Holly Northrop Blog

Somehow, I managed to catch a small cold, no big deal under normal conditions but I started feeling sick while standing in front of the conveyor belt over in baggage claim at the Charlotte North Carolina Airport. My throat started to feel raw and I began loosing the ability to swallow without wincing. Add into the mix that I had just started my period, (sorry but it is needed to give the full weight of the situation) and it was 95° in the shade down there. Saying I felt a little under the weather is an understatement.

We flew down Thursday from Albany on an airplane with two crying babies. It was like dueling banjos, one trying to outdo the other for over two hours. This was the moment where Martha discovered the happiness that a good iPod can bring. But what made it even more super fun was that we were in the very last row, the last two seats next to the toilet.

Before leaving, Martha made a snarky remark about how I'm high maintenance when we travel to visit her mom.
"Do you stay in the same hotel?" I asked.
"Yes"
"Do you get a king size bed?"
"Yes, but I don't have to have coffee and yogurt brought up to me from downstairs and I don't buy water to have in the refrigerator or go to CVS and spend money on crap that we could have brought."
"But these are all things you like." I argued.
"But I don't do it when you're not with me. I get up and just go. I don't need water and I grab a coffee when I go out the door."
"What car did you rent the last time you were there?" I asked.
"I don't remember."
"You said you liked it."
"Right, but we can't get that because I put mom's walker in the backseat."
"So I'm high maintenance because I need a seat in the car?"

You Ever Seen so Many Damn Trees?
"What ever happened to blueberry?" I said while digging around in the ice bowl of various yogurt flavors unable to find anything other than peach. Martha and I were both downstairs at the hotel getting our own coffee and yogurt to bring back up to the room.
"What ever happened to laughter?" Martha added.
"Oh I know what happened to laughter." I muttered.

And so we were off to see Gen. But before we arrive at her apartment we stopped at CVS to buy Cëpacol Throat stuff, Sudafed Cold medicine, Hershey's Kisses and water. After taking the extra long way, we arrived at Gen's apartment, Martha opened the door and there she was, sitting upright on the couch sleeping.

We hug, visit, and laugh for about an hour. Gen told this story about how one night, just a few weeks ago, she was sleeping in bed and she heard scratches on her door. She though it was "that damn cat" that lives on her floor. After a few minutes, the door opened and a man walked into her bedroom.

Martha and I looked at each other and pressed Gen for more information.

"Oh my God Mom, what did you do?" Martha asked.
"I told him to get the hell out of here." She said.
"And what did he say?"
"Well, he said he didn't know where to go. He was lost you see and I told him to go away. He's new see, lives down the hall."
"How did he get in?"
"He had a key."
"What!"
"He had a key and you know I was thinking about that. With all these doors, how many different types' keys could they possibly make?"
"A lot, mom, a lot."

Once I got the gist of the story, I got up and walked down the hall to the Director of Care to relay this little story. She freaked out and promised she would look at all the men's keys who live on Gen's floor. Maybe a maintenance man left a key in a room and a resident picked it up by accident or something like that. But there is no new resident on her floor. The newest gentleman to arrive has been there for several months and he's not a wanderer. She has several women who wander but not men. Sometimes the women, with the short hair look like men and maybe Gen was confused. Was her thought. I just kind of look at her and she promised to look into it.

When I get back to the room, Martha tells me that they might have figured out what happened. Gen said that when the cleaning people come sometimes after they leave the door is unlocked and the wandering man just walked in without keys.

The Land of The Dead
It is so hot in North Carolina that there are hardly any bugs. Seriously. I noticed this last summer too. The grass is brown and the trees look funny. I remember as little as six years ago when we would go visit Martha's parents at their home, the ground was lush, the trees were bright green and everything was dewy. There were so many wasps flying around that I would wait until my desire for a cigarette outweighed my fear of wasps before I would go out to the carport to smoke.

But not now, I can run all around outside in #70 sun block (so I don't just burst into flames) and there is not a bug in the air. It's weird and surely a sign of the end. I saw one wasp in the three days we were there and it was trying to get into the Golden Coral restaurant where all the food there is that down home, all-you-can-eat buffet style.

I'm Paying You to Tell Me What to Do
Gen was reading the paper when she put it down turned to me and asked, "Do you and Martha do drugs?"
I looked up from my book and just stared at her, waiting to see where this was going.
"You know, what do they call them...um...um...pop...pop poppies. Yes, poppies. Do you kids do poppies?"

I paused for a minute trying to figure out what the hell is in her head. Poppers maybe, but where would she even hear about poppers. I took a hard look at her and then I realized that she is looking at the world news section of the paper.

"Are you talking about the Afghanistan poppies?" I asked.
"Yes, they said that the crop is even larger then last years. You don't mess around with that do you?"
"No Gen, we don't mess around with that."
"Well, that's good."

I heard the "that baby is cross-eyed" story twice. But only heard the block story once. The block story is fun in a weird way. It goes like this.

"When Martha was little she used to treat people so damn funny. She'd want Frank to read her a story so she would go get her book and throw it at him and then climb up on his lap. Her sister used to build these buildings out of blocks and Martha would come along and knock them all down and then run over to her sister and hug her."

It Seems So Long Between Visits
Because conversation between Martha and I usually turns to what our leaving plans are soon after we arrive, we decided that we wanted to fly out of Charlotte instead of Greensboro. Charlotte goes straight to Albany but Greensboro is a connection flight nightmare through Philly. She forgot her computer so in a weird way is was nice to be totally unplugged but we did need a computer to deal with the airlines.

So we stopped at the local library. It was almost 100° outside so Gen and I waited in the car while Martha ran inside to the bizarre world of small town local library politics. She just wanted to use the computer real quick but didn't have a library card. So they gave her a temporary library card but she had to wait until her number was called. There was a row of computers that were not in use, but she still had to wait for her number. This went back and forth for about fifteen minutes.

Meanwhile, I'm in the backseat of the air-conditioned car with Gen in the passenger seat and every minute or so, she's reaching for the keys to turn the car off while saying, "Its so damn hot out, come on Martha, what the hell are you doing?" Then I'd have to say, 'Gen, don't turn the car off. No, don't turn the car off."
"Well, what the hell is she doing?" she'd complain.
"She had to use the internet. She'll be right out."
"Oh for heaven's sake" and then reach for the keys again.
"Gen, please don't turn the car off."

I'm Sorry I Ordered This
"You know, everyone here could stand to lose between 20 and 200 pounds." I muttered to Martha as we sat around the country table of the Golden Corral® restaurant.
"Boy this Golden Coral isn't anything like the one on Stratford." Gen said while chewing on a Brussels sprout after having just asked us what it was that she was eating.
"No." Martha replied.
"What's the difference?" I asked Martha.
"I have no idea." She whispered to me as she got up to get desert.
A few minutes later, she arrived back at the table.
"I just saw a cockroach," Martha said to me as she plopped her plate of cake on the table.
"Where?" I asked as I tried to swallow a mouthful of cottage cheese.
"Up there", pointing to the 'biggest and best buffet' spread of cakes, cookies, pies, ice-cream machine and nut toppings.
"Up?" I asked with raised eyebrows, while scanning the counter top from our table, then quickly checking to make sure my purse is still on the back of my chair and not on the floor.
"Yep, up."
"Oh."
"I'm not surprised." She shrugged.
"How big?" I asked.
"Little", she put her thumb and forefinger together to about half an inch.
"Oh that's not bad."

Scattergories: More Categories for Extended Play
"What's that white stuff that they put on cakes?"
"Icing?"
"No."
"Cream cheese?"
"No."
"Whip cream?"
"No."
"Coconut?"
"Coconut! Yes, that's it. I'll eat lemon cake with coconut if they have it."

It's Hell to Get Old
"I don't' want to get old, like all those old people at the home. It's just sick. We are living too long." Martha said the night before we left, our visiting with Gen over for now.
"Yeah, but what are you going to do? Murder/Suicide thing, what when we are like 70? No wait we get to drink and smoke again if we live to 70. So 75?" I offered up.
"Yes."
"Who kills who?" I asked.
"Either way." Martha laughed.
"I'll do it, I can commit suicide you can't. I'll shoot you in the head." We both laugh.
I grab a pen and my little black writing book.
"You can't write that. Murder/Suicide is frowned upon."
"Not with my readership."

Jasmine said it best when she mentioned to me, "Mom. Construction doesn't follow you, you follow construction.", and I think she might be right. There is something wrong with us in that we only like to do major home repairs when the weather is below 20 degrees. More adventures in home ownership; we are having new siding put on the house.

The first day when the workman were here ripping off all the old aluminum siding, it sounded like I was in a tin can. I told myself that everything was fine and reminded myself that is was in no way as loud as when we had the new roof installed. For whatever reason, I actually found comfort in the noise. Go figure I'm a little weird.

After a few hours of yanking old aluminum off the house, they then started either hammering in nails or prying them out. As I noticed that cats were sitting on top of one another in the closet, it occurred to my why it was that I felt like I was in a movie. The hammering and snapping noises from three of the four sides of the house reminded me of Night of the Living Dead. The whole zombies tying to get into the farmhouse sensation.

After a few hours of demolition, I decided to go outside and 'check in'. I stood on the sidewalk and looked at our house all covered in this odd insulation/aluminum foil material. We looked like a big baked potato. In places where the foil had ripped off, I could see the original clapboard; clapboard that had not seen the light of day in over one-hundred years. The wood was in such great shape that if we had a shit load of money we might look into having it restored. But as it is, we don't have a shit load of money so we are covering the clapboard back up with a lovely cream colored vinyl siding with white window trim.

The next day of the project it rained in the morning, (poured is more like it) and then the high winds came, (wind-chill -1), blowing our foil all over the yard. We weren't going to use it anyway but now in addition to a house that looked like it had been singled out by an angry tornado, we now had big sheets of space foil all over the yard. It's a good look. By Thursday, our house was such an eyesore that folks would slow down and stare when they drove by. At night, the house sparkled in the moonlight. The word is they will be done by Friday.

Sickshit
What would a new semester be without a trip to emergency room for Miss Jasmine? Jasmine caught a cold, which turned into a high fever. Therefore, in using the emergency room as her personal doctor she drove herself over there and after about an hour of so they determined she had bronchitis.

Here is quick review of Jasmine's ER visits since she has left home. Oncologist and OB/GYN issues are not listed here.

• She cut the tip of her thumb off fucking around with scissors while opening a box.
• She found a lump in her groin.
• A routine eye exam went to hell when the eye doctor noticed that her optic nerve seemed swollen. He mentioned the words 'brain tumor' and off the ER MRI she went.
• She felt sicker then normal and it was determined that it was because she was dehydrated.
• She fell on her wrist and it proceeded to swell up.

Right out of the gate, actually it was well before our gate at Albany airport and deep in the bowels of TSA Checkpoint Charlie land, I was yet again, made to stand off to the side, away from the herd and forced to do weird things. The folks over at Homeland Security are as friendly as a bag of rattlesnakes. So I was all the more delighted when a guy wearing the standard issued white shirt with the big Helvetica Bold lettering TSA on the back, grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me off line. He broke my number one rule —do not fucking touch me. He told me to leave my shoes on and to come with him.

'I'm going to put you in the puffer." He said.
"The what? A puffer? No." I pulled away.
"Yes. You're going in 'The Puffer'." He demanded. Honestly, he could have been just a tad nicer.

I looked at him and he had the classic 'do not give me any shit bitch' look and I threw my hands up in the air and laughed, because for whatever reason I always seem to warrant a second look and I obviously give the impression of being someone who knows how to handle explosives.

So there I was standing in a clear plastic phone booth type box, wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt and a bad attitude. Three or four puffs of air blew my hair straight up, like an allover fluff and then there was total silence as the explosives trace detection portal analyzed my particles. Super Sexy.

Once we were actually on the airplane things moved along rather seamlessly. The planes were on time, the rental car was there waiting for us and did not stink to high hell. Things were good.

You Know Martha, It's a Dangerous World Out There
Driving over to Winston-Salem from Greensboro I noticed that while it is technically fall, the overall color of the leaves were dull and brittle. The woods were so dense with dead underbrush that it looked as though they could burn for years, much like an underground Kentucky coal fire.

When we got to the hotel I pulled my suitcase out of the back of the gas guzzling SUV that we had rented (having forgotten that I had been digging around in my suitcase earlier looking for gum and not zipped it back up), I then proceeded to spew the contents of my travel life all over the parking lot. Along with my underwear, socks and a Jesus Loves Me shirt, my digital camera, the holga and my 1940's Brownie Reflex camera hit the ground hard.

After a quick survey of possible breakage, Martha helped me shoved all my shit back into my suitcase and onward we went.

Later on that evening and after a speedy visit with Gen we went to scary downtown Winston-Salem to a little café for some tea. Walking back to the car, I was holding my digital camera in my left hand when it became tangled up with my purse strap. I was attempting to untangle it all when my lens cap sprung off, rolled down the sidewalk and straight into the sewer grate. Had Martha not seen it with her own eyes she would have never believed me. Go ahead ask her.

"How does this shit happen to you!?" she yelled.
"What do you mean, this IS my life!" I laughed.
"Oh Jesus Christ Holly," she said as we both stood over the sewer looking down at my lens cap resting nicely on the comics page of the local paper.
"Okay, all we need is a big stick and some gum. Do you have any gum?" she asked.
"Yep I got a bunch of gum and why don't you pull that big stick out of your ass and we'll be all set."
"Only if you kiss it first."

We started walking back to the car to drop off our teas and purses, all the while looking for something stick like to use. First we walked towards a garage door that looked as though there might be plastic tubing on the ground in front of it but upon a closer look we noticed that the plastic tubing was coming from the garage door like for some kind of ventilation, like you might find in say, a meth lab. So we moved away from the garage door. Across from the meth lab was pile of broken up wooden pallets. Perfect, now I just needed to chew a bunch of gum. We get back to the car and I stick one piece in my mouth and start chewing. I wait a few minutes and then put another one in there, chew for a few more minutes and I put the third in when Martha looked at me and in a snarky tone said, "I think two is enough." I opened my mouth to say something snarky back and half of the third stick of un-chewed gum fell out of my mouth and landed on the sidewalk.

"Okay, well two and a half should be good" she laughed.

I frantically chewed gum while we walked back to the sewer grate. The gum couldn't be too sugary otherwise it wouldn't be that sticky. After a few more minutes, I stuck the gum on the end of the stick and Martha proceeded to poke at the lens cap. She was able to get the thing stuck to it but when I would try to grab it, it would fall back to the paper. After a few attempts, a passerby asked if we dropped our keys.

"No, the lens cap to my camera", I replied, and within seconds this guy was on the ground, in the gutter, helping Martha navigate the stick over to the side that had more space. In the blink of an eye, I was holding my sticky dirt cover cap.

The guy started to walk away and I asked him if he wanted some hand sanitizer. Sure, he said as I squirted a big dollop into his palms. "Thank you so much, I hope you have a wonderful life." I called out as he walked away.

I never know if I'm blessing someone or cursing them when I say that.

Weird Sushi Drug Breath
The next day at the Assisted Living place from 10:30 until 3:00 was Glamour Shots Day. For $50 bucks you could have your photo taken against a lovely Seasonal backdrop. A stylist could do your makeup or if you chose, you could do your own. It is understood that there are no Glamour Shots of Gen. You know that, right?

This was the day that we took Gen to the mall to get her a pair of shoes. I'm not sure I can accurately describe the whole rotten ordeal other than that she's got a bunion on one foot and the other one is half a size larger. She wanted laces but she can't tie her shoes anymore but was hell bent on ignoring that fact. All she did was bitch and by noon, I already had a whole Xanax in me and was periodically licking another one just to take the edges off the edges. By mid-afternoon once we were safely back in the comforts of Assisted Living, I ended up taking a two-hour nap on Frank's bed.

I think this was the night that Martha and I decided to try the Japanese place that we had driven by about a zillion times over the past year. Actually, there are two, but the big one looked to be the better choice, until we got in there and realized it was more like a Benihana then anything we might be interested in. The last thing I want to ever do in my life is sit in a room full of southern Christians under florescent lights, unless there is some kind of old-time revival snake handling thing going on and I have a camera. I most certainly don't want to be stuffed around a large round table with a Japanese 'chef' cooking the shit out of my food while juggling knifes and pepper shakers in front of me.

So we drove down the street to the other Japanese place and what do you know they had a sushi bar and by first glance it appeared to be normal. But in a matter of minutes, good feeling gone. A totally out of control Wake Forest drunken college jackasses were over in the corner. There must have been ten of them and then another eight or so came in to join in. They did this sake!, sake!, sake!, scream and then slammed the table when they were done chugging shots of...sake. It was beyond loud.

"What are you thinking about?" I asked Martha when there was a break in the screaming.
"I weep for our future." She said.

For Christians, They Sure Do Raise Hell with Each Other
Our last day in Winston-Salem my spirits were high but my back gave me the finger. It was done. It now hated me and was going to punish me anyway it could. The last day was difficult mostly because I couldn't wait to get the fuck out of there. I was so impatient with just about everything. I kept zipping and unzipping my drug pouch and at one point, while looking inside it I said to Martha, "I'm just going to eat everything in here and spend the day at the hospital."

"You're sick", Martha said laughing as she hovered Pecan Sandies at quite the velocity. I lifted my head, smiled and rotorted, "It's either that or vodka, right?" She shrugged her shoulders agreed and shoved another cookie in her mouth.

At one point Martha and I went to Tanglewood's Festival of Lights. I can't seem to remember what night that was but it was fun in that creepy the earth is doomed kind of way. Of course, only I see it that way because I'm such a cynic, but whatever, it was disturbing and after a few days of listening to Gen spout out things like, "I used to know this area but since I've been incarcerated I've lost all that knowledge." I was a little drained in the warm fuzzy sector of my brain. Good feeling gone.

Jasmine was in Europe on the day they discovered the plot to blow up ten or twelve transatlantic flights coming out of England. Her flight back to the United States was scheduled for 48 hours after a complete and total lockdown of all the airports within a zillion mile radius of the Atlantic Ocean.

I think Jasmine's entire trip on Saturday from merry old Oxford, England to Hudson, New York was a total of twenty-four hours, give or take an assortment of space outs and minute brain freezes that she surly must have had along the way. She started out on a bus ride to Gatwick airport, (she is so very lucky that it wasn't Heathrow) that was clogged with rush-hour airport traffic. Very late, she arrived at Gatwick with her baggy consisting of her passport, a piece of paper with our phone numbers on it and her wallet. In tow, she had two massive pieces of luggage that she waved goodbye to at luggage check and then it was on to a jumbo-jet airplane, for an 8-hour flight that, by the time it took off, was already three-hours late.

Arriving in the United States, she had by then missed her train to Penn Station and had to reschedule another one that left her with an hour layover in Philly's Penn Station (always a pleasure) and then another hour layover in New York's Penn Station (extra fun and freshly scented), very late on a Saturday night. In New York's Penn Station, she sat on the floor with her two gigantic pieces of luggage, her deodorant having given up several hours prior, staring at the track board, waiting for it to display the track number for her train and desperately trying not to fall asleep. At 11:45 pm (4:45 am Jasmine time), she boarded a train to Albany and rode for two-hours north to Hudson, New York where Martha and I picked her up at 1:45 am (6:45 am Jasmine time) Sunday Morning.

She had started this crazy pilgrimage in Oxford at 7:00 am, still drunk from the night before and ended up stinking up our car almost a whole day later. She never slept on the plane or the train and they did not serve ANY water on the eight-hour flight across the ocean. She had no iPod; paper; books; pens; music; no electronic devices whats-so-ever and not once was she allowed to use HAND SANITIZER. Are they trying to spread a pandemic? Bring it on you dumb, unprepared fucks.

Yuck.

But she is here, she is home and will be here for the week and the world is a very frightening place. Yeah, I know all about it but the idea of my child on an airplane on the day that Al-Qaeda decided to blowup people coming home, to America; to kill more Americans, freaks me out just a tad. Oh sure people are blown up every day in the name of religion or oil and I realize that statistically, there is little difference between my family and any family in northern Lebanon so why not blow up my kid? Who is to say? Why are we even dealing with this? Why is this becoming the only normal way to think? Why, as gas prices climb to the point where $5.00 a gallon will seem normal, why do we still have a president that SUCKS at foreign policy and continues to SUCK at foreign policy to the point that other people keep wanting to blow us up because he SUCKS SO BAD? Homeland Security my ass. I see him as the biggest threat to this country's ability to communicate and function in this world. Every time he fucks up, we, as in the collective we "The Nation", have to smile for the cameras, bend over and embarrassingly take it up the ass in front of all Nations. But Americans don't mind because they feel safer with all that extra security of forcing nursing mothers to drink their own breast milk in front of the armed National Guard.

Oh wait, that's right they hate us because we are free. Right. That is what makes them crazy for our blood in the streets. Right.

RUNNING WITH PACKS
I finally had a chance to do some serious walking about this little town I now live in. Even though we should have stayed inside and tinkered with countless things, Martha and I went for a major Sunday morning walk with the Polaroid camera. Then when Akash and Yasuyo arrived, we walked the whole length of the town, all the way down to the river. Shot some very fun very, odd photos and had good solid laughs, the kind that have been seriously lacking in my life. (Obviously) I think just having Martha and Jasmine home has done me wonders but the added laid-back company made it even better.

In less time then it takes to watch an episode of VH1s I love the 80's; Jasmine has managed to trash the entire second floor of our house. My office is full of crap; the bathroom is filled with odd personal product and things like a flat iron and a hair dryer are all fighting for space on a very narrow vanity. On my desk by the new computer is a bottle of OPI Nail Lacquer (Edin-Burgundy), a copy of the new GQ with "The Private Life of Justin Timberlake" bookmarked and underneath that is a copy of the new US Weekly with the VINCE PROPOSES! screaming headline.

Oh well, it's not as though the house was in perfect condition before she arrived. So much to do so little time to deal. All her shit is now mixed in with my shit so everything looks even messier then it did just the other day. I kind of feel like I have made no progress but I know deep down that is only an illusion. Plus, I kind of need to get out of the house with some family and friends for a few hours.

There is a rather large pet store that is just down the street from the house and I personally see that as more of a potential threat than living next door to the Happy Clown Soft Serve Ice Cream Stand up on RT 23. Currently, they have a gaggle of black and white kittens in there that would make even the blackest of hearts melt. It's sick and I should be forbidden from entering the store. Kind of like Tippy, the white and black cat that isn't allowed in the Muddy Cup Coffeehouse even though I always see her in there, napping on one of the many sofas. They even have a sign on the front door with her photo and underneath it, it reads; "Don't let me in!". I should hang a photo of me near the register of the pet store with the words "DO NOT SELL LIVE ANIMALS TO THIS CRAZY BITCH" plastered all over it.

This whole town has a cat thing. There are gangs of feral cats that roam around the town. There are about ten or so over by the hotel and then, at the other end of town, there are several more that hang near the train station. We have two that linger in our backyard and drive Zoë nuts. One is a big black cat who does not give a rat's ass about us and then, there is a cute tabby that appears to be pregnant. Oh Jesus, one way or another I see more cats in my life. I just know it.

On an airplane ride home to Jersey and the journey is a little bumpy, to say the least. An hour before, at the airport terminal we watched a massive hailstorm move through the runway area and freak out most folks waiting on airplanes. The odd thing is that storm was roughly the third hailstorm I have seen in just as many weeks. I'm telling ya, it's the end of the world.

Oh well, at lease I'm closer to God. We are on a puddle-jumper and boy howdy it certainly is jumping. Martha is convinced that we are going to crash. She's had a death grip on my left arm for a while now, her eyes are dilated and she's whispering to me "We're going to crash, we're going to crash." loud enough that the guy across the isle from her keeps frowning at me. I give him my best version of my smile, fuck off, hair-flick look and shift around so I can stare out my window.

Sliding around in the air above Greensboro, NC I look out at God's country and notice that at some point in this airplanes history a Ladybug has died, having been trapped between the two pains of window glass of my window. Now this concerns me on a few levels. First, how did the Ladybug get there? I thought these things have to be sealed, not drafty. Okay I understand we're not going into space here but isn't there that whole 'pressurized cabin" and air mask demo thing? If so, then how did a bulbous shaped Ladybug squeeze through a seam and why, if there is a seam, wouldn't the unseen seam cause a pressure problem? Shouldn't my window crack and then blow out along with my seat and the back half of the plane? Secondly, what does a dead Ladybug stuck in my window mean? I don't like the metaphor, you know, luck and all.

These little puddle-jumpers remind of me of MRI machines. I love to fly and usually don't give a damn about anything as long as I can sit near a window. But after a year of constantly being shoved into a little metal tube, apparently now, I get a little claustrophobic. That little mind game reared it's ugly head last Friday morning after we had been in our seats for over thirty minutes but still on the ground and not going anywhere. Everything was too close to my face, too tight and it felt like there was no air. Panic set in, and not being one to fuck around with panic, I chewed a Xanax and silently talked myself down until the sweet relief of the modification of my GABA_A receptor. Gaba Gaba hey!

CARE
Martha's Mom and Dad are old and crazy. That is the short answer to "How was North Carolina?". Martha's sister came up and while we all had a lovely time together, I didn't sleep more than a combined total of 5 hours in two days. The second night there I ended up on the recliner. I can no longer sleep in a double bed with another person, in particular Martha, who is long and likes to lay diagonally. It was super great and with her sister there, the only other place I could have gone was the passenger side of the PT-Cruiser that we rented. It was a serious consideration at 4am Saturday morning but it was also storming outside so I thought against it.

The long and strange answer to the NC trip is that Martha's mother isn't doing so well. What's making her sick is a drug she is on, Coumadin, also known as RAT POISON. She is having a rare and deadly reaction to it and steps need to be taken to get her off the drug. When the choices are gangrene, open sores that will not heal, possible limb removal and liver failure or the quick click of a stroke, I think I would take the stroke, Bob.

But I'm 43 and what the hell do I know? At 87 and when you were raised to believe in a doctors care and blindly go along with what is recommended regardless of the effects, this concept of challenging your doctor and making end of life decisions is quite daunting, depressing, discouraging and over all a big fucking drag. It pains me in new and different ways to see her in so much discomfort. I feel for her and I love her with all my heart. I love her like a Mom.

When I am left unsupervised things happen and well, (blink, blink) I am now the proud owner of a new leather jacket. This is the same leather jacket that I wrote about a few weeks ago and the exact same one that I have been fondling in the store every time I go in Macy's. I mean it is literally the same one. I know this because this jacket had a bunch of torn up price tickets in the left pocket. It was also the only large that they had left, it was on sale and I viewed it as destiny. I wore it home and was hit on three times. This is amazing to me because I really do look like a sick old crazy bitch but stick a piece of leather the color of white-trash on my back and suddenly I'm fuckable?

Major trouble sleeping this weekend and I am not sure why. Well other than the obvious freak-out that my head is going through combined with Martha being out of town but no, I think it was something else. The blood pressure medicine is working, sort of. All my symptoms have gone down a notch but the surges of adrenaline are maddening and can pull me out of a dead sleep. Kind of like that falling dream that jumps you awake, only I get a rush that wakes me up. It is as though I am sniffing Rush while sleeping. Sounds fun but trust me it is not. Not a good weekend to be alone I suppose. My mind is a terrible thing.

At the Randy Ray golf outing in Pittsburgh this weekend Sharp gave away AQUOS LCD TV (nice) and Martha played golf with a woman with one arm. Aunt Janet lost her left arm in a car accident seven years ago but she is crazy for the golf. Determined to keep playing despite her handicap, she has worked very hard over the years to get to this point - the point that she was originally at seven years ago. Crazy, eh? Aunt Janet is related to Rick and Jen, two friends in PA that Martha was staying and golfing with.

Rick gave Martha a wooden screw-together putter (like a pool stick) that was part of the skill prize packets for the outing. When Martha was packing to come home she threw it in her carry on luggage and didn't really think about it again until it showed up on the X-ray machine at the "Pittsburgh International Airport" and security was all up her ass thinking she had a gun in her luggage. Even after it was explained (and demonstrated), as to what the hell it was they still made her check it with her golf clubs. They were considering it a 'bashing instrument" and took it away from her.

After security, the next mess for Martha on the road home came at the gate where she could not get a flight out of Pittsburgh. She was on stand-by for all flights and the man at the counter told her that while her luggage had made it out on the noon flight to Newark but it did not look good as far as getting an actual seat on any of the four flights out that day. At this point in the story, an executive decision was made. Martha rented a car and drove across the "Swing State" of Pennsylvania to the "My Governor is Gay but Lives a Privileged Straight Life" state of New Jersey. Of course she could not just drive home, she had to go to Newark Airport to: drop off the rental car ($153.00), pick up her luggage (more on that in a minute), take the shuttle to short-term parking where the Jeep was at ($25.00) and then drive home. Ta da! All that bullshit took almost 12 hours. Nice.

But wait, Mr. Gate Keeper Man in Pittsburgh lied and they never sent her luggage on the noon flight to Newark. Newark said they didn't have it and that her luggage was still in Pittsburgh and they didn't really care about any of it either. I mean what the fuck, she didn't FLY to Jersey all she did was fly out of Jersey on Friday night and used the super-pricy short-term parking. Newark said they would file a baggage claim and fly the bags here, maybe on Monday. Yeah, right, I bet she was wishing she still had her "bashing instrument." She could have demonstrated it again but only this time whacking one of them in the brain with the screw-on putter head, by accident of course, by accident.