Molly Goatwax

Your Advice, please

As the season makes light scarce, in a world gone mad, where lava lamps kill, there is no certainty except death and taxes. When bubble baths and pedicures are no longer enough to sustain one's optimism, nay, even marzipan loses its restorative charms-what do you do to buoy your spirits?

I dig

Dear Miss Rocketgirl,

Thanks for the Loonies!

Dear Miss J.

As warned, I have given the graduate student your phone number. She took particular interest in the devotional candle you decorated with collaged images of red shoes.

Dear Miss Stacy,

Thank you for sharing your ideas and listening to mine with tolerance, and dare I say it, respect, as I explained my veneration of Annabelle the goat. I look forward to reading your research, and will look out for an old wooden radio casing for you to make your own wishing box.

Cement Head

Ugh. Drowning dreams plague me. In this instance, I was standing by a puddle, about seven months pregnant, when the mud started sucking me down to the hips. I couldn't breath, so I woke up to find Homer had gotten into the room and was lying by my head. No wonder it feels full of cement. This evening a graduate student doing research on the use of religious objects in art is coming over to interview me. I hope she was warned of my irreverence. It will be nice, after a day at the cubicle farm, to engage in an academic discussion. I'll have to unearth "The Madonna of the Smiley Face".

Beware the Bin

Clothes, books, cat hair, lint, junk. Hubby purchased a few items of furniture from the Swedish Lifestyle store, cheap and is setting them up while clearing out some of the rickety boarding house "antiques" gleaned from my mother's real estate hobby. And so we are clearing out in advance of the looming glut next month.Tempted as I am to dump the excess into one of those yellow Planet Aid boxes that have sprouted up all over, I hear it's a scam. I'll drive what I can fit in the car over to the Goodwill, the bay behind the store on the Alemeda is open for donations on Sundays. The books go to the Book Thing.

More Real Estate

Oh, help me. Even though I vowed not to, as I went to get extension chords for the porcelain village, a post office, police station and mansard roofed frame house jumped into my basket at 99 cents each. They need the light fixtures, though. I attempted replacing the church in the original display with the police station, but was stopped by the eight year old. She doesn't want the army guys or the ambulances this year, either. Oh well. I'll set up the overflow in my cubicle at work and let the judging commitee make of it what they will.

It's all about the real estate

Regardless of my personal beliefs, or lack thereof; the holidays' magic must be observed for the sake of the children. So, after a lovely meal at The Bowman with Hubby, the daughters and the common-law son-in-law, ('cept there's no common law in this state) out came the light-up porcelain houses from their tubs in the basement. Last year's post-season acquisition of a pub and a boathouse (!) has forced the village to move from the dining room's covered radiator to the longer one in the rear parlor's bay window. Over the weekend, we will figure out the electrical configuration and set up the palm trees and occupying army guys, who point machine guns into the light up windows. Cop cars and ambulances will complete the scene as the eight year old arranges the finishing touches. I don't know where we'll fit the village next year if I keep buying more houses. It's just something I feel compelled to do. And, you're right Miss C., I'm not at the mall. I'm at work.

When Love makes your skin crawl

Hubby says that he finds the ubiquitous holiday pop music jovial. I find it oppressive. Particularly so when your supervisor in the next cubicle insists that we all get into the holiday spirit, and the people in your aisle chime in their agreement. The busiest interstate highway on the East Coast was also oppresive, congestested and wet, with the drivers competing on it allready fed up with the congestion. So I had to make this valentine for therapy, it's for when your true love makes your skin crawl, as if you had angst on your soul.

Yum

My parents were so strapped at the time, that when a gentleman caller for my eldest sister put his cigarette in mother's last just-opened-not-yet-drunk can of beer, she went to the kitchen, poured it into a glass and fished the butt out. Right quick. But she bore a grudge against the young man, and does to this day.

Pilgrims

When we went by the future home of Molly's over the weekend, it was still full of the junk that the sellers put there from the house next door and had promised to move. So, besides the many licensing and certifications issues, there is the problem of getting around the junk to paint the back bar and walls. When I can. Not that I don't like junk, I do! It's just that I don't like this junk. So, there you have it. Delays. And, what is a pilgrim? The eight year old's homework assignment is clearly worded to provoke thought about refugees from modern repressions and suppressed freedom, but we are having trouble moving past the iconic bucket hats and big belt buckle stereotypes. There are many types of pilgrims, from hippies landing in Tibet to the throngs that crowd Mecca each year. Mr. Beetz's parents fled the Nazis during World War II, but he insists that they were not pilgrims seeking freedom in their journey to this country. As for myself and my own Thanksgiving thoughts, well, if my mother's ancestors had not come to this land to slaughter my father's, I wouldn't be here. I might just consider me a pilgrimage. To somewhere. Graceland sounds good, if I can get off work.

Way Cool

I was getting seriously concerned about that turantula, even if I don't want it in my house, So, Mr. Beetz and the 8 year old went out to catch crickets and took them over to the vacated unit. We also went to the school fair in hopes of finding her science teacher, with the idea of placing it in the lab. Miss Joolie gave me a bit of advice on another science teacher, and also a cool tee shirt, a button and a note penned on the back of a print of Kurt Vonnegut! Wow! Way better than pie! Better even than my acing the Alcohol Awareness test! Now I'm stylin'.