Holly Northrop Blog

My nerves are shot. My therapist tells me that I have enormous anxiety (ya think?) and to take more Xanax, that that is what it is there for. I so do. Clearly, with each passing day I become less and less employable. Oh sure I can go spend the day in Manhattan walking around for six hours shooting. I do think my photography is getting better but I can't help but think that in the not too far off future I'll be sitting in some Social Security office somewhere filling out a form having to do with my ability to 'handle' a full time job.

It started with a weird cold that I caught within minutes of landing in the Charlotte, North Carolina airport this past June. While Martha went to rent a car, I walked over to baggage claim to grab our bag. It's always a surprise when it actually comes down the chute isn't it?

Anyway, the minute I turned around to the carousel, a rush of air blew over me and within minutes, I had a sore throat. It was weird and got really weirder. The whole visit I had a wicked sore throat and on the last day it turned into a cough. Thankfully, the flight home wasn't a cough fest but from the first night home and for a solid week after I slept on the couch every night coughing my fucking head off. And I mean COUGHING. I would cough all the air out of my lungs and then gasp for air. It was frightening.

So frightening that after Martha tried for days to get me an appointment with a doctor but no one would see me for four-five weeks, I walked over to the emergency room where they took an X-Ray of my lungs, gave me a scripts for antibiotics and cough syrup with some yummy Vicodin in it. The X-ray looked good so they diagnosed me with Acute Bronchitis and sent me home with instructions to follow up with my doctor five weeks from then.

I took the antibiotics and nurtured the cough medicine and for about a week, I felt better. But the minute the drugs stopped I started coughing again. Some days it felt like I just couldn't breath. I started to get worried and well, a little weirder so the head doctor decided to up my meds. Nice.

A week or so later is when I dropped Victor's Horizon 202 camera.

After $158 to fix the camera I go to my 'follow up' doctors' appointment where my new doctor reviews the X-ray and then asks me if anyone told me what they found in my lung?

WHAT?

Seems there was something 'funny' on the X-Ray; a grayish area in the lower right lobe. She wants to have another technician review the X-Ray and then decide if we should do a CT Scan. She'll call me.

Right.

So I TRY to go about my normal existence by obsessively chewing gum and working out and then jumping out of my skin every time the phone rings. Finally, after two days my cell rings while I'm out shooting in Manhattan. They want to do a CT scan. I call Martha and in what can only be described as extremely pathetic, I start crying while walking along the edge of the East River under the Brooklyn Bridge. (Yet I still continued to shoot photos, very odd) I am convinced that I have lung cancer and that I was going to be dead by Christmas, or at least by the end of September. I think I'm turning into Woody Allen.

The CT Scan was set for that Friday with my follow up visit two-weeks from then. On the day I walked over to the hospital for the scan there was a monster storm coming over the Catskills. Thunder, lightening the whole works. I walked over a little early so as not to have the heavens literally open up on me. They took me early, walking me back to the waiting area of the machine. Just as I am walking by the open door of the room, a flash of pure white light bursts out of the door. It was as though an enormous flash bulb went off to my left just as I was walking by. The timing was perfect and I bet my skeletal image is UV Ray burned into the wall that was on my right. Kind of like an early man cave painting.

Obviously, the hospital, which is on top of a hill, was hit by lightening. The CT machine was fried and they had to take me over to the other machine in the ER.

After the scan I'm told that if they find anything they'll call me, otherwise I'll see my doctor in two-weeks. What is with the wait for a phone call thing? Jesus Christ. After a few days I have both Jasmine and Martha up my ass to call the doctor but I just can't. I do not want to know. La, la la la la la la... I retreat, withdrawal and go into my own little happy place. Besides Jasmine was easily distracted because she was in the process of moving back to Pittsburgh having finished up school. She found a nice one-bedroom apartment in a good area of town and she's even going to have a cat.

On a beautiful Saturday morning and four days before I'm to go back for my follow up doc visit, I innocently check the mail. In the mail was a letter from Jasmine's college. I open it thinking it was a letter congratulating her or maybe even her diploma, but no, it is a letter informing us that she isn't graduating. She is one credit shy of a degree and they have put her on academic probation but she is invited back for the fall semester to finish up her course work. The one credit that she needs is an incomplete. They also sent along a copy of her miserable transcripts unlocking the 5-year mystery on just what the hell was going on in college.

This event was truly unfortunate for all of us.

After the crying, yelling and a few nasty phone calls, Jasmine swears that once she gets a hold of her professor that the incomplete will be changed to a passing grade, I walked out of the house stormed across the street and called the neighbor a jackass.

Monday Martha got an alert from Jasmine's checking account that she was $100 overdrawn. Upon further inspection, it was discovered that Jasmine had managed to motor through $1600 in four days. All of which is more or less explainable except for the $263 at Ikea.

Tuesday Martha got another alert from Jasmine's checking account indicating that there is now $270 worth of overdraft charges.

Thursday at 8:30 in the morning and with 1 ½ Xanax in me I stood in the doctors' small exam room pacing like a caged tiger. Finally, she comes in and immediately tells me that everything is fine.

The 'funny' thing on my CT scan shows a calcified granuloma that is usually benign and generally caused from either a prior early childhood incident with the lungs like pneumonia, or histoplasmosis. Histoplasmosis is commonly caused by a fungal infection and is endemic to the Ohio River Valley. Interesting. I'm thinking it's the combination of sitting in the Ohio River Valley woods sniffing glue at the early age of twelve. That would cover both. Oh hush, it was only for one summer and the damn shit gave me a horrible headache. What can I say, it was Ohio and I no longer live there for many, many reasons. Think Gummo. Seriously.

So right. We go to Pittsburgh this Thursday to visit with Jasmine where we will dance and sing songs. Should be a good time.

It's not the individual events so much as it is the stress of the all events happening at one time or for an extended run of time. I dropped a friend's camera but it was fixed and he's still talking to me. As far as I know, I don't have lung cancer but for over two weeks I convinced myself that I did. I just have chunks of things in my lungs. So far, Jasmine is a mess but she will figure it out, she has to.

In what was supposed to be a low-key Thanksgiving weekend with Jasmine turned into a total cluster fuck, consisting of hospitals; doctors; social workers; hospice workers and general frustration all wrapped in the cranberry sauce of sadness.

Martha's dad was admitted to the hospital the Wednesday before Thanksgiving with shortness of breath. After draining fluid in his left lung the word came back that there was nothing they could do, the lung was full of tumors, (as was Frank) and for us to come down and to go ahead and set up hospice care. However the fuck we were supposed to do that.

Before we could cut our visit short with Jasmine, we had to find someone in our little town of Hudson that could look after the cats. We didn't leave enough food out for an open ended stay away. Nor did we even begin to bring enough clothes. Martha called a friend of hers that have a part-time house in the next town over. They have two friends that actually live three houses away from us and while, yes we have met them once or twice, they have never been in our house. Martha called Paul and set up cat sitting services while we had a spare key made. We then sent the key overnight to people we do not know with hand written instructions on where shit is and what to do.

We left Jasmine, and drove ten hours south to Winston-Salem, NC, stopping every two-hundred miles for gas and a bathroom break. We had to be in Frank's hospital room by 4:00 for a family meeting with the cancer doctor.

We were only 15 minutes late, simply amazing if you ask me, considering I had us turn off the highway too soon, (the only map we had in the jeep was more of a general United States atlas thing). We drove in on a bunch of Appalachian back roads, in what I consider the first of many unnecessary tension-filled moments. But the doctor was late too, actually we were on the same time seeing how we followed him into the room.

While I am sure it cannot be easy to tell someone that they are dying and there is nothing that can be done, I know there has to be a better way then what happened next. The cancer doctor didn't want to say the "dying" word, and instead inserted all kinds of other words. When in doubt he would reference the word "Hospice", which neither one of Martha's parents understood what that meant nor was Mr. Cancer Doctor wasn't going to explain it to them either. Not talking about it probably has something to do with not giving up hope but you know what, if you are too PC with breaking bad news then not giving up hope leads to inaction, (especially with this crowd), which is the last fucking thing that needed to happen when the hospital is kicking you out.

All Frank wanted to do was go home; he didn't care or understand what was being said to him about hospice care.

Finally, after a bunch of phone calls, in-room meetings and the handling of Martha's mother, Frank was disconnected from the IV, given a script for some antibiotics, a mother load of Oxycoden and released from the hospital. After five days of lying in bed he could barely walk.

Martha's mother, ever so disgusted that we were there and completely resentful that Martha moved them into assisted living, was for the most part, cranky and thought we were pushy. This woman is going to be the primary care giver once we leave yet she can't really follow the simplest of instructions and has a bitch fit if she feels slighted. When Frank's tongue swelled up overnight, she bitched at Martha for calling the doctor the next day. Frank had horrible night sweats one evening last week and she told him to remember his prayers instead of calling the hospice number. This is the same woman that asked me, "Tell me dear, is Christmas on the 25th this year?"

Yep. It is that easy to land in the hands of the totally crazy as your guardian. Frank, I love you, good luck and please take the Oxy like Pez.

I spent five days on elderly time. Lunch at 11:30, dinner at 4:30 endless hours of just sitting; no reading, TV or talking, just staring into the air; or trying to remember how to add; or if you've taken your medicine; or what the emergency magnet on the refrigerator is for; or what fucking day Christmas is.

DRUGS AND A PUMPKIN MUFFIN
I could never work there, at the Assisted Living place. No matter how nice and clean it is and how adorable the apartments are. Christ, if I worked there, everyday at the end of my shift I would run screaming from the building to my beat-to-shit ten-year-old grey Buick, lighting cigarette after cigarette while pealing out of the parking lot, driving to the nearest bar, (probably an Applebee's) where the staff, without asking, would know what I drink.

Once seated at the horseshoe bar, encasing myself in the comfort of FOX News and classic rock, I'd drink myself stupid while hoovering my way through Boneless Buffalo Wings and a big bucket of Baja Potato Boats. Every night I'd finish it out with a helping of Triple Chocolate Meltdown™ and a pack of Marlboros.

The all day game of "Who is that? What are you talking about? Why is she on the phone? When is lunch?" every two-fricken-minutes would drive me to be a fat-as-fuck, two pack-a-day, alcoholic. I don't know how these people work there and I know that we, the collective, democratic we, will never pay them enough money to deal with Assisted Living Land.

I was under such odd stress that I would tell anyone who would listen that I wanted a cigarette and when Alison, Martha's sister would go outside to smoke, I would join her and stand an uncomfortable ten inches from her face. Interestingly enough, at the Assisted Living Home out in front they have several rockers and a full-blown smoking section, complete with elderly smokers, most of whom were women.

Once we left Winston-Salem, the overwhelming desire to smoke went away, and thank god as I was just about a day away from making some kind of screwy deal with Martha involving a carton a Marlboros and a case of beer.

We managed to bring home a piece of furniture from her parents' house that Martha had wanted to have but we could never figure out the logistics of it all. Now that we had the Jeep in town we put a beautiful chest of drawers in the back and covered it with a 5 x 8 oriental rug that Martha's mom gave us. At first glace it looked like a casket covered with a shroud. Actually at first, second and third glances it looked like a casket and there was nothing to be done about it.

We finally left Winston-Salem on Wednesday afternoon, deciding to split the thirteen-hour drive into two days. We drove for five hours north to a Hampton Inn in the middle of Virginia, where I THOUGHT we had reservations. We didn't because Martha never imagined we would make there. They were sold out and we had to spend the night at a fricken Best Western that was attached to a Perkins.

I didn't even want to walk up the outside steps to the second floor of the motel. My tired and over stressed mind kept replaying some very awful Ohio memories. Martha, ever the optimist, sweet-talked me with, "I'm sorry if this reminds you of your childhood. It will be all right, we are making NEW memories."

"I hate it when I know that I am going to be able to quote you." I smirked, dragging my suitcase behind me.

I was on edge the minute we stepped into the room, and I was convinced the place had bugs.

Unable to sleep even after a Xanax and a Benadryl, I was lying in bed with the lights off watching John Stewart fawn all over Tom Waits. I was clearly fucked up and enjoying myself, when out of the corner of my eye I notice a large black spot on an otherwise white lampshade, just a few feet from my head. Upon closer inspection, it moved and so did I. I jumped out of bed and ran, yes ran, over to the other side of the bed where Martha was out like a coma patient. I called her name and as her eyes shot open, she screamed at me, "My god Holly, what's the matter with you?"

"There's a big bug on the lampshade." I whined.

Glaring in my general direction because she can't actually see me without her glasses, she shouted, "Well kill it! What the hell is wrong with you?"

"It's big and I can't tell what it is." I yell back. This was true; it looked like a dino-bug. You know, been here about a million years before us and will be here a million more after we are gone. Those things creep me out. Plus, it was the size and shape of the toenail on my big toe.

"What the hell am I suppose to do?" Martha yells just as she grabs the yellow pages and from roughly ten feet away she throws it at the lamp. The shade goes flying off the lamp and the whole thing slams against the window, but does not break. I look down at the carpet and there is the bug - dead. I was laughing so hard I could barely say... "We're making NEW memories."

The rest of the drive home was long and for about an hour very foggy. Once home and semi settled in, Martha and I went out for a sushi dinner.

When we returned from a lovely dinner, our key didn't work—at all. Martha walked down the street to Paul's house but... he wasn't home. We had no choice but to break into our own house. I remembered that the window over the kitchen sick was unlocked. So there we were, standing on the slanted metal cellar doors in the dark with the wind blowing the gate door that is just out of backyard light range, clanging it around in the dark and heightening an already stressful event, I picked up Martha and shoved her thought the small kitchen window. She crawled into the sink and onto the floor and finally, we were home.

I think I need to start having the same expectations for The L Word that I used to have when I was in high school and watched General Hospital everyday after school with my best friend Sherry. The only thing that was expected from that soap opera was for it to be on. Plot was not an issue and believability was never a consideration. If we skipped school, then the whole run from All My Children, One Life to Live and on into General Hospital was room ambiance to our pathetic southern Ohio lives. That and Lynard Skynard [Leh'-nerd Skin'-nerd].

But the point is, nothing groundbreaking was expected from these shows and we were never mentally challenged, except for when Luke raped Laura on the floor of a disco and then they ran away together to Ice Princess Island. While on the run, Luke and Laura fell in love but she was already married to a guy named Scotty, who went nuts when she ran away. Somehow, Scotty and Laura divorced and she then turned around and married Luke, (the guy who had just months before raped her on the floor of a disco) but not before he managed to save the town of Port Charles from being frozen from Cassadine's weather machine.

As far as I can tell it's every woman's fantasy, to not only fall in love with your rapist but to run away to exotic locations with him. While "on location" together, you can help save the planet. Then, with nobody in the way of a complete 180, nothing else says submissive-punching-bag better than "I do". I mean, if he rapes you before you marry him, just what is to be expected when you lay down the "till death do us part" line?

Anyway, The L Word isn't even as believable as anything that was ever on General Hospital. I now realize that I extremely dislike just about every character on the program because every single cliché within the lesbian community is in use. I can almost see the conference room white board with the all the characters names across the top and little boxes below, each one filled in with a predictable behavior or affliction. Some characters have several clichés running in rotation so all that they do is hop from one superficial event to the next. The writers of The L Word are really bad soap opera writers. This shit would never fly in the straight daytime land of soaps and that stuff is total crap. I expect at least the same level of hogwash as General Hospital. Come on girls the bar is already low enough.

WOMAN'S WORK
More health scares with Jasmine this week. For the moment, things seem to be in a small holding pattern. I can't tell if it is just Jasmine's natural hypochondriac abilities at work or if there is something more sinister below the surface. Telling me to relax is really something that just doesn't work much anymore.

She is coming home for spring break to meet with her main doctor here about a new thing. Heredity might be at play, so we aren't as concerned but then some days we are. It flips every other day and I am slowly losing what is left of fucking senses. This Friday Martha and I will be in Pennsylvania. I hope we can get there in time for her appointment with the eye guy. This is all for the second opinion about the spinal tap. Her doctor here wants to make sure she needs a tap and not drugs first.

I, true to form, buried my head in my photography. Green-wood Cemetery is up. It took me five days to scan all the negatives. Not five solid days, I did have to work and talk endlessly on the phone with Jasmine about health issues. Anyway, the gallery here is up and I will be putting a smaller one on Toycamera later on in the week. I'm also going to see if the Voice will run it. They were interested a few weeks ago but now, things might be different. Everything else about work is.

Regardless, it is good work and I am very proud of it. I think I managed to catch the feeling that was with me on the one rainy day. It is a strange sensation to walk alone among the dead with nothing but a camera. I've always enjoyed it, but I'm funny like that. Martha went with me but we would separate the minute we left the car. She traveled over one hill and I over the other. She managed to shoot a pretty funny little video clip of the two of us but outside of warming up and drying off in the car the shoot was a solitary event. She shot some very good photos as well.

SUNBEAMS ON GOLD CARPET
Lately, I have had to think about my mother more than I normally would and more then I am comfortable with. All this aging stuff has me trying to guess about her health issues so as to gauge my own demise. Heredity is a funny thing. I can't remember how old my mom was when she went through the change but if I had to guess, it probably started before the age of fifty but really hit peek levels by the time she was fifty-three, and those where some good ole days I'll tell you. I was thirteen and she was fucking crazy as a loon. It was somewhere around the age of fifty-eight that she developed uterine cancer and had a hysterectomy. She then went on to live another twenty-two years with varying degrees of health problems. I have yet to find out what she actually did die from although I know she had just undergone her first round of chemotherapy when she died two years ago. But what kind of cancer is a mystery to me. All of my doctors are interested in my family's, (particularly the females) medical history but that is so hard to give when everyone is dead. Yes, I could find out if I really wanted to and I will probably have to but not just yet.

So for now they'll get this list. Breast and Uterine cancers; extremely high blood pressure; hypertension; mental illness, specifically manic depression with panic attacks and high anxiety; alcoholism combined with prescription drug abuse; cigarette smoker for fifty years, osteoporosis and cataracts. Yep, that was my mom as defined by illness. The sum of all that's wrong, well at least what I knew about.

I think that I just might be stronger then my mother ever was. Now that is a bold sentence and I'm still working on processing that thought but if I line up both of our lives, well... I'm thinking that an idea of that caliber just might have some weight to it. I mean honestly, once she married my dad she had thirteen years of VP bank wife, country club loving, republican voting living before I came along and created half of what was wrong with her. By the 70's all she had in her life was a fucked up teenager who did normal fucked up 1970s type stuff. There was only ONE of me so other than that, she pretty much had the run of her life if she wanted it. Instead, she cleaned the house, grew zucchini in the backyard, sat at the kitchen table, and stared out the window for hours on end while drinking Black Label beer and chain-smoking Salem cigarettes. Maybe, that's the way she wanted it. The only probe into my mother's brain during those dark years was kept on a pad of paper by the phone. In that pad of Provident Bank notepaper, my mom would write these wacky sentences; nothing that I can recall now and not anything I could have begun to understand then. I left home a seventeen and while she did seem to calm down a tad bit, that woman was as high-strung as they come. And why yes, the apple didn't fall very far from that tree.

I don't think my mom could have handled working full-time in the fantastic mans' world of publishing, or faired well with any kind of artistic talent, moonlighting the self-indulgent process of creation. Or nurtured a shaky child through college, with the constant health scares and the ever looming fear of the cancer coming back. She could have never walked away from a marriage, even though I know that for many years she was painfully unhappy with my father. She could have never ever handled moving to Denver, DC or NYC and none of this could she have done before the age of forty.

I have no real point here other then I've been thinking about my mother and as I mentioned before, I'm thinking about her a little bit more then I am comfortable with.

There is no way to describe the absolute joy and jubilation that comes from knowing that Jasmine's PET scans are all clear. I didn't even realize just how fucked in the head with worry I truly was until the word came that she was fine. I started to cry at my desk at work. Tears of relief. Then, within two minutes I suddenly was exhausted and in dire need of a nap. But, in the middle of a newspaper deadline, I stayed chained to my desk.

Jasmine is learning the fine art of first apartment furniture gathering. She has already snagged an end table from the clutches of the trash room and then, last Tuesday, she found herself with a day off, wandering around Macy's furniture liquidation sale. She bought an entertainment stand for eleven dollars. That's as good as any yard sale or Goodwill. I have trained the young grasshopper well.

The only catch was that she had to get it home all by herself. So, she carried it through Newport Pavonia mall, drug it on the Light Rail at rush hour and then walked it three blocks to the apartment. There really isn't any place to put this 4ft by 2ft thing so it is currently shoved up against the window in the living room. There really isn't any place to put anything in this apartment and we don't have a storage space. We have eight weeks until move out and the stacking of crap has already started. The office is a disaster zone.

Plans are in the works for Miss Jasmine's 21st birthday. They now include a fancy water front dinner at The Chart House and she is busing in college backup in the form of a boy from PA to help her celebrate. Oh sure, Martha, Sheri and I are just great and all but we tend to wrap it up kind of early. We'll get tired and cranky and the talk will turn into a three-way mom fest with no end in sight. At least with one of her own kind around we'll instinctively back off, not so much to save Jasmine but more of a not letting the others see how ridiculous we can get.

But yes, back to the idea of company in our cramped little domicile. He is gay and will be Jasmine's roommate next year. Horror of horrors we are having a boy in the house. Hmm, does it count if he's gay? Well, the cats will let us know.

CUT ME OPEN
Well, hey what's this I see? A surgery date has been confirmed...and why, yes, it looks like...July 27th at 10am in the morning they will be taking my left adrenal gland out. We shall see. I have to jump through all those hoops that I jumped through in February so let the games begin. I'll believe it when I wake up in the hospital doped up and hallucinating. At least all this time has made Martha and I deal with some adult stuff like Living Wills, Power of Attorney and the all-important Last Will and Testament. Hey, they are going to put me under so we had to go there. Thank you to Olivia for the use of her super cool Notary stamp.

AMERICA: THE MOVIE
Why has 60 Minutes been nothing but reruns for the past several weeks? What the fuck? Isn't there ANYTHING to report on? I mean the whole cancer sniffing dog thing was cool but honestly, they should be ashamed of themselves for phoning it in like every other news and entertainment program. What about Sandra Day O'Connor? (This country is so fucked) What about Live 8? What about the Increase in the Number of Documents Classified by the Government. Or National Organization for Women pissing and arm waving at Bush over abortion rights. It's not just 60 Minutes either. Dateline and 20/20 are just as useless. I don't get it. How can so many of us not care? My own newspaper has turned into something I no longer recognize. The Village Voice is not what it used to be that is for sure and the word "evolve" isn't what I'm thinking of. The right is the new left and the true left are a bunch of sky is falling fruit loops.

What? Everything is fine, the economy is great; don't worry about healthcare, or jobs. Where's my fucking iPod? Katie Holmes said YES! "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." -George W. Bush, Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005

And you know, Freedom ain't free, biatch.

EVERYTHING ABOUT ME SAYS GO AWAY
Sunday night, a little after 5:00pm and I had the apartment all to myself for about the two hours. Jasmine was at work and Martha was out doing the most social of activities. She was golfing with two other lesbians. As predictable as that is, it is just as unpredictable that I won't play along and be the fourth wheel on the lesbian golf cart. I'm just not that kind of girl, although I happen to like a girl who is a golfer. I love to nap to golf and I really do dig Annika. But it's more than just golf that I won't partake in. Martha explains it away with excuses that I'm not very social and "that's okay", which, I suppose, it has to be.

She and I had a conversation about how if anyone ever needed a mentor in life it was I, because almost everyone I've ever known has turned up full of shit and exclusively self motivated. I did have a teacher once, senior year of high school that I trusted and gave me basic life stuff. She was part of that new Hippie way of Team Teaching and insisted that her students call her by her first name, which was Cindy. She treated all of us like adults, even if we fucked up and skipped class to go smoke dope in the parking lot. At the time, I thought she was cool because she was the first adult to vocalize to me that my mom was probably insane and not to pay too much attention to her. But, by that point, it was a little late in the game and I was out of the state of Ohio within three months, regardless of whatever horseshit my mom pulled. I would have thumbed to college if I had needed to. My mom hated Cindy and constantly told me so, but it was the only time I ever got straight A's in high school.

This was also around the same time that I met a girl that was a little older than me named Jenny. We both worked the nightshift at Frisch's Big Boy and became fast friends. She lost her right eye when she was a small child via her little brother and a tree branch and she now had a glass eye. One slow night when I was bored out of my skull I asked her if I could see it. She responded by popping it right out of the socket and holding it up in front of my face. Both of my eyes shifted focus between the marble eye in the foreground and the dark hole of her eye socket in the background. From that moment on, I thought she was the coolest girl I'd ever met. That single act of unconscious behavior blew my mind.

Ah yes, but that was a hundred years and countless buckets of whiskey ago and unfortunately, the basis of my bullshit detector rests somewhere within the seeds of my youth. Over the years, I have met some of the finest folks under the strangest conditions and I have watched some of those same folks turn the strangest. It really is tragic when you fail to live up to someone else's expectations.

Whether its lovers, family or friends, you think you are all on the same page but then the page changes and you realize that some of those that you love can't keep up. You recognize that they are in remedial reading and stuck on junk that was never who you were in the first place. Or maybe who you were for one day, on acid and walking around with a camera but not who you are all the damn time. But in their head, that's how you have been filed so now you are stuck living out somebody else's absurdity. Oh sure, some fake it real well and a have glazed over understanding of the words that are coming out of your mouth. They fake it until they can't follow along anymore and either walk away or blame all their heartache on you. Others act out in aggressive deeds of hostility in the hopes of showing you just what an asshole YOU are. That is when you start to realize that blood is thinner than water and everyone is apathetic unless it directly relates to themselves.

Ah, I have a point in there somewhere but who cares.

Yeah, so that is what I did when left alone. Write and listen to my new Say Hi to Your Mom CD. (Everybody send love to Eric in Brooklyn.)

Fuck it, and chalk it up to being so fucking overworked that I'm nuttier than normal. Siren is so up my ass that all I dream is green. Let's just say that this year is particularly painful and I spent the majority of my 4th of July weekend working on it. I like the site though but I am also fried. I keep telling myself that it is for the greater good of the collection of hours and another portfolio piece. I'm collecting my overtime to cash out for my surgery. It would be nice to use that instead of ALL of my vacation time. We do have that beach house thing in October that I daydream about daily. Last week was just downright ugly with the Union threatening to strike and then pulling me into there little circle of strange. That's right, I'm now a Union employee. God help us all.

Wow, what a weekend. The Mermaid Parade at Coney Island, The Dyke March at Bryant Park, Billy Graham in Queens, The Gay Pride Parade and a massive street fair, one block from my apartment building. I had none of it. Well, I did watch some of the street fair out the window through the binoculars, but even with all that photo worthy stuff, I just could not get my shit together to go outside. Martha and Jazz managed to go shopping for red Pumas and Rose scented perfume in SoHo but not me. It was so absurdly hot again and after what happen in Brooklyn Heights a few weeks ago; I thought it best to simply not. Besides, I recently bought a shit load of music and I had a big, long overdue date with my stereo. I am working on a strange little project that requires me to listen to massive amounts of weird and wonderful stuff while maintaining a rather large list of songs. All things best done, alone...and, uh well...alone. Just me being really, really weird. It's what I do best.

CHILDREN ARE A PRODUCT
My brain has been a little distracted as of late. Surgery is back on the table and Martha and I meet with the surgeon this week to pick a damn date. If all goes right, unlike before, I should have my operation within the next two weeks. This would work just fine because I am sick to death of this tumor and so desperately want to move on with my life. Jasmine had her PET scan Thursday and we are waiting on the results of that test. This time of year always makes me a little crazier then normal and she does not help matters by blurting out crap like, "If is get cancer again, I am NOT going to have chemo. I'm just not Mom." This late breaking news came to me while we were trying to have a nice little sushi dinner.

I could have stabbed her in her baby blue eyeball with my chopstick.

After reading an article about Jasmines' generation being called the Boomerang Generation (we keep kicking her out and she keeps coming back) the fear of her moving forward becomes a fright, especially when I start to think about how fucked up it actually is out there and how ill-prepared she is. In so many ways, she is still a child and a mouthy one at that. I keep telling myself that how she is around the house and around me is different then what she is like in the world but how do I know that? It's like that asshole at work that everyone has to deal with. You know, every office everywhere has the one guy who is just a total dick. (Some offices have more then one.) Well, he has family, friends, and a whole other life support system outside of the office. Do his people know he is the office asshole? Do they care?

Not that Jasmine is an asshole by any means; I know it sounds like I am comparing her to one but this is all more of a general worry about her moving into adulthood. Well, if she is reading this she will be pissed at me but for all the wrong reasons. I am not saying that she is childish - not really, except for that chemo remark. There are so many explanations as to why she is not embracing the whole adult thing. I mean Christ; I have yet to come aboard that ship, although, I at least acknowledge that there is a ship. I really do wish that life were just one big tightly packed bowl of crazy fun.

We are coming up on her 21st birthday here in a few weeks. This one is a strange one because, for this one and only time, she will be exactly half my age. Or I will be twice as old as she is. It's a strange thing and most mothers and daughters are a little older when it happens. You know, 25 & 50 or 30 & 60 or as with my Mom and I, 40 & 80 after which my mom promptly died eleven days before my 41st birthday. But all that math is just math and the strangeness of ageing is never dull.

MEDIA FRENDLY
Martha entered a contest at work, technically, it was a raffle, and she won first prize: a Sharp 13 inch flat panel TV. It is cute as could be and she gave it to me to put in the office. So now, we have a three-room apartment with a TV in every room. There is something so very wrong about that. But it is cute and I'll watch the news on it once we get cable hooked up. However, this has opened a whole new can of worms about if I'm going to get a cable box in the office then I should just go ahead and get a cable modem. See, I am still on dial-up (whatever I have my reasons). One of the many is that dial up keeps that fucking phone line busy for hours and I can only be reached by cell phone and only if I happen to notice it is buzzing. Another is the cost, on demand lifestyles are expensive. Probably the one reason that Martha doesn't understand is that I really do not want to give up an email address that I have had for ten years. It is old and dependant on maintaining a certain account that would become obsolete if we switch to a cable modem. It is like having a 212 area code. Ideally, I would like to get DSL but get this; they do not offer it in my area. I am in a weird 5-block pocket of non-DSL availability. That sounds about right.

HELLO FRIEND
I shot a little pit of product last week for Lynn Yaeger's column, Elements of Style and in doing so; I met possibly the nicest man ever. The place was Charlie's Place (it's closing this week, hence the photo), but Charlie is so sweet and delightful that twenty minutes in his little jewelry shop on Mulberry Street restored my faith in human kindness. Right out of the gate, when I introduced myself he shook my hand with both of his hands and told me I was beautiful. Now, I used to be attractive, but the last four years have taken a big chunk out of me, so I know in my head that this is nothing more then a sweet little old man lie, but it totally worked for me. From that moment on, he was delightful and I was relaxed. Anyone who can calm me down is a gift from God in my book.

So much of New York City is the exact opposite of nice that when someone smiles at you on the subway or holds a door open for you instead of slamming it in your face, it makes you soften for a minute. And when you find a person that is sweet and gentle in a place where everything has slowed down to a more normal pace, you want to just hang out and breath in the calm cool air. Meeting Charlie changed the rest of my day. I carried him with me all throughout work. On the way home I walked slower with my head held upright, managing to catch other folk's eyes before they shifted nervously away from mine. On the subway, I smiled and actually looked around at my fellow passengers. I am sure they thought either I was out of my mind on drugs or a tourist but I didn't care. I wanted to look around me instead of burying my head in a book. I wanted to see if anyone else was out there. And well, okay not on this particular ride home did anyone smile back at me but Charlie's gift of kindness was the best thing ever because my odd behavior gave me a wide berth of seating to stretch out in. Apparently, being nice is a great way to keep people away. So is possessing a foul odor but that is another story.

Last weekend, Martha and I managed to make it out of Ikea with only a few things we really did not need. We went in for a bookcase, which we got, along with some cheap rugs and we bought Lily, (yes, that is right, the cat) a floor pillow that we inserted a heating pad into so she could have snuggly warmth. She is twelve or thirteen and our intention is to spoil her to the very end. Yes, yes, yes, I gotta say, it's good to be a cat in this house, well unless you're Mona, but she does have a sunny, 18th floor view of Manhattan 24/7 in a tastefully decorated, enshrined urn, complete with blood red ribbon and her favorite suede mouse.

Blink, Blink.

We also went to Ikea to price out and abuse the shit out of, a daybed that I want to buy for Jasmine. We simply must buy her something better to sleep on other than that disgusting child's bed that Jim and his woman made her sleep on. We will be taking that crusty thing back to PA sometime over the next five weeks because she wants to have it as a couch type thing in her new, Mary Tyler Moore apartment. We are planning to put all of her dorm shit into a storage space for the summer so that it is already there for next fall.

This daybed has massive storage underneath it and seeing as how I will not let her have any other furniture here, because there is no room in our room for things like a dresser. She needs something to store her clothes in as an alternative to all over the floor.

EVEN BETTER STONED
Synchronized Ice-skating? I have never seen anything like it until I walked into the bedroom and low and behold, there it was on the TV. For four solid minutes, I sat on the edge of the bed with my mouth open and my eyes glued to the screen. It was like a hypnotic drug. Every ten seconds or so Martha and I would go, "Wow". They were like liquid Rockettes. Most pleasing and I simply must know more.

WE ALL HAVE ONE THING IN COMMON
An acquaintance of mine died on Easter Sunday of liver cancer. It was fast and fucked up is what that was. He was diagnosed in September, actually around the same time that I was diagnosed with my bullshit.

Anyway, he and I would occasionally talk about the state of affairs with healthcare, how all doctors are assholes and his personal decision to continue to smoke with cancer. He didn't have lung cancer, so what the fuck, right? I have often said that if this crap I have turns ugly I am going to march directly to a liquor store and buy two packs of Marlboro Lights and a fifth of Southern Comfort. Warren Zevon smoked until the end and he HAD terminal lung cancer.

In a world that at times, seems to be riddled with assholes, my friend was one of the good guys. A first rate fellow who understood long before he was sick, that none of this really matters. Life is to live, stop bitching about it and go live it.

I am going to miss Bob and I am surprised that I met him here in strange and impersonal New York City. He and I spoke in his office about a week ago and I had a nagging feeling at the time that it was probably close to the end for him. I hate it when I'm right.

HOW MUCH WOOD WOULD A WOODCHUCK CHUCK IF A WOODCHUCK COULD CHUCK WOOD? (Repeat as Necessary)
Jasmine sent me and everyone physically and spiritually around me, into a three-hour freak-out on Monday morning when she found a lump on her groin —again the use of that fucking word. She had just past the three-year anniversary of being cancer-free in February and it was close enough to the lymph node that she went to the emergency room.

I passed the time away, waiting on a phone call, Googling LUMP IN GROIN and power reading all possibilities. Martha and I took Xanax at just a little past noon at our different work locations and we were all so flipped out that there were actual phone conversations (2) involving Miss Simon.

I truly contemplated calling Jasmine's dad but decided to wait until I knew more.

After one hundred and eighty minutes of nothing but pure fucking worry, Jasmine called with a diagnosis of an abscess in the tissue. Who knows why? And that is the GOOD NEWS. I am starting to figure out that there is no long-term guarantee on Good News. Yes, yes I know THAT — but I have always had a skewed vision that someday, for all of eternity, everything will be great. Deep down, I am an optimist. Don't laugh, it's pretty deep in there. So right now, Jasmine is fine and that is the best news ever. When she comes home in five weeks however, we are going to scan the shit out of her.

After a two-day saga of tears, long distance phone calls and half a Xanax, Martha's suitcase and golf clubs turned up at Newark airport. I was shocked that they even called her. I honestly assumed the clubs were long gone and by know re-gifted and probably being used somewhere in Paramus. I mean come on, its Jersey! My friend Don found a foot on the side of route 17. (Yes, really) It's Newark airport! It's all that.

The word(s) from college land is "A's & B's, Mom. A's & B's." I suppose that Jasmine has either put the bong down and is learning to regulate that activity or she has figured out how to study while stoned. Either way I am proud of the grades and miss her terribly. But, as she said to me just the other day, "Mom, I like it here. I need one happy place in my life." I completely understand this. Making her come home to flip out about me is not a "happy place".

It was about two blocks from my doctor's office when I realized that I didn't have enough cash on me for my co-pay. So I crossed the street and headed for the ATM and it was right in front of the bank that a thought entered my head and actually made me pause in my footsteps. This made the four police officers that linger; err, I mean guard, the Chase bank at the Newport Mall stop laughing at each other and stare at me. Always fun when that happens, fucking Mall Guard Nazism run amok. Just what in god's name have we let happen in this country that a person can't have a small brain freeze in public without causing suspicion?

Anyway, what occurred to me was just how fucking lucky I am. No really. I have health insurance. I need surgery and I am currently in the process of grabbing a hold of my nerve and pulling together copies of my CAT and MRI films, blood work, labs, referral for surgery, and dragging all that to his office so we can set up a timeline (project plan) for my operation. What I have is so rare I can only imagine how much this would all cost if it were straight out of my pocket.

Jasmine's chemo was crazy money and this is probably going to clock in around that price. The only reason I have health insurance is because I have a job (lucky) and because Martha not only has a job but her company has partner benefits. I consider this double luck and for me, that is rare in and of its self. Considering that within the past year I have had over $5000 worth of medical tests just to be able to diagnose me, lord only knows how much it is going to cost to fix me.

Boo fucking hoo, if I am scared at least I have an insurance company to fight about it with. Better yet, at least I have a partner who used to be a benefits administrator and loves to fight with insurance companies. She's like a Chihuahua and I love her.

My doctor now has me on two kinds of blood pressure medicine. First, I was on a Beta blocker. Now I am on an Alpha AND a Beta blocker and of course my new best friends the Percocets. My pulse is still strong so hey, as long as I stay upright all is good. Staying awake is tricky though. I think I am right on the verge of Narcolepsy. My head could hit the table at any second. If I were only just lightheaded. I feel like I have no top to my head. My brains are floating around behind me, flapping around in the wind like a kite, connected to my skull by my spinal column, which is now made of string. I have to have strong mid-day coffee just to remember to breathe. I also smell cat shit wherever I go. At first, it was only at home and I just assumed it was our big-fat-Zoë-cat who shits like a four year-old child. But now I have been smelling it at work, so now I know it is me. Something isn't working right in the old brain, but that is not so surprising.

It has been two-years and four months since the diagnoses of cancer started appearing next to my daughters name on every medical record she has, and no matter how much time goes by I cannot get used to that. There is no "comfort level" with any of this shit.

Jasmine had her PET scan on Wednesday and now we wait. We both hate this but for different reasons. I hate it because it makes me a nervous wreck and I find myself doing strange cross-the-finger type OCD stuff along with making weird promises to God. It is all just bullshit I know but that is what modern medicine has reduced me to —spinning around in my own nervous clatter.

Jasmine hates it all because she just wants to be normal. Actually, she would like her family to be normal but that is a much larger issue. She just wants to able to live like a normal twenty-year-old and not think about anything for too long, except boys. She hates doctors, hospitals, my sideways glances and constant fluttering. She and I usually get a little snippy with each other around scan time and it probably was best that Martha ended up taking Jazz all the way up to 168th Street for her all-day scan. It is one of the few places that when you are there you actually think to yourself, "Wow, I would rather be at work". I am sure this thought entered Martha's head at least twice every hour for six hours. Meanwhile they gave Jasmine a Valium and she napped in the big white tube.

I could use a Valium. Christ, everyone I know could use one.