Postal Rage Is Back

January 31st, 2012 Posted to Screaming Hysterics, Wierd Stuff, Words from Venus

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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Felt Like Pooping Lately?

January 24th, 2012 Posted to Family, Mysteries in Life, Wierd Stuff, Words from Venus

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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Are You Really as Odd as I Think You Are?

January 17th, 2012 Posted to Family, Mysteries in Life, Relationships, The High Beings, Wierd Stuff, Words from Venus

"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.  Read the rest of this entry »

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Skeeter Stings Teenager…Outcome Uncertain

January 10th, 2012 Posted to Art and Beauty, Family, Mysteries in Life, Screaming Hysterics, Wierd Stuff, Words from Venus

 

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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Jim and the Cat Butter

January 3rd, 2012 Posted to Family, Mysteries in Life, Relationships, Screaming Hysterics, Wierd Stuff, Words from Venus

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? Read the rest of this entry »

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One Man’s Poison Is Another Man’s Major Good Time

December 27th, 2011 Posted to Family, Lovelife, Mysteries in Life

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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“The Worst Party I Ever Went To”

December 21st, 2011 Posted to Words from Venus

The old father-in-law is sobbing in a tiny hall bathroom in a relative’s house. With him are his very old wife and their grown up son.

The rest of the family continues to sit around the Christmas table looking confused.

Too much “Merry Water” and the grandfather makes what he thinks is a kind remark about another grandfather who is dead.

This sets off a furor between the son-in-laws who verbally attack the old man about the dead man’s character.

Bad goes to worse and the old guy starts crying and retreats to the bathroom.

Merry Christmas!

That was last year’s holiday party.

This year it’s another doozer.

I decide we siblings need closure after our mother’s death a year ago.

After two times of trying and having interlopers show up and ruin the gathering, a new date is finally set. Just my siblings and I will meet at my house along with our Great Aunt Ruby, the last of the oldest relatives. Nobody else is invited.

We will vent and air our feelings about our mother’s long and difficult dying from cancer. We will sort through all the un-resolved “PTSD” some of us feel we have acquired, the “loss of faith” and “fear of dying Mom’s way” that some of us have said we are feeling.

This is my plan.

We need to do this I believe, in order to either dump or pick up our worn emotional luggage and clatter on. Read the rest of this entry »

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Why? Why, Why, Why!!?

December 14th, 2011 Posted to Mysteries in Life, The High Beings, Words from Venus
I’m thinking about crows as I lie in the road. It’s very quiet except for me sobbing and whining “Why, why, why?”

I look up at the bland blue sky. A few large black crows are watching me from the gently swinging telephone lines.I’m also thinking how today seemed to be a good day. The perfect day to take a little walk. Of course, I had found a dead ant in my nose when I woke up, but odd things happen. Overall things are getting better for me.

With rest and good nutrition my ‘bad’ ankle is feeling better. Today, I am finally feeling that I can take a walk down the road to look at the black walnut trees that line it. The nuts are ripe and the big, scruffy crows are wondering why I haven’t been down for awhile to gather and toss the walnuts into the street.  The crows wait for the cars to come by and squash the shells, leaving mashed nuts for them to eat.

A few minutes ago, as I started my happy walk, before I have landed on the pavement, here’s a tiny pebble on the asphalt road but I don’t see it. The sole of my right shoe hits it, my foot rolls over, I hear a snap and I hit the pavement hard, bam!  I’m on my left side flat out. This has all taken a second, if that. My jeans are ripped, my elbow hurts and is bleeding along with my palm, knee and left ankle. But my right ankle is screaming with pain.

“Oh noooo,” I’m wailing. “That was my good ankle! Why my good ankle? Why, why, why?”
I lie in the street and sob. Read the rest of this entry »

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What really happened to my hairdresser when she ran off to Oklahoma!

December 5th, 2011 Posted to Words from Venus

My hairdresser, the one who suddenly moved to Oklahoma three years ago and left me alone holding my fried dyed head, is shouting at me over the phone.

“Venus I still can’t believe it! This twenty seven year old guy, my client, got out of the chair, gave me a goofy, moony look, grabbed me, picked me up and leaned me against the wall in my hair salon!”

“Wait! Wait!” I say, “Back up, back up, what are you saying? Tell me, again what you said before this happened.”

It’s raining in California and I am laid out on the couch by the fireplace sipping a bit of gin, listening to my ex hairdresser friend tell me how bad her life has become.

‘K’ has been saying how much she hates living in a ‘tiny inbred town’ in Oklahoma in the near middle of the USA.

“Where,” she says, “most people have been on welfare for three generations, don’t work, don’t want to work, are lazy, snort meth and have no teeth.”

My hairdresser lost her house to foreclosure in California and moved into the heart of the country where she has a grown (but not mature) son for some kind of infrequent company.

She had hoped for better times. Read the rest of this entry »

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Two Messages From My Mother-From The Other Side?

December 21st, 2010 Posted to Words from Venus

Mother With Her Great Grandson Loch, 2006

Message Number One:

IS THIS ‘HEAVEN’??

Four days before my eighty-eight year old Mother dies, she has two fabulous days.

Mom has been suffering with cancer for a long time. However, very early on the first or second morning of her ‘two fabulous days’, we siblings find her with no pain, sitting up in the hospital bed in her living room, her white hair brushed back from her smiling face. She looks serene, happy and ‘well’, totally at odds with how distant, sunken and almost dead she has been looking for the past weeks.

This morning is different. She’s drinking coffee with cream and then more coffee with vanilla ice cream. She demands and eats breakfast! This is incredible as she hasn’t eaten or drunk anything for a week or more. She has her usual big and beautiful smile for all of us.

Suddenly, she turns to me and says, “Venus, what have you been doing lately?”

I think for a bit, then repy, “…Well..not much Mom. I’ve been with you.”

She keeps looking at me, waiting for me to say something interesting.

She looks to me, because back in time, when Mom started to need more help, each of us siblings took a Mother Job. I had been designated ‘The Entertainment Committee’ for her and she was used to my filling that capacity.

Finally, I manage to think of something I’ve done besides being with her.

“Well..I took a sun bath on my roof the other day,” I murmer.

“Oh! I saw you!” Mom says. “I’ll never forget you sunbathing on the roof! It’s good for you to get the sun.” Read the rest of this entry »

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