Holly Northrop Blog

I have more bling in my mouth, via a new gold tooth. Yes, that makes two. It's in the back so who cares but it is kind of fun to have. I told Martha she doesn't have to buy me jewelry just buy me teeth.

For the first time in my life, I have borrowed a camera from a friend. I know, I know I'm scared too but this camera he has is very unique and I couldn't help myself. It is a Horizon 202 and it shoots pans but what makes it super cool is the look and feel of the pans. Plus, it's Russian. I have a thing for Russian cameras. I've wanted to Kiev 88 (basically a Russian Hasselblad) for years and my Lubital, while heavy and a picky bitch, is super fun to play with.

Anyway I'm going to take the beast into Manhattan this week and well, we'll see what I get. Just because the camera is cool doesn't mean I know what the hell I'm doing with it.

Jasmine has started looking for an apartment in Pittsburgh. Ah yes, the average Pittsburgh landlord is truly unique to the region. South Side, Squirrel Hill, Bloomfield, Friendship and Shadyside all have distinct 'characters' and so do the Landlords.

Just in Pittsburgh alone I've lived in seven places, ten if I count the three dorm rooms I was in while I lived on the campus of Duquesne University. One of those places was a four bedroom brick house that Martha and I owned in Friendship. The funny thing about Pittsburgh is that I'm not from there I just happen to end up living there a lot. I went to college there but then I've moved back (of my own free will) two other times. Martha, who is from there, would move back in a heartbeat.

So now Jazz has begun the process of meeting prospective new landlords and witnessing just how fucked up people can live.

Two apartments come to mind that I've had the misfortune of standing in while apartment hunting in Pittsburgh. Both are from the same hunt and I think they were both on the same day. It is from the time period that Martha and I were looking for our first apartment together. I was unemployed (surprise, surprise) and Martha worked all day, (again surprise, surprise) so it was my 'job' to scope out a good apartment and then bring her back later for final approval.

The first place was a one bedroom right on the edge of Shadyside near The Center of the Arts. They allowed pets, but it was on street parking. The outside of the building was awesome Big old sloppy Pittsburgh row house. Just huge. It was four stories high and the apartment was on the top floor. It had amazing original woodwork and the bedroom was possibly the largest bedroom I've ever seen. It was the whole top floor and while the ceilings were slanted in that attic way, there was good overall floor space and it had a balcony just off of the kitchen. There was just one MAJOR problem.

The floor looked bizarre. It was wall-to-wall carpet but it had a weird texture to it. When I asked the crunchy hippy chick who lived there what kind of carpet it was, that is when she told me that she had never vacuumed the floor in the ENTIRE two years that she had been living there. She had a cute little dog and the carpet was COVERED in dog hair.

My mouth dropped open and I looked at her and then the owner and then back at her in total disgust and confusion. How could you not vacuum a carpet for over two years AND how could you show an apartment in that condition and think for one second that anyone is going to rent it. What was even more bizarre was when I made the comment that the whole thing was disgusting she shot back with a 'vacuum cleaners are expensive' explanation.

The second apartment was just down the street, also in Shadyside and had an even more disgusting problem. The place was huge (two bedroom) and again, I would have totally considered it except the kitchen had roaches crawling all over everything. The stove, the counter tops, you name it they were there. Some dead, some living and all of them not even running away from us.

This apartment still had people living in it so really, I'm not sure what the hell was going on. There was a kid's room, so there was a child living there and the furniture was nice but the apartment was infested with roaches. And again the owner just shrugged her shoulders and went rambling on in some heavy Slovak accent about how great the neighborhood was.

Needless to say, Martha never saw either one of those places.

Moving sucks. No real surprise there. No real surprise when the thunderstorm came blowing through Jersey City, dousing my filing cabinet and no real surprise that the movers had already blown their total time budget before we even got to the new place. So the yelling at the end of a very long nine-hour-move, between the movers and Martha was totally and in an curious way, expected.

Zoë almost had a seizure and I really mean that. No shit. Move day was super long and hard for that cat. It started out for her by spending over four hours locked in the bathroom with Lily while the movers carried all of our stuff out of the apartment. She meowed like a colicky baby. I sat in there with her for 15-minute intervals, spraying Feliway cat spray on my hands and then petting it into her fur, just shy from spraying her directly, which the label warns against doing. But, I could see why an owner just might go on ahead and spray the cat. Anyway, after the first hour of her pissing and moaning, I left her alone. (There is only so much I can take.) Part of me wanted her to blow just so the rest of the day she would be a zombie. Selfish, I know but best for all involved.

When it was time to go we shoved her in a Kennel Cab with Lily and hit the road. Staring at a three-hour drive from Jersey City, I was concerned that she would flip out in the cage and pee all over Lily. I could almost see the pull over to the side of the road anxiety but she seemed pretty doped up and able to deal.

The drive was uneventful, except for the phone call from Jazz letting me know that she had missed her flight to England. She was supposed to have flown out on Friday, not Saturday. She didn't figure all this out until she was at the airport and freaking out on some airline staff. The tension was high as she navigated and forced her way onto a flight to Philly with a connecting flight to Gatwick airport. We agreed to have her call me when she was at the gate (with boarding pass in hand) for the flight to England. It concerns me that she fucked up her itinerary like that. I mean what the hell, Jazz?

We got to the new house, locked the cats in the upstairs bathroom, and proceeded to help unload the truck just so we could get the hell away from the movers and be done before dark. Our shit is a wicked combination of volume and weight. Takes forever.

We let the cats out after the movers left and that is when Zoë went into overload. She seemed all right when she was walking around on the second floor but it was shortly after the big scary all by herself walk down the stairs to the first floor that she started panting. Cats don't pant. Oh god it was ugly and Martha and I were convinced she was going to blow. I kept spraying my hands and then petting her very slowly, trying to get her to calm the fuck down. Finally, she seemed better, sort of. The pacing and the panting stopped and she just wanted to lie in the hallway.

It then occurred to me that it had been several hours since I had spoken with Jazz and she should have called by then. I picked up my cell phone and called right into Jasmine freaking out. The Philly airport had been closed earlier due to storms and when I called her, she had been sitting on the runway for over an hour waiting to de-board the plane. The pilot had turned off the air conditioning and the passengers were not allowed to get up to even use the bathroom. Jazz was stuck in a middle seat on a full plane, sweating and crying. She had flown out of Pittsburgh, went to Philly, circled around Philly for twenty minutes, flew halfway back across the state of PA only to land in Harrisburg to refuel, and then took off again, flew back to Philly, landed in Philly and then everything came to a dead hot stop. Wow that is pretty fucked up. I did my best version of Calm Mom and managed to get her to at least sound better.

It was around that moment that I paused and thought it unusual that both Zoë and Jazz were almost on the same page.

After all that, Martha and I went out for sushi. What the hell, there is really only so much we can do for that cat or Jasmine and besides, we needed to eat.

I spoke with Jazz one more time while she was at her gate. Her flight to England had been delayed but not canceled so she was able to eat, charge her cell phone and get some cash before she flew off across the ocean and arrived in England at 4 am, (our time).

Jazz is in England, and we are in our new house. Wow.

Things I am going to miss about hi-rise living:

Jasmine's leaves for England on Saturday and her passport finally came just the other day. Months ago, while she was home for spring break, Jasmine without much bitching, got her shit together and shuffled on over to the post office to get her passport. All went without a hitch and I immediately became suspicious. Six-weeks later, her passport arrived here. Martha and I opened it and her first name was spelled wrong. Those fricken yahoos had left the 'e' off the end of Jasmine.

The next day the three of us had a conference call, (Martha in Jersey, me in Manhattan and Jazz in PA - we do this all the time and they should be recorded) to discuss the odds of her being stopped by our Homeland Security buckaroos or having trouble with the Brits on the return trip home. We made the group decision to send back the passport in the hopes that they would return it in time for her trip. A few weeks go by then one day Jasmine's passport is returned to her in PA with a stamp on the unopened envelop that reads "wrong address". Now, instead of the government agency that the passport was mistakenly sent to forwarding it to the proper department, they sent it unopened back to Jasmine. By this time, the clock was ticking and Jazz only had five weeks before she was to leave for England. Against Martha's protests, Jasmine sent it back to them at the correct address with a sweet little note inside explaining that she is a college student (blink, blink) and could she please have this corrected and returned before the 22nd of July.

I just assumed that once she stuck her passport back in the mail that she was fucked and would be spending the rest of the summer helping me unpack and settle into the new house. But magic does happen and hot damn if they didn't not only correct the spelling error but managed to return it to Jasmine one whole week before she escapes to England.

So now the last minute focus is on how much money she is going to need. Given this child's total lack of economic understanding and the current exchange rate, I am frightened. Thank god for Grandma Northrop's money because without that, there would be no studying abroad.

"The dollar is worthless. It's double. You gotta think like this Jazz, if a cheeseburger is $8.00 here then it will be $16.00 there. You are going to spend a shitload of money." Martha sighed.

"I know, I know. Starting next week, I have to make a packing list. I already know I need conditioner." Jazz replied in all seriousness.

2ND FLOOR SM. FRONT ROOM
Packing up everything you own all by yourself sucks. I chose to combat the solitude by doing the one thing that I know how. I smoked pot and drank coffee all weekend long and I did my best work as a gum chewing stoner, packing up negatives as well as playing with tape. Even though we live small, we live thick. Our crap is concentrated and when I say our I really mean me. I have books and music; countless binders of photography negatives; plastic drawers filled with working prints; Polaroids and framed photography from past exhibits; zip disks and binders upon binders of backups of either photography or computer work. The biggest collection of stuff that Martha has is her clothes, something that I just don't care all that much about. If is could get away with it I would wear the same baggy shit every damn day.

Martha spent the weekend in North Carolina handling her parents affairs and their decision to sell the house and most of their stuff and move into a nursing home - right now. Thankfully, it all cannot happen within a seven-day period so Martha came home for the move this weekend, and to get me more boxes. She will be going back and forth a great deal over the next six-weeks until they are safely moved into the nursing place or she cracks. The timing and logistics of all of this is a little wacky but like Jasmine' said; "That's how we roll mom. As much ridiculous shit as possible happens all at once. Whether we do it or the universe does it."

She's cute. She called me several times over the weekend just to check on me. Probably because I told her I was freaking out but whatever. Love is love.

But having all this stuff makes it difficult to feel like there is any forward motion in packing. For hours, I would stand in one place, packing box after box and stacking them on one side of a room but never even making a dent in the source. It made me think of what it would have been like to pack up my grandma's coal pile, if for whatever screwed up reason that had to happen. I bet it would have taken all day.

GIVE BACKS
So there I was home alone, stoned and boxing up my life, and what do I start thinking about? My mother. Left alone and well after the stereo was packed I had no choice but to go there.

I am starting to have the same level of anxiety about moving upstate that is usually reserved for things like my dentist or hi-speed interstate driving. The interesting thing about being the child of a mentally ill parent is that you spend most your adult life looking for little 'signs' of a possible inheritance of the illness. Kind of like WWMD: What Would Mom Do? perspective and then adjust accordingly.

All odd behavior is questioned as to its normalness, if that makes sense, and making sense is important. The minute that you feel as though you are not being understood, well that might be the crack in the door that lets the dark little crazies out of the backroom of the brain.

Have I ever thought about throwing myself off my 32nd store balcony and swan diving it on down, well, no but only because I don't have a 32nd store balcony. Have I ever thought about jumping out of my 18th floor window, and trying to belly flop onto the roof of the fucking hi-rise across the street...

...well actually I thought about it a lot as I kept pausing to look out my window while packing up my office.

"Fuck this." I though. I'll just mark all the boxes Goodwill and jump out the window.

This is obviously a slight panicked response to moving. For little slivers of time, my solution to moving is to just not. Fuck it, I'll get off here. I would rather jump out a window then move upstate.

What the fuck is that?

Some things are no doubt learned. My mother's long ago dead phobias are now mine and when I trace them back, it goes right to the point where I spent an absurd amount of hours watching her flip out about shit.

Nothing like having an existential meltdown while boxing up my life.

People have started looking at our apartment. That means I have to let folks in. God how I hate that. Of course, I'm not going to be there when it all happens but I hate the idea of breeders with kids or trust fund snots walking their dirty city shoes all over our apartment. We are a no shoe home and it's just disgusting to think about what other folks might drag through here when I'm not around. If I keep thinking about it, I'm going to make myself crazy.

Anyway, we got a mortgage. Amazing. I'm in dept up to my eyeballs with student loans and a bank wants to give me more. And I say hell yes, that's the American way! So it looks like we just might close mid-month, two-weeks from now. The loose idea is to start spending weekends up at the house, you know, painting cleaning and moving the small stuff, getting ready to live there. It is easier to rip up carpet and paint a room with nothing in it, oh and rip up carpet we are so going to do. The living room has a nice mauve thing (We have a red couch.) that is so out the door once we buy masks, gloves and a crowbar. I don't care what is under there because we are going to put this down. Martha and I have been eyeballing the Flor product since the design show at the Chelsea hotel a few years ago. We had wanted to put it in that condo we tried to buy up in Union, god I am so glad we walked away from that deal. $325,000 indeed. It would have sucked and that monthly mortgage payment would be killing us by now.

The things I will miss about this apartment are very, very simple and obvious. I am three blocks from the subway and seven minutes from Manhattan. Can't beat that. But the real thing is this. Living eighteen floors above it all, every room has a wall of windows so the real reason that this apartment is awesome is the view.

Specifically on mornings where the fog has set in and the city is a ghost out my window. Before the rest of Jersey City gets up and makes it so noisy I have to close the window, I can hear the blow of fog horns from the cruise ships floating up the Hudson from out of the harbor. I've seen the QM2 a few times and I can't believe it floats. That thing is huge. So it the QE2. Even from my window those ships are so large that they block certain parts of the Manhattan skyline as they drift by.

But this place has never been very peaceful. There is always noise, construction, children, jackhammers or beam pounders and the sirens, Christ the sirens. The whole city around us is constantly humming. Last night fireworks went off just a few blocks from our building and lit up the whole sky. The view was amazing, front row to a great show. I have no idea why there were fireworks but they seem to have them quite a bit over here.

But honestly, aside from the stench from the neighbors cooking floating through the bedroom every now and then I really liked living here. It has been a good run of it.

IF YOU CAN'T SAY ANYTHING NICE
Work is weird, a new guy started and honestly I can't imagine what it must feel like for him. All around our department is just emptiness. It is almost like the scene of a crime, only well after the entire crime scene has been cleared. All that is left is that icky feeling that something bad happened in the spot you are standing in. I don't know, I'm just trying to be nice and not bring up any negative crap in front of him. So yes, I do spent a lot of time at my desk with headphones on avoiding eye contact.

After it rained all day last Monday and well after I had been sitting at my desk, cold and wet for hours on end, I came home to two notes. One was attached to the elevator informing the residents of my building that there was no hot water and will not be any hot water until after 11:00am Tuesday morning. The hot-water pipe had burst on the roof and now the penthouse was flooded. That can't be good and it probably isn't just the penthouse. All that water had most likely run down the walls to the lower apartments. We live eight floors below that nonsense so I was a little worried. This has happened to us before and more than once. In fact, I almost expect it to happen again.

Anyway, the second note was attached to our mailbox. I had to take that little note and walk over to the doorman and sign for a larger packet of paper. Inside the packet was our new lease, and should we choose to stay in this deluxe apartment in the sky, the management company was informing me of their intention to raise our rent by $400.00 a month. The new rent on our apartment would be $2420.00 plus an additional $160.00 for parking. That's, $2580.00 a month for a two-bedroom in Jersey City. Jesus Christ.

Monday could have been so different. I could almost see the alternate version of the evening playing out in front of me in the dark corners of the apartment.

If we were staying in this luxury apartment, Monday would have been a freak-out fest. It would have marked the start of the apartment scramble and the crazed race to find something that costs at least what we are paying now (before rent hike) with the same amount of space, safety and comfort. The horns would have been blown. There would have been yelling and many, many phone calls to various people who could not help us or give two shits about helping us. My guess, we probably would have called a lawyer.

But, because we are in the middle of buying a house, all that bad vibe stuff just kind of lingered in the air and then faded away. Oh sure, we have to let them know if we are leaving and there are all these crazy rules about how to move out. Extra 'move out' deposits and a general attitude of "fuck off, you tenant you", but we'll work around all that. Frankly, they can kiss my butt. I love this apartment and will miss the view and all that extra crap but not for $2580 a month.

MOMENTS OF ZEN ARE ALL AROUND
Usually, at least once a week but sometimes way more, New York City develops a certain synchronicity that is bothersome. It usually comes together over a two or three block radius before you realize that everyone has taken extra cranky pills that day. It happens slowly. You might look up and just so happen to catch sight of a well-dressed elderly woman aggressively giving the finger to a cabdriver who almost ran her over. As you keep walking, you come upon a group of folks standing near the corner dominating the entire sidewalk while waiting on the 101 bus, behaving as if they are trying out for The Jerry Springer Show. They scream slang and general obscenities at one another while you try to push through the crowd without being smacked in the head. And it's right around then, when you'll notice that you have been walking the block with a fire truck that is stuck in traffic with the siren blaring and horn in the on position. Your eardrums are about to shatter. You make it to the corner where black Lincoln town cars and yellow cabs have created a logjam at the light and the whole city smells like butt crack.

It is the exact opposite of that weird magical moment when for a few seconds the entire area of the city that you are in goes completely quiet. Not a sound is around and it is the middle of the day. It is so quiet that you'll start to hear birds chirping. A soft breeze blows down the street and the sent from the flowers at bodega on the corner floats around you, inviting a smile. If you close your eyes, you will swear you are in the middle of nowhere. Like a swing that has gone just a little too high and is momentarily suspended in the air before gravity pushes it all back to earth, the sounds and smells of the city rise back up to the normal rhythm, only to slowly swing the other way. The screaming butt crack way. New York does this dance all day long, all over the city.

EMPTY
In what is beyond a joke (and well beyond believability) yet another person in my department quit last week. Honestly, I have never seen anything like this and I've seen an enormous amount of shit in this business. We are now down to the final three and goddamn it, I am going for the prize.

Several months ago all the cream was let go from this company and now the whole wing of offices that held the executive staff is empty. It is kind of creepy to walk down that darkened hall with all those empty offices tree-branching off into nothing, but at the very end of this dark tunnel is the executive ladies bathroom and I've got to tell you, it's a whole other private world back there. As long as they keep that door unlocked, I will never use the public restroom on the fourth floor again. I feel like George Costanza.

MOVING JASMINE
This week we will be making the fine, fine trip through Pennsylvania to visit with Miss Jasmine. She is moving into her very own apartment and we are driving there to help her settle in. I can't wait to see her. I haven't seen her since that whole eyeball thing in March but it feels like it's been so much longer. No sure why. Hmm, regardless, I can't wait to squeeze her.

More road tripping but I think this is the last of it for quite some time. The next big drive will be when we move upstate. Okay it's not a big drive but for a car full of two cats and two neurotic woman, two-hours is considered a trip. And technically, it's is three-hours from our current overpriced apartment in Jersey City to the house in Hudson. I figure once we get in the house we ain't going no where. We will have this thing called a yard to deal with, among many, many other things.

Well it looks like Martha, Jasmine and I survived five days of some intense girl power in our little three-room apartment. All I can really say is "WOW".

Keri managed to commute from here to DC and back without too much trouble other than sleep deprived delirium, but after a few coffees and a nice walk down 5th Avenue she got her third or fourth wind.

Sheri is so lovely and having her near always makes me feel better no matter how sick we both are. She came with a cold and we kibitzed over medicinal herb and Sudafed Cold Medicine. Of course, not to be outdone I kicked up my buzz a notch by drinking Vicks NyQuil Cough syrup straight out of the bottle like it was Southern Comfort. For two days, I carried it with me in all around apartment seeing as how I didn't really go anywhere else. Too sick and full of cold medicine to run amok like normal, I did manage to get out and go to dinner with everyone one night and Martha, Sheri and I went shooting early (crack of dawn early) over at the Fulton Fish Market and then on up to Time's Square. At eight o'clock in the morning, Times Square was already a buzz of nutty. Not as bad as normal but that whole fucking area has a pulse, I swear to god. It is kind of bothersome because it feels like a corporate monster pulse instead of the vibrant creative pulse like other areas of the city.

But that was it. I stayed home almost the entire four days. I have a cold that will not leave me alone. My voice is just now coming back but the constant coughing night and day is maddening.

Jasmine's friend Courtney is a nice little hippie chick from Jim Thorpe and is, at times, the polar opposite of Jazz. I suppose that is how those things work sometimes. Jazz had someone (other than us) that she could boss-around. Martha called it "Jazz Lite: Just as Filling but Half the calories".

Courtney is very, very laid back and I know she had a great time because she made the announcement that "this was the best New Year's of my life." It is always funny to hear something like that coming out of the mouth of a twenty-year-old. She has a good decade ahead of her filled with retarded behavior and complete New Year's Eve debauchery before a statement like that can carry some weight. But I have no doubt that Jasmine is a most excellent host and besides, they got served in a Chelsea bar on New Year's eve and hooked up with two boys from school. Boys, beer and balls dropping; sounds like an ideal time.

Jasmine, ever in tune with my neurosis and listening to the place in her brain where I have taken up permanent residence, also known as "the Mother Zone", made sure she was home by midnight on New Years. I have been in New York at midnight and it is kind of crazy on the street so I wanted her here. Yes, I can be a drag but I only had to ask her once. Besides, at midnight if we all cranked our necks we could see the fireworks in the harbor from the comfort of our big fat lesbian bed. Who would want to miss that?

My office had become the dressing room for Sheri, Keri, Jasmine and Courtney. Girl clothes, jewelry, strange bath pellets and hemp oils sat next to my Holga camera. Silver chains and finger rings curled around bottles of perfume on top of my filing cabinet. There were three stacks of clothes. Sheri's pile under my photo table; Jasmine's pile, stacked against the closet door and one of Courtney's luggage (the other one was in the living room) next to my chair/Lily's ottoman. I think Keri had a small pouch in there somewhere but it was lost to the room. It is so jammed full of stuff that even the cats stayed away, too dense for cat play.

Sheri and Keri shared Jasmine's twin bed, (they are either more cat-like than Martha and I or are just plain crazy) while Jasmine and Courtney slept on the air mattress in the living room.

For the most part it all seemed to work and there were only a few moments were I felt trapped without a place to go. New Years Day at 7 am was one such time. Everyone was sleeping so I made coffee, sat on the kitchen counter, and waited for Keri to come home from work. She was due around 8:00 so I though I would write a little and hang out on the counter, something I haven't done since I was a teenager.

Our red kitchen is around 12 x 7 and that's about it. Jasmine, blessed with the curse of not being able to sleep more than four hours no matter how drunk she was when she fell asleep, woke-up and joined me. She and I hung out in the kitchen for an hour and chatted about everything. It was so cool. We caught up on Courtney's visit, the up coming weeks activities and doctors appointments and the general state of the household.

Keri came home and then Jazz and I went for a two-hour walk around the water and canal in Jersey City where I took photos and Jasmine bitched about the sun. Every now and then, I took photos of her bitching about the sun. We talked about everything from boys and school to her cancer and my tumor stuff and Jasmine is quite possibly the coolest person I have ever known. Oh yes, she is lazy and makes all of us crazy and yes, there was a small conversation about trading her in for Courtney but that was just because we were all wooed by Courtney's usage of the dishwasher and the folding of clean clothes. Jasmine rocks and I would never trade her in. I would consider selling her but I would never, ever just trade her in.

Four days home from work and not too much going on except watching me take drugs and listening to me bitch about my symptoms coming back, sounds like a great fucking time doesn't it?. In an effort to keep busy and stay the hell away from me, Martha painted the apartment. Well, she painted the kitchen and the living room and technically, I taped and placed drop cloth. Both rooms look great and it is amazing what a little color can do. The whole deal in the living room has changed and the kitchen is warmer. Of course I am just another day crazier so what the hell do I know.

I spent all day Sunday collecting my urine so I am a little jaded about this whole holiday thing anyway. Every year somebody either starts some kind of shit or someone/something dies. So really, the holidays for Martha, Jasmine and I are one big watch and wait game. The phone, while always something to avoid, this time of year becomes something to gasp at when it rings.

I ordered $70.00 worth of product from my site. Mostly postcards and a calendar and it appears as though I am my biggest fan. No real surprise there, eh? Sick bitch that I have become. This is the kind of shit I get sucked into reading. After a certain point, even I don't care anymore and it's MY tumor.

This Xanax is great in that I can sleep for 10 hours solid. I haven't done that since I was eleven. The dreams are a little to much to handle, what with over friendly appearances from my father and all, but at least I am sleeping. My head is such a fucking train wreck that 10 solid hours of anything is probably not a good idea. Except for music, I suppose.

Saturday night I watched the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus for the zillionth time. Martha's had never seen it and now we own it, much to the shear delight of those that I live with. (Jasmine has something to look forward to when she comes home in three weeks.) Buy it for any and all in your life, this freaky holiday season.

I need a week solid where I do nothing but feed my Nirvana obsession with the new box set, With The Lights Out. There is just too much material to casually listen to this and there is a DVD to get through. All of which I want to do I but who the hell has time for all this?

I spent most of Sunday playing with my Polaroids. I have been printing them out larger or three small ones in a row like on the site. This was also the day that Martha started referring to her site, The Scribbler, in third person. "The Scribbler says..."

But it was on Monday that I felt almost back to where I was in August when I was on vacation. Just a normal itchy bitch but at least my head was clear. The fog had lifted and I actually remembered things in a normal manner instead of the three-to-four day delay. But the hives were too much for me to tolerate and by 2:00 I caved and chewed a blood pressure pill. (I had wanted to see how long I could last without anything - just for shits and giggles.) While not as effective as my new favorite yellow friend, Ms. Xanax, I suppose they will do in a pinch.

I was about an hour late for work on Monday because I had to have my weekly bloodletting but while I was walking along the cement platform of the number one tourist spot in America I noticed that they have finally started capping the tops of the shard, twisted rebar. Unfortunately, for the rest of us they are capping them with brightly colored plastic cones. Neon orange, red, yellow and my personal favorite, lime green; populate the slurry wall like a plastic fantastic field of flowers. The whole thing being vertical makes it all the more surreal. I would take a photo but deep in the pit, they get all jumpy down there whenever they see a camera or anything small, shinny and confrontational.

Anyone who lives in New York City or within a thirty-mile radius and has at least half a brain is anywhere else but here. Having fried my brain decades ago on drugs and mayhem I am now the victim of improper planning. Although if we had taken our vacation this week instead of two weeks ago the five of us would have probably had to spend way more time in the Tarboro Wal*Mart. Like maybe the entire week from the looks of all the crazy storms flying up the coast of Florida. But here in New York you either evacuate yourself and shut the fuck up or bitch endlessly to anyone who will look into your crazy eyes.

Maybe it just seems freakier than I think I can handle because I work for a paper that desires to be in the center of the vortex and is located in the overflow of the vortex. All great ideas are usually born in the Village and then move uptown. The streets are filled with "visitors" from both camps but the Village seems to be housing most of the protesters. I mean literally housing them because most arrived with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and a promise of "maybe" someone's floor to crash on. So Tompkins and Washington Square Parks pick up the overnight street slack, as do all the other spectacular nooks and crannies.

The VP is here (I think his helicopter flew by my window on Sunday) but the real news is that the Bush twins are coming. Now, Kerry's kids and his step kids for that matter all spoke at the DNC, but the Bush twins are not under the same pressure to articulate their strong support for their father, (The President), at the RNC. No, no they are in town to party. Typical. Just like all the other C student trust fund fucks that come to New York in the summer and demand this town to dazzle them. Woo Hoo! How very 'Sex in the City' they must feel. No obligations except that one pesky one about "not getting arrested", but seriously, what cop is going to even get close to that nutty party train even if they were drunk, running naked past the Plaza Hotel, spooking the horses and making the FAO Schwarz children cry, cry cry.

I wonder if it ever registers in their not so identical heads that this city is just about out of its mind with pent up anger and frustration plus adding to that it is hazy, hot and humid here and the climate is ugly no matter where you are. I overheard three people at the Staples on Broadway & 9th arguing about Bush, Iraq, The (fucking) Republicans, Afghanistan, the economy and healthcare. And I mean they were yelling at each other inside the store at 7:30 on a Friday night right there in the aisle by the CD-R and CD-RW spools, which is where I needed to be. Ah, but New York is like that. When stuff is going on it is talked about everywhere and EVERYONE HAS A REALLY LOUD OPINION.

Miss Jasmine is officially a sophomore in college. I would like to take a minute here and thank everyone who has helped and continues to support Martha, Jasmine and I in what is at times agonizingly slow process of "getting that child an education."

Martha is so unbelievably super cool that I can hardly stand it. She drove Jasmine to school by herself. Now before you think that I am a total fuck, which usually I am, but this time a few things actually made the decision for me to stay home instead of a road trip.

The first one is that I needed to have some medical tests done that required me to be in one place, preferably at home, for 24 hours. My doctors are still trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with me and I have been putting this off for over a month. The second one is that my child has so much shit in her life that I simply did not fit I the car. Well one of us wasn't going to fit. I do not drive, (yet... I have a driver's license) so one of the two seats had to have Martha in it. I am not in college so...

I did my tests and now we wait. I also cleaned and unpacked almost everything in the new apt. and it was awesome. I did all the laundry, even the weird stuff like extra sheets, dishrags and all of my strange lace. I 409'd everything and vacuumed up all Jasmine + cats + me = dust balls. I did not leave my 18th floor ivory tower for two days except to take out the trash and THAT was just to the end of the hallway. Martha wins the Coolest Girlfriend in the World prize. Jasmine wins the Money Came Through and All My Shit Fit prize.

I miss her already. In fact, while I was cleaning the bedroom I turned the TV on in the living room just so it sounded like she was still here. Chewing on string cheese, listening to The Style Network and reading pop-fiction I felt the warm glow my peanut all around me.

If you want to know where we rented the beach house, all you need to do is look at this map. Where the two storms "hook up" is about it. Well, that is about right, eh? Overall, it is fine and I am just happy to not be at work but seriously, really? Keri keeps sending me email to "think happy thoughts" and I always do. I always do.

I can't help but imagine that if all of us were going to the middle of the Nevada desert (like to Vegas) in August, with no water and magnifying glasses for a hats, there would be a freak snowstorm happening right there on the strip by that stupid New York-New York Casino. See Keri, these ARE happy thoughts because why?? Because I am laughing and EVERYTHING, in fact, is a photo-op.

Already something is not working right in our brand spanking new apartment but at least we can bitch about it and "technically" management will fix it. The air-conditioner in Jasmine's room/my office/vortex-of-angst is not working. It thumps like a crazy bunny's back legs and produces room temperature air. On a day that the room is eighty-five degrees, well that's not going to work now is it.

I started to mess around with a Google search within this here site. I have so much work I should do with this thing and that is "the plan" once I get back from the storms of vacation. I have new posts that need to be put up and I want to change some core things too. But all of that is for another time. For the next ten days, I am going to try to calm the fuck down and enjoy a little bit of this thing called living.

It all seems very fitting that Martha and I start the first vacation we have had together in over six years on a Friday the 13th, doesn't it? I think so. Fuck it, right? Jasmine was born on a Friday the 13th and well, that has been a good thing. No matter, Friday is all I can think about even if it is suppose to rain.

I had been debating with myself on whether or not I would be doing Photo of the Day while I am "on the beach" but after thinking about it for a solid minute... I say "no". I would rather take photos and nap then have to photo edit for just one week of my life. Besides almost everyone who actually READS me is going to be WITH me. It will be reminiscent of...reality. Cha.

The RNC is three weeks away. Good lord, Martha and I did not plan this very well did we? The Republicans come here when I get back and the hassle is going to suck any relaxation right out of me. Work is going to be a nightmare. The DNC wasn't bad but it also wasn't in our own backyard AND it wasn't the "enemy" (so to speak) stomping all around a city that cares more about state and local politics then what happens inside the beltway. Most of the residents of New York City have a tendency to hate whoever is running the nation anyway, but especially now. Now, the idea of blowing up our own bridges and telling the rest of the country to fuck off and go away is quite appealing.

Unpacking has been an ongoing and will continue to be an ongoing process. Miss Martha did manage to build a four-drawer vertical filing cabinet on Saturday night. It was some seriously advanced build-it-yourself shit and even I was a little worried. The directions were so intense that no beer was consumed until well after the last drawer was built. But it looks great, doesn't wobble and now finally we can separate all of the arty-farty crap in my filing cabinet from the important household papers. We had been using my old filing cabinet for all of our shit but we could never find anything. Or it took forever and tempers usually...um...flared, I think would be the word there. Now piece and harmony should come to us via the filing cabinet. That is the dream anyway. It is good to dream.

Unpacking the office space with Jasmine's crap still in boxes all around is another bone of contention. I understand her frumpiness about this situation. She can't unpack and refuses to be "into" this space 'cause she is moving into a dorm room (a single one mind you) in four weeks. So she is living out of a closet. Could be worse, could be way worse. We could be living in a van down by the river. When I tell her that, she rolls her piercing baby blues at me (that God and I gave her, thank you very much) and then walks away. Yeah, I'm thinking a week in a beach house cooped up with that shit just might make me eager for the political climate of a citywide Republican/National Guard take over in late August. If you are going to be cranky, be cranky about something "real" for fucks sake. Not that politics is real but it is more real than home decorating.

The new couch came and Boy-O-Boy is it RED. Not only is it red but it had cat hair on it the nanosecond it entered the apartment even though no cat had even eyeballed it yet. The cats, of course, ran for every one of their little nine lives when the intercom rang. (Yeah, I have an intercom - ridiculous and even I'm afraid of it.) Anyway, as the three of us continue to acclimate to this living as though we are members some monarchy (the white trash part of the bloodline that's for sure) I feel like we have murdered someone and have taken over their apartment. Okay, a little severe but this is going to take me little while to get used to. Every day I see the doorman I am compelled to show him my keys and I have my hand on my wallet just incase he wants to see ID. Hell, Martha still won't go near the windows 'cause she is afraid of heights and this living like Bob Newhart on the 18th floor has her a little flipped too. She is sticking to the center of the apartment building where the bathrooms, kitchen and her side of the bed are. Miss Jasmine naturally, is fine and thinks (correctly) that we are all nuts.

I am finding it harder and harder to go to work. With the beach thing a mere ten days away the only thing I seem to care about more and more is where exactly did I put my beach hat? I found the tent and I know where my books are. I have the laptop (for writing only, no working) but my glasses and hat is still in some box somewhere. That alone is giving me the inspiration to unpack. Speaking of, Martha said to me the other night that someone she works with moved over the weekend too and that they are all unpacked already. Whatever. Do they have a record collection, a massive home office or two computers with two separate workstations? How about a disgruntled and at times down right unbearably moody twenty-something hanging around in the shadows of their day? Well?

While the irony of a hurricane hitting the beach house that we have rented has always been lurking around the dark cynical corners of my mind, I managed to catch the tail end of some weather report the other night about one coming close to the Outer Banks. Then, there is the possibility of another one that is currently hanging out in Puerto Rico, slithering up the coast while we are actually there. Cool and oh yeah, what's that I always say? Everything is a photo-op.

Best not to dwell on it all, of course until we are there. Then we can flip out at random. I suppose it doesn't matter where we all end up right? Being evacuated from a "Nonrefundable regardless of what God throws at you." beach house or the "We are poor now and have no fucking money." Super-8 Motel, two-hundred miles inland, a vacation is still a bunch of days when you are not at work. Hmm, hurricane or work? Those are my only choices? How about a bullet to the head?

Sheri baby, make sure to bring the gun-just in case.

So we made the move and we are in. Woo hoo! We love it and we never want to leave, at least that is the word on day two. It is quiet and the cats are totally flipped out. They are so flipped out that untouched Fancy Feast sits in a bowl just waiting for a cat to take notice of it.

Amazingly, it did not rain and the movers did not suck. It took longer than we thought but it was well worth it. Overall, there was minimal bullshit. The cable person even showed up an hour early and we have had cable since before we were finished with the movers. There were only a few scrapes; Martha cut her finger and dropped my old office chair on her foot while taking it down to the trash. My legs are bruised and I look like I had to fight off an attacker and Jasmine seems to have hurt her shoulder but overall we are pretty tiptop.

Jasmine and I now share a room. Her bedroom is also my office. I don't think she is too happy about it all but she DOES go back to school in four weeks and she will have her VERY OWN dorm room to decorate with all of her fine tuned angst. The bill for her sophomore year of college came right before we moved. Talk about a buzz kill. Jesus Christ, I'm going to be long dead before that shit is paid off.

This apartment makes me feel like I am on vacation. I know that will pass, within time but honestly, I don't think I have ever lived like this. Except for when I was on the company dime. It makes Martha and I somewhat uneasy but that is just because we are waiting for the crap to start. It is a pathetic view of the world but one she and I have sadly, grown used to.

Ah yes, work. I didn't win the lotto, I just moved. Work is still work and I have a good two-week run of it until I can completely fuck off for seven sun-filled days. My vacation is going to consist of reading, sleeping and seeing how fucked-up I can get. We bought a beach tent, a beach towel, and summer reading books for all. I personally bought a big floppy blue beach hat and matching blue sunglasses. I am totally working the Sophia Loren, Jackie O thing with these glasses. They almost cover my face from my forehead to my mouth. I look like an aging movie star and some days, in my head I suppose I am.

Lily, our black and white nut-bag cat, has suddenly become the morning alarm clock. Every morning at roughly 5:30, she busts into the bedroom and starts meowing in a rapid, car-alarm precision. She started doing this about two weeks ago and she will not stop until one of us gets up out of bed. All she wants is someone to be awake. In her little walnut sized brain it is time for the house to get up. It is madding and she has no concept of weekends or that one of her mothers has a sleep disorder and probably has only been asleep for two hours when she decides to call it "day".

I think I have managed to replicate the Manhattan skyline in my apartment with the moving boxes. Well, maybe not the WHOLE skyline and it isn't to scale but in the dining room I feel that I have captured midtown. The living room however is closer to the low-rise feel of the East or West Village. We are officially living in a cardboard box jungle. Saturday is the big day.

I have one, rather bothersome and probably nothing, concern. For almost a week now, I have ordered three wardrobe boxes from our movers. First, when they did not show up on Sunday, we called and they told us we were not on the schedule. Okay, but we were. Anyway, Martha yelled at them so on Tuesday they didn't come because they were caught up in the torrential rains and flash flooding that seems to be in fashion lately. Wednesday, they said they would come around 6-7 o'clock. They didn't and they didn't call either. Now they 'assure us" that they WILL BE HERE at 9am Saturday morning. Am I worried? Yeah, sure but what the fuck can I do? All of us are pretty much over a barrel on moving day so it is best to practice the deep breathing, I suppose. Smiling might help.

So I have been watching the DNC and a few things have stuck in my head:

I wrote this at the Laundromat down the street from our apartment. I was at the Laundromat because all six of the washers AND dryers in our apartment building are broken. Martha did not discover this until around five o'clock Sunday night. Now, the super is gone because his mom died and he has my sympathy but what I cannot for the life of me understand is why, in a block-long, 80-unit apartment building when one person leaves for a family emergency the entire system falls into catastrophe. Why things here are held together with a pubic hair tolerance for error is beyond me and I suppose, in a nutshell, why we are leaving. Hopefully, the fucking elevator will be working by Saturday when the movers arrive.

What an amazingly frustrating weekend. All we did was pack and watch shit break around us. The weather was beautiful and I could think of about fifty other things that Martha and I could have been doing. Trying not to be too disgruntled we resided ourselves to a weekend of cleaning, packing and last minute phone calls from the landlord wanting to show the apartment. I gave up trying to make it look nice. Fuck it we are in the middle of moving and he is just going to have to parade these folks through our filthy, boxy mess. Sunday was worse because they didn't call us until very late in the day and things were already a total disaster. The landlord had set up three showings all within a three-hour period.

Yeah, Sunday was the worst. Hell, by noon there had already been tears and that happened well before the parade of Jersey renters and the laundry thing. Martha had taken her "Joyfully Subversive" button off that she had been wearing all day Saturday. This, of course, being the clear indication that all of her fun was done.

Anyway, the first contestants were a very attractive early 30's gay couple. I had to suppress my overwhelming desire to tell them to run away. This place is chalk-full of cranky uptight breeders with strollers where the word family means very different things. The second couple was a young soft-spoken family from India. The mother was in her full dress, including dot, and while she was simply beautiful it kept getting snagged on our boxes as she tried to navigate the labyrinth. Their child was so quiet and well-behaved that I had forgotten they came with one. I have been telling Martha for months that I believe that the only thing that could stand to live in this apartment, (once they fix the heat, that is) and not only live but possibly thrive, would be a loud, young couple with children. Kids - plural. Something that would naturally raise the noise level from this apartment in an attempt to drown out the stomping crazy-man from above and the door slamming bitch from below. Loud children in a loud children tollerant apartment building would be a natural thing. So with this in my head here comes the third family. A nice young Jamaican couple with a 3-year old terror named Justin who loved to run, cry and cough (mouth: wide open in perfect circle, projection: straight into the living room, hands: flailing around at sides) while running up and down my hallway, knocking shit over in the bedroom and screaming at an incredibly high pitch. I think we have a winner. Everyone say "hey" to Justin.

The Laundromat, interestingly enough, it is just as noisy as my apartment when everything there is firing on all cylinders. When Jasmine is watching TV in the living room, crazy-man stomping back and forth at rapid speed over my head and the jackhammer kitchen renovations from the apartment below all measure up to about the level of a crowded Sunday night Laundromat. Ah well, I kind of needed to be here anyway. LALA*LAND's theme next month is Laundromats and I was wondering how I was going to meet that. I didn't just want to bust into one and start snapping photos. I could and would have but this is much easier - would be one way to look at it. Everything is a photo-op once you get up and over it, I suppose.

So yes, let us see... Miss Jasmine has been bitching at me for the past month or so about not being able to see very well out of her right eye. Now, understand that Jasmine does tend to bitch about everything and yes she does come by that honestly, but when she would complain about her eyes she did so late at night AND after she had been reading all day in the cold, dark apartment, or after she had been playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City all fucking day. Okay? Well maybe I'm just a little distracted and her eyeballs are not on top of my list of things to flip out about right now. Whatever. Sunday we finally drove our lazy asses five blocks to the mall where she had an eye test and guess what? Peanut needs glasses. Reading glasses, but still. Who knew? Well technically, she knew. Upon hearing the news that she gets to wear specs she immediately came at me wanting more bling-bling than the insurance will pay for. She WANTED $200.00 Vogue frames; her new, very smart looking silver no-name frames will be ready in two-weeks.

Packing and more packing, it is truly endless. We keep putting out knick-knacks and oddball furniture and folks keep scurrying out of their apartments to collect it. I have not actually witnessed anyone slithering away with my old candle holders or Martha's sixteen-year-old magenta bowling ball, but hours after we put something out there it is gone. We are putting out good knick-knacks that's for sure. Even the pack rat in me knows this. So far, we have managed to give away Jasmine's dresser, Martha's desk and my credenza. The dresser and the desk went to the same woman who kept calling our furniture "appliances" on the phone. I don't think she actually meant "appliance", but that's what she kept referring to it as. I wasn't very hopeful but when she showed up with her seventy-year old asthmatic father, her daughter-in-law and her three-year-old granddaughter (they were the muscle). I new they were very serious about free furniture. Martha helped carry both pieces to their van and the woman was so happy she gave us hugs. Twice. I told her to "have a beautiful life" not with the least bit of misery or sarcasm in my voice. Straight up. I'm thinking that this is the best thing I have done in quite some time. It makes me want to just give it all away for a hug.

So this Tuesday is the 35th anniversary of the moonwalk? Jesus, I am old. I remember that day. I remember my dad standing on the back porch calling me in from the sandbox-swing-set combo and into the house so I could watch the moon landing on the black & white TV console in the family room. I remember at the time I felt as if I was being stared at or watched, kind of like a guardian angel in the sky above me. Not watching just me, but all of us. The PLANET I mean. It was weird. There were people walking around up there, and from that moment on, I never looked at the moon the same way again. I also totally bought into the Jetson's way of living and that by now, 2004 thank you very much, that we would be living on ALL of the planets, and not only in OUR solar system, but the whole big damn deal. I believed that we would be living AROUND the universe. I would have a dog with a space helmet bubble on its head and a powder blue bubble sky-car that made a really cool zippy sound. The whole thing made me actually give a shit about science, technology and fashion even at that pre-elementary age. I wasn't Sci-Fi so much as I was a romantic. I guess I still am.

The hardcore packing has begun and I must say it is liberating to throw shit out. If I could I would just hurl it all out the windows but instead I gather up piles of crap and make Jasmine drag it to the basement. I have to say that this is cathartic in ways I could not have imagined. The apartment is officially trashed and as if I needed further proof that my shit is shit and I can't even give it away, Martha has placed an add on CraigsList.

FREE FREE FREE FREE FREEEEEEEEE
(1) Sofa
(1) Chair
(1) 7-drawer Desk
(1) Antique Credenza
(1) bedroom dressing table w/round mirror

The couch is going to our landlord's father and outside of a small interest (one girl who lives down the street) in the desk that has been it. Goodwill has yet to call us back about picking ANYTHING up and the one donation place Martha called wanted only full dining room sets. I just do not understand this. I have a dining room table that I use as a work/photo table. I have never had a dining room set except for when I lived with my parents and we all know that none of that shit was ever mine. Our dining room is my office. Who lives like that or more to the point who lives like that and shops at donation centers? Who the hell around here has the space to live like that?

Oddly enough if we leave crap out in the main hall, by the laundry, after a few hours (in some case minutes) it disappears. Things like; a small metal chair; a huge plant; pots for planting; a small metal table; you know, crap that if we had a yard to have a yard sale in I would put a sticker on it asking for a dollar or two. But, if Jazz leaves it out in the hall, folks scurry out when the coast is clear and drag it off to their place. It is official we hate our neighbors and they hate us. Awesome, the circle is complete.

Not only is Tuesday Miss Jasmine's 20th b-day but we all three of us are going to see Prince. What buzzy thing that is. I haven't seen him in; God I don't how long it has been, fifteen-eighteen years.

Jasmine is hell bent on doing the South Beach Diet and I'm game only because it actually is a better meal plan then the one that I have been on for the past two and a half years. My diet consists of coffee, salad and yogurt. Two to three times a week I eat tuna sashimi and once a month I plow through a bag of lime chips. Anyway, we bought the diet book and the cookbook just so we could maybe start eating right.

July. Let the countdown begin. We move in 30 days. Hee Haw.

The good thing about moving and the upcoming three-day weekend is that we are going to purge, purge, purge. We (and that means all of us) are going to throw out buckets of stuff that no longer have any reason to be in our lives. If we can't toss it then we will donate it. That is of course, if they will take it. I still can't get over that day the Salvation Army came to pick up the green chair and upon seeing it said that they did not want it. Yes, we have crap but sweet Jesus I don't think it is unworthy of donation.

All I know is that this will make the third apartment in four years that I've had since I've been here. No wait, technically it makes six, if I count the three corporate apartments in midtown. I forgot about those. I moved three times in four months the summer of 2000. The first apartment was on the 5th floor of a 10 story 1930's apartment building on 53rd & 3rd. It flooded when a water pipe in the apartment directly above me broke in the wee hours of a Tuesday morning. I woke up to it raining in my apartment and I have never seen anything like it in my life. It was kind of like The Amityville Horror but with water. They then moved me to the 7th floor where life was pretty good, living on an open-ended expense account, until the building closed and I had to move into another building down on Lex. and 34th. So I did what is so common here and not considered crazy at all, I moved all my shit via a taxi. That place was more like glitzy hotel and riddled with tourists and by then I was feeling the pressure to find my own apartment and get off the company dole.

Not only do we move but also this month is Jasmine's 20th birthday. Martha and I are taking her to Madison Square Garden to see Prince. How fun is that? She is into it and none of us has ever been to The Garden. Jasmine will also be spending a week with her grandma somewhere in the middle of God's country, AKA: America.

Jasmine's scans are back and they look good. The oncologist thinks that her neck muscles are a little thick but that there is nothing indicating cancer. I think her brain looks a little thick don't you? But what the fuck do I know about that. I am sure my cranial headshot looks like Swiss cheese. What I do know she has been given the all clear sign and THAT is the best birthday present ever.

My hard drive crashed. The new photo one. Yeah, right. Click, click, clicking, fucked. I felt like puking.

As it stands right now I am unable to access March, April and the majority of May photos. Oh yeah, and my website. The only copy of this here thing is well, this here thing, which is actually in California - dude. Scary isn't it?

I have a call into Western Digital and I will so attempt data retrieval. If they can dig around on a wiped clean computer to try and figure out who is a pedophile or who killed who, (combination CSI Crime Scene Investigates and Investigative Reports working my mind) if they can do that then can they help a girl out with some pretty little New York City photos eh?

Funny. I was just talking to Martha the other day about how I wanted to start shooting more film again. Mostly Polaroid but now... I mean really, fuck all this, who needs it? I bought the external 200-gig drive FOR A PIECE OF MIND. Okay, I should have probably been burning more CD's but Jesus. It is very simple the other way: shoot film, have neg., archive neg., move on. All this linger, linger tinker-tinker bullshit code. I am an artist (?) and this medium is choking my creativity –sometimes. Mostly, it feeds it but when it decides to have a bad day, it is a real bad day and THAT I could so do without.

Start packing up the trailer 'cause we have rented an apartment in Jersey City on the 18th floor of a snooty hi-rise with a view of Manhattan. Yes sir, we are moving on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky. It is smaller but we have too much shit anyway. We have to move; this apartment has no heat. I bring this up because...

Later on in the day of my hard drive crash, I was at the bank filling out paper work to get a certified check for the new apartment. The lease signing was later on that evening. As I am digging around in my wallet, I notice that I do not have my ATM card or my driver's license. While I am at the teller's window, I call Jasmine at home and ask her to check my camera bag to see if my ID is there. For the first time in over two years, I did not take a camera with me when I left the apartment because, well fuck, I was somewhat disgusted with all of it (see above) and I just walked out the door without it. Jazz tells me that my ID and ATM card are there and upon hearing this I screamed, "FUCK!" and then immediately started to cry. It was so uncontrollable that tears were actually jumping out of my eyes instead of the usual depressing creep down my cheeks. The tellers there kind of know me. I am there every week and it IS our branch. They know me but they don't "know shit about me" and now I am projectile crying in front of them. In a nutshell, I cracked in public and I cracked hard.

Yeah, right. But hey, I actually did manage to get a cashiers check with nothing more than my Village Voice Photo ID and a bucket of tears. Well that, and a great deal of insanity, I suppose.