Sunday Brunch in the lobby. A brunch we only walked by, tickets were $100.00, but strolling by I did manage to see a tiered liquid chocolate fountain. Sliced fruit was displayed around it like a living fondue alter. There was an enormous leg of a lamb the size of my own leg, resting on a wooded slab, nicely lit by the heat lamp. Unidentifiable pastries, some sprinkled gold flecks, filled three large tables and there was something that I'm considering to be a wall of bread. Various bread products stacked in such a manner that when combined they formed a three foot high wall that separated the vegetables from the meats. So much food, so much of it was bagged and tossed out.

From the minute we got off the elevator on our low-level floor I was reminded of the Overlook Hotel; the hotel from The Shining. The long halls with rooms on either sides, the red carpets, the Deco interiors. Our room was three long hallways and two blind turns from the elevator. At every turn, I expect to see The Twins or a door ajar with some weird woman in the bathtub.

Before we went to the wedding, we had some time to kill so we took a ride up to the 18th floor to the Starlight Roof. The 18th is a maze of hallways and various size rooms. Some rather large for meetings and presentations and some smaller for well, smaller things. Let me tell you, the walls up on 18 are pillow-paneled with a pastel tan and mauve pattern.

When we were wondering around up there, we were alone. Totally alone. We walked into the Starlight Roof and my jaw hit the floor. This room is a Deco Dream and the view from the windows is breathtaking.

"We have to come back up here tonight after the wedding!" I said.

And we did. Somewhere after midnight, we rode the elevator back up to 18 and immediately walked over to the mirrored French doors of the Starlight Roof. The room was dark, the only light in the room came from lights of Manhattan through the floor to ceiling windows. The Manhattan skyline from inside Manhattan is stunning.

We shot a bunch of photos and after a few minutes, we walked out of the room and we were instantly twisted around. Things has changed since we had been up there in the daylight. A few doors to darkened rooms that had been closed were now open. The path back to the other set of elevators, the ones that go to our floor, was different, or at least looked different. Combine this with the fact that most of the lights were off, so if you looked over to the right or left, all you saw was darkness it started to get a little spooky. We knew we were the only one's up there and that made it worse.

This is when I started shit.

I stared talking about how spooky this whole place was, with its hundreds and hundreds of black and white photos from the 30's, 40', 50's and 60's lining the walls. The downright disturbing ones were the photos of the Starlight Roof taken around 1934 during certain galas, such as New Years Eve, society dinners, etc. All shot with a long exposure so some of the folks faces are blurred and some are looking right at the camera. When you stop and think about how everyone in the photo is now dead, well then in your head, the ghosts appear.

"Shut the fuck up." Martha said as she started to walk faster and faster away from me down a long twisted hallway.

"I'm telling you all I can see are those twins. Come play with us... forever and ever and ever."

"Holly, fucking stop it!"

I was doing the thing with the finger but she didn't look back at me. Honestly, I even scared myself.

I haven't been in to Manhattan for over a week to shoot and I'm starting to get a little wiggy about it. But, Sunday is Miss Harvey's birthday and it's a big one. We are going to a wedding on Saturday in Manhattan so she rented us a room for two nights at the Waldorf-Astoria®. Two nights and one whole day of nothing but Manhattan to shoot, you can bet I'm going bring more cameras then god intended. I'll probably even bring the Lubital, which hardly ever makes it in because it is so boxy and heavy.

For two days, we are so going to live a different life. Then it all comes to a crashing end with a 2:00pm dental appointment on Monday. This time, Martha will actually get to go to one of my dentists. Apparently I have a mouth full of cavities and I see nothing but a horror show headed my way and while I'm glad that she will be there, I know she's going to be pissed sitting in the waiting room with our luggage. The cool thing is instead of calling her from the dental chair and bursting into tears with horrible news, I can just walk out and drop the money bomb.

After that, we then get to ride the path, to the train, to the car, to the thruway to home. Awesome. Like I said, crashing end.

Big news around here is that we got Reverse Osmosis. Woo, hoo. But seriously, this will cut down enormously on the amount of plastic bottles this house brings home every week. We recycle, but you know, I lived in Jersey long enough to know that just because you put you shit out on the curb does not mean that it actually ends up in the right place. Besides plastic does not totally break down. It just gets smaller and smaller.

I remember when there was hardly any plastic in our lives.

Milk, juice, RC Cola, mayonnaise and Listerine® were all sold in glass. Toothpaste, TV Dinners, cream cheese, fancy cheese spreads, (including Velveeta®) were packaged in foil packets. Food was stored in foil, wax paper and meat was either cut or ground fresh and then wrapped in butcher paper. Lunchmeat was also cut fresh, wrapped in a wax paper and then in butcher paper.

Boy, you can really tell that I grew up in White Land or as I like to call it, Mayonnaise Land.

Almost everything was in a cardboard box of some kind and potato chips and pretzels could be bought in large tin drums.

Of course, this was way back in the day when you could smoke in grocery stores. I remember riding in the child seat, sitting next to the little red beanbag ashtray that my mom had with her everywhere she went. She carried an ashtray, isn't that the oddest thing? Anyway, when we were at Kroger's sometimes she would accidentally singe my leg when she bent over to pick something off the shelves. Whenever this happened, she would give me a small brown bag of M&M's to eat.

At the check out all of our crap was put in paper bags and then a bag boy would go out to the parking lot with us and load the bags into our excessively large trunk. When he was finished, mom would tip the kid and then slide into our gas-guzzling Thunderbird. We would then ride off into the sunset without wearing seatbelts.

Every mother had at least one piece of Tupperware in her kitchen but that was it. No one lived by plastic like they do now. Even at cookouts we used paper plates with real silverware. Hardly anything in the kitchen was plastic. I remember when my mom and dad bought a new dishwasher and mom tragically put a knife with a rubber handle in there; it melted stinking up the whole house and ruining the washer. It was winter, we had to open all the windows to air out the house, and my dad was so very, very pissed. Pissed at my mom, pissed at the usage of rubber and pissed that it was winter. It's a good memory as most of them are.