Dear Roger:Cast That First Stone, I DARE You.

So of course there had to be some drama for my sons birthday,we are no longer allowed to enjoy a simple day to ourselves as a family, with family related things going on, no, for the past two birthdays we have had to deal with the black cloud of a pseudo girlfriend and her family of dysfunction.
I really don't have too much of a problem with girlfriend, she is a product of how she was raised, but she is a manipulative little thing that seems to be able to make my son dance like a trained monkey on a leash like no one else. The couple of weeks he had broken up with her were like the good ole days, he was a happy guy again and a joy to be around, and we all knew the minute she pulled the,"I cant live without you" bullshit she used to get him back because he looked like the weight of the world was back around his neck. The only bright side? I am pretty sure he is starting to break away from her by hanging out with another girl from his school is a dancer,(no, not a titty dancer though even that would be an improvement, a Ballerina), so that's an interesting wrinkle in the situation.
On sons birthday, I was informed that girlfriend was going to bring him a cake and that she was going to be joining us for dinner.I learned after last year to not put much weight into such declarations and I went on about my business of preparing for dinner, keeping my comments to myself, though I made it quite clear, I was NOT going to drive him to Vancouver so he could see her. He assured me that she was coming to our house and I should be ready for an extra at dinner, suuuuure.
I went running around with a friend of mine for a little while and did some shopping for some things and then I arrived home to find son in a particularly foul mood. He informed me that his girlfriend was NOT going to be coming for dinner,(no, really? Wow, I'm shocked), she had texted him and told him that her father was not going to bring her because I am a,"Damned Sinner" and he doesn't trust me around her.
Whoa...say what? Does he think I am going to sacrifice her for a virgin or something because considering he has 2 other kids who both had kids out of wedlock before they were even 17, I'm willing to bet that ship has probably already sailed. (Catty, I know, but let me give you some backstory on this crew), and then we will talk some more.
This guy...he considers me a,'Damned Sinner" because I support gay rights. I don't go to church and I have issues with my faith. I am very open and honest about that.I have been though a lot and I have my doubts about a lot of things, but I don't force my issues on my kids and I send them to church. One of his relatives found out about what I write,(that was a really fun day), and they confronted my SON about it IN CHURCH. My kids didn't know about what I wrote until then, thanks to them, everybody knows now. Nothing like being outed as a writer of Gay erotica and other things to your teen son in front of his friends in church. I wasn't even there and that's probably a good thing because I would have gone to jail. These are the same people who told my little girl that I was going to go to hell along with her favorite boy and his band,(have no idea what the hell they did to set them off), and most of the things and people she holds dear. The only thing that kept me from going over to this guys house and kicking him in the dick is the fact I don't have a car and he lives in Vancouver with the kids of his that haven't attempted suicide recently or who aren't currently locked up.
Last night, I actually saw my son finally reach his limit with the crazy. He made other plans with other people after they stood him up,(again at the last minute because I am a sinner), and right as he was getting ready to walk out the door, his girlfriend texted and asked if he was able to leave to go with them and his response back was,"NO, Im busy being a sinner too."
Can you tell I am a bit pissed off? I didn't choose the church my kids go to. I never intended them to continue at this church for a long time, I wanted them to maybe for a year, get a good feel for the doctrine and then move to another church and see how it was different, but then son got tangled up with the crazycrew and its been all downhill from there. Another good thing about the move for me and my daughter will be the fact that she will have to change churches. Shes a child of faith, and she can flat throw down a prayer like no ones business, but I really don't like the social makeup of the church she is attending. They are all about the financials and a lot less about service to others and compassion. She is a compassionate child and my son used to be. We don't have the same social beliefs as the church they are attending now, and we damn sure don't have the hypocritical attitude.
He didn't go hang out with her today either, and I have my hopes that he has finally seen the light, but I am not going to hold my breath, this "Damned Sinner" has learned that the boy doesn't seem to think too clearly when it comes to women, though I am really rooting for the dancer, shes the one who made him the snow globe and asked him to the Winter Formal and who has told him to, "get over himself" more than once. Gotta respect a little chick that and shes a local so I would at east be able to keep an eye on things.

Dear Roger:Werewolf Birthdays

My son turn 16 today. I think this is the saddest I have been on one of my kids birthdays ever. Raising a boy has to be one of the most maddening, frustrating, heart breaking and difficult undertakings you can attempt.

I tried hard to be a good mom. I talked, listened, stayed involved, gave lots of hugs, supported, and made sure he had the things he needed to fit in or to be himself, whichever he was wanting to do at the moment. I always made sure than when he went to school, no one knew he was a poor kid. I indulged his weird haircuts, his odd tastes in music and when I could I took him to see his black cloud of a psuedo girlfriend. I cleaned up after him and over-indulged him as any Texas mother is prone to do her first born son. He has constantly been told how,"Smart, talented, handsome" and what not he is, and hes got a bit of an ego. Ive heard from his best buddy he can be a bit of an ass at times to be around, and honestly, ive seen it. Hes got a snarky, sarcastic temper and hes a perfectionist who expects everyone around him to be up to his standards.

I love my son with all my heart. For his whole life hes done without the key thing that helps a boy turn into a civilized male, a civilized male role model. He has no father. His biological is a sociopathic bastard who offered to kill us both many times over if we ever bothered him, convincingly enough that the state investigators determined that he was a credible threat and that we should probably stay far away from him.( I really know how to pick men)But now that my son is of age and wanting to go into acting and such, he wants to meet his father and ask him,"Why?" partly to find that out, and partly because his father was a small time actor amongst other things who still has family out in Santa Monica and I guess he thinks he might get in their good graces.

When my ex showed up out here, he greeted him with open arms and they have developed a camaraderie. I dont really know what to think about that. I know that they have talked, in depth, several times about what happened, and I know that my ex has apologized to him but I dont know, I guess I just cant forgive as easy and my ex knows that. We actually talked about that last night when my son left for a little while. It cleared the air about a lot of things. My ex said that boys reach a point where they just become creatures that are really unpleasant to be around,(like werewolves)and that without focus or direction and strict regimentation like a military school, they often get into trouble. He told me that the next two years are going to be the toughest. I remember my 16-17 year old years and I still don't really know how I survived them and I wasn't in a big city filled with all kinds of trouble to get into. My son has been pushing me away lately, not wanting to talk to me, looking at me scornfully and accusing me of favoritism towards my daughter. Thats not true. I love all my kids equally, but differently and i tried to explain that to him. With him, for years it was just me and him, struggling with only each other for company, he was my peanut and my world. I gave up everything for him and I stopped being selfish. I stopped living just for me. With Sticky, my protective love emerged. I watched him struggle to live and then struggle to achieve and I helped him every step of the way and I live for his smiles and his hugs. Stubby is my middle child, the one who thinks he is the extra, but he is the child who is most like me and that is both something I love about him and fear for him. I see every personality trait I have ever worried about in me, living in my son and I hug him daily in the hopes that he will realize that he is loved well beyond what he imagines. Stevie, my daughter? The one son accused me of favoring...we nearly died together. She was born sick, she struggled to live and nearly didn't. Her father never came to the hospital to see us in those entire 10 days she struggled to live. When I brought her home, I was told that she was my problem. I spent months sleeping with her in my arms. She is my smiley child. Even though all the horrors, she would try to make me smile. When I was soo sick with H1n1, she would bring me drinks and sit and sing to me and keep me company. She always greets me with a smile and a hug, and no matter how crappy my day has been, she knows how to make it better and she will harass me until she makes me laugh or smile. How can you not love that?

I'm not really explaining very well that I love all my kids equally, but I do. When Chance is late getting home I am uneasy and worried, not because I want to control his life , but because I want to know hes safe. he thinks its because im a control freak at this point. The ex tells me that I wont win. He said I could present the boy with a brand new truck for his birthday,(wouldn't do that even if I could because that's just ridiculous over indulgence), and he would still find a reason to be pissed at me. I was going to give him the electric guitar, but I don't think I will now. I'm going to wait for Christmas, maybe by then he will be talking to me? I don't know. Everyone says boys are supposed to be easier, but I don't believe it. They are like having a werewolf with rabies and and an eating disorder living in your house. The do dangerous and ridiculous things and wonder why they have road rash on their skull and ass, and scorch marks on their jeans. I've spent some time looking at military academies and wondering if i dart him like a rogue grizzly, would they accept him for shipping if he were duct taped to the seat?

Dear Roger:Love You Long Time

http://youtu.be/Mia9jYTDtFI

My daughter. Good Lord that child. I often say that she is the greater beings sense of humor at work because there is no way a train wreck of a woman like me should have such a girly girl as a child. She has butt length curly blonde hair that she expects me to help her style when my idea of style is a pony tail stuffed under a ball cap. We got into an argument last night because she wanted me to paint her finger nails and toe nails, and I told her I didn't want her to do that because she is too young and because I am terrible at doing that, I mean seriously, it looks like a blind man with the tremors got ahold of house paint when I attempt it, but she wore me down and I let her do it.

She loves young Jackson Rathbone. I think we've talked about that before quite a bit, and I don't really deter her. She needs a decent male role model and she could do worse than him.

She celebrates his birthday pretty much the entire month of December and draws him cards and such. Last year I had to hike my ass to the post office to mail his card in the rain after she found it laying on my desk where I had stashed it thinking it would just go to some mailing center and be discarded anyway. I wont make that mistake ever again. She wanted to sing a song for him this year and after she worked on it for over a week with much drama and stress, she finally got something she was happy with and we got it recorded and I sent it off into the internet ether a little early thinking it would bounce from place to place and maybe get seen someday. Yeah...im a dumbass. Not only did he see it, he tweeted it out and thanked her for it setting off an avalanche of emails and tweets and comments and HOLY COW ! in my life. She was tickled to death he had actually seen it and that he knew she was thinking of him.

Shes a good hearted kid, and that was her whole motivation, to let him know she was wishing him a happy birthday. She prays for him every night and defends him from teasing by her brothers and others.

Her father wasn't pleased by all the attention, but then his gripe was,'She never does that kind of stuff for my birthday." yeah...well...I wont go into the reasons why, they are all public record, but she doesn't even know when his birthday is and I don't think she cares.

She adores a decent enough boy and I am happy to let it be. I remember when I was just a little bit older than her, standing in front of a stage I was barely tall enough to see over, watching a young man sing and strut around, my heart racing as I screamed my tweeny lungs out. I adored him and I had all his records and posters and concert t-shirts. He was pretty obscure and I got teased pretty hard for liking him as well, but 30 years later, the opening chords of one of his songs still brings the biggest grin to my face and news of a revival tour of the states has me contemplating going to L.A. for the first time in over a decade, just to see him. I get it, I really, really do.

Dear Roger: As If Life Wasn't Interesting Enough

So yesterday I was telling you about daughters little video that I sent off to her favorite fella? yeeaah...I didn't think anything of it, he is busier than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest and he has soo many people vying for his attention that I didn't even dare to think that her little video was even going to cross his radar, so I was going about my business yesterday morning, sitting around being lazy, drinking my coffee and reading a, uh ahem...story? when my Iphone tells me a priority tweet hit. I picked it up off the coffee table thinking it was either my bestie Chels wanting to know if I wanted to go for coffee or the band boys talking about all the excitement over in England. Oh yeah, it was one of the band boys all right, THE band boy daughter thinks hung the moon and lit the stars. Not only did he see her video, what I was looking at was his tweet of the link to it with a description of it as the "Best Birthday Gift Ever" and thanking her for it. I dropped my damn Iphone in shock, thank God for good cases and soft carpet.

I may have shrieked...I dont know, but Spencer jumped, the cats fled the room and then things really got crazy. My twitter feed went nuts, my email started blowing up and I just was standing there with my teeth in my head for a few minutes before my Texan kicked in and I remembered my manners. I typed in a polite,'Thank you " to the young man and sent it off and then realized I had to tell someone in RL other than the dog how awesome this was because I just knew my daughter was going to lose her ever loving mind when she got home from school. I watched for a bit as the numbers on her video started climbing and I was dumbfounded, good Lord...My little girl has sand like none of us has ever had. I would have never had the guts to do that, I am still freaked out that I helped her with it, but she was very sure about what she wanted to do and how she wanted to do it, I was worried though that she would be freaked out that soo many people had seen it, so just a little bit of dread hit for a bit.

I called up my sis and talked to her and she was more reassuring and convinced that God had played a real joke on me by giving me Stevie as a daughter,(girly girl), when I flounder on the best of days to not shave my head in frustration and and am more prone to jump into a brawl than some men. Stevie makes me try harder to be civilized and that, I think, is good, but I hope I am not failing her.

I got all kinds of emails and tweets and facebook comments in support and love for her little video and I was busy all day saving them up for her, but the main one, the one from him, I marked that as a favorite and set it aside so she could see it when she got home first thing.

I watched for her bus and Shortround got home first. I told him and he was excited and happy for her. I swear, if his mom cant keep it together, I am going to adopt him. Hes a great kid and hes good for my son, making him spend less time texting his black cloud of a psuedo girlfriend, and more time actually going out and doing things. The way he invades my sons personal space and forces him to be more social, cracks me up, and well, he has done the same damn thing to me. The kid is a hugger and I've been hugged more in the past week than I have in the past couple of years. I've learned to deal. Hes needed them because things have been pretty rough in his life. Hes started calling me,"Mom #2" Weve spent a lot of time taking about his situation and things, and he knows it will get better, and that he has a place with us for as long as he needs, my main rule is that he has to actually eat some real food, check in with me regularly, go to school and be here at night. My son watches out for him at school and walks him home and to school, so I think we have it handled . He helped me get the computer set up so when she got it the tweet was right there for her to see. We both got hang dog expressions on our faces and pretended we had some bad news for her,(fucked up, yes, I know) and as she shed her jacket and backpack and sat at the computer, I got my camera ready. It took a minute for it to register and when It did I was glad I was standing back. The "OH MY GOD's" were deafening. She was soo happy he actually saw it she jumped up and hugged me, her brother Stubby, Shortround, Spencer, and then she raced through the kitchen half a dozen times shrieking, "Im soo happy! I love him soo much!" She was buzzing for HOURS. In fact, the voice of doom finally had to be broken out at 1130pm to get her to finally go to bed and go to sleep. She had gone on a painting jag and had painted half a dozen new ideas that were mostly hearts.

Looking over at her now, she is snuggled up in her bed with her monkey under her arm, and a slight smile on her face, her day, her week, her month, her year, made again thanks to a kind young man taking a few moments from his hectic life to make a child's life so much more bright.

The video view count this morning was over 903....good Lord.

Dear Roger:The Wheel That Spins Us All

Yesterday was just a weird day. It was colder than frostbitten penguin balls, in fact I swear I saw a few snow flakes. The kids were restless and working on driving each other an myself nuts, so they went out grocery shopping with their father for a little bit and he came back looking like he had been through the gates of hell,(wussy), and my daughter...that child, let me tell you, she is going to be the death of me. Seriously, she is going to probably be the one with the pillow over my face in the wee hours. She was insistent that she HAD to get the song and birthday video done for her favorite fella yesterday. She had been walking around working on the lyrics for a few days and getting frustrated when her ever helpful,(heavy sarcasm) brother Stubby, kept interjecting his suggestions. I had to intervene when she chased him from the bedroom with a boot in hand, prepared to use it as a weapon. I had to say,"Boots are shoes, not tools of destruction." Three thrown pens later, two flounces and and a meltdown in tears, she finally got something she was happy with. If she is like this as a child,(super perfectionist), what the hell is she going to be like as an adult? Her older brother was trying to stay out of her line of fire and practice his guitar with Shortround, but she went up to him and said,"I need to know if you can play a simple rhythm?" She then hummed it out for him and he tried to copy it and she shook her head, "No, No NO! Thats all wrong! Listen to me!" Shortround at this point is clutching a pillow and trying to not fall off the couch laughing as my son looks a bit intimidated. She clapped the rhythm and then gave him an example of the sound she was looking for by singing it. He tried to copy it but he was putting his own funk on it and she got annoyed with him."Do you not get this is a BIRTHDAY song?" They began bickering and I am sitting there looking at them wondering if other families have kids that bicker over such things? She finally just threw her hands up in frustration and said, "Never mind! If I want background music or something I will have Cole beatbox for me." Shortround fell off the couch laughing. Fired from a gig by a 7year old. I left and went to work for a while. froze my ass off, got called a,'Bitch ' by a junkie, and just generally had a crappy afternoon when my shoes got wet and my toes froze, but when I got home, I was met at the door by my little girl who hugged me with her sopping wet hair flying all over and one of her best dresses hanging on her . I was put to work right away doing wardrobe and hair, combing out her hair and drying it while she played with my Iphone and took pictures of her Jackson sitting on her bedside table. Once I got her hair and dress ready, I asked if she was going to wear shoes and she said,"Why would I wear shoes? We aren't shooting this outside. You aren't going to focus on my feet are you? I don't need my shoes, focus on my face mom."

She was practicing her song and talking to her monkey while her minion, also known as her brother Stubby, ran around getting the lighting just right and trying to get Spencer to stop biting his butt and chasing the cat. Once that was all sorted, he bribed his underwear only clad brother Sticky to stay in his room for the duration and then she tells me,"Im ready, get your camera person hat on and get ready."

With Stubby sitting next to me on the couch, adjusting my hat til she thought it looked right, I used my Iphone and filmed her, trying to avoid filming all the boots and jackets hanging all over the dining room chairs, the dog water dishes, the backpacks, and all the other crap in the background. She messed up once and we all started laughing so I had to stop filming and erase it and start again, with her looking like a bundle of nerves the whole time. Shes a funny kid, all confidence and swagger on the surface, but she wants to make things perfect to the point of stress. I got her laughing and she finally relaxed and said,"Okay, Im ready. Camera, ready? Lets get this right, its important! Roll em!" And she sang her little song and for once there were no interruptions of the dog barking or her brother snorting or anything else. It came out pretty damn cute. I loaded it to youtube, and she watched me like a hawk as I sent it off in an email and posted it to my Facebook page. I got a lot of hugs yesterday for that, pretty decent pay for what I did I think, though it was a a couple of hours after I got home before I got my wet shoes off and my frozen toes thawed out. Shes worth it though, her and her brothers started filming some movie about the dog and her monkey...God only knows what that is going to be about .

Found another place down near that school for her. Its actually right across the street and if I can get it all pulled together, hopefully we will be there around mid January. I wanted to move for the start of the new term, but there is just too much up in the air financially so I have to sit tight until I am sure someone else is capable of pulling their weight. She is so eager to go, she has been working on her ,"Portfolio" and yesterday she painted a picture of a cat turd because the blue flecks from the litter make it interesting. Interesting does not begin to describe the child.

Dear Roger: Where Did The Time Go? Can I Get A Rewind in a Digital World?

This next week my oldest son is turning 16 years old. I want to say,'Uh, NO! That is not allowed. There is no way in hell my cute little, curly haired, dimpled, sweet baby boy is turning 16", but I have a feeling my cries would be fully ignored unless they were laughed at. This is like birthdaymageddon around here. My eldest daughter is turning 20, another heart stopper but I have had more time to get used to that one. You would have been on the back side of 65 and that still blows my mind, my father is in the same boat. My nephew, my niece, my sister turned 40 on the 1st and I actually managed to break with tradition and send her out a few truly obnoxious cards in time to annoy her, and so many others in the family have birthdays this month that its no wonder that everybody gets so damn cranky. Daughter has been sweating me to get her hand drawn card to her favorite boy mailed out to him because he creeps ever closer to 30 this month as well, and every time I walk past where its laying on the counter I feel guilty, not because I think he gives a damn, but because I know she does and if I don't get it sent out in time, she will be upset with me.

Back to son, SIXTEEN. Holy shit. He is such an odd character for 16. Case in point, I came home unannounced the other day because I knew he was at my house with his buddies Jay, and Shortround and they were in my home alone. I remember what I would have been up too at age 16 with no parents around and money as well as time on my hands so I decided to scoot on home and make sure they were behaving. I walked up the back way and found all the blinds drawn and the lights off. I thought to myself, WTF? Do I reallllly want to go in there? Will I need brain bleach? After all, kids are different nowadays and I just don't understand how things go anymore, and I know that they are wayy more touchy feely and friendly with less respect for personal space than the guys I grew up with used to have and I did not want to be traumatized. But it was cold outside and I figured, well, I have seen all kinds of things, nothing can be that bad, so I opened the back door and stepped into the house.

The sight that greeted me was, unexpected to say the least. Jay is a musician like my son, and he was sitting next to my son on the couch and they were both arguing over a chord progression or some musician/dork thing. Shortround was sprawled out on the floor with a soda in one hand and an quesadilla in the other, watching Harry Potter. My kitchen had been violated in a foul and demented manner with eggs and Asian seasoning splattered all over the pans,and there were empty soda cans everywhere, but there was no lingering odor of weed, no blaring rap music, no evidence of any other kind of weirdness going on at all and I had to wonder, What the hell kind of kid had I raised? I know what I was doing at 16 and it resembled nothing like that. My friends and I were involved in partying out on oil leases and racing vehicles and drinking all forms of alcohol. I wont even get into some of the other stuff that went on, but lets leave it to say that those Jackass guys were copycats and candyasses compared to us and its amazing more of us didn't end up splattered all over the highways.

My son has wrecked his skateboard a few times, and he has a deep and passionate loathing for Toyota drivers because of their seeming desire to have him as a hood ornament, but he has not been in trouble or suffered any serious injuries,(know that I am furiously knocking on my bedside table that is made of wood), but he is a good kid. He is way too serious and intense at times, he has a bit of a stick up his ass when it comes to cutting loose and having fun, but I am soo damn lucky. Hes not a criminal, not a sociopath, not a bully or a coward. He has friends and he stands up for those weaker than him, and his friends are loyal to him. I cant stand his girlfriend and neither can his friends, but its not because shes a bad girl or a whore or anything like that, she is just wrong for him. Turns out my son is a bit of a prude, and while he likes looking at pretty girls, he doesn't like trashy women. Can I get a hallelujah?! No hookers, strippers or sluts in his future. He likes good girls! Yes! I swear to GOD, I damn sure don't understand that one. He is smart as hell, a little lacking in the ambition side of things, but hopefully he will find that as he gets a little older. He is going to start an early entry college program after the first of the year that will allow him to focus on music theory and more advanced classes that don't have all the screw up kids in them, because he does not suffer fools well. He lacks patience and he resents group projects where he feels like he is doing all the work and putting in the effort and then suffering when no one else contributes their part and the grades stink. Its happened to him several times this year already and he basically quit going to one class after the last time because he got all his part done, and no one else did theirs. He was pissed off, frustrated and angry and I was worried that he was going to resort to getting physical over it because I had set the rule that he could not participate in sports unless he had B's or above, and with the loss of the group project grade, that meant that was not going to happen, so his temper came out at school, and his counselor realized then that he was in the wrong place. She referred him to the college based program and told him that he was too smart and talented for any other the other programs, and that since he couldn't afford private school, it was his best bet. He will end up with 24 college credits, early entry into Portland State and the start of a good musical resume that will begin at 16 instead of 19, so hopefully his intensity and love of music will drive him to succeed, where the schools have failed him. His ability to play so many instruments will hopefully be cultivated and expanded and he will take that and make something of it, if not as a musician, maybe as a songwriter,(which he already dabbles in), or as a teacher. Either way, at 16 hes no longer a kid, though he is still my baby.

Dear Roger:Keeping it Reality?

So I got to see myself on a tv show last night. Yeah, I actually dabbled a little bit into the acting thing and extra-ed on a couple of shows and even considered trying for more, but I don't think I have the right personality for it, meaning I have too much of a smart-assed temper and I am not a very good ass kisser. When I don't like someone, I tend to let them know it, even if its unconsciously. Anyway, back to seeing myself on tv, I had gotten to work on this new show for ABC called GRIMM, the premise sounds pretty cool and it has potential, so I was pretty excited, but Ill tell you what, acting is boring. It was a lot of repetition, a lot of sitting around and a lot of ego stroking. I did meet some pretty cool and interesting folks, made some new friends, and for the most part it was a fun day, but meh...not really my thing. I figured I would get cut from the final product because I didn't really look like all the other background folks, I was dressed in my white shirt and vest and black jeans and boots.,(my typical attire when I worked in forensics), and while their wardrobe person called it good, I got them impression the director didn't like it, but whatever. Some chick did my hair for me that day and it was pretty neat. I haven't had my hair styled like that in well...forever and I think there were enough bobby pins in it to unlock half the locks in Portland. I spent a great part of the day sitting at a desk pretending to write a report and answer the phone, then another chunk of the day walking back and forth in a hallway and then at the end of the day I was walking around in the squad bay passing out folders. That is what made it into the show! Me, walking around. Mostly caught from the back. I was shocked to see how weird I walk. I already knew I was short, but I have this weird bowlegged amble.WTF? How come nobody ever told me? I sat there looking at the tv stunned a how strange I looked, and impressed at how long my damn hair is in the back now, but I walk weird. My ex said that i have always had a very distinctive walk that he could pick out of a crowd when he could recognize nothing else, he called it an "Asshole swagger". Hes a jerk though, so I don't pay him any attention, but my son agreed. Soo, I don't think I like seeing myself on film. I am also in an upcoming episode of Portlandia and thank God I am sitting down for most of that one. Having never seen myself on video, its quite an odd thing to digest. You see all the faults and oddities in yourself and if you are surrounded by knuckelheads like me, you get teased about them ceaselessly. The only one who wasn't teasing me was my baby girl, she was very proud and wants to get into acting herself...oh no, oh nononono! What have I done?

This week flew past and has been soo damn busy for me. I am tired and ready for a break but I dont think thats coming anytime soon. Daughter asked me yesterday,"Whats that black stuff under your eyes? I thought I had dirt or something under them so I went and looked in the mirror and realized I looked like a raccoon from being so tired. Dark circles with bags, what a nice look. I dont think I would have to worry about any looming acting roles for a while looking like that.

Dear Roger:Observations,Realities and Accepting the Fact I Dont Have Time For BS

I have become a much harder person as I have aged. While my small daughter still keeps me young at heart in many ways, in many other ways, the experiences I have had have turned me into a colder person who calls it as I see it. I am a lot less willing to put up with bullshit that I put up with earlier in my life because I have realized that time is short, things happen and there are no promises of tomorrow. I have faced my own mortality a few times and rather than being afraid for myself, I was worried about my kids. That really would be my only worry. I read an interesting article yesterday about how doctors die. Strange subject material I know, but it struck a nerve with me and I realized it was because it was how I saw things. As someone who has worked in the medical field from beginning to end,meaning I have delivered babies and I have been with people as they have died, I have worked trauma codes that did not end well and I have assisted in 34 autopsies, I have decided that I am a strictly,"NO CODE" kinda person. No heroics, no long drawn out money draining efforts. I want my quality over my quantity. I hope to be one of the lucky ones that is just out walking around and have it hit me like a bus and that is it, gone with my boots on. My greatest fear is ending up at the mercy of someone else. I have lived the last 10 years with various serious health issues and I struggle now to keep adequate weight on, to keep my migraines under control and to function some days. Its not fun. It makes me grumpy and hard to be around at times and no one really understands that living with long term pain kinda sucks the joy out of you. I tend to ignore other things, like the two wisdom teeth I have that are slowly breaking down and abscessing in my jaws right now because there is really nothing I can do about them. The last quote I got to get them removed was $1200, and that is out of my reach, so I just have learned to cope with them.Its all relative to whatever else is going on in my life. I get annoyed at people like my ex when they whine about minor things like how difficult his life is because he fucked up and now everyone judges him. Well, that is his own damn fault. He had options earlier in his life, he had a full ride scholarship to a great college and he could have been a lawyer, but he decided to be an asshole instead. We all choose our directions and we have to deal with the repercussions. I try to get my kids to see that and realize that decisions we make as teens can have a lasting impact into adulthood. I was a fuck up as a teen and I lived hard, abusing my body with copious amounts of alcohol and it took me a few years to figure out that the whole,"Live fast die young and leave a good looking corpse" thing wasn't going to work out for me because it was too late to die young. Alcohol poisoning slowed down my drinking and now I am pretty much a one beer drunk. You would think that being such a cheap date I would score a man every now and then, but nope... Its still a straight pecker desert around here. Its okay though because with the live I have going on right now, any sane man would run screaming into the night and I have already had enough of the crazy to last me a lifetime. I have things I want to do to make life better for my kids, but I will get them done one way or the other, with or without help. I always do, I always will. I work hard to be a good person, an honest and direct person who does the right thing, always. I am not afraid to die, not afraid to live. I am doing both, daily.

Dear Roger:Inspirations,Motivations, Writing Jags and Monkey Sex-Or things Found In A Molskine

Im on a writing bender again. It could be worse, having writers block is waay worse for me, but my muse had paid a particularly inconvenient time to pay me a visit, especially with the crowded house, the stress of trying to find a new place that I can tolerate and the holiday stress. I have 3 new stories I have cooking, one is already at over 25k the other at 15k, and the third is around 8k but its rather dark and I try to keep it on the very back burner. My other stories I have been working on all along are still just cranking out of me and I intend to wrap up 2 of them in this next week. Its really not a stress for me to write, and that makes my son a little crazy. He has been hit with writing assignment after writing assignment lately and he struggles with them. He of course waits until the last minute to ask for any help and then he harasses me when im in the middle of either writing something that is really flowing , or editing. Both situations make me a little crazy. He had been struggling to come up with a concept for his one paper and he started bouncing ideas off of me. I shot them down one after another until he was about ready to scream in frustration. All of them sounded like the sitcoms or crap he saw on tv and I told him so. I told him to draw from real life and what he saw around him. We sat and threw things back and forth until he finally grasped the concept and away he went.

Life experience is what helps me to write.I have been asked in the past where I get the ideas I write about and how I create things so quickly, but its from observation and life. Everything I see or hear or experience has been filed away and preserved so that I can draw from it at a later time. I have had some pretty depraved experiences and that has made for some of my more dark and horrific parts of my stories, I have also had some pretty damn funny things go on in my life and those have been added in as well. Every person, every voice and story and place is added to the mix and drawn from and something as simple as an expression shared between two boys in a photograph can fire off an idea that takes on a life of its own.

I spent a lot of time in college studying criminal psychology, criminal personality, things like body language and microgestures. I wanted to work for the FBI in the Behavioral Analysis Unit. I read every damn book there was to read about it, studied under some of the best professors to be found, and then life intervened, my head got scrambled up in a tumble down the I40 and it took several other knocks that left me with a wonkiness that no one wants to employ in any law enforcement capacity, but I still have all that knowledge from all those classes I got,"A's" in and all those books I read. So I study people and I use it when I write. Watching how two people move around each other or look at each other when they are supposed to be in a relationship, or others when they are just friends, it leads to some great ideas for story lines that only seem to wander through my mind at the most inconvenient of times. I get ideas when I am in the shower or almost asleep in bed or out walking in the rain, in a hurry to get somewhere. It never seems to be when I am actually sitting at my computer trying to write. One of my favorite authors,"Bukowski" said that that was how it should be though, you should only write when its burning to get out of you. Lately it has been. I dont know what I will do with it other than keep putting it up where I have been. I think about submitting it to a publisher from time to time, I have what are essentially 3 novel length stories already done, but I am so damn difficult to deal with when it comes to editing. I have that artistic temperament and my stories are my 'Vision" and much like a painter, I write them how I see them, and I write how I talk. Its often a bit crude and rough around the edges and impolite, though rarely graphic in the sex department. Weirdly enough the most graphic sex scene I wrote was in a story that involved two gay male characters. The research on that was interesting to say the least. I prefer to not smack my readers in the face with it,(so to speak) and let their imaginations do the work, but I still get reviews describing my sex scenes as,'Smoking hot" and so on, so I guess I am doing something right for someone who has failed in all real life research attempts as of late.

Writing has been my salvation my entire life. I have always done it. I write everything from stories to poems to songs to just nonsense ideas for things. My dream job would have been to be a writer, able to ensconce myself off in some Scottish croft, alone except for the occasional visitation from a hot lil number that I had flown in just to see to my needs when I wanted him, and there I would crank out my great American novels as the mood struck me, along with a few hit songs for others to sing, but life stepped in and smacked me up side the head and so I write from my bedroom in an apartment in a suburb of Portland in the wee hours of the morning, hoping to get enough time to edit and save before the dog needs out or the kids need food, and I save those experiences in my mental file for later.

Dear Roger: Keeping Things Interesting On The Homefront

So yesterday I mentioned I was having a hard time dealing with my teen son, right? Well my masochistic tendencies must have kicked into overdrive yesterday because now I have two teen boys in my home. Sons best buddy is having problems at home like we had a couple of years ago and he ended up needing a place to stay. Like I was going to leave a kid out on the street? You know I take in strays. Hes a good kid, and my own son seemed a lot calmer and happier knowing his buddy was safe. They are piled up in my living room sound asleep right now, its the first time in hours that its been quiet in the house. The kid must have thanked me a million times and I kept telling him its not a deal at all, but he hugged me.I am not a hugger. I hug my own kids, but outside hugging does not happen. I am not a very physically demonstrative person. I just kinda go into a freak out mode when someone grabs me for a hug, so I try to avoid them, but the kid was fast and before I could move he hugged me. Son told him,"Dude! She is not a hugger. She wouldn't even hug Jackson Rathbone when she had to chance so you are probably lucky to be alive!" I think I was too stunned at that point to do anything. The kids mom had hugged me too. It was just a day of my personal space being violated all over the place.

My sis called yesterday about wanting me to talk to my parents again. It was like the great gorilla in the room that she finally pointed out and decided to confront me about. I have not spoken to my parents since February of last year. It was a decision I made after much introspection and the realization that it would just be better for everyone if I quit trying to be the daughter I cant be. Its not about money or material things as they seem to think. I could give a flying fuck about money. I don't have any, never have , never will, don't care. Money just brings troubles of its own. If you consider pictures of your grandparents and uncle to be material things, then maybe. But it was because I was replaced. I wasn't needed. They had another chance to,"do it right" and I don't know, maybe they did? But I am screwed up and it just best this way. I am not a particularly nice or pleasant person to be around on the best of days. I got tired to being the family fuck up and without a family to be compared to, I seem to be a success story. I came up here with nothing, got a place to live, a job and built a life from nothing and now we are moving forward again. My writing is going well, my kids are doing well. My family tends to heed my advice and its working well for us so far. I've got issues and resentments and problems that go back decades, and rather than deal with them I prefer to just shut the door on that part of my life and move forward, trying to let it go. We all make mistakes. I was one of them. I know that, its okay. I have accepted that I was never the perfect kid, but I am trying like hell to be a decent parent to my own kids. I don't know what else to say. I worry about losing my sis. We finally built a great relationship as adults after being played off of each other for years. She was the favorite,getting away with almost everything but murder, and for a long time all we did was fight,. but now I would be lost without her bi-weekly calls to harass me about some craziness going on in her life.

I don't know how she lives back there, but she is doing well with no debt, a new house a great husband and life, once again the perfect child. We balance each other, the good kid and the black sheep. I miss her and her crazy kids whose adventures just about rival my own kids craziness, and maybe someday we will all get together again, but for the near future, I am happiest far away and wandering and I hope she understands.

Dear Roger:A Sure Sign Of Insanity

My eldest son is going to drive me to drink. I swear to God I do not know how teen boys survive to become men. He has moments when he is kind and helpful and charming and the adorable little boy with the dimples that charmed the hell out of people all over the place, and then in the next moment he is the epitome of,'Werewolf boy" snapping and snarling and trying to rip throats out of all those around him without rhyme or reason. He is reckless, like a,'Jackass" stuntman without the paycheck, often coming home with odd scorchmarks on his pants or his pants ripped completely out like he did the other day! I am serious Rog! The entire ass end of his jeans were ripped completely out. I asked him what the hell happened to an almost brand new pair of skinny jeans and all he could say was,"I dont know." He has road rash and weird scrapes and bruises all over him, like a stray dog that got rolled by a pickup truck. I know a lot of its because of that skateboard, but my God! Hes running around with a bunch of Japanese boys and hes picked up some of the language, so now he mutters in three different languages under his breath when I annoy him, which seems to be all the damn time.

He comes home to eat, poop, get his clothes washed, and to practice guitar for hours. That is about it. He only really talks to my ex, which blows my damn mind. Its lately been like he prefers his company, which he might. Maybe he is just desperate for any adult male to talk to? I dont freaking know. He seems to be pissed at me most of the time no matter what I do, so I just try to stay the hell out of his way. I have over indulged him and I can give him anything else, but at times its reached the point I dont even want to be around him, but that may not be a problem much longer. I found an Arts and music magnet school in the city of Portland that is very highly rated. They actually have a gifted program and they are an immersion program in the Arts including Music, dance and painting and such, in other words, heaven for Stevie. The only problem is that its in a very spendy neighborhood that we all couldn't afford to live in, so what we are considering doing is me getting a studio down there with her, letting the boys stay in Gresham so that they wouldn't get disrupted, and commuting back and forth for work and visits on weekends and holidays. A lot of things have to fall perfectly in place for it to work, but Stevie is beyond excited. Its the neighborhood we originally wanted to move to when we moved to Portland and she would fit right in. The ex already has applied for 6 different jobs and is waiting to hear back on them. He wraps up one he got today, so hes already showing signs of progress in that aspect of things. If I find the right place and get in, we can financially make it with no problems, and maybe my son will be less moody to be around when he doesn't see me every day. I dont know, teen boys are difficult creatures to deal with, and I have 2 others on the way, a terrifying prospect to say the least.

Dear Roger: Pretty,Pretty Shiny Shiny, All Are Welcome,Alll Are Welcome

Things have been pretty calm around here. There is a spirit of cooperation that seems to be working out well for all of us. Maybe its the holiday spirit, maybe its just the realization that its root hog or die, or maybe its the realization that we have to work together for the common good, but everyone has been doing okay, even with all the typical strangeness going on.

The ex has finally accepted that he plays second fiddle to a monkey and he even got into the spirit of helping to find monkey related Christmas presents for her. I was floored. Most of the time he seems pretty confused as to how to deal with her. She seems to amuse and terrify him at the same time, but finding her things he knows will make her happy are his one sure fire way of communicating with her.He brought her some tattoo magazine the other day that had her fella in it and that got him a hug from her that about strangled him before she vanished into her room to read it to her Jackson. I had to ask,"Are you on drugs again or something? I didn't even know you remembered that boys last name." He said, "Well, I figured I better learn it, she has been pretty damn loyal to him for the past few years so it doesn't look like hes going away any times soon." He kinda growled that last part and I saw the irritated biker father for a minute,and it cracked me up. He has been buffaloed by a tiny blonde and a monkey...oh how the mighty have fallen.

She still calls him by his name, but at least she does talk to him now and she doesn't vanish the minute he shows up. She showed him her art work, including the birthday card she drew for her favorite fella and when he asked how old he was going to be, she said,"Lets just not talk about that." So her smart assed brother ,"Stubby" (though no longer called that to his face), said, "Hes going to be 27, that's TWENTY YEARS OLDER than you! ANCIENT!" He made several other snarky comments until her other brother, my oldest son said, "Why you hating on Jackson? What the heck did he do to you? Do you KNOW him? Have you met him? What is causing this problem with you? Are you jealous?" Just prior to this dissertation, he had been sitting in his chair obsessively playing with his new Iphone 4's guitar tuner app and ignoring all of us, I didn't even know if he was in the same world as us, but then BOOM! He calls Stub to task. All of us stop and stare at him, and he never even looks up from his phone, just keeps messing with the app, until his baby sister flies into his arms and hugs his neck so hard she about strangles him. The ex goes and puts an arm around Stub and says to him,"Son, we are out numbered just drink the koolaid and smile, its safer that way."

Christmas shopping has been a little better this year. Im still not rich by any means, but I have been able to pick up a few things for the kids and its going to be a lot better than it was last year for them. There wont be any fancy tv's or game systems because we just aren't into that kind of stuff, but there will be things they need and musical instruments as well as music and we will all be together. That is the most important thing. I missed my kids all being together last year and it was a very sad Christmas, this year? We are thinking about going out and actually having a Chinese dinner and enjoying ourselves, even though the ex thinks we are all crazy.

Its difficult shopping for the boys because they want gaming systems, and the ex has finally gotten on the same page with me about that in that he has realized that gaming systems just make the kids fat, lazy and irritable. So its no Guitar Hero, its real guitars. No Tony Hawk Skate games, its real skateboards. He was floored to realize his little girl has quite the attitude and is learning to skate faster than her older brothers. Her attitude and style had him muttering the other day and he looked and me and said,"If my daughter grows up to be a Suicide Girl I am going to blame YOU!" I didn't know what to say, he was the one who was a biker, not me! I may have been into punk and edgier things, and maybe I had shown her a world that most little kids in polite society didn't see, but HE was the biker. I pointed THAT out to him, and then he reminded me that while he may have been a biker, he was not the one with tattoos on his wrists and arms and a hobby of telling people where to go and what to do once they got there, and as my small daughter trotted past us after her brother for some slight, with her monkey hanging out of her back pocket, a stick-on tattoo peeking out from under the sleeve of her t-shirt, as she yelled,"Im going to kick your butt you ass hat!" He pointedly looked at me.

Dear Roger:Texas Nicknames for Short Men or Why My Son is Developing A Complex?

Nicknames. I have had one pretty much my entire life. When I was a kid I was,"J.D." as if I wasn't enough of a tomboy, that appellation incited me to even more orneriness and contrariness than just about anything else, including the chopped off hair and the lack of a shirt until I was 12. It was shouted from the baseball bleachers by cheering parents when I would zing a pitch a little close in on an opposing player, or from the soccer sidelines when I would charge down field against much larger opponents. It shaped who I became as a teenager and young adult when I was called,'Speed" for reasons I wont get into in great depth due to the fact I know my family and friends tend to peruse this blog, other than to say it started with my reputation for being a daredevil and having a lead foot and willingness to push the envelope, and it grew from there. That lasted for a few years while I was in the wonderful, wild world of the greater Metroplex and then it ended when I realized that there were some scarier and crazier motherfuckers in the world and I relocated to Arizona in the wee hours of Dallas morning when a NRH friend of mine told me he was leaving town and it was a good idea if I did the same before we both ended up finding out what was in the bottom of Ray Hubbard. Somehow, in the midst of all that, I ended up without a nickname for a while, but then I went back to my daredevil ways, but it was for good this time.

It was after being chased up the side of the Nogales mountains by a 30ft flame front and losing parts of the backs of my ears, some of the hide on the back of my neck and giving my fire chief the scare of his life,(considering I was only supposed to be delivering water to firefighters already on the defensive line), that he looked at me and my partner in crime, and said,"God Damn, Calamity!" I got 6 weeks on dispatch duty and the nickname that has stuck for nearly 20 years.

To be honest, I think it kinda fits.

I have given all my kids nicknames and they have all fit the kids rather well I thought, though my eldest sons original nickname was given to him by his granny. He was originally called,'Pecker", it was just a West Texas thing that most people really wouldn't understand and I couldn't explain. Now that hes a teen, he is,'Werewolf Boy" though rarely to his face. I call him that not only because of the whole hair issue, but because he is moody, unpredictable, and likely to want to rip the throats out of everything and everyone around him with little thought or provocation. My next oldest is called,"Sticky" because he just always is, sticky. My baby girl for the longest time was the,"Stinky Princess" when she was a tiny baby. That name was given to her by her brothers. I just called her princess, but the boys just called her,'Stinky". Last, but not least, is the main subject of today's blog,"Stubby". My short man. He is my shortest son and its driving him crazy. Hes in the 5th percentile for height, shorter than all the kids in his grade except for 2 Asian girls. He blames me. I have tried to point out all the short guys that are doing great, but he doesn't care. He knows that his 7 year old sister is within an inch of being taller than him. She tried to be helpful and tell him that her favorite boy is a petite fella, and that just pissed Stubby off even more. I told him that he would probably have a growth spurt in the next few months and that didn't help. He is just wrapped up in being pissed off about being ripped off in the height department and much like I was at his age when I realized I was the smallest in my grade and people were patting me on top of the head and telling me,"Dynamite comes in small packages." He is ready to start kneecapping people, so I really should not have been shocked when he snapped at me this morning and said,"QUIT CALLING ME STUBBY!" I still was though. I wasn't ready to have to put his baby name to rest. He is still finding his way, trying to find where he fits in and what his niche is. His sister is,"Monkey Girl" and she is the Artist,singer and entertainer of the family. His big brother is the musician and the athlete. Sticky is the one who everyone just loves no matter what because he is just charming and sweet. Stubby...he is smart and and sweet and funny, but he doesn't know how to showcase himself like the others do. Hes still struggling to make friends and find his way. He prefers to read and be by himself, though he often find himself being the straight man to his sisters comedy routines. He wants to show that he noticeable in his own right and capable of casting his own, equally tall shadow. Its not going to be easy, and I warned him I would probably slip and call him Stubby more than once, but it wasn't that I didn't recognize that he was growing up, it was just me not being ready for it and being able to handle it.

Dear Roger: Temper, Temper

My son says I have a temper.I don't think its so much of a temper as a lack of willingness to suffer fools and poor behavior. Case in point, I have been a customer of Sprint since May. I own 4 lines of service for which I pay a SUBSTANTIAL amount of money each month. My bill is paid up, I have been an excellent customer and I have rarely complained though I have had some ongoing issues with my phones. I have the LG Optimus S phone which as my research has found, has some gremlins. Its does fun stuff like freezes and shuts off for no reason and with no warning, so I have been walking around part of a day, thinking that my phone was on, while my daughters school was trying to get ahold of me because she was sick, when actually it had shut itself off in a weird fit. The media player stops in the middle of songs and the whole phone wont do anything until you shut it totally off and restart it. All kinds of cute stuff that I could go on and on about. My sons phone does the same thing and more. I had called SPrint and they had walked us through a hard reset which wiped all our stuff and supposedly fixed the problem, but all it did was cause us to have to go back through and reset up all our things. I called them back, they said,"We will replace the phones since they are under warranty and you have the insurance as well, just take this ticket number to the nearest store and they will take care of you." Sooo, I went out in the rain, ticket and screwy phones with, and went to the store I loathe because they always treat me like I am some goofy old woman, and they looked at me like I was a crackhead thief and said,"We aren't replacing your phones. We dont care what the people at corporate said, we are a sales store, we wont do it." Things deteriorated from there. I spent over 2hours on the phone being transferred around, hung up on ,condescended to, lied to and just treated like they had me by the short hairs. I finally got cut off again so I called AT&T. They have IPhones with more features, a better service plan,and its almost $100 cheaper a month. In less time than I spent on hold with Sprint, I had new service ordered from AT&T. I would rather pay the early termination fee than be treated like a punk by a company that doesn't appreciate me.

I was angry though. There have been companies that have pissed me off and I have never done business with them again. Restaurants, stores, what have yous, if I get treated with disrespect, I will walk past them and pay more to go someplace else. I am the same with people. Maybe I hold a grudge too long, maybe not, but being treated with respect is a huge thing with me. If I am giving you my money, I damn well expect to at least get common courtesy. When I am met with respect, and even someone who goes a little beyond and acknowledges that I am a person? Hell, I am loyal to the bone, but treat me with disdain and with disrespect? I employ a scorched earth policy. I pay waay to damn much for clothes for my son at the local Zumiez store, but you want to know why? Because every damn time I walk in there, the manager looks up, says, "Hey Jen! Hows it going? And he remembers what I have bought in the past, he actually offers decent suggestions for what my knuckleheaded son could use and he thanks me for giving him my hard earned money. That is why I shop there when I could buy him cheaper clothes elsewhere. Its the same with bands and music. When I went to see Flogging Molly, it was a huge ordeal. I had to save up to buy the $38 ticket. I got it months in advance and I felt guilty for buying it because at the time that was a lot of money for my little family. The trip down there and back on the Max took the last $2 I had. I didn't even have money for a t-shirt or anything, but I had the time of my life and I left that show feeling appreciated because Dave King stood on that stage and he acknowledged that he KNEW that many of us in that audience had spent money we couldn't afford to come see him, and he thanked us for it and he meant it. That someone acknowledged they knew the the true cost of devotion and love of music to some of us, was amazing and it cemented in my heart the love of that band. It ensured that when times got better that more Flogging Molly album and t-shirts joined my old ones.

Everyone already knows the reason for the whole Monkey loyalty thing. The ex has given up trying to dissuade her and when he finally sat down and listened to the whole story,he realized that playing second fiddle to a rangy little rock star was better that not being allowed around at all. He was looking around her room the other day and he commented that there were no pictures of him on the walls. She said,"There isn't any room. I have my art and my Jackson pictures and my Harry Potter pictures, so I don't have room for you." He didn't take that very well, but he knows he fucked up and for the majority of her life he hasn't been a positive thing for her, and the man who has been, takes up much of the important space. Shes not holding a grudge, but hes going to have to work hard to make up for all the bad karma that hes so worried about because sometimes one temper loss in the wrong way can cost you more than you think. I work on keeping my under control and contructivly managed, he needs to learn how to do that before he goes trying to usurp a monkey.

Dear Roger: That Old, Familiar Feeling

My ex arrived up here last night. The one thing I had hoped to avoid more than anything else has finally come to fruition. Like an albatross around the mariners neck, he is mine, signifying my doom. I will never be shed of him. It was as if all the joy and light had gone out of the world and the hand had once again clamped around my throat, slowly tightening.

He brought the dog I told him he couldn't bring, and the boys were thrilled to see it. I told him the dog couldn't stay and he said,"Well kids, your mother says I have to get rid of him so I guess I should just let him run out into the road and make it quick." He laid it all at my feet, finding a home for the animal, or taking it to one of the overfull shelters, none of which are accepting animals. Luckily for me, my son had heard of a rescue for the particular breed and when I called them they said they would take him, but it would be a couple of days before he could be picked up. Of course he has had no vet care in the past year or shots, so I will need to get those done. Yet the boys still see him as the hero and me as the monster. They want me to get rid of my dog, Spencer, because he is newer. I dont understand. I just dont get how he has managed to fuck up my sons so badly in such a short amount of time. My eldest son got frustrated with how he was speaking to me the minute he walked through the door, so he walked up to him to say hello and to let him see that he now looks him in the eye and is just as broad shouldered as him, hes no longer the scared and small 12 year old he beat in the front yard like a misbehaving dog.

My daughter has hovered around the periphery of the situation. She is eager to show him things and talk to him, but nervous as well. She doesnt really know or trust him anymore. She has seen the dark side of him once too often and she worries. He has already told her to "Be quiet" twice, and that rankles me to no end. My daughter is the youngest and the only girl in a house full of savage boys, she is vying for attention and to be told to be quiet is cruel. I saw her shrink physically when he said that, and it pissed me off. I had come from her parent teacher conference thrilled that her teacher told me that my daughter is a born director, leader and a force of nature who has a goal in mind and the ability to reach it. She is driven and vivacious and outgoing and a happy child. I like to think that I did that by getting her out when I did. She has had over half her life away from him and his influence, never being told to shut up or go away or that she was stupid. She has been supported and loved and encouraged and allowed to love who she wants and follow her dreams, he was already making snarky comments about Jackson last night, and if he keeps on I will send him down the road. He threw away my eldest sons stuffie that he had from the time he was a baby. A battered and chewed but much loved stuffed bulldog named,"Churchill". My son had gotten it in Yuma and had carried it with him for over a decade. It had been stitched up, re-stuffed and was retired to a shelf in my sons room. When we left, somehow , Church got left behind. I asked the ex to please put him in storage with a few other things and I would gladly pay the fees, he said,"oh that old ratty thing is long gone, I threw all that shit away." He threw out all my eldest sons things, most of my stuff, and a good amount of my daughters things too. I dont know what possessed him to do that, but it was evil and I fear he would attempt the same with Jackson if given half the chance. He knows his position has been usurped in her heart and he hates that, and I worry that he would try to force her to love him because he is her father.

I hate this. I hate he is here. My stress level is through the roof, the boys are behaving as typical kids of divorce, not wanting to listen to me and playing us off one another, and he keeps claiming he doesn't want to cause problems while he continues to make passive aggressive comments and little digs at me about everything. I wish I could just run away for good.

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.

Dear Roger: Cave Dwelling For A Reason

I dont like most people. You know that. People who I have let into my rather insular existence know that, and the world around me picks up on it rather quickly. I have my reasons. When you have been either shit on or brutalized by a large chunk of the world, it tends to color your opinion of things. I prefer to just tend my own knitting, stay in my hidey hole and write, communicating with the world around me via social media or in vary limited social engagements like concerts. I pretty much trust no one, including family. The ones I trusted implicitly are all dead and everyone else seems to have an angle or something they want. I have cut off most of my family and only communicate with my sister, and that is maybe twice a month. Its not the healthiest of lives, but I really prefer it. It allows me time to focus on my writing and my art and it just keeps me from getting fucked over time and time again and from seeing things happen that enrage me, like my grandparents things being sold or given away, or my pleas for pictures of my grandparents or you being ignored repeatedly. I'm not a nice person, but then again I am the product of my experiences.

Its been a shit week around here that has made me want to retreat even further into my social isolation, but I am trying to resist the urge. I have been focusing on my writing and I managed to finish up a story that I had been working on for close to a year. I also successfully merged it with 2 of my other stories and now have managed to create an almost novel length story with characters that people got really emotionally invested in. I am finishing up the final part of it this month and I have already started posting a new story that I had put on the back burner while I had worked on how to merge the three I had been struggling with. I woke up this morning to an email box that was overflowing with positive reviews and author alerts and favorites. It was a great way to start the day. I've been sick the past few days with some hideous stomach bug that left me barfing and so damn weak I could hardly get up off the couch, but of course with 3 kids to myself after the eldest bailed on me. I'm still pretty shaky, but I am determined to clean house today and emerge from isolation just a little bit. If I keep allowing myself to stay in, I will just continue to do so and it will become a nasty circle of enabling behavior. I'm already hyper vigilant again and just trying to ramp that back down has been a challenge. Checking windows, doors, kids, watching people, making sure Major Jack is handy, its all just signs that I need a vacation maybe a concert so I can go and get my ya ya's out.

Dear Roger: Cock Blockery And Writing Jags, Does One Equal The Other?

So, like the other pale imitation of men up here in the drippy Northwest, this last one either turned gay or came to his senses and scurried off to less scary challenges. It was not unexpected, after all, we didnt have much in common and he was not within my requirements, but I did kinda like him and I was planning on taking him to a very nice dinner tonight of all nights and then hitting that like a ton of bricks. Perhaps it was the fear of the pending unleashing of the long caged beast that sent him fleeing for his very life? Who knows? I must give off some vibe of,'I am going to eat you up' like an errant Wild Thing that just scares the living daylights out of men. I swear I would not have hurt him in a bad way, but I guess we will never know. My son found it amusing. He thinks he needs to set me up with someone, but then he doesnt know anyone that would even remotely qualify. He gets skeeved out at the fact I find younger men to be more interesting, and I know that when I was in line with my daughter to meet those adorable young men in the band, my son was standing right behind me the entire time whispering ,"Mom, behave yourself!" As if he was worried I was going to drag the little one off into same dark lair and have my wicked way with him! Actually, it was the tall boy that got my attention, but I did behave myself and I simply smiled, got a bit wobbly in the knees, and went about my business.

All the sexual frustration has been good for one thing though, I have been writing like a fiend. Before the end of last month rolled around, I posted close to 20k words. Its just been pouring out of me and ideas are coming almost daily. I have had to start carrying my moleskin again so I can write things down so I dont forget them and I have been annoying the kids with all the time I have been spending just typing. My computer has keys that are unreadable due to all the typing I have done on them. My stats are fantastic and my hits are through the roof. I got over 12k hits on my stories last month and for some reason my profile posted 88 hits in one day. I have no idea why so many people would be interested in reading about me, but then again, if it generates interest in my writing, so be it. I have missed hanging out with my friends, with all the work I have been doing and with the crappy weather and the sick kids and all the general craziness that has been going on around here, but my writing has been my solace. I have gone back over it and read it and I have to say I am proud of what I have accomplished. I have stories that would stand alone as pretty damn good short stories, and I have even written a couple of smoking sex scenes, and considering its been a long damn while, I thought that was a major accomplishment.

The ex is staying in Ventura! He vacillates about it from time to time, but I can tell he loves it down there. He misses his kids, but he loves the freedom of not having to do the day to day care of them. Its hard damn work without end. He laughed at me when he found out my dating thing failed, in fact he said that my problem was that I was a,"Gay man in a woman's body." I didn't argue, I just asked him what that said about him? I try to involve him in the kids lives via phone, but he is always busy or short tempered, (not unusual), so I have decided I am just going to leave the ball in his court. If he wants to talk to them, he will have to call them. He grumbled about their Halloween costumes, but then he sent 50 dollars to outfit all three kids. I dont know how many of you have tried to outfit 3 kids for Halloween, but 50 wont cut it. We bought face paint and went with my idea and they had a blast. I sent him a picture to his phone and figure that I will deal with the bitching later. I am just glad he has decided to stay down there. Its going to make all of our lives better.

Dear Roger:Relationship Advice? Are You Kidding Me?

My eldest son and his girlfriend of over a year broke up yesterday. The resultant drama had the whole house in disarray and of course he was upset and sad. He says it was a mutual thing, but who the hell knows? He asked me why people seem to make no damn sense some times and I just had to grin at him. He realized that I was 5 days post date from my last date with no phone calls or texts or even a Facebook poke, so I was once again...thhhhpppt! 'Aww, mom! Its like you always say, F'em and feed em fish heads." Exactly, he seemed to get it at that point. People kinda suck and once you realize that, life is a lot easier. You dont expect anything different from anyone, and that way you aren't disappointed when they turn out to be an asshat. I finally got him laughing by telling him tales of my dating experiences, and all the losers I had gone out with when I was younger and my theories on why I dont have any success now. I didn't mention my tumblr full of images of men tied up and vaguely dominatrix themed art or the gay erotica I write, but he told me that I just intimidate the hell out of men. "You gotta quit looking like you want to eat them or kick their asses mom! You need to get your teeth fixed,(another bad wisdom tooth has struck), and you need to try and be girly." I have tried. I dressed nice, I tried to tone it down a bit, but I am me. I am the queen of socially awkward and weird and as my favorite button says, I am, "Deeply and creatively weird" and pretty proud of it. I dont know what to do about it. I guess just saying,"Fuck it! Drive on." is the way to be, If I am destined to ever meet a man brave enough to take a tumble with me, then it will happen, but if not, well then I will be the crazy cat lady with Duracell as company.

Son seems to be coping pretty well. He has girls hitting on him all the time and he could have gone to Homecoming with a ballerina from his school, so I guess he will land on his feet. his mohawk got him in trouble with his girly entourage. They were not happy that he had cut his hair and apparently I nearly got ugly phone calls about it from some teeny fans of my son. The boy is 15, but has already got fans and an entourage due to his guitar playing and his singing. This is not good. I guess I should count my lucky stars that I gave him the talk about protection so soon? If hes going to be a rockstar, then he will need it.

The ex is staying in Ventura. I cant say I am disappointed, in fact I am thrilled to death. He had promised to send money to help with the boys Halloween, but we all know what the end result of that was. I dont count on anyone, especially a man, so I am putting together their costumes as best I can on my own.

I've been on a writing jag on my story,"Long Distance" that I had put on hiatus over 6 months ago! I am thrilled that the characters started talking to me again, but the writing jag comes at a really inconvenient time, I am busy at work and its hard to take time to jot down noted and ideas when you are cleaning Labrador out of some scrotes fridge.

Dear Roger: Conventional Wisdom for the Unconventional?

My son tells me I am not like other moms. I dont know if that is a good or a bad thing. I tend to be strict about manners and curfew and discipline, but I also support my kids in their pursuits to be themselves. I let them know from an early age that I loved them no matter who they loved, and that we are a live and let love family. We may tease eldest son about his alleged boy crush on Jackson Rathbone, but if that was the real case, we would support him. My kids dont make the,"Eww thats gross!' face one of my friends makes when she sees a gay couple. They just treat them as any other couple. We had to clean up a lot of hate speech out of Stubby and Sticky when they first got up here, but once it was made clear that we dont allow that kind of talk because it hurts feelings, they stopped. Sticky knows words can do damage, he has heard the word.'Retard" so often that he sometimes throws it back at people when they do something he doesn't like. Nothing brings a stop to all activity in a room like a kid with Downs Syndrome asking someone,'What the hell is wrong with you, are you retarded?" He has developed quite the smartassed attitude since he has been up here and he is getting very independent. I encourage that and though its been hard for me, I have been letting him pick his clothes out and even have a say in whats for dinner.

Letting my kids be themselves is important to me. Communicating with them is even more so. My teen son has been dating the same girl for over a year now, and while they are pretty tightly chaperoned and not alone long enough to ever get up to anything, I know what its like to be a teenager and I worry. We have had a very open dialogue about things since he started maturing and though he would rather crawl under a rock and die than talk to me about it, I have sat him down and had an abbreviated version of the talk with him a couple of times,(once due the a very concerning reaction to a Criminal Minds episode), and once when he started dating. I decided that since we had a little bit of time by ourselves on Friday to go to a store where protection was sold, I would give him a lecture with visual aids.

He got that,"deer in the headlights" look as we approached the condom section, but I stopped him and I said,"We need to have a talk and since no one is around and we have a few minutes, im going to explain a few things to you." I then pointed out the things to use, the things that were crap, the reasons for some things, why some things should be replaced regularly, why some things should be avoided, and just general things boys should know. I gave him the talk that a father or a big brother should have given him, but since he has neither he got it from me. He was dying for a few minutes but then to my shock, he started asking questions! We must have stood there for a good 15 minutes discussing things and he even thanked me for clearing up some wrong information he had gotten from his buddies. I told him that my job as a mom was to make sure he was a healthy and happy young man and if explaining things to him that made both of us uncomfortable was part of it, then so be it, its part of the job.

We spent yesterday doing hair cuts. I let the boys choose what kind of hair cuts they wanted and that meant I spent the afternoon cutting mohawks on my sons. They teased my daughter about getting a mohawk and when she proclaimed that,'Girls dont get mohawks!" my son went hunting for the picture of me with mine. Poor daughter is quite the odd child out when it comes to this family. She is a girly girl and dances, sings, has long, pretty blonde hair, aspires to be an actress, ballerina, artist that marries her favorite young man and then takes him to, "France for 6 months and then Japan", while the rest of us are rough around the edges and barely civilized.

Dating...thhpt. I think I am terrible at it. I am not quite sure what I want. I swear and be damned I dont want a man around, but then when there isnt one around I mope. I find myself hungering for human contact and small doses of it just make me want more, like a junkie that just gets a small taste and then cant afford to pay the dealer for a bigger hit. I think I want romance, but then I dont know how to get it or if I even deserve it at this point in the game. All the time I have spent alone made me a harder person, but it made me a hungrier person in many ways. I throw myself into my work and my family to keep myself distracted, perhaps that is the best way to go about things. Who the hell knows?

Dear Roger:Fashion Tips From A Teen Boy

"You need to go shopping, and not by yourself. You need to take a chick, or me with you to show you how to shop for stuff to make you look decent and not like you want to kick someones ass."

This was what my teen son told me yesterday as he was digging through my closet trying to help me decide what I should wear on my date tonight. He has decided that I am pretty hopeless when it comes to my fashion sense. I have tried to explain to him that my fashion sense is my own, its not my fault that people like Ellen Degeneres copy it and then it gets skewed and labeled for a certain demographic that makes dating all the more difficult. Yes, most of my clothes are black or denim. Yes, there are a lots of snaps and leather and buckles involved in my clothing. Yes, I do own more than a couple of pairs a boots that may or may not need help not smelling like they just came in from a very bad crime scene. Yes, I do not own any heels, stockings, dresses or make up. My son looked through my closet and shook his head,"How in the hell do you have soo many kids?" I think that was a dig? He has been on my case lately about being more ladylike and civilized. I have genuinely tried. My Ms. Congeniality days are mostly behind me, though I did snap a little last night and take him down and out the back door when he kept harassing me while I was cooking dinner. I got him with the element of surprise and before he could launch a defense I had him off balance and out the back door squawking like a plucked chicken that I had,"Cheated".

I think he wants a mom that would be too worried about her nails to teach him Judo stuff? Who the hell knows, hes a teenager and nothing I can do is right, because I am his mom and wrong by default. He tells me to get a boyfriend,(I think that was son speak for get laid), because I have been kinda grumpy and morose lately, and hes even been pointing guys out to me! I don't quite know what to think about that. Hes supportive of me dating, and when I had said I wasn't going to date anymore a while back, he got angry with me and said that my unhappiness would scar the rest of the family! I didn't think I was unhappy? Ive been alone for over 3 years. I am pretty set in my ways and for the most part untrainable. I am awkward and inappropriate and a bit crude and I make no apologies for myself. I like my stinky boots,(not the pooped in ones), I like my jeans that fall off my ass and cause me to moon the street full of cars in front of my house. I like my weird music and my bad dancing. I like my stupid hats and ratty t-shirts. I miss some things about having a man around. I miss kissing and making out and just being touched. I damn sure miss sex, even poorly done its damn sure better with a man than solo. I miss talking to an adult male. The poor guy that took me out the other night about got his ear talked off. I miss the smell of a mans cologne and the feel of a short hair of the back of a mans neck underneath my fingers. Its a trade off sometimes. Not having to worry about shaving my legs or wearing the nice drawers,(or any on laundry days),and t-shirts without holes, doing my hair and all that. Not having to explain myself and my fiasco of a world to some poor sod who has dared to tread within, but then its lonely in here sometimes and I think that maybe, just maybe, I will shave my legs and wear the nice drawers I save for,"Special" occasions, and maybe I will remember I am Southern and that I do know a few things about a few things, including how to be a lady, at least hopefully more than my son knows.

Dear Roger: Touch

Its weird how you take such simple things for granted, things like simple human contact from the opposite sex, and when you get that contact again,even if its something as simple as a hand holding or a touch on the back, it can just leave you all flustered and twitterpated.

My kids have enjoyed making fun of me the past day or so because I got my hand held the other night. It shocked me! After all, it had been pretty damn near 17 years since a man had held my hand and I almost reacted the wrong way, because I didn't know what the hell was going on for a moment. Being touched again and having my hand held in public? I didn't know quite what to think. I can tell you that I was pretty shocked, and I liked it. Thats fairly new territory for me because after all, for the last couple of decades, I have not been involved with the nicest of fellas, with a couple of rare exceptions who didn't stick around for very long.

I came home smiling and in a good mood to find my teen son laying in wait for me on the couch. He flipped on the light and smirked at me,"Do you know what time it is? Give me the keys so I can go let the poor guy out of the trunk,okay? You have always taught me mom, No means NO! So you have to let him go mom." My son is just as big of a smart ass as I am, so I have had to deal with endless teasing about my good mood and my return at a reasonable hour,(old people jokes abound), but hes been surprisingly supportive of me getting out and he has even offered to babysit for me at a reasonable rate.

Things are steadily moving forward. Its amazing how far we have come. Its crazy around here at times but I read some of the stories on the 99% tumblr and I realize how lucky I am. I am lucky that my grandparents imbued me with the fortitude to fight and keep trying no matter how many times I get my feet kicked out from under me. I am lucky that I know that I have to keep trying and keep going for my kids because they deserve better. I am lucky that, even though things don't often work out the way I had hoped for or planned, they work out they way they need to work out. I'm tough because I have to be. I fight because I have to, and if I get to have a little fun along with way, then that's all good, but if I have to keep going on alone, I will do that too.

I have a second date coming up later this week. Im kinda excited about it. Dont really know what to expect, after all, its been a few years since I have done this kinda stuff and its a whole new ball game since my give a damn got busted. Its nice to not NEED a man, but to kinda, sorta, maybe, want one around for company. I have proven to myself I can do pretty damn much everything on my own. I have torn it down and built it back up, so maybe now I can figure out how to behave in polite society again and not be twitchy when a fella reaches for my hand.

Dear Roger: Monkeys in the Bedroom, and Other Things That Are Best Not Contemplated in Polite Company

"What happened mom? What happened?" Stubby asked me that tonight, and I have to say that I was just sitting in my room this morning wondering just that. I woke up, all bleary eyed and exhausted from weird dreams, to find the mug of a rather cute young man within my eye shot, but rather than being pleased, I groaned and rolled over and found myself face to furry face with 3 monkeys that had somehow migrated into my bed during the night. I no longer have a room to myself, (in case you were thinking my life had suddenly gotten really exciting), noo...I actually ended up caving in and getting a washer and dryer, which meant that my daughter had to surrender her private little alcove,(formerly known as the laundry room), and she has now moved into my bedroom. She was supposed to occupy part of the room, but in true Stevie Rae fashion, she moved in and simply took over. My desk is now her, "Art Studio", the closet is now her,"Stuffies salon", and I will be relinquishing my queen sized bed for a full sized bed at the first of the month so that I can get her a regular twin sized bed that will accommodate her monkeys in a comfortable fashion. She commandeered the lower half of my bedside table for her Harry Potter library, and she hung pictures of her favorite boy all over my room. I drew the line at her breaching the walls actually around my bed its self, but he is all front and center, right over my bedside table, so when I woke up, it was monkeys in all shapes and sizes right THERE, I guess its a good thing I have given up ever actually dating in any constructive manner, so I guess my room looking like some tweeny-bait nightmare will be my deep dark secret that only me, my kids and the maintenance men that I have to actually work with,(and who now will be able to tease me mercilessly about it), will ever see.

I do supposedly have a date on Friday with a real, live male, at least as of yesterday afternoon I did. Who knows what the hell he has found via Google that may have caused him to come to his senses in the mean time? I'm not too worried about it. He sounds interesting, maybe fun, but I don't get all wound up about anybody anymore. The last guy to make me weak in the knees and to get my hands shaking was a giant of a boy who thought my tattoo was,'Cool".

Having a washer and dryer actually back in the house makes life soo much simpler for me. My eldest is supposed to be doing the laundry, but getting a teen boy to do laundry properly is like trying to get him to actually put away his clean clothes even when they are folded and stacked neatly on his bed. I would have better luck if I stacked them on his guitar, unless of course it happened to be the time the cat peed on his guitar case.

We may be short a cat if that happens again. My eldest son is not a cat fan most of the time anyway, but for the cat to pee on any of his guitar stuff? If he could have caught the cat, it would not have gone well for the cat. Its never done anything like that before, so I have no idea what would prompt it to do that to of all things his high dollar damn gig bag, but there was no denying it and it couldn't be blamed on Spencer. Im hoping it was just a rare event that was because the cat was annoyed at him or something, and not the start of a behavior that will be a serious problem, there are only soo many places the cat can hide in this apt and the other kids dont need to learn all those creative cuss words like my son used when he found the pee.

Dear Roger:Refereeing Monkey Related Brawls

There are days that I have to wonder how any parents remain semi-sane. I can be sitting peacefully, minding my own business, and then all of the sudden I am surrounded by them. "What are you doing, mom? Why are you so quiet? Are you depressed? What are you reading? Look what I can do! One time, at school, my friend, Alexie, he ate a piece of gum from under the desk. MOM! He hit me! Whats for dinner? Can I have a snack? Can I watch a movie? Can I use your computer? Can you go on Pottermore? Want to make a new video? Theres nothing to drink!" Add into this the various aromas that drift around them and their teen brother, along with the brawls that break out over seemingly nothing, and you have a recipe for rapid growth insanity.

Yesterday I was sitting on the couch, just trying to check my bank account and maybe read the online newspaper since I am not allowed to watch the news on tv anymore since its,'Depressing and stupid" according to my teen, when the foulest aroma I have smelled since I was a forensic investigator drifted across my nose. I quickly pulled my t-shirt up over my nose as my teen son started laughing next to me on the couch. "Mom, I think those breakfast sandwiches you bought for me were a bad idea." I found out how much of a bad idea as he proceeded to foul the apartment the rest of the evening. I swear, candles we lit to dispel the foul aroma, burned brighter he was soo disgusting.

Having one bathroom has led to some serious conflicts of scheduling. My teen tends to hibernate in the bathroom to indulge in his, whatever the hell teens do in there for an hour at a time, and he forgets that he has 3 siblings who are not only devious and shameless, they also have small bladders. I have given up locking the bathroom door when I shower. I just tell them to not flush and to shut the door when they are done and I am thankful for opaque, monkey covered shower curtains. My son, tries to keep them out. Not a smart move because that leads to revenge seeking. The cold glasses of ice water tossed at him while he was in the shower sent a message that they were willing to break in and do bad things, but he retaliated instead of just accepting that they needed to come in and pee and leave. I drew the line when they grabbed his towel and as he chased them into the living room. No one needs to see that. The rule of the house is no naked in the living room. You would think it would be a simple rule to follow, but I have monkeys and its harder than you expect.

Speaking of monkeys, I have to get the boys something they value and love as much as my daughter loves her Jackson. For sanity's sake. My eldest son loves his guitars, so when hes being a jerk, she knows she can go right for that guitar and threaten its life and he will back off. The two younger boys are not emotionally invested in anything so they really don't have anything she can leverage against them and they terrorize her by stealing he Jackson and doing horrible things to him. I have had to rescue that monkey out of more boy pants and dog beds lately than I care to think about and the only thing that put a stop to it was the voice of doom followed by threats of a dire nature. Its for their own good, she gets pretty wound up and protective over that monkey and her Jackson stuff. Its bad enough they trash talk her favorite boy. She punched Stub in the mouth the other day and they both ended up in time out ,(sanity break for mom) for a half hour. Shes tough and very over-protective. Ive told her that boy couldn't give a damn about what some little snot nosed 9 year old says about him, but she just cried and said,"I give a damn!" The drama is just beginning I'm afraid.