Hello my friends,

Here was my day, today. This was my Day Off.

Up at 6:20 AM.

Sweep ALL the new fake wood floors in my house. Oh my gosh. What a mess of dog and cat hair and dirt. ‘All this,’ I think, ‘used to be what sunk down into my former carpets and disappeared.’

Then I wash all those floors on my hands and knees. Very healthy and good for me, I am sure. I used to know a doctor who said it’s good for women’s female organs to scrub floors; it puts them in order. I think of him, now.

I do some yoga and work a bit on an exercise machine.

I visit my neighbor, Lyn and she shows me her house remodeling project. It looks like my remodeling has infected her house, too. I’m sorry, I tell her. I have already ruined another friend, Regina, who starts remodeling her house next month. Remodeling is like a virus I think. A very expensive virus and everyone should stay away from me as I seem to be a carrier.

I work on my taxes and try not to get impatient and exasperated.

Meanwhile, my contractor, Chuckie, has the radio volume turned way up as he works on my new patio, so we are both listening to some screaming, out-raged, strident right wing talk radio man.

Geranamo, Chuckie’s side-kick, is busy painting my ex-boyfriend Bill’s (now my tenant’s) bathroom, shocking red. This will be a surprise for Bill. When I told him I was having his bathroom painted while he is at work he said, ‘Don’t get too wild.’

I have an appointment to call my tax lady at 4PM.

Next, I call my mother to see how she is doing. She has had the bad flu and just as she was getting it, she tripped outside on the hose as she was trying to feed her lemon tree. She fell hard and couldn’t get up. One of the tenants, a teenage girl, saw her on the ground in the yard and dragged her into the house.

My mother says, when I call, (“gasp, wheeze, gasp”) that she has been feeling really horrible and she is nauseated and can’t eat. I tell her I will go up town and get her some food.

I call my sister Polly. I say, “You need to have Dr. Ron check on Mom, again. She sounds dreadful.”

Polly is sick, too and she says, “Ron is sick,too, and he’s just getting started with it. But, I have made some red beans and rice. When I called Mom earlier, she said she would eat some. Will you come and get them? I’m too sick to go out.”

So, I stuff some oil up my nose so my family won’t infect me (you know how I am; I think if I stuff sesame oil up my nose I won’t get germs and I believe I am right) and run up town to get Mom some groceries.

I get Mom a baked chicken, mashed potatoes, mixed fresh fruit and some ginger for her stomach. I have to go to three stores. Then, I drive to Polly’s house to get the beans.
I am in a hurry because I have promised my daughter Summer that I will meet her half way between her house and mine, (a half hour or more for each of us) to sit with her and Lexi at the dentist. Lexi, who is five had her first cavities filled last week and she said it was the worst thing that has ever happened to her in her life.
Now, her teeth are hurting and she is crying most of the time, so Summer has to do an ‘emergency’ run and take her back to the dentist.

I rush to my mother’s to deliver the groceries and to check on her. She is asleep in her bed and I tap her on the knee. She shoots upwards like a marionette on strings.

She’s not hungry, she says, so I fix her a plate of chicken, mashed potatoes and fruit. She eats all of it and looks like she could lick the plate but refuses more.

“I wish I had some wine, ” she says. “I spilled the last bottle you gave me.”

Well, luckily, I bought a bottle of sirah at the store and I bring it in from my car.

I open it up, pour Mom a big glass of it and leave her lying on the chaise lounge on her deck with the glass of wine and the open bottle. She wants me to stay, but I can’t. For moral support and because I miss them, I have to go sit with Summer and Lexi at the dentist’s.

I call my tax lady and say I just can’t chat with her today.

At the dentist, we wait for an hour and one half. It’s a children’s dentist and the swarm of anxious little kids is not relaxing. Summer, Lexi and I go outside and sit on the stairwell.
Lexi’s whines and rubs her teeth.
Summer looks at me as we wait and says, “Mom. Your wrinkles are going away! Why is that? They’re really going away.”

Lexi throws her arms in the air and wails more and cries and says her jaw and her teeth hurt. I tell her it’s normal to hurt for a week or two or more, after you have your teeth drilled and filled. Eventually, we see the dentist and he takes X-rays and says pretty much the same thing.

I drive home in traffic.

After I have been home a short while, my sister Candy calls and says she can’t reach Mother on the phone. We agree that she probably has her hearing aids out and Candy says she will try later, or maybe drive over to check on her.

“And you know Vicki and Bill,?” she says. Of course I do. I have known them for years and years. Bill is the husband who put the radio in upside down in his car and sat on a tree branch and sawed off the branch.

“He just had a seizure,” Candy says. “The doctors say he has a brain tumor. Vickie has had two years of hell. Her mother died, then her mother’s house burned down and her mother’s old boyfriend was homeless because of that and Vicki’s niece took him in and she just committed suicide a month ago, and now the old boyfriend needs a home and care and Vickie says she is just not ready for Bill to have a brain tumor.”

This is my day today, and I know many of you have days…or lives…. just like it.

I go and have a little drinkie and then I eat a big bunch of cookies right after dinner. I am pretty sure I will now have huge gas all night.

Then, I call my sister Candy, again. Has she found Mother? No.

I call Mom on 3 way and we still can’t find her. We decide that certainly she is safely in bed asleep, drunk on sirah, with no hearing aids and that surely all is well and we decide to go to bed ourselves and think about all this, tomorrow.
It is 9PM but it feels like midnight.

WINNERS

Here are the winners of the latest random email address drawing.

If you haven’t already done so, to enter this contest, please go to the Home Page and click on: “Free Sessions and More.”
You can win as many times as you do.

If you see yourself here, please email me at:
tovenus@earthlink.net and give me your name (and mailing address if you are a winner of the CDs.).
This particular drawing is null and void after 3/7/08

The GOD IS ALWAYS HAPPY 2 CD SET:

Carlene Yasak
Camilla Davola
Jeja Super
Alex Freeman

FREE FLOW-DREAMING TELE-CLASS WITH VENUS AND SUMMER:

Cher Durst
Dianne Hawhee

FREE 15 MINUTE TELEPHONE SESSION WITH VENUS:

Frances Nix
David Gonzalez

There it is, the perfect mirror, a long, white-wood paneled mirror from China.
Cheap.

It’s the perfect mirror to put on the wall in back of my computer, to reflect the outdoors in, and relieve my computer-generated, house-bound boredom.

I reach up and drag the long mirror off it’s perch, pull it to me and look down into it’s face.
Eeeeck!!
My lower neck is wrinkled like an old dress in the hamper. My sad neck is dragging into my collar and my pointed face hangs down and swings like a bloodhound’s, without the slobber. My teensy brown eyes are lost in eye folds and fleshy pouches.
My hair is the color of burnt broom droppings.

I’m horrified, but I can’t stop looking. This is one ugly woman.

A tattooed, faded eyebrow rolls close to my nose. When did this happen?
I look some more and note that my teeth hang over my lower lip like a horse.

Oh my god.

I run for my car.

I open the car door, hop in and sit where I’m safe and won’t offend myself or other shoppers.

Oh my god.

I should die right now. My life as a pretty woman is over.

Just breathe. Just breathe. Let’s figure this out. My mind rolls over and over like a turning compost bin.

I grab the air for some common sense, for some relief from my despair.

Of course, of course. It’s coming to me now. Now, I remember. I remember how I have always looked when I first wake up in the morning. I look like an empty shell, a homely bundle of skin, like an ugly wrapper on sausage.

Then, as the ‘I’ of me, the being, comes rolling into the physical package and says ‘Hello,’ everything changes. I warm the body up and beautify it. The body and the face sparkle. The eyes get merry and the face flushes with rose. ‘I’m’ back from my night travels and I light up my body like a luminous Christmas ornament.

When I looked into the Chinese Mirror, I now realize, The Real Me wasn’t there. This other particular ‘I’ was nosing around Home Depot with it’s mind on mirrors and house screws. Whomever was in my body was more like a shell of myself, the one who goes on autopilot and just gets the job done. This is the same one who is not busy being and projecting it’s best and most beautiful and likable Self.

When I was late into my 40’s I had a much younger boyfriend who used to marvel at me. He would say, “Sometimes you look twenty-fire years old!”

I didn’t look twenty-five because of creams or potions. I looked twenty-five because at times I felt twenty-five, acted twenty-five and saw myself as twenty-five.

Have you ever looked at yourself when you are feeling happy and well and beautiful?
And, conversely, have you looked at yourself when you had been worrying deeply and steadily for days?

You had the same body, it was the same general time period but what a difference in your looks, right?

When I looked into the ‘Demon’ Mirror in Home Depot, I was just thinking of getting a job done. I wasn’t mindfully in my body looking out.

We need to be mindful.

To look young and beautiful and handsome, we need to flood our thoughts and imaginings with pictures of ourselves being robust, healthy and apple-cheeked. And, we need to remember to keep doing it. If we forget, if we go on auto-pilot, the little, bitty, robot-like menial worker in us takes over and let’s the body show itself bare-faced and maybe not so beautiful.

What you see and feel about yourself is what others see and feel about you. People believe what you show and tell them mentally. Your body believes it, too!

After thinking about this, I get out of the car and go back into the store. I march down the aisles to the mirrors where I pick up The ‘Demon’ Mirror and drag it to the check out-stand.

I’m going to take this mirror home and put it on the wall to reflect the outside, in.
Every time I notice this mirror on the wall, it will remind me to be mindful of my mind-set.
But, here’s one thing I won’t do. No matter how Mentally Adjusted I am to My Constant Prettiness, I will never, ever….ever…… look into that Demon Mirror, again.