Holly Northrop Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh for fuck's sake. My 45th birthday is this Friday. What the hell? Even Jasmine gave me a wide-eyed look a few months ago when she realized how old I was going to be. I am the youngest parent of all of her friends, except for Weber. Her mother is around my age. Well, it is some kind of milestone I suppose, but for the record, 45 is not the new 35. That is absurd and delusional. 45 is 45 and for some of us, 45 is the new 50.

Jasmine said I was ridiculous and Martha said that once she reached $1000 she gave up on the idea of getting me everything on the list. That's right, I'm talking about my

This is not even the whole thing; this is just stuff that I tag every now and then. I don't understand, doesn't everyone have a huge Wish List? I mean, that is why they call it a Wish List. It's not a shopping list like I make very week for the fricken grocery store. It is a 'if I had money and abundant free time this is what I might buy' list. I actually thought mine was rather small considering how long I've been shoving shit in there. I've always used it as a catch all for things I don't want to forget about. Things I simply must have, (new releases, photo supplies and balls out obsessions), I negotiate with Martha and then go buy them, or...er...I mean, do whatever she tells me to do. :)

Anyway, I thought this was a great resource. Martha was bitching the other day about how I am so hard to buy presents for and with not only Christmas to worry about there was also my birthday. I knew she and Jasmine were conspiring together over what to get me so I thought I'd just send this little list along to help out. Music, books and photography about covers it. I have enough jewelry and knickknacks to choke a horse. Clothing is always an issue, and best left up to just me, alone and cold in some unforgiving dressing room somewhere.

With all this chatter about Wish Lists, it only took Martha a week to get on board as she has made one for herself. Looks like it's not very long before she makes a page two.

The Other Shoe Hits the Floor
Ah yes, but all that laughter quickly ended when a certain letter arrived at the house. Yet again, this Christmas needs to be light but at least this year we know exactly why. Along with my shaky employment outlook, the city of Hudson is raising our tax bill. (They are calling it an adjustment; I am calling it an ass pounding.) For the first two months of next year, we will have to shell out an extra $300 a month (!) and then the rest of the year it goes down to something like $250 or so. I stopped paying attention at the $300 number. Anything other then $20 is too much. What the hell are we paying all this tax for? Jacuzzis and tiered landscaping with white picket fencing for everyone, yippy!

Martha spoke with the tax assessor and after a whole lot of number punching on his trusty calculator he came back with, 'Well you're right in line. The increase is correct."

How can this be? Nothing is selling up here, except large million dollar properties. And THAT, apparently is the problem. Taxes are based on property values and those values are all over the board. The house down the street went into auction in October but the house directly across the street from the auction house is listed for $239,500.

But then you have something like this with a list price of $299,000 but taxes are over $8000? But then this, cute little two-family home, which is what our house is considered to be, listed at $199,000 and taxes at $3,700.

Then almost all the stuff on Warren Street, the main street of Hudson, is listed either right at $1,000,000 or just under it. That's what's selling. The big, big ticket items.

If we were wealthy, and this house that we live in was our second home, you know some part-time, weekend thing, like this which is just down the street from us and cost roughly $340,000 dollars more then our house, then I suppose things like this wouldn't effect us. My Wish List would not be on Amazon it would be on Lonely Planet. In no particular order, Austria, Germany and of course, Prague.

Ah, yes there is nothing quite like Christmas time along 5th Avenue in Manhattan. Kind of makes ya crazy if you don't have some sort of distraction. So that is why I shot Christmas in Midtown while listening to Led Zeppelin; specifically, the live twenty-five minute version of Dazed and Confused from the 1972 show at the LA Forum. When that song was over I found myself still in the feverish pitch of an international Christmas blast and unable to tolerate the sounds of directionless tourists. I shuffled my Shuffle to the twenty-three minute version of Whole Lotta Love from the same 1972 show. I definitely had a Wizard of Oz and The Dark Side of the Moon thing happening. It was, simply put, fantastic and the only way to roll around up there this time of year. It doesn't have to be Zeppelin but my god I recommend blasting something in your ears.

More talk about Zeppelin, I know, I know but there is no denying them. This is a band who electrified the blues and once they get in your head, they stay. Zeppelin's first four albums were released within two and a half year period, (from 1969 to 1971) and that is a substantial amount of excellent music to be bombarded with. I am officially deep in the trenches of a Zeppelin problem and I am taking Martha with me. She even started humming songs and the other day, she watched Black Dog online without me even being in the room. What can I say? For her it's all about John Bonham, for me it's Jimmy Page. I've taken out all my old vinyl, (all ten albums) and Miss Jasmine is now Christmas shopping online for either this, this or this.

What I really want for Christmas is something like this, only with this lens but that is a whole other subject that is never going to be talked about. But hey, look what's back on the market. Now that and a stopwatch would be a fun birthday present.

While wondering around the mean streets of Midtown, I called Jasmine in Pennsylvania for directions to the Disney store. I'd wanted to go there to shoot a Barbie® window display but didn't have a clue as to where it was. For some reason I thought it was near Times Square but as I walked by the Sullivan Theater, it occurred to me that I really didn't know where it was and before I made the huge commitment to walk down into Times Square at the height of lunch hour, I'd better double check. I'd just assumed it was in Times Square, because it sounds like it should be there. Jasmine is my dialup internet when I'm out shooting. If I need the exact address or phone number for something in Manhattan, I call her. Even out of state, she's still my photo bitch.

Jasmine informed me that it was over on 5th Avenue near Central Park and she knows this from memory because why? Because she's been there, of her own free will. Not with me, that's for damn sure. While I was waiting to cross Broadway with fifty holiday shoppers with cameras, I said to Jasmine;

"Oh man they lit that god damn tree last night and everyone here is out of their fucking minds."

Jasmine laughed in my ear as the woman in front of me turned around and gave me a total look of abject horror. I mouthed a 'what?' and shrugged my good shoulder at her and she looked away. That's right, Merry Christmas and welcome to New York.

With the hoards of crap that the foreign tourists are snapping up, New York City's economy should be just fine. The rest of the country will be homeless, having foreclosed on their dreams, but Manhattan is cleaning up. Who could blame them? If I lived anywhere else, I'd suffer through a shitty international delayed flight just to hit America's bargain basement prices. It is as though the United States has become one big discount store. We are now nothing more then one giant Wal*Mart.

United*States
Save Money. Live Somewhere Else.

The Wet Side of the Darkroom
I've been glazing my back with Tiger Balm extra strength for about a week solid now and it really seems to be pulling me through a rough patch. I'd rather smell like grandma then wear the TENS unit. That thing just reminds me that I'm fucked up and honestly, do I really need yet another thing to remind me of that?

Tiger Balm, for whatever reason, doesn't have the same reaction. Probably because I can't really smell very well. Too bad for everyone else now that it is the holiday hugging season. Acupuncture is working well and so is therapy. Lots of talk about bad things seems to be releasing some of the tension that I have all jammed up in me.

My therapist shares a space with several other head doctors in the practice. I've been to therapy about five times now and every time I've been there I've noticed a round tan device about the size of a large nut can sitting outside of her office. Finally, the last time I was there I asked her what it was. She said it was a noise machine. I laughed and joked, "Oh to muffle the sobbing." Her response was total straight-faced silence. I guess that would be an unfunny yes.

XM Radio has a new channel called XM LED. It's an all Led Zeppelin station. Seeing how I only go into work one day a week now, the odds of me knowing about this station were pretty slim. I'm hardly ever in the car and it's not like Martha listens to things like guitar-driven heavy metal sludge, unless of course, I'm forcing her to.

So last Thursday, while waiting on Martha, who was in CVS buying a battery for her business calculator, I was in the car stumbling along through the XM radio offerings when I hit upon a channel that said XM LED on the top. They were playing Good Times Bad Times. 'I wonder if this is a Zeppelin channel?' I said aloud to no one but the Prius.

Another Zeppelin song came on and I clapped my hands together like the true idiotic fourteen-year-old girl that I am. Now I had to figure out how to convince Martha to let me play the station for a little while on the way home. She likes to listen to tinny talk radio so this might be a rough sell.

She comes out of CVS and opens the car door as I am blasting The Crunge.

"So check this out! It's an all Led Zeppelin station!" I had obviously decided to just go for it.
Martha turned the volume down just a tad and said nothing as she fidgeted with her coat, the seat and her knee pillow.

"How about we just listen to it for a little while and if they play Stairway we're out." I negotiated.
She smiled and said, "What ever you want, poo."
Translated means, I'm not happy but this makes you happy, however do not make me any unhappier. If I develop into unhappier, you're out.

Despite pulling straight out into gridlock traffic on the highway, once we got moving we ended up listening to it the whole way home. They never played Stairway to Heaven, (nor any bootleg stuff either, but that is my issue) and as I pointed out to Martha, Zeppelin is great driving music, especially on a cold and clear star filled night.

The next day at work, Martha and I were IM'ing each other when Martha wrote that she could go another twenty-years without hearing Zeppelin again. Well, I guess twenty-years is really only a nine-hour work day long because that night on the ride home, she called me from the road just to let me hear that she is blasting Celebration Day.

Whatever Gives You Hope
Martha and I will be making the seven-hour drive to Jasmine's hippy den for Thanksgiving. Hmm, I wonder if we can listen to a little Zeppelin along the way?

Anyway, Jasmine doesn't like turkey or ham so I have to make filet mignon. She's been this way for years and I blame her step-mom. It has to be that woman's dried out birds that made Jasmine revolt. The child always hoovered my turkey, stuffing, gravy, biscuits and beans but that all changed once she got a few holidays in her with the other family. I never made ham so the ham thing is totally coming from them. An odd note here is that she will eat ham sandwiches. At any rate, now she won't eat anything resembling holiday food so we usually have a nice filet, spinach soufflé, salad and homemade pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie seems to have made it though the emotional wreckage of it all.

Another great email from Jasmine follows. They are pretty priceless, and I would go so far to say that they are her generations version of the pretty picture drawing. Totally refrigerator material. While this one is not as good as the "Can I have a $1,000 for my birthday?", that one is pure gold but the one below is still fun.

You know the drill, this is a cut and paste job here, so spelling, lack of punctuation and general sentence structure are all signature Jazz.

From: jasmine northrop
Date: Nov 15, 2007 2:25 AM
Subject: hi there
To: martha

so i was going over my check book and my account and things dont add up. i am going to need you to help me when you come. i think i figured it out, but i would still like to sit down with you and see what i am doing wrong.

second, i had to get gas today because i was sucking fumes. i had to dip into the reserve money, so i was wondering with this weekend trip to pgh, if you could put in $150 for me. i am getting paid this friday, but i have a hair appointment and with all of the bs with my bank account, all of the money i saved was eanten up. plus i had to get birth control and it was $35, which i didnt expect. with all of that, i am going to have no money for pgh or the up coming week. I wouldnt go to pgh, but weber's family invited me down to celebrate weber's bday with them. i wouldnt get my hair fixed, but it is in desperate need for something to happen to it. it would be greatly appreciated. i havent gotten that many more hours at work, but since it is the holidays, they are going to bump me up because everyone is going on vacation. so things will be better in a week or two.

i am in class from 1230 to 2pm, so if you want to yell at me, dont call then.

thank you soooooo much.
love you, jasmine

Yep. Well at least she's on birth control.

We finally have a bathroom door. Oh my god I'm so happy I can't even begin to tell you. See, right out of the gate and way before we moved here, Martha had the whole door thing happen. We have not had a bathroom door on the main bathroom since June to be exact. That's right, six fucking months of nothing but opaque red fabric separating all my bathroom issues from the rest of the house. A bathroom that is just steps away from the living room mind you. Yep. I'm so happy, I go in there just so I can shut the door and stand there. It is so awesome.

I guess part of why I am so happy about the door, besides the above-mentioned privacy issues, is that it represents progress. Progress on the house is something that kind of came to a stand still. Oh sure we had several folks come out and give estimates on reframing the door and after many months of nagging frustration we finally picked one. We got on his schedule and he came out and did it. Fucking amazing. We are on the roofers schedule too. This has been another long-term run around the world to get on a roofers list scenario. My guess is that by the end of January we should have a new roof. But for now I am totally jazzed about the bathroom door. Best present ever.

New Day Year
The chef at the Bridges Restaurant had a death in the family so our New Year's Eve festivities were canceled. Although not as devastatingly so as the chefs. The restaurant gave us a coupon for a Murder Mystery event that they are hosting for Valentines Day. Now that sounds like simple fun doesn't it and such a perfect holiday to have a murder! I have heard about this goofy stuff but have never seen it firsthand. I almost can't wait.

So instead of the dinner thing for New Year's we went to friends' house, had a perfectly wonderful, and sober New Year complete with chocolate cake and a few bites of the spiciest sausage that I've ever eaten. I had to eat a whole sleeve of Gas-X in order to keep it together.

I figured we could all use the luck so I made pork with sauerkraut for New Year's Day dinner. Bringing out the German/Pittsburgh thing in all of us. Martha, who grew up in Pittsburgh, swears she never had pork and sauerkraut on New Year's Day until she married a true Pittsburgher from Shadyside. Jazz grew up with kielbasa all around her like garland at a yinzers wedding. And me, well I didn't grow up in Pittsburgh, but having spent some serious time there, I have had many a hunk of pork with sauerkraut at the old after hours, members only, Noray Social Club. Somewhere I still have my membership card. For many, many years now it's been known as Donny's Place but I bet not much else has changed.

Ah yes, the New Year's holiday, the last in the seasonal trifecta representing the hopes of a New Year and the end of whatever nonsense that might be going on in one's life. But being the tart little gloomy Guss that I sometimes am and while I can only hope that each year is better than the last, I do feel that a simple date change cannot possibly have an effect on the hogwash that is currently going on.

Jasmine leaves Thursday and I don't think even with a gun to her head she could possibly stay one day more. She is done with us and us with her. Twenty-two is a screwy age to begin with but amplify it even more when the twenty-two year-old is slothful, well then, you have nothing but trouble.

Some definite disconnect is happening with understanding and accepting that she really doesn't live here (or with her father) but she has her own place, space and lifestyle. She understands it on some levels, mostly on the "I get to do what I want" level but not on the thought that if you don't live here and are staying here well then that makes you a guest in this house. And more to the point is that if you are a guest, you do simple things like contribute or help out without being asked, without making me treat you like a child. You are helpful because deep down you understand what a goddamn drag it is to have a houseguest for two-weeks.

But apparently, that whole self-actualization thing is tough going when you are in the early twenties of adulthood. I can't really compare my life with Jasmine's. This is where my understanding stops. I was good up until the end of her sophomore year of college. I do not understand why her grades suck or why she isn't going to graduate in May. She now has to go another year and that just puzzles me beyond belief. I mean I'm not stupid I understand why she can't graduate, she doesn't have enough credits, but it's the other 'why'; the 'Why did you let this happen?" why. I had a whole differently thing going on at twenty-two, granted she was a big part of that, but in six-month-old baby form. My needs and wants then were third or fourth on the list. Not only was she a factor in my day-to-day I also worked full-time and had a husband and a cat that required attention.

Now having raised the child, divorced the husband and moved into the whole backside of middle age with my girlfriend, I'm way more selfish these days and absolutely loath the "Nagging Mom" stereotype she keeps pushing me into.

[Sigh]
Bottom line: she needs to go home.

Ah yes, a New Year.

After a few days of negotiations, I managed to convince Martha to let me open one of my Christmas presents early. I already knew what it was, the surprise element wiped away by a steady email stream between the two of us about various brands, woofers, tweeters and pricing. I was getting new speakers and Martha was organizing a deal with a guy she used to work with. Once we decided on a pair, they arrived rather quickly. I came home from work and there, behind the doorman, were two 4-foot tall boxes. Taped to one box and in plain view of about two-hundred people was a packing list with Martha's complete credit card number (including expiration date) flapping in the breeze.

After we got the boxes in the apartment, and called the credit card company to place the exposed credit card on hold, I had to make the case as to why we should take the speakers out of the box—for space reasons, of course. And if we went so far as to hook them up, well then, we could remove the nasty boxes AND the enormous Harmon Kardons that the new speakers were replacing.

Speaking of the Harmons, I have had those speakers since Jasmine was two. I even remember the day Jim brought them home. Originally, they cost about as much as our rent, which at that time was around six hundred dollars a month. Jim got a deal because they were the floor models at the stereo store in the same mall where he worked at a photo lab. Much like Hyde.

We were living well beyond our means in a two-bedroom one-bath condo in a condominium village called Southglen Commons just on the inside of Littleton Colorado. We were living in Littleton specifically because it had the best pre-school in the Denver area. Yes, that's right, it was all just down the street from Columbine. If I had been a completely different person, not gay or a vagabond then Jazz probably would have been a sophomore at that school, instead of a disgruntled one in Pittsburgh in 1999.

While we were not the lowest form of white trash to live in Southglenn Commons, we did live above them. The two guys who shared the two-bedroom below us were perfect in so many ways but to me their main function was to keep the gaze of the neighbors off of us. They were young, loud and drunk most of the time. They listened to heavy metal and I'm almost positive they sold drugs. To live below us during those years had to have been ridiculously loud and only someone who was louder, and more fucked up would have been able to stand it. Jasmine was two, three and four while we were there. All she did was scream her head off while running from one end of the apartment to the other. She would scream just for the pure joy of screaming. It was great. Between Husker du and Jasmine, the only neighbors we could have had were young drunk fuck-ups. Any other normal hardworking asshole would have constantly complained and probably called the cops. All things I totally understood then and now. I knew how lucky Jim and I were to have such crackhead neighbors. They never fucked with us for two obvious reasons. We looked like dirty poor hippies and we had a kid. This was back in the day when there was still honor among thieves.

One night I woke up to red and blue flashing lights swirling around on the bedroom ceiling. I screamed at Jim to hide EVERYTHING and ran from our mattress on the floor to the big living room window just in time to see the Denver police dragging both shirtless boys from their apartment and through the snow towards the flashing police cars. As I watched the cops shove each boy into a police cruiser, it made me sad to think that they were gone. Thankfully, that apartment stayed vacant for the rest of our time there.

Before the Harmon Kardons, I had a pair of Panasonics that drove my mother to attempt murder on several occasions. They made it to college and beyond, a feat that should not go unnoted. After all, they survived nine crucial years, (1977-1986) before being regulated to 'second pair' and spent their twilight years hooked up to the TV blasting The Smurfs and My Little Pony commercials. Jim and I never threw anything out because we started out with nothing. We bought other folks yard sale crap and kept it all until it disintegrated. The bright yellow dresser that Jasmine grew up with was 'found' on the curb a block away from our apartment in Pittsburgh. I was alone and on foot so I pulled it down the alley, the asphalt slowly shaving the veneer off the bottom. When I got about three houses away, Jim came out only because he had heard this god-awful sound coming from out back. He had looked out the window and noticed my red head over the fence tops, slowly bobbing up and down to the rhythm of a loud scraping noise.

Ah, yeah... so, um... right. As my neighbor's can tell you, I have new speakers and deep down I am only thirteen. It takes every bit of my adult fiber to keep the sound at a reasonable level. All I did Saturday was sit at bottom point of the perfect sound triangle in the living room, listening to music. They are great and I hope to get a good twenty years out of them. Sometime around 2025 I should be bugging Martha for a new pair.

I did mange to do a few things over the holiday besides lay around and watch movies. I cleaned up, or more likely messed up, some of my code; added a new logo thing and did some general site maintenance. Real boring stuff. I pulled work for the Krappy Kamera Contest and Toycamera.com has me as the featured artist. I'm not sure for how long I'll be on the homepage so the gallery link is here.

Miss Simon came through here Tuesday-Wednesday and then again on Saturday night. She has her very own version of travel hell that only underscores our decision to stay here and have the rest of the country clog the nations highways. Why travel when New York City finally clears out and one can move about without too much annoyance? Shave a few million off the total and things become quite nice. So nice that a trip from Jersey to Queens really wasn't that fucked up even with the 7 train running on a screwy schedule.

Jasmine went to Grandma Northrop's house in Tennessee. According to Jazz, grandma has been sick and therefore the two of them didn't do much. Jasmine spent the majority of her trip to the deep dark south hanging out with the twenty-three year old neighbor boy and his friend, smoking dope and getting drunk at an all-night bowling alley. The crabapple certainly didn't fall very far from that tree. She stayed up partying all night Saturday and then boarded a 8:30am flight to Charlotte where she had a small layover until her flight to Pittsburgh dropped her off at her fathers. By the time he saw her I can only imagine what she smelt like. I am so glad I was totally out of the loop on all of it. It's way funnier over the phone then in person.

Thanksgiving was different this year. Well, wait, Thanksgiving has always been a little different seeing as how I haven't played the roll of 'daughter coming home' in twenty-five years.

As your average disgruntled fucked up kid of the 1970s, Turkey Day was always my favorite day to do a shit-load of drugs. That is if we did not go to Grandma Schneider's House. Grandma lived on a hilltop full of black snakes, about 15 miles outside of Midway, PA. She had a chicken coup and every year slaughtered her own turkey. Grandma Schneider's house was crazy scary and anything stronger than a joint was NOT recommended. The coolest thing at Grandma's house was her black and white dog named Zippy. I hung out with him as much as I possibly could.

If we stayed in Ohio, I would hang out with dad all day while he watched hours of football. It was the one safe place to be, even if he fell asleep. Mom would never mess with a day of sports and I would lie on the floor between the TV and my father, reading horror novels. (I became the dog.) Salem's Lot and football saved me from my mother and myself.

The last time I "went home" for Thanksgiving was in 1980. I had been away at college for the five months prior and after eight hours on a Greyhound bus from Pittsburgh, I arrived in Cincinnati with a duffel bag full of neurosis and a head full of acid. I was having a good day and it was precisely because of the drugs that I was able to be pleasant.

It is almost as though my dilated pupils had taken a photo of that particular day. I remember the image of dinner so very, very well. Probably because it was the last time I ever went home for a holiday. I remember it better than I remember any actual conversation that most likely happened between the three of us. The image of the turkey candlestick holders that caught the wax drippings from the candles, their light flickering off of my mother's china and for a brief moment, everything seemed comfortable, still lingers in the shadows of my psyche. I recall how my eyes followed the light around the thin gold rim of my plate and then looking up to my left at my mom just as she smiled at me. I then shifted my eyes over to the right at my father and caught a glimpse of him watching her with his crooked, Dick Cheney grin.

He had good reason to keep an eye on her. My mom could go from semi-happy and laughing to yanking her lit cigarette out of the beanbag ashtray and pointing its red ember at my nose, murmuring strange things about Meadville, marijuana, abortion or my 'rotten friends'.

Yes, well enough of that silliness, she is dead now and her china sits in a moldy basement in Butler, PA. C'est la fucking vie.

Thanksgiving was different this year. I made Filet Mignon and Martha ate almost a whole homemade pumpkin pie. We watched the fine cinema of Fritz Lang with his masterwork M and we took naps. A little bit of German horror, a nap, extended family floating in and out, and turkey lunch with friends in Queens. It all sounds pretty perfect to me.

Well it looks like Martha, Jasmine and I survived five days of some intense girl power in our little three-room apartment. All I can really say is "WOW".

Keri managed to commute from here to DC and back without too much trouble other than sleep deprived delirium, but after a few coffees and a nice walk down 5th Avenue she got her third or fourth wind.

Sheri is so lovely and having her near always makes me feel better no matter how sick we both are. She came with a cold and we kibitzed over medicinal herb and Sudafed Cold Medicine. Of course, not to be outdone I kicked up my buzz a notch by drinking Vicks NyQuil Cough syrup straight out of the bottle like it was Southern Comfort. For two days, I carried it with me in all around apartment seeing as how I didn't really go anywhere else. Too sick and full of cold medicine to run amok like normal, I did manage to get out and go to dinner with everyone one night and Martha, Sheri and I went shooting early (crack of dawn early) over at the Fulton Fish Market and then on up to Time's Square. At eight o'clock in the morning, Times Square was already a buzz of nutty. Not as bad as normal but that whole fucking area has a pulse, I swear to god. It is kind of bothersome because it feels like a corporate monster pulse instead of the vibrant creative pulse like other areas of the city.

But that was it. I stayed home almost the entire four days. I have a cold that will not leave me alone. My voice is just now coming back but the constant coughing night and day is maddening.

Jasmine's friend Courtney is a nice little hippie chick from Jim Thorpe and is, at times, the polar opposite of Jazz. I suppose that is how those things work sometimes. Jazz had someone (other than us) that she could boss-around. Martha called it "Jazz Lite: Just as Filling but Half the calories".

Courtney is very, very laid back and I know she had a great time because she made the announcement that "this was the best New Year's of my life." It is always funny to hear something like that coming out of the mouth of a twenty-year-old. She has a good decade ahead of her filled with retarded behavior and complete New Year's Eve debauchery before a statement like that can carry some weight. But I have no doubt that Jasmine is a most excellent host and besides, they got served in a Chelsea bar on New Year's eve and hooked up with two boys from school. Boys, beer and balls dropping; sounds like an ideal time.

Jasmine, ever in tune with my neurosis and listening to the place in her brain where I have taken up permanent residence, also known as "the Mother Zone", made sure she was home by midnight on New Years. I have been in New York at midnight and it is kind of crazy on the street so I wanted her here. Yes, I can be a drag but I only had to ask her once. Besides, at midnight if we all cranked our necks we could see the fireworks in the harbor from the comfort of our big fat lesbian bed. Who would want to miss that?

My office had become the dressing room for Sheri, Keri, Jasmine and Courtney. Girl clothes, jewelry, strange bath pellets and hemp oils sat next to my Holga camera. Silver chains and finger rings curled around bottles of perfume on top of my filing cabinet. There were three stacks of clothes. Sheri's pile under my photo table; Jasmine's pile, stacked against the closet door and one of Courtney's luggage (the other one was in the living room) next to my chair/Lily's ottoman. I think Keri had a small pouch in there somewhere but it was lost to the room. It is so jammed full of stuff that even the cats stayed away, too dense for cat play.

Sheri and Keri shared Jasmine's twin bed, (they are either more cat-like than Martha and I or are just plain crazy) while Jasmine and Courtney slept on the air mattress in the living room.

For the most part it all seemed to work and there were only a few moments were I felt trapped without a place to go. New Years Day at 7 am was one such time. Everyone was sleeping so I made coffee, sat on the kitchen counter, and waited for Keri to come home from work. She was due around 8:00 so I though I would write a little and hang out on the counter, something I haven't done since I was a teenager.

Our red kitchen is around 12 x 7 and that's about it. Jasmine, blessed with the curse of not being able to sleep more than four hours no matter how drunk she was when she fell asleep, woke-up and joined me. She and I hung out in the kitchen for an hour and chatted about everything. It was so cool. We caught up on Courtney's visit, the up coming weeks activities and doctors appointments and the general state of the household.

Keri came home and then Jazz and I went for a two-hour walk around the water and canal in Jersey City where I took photos and Jasmine bitched about the sun. Every now and then, I took photos of her bitching about the sun. We talked about everything from boys and school to her cancer and my tumor stuff and Jasmine is quite possibly the coolest person I have ever known. Oh yes, she is lazy and makes all of us crazy and yes, there was a small conversation about trading her in for Courtney but that was just because we were all wooed by Courtney's usage of the dishwasher and the folding of clean clothes. Jasmine rocks and I would never trade her in. I would consider selling her but I would never, ever just trade her in.

Happy New Year. Boy these holidays just fly by don't they? A month ago, I gave myself shit about not being able to complete the holiday Christmas hunt at 26 things and guess what, I am scrambling. Ridiculous. It's not as though I haven't been shooting I just haven't been shooting Christmas crap.

File Magazine published a piece of mine and that is a great way to end the year. It is my first piece with them. I really should push more of my work out there, maybe this year I will get more aggressive with that whole thing. On the other hand, I was reminded in a very odd way recently that patience is a virtue.

So I heard that the earthquake caused the 'earth to wobble' on its axis. Wow. Bush isn't going to destroy the planet, God is. Between the melting polar caps and this, I would guess that the end is probably pretty close.

Speaking of all that death and weird stuff, I should have my operation in January once all my doctors get their heads out of their collective holiday asses. My only "goal" with all that is to stay alive.

I have yet another cold. I think my immune system is starting to crack; too busy dealing the tumor to pay attention to the billion other common germs that I am exposed to every day. This is the third cold I have had in four months. It is strange. Sheri and Keri started getting sick on the way here. As I write this Martha, Jazz and Courtney are the only folks in our group who aren't sick - yet. So yeah, half of us are snotty and coughing.

HE WHO FUCKS NUNS...
The new Green day album, American Idiot, is fucking great. Martha brought it home for Jasmine but I snagged it and now I am thinking that she is not going back to school with it unless she burns it. I have always been a little indifferent to them but this album is really good. The only complaint I have is that on a few songs they tweaked Billie Joe's vocals to the point that he sometimes sounds like Cher with that whole disco voice thing. I don't think punk rock should be "tweaked" but what the hell do I know. Everything is fucked with these days.

Also been listening to a great deal of The Clash, a band that I bet didn't tweak anything except peoples attitudes. Joe Strummer never sounded like anyone but Joe Strummer. I have started reading Let Fury Have the Hour: The Punk Rock Politics of Joe Strummer and well, now I have all my little bits of Clash stuff out and about to listen to. Yes, it looks like a punk rock New Year.

Miss Jasmine is going to a see the Drive by Truckers at the Bowery with Courtney on New Years day. There is also a conversation about all of us going ice-skating in Central Park at some point over the holiday. Martha and I have done it and it is such a New York thing to do. Of course I don't really ice-skate, I take pictures instead. I simply cannot balance on a blade. Funny though, I have been symbolically balancing on sharp edges all my life but stick those blades on my feet and I am on my back in a nanosecond.

Sushi is totally in the cards because it is the one thing that the majority of us love. Well, Martha makes do with a big ole plate of Salmon Teriyaki but other than that, we can all agree. Yes, Virginia miracles do happen.

TRAVEL SKILLS
We are planning on a trip to Vancouver in the spring. I personally cannot wait although oddly I am a little nervous. I am not sure why but it as something to do with living in New York long enough to think that maybe I can't live anywhere else. New York does that to people. It is like an assimilation of sorts. I would very much like to go see Martha's parents before the summer and it would be nice to visit Jasmine at college during the next semester. But all trips and plans are on hold until my tumor is gone and I have the okay to go run around the planet like the lunatic I used to be.

AND ONE MORE THING
So yeah, Happy New Year everyone and I hope that this year is filled with laughter, love, luck and happiness for all of us. Keep dreaming.

Ah yes, Christmas that most hedonistic day of all the days of the year. Did everyone get what they want? Does anyone? Hmm, well we do give it a good shot every year don't we?

Martha and I bought Miss Jasmine a digital camera. That's right she now has the technology and the ability to provide us all with an endless supply of party pictures, photos of cute, crunchy college boys and all of her stoned friends. Not to mention endless, and it really is endless, photos of Lily. Once the novelty of the medium wears off hopefully, she will find her approach. She most certainly has an eye, but for about the next six-month period sophomoric hi-jinks will prevail.

There is some talk about Jazz changing her major from Business to English. I think it's a great idea. Whatever makes her happy. Of course there is no money in having an English degree as a few of my writer friends could specifically address but I also know of one or two who are actually editing AND writing for a living. However, it IS a shit wage, as are most things creative. I don't know, what one does in college is hardly ever what they end up doing in life. But I think that Jasmine is finally starting to see that not everything is so fucking front burner and to stop flipping out about it all. Yes, she is a product of her environment but she is also a Cancer for god sake.

We also bought her Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas. This family has been a fan of GTA since the first one so of course we HAD to get this. It was only a matter of time. A few things surprised me in this version. The first is the language. Now I am no priss and I tend to have a mouth that is reflective of my white trash roots but this game is a little heavy on the usage of the word FUCK. I'm not offended in the least but it is interesting how Rockstar Games has pretty much given the proverbial middle finger to middle-America and you know, I support that. The second thing is how black it is. Considering the typical gamer, and I do not consider Martha, Jasmine and myself the typical GTA fan, it is interesting to see how layered in black culture this version is. Again, I see it as slap upside the corn-fed, bible-thumping heads of all that crazy Christian crap in the middle of this country.

I like the game because it is the one and only time I get to drive and I actually enjoy it. I walk up to any car I want, beat the driver senseless and then hit the X button and slam the car straight into a pole. It's fun and makes me happy. Martha likes to watch Jazz play because Jasmine is actually very good at it. She is all serious and not just with the missions. She makes her guy every morning go to the gym and workout. He eats salads all day and spends his extra money on clothes, tattoos and custom-made hydraulic cars. Sometimes she'll have him play pool or just spend the day "tagging". When Jazz does do a mission it's usually only for the money, although she can blow shit up with the best of them I think because she is a girl there is more "character development" going on.

In what I view as to total act of unselfish love, I bought Martha the Star Wars box set. Jasmine's father is a Star Wars junkie and both she and I were, in essence, tortured by his obsession. For me, it was that and Steely Dan which Martha also enjoys. But just because he likes it and I've seen all of them a few hundred times doesn't mean that I should hold her responsible for my brain damage. Christmas day, after present opening was over; she scurried off to the bedroom to unleash the magic. I even went in there to hang out with her and watch Return of the Jedi but found myself quoting dialogue, an annoying habit I have but usually reserved for old John Waters movies. She became slightly, and rightly annoyed so I tried to nap. But Luke, Darth and that whole father thing kept rattling around in my brain. I got up and pried Jasmine from the living room TV where she had set up the total GTA workstation complete with the map, freshly downloaded cheat codes with the strategy book and a snappy highlighter. I made her go for a walk with me, just so she could take a break and live in the third dimension for at least thirty minutes.

Besides the sun was setting and I wanted to try out my new toy camera that Martha bought me. It's a Holga and no big deal at all. Totally made of plastic and held together with black photo tape. It has a built in flash that is about the size of a box of tic-tacs and I think I might have temporally blinded Lily's left eye. She's better now but for a few minutes I don't think she could see very well. My eyes were buggy and I was on the other side of the camera. It was like a prison search light for a second there. I can't wait to see what I get. It shoots medium format film, a format I enjoy but the cameras are, so damn expensive. The Polaroid is about the same ratio but this is real film with a negative and everything. I figure the first roll will suck until I figure out just how much light is getting in and if I want to stop it or not. But it's cheap and for now, fun. I really like it, and I am considering the possibility of at least developing the film at home to cut down on some of the cost. This makes complete sense in an already overcrowded apartment, eh? Let me just splash a little bit of smelly, toxic liquid around the place. Don't mind me.

Speaking of space and stuff, Wednesday Sheri and Keri arrive and then Thursday Jasmine's friend will join us. I'm not sure how all of this is going to work out for five days but I remain hopeful. I think we are going to give Jasmine and Courtney the living room to dance around in and pretend that they are living the hi-rise life without any of the rest of us around. We'll keep all the lesbians in the back bedrooms. On paper, it looks good but in real-time, we shall see. It's a lot of female energy in an 1100 square foot apartment to successfully juggle.

My Christmas shopping came in under deadline, unlike the redesign of The Village Voice website but hey, it's Christmas and all the blinking holiday lights can distract even the most focused programming elves.

I went out shooting the other day in Soho with the intention of snapping some holiday paraphernalia but I just couldn't bring myself to go near any of the shops where the hordes, and I do mean hordes, of people were shuffling about with the glazed over look of holiday fright. Talk about a buzz kill. So I ended up shooting graffiti and the greasy streets behind all that glitters on Broadway. Not very seasonal but sometimes that is all there is or all I can tolerate, I suppose.

I did go to the mall but cheated and altered my mood by taking a muscle re-laxer. Nothing was going to bother me there. Not one damn person, place or thing, except I suddenly became very hot in the middle of Macy's and had to sit down on the floor by a mannequin with spiky red hair and pho-tattoos and honestly, even that didn't really bother me. Those little green pills are the greatest and there is a real reason I'm taking them, not just because I want to.

My tumor releases a hormone that reeks havoc on my body, this we know, blah, blah, blah whatever - but the headaches that come with it combined with the muscle pain from having such an intense headache is such a fucking drag. So I am self medicating with Martha's back pills, strictly for the muscle pain and well trips to the mall, I guess. Nothing makes the headaches better, not one thing and they can last for days. Just when I have thoroughly convinced myself that I simply must have a brain tumor with only days to live the pain shifts to my neck muscles and lymph nodes. It is a good time and I am nothing short of delightful to be around.

My sense of smell has increased by a tenfold but I am still deaf. So what that means is Martha gets a lot of me watching CSI Crime Scene at high volumes then suddenly muting the TV, sniffing the air and asking, "What's that smell? Do you smell that? What is that?" four or five times in an evening. God bless her and yes, I bought her cool shit for Christmas.

THIS IS A TEST AND YOU WILL BE GRADED
I think Jasmine's friend Courtney is coming to the big apple for the whole New Year thing. Jasmine has promised me that she isn't going into Times Square for the ball drop - 'cause that is just the stupidest thing ever and anyone who lives here knows that. All those folks on TV either are tourists or out of their god damn minds. Neither of which do I want Jasmine nor her skinny little friend, pinned in with for hours and hours. Each quad becomes one big outside toilet after a few hours. No, no, no. They can run around New York with my metro card and as much common sense as any two twenty-years old can possibly have but I say no to Times Square on New Years.

We will have a full house then. Sheri and Keri will be here too. Let's see, that is two girls in every room. Oh god it is an apartment full of six women, eight female entities if you count the cats. On man, thank god we have two bathrooms, although, Martha has refused to share. Maybe she'll let me in there if I promise not to clog her drain. I don't think they make the industrial strength kind of Drano I am going to need to combat all the hair. All but two have the long crazy hair that drives all the boys (and girls) nuts.

Jasmine's grades are in:

Saturday, I went Christmas shopping in the Village. This sounds nuts but if you know what you are doing, stay off of Broadway and only walk out to it on an "as need basis", it isn't that bad. If I could have had headphones on it would have been perfect but Martha was with me and we were trying to have fun.

The deal with shopping in New York the weekend before Christmas is that you have to know what you want and where you're going to get it otherwise, you're fucked. You simply must have a plan. If you have to have a map to walk around Manhattan then you shouldn't be Christmas shopping at the same time.

I did a very New York thing and screamed at a bunch of jerks on the subway to get out of the way. What? I did not swear at them. Look, it is real simple people, the doors open, step out of the way. Let someone off before you get on, just like at Disney, okay? If you have a stroller, do everyone a favor this holiday season and take a cab. Why should we all suffer just because you decided to breed and roll it around on a crowded subway car? Christ, I was twenty-one-years-old when I had Jasmine and even I wasn't that stupid, and I was pretty dumb. No wonder your kid was hit in the head with a backpack and is now screaming at the top of his lungs. This isn't the wide open spaces of middle America. This is lean and vertically mean New York. Merry Christmas and keep it moving.

COMING HOME OVER AND OVER AGAIN
Miss Jasmine is home and she looks fabulous. Her hair is longer, her smile is brighter and like any true sophomore in college, she brought home a suitcase full of dirty laundry and smelt like beer and all night party funk at 9:30 on a Sunday morning.

The drive up was normal and as full of holiday cheer as it was going to get. Martha and I listened to a Mojo Christmas CD that set the tone and made me actually excited to listen to it again next week while I fight the sea of ridiculous shoppers on my way to work. At least I have Friday off and I only need to buy three more presents.

Jim Thorpe was just how I remembered it, minus that whole Irish drinking thing. The main part of town was straight out of a Christmas card but there was no time for photos of that perfection because I am a fucking nut bag about driving in bad weather and it was foggy and slightly sleeting & I wanted to leave ASAP. But because there are other people to consider (imagine that) we stopped at the diner and had breakfast and then went up the hill to the castle ruins that is most likely the local make-out, hang-out and smoke a bowl place. A few more photos later of some crazy yard decorations and we were on our way back to the big bad city. Jasmine rode shotgun in the back with a gaggle of things that no long fit in our apartment. Things like a 3ft. long space heater, a set of golf clubs and a case of water. Martha now drives around in a big green mobile closet.

Of course, we couldn't go straight home after driving for six hours. Oh no, we had to stop at two grocery stores first; one for meat, kind of like that whole yuppie butcher thing that Jazz gave me well deserved shit for and the other one for normal stuff like her hair care products. By the time we actually got home I thought Jazz was going to puke. God knows I wanted to. She took a shower and a big fat nap on the red lesbian couch. After a few hours, she woke up cranky and ready to be bored. Ta da it's Christmas break.

There is some talk of some of her college friends coming here to stay for one night and also some chatter about her driving down to Reading, PA with a car load of girls to go to a house party over a three-day period between Christmas and New Year's. All stuff I'll just have to shut the fuck up about I suppose because she is "living" as she calls it. Hmm. I was much worse so I'm going to shut the fuck up about it, like I said.

More weird driving habits, Sheri and Keri are coming in for four days over New Year's and from what I understand is that Keri is actually going to commute back and forth to DC on Friday or Saturday.

Ah yes, Jasmine is home and Zoë is nervous and pissed. She immediately went behind the Christmas tree and started chomping down on the evergreens and making loud monkey barking sounds that remind me of the Wizard of Oz. She truly is the weirdest cat I have ever known.

Some of the best birthdays are the ones that I can't seem to remember that well. I was either too young or too fucked up but I do remember thinking at the time that these were great days regardless of whatever distorted reasoning's.

Over thirty, birthdays are a time of reflection but at a young forty-two, I already have entirely too much thinking going on in my life. Does everything have to be so dreadfully serious? One of the best birthdays that I ever had was my fifth and all that happened that year was my Aunt Virginia and Uncle Johnny came to town and we went out to dinner. But the little details from that day are what make it a great day.

It was 1967 and my Aunt had given me a mod-orange, yellow and brown dress. The sleeves were puffy and made of translucent chiffon. The hemline hit mid-thigh and I loved it. She gave me a pair of white go-go boots to complete the ensemble. I'm surprised I didn't pass out. Maybe I did, I can't remember but I do remember sticking my left foot in that boot and zipping up the zipper to my knee. You couldn't have smacked that smile of my face no matter what.

From that moment on, my Aunt Virginia was the best person in the world. Aunt Virginia and Uncle Johnny were not actually related to me. They were friends of my parents and soon after my fifth birthday I didn't' really see them too much. By the time we had moved to Ohio they were just a memory in the house. Most of my parents' personal friends fell out of flavor after a few years but the business, country club friends stayed around much longer. I think it is directly related to anyone who actually came to the house. Once inside folks didn't seem to eager to come back around.

For my birthdays mom would buy a Pepperidge Farm frozen 3-Layer Vanilla cake with white icing and write Happy Birthday on it. Sometimes, she would make red flowers or there might be candles. Mom had convinced herself that I was allergic to chocolate so she would only give me vanilla anything. Easter candy was either pure sugar balls or chocolate vanilla - a total joke with the use of the word chocolate. All store bought cakes, cookies, milk and any desert item was vanilla. Halloween, well almost all of it was thrown out. I didn't have my own freewill with chocolate until I was a teenager and by then I was into a whole other kind of candy. In fact, I'm not really a candy person. Oh now I can motor through a box of Godiva dark chocolate truffles just as well as the next crazy bitch but 'candy' has never interested me. But I do make a wicked double layer chocolate fudge cake.

But back to my fifth birthday. That night we all went to the country club for dinner. I wore my new dress and boots regardless of the arctic wind coming off of Lake Erie. The maitre d' sat us next to a table where identical twin girls were sitting with their parents. I was mesmerized. I had never seen twins outside of the Ed Sullivan show and I could not stop gawking at them. They had long blond hair and matching black velvet outfits. And they were about my age. This blew my mind. Mom and Dad bitched at me all through dinner to stop staring at them but I couldn't. Besides they didn't care, they kept giggling and waving at me. I had bright red hair and that was something they had never seen before other than Bozo the Clown and THAT was assuming they had a color TV at their house. Most people didn't in 1967. We had our own little Carney show and if all of the adults would have just backed the fuck up and let the natural weirdness of children take place it all would have been fine. Instead, my parent s bitched at me and their parents bitched at them. No one had a good time except the three of us.

LIFE IN A LETTER
Sunday morning I was digging around in my old photo albums, the whole memory kind not the arty farty ones, looking for a photo taken of Sherry and me on my 17th birthday. I had been writing about this whole birthday thing and I wanted to run that photo, maybe, I didn't know but I wanted to find it. I have hardly any photos of my life before 17. I have one baby picture, three photos that were taken in Sherry's bedroom and my senior photo. So the pickings of a life prior are quite slim. Anyway, I came across a strange letter that my dad sent me in late July of 1979.

It was between my junior and senior year of high school. I was 16 and away at a summer arts program that I had paid for in cash pulled together from a combination of drug money and a full-time night shift job as a carhop at Frisch's Big Boy. The photo that I had been looking for, and had since found and displayed on the bed in front of me, was my thumbtack in time. The return address was a P.O. Box in Cincinnati, not the house address. He had also given me his private number at the office. Previously, I had only his secretary's number.

In the letter, he had written some very different things to me, unlike the usual mantra of what a fuck up I was. So different that he even wrote down that he was proud of me, that I had worked hard AND that he thought I was talented.

It is all very strange and it left me itchy and with a headache. I know better than to read his letters but this caught my eye because of the return address. I have no memory of it, except the one line about being proud of me. I do remember thinking something about it being in writing, words to hang on to, so speak and then sticking it in a book. Isn't that funny? Probably because it was so different that I just didn't have any idea how to process it. My mind is a terrible thing.

All this is just an overwhelming desire to find meaning in something that most likely does not have any to begin with. But, that is what we do. Look for meaning in the meaningless.

SAVE A TREE
The holiday library party wasn't too horrible with the general public in public thing and we even went on a geek tour of the stacks of books down under the main library. They have seven floors of books running under the library for two city blocks. That is totally insane. Sushi was great but I can no longer eat the tuna tartar that has the mayonnaise in it. It makes me sick, sick sick. After dinner, Martha and I toyed with the idea of buying a tree.

Every year, Martha and I always have the 'price' talk when it comes to trees. She wants a free one and I think anything fewer than fifty dollars wrapped in a pretty New York moment is great. We decided to wait and maybe Martha could pick one up out by where she works in during the week. So we go home and do the "I'll feed the cats Fancy Feast while you change the litter box" combination and life went on its normal Sunday night routine.

Martha took the cat litter down to the recycle room and there in the middle of the room was a beautiful tree measuring just under six-feet tall. It was laying there on the tile floor with a brand new, heavy-duty tree stand, still full of water, sitting next to it. It was as though someone had just given up on Christmas right out of the gate. She put it on the elevator and pushed it through the front door calling my name. I ran to the hallway and there she is standing there holding a tree with a big ass smile on her face. There is nothing wrong with it, the needles still stick and it feels soft and dewy. It is beautiful and it is Martha's favorite price, free.

Now I just have to stop at K-Mart to pick up new Christmas lights, I can't find ours. Actually, I think I gave them to Jasmine for her dorm room. I also finally get to buy a squirt bottle for Zoë. She's a bad kitty when it comes to the evergreen and this year is going to be a wet one for her.

But talk about a really super cool birthday present, eh? A free Christmas tree.

And oh yeah, one more thing, McDonalds delivery, seriously? Isn't that one of the seven signs apocalypse?

A year ago, I was down in Ohio dealing (or not dealing) with the death of my mom and I cannot seem to shake the sensation of that icky spectacle. Life after your parents die makes for a strange sense of awareness. In my case a whole bunch of things make it a little more troublesome but for the sake of something normal I'll just state some obvious stuff. I am an only child and my grandparents are dead. The whole cousin thing is so small and distant that I have no idea who is still alive. I was the youngest first cousin and there were only a handful of us. My relationship with both of my parents was, let us just say fucked and I am being kind. The troublesome parts are the anniversary dates, the particular days that seem to stick in my head and remind me of the mountain of bullshit from where I come from.

Bad anniversaries do that I suppose. The whole cancer thing with Jasmine works very similar in my mind but truthfully, what comes slamming back is the fear. She does not worry, I do, and we usually end up yelling at each other about it all. It's a good time for she and I and those within earshot enjoy it too.

Christmas season and weird family shit go hand in hand but when you are a family of three, the strange sticks out more.

LEARNING TO SEW
My mom and dad had a plastic Christmas tree that they kept in a huge Sears box in the basement. Mom hated pine needles, plants, pets and anything living that might make a mess. Likewise, my worthiness was constantly in question. Every year my dad would lug that thing up the basement stairs and assemble the razor sharp wire mess in the family room. He usually did this around the fifth or sixth of December, whatever day fell on the first Sunday in the month. We never went to church (what, are you kidding?) and by that point in the school year I was usually grounded so the whole day was pretty free.

First, he would pull all of the pieces for the tree from the box and lay them around the room. The view from the kitchen looked as though my father had done bad things to an unnaturally green evergreen.

My parents had an old black lacquered stereo console that they must have bought sometime in the fifties. It was in every baby photo I ever saw and there used to be plenty of those. My dad was a photographer and shot a great deal of film of me as a child and mom as a new mother. He also photographed every Christmas up until I was around eleven. Then he just stopped. Anyway, the console had a radio and a turntable that played 33 & 1/3's, 45's and 78's. My dad had a huge collection of 78's, mostly big band stuff but this was the one time of year when my mother removed the lamb from the top of it and opened the lid. Bing Crosby's White Christmas blasted repeatedly, so much so that to this very day I cannot tolerate it.

While Bing would sing, my dad would snap the pieces into the tall green metal tower and by mid-tree the profanity would start. As a small child, I would sit at the kitchen table and watch with wonder. As a teenager, I would sit on the kitchen floor with a head full of acid and attempt to analyze the whole experience.

My mom had the box with the all of the ornaments and crap we put in the front windows of the house. Decorating the tree was my job because I was "the artist" and they considered it a birthday present to let me do it. In a weird way, I was into it. Every year I decorated the tree that dad built.

Dad would finish snapping the last wire branch at the top with a final "fucking thing" statement and then he'd step back, gaze at it, tilt his head from side to side and then glance over at me in the kitchen, clap his hands together and say "Okay, it's all yours" and walk off. Elvis had left the building. He would stomp off to his office not to be seen again until dinner.

At that point, Mom would come on stage with the box of garland, lights, ornaments, tinsel and the white angel for the top. Once she had given me all the props, she would go back to decorating the front windows of the house with plastic Christmas wreaths, the center of which had a single red candle with two white snowbells on each side. They were the prettiest thing, six of them in all and every year I never understood how we ended up with something so understated.

I had a least and hour of alone time with the tree before mom would be back, sitting on the couch, chain smoking and watching me decorate. She never said anything to me; she would just sit roughly ten feet away and keep an eye on me. Calling it creepy isn't quite right it was more disturbing. I honestly don't think she was even looking at me. At least that is what I told myself then. I think she was off in her own thoughts and daydreams. Sometimes, depending upon how wasted I was, I would ask her what she was thinking about and her only response was "Dinner." Once dad had finished with his part, we could stop the music so the only sound was the ticking of the grandfather clock and her hitting a cigarette. After about a half hour, the family room was full of low haze of stagnant air made pronounced by the smoke.

Everything about the tree was glitter. Glitter covered all of it, including me. It was more like a gay disco tree than the gay disco trees I would see years later during my clubbing of the holiday seasons.

Most of the balls came in highly reflective colors and others were a Spiro-graph styled fabrication with sharp pointed edges. Metallic paint was everywhere as was sprayed on snow that would scrap my fingers as I removed them from the storage tissue. The lights were huge bulbs of fire hazard red, blue and green. Every year my mom would buy three large boxes of garland (gold and silver) and five boxes of tinsel. There was so much tinsel that strands of it would melt to the big bulbs after hours of on time.

The idea here was that my father did not want ANY of the green parts of the tree to show. One year it suddenly hit me why this was important to him. Well it didn't hit me, so much as I just asked him about it before the branch snapping when he was still organizing and in a fairly good mood. He told me that when he was a kid they were so poor that some years they didn't have Christmas but they always had a tree. The decorations were a few "shitty" (his word not mine) home made ornaments and a bare tree made him "feel poor". He liked the plastic trees and he wanted them COVERED in crap.

It usually took me three hours to decorate the tree and by the time I was finished the thing looked like it was made of aluminum. It was so reflective that you could use it as a mirror, apply mascara, adjust your clothes etc. Granted, it was a distorted mess and more like a funhouse mirror but it was excellent for the close-in work and fit the mood of the house perfectly.

Once plugged in and admired on the first night, it was pretty much forgotten by my parents until it was time to take it down, the first week January. I however hovered around it as if it were a shrine. I would lie on the floor every night watching TV, my eyes alternating between Welcome Back Kotter episodes and the glitter fest to the right of it. The competition for my attention was intense.

According to Martha, I have now carried on with a few of these bizarre traditions. I totally control the tree, the decoration of it and require constant approval while "creating it". A few things are different, though. We always get a real tree on my birthday and the green is the best part. I don't believe I own any normal Christmas music but I have several punk Christmas songs but I never play those either. The more bizarre things I have found along the way end up in the tree and tinsel is