Holly Northrop Blog

During this visit down to North Carolina, the desire to smoke was not so overwhelming. Last November, all I wanted to do was have a cigarette. Like every fifteen minutes the urge to light up was driving me to force Martha's sister to go outside and blow smoke in my face. I do think that most of that was the noticeable impending death of Frank and Gen's constant, and I most certainly do mean constant, scratching her arms. But this time, the smoking thing was not so much. I was however chain chewing Orbit Sweet Mint gum.

All of our luggage was searched except for the one bag that I was sure they would not only search but blow up. In that bag was all of our 'gear'. We traveled with a pretty serious looking massager; a big blue exercise ball; the foot pump for the big blue exercise ball, a neck brace for guess who, a laptop and weird looking camera equipment. Apparently, this bag did not raise any suspicion but all of our black clothing and socks really caught their eye.

Martha's mom is so scrambled that stuff just disappears into thin air. She forgets where she puts things and then, well she forgets that there was anything to begin with. Several weeks ago, she received a check for $16,000 for Frank's life insurance policy from PPG. She told Martha's sister that the check had come so we knew it was there, somewhere because it wasn't in the bank. When we get down there and start going through all the paperwork, we find that some of the paperwork is filed away in the locked closet, some of it is in one of six desk drawers, or it is in the green lock box that Gen is now keeping behind Frank's chair, instead of the locked closet.

There is no order to her filing madness. Forms that needed to be filled out and returned are hidden behind old bank statements, or merged with solicitations for credit cards. In one desk drawer, Martha finds several checks in a stack that need to be deposited but not the $16,000 check. All the while we are digging around in the back of our minds, we are looking for that check.

Gen now insists that she never received a check.

"Now girls, really, in your heart of hearts, don't you think that if I had received a check for $16,000 that it would have made an impression???" She kept saying over and over. "Nope, I never got one, and that PPG, I tell you they have never sent one damn thing to me."

It's All About Drugs or Money
I was standing in the hall closet, where all the important paperwork is supposed to be locked up. I'm in the middle of this little room where directly in front of me hanging on hangers are some of the ratty bloodstained shirts that Gen wears. They are bloodstained from three years of her scratching her arms raw. She first started scratching due to an allergic reaction to Coumadin (warfarin) which turned into necrosis and now, no longer on the Coumadin the scratching has become just flat out neurosis.

Looking past the shirts and to the right I start to pay closer attention to a long vertical row of bookshelves. There is a bunch of paper and crap on top and when I reach up to touch there, I hear a thud from behind. Something had fallen behind the bookcase. Now if it was that easy for me to drop paper behind there I just know there is a landslide of crap back there from months of Gen throwing stuff on top and her not being able to hear it fall down behind. Or hearing a thud and not understanding what it was. As far as Gen goes, the power of deduction is gone. She keeps her purse on the floor yet she's in a walker and has enormous trouble bending over. Stuff like that.

I yank out the shelves and I'll be damned, if there isn't a shit load of paperwork back there. I also found an envelope marked MONEY with roughly $200 dollars in twenties in it.

All day long Gen had been saying that she didn't have any cash and needed to go to the bank.

I show the money to Gen and then hand the whole thing to Martha. All the stacks of opened envelops and manila folders I put on Martha's lap. After a few minutes of digging around in it, Martha finds the check.

I show the $16,000 check to Gen and she looks at me and asked me where I got it. I tell her that it was in the closet and she swears that she has never seen that before in her life. She then looks at it again and asks me if it is a bill. Obviously, a $16,000 check did not make an impression on Gen Harvey. We all laughed and ha, ha, ha.

I go back to the closet and just stand there staring at the ceiling while rubbing my face I close my eyes and try to clear my head. I open my eyes and I'm looking straight at the shirts. I turn away and put the bookshelf back but this time against the wall as far as it will go. I'm really pushing it against the wall, wondering if I should maybe hammer it to the wall. In doing this I grab a bunch of empty red file folders that were on a shelf and throw them on the floor. I notice that there is another white envelope mixed in there and when I pull that out, fuck me if there isn't another wad of twenties in that one.

"Found more money!" I yell from the closet. "Bring it here." Martha said between rapid gum chewing.

All in all Gen had over $300 in cash and $17,000 in checks just shoved in various nooks and crannies of her two-room apartment. Now, that's just in the places where stuff should be, we didn't go through everything. There were two other closets, two dressers and a nightstand that remain untouched. They never came to pick up Franks cancer meds so in addition to wads of cash I found 400 Oxicodine pills (complete with refill) and a massive vile of liquid morphine mixed in with all his other cancer, not so fun drugs. This is after just two and a half months of her living alone without Frank.

Two Conversations and a Found Object
One:
"Martha was such a dumb kid. She was dumb in school, dumb in college and now look at her. Where did she learn all this?" (Moving her hands rapid fire as if she is smacking the shit out of a keyboard.) "The world is such a confusing place." — said to me in front of the Olive Garden while watching Martha walk through the parking lot to get the car.

Two:
"How did the two of you meet?" asked Gen.
"On a Guns and Ammo website", replied Martha, who was being a total smartass. The joke was that this is what we are going to start telling folks when they ask, but not Gen, for god's sake.

What she heard instead of the joke was priceless.

"A drunken what?" she asked completely confused while rubbing her right ear. I almost choked on air I was laughing so hard.

Found:
Martha's sister brought an old book for Martha to keep. It is the Great Big Joke Book and here is the inside page.

Codeine: It's Like Cocaine Without All The Great Ideas
We had to buy Gen two new phones because every time Martha would call her, the phone would make these horrible screeching sounds and they could never hear each other. We thought the phone was broken, but again once we got there I saw exactly what was going on. The channel button was right next to the answer button. Every time she answered the phone, she kept switching channels. Of course, there is no explaining this, just throw the fucking phone out and get her a simple $12.00 pick up and answer phone. We bought two of them so she can have one by her bed, instead of limping with her cane into the other room to answer the phone.

Gen has a nasty little habit of throwing things out if she doesn't know what it is. If it looks like trash, it is trash. She did this with the phone cord I had placed on the bed. While I was on the floor, under Frank's bed installing the cable into the phone jack she picked up the curly part of the cable that connects the talking part to the phone part, and threw it away. I saw her toss in the trash just as I was climbing out from under the bed. I went over there, pulled it out to the trashcan and connected it to the phone. She saw me do this but just smiled at me. The whole phone thing in general is a complete mystery to her. She answers it upside down. Seriously, the talking end, she puts to her ear.

She is like a toddler. You have to keep one eye on her and you must always pay attention to what she has in her hand. Having raised a child and a sneaky one to boot, I am familiar with this and actually reinstated the eyes in the back of my head, which certainly came in handy, I tell you.

I needed to have an ID card from her wallet that had her social on it. I had placed the card on top of a stack of paperwork that Martha needed to take to the bank. It was on the coffee table in front of me when I noticed that Gen kept looking at the card, then looking at me and then scratching her arms without saying a word. After a few minutes I get up to get a drink of water, knowing full well that once my back was turned she was going to snag the card.

I get a drink, I sit back down, look at the coffee table and the card is gone.

"Where's the card?" I asked Gen. She smiled the smile that she gives when she either cannot hear what you have said or does not want to hear what you have said.

I asked her again, "Where's the card that was right here?" Pointing to the exact spot on the coffee table where the ID card had been.

"What do you need that for dear?" she asked.
"The bank." I answered.
"Oh right, right." She dug the card out of her wallet and handed it back to me, smiling.
All day Monday (the same day my iPod charger broke), I kept thinking that it was later in the week then Monday. By 2:00, I could have sworn it was Tuesday, by 5:00 Wednesday and by 8:00 Thursday.

Elderly time is a whole other way to deal with the stresses of a day. It's all about food. Lunch is at 11:30 and dinner is at 4:30 with only about thirty minutes flex time allowed. All we did was eat, and we only ate at Wendy's or Subway. Lunch, dinner, lunch dinner, lunch, dinner. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc all the way to Saturday. We broke it up at little and went to lunch one day at the Olive Garden where we totally hooked in to the soup and salad deal while listening to Paul Anka sing Nirvana's "Smells like Teen Spirit". Another day we went to a place called The Village Tavern when after forty minutes of nothing but water and spinach dip I lost my New York shit on the waitress. Then there was the old favorite, The Golden Corral, an all you can eat buffet that has to been seen to truly understand the appalling level of obesity in this country and how it is directly related to economic status. Or as Gen likes to say, "This place really attracts the blacks."

She Was Stunned By the Floral Arrangements
On Thursday I had interview with a company in Durham and not just any interview but a five hour interview. Yep, in five hours I spoke about my career and myself ad nauseam. The interviews were staggered and mostly in groups. I have been at this awhile and my experience is vast, (the world does not revolve around The Voice) so I was able to not tell the same story twice (for the most part) except for the reason I was considering the move to North Carolina. Nothing like coming out to a dozen strangers while on a job interview. I usually save that nugget for later.

Actually, that day was even bigger in its events then just an interview. My interview was at 1:00 so Martha and a nice realtor and I drove around Durham looking at homes. We saw five different places and found the perfect house, just slightly out of our price range of course. Let me just say that it has a big oval shaped Jacuzzi tub and a garage. So the morning was spent house hunting and the afternoon was spent working it. Perfect job, perfect house, weird day. Oh right, adding to the level of complexity was the time crunch we ran into between the realtor and the interview. We left the realtor in plenty of time to grab lunch but we got lost. The idea was to park at the company because it was in downtown Durham and restaurants are everywhere, grab some lunch then send me on my way. Well, we pulled up to the company fifteen minutes before my scheduled time. I drank some water, kissed Martha and walk in there with nothing more in my stomach then the yogurt and pretzels that I had three hours prior.

Instead of sitting in the car for five hours, Martha actually drove away from the building and went to the art museum. And, she found her way back, without maps or without me in the car. I am so proud. Like I said, weird day. I always find it strange when life can just lay it all out and show you how everything could be different. Perfect new house, like 2006 new, perfect job with nice normal smiling people to work with, and roads that Martha had little trouble figuring out once she had me out of the car. Oh and one more thing, it was in the mid 80's the first five days we were in North Carolina, but on Thursday it was around 85 degrees with about the same for the humidity. I was in black, lightweight and kind of breezy black but still nonetheless black. Some of the women who interviewed me had flip-flops on I however, had my biker boots.

I spent a good deal of Friday alone with Martha's mom. Martha and her sister had a bunch of errands to run so I stayed with Gen. We talked about everything. Mostly old stuff, like her old stuff. Her mom and dad, Colorado where she grew up and about her sister who died of kidney failure when she was only twenty. There are so many reasons that I love talking with her about this stuff but a few of them are rather simple to understand. When she speaks about this stuff, she is real clear, things are not confusing and she can move back and forth through the decades like a pro. We'll be talking about memories she has of her grandfather and then move right on to when she first married Frank and they lived in a cockroach infested military housing before Martha was born, then back around to more general topics like what it was like to be a child in the depression.

I think all this remembering is good for her. She seemed sharp and not at all depressed and there was no scratching. Her short-term memory is shot but all the hardcore stuff is still there, plus after a few hours of using her brain like that she was actually a little more on the ball with the daily stuff. Afterwards, when we were looking out the window at a cookout that the Assisted Living folks had set up, commenting heavily on how neither one of us would be caught dead (yes, ha, ha dead) out there, she asked me to order her some books. I have not seen her read anything other then the paper in almost two years, right about when Frank started to get sicker. I can't imagine losing a spouse after sixty years of marriage. I can't imagine knowing he was dying. I can't imagine any of it.

Last weekend I made my Famous Chocolate Cake for the neighbor Jack because he shoveled out our driveway with his snow blower after we got over two-feet of snow. Well this weekend I made my Peanut Butter Kookies for our chiropractor's 46th birthday. I'm not sure what is up with me and the baking niceties.

Who's to say? I do know that I've been thinking a great deal about people that I no longer talk to anymore for a variety of stupid reasons ranging from nothing to say to logistical to general irritation, none of which are legitimate. And that makes me so very, very lame. So I guess I'm trying to make up for it all with baked goods to people who barely know me. Strange isn't it? Ah yes, the mind is a terrible thing.

I Would Mug Me
Martha bought me a Polaroid back for my Holga and while I love the shots that I'm taking, working with the material on the street is a nightmare. I don't know how folks used to shoot with the peel apart films. I look like a idiot out there trying to juggle my camera; the toxic disposable paper of the backing that I want to keep because they are cool; the wet print I just peeled apart; a small accordion file for the wet print to go into when it dries; a long zip up pouch for the disposable paper backing to go into when it dries and my purse.

Of course I know that years ago they didn't care about the paper backing and seeing how most of the photographers were men, there were no purses on the job.

Tax Time
Martha and I finally broke down and had our taxes done. Now, if we lived on a different planet, one that truly did treat all people equally, there probably would still be taxes but I do think that at the very least, she and I would be able to file a fucking joint return. The tax benefits that the government dollops out to legally married folks should be available to all of us that are in any kind of cohabitation in any kind of "family" scenario. Boy, boy, girl, girl or even boy, girl and yes, those polygamous marriage people too. A family is a family is a family.

Instead, the IRS only sees my status as single or the more depressing category of divorced. Although I do get to claim Jasmine, I cannot claim the house. Martha, filing as single but with none of the benefits of actually being single, gets to take the house. She and I pay higher taxes within a year because of our single/divorced status. This goes with the governments' theory that because we are single, we have more disposable income and with less overhead, we should contribute to the overall community on a higher level then those that are actually draining the system. I pay more in taxes for the local schools then traditional families only my invisible family will never use those services. I understand how it's supposed to work, with Jasmine in a whole other community, draining that towns resources etc. But what is happening instead is that Jasmine is at an out of state college and we are paying almost double for her to go there. So we pay higher taxes in our town and higher tuition in another state.

And once I consider all the money I make in a year, that which isn't in my pocket is funding the beginning of The Third World War, I get super cranky about being told what I am verses what I really am, sexual preferences being left out of the equation.

All this tax shit is nothing new to me; it has been going on for years ever since I stopped being a straight married mom and switched teams. What is new is that I keep getting irritated over it all. It cost Martha and me a total of over $500.00 to have our taxes done. Two single returns, one using the long form and one using the standard, a bunch of bullshit around living in Jersey and working in Jersey then living in New York, student loan interest and a new home purchase. All of that could have been on a joint return and saved us probably $250.00.

The good news about all of it is that we are getting money back, money that will so help with the payment on the new roof. I'm not sure if we would get more money back if we could file a joint return. If it wasn't so complicated I'd run the numbers just to see.

The Carpet Highway of My Two-room Apartment
In the two weeks since Martha's mother, Genevieve, has been alone things had been relatively quiet. The first week passed without us being aware of any incidents. However, the second week proved to unveil the stresses of elderly confusion. Genevieve, not wanting to bother anyone except direct family, ran out of blood pressure meds and in an attempt to get medicine without asking someone to take her to CVS, she signed up for Medicare through the Assisted Living home. Now her medicine is going to cost her $300.00 a month instead of $3.00. It will probably take Martha weeks to fix that.

Genevieve also signed almost $8000.00 in checks over to the desk jockey at the Assisted Living home. Her insurance company reimbursed her for her living expenses and because she would not ask anyone to take her to the bank, she signed the checks and told the receptionist to credit her account. No receipt, no anything, and most importantly the Assisted Living home never called Martha.

Martha spent a great deal of Thursday on the phone to just about everyone at the Assisted Living home drilling into all of them that they are to contact her if Genevieve gives away anything, (jewelry, cash, furniture) or if she tries to leave the property without some kind of supervision.

For Genevieve, the mail is a foundation of incredible anxiety. Everyday something arrives that is so confusing to her that for all she knows it could very well be written in Taiwanese. Her job before Frank died was to open the mail and lay it out for him to read. She never actually read anything. So now, everything is confusing. A credit card offering 0% interest for 9 months is cause for serious concern. "What is it, what should I do?"

There is still a great deal of tinkering that needs to be addressed before Genevieve is in a place where she can't screw up things. Martha and I are going down in about a month to tie up some loose ends, to say the least.

Martha's father died last Sunday night. There are so many things I could say about a man who never once made me feel out of place. He welcomed me into his home simply because his daughter brought me there and proclaimed me as the one she loves. He never questioned Martha and in turn, never once looked sideways at me, and I was looking for it too. I made his daughter happy and could make his wife laugh; something that not too many folks get to do.

You know, in the fifteen years that I have been with Martha; I have never known her father to yell at her. Well, maybe a little towards the end, but he was just crazy with cancer, but never under normal stresses. Not once. Isn't that nuts?

That loyalty to his family was amazing to me. At first I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, I mean come on, he was roughly the same age as my dad, and well, my dad was an ass, kind of turned me off to that whole generation. But not Frank. Frank was good and welcoming and I'm going to miss him in my life. I'm just so happy I got to know him.

Suspicion Breeds Confidence
So up until Saturday I had been home alone for ten days. I stopped working last Thursday (I stopped caring months ago) and I am so dreading going back. The mothership is in town this week and considering that I can barely stomach emails from Arizona I'm not sure how I'm going to handle looking directly at them.

My back is fucked. Specifically, my neck but the pain is screaming out of my back. All down the right side. I have three blown disks in my neck, resulting in a pinched nerve that is debilitating. When Martha comes home, I can go back to the chiropractor and resume my traction but all week long was just crazy.

I was productive over the time off. Aside from obsessively cleaning the house and watching movies, I did a little bit of writing, (which scares the hell out of everyone), I made two trips into Manhattan to deal with my print for the upcoming March 3rd show, and I actually got my drivers license renewed. A few weeks ago Martha and I went down to the DMV in Hudson; quite possibly the nicest DMV I have ever seen in my life; to turn in our New Jersey driver's licenses and make this here New York thing legal. Well, Martha had no trouble but when it came to my turn, the server crashed and wouldn't let the clerk enter my information in. Typical for me. So, with a week off I limped my ass down there, stood in line and by all accounts the server did not crash.

With me, everything takes longer.

Just like this whole insurance thing that we are trying to get for me. Martha: no problem, blood urine and just give them a check. Me: blood urine, then they called my doctors and wanted all my records, I had to take an second insurance investigation on the phone, and now the sales guy and I are playing phone tag because he wants to ask me one question and he doesn't want to leave that on my voicemail. This to me says that my answer to his little question is not the real answer but my reaction to his question is the answer. WTF? This is for insurance not a job, not security clearance to fly planes. I think I could successfully go to Wal-Mart buy a rifle, a box of bullets and a map to Washington, DC, run all that through one cashier, without a tenth of the hassle that term life insurance is giving me.

In the insurance investigation, the woman actually asked me, "In your lifetime have you ever had an alcoholic beverage?"

Wait. What? Really, in my lifetime?

"Sure, I had a beer in college." I replied. That's right, I said beer 'cause I knew where this was headed.
"Well, because you answered yes, to that question I have to ask you if you have even been in AA, NA or any substance abuse programs?" she declared.
"No." I spitted out while laughing.
"Have you ever tried any illegal drugs?" the tones in her voice taking on a slight serious Oprah feel to it. That trusting, 'go on, confide in me' allure.
"No." I sighed at the general unhappiness that this woman is causing me.
"When was that last time you had an alcoholic beverage?" she asked.
"I have no idea, twenty years maybe. I'm 44 years old and you are asking me about something that happened in 1982, you realize that, right?" my laughter is more sinister now and totally annoyed.
"Why did you quit drinking?" she persisted.
"Quit drinking? I don't like alcohol. I never really drank" she pushed me to this point. If she'd of persisted I just might have admitted to being a Christian or at the very least a republican.

"I did observe her to be a woman of an unruly turbulent spirit, And would often fall into strange fitts: when anything crost her humor" - (Richard Walker v. Sarah Bibber) The Salem witchcraft papers, Volume 1 : verbatim transcripts of the legal documents of the Salem witchcraft outbreak of 1692

That's it! I'm a witch, I'm a witch! Note the red hair!

My god, who are these people? All we want is term life insurance for me. That's it. Something WE PAY FOR EVERY MONTH. Just who the FUCK are these people? You would think being the daughter of a Jackal would save me from this bullshit. I mean this is right up that alley. I guess my hope and dreams of ever becoming this have been shattered because I drank beer in college. Damn, keg parties in the study room. Whoop, whoop, there it is.

Martha is in North Carolina with her father, who is in the final days of his life. We got a call last week from her dad indicating that he thought it was time. This was right before a massive snowstorm dumped two feet of snow on us. It took Martha two days of horseshit to get a flight out and she had to drive to Connecticut to do it.

The roofers finished the last shingle six hours before the first snowflake fell. Our brand new roof is covered in some areas with almost twelve inches of snow. I shoveled our driveway four times on Wednesday, just to keep it to a level that I might be able to handle for Thursday morning, when Martha was going to need to get the car out of the garage and drive to the airport.

Thursday morning I woke up before the sun and was outside shoveling snow by 7am. I had only two and a half hours to dig out the ice covered two-foot high drifts that our driveway had become overnight. By 9am, I was physically finished but the driveway still had major ice drifts. Martha came out to relieve me and dug out the remaining blocks. After that, she traveled for over twelve hours before she was finally at her hotel room in Winston-Salem.

She wanted me to stay home, deal with the cats and to just be here so she won't have to worry. I am home alone, with nothing but my crazy head. I'm not even working, they can kiss my ass as I have taken some time off. Her last words to me before she left were, "Can you wait till I get back to completely flip out? I don't want to have to worry about you while I'm down there. Just wait until I get home."

"Okay babe, no problem." I smiled.

The whole shoveling two feet of ice balls thing was fucking awesome. Martha promised me that she was going to buy me a snow blower. Three days later my back is still fucked up and now, I have no way to the chiropractor. Whatever, out of sheer desperation I've made a 'homemade' traction device that as long as I don't 'accidentally hang myself', seems to be providing some relief.

Being home alone and thinking about death is always a good place for my head to be. After thinking about Mr. Harvey and all the wonderful years of knowing him, my head starts rattling around all the other kinds of death and weirdness that I've seen. There is my dad and the whole bat filled funeral. And then of course my mom and not only not knowing exactly what she died from but why on her deathbed she requested that I not be told she was dying. Or how both of my parents deaths involved my ex-husband. I am still at a loss as to why the fuck that happened. My thoughts bounce around to when Jasmine had cancer, and how I was so frightened that she was going to die. That constant stomach filled fear that has permanently scarred my innards to the point of chronic nervousness. I don't even know that if she was healthier, and suddenly became obsessed about her wellbeing, if that would make me feel any better.

I think about people that I've know that are now dead. Friends, distant relatives or bizarre friends of my parents, float in and out of my brain. I spent a good half-hour Saturday while scrubbing the floors remembering a neighbor friend of my moms'. Actually, there were two, the Robbins; they were a mother and daughter duo. Mrs. Robbins, who was roughly ten years older then my mom, would come down to the house at least once a week and hang out at our kitchen table, drinking, "coffee" and clear drinks with ice cubes in them. The Robbins lived on the corner and Mrs. Robbins was the atypical sixty-year old Jewish wife of an atypical sixty-year-old Jewish husband. Mr. Robbins had hurt himself years prior and was mostly wheelchair bound. He was a survivor and had the number tattoo on his arm. He seemed nice enough, very quiet almost invisible even though he was in a rather large metal chair. As a family, they were rich and traveled all over the world several times a year. The oddest thing about the Robbins was the fact that their only daughter, Sheila, who in her mid-thirties, still lived at home. There was a rumor that Sheila had been briefly married once but now things were very, very different.

When Mrs. Robbins was over, she would end up sitting in my chair at the table, directly across from my mom, going on and on about all of her jewelry, (she had big gold rings on every finger), and hand blown glass that she bought while they were vacationing on some tropical island. She had a tan that was so bronze that she almost blended in with the antique walnut table that my parents bought while we were on our vacation in Michigan.

When Mrs. Robbins wasn't going over a recent trip tally, she gossiped nonstop about all of the neighbors. Neighbors I didn't even know we had. She knew everyone's comings and goings and wondered aloud about their lifestyles and drama. The family from India who lived behind us and whether the dot on the mothers head was a real ruby; the folks at the end of the street who's son was killed in Vietnam and how sad it must be to be in the house and how she just can't bring herself to visit them. And then there were the kids who were caught drag racing in front of her house, she just happened to notice one kid in particular was a kid she had seen me with before. She had seen me 'climbing' (her word) out of his car. What a great thing to tell a parent.

"Hey, yeah I saw your fifteen year old daughter climbing out of a dark green Nova the other night. That boy was arrested for drag racing right in front of my house. He looked like trouble." Doesn't really sit too well no matter what kind of family love you've got going on.

My house was already a war zone without any help from Mrs. Robbins. I must say I hated to see her around the house because it usually meant that a handful of shit was going to be flung my way before the visit was over.

She was an insentient neb and I have always believed that she is the one that told my dad she saw me sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night and even more menacing, she was the one who anonymously called my folks and told them I was pregnant when I was thirteen. The result of that particular phone call caused me to run away for weeks on end to avoid being smacked into a pulp on the vinyl kitchen floor. Mrs. Robbins was so vocal about everything and felt that she was well within her right to say whatever entered her mind, no matter what.

One hot summer day while I was lying on the couch watching Gilligan's Island, Mrs. Robbins was over, yakking with my mom about being discriminated against at Krogers. Something about how the bag boy would not help her wheel her groceries out to the car. As I was lying there listening to her, I wondered to myself how that panned out to discrimination, when suddenly the conversation switched up and she turned towards me and shouted over the banister that separated the kitchen from the family room;

"She is never going to amount to anything." She snorted while pointing in my direction. "I can tell to look at her."

My mom just stared at me. I rolled my eyes, crawled off the couch and went up to my room to smoke a bowl. Ah yes, memories, like the cracks of my mind, dirty water memories of the way it was.

But the real story with the Robbins has more to do about their own hidden family dynamics then I could ever realize. Even though my mom was as nutty as they come, I knew then that I was glad that Mrs. Robbins wasn't my mom. Even at my pathetic self-absorbed teenage age worst, I still pitied her daughter, Sheila who lived at home. Sometimes Sheila would also come down to visit with mom too, not nearly as much as Mrs. Robbins but at least once a month. Mom didn't like Sheila too much because she felt that she was too depressing. (I find this very amusing, and still do.) She would rather spend time with Mrs. Robbins then listen to Sheila talk about her mother.

Mrs. Robbins was driving Sheila bat shit and given what I had seen up till then, I was totally on Sheila's side. Sheila was roughly eight ways of fucked. She was in her mid-thirties, questionably married, (in hindsight I think she was gay) She did go to college and had some kind of liberal arts degree but was never able to really find a job or move out of the house. Her mom always insisted that she help with her father, who was partially paralyzed and needed a full time nurse, not his daughter wiping his ass full time. What Sheila was doing, and she was only doing it with my mother, was reaching out. She had no friends, and never went anywhere, except to my house about once a month.

Sheila's miserable life went on this way all thorough the 70's and sometime in the early 80's she decided that she had had enough. The details are sketchy but the gist was that one morning Sheila snapped and killed her mother, stabbing her several hundred times all around the kill zones. She then turned around and stabbed her father, who was unable to do anything but sit there and watch his daughter kill his wife. She only stabbed her father a few times but just enough to kill him too. Then, Sheila went upstairs and hung herself in her bathroom. They didn't find the bodies for over two-weeks when finally a neighbor, not my mother, called the police because their mail and newspapers had been littering their yard.

I remember the day that mom told me of the murder/suicide. She was shocked, as was the whole neighborhood I sure. I was living far away from Shadowcrest Court and hadn't been home in years but as mom was going over the details of the murder I kind of understood. Sheila's buttons had been pushed. All those years growing up there, I just figured my house was, you know, 'That House. The police were always there, you could constantly hear my mom screaming at me over the Rolling Stones and there was that nasty time my dad beat the shit out of me in the front yard in plain sight of Mr. Pishotti, who was walking his two full sized poodles. You know, we were 'That House'. But clearly the winner here was the Robbins family for the murder/suicide at the corner house. I think we came in second place.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miss Jasmine's twenty-second birthday is this Thursday. Hard to believe in oh so many ways isn't it? Not sure what her plans are. I know she has friends driving over from Philly to spend the weekend with her so my guess is there will be just general debauchery instead of the extravagance she requested. She is however, excepting donations of no less than $1000.00 per gift giver. Drop her a line and say "Hey".

A DIFFERENT KIND OF HIVE
The new house is coming along and is presently waiting for us to move into it two-weeks from now. I am a little panicky. We have discover wasps living in the gutter right over the side door into the sunroom. This is a major in/out part of the house from the driveway. I'm a little freaked out by it all but Martha has promised me that she will have someone come take care of it before we move in. By the looks of all the massive cans of wasp and hornet bug spray that the Home Depot up there has on display, my guess is that we aren't the only ones being terrorized the second we walk out of our house. I'm already not a big fan of the great outdoors in the summertime and this is just a little much. Flooding, I think is what they call it. Further cracking my mind and making me unable to shut up about it, causing Martha to daydream about putting me down, is what it is doing.

WHEN PARENTS ATTACK
Martha has to go to North Carolina this weekend to deal with her Mom and Dad. Things are... well, not going along in a such a great way. Her mother is running the crazy train and dad is having a little bit of trouble now that he is home. The timing is interesting in that I will have to pack everything. No shit, we move on the 22nd so it has to be this weekend that all packing takes place. It will be a weekend of air-conditioning and overuse of the dishwasher. Oh well, give me enough boxes, tape and bubble wrap and I'll have it all ready to go. After all, I am a professional packer.

I LOVE THE TRAIN
I had a five-hour commute on Friday night that in all honesty struck me as more funny than exhausting. The real buzz-kill was New Jersey transit where I ended up sitting next to a yuppie fuck who farted every few minutes. This went on for over an hour on a train that went no faster then five-miles-an-hour due to train congestion. I could have run along side the tracks at a faster clip then the 5:21 train to Suffern. But the whole train thing started out badly.

I had managed to get to Hoboken via The Path in record time and even considered myself lucky at the quick Path snag. That 9th street station is a heat pit of hell and I didn't have to wait too long for a Hoboken train. In Hoboken, I walked into the train station at 5:10 to buy my ticket to Route 17 and I actually thought to myself how cool it was to be able to catch the earlier train. Just as I started to walk towards the ticket window, things started to twist around. I went to the window just as the announcer started screaming train times over the intercom system. I told the lady that I needed a ticket to Route 17 and I thought she said to me, "You're going to suffer." I just looked at her while she took my seven dollars and handed me a ticket that had no information on it except the words Hoboken and Cancel.

"How do I know what train or what track to go to?" I asked.

She pointed to the TV screen mounted on the wall to my left and said, "You are going to be on the train to suffer." I could barely hear her because of the intercom and the bulletproof glass that she was sitting behind had only one tiny little hole drilled in it for two-way communication.

Confused, I walked over to the TV and noticed a listing for the train to Suffern on track 12. If, in all of my six-years of essentially living in the fine state of New Jersey, had I actually paid any attention to anything around me, (other than Manhattan) I would have already known that there was a town named Suffern.

Feeling super stupid I boarded the train at track 12 and proceeded to sit there for over twenty minutes before the conductor announced the train was out of order and we all needed to mad dash it to track 16. So that is what we did, a whole train full of pissed off Friday night commuters ran to track 16, pushing and shoving each other all over the place and within minutes we were on our way. Things were rather speedy until Secaucus, and then it went to shit. Fart man got on and the train slowed way down. It took me two-hours to get to Martha in northern New Jersey and we still had another hour and a half to go. But honestly, once I got in the car with her, I was fine. I mean she and I are always racing to get home to each other. Once we were in the same place nothing else really mattered, until it got dark and we got off the wrong exit up in the Catskills and bugs the size of small mammals hit the windshield with alarming sounds, but whatever, we'll figure it out.

Martha's dad fractured his hip somehow (his swears he didn't fall) and Tuesday he had hip replacement surgery. I am glad that the surgeon decided to replace the hip instead of using the pin thing. The recovery time is faster, in fact, he should already be at the rehabilitation center, and the pain is less severe. So yes, in-between the already normal high anxiety of home buying, add in the stress of parental health issues and there you have Martha's general state of mind. She is holding up surprisingly well considering that her mom has now decided to act like a wild caged animal and lash out at her daughters. It has been an emotional rollercoaster that is far from over.

HOMO HOMEOWNERSHIP
Last minute reworking of numbers about drove me crazy. Despite both Martha and I being on the verge of total panic it all seemed to work out. There is nothing worse then the sight and sound of two lawyers franticly punching numbers into calculators searching for a seven hundred dollar discrepancy. Yeah, now that was a good time and the error did not work out in our favor. But we also had to pay the rest of this years city tax so we walked out of the closing having to shell out an additional eighteen hundred dollars. Not ideal, but for New York property, it could have been a blood bath.

So here we go, we now own a home. I signed away my life and got a 106-year-old farmhouse in return. It all surprisingly seems to fit.

Miss Simon and her gang made the trip down from Vermont on Friday to spend two fun filled nights on an air mattress in the soon to be horn room of our new house. Sheri came with the new girlfriend (Jess) and two huge boxers (Josie and Oliver). We had a lot of dawg in our house that is for damn sure. After the initial frantic excitement of meeting new people and a new house, the dogs (and people) settled down and the four of us painted three rooms in one day. I bet Jess had a great time, all we did was work like crazy and bitch about Martha's mother and fret over the health of her father. For big fun on a Saturday night, we drove up the road for some soft serve ice-cream. God, we are a drag. I am sure when we finally get up to Vermont, Martha and I will have to plow a field or something of equal value. We owe them big time.

The town is super cute and at every turn, I love it more. This kind of thing makes me nuts because the more I like something the more I look for the other shoe to drop. It's a fucked up way to go through life but good and bad are like hot and cold faucets on a sink. Either one is too much without the other to tone it down a bit. When things really suck, I am always looking for something good to cling on to and when things are going great, I get jumpy. So this whole buy a house, dad's in the hospital thing is strangely on track.

The living room, our bedroom and the sunroom all have fresh color on the walls and that has perked things up enormously. We still need to deal with the living room carpet (disgusting) and steam clean the other carpets; paint the hallway, the whole upstairs and Martha's horn room. The kitchen and about a million other things will have to wait until we are in there. The grass needs cut and not only do we not have a mower we haven't dealt with having someone come mow it either. Martha is going down to North Carolina to deal with her whack job family so it will be two-weeks before we are back at the new house. Already, we have suburban concerns.

THE PUBLIC KILLING OF AN ALREADY DEAD HORSE
What a week to be without internet or more specifically, what a week to skip work. I didn't see a TV, email or a web page for four days, and I gotta say I'm okay with that. So it was over the phone on Friday that Sheri told Martha about Erik Wemple. Holy shit. You know, I should have known that that meeting was too good to be true. Erik's introduction and the hour and a half conversation that followed was, what I consider, an actual high point when reviewing the last five months of this merger bullshit in my head. For ninety minutes, I actually started to believe that things 'might' get better. I should have known. He seemed like a good guy, he seemed like he wasn't a big asshole, any more or less then is required in this business. The New York Times wrote, "His resignation thrusts The Voice back into turmoil." You think? Can't wait to go back to work. Should be a gas. I told Sheri that I was just going to sit at my desk listening to Frank Zappa, pump out the queer issue, and try not to pay a bit of attention to anything around me.

On an airplane ride home to Jersey and the journey is a little bumpy, to say the least. An hour before, at the airport terminal we watched a massive hailstorm move through the runway area and freak out most folks waiting on airplanes. The odd thing is that storm was roughly the third hailstorm I have seen in just as many weeks. I'm telling ya, it's the end of the world.

Oh well, at lease I'm closer to God. We are on a puddle-jumper and boy howdy it certainly is jumping. Martha is convinced that we are going to crash. She's had a death grip on my left arm for a while now, her eyes are dilated and she's whispering to me "We're going to crash, we're going to crash." loud enough that the guy across the isle from her keeps frowning at me. I give him my best version of my smile, fuck off, hair-flick look and shift around so I can stare out my window.

Sliding around in the air above Greensboro, NC I look out at God's country and notice that at some point in this airplanes history a Ladybug has died, having been trapped between the two pains of window glass of my window. Now this concerns me on a few levels. First, how did the Ladybug get there? I thought these things have to be sealed, not drafty. Okay I understand we're not going into space here but isn't there that whole 'pressurized cabin" and air mask demo thing? If so, then how did a bulbous shaped Ladybug squeeze through a seam and why, if there is a seam, wouldn't the unseen seam cause a pressure problem? Shouldn't my window crack and then blow out along with my seat and the back half of the plane? Secondly, what does a dead Ladybug stuck in my window mean? I don't like the metaphor, you know, luck and all.

These little puddle-jumpers remind of me of MRI machines. I love to fly and usually don't give a damn about anything as long as I can sit near a window. But after a year of constantly being shoved into a little metal tube, apparently now, I get a little claustrophobic. That little mind game reared it's ugly head last Friday morning after we had been in our seats for over thirty minutes but still on the ground and not going anywhere. Everything was too close to my face, too tight and it felt like there was no air. Panic set in, and not being one to fuck around with panic, I chewed a Xanax and silently talked myself down until the sweet relief of the modification of my GABA_A receptor. Gaba Gaba hey!

CARE
Martha's Mom and Dad are old and crazy. That is the short answer to "How was North Carolina?". Martha's sister came up and while we all had a lovely time together, I didn't sleep more than a combined total of 5 hours in two days. The second night there I ended up on the recliner. I can no longer sleep in a double bed with another person, in particular Martha, who is long and likes to lay diagonally. It was super great and with her sister there, the only other place I could have gone was the passenger side of the PT-Cruiser that we rented. It was a serious consideration at 4am Saturday morning but it was also storming outside so I thought against it.

The long and strange answer to the NC trip is that Martha's mother isn't doing so well. What's making her sick is a drug she is on, Coumadin, also known as RAT POISON. She is having a rare and deadly reaction to it and steps need to be taken to get her off the drug. When the choices are gangrene, open sores that will not heal, possible limb removal and liver failure or the quick click of a stroke, I think I would take the stroke, Bob.

But I'm 43 and what the hell do I know? At 87 and when you were raised to believe in a doctors care and blindly go along with what is recommended regardless of the effects, this concept of challenging your doctor and making end of life decisions is quite daunting, depressing, discouraging and over all a big fucking drag. It pains me in new and different ways to see her in so much discomfort. I feel for her and I love her with all my heart. I love her like a Mom.

Hot damn, it is The Siren Music Festival time again and every year I always tell myself that somehow, someway, it WILL be different. I will not work on it at home or make myself nuts with the pressure to get it done. Whatever, who cares? It is live and I did it in three days. The band pages are still to come because, ah, well, they haven't announced the bands yet, but at least the site resembles all that expensive marketing material that hits the streets on Monday. This year will probably be extremely huge and it is still a question as to whether I will go or not. Part of me hopes for a hurricane to hit the coast on the 16th just so the crowd will be thinner.

Last year, I sent Jasmine along alone and after the 90 minute travel time from our apartment to Coney Island she fought her way up to the backstage security only to be told that she couldn't enter the roped off area because she was under 21. Did not matter one bit that her name was on the list or that I work for The Voice. So this year she is all ramped up and could give a rats ass if I go or not because she will have turned 21 three-days prior to this free monster of a festival. I am no longer needed because she will be an ADULT, ta fucking da. Well, she still needs me around to sign my name on those student loans and various other things that are not in her field of vision at the current time.

But hey it's no time to be bitter because why, because I'm not going to let any of it bother me. Plain and simple. I have a new Xanax prescription and I cannot seem to stop listening to Johnny Cash. For the moment, life is tolerable.

THE WRONG END OF THE SADIST'S WHIP
Last week, last Friday to be exact, I had a test at St. Mary's Hospital that I swear to the good lord above if somebody ever does something like that to me again I am going to punch them in the nuts. I don't want to go into all the crazy little details, but there was about a two-hour period where I would have given away all my passwords, my social security number and bank card for a little relief. In addition, I would have gladly converted to ANY form of either organized or unorganized religion just to make it all stop. Fuckers, every last one of them, and the only reason I keep going back for more fun at that sadist lab called a hospital is because of Martha and Jasmine.

As you know, or could probably guess, I'm so sick of being sick that I just don't care, but they seem to, so what the hell. I'll chew a pill, find a happy place in my head and try not to lash out at strangers. But Friday was the limit to the amount of bodily discomfort I can put up with.

But last week was just one long continuous game of Wac-a-mole from the start. That's what usually happens when you leave town for a few days and go hang out with people who do nothing but hang out. Life starts to look a whole lot better from the warm brown paneled rec rooms of suburbia.

Suddenly, that fucked up pain in your belly starts to disappear and you are not so concerned about the risk of puking in public. You start daydreaming about crazy stuff like yard sales and backyard gardens, but none of that really matters because for the first time in almost half a year you are unexpectedly relaxed from a no-brainer visit with the folks. Who knew? Another odd thing is that for four-days in a row you were able to take a nap without the aid of a Valium because you forgot to pack the tension claw that usually grips your skull à la one of H.R. Giger's aliens and you could take it all down about a hundred notches all by your big, bad self.

Ah, but upon your return to the homeland the claw awaits you and you will be punished. All fun has a price and we never seem to have enough money.

I LOVE YOU BABY. ALWAYS AND NEVER
For Martha's birthday, along with taking her out to lunch, the folks that she works with gave her a gift card for Target. This could not be any better timing for us. Now, we loath Target, and in fact I used to work at one in Denver about a hundred years ago. (Jesus, talk about depressing. Shit, that could have turned way ugly for a whole bunch of folks if I had been thinking a little clearer.) At any rate, she and I resist Target because everything in the damn store is made in China or some other imprisoned country, for pennies on the shrinking American dollar. And honestly, I'm sick of supporting China's economy. But to actually BUY AMERICAN in this country is expensive and damn near next to impossible. American Apparel is nice and all but a little pricey, and the company has that whole Day-over 18 ad campaign that personally, kind of bothers me in a borderline pedophilia way.

Okay, besides all that nonsense, the point is this; money is too tight right now because of my teeth, the IRS, hotel rooms, gas prices, airport taxis and well, yes, our little TJ Maxx thing. But life keeps spinning out of control and Jasmine needs new clothes. Not just for fun either; she needs the massive makeover for her new job at The Stationary Store. She has to hide those crazy tats and put the butt crack way away. Basically we needed to make her look like the nice young republican that we all know she could have been had her father dug his hooks in a little deeper and I'd had been committed somewhere out west and unable to influence her through democratic witchery. Or so one version of the story goes.

So Sunday, Martha and Jasmine made the quick little drive over to Target, and three hours later she has two skirts, two tops, a pair of pants and a cute little sweater. Nice comfortable lesbian shoes had to be purchased at Payless, but those girls where so on it that they only left fifty cents on the gift card. Awesome shopping and they paid nothing for it except time at Target, which of course we all know is priceless. I stayed home and napped.

I have promised to take Martha to see the new Star Wars in the theater, and yes Jasmine has to come with me, that is the deal. We did not do that this weekend. I didn't promise to wait in any line and I don't think even Martha wants to do that. We did however see Sin City and I loved it. Too much fun and way over the top. Yeah, yeah Star Wars, but Sin City was so strange and absorbing I couldn't stop laughing.

I flew into a North Carolina heat wave last Thursday wearing all my New York black and not nearly enough Valium in my system to properly process all that Southern Hospitality.

Southern Hospitality, with its smiling face and slow-drawl of kinship is charming, so charming in fact that at first Martha was wooed into wanting to move down there. "Everyone is so nice, let's live here." But behind all those pleasantries is a firestorm of resentment for Yankees and Democrats. Remember, fucking Edwards could not even carry his own damn state last November. It took me a short time to get used to the constant eye contact of the neighbors without responding with the 'What the hell are you looking at?' stance that is now ingrained in me from walking the streets of New York City. That whole busybody nature of a small southern town is one thing I could never tolerate no matter how long I hung around. That and all the GOD BLESS THE USA signs everywhere.

It was seriously so hot that within the first hour of arriving we stole her parent's car and drove over to TJ Maxx to buy ANY summer items that might work. I bought two pairs of Capri pants (1 pink and 1 tan) and a few cool summer tops. Cool as in temperature; I look like a suburban mom in all that crap but at this point in my 'game', I really do not care.

Seeing as how the Harvey's go to bed at 5:00 and since Martha and I do not drink anymore, we spent a great deal of time watching TV and walking around the neighborhood. On the Discovery channel, we watched a program about a Humanzee (Combination of chimpanzee and a human) named Oliver. Towards the end of the program they touched on the whole human cloning thing at which point Martha made the comment; "All they are going to do is make more Republicans." Anyway, the program fucked with my head and I had dreams that night that left me with a bizarre Plant of the Apes sensation when I woke up.

Day 2 of visiting the parents and Martha's dad, Frank, asked us if we could all take Martha's mom, Jen, over to TJ Maxx for summer clothes. She was in dire need and hates to shop, actually she refuses to shop is more accurate. She will wear items until they rot off her body, something I can relate too. Well it took all three of us to move her about the store. She needs a hip replacement and tends to be a bit cranky. Frank kept Jen in check and away from the front door while Martha and I worked both ends of the store, pulling things off the racks and running them back to her to hold up to her body. There would be no trying shit on in the dressing room so we had to guess. In less than twenty minutes, Martha and Frank were in the checkout line with two pairs of pants and three tops. I was sitting with Jen by the front door trying to catch my breath. It was like speed shopping and I was dizzy.

But it was on my third trip, later on that evening, to TJ Maxx that Martha and I bought luggage. We had to exchange a pair of pants that didn't fit Jen and because of all the other crap we bought on the past two trips, we now needed something else to drag it all back home in.

This whole Harvey family is so different from mine, at times the love, and the unconditional concern for one and other makes my cold black heart skip a beat, no wait that's my murmur. But honestly, it turns my cold black heart to a warm gray, with maybe a little pink around the edges and I end up doing shit like crying at TJ Maxx for no other reason then just the sight of Martha playing with new luggage.

FUCK YOUR GRADES
Even though I didn't check email for four days I still had my cell phone and bad news will always find a way to break on through. Friday, Jasmine's grades were posted. She failed Economics and got a D in Sociology - which I have no idea how you can get a D in Sociology other than to not do the work or go to class. So, yes that is correct she actually did worse than she did last year. Oh sure she got an B in something, writing I think but right now I really don't give a fuck. The only thing that saved her from the complete fireball of my rage is that I found out while I was down in North Carolina, some 900 miles away and unable to get at her except via the cell phone, which I simply closed shut in revulsion as soon as she told me.

Oh, this child, this child, this strawberry blond, blue eyed cherub will be the death of me. This little ball of problematic intelligence loves to run down various rabbit holes of bullshit, ultimately leading to her downfall. Maddening, I say. Maddening.

She counteracted this devastating information with the news that she got a job in Hoboken at a stationary store but all that did was make me take the 'Send her to Grandma for the Summer' solution off the table. We need the money for her Junior year of college, which I could just start throwing twenty dollars bills out the car window until I reach the $800 mark, roughly equal to the failed credit. Could be a lot more fun and maybe every now and then someone in-need might find a twenty-dollar bill.

Ahhhhh. Grrrrrr. YUCK.

In an attempt to control some of the irritation from this news so that I could actually walk back into my apartment and not immediately punch Jasmine in the face, Martha and I consulted the elders, (The Harvey's) and their counsel was surprising and refreshing. They said we should just lighten up and not let her get to us. Well, they said a bunch of other stuff too but it all boiled down to that. Jasmine is soon to be 21 and we need to back off. These are her mistakes and while yes, we can be disappointed ultimately she is only hurting herself.

Then I got to hear about all the stupid shit that Martha did or wanted to do when she was in college, most of which I already knew about but it definitely added a perspective that was much needed. This is the last summer Jasmine will be home, next year she will have to work and go to summer school to make up the credits and in theory, after that, she should start moving out and about into the world.

But back to North Carolina for a minute, leaving the old folks was so very, very hard. When people you love are that old (83 & 85) each farewell could be the last. Yeah yeah, the same could be said for all of us but sweet Jesus I can't walk around with that in my head. That just feeds my doom and gloom problem. But leaving North Carolina was hard because Martha's parents are probably the closest thing to a formal family that I have had the privilege of experiencing. These folks are so god damn cute. They have been married for 58 years. 58 years people! That is just crazy.

Ah well, now all that is over and we are home, home, home. We have had the family talk with Miss Jasmine about next steps and expectations and thanks to Martha's mother, words of wisdom from another era have cooled our hot heads. Jasmine forgot to water all of my plants, but you can bet she cleaned the apartment without even being asked seeing as how I pretty much stopped talking to her after Friday morning's news.

Back to work, more doctors visits and life stuff. Life is just life, I suppose.

Choosing to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution, Martha and I drove our gas guzzling SUV right through the heart of Pennsyltucky last Friday to pick up princess Jasmine at college and drag her pickled body back home to Jersey City. There is nothing like a road trip akin to that to make a person realize just how much FOX News has a chokehold on the spoon-fed minds of the middle class. Between the Bush/Cheney bumper stickers tastefully displayed on various shades of deep red Buick LeSabres and the 'Support Our Troops' magnetic yellow ribbons slapped on the ass of the basic Ford Taurus, it was hard for me to gauge which one bothered me more. It was easy to tell however which one drove Martha crazy. Every time a we came upon a Bush/Cheney sticker (and there were PLENTY of those, let me tell you) Martha make a 'Uch' sound and flipped into road rage mode as she would flick on the blinker, hit the gas and zoom around them. Those cars can only appear in the rearview mirror.

Ah yes, but Pennsyltucky is almost the same as I left it, a complex five years ago, only now, more of why I left is on display everywhere. One could not help but notice under the deep blue skies and shining sun, flags as big as my entire living room whipping around passionately in the wind as fat-as-fuck natives shuffle between Wal-Mart and Eat-N-Park, their eyes dilated from constant hording.

But back to the task at hand. We made good time getting to Jasmine's small college town and without much fan fair, thank god, we actually moved her out of her dorm and into a storage space under the four-hour allotted timeframe. We even met one of her hippie chick friends (Yes, I got a photo) who was in the process of moving to California. But really the big thing for Martha was the Friday night dinner where we could talk about the "New House Rules" for the summer. All very exciting for Martha but not so much for Jasmine, who tends to get frumpy whenever ANYTHING changes. Turning Jasmine on to closed caption instead of blasting the volume on the TV is going to be hard, but I think it's a good way for her to learn to read.

Traveling in true lesbian form, we needed to stop at the grocery store twice for just an overnight stay. Ah well, there is shit you need and then there is the shit you forget to bring. Besides, who knew our hotel room had a refrigerator? And sweet Jesus, where else could I stand in line at the Bi-Lo and listen to Aerosmith's Lick and Promise while waiting to purchase fat free half-n-half and crossword puzzles. Well, maybe in Ohio, which makes sense if you think about it because those borders do touch. This explains why while I was in line, singing along with Steven, I had a flashback to the summer of 1976 when I spent a few months sniffing glue with a small group of dope fiends that I met in summer school. We would go over to the hardware store next to the Harley shop and buy a big tube of white airplane glue, always making sure to get a brown bag at checkout so we have something to squeeze the goo into. Then, we would scurry off behind the condos on Montgomery Road where the woods was thick and dark. So thick that the sun hardly passed through the trees and the forest floor was covered in cool sweet moss. It was the summer of the Bicentennial and the Seven Year Locust and those crazy bugs were everywhere in the woods, clicking away all around us as we sniffed glue and fried our brains.

Funny what a song can do, eh? It's like one big smear of the bizarre. No wonder I have a tumor.

The drive home was enchanting for about thirty minutes in that I met a friend's mom in Milton, PA where we picked up a wall clock and a bread maker. Weirder small town photo stuff is really the driving force here but Milton was quaint without the usual past religious percussion vibe that most small towns in PA seem to carry. After that, it was around three hours of nothing but studying the black crows hanging out in the barren trees of the Pocono's all along the side of interstate 80, patiently waiting for the next road kill. I guess they view the highway as a 24/7 deli. Just sit and wait, any minute now something is going to try to cross the road. Why do they do it? Only the crows know.

THE WEEKS LIST
What weekend isn't complete without a little trip up the road for some barium and meat? I have to have yet another CT scan at 8:15 Monday morning so Sunday is berry flavored Barium Sulfate Suspension day and we need to go to the grocery store. The chores of life even on Mother's Day.

I spent $700 at the dentist last Thursday where I had to get nine (9) shots of some kind of crap I need to counteract the damage that the tumor and blood pressure medicine are doing to my teeth. My stomach has been killing me for about a week, I have no idea why, probably nerves, but fuck if not one thing would do the job and make it stop. I am actually thinking of drinking whisky just to see if that still works. It was only when I was at the dentist and I accidentally swallowed a big lump of topical novocaine that it eased up for a few hours. The cramping and nausea returned for the following two days but for those few hours it was great.

Big, big week here and only two days of it are going to be spent at work. Aside from the awesome CT scan with 1 mil cuts of my pesky adrenal gland, Martha and I are traveling to NC to visit her unbelievably old but totally inspiring parents. They are both 85 and an absolute joy to be around. I cannot wait to see them. The whole deal down there is so low key that the only big thing of every day is lunch. I'm going to read, nap and laugh my ass off because they are a riot. Actually, it's the three of them, Martha and her parents, that is where the laughter and the love is crazy fun.

Wednesday is Martha's 42nd birthday. She opened her brand new digital camera on Saturday night after we came home. A good chunk of Wednesday will be spent dealing with more doctor horseshit but I hope I can at least take her out for dinner or something.