Holly Northrop Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Last Friday it took me all day, and I mean from 9am to around 6pm to cut ten matte boards and frame ten 16 x 20 photographs. I only have to re-cut two mattes but one frame arrived broken and then I broke the glass on another. I can count on one hand how many times I've broken frame glass; it never happens. So now, at the eleventh hour before hanging I have frames racing towards me through the FEDEX system.

Bending over for nine hours was murder on my back. Even with the TENS unit plastered to my skin and cranked up, I still had trouble. I wonder if I can just have the TENS unit implanted under my skin and wired to my back spasms?

Martha and I actually went out on a Saturday night. We went to the Fall Supper at TSL and it wasn't as mentally taxing as I thought it would be. I had fun, met new people and my god the desire to smoke did not permeate every second of conversation that I was involved in. Weird. Who knows, either the planets were aligned just right or one-hour of therapy beforehand actually did some good. I still felt like a jumpy nut bag but part of me was okay with that.

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As most of you know, Miss Jasmine is now in her fifth year of college and that is not because she is going for her masters. This is just to pull a simple bachelors degree in Journalism out of her ass. About two-weeks ago she called to tell me that she is going to have to withdrawal from three, (3) THREE! of her classes because she is flunking out. Now, she was only taking four classes so having to drop three will put her down to one class for the semester. My reaction to this news was, oh what's the word that could best describe my retort? Wrath, anger, profanity-laced rage? I say yes to all of the above.

The details of this nonsense are silly and revolve around Jasmine's sometimes lacking ability to see the big picture. It is not drinking, drugs or even a boy that is the problem. It is Italian. Jasmine cannot seem to learn Italian. Because of that, she started screwing up in her other classes, one of them being Health, which to me is like failing gym.

The thing that cracks my brain and makes me want to smack the stupid out of her is that I had to get a fucking student loan for her to go this semester. Yes, this one precious class that she has left is now worth around ten grand.

And in what I consider unfortunate timing for me to be happy for her, but good for her because she doesn't have a whole lot of school to worry about, Jasmine and a bunch of her sticky friends are driving to Asbury Park to see Gogol Bordello at the Stone Pony on Monday night. Sounds like a great time and if I were twenty-three, this is what I might be doing. I'm just not in the mood for her to be having a great time right now.

Martha is so pissed at her that we really can't speak of it yet. We are driving to PA for Thanksgiving so we all have about five weeks to find our 'happy places' on this issue so we can have a nice holiday with each other.

The show in Hudson for the ArtsWalk 2007 was a pretty big hit. Of course I obsessed about my placement, (there was unusual window glare and you could hardly see my stuff) but once the sun went down things looked much better. But you know, the curator in me would never have hung the photography in that space. Almost all of the work was framed in glass and there were too many windows in the area. I would have put paintings or other non-reflective work in there and hung all the glass-covered stuff in the makeshift darkened spaces. I cannot help myself this is just the way I think. It wasn't just my work that was having a bad glare day.

Martha and I loitered near my stuff, watching folks check out the work. Martha had work hanging too but because I'm am a selfish bitch we stayed near my stuff. It's an odd feeling watching someone stare at something I made. Probably something I'll never get used to. All that time that I used to gallery sit when we would have the summer shows at the 220 Gallery in Chelsea, I would sit there for hours on end watching folks walk around the room with their pocketbook dogs in tow, sometimes pausing at a photo of mine; it is a weird sensation. You almost want to hear what they are thinking but then they might open their mouths and want to know where the subway was or which street was better to grab a cab, 7th or 8th? Any illusion of appreciation vanishing as each word is released from their lips.

But that's how they roll in Chelsea, up here in Hudson I heard the most delightful remark about my work. "Now, these are quite wonderful, aren't they? They have a ghost quality to them." Perfect.

Anyway, it is fantastic to be showing again and I am so very proud of Martha's work. She got a great spot and her pieces worked well with the other artists around her. In more showy news, I've thrown my hat in the ring for some added nervous punishment by participating in a group show at TSL. It is a Black & White show of Hudson somewhere around the last week in October. I've also started work on the 2008 calendar that I would like to have ready to go and for sale within the next two weeks.

With all this fun stuff comes the realization that next week I will be back at work. Fucking hell. Back to the worst, time sucking, emotionally draining and vapid relationship of my life. What more can I say?

I will be trying something new this week in regards to the pain management assault on my back spasms. Two things actually, Acupuncture and Psychiatry. Sounds like a term paper doesn't it? Tuesday, for the first time in my life (that I am aware of) I'll have needles shoved into various pressure points on my body. Then a big, big day on Thursday, I have a meet and great with a Psychiatrist. Exciting stuff there. He's going to evaluate me. I guess I better hold off on the general use of profanity and suicide jokes. I could spend the whole time talking about how the ring that Martha and I had resized in a brand new setting is just like the one Jenna Bush has on her little finger, except hers is three times the size of mine. Would it be wrong to take a Xanax before I go see him or should I just let him see the show all raw and end of day jumpy? Something to ponder. I guess it depends on what kind of soul sucking day I've had.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Staff Member
For the very first time in my life, I had a professional massage. I have always had issues around people I do not know touching me but after what happened at the Pain Management Center last Tuesday, I had run out of options. Tuesday's appointment at the PMC turned into a total shitfest. I arrived with chronic pain in my back and unable to even sit on the exam table. Obviously, the shots were making things worse; my back was now totally locked up and would not stop with the spasms. This had been going on for over ten days. I had already been seeing my chiropractor every other day for over a week and a half. I remember walking over to the PMC thinking that this was great, they could see and feel what was going on and most likely do something to fix me. At least this is what I thought.

Instead, what happened was a joke. They did nothing. I stood there and cried and the nurse practitioner just stood there and looked at me. While standing in front of an enormous poster for OxyContin, she said that the shots were supposed to have the opposite effect and that there really isn't anything else they could do for me. There is no alternative treatment for that kind of pain.

What, you mean "real pain"? I could not even get a muscle relaxant out of this bitch even though my back would not stop spazzing and I had tears, (real tears people) running down my cheeks. She told me to go get a deep tissue massage and to buy a Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulator (TENS) machine.

Now mind you I have two blown disks, a pinched nerve and Osteoarthritis in my neck. I have x-rays and a CT scan that show these things and she wouldn't even give me an aspirin. So having no choice other then to start over with another doctor, and plan an extended drive up to Canada, Martha made an appointment for both of us at Bodhi in Hudson. I have to say that it was pretty awesome. Martha went first, because deep down I am just a pussy, and after thirty minutes, she came out looking all sleepy and relaxed. So I took the plunge, got half-naked and got rubbed. At first I was a little weirded out, whenever anyone who is about to do anything to me, tells me to take a few deeps breaths and relax, well, that tends to have the opposite effect with me. I stiffen up and become hyper alert. What can I say, I am a damaged soul. Anyway, after a few minutes, I did manage to let it go and things went much better. So now, not only do we have a chiropractor on our payroll we have added a masseuse.

Sometimes, I just can't seem to get into the rhythm of New York City. It happens. Things are just slightly off and you know it. You can feel it before it even really lets you know just how off it's going to get.

Walking to work last week, I came upon a construction area where the sidewalk was gone and a section of the street was being used as the pedestrian walkway. A little cement barrier was set up so that traffic could not just mow people down. At the entrance to the walkway I had to step out into the street because a delivery truck was parked at the opening. Two guys were unloading stuff from the truck. I looped around the one guy just as the M8 cross-town bus skimmed by me lightly touching my right hand. I shifted over just a little so as not to be run over and as I moved to the left, the guy who is unloading the truck grabs a big ice chest full of clear liquid, turns slightly to the right and dumps it all over my legs. I totally stepped into it. I am wearing shorts and flip-flops and that shit was ice cold. I freaked out, ripping my headphones out of my ears while screaming "WHAT THE FUCK?!"

He didn't see me, I know this, it was totally an accident so I'm not really bitching at him, and he's apologizing like crazy.

"What is it?" I questioned, looking directly into his eyes, my face mere inches from his face.
"What is what?" he looked at me, confused.
"What'd you mean what is what? What is the water? Is it fish water?" I said.
"No, just ice, see." He says as he pulls me over to the curb where there are big bags of ice already pulled off the truck and lying on the sidewalk.
"It's all good. Just water, I promise, feel good eh? Nice and cold. Nice and cold. Hot hot day, right? Just water, no worry."

I rolled my eyes and walked away. Yes, it did feel good except that my brain was convinced that it was acid water and I was going to end up with a weird rash or something. I get to work and wash my legs and feet with anti-bacterial hand soap in the sink. My shorts however will have to wait.

At lunch, while out shooting and walking down St. Marks I see a homeless guy a good half a block away from me. We are headed towards each other and I don't think to much about it except that I notice he is wearing a heavily stained light blue overcoat, he happens to be barefoot and he has eight inch drinking straws sticking out of both of his ears. Somehow, and I'm not really sure how this fucking happened, he walks right into me, or I walk right on into him, it doesn't really matter. We both misjudged and the end result is that we touched. Like touch touch. Like my hand touched his chest and I gently pushed off of him. My face was inches from the bits of NYC that were stuck in his beard.

I pulled away from straw man and immediately turned around, and walked directly back to work. Shooting is over, more anti-bacterial soap, water and hand sanitizer are in my immediate future. I am trying to cross 3rd avenue but while in the middle of the crosswalk, where there is plenty of room to move around, a Cooper Union student manages to get her pen caught in my hair as she passes by me. It flips out of her hand, (at least she let go of it) and around my head to my face, lightly smacking me in the nose. And again, I'm like "WHAT THE FUCK?!"

"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry." She cried.

I just stand there in the middle of the street, pull the pen out of my head, hand it to her and walk away.

Like I said, sometimes the rhythm is just a little off.

Prick Me, You Prick
You know what's funny? Not funny, funny but odd funny? When I was a kid, my mom use to take me to the doctor's office on a pretty regular basis. In my head, it seemed like a monthly thing but in hindsight, it was probably every six-months or so. But the general reason she would take me was to get a shot. Almost always Dr. Goodman would inject me with something, usually penicillin. Penicillin in the 60s was given out at alarming rates, at least by Dr. Goodman, and that's why I am now allergic to all cillins and sulfas. Much like Zoë's booster-induced seizures, I have booster-induced allergies and my guess is that a good chunk of the kids who grew up in Meadville do too.

From the age of around three up until around seven, whenever my mom would take me to the doctor I would ultimately flip out on her. I hated shots. I always ended up getting a shot and I fucking hated them. The minute I'd figure out we were going to the doctor I would start planning my escape. I can it trace back to this precise moment of my childhood as to where the fantasy of me jumping out of a moving car began. So easy to do then with no child locks, car seats or sober mothers. Hell, I wasn't even wearing a seatbelt. It is a fantasy that became a solid staple in my playbook until I left home. Jumping out of a moving car just to get away from my family. Tuck and roll.

Dr. Goodman had a home office. He lived in a very nice ranch house where the bottom part of the home was his office. The waiting room was always filled with a thick layer of stagnate cigarette smoke that would come to life whenever the door opened. Everyone smoked. My mom smoked, Dr. Goodman smoked and his wife (the nurse) she too would be smoking. Off of the waiting room were two or three exam rooms equip with metal tables, wooden tongue suppressers and plaid beanbag ashtrays.

When I was four I got the measles. According to my mom, I was very sick for days and days. My memory of this has always been condensed into those few moments when I was conscious. I remember the ice bath she gave me because my fever soared to 105 degrees and she was out of her mind with worry. I remember puking up ginger ale and saltines off the side of my twin princess bed and into the blue bucket that she usually used to mop the kitchen floor with. And I remember Dr. Goodman examined me from head to toe in my bedroom, just before he gave me a shot in the ass.

I was never safe, at any moment Dr. Goodman could show up with his little black bag full of needles.

After about a week of that shit, I was finally able to go to the doctor's office instead of him having to come to the house. My mom drove me down the street to his office and once inside I made a run for it. I ran all around their house, upstairs into the kitchen, around the dining room and into the master bedroom. It was freaky weird, with my mom and the nurse chasing me. My mom body slammed me by the doctor's double bed, shoving my head under the bed frame, where I saw the doctor's scared to death white poodle barking at me. Just as I looked into the little dog's eyes, the nurse came up from behind and jammed a needle into my ass.

Ah yes, memories. What has me thinking about all this is the current state of my back and the direction that treatment has taken.

I just had three shots in my back muscles. That's right, three of them. It fucking hurt and I had to sit there and take it. There was no running away because at this point in my life, no one would chase me. Only the pain would follow and I'm sick of the pain. I want to break-up with the pain. But sitting there, all bent over while two-inch long needles were slid into my back and buried into the tesre minor and trapezius muscles, I thought of Dr. Goodman, my mom and how I really, really wanted a cigarette.

I went to the dentist last week and it only cost $300. I don't know if I mentioned that I had oral surgery a few weeks back so making it out of her office with a bill less than $1500 is what I happen to consider lucky and quite possibly even a good day. So sad isn't it?

Even sadder is that I need to start wearing glasses. Oh sure I had reading glasses and would every now and then actually wear them, but for the past 6 months or so, I've started carrying them with me. I've never done that before. At first, I thought my eyes were just tired. Characteristically, all of me is tired so why not my eyes? But I noticed that I was having trouble actually seeing shit close-up no matter what time of day or what state of mind I happened to be in.

Martha and I would be at the grocery store, I would flip a can around to read the label, and I would not be able to see the fine print. I would hold if far away or pull it real close, nothing made it better. I can't see words under 6 point and I have ALWAYS been able to read tiny little things. I also noticed that the last time I used my 35m I had trouble focusing it. Fuck!

So Ms. Martha took me to the eye doctor. After several tests, some of which I found rather cruel; like that one where they dilate your eyes and then take a Polaroid (complete with flash) of the optic nerve. I saw nothing but magenta for ten solid minutes after she did that. Then she had to retake the left eye because I blinked. What, you didn't think I would blink? After realizing what was up when she shot the right eye, my internal self-monitoring OS intervened, thinking that I was on acid (hence the dilation) and was looking through the wrong end of one of my cameras. My eyeballs went into self-preservation mode. In any case, it didn't matter that I blinked on the first take, I still saw magenta because the flash was so intense that it just shot right through my onion skin eyelids.

After way too much fun at LensCrafters, it was discovered that my left eye, (the one I use to focus a camera with) is loosing its ability to focus. Super. Reading glasses will work for a time but the eye guy said that eventually I will have to consider bifocals. Even better.

Of course, Martha thinks I'm just a big pussy about it all. She's been wearing glasses since she was twelve, when she couldn't see the chalkboard in class. When she got glasses, it was one of the most depressing days of her life. And there you have that.

In what I hope is the last day that my back pain is on this here earth, I have an appointment to see the Pain Management Center on Ascension of Christ Thursday. Yes, yes I know, to hell I go.

Remodeling the Homeland
Jasmine is home all week and besides lying on my couch demanding On Demand and sushi, she is going to seriously paint our kitchen. Before and after photos will follow but the project is not just a simple paint job. She's going to paint the cabinets and possibly do a little backsplash tile work. It is a big enough project that we will be paying her, which should help on a number of levels.

We are also getting a new front door, if the guy will ever call us back. The trailer trash red front door will soon be in a landfill somewhere, replace by a nice white no nothing fiberglass thing complete with a sexy storm door.

After months of waiting it out, Martha got a "good deal" on a brand new Sharp stainless steel stove. In the beginning, there were only a few catches. First one was that we had to get it from Mahwah to Hudson. Okay, after she sweet-talked a few folks at work, they got it in the back of the Jeep and we drove it home on the New York State Thruway. I was a tad nervous seeing how the thing weighs over 200 lbs and was not tied to anything. But really, what could we have strapped it to that would have held? It was the kind of scenario where a minor fender bender could have killed us, mowed over by a stove yes sir. But then again, there really isn't much less than massive fireballs when shit goes wrong on the Thruway. On the tame side, it is either a flat tire, general car trouble or a dead animal on the side of the road. The other, is a pillar of smoke at the end of a 5-mile backup where at the ground zero site of the accident, it looks like a bomb went off. High-speed interstate fuckery is a death dance.

But yes, back to the stove for a minute. So we get this thing home and Martha has arranged for the gentleman who mows our yard (Homeland Dan) to help us remove the skank-ass 40+ year-old stove that came with the house and put the new free stove in its place. Old stove comes out, no problem. New stove goes in, no problem. New stove is plugged in and then, there is a problem. The sensor fan will not stop running. Something is wrong.

The next day at work, Martha speaks with the tech guys and everyone agrees that something is wrong. We live so far out in the middle of nothing that there are no Sharp service people to come to the house. Somewhere someone thinks it might be the cord, so we buy a new cord and have Homeland Dan come back over to pull the stove out from the wall and install a new cord. Which he does and when he plugs the new cord in, the sensor fan comes on.

So now, (as I type this now) I have a broken stove in the middle of the kitchen. The "plan" is to have Homeland Dan come back over and put it back in the Jeep. Martha and I will then travel with it back to Sharp where she will have others unload it. She's to find another stove, test it there, and then have that one loaded up in the Jeep and we will drive it home to where Homeland Dan will come over one-more-fucking-time to unload the stove, drag it in the house and hopefully be done with us.

The week started out simple enough. I had an MRI scheduled for Monday morning and I was a little nervous about that. The reasons for the test were simply to look at my neck and upper back so my chiropractor could figure out just how fucked up my back is. When I see him on schedule, everything is about 80% back to normal. When I go a week between visits, well, things go down hill hourly.

I figured that I would pop a Xanax about twenty minutes before I go in the "open" MRI machine. That whole year of testing that I went through a few years back made me claustrophobic; just another added spice to my Lazy Susan assortment of phobic ticks.

I get there and chew a pill while I pick out my music selection, (Elvis's Number 1 Hits), and fill out paperwork. Fifteen minutes later, they take me in the back, I take off all metal, put my purse in a locker and I wait. Ten minutes goes by and I'm not feeling the Xanax at all. I'm tense and starting to get a headache. The technician comes over and checks me out one last time for metal. I lay down on the table, he moves my hair and then he locks my head down. He placed a large plastic arm across my neck, not really touching it but I can see it and now, I can't move my head at all. This starts freaking me out on the inside. My heart rate jumps to roughly a zillion beats per minute, I instantly start sweating and I suddenly have to go to the bathroom.

Outside of my internal hell, the technician tells me that the first test is going to take twenty-five minutes and then he puts the headphones on my head, with the right one not even over my ear. I lift my hand to move it but I can't get to my head. I close my eyes as he pushes me under the machine and I instantly begin hyperventilating only now I can feel my hot crazy breath slamming back into my face. I open my eyes and I immediately become disoriented and feel like I'm going to pass out, which in hindsight, I should have tried to do. If I'd a passed out everything would have been fine. The machine is an inch from my nose, so close that I cannot focus; I can't turn my head to look out the open sides, removing any possibility of finding a focal point. Elvis starts in faintly with Heartbreak Hotel but I can only hear it in my left ear. The magnate starts popping and I freak out just as Elvis is getting to "I get so lonely I could die".

"Hello! Hello! Can you hear me?" I hear myself and I notice how insane I sound.
"Yes" comes out over the intercom, in a godlike presence.
"I want out." I said.
Long pause.
"Hello!"
"Yes, yes, I'm coming in." God said.

Mr. Technician pulls me out, and we have a conversation about how I really need this test and blah, blah, blah, all the while I'm trying to pull my head out of the big plastic head block.

"No, I can't do this." I say. And with that I am set free from the head block and I hear the receptionist call my doctor, "Yeah, your patient, Ms. Northrop. She claustroed."

They were all nice and stuff and I even got the complementary mug filled with candy even though I clearly did not deserve it.

I got the hell out of there as fast as I could. The testing place was way out in Mahwah, NJ and I had to walk about a mile to the train station. Normally, not a problem but about ten minutes into my 2º walk the Xanax hits me. Suddenly I can't pick up my feet and I'm tripping over air. The sun is way too bright, the wind chill makes me sleepy and my purse feels like a dead body on my back. I start doing the drug shuffle down the road all the way to the train station. Thankfully, the local came within minutes. Once on the local, I find an almost empty car, I crawl into a three-seater, shove my purse against the wall for use as a pillow and pass out before I am even fully lying down. I woke up an hour later as we were pulling into Hoboken. I was on my back with my mouth open, snoring like grandpa after Sunday supper.

I grabbed my shit and stumbled off the train and down the stairs to The Path where I had to stand. I was too fucked up to properly hold the pole so for ten minutes I was that stupid bitch on the train.

Climbing out of the 9th Street Path station was like moving through mud. Once on the street I shuffled along to the Voice at a snails pace. It took me almost twenty-five minutes to walk a walk that normally takes me ten, fifteen tops and that's if I hit the all the lights wrong.

Work was a joke, I nodded of and on at my desk until 4:30 when I packed up my little crazy train and shuffled on back over to The Path station. I slept on the crowded train to Suffern, sitting upright with my mouth open, then crawled off that train and slid into the car with Martha. I nodded off at least three times on the way home.

The next day (Tuesday), I had to go to the chiropractor because I had missed my visit the day before due to loss of consciousness. Martha could not take me and I thought, okay, I could handle this whole suburban transportation thing. The chiropractor is in Suffern so I just needed to call and order a cab, seeing how you cannot really hail one. I call a cab and everything is all set. The train is no problem and in fact, I managed to catch the early one so I called and changed my pickup time.

Everything turned to shit when I got off the train. It is again, 2º outside and even though I am wearing Martha's parka my legs freeze within minutes. There is no cab. Okay, no problem he'll be here. I wait ten minutes before I call.

"Oh yes he is on his way, traffic you know."

Suffern is a suburban stop and never once have I ever felt too weird there so my guard was way down seeing how it was light and so very artic out. I was standing near the ticket machine when suddenly someone yanked on my back. I didn't even hear another person come up behind me. I didn't have my headphones on but I did have the hood to Martha's parka around my head. That thing is soundproof.

So I flip around like a cat and there, not two feet from me, is a relatively young homeless man wearing multiple layers of filthy clothing. His face is smeared with dirt and his piercing blue eyes are staring right at me. My brain goes into attack mode and I'm convinced that this is going to get seriously fucking ugly real fast. No one is around, the station building is closed and the sun is going down.

He looks at me and asks for a cigarette. I start backing up and out into the parking lot telling him I don't smoke.

He smiles at me and asks me again for a cigarette while walking towards me.

I move out into the center of the parking lot where there are no cars and no hidden spaces. I never take my eyes off of him as he is walks towards me. In seconds, I had managed to put a good twenty feet between us.

Off to the left I notice exhaust coming from a parked car. I turn my head just a little to see if there is anyone in the car when I notice a young woman behind the wheel. I point at her and mouth, "I am coming over to you."

The guy changes directions with me, every few minutes asking me for a cigarette. He can't see the car that I am headed towards it just looks like I'm trying to get out of the lot, and this makes him start to move closer to me.

Within ten feet of the car, I hear the woman pop the locks. For the first time since I looked at the guy I turned my back on him and walked directly to the woman's car. I reach out open the door, slide in the passenger seat and close the door. The woman immediately locks the doors behind me. I turned to look out at the guy and he was walking back to the ticket machine having figured out that he couldn't get to me. That's when I noticed a stairwell next to the building. That's where the guy had come from.

I looked at the woman whose car I was now sitting in. I smiled and said thank you. She didn't speak English.

"¿Habla usted español?"
"No." I said
We smile at each other.
We point at the guy and I said the word bad.
"Jes." she said.
We smile.

A few minutes goes by and still no fucking cab. Another train comes into the station and the person she was waiting on gets off the train. I thank her while getting out of the car and just as I do I notice the homeless guy lingering around the passengers asking everyone for a cigarette.

He sees me but now there are too many people everywhere to fuck with me. He smiles at me with only one side of his mouth. A Lincoln Town Car pulls up to the station and a passenger gets out. After she is finished paying and fucking around with her hair, I flag him down, asking if I can hail him.

"I'm not going very far and I've been out in this cold for forty-five minutes." I plead. "Sure, no problem." said the driver.

Ten dollars later, I am at the doctor. I walk into the waiting room just as a patient is coming out of exam room.

"Hey you have the same coat as me!" He said it with the same heightened excitement that someone in kindergarten would have.

"Isn't that amazing? We have the same coat. Where did you get your's?" he rattled off.

"Land's End." I sigh as I start rubbing my face. My latest nervous tick that I'm trying out.

"Land's End, that's right. Isn't that amazing? Does your's do this?" He shows me the collar area of his coat where the fibers have all turned into grey fuzz balls. It's rather disgusting but he wants me to look at it.

I'm still standing in the waiting room with my coat not only on but zipped up, I have caught a crazy chill, to say the least and I've started to shake. I watch him rub his fingers over the fuzz balls for a few minutes and then he starts up all over again.

"Isn't that amazing? We have the same coat. Does your's do this?" And again he shows me the collar area of his coat where the fibers have all turned into grey fuzz balls.

"The drycleaners said it was from my beard. Does your's do this? Not that you have a beard." Now I am just staring at him as he rubs his coat. After a few minutes he starts up again, I shit you not.

"Isn't that amazing? We have the same coat. Does your's do this?"

He and I are the only two people in the waiting room. No one else is in earshot of this glitch in the matrix and I begin to laugh aloud. He doesn't seem to notice.

Just when it looks like he might start up again, his doctor calls him back to the desk for some paperwork. I'm left sitting there alone with my coat on just staring at the brown paneling.

My doctor comes out and asks me what's wrong, am I alright?

Yeah, sure, I'm fine, because I am right?

The next day, and let me just say that it was only Wednesday, I had a job interview. Great, cool very exciting. The plan was for Martha to drive me to the interview which was in Port Chester, and then for her to go on across the Tappenzee Bridge and on to work. I would then take the train into Manhattan after the interview and play it by ear from there.

Wednesday morning there was a light dusting of snow on the roads and for the most part upstate wasn't that bad but the further south we drove, the worse the snow and the traffic became. The first hour of the project hour and a half drive was uneventful but then everything went to hell. Every highway we turned on to had a multi-car, multi-lane accident. Originally, I was going to arrive in Port Chester with like ninety minutes to kill. I figured I'd find a coffee shop and just chill. But no, it took us FOUR HOURS to get there. I walked in exactly at my interview time with not one minute to spare. I walked in used the restroom, shook hands and proceeded to talk my way through a two-hour interview while Martha waited in the car.

After that, we drove straight home where we watched Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall in Robert Altman's 3 Women, because if things were going to be so weird then I needed to watch and even weirder movie then the one that I felt like I was a character in.