Holly Northrop Blog

Right out of the gate last Monday morning, I sat in the Hudson courthouse listening to a laundry list of heinous charges against a man whose life could very well be my hands.

He was charged with twenty-one, (21!) counts of rape in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd degrees, all dating over a one year period from November of 06 to April of 07. Instead of saying the word sodomy, (which I'm am sure most of us would have preferred to have heard) the judge read out each and every degree of anal and oral intercourse to the point that if he said the words 'anal' or 'oral' one more time I was going to throw my paperwork on the floor and walk out. Finally, the judge wrapped it all up with a tidy 'endangering the welfare of a child' charge.

Rough stuff to wake up to.

I was so out of there, but not as fast as all of us would have assumed. There was no way I was qualified to be on a jury for a trial like that but first, they had to chat with me. It was a big case and with a jury pool of over six hundred people, and even though I was in Group 1, it still took them awhile to get to me. Weirdly, what made them pull me and ask questions had to do with my employment at the Voice. But once they got in there, and opened the door to talk to me, it wasn't long before I was thanked for my service and out the door I went.

Amazingly the man was found innocent on all charges except for the endangering the child part.

Good god the economy sucks but there is hope for us all and here is why; Jasmine managed to not only snag an interview for a managers position at Staples but she also GOT THE JOB! WOO HOO! Email her and praise her.

The job has benefits and this alone is cause to sing. COBRA costs around $450 a month and guess who is paying for that? One guess and it is NOT that ass cancer father of hers.

But times are screwy and if all any of us want is a $10.00 an hour job at Staples well then, it's all good baby, it's all good.

The New York Times has an excellent interactive feature on the Presidential Debates for all those fact checkers out there. The Check Point feature is awesome. I think the whole package is splendid and I wish I worked there. I don't care about the horror stories that I've heard, I still wish I worked there. I would say that I would give my right arm to work there but then if asked to produce said arm, I would have to decline.

Anyway, so what came out of the debate for me was the impression that McCain is totally insane. Insane McCain and his dope fiend wife Cindy (a total drug name) are quite the pair. Wasn't she taking over twenty Percocet and Vicodin a day with a direct line to a prescription pad? Fucking Jackpot.

Ok but let us say that you are awake from 6am until 11pm - ish. Twenty pills a day works out to be a little over a pill an hour. I'm curious, was she alternating drugs, first hour a Percocet next hour a Vicodin or was she starting out the day with the bang of a Percocet and then keeping it level with Vicodin? Or maybe it was a slow warm ramp up with Vicodin and then around the middle of the day, when things tend to get weird she'd pop a Percocet?

Good lord regardless of the order, by noon, I think even I would have to take a nap or something. This went on for three years or so we were told.

All I can say is God Bless Betty Ford. At least she was, well, different and not a Cindy.

Insane McCain is all war, all the time. 24-7 WAR. By him suggesting a spending freeze on everything but defense, veterans' affairs and entitlement programs just confirms how much war is part of his brain. He seems to be, um… fucking damaged, right?

Ok so here is the thing...I do not really talk about politics anymore in this format because I have lost my ability to be tolerant on any level. This is somewhat odd seeing how I am a lesbian and I not only expect tolerance I demand it wherever I go.

But these goddamn republicans make me fucking crazy. I find it hard to believe that they have managed to dig up, (ha, ha dig up) a crazy old man obsessed by war who gives me not one, (NOT ONE!) ounce of hope for this country. If I suspect that someone I am talking with is a republican I have to beat down the anger inside me just so I don't smash their face in.

It's a problem. I keep saying to Martha that I want to move to New Zealand, but she just keeps telling me to shut up.

Anyway, I don't think this rage change has so much to do with working at the Voice for six years but more of being engaged in the news business and witnessing each and every day the ass pounding that this country has taken under the Bush/Cheney administration.

Oh and fuck Giuliani. What the hell was he doing wrapping up the debates? Where the fuck was Sarah? Under lock down in one of Cheney's many bat caves undergoing the final exam cram of her life? Win or lose, she will never again see daylight of her own freewill.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHAT?

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

Right.

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

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

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

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

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

This event was truly unfortunate for all of us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An abundance of workmen are currently plaguing me, adding to the overall persecution issue that I have. First off, there is the ongoing gas line replacement that Hudson is undergoing. They went away for a few weeks and I thought they were done but no, now they are back. Not only are they back they want to come inside and dick around in our basement for three hours on Monday morning. Then, we are having our driveway dug up and repaved. The thing is a mess and will not make it through another winter. And the same goes for the gutters, something Martha has been avoiding talking about. The siding people are coming back to rework all the trim around the windows and a few other things that they should have done right in the first place.

All this and a few other distractions have left me flustered, with my ADD working overtime. I'm so unfocused that while on the phone with Martha last week, I threw money in the trash and put receipts in my wallet.

Anyway, Jasmine took her 'final' final last week and now we wait. Tick, tick, tick. She said it was hard but she's sure she passed. Wasting no time at all, her health insurance sent us a letter informing us that if she is no longer a full-time student that they will no longer cover her. We or rather Martha, is going to have to start paying COBRA until Jasmine gets her shit together. Not only are we (Martha) going to have to pay COBRA but also her rent, and anything else that she can't cover. Martha said she wants to start claiming Jazz as a dependant, checking the box on the COBRA form for: Continuously incapable of self-sustaining employment as a result of a mental or physical handicap.

On the cool and exciting side of things, it looks like Jazz is going to be moving into her new apartment this coming weekend. How thrilling for her. Martha, who is living vicariously through her, is planning our trip to the 'Purgh' at the end of the month. We are going to spend five nights and four days in the lovely city of Pittsburgh. I haven't been back since September of 2000 so I'm looking forward to it. Martha wants to visit friends, go out to dinner and maybe a Baseball game. She also wants to drive around Mt Lebanon looking at her old house, various schools and general memory lane type stuff.

She also wants to go buy this two-bedroom condominium and move there, with or without the rest of us.

Aside from spending time with Jasmine, I want to visit my dead grandparents and go to the record store. Somehow that seems perfect. What the hell else am I going to do there? I have like one friend there, whom I will visit and of course I will be shooting photos but with some of the best records stores in the country located there, um yeah, I'm going to the record store. That and the fantastic Red, White and Blue.

Still shooting with the Horizon 202 and I've got about another week before I should 'respectively' give it back. Seeing how I have to go into Manhattan twice this week I should be good. Going from the solid square format of my Holga to shooting in panoramic is a refreshing change. Suddenly the world has opened up. Not all shots can be pans, although it could be fun to do a series.

Martha and I went to see Batman over the weekend. We originally had tickets to the IMAX in Nyack but we decided against making Martha basically drive to work on a Saturday. After driving all week long from Hudson to Mahwah and then back, by Friday she's pretty bat shit crazy so adding another day, is nothing short of cruel. At the time we ordered tickets it sounded like a fun idea but on the day of the event we changed our minds and went up to the local crap theater, here in Hudson.

There were maybe fifteen people there but the truly stand out bunch was a family that sat in the last row up to our right. There were four of them, mom, dad, and two sons and all so very, very overweight that together they could have made three more people. They sat in the last row with an empty seat between each one of them and proceeded to wrinkle paper and chew food for a solid two hours of the two and a half hour movie. They would eat and eat and then every fifteen minutes of so they would send one of the kids down to the concession stand to stock up on candy and free refills on popcorn and soda. They only stopped eating when the food trough closed. Finally, the last thirty minutes of the movie were quiet.

The movie was long and Heath was awesome. I found the nurse outfit more disturbing then anything else. Free refills and processed foods should be eliminated.

I think I might be reaching the end of my ability to go to a theater. Martha and I have large TV so honestly what the fuck are we doing? At home we can get fucked up, pause for bathroom and water breaks and the occasional 'I need a moment break' without any trouble at all. I can touch and lay on anything I want without fear and stickiness. The only things that are sticky in my house are the things that are supposed to be sticky, like tape and spray mount. Ok so we don't have surround sound and for the moment we have to wait until things are released on DVD but still.

Jasmine's apartment saga continues. She's found a place that she loves, and is in the high range of her price range. That's funny, it's not really her price range it's more like ours now isn't it. Martha spoke with the landlord, she being the more responsible sounding out of the two of Jasmine's mothers. Technically, Jazz has three mothers, but none of us considers that beer-drinking bitch in PA to be anything more than a pain in the ass.

Speaking of asses, Jasmine's father has yet to pony up any money to help his daughter out. He gave her 100 bucks for her birthday, which she proceeded to spend on gas money to go see him, visit a friend in Pittsburgh and then back home to school. Nice. You know, I could get over shit faster if he would stop doing shit.

Anyway, the plan is to go to Pittsburgh once Jazz is a little settled. I think we are going to stay a few days and hang out with her. I want to visit my grandparents' graves and Martha wants to see actual living people. It will be hard to resist the urge to drive that extra hour up Route 8 and burn down a certain brick house with a recently landscaped yard, but I'll try.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jasmine came home for her twenty-fourth birthday this weekend and I think we sufficiently scared the hell out of her. In just a few short weeks, she will be graduating and moving to Pittsburgh. She's yet to secure a job, apartment or any kind of real "plan". Now, when all of us were twenty-four were we not all total jackasses that flew by the seat of our jeans? So it is interesting for me to be on the other side of the whole 'after college' scenario. Jazz is overwhelmed and Martha and I can't help but see just how fucking easy it all would be to have a $600 a month apartment instead of mortgage. To be able to self-medicate with cheap beer, whisky and cigarettes instead of weekly mental illness checkups. Rather than be unemployed over 40, to be very employable with a salary requirement of under 25k a year. And I of course want better teeth.

But anyway, she's freaking out and I feel that given the time frame that we had to freak her out in (roughly 72 hours) we did a fine, fine job.

Seeing how it was her birthday, we tried to have a little bit of fun. Sushi, and a brand new iPod, but at Happy Clown Jasmine dropped her ice cream in the dirt.

Right now, you could say that she is in a bit of a rough patch. She's got a new iPod but her computer is broken and down in Pittsburgh waiting for someone (not us) to donate money for her to get it fixed. The apartment she's in has no air-conditioning and no cable tv. She's working fulltime at Staples, driving a gas guzzling SUV at a time when gas is over $4.00.

I know she's worried and it's real hard for her to see that in as little as six months things will be totally different and in a year she will have found her grove. That's the thing with life; it keeps moving.

Besides I don't know what the hell she's freaking out about, I got an AARP membership card in the mail. Now there's something to get weird about. But I did manage to sell a piece at the CCCA Landscape show. How cool is that?

We did so much running around this weekend and between all the crap we did on Saturday, (Psychologist check-in; Home Depot; Best Buy; Lunch; dropping off submissions at one gallery and then visiting another; tea shopping; sushi dinner and of course Happy Clown) then the massive yard work that Martha and I did on Sunday, it is no wonder that on the way to the grocery store I discovered that I had put my pants on inside out. Now that is tired.

A woodpecker has moved into the neighborhood. He's hammering away at something across the street. I can't tell if it's someone's house or a tree that is his construction zone. It's pretty cool to hear the tat, tat, tat every few seconds. It's cool because it's across the street and sort of a muted sound by the time it reaches me. Closer, it would drive me crazy as most things do when they get near me.

Because the Earth is attempting to rid itself of the parasite known as Homo sapiens, the weather here went from 40° to 70° in a day. So it was no surprise that a big black wasp somehow got into the house, specifically the darkroom. I was the unfortunate one to discover this. According to Martha, I turned into a basket case, which I am sure is the correct assessment given my behavior. It is however also unfortunate that she said this to me, instead of muttering it to herself under her breath. But in her defense I do tend to become emotionally unhinged at the strangest things.

Interestingly enough, the phrase 'basket case' originated in WWI. It was used to describe solders that had lost both their arms and their legs and had to be carried around in a basket. It is only recently that it is used as a description for someone who is losing his or her shit.

Learn something new everyday.

One funny thing about the whole wasp episode was that Martha was just getting ready to take a shower when I freaked out. Because she is awesome and the one to kill flying things, (I kill the crawling things) she walked up the stairs, naked except for her glasses and a pair of socks. The wasp was in the window right behind the new Irish Shamrock that we had just bought exactly two days prior. I have to hang these plants or Lily mows them down like grass. They are beautiful and I love having them in the house. She killed the last one we had in the high-rise so I was thrilled to have a new one.

When Martha fired off a blast of Raid Earth Options Wasp & Hornet Killer, she not only sprayed the wasp but nicely misted the plant.

Me: You sprayed the plant!
Her: Did you tell me not to spray the plant?
Me: No but we just got it.
Her, sort of yelling at me: Did you want me to kill the wasp or what?
Me: Man that shit stinks.
Her: I think it smells nice. Kind of lavender.
Me: Yeah, poison lavender.

Monday the exterminator was at the house and I just loved it when he told me that I needed to calm down. He was here for about an hour and it was much like therapy as well...therapy. Considering that I haven't been in two weeks, it was a deeply needed session. At least he's a nice guy. I should have made him some cookies or something.

Wednesday, I had my rescheduled doctors' visit and here is what I learned. If you cause me pain and then leave me alone in Hoboken for too long, I WILL go to the record store and I WILL most likely buy something. I bought the new Breeders and I managed to find it in a more reasonably price vinyl then I was finding in New York. Considering that I bought The Song Remains the Same in 1976 for a whopping $7.00, $12.00 for a new record today isn't that crazy. Plus, it comes with a free digital download. It's like getting two records for the price of one. I couldn't afford not to buy it. At least that is what I told Martha. But she has a soft spot for The Breeders so she wasn't too mad at me. Anything to stop me from talking about wasps or Jasmine, right babe?

Finally around midweek, Martha was able to escape my madness by traveling 700 miles south to the other side of the crazy coin, and spend three days with her mom. This trip was to be a little different because her sister, her niece (complete with husband and one-year-old baby in tow), were meeting her there. I managed to get out of that shindig because I had to deal with some gallery stuff. Besides there were already too many people planning to shove their bodies into Gen's tiny overheated apartment. It would look more like an intervention then a family visit, (sort of like the same thing I suppose) but anyway the deal breaker was a crying baby added to the mix.

Been there; done with that, I'm out. Instead of messy diapers and constant whining, I get to hear about Jasmine's logistical problems with dropping the Jeep off for a checkup because the person that was supposed to drive is on acid and can't drive her back from the dealership. I guess it is better then her telling me that she's on acid and can't drive the car.

This is what happens when you let them live, teach them to walk, talk and wipe their own ass. That talking thing was a big mistake.

With Martha leaving on Thursday, I was alone for three and a half days. Gone are my 'whoop-whoop' days, that is for sure. But I did notice that once I'm alone I immediately revert to my old sleeping patterns. Staying up until two or three in the morning, waking up at seven and then napping around three, it was classic stuff. It's amazing how living with one person who is relatively normal; sleeps normal, eats normal etc., how living with that person changes my sleeping regularity. When she's around I seem to stop being so weird.

All I know is that our big fat bed sucks without her in it.

Jasmine and her friend Weber came home for three nights and two days and my god I am exhausted. As is always the case with Jasmine I did more in two days then I do in a week. Sometimes I do think that she is trying to kill me although not intentionally more like on a subconscious level. Weber had the sweet set up. She got the upstairs, the queen size air mattress and the studio to hang out in. Jasmine got the red couch in the living room with two cranky women in the next room.

The first day they were here, we toured the spooky Hudson Library, went to the mall, Home Depot, walked around Olana and ended the day with a sushi dinner and a trip to Happy Clown for some soft serve.

Day two Weber drove into Jersey City, (two blocks from where we used to live) so I could pick up my 15 x 40 print. About every hour or so on the way down the Thruway, I would coat up with Tiger Balm in Weber's car. I am so good at applying Tiger Balm that I can even do it while crossing a street, never missing a step. So the all day glazing went on without a hitch. My back only started to really give me trouble about the last two hours of the ride home. Considering how things used to be, I'll take two hours of a little back stiffness any day.

After picking up the print, we drove on over to Newport Mall and witnessed all the horror that is Newport Mall and parked the car. We jumped on The Path to the World Trade Center where there we 'ran into' Weber's sister. New York is like that, you just run into people all the time. It's super weird.

Anyway, after that we went to lunch and dug around in the dirty vinyl bins of record stores; where I would like to point out here that I was in three record stores and did not buy a single thing, even though I have been wanting to buy more vinyl. But the prices on new vinyl is through the roof. $30.00 for Nick Cave, $20.00 for The Black Keys and on and on.

After the record thing, we walked down to the Asian Mart on Broadway and Canal; pushed our way around the store and then out Canal street to the subway. We then reversed the order of the whole day by jumping back on The Path. It was at that moment that I realized that my deodorant had given up and I stunk. Actually all three of us were kind of ripe but I was by far the worst.

We rode The Path back to the mall where we hurried back to the car before 6:15 because the price of parking went from $10.00 to $22.00 if we didn't clock out after six hours. After some ridiculously tense moments at the parking machine, we made it with roughly fifteen minutes to spare.

Once in the car we crawled our way through Jersey City to Hoboken to Edgewater, (stopping at Whole Foods naturally) and then on to Fort Lee, under the GW Bridge and onto the Palisades Interstate Parkway. I was eating sushi in the backseat when we merged on the I-287 which fed us onto the New York Thruway were three hours after leaving the mall, we finally pulled into our driveway.

Jasmine brought with her from school an enormous painting (4ft x 3ft) of two cherries on a black background. There is really only one place it can go and that is over my photo table. No place in the house can you get far enough away to appreciate it. She did it in squares, not as crazy as Seurat but more of a cubist grid thing. It's all pretty cool and I love to see her painting, plus she has one of the best signatures I've seen in a long time.

Zoe was a complete and total bitch cat the entire time Jasmine and Weber were here. Not only did she attack Jasmine on the stairs with some kind of midway standoff; she attacked Weber when she bent over to pet her. That monster cat smacked me with multiple jabs and then bit me when I was petting her in the window. Jesus Christ she's a drag and I will NEVER have another calico no matter what. All that red hair just makes them crazy.

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.

Jasmine called me the other day and opened with this.
"Hi Peanut."
"I just saw someone get hit by a car."
"Again?"
"Yep, she was lying on the ground with a pink blanket covering her..."
"Her head?"
"No, not her head, not her head."
"Where are you? Are you ok?"
"Yeah, I'm driving back home. I was hungry and I wanted to get something to eat."
"I don't know what to say, Peanut. In all the years I've been alive I've never seen anyone get hit by a car, and with the company that I used to keep you would think that would have been a common occurrence. I've been on this planet twice as long as you have and you've seen it twice."
"She was on a bike. Her purse was twenty feet in one direction and she was lying in the middle of the road."
"Oh my God. That's horrible."
"All this just proves that I need to get out of this town."
"Call me later if you want to talk about this more."
"Ok. Right now I'm going to go home and smoke a bowl."
"I would too, Peanut, I would too."

All day last Thursday, I was fighting with the Voice and their wacky math of severance. They say one thing while I have something very different in writing. After an all day affair of rapid emails, general frustration, back pain and that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, I think we finally might be on the same page. Well, at least we are down to a few days discrepancy instead of several, several weeks.

God, I want them to go away.

I rarely talk about pussy here, oh sure, in private conversation, but hardly ever here. Unless of course, I am talking about our cats or my ex-husband, (Oh stop.), anyway last Friday I had a gynecologist appointment in Hoboken. Now, this is a big fucking deal for me to get to, quite the pilgrimage you might even say. I live upstate and well, he is in Hoboken, some two hours away. The funny thing is I really don't care for my doctor that much. Well, it is not him it is his goddamn staff. They SUCK, especially that blonde one. I've been putting this whole appointment off for months. He has to do shit to me that I do not particularly care for but this is the main reason I still go to him. My mom had uterine cancer when she was 58 so I get that extra special scraping that honestly, I cannot take enough Xanax to make better. I know because I have tried to Xanax it all away before.

So after an hour and a half driving through mist, rain and fog and a forty-minute train ride I finally arrived in Hoboken. My appointment was at noon but it was only 10:00. With not enough time to go into Manhattan, I decided to stroll around Hoboken for a while. I had an umbrella but it was misting, more like a spritz thing going on then umbrella weather.

I started out by walking around the waterfront area. The fog and mist was so thick that parts of Manhattan were lost in the sky. It was pretty cool and I took a cell phone photo and emailed it to Martha.

I've been doing that every now and then. While I'm out and about I shoot a cell phone image of something pretty and send to Martha. To Jasmine I send shots of Sushi just because I'm a bitch.

Anyway, after that I walked up Washington Street to Dunkin Donuts and grabbed a cup of coffee. Having nowhere to go I decided to sit down and enjoy the coffee instead of walking around with it. While sitting there in the quiet of pastries, a woman came running in holding a Dunkin Donuts bag. She walked right up to the counter, interrupted the current sale and demanded her money back because they had charged her for two muffins instead of only one. She didn't want two, she wanted one.

So the cashier, who was in the middle of helping a customer stopped ringing him up and closed the cash register. Instead of finishing with him, she proceeded to loose herself in how to do a refund. The guy is just standing there while muffin lady was pushing him off to the side. His coffee and donuts where now on the counter in front of muffin lady.

After five minutes, (five minutes was an awfully long time to watch this shit unfold) the cashier figured out how to refund the wackjob muffin lady her two dollars. The cashier then took the extra muffin out of the bag and put is back in the basket for resale.

This is where I stopped drinking my coffee.

Wackjob muffin lady obviously touched the muffin and just where the hell have her hands been. The pastry had left the store and who knows what could have happened to it. She could have dropped it on the ground or any number of unsanitary things could have happened to it, but the cashier put it back on the shelf.

The cashier then turned to the guy who by now is beyond pissed, and started to ring him up again. The problem was that she had already rung him up and taken his money. She hadn't given him his change back and she cannot remember what the total was or how much money he had given her. He kept telling her that she was to give him seven dollars and forty-seven cents back but she did not believe him and could not figure out how to fix the problem. She was the only one there and there was no manager.

She put a tainted muffin back on the shelf but wouldn't give this guy his change back.

I stood up, threw my full cup of coffee in the trash and left the store.

Avoiding any and all humans I walked down Washington Street trying to convince myself that I had not been poisoned or that I was not going to be sick.

After walking that off for about six blocks, I loitered in front of Maxwells, slowly reading the upcoming shows and shooting photos. I walked back out to the water, finding a new park that has been built since Martha and I lived in Jersey City. It is right on the water in front of a massive high-rise. "It is certainly nice to be rich" I said out loud to nothing but the seagulls.

Finally it was time, or close enough to the time to where I could go into the doctors office and wait in the waiting room.

I walked in and noticed that the waiting room was only slightly full with four pregnant women hogging up two seats apiece. I see that blonde girl is still there, her overuse of Cerulean blue eye shadow announcing her well before the sight of her snarl. She is in her resting position when I walk up to the glass to check in.

"Hi, Holly Northrop for noon."
"Who are you seeing" There are three other doctors in the practice.
"I give her the name of my doctor."
"I can't find you here."
"I have a noon appointment, I'm about a half hour early but I should be on the list."
"Oh, right we didn't call you because we didn't have a number for you."
"What?"
"The doctor had three woman go into labor this morning. All of his appointments have been cancelled."
'What?"
"The doctor isn't here."
"A phone call would have been nice."
"We don't have your number."
"What do you mean you don't have my number? I've been a patient here for five years? How the hell could you not have my number?"
She opens my chart, studying it for a few minutes.
"Well, what is this 518 number?"
"That's my fucking number!"

Behind me I felt the weight of expectant motherhood shift uncomfortably in their seats. By now I'm starting to push my face though the little eight inch sliver of glass that is separating us doing my best to resemble Jack Nicholson in The Shinning.  'HERE'S JOHNNY. I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just gonna bash your brains in.'

"And this 917 number? What is that?"

"That's my fucking cell phone. The same number I've had for eight years. What the hell is wrong with you?"

It was at this point another staff member came over and told the blonde girl that she would handle this. Blonde girl raised her French Tipped fingers up in the air, (the universal 'whatever' sign), pushed her chair away from the counter and walked away.

The new nurse apologized repeatedly, made sure she had all my numbers in the computer and rescheduled my appointment for two weeks from now.

I walked out of there, slightly calmed down but still snarling and snapping at the air. I was surely alarming small children and the elderly. For fucks sake, I could be home instead of walking around for the next four hours in the mist.

Somewhere in my walk back to the Path station Jasmine called me. I knew the results of her Spanish test were due that day. Spanish is one of the reasons that Jasmine has to go to summer school. This child cannot learn a language.

"Hi mom!" she's all perky and shit.
"What did you get on your test?" I said with such flatness that she immediately asked me what was wrong.
"Nothing is wrong. What did you get on the test?"
"Um, he didn't grade them yet."
"What? Jasmine I am in no mood."
"He didn't grade them yet, he said Monday."
"Jasmine, just fucking tell me. Don't fuck around just tell me." I am yelling at her while walking down Frank Sinatra Drive. It's a good image.
"MOM! I'm telling you the truth. He didn't grade them yet."
I hang up. I guess we'll find out on Monday.

After Jasmine, I crossed back up to Washington Street & headed towards Tunes. Goddamn it, I'm going to the record store.

I was there for an hour digging through bin after bin of used vinyl records. It's probably the best therapy in the world. I ended up buying two Monkees records. One I have, but it is almost unplayable and the other I've often wanted. Yes, yes The Monkees, Monkees. Whatever, don't judge. I almost bought Joe's Garage, Green on Red, and a few new things, but Martha would have lost her shit with me. No matter how bad my day is, it is never worth it to piss her off by overbuying records.

Somewhere around 2:00 I went into Manhattan to pick up three rolls of color film, some over-the-counter medication and snag a bottle of my favorite ginger dressing. I walked the long way to everything and before I knew it I was running late. I need to scurry to get back in time to catch the train to Suffern. All day long I had nothing to do and then suddenly I was going to be late.

After being outside in the mist for six hours I officially had an Irish Fro. Every single hair on my head had its own curl and desired direction, completely unrelated to the hair next to it. Sitting on a crowed path train I could feel the guy next to me trying to push my hair out of his space. If I turned to look at him I could feel the girl on the other side of me jump because the back of my fro was touching her. I know I'm not gross but to them I am. It's an interesting sensation and even worse on New Jersey Transit, where we were all packed into the cars like dozens and dozens of eggs, each in a seat and no spare room for frizzy red hair.

And just to make looking for a job even more challenging, my email has been randomly deleting itself for the past three months. I don't know why and I'm not even sure I've fixed the problem. So if you've sent me an email and feel that I've ignored you more than I usually do (because I am totally dysfunctional), call me. The 518 number or the 917, you have them, right?

The siding people are still in our lives and with only being able to work one to two days a week due to weather, it's anyone's guess as to when they'll finish up. We start week three this week, and I'm kind of getting used to having them around.

Last Thursday at the end of the day, the foreman and I were standing on the sidewalk looking at the front of the house when I commented on how great it looks, how it was really coming along.

He turned to me and said, "Yeah, you know all day people have been driving by real slow, checking it out. One guy even drove by then turned around so he could look at it again."

I looked at him and laughed, "Dude. People have been doing that since the first day you were here and ripped the shit out of it, making it look like a baked potato."

Ah yes, but we're not finished yet. The other night the winds were so high that more shit flew off the house and landed in our neighbor's yard. Nice, real nice.

Three weeks ago, the only restaurant that Martha and ever go to closed for a three-week holiday. As the weeks pasted by, Wasabi's lights were dark and Martha and I were lost. Every Friday night, we go to Wasabi and have a little bit of sushi and laughter. It's our thing and now our thing was on vacation.

Two weeks ago we thought we might try another restaurant, but all we ended up doing was driving around, giving up and then going home. Pathetic, we know, but we didn't want over priced Italian food, which in Hudson there are three of those places. The Mexican place is always crowded and included in your overpriced meal is unusually snotty service. The last time we were there they sat us next to a table full of children under five with the kitchen door at my back. After the hostess tossed menus at us we looked at each other and decided to go. We just walked out.

The diner closes at 8:00, strange for a diner, but not for this town. Hudson is more of a daylight kind of thing. There are several places to eat and have coffee when the sun is in the sky but at night, not much moves around out there except for deer, cats and an occasional crack dealer over on State Street.

But Valentines day brought along total happiness. Not only was Wasabi open but I got a t-shirt from The Elephant Sanctuary and my Polaroid film from Austria finally came.

I bought Martha the translated from German version of Arthur Schopenhauer's The World As Will and Representation, In Two Volumes: Vol. I. It's so intense and so very, very dark that just looking at the cover brings me fear, loathing and a heavy sense of nothingness. But hey, that's what she wanted. Nothing says love like deep dark German philosophy.

But back to happy thoughts. The super big thing that happened is that Martha had HDTV installed in the bedroom. Ha! This all started when months ago she bought the big TV for the living room and had HDTV hooked up in there. Suddenly, I was out there all the time making her watch stuff like Arcade Fire on Austin City Limits. But now, I can go in the bedroom, leaving her free to watch all The Family Guy she can handle.

We went to the mall on Saturday and I think I've figured out the best way for me to stomach that shit is to go straight there from therapy. If I spend an hour, digging deep into the crazy cracks of my brain, then go directly to a mall, it is several hours before I even realize that we are nothing but a society of consumer zombies and start cursing at the air. So with all that brain down time, we were able to get shit done.

We spent an hour in the Verizon store buying new cell phones and I did not freak out about it. Our cell phones have been an issue for months. We've been paying $89.00 a month for roughly ten minutes of cell phone usage. AT&T was totally ripping us off and because we were not on a contract anymore, they could not give a shit about us. Every weekend I would back out of the mall idea, but not this time. This time Martha just drove there and so the whole Verizon marathon was a breeze. Well, sort of. Nothing is really ever a breeze but let us just say I did not add to the situation, as I have been known to do.

After the Verizon thing, when I normally would have demanded we leave, instead we walked down the mall way to the overcrowded Apple store to check out iPods for Jasmine. Super long muddy Jasmine story made short; her roommate had a party with a bunch of people that Jasmine did not know. She left the apartment to drive a friend home and when she returned, the people were gone as was her iPod.

Jasmine told me this several months ago and she begged me not to tell Martha, which I agreed to because, well she fucked up and I see no need to underscore certain things in Martha's eyes. It was Martha's idea to buy her that iPod for her 21st birthday so I felt it would hurt her feelings to know that it was stolen.

Because my child is so very horrible at keeping a secret that is told to her, (she can't even keep her own secrets) while she was on the phone with Martha she got all blonde and let it slip that she no longer had an iPod.

"So, I was thinking, when I get my tax rebate can I use that to buy an iPod?"

Martha was like; "...wait what, hold on. What happened to your iPod." And so on...

This is the exact same way that I found out Jasmine was still working at Staples after she told me she quit— like we agreed that she would do so she could FOCUS ON SCHOOL. A few weeks went by and forgetting all about the little fib, she told me one Saturday night she was tired from working. A few weeks went by and forgetting all about the little fib, she told me one Saturday night she was tired from working.

[Insert a long heavy sigh here.]

Martha, being the nice one of the two of us, wants to buy her a new iPod for her 24th birthday. I don't want to buy her anything until I see a diploma.

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.

The very first time I was ever laid-off from a company was in Denver, Colorado, (Aurora, to be precise), in September of 1987. It was a small design shop consisting of an owner; a female Art Director (an odd sight for the decade and someone I considered to be a mentor); and a female bookkeeper. All were full-time employees. I was hired as freelance contract work. Specifically, I was hired to paste-up the Yellow Pages.

There was a typesetter who came in twice a week to print out galleys and galleys of type that I had speced. Specing type is an art form unlike anything that goes on today. It's a mathematical formula involving a pica pole, words and the ability to problem solve without approval and/or praise.

While this wasn't my first job in my chosen field, I had previously worked at a print shop, it was the first job that I liked the folks I worked with and enjoyed, for the most part, coming to work.

I was young and had so very much to learn about business.

I worked there for roughly a year and a half. Once the Yellow Page contract was finished, I moved on to bigger and better projects. Things like hi-comp work, where I was able to play with Letraset films, papers, Pantone Books and press-type. Mostly I did hi-comp work for Coors Beer and AT&T. It was a good gig and I was happy.

Then somewhere around the beginning of spring 1987, the company hired a bearded hippy guy, who I considered to be a slimy fuck. He was a fast talker and knew everything about everything. He also had a knee-slapping laugh that sounded more like a bark, bark, bark, and a snort, then anything normal. The hippy guy was hired to help out on an enormous production job; pasting up direct mail pieces. You know, that junk mail shit everyone gets, discounts on dry-cleaning, and half-off on pizzas? Well, I've actually made those.

After a few months the direct mail contract was finished, and much to my annoyance, this hippy guy stayed.

Not only did he stay, he started going out to lunch with the Art Director, something that I had never done. The Art Director would slam me with work and then have closed door meetings with the hippy guy. Considering that the office space we all existed in was about the size of a one-bedroom apartment, having a closed door meeting of any kind was weird. Sometimes I was the only one who wasn't in a meeting.

As spring turned into summer, the work started to dry up. 1987 was a weird year for business. Reagan was president and in the middle of the Iran-Contra Affair, the stock market was going nuts, (and eventually crashed i.e. Black Monday) and the economy was starting to suck. I spent a great deal of time at my desk painting personal projects and turning up my radio to avoid hearing the Art Director and this hippy guy laughing at each others jokes.

Then on the first Friday of September at 4:45, I was called into the Art Director's office and asked to close the door. I sat there, all of twenty-five years old and wide-eyed like a puppy, notepad in hand, thinking we were going to talk about a new project when she folded her hands together on the table, put on a sad face and in a soft voice said, "We're going to have to let you go."

Go where? I thought and then it occurred to me that something very bad was happening. I immediately asked about the hippy guy (like this was important) and the Art director informed me that it was just me that was being let go.

I couldn't believe it. I was devastated but more importantly I was blindsided and I hate that. No one likes to be taken by surprise but I vowed to never, ever let something like this happen again. Oh sure, I can be laid-off, it is after all, the nature of this business, but not without seeing it coming first.

But back to September of 1987.

After leaving her office, I grabbed a cardboard box that was full of reams of copy paper, dumped the paper on the floor and started packing up all my shit. All my tapes, art supplies that I brought from home; rulers; orange triangles; a set of Rapidograph pens; a pica pole etc.; all jammed into a box along with my radio and Violent Femmes, Patti Smith and Husker du tapes. Intermittently I was spewing profanity at the hippy guy by telling him to 'fuck off'.

As I was just about to leave the office for the last time, the Art Director asked to see what was in my box. I was horrified. I completely understand this thinking now, but at that time, I was personally offended. I could not believe that she would think I would steal something. Standing in the small lobby, while the bookkeeper, hippy guy and the owner stood guard, the Art Director dug through my box of crap at a slow, meticulous pace. I just stood there with my mouth open, trying not to cry.

Then on top of that she pulls out a metal 12" printer's gauge claiming it to belong to the company. Hippy guy made a gasp and the owner took a step closer to me. I explained to her that it was mine, that I had brought it from home and I used it instead of theirs because the numbers on mine were easier to read. Theirs was faded. She then made me walk back over to my desk and show her the other one.

Once I got out of there, I threw all my shit into the back of the Dodge Omni coffin car that I drove, (yes I even drove then) and cried.

Being laid-off that time unleashed a shitstorm of events that were impressive only in their combined determination to punish.

Because I was always contract freelance and never considered a full-time employee, I was unable to collect unemployment. So right out of the gate, Jim and I were screwed, living from shitty paycheck to shitty paycheck, we had maybe twenty dollars in our checking account. Oddly enough on the day I was laid-off, in the mail arrived a brand new MasterCard with a $3,000 limit in Jim's name. Our grocery store just started taking credit cards, and so there you go.

Three days after I was