Archive for
2009
Friday, October 30th, 2009
Tuesday 7PM:
Bill returns from a full, late day at work. How glad he is to find that Lexi, (six) has laid out a full course meal for him in his studio. The courses sit on 3 chairs lined up in a row. Each chair has a place mat and silverware.
The first chair hosts a large bowl of garden greens with carrots, tomatoes, hot marinated red and green Spanish peppers, orange seasoning, salt and pepper and liberal amounts of tabasco sauce.
On the second chair we have a banana pudding. The bottom layer is an intriguing mix of a (very) ancient smashed brown banana mixed with a small, raw chopped potato and over that is sliced the last perfect banana from my kitchen counter.
The third plate holds a long medium sized loaf of French bread, cut in half. It is covered in raspberry jam.
There is also a cup of water with lime juice squeezed into it.
Bill is surprised to find his dinner waiting. I don’t tell him that it has been waiting out for him since noon. I don’t see anything that will kill him without refrigeration, so I let that knowledge be unsaid. Why upset him?
He makes appreciative sounds as Lexi ushers him to his table and begins to serve him. He starts with the tabasco and hot pepper salad.
I watch intently. He eats it, doggedly.
His eyes water. He looks at me like he might die but he keeps eating. Lexi points out each pepper and details how she collected all the vegetables from the garden and what went into the dressing.
Suddenly, I say, “What’s all that green stuff?”
“Lettuce,” Lexi answers.
“But…we don’t have any lettuce in the garden.”
Bill looks up at me and stops chewing. (more…)
Tags: bill, cooking, dinner, gas, Lexi, mustard, peppers, stomach, tabasco, tofu, turkey, TV, VIBRANCETV
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Thursday, October 15th, 2009
The trunk of my car pops open and I peer into the cavern as I start to toss in my groceries. Yikes and eeeeh gads! There’s a small black snake in the trunk, a little snake with white spots, an open mouth and wide eyes. It’s looking at me.
I jump back, reach to the ground and pick up a little stick. Carefully, I dish up the snake and turn it over. I know it’s not a real snake. I know it’s a plastic fake because my grandkids, Loch and Lexi are here. I know the fake snake was left in the car trunk when I hauled all their clothes and toys out of here a few days ago…but still, a snake is a snake and I need to make double, double sure.
It’s been three days with Loch and Lexi and here’s how it’s going.
My ex-boyfriend Bill, still lives in my studio and is what we call the kids Extra Grandpa. They love him and he loves them.
Tonight, he huffs into my bedroom at the back of the house and says, “I can’t find my cigars. I just went uptown and got them several hours ago and they cost me $20 and I can’t find them!”
He looks at me, meaningfully.
I rush to defend myself. “I don’t have them!”
Bill says, “Lexi says she saw Loch take them out of my desk drawer and they aren’t there now.”
“I can’t believe that,” I say. “I didn’t see him with any cigars and Lexi doesn’t always get her facts straight. She’s only six.”
The Drama unfolds. Bill asks Loch where his cigars are. Loch says he doesn’t know. Lexi says “Yes, you do Loch. You took them out of Bill’s drawer.”
Loch shakes his white curly hair indignantly and says, “I did not!” He looks affronted.
Lexi rummages through all the trash cans, Bill checks Loch’s bed and toy bin. He scouts his house and mine looking under books and behind pillows. This continues for at least half an hour with much yelling between Loch and Lexi while Bill huffs and puffs and bangs a few doors open and shut.
Lexi continues to insist that she saw Loch take the cigars while Loch vigorously defends his honor.
I continue to say Loch is not guilty. After all, if a three year old boy found some fresh cigars don’t you think he would be doing something with them? (more…)
Tags: bill, candy, kids, Lexi, LOCH, mother, snakes, tea, WEEDWHACKERS
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Friday, September 25th, 2009
A letter comes in the mail. It’s from my daughter Summer and there is a note stuck on the folded letter inside. It says, ‘Mom, Lexi couldn’t sleep last night so she stayed up late, secretly writing this to you. All by herself! It is adorable. XO Summer.’
I unfold the lined paper and read:
“Hi BABA how are you and Bob and Bill. (Bob is the dog and Bill is the Ex-boyfriend. Lexi is my 6 year old granddaughter.)
“I hav sum great plans for October.
“I am going to hav a lot of fun.
“I will hav a lot of fun with you, Bill and Bob of cors. I am gowing to hav a Super dupr jollygood time.
“Here is a poem I made up.’
(Here’s where I get scared. It’s a poem about me, and oh boy, Lexi is always totally honest in her evaluations of people. I have already heard about my hanging flesh and a few other things so I take a deep breath and resolve to take it like a Good Grandmother would. With pleasure, whatever she says.)
‘Yore eyes are brone.
Yore hair is blond.
Yore teeth are wite.
Yore lips are pink.
That was it.’
“See you in October. LoveLexi. (heart, heart, hearts etc)”
Oh my gosh. I breathe relief. What do YOU think that last line could have been? I know what I think and am so glad I don’t stink. Lexi would have told me if I do. (more…)
Tags: bill, bob, cat, jim, Lexi, mother, papers, pink, poem, polly, spirits, summer, tea, teeth, tooth
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Friday, September 11th, 2009
I’m sitting outside on the patio under a leafy tree at my favorite coffee shop, talking with Alan.
Alan is an architect who has been helping my brother Jim with his restaurant project. Alan has long gray/blonde hair that hangs in a messy horse’s tail down his back. He flicks the hot ash from his Camel cigarette and says, “When Jim was at my house one day, the water in the kitchen faucet turned on by itself and I said, ‘What the heck?’
“Then,” he continues, “awhile later another faucet downstairs turns on and starts a flood and again I said, ‘What the heck? Are there spirits around here trying to tell us something?’”
Alan pauses and sucks his white Camel like a doobie.
“I thought, ‘Does this mean this whole project with Jim’s new restaurant is big money down the drain?’”
“Hmmm,” I say.
Jim and Alan, after a year of trying to get a loan and borrowing money from friends and family to build a new restaurant, have been denied. The banks tease but they just won’t loan. Jim is caught up in the collapse of the economy. He’s now at home with the cotton blankets pulled over his head, in the musky dark and in despair.
Alan breathes some smoke and I breathe some smokey air.
We are both silent. Because of his illness and the economy, my brother Art may lose his jewelry shop which is right next door to the coffee shop and the coffee shop itself is teetering on the edge of extinction.
When I go home, I tell my ex, Bill, about Jim.
Bill says, “Sometimes I wake up in the night and I wonder who I am. I wonder where I am. Am I back in my childhood or am I forward in time somewhere? Am I on another planet? It takes me awhile to remember who I am and what part of my life I’m in. It’s hard to get re-oriented, but once I do, I’m OK.” (more…)
Tags: bill, carnival, cat, confusion, jim, life, loan, mom, mother, pipes, planet, plumber, table, tea
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Saturday, July 11th, 2009
Polly calls.
“We have to do something! Mother got up this morning and there was a big rat swimming around and around in her toilet bowl and she couldn’t get him out and then she did get him out with the toilet brush and then her dog grabbed him and ate him and Mom says that somehow the toilet seat got dismantled and torn up and she feels really bad about the rat getting eaten, he was trying so hard to survive.”
Polly sucks air and goes on. “She has lost her blood pressure pills for three days now and that’s very dangerous and you can’t find anything in that place it’s such a mess and there are vast dangling cobwebs on her windows, have you seen them, her housekeeper is no good but Mom won’t fire her because she likes her and Becky has ripped up all the rugs digging for squirrels under the house and we need to replace the floors with vinyl, Mom agrees and Mom just keeps eating that same crock pot soup that cooks all the time and she never dumps it and starts over and you have to do something and right now, Venus.”
I say, “I’m not coming over there and clean that house. I am not cleaning up all the blood and guts from all the dismembered field creatures that her cat brings in. I am not. ”
I know my abilities and housecleaning is not one of them.
Polly jags off onto another topic about how she, Polly, fired her website person and she is now doing the site herself and how she was talking to so and so this famous person and her grandkids are always over at her place and she can’t get anything done and she keeps jigging and jagging from topic to topic and I can’t stand it. Trying to follow her mind makes me feel crazy and I finally yell, “Shut up! Shut up!”
“Arrgh?” she says.
“What’s wrong with you, are you ADD?!! You never stay with one line of thought. I can’t stand it,” I say and I am not kind about it.
And later that day the results from the CAT scan our mother had a week or so, come in. (more…)
Tags: cancer, cat, CATscan, cult, doctor, dog, hell, kids, mother, powder, rats, seminar, summer, wine, yellowpills
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Thursday, June 25th, 2009
Lexi, my six year old granddaughter, is in trouble, again.
Her mother tells me, “Lexi is at the age where she is fascinated with people’s rear ends. And, she has her own computer. Not a good mix. The other day she came running into the kitchen and asked me to come and look at something.
“I went into her room and she led me to her computer, pointed at the screen and said, “Why are they doing this?”
I peered closer and oh my gosh! I said, ‘Lexi! Where did you get this?!’ She said she had gone to Google and typed in something like BumBums.com!”
“Mooom!” Summer wails to me, “It was some Butt Fetish website and there were all kinds of weird things sticking out of people’s bums! And I had to explain to Lexi why people would do this and what the meaning was!”
I’m laughing. I can’t help it.
“Mom, Lexi is coming up to visit you for awhile and I want you to watch her on the computer. I don’t know what she might think to look up, next.”
“Gee,” I say, “I never would have thought of looking for something like bum bums on the net!”
Last time Lexi stayed with me for awhile, it was interesting. Of course.
She looks at me one day and says, “You’re looking a little old, BaBa.” (more…)
Tags: bumbums, butts, computer, crosses, death, flowers, Lexi, pretty
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Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
We’re watching lightening fritz through the sky and hammer the hills around us. This is Southern California and a lightening storm is a novel sight.
Eight of us Art Guild Girls are sitting outside on a stone terrace, next to a undulating golf course, having lunch. The sky may be full of danger but as I am soon to find, there is more emotional danger at the table.
We ‘girls’ range in age from 40 to 80 plus, years old. We are the President of the Guild, on down through the ranks to The Sunshine Girl, which is me.
We do all the work that keeps the art meetings happening in town, we bring the demo artists that perform for all the local artists once a month, we bring in money, award scholarships to High School kids, keep the Art Library going, put on art shows and etc. We deserve a lunch at the end of the fiscal year and I have finally convinced my Guild friends that we do indeed need one.
The ladies ask me to order the wine. I order a bottle of red shiraz named ‘Layer Cake.’ How can one not order something with a name like that? And, I order a nice chardonnay.
We’re having a fun time. Oh sure, one lady has to tell us a story about a cat that she took on a trip that kept disappearing and we have to follow that darn cat through almost every state in the union. I keep saying, ‘So did it all work out OK?’ and she keeps saying, ‘I’m not through with the story yet,’ and everyone rolls their eyes and takes another lick of ‘Layer Cake.’
We’re eating and drinking and laughing and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, this lunch was such a good idea. We are all so happy together.’ Suddenly, ‘Ardath’ who is lost in her 70′s somewhere, looks at me and says says in her high-pitched wavey voice, “Oh Venus..you have such a won-der-ful personality! You have a fab-u-lous per-son-ality!”
I’m grinning and thanking her, “Thank you Ardath, that’s so sweet, thank you..” when she adds loudly, ‘But, that’s all you’ve got!”
“Whaat?”
“Are you always this way?” she asks.
“Whaaat?”
Then, Ardath leans across the table and looks at me intently, as she shouts, “Are you Bi-po-lar?!” (more…)
Tags: art, bipolar, cake, chocolate, friends, guild, lightening, lunch, natural, nature, party, personality, shallow, wine
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Friday, May 22nd, 2009
“I never saw so much blood!” my almost 87 year old mother is telling me. “I was finally feeling good again after 7 months of being sick from that flu shot. I felt so good, I went out to plant my garden and the next thing I remember is being on the ground. I think my ankle gave way.”
I bend forward from my chair to look at the offending ankle. It’s puffed up but it looks good in comparison to some of the rest of her.
Mom and I are sitting on her deck having a cup of tea. One side of her left arm is purple and green and red and the left side of her face is swollen into a large square shape. The skin is mottled purple and red around her mouth, chin and neck. Mom assures me that there is more damage that isn’t showing.
“I bled all over everything!” she says. “Go and look!”
I get up from my garden chair and obediently trot down the deck’s steps to the part of the garden my mom points to. I notice blood splots all along the concrete path.
Mom has parked her wheelbarrow up against a low bricked area. Yep. There’s blood all over the bricks and blood all inside the wheelbarrow. There’s blood on the petunias still in their trays. Yikes. (more…)
Tags: ankle, blood, deck, entertainment, falling, food, garden, juice, mother, phobia, polly, sickness, sister, sun, vomiting, wheelbarrow
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Thursday, May 14th, 2009
My ex-husband Ken, has given me total permission to say anything I want about him on this blog. Is he crazy? Or, was he drinking when he said it? I can’t remember, so that’s good enough for me, I will just imagine that he said, ‘yes’ while he was in his right and usual mind.
Ken is Summer’s dad. He is also known as Bumpa to our grand kids, Lexi and Loch.
Ken is going to build me a chicken coop. I have it in my mind that I want three red laying hens: Stella, Lolly and maybe Louise.
Ken asks me how soon do I want this coop. I say, “Right now. Immediately. I have already met my new chicken friends at the Diamond D Feed Store.”
We work out the perfect spot on my property. It’s almost under a giant scrub oak tree.
Ken paces out the size, raises one of his arms in the air and says, “The nesting boxes are just past my armpit.”
Then, he goes home.
He emails me several days later. “When I drive by in a few days on my way to my house in the desert, I’ll pick you up and take you to the desert hot springs.”
I email back and say, “No. I have a better idea. When you come by let’s go up to Ransom Brothers hardware store and get all the materials to build the chicken coop. Then we will come back to my house and build it. My chickens are waiting.”
Mother’s Day comes around and Ken is here at my house, babysitting our grand kids while my mother, my daughter Summer and four sisters and a woman friend, lunch and party.
Bumpa takes babysitting seriously. He sits on a chair near the end of the patio and watches the kids make mud pies, just beyond the metal gate. For hours. He watches the kids like an interested guard dog.
Meanwhile, a few drinks into the outdoor brunch, my daughter Summer mentions that another scrub oak’s arms are too far into part of my patio.
“Mom, no one can walk through here. We need to cut those branches out.” (more…)
Tags: bob, bumpa, chicken, christmas, cooking, coop, dog, eggs, fly, food, ken, mother, mud, mudpies, party, stew
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Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
When my father went blind, I sometimes took him to the Blind Center where he could socialize. One day, I met an old blind lady there, named Ruth. She was charming but what captivated me most was that Ruth had penciled her bald eyebrows into a surprised arch……. with a bright red lip liner.
I remember thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, is this my fate in my old age? Will I be doing things like this?”
Apparently so. I look in the mirror as I’m getting ready for my big Studio Art Tour Event and I notice that I have outlined my eyes, top and bottom, not with a brown eyebrow pencil but with my red lip liner.
Eeeeh gads!!
I assure myself that the light in this bathroom is very poor.
It’s the day of the Studio Tour when hopefully, hordes of buyers will come and purchase my art.
Summer, her father Bumpa, and my grand kids are here to help me. Lexi is six and Loch is three.
Loch has arrived wearing his usual attire. A tee shirt, shorts, high plastic yellow rain boots patterned with some kid design and his large green and white cotton gloves.
He only takes his gloves off when he goes to bed. For several years now he has referred to himself as ‘a hard working man,’ and he likes to dress the part.
Summer tells me he wears the gloves so constantly that they have acquired a rank stink.
“I’ve washed them and bleached them but within a few days, the smell is back,” she says.
She tells me she is afraid that he’s going to get a fungus. (more…)
Tags: art, blind, bob, father, house, kindergarten, Lexi, lipliner, lizard, noses, party, red, studio, tour, wine
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