“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…)
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…)
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…)
When my father went blind, I sometimes took him to the Blind Center where he could socialize. One day, I met an old blind lady there, named Ruth. She was charming but what captivated me most was that Ruth had penciled her bald eyebrows into a surprised arch……. with a bright red lip liner.
I remember thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, is this my fate in my old age? Will I be doing things like this?”
Apparently so. I look in the mirror as I’m getting ready for my big Studio Art Tour Event and I notice that I have outlined my eyes, top and bottom, not with a brown eyebrow pencil but with my red lip liner.
Eeeeh gads!!
I assure myself that the light in this bathroom is very poor.
It’s the day of the Studio Tour when hopefully, hordes of buyers will come and purchase my art.
Summer, her father Bumpa, and my grand kids are here to help me. Lexi is six and Loch is three.
Loch has arrived wearing his usual attire. A tee shirt, shorts, high plastic yellow rain boots patterned with some kid design and his large green and white cotton gloves.
He only takes his gloves off when he goes to bed. For several years now he has referred to himself as ‘a hard working man,’ and he likes to dress the part.
Summer tells me he wears the gloves so constantly that they have acquired a rank stink.
“I’ve washed them and bleached them but within a few days, the smell is back,” she says.
She tells me she is afraid that he’s going to get a fungus. (more…)
“Are you coming up town?”
My ex-boyfriend Bill, the one who lives in my studio apartment, calls me from his work. He’s been at the bank for two hours now and I wonder why he’s asking me if I am coming up town. I’m suspicious and as it turns out, I have a right to be.
“Well,” he continues, “…..I just noticed that I wore two different pairs of shoes to work.”
I’m quiet, soaking in the picture.
“Well, OK, so it happens, ” he says. “I need you to go in my room and find a black shoe with laces. Get the Tom McCan one, I have to match it with the other shoe on my right foot. So, get the left foot, would you?”
I start laughing. And laughing. I snort through the rest of the phone call where I promise to bring him a matching shoe.
I run out to Bill’s place and root around in his shoes. Grabbing the one he wants, I run into my house and find my housekeeper. Isabel doesn’t speak any English but when I pantomime Bills’ trouble and shake the shoe in the air, Isabel gets it. She laughs and laughs as she waves and shakes a blue duster in the air.
On my way up to the bank to salvage Bill’s reputation, I stop to see my mother. I have to tell someone Bill’s hilarious news.
I say, “Guess what Mom! Bill wore two different shoes to work and he didn’t even notice it for two hours!!”
I’m jerking and grinning and giggling and ha ha ha-ing.
Mom looks and me and says thoughtfully, “…..I’ve done that.”
“Oh geez Mom, you would.”
Mom doesn’t see the humor.
“You and Bill are just alike. I don’t know where you two live in your heads.”
I sigh and mumble, “Dang, a good story wasted.”
My mother has recently dropped a heavy load of books on her left foot which has laid her up for days. When my brother in law calls to tell me she’s done this, he shouts, “Do you know what has happened to your mother!!?”
I say, “No. I don’t.”
Ron sounds exasperated and says, ‘I thought not!’ …….and hangs up.
Which leaves me to wonder, ‘what happened to my mother?‘
I have to call back and have a sister tell me. Ron hadn’t bothered to tell me because once again, Mother hadn’t bothered to mention something of note. She just doesn’t notice things that other people might think are extreme, like strokes and lung cancer, which she has had and which passed by with little comment from her.
Since I’m here at Mom’s we might as well have tea. Mom is in the tea leaf reading ‘biddness’ now. At least, she thinks she is. She is almost 87 years old and has been insisting she needs a job for years now.
A few weeks ago she was asked to read tea leaves at the local Historical Society’s Tea. My sister Barbara helped her pack up her tea pot, leaves and the *tea leaf reading book she wrote, watched her dress in one of her usual odd outfits and drove her to the party.
When I arrived later at the Society, there was Mom, sitting at one of the tables with about six ladies, reading their fortunes in a cup. She was wearing her red velour pants, her blue plastic gardening shoes, a little yellow sweater with spaghetti dried on the breast of it and an old brown jogging jacket. On her head was a magnificent glossy creme colored silk version of a large mixing bowl draped with huge beige flowers, pale netting and pearls.
As I popped into the room, I noticed three tables of women at full attention as Mother was reading one of the guest’s tea cup. The lady appeared to be in her late forties or early fifties, with thick dark hair, full red lips and a giant hatted head full of stuffed spotted birds and colored chiffon.
“Oh…” Mother was saying as she peered intently into the cup, “ummmm…I see a man! He’s a handsome man with dark hair and he has lots of money. I see that you have been going on trips with this man and it’s a very tempestuous, passionate relationship.”
Mother looks up into the woman’s eyes as all the other women gasp delightedly, titter and ‘oh’ and ‘ah.’ The lady in question looks pleased and demure.
Mom stares back into the cup and continues, “yes, he’s very rich and he has a well known position in local society, and oh my, he’s married!”
The room erupts with startled and happy shrieks and Mother looks pleased. She must be doing a fine job. The guest snatches her cup back and manages a wan smile.
“Let’s read someone else’s cup,” I say as I trot over to Mom.
Everybody wants their cup read. Apparently, Mother has proved herself.
Later, the woman with the married boyfriend asks me if I can bring Mother to read leaves at her next function and someone else from another table tells me she wants my mother to come to her party, too.
Mother is in business. She’s officially in the tea leaf reading business. Mom tells me later that I am her business agent.
Just what I need. Another job. I can see myself driving an almost 90 year old spaghetti breasted tea leaf reader dressed in gardening shoes and an enormous, flapping, flopping hat, all over the county. Heck, maybe I can get her on Oprah and then I will really have a big job.
*My mother’s book (It’s how to read tea leaves) is “Tea Leaf Tales” by Margaret McWhorter. $10 plus $6.00 Priority Mail. Mail your request to Margaret at 3601 Main St. Ramona, CA 92065
(You see, I am acting like a business manager, already!)
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TESTIMONIALS from Venus’ Private Phone Sessions:
“Thanks for the time you gave me yesterday. It helped me and has cleared my mind and I feel better and am ready to take the necessary action to move my life.”
Y.N.
“I did what you told me to do and I let go and let GOD…and today I was accepted for an apartment and I move in on Saturday. Thank you!!! For all your positive energy that you sent me, I believe it had a lot to do with me getting a place to live.”
P.V.
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FLOW DREAMING TELE-CLASSES WITH VENUS AND SUMMER April 26th, 2009
Flow Testimonial:
Venus, remember that my wish was to get a new job and get out of debt?
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YOU WALK ON WATER!! Thanks from the bottom of my heart!!
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*Next Tele-Class is APRIL 26TH, 2009 For Wealth, Prosperity and Abundance.
To read many more testimonials and sign up for the next class, please go to: www.flowdreaming.com
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THE DEAR VENUS SHOW MOVES TO ANOTHER RADIO STATION
and ***changes time*** to 1:00 PM Pacific/4 PM Eastern:
Starting April 7th, The Dear Venus Show will air live, every TUESDAY at 1:00 PM Pacific/4 PM Eastern. www.contacttalkradio.com
Venus is on EVERY WEEK, with fewer commercials, Free On Air Readings, Free Archived Shows, Pod Casts, ITunes, and a winner is chosen each live show for a free 15 minute private phone session with Venus.
The First Show is April 7th, 2009 at 1:00 PM Pacific/4 PM Eastern. See you there???
*THE SHOW CALL IN NUMBER TO TALK TO VENUS FOR THE US AND CANADA IS 1-877-230-3062. International callers, dial your country’s international code for the USA than dial 425 644 5620.
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*WINNER OF A FREE 15 PHONE SESSION WITH VENUS IS: *catherine verge
Offer is valid through March 30th, 2009. After that, null and void
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Everyone's backends. Mom has the white hair. My sister Barbara is in front of the girl in the green t-shirt.
My Cousin Laura stands up and says she wants to talk. My Cousin Laura? The ‘quiet’ cousin?
This happens after all twenty-five of us ladies have had lots of outstandingly good home-made food and high alcohol percentage wine.
My Cousin Laura is in the dark pink shirt and jeans.
We expected forty people for the party but lots of ladies have suddenly gone down with the Big Flu and they are all livid about missing The Big Event.
My daughter Summer makes each person a name tag as they arrive. They have to identify themselves on the tag. For example, “Betty, Venus’s art friend #1.” “Judy, Venus’ tall friend.” “Nina, I don’t know Venus but I heard about the party.”
The phone rings. It’s Isabel. “Where is your house! I have been driving around for an hour and a half!”
We determine that her husband gave her directions and said I live 6 miles down my road and not the .6 that I put on the invitation. Isabel arrives shortly and she arrives mad. We give her a big glass of red wine.
My Cousin Laura now picks up a big cardboard box and hauls it to the center of what I call My Great Room, which includes the kitchen, sitting room, dining room and living room.
Laura drops the box on the wooden floor with a thud.
“Well,” she says, “I’m going to show you what my family gets me for Christmas every year. I am very particular and they are afraid of me and my reactions to Christmas presents. They know I like a certain kind of bathrobe. It must have a high collar, and have a belt that is sewn into the back as part of the robe.”
She hauls a light pink robe out of the cardboard box and puts it on, to demonstrate.
“Now, this is my favorite robe and it is just to my specifications. It has the high color, the built in tie and it is the right length and it fits. It’s also the right material.”
Laura turns in a circle to give us the full view.
“The problem is, it is very old and it’s falling apart. So,” she says, “here is what my husband and two daughters do every year. They try and find me the perfect new robe.”
She leans over and pulls another robe from the box. She puts it on.
“You see,” she says, “the collar is wrong. It lies flat. And the belt isn’t part of the material. It just won’t do.”
Laura pulls the robe off and hauls another from the box. She puts it on and demonstrates it’s defects. It’s too short, the color is poor and it’s not well made. She throws it back and pulls out another. And another. She puts every robe on that date from at least six or seven Christmases.
“Ah ha,” she finally says, “now look at this one they got me this year. It’s almost right.”
Laura puts on the latest robe. It’s a light pink, it’s the ‘right’ material, the belt is sewn in as part of the robe and the collar stands up around her neck.
“But look!” she says with exasperation. “It hits just below my knees and it zips up from the bottom!”
She zips it up to demonstrate.
“I hate it!” she says.
Summer shouts, “I’ll take it!”
And another woman hollers, “I bid higher!”
Laura looks at both women with disgust.
“Watch this,” she says. She starts to walk. The robe is too narrow when it is zipped and she has to take mincing steps like a geisha.
The women roar with laughter.
Laura thrusts all the defective robes back in the box and leaves the ‘stage.’
My sister Candy stands up. “OK, she says, “Venus wants me to tell some Grandma Stories. This is our mother’s mother.” She points to our Mom sitting as close as she can to the center of all of us. She can’t hear much, so she tries to read all our lips.
Candy is in pink on the left.
“I never knew Grandma when she was alright. The entire time I knew her, she was basically out of her mind. She had had many strokes. But she was the sweetest, funniest woman. She was very thin and had long white hair that she kept braided into two long braids and then wrapped over her head. She had a ton of wrinkles because she had lived in the desert most of her life. She was in her 80′s when I was a teenager and she and our grandfather, Lancaster lived on the property with our folks. They had their own little cottage, with a porch, right next door to us.”
Candy pauses and looks at our mother.
“Well, Mom was always saying to my brother Art and me, ‘It’s time for you and Art to go over and check on Grandma and Lancaster.’
“Venus started calling our grandfather Lancaster because they lived in lancaster California when Venus was little.”
“We checked on those two in the morning, late morning, afternoon and evening and in between because you never knew what they might be up to. Grandma thought Lancaster had a girlfriend named Billie Jo! She thought that because she found a nightgown of “Billie Jo’s” hanging in their closet. Of course, it was Grandma’s nightgown! But, one night when we went to check on them she had Lancaster cornered in the closet and she was menacing him with a butcher knife because of his relationship with that woman. So you can see why we had to watch things.”
Everybody gasps.
“So, OK, this one time, Art and I go over to see how the old folks are doing. It’s close to noon and Lancaster is sitting on the porch smoking marijuana and watching the cars drive by on the road. Oh, I guess you want to know why he was smoking grass in his 80′s? Because of my brothers, of course. One Christmas they gave him some. They said it would help relax him, which he needed because he lived with Grandma. You see he didn’t realize she wasn’t alright in the head. He just thought she was difficult. Anyway, so we go over to the cottage and we say, ‘Hi Lancaster, where’s Grandma?’
“He says, ‘Oh leave ‘er alone!’ ’Well, where is she?’ we say. Lancaster says “She’s fine. leave her be!’
“OK, so Art and I look at each other and take two seats on the porch. Art lights up some grass with Lancaster. About 15 minutes go by. I say,
‘I think I should go check on Grandma.’ Lancaster gets irate. ‘Leave her be!!’ ‘No, really,’ I say, ‘ I think I better go see what she’s up to.’
Lancaster snorts.
“Lancaster is a great guy. A lovely man. He was a handsome marine when Grandma met him and he’s still handsome, but gnarled up and stiff with arthritis from a bad car accident a few years back. When referring to his condition he always says, ‘I’m all stove up.’ He and Grandma have had a long and love filled relationship that has lasted well into her dementia, but lately, it is becoming just too much for the man to deal with.
“I get up off the chair and go looking for Grandma.
“She’s not in the house. That’s odd.
“I walk out the back door and into Lancaster’s tomato patch and a plot of grass.
“Oh my God, I can’t believe it. There’s a lawn chair, one of those long chaise lounge kind of things, the ones strung with plastic ribbon type bands …and Grandma is FOLDED UP IN IT. It has totally collapsed and all I can see are her two little legs sticking out through the top of it, with those black old lady shoes with laces, her legs and shoes pointing to the sky and waving in the air!
“Lancaster must have seen it happen and he chose to let her hang out here while he took a little rest from her, out on the porch, smoking a doobie.”
The group of women go crazy with laughter, especially after Candy assures them that she unfolded Grandma from the chaise lounge and Grandma had just said, “Well, hello my darling,” with a big smile.
Then Candy launches into the time when she was a teenager, and so easily embarrassed, when she took Grandma for a little drive. She stopped up town at our local gas station, and you have to remember that our town had maybe 3500 people then and we all knew each other.
“I told Grandma I had to go to the phone booth and make a call and...not… to… get… out.. of… the.. car!
”After a few minutes on the phone I turned around and there was Grandma, out of the car and wandering off to somewhere. I dropped the phone and ran after her yelling, ‘Get back in the car! Get back in the car!’ and she started screaming, ‘She’s kidnapping me! Oh, help! She’s kidnapping me!’ and the young guy that pumped the gas was just looking at me and I shouted at him to never mind her, just never mind!!
“I had to drag the woman back to the car and she kicked her heels into the pavement and yelled and made me drag her by the arms and her big old red coat kept falling off and and it was so humiliating for a teenager to have to do this in front of a young good looking guy!”
“I finally got her in the car and locked all the doors and I said, ‘I am never taking you for a drive, again!’ and Grandma looked at me with love and said sweetly, “Where are we going now my darling?”
Everybody is hysterically at the party. Candy tells a few more Grandma stories but than she has to give the floor to Lu.
Lu is in her 70′s. She has white hair that merges abruptly into red. She’s dressed today in a Charger’s football outfit and looks three times bigger than she really is. She lives down the road from me. She says, “Well, I like to do my chores naked. So, this one time I was riding the tractor, naked. I had just finished digging a long deep trench when what do I see but a service man driving up my road in his big truck. He musta’ seen me naked on the tractor..well, I know he did, because all of a sudden he lost control of the truck and drove it right inta’ the ditch! And he couldn’t get it out.”
We are all screaming with delight at this picture, which encourages Lu.
“Another time, I was building a stone wall, and I was naked of course. I like to do all my chores naked. So, I look behind me and here is my neighbor, a man, coming up the drive in his big truck and by golly…he drove into that same ditch and he couldn’t get his truck out either…you know…that neighbor man never comes over anymore.”
Lu looks very satisfied.
A woman named Sally leans over to me and nods her head toward a woman named Diane. Diane lives way down the road from me. She comes from Europe where she was a journalist at the United Nations. She is a big name in our area now as she works for Good Causes.
Sally whispers, “Did you know that Diane often goes out and moons the marines when they fly over her house in their helicopters? She doesn’t like them coming over her house way out there in nowhere.”
Another friend says, “What is it with you women on this street? You all go naked so much!” She looks pointedly at me.
“Well,” I say, “that is odd isn’t it? And did you know that there used to be a nudist colony right down the road around the bend? It was here when I was a kid and one day they had a big fire over there and the fire planes dropped pink fire retardant and for weeks you could tell who the nudists were!”
The party keeps going like this. One lady tells an awful story about a dead cat and she is shouted down and sent back to her seat.
Finally, late in the afternoon, we seem to be all worn out. Lots of food, lots of wine and lots of laughter and it’s all been done for our good health, of course.
So, we are exhausted but stunningly healthy and we all go home, stuffed with cookies and lasagna and wine and laughter.
Venus' art room, where I broadcast my radio shows.
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Remember this SATURDAY’S TELE-CLASS ON VALENTINE’S DAY. I will be working on your WISHES for LOVE and will send you MY MOTHER’S LOVE MOJO which packs a heavy punch, and sometimes a surprising one! Summer will put you INTO THE FLOW FOR LOVE. There are a few ‘seats’ left. Please go to www.flowdreaming.com to read about the class Feb 14th 2009 and how you can join us.
*March 7th 2009 we have another Flow Tele-Class for Money, Prosperity and All Good Things.
Some of my art.
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Just a reminder, I do PRIVATE PHONE SESSIONS. I am telepathic, clairsentient, clairaudient and clairvoyant and I am an empath. I also work with with Good Energies, sent to you from what I call the High Beings…Please go to www.godisalwayshappy.com and look under ‘sessions with venus’ to read about what I do and my rates.
*You can also listen to part of a CD on my site, where I transcribe some of what The High Beings have told me. www.godialwayshappy.com
My bedroom.
****2 WINNERS: *I am now drawing TWO NAMES for free 15 minute sessions, during each Radio Show. Listen to “Dear Venus”at Hayhouseradio.com every other Weds 9AM Pacific/12 noon Eastern. The shows are archived and you have one week to find your name and contact me at tovenus@earthlink.net.
The sitting room in my bedroom.
****2 MORE WINNERS: *I am now drawing TWO NAMES from your email addresses, each time I write a blog. The winners this time are:
Sandy Flowers and Anita Mutz. This offer is valid through Feb 18th, 2009. After that, offer is null and void.
One of my paintings: Blueberry Pie.
