You could cheat, too... Here's a snippet (in C++, but I'd say your a pro enough by now to convert it to Python without any problems ).
bus = dbus.SessionBus() proxy = bus.get_object('org.freedesktop.Notifications', '/org/freedesktop/Notifications') interface = dbus.Interface(proxy,dbus_interface='org.freedesktop.Notifications') interface.Notify('Healthcheck', 0, '', 'W0000p', 'I R Sexy', [], {}, 2000)