Dear Roger: Dont Neuter The Monkey!

I have finally surrendered my room.Son got given a very nice full sized platform bed so he gave his twin bed to daughter since she has vastly outgrown her toddler bed mattress on the floor, so she now has an Ikea platform bed in my room in twin size. These rooms were not made for this level of occupation. I am lucky to have the space that my queen sized bed occupies to call my own. My decor of the tin wings and the fugly mirror and other odds and ends, is rapidly being overwhelmed by monkeys, though I was a little distressed when I came to bed last night and discovered that the monkey daughter had designated as,'Mine" to care for and what not was missing from my bed. I have no idea where Fredrick the gay monkey may have wandered off to, and I spent a good 10 minutes at midnight last night searching for him, afraid that if I didn't find him, my daughter would judge me a failure in monkey care. I can only hope he was sleeping over with one of the boys. But anyway, my life has been usurped by monkeys. They are everywhere in my room and in my life. I even had to pull one out of my boots yesterday before I could get dressed. Daughter has them arranged all around the room and she tucks them into her bed when she goes to sleep at night, her special one, Jackson, snuggled right up against her, his beady little eyes peering out at me as I try to settle in for the night.

The decor on her side of the room is an homage to her favorite boy and his band. His smirking mug is everywhere, and while its not unpleasant to look at by any means, she gives me the stink eye if she catches me looking too long. That is kind of difficult to avoid, especially since she hung a picture of him right over my bedside table!

Her brothers delight in tormenting her. They steal her monkeys, especially Jackson, and do all kinds of crude and cruel things, just to hear her shriek in horror. I warn them that she is one of those people who believes in revenge and they best let her be, but they never learn and then they are shocked when she puts the smackdown on them or she does something to thier guitars. I know she loosened all the strings on sons guitars last night after he came walking out into the living room carrying Jackson in his mouth. That grossed me out more than a little and I happily reminded him that not only had that monkey been tossed into the middle of Portland city streets, he had also been wrapped in a soaking wet with sweat, headband from young Mr.Rathbone that had left the monkey soggy as well. He had been jammed down countless boy pants, and had been dropped on gnarly Portland city sidewalks.( The monkey needs a bath, and badly but daughter would end me if I even tried it. Apparently the sweat has made him sacred, I think its made him stinky and more than a little unsanitary, but I like sleeping.)The look on sons face as he realized all the implications of what I was telling him was priceless, and he quickly spat the monkey out and went and washed his mouth out with half a bottle of my mouthwash, but then he came back and simulated neutering the monkey while daughter howled in anguish. He said,"And that's what will happen to the real thing if he ever comes around my sister." as he dropped the monkey to the floor and stomped away like a mighty hunter, the little boys trailing after him, preening like cavemen after a successful kill. Daughter was disconsolately laying on the floor, the monkey clutched to her like some character out of a Shakespearean tragedy.

Its never dull around here.

I managed to perk her up by showing her pictures of her favorite boy at his movie premier last night. She saw how he was dressed and her eyebrows disappeared into her scalp. "Is he wearing makeup?" I told her,"Yep." She sat and looked at all the pictures, smiling, though her eyebrows hardly left her scalpline. Her brothers came out to see what was going on and the comment was made that her favorite boy was as pretty as she was. She stuck her tongue out at her brothers and said, "I dont care if he does like boys, I still love him!" and she flounced from the room with her monkey in tow. I think I have raised her right.