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Blessings Of An Unusual Kind

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…)

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Posted in Art and Beauty, Family, Looking Good, Photos, Relationships, Stories about Mother, Wierd Stuff, Words from Venus | 6 Comments »

LEXI COOKS DINNER oh my

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…)

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Posted in Family, Relationships, Wierd Stuff | 5 Comments »

WEED WHACKERS AND CIGARS

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…)

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Posted in Family, Relationships, Words from Venus | 2 Comments »

COLLECTING A LIFE

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…)

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Posted in Family, Parties and Fun, Pets, Photos, Relationships, Screaming Hysterics, Stories about Mother, Wierd Stuff, Words from Venus | 1 Comment »

MOTHER HAS A PLAN

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…)

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Posted in Family, Mysteries in Life, Relationships, Stories about Mother, Things I'm Not Good At, Wierd Stuff, Words from Venus | 12 Comments »

LEXI’S WORLD

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…)

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Posted in Family, Mysteries in Life, Relationships, Wierd Stuff | 3 Comments »

VENUS GETS HIT BY ‘LIGHTENING’ AT LUNCH

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…)

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Posted in Art and Beauty, Mysteries in Life, Parties and Fun, Relationships, Screaming Hysterics, Wierd Stuff, Words from Venus | 13 Comments »

Blood In The Wheelbarrow!

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…)

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Posted in Family, Relationships, Screaming Hysterics, Stories about Mother, Things I'm Not Good At, Wierd Stuff, Words from Venus | 7 Comments »

Life Is A Round Egg

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…)

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Posted in Family, Parties and Fun, Pets, Relationships, Stories about Mother, Things I'm Not Good At, Wierd Stuff, Words from Venus | 10 Comments »

Watch Out! There’s A Green Onion On Face Book!

Friday, April 17th, 2009

My granddaughter Lexi has been with me for two weeks and she is ready to go home.

We are both emotionally exhausted. 

One day I take her to the movies to see ‘Monsters and Aliens’ in 3-D. I get her a big bag of greasy popcorn and she sits in the aisle seat with me next to her.

The sound from the movie is suddenly like twenty boom boxes going off in a small room. Lexi jumps,sits back down, then keeps turning to me and shouting, “Is it too loud for you BaBa?! Are you OK?”

I assure her I am.

“Is it too loud for you, BaBa?!” she persists.

“I’m OK, Lexi, really.”

“Is it too loud for you BaBa?”

Then BAM! There is some kind of movie explosion, Lexi leaps from her seat and reflexively tosses her entire enormous bag of popcorn into the air and all over the aisle floor.

She wails and moans in despair.

Lexi is a very emotional child.

 I suddenly get it. The noise is too loud for Lexi but the only way she can say that  is to keep asking if it’s too loud for me!

Another day I take Lexi to the Wild Animal Park. You might think this would be fun, but the same thing happens to me that always happens to me at that Park. Lexi and I get wound up in the center of the Park and never make it to the animals. We just can’t seem to find our way to the lions or the gorillas or even the screaming birds. We do see a lot of food stands and shops and lots of fat jungle pigs but we keep seeing those same red snouted beasts over and over because we keep ending up at the pig pen.

It’s getting hot so we strip down a bit. This means that we eventually lose Lexi’s little red jacket with the fake rat fur collar. Lexi moans and cries and wishes very loudly that we had never lost it and what will she do without her jacket, forever and ever!

Lexi is a very emotional child.

We eventually find the jacket draped over a fence. It isn’t hard to find because we continue to walk the same damn circle that we have been walking for two hours.

 Lexi does get to ride the merry go round. She always rides the cheetah and by golly she rides it again today, four times. This is how it goes:

 She sits on the big plastic cheetah and straps herself in. Then we wait for maybe fifteen minutes. A bell rings, the carousel starts to turn and around and around everyone goes for about one and one half minutes. Then, it grinds to a halt. Lexi waits on the cheetah for at least another 15 minutes when the fun ride starts up again, and goes around and around for one and one half minutes. Then, it comes to rest and Lexi waits on the cheetah for the next forty years. 

At one point she’s on the other side of the carousel and I can’t see her from the cold stone bench I am sitting on. I get up and walk around the back of the merry go round to check on her and make sure she hasn’t been snatched by people looking to kidnap someone.

She hasn’t been kidnapped but she is hanging up-side down from a spotted horse, because she is strung up and hog-tied in a leather safety belt. She cries out to me and says she can’t get off the horse, that she is caught.

I have to rush onto the carousel and extricate her which isn’t easy. She decides the only safe animal is the cheetah and back onto it she goes. Another fifteen minutes and they’re off. And, then we wait and do it, again.

So much for The Wild Animal Park.

Lexi likes to eat. When we are home there is a constant chorus of “I want olives. I want pickles. I want ice cream, my Mommy gives me ice cream.”

(Yeah right.)

“I need more olives. I need more pickles. I want root beer. My Mommy gives me root beer.”

(Yeah right.)

“I’m hungry BaBa.”

She and I are always foraging through the pantry, the cupboards, the refrigerator and the freezer, hunting for something that she thinks she wants that I will allow her to have. And rarely do the twain meet.

When Summer comes to get Lexi to take her home, her mother and I have a few glasses of red wine (for our nerves) and subsequently decide it will be a good idea to put me on Face Book. Not that we know how to do this or even what it means or why we should be there.

Summer somehow gets me on three pages on Face Book! We are astonished. There is a personal page, a friend page and a fan page.

Summer says, “Mom, you only need one page as you will never keep up, otherwise.”

“What am I keeping up with?” I want to know.

 Summer isn’t sure.

We decide I only need a Fan page as I consider my radio listeners and the people I do phone readings with, my friends.

Good. We agree. But, we can’t find the Fan Page ever again.

 I realize that Summer is going back down the mountain and that I am being left with knowing nothing about how to find the page I want or what to do with Face Book.

I whine, “Summer, what am I going to do?”

Summer doesn’t know and I don’t think she cares as she has sobered up and it’s time for her to scoop up the kids and go home.

The next day I run my car down the mountain to the big book store and buy a manual on how to use Face Book. I am elated. It can’t be that hard to learn.

It is.

The book was published in 2008 but already not much matches the Face Book I have. I want to put my maiden name on a page so some of my old chums might find me, but what the book tells me to do doesn’t work. Nothing works.

I throw down the book in disgust. I think about another project I am trying to master. Energy medicine. Learning to balance  meridians and balance the body and health. It seems much easier then learning Face Book.

There’s also the Art Studio Tour this weekend. I am one of the artists on the Tour. This means I will have my home studio open on Saturday and Sunday for the paying public. They don’t pay me, they pay the Chamber of Commerce.

I will need to clean my studio and my house, price all my paintings, display them artistically in my studio, make huge pots of coffee, put out wine and cake,  and hope that I will make a few sales. Am I ready for this? No.

I have been on the Tour for a number of years and this is what actually happens:

50 gazillion people  come to my house.

They ooh and ahh over my flowers and trees and property, parade through my studio and then into what I call my Chinese Bathroom with the black wall paper with huge white flowers and the bright red floor and from there….

They scatter. Rivers of strangers stray through my house, ooohng and ahhhing and fingering my plants to see if they are real.

They sit on my queen size bed and on my Todo toilets.

They run the water in my kitchen sink and open my cupboard doors to have a better look at the pounded and stenciled tin insets. The remark on my vibrant red kitchen and the vivid bird wall paper.

They plunk themselves on my poofy couches and say things to each other  like, “Hummm, feels good here. Let’s stay awhile.” And they do.

 I decide I need to look better then I do for the wave of lookers this weekend.

So… I finally get my hair done. As you may know, my regular hairdresser ran off to Oklahoma at least four months ago. Shortly after that I got my hair done by a new stylist and she turned it a rabid rat dung brown.  Arrrgh. We must have miscommunicated.

I have since spent a lot of time sitting in the sun trying to get the color to fade, which it has.

I have now at last found another stylist. I have been three times to chat with her about how I want my hair. As of today, my hair color is divine because I have finally convinced her to let some of my natural white hair come into the artificially colored mix. I have also let my hair grow long and I like it.

However, in spite of the color, I do today, look like one of those long green onions with the white peeled knobs, because the woman has managed to plaster my hair to my head. Ah well. It’s humbling.

To further mortify myself I go out in public to an art demo meeting and to the grocery store and I look like hell. The hair is divine but I don’t look so good in it. Thank god I’m not a teenager as I might hang myself.

All of the above (and even more!) is why you haven’t heard from me on my blog, for awhile. When I start getting emails from you and you are saying, “Oh Venus, are you OK? You haven’t written a blog for awhile so I’m starting to worry,” I think, “Dang. Do they really want to know what I’m doing? Or, are they being kind? Do they really want to know that there is now a green onion on Face Book and that they know her?!”

…………………………………………..

THE DEAR VENUS RADIO SHOW

Oh my. What a mess it was this past Tuesday. There were problems at the studio and my voice kept doubling back on me and it almost drove me mad. I had to push the headphones on top of my head so I couldn’t hear the feedback. Then I got dropped from the show! But, things finally cleared up and I did readings over the air. However, by that time, because of angst and frustration, I had knocked my forehead on my desk several times which may have made my connection with The Beings better or worse, I’m not sure. Tech problems are to be expected with a new show and all should be mainly good from now on.

I do give away a FREE 15 MINUTE PHONE SESSION with me, on every live show. You can hear the shows for FREE in the ARCHIVES and you have a week to check and see if YOU were the winner. (The live show also has a live chat room where you can gather during the show, that I hear is lots of fun.)

LIVE SHOW EVERY TUESDAY at 1PM Pacific/4 PM Eastern. “The Dear Venus Show” with Venus Andrecht. www.contacttalkradio.com

………………….

NEXT FLOW DREAMING TELE-CLASS WITH VENUS AND SUMMER, APRIL 26TH, 2009  For Abundance and Prosperity and All Good Things.

This is where I work on a wish especially for you and Summer takes you and the wish into The Flow.

For lots of testimonials and to read about and or, sign up for the class, go to www.flowdreaming.com ……………………………………………………………………………….

PRIVATE PHONE READINGS WITH VENUS

For what I do and my rates please go to www.godisalwayshappy.com and look on the Home Page

………………………………………………………………………………..

*WINNER OF A FREE 15 MINUTE PHONE SESSION WITH VENUS:  *Liza Zanoni* Offer good through April 22nd, after that null and void.

X0 Venus

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Posted in Art and Beauty, Family, Parties and Fun, Relationships, Screaming Hysterics, Wierd Stuff, Words from Venus, Work | 9 Comments »

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