Archive for May, 2008

A FINE DAY

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

I take a tranquilizer and drag myself up town to the dentist. I am dreading this. I haven’t been to a dentist in eight years! Why? Because they hurt you and tell you terrible things like, “My god, this is the biggest, blackest cavity I have ever seen; we are going to have to drill all the way to your navel. It’s going to hurt….ummmm? And, why haven’t you been here in eight years? If you had come in every six months like you’re supposed to, we wouldn’t have to be drilling this hard, this loud and this deep. Tsk tsk.”

But, what luck! No cavities.
The dentist replaces a deteriorating filling, blows some sand in a pot hole and replaces a broken part of a tooth.
Then, she takes a mold for a tooth guard as I am a ‘grinder.’
Next, I get my teeth cleaned. And eeeh gads, it doesn’t hurt!

The dentist, the helper and the hygienist keep saying, ‘Oh! This is going so well. This is awesome. You have beautiful teeth. Oh, your gums are so healthy. Your teeth are so clean. Oh, this is so easy. Oh, you are doing such a good job! This is marvelous.”

I think I must have an unclear mind and am overestimating my good teeth fortune, so finally, just to clarify any misunderstanding about how wonderful I am and how glorious my teeth are, referring to the tranquilizer, I say, “I’m on drugs.”

They approve and clap their little gloved hands.
“Oh! Wonderful! That was a great idea.”

I am suspicious. I think this office has taken sensitivity training in how to work with nervous, weasly dental patients to make them feel better, which in turn makes their jobs easier and the patients more willing to return.

And, although I am suspicious, I like all the positive talk. In fact, I’m having a wonderful time! I am having a wonderful time at the dentist, can you imagine? And, yes by golly, I will be coming back in six months to get some more royal treatment. And gifts. I leave the dental office with a bag of tooth brushes, a tube of special tooth cream, two packets of wooden dental picks, green mint dental floss and a magazine on how to lose stomach fat.

All in all, quite a fine day.
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*WINNER OF THE RANDOM DRAWING FOR A FREE TELEPHONE SESSION WITH VENUS: *Maddy Farnor*. Offer valid through May 29th, 2008 when it becomes null and void.

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A Startling Message from the Universe

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

My daughter Summer, is upset.
She says, “I am not normal! Tell them I’m not normal!”

I just told her that someone who listens to us on the radio and reads my blog, wrote to me very affectionately, “Your Mom, your granddaughter Lexi and you are so weird but Summer is right there in the middle and she is the only normal one.”

Summer almost has tears in her eyes.
“I’m not normal, Mother.”

This surprises me. She has always been the serious counterbalance to my extravagant nature. I have learned to step with care around her with all my high excitement and outrageous opinions and actions.
She has never liked me to talk about her or her life, to others, so I am cautious.

I think Lexi has wrought a desire in Summer to be more like us. Lexi is five and as Summer says, because of her brilliance and her fiery, passionate, dramatic and emotional nature, 90 percent of her time has to be given to Lexi.
As my mother says, ‘Lexi is just like you, Venus. Only more so.’

I believe that Lexi has finally worn Summer down and battered her up so much that Summer has decided to give up and join us. Why not? It’s hard being in the middle.

As Summer says, “With Lexi, I feel like I am raising my mother! And, you are on one side of me and Lexi is on the other.”

Today, Summer is at my house with Lexi and her two year old brother, Loch ‘the perfect child, the boy with the curly, wild and white blonde hair, the botticelli angel with the beautiful smile.
He’s the two year old who thinks before he acts, who listens when we say ‘no,’ the child who is balanced and calm and in love with beauty and people. He’s the boy who naps for 2-3 hours a day, goes to bed at 7PM and plays happily in his crib for an hour in the morning after he wakes up.’

Totally, the opposite in almost every way to his sister who races full-on all day and goes to bed at midnight; if her folks are lucky. Lexi is the girl who plays with the boys at pre-school because the girls can’t match her speed and frenetic energy.

Today, Lexi has been a dog for the past hour or two. She is racing around the floor on all fours, coming over to occasionally lick our legs and beg for attention.

I have fixed her a plate of scrambled eggs, catsup and mixed fruit. Lexi doesn’t like to eat until 8:30 at night when she becomes ravenous, so we wheedle and deedle with her all day, trying to get protein into her. We have given up any pretense of pretending that she is a normal child who can sit at the table with us for a regular meal. We have given up on silverware, too. Her fingers work better except when she is a dog and must be fed by hand.

Every time she wings by us, barking and yapping, her mother or I shove some egg into her mouth or a piece of fruit.

Eventually, I get up from the table and wander off to my bedroom. I open and step into my closet. I’m changing my shirt, calling out something to Summer when she finds me and comes into the closet with me. We’re chatting earnestly about something when I notice that Summer is trying to shove a large chunk of pineapple into my mouth. I open obediently, then come to my senses, and shout, “What are you doing?”

Summer blinks, comes out of some kind of trance and says, “….Oh! Oh! I was on a mission, looking for Lexi, I was going to put this pineapple in her mouth when I heard you chatting from the closet and came in and I guess…I guess, well you know how it is when you’re on autopilot? I was just following through!”

This is so ridiculous that we start laughing madly and of course, I drop to my knees where I can laugh even more.

“This proves you aren’t exactly normal, Summer!”

I think she feels better when she hears that.

I’m now sufficiently dressed and we’re all in the car, zipping across town to visit the semi-feral kitties at my friend Carol’s house. This is our second visit. Summer and the kids are getting to know he kitties so they can take two home when the cats are old enough.

Let me amend the semi-feral cat statement. They are more feral then we thought, even though they live half in Carol’s garage and half in her laundry room. How do I know this?

Because of a piercing scream that comes from Summer after we have been with the kitties for about ten minutes.

“It bit me! It bit me! The little, beige cat bit me!”

I saunter over to take a look. Ummm. Summer’s bleeding like Red Rose in the fairy tale who was stuck by thorns. She’s holding up a middle finger which gushes with blood like a small fountain. Summer’s mouth has formed an ‘0′ shape and her eyes are rolling like pin balls in a tin cup.

This is where I am going to tell you that Summer is not normal. She has a phobia. She got it from me, who got it from my father who got it from his mother. We are nervous. But, only about certain diseases. We’ve had to specialize, otherwise there wouldn’t be time to have other things in our lives.

Summer is afraid of Lexi being sick. She is afraid of Lexi’s high fevers and mysterious rashes.
She is afraid of cat bites and rabies and cat scratch fever and stepping on rusty nails.

“I think it’s time to go home, Summer,” I say.

We’ve washed the finger up with soap and peroxide and bound the middle finger in a big wad of white kleenex. She holds it straight up in the air with blood melting through it.

I think I may have to carry her to the car but she makes it and we even remember to take the kids.

Summer is driving, but not so well. She has a glaze over her eyes and I know she is thinking, ‘The cat has rabies, I’m going to die or maybe get a horrible, horrible infection and this has ruined my day.’

She stares ahead at the country road we are on and creeps the car along.

“You will be fine,” I say.

No response. She drives with the tissued, bloody finger held straight up off the steering wheel.

What can I say? I know what phobias are like. They take you over. They ruin your life. They turn you into a ball of stupid terror.

We inch along. Finally, we come to the turn off to my street. A dark, dusty car roars past us on my side and the man gives Summer The Finger.

“That man just gave you The Finger!” I say.

“I don’t care,” Summer says. “He’s been following me all the way home.”

Ah. No wonder.

We’re in the house now and I’ve got Summer sitting on my beautiful blue, very hip and very uncomfortable new couch.

I have given her a special medicine for all occasions, a glass of dark red wine.

“You’ll feel better, soon,” I say.

“I won’t,” Summer says. “This has ruined my day. Why would this happen!? What could possibly be the reason for this?”

She holds up her middle finger twisted with kleenex, for me to see.
She is giving me The Finger!

Suddenly, it all comes clear.

“I know why it happened!” I shout. “I know why! I know why! You’re giving me The Finger! You got your middle finger bit. The man in the old car gave you The Finger! It’s the Universe saying…”F… IT! F… IT!
All this stuff is just not worth worrying about! Give up all your worries and your fears. Give it all The Finger! Oh Wow! How Cool!”

Damn. I’m a genius. Or, maybe the Universe is and I’m a good interpreter.

Summer is so shocked, that she bursts out laughing.
“Do you really think that’s it?” she says.

“Of course it is! How much more clear could this Sign From The Universe Be?!”

We go hysterical with laughter.

“You’re right,” Summer says. “I’m not going to worry about this cat bite anymore. I think the Universe is right. I got the message twice, bang, bang. I think it’s time for me to say that about a lot of things in my life. Just F… It.”

And, the Universe,” I say, choking with glee, “found a shocking way to tell you!”
Har Har Har Har.

And we take that red wine and we toast the Universe and thank It for showing Summer what to do and with such clarity and in a way that she could see it!

addendum: Summer went to the doctor and he says she’s fine and she won’t get rabies. And, she didn’t get an infection, either, so let’s hear it for the Universe, Hip, Hip, Hooray. Give All Your Annoyances ‘The Finger!’

*THE WINNER OF THE RANDOM DRAWING FOR A FREE 15 MINUTE PHONE SESSION WITH VENUS IS: Len Roberts (Offer valid through May 24th, 2008)

Posted in Being Psychic, Family, The High Beings | 7 Comments »

Venus Swallows an Earwig

Monday, May 19th, 2008

This morning I swallowed an earwig.

Every-night, I put a glass bottle of water by my bed on the bedside table. When I get thirsty in the night, I drink from it. I don’t keep a cap on the bottle.

This morning I pop out of bed, notice a bit of water left in the bottle, and think, ‘might as well drink it.’ I toss the water down and oh my god! I’ve swallowed an earwig! I know immediately what it is and I can feel it lodged down inside my throat, on the right side, near my collar bone. In my mind I can ’see’ it’s long, narrow, shiny brown body with the two pinchers flung in front of it, and I can ‘feel’ it’s waving antenna.

“ArrrGH!” Without any conscious thought I immediately bend myself in half towards the floor and croak and choke, “Arrrgggh, agggh, ukukuk!”

The earwig drops out, splat! on that laminated wood floor.

What fantastic luck!

I sit down hard on my bed and then as I always do, I pull a card for my day ahead, from a deck of regular playing cards.

Arrrgh! I get the Death Card!

I try and remain jolly when I get the Death Card but so far, when this happens I always hear about or see a friend who is dying and this ‘bright’ news along with swallowing earwigs is not a good start to a day.

But, hey, it all works out! My sister Polly gives me two tickets to a Do Wop Concert for this evening, that she and her husband Doctor Ron have to give away because they decide to go to Italy, instead.

A Do Wop Concert is where a lot of Very Famous singers from the 1950’s and 60’s get together on stage and sing all their Very Famous old rock and roll songs.

I invite my ex-boyfriend Bill to come with me for the performance. We’re excited. We’re so excited that Bill drives (what is rapidly becoming my ‘old’) green Jaguar down the mountain at 85 and 90 miles an hour.

I scream, “What’s the matter with you?! Why are you driving so fast?”

But, he won’t slow down. Honestly, I don’t know what is the matter with this normally dead slow driver and there is that word, ‘dead’ again. And, as he races the car I am remembering the Death Card I pulled for this day.

I look at the man. Maybe he’s been revitalized by the coming Do Wop performance, remembering his darkly handsome, lost youth, or something? He isn’t saying, he’s just driving like he probably used to drive when he was a kid.

We get to the Civic Theatre an hour early. Now what?

Everybody else is there, too, milling around in the large courtyard.

“Oh, yes,” I say to Bill. “That’s how old folks are. They get early to everything.”

Bill looks around at the gray-haired, limping mob and says, “Looks like The Old Geezer Club, to me.”

We look at each other. We’re sure we look nothing like the Old Geezers.

The people who have gathered for the show are incredibly interesting. There’s a lot of old men in old duck-tail hair cuts. Well, I mean, those that have hair have the duck-tail, greasy hairstyle.

There’s lotsa’ lumpy flesh here, and lotsa’ blond ladies. And, canes and wheelchairs and people I probably knew in school that bear no resemblance to their Be-Bop-Do-Wop former selves.

At last, we move into the theatre and take our seats.

Bill likes his seat. We are way back on the aisle, by the doors and Bill can flick in and out of the hall whenever he wants and bring in wine and treats. Which he does. The show is underway and he immediately drops his glass of red wine onto his white chino pants. He then goes out and gets a thick brownie with masses of chocolate frosting. He eats it, then leans over and complains to me, “I don’t know what’s wrong. I can’t see much of the stage.”

I snatch his glasses off his nose and hold the lenses to the feeble light. Just as I suspected. They are loaded with gobs of fudge frosting.

Here are my thoughts about the concert.

You have all these old MoTown men in their 70’s, shuffling on stage, trying to do all the fancy kicks and leg and body drops and it ain’t workin.’ One man has to sit down on the bandstand for a few minutes and recover. The music and the words seem mushy and hard to distinguish. I’m feeling kind of bad for all of these Formally Famous Big Rock and Roll Stars in their hot red or bright lemon velour suits that look like pajamas.

And then I realize, ‘Oh. That’s it! That’s the Death Card for the day. It’s The Old Geezer Show!’

I’m relieved. We all have to go on this eventual final field trip, but at least nobody I know is doing it right now, right today. We’ve all got to go, but, hey, this is wonderful…..we’re all sitting here singing our way to The Promised Land.

Maybe all of us Old Geezers can gather together and sing our way into heaven. What do you think? A bit of shuffle, a little MoTown, some Rock and Roll…and we’re in.

……… “Good Night Sweetheart. It’s Time To Go….Good Night Sweetheart, Good Night.”

I hope I get a fun playing card tomorrow.
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Posted in Looking Good, Lovelife, Screaming Hysterics, Wierd Stuff | 11 Comments »

ADVICE FROM MY MOTHER

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008

It’s a bright, balmy day and I’ve driven my mother up into the high mountains to have a Belated Mother’s Day Lunch.

We’re in a pleasant, sunny, crowded restaurant, sitting at a table, waiting for our meal, when my mother remarks; quite loudly because she can’t hear very well…..

“You know how back in time, your cousin’s husband (whom we shall leave nameless!) was contacted by that young man who said he was his son?”

“Yeah?”

“And how surprised he was to find that he had a child he didn’t know he had?”

“Yeah?”

“And it was true, the young man was his son….But, for awhile he and his old friend Johnny thought it might be Johnny’s son because they had both had a fling with the same girl at the same time?”

“Yeah?”

“And, the son came out to meet his father and and his teen-age half-sisters but it didn’t work out because the boy fell in love with one of his sisters? Remember?”

“Yeah?”

“And his father said, ‘This won’t work. You’ll have to leave! This is your sister!’ And, everybody was upset? Especially the sister? Because she thought she was gaining a brother but he wasn’t acting like the brother she wanted?”

“Yeah?”

And, your brother Jim went back-packing across Europe when he was young and he says he could have a child somewhere in Germany, you know. He thinks it’s possible, but he can’t find out?”

“Yeah?”

“Well,” my mother says, (now that we have the entire restaurant shushed and fascinated by her shouted conversation,) “well, you know Venus….you have to be careful where you lay your eggs!”

Amen.
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Venus and the Dog Bones

Monday, May 12th, 2008

Here’s how I clean my house.

I have miles of new laminate floors. They are like a sea of fiendish polished wood, rolling with wads of and long fat wisps of gray cat hair, dried weed stems and yellow stickers, grit and dirt. Blotches and blobs of dried spills are dotted everywhere.
I am overwhelmed by my floors.

Here’s my method.
Dust everything high up. Think about cleaning all the imposing dark granite counter tops in the kitchen but that can wait. Maybe for a month.

Get out the broom and sweep all the base boards and the sides of all the rooms and into the corners.
Step barefooted onto a sharp dog bone. Scream.

Go and lie down.

Sweep all the floors.

Check my email.

Wide sweep all the floors with a big commercial duster.
Moan long and loudly.

Bill opens the door from his adjoining studio and says, “OK that’s enough cleaning. I hate to see you suffer like this. I told you this last week.”

Ignore him.

Wander outside to the patio and lie exhausted in the ratty chaise lounge and get some sun.

Vac the floors.
Get myself wound up in the vacuum cleaner cord, step on another pointed dog bone, scream and fall to the floor.
Moan.
Look around and say, “I just can’t do this. This is too much for me.”

Vacuum some more. Vacuum up the white tassels on a small oriental rug. The vacuum cleaner coughs and quits.
Moan and cry some more.

Bill opens the door from his studio and comes into my great room.

“Why don’t you hire some help?” he says. “You look terrible. You can do lots of things very well but you’re not good at this. I mean it, give it up. You’ve been moaning for hours. You’re losing the whole day.”

I tell him to leave me alone.

Get down on my hands and knees with a small, wet yellow sponge and clean the base boards by hand.

Sign heavily and sit against the wall for awhile.

Wet the sponge again and wipe and clean all around the outside of the rooms and into all the cracks and corners. Forget to keep a bucket of water at hand so make many trips to the sink to pull all the hair and grit and dirt off the sponge and re-wet it.

Lean my forehead on the kitchen counter.

Look around at all the stains on the floors. Think about getting out a mop. But first, get down on my knees and scrape off all the unidentified stuff that is three-D.

Get out the wet mop.
It’s new and I can’t get the handle to expand or the sponge to release. I can’t even get all the cellophane off the sponge!
Throw the mop against the dining-room table.

Go into my bedroom and rip the sheets and pillow cases off the bed and the pillows. Carry the pillows outside and put them in the sun.
Sling the brown feather blanket over the pool fence. Sling it too far and part of it drops into the pool water.
I say a bad word.

Go inside and lie down on the bed.

Get up reluctantly and take the dirty sheets and pillow cases and put them in the washer.

Check my email.

Wander outside.

Come inside.
Try and turn the mattress on the bed. Can’t do it. It’s too heavy for me.

Look through some of the tall, crooked piles of books that I have stacked by my bed.

Tip the small bedside table over to see if it still has black widows on the underside.
There is a tremendous racket as all the vitamin bottles and books and pens and nail clippers and all the stuff of life that is stored inside, rockets to the back of the table.
The bedside table is too heavy for me to hold at tilt position and it falls hard on it’s back. I go with it.

Bill appears in the doorway.

He has his cell phone camera. He’s very amused as he takes my picture.

I decide Bill is right. I can do many things well but there are a few things that I do abnormally badly. Housekeeping is one of them.
And then there is my cooking.

When I was in college, I had my two younger brothers visit me at my apartment. I made them dinner.

Years later we are talking about that evening when my brothers say, ‘You made the best pizza we ever ate!”
I’m puzzled. “I never made you pizza.”

“Oh, yes you did,” my brother Jim says, “Art and I agreed it was the best pizza we’d ever had.”

Suddenly, I remember.
“That wasn’t pizza!” I yell. “That was meat-loaf!”

Sometimes you just gotta’ say ‘Uncle’ about some things in life and concentrate on where you shine.

Tomorrow, I’m seriously looking for someone who shines at cleaning houses. And, when I find her, I will pay her well, and fill her arms with lilies and compliment her lavishly, but I will not make her meat-loaf or even attempt to make her lunch. I won’t want to lose her.
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THE FOG MADE VENUS DO IT

Wednesday, May 7th, 2008

It’s a ‘Gray Day In May’ here in San Diego County, California. And May will morph into ‘June Gloom’. It happens every year and every year I say ‘Along with everyone else I will not get depressed this time.’

Each year thick fog rolls in from the ocean and covers spring. When the wet fog finally lifts and blows away…it will be summer and we will have entirely missed spring. I get very annoyed about this.

It’s true, Southern California has magnificent weather but we also have tornado-like winds, walls of raging red fire, and we have our earthquakes of course, and the uneasy sense of the possibility of the sea suddenly overtaking the land…. and we have fog.

Today, while closed into the house, my thoughts are like jitter bugs, bounding inside my head. I go up town to shop and get away from them.

In the parking lot at the grocery store, a woman calls out to me. It’s my art friend Judy from up the mountain. She’s just gotten out of her car and with her is a sick man, a dreadfully white faced, scrawny old guy with several ratty white whiskers and my god! It’s her husband!

I stumble toward Les and say, without any tact at all, “Oh, what has happened!!? What has happened?”

This is my friend Les, the handsome, dark-haired, retired detective with the exciting life and reformed bad-guy demeanor. Just recently, with a thumb to old age, he bought a huge motorcycle and accidently and immediately drove it up into a pear tree in his yard.

Now, he is barely standing before me, leaning hard on a cane, and he has a large drop of water dangling on the tip of his nose.

“Cancer,” he says as he thumps the left side of his chest. “I had my last day of chemo and radiation yesterday, and this is the first time I’ve really been out in months.”

I’m staring at him. I want to say, “Well. I believe they have almost killed you!”

I lean toward him and he says, “Will you hug me Venus?”

I give him a very hard squeeze. Les is dear to me. He and I have always had great affection for each other.
My heart feels like shattered egg shells.

As I get in my car and drive away, I realize that I am not only depressed by the fog but I am now annoyed at these malfunctions which are built into the human body. Whatever or whomever, designed bodies was either careless, or deliberate, in building in the slow and inevitable deterioration of all living things.

But, of course, according to the Beings who speak to me, it is all part of God’s plan, to have as many experiences as possible in as many ways as possible and in as many forms as possible. However, The Beings assured me, the rules aren’t necessarily the same in other places where God also exists. That being everywhere, of course.

I think I need to do something fun.

My sister Polly and her husband Dr. Ron, are going to Italy next week. They have been planning this trip for over a year and are intensely excited, yammering on about the great land of Italy.

Last night on the BBC news, I learned that Naples has had garbage piling up on all it’s streets for three months. The TV showed the mouldering piles, going layers deep, splayed into the roads with some of the filthy stuff on fire. We were told the famous city is a reeking, foul mess.

Won’t Polly and Dr. Ron be surprised when I tell them what awaits them in Naples?

Is this my idea of fun? This fog really needs to clear up.

But, here I go, off to spread the Garbage News and see what other trouble I can get myself into.

‘An idle mind (hemmed in by fog) is the devil’s plaything.’
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