Archive for the ‘
Wierd Stuff ’ Category
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
Jim in his kitchen. http://www.artmojos.com
Today I am trying to learn the cash register at my brother’s stationary mobile kitchen and I charge an old man $776.00 for his hamburger.
I tell him I’m truly sorry but he is not happy about it.
I tell him this is my first day, that I am helping my brother by learning how to take orders for meals. That sometimes Jim needs extra help when he gets really busy and since I work for free he will be calling on me.
Now I can’t get the cash drawer open. The ten dollar bill the old fellow is trying to give me flies off the counter and out the counter window and sticks to the old fellow’s gray sweatered chest.
I reach out and peel the bill off him. (more…)
Tags: brother, career, grill, jim, key, kitchen, money, tea, work, working
Posted in
Family, Things I'm Not Good At, Wierd Stuff, Words from Venus, Work |
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Tuesday, February 7th, 2012
"My Bathroom Sink Before I Blew It Up." http://www.artmojos.com
This morning I’ve blown my bathroom sink apart.
It is quite a surprise.
Here’s how it goes.
I have an art deco type, fluted glass sink. It sits on top of the tiled bathroom counter and is pleasing to look at. It is moulded to look like a huge, luminous blue flower rising open-mouthed toward the indifferent burnished copper faucet above it.
The sink was very expensive. It makes a statement. It makes the bathroom. It’s a beautiful and wondrous and overpriced extravagance but everybody needs at least one outrageous, nonsensical, illogical extravagance don’t you think?
I have to stand on my toes to use this sink and even then I often clank my elbows on its undulating glass edges.
Its lithe inner neck is attached to a pipe and hidden under the countertop but like an unrelenting sinus condition the pipe is always clogged.
The sink is a gorgeous delicate Being, but I don’t like it. It is uncomfortable to use and it barely drains. Nothing I’ve used clears the blockages and I’ve even used human plumbers.
This morning I have had enough of the sink’s peculiarities and quirks. I have in hand a very large jug of poison gel that is guaranteed to scrub clean the most recalcitrant pipes.
The instructions say to pour the burning goo down the drain and let it sit for one half hour. Then I am instructed to run hot water down the pipe.
This is a problem.
I can never get the water to run long enough to get it hot enough because the water won’t drain from the beautiful sink. The water fills to the brim and then sits sullenly, threatening to rush over the lips of the blue beauty.
But…suddenly, I have an excellent and even brilliant idea. I will heat the water on the kitchen stove and pour that down the drain. (more…)
Tags: art deco, bathroom sink, drain, plumber, sink
Posted in
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Tuesday, January 31st, 2012
It ain't a great day, folks. www.artmojos.com
My art friend Judy tells me they can’t have any more chili cook offs at the Historical Society in town because of the New County Rules.”You know” she says, “you all at the Guild can’t legally have that spagetti dinner you’re having at the Art meeting, tonight, right? It’s against the rules. You have to have a commercial sanitary kitchen with paper work and permission from the county.”
I say “Yeah. Fock ‘em.”
I’m mad.
“We couldn’t,” I say bitterly, “even have real food at our recent big art show down the mountain in that really nice place. Last year we had a huge spread of home made food there and everyone came for the food. Not the art. The food!
“This year, every last bite we laid out had to be commercially bought and sealed in plastic. Crackers in plastic, peanuts in little plastic packets, bottled colas. No more homemade lemon aide with fresh lemon slices and real ice tea…no more home made main dishes or desserts. It was a disaster. People hated it. I never want to go to another plastic art show.”
Judy agrees.
“It’s totally awful,” she says, “pretty soon we’ll have to ask permission to use toilet paper on our butts.”
I’m thinking, “Geez. I need to go up town and see the sights. Just get away from being so mad about all the increasingly intrusive rules we are all expected to live by.”
Walking into the post office I get in the long line that’s waiting to be served. I love the post office but here they are, having to fire lots of workers and maybe not being able to survive.
I think the post office is the very best for moving mail quickly and with the least expense. But, who cares what I think, right?
I’m just hanging, waiting for my turn to (eventually) come up to the counter when suddenly I realize there is a huge big man in line causing a commotion. He’s yelling at the man next to him and at the whole post office. (more…)
Tags: angry, carnival, mad, man, post office
Posted in
Screaming Hysterics, Wierd Stuff, Words from Venus |
18 Comments »
Tuesday, January 24th, 2012
http://www.artmojos.com
This is not a story about fish. It’s more about toilets, but we will get to that.
One day my daughter Summer and I take the kids to an Asian Market.
It’s true that the kids are overwhelmed by the fish.
Loch, who is five, is fascinated by all the rows of multi-colored dead fish on ice. He is exuberant about the live blue crabs which keep waving their legs in the air while trying to crawl out of their tub. Most of all he is mesmerized by the live lobsters and various swimming fish in tanks, waiting to be plucked for someone’s dinner.
Nine-year-old Lexi is impressed by all the severed fish heads with their frantic bulging eyes and festive teeth, while in another long case I am disconcerted by by all the animal parts. Tripe, brains, knuckles, tongues, stomachs, spleens and splintered bones are laid out in haphazard ways.
I gulp and feel suddenly intrigued by vegetarianism. The animal parts strewn about have made me, a Primitive Meat Eater, go kind of glinzty.
Aside from the fish and the bloody animal piles, there is lots of other stuff, foreign to our American eyes.
Row by row with our rolling cart, we all wander and look at unusual products.
I toss fish powders and some seaweed soup mixes into the basket.
We get a few fresh but unknown vegetables that we won’t know what to do with when we get home with them.
The store is dirty.
The kids are excited and curious as we wind our way up and down the aisles between fire crackers and bags of various dried mushrooms and jars of fish paste.
Loch suddenly yells, “Why does everyone here have brown skin and we have white skin!?”
Then he begins (and won’t stop singing) Hanuaka songs in a loud voice…and we are not Jewish.
The store is dirty and packed with people and suddenly I have to pee. (more…)
Tags: Asian, bathroom, fish, kids, Lexi, LOCH, summer, toilets
Posted in
Family, Mysteries in Life, Wierd Stuff, Words from Venus |
12 Comments »
Tuesday, January 17th, 2012
"You Think I'm What??"
My brother-in-law has called me on the phone.
He says, “I want you to know I love you.”
I say, “Thank you Ron.”
“And,” he adds briskly, “although you have always been an irritant in my life you have made me a better person by doing it.”
What? He loves me but I irritate him? I irritate him?
He continues.
“And whenever I need help you are always there for me and you always stand up for me, no matter what. And I love you for that.”
“I am an irritant?!” I say.
“Well, yes.”
“What do you mean I’m an irritant?!”
“Ah…well…I really don’t know…except that you always call me on my stuff and tell me, bull’s eye, whatever it is. You are always honest with me and tell me straight and you tell me to knock it off.”
“Like what?”
“Well…I don’t know…but it’s a good thing I married your sister and not you. I just know that you have always been an irritant in my life and I love you.”
“Gee. Thanks for the call, Ron.”
“You’re welcome.”
Hahahhhahah!
Later that same evening my cousin Elaine sends me an email. (more…)
Tags: All One, boredom, candy, father, God, irritant, jim, laugh, mother, polly, Ron, tombstone
Posted in
Family, Mysteries in Life, Relationships, The High Beings, Wierd Stuff, Words from Venus |
4 Comments »
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
Posted in
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
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3 Comments »
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 |
4 Comments »
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 |
6 Comments »
