Molly Goatwax

OCD

Behold a gel transfer of a colorized version of our city jail, edged in lace and set on Japanese paper. I know it's reversed. The ideal of it is more important than its reality. It took me three or four days to dig the insets for the fuses in this piece. Sparky lent me a 5/8 drill bit and I had to dremmel the holes out to 3/4. Please notice that the mica window in the right-most fuse indicates that it's blown. I don't know what will go in the corners as there are no more upholstery nails.

the surfeit

It's a blessing to have recieved such an economy of gifts. A sweater, an earring, a breadbox. Really! It's a good thing no one gave me a cake stand, I already have at least four of them and they um, never get used. Same with butter dishes, except we use the pressed glass one, favoring it over the porcelain, the silver plate and the crystal ones for utility. I gave my studio room-mate a mod ceramic salt, pepper and tray set because they are colors and shapes she uses in her art and because she didn't have one. She's young and hasn't collected a whole lot of household stuff yet. I know she likes it because not only did she fill them up and change the kitchen table's cloth to show them to their best advantage, they now bear a feast's worth of smudges.

Gloria

Earlier I heard lots of bells over my neighbor's windchimes. I stuck my head out of the window and realized that as the crow flies, the nearest church is the fabulous Art Deco cathedral with which I acquainted myself recently and it was sounding a whole tower full of bells to glad effect. Bells truimphant! In Excelsis Deo...

sleepless

Was it the former colleague looking so slim and elegant at the grocery store? An old friend ranting the usual rant about the commercialization of Christmas? The neighbor's windchime? Guilt, regret and sheets of sweat? In my waking introspection I find myself pondering holidays past, some of which recently have been awful. Last year we had the two week rocks-in-the-stomach-ache and the year before, my mother and new stepfather both passed away. I should by contrast, be happy. Let's turn back the hands of the clock another year, to 2004. Then I regreted having to go to a job I despised instead of watching cartoons and drinking beer. I know! I can watch cartoons in my pyjamas for a month! A year! Or at least until I fall back to sleep and not have to worry about being anywhere tommorrow.

perspective

One of the aspects of walking for health that I find agreeable is becoming a tourist in one's own neighborhood. Yesterday after passing a few positively baronial mansions hidden away on Cotswold I found myself on the grounds of the fabulous Art Deco cathedral on Charles Street. As I approached it admiring the surface decorations, I noticed that the doors were open and many fancy long cars were out front. I went inside. A man so well appointed in life that his parish church couldn't hold it was having his funeral. I put some quarters in a prayer box and gazed at the windows as I learned of the privations and triumphs that marked the man's career. When I told hubby about it at home, he asked me why anyone would attend the funeral of someone they had never heard of. I told him that's the kind of thing you do when you are busy living the life of a poet. That, and collecting the corks out of the wine bottles in everybody's recycle bins.

It's still all about the real estate

Lest you think me a complete curmudgeon, I was standing in line at the thrift store the other day, behind a lady and her mother discussing some light-up porcelain buildings on the counter. They didn't want the simple "stone" chapel because its front steps were broken off and the other, well one thought it looked like a mosque and the other didn't know what to make of it. I looked on the bottom and read "ST PETERS ROME" and I told them it was a basilica, not wanting to disabuse them of the notion that it was some foreign, heathen thing they wouldn't want in their Christmas village. After they had firmly abandoned it, I liberated St. Peter's for two dollars and planted it between the theatre and the pub in the entertainment district of my own light-up porcelain village.

the grass IS greener over here

Usually, at this time of year, I feel clubbed over the head marginalized by the ubiquity of Christmas and its celebrants. I'm all for a bit of fragrant greenery and I love the shiney lights with my brewski, but I don't understand why mature adults need to wear silly looking sweaters and foist their version of cheer on others with silly games and competitions. But the misery that came with being chained to a corporate computer and being forced to listen to the Carpenters' carols on FM lite with a smile has vanished. I feel confident that I will never again be humiliated by my bosses' manditory festivities. I survived. American Home Mortgage did not.

Next

I must gain an understanding of a pair of walkie-talkies. These Motorolas are a lot more sophisticated than the ones I used to lug about the campus of the art school. Oh ho! It has a weather fequency and a programmable NOAA alert...this may take me a while.

Where have I been?

Learning to program a universal remote control device can take a long time.

Toys! More Toys!

Talk about lusting after the kids' toys...My quiet admiration for the neighbor boy, Ben's, catapult has been totally eclipsed by a peek at the cheap camera Hubby got for the tot...video and editing and stuff, 8 megabytes for still pictures for 80 dollars. One two three You-Tube instructions are prominent through the clam shell bubble. Huh. I'll have to sneak its use while she's in school. It blows away the Canon I bought several years ago for three times as much.