Busy Day

I had an assistant today so there wasn't a lot of accomplishment happening.  I managed to eke out 15 minutes of writing before she arrived. For the rest of the day I danced to LC's tune--and loved every minute of it.


We baked pinwheel cookies with two rolls of store-bought sugar cookie dough and they kind of got away from us.  I didn't roll them out really long so cutting 1/2" slices made huge cookies.  These two aren't the biggest ones but they're close.  One cookie is enough to share.  I sent most of them across town when I dropped off LC.

We unlimbered the potholder loom and bag of loopers I've been saving until she got old enough to start making one with help.  I wielded the hook and she chose the loops, made sure they were on the right peg, and pushed them into place.  We made one potholder which went home with her.  Next time we'll make another or maybe make two to sew together for a little purse.  The directions are in the box.  I still have two made by her daddy and auntie in the potholder drawer.  The tradition continues.  I just wish I had the little red plastic suitcase the kids' loom and loopers lived in.
 




Here's the pile of forsythia branches MW cut earlier this week and the well-behaved looking shrub that's left.  Don't let this fool you, it grows like crazy and sends out water shoots from every side.  It's the maniac of shrubs.






17 October--Barbara Malcolm, Horizon. 

             By noon, I knew why I had entered this fair.  Most, if not all, of the customers shuffling past my booth had made favorable comments and many purchased something.  By noon, I understood I should have brought twice the number of smaller unframed paintings.  By noon, I had painted two pictures—one of Lake Michigan, which lapped at the edge of the park, the other of a patch of purple clover that was blooming merrily at the edge of the tent—and sold them, right off my easel.

            “Marge!  Marge!  Look, I found her,” a gravelly male voice called from nearby.  I looked around to see what Marge was so desperately seeking.  Turns out it was me.

            An expensively dressed retirement age couple met and conferred before stepping into my booth.  The man took an unlit cigar out from between his teeth and thrust his hand out.  “Little lady, we’ve been looking for you all day.  Haggis Chandler’s my name; Marge here saw your clover painting.  She wouldn’t leave off pestering me until I found you.”

            Haggis?  What kind of name is that?  I guess his mother wasn’t too happy when he arrived.  I tried to shake his hand without touching the wet cigar.  “That’s very flattering, Mr. Chandler.”

            “Call me Hag.  Everybody does.”  He shoved the cigar back between his teeth.  “This is my wife, Marge.”

            “Um, Hag, Marge, nice to meet you.  What can I do for you?”

            He snatched the stogie out again.  “Why, you can paint little Margie here one of them clover paintings.  That’s what you can do.”  Back in went the cigar.

            I turned to his wife, a short dumpling of a woman with taffy colored hair.  “You like clover, do you?”

            She smiled at her husband and slapped him lightly on the arm.  “Don’t listen to him.”  She tucked her arm through mine and walked us over toward my easel.  “We’ll let the men talk.  What’s your husband’s name, honey?”

            Though my instinct was to pull my arm out and stop walking, my first morning selling art had taught me one thing—never alienate a possible customer.  And a rich-looking one at that.  “His name’s Abel and we’re not married.”

            Marge snorted.  “Fooling around?”

            It was harder to resist tugging my arm from the vise of her elbow.  “Just dating.”  I gritted my teeth and pasted a smile on my face.  “What can I paint for you, Marge?

            “Bluebell.”  She stopped walking and looked straight at me.

            “Bluebells?  The flower?  Are you from Texas?”

            Marge giggled and slapped my arm.  “No, silly, Bluebell’s my cow.”

            I could see the commission check I had started to imagine flying away.  “I’ve never painted a cow before.  I don’t know if I can.  I’m not very good at drawing so I’m afraid I wouldn’t do Bluebell justice.”

            “Oh, I wish you’d think about it.  When I saw that clover you painted this morning, looking so lifelike and delicious, I just knew you were the one to paint my precious little cow.”

            This time I took Marge’s arm and escorted her back to the front of the booth.  “Why don’t you leave your name and phone number with me and I will think about whether I’m the right artist to paint Bluebell.”  I handed her a pen and scrap of paper, we exchanged goodbyes, and they left.

            “You’re never going to believe what ‘little Margie’ asked me to paint.  Her pet cow, Bluebell.  She said my clover painting looked so delicious, she knew I’m the one to immortalize Bluebell.”  I turned, expecting to share a laugh with Abel, but he wasn’t laughing.  He was staring at a piece of paper in his hand.  “Abel, are you all right?”  I touched his hand.

            He jumped and looked at me with a dazed look in his eyes.  “You know what he did?”

            “You mean Hag?  Isn’t that a name for the books?”

            “Yeah, Hag.”  His eyes had returned to staring at what I now saw was a check.

            “What did Hag do?”

            “While you and Marge were talking he picked out eight of your paintings, all in frames, and wrote out this check for twenty-five hundred dollars.  I helped load them in his car.”

            I looked around at the walls of the tent.  They were a lot emptier than they had been a few minutes earlier.  I reached over and took the check from Abel.  “Twenty-five hundred dollars.”  I could feel my knees buckle and groped for a chair.  “Eight of my paintings, even the biggest ones with the fanciest frames, don’t add up to that much, do they?”

            He eased into the other chair.  “No, they don’t.  They added up to just over eighteen hundred with the tax.  He said he threw the rest in to make it a round number.”

            Luckily, customer traffic had slowed; no one was in our booth.  I guessed everyone was off finding some lunch.  “What kind of car was it?”

            He chuckled.  “I don’t think you have to worry about the check being good.  It was one of those Cadillac Escalades with all the extras, looked like it could drive itself.  Snazzy.”

            I folded the check in half and put it in the pocket of my shorts, buttoning it closed so I didn’t lose it.  “Guess I’d better learn how to paint cows.”

I woke up at 5 o'clock this morning and couldn't go back to sleep.  I'm dead.  Talk to you tomorrow.
--Barbara