We’re at our Art Class when Regina puts down her paint brush, tucks some brown hair behind her ear, looks at me and says, “I have to dump my boyfriend.”

Carol, who is doggedly painting some flowers, doesn’t hear Regina, because eighty-year old Carol can’t hear too well.
About ten minutes ago Regina had mentioned that The Boyfriend was taking her tonight to see The Pageants of the Masters in Laguna Beach and Carol said, “What? You’re going to be on a mattress, tonight?”

Stan, Regina and I laughed and Regina, said, “Ah..yes…I guess I will be on a mattress, tonight.”

I said, “I’m jealous.”

Regina is the woman who’s husband died about two years ago, at fifty, from colon cancer. As you recall, his illness and death traumatized all of us.

Regina has since been valiantly putting herself out into the world, remodeling her house, keeping her mind busy and living life.

When she tells me she is going to dump her boyfriend, our teacher, Stan, is out of the room. It’s best that way as he gets upset about these kinds of announcements.

“So,” I ask, “why are you going to dump him?”

“Because he is suffocating me!” Regina says, with fervor. “He calls me three times a day and he emails me and he wants to be with me every day and he says he’s in love with me and he has only known me a couple of months!”

“Oh, I get it,” I say. “A girl I know who is only nineteen just said the same thing to me. She said her boyfriend calls many times a day and when she sees his number on the phone she makes a bad face and thinks, ‘Man!! I just talked to you, what more could you possibly have to say!’

“I told her that her feelings about his calls are not a good indicator of the beauty and endurance of their relationship.”

Regina heaves a big sigh and slaps her illustration pad on the table top.

“This guy was married for thirty-six years and his wife died and then he takes up with me. He has only been with two women in his life. I want time to myself, and I want to be with my women friends. I tell him this and to back off, but he just won’t. He’s ruining everything.”

I mumble my understanding of her feelings.

“I said to him, ‘Can’t we just be friends, with benefits?’ He said ‘no’ that wouldn’t work. So, it’s all or nothing. The thing is, he’s not ready for me or any woman. He is still grieving his wife. Whenever I do something he says, ‘my wife wouldn’t have done it like that.’

“So what are you going to do, Regina?”

She says she is going to end it, tonight.

Which is very sad, I think. The poor man just doesn’t know that women…just like men…don’t want to be suffocated in a relationship. Everybody needs their space and a bit of mystery and uncertainty about the beloved often keeps things hopping.

I’m thinking of a hair dresser I know, named ‘Sally’. She complains all the time about her rich and loving boyfriend in Canada. He wants to marry her and take her out of California and away from her work and all her family and friends. He demands that she do it his way and that she can have a life of ease if she does. He gives her no other options.

‘Sally’ has been telling everyone that she can’t do it his way, that he is over-bearing, that he is stifling her and that she is going to have to get rid of him.

What happens? He dumps her, first! He calls and says, ‘This Isn’t Working. Let’s just live separate lives for four months. Don’t contact me. Let’s see how it goes.’

‘What happens’ is now ‘Sally’ is crying all day and all night and wailing that this former beast is the Love of Her Heart and that she can’t live without him. She is so steeped in suffering that she can barely cut hair and her voice is raspy from all the moaning and crying she has been doing.

Ummm. Is Love totally not rational? Does it have to be like this?

Ladies and Gentlemen, here’s an idea. Let’s tuck our insecurities away for awhile, put our grasping claws in our pockets and give each other: freedom, mystery, a bit of uncertainty along with the Love…. and see what happens?
…………………………………………………………………………….
*Please note the following three messages, including the winner of the drawing. Thank you*

1. DO YOU NEED BETTER HEALTH OR A GOOD BUSINESS TO PULL YOU THROUGH THIS ECONOMY?
Quite awhile back on The Dear Venus Show, I mentioned that I would be looking for ways to help all of us in this economic climate. Well, I have been looking and looking and looking.

I have found something of interest and have signed with this company for my own good health and to build the business. In ‘bad times’ networking companies historically do very well. The right ones prosper.
I believe this product is very valuable. I have a close friend who credits it with helping save her life from Stage Four cancer and have a number of other friends who keep urging me to get a Unit for myself because of their own great health results. They say it even makes their indoor plants grow mightily with huge, glossy leaves.

Of course, no one thing is right for everyone so you must use your common sense here, as with anything. Personally, a long time ago, I realized that I had passed up some stupendous opportunities in my life because I had refused to look at many things for my own reasons. Now, I look carefully at most things The Universe may be presenting me so I won’t pass up a fortune of good health, love or wealth, ever again!

I have made LOTS of money with the right mlm companies, over thirty plus years of working with them. And yes, all mlms are not the same. Some deserve their wretched reputations but I steer clear of those. I have helped many people find financial health by building with the right, ethical company. I have built these businesses and trained for companies around the world.

If you are not looking for a business, you might want a Unit for your own radiant health and for that of your family. It may seem a bit pricey, but I always look at Prevention as being the best method for Saving my money. I’d much rather have robust good health then potter around, spending my money on frequent or lethal ailments. And, good health brings peace of mind. When you and those you love are healthy, the world looks good.
www.ionways.com/dearvenus (Be sure you use DEARVENUS as someone else is using the word ‘venus’ for their site and it is NOT me. How many venus’ can there possibly be?? I know a few dogs named Venus…but not many humans)

2. If you have not been able to receive the FEED to automatically get my blog, a listener and friend of mine has this advice for you: “my feed (for your blog) is automatically sent to my norton anti-spam filter, so I have to check that every day as well as my inbox.”
Another suggestion is to try a different email address.

3. WINNER OF THE RANDOM DRAWING FOR A FREE 15 MINUTE SESSION WITH VENUS:
*Vanessa Allred. Offer good from July 18th through July 20th, 2008. Null and void after that.

Hello my friends. I thought you might like to see the kinds of things we four sisters email each other, pretty much daily. Mostly about Looking After Mother. As you know, we each have our assigned jobs.

Polly is Medical, I am The Entertainment Committee, Barbara is Finances and Candy does legal stuff and cleans up Mom’s ratty mobile home after the cleaning lady has been there, and etc. I guess she does Catch-All. The two brothers? Well, we put them in charge of taking care of Mom’s car but we girls end up doing that, too.

On Jul 11, 2008, at 7:40 PM, Barbara wrote:
I’ve been sitting here reading your back and forth emails to my friend Kareen who is half asleep on my sofa at the moment. I keep waking her up laughing and she has to know what’s so funny! I always go to Shiley Eye Center. They do get really busy. Too bad, but I’ve never had any exciting adventures there, like you have, Venus.
Barbara

Here are the emails Barbara is referring to. You know about some of this as I put the first happening in my last blog:

Venus writes:
Hi Polly, Mom told me and Candy the other day that she thinks she needs her eyes checked. She says that at night a dark film comes over one of her eyes and it’s getting worse.

I know you are The Medical Person and you love to handle this kind of thing.

Candy took mom to get a hair cut, down the mountain the other
day and she took her to a nice lunch. They both stopped by my house
after and we had wine and a nice chat.
As they were leaving, Mom thanked ME very much for the hair
cut and the lunch. Twice.
I hope it was the wine talking.
Sorry Candy.
X Venus

Candy:
Mom likes her haircut it doesn’t matter who gets credit for taking her.

I unloaded my fruit tree and dropped off apricots yesterday at the senior center. The place was
packed and the apricots went like hot-cakes. I sat down with mom and her ninety-five year old friend Anita at lunch at the center and Anita said, “Your mom looks ten years younger with her haircut.”
It’s true. I hope Mom will have more spring in her step now

Her driving sucks.
I watched her leave the senior center. It took her at least five minutes to get herself out of the parking space (not parking lot; parking space).
She had her blinker on (to leave the space) and inched her way out. I suppose not
being able to see has something to do with inching her way out. Oh my. It’s a good thing we made the rules about her only driving on the straight road into town and only where there are stop lights.
Remember when she hit that truck before we knew she had cataracts and got her that operation? She said she ‘didn’t think the truck was that big.’ !

I can take mom to the eye doctor while I have time off. Does anyone know who she sees? The only time I’ve dealt with her eyes was with the two surgeries at that eye center in La Jolla.
Candy

Venus:
Hi Candy, I think it’s the Shiley Center. I took her there only once and they locked me out of the building and locked Mother in it!!!

We had been waiting for hours, it had gotten late, it was dusk and they were behind, so you know how i am about medical stuff; doctors and hospitals make me very nervous. I said ‘mom i gotta’ take a break from this.’

I went outside and sat in my car for awhile but when i tried to get back into the Center, everyone
was gone and the damn doors were locked!!!
The place was all glass and I could see that the entire waiting area was empty and there were no nurses or receptionists at the desks! And, there were no longer any patients in the waiting room.
I had to yell and yell and beat on the doors. Someone like a janitor finally came and opened the door and I shouted, ‘where’s my mother?!’

The man took me on a hunt and we finally found her in a back room waiting for a doctor who was still there somewhere in the bowels of the place.
I said that was the last time i was ever going to that Shiley
Center. Too much trauma. I thought I had lost Mother.
X Venus

Candy:
Gosh! You’re still whining about that one trip to the eye doctor.
I’m pretty sure Polly and I have had a few miserable trips to the doctor
with mom and/or dad. It’s a good thing you do such a great job with the
entertainment position - and you can’t count the haircut and lunch!

I’m wondering if mom has to have a referral to go to the Sheely Eye
Center?? Does she have a regular eye doctor? Polly, do you know?

Venus:
Mother is on a new kick.
She Loves that Irish Cream Brandy that Barbara got for her.
My duty as The Entertainment Committee has taken me to Mom’s place four times this week and Mom sits me down each time and brings out the bottle. We sit and drink that stuff. We are deep into the second big bottle!!!
She even bought some special glasses for us to use.
Well, I like the stuff but I am now at my limit.
I know I am The Entertainment Committee but you girls have got to help me out with this and do some drinking with her!

Polly writes:
These emails are always so interesting. I wish i had some fun to contribute.
I’ve been to the Shiley center also. The last time mom had her eyes checked, it was at Sears. If we want to have Gary Myers check them and send us somewhere else, we could do that?? I don’t know who is good and I hate taking her so far away. Surely we can find someone good in Poway.

Mom’s hair does look cute. She was thinking younger the other day. She was casting google eyes at Skip, again.
By the way Candy, you have to forgive Venus. Have you forgotten, she has this “tiny little quirk” about anything remotely related to medicine?. She’s not normal about these things and you have to over-look that.
Remember, with Daddy she did The Funeral Duty and had to take him to all the funerals. Nobody else would do it.
And she is really good as the Entertainment Committee for Mom.
…..
And so, my friends, I hope you have enjoyed a peek into The Sister’s Daily Conversations About Our Mother. We are grateful she is still here with us. She will be eighty-six years old, Sept. 5th. She has A Plan to live to 102, but sometimes she questions that decision. She wonders if it is really a smart move, but since she made the decision, she says it is hard to get off it.
Firmly made decisions go deep.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
You can EMAIL any blog article to a friend; please see below.
WINNER OF THE RANDOM DRAWING FOR A FREE 15 MINUTE PHONE SESSION WITH VENUS-*Kristen Tolley” Offer good through Monday July 14th. After that, null and void.

My sister Candy calls and says, “Hey, I just took Mom down the hill and got her a new haircut and took her for a nice lunch. Can we come by and I’ll show you her new hairdo?”

“Sure. I’d love to see you!” I say.

I rush to take off my tacky house dress because don’t you know, it’s a hot day and I didn’t bother to dress for anything but the heat.

My mom and sister show up and ‘oh’ and ‘ah’ about my re-modeled house. It seems they have seen it since it’s been remodeled but it’s OK, if they want to make more nice remarks.

We end up in my bedroom-sitting room because it is so pleasant. The bedroom part is gold and the sitting area is aqua. Sun pours in the three curved windows to the west, onto my blue vase which is sitting on a glass table, filled with brilliant yellow sunflowers.

I put Mom in my yellow striped chair and crank the bed up for Candy and me to recline on. I can touch a button and the bed lifts to a sitting position and I can crank some more and the end goes up until your feet are reaching for the moon. It is very nice.

Candy says she has stopped drinking wine as it is making her fat, but pretty soon, she suggests we have a bit of wine. Mother agrees. I use small glasses.

Mother has a glass of wine and says, “Oh my. I can certainly feeeel this.” She always says that.

We all hang out in my lovely room and chat for maybe two hours. Mother’s white hair is divine and it is curling up around her face.

Candy says, “With that haircut, you look ten years younger!”

Candy says her hair dresser did a nice job and that she and Mom then went to the Fish Grill for lunch. They had fried fish and chips. Both Mom and Candy agree that it was way too much fried food for them and they won’t be doing that, again.

Mother keeps looking at her watch. She is worried about her dog Becky who is perfectly fine, but Mother always thinks Becky is lonely and missing her.

Finally, Candy says, “Mom, do you want to go home and check on Becky?”
She does, so the fun day is over.

I walk Mom and Candy to the car. Mom is looping all over the patio walk from drinking one glass of wine, so we have to watch her and sometimes give her a nudge to keep her upright.

We get Mom in the car and she looks up at me and says, “Oh thank you Honey, for the wonderful haircut and the wonderful lunch.”

I say, “What?”

I look at Candy who is in the drivers seat. She looks at me and raises her eyebrows.

Mom repeats her thanks to me for the wonderful haircut, lunch and day. I squeeze up my face and grin at Candy and say to Mom, “Oh, gee, you’re so welcome, Mom!”

No good deed goes unnoticed, even if it is misapplied, I guess.
Candy is laughing and shaking her head.

It’s now the next day and I stop by my mother’s house to take her some ripe apricots off my tree.

She says, “Oh, the strangest thing happened, Honey. When I got up this morning, I couldn’t find Sassy. I could hear her yowling, but I couldn’t find her.”

Sassy is the black and white cat that Mom took in when the cat needed a home. Sassy is a maladjusted cat. She is also unpredictably mean. She lived in an auto shop, before she came to Mother, where the male customers teased and treated her badly. She developed a mean persona because of her upbringing but Mother tries to love her, anyway.

Mother continues, “When Skip came to help me this morning, you know he’s building the patio, I called him in and I said, ‘I can hear Sassy but I can’t find her. Can you listen and find her?’”
Skip said, ‘I can’t hear so well, myself. Let’s call Jeranimo in.’

“So, Jeranimo came in and looked around a bit and then he said, ‘Could she be in the dryer?’
I opened the dryer and there she was!”

“Oh, my gosh,” I say, “how did that happen, Mom?”

“Well, yesterday, I noticed the dryer door was open and so I shut it. She must have been in there when I shut it.”

“Oh, my gosh,” I say, again. “I bet she was crying and meowing all night and you couldn’t hear her because your hearing aides were out.”

I think a bit and then I say, “She was in there a long time. Did she pee in the dryer?”

“Oh yes!” Mom says, “and much, much worse! She did everything in the dryer. It was a terrible, terrible mess and she was coated with poop and pee and you know how Sassy is, I wouldn’t dare try and clean her up.”

I am gagging.

Mom says, “I have cleaned and cleaned the dryer and next I think I will have to dry some old towels in it, before I even attempt to dry my clothes.”

I say, “Well Mom, shit happens.”

Which reminds me. I have brought Mom that bag of apricots off my tree which I now hand to her.

Mom says, “Remember that year you ate so many of these apricots that they gave you a problem?”

I do remember.

These apricots are so good that I was eating what seemed like tons of them off my big tree that year. One day I was up town, driving toward home when oh, my gosh! I said out-loud to myself and the car, “Oh! MY gosh! I am not going to make it home!”

I was dumbstruck and horrified.
Quick, I pulled off the road, onto my Mom’s property, stopped the car just barely, raced into her house, ran past my mother and threw myself head first into her bathroom.

I was really surprised. I didn’t know a bunch of apricots could do that to a person.

Well, shit happens.

What you have to do is find the humor in these circumstances, whether it’s eating too many apricots, or getting locked in a dryer for almost a day or having some other strange and bothersome something happen in your life; hey, shit happens. Don’t get too worked up about it, you have a lot of company. Everybody gets covered with and reeks of the stuff sometimes, even if it’s only metaphorically.
……………………………………………………………………
WINNER OF THE RANDOM DRAWING FOR A FREE 15 MINUTE PHONE SESSION WITH VENUS:*Reinhold Neininger*
Offer good through July 11th, 2008. Null and void after that.

Don’t be shocked.
I am sitting at my computer, writing this blog, naked.

I have compelling reasons.

It’s very, very hot.
It has been a long holiday week-end and I do not have to stay alert for:

The Pool Man Who Goes to Paris every year and Likes To Drink Red Wine, Candido The Gardner And His Crew who’s motto is, ‘If you see a flower, yank it out!’, Frank The Fed-Ex Man With The Long, Scrawny Blonde Pony-Tail, who I have known for 20 years, The Ever Changing UPS Man, The Scared Out of His Pants About Dogs Gas and Electric Man, The Post Man With Red Hair and Buck Teeth who likes to sometimes, personally deliver my mail, My Neighbor Ken who is just friendly and comes in the fenced and bushed and treed yard to chat, Jeranimo who has finished helping Chuck build my house but who has now become my Weed Yanker and Fix-It Man, The Lady Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Long Dresses Who Are Still Determined To Save Me From Hell and my Ex-Boyfriend Bill who lives in my studio but is out of town for the holiday.

There may be others who might possibly show up: A brother or sister of mine, an in- law, or a friend rattling around with nothing to do. But, if that happens, too bad for them, I say. They can just take off their clothes and join me.

Being naked in the house and running around outside naked in the flowers is just bliss. I feel like one of those Big Garden Fairies.

Being naked is the most bliss I have had all week-end as I have spent my holiday coughing and blowing and blowing and blowing my nose and being exhausted and peevish.

My sisters think I have allergies.
Could it be the oak tree that is in full yellow flower and hangs over my back patio? I sit under the branches most of the day and step bare-footed on the little, spiky flower pods that it tosses on the ground. Or, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to spend most of a day on a blanket on the grass, soaking up the earth’s energy, trying to get well?

My sisters suggested the allergy connection when we had lunch (outside) with our mother and brother Art, yesterday at The Coffee Shop. We sat under trees and next to flowers, of course. I am noticing that trees and flowers seem to be everywhere when you are suspicious of having allergies.

However, we all had a fine lunch and a fine time.

We were talking about Daddy.

Our father died almost eight years ago when he was eighty-two. Things have been much quieter since he left.

Because of a difficult relationship with his mother, our father was a narcissist; almost completely devoted to himself and his martini drinking which he drank in large, glass fruit jars. He was also brilliant, very generous and immensely entertaining. He was a Pillar in the Town.

Mother says she married Daddy because he was so interesting. She learned, however, to rather regret marrying him for the interesting-entertainment factor as it was rather non-stop.

As we chat and eat at the coffee shop, we all recall the trip to Arizona to see family friends. With six kids we took darn few trips so this was a Huge Occasion that we kids had been looking forward to for months.

Daddy decided to take George, our large, black labrador, with us.

“George will enjoy the trip,” my dad said.

Off we went, eight people and a huge, un-trained dog, squashed in a tiny, rattley car with no air conditioning…in the summer, leaving California, heading for Arizona.

We drove for hours and I remember us kids being good sports about the tremendous sucking heat and the long drive and George, the good natured but, ill-mannered dog, who kept whining and drooling and slapping his tongue around, sitting his large butt in our tiny laps and stepping on our toes with his sharp dog nails.

We were going on a Real Vacation! We were just like all our friends who went on vacations all the time!

Here’s what we all remember about that ‘vacation.’

We pull up to the border crossing into Arizona. The windows in the car are all down because it is noonish and we are all feeling like we are sitting in buckets of stinky sweat. Our hair is wet and sticks to our heads and our tee shirts and shorts are binding us in all the hot, sweaty places. Our mother’s dark hair is pinned up on top of her head while my dad is wearing his usual white tee shirt and his usual long beige jeans, but he has his shoes off.

Our dad slows the car to a stop. The Border Guards look hot and lazy in the heat. They all turn slowly and look at Ma and Pa Kettle and The Gang in the old blue car with six kids and a huge, black, slobbering dog.

One of the men ambles over to us and gets set to lean in and ask a few questions about our intent.
Our father gives him a big smile. Our father’s nice, white teeth are a bit off so it always seems he has only one big front tooth right in the middle of his grin, which gives him a certain uniqueness that you don’t forget.

George is whining and jerking around in the back seat with us kids. He’s not happy. He has a thought. We kids can see it, and scream at our father, “Daddy, Daddy, George wants out!”

Daddy ignores our message about George’s desperation and Whhooooom! George is clambering out a window and now he’s streaking across the desert, through the cactus and into the big unknown.

Now we’re really screaming!

My father throws open his door, knocks the Boarder Guard aside and takes off across the desert after George.
He has no shoes on!

We watch our father pounding into the desert, yelling for George, jumping multiple times into the air from the scorching heat on his bare feet and the stabs of the cactus needles. He’s hollering, “George! George! Ouuuuch! Owwww! George! Come here you F…ing dog!”

He screams and calls and shouts obscenities as he and George become smaller and smaller as they tear across the desert floor.

All of us and the Boarder Guards, are mesmerized.
It seems like a long time, but at last, our father catches George and drags him back by the collar. They are both soaked with sweat and covered with dirt. Cactus needles stick out of fur and skin.

Our father shoves George into the car, hops in, says a number of choice words which are not carefully thought out, starts the car and slams it in reverse. We do a half donut as our father yells, “That’s it! We’re not going to Arizona! We’re going home!”

We kids all shriek with blistering disappointment and collapse into tears as our father hits the gas and roars back into California.
We’re not going to have a vacation. We’re not going to Arizona. We’re not going anywhere and it’s not our fault.

It’s a long, hot, un-happy ride home. We kids keep crying, my father is still yelling and George pees in the car.

We kids are now grown up and I have just finished my omelet as the rehashing of The Almost Arizona Vacation, ends.
I realize that after all these years, I am still mad about being yanked home because my father was having a tantrum. It seemed so unjust that we got so close to Our Vacation and didn’t get it. But, this is what you get when your mother marries ‘an interesting man.’

Looking back on it, now, as I sit here naked, typing up the sorry tale, I think that vacation might have happened, we might have all actually made it to Arizona, if we had all driven and ridden, naked. It would have been cooler and cooler heads may have prevailed.

But, maybe not, we could never have gotten George unzipped out of his hot outfit.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
WINNER OF THE RANDOM DRAWING FOR A FREE 15 MINUTE PHONE SESSION WITH VENUS: *Tia McLaughlin* Offer good through July 8th, Tuesday, 2008. After that, null and void

A man tells me that he met his now wife in the 7-11 Convenience store. He went in for a coke and she was buying one, too.

Just as an aside, I’m told that ‘older’ women are dating younger men now, which is making it hard for ‘older’ men to get a date. Kind of a turn around, isn’t it?

My art teacher, Stan, tells me this one:
“I knew this happy couple that had been married for years, and they had four kids. One day not too long ago, they up and divorced. I was shocked!

“So, they are just recently divorced and the ex-wife is driving down the freeway when a car comes along side her, swerves a bit and bangs her door.

“She pulls her car over to the side of the road and the other driver does, also.
This woman, my friend, is really, really mad. She gives the driver hell for hitting her car.
He says, “Lady, lady, I’m really sorry, my phone was ringing and it distracted me, but it’s OK, I’ve got good insurance, I’ll take care of all of this for you.”

The woman continues to rant while he begs her to calm down.”

Stan looks at me and says, “You know what, Venus? She married the man. And, he owns this huge, famous company, he has a home in Telluride, Colorado and more homes in other fancy places. He has a yacht and a jet. He’s very wealthy. She’s a socialite, now. She has a dream life.”

“Geez,” I say, “and so many people can’t even get a date and she gets this and just by driving down the freeway? What happened to her ex-husband?”

Stan says, “Oh, he died. His luck wasn’t as good.”

Here’s a thought. Maybe if you’re out there looking and looking for The Right One and it has become a Huge Job…maybe you should just shuck The Big Painful Search, give it up, relax and take a drive down the freeway to get a coke? Maybe Destiny is indeed at work in our lives?
…. If so, let her take over. Surrender. Try it. Surrender, relax and be happy, at least for awhile, and see what may happen.

Can I visit you in Telluride?
………………………………………………………………………….
***WINNER OF A FREE 15 MINUTE PHONE SESSION WITH VENUS *TUULA WHITELAND*
Offer valid through July 3rd, 2008. Null and void after that.

I have a Stinky Cold and I am exhausted. A screaming, angry two year old boy with white curls as big as inner tubes (well, almost) is yanking on my arm and yelling, “BABA, NO, NO, NO!”

It’s Saturday and I am sitting on the porch of what we call The Cottage. The Cottage is a cute little place right next to my mother’s mobile home.

I’m sitting here with my mother. Once again, our almost 86 year old Mother has smears of mud on her cheeks and forehead. She has been watering her plants, once again tripped through the hose, and fallen flat on her face. Since she does this almost daily, we girls have finally stopped worrying about it.

Mother falls because she gets the big green hose wrapped up around her ankles. It’s that simple. As she says, ‘Well, when I’m going down, I always remember what my mother told me when she was old. ‘When you’re falling, just relax into the fall, just let go and relax,’ and you know, Mother lived to be eighty-eight and she never broke anything in her life.”

I sit back in the chair and try and remove my mind from Loch’s clutching and screaming.

Many years ago when Summer was young and I was just divorced for the second (and last time) we lived in this same cottage for a year while I gathered myself for another foray into the world.

Today, Summer is working out of town and I have her children, my grandkids, for five days. Right now five days seems like fifty. I have come to my mother’s place to get a treatment from Dr. Ron and a bit of a rest, at least for an hour or so.

My sister Polly is here, acting as receptionist, as her husband, Dr. Ron, is seeing chiropractic clients inside the cottage. I have already been in to see him. He was shocked at the sight of me.

“My god,” he says, “are you OK?”

He asks me this as Loch, the 2 year old clings to my legs and screams and screams and demands that I come outside with him.

The Perfect Child, the Boy With NO Faults, as Summer and I have always referred to him, has suddenly morphed into a two-year old demanding dictator. He has been yelling and screaming “NO” and making heavy demands for 3 days, now. He has also given me his sticky, gummy, throat-raking cold.

Dr Ron says, “I’ve never seen you look so bad.”

“I need a treatment,” I rasp.

We both look down at Lock who is climbing my legs, smearing them with his tears and continuing to scream and scream.

My sister Polly, leaves the patients in the office and comes into the treatment room.

“Loch,” she says, “want some chocolate?”

Loch lets go of my leg and grabs Polly’s hand, while sunshine breaks over his face.

“Eeeh gads, ” I think, “if his mother only knew what goes on up here!”

Dr. Ron quickly gets to work as I spill out my three day story.

“At least Loch naps everyday but Lexi never does. She’s five, now. I took a little nap while Loch was down and when I got up, Lexi had gathered her sticker books, removed all the stickers and stickered everything in my house. All my pillows and bed sheets, the toilets, the bottoms of all my coffee and teacups. And the outsides of the cups and glasses. She stickered all my miles of wood laminate floors, most of my books, my desk, the computer and all the knicknacks. She only refrained from stickering my walls because I caught her stickering the new wall paper a few days ago and told her that it is the only thing that she absolutely can not sticker. It’s my brand new wall paper, and sometimes the stickers don’t come off it.”

Dr. Ron understands. He and Polly have grandkids.

“And,” I continue, “Lexi brought all her stuffed animals to my house. I’m not kidding, she must have a hundred. As I said, after what I thought was a very brief nap, I found all those stickers and the animals everywhere. One animal each in all the cat and dog dishes and inside my muddy walking shoes which she had also placed on the couch. On every counter and table and shelf and space she had stickered and placed a stuffed animal. And over each of them she had carefully placed a brand new kleenex from the two boxes I just bought for this miserable cold! I even found a stuffed and stickered and kleenexed unicorn on top of my stove.”

Dr. Ron is busy adjusting me as I rant.

“I don’t mind all this,” I say. “She’s quiet about it. The odd thing is, Lexi has turned into a Model Child. I don’t know how this has happened, but now Loch has replaced her. He is The New Lexi, or Lexi #2 as she used to be.”

The treatment is over and I rush out to the waiting room to see what damage Polly has done with the chocolate.
Polly has fed the kids two pieces of chocolate and a cookie, each.

“We need some nuts,” I yell. “Some protein! Don’t you know what this will do to Lexi’s blood sugar? She will start to have temper fits like Loch. I have to give her protein every several hours or she has screaming fits!”

I stumble out to the porch with the kids in hand. Loch starts to scream.
My mother is still there, sitting in a nice chair, as now are my sister Candy and my sister Barbara. Polly joins us.
I drop into a seat.

“Geez. What happened to you?” one of my sisters says.

“I’m having five days with the kids,” I say.

Oh. Everybody gets it.

” I was at the grocery store with them,” I say. “Again. I’m going through the line, buying the groceries when the checker says, ‘Oh. I remember all of you.’ We won’t go into why.”

I continue. “Well, the older man behind us is remarking on Loch’s magnificent hair as everyone always does. He and I have quite a conversation about Loch’s beauty. Meanwhile, Lexi is in the basket and reaches out for a magazine in the rack.

“I want that muscle magazine!” she breathes.

“What?”

“That one, Baba, that one! The muscle magazine with the man on it with the bare chest and all those tan muscles! I have to have it! I love muscles.”

Lexi is only five years old.

“Please Baba, please Baba, please Baba.”

I catch the man behind me looking at me like, “who the hell is this woman?”

‘Oh, what the heck,’ I think.
I buy her the muscle magazine.

“So,” my sister Candy says. Candy looks very pretty in a pink shirt and shorts. “So. What we all want to know, is how did it go the day Ken came up to help you babysit the kids? He did come up, right?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah,” I say. “I told him he had to help me at least one day as they are his grand kids, too, and he hasn’t developed a relationship with them. He’s been too busy getting married. He counted it up when he was with me, it’s five wives that he can remember!”

My family is snickering and waiting for the full story. When our daughter Summer was two, Ken and I divorced. I got married once again, and divorced and that was the end of it, while Ken kept on marrying.

“It went very well,” I tell them. “He came at 8:30AM and he stayed until 6:30PM. He kept saying, ‘when is Bill coming home to help you out,’ and I kept saying, ‘you can leave if you want to,’ and he kept saying, ‘no, I’m staying.’ But, as soon as Bill came in his studio door, Ken shot out to his car, like he was on a spring. I don’t blame him.”

“He was really good with the kids. I felt miserable with this cold and kept sneezing and sneezing and blowing bursts of water and germs into the air, and I was snorting into kleenex all day. I was quite attractive. He told me I’m beautiful.”

Everybody looks at me.

“He told me he has always thought that I am beautiful and that he still thinks I am beautiful.”
I sneeze a big glob of something into the air.
Everyone covers their faces.

“He’s married again to a nice lady. They golf and play bridge together.”

Barbara says, “What’s happening with all his brothers and sisters?”

“Well, you remember Carolyn? She was divorced once and widowed once. Oddly, she married two men named ‘Dick’ both times. She married two Dicks.”

My mother brightens and jerks forward in her chair, “Who has two dicks?!”

We’re off in gales of laughter as my mother is left wondering why.

Loch stops crying and goes to pull some flowers off their stems.

Lexi is busy drawing something at the glass-topped garden table.

I take a deep breath. Thank god for family and thank goodness for this lovely break from the routine of child rearing. I don’t remember that being with little kids was this hard but back then I was lots younger when Summer was little. Even though I was single a lot and raised her always on my own, I remember it as a wonderful experience.

It sure it would be easier if I didn’t have this Stinking, Snotty Cold. I sneeze and sneeze and sneeze.

Mother says, again, “Who has two dicks?”

“Well, Mom, I say, “you know what? I don’t know who has two dicks but I wouldn’t want to meet him. One dick can cause enough trouble, don’t you think?”

We all laugh and think about that one.

Polly says, “So, are you going to have Ken help you babysit in August when you have the kids for two weeks?”

“Absolutely.”

I think for a moment. I’m remembering the other day when Ken sat with me and the kids. He was looking at the kids and me and getting a bit teary eyed. He said, “This is our family, Venus.”

I said, “Yes. It is. And, you always said that in the end we would be back together again, and here we are! We’re together and we’re watching our grandkids.”

When Ken leaves, I hug him good bye and sincerely thank him for his help. He hugs me very warmly and says, “I still love you.”

I say, “I love you, too.”
And, you know what? I do. Oddly and strangely enough, I do love the man. Even though I mightily fought the thought of it all these years, in the end, indeed, here we are together. We’re two grandparents, kept together by our daughter and our two grandkids, and glad to be here.

I tell my family what happened and what I am thinking.

We all kind of drift off into our own inner spaces. I know we are each thinking about the men in our lives and our kids and grandkids and everything that has happened. It’s a big picture book unfolding and for some of us, maybe it’s even near the end of the book.

I feel very lucky to have my family and my ex-boyfriend Bill who is so kind and loving with Lexi and Loch and for my ex-husband Ken who has loved us all these years but maybe didn’t know what to do with that love and I’m lucky to have Polly’s husband Dr. Ron, who calls me in the evening after this day is done and says, “Boy. I have never seen you look so bad. I want you and Bill and the kids to come over to our house for ribs and wine, and the kids can swim. You need a break.”

Yes, I am a Lucky, Happy Baba…….. And, the sneezing and snot-flying is finally stopping….! And Loch is still napping as I write this.
Yes! All is well.
……………………………………………………………………………………….
**WINNER OF THE RANDOM DRAWING FOR A FREE 15 MINUTE PHONE SESSION WITH VENUS: *PAT CHARITY* Offer good through Tuesday July 1st, null and void after that date.

My mother fell splat, on her forehead, today. Polly tells me this.

I call my sister earlier in the day to say that I have visited Mom this morning and that I took her some macaroni and cheese. She has been dizzy for a week and threw up all day yesterday. Will Polly please check on her later today?

When I call Mom’s house, Polly tells me about Mom’s filthy forehead. Polly tells me this while she is cooking up some egg drop soup for her.

“You should see Mom,” she tells me. “She says she tripped on the hose outside in the yard and fell flat on her face. She has mud and twigs stuck all over her forehead. Then, she was watering an overhanging pot full of plants and it tipped over on her and she is covered in mud and dirt. Mom!” she shouts, “you need to take a bath, tonight.”

I hear Mom laughing. Polly has us on speaker phone.

As it turns out, I have a bit of a day myself.

When I leave Mom’s house in the morning to go up town to get her mac and cheese, I notice a dark colored car coming toward me to my left, which suddenly seems to swivel and blow up in a cloud of gray smoke and then immediately the car is in my face, heading straight at me. I sharply twist my steering wheel to the right and do a spin out of the way. Thank goodness I have excellent reflexes, (inherited from my father, I think) and an excellent car.

A very near miss. I realize as I pass the car that it’s driver failed to realize all the cars in front of it are stopped. Instantly the river hits the brakes and jerks away from them and (almost) into me. If I hadn’t been watching and been so quick, eeeh gads, it would have been The Big Goodbye. And isn’t that life? So changeable from one moment to the next. You just get comfortable with something in your life and it’s whipped out from under you.

With my heart now beating a wild disco rhythm from the scare, I proceed to the grocery store where I buy baked chicken and romaine lettuce and mac and cheese. The Chicken and romaine is for a lunch I am making for two of my grammar school friends.

Patti is down from Seattle and Nancee is coming up the mountain to see me. I have warned them about my meals; that sometimes they are excellent and sometimes they are horrid. They are willing to take a chance.

During lunch, I mention to them that Gerry Is Here.

“Gerry,” I say, “is Bill’s old army buddy from many years ago. He arrived last night for a visit.”

I mention that Gerry has barely worked in his life. That when he needed money he would get a job tending the night desk in a motel in the desert and that for awhile he worked for the forest service putting out fires.
Gerry has spent his life smoking grass; mary jane, marijuana. His day consists of cutting his grass, rolling it up into a cigarette paper, tapping it on the table and smoking it. That’s it. That’s what he does.

Recently, his mother died and left him a big portfolio. He now has more money then I do and I worked my butt off all my life!

I tell the girls that Bill told me when I first met Gerry, many years ago, that all Bill’s women couldn’t stand Gerry. Bill warned me. He told me he would understand if I didn’t like him, either, but the truth is, Gerry doesn’t bother me, at all.

Oh well, maybe one time.

It was during the first fire storms four years ago that kept burning past my house for four days. I’d go to my mother’s house down the road, to just get away and watch the walls of fire tear across the mountains behind my house.
One day my sister Candy called and screamed, “I’m sitting in my car at the end of your street and your house is next, Venus! The fire is coming right at it, you’re toast!”

She was mistaken.

Gerry and Bill stayed at the house and using Gerry’s fire skills, they put out embers on the property. I would come and go. The police barricaded the street and no one was allowed to drive down the road. I would walk it, about a mile plus from my mother’s house to mine.

At my house, Gerry was always yammering on and on about negative stuff. “It’s gonna’ burn your house, Venus. I’ve never seen worse then this. It’s just a matter of time.” Things like that. Finally, about 3 days into the continuing conflagration I looked at him and yelled, “Shut up! Shut Up! Shut, Shut, Shut Up! Shut…Up!”

He said, “oh. well. ok.”

I don’t snap very often but when I do, I do a fine job of it.

I tell my friends at lunch today, all these things about Gerry; the weed smoking and the fires and the big money by accident and then I add that he is a Jehovah’s Witness and when he leaves my home after a visit, Bill and I find religious tracks on the backs of our toilets.

The girls say, “…But…it doesn’t sound like he is living his religion…!” They seem mystified and horrified.

I agree and say, “Yes, but Gerry feels like he needs to make a stab at saving us from hell. It’s true he doesn’t seem to have much conviction behind it.”

I say brightly, “Gerry is right in the next room. In Bill’s studio. He just got back from China where he had a good time spinning silk worms. Do you want to meet him?”

Nancee says, “No.”

I’m surprised. If someone offered me a chance to meet such a character I would jump up and shout “Yes!”

Then, I mention a book I am reading by Suzanne Somers, called ‘Ageless’. It’s how she uses bio-identical hormones and HGH and other products from cutting-edge Anti-Aging M.D.s to be healthy, look fabulous and feel good. I am all excited about the subject and am researching the field and am going to see someone about retarding aging and feeling and looking good longer. I mention this to the girls.

Patti says, “Why? What’s wrong with getting old? Why not just accept it?”

My mouth is opening and closing with no sound except maybe little peeping noises.

I squeak out, “Why would you want to get all those nasty, messy diseases and break your brittle bones if you didn’t have to?”

The girls look at me as though I am daft and dumb.

“It’s not just looks,” I say. “I admit I’m going to die but I want to die healthy.”

Nobody says anything. The conversation sinks into the chicken salad.

I wonder about myself. I don’t seem normal. I am almost always up for meeting fun people and researching and trying new things. Apparently, I am not placid in life. I don’t just let the river take me quietly along while I watch the banks of Time slip past.

I grew up with these girls, these wonderful, smart and loving ladies and I care dearly for them…but it is like we are swimming in two different streams.
Their lives are their church and their husbands and their grandchildren and their friends and they’re placidly paddling along.

I can’t seem to placidly paddle. Something remarkable is always catching my attention.
As Summer sighs and says when I try and draw her into my latest discovery, ‘You know how you are Mother. You get excited about everything. You do know that don’t you?”

Well, here’s the deal. Let me run around and pick the daisies and you can drink the daisy water in the vase…..You do what you do best, and I will do what I do…If you can accept me the way I am…I will do my best to accept you, the way you are. Maybe if we all did that, the world would be just a bit less violent, and a bit more peaceful…… Or, maybe not, because the people like me are always stirring things up!
………………………………………………….
WINNER OF THE RANDOM DRAWING FOR A FREE, 15 MINUTE PHONE SESSION WITH VENUS: *Jeja Super*. Offer good through June 23rd, 2008. After that it is null and void

Hello my friends,

Here is the information for the health products I spoke about on my radio show, titled, VENUS HELPS YOU WITH YOUR PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH, June 18, 2008

For more details please see the Archived Show at www.hayhouseradio.com The Dear Venus Show

1. The Old Herbal Drink (Called KM) that I have been drinking for more then 20 years for energy, beauty, aches and pains and much more. www.venus.matol.com
(*PLEASE NOTE: if you live outside the USA or Canada, to order the products you must contact my friend Ariel, to send them to you. Make sure you tell him, “VENUS SENT ME” so he will help you. Email him at matolinfo@xplornet.com (Ariel)

2. The All natural, patented, Anti-Aging Products that I have been taking for almost 7 years. They DO work. See my website www.godisalwayshappy.com On the Home Page, look to the left and click on Health and Beauty

3. The Amazing Herbal Tea that flushes the liver, cleans the bowel and all the body systems. A very simple and easy cleanse.
www.htcholytea.com/venus
OR
www.holyteaclub.com/venus for whole sale

IMPORTANT NOTE: you can sign up for any of these as a distributor and get them WHOLESALE. You do NOT have to sell them or do the business. I always sign up for things at wholesale, why not?

I’m trying something new. Not wearing underpants.

Let me explain where I got this idea:

I’m going to a very small dinner party for a friend of mine. It is her 60th birthday and it is a surprise party. It’s held in a restaurant, right in the middle of the big stadium area in San Diego, and unbeknownst to us, it is the night of the Huge Mexican/Argentinean Soccer Game at the stadium. Which has not much to do with the story about my underwear. Well, maybe nothing at all to do with underpants, actually but, let me set the scene.

My sisters, Barbara and Candy (Sister Polly is in Italy) and several friends have tried all week to find a nice restaurant for a birthday dinner. That is almost impossible because Leslie, The Birthday Girl, not understanding that this is a surprise party for her, keeps rejecting all her mother’s suggestions for dinner at any restaurant we suggest to her mom.

We have constraints. Like, Leslie won’t eat almost everything and she is almost blind and only drives with her 85 year old mother who reads the road signs to her. So, we girls want to keep the party close to her home!

We finally find a restaurant that Leslie wants, but then some of us ‘girls’ have to get there from North County (about an hour away) and we don’t know at the time, about the HUGE soccer game and the state of the freeways that we will encounter.

Plus, the day isn’t going so well.
I have driven an hour to the coast for an appointment and can never find the place. I am mightily pissed. I then drive back inland to the car pool meeting spot where we (my sister Candy and her friend Stephanie) will meet and car pool to the party. I have to wait 2 hours for them to join me….because I am not at my appointment where I should have been.

When we pile into Candy’s car for the ride downtown, we are all sweaty and kind of mean. Candy is upset about the whole week of trying to find the right restaurant and Stephanie, our friend, has had a horrific day and wants to quit her job, like right now. It is one of those kinds of days.

Then, it starts to rain. It is a cold rain. It ‘never’ rains in June in San Diego and we are in tiny little summer outfits and sandals.

But, our snappiness propels us down the heavily congested freeways and we finally get to the restaurant. Our hair is all frizzed up from the rain and we are chilled and damp. We meet our sister Barbara there, who’s hair is also as frowsy and thick as a dog blanket. Our friend Connie who has flown in from up north, is here to surprise Leslie.

Ok, let’s not string this party out. Let me just say at one point while we are having dinner, ‘Pretty, Blonde, Divorced, Childless Connie’, who I have not seen in many years, mentions that she has not worn underpants since 1979.

I am amazed. I suck a hanging salad leaf into my mouth and say, ‘but…but…what if you leak, or something?’

Connie says, “Oh, I just stick panty-liners in my jeans or whatever. It is so nice. No panty lines. No fat pouching out under the panties. And, it saves a LOT of money on panties. I threw out all my underpants in 1979 so I think I shall retire on all that money I have saved.”

Then, she goes on to say, ” But, I didn’t do this on my own. I learned it from a lovely woman I worked with. She was tall and beautiful and we worked at the airlines, together. She never had a panty line. So, as of 1979 I also stopped wearing panties.”

After the party, I go home and think about Connie and her no-pantie proclamation.
I decide I will try it and I email and tell her so.

She emails back, “Be FREE of panties if you so choose! It will save you lots of money and might spark up your love life!”

I email back the next day and say, “Hey, I got some ‘liddle’ tiny panty liners today and I will be trying them out inside my jeans. Oooh Laa La Connie, you may have changed my life. I hope the ‘liddle’ panty liner doesn’t creep down my leg.”

Connie emails back and says, “It takes practice.”

Well, I have tried the no-panty thing for two days, now and I haven’t had any wedgies and I feel thinner. I really think our panties must add a good pound or two.
I also feel kind of breezy in the butt and fine in my mind. Like ‘Ha Ha, I am getting away with something wicked that you don’t know about!”

I wave gaily to a man in the grocery parking lot. He waves back and grins and shouts Hello. I swish my naked butt.

I am telling you about this panty business because I had a woman friend over for tea the other day. During the telling of some sad stories she said, “You know Venus, we take care of the men in our lives and we take care of our kids and we take care of our parents and who takes care of us?”

We looked at each other over our cups of tea and she said, “We women take care of each other.”

And, so, I am taking care of you, My Lady Friends.
I never had the thought to ditch my under pants until Connie told me about the freedom you can get from that ditching. I am now passing this bit of advice on to you. I may not be a Hillary Clinton, leading women resolutely on to equality and freedom, but I can do my bit with the underwear advice.

And as for you guys? Hey, maybe you should try it, too?

Let’s all do our part to keep America FREE!
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………
WINNER OF THE RANDOM DRAWING FOR A FREE 15 MINUTE PHONE SESSION WITH VENUS: *Milly Eminger.* Offer null and void after June 14th, 2008 (To participate in the drawings make sure you are signed up. Go to the home page www.godisalwayshappy.com and click on ; ‘Free Sessions and More’.)

My mother FLOSSED HER TEETH at the table in a fine restaurant.
Yes, she did.

My sister Barbara and I had taken her up into the mountains for lunch and when we were finished with the fine lunch, Mother pulled out her dental floss, wrapped a giant wad around her hand and Flossed Her Teeth at the Table. Very thouroughly.

Barbara and I were aghast. We have never seen or known her to do something like this. We didn’t say anything. What could we say? We just looked at each other with pinball eyes.

Mother was not herself that day in the mountains. She was dizzy with ear trouble and she was strange in strange ways.

I have been thinking about this all week. I am thinking, ‘Is this the end?’ ‘She wasn’t herself. She was odd that day! What does this mean?’

Today, I buy a bottle of fine wine, some herbed goat cheese, raw asparagus and celery and I march over to my Mother’s with the feast. I have to find out if she will floss her teeth after we eat, but even if she does, that might be understandable because it is just us, but I have to ascertain for myself if she has cracked her mental marbles.

I am also wondering if her actions were caused the drug she is taking for the dizziness.

I need to know.

Since Saturday, I have been thinking, ‘When Mom passes we will have to sell the property and it isn’t a good time to do that. But, all 6 of us kids can’t agree on what to do with it and so it will need to be sold. I don’t want that. We have already gotten an offer of 6-7 million for the 11 acres and we turned it down. We don’t want the huge Loews building and a shopping center on that property. It would ruin the character of the town and most townspeople would hate us if we gave our souls for the money, for Progress, if we prostituted ourselves to The Developers. And, we kids don’t want to sell the land for blood and greed, anyway.

So much depends on Mother. She is almost 86. I often wonder, ‘What will I do when my mother dies?!’

I can’t stand the thought. I know that mothers die, and often when they’re much younger than ours, but still, how will we get on without our mother? Mother is always there for us.

We stop by her place all the time. We let ourselves into her old, ratty mobile home, because she can’t hear us knock.

She is usually asleep on her bed or in her big, blue living room chair, with her black dog, Becky beside her. Or, she’s watching Dr. Phil or Oprah or she is out on her new deck watering her potted flowers. Or, she is reading and researching something or she is on her computer. Always, she has a crockpot of soup going that has been going for weeks and she has usually forgotten to turn off the coffee maker from the morning.

You can count on the cat box reeking and the trash overflowing and the house to be a mess of cat hair and magazines and books and sometimes dead squirrels and lately, opossums. Becky brings them in the house to play with and accidently kills them. And there is usually dog or cat vomit on the grimy rugs. And, of course, there is Sassy, the Mean Cat to contend with.

We do have a housecleaner for my mother, but the house is hopeless and we know it, and we kids don’t expect much from the lady who tries to clean it. We bless her and leave her be.

Today, I arrive with my arms full of grocery fun and find Mother raising from her bed, disoriented. She has been doing exercises for her dizziness and she thinks they wore her out and maybe she fell asleep?

I show her the bottle of wine and she gets all grinny and excited. She follows me into the kitchen where I open the wine and lay out the food. We adjourn to her deck.

Mother loves her new deck. It has a lovely table and comfortable chairs and an awning. Mom has the deck filled with tubs of flowers and some tomatoes.

The Mean Cat is in the chair I want to sit in. I callously dump her out. Well…I try. I have the chair tipped waaaay over on its side and she is hanging on. So I give the chair a few knocks and she’s out.

The Mean Cat has had a hard life. She was brought up in a machine shop where all the male customers treated her roughly and so she treats us the same. I tried to be friendly at first, but when she ripped the skin on my little finger, almost to the bone, I gave up on our friendship.

I sit in the Mean Cat’s chair (knowing I have white cat hair all over my back, now) and Mom sits next to me. I pour the wine and cut the cheese and line up the asparagus and quartered celery. Ummm. Yummm. Mom and I make a toast to happiness, good health and great sex.

“Ha!” my mother says, “I haven’t seen any sex since your father died 8 years ago….not that I can remember anything about having sex with him…isn’t that strange?”

But, then she tells me that one of her boyfriends, David, has called from Reno.
“He said, ‘I should be there with you, right now!’” Mom says she said, ‘Well, why aren’t you?’

He told her he would think about it.

I growl a bit in my throat and say, “Well, don’t bank on it, Mom. He’s been saying this for years. Remember, he’s almost ninety and you said seven years ago when he did come to see you, that he is stingy with his penis.”

Mother is drinking her wine and eating goat cheese. She knows how he is.

She tells me about another man she knows that she fancies. She tells me he runs over to see her at the Senior Center and then at lunch he sits as far, far away from her as he can. And, as she has told me before, she mentions again that she thinks he lives in his car. Today, she adds that she thinks he lives in his car with another man.

“Mom,” I say, “I think he may be odd.”

Her other boyfriend, Skip, who is my age and handsome, has been thrown into the air by his horse, hit splat on the ground and broken 3 ribs, flattened a lung and broke something else of importance.

“Eat some more cheese,” I say, “and drink some more wine.”

I am watching my mother and listening to her, carefully. She seems herself.
I sidle up on the subject I have in my mind.

“Mom, are you still taking that drug for your ears?”

No. She stopped it a day or so ago.

“Mom,” I say. “Do you remember that you flossed your teeth at the table when Barbara and I took you to lunch in Wynola?”

Mother looks at me. Looks at her glass of wine. Looks at the plate of asparagus.

“Mom? Do you remember that? You did a mighty job of flossing. In the restaurant. At the table.”

No. She doesn’t. She has utterly no recall of flossing her teeth at lunch.

This is the first time, I think, that I am glad she has no memory of the occasion! This proves my idea about the medicine she was taking. She isn’t getting senile. She was drugged! Haalaluya! She was drugged. Thank you god, my mother was out of her mind from drugs.

I am not going to lose my mother, yet. And, we don’t have to sell the property to a developer, yet. And, I don’t have to wander into a depression about my mother, yet.

“Here Mom,” I say as I pour her more red wine. “Drink up.”

“Oh, my goodness, I feel it,” my mother breathes. “Wow.”

‘Yes,’ I am musing, as I pour her a larger good shot of red wine, ‘maybe I will turn my mother into a drunken drug addict and then I won’t have to worry about her mental state because I can always blame her behavior on her addictions.’

Very clever of me, don’t you think?
………………………………………………………………
WINNER OF THE RANDOM DRAWING, A FREE 15 MINUTE PHONE SESSION WITH VENUS: *Clorinda Chavez* Offer good through June 14th, 2008 when it becomes null and void. To be automatically notified of winners, please sign up for the Blog Feed in red, to your right.