Molly Goatwax

just in time

I finally found the box with the porcelain light-up basillica and Texaco filling station. It was right where I had looked a dozen times before. Sometimes I think that all the stuff in the basement shifts itself around those four rooms like cud in a ruminant's stomach. Last night I set the buildings into place and turned on the switches, our tiny town all aglow in the darkened glass porch. Ahhh....very satisfying to gaze apon with a pint of porter in hand. But wait! Do I see gaps? Can we fit in more porcelain real estate? We may need a bigger house to contain it all!

a little wallop

The smokey joe is totally buried with snow and I couldn't find the metronome-though I have a good idea about pairing it with a discarded excercycle....no, the car is dug out and the roads are good to take me to work. Worse luck. Maybe next weekend...

A chance to pause

For the past few months I have been so involved with keeping up with myself at the brokerage. There are so many different file submission and closing procedures for each wholesaler, and so many of them, and new ones all the time! And now our firm is merging with another, so the work process will be all different again! Well I can forget about all that for a few hours,at least. This is one Saturday morning I'm not going to the office. There's already a few inches of snow on the ground and it's coming in all day into tommorrow. I think I'll paint a picture. For that I need to find the metronome and the light-up basillica in the basement

Fallsway Spring Co.

 

Sometimes, when the light is right, I feel like I live in an Edward Hopper painting.
 

It's still all about the Real Estate

This week I set up 18 feet of porcelain light-up houses on a roll-out carpet of snow like fluff on the ledge in our glass porch. Our newly minted teen pulled the hat from her eyes long enough to place the ambulances, police cars, monsters and army guys pointing long guns into the light-up windows to simulate a state of seige in our porcelain village. Some traditions thrive. This one continues, in spite of my misplacing the Basillica of Saint Peter and the Texaco filling station. The basement swallowed them. We need another porcelain light-up property or so to fill in the blanks.

Smokey Joe in the snow

 Well...at the edge of the snow in my parking lot. Here I'm smoking boneless ribs for lima bean soup. I brought a plate of them inside and the younger daughter hugged me and told me I smelled good.

yummmm...

I swore, after Thanksgiving, that I wouldn't cook for a week. I spent the better part of two days at the stove. If trying a new recipe is a walk in the park, then fixing the Turkey Day feast is like running a marathon! (But just fix that green bean cassarole with fresh green beans instead of canned and convert)... So on this past Thursday I eased myself back into cooking  with a quick and familiar Sephardic red lentil soup out of necessity. Today I chopped up onions, peppers, mushrooms and Italian chicken sausage with rice and lentils for another soup to freeze into tubs because, well, canned soup has too much sodium and it tastes...uh...canned. Well today's soup was right tasty and I put it by. Now I am wondering about my next kitchen adventure because the cookware sets company wants to send me an appliance for review and I dither. What do I want to do next? Tommorrow, in spite of the falling snow, the die-hard barbeque-er in me is going out to the parking lot to Smokey Joe me some country ribs. Then the (not so) left overs will get chopped into some heavenly 15 bean chile. I think I need some nice bread to go with all those tubs of soup in the freezer...

more ya-hooty

Today I went to pick up my piece from a group show and got offered a solo for the hole in next year's schedule! It's not Miami, but I'd better get to work!

But I'm still ahead

One of the ladies in my Scrabble circle paid her outstanding balance and took delivery of the painting she had on lay-awayfrom my last big show. Then I beat her by a hair in the first game then came in last on the second, in a field of four. I decided to fold up my board and take it home.

ya-hooty

I was the last processor left standing at work today, so I got a couple of easy emergency files. It just goes to show you, that if you hang out at a bank long enough, someone will hand you a wad of cash. After I put them to bed and as I was climbing up the steps to the notorious Mount Royal Tavern, I noticed a uniformed "Rover" guard for the art school whizz by on a Segway with a helmet on his head and a light beam strapped to his chest. I was jealous. It almost, but not quite, made me wish I still worked there. But not that much.  Perhaps I will get my own Segway with the wads of money they are handing out at the bank....