Holly Northrop Blog

The Hudson Artswalk is the 10th -13th this weekend. Come up or down or all around if you can. I have five pieces in the main gallery and three pieces at the CCCA Gallery space for the Hang Dog Show. Martha has four pieces in the main gallery also. Here's how queer we are. We volunteered this year but the stipulation is that we have to sit together. Lesbians.

I'm in another show in Texas. I wish I could see that one. It's a life after death themed show and I have three pieces hanging down there. One is The Cross at Ground Zero, another is of a grave I shot at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn and the other one, check this out, is of my dead mother in her casket. Yep, I went there. It's a great shot, so there. This holiday season is the five-year mark of her death and somehow it seemed fitting. The fact that I'm writing this on the exact day that my father died nine years ago is even weirder.

But anyway...moving on.

I never say this but it would be nice to sell something. Probably not the print of my dead mother but still there are other things that are not so disturbing, sort of. But it's not really a selling kind of time is it? We are all hording our money. Hell, I've turned into my grandma Schneider. Every day I tell Martha to withdrawal everything, bring it home, we will hide it all over the house and bury it in canning jars in the yard. Fuck them. Fuck the bankers of the world. The banking industry has NEVER been good to me.

I have all these projects that I'm trying to work on but doctors appointments and a general case of the head crazies have been prohibiting me from focusing on them. I want to make my yearly calendar, and oh, by the way they are no longer free to friends this year. Sorry but times are fucked and I am unemployed. If you want to do something helpful and you still have a job, buy my calendar.

I'm also trying to gather prints for a book, two books really. One would be a large photo book of my work and the other would be a smaller portfolio type book. I so need to update my design portfolio website and blah, blah, blah. I'm the busiest unemployed person I've ever known.

For about the past year, our sunporch has been slowing crumbling back into the earth. Now, when someone mentions that they have a sunporch it implies that they have a wonderful space with sundrenched-whitewashed floors and gentle breezes of lavender scented happiness that floats through pale yellow window sheers. Fluffy white pillows cover an inviting whicker-seating collection and beautiful dark green palms create pockets of cool shade.

The reality of our sunporch is much, much different.

To begin with, we use it as the main way in and out way of the house. More like a mudroom. The door is fucked up from when I had to push the screen in to unlock the door when we locked ourselves out. The weather stripping is coming off the bottom so when you open the door there are strands of rubber hanging off the door. Kind of like a rubber tire that has exploded on the highway.

The floor had hideous, and I do mean hideous, wall-to-wall teal colored indoor-outdoor carpeting. The previous owners even covered the red brick steps with it. The carpet was filthy, seeing how I had never cleaned it; not once in two years. Because there was a feeding station in there, the whole room smelled of warm cat food, regardless if the windows were open or not.

But the windows are cool, kind of an old 50's slat type. Each window has about fifteen slats of glass that open outward, but tilt down, so that even in a thunderstorm, it never rains in.

Oh but the water has been traveling through there in other ways. Ways I didn't even know about until we had the floor ripped up. Apparently, there has been a small stream running through it to the back of the house for about ten years. The good news is that under all that carpet and rotten plywood, there was an actual cement floor. It does have a rather large crack in it, but with a new layer of cement, some paint and new baseboard all that we will have to deal with is repainting the walls.

It's not like we actually have any money to do this shit. But we have to. The floor in front of the door was falling in because the water was rotting it out. Another winter and one frozen ice ball would have made it impossible to open the door. That would have been fun to come home to some cold dark night.

We had to get the tree in the backyard trimmed otherwise when the ice comes, and you know it will, some of the large droopy branches would most certainly have snapped and demolished the garage. Again, an interesting thing to either, come home to, wake up to, or watch happen.

We had to get new gutters because we barely made it through last winter. The three-foot long ice daggers that hung twenty feet above the front door last year, would have killed someone this year. And my god, what a fucked up thing to come home to, wake up to, or watch happen.

Well it seems as though the little cold I caught turned into a coughing nightmare. Wait, saying it was a nightmare implies that there might have been some sleeping involved and that has not been the case. I had a dry hack for four days. I would cough so hard that all the air would leave my lungs and then I would gasp for air. It was awesome. I took NyQuil and all that happened was I would pass out for an hour wake up coughing but still be fucked up on the NyQuil.

It was like this. You know when your drunk and you fall asleep but wake about an hour in and you realize that you're still drunk but now it's even worse because it's not the fun drunk but sleepy unable to sleep drunk, thinking you're going to puke drunk.

It was like that, only with out the fun drunk part.

The whole thing turned into a cycle of days the started with DayQuil, then Sudafed Severe Cold with Sudafed Sinus a little nose spray and then sucking on a few Halls Mentholated Cough Drops. Then I was quiet for a while, I might even fall asleep for an hour or so but bolt upright coughing and then the whole cycle of DayQuil, Sudafed, nose spray, cough drops would start all over again.

At one point, I was taking Dayquil and NyQuil Cough interchangeably. Drink one and chase it with the other. I totally had a major buzz on but I was still coughing.

That was my week. Nothing happened and I did nothing. I didn't go shoot, go to therapy, or cook. The house is a mess and I'm so not happy. I slept on the couch for three nights in a row solid. Then I would spend a good chunk of the day there downing shots of DayQuil and chewing Sudafed pills. When I add in all the over the counter medicine combine with the lack of sleep, I could barely handle any TV that was more mentally stimulating than Charmed.

By Sunday I am still coughing, the glands on the left side of my neck have swollen and I am totally exhausted. Martha has tried to get me in to see a doctor but because I'm not a patent of anyone I have to wait for three more weeks for an appointment. Or I could walk over to the ER at the hospital and see a doctor within a hour or so. But the cost for the insurance company would be ten times higher then if I could just go to a doctor. If I had a doctor up here then they could see me that very day but because I'm a new patent, I have to wait. How does that make any sense?

Jasmine has asked me to burn all my Joy Division for her. She swears she's not depressed, that she just likes the music and I do believe her but part of me did pause when she asked me. It's one thing when I decide to 'go there' but it's a whole other can of worms if your child 'goes there'.

"Mom, I also listen to Tool, but that doesn't make me want to go out and kill myself."
Although she was making a point I never got past the "I listen to Tool" part of that sentence. Tool makes many people want to go out and kill themselves.

She's coming home for her birthday and I can't wait to see her. She's driving and the cost of gas alone is going to be as much as a night at the Waldorf.

Can I just say that the West Fourth Street subway station is a total pit of shit? I hate when I have to use it and will walk the extra blocks just to avoid the damn place. Every time I'm down there I feel like I'm either going to be mugged or shoved in front of a train. It's one of the few stations in Manhattan that makes me feel that way. Even the station in the South Bronx didn't make me as uncomfortable as West Fourth Street.

I don't know why but that station just creeps me out, the vibe is all wrong. It's super spooky when you're all dressed for an interview, (or a job on Wall Street), you become a target for bullshit. I've seen it with other people and I've seen it with me. Dress like any other scourge of the earth and no one looks twice, but slap and pair of dress shoes and a Fossil Red Leather Business Tote on your ass and well, here they come.

Again with the dental visits, another Wednesday, another filling. I am seeing these people on such a weekly basis that I'm starting to know their lives, you know how their weekend was, etc. I could be an employee, except there is no way I could stick my hands in another person's mouth. I can barely tolerate the sight of my own horrible teeth let alone the fucked up crap of someone else's nightmare.

Funny, my dad was always trying to get me to go to dental school. That's all he used to say to me all through high school. "You know Holly, those dental hygienists make damn good money."

He'd always say that after he'd had a dental visit, which if I recall was with about the same frequency that I have. I get my shitty teeth from his Irish/German side of the family tree. Come to think of it, I get a lot of shitty things from that side of the family. Interesting how he never thought I could actually be a dentist but that I just might be smart enough to handle teeth cleaning.

Speaking of stupid, for two days last week, I periodically watched two guys from National Grid dig a hole in our front yard.

Union Street is undergoing a MAJOR construction project, in fact all of Hudson is but now they have started on our street. They are replacing all of the gas lines, the main one and the one that feeds into each and every house. So the drilling, tarring jack hammering, and general jackassiery should be a good time for all of us. It wouldn't suck so much if everything wasn't in the front of the house. My studio, the living room and the bedroom all have direct viewing of the construction. The only place I can hide out in is either the kitchen or Martha's office.

They have marked up the road in front of each house with colorful orange, blue and white spray-paint. It looks like HTML markup. I do notice that our house seems to have quite a few more notes then either one of our neighbors. Not sure what that means but I'm sure it sucks. It's been my experience that anything that has more code around it or special notations is most likely problematic.

The first day of the project is when they started digging the hole. They were looking for the main gas line. They found our pipe with out any real trouble. It's only about two feet down and right in front of our driveway, but the main line was a mystery, wrapped in a enigma that was stuffed inside a Triple Whopper^TM with Cheese. The magnet that they use to find pipe indicated that the main line was in our yard, so they started digging. Digging, digging and digging. End of day one: nothing so they covered the hole up put a bunch of orange cones with yellow tape around it and went home.

Day two. They dug out the hole that they had just filled fifteen hours before and then they dug further. By now, this hole had interested a neighbor, he came over to stand there, and watch Darrel and Darrel dig a hole.

He stood there for over thirty minutes, looking down at the hole. Amazing. I don't get it, I don't understand what part of the brain wants' to watch someone dig a hole. This is such a man thing. Is this the same thing as when we watch each other put makeup on? Just stupid brain shit, kind of like the power save on the computer.

They finally found the main line three feet over and under the road instead of in our yard. So they filled up the hole, and dug a new one, out in the road.

Saturday morning I woke up at 7am to the sound of aluminum ladders being extended and the general clanking that aluminum can cause. The weather has been so nice here that for over a week we've had the windows open and I'd like to keep it that way. Air conditioners cost money and seeing how I'm unemployed and the entire country is in some form of biblical disaster, (flood, fire and food are all attacking us), I figure the less I can crank up the air the better.

After a few clanking moments, I hear a weird noise coming from across the street. I look out and see a man standing by the neighbor's big tree in the front yard. He has the ladder and is looking up at the tree.

Ok whatever, the neighbors are having something done to their house, painted, shutter stuff, whatever, don't care I move on, pissed that I'm awake so early on a Saturday. But this weird noise keeps drifting over. I think it's either a treed cat or one of those crazy squirrels. I figure whatever it is, it's some kind of animal that is caught in the tree and because the workers are right there, it's freaked out. I know a woodpecker lives there but I wasn't sure they make a growl-moan sound.

Finally I figure it out. One of the workers is a mute. He's not deaf because there isn't any signing going on, just loud moaning sounds after everything the other guy tells him to do, which like normal conversation is every few seconds. He sounds like Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein.

"We don't have enough errands to be away from that all day." I said to Martha.
"Well, we're just going to have to take the long way." She said.

Sunday was rough. I have no idea why but it was rough from almost the get go. Sunday was flea day. I hate the day when we give the girls flea treatments. We never had to do it until we moved up here and I just hate it. Zoe always acts like we've stuck a piece of tape to the back of her neck, staring up at the ceiling then flipping her head from left to right in a vein attempt to lick the back of her head. She looks like she is hearing voices. She can do this for hours and she makes me nuts. She drives me crazy, which drives Martha crazy and before too long, one of us (me) is sleeping on the couch with a little prescription overdose. I hate flea day.

In the middle of talking to Martha about how fucked up my head was (and chewing gum) my temporary crown fell out. Like right in front of her. I wish I could say that this was the first time she has ever seen this but alas I have had many a temporary crowns in my mouth and she is way over the shock of seeing something fall off my body. Sixteen years is a lifetime.

So just like that, it is 100° with 97% humidity. Ok, sure that should make shooting all day in Manhattan all the more fabulous. I think some of the summer days will be spent looking at art rather than attempting to make it. MOMA here I come.

I remember a few years ago when Jazz and I went to Siren. It was early in the day and I wanted to be in the crowd for a few bands before going backstage. With not a cloud in the sky, we stood on the black pavement watching The Kills when about halfway through their set, I got silly sun sick. Despite being lathered up in #45 sun block, fully hydrated and with plenty of personal space all around me, I got dizzy. Like rolling eyes, dizzy. Jazz got all authoritative and pushy and we were out of there in a matter of seconds. Then rest of the day she kept shoving me into the shade.

What was my point? Oh yeah, summer and I just don't get along. Not even like a bad relationship, that would imply that at one time we liked each other. I just spend as much time as I can in my air-conditioned pod praying for the temperature to go back into the 80-degree range. I only go out at dusk, and pretty much piss and moan the entire time. It's great.

More work on Martha's office last weekend in what is now the longest running makeover in history but once it's finished it will be nice and functional. The bookcases are built, mini blinds are hung and now the shredding, filing and general organization begins. Considering that this is all shit that we should have either done before we moved in here or taken care of years ago, three weeks in, isn't that bad.

The sunroom however, looks like storage shed. Unfortunately, a storage shed that is the first thing you see when you walk in the door. There are two large tables, a bookcase; Martha's old desk; our old coffee table; a bench; the bottom half of the china cabinet; two small glass end tables; a kite and a wind sock; and of course Martha's exercise bike, all shoved in there for all the world to see.

I look like I have some mental defect, outside of the one that we are all aware of. Some kind of fucked up hoarding thing that has now upped itself a notch to include large furniture.

Last Wednesday was a big day for a bunch of reasons. At 7:30 in the morning, Martha had to drive my pathetic non-driving ass twenty minutes north to Chatham in order for me to pick up the print for the CCCA Landscape show. Already in a slightly miserable mood after informing work that she would be late, driving AWAY from work was not something she wanted to do at all. The print was supposed to be ready to go by 8:00. We arrive at 8:00 and the guy isn't there. For twenty minutes, he isn't there and Martha is now no longer talking to me, preferring to wait in car and stare at a brick wall while listening to a forty-five year old speech by JFK on NPR.

Finally, the framer arrives and guess what? He's not finished.

"I need about another twenty minutes", he said to me. F.U.C.K. I think in my head as I walked to the car. Needless to say, Martha was not pleased to hear this.

After another twenty minutes, he was finished. We dropped the print off at the house and then proceeded on our merry way down the thruway.

All told we were running over an hour late. There was a last minute push to make it to the Suffern station by 10:45 otherwise I would be stuck there for almost an hour until the local train moseyed on down the tracks.

As we got off the highway and rounded the bend, Martha sort of slid through the stop sign instead of coming to a complete stop. Just as she did this and sure as shit, there was a cop.

His lights went on and we pulled over. Sitting there on the side of the road with the flashing blue and red lights behind us, the 10:45 train to Hoboken passed by us. I waved at it and giggled; Martha just glared at me.

The cop got out of his gas guzzling SUV and walked toward us. Martha looked over at me and said, "Do not say ANYTHING."

Martha rolled down the window.

"I stopped you because of the stop sign back there."
Martha said nothing and handed off her license and registration. The cop noticed that she had a Fraternal Order of Police Newark, NJ card in her wallet.
"Do you want to hand me that now?"
"Do you want it?"
"Well, you want me to have it before I start writing the ticket."
She handed him the card.
"Do you know where you got this?" He said turning it over in his hands.
"Ah well, we do charity work for them."
"Do you remember the name of the person down there?"
Martha pauses...she can't remember, "No"

He walked away.

After a few minutes of us fumbling with the card and bitching at each other in hushed tones, she turned it over, and there on the back was the name.

The cop came back.

"I have one question for you. What are you ladies doing down here from Hudson?"
"I work at Sharp."
Having no real purpose for being anywhere, I just smiled.
"Oh you make the drive? So do I, well from Kingston but I'm down here everyday. I know it looks like you are in the middle of nowhere but you need to stop at the stop signs."

He handed Martha back her license and registration and check it out, he let us go WITHOUT a TICKET.

Holy shit. I marked that day down on the calendar just like I did when Martha remembered where the AAA batteries were at. That stuff just does not happen every day.

More funny weird stuff: Ever since Frank died, I've been ordering books every few months for Martha's mom. Gen used to be a big reader and by all appearances she still is, she sometimes just can't remember what she's read. But who cares, it makes her happy to get books and I love books so, there.

We always ask her what she would like, and together we usually go over the New York Times Best Seller's list and pick a few. There are some glitches; she keeps asking for A Thousand Splendid Suns, even though she's read it more than once and The Kite Runner keeps coming up also. But we push through that and move on.

Here's the thing, her book requests are fucking up my Amazon.com personalized recommendations. Not that I usually use them (my wish list is a more accurate gauge) but I'm starting to get pushed some seriously strange stuff and this last request has really screwed with the algorithm.

Gen went to the doctor a few weeks ago and while there, she struck up a conversation with one of the nurses. As she put it, "She took a liking to me."

Anyway, they starting chatting about reading, both agreeing that they were avid readers, the nurse recommended that Gen read Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers.

Ok, well Winston-Salem is a Christian town in a Christian state in the Christian south. North Carolina is more of the New Testament South and Francine Rivers is a Christian writer, who specializes in Christian Fiction and Christian Romance.

So know I'm being pushed the entire Francine Rivers collection.

From Amazon's review of Redeeming Love:
"In this splendid retelling of the biblical story of Hosea, bestselling author Francine Rivers pens a heartbreaking romance between a prostitute and the upright and kind farmer who marries her; the story also functions as a reminder of God's unconditional love for his people. Redeeming Love opens with the Gold Rush of 1850 and its rough-and-tumble atmosphere of greed and desire. Angel, who was sold into prostitution as a child, has learned to distrust all men, who see her only as a way to satisfy their lust. When the virtuous and spiritual-minded Michael Hosea is told by God to marry this "soiled dove," he obeys, despite his misgivings. As Angel learns to love him, she begins to hope again but is soon overwhelmed by fear and returns to her old life. Rivers shines in her ability to weave together spiritual themes and sexual tension in a well-told story, a talent that has propelled her into the spotlight as one of the most popular novelists in the genre of Christian fiction. This is one of her best."

Of course the main character is a whore. I would expect nothing less.

Aren't spiritual themes and sexual tension the problem with just about every organized religion on the planet? And some would argue, combined, they are one of the fundamental causes of mental illnesses.

Anyway, so all this Francine stuff is meshed in there with things like: Hunter S. Thompson's Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga; William Eggleston's 5x7; A bunch of Dali prints; most of the God stuff from Dylan like Saved; some good old S&M Satanic stuff from Lydia Lunch; some Handsome Family and then every third or fourth item is a Francis book like the The Last Sin Eater.

Or even better: One Night With the King (2006) DVD. One Night With The King is a 'sweeping epic about Hadassah the young Jewish girl who becomes the Biblical Esther Queen of Persia.'

And one quick look at the overall reviews for One night with the King:

"... Lush production but inaccurate telling of the biblical story"

"... If you're looking for biblical accuracy, you'll be disappointed.

And OMG my personal fav: "... as a girl, I have to say, some of the outfits are quite cute, and I'd love to wear them."

Awesome.

Because of a miscommunication between Martha and I we have two copies of 7th Heaven (The Women's Murder Club) by James Patterson. She got the book from work and I ended up ordering it for Gen. I've looked at it and I'm not sure I can read it. I couldn't even keep my mind from wandering when I was reading the back of the book jacket. So we have an extra copy here at the house, email me if you want it and it's so yours.

More work this weekend on Martha's room and I think I'm going to die. Her 3000-pound desk arrived and it took us all of Saturday and well into Saturday night to build most of it, taxing all of my problem solving and geometrical relationships skills. We stopped working only because our backs were broken, I was unable to hold things with either one of my hands and I could no longer think straight.

The house is still a misfortunate mess but her space already has a real good vibe and once it is finally finished, (we still have to build the bookcases and then go through everything, file it and organize the whole mess), it will be a great office. Unlike the fucking disaster, it was before. I wanted to take before and after photos but no one needs to see the before. However, here is the almost done photo and another of Miss M at her new desk.

The outside of our house is turning into crazy cute, which after the cold dead winter look combined with the whole foil thing, we are very happy to at least look normal. It's just the inside that has problems.

Sunday we had to drive a framed print down to Connecticut for a show I'm going to be in at the Ridgefield Guild of Artists. While the whole thing was not so much fun due to back pain and general stiffness that both of us were suffering from. I felt extra bad about making Martha burn a weekend day in the car but we did it. Drove all the way down to Ridgefield, dropped off the print but then we got a little lost when we drove off the Taconic to look at a golf course. Not just any golf course but the James Baird Gold Course, which was built in 1948, apparently an historic landmark of golf course lore.

We then drove around some weird little back roads until we finally came upon civilization and spotted a Dunkin Donuts where just like that, all was made better with coffee and a muffin.

Wednesday I have to pick up another print for a Landscape show up here in Hudson and I just found out that I'm going to be published in Lightleaks.

More home projects on the horizon include a new floor for the sunroom. I had wanted to just rip up the nasty carpet that was in there but right before the last snowstorm in February, I noticed that the floor was buckling in front of the door. So now we have to replace the floor but we can save a shitload of money if I do the demo. Now that is going to be fucking painful. I am scared for my back, shoulders and the general whole body area.

Speaking of pain, I get to go to the dentist every Wednesday for the entire month of June. I've also moved my therapy to Wednesday night, so um, Wednesdays are going to be full. I will either be having a filling filled, a mold made or a crown put in, and not all on one tooth. This a la carte presentation spans several teeth on all four corners of my mouth.

Then after fucking with my mouth, I get to ride the train to Martha and then another hour to therapy where for another hour I'll probably talk about my teeth and all the nuttiness the entire thing is causing me. You know loss of control, pain and that nasty persecution thing that is on an endless loop in my dizzy brain.

The whole thing is a total drag in that I'll have to break up my day of shooting to go to the dentist, not just once but for four weeks in a row. How the hell is that going to work. Start placing your bets now as to what week you think I'm going to crack.

After $2,700 and a week and a half later, Jasmine finally has the Jeep back and not a day too soon seeing how she moved Saturday and Sunday. Her living situation has always been a little screwy but this one was down right stupid. Now she's in another place until August, when by all accounts she is supposed to graduate. She's not going to walk though, she'll just have the diploma sent here, where upon opening it, Martha and I will drop to our knees and weep.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Big fun news: I was accepted into two (2) shows last week. One is up here in Hudson at the Limner Gallery for a show titled 'Art Biologic'. The opening is May 3rd, 4-6pm and the show runs to May 24th. I have one piece in the show that is a little different then I usually hang. Come on up to Hudson if you want to see some art. It's First Saturdays' and all the galleries will be open late.

The other one is in Johnson City, Texas for a show titled 'Urban Ambience: Scenes from the City' at the Watson Studio Gallery. The opening is April 19 and runs until May 24. I have two pieces in this show (#42 & 43). So if you are in Texas...

And then finally I am in a current show in Jersey titled: 'Is it possible to make a photograph of New Jersey regardless of where you are in the world?' (Great Idea) Link is here but know that it is a rather large .PDF and takes a few minutes to fully load. All the photos are awesome and my piece is on page 19.

Busy, as a beaver, yes I am. I am submitting to three more shows, and well, we will see how that all goes. A while back Martha joked, but half-seriously, that I should get an intern. As truly funny as that is, she's kind of right.

Some friends of ours just had their first baby. Well, probably their only but anyway, they are brand new parents and congratulations to them. Welcome to the rest of your life.

Speaking of forks in the road, (or is it in the head?), Jasmine comes home for a quick weekend visit. She's going to play Photo Bitch for me on Saturday while I shoot a dear friend of mine and his fiancée in various locations in Manhattan. Should be fun and exhausting at the same time, hence the need for Photo Bitch. Jasmine is bringing a friend, (Weber) so the Photo Bitch has an assistant.

I get to use Martha's new camera. It is a digital world after all but I'll still shoot a few moody black and white holgas because that's just the way I am: moody black and white. Oh and the new printer came and man it is beautiful. Just simply stunning. Thanks babe.

When you buy a house, it never stops. The siding people have to come back to finish up the shit they should have done in the first place. There are holes and some of the siding trim is popping off. Needless to say we are not happy and I think if one more thing goes wrong, Martha is going to file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.

The floor in the sunroom is buckling. Not sure why or what the fuck is going on but I can't wait to find out. If we don't fix it, pretty soon we won't be able to open the door.

Our taxes went up again. This makes the umpteenth time they have raised them and so far, our tax bill has tripled since we moved here two years ago. We are going to have to file a grievance, (that should be fun) but how in hells bells can it be normal to pay $8,000 a year in taxes?

And you know it you love it, the wasps are back. The bug guy will be notified. Those bugs are straight from hell and for whatever reason they love our house. I did however find some sick comfort in watching them build a massive hive in our neighbor's attic. They work with military precision. Martha said we should send them over to Iraq. While I shouldn't have watched it, (the hive is about thirty feet from our kitchen window) I couldn't look away. It was like the live National Geo channel.

And while I'm thinking of nasty wasps; worrying about speaking badly of a former employer is not such a problem when that employer is doing just a fine job all by himself. I'm just so very, very glad that I no longer work for them. It would be too embarrassing to say, 'Oh yes I work for this racist, good-old-white-boy Arizonian jackass, who while excepting and award, had no problem using the "N-word" in front of a room full of Professional Journalists.' Reporters who report, and did report and in some cases even video taped the whole nasty event. This is the same ignorant jerk who just one week prior to shooting his fat mouth off received an Civil Libertarians award from the ACLU.

Wow, and wow. Old news, seeing how it happened last Thursday. It has already circled the blog world about a zillion times, but the whole thing just makes me sad. I have a real problem when a former employer drops the "N-word" on camera and gives a snarky apology as an afterthought.

Well, last week the siding people finally finished up. Jesus Christ they are gone. There is still some caulking that Martha and I are going to have to handle. If we don't fill up the seams, when the wasps come and you know they will, our house will once again be one big hive.

After the massive rain storms that pounded the shit out of us over the weekend, Martha noticed a drip pattern in the hallway. Having just put a new roof on last year and new siding all over for the past five weeks, the only drip pattern in my life should be in my head. I was supposed to go out on the roof and see if I could see anything but my heart just wasn't in it. And you know, if I'm on a roof and if I'm not feeling it, then I probably shouldn't be out there in the first place. Oh yea! Here come more noise making workers to find the mystery leak. It is endless.

Like everyone else around here we have a little bit of water in the basement and we have a small pond, or as I like to call it, a seasonal pond, in our back, back yard. The birds like it and of course, the ducks are migrating to it. When it freezes, we will then have a little ice-slaking rink. Standing at the kitchen window it is fun to watch the birds play in the water, seeing how I have all this time now to do things like gaze at ducks.

I went into Manhattan on Thursday for a no charge dental checkup, Martha's favorite kind. After that, the day was all mine. Now of course on the day I have to go in there was a bomb in Times Square.

It was just a coincidence that I had already planned on going over there to shoot a little and maybe go to the International Center of Photography. Boy, if we had some extra money, (isn't that funny) I would take a class there. But as it stands, I can't even join with an Individual Membership running $75.00. Most of the classes that I might be interested in are over $600.00.

When I left the house at 7:00 am that day, I read that they had closed Times Square. By the time I had finished my three hour pilgrimage (I mean commute), and in true New York City fashion, traffic was back to normal. When I had finished with my dental appointment at noon, they only had the island where the recruiting station sits, and the flash point of the bomb, blocked off. I actually walked right up to it and shot some film and a few photos with my snazzy new cell phone.

Having nowhere to go and no real agenda was despite being awesome, a little stressful in that 'where to go to the bathroom' kind of way. I have a few spots in the village, but midtown, I'll need to explore that further. I can't keep asking my friends to let me in their buildings so I can pee.

For lunch, I tied my purse to a chair and ate soup in Bryant Park where I sat two tables over from an Indian man who was practicing the violin. Sitting in Bryant Park I noted that most of the folks around me were nothing like me at all, which is a sensation one would think I would be used to by now. But uptown is so very, very different than the village. It's not that I'm not familiar with it, I so am. When we first moved here, every damn day I commuted into Manhattan via Times Square. I had to walk down 42nd street and catch the subway downtown to 8th Street. It was a twice-daily nightmare. I also think Times Square is where I started loathing anyone not from here.

Later on in the day, I met a friend and after a cookie and some sunshine, she took me back to her office. Someone that I used to work with has been freelancing for her. I hadn't seen him in over two years. He quit the Voice after the merger, along with a bunch of other people from the web department. Seeing him was sad and happy at the same time, if that makes any sense. I suppose this city is littered with shell-shocked ex-Voice employees. I feel like I was in a cult or something. Some kind of Heaven's Gate thing, except I got out before the Phenobarbital and plastic bags were passed out.

I remember someone telling me years ago that once a Voice employee, always a Voice employee. I kind of knew what he meant at the time and now, I really understand.

I'm done, I'm done. Its' January and we all know what that means. It's a new season of The L Word! Hurry, mute that fucking theme song!

Ah yes, week four of our home renovations starts out with the siding people still here. The creamy yellow siding is all up; gone is the flapping foil and chunks of demonic wasp nests. That's right, I'm not just fucked-in-the-head over wasps, there really was an infantry of horror behind the old aluminum siding. The boys, (as we now call them), pulled out big slabs of nests all along the back of the house. Some still had wasps in them, but because it was cold, they died upon exposure. If only it were that easy. I can think of a few people that if all I had to do was to rip them out the house onto the front lawn where they would die from exposure, well then Martha, fill up the Prius 'cause we are going on a road-trip.

So what did we learn here? Sometimes, I am not as zany as I may appear to be. I am kind of like that warning on the side view mirrors; objects may be closer than they appear. Just because I'm freaking out about something does not mean that it isn't real.

Anyway, now all that is left to do on the house is the window treatments and all the other little details, which if I remember correctly, is where the Devil lives; in the details.

On cloudy days, the house looks (no doubt about it), yellow. On sunny days, it blends in more with all that damn sunlight and seems to be more cream.

Every part of the outside of the house has been hammered to death. What that means is that all over the inside of the house is dust and little one hundred year old dirt particles. Mostly the dirt crumbs are all around the edges, window frames, outside wall baseboards and any furniture that is against any outside wall. So pretty much everything. I've been trying to keep up with it but it's just useless. So once they leave, (hopefully by Tuesday) I have a immense whole-house cleaning to look forward to.

On the other side of torment, somehow, I ended up on a peculiar mailing list at work. Roughly twice a month I receive a package with a God book in it. I'm on a Christian mailing list. Of all the things that could come to the Voice it is hardly one for the record books. The fact that this package is addressed to me is odd. Someone out there decided that I needed to get my God on.

So far, Thomas Nelson, Inc. from Nashville, TN has sent me:
The Trouble with Paris: Following Jesus in a World of Plastic Promises
Jesus Brand Spirituality: He Wants His Religion back
Finding Our Way Again: The Return of Ancient Practices
And, from the Ancient Practices Series: In Constant Prayer

I've made a little shrine for all these books over my desk. Seeing how I really don't have much personal stuff there anymore. I have been putting up 'my flair' with either weird things I find around the office from past employees cubicles, or things that come to me, like the god books. Up until a few days ago, I still had hanging there my 20 x 13 photo of dead Pope John Paul II that Gianni Giansanti took and that I personally think is one of the top ten amazing shots of 2005, but I brought that home because I didn't want anyone else to snag it.

In addition to all the Jesus crap, I have a Sexual Harassment pamphlet thumb tacked to my cube wall, a webby award that the old web team won back in the 'tail end of the days' when we did shit that was cool, and a copy of a TPS Report.

Walking by my desk one would think that I am some kind of crazy religious dyke with the conflicting protestant and catholic concerns.

While poking around the Thomas Nelson's, Inc. from Nashville, TN website, I noticed a few interesting things. I particularly liked the menu on their homepage for the first three sections; Fiction, Non-fiction and Bibles. It is interesting to me that they find a difference between them. Upon closer look, the line between them all is pretty fuzzy but when you start using the term Non-fiction in reference to anything having to do with Christ aren't you already blurring the lines of reputable classification?

The reference section is more like self-help on how to read The Bible, which furthers my belief that all self-help books are bullshit. In all of the reference section this book: Captivating Heart to Heart Study Guide: An Invitation Into the Beauty and Depth of the Feminine Soul, bothers me the most.

Here is the first paragraph of the books description:

"Every little girl has dreams of being swept up into a great adventure and of being the beautiful princess. Sadly, when women grow up, they are often swept up into a life filled merely with duty and demands. Many Christian women are tired and struggling under the weight of the pressure to be a "good servant," a nurturing caregiver, or a capable home manager."

Eww, eww and yuck.

It's like Haiku:

little princess girl
capable home manager:
tired woman's dream

What the hell is a capable home manager? Is that what they are calling housewives these days? Well, by that classification, my mom was an incapable home manager with a "slight" prescription drug problem, but hey, maybe she just needed a little more GOD in her life or to be dragged out on the front lawn.

In the video section, I found out that James Brolin stared in a A Dramatic Presentation of the Birth of Christianity.

James, (Marcus Welby; Amityville Horror; Barbara Streisand's husband), Brolin plays Peter. The guy who put the Reagan in The Reagans. I hated Reagan so much (still do) that I just wanted to punch the TV anytime he was on the screen. Judy Davis was awesome as Nancy and the reason that I watched it in the first place. I remember thinking at the time that her version of 'Just Say No Nancy' reminded me of my nightmare of growing up in a house of republicans.

This is that movie that the Republican Party got all pissy about and threatened to boycott. But I'm confused here, it's network TV. Who the hell cares if a political party decides to boycott anything that is broadcast on network television? What is the larger message here; does the Republican Party own Nielsen TV Ratings?

Anyway, CBS caved to this threat and moved it on over the Showtime. Showtime, the channel that has always excelled in stupid programming and will run the sloppy seconds of HBO in a heartbeat. This explains to me not only why The L Word ever made it on the air, but why it is in its (gag me) fifth season.

Right, okay, let us see I've covered God and the Devil, home renovations, politics, mom issues, lesbian sex and drug use. Is there anything else I'm not supposed to write about? Why yes there is, but for now I'm good. So I guess I'll go flip back and forth between a little mind numbing girl-on-girl no sex/stupid sex, and the Nielsen TV Rated Oscars, while abusing a just a little bit'o prescription drugs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have to get an MRI Monday morning and I'm a little freaked out about it. So freaked out in fact that while Martha was at yoga, I laid under the coffee table for about ten minutes just to see what would happen. We have a rather oversized coffee table that was perfect for a visual test of something big hovering over my upper torso. I wanted to see exactly what the fucking problem was with my brain and small spaces. This whole claustrophobia thing is new; it only started when they kept scanning me for my adrenal tumor. I realized while I was under there that it isn't so much the machine but the whole thing, the noise, the lights the medical nature of it all, and well not being in control. I was in control under the coffee table. I could touch it and laugh at the silliness of it all and after a few minutes, I even had a cat join me, wondering just what the hell I was doing.

I have six blue, doctor-prescribed Xanax, a sleep mask to block out the light and Martha to help me through it all. Martha is taking the day off work just so she can sit in the room with me for my forty-minute test. Forty minutes is an awfully long time to have me shoved under a big metal pancake thing and expect me to keep it together. On the upside of it all, once I'm away from the MRI place and have calmed down, I should have a pretty great buzz on. Needless to say I will be working from home after a small nap.

Fantastic news from CCCA, (Columbia County Council on the Arts - these people seriously need a better website), they have chosen four of my photos to hang in the 13th Annual ArtsWalk. The super cool thing is that they are photos that I shot with my Brownie camera. That weird little blue camera shoots some strange stuff every now and then. Again, they didn't pick my favorite but what the hell. Even better news is that they also chose two pieces of Martha's to show. This is going to be fun. We get to go to the Meet the Artists' Reception where all of our social demons, (alcohol, food and mindless conversation) will taunt both Martha and me. Maybe I'll save a blue Xanax for that seeing how even on a good day I am still a total loon in public.

So the wasp guy came last week and I think we are now finally on the same page with the intensity of the problem. I know he thought I was crazy, as most folks think when they first meet me, but now, well, let's just say, he had an epiphany.

I was outside with him when his illuminating discovery had just begun. As he was placing the latter against the sunporch roof, it slipped out of his hands and tapped the gutter. That's when a small army of about a hundred brown wasps flew out in formation to see what was up. As I ran into the house, I looked back over my shoulder to see him jumping off the latter and stepping way, way back trying to get a better look at the whole house. I watched from inside the sunporch as he went back to the truck and brought out the big guns, (literally he had a big spray thing that looked like a gun) a big can of professional wasp spray and a fogger. As he started spraying, I went inside.

At one point, I looked out the upstairs bathroom window and there must have been a thousand wasps flying off the house. It was like the apocalypse out there.

After about an hour he came in the house and we chatted about the severity of the problem in which he actually apologized to me for not understanding just how many there were. It seems as though we are wasp central for Hudson. Well, at least for our little part of Union Street. Every five feet or so, and all along the sunporch was a nest. There are so many of them that he is going to have to come back and keep spraying and spraying. They have found a perfect place under the gutter traps and they don't want to give it up. Considering that they will probably be dead in six weeks I could live with it if they weren't over the main door into the house. Every time we open the windows, they get in and whenever I go outside to water or feed the cats, they are all around me. It's like we live inside their hive and it's rather spooky.

But again, outside of all that nonsense, we have officially lived in upstate New York for one whole year. That's right folks, Martha and I have been driving up and down the New York State Thruway for a solid year and both of our backs are showing the wear and tear. Woo hoo! We should get a sticker. We've had the Prius for just about a month and we already have over 5,000 miles on it. I do love living up here and I think I might have found a way for Martha to let me redo the bathrooms. We went to Home Depot to get a bug bomb for the garage, (spiders) and I had her looking in the bathtub isle at Whirlpool Tubs and talking about how fucking great it would be to have a soaking tub in the bathroom. It's the we could have "this" if you let me do "that" game.

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:

First off, this thing has to be the craziest thing I have seen on the internets in quite some time. Praise glory be to the meticulously passionate artist.

Our new stove still does not work. This deal of the decade has yet to do anything other then sit, extended out into my kitchen, for over a month now. All I can do with it is dust it. The repairman has been here twice and replaced three circuit boards and a sensor. Now he has ordered one more part and if that isn't it then he's going to have to pull all the wires out to see if there is a crossed connection. Of all the times of year to not have a stove, this is the best I suppose but I am becoming a little annoyed with microwaving water for my calm-me-down mint tea.

On the plus side we now have a fantastic new front door, complete with super cool screen door. On the day of the install, there was a massive thunderstorm with sideways rain and hail that blew threw the house minutes after the workman set the door in its frame. Nothing was holding it in, it was just sitting there when all hell broke loose. It rained so hard that our garage flooded. I have never seen the garage flood, the basement yes, of fucking course, but not the garage. This storm was so powerful that the basement didn't flood at all, it all ran off and on down the hill. It was crazy.

But now we have a brand new and ultra cat fascinating front door. The screen door is full length and for now we have the double-paned glass in there, so when the door is opened, it looks like the whole world is out there. The first few days the cats were afraid to go near it because it looked like they could just walk outside. I watched one of the neighborhood cats that I feed (the one we gave free healthcare to, who we have also named Big Grey Fatty) walk right up our front steps and bonk his nose on the glass. He was just going to walk in the house. Now, he sits out there on the stoop while Zoë sits in front of him behind the glass, doing this super disturbing little Meow Dance in front of him. It is kind of like her Crazy Sock Dance but way weirder.

I have found the perfect space in Hudson to renovate into a public gallery/live work space and I only need 100k to make the deal happen. Anybody, anybody? 40-50k down and 40-50k to repair. The place is on Warren Street in one of the best locations possible and is damn close to exactly what I have been looking for. Which is why I shouldn't look in the first place because I just might find it and then what? Built in 1872 and a whopping thirty-four years older then our 1906 house, it is twelve-feet wide and it needs a new everything. Heat, electrical, plumbing, oh and let us just say a new roof. How seriously interested was I? I went into the clay basement, that is how serious. I love dreams like these. Of course, dreams like these are one of the things that make Martha totally nuts, (that and living in a cat town) but she is the one who wanted to see it.

In all honesty, stuff like the little twelve-foot house makes me crazy too but only because it slams home the certainty that money does make everything happen. Without a bucket load of cash, you just end up driving up and down the thruway every damn day for hours on end in an SUV with no air-conditioning, stuck behind an opened-top, semi-trailer truck full of NYC dumpster trash, dreaming about things you cannot afford. But I suppose with a place like my little twelve-foot wide dream, in the midst of a total gut renovation, a broken stove and the realization that your ten-year-old calico is startin