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Family ’ Category
Tuesday, January 10th, 2012
Skeeter Has The Answer For All Of Us
There’s a handsome man in the beauty shop, but when he opens his mouth I realize he isn’t handsome. He’s annoying.
He’s walked in and settled himself in a brown plastic chair against the wall, way behind the one I’m sitting in. He acts like it’s his personal chair.
He’s snortling and saying things about Alaska, trying to get my attention but I’m not giving it. I am not in the mood to amuse a strange man.
My granddaughter, 9-year-old Lexi, is getting her first Beauty Shop haircut.
She’s sitting transfixed in a high booster chair in the regular salon chair in front of a large mirror. The stylist, a sixty-something woman with slicked back long, long, long dragging reddish/gray hair, is snipping and snapping around Lexi with a sharp pair of silver scissors.
I’m thinking the stylist needs a haircut really badly.
The man in the back chair keeps nattering on. Lexi’s beautician, and the other one in the shop, largely ignore him.
Both ladies are methodically cutting, whacking, and curling their client’s tresses.
I’m yawning.
Three young boys walk in. The oldest asks if anyone can cut his and his brother’s hair.
“Just have a seat,” they’re told. “We’ll be with you shortly.”
The two youngest boys look like they are in early grade school. These two boys grab seats and the older one, about fifteen, sits next to me.
He looks part Asian. The other two don’t.
I’m wondering how this family got mixed and what might be their interesting story.
Lexi ignores the boys. She is too involved in her first real haircut and maybe too young to feel embarrassed by her wet straggly head of hair and her butt on a little’s kids booster seat.
Everybody’s quiet. Everybody except The Man In The Back Chair Against The Wall.
“My name’s Skeeter,” he says. “You sure have nice weather here. I’m from Alaska.”
The boys are very polite. They nod toward the man and acknowledge him.
The boy next to me says, “My name is Ronnie and my little brother’s are Ace and Cash.”
The client who is getting her hair curled is finished now. She’s about eighty and she leaves happily with a tall pile of red curls standing straight up off the top of her boney head.
Ace, who looks about six-years-old, is called by the other stylist to get in the vacant chair for his cut.
The woman asks if the boys are having a nice Christmas holiday.
They are.
Skeeter speaks up. “I wrote a book,” he says. “I got it right here.”
The boys turn towards him to look but I don’t. (more…)
Tags: beauty shop, book, boys, Christmas carols, God, hair, Jesus, Lexi, Skeeter, teenager
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Art and Beauty, Family, Mysteries in Life, Screaming Hysterics, Wierd Stuff, Words from Venus |
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Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012
Special note: I’ve had a Big Blog Blow-Up this holiday. All my plug-ins and comments etc are in total disarray. I bought ‘Blogging For Dummies’ and am reading as fast as I can. With my meager knowledge and Summer’s help I plan to have my next (real) blog up and to my subscribers by Jan 11th 2012.
I will also list the winner of a phone session with me, pulled randomly from the comments that some of you were able to get to me last month.
Thank you for your patience.
In the meantime….to hold you over, here’s just a little something that happened in my life over the holidays.
Would you rather eat after cats or squirrels?
Jim and the Cat Butter
My brother Jim calls at eight p.m. and says he’s coming to see me. He arrives exhausted and with a bag of food from his restaurant tucked under his arm.
He tells me he hasn’t slept for 24 hours.
“Last night I had to paint the door red and it wouldn’t dry so I couldn’t shut it so I had to stay up all night and wait for it. I just couldn’t walk off and let the burglars in my place.”
He’s messing around in the kitchen, getting stuff from my refrigerator for his sandwich.
I’m in my pajamas on the couch, paying attention to the TV.
Jim brings his meal into the living room and settles into a big chair. He eats and finishes his sandwich.
I get up to get a glass of water. On the kitchen counter, I see the butter tub. The lid is off and the tub is empty. Ummmm? (more…)
Tags: cat butter, cat food, jim
Posted in
Family, Mysteries in Life, Relationships, Screaming Hysterics, Wierd Stuff, Words from Venus |
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Tuesday, December 27th, 2011
Jim has been seeing “Dr. Doug” the psychiatrist off and on for years. My brother is very emotional and rides the waves of his life in giant dips and upswings. As Dr. Doug tells Jim, “Our goal is not to eliminate your personality, but to make the waves and dips more gentle.”
Jim and I are sitting in Dr. Doug’s office early in the evening. Jim can’t sleep because of his sudden divorce and a near bankrupt business. He needs a Magic Pill.
I am very supportive of my brother. Since he has asked me to be here with him tonight, I am.
Dr. Doug is very professional as he shuffles important papers, reads previous notes he’s written in binders and all while writing down everything that Jim says. The doctor talks about this drug and that drug and says that every drug he has tried on Jim doesn’t work. He tells me that Jim is sensitive to chemicals and that they have odd side effects with him.
“So,” he says, ” I have one we’re going to try on Jim that is very benign. Very benign.”
He leans forward in his tasteful brown chair. The chair has little shiny wheels that squeak like tiny mice.
The doctor is a handsome man. He is also very bright and likable. He wears no wedding ring. (more…)
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Family, Lovelife, Mysteries in Life |
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Friday, November 19th, 2010
The night after my mother passed I woke, sat up in bed and began singing “Somewhere Over The Rainbow.”
I sang it over and over in the dark, wondering why I was doing it as I am not a good singer and I certainly never wake up singing in the night! In the morning, I realized that this song is my mother!
We will be playing this recorded version at at her service and I have asked my daughter Summer to also sing the song, in her own way.
Margaret McWhorter, age 20
MY MOTHER’S OBITUARY
As beautiful as a movie star and as unaffected as a flower, our Mother, Margaret Jane Woods-Lange McWhorter died Tuesday evening, Nov 16th, at the age of 88 after having well-lived ten years with lung cancer. When sometimes asked how she stood the pain and fear of cancer she said, “I just make it neutral.” She also told us she had made friends with her cancer. (more…)
Tags: beautiful, cancer, mother, obituary, overtherainbow, song
Posted in
Family, Mysteries in Life, Photos, Relationships, Stories about Mother, Words from Venus |
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Tuesday, June 8th, 2010
“THE LITTLE PINK DRESS”
(Hanging In My Art Room Minding It’s Own Business.)
I’m having a family party at my house. My sister, sitting in a chair on the patio, leans over to me sitting on the chair next to her and says, “Venus, someone has to tell you. Never wear that dress again. Go look in the mirror at your butt.”
I look at Polly, agast.
“That dress ripples all up your butt. Go look. You’ll see.” (more…)
Tags: barbara, bill, butt, Charles, dress, Family, men, mirror, paintings, party, patio, Photos, pink, polly, sister
Posted in
Family, Looking Good, Mysteries in Life, Parties and Fun, Photos, Relationships, Wierd Stuff, Words from Venus |
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Sunday, May 9th, 2010
My brother has just finished telling us about the massive gray polyps in his colon, found with a colonoscopy, polyps that, according to Jim “Had their big heads waving around in there on long skinny stalks.”
My sister Candy, my brother Jim and I are sitting in a booth with our 87 year old mother in a Denny’s Restaurant. We’re having breakfast; a Senior Special, one waffle, eggs and bacon and something that sounds like “Eggs Over Hominy.”
We’ve been ‘enjoying’ Jim’s graphic description of what he had to do to clean his bowel the night before the procedure. I’ll save you from all of it except to say that Jim had to buy his laxative supplies at the drug store and he swears that one of them was called “Move-A-Quick,” or something like that,” and he swears it lived up to it’s name.
My mother, my sister and I start clattering our silverware on the table and making little squeeking noises so Jim abruptly changes course.
“So,” he says, “my daughter told me yesterday that all her friends at school think I’m gay.” (more…)
Tags: ants, art, breakfast, burp, candy, colon, conversation, cousins, dad, disgusting, Family, gay, jim, ken, laxative, Lexi, mojos, mom, mother, pee, polyps, poop, singing, tits, toilet, vomiting
Posted in
Family, Relationships, Stories about Mother, Wierd Stuff, Words from Venus |
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Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
My mother, who is 87, has been talking lately about the tea kettles.
“The tea kettles are doing this, the tea kettles are doing that.”
It took me awhile to understand that she is talking about the recent American political group, The Tea Party! I had been thinking, ‘Why? Why are tea kettles out doing things?’
My mother and I are sitting on her deck, watching the cars go by on the road on the other side of her wide field. My mother smiles broadly and her white hair glistens in the sun. She’s wearing her little red, dog-hair decorated sweater over her blue, green and purple top with the coffee stains on the front, with hot pink sweat pants and high rider tennis shoes.
“You look good, Mom,” I say. ”I’m glad you stopped that cancer medicine. You don’t look terminal to me.”
This is the medicine that cost $4400.00 (!) a month and caused Mom’s nose to swell to the size of a small potato.
I had come over to visit her after she had been on the medicine for a few days. I kept looking at her face. Something wasn’t right, but what was it? She didn’t look like my Mother. I had studied her, carefully.
“I think your lipstick is wrong,” I said. “It’s going up over your top lip somehow and it seems odd.” (more…)
Tags: bill, cancer, car, dog, driving, drug, ex-boyfriend, face, kettles, keys, lung, medicine, mother, nose, potato, studio, tea, terminal, tire, wallet
Posted in
Art and Beauty, Family, Looking Good, Photos, Relationships, Stories about Mother, Wierd Stuff, Words from Venus |
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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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Family, Relationships, Wierd Stuff |
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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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Family, Relationships, Words from Venus |
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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
Posted in
Family, Parties and Fun, Pets, Photos, Relationships, Screaming Hysterics, Stories about Mother, Wierd Stuff, Words from Venus |
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