Molly Goatwax

Nudging the establishment

Yesterday I sent off an application packet for the municiple Open Studio Tour in Baltimore this fall. I had completed the entry form and made out a check when I noticed that a resume was also required. At first I thought to send the packet back without a resume, but Hubby suggested that I really should follow the directions. So I made a really fine resume, using the template in the laptop's software and it lists my name and contact information, my education and the honors I was awarded. Under exhibitions I put simply; No Recent Exhibitions, even though two of my pieces are currently hanging in a show at the notorious Mount Royal Tavern. No listings of permanent collections, none of my publications, including this. Hubby accused me of purposely trying to provoke the powers that be, but I figure that's all I want to tell them and the event is open to all city artists anyway. What would Marcel DuChamp do?

addiction tranference

It continues to rain, although one of the bushes out front is beyond revival. A load of marbled papers came in so I have been busy cutting and gluing that, walking 3 or 4 miles a day on a treadmill or over terrain and I finished reading the Harry Potter series. Such an engaging epic! I forgot completely that I wanted a cigarette whilst I was reading! I am feeling a little better after a week of not smoking, though missing the expected oxygen rushes in my lungs and the color sensors in my retinas, and of course eating too much. What next? I need another fixation. I know it's handy, but gambling, casino style, has never been my thing. Time to find more furniture by the side of the road?

Day 6

Headaches, check. Long muscle cramps...yes. Confusion, fatigue, inability to focus? Quite, and as far as irritability, it's a wonder Hubby hasn't tossed my body parts over the Hoover Dam. Yesterday my back was so sore sore sore I could barely put my pants on in the morning. Soon, if I keep on the programme, all this will pass. For all of my adult life and before, I have been a heavy smoker. Last Friday I chucked the cigarettes out the window and unwilling and unable to get a 'scrip for major sedatives, stocked the house near the mountains with beer, goodies and the Harry Potter books...snarl...I'm almost done with book the fifth and don't like the prospect of paying for hardbound. I suppose we will, though...hey, wait! There's a library about here somewhere...I'm sure they've seen folks yellow from nicotine withdrawal before.

and pigs have sprouted wings

There have been thunderstorms in the desert, for the third day now. The flood control channels have water in them and wireless signals have spotty receptivity in our cell phones and lap top computers. I'll be lucky to post this, by way of explanation...testing...testing...

Priority Mail

It took seventeen days for my package to travel from Baltimore to Las Vegas. Next time I will use a private shipping service. I'm not sure the Department of Homeland Security is entirely to blame, either. Last February I gave the USPS a break and blamed a snow storm for my late and undelivered valentines. More and more, I'm thinking the super-surly clerk at the 21210 postal branch is sabotaging people's mail because she will not acknowledge a customer's existance until after she fixes her steely gaze on one, says "Good Morning", and the customer replies in kind. Then, she asks if she can help you and forces you to repeat your original request. It's as if she's broadcasting her distain and commanding that you respect her or else she will not let you purchase stamps. Or anything else. Well, I can't respect that kind of attitude and what cements my certitude is that Mr. Beetz took my boxes to the 21211 branch and they got here in two days.

It doesn't take much

Hubby and I have redeemed each other from Jerk Jail. Such a relief. He took me to a cigar store and I selected a sturdy empty box. Now in the small back bedroom whose floor is covered with the cardboard from furniture boxes and outfitted with a table and a chair I found by the side of the road, ( old habits die hard ) magic will happen! After I eat another Ito mango nectarine*, YUMMY! Now, if only I had my painted dickey board squares so that I could continue my valentines, my happiness would be almost complete.

*this is not a paid endorsement. I don't do that here.

Fiddlesticks

Feeling tragically misunderstood, somewhat paranoid and decidedly homesick, yesterday I set about assembling furniture to keep my hands busy. I don't think I've ever done that. Most of our furniture in Baltimore was someone else's before I either found it, inherited it or bought the house that contained it. In the afternoon the package that was sent back to Baltimore and re-mailed by our roomate arrived. I should have been happy, and I was, until I opened it. My decorated cigar box and most of my crayons were smashed to blithereens. The pencil sharpeners and scissors are missing. I was so angry I was visited by an instant eyeball headache and subsequent squabbling with Hubby. I hope he feels like talking to me soon. Time to go back to assembling furniture and waiting for Homeland Security to release my other package.

Our government in action

Anyone who has received one of my valentines can tell you that it is quite thick and rather heavy for such a small piece. You can imagine that a couple hundred pre-cut squares of dickey board would be a challenge to carry any distance and cumbersome in one's luggage. That's why I decided to mail them to myself in flat rate boxes. Let the USPS shoulder the burden! Well, it didn't quite work out that way. Instead of arriving in Las Vegas in two days, they were intercepted by the Department of Homeland Security as a terror threat. I kid you not. One of two was sent back to the house in Baltimore all labeled up with official cautions and the other is still missing after nearly two weeks. Besides the cardboard squares, they contained a wooden cigar box full of watercolor sticks, pencils and paintbrushes which cost a couple hundred dollars in the aggregate. I didn't insure them and am sorely aggrieved. My art supplies have been deemed a menace to the national security. I wonder if the feds will be waiting on my doorstep for me in Baltimore so they can confiscate the rest of my crayons.....

Fish out of water, continued

In advance of our plane ride out west, I mailed myself a couple of flat-rate boxes of art supplies so that I would have something with which to amuse myself besides slot machines and mojitos. After a week passed they failed to arrive and I was getting restless, so I decided to find a facility where I could build some stoneware tubes (pictured here) to decorate our empty back yard. Looking at the menu of services and supplies I was talked into taking a hand building class as the thriftiest option to complete my project. Class comes with unlimited open studio, but to be polite, I attended the first session yesterday. There I was, with six coifed and pedicured elderly ladies and one new age seeker wearing smocks trying to build one of these, when, during a lull the instructor asked if anyone knew any good jokes. No one offered any, so I volunteered what I thought was my safe "job interview*" joke with the proviso that you had to be from Baltimore to get it.  Here it goes: "Why were the three wisemen covered with soot?" The lady next to me bit and asked why. "Because they came from afar!" I crowed. This usually gets at least a snicker back east, but it was met with seven blank faces and some polite coughs. Maybe I should just keep my mouth shut, put the socks away and get a pedicure.

*Sometimes an interviewer will spring the request for a joke to see what comes out of your mouth and it's better to have a safe, lame one memorised than let loose with something non-pc or a foundering stammer.

I'm not from around here

Now that we have engaged the ten year old in a month's worth of structured activities, I find myself faced with the choice of taking my morning walk at an unbearably early hour, hiking in the searing heat and sunlight somewhat later, or using a treadmill at the complex's fitness center in air conditioned comfort. I swore years ago never to attend a gym, but this one's a no-brainer. To ward off the tedium of imitating a hamster for an hour, the machines have individual flat screen televisions built into their control panels. I swore off television as a teenager but into each life a little rain must fall-as they say-especially when I can get the sci-fi channel to myself without disturbing those less geeky around me. Speaking of geeky, there I was, with the facility to myself marching in place this morning when a highly polished and stilleto'd young woman (whom I at first mistook for an escapee from the adult entertainment industry) from the development's sales office trotted a pair of potential victims through the parquet floored gym. When she saw my grey haired and ragged affect, she stopped her spiel and hustled the couple away to the next attraction. As I walked through the marble foyer on my way out, I saw her talking to a colleague, then stop as I came into view. I looked behind my shoulder twenty feet past them and they were still staring at me. Sorry if I don't help set the tone and spoiled your sale, lady. Must have been the stained Baltimore tee shirt and the sandals worn with socks.