Holly Northrop Blog

It took eleven hours for us to drive to Pittsburgh due to rain, fog, traffic and one highway closing accident. PA threw everything but snow and flying baby monkey asses at us. Well, at least with the detour I was able to see Altoona again. Woo Hoo! The day we arrived Jasmine was sick as a dog and we didn't see her for three days. The last time I got sick, I ended up in the emergency room so fuck that.

Martha and I ended spent five nights in a row at one person's house, instead of the original agreed upon three. We will be forever in debt. Thank god, she did not have to spend any of her daytime with us. Just the exhausting nighttime, where the only break she got from us was the one night she went to Seven Springs to see Ted Nugent, or 'Sweaty Teddy' as he is referred to.

This was a total cat visit. I met Jezebel, the most beautiful longhaired puff of a cat who is the closest thing to Mona that I've met since Mona died. I visited with roughly four or five (I cannot remember due to volume) of Amy's cats and one sweet aging greyhound. I saw a photo of Dee's two babies and of course, our grandson Oscar, Jasmine's new one-year-old part Main Coon boy kitty.

Martha and I went totally nuts at PetSmart. We bought him a new kitty tower, with scratching post. He is a big time scratcher. We bought a round plastic circle thing with a ball in it that spins round and round, hours upon hours of entertainment. (If I could only be so exhausted by shear joy without being chemically altered.) He played with that thing so much that he fell asleep on it.

We got him a gratuitous string toy, a big bucket of litter, a big bag of food, a case of wet food, three bags of Greenies, and three cans of the special Fancy Feast® Elegant Medleys®.

Man did he hit the jackpot or what. He was just days away from being abandoned or put down and now, he is living the good life.

While Jasmine new apartment is totally adorable, she didn't really have anything in it. She had a bed, Martha's old desk, which used to be my old desk, our old coffee table and a TV. It was kind of barren to the point the even the cat was bored. Yes, yes I know, most of us had sheets on our windows until we were 30, but still.

The next time we visit Pittsburgh we want to stay with her so we bought a futon couch. She needed something else to sit on so we bought her a chair. We went a little thrifting and found an old school desk that will make a great end table. Stuff like that that turned into a day of me wondering around a PetSmart, The Salvation Army, some weird discount furniture store on McNightmare road, Target (for fucks sake) and a Big Lots, all over a two day period.

I got a heat headache and cottonmouth from walking around slack jawed at the whole presentation of consumerism. Martha, amazingly, remained calm and up to the challenge of spending WAY too much money. Of course every morning I gave her a little "cocktail" consisting of a Tylenol® Arthritis, a prescription anti-inflammatory and just a touch of Xanax so the day would go just a little smoother.

Basically, we bought Jasmine a new apartment and Oscar a new life.

Jazz and I struggled (to the point of absurdity) to put the futon frame together. We put it together in every wrong way imaginable before it was finally right. Well sort of, the one piece in the back is supposed to be in front but after Jazz unscrewed the rails for the third time, she refused to do it again. After about an hour of fucking around with the futon, Jazz looked over at the new chair and there was Oscar lying on the ottoman with every fan pointed at him. He looked most comfortable while Jazz had sweat dripping down her cheeks and a runny nose from bending over for minutes on end.

Outside of the whole Jasmine money pit thing, Martha and I drove all around Pittsburgh, which isn't that big of a deal really. A person can go from Squirrel Hill to Mt. Lebanon in fifteen minutes. It was awesome to see people. Well, I only have two people but two very cool people.

We did try to find my dead grandparents. We drove around to several cemeteries that I thought might be the ones. We even went into the offices of two of them. At one point, Martha and I sat across from each other in a cemetery conference room lined with headstones, while the woman made a few calls to other places. Every time I looked at Martha, all I saw was the wall of gravestones behind her.

Thanks to Amy and Nellie King, we were able to not only go to a Pirates game but also sit behind home plate. With the idea that dinner was going to be at the ballpark Amy turned to me and asked me what I would like to eat.

'Well, I'm a vegetarian and I don't eat carbs."
She brought me back a huge kosher dill pickle.

Oddly, I realized that I do miss Pittsburgh. I've not been back in eight years but it is a place that I've moved back to three times in my life. I'm from Ohio, but Pittsburgh is most certainly a second or third home. Even stranger, I could see myself living there again.

However, I cannot believe what they have done to the South Side. What a fucking nightmare.

And clearly The Beehive people have totally lost their minds and have bestowed upon the obnoxiously carb heavy city of Pittsburgh, The Double Wide Grill. All I can say is WOW.

I mean the South Side was kind of a dead zone with the old J&L plant being leveled and yes the whole toxic waste fields thing needed to be dealt with but they made it a yuppie paradise. (Seriously, Forever 21?) I'm not so sure I'd want to eat one bite of a GODIVA® CHOCOLATE CHEESECAKE from the Cheesecake Factory on the former ground of a Superfund site, now labeled a nice and tidy word like Brownfield. Dirt is brown right, so Brownfield makes complete sense. It's just dirt.

I suppose a little plastic materials (which never biodegrades) and resin particles here and there is what we're all made of, right? Never really hurt anyone.

I remember sitting in my fifth floor dorm room window at Duquesne University watching the J&L furnaces lighting up the night sky. The glow was surreal. The furnaces operated 24-hours a day and on certain nights when the fog came in the silhouette looked like a large demon climbing out of the ground. Even in the daylight, the damn thing was frightening with its coal furnaces glowing from deep within and years of caked on black soot covering everything. It looked like they were burning a hole to the center of the earth.

I don't really have a solid answer to what should be there. On the other side of the river, where the other half of the plant was, they built the Technology Center so that area was repurposed for job growth. Maybe continuing with the theme of advancing technologies by dragging that shit across the 'Hot Metal Bridge' would be interesting.

One could argue that retail jobs are job growth but, not really. $7.00 an hour does not a career make no matter what city you live in. Relying on consumer shopping to boost the local economy is foolish in that if we are all working for Ann Taylor then we cannot afford to shop at Ann Taylor. So Ann Taylor will leave.

Ah yes, but now we are back. We came home to a weird smelling house and an orange cat puke stain on the carpet. It took us over ten hours to get home but that was because we had to pull over at a rest stop and sleep for two hours. At least we had our pillows with us.

All along the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge there are signs bolted into the light posts that read; "Desperate? Life is worth living! Call Helpline." I noticed this last weekend when I was on my way to therapy. Fitting, I know, but what struck me as odd was that they are mostly posted in the center of the bridge. Now, the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge is long and tall, and if, lets just say if, you wanted to jump off the bridge I would think that any point along the bridge would work. Why make a trek of it when around 200 yards in is just as good of a location as dead center? Maybe that is the point, Dead Center but see no matter what you hit, anything over two stories is going to kill you. Thinking that you can just dive off a bridge, slip into the water and then drown is a mistake. No, no, it's hit the water and explode. Hell, I could swan dive from the top of my house if I wanted to. Not that I do, I'm just saying. Relax, it's the holiday's isn't everyone thinking about killing themselves?

Thursday, before the snow actually started in Hudson, Martha was all cross-eyed and hell-bent on going into work. She managed to make it there, but not before driving through the tip of the storm, causing her concern on her ability to drive home. After about an hour at work, longer then it took her to actually get there, she got back in the Prius (!) and drove directly into a blizzard. It took her three-hours to get home, which isn't bad considering the severity of the storm. She said there was an accident every half mile of so, and the Prius did 'not that bad' in the snow.

Once Martha was home what more could I ask for? A huge snowstorm to dump fourteen inches on us the day before my birthday seemed just perfect.

Jasmine bought me a really cool photo book and I'm so proud of her. It arrived a day early and everything. All in all my birthday was great. I baked my own birthday cake that was so good Martha had two pieces and then passed out with yellow frosting still on her lips.

A new Diane camera is in my life thanks to Martha and I've been shooting with it like crazy. I'm currently out of developer and fix so I have no idea how the little camera is performing, (to me it seems fine), or where the light leaks might be. My chemicals probably won't get here until after Christmas, which sucks and proves that sometimes I really should pay attention to this holiday.

Speaking of Christmas, I have yet to buy one fucking thing for anyone and I'm not really sure what to do about that. At this point in the game, it's almost too late to buy crap online unless I pay crazy shipping. So that means I'm actually going to have to drag my ass out of the house and go into the places that have Christmas music, or excuse me, 'Holiday' music playing. Martha and I decided not to get a tree again this year, because Zoë is such a monster and will not leave any kind of evergreen alone. She is such as suck ass cat that the only foliage I can have is cactus and she tries to eat that. Stupid thing. I've even seen her try and chew on the Christmas lights. Anyway, we are exchanging a few gifts and we do have the outside decorations up but inside, it could be anytime of the year.

Bucktooth Neighbor Wave
Our neighbor across the street is totally obsessed with outside chores. I know this because he is forever making noise and seeing how my studio and the living room face him, well... he bothers me.

In the summer, he was ceaselessly cutting the grass, weed whacking the trim, mulching the flowerbeds and watering. In the fall, he was constantly blowing leaves down the driveway and then into the front yard where he would blow them into a pile. He would then get the lawnmower out and mow it all up. Now, in the winter, I watched him snowplow, salt, shovel, and again snowplow all day Sunday. Every hour he was back outside making some kind of noise interrupting my enjoyment of the hours upon hours of Planet Earth in HDTV that I was engrossed in. That show ROCKS and it rocks real hard on the new TV.

Anyway, Martha and I started talking about what might be going on over there and here are the loose facts. He looks to be around our age. It is his parents' house and they still live there. He moved in around the time we bought our house. My guess was to help with his folks. The mother is almost unable to walk, yet refuses to use a walker. I've only seen her a handful of times and she has the smile of elderly dementia. The father shuffles out every now and then in his slippers to take out the recyclables. There is a sister, who looks to be within a year or two of the brother and she has a little yappy white dog. Cute as could be but it barks at everything, including the wind. The sister only comes around every few months to visit. At one point yesterday, we noticed a kid outside, chipping away at some ice. Not sure where he came from. The house is small, smaller then ours and all one floor, so when everyone is in town, (like now) it must be gaud awful. Mom, Dad, brother, sister, kid and dog. It explains why at one point I looked over and noticed that he was just standing in the driveway holding the shovel. Just standing there, not doing anything but not going inside either. It was 17 degrees outside and he was just standing there.

One good thing that happened last week is that we are finally in possession of our new black Prius. In one week, we managed to put 900 miles on a brand new car that was only used to go back and forth to work. God that is a tad depressing isn't it. 900 miles and we only went to work. We should have at least gone to the beach or something. But the new car is fun to play with. Martha splurged and hooked us up to satellite radio but even that can't handle some of the true dead zones that are up here in Upstate.

My back has moved on to a new level of outstanding pain. Two weekends ago, I spent almost an entire Saturday face down on the living room floor while Martha, assessing her life choices, pounded on me with the massager. Once that was over, she then put a heating pad on my back and weighted that down with pillows. I took a shit load of codeine and fell asleep with my nose in the carpet. I woke up an hour later sweating and with my neck in a kink. Nothing helped. Depression would have been several steps up from where my head was at.

Out of shear desperation and some half-assed medical advice, Martha ordered medical equipment. She bought me, although we are both now using it, a TENS unit. Who would have thought that my life could change with a little 9-volt battery and a little bit of electrical energy? She also bought a ultrasound for that deep tissue massage. It seems that I am allergic to the self-adhering electrodes (because I am a pussy girl) so Martha had to spend even more money on the hypoallergic ones. The total tally on both of our backs now stands at:

So guess what? I was accepted into a group show at the Columbia County Council on the Arts 12th Annual Juried Art Show. They chose this photo. The opening is Saturday, March 3 at the Hudson Opera House. How fun is that? I guess we picked the right six. Thanks to Martha and Jasmine for helping me pull work.

We canceled our dinner reservations for a Valentine Mystery theater on Saturday night. I kept thinking it was a murder mystery and Martha kept pointing out to me that there was no murder, that it was just a mystery. Finally, after about the tenth time, I understood there was no murder, and it was at that precise moment when I lost all interest in it. I mean, who wants a mystery without a murder? Well if given a choice, I want a murder to go along with my Valentine's dinner, and so does Martha.

Saturday had already become such a big day, what with the whole Zoë to the veterinarian thing. About a week ago, Martha found a lump on Zoë's side. We both agreed that we would watch it and see what happens. Well that lasted about two days before I pressured Martha into calling and making an appointment for Saturday morning. All week long, I worried about that nervous calico. The timing on hidden lumps is never good but right now, with Martha's dad so near the end, it could suck a little more then necessary. After all, Mona died and then just five fun filled weeks later so did my mom. I would like to think that Martha as better karma then I do. I tend to look at it like her biggest mistake was falling in love with me and all my baggage.

But anyway, all week long I worried and surfed the internet about cat tumors. Now let me explain my ability to deal with Zoë. I can't STAND to be in the car with her. She never shuts up. EVER. Her meow is a high-pitched whine and after just a few short minutes of that shit, I want to open the car door and shove the cat carrier out into oncoming traffic. Sick and cruel, I know, I am aware. It's almost an instinctual, guttural thing, a moment of temporary insanity. Or at least that is the excuse I am working on.

So the trouble with this "cat in the car" thing is that I can't ride in the car to the vet. Martha said I make things worse, which, I have no doubt to be true. But, I so suck as a partner if I can't even ride with a potentially sick cat to the vet. Well, just not this cat, or the neighbor's cat or any cat that won't shut the fuck up. Lily shuts up. Mona used to shut up. Zoe, not so much. We talked about me taking a cab or if how I had my own super cute little Mini Cooper then I could follow behind. Now, there's a great reason to rush out and buy a new car. All stupid ideas aside, I was to stay home and work out all my nervous Nellie shit by cleaning the house.

I blame Jasmine. Specifically, I blame colic and for a better understanding of the sound and its effects, I suggest spending a little time with Eraserhead, and then you will know. Why did Mary leave and just what was it they drove Henry crazy? Hum? Anybody?

So then, the results of Zoë's doctor visit? Well, eighty some odd dollars later, they determined that she has a fat tumor. A ball of fat in her side. Very common, and very fun to make fun of.

The exhaustion of all that high-level cat emotion sunk in while Martha and I were engaging in some hardcore couch riding. I feel asleep to The Wild Bunch and woke up to Martha watching Match Point, Martha is in love with Scarlett Johansson, until I remind her that she is three months younger then Jasmine and then it's not so funny anymore.

Before we knew it, we were sucked into 2001: A Space Odyssey and well, there you go. Neither one of us were in the mood to go to a Mystery Dinner Theater especially if there is not a murder to keep us interested. So we went to sushi and then to the store. Are we boring? Well, not to each other (much) and I suppose that is all that matters. Just knowing that after fifteen-years of the same shit different day scenario, someone still laughs at my jokes and does not try to kill me in my sleep and make me the murder, is the greatest valentine ever.

Martha and I made a joint decision not to exchange gifts for Christmas this year. Reasons being, the most honest of all, we don't have any spare money to buy crap and no one has any spare hours in the already stuffed days of our lives to make shit. All of our money is tied up in a new roof and a new bathroom door, and not to mention the new insulation in the attic. Once all of those projects finish up, our savings will be depleted and I'll probably stop being so snarky at work for a while.

But, and the big but here is that I didn't seem to think through the whole emotional side of not having a tree or even opening one gift. It kind of feels like my first Christmas with Jim, and that is never good - although we at least had a depressing Charlie Brown tree. Martha and I didn't feel like fighting with Zoë over the tree. That cat is so crazy—she actually eats the pine needles. Eats them and then pukes them up all season long. She's so wild that I know she'd eat a plastic tree too, if I was ever allowed to buy my 7 1/2' White Spruce with Clear Pine Cone Lights Christmas tree. It has 1842 branch tips and she would chew everyone down to the wire.

Jasmine even bought a cheese log. Technically, it is a cheese ball, but no matter, it is still that port wine, nut covered crap that was the only gift from my parents that first year with Jim. I remember it came a few days before Christmas and I am pretty positive my mom spelled my new married name wrong.

Ah, well, no matter, try not to dwell on the dead in this season of...what? Santa?

Two of two toilets clogged up on the first morning that Jasmine was home. Martha woke up and immediately drove to the hardware store to purchase all forms of clog removal devices. Even after Martha aggressively plunged the toilet for several hours I had to call an emergency plumber. We were without a toilet for so long that Jazz had to go use the one over at the Muddy Cup when she woke up —further cementing our "Lame Christmas" status. I called several plumbers but everyone wanted crazy money to drive over here on Christmas Eve, never mind that it was only 10:30 in the morning. One place wanted $65 just to cross the Rip Van Winkle Bridge. Finally, Martha got a hold of the plumber who lives next door. He's never been very friendly to us but he did send two of his guys to deal with our troubles. They said he would bill us. Great. Hate shit that is THAT open-ended. Nobody signed anything, can't wait to see the tally.

No Christmas Kitty
In a super stupid misguided way of trying to do the right thing by imposing our will onto something that was doing just fine before us, Martha and I tried to save a cat. This shit all started last Tuesday when after our lengthy commute and just seconds from home, we came up over the hill to the view of a dead cat in the headlights. We began freaking out because we thought it was this one particular grey and white fatty that has been hanging out by our house since we moved in. I started feeding it, (yeah, I know, shut up) several months ago and proceeded to bagger Martha into letting me snag it.

Well, now we thought he was dead, and we both had probably one of the worst nights ever.

The next day wasn't much better and by Thursday I just wanted to stay home, clean and get ready for Jasmine who was due in later on that evening. While doing the dishes I looked out the window and out of the bushes plopped the grey fatty. I couldn't believe it. The cat that had been run over was another one, which I have seen walking around in the road before and thought maybe it might be, but honestly, I couldn't look at the dead cats face that night.

So we grieved for two days over a cat that was very much alive. I ran outside called him over to me and walked him into the sunroom. All of which he was very happy to do. I gave him food and water and then called Martha. "Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas" we said to each other and then made a vet appointment for later on that afternoon. I spent the rest of the day cleaning the house, and taking little breaks out in the sunroom/quarantine room.

After a few hours, he was not happy. He wanted to leave. Of course he did, who the fuck am I?

Martha came home early, we packed him up in the carrier, and into the car we went. This was the first big no. He didn't like the car at all. Even worse then Zoë. In fact, he was so loud and unhappy that I had to get out of the car at the stop sign. I totally blame Jasmine for this. Constantly meowing cats' sound like crying/whimpering babies with colic. This triggers a freaky reaction in me that causes me to remove myself from the sound. Saying I can't handle it is an understatement. The funny thing is that actual crying babies don't bother me any more then they bother all of us, but there is something in a cats' meow that sounds just how Jazz used to sound when she had colic and would sleep/cry all damn day and night for months on end.

Fascinating, I am just so smack full of mental illness.

Okay, back to the cat. So yeah, I jumped out of the car in the middle of the street and Martha had to drive him to the vet. Things got super tension filled and the vet ended up having to sedate the cat just to look at it. Great. We had him tested for Feline Leukemia, which he did not have. Aside from being five-years-old and covered in fleas, Martha found out that he had already been fixed. He really was someone's pet.

Great, super, fuck it he shouldn't be outside. Martha paid the $200.00 bill and put him back in the Jeep. Apparently, during the ride home, the carrier slid off the seat and he went head first into the steel grate door. This is when he woke up, fucked up and freaked out.

In-between all this shit, Jasmine calls me to say that the cab from Albany airport to the train station cost $50.00 and that she left her coat in the cab and she can't remember the name of the cab company. How can you fucking loose your coat? How is that fucking possible? And for $50 for a cab ride and then another $20 for the train? Jesus Christ, we should have just fucking drove up there. It's like twenty-five minutes away.

Martha drives the grey fatty home and we carry all seventeen pounds of him into the house. He's upstairs stumbling around when he decides to lean up against me and begin to growl. Just a little at first, and I don't think too much about it all. But then he starts growling more, as he was coming out of the sedative. There was no hissing, but a great deal of growling.

So then the conversation between Martha and I got seriously strange. It became apparent that we were not going to be able to keep him. I was afraid to even show him Zoë and Lily. Oh for fucks sake we were going to have to let him go. After some yelling, which I'm sure totally helped his over all mood, Martha and I walked him down the stairs, into the sunroom and out the door. I took him over to the back yard by the fence that he had plopped through some nine hours before. I said good-bye and he didn't look back.

This is like one of those dumb things that you only tell a few people and then try to forget about just how stupid you can be. Hey look at me, I'm super stupid!

Sunday morning when I was walking over to pick up Martha and Jazz at yoga I saw him sitting on the back porch, of the house that I have always suspected that he might belong to. It's about three house away, not nearly as far down as where the dead cat was, and let's not forget here a cat was killed that night, which is what started this whole shit. But anyway, I saw him and he looked over at me and that was about it. He didn't come running and probably won't for some time. I alien abducted him in an attempt to save him. Nice. I'm such a good neighbor.

Oh well, the neighbors have a perfectly healthy cat that isn't positive, and has been treated for fleas. Happy Holidays.

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 spent the majority of last week working on a 911 package for work. The Voice is doing a piece that I can honestly say I am proud of. Been a few months since I've felt like that.

But what all that meant was that I spent three solid days either looking at photos of the Twin Towers falling or I was down at Ground Zero with my camera, shooting everything from tourists to the actual pit, via the Path train. Instead of walking through the space like when I used to commute through there, I had to linger around the edges of the fence and shoot photos. All around me was a massive photo exhibit (complete with minute-by-minute timeline) that folks were driven to with the customary display of astonishment or boredom on their faces. Ground Zero is a fucked up tourist destination. Aside from the obvious reason that it is a fucked up tourist spot, there is no food or water, no bathrooms or even a place to sit down unless you want to sit right on the sidewalk. There are no trees and the whole area is void of any life except of course for the commuters, tourists and Port Authority workers. But I did notice a bunch of rag weed growing over in the southwest corner of the pit, so life is returning I suppose.

The WTC site is full of life, but lifeless.

Prior to my being down there for two days straight, I had been holdup in my little town in the woods for six solid days. I had very little human interaction outside of the sushi place and the chick at CVS. Thankfully, because I've lived here for so long, I know how to shove hysterical emotion deep down inside me, only to have it come out at odd and inappropriate times of course, but that's my problem and I've learned to deal with it. I had a job to do and there was no time to flip-out with a bunch of untamed emotions.

They say that what happened on 9.11.01 was the largest man-made disaster ever. Except for the Ice Age, I'm thinking that every disaster is man-made considering how we manage this planet. Just about everything the goes wrong is our fault.

Like most folks who were in New York City five years ago, I chose not to go into work on Monday. I was in Manhattan on the one-year anniversary of the whole thing and that was about as fucked up as anything can get. All the stores weren't just closed, they all had flags or signs of remembrance hanging in their windows. The only thing that was open besides The Voice, was Ground Zero. I was also in the city two years ago when the fucking Republicans had their convention here and used New York City as a political backdrop, while behind the scenes the city was in lockdown. Step off the sidewalk and you just might be arrested.

This year I just don't want to play. I'm good thanks and I don't want to think about it any more.

NATURE OR NURTURE?
Martha had the windshield replaced and it cost a little under $300. About half of what I thought it was going to be. It was beautiful but after an hour and a half drive in the country on a Friday night, it is now covered with bugs and looks like every other windshield around here.

Saturday, Lily went to the vet and it turns out she has fleas. So that means Zoë has fleas. So we are currently undergoing 'flea treatment'. Fantastic. We had an Orkin guy come out on Saturday to look at the spider problem that, honestly I have never, ever seen anything like in my life. Thursday morning Martha and I woke up and noticed that everything and I mean EVERY THING in the town of Hudson was COVERED in spider webs. There were webs all over the bushes, trees and fences. The stop sign at the end of Union Street and 3rd was covered in a web that was bigger than my upper torso. I am NOT KIDDING. Even the power lines, you know where the birds sit, were incased with web work. The spiders had a busy night that's for damn sure.

No we didn't have spiders in the house, which is all I really care about but even I was a little shocked. Martha was totally horrified. We live in spider town.

So we thought the Orkin guy might have an idea or two as to WTF is up with the spiders, plus we wanted him to check out a wasp thing we got going on. He said the spider phenomenon is actually a good thing and that they come out in droves after a long rain. Spiders keep the bugs down, blah, blah, blah. By the time he got to our house most of the webs in the whole town were gone so it was kind of hard to stress the complete coverage we had but he is a local and has seen it all before. We were more of show to him than anything going on in the woods.

While he was at the house, a green garden snake slithered across the path to my front door and appeared to slip down a hole into our basement. So we made the Orkin guy go in the basement. He doesn't think the snake went in but he did find a salamander down there. And again, we heard how now salamanders are a good thing and they keep the bugs down with that whole food chain thing. So my question is this; will the snake eat the salamander? Where do the cats fit into this? They suck you know. Our pets are broken and have no idea how to actually kill even the simplest bug so just what do you think is going to happen if a garden snake crawls upstairs and sticks it's tongue out at them. I'll tell you what would happen, Lily would run to the highest point in the house never to be seen again and Zoë would shit herself. That is what she does when she is terrified. She poo's.

Over a week ago, Martha noticed a "thing" on Zoë's neck. A little pea-sized area of scabbing that upon closer inspection, (always a pleasure with this cat) looked strange. Not just a normal claw mark or scratch. We made the unpleasant decision to take her to the vet. The last time we took this cat to the vet, she had a seizure. That was two years ago. I figured that the only time Zoë was ever going to go back to a vet was when it was "time", if you get my drift.

But apparently I was wrong. Martha found a local veterinarian and made an appointment. Now the word local has a slightly different definition up here. In Columbia County, fifteen-minutes away IS local. I understand this and it makes sense. Fifteen-minutes along a backcountry road is nothing. The word local to me means that I should be able to walk to it. Not so. There is no vet in Hudson and so what? What's the big deal with fifteen-minutes in the car? Well, nothing unless you have a frantic cat pacing around counterclockwise behind your head and meowing with every breath it takes.

Zoë is totally crazy and never, was it more apparent then when she was in our Jeep. She meowed the whole way there, the entire time at the vet's office and then, the whole way back. Her meow is somewhat high pitched, and sounds similar to a whinny baby (i.e. Jasmine when she had colic). All I wanted to do was throw Zoë from the car and never look back.

But alas that is not what happened. After the longest fifteen-minutes of my life, we found the vet's office and parked the Jeep. We waited in the exam room for another small eternity while I kept spraying my hands with Feliway and then rubbing Zoë down. This would calm her down for roughly one to two-minutes at a time. During those precious minutes of silence, the air would lighten up and Martha and I were able to have quick slices of conversation. I even made a joke about how seeing how we were already there, maybe we just might want to go-ahead and put her down. I know, I know, not that funny but Jasmine would have laughed with me. Martha however, just glared at me. Humor, it's a funny thing.

So the long and the short of it is, Zoë probably had allergies. The vet gave her two shots of cortisone and charged us just under a hundred dollars. (Nice) With a wait and see diagnosis on our plates we got back in the car and headed home. For fifteen-minutes, I held my left hand twisted behind my back, shoved into the cage rubbing on Zoë's face whenever she would pace near me. It was kind of like being arrested. Chewing gum like a lunatic and bitching that I wanted a fucking cigarette, I counted down the minutes on the digital clock until we finally pulled into our driveway. Once we were all inside, Zoë ran into the bedroom closet and I took a Xanix. I didn't see that cat until dusk and that was all right by me.


FLIPPING AROUND TO NOWHERE
So much has changed in the past month. I have brand new computer that I barely know. I installed what I needed to make it so I could work from home. Did a super fast migration, so fast in fact that I forgot to migrate all my old email. I am finding that all that stored old email has yet to come in handy some three-weeks later. I've got email that has a dates from the 1990's saved. What the hell could I possibly want any of that shit for? I'm like an email pack rat.

I have a new office space that is still in shambles but functions. The thing about a new office space, especially one that now includes enough room for me to have a darkroom, is that it also becomes a time to evaluate the kind of work that I am actually doing in my office. Is this the type of work I want to be working on, etc. Am I writing enough? No. Am I shooting enough, no on that too. Well, just what the hell am I doing up here in my very own apartment? I spend a good chunk of the week on Voice stuff and not much else, because well, that seems to suck the little ol' life right on out of me.

But as I dream big and live strange, time keeps ticking away. Funny how that happens. Well, I'll have some time this week to sort stuff out while Martha is down in North Carolina. She'll be gone for a week and we all know what happens when I am left alone for that long. The crazies will creep over this house like well-fertilized ivy. I'll have days upon days without rational interruption to dwell on shit that is best left murky. It's either figure it out and find a new direction for myself or spend hours upon hours stoned and stuck watching Netflix Faith & Spirituality Dvd's. Or buying everyone I know a pair of these. It's so nice to see The Klan, er I mean the Christians are using the Internets, isn't it?

Anyway, aside from the new computer, and the new office space there is that whole oddly appealing small town I live in that I know next to nothing about. I'm so far out from New York City that I can't even get New York City news, something that I am still not used to. Not that local news has ever been all that great no matter where you live but I had been quite used to the general NYC rap-up of loathing at the end of each day.

But the local news up here is so thin that one night last week, as I was reading Wired it occurred to me that the 11:00 news had been talking about the weather for over four-minutes and there wasn't ANYTHING going on. No dangerous thunderstorms or crazy crap somewhere else in the world to report. Honestly, I'm not even sure just what the hell they were broadcasting into my bedroom because I was all involved in the article about the snarky folks at Pitchfork. What I do know is that when I started reading the article the weather had just come on and when I finished it, the weather was still on. I had to double check to make sure I hadn't changed the channel to The Weather Channel.

I guess from the News Producers prospective there isn't a whole hell of a lot to yack about up here, but hey I have an idea; the world is a big place and there is tons, just tons of stuff happening all over. I understand that the whole Iran, Iraq war thing is kind of a drag for those in the back of the classroom but for those of us down front, the local news is way too soft and forgiving on our looser president and the global economy.

So maybe they could talk about something else from somewhere else. Instead of four-minutes of clear skies and sunny days, maybe two whole minutes of global news might be kind of fun.

But what the hell do I know, I'm just learning to live here.

Day two of my commute last week and I was ready to either quit my job or sell the house. Balls to the wall my total time is six hours a day, that's three hours each way. That is totally insane, this I know but I won't be doing it every day. I will only be going into the office probably two days a week but not just yet. There are still some technical things that need to be worked out. One being my new computer and the cable modem that is coming on Wednesday and the other is setting up an open connection between me and work. Characteristically, that has always been a problem between us, but technically, we should be able to work it out.

So for now, I make a pilgrimage that consists of an hour and a half car ride with Martha (the most enjoyable part of the trip); a forty-minute train ride through New Jersey suburbia and urban decay; a sweltering Path ride from Hoboken and then finally, a nice little sun filled ten-block walk to the Voice. Awesome and when I get to work I feel like I should be somewhere other than just the fricken East Village where everything smells like baked butt crack.

I go from fog and deer roaming around in a flowering meadow to masturbating homeless men lying in the middle of the sidewalk, foot traffic splitting around him like commuter cars moving around a stalled blinking vehicle. All that visualization within a three-hour span, no wonder I'm worn-out. I'm so fatigued I'm kind of numb to all of it. I have started smoking pretzels to psychologically make myself feel better. I have also invited the Starbucks monkey back on my back. Can't help it I need crack in a cup all the time now.

I want new pets, ours seem to be broken. Zoë is a total whack job and Lily is insistent on waking us up at 5am. Five in the fucking morning, people. She paces around our bed, the sound of her nails clip, clip, clipping on the hardwood, meowing a top volume (getting a nice reverb off the high ceilings) yanking us out of the deep sweet sleep that Martha and I crave. Once I get up, Lily then follows me everywhere, meowing all the way. She's like a whinny baby in a walker. Kind of like Jazz used to be, or just... kind of like Jazz. Kidding, I'm kidding.

It took Martha, myself, plus a last-minute maid hire, most of Saturday to clean out the old apartment. It wasn't that the place was so filthy; it is that management is so damn picky. They gave us a list of how much stuff costs. Everything from a $5.00 light bulb to repainting the entire apartment at "current contractor rates". Scary shit. We will be charged an arm and a leg. I know it and am just going to have to embrace it. There is only just so much I could handle cleaning and painting before I was either going to just throw the mop down and jump out the window or make Martha open the checkbook. How much do I have to pay to get out of this?

(YUNZ GUYS) CHECK MY MESSAGES?
Jasmine is currently supporting Europe's economy. She has spent, in one week mind you... $1200. She was supposed to make a grand last the whole three weeks. Europe is expensive and the dollar is shit, but Jesus Christ. She'll be home in two weeks for some down time, painting my stairs and general harassment on the parts of all parties involved. I miss her so much and can't wait to squeeze her. I just wish she'd get her fucking head around money. Well, she's got her head around it all right, it's just screwed on wrong. She went to Stonehenge on Friday, (hippie) and her and a gaggle of her friends went into London on Saturday. All in all she sounds like she's having fun and she's even managed to pick up a slight British accent. Marble mouth Pittsburgh with a British flair. Kind of like Madonna, Detroit chunk with proper pronunciation.

SNACKS THROUGHOUT THE DAY
Martha goes back down to North Carolina this week. She'll leave Thursday morning and won't be back until Sunday. She is leaving me alone in the house. Ahhhhh! It's fine, really. It's a little soon but fine. Cable should be hooked up in the bedroom by then and I already have my train tickets for work, (I get to take the big train!) cutting my commute down by a third, so as long as I don't have to deal with anything too nuts I should be fine.

Things are getting ugly for her folks. Dad keeps falling and mother creeps each day a little closer to the crazy glue. Denial is an amazing thing. Her father actually thinks that he should be able to start driving again; even after he fell off the toilet. My dad used to say, "It's hell to get old, Holly. Avoid it."

Okay dad, I'll make sure to slit my wrists before the age of fifty.

Anyway, while I do agree with his core thought about aging, I also know that it doesn't have to be so terrifying like Martha's parents are taking it. In many ways, I'm ready to go to a retirement community right now. Sign me up for meals on wheels and all day TV. I most certainly would not have to commute six hours a fucking day, unless it takes me that long to shuffle on down to the dining hall and back to my little room with Martha.

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:

Three days of painting and cleaning have left me bruised and beaten. That almost sounds like poetry.

Martha continued with her terrorization of the doors in our new house. This time she zeroed in on the front door. While she did not try and flip it or touch its hinges in any way, she did try to paint it. Our hidden yuppies have sprung to life and she and I have conversations around things like exterior paint, black shutters and window awnings. At this point that is all we want to take outside for the neighbors to observe is a painted front door. We are trying to keep the crazy in the house until we have lived there a little while and maybe make a few friends. At least, it seemed like a good idea to paint the front door. We bought a gallon of high gloss firehouse red, exterior paint and she went to town. The door was originally a teal green so primer was necessary. Things were fine until she came back at the door for the third coat but the second coat wasn't dry. So now we have a lumpy, textured door that needs to be sanded down and re-painted. Also, we had run out of paint tape so she just decided to "wing it" around the glass parts at the top. Yep, we look like one of those houses. The shutter and awning show later on this summer should be fantastic.

We carried the original bathroom door out to the garage while humming the death march song.

This trip upstate we only went to Home Depot twice but we still managed to spend a shitload of money. We finally ordered the living room carpet but now it is unlikely that it can be installed before we move in. Fuck, we waited too long. Should be interesting. I guess we'll just shove everything into the bedroom, kitchen and Martha's office. On the carpet-ordering trip to Home Depot, I saw someone I work with. How very odd. Apparently, as I am finding out, other Voice and former Voice folks live upstate. My old Editor in Chief lives literally ten minutes away from me. Plus, we are just a stones throw from the Catskills so celebrity sightings are all around. Christ, I think I saw JD Salinger over in the lumber section.

Even though we are sort of living at the new house, I haven't really been cooking and the whole dinner thing has been difficult. Anything other than salads, yogurt, almonds and pretzels needs to be purchased off-sight. We went out for a sushi dinner that is within a two-minute walk from the house. It was super yummy and they will know me before too long. We also stopped at a local country bistro just down the road from Home Depot. We had to pick up a few things and needed real food, so okay, right? Well things close early round those parts and we pulled in 15 minutes before closing. Once seated the waitress informed us that there was no baked potatoes, mashed potatoes or liver. Then the cooked barked in "there aren't no home fries neither, or french-fries". They seemed all freaked out about the whole lack of potatoes but I just smiled at the waitress and apologized for being there.

All in all here is what we did in three days.

First off let me just say that I cannot even believe that the Pittsburgh Steelers are going to The Super Bowl.

I shot Newark, yes that would be Newark, New Jersey for the Voice on Sunday morning. Not quite at the crack of dawn, but shortly there after. I'm thinking my editor has it out for me. He seems nice and all, but he does keep sending me to these odd pits of shit. No one WANTS to live in Newark, do they? Isn't Newark the kind of town that once you figure out where you are living you try with all your might to get the hell out of? Yeah, yeah, urban pioneers my ass.

We drove for a couple of reasons. One was because Martha has a nasty, snotty head cold and the other was because there was no way I was going to walk around Newark. Fuck taking pictures. The bar for this kind of bullshit is the South Bronx, which is worse but you know, in some ways, not really. Prior to Sunday, I had only been to either Newark's Penn Station or Newark Airport. Neither of those leaves any kind of positive impression. But driving around, I mean, who knew it was a real city at all. It's small, like Pittsburgh, or rather more like DC with tall buildings.

The sad truth is Martha and I could buy a whole building there for what a studio is going for in New York. I could do it. Buy a big old thing, turn half into live space and the other half into a darkroom/studio, play music really fucking loud space. Run razor wire and grenades around every square inch of the outside, gate up every single window and install a security system the likes of the Hope Diamond and just sit back and wait for the yuppies to come. Oh and they are coming believe you me, the proof was in the Starbucks sighting right there on Broad Street.

TWISTED
Jasmine's second semester of college has started out just the way they all do, at the hospital. Over the weekend, she fell down and jammed the thumb on her left hand. Once X-rays determined that nothing was broken, she called me to let me know what had happened. After listening to her explanation of how the sidewalk dipped and she took a tumble, I asked her one question.

"Were you drunk?"
"Yep."

Okay then. Jasmine has exactly eighteen months before she will no longer be on our health insurance and little things like this will become big fucking things called "self pay". This, to me, does not mean Mom & Mom pay. It means self, as is Jasmine pays. Ah well, Jazz is the one who has to live with the knowledge that she fell down drunk in public and knows damn well that I would probably write about it.

CRAZY PUSSY
Cats are so fucking strange. Lily, the black and white, had been hissing at Zoë for the past few days. It was as if she no longer recognized her. I figured one of two things was happening here. Either Lily had finally snapped and was starting to display signs of senility, (she is 13) or Zoë was getting ready to have another seizure. She popped over a year ago (that was a great day let me tell you) and hasn't had one since.

Now, up front this was funny behavior to observe but in the middle of the night, when hissing and thumping broke out on top of me, pulling me from the sweet dead sleep of dreams, I got a little cranky.

What was funny about it all was that Lily thought she was in-charge and Zoë had been humbled. She entered rooms very slowly and bowed her head down to Lily. Somehow, Lily had flexed some kind of alternate alpha cat stance and for the moment, intimidated Zoë into submission. That is until Zoë finally got pissed and called Lily's' shit out on the carpet and well, slammed her black and white fur onto said carpet. Suddenly, Lily's hiss had a very different sound to it, more like the slow tire leak that we usually hear. Even though the hissing has now stopped, we are still waiting on the seizure. Great.

So yeah, the MTA strike. Wow, seems like some crazy distant fucked up nightmare but nope, I'm pretty sure it happened. I seem to remember walking to the WTC from the East Village, but compared to some folks, I have NOTHING to bitch about. Some people walked for hours and hours just to get home so they could go to bed, sleep and then get up and do it all over again in reverse. Yeah, right. And to those few bloggers/reporters/music critics that are fat and comfortable elsewhere in the country, vomiting up pearls of wisdom like, "Leave town, chumps." I say Fuck You. Most of us aren't sucking on the tits of daddy's trust fund pretending to be all grown up. Laughing and pointing at 8 million people is the most stupid thing in the world—chump.

Oh, Holly, it's Christmas.

Ah yes, but it is times just like the MTA strike, where I am walking and walking and walking while the truly unthinkable is happening right in front of me that I like to do a little thing called "Review". I have lived here for five and a half years and in that very short time I have witnessed, and on two or three occasions waded through: the WTC collapse, the Blackout, the Republican Convention and now the MTA strike. This city has amazing stamina and continues to make my jaw drop with its tolerance. I only saw a few instances of outright anger and violence over the traffic gridlock. Most folks knew that we were all just as fucked as the next guy. But walking along with a few hundred of my fellow citizens, the subway strike reminded me of the Blackout, which reminded me of the WTC disaster. Only this time it was Christmas and I needed to get to the WTC instead of run away from it. I think the only thing that will ever remind me of the RNC is when Bush invades NYC and starts rounding up all the liberals, ferrying them over to Staten Island, for 'Cheney's Final Solution'.

Is it wrong to compare the president to a communist dictator who would extinguish large groups of folks if he could get away with it? Well, if NYC had oil buried deep within its Manhattan Schist, they would be blasting for that instead of the new City Water Tunnel #3 and all kinds of eminent domain laws would be passing left and right. So no, I don't think it's that much of a stretch.

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Jasmine arrived in Newark on Monday night 3-hours before the MTA strike and after a 13-hour bus ride from the bowels of PA. She then got up early Tuesday morning and went to work at the stationary store in Hoboken and she has been working everyday since. Awesome. She is pretty miserable and once again, my work here is done and I didn't even have to do anything. Except change her room into my office, insisted she sleep on the couch and make her work every damn day she is home. I suck but so what, I'm supposed to. Whore-Ray as they say. Now we just have to make it possible her to support herself. Or as Martha likes to say, "How much do I need to give you to make you go away?

Jasmine's grades are in.
Genetics: C
Journalism: B
Journalism & Mass Media: B
Religions of India: B
Italian: D

She passed Italian! I can't believe it. Oh sure it is with a low D, but who cares, she passed. Now we move on to second semester. Second semester is where the grades usually drop off and Jasmine constantly has to go to the hospital. Stuff like; she cuts her finger and it won't stop bleeding, she doesn't drink enough water and becomes dehydrated and then there is usually some kind of, oh let's just say 'scare'. First semester is usually Death and Sorrow. This year, Grandma Northrop had a small heart attack over Thanksgiving and just two days after Jasmine had gone back to school. No the two aren't related, I don't think. Anyway, they released her from the hospital a week before Christmas and she is healing slowly.

More reasons to fear that I might be turning into my mother (outside of the obvious), I found myself eyeballing fake Christmas trees at K-Mart. Not just the green ones either but a white foil one. The only logic I found to not getting one was that Zoë would still eat the tree regardless of whether is was real or not. I would rather her eat real green trees rather than white plastic ones. This is what I was thinking about while I stood in K-Mart and rolled the white metal tree branch into a curly cue, not how ugly these things are but whether or not my cat would eat it.

ABUNDANCE OF THE HEART
Christmas was low-key this year. Martha and I having already opened our big ta da gifts weeks ago. I love my new speakers and her iBook is always by her side. We bought Jasmine a few little things, here and there with the promise of a trip to Target. Funny, even with just little things we still managed to spend a shit-load of money.

I had one surprise for Martha and it turns out that she bought me the same exact present, the deluxe version of Office Space. Martha bought Jazz a 'vintage' My Little Pony that is still in the original packaging. Vintage is now considered 1986, people. I got a bunch of books, unheard of music and a new purse.

I made one of my famous Dark Chocolate cakes, and then I made a b