Dear Roger: Power Struggles,I Can Claim Temporary Insanity Due to Teenager Infestation

New parents of baby boys out there feeling all smug and self-satisfied that you dodged the bullet because you think that because you have only one dick to worry about, let me tell you a thing or two about a thing or two regarding that situation in which you now find yourself.
You think your little baby boy will be easier and less dramatic and less prone to bringing drama into your house? I say to you, "HA!!!" I used to believe the same thing. I thought that when I had my sons that life was going to be easy street, that I wouldn't ever have to worry about them getting hormonal, and moody over boys or overly  dramatic and shrieking because someone disrespected some odd little actor/rock star or stuffed animal that was an iconic representation thereof, but let me tell you what,boys are just as weird and dramatic and horrible about things, and often they are more demonstrative in their feelings and destructive. They do stupid things like throw their video game controllers at hard surfaces and then wonder why they don't work, take apart their guitars and skateboards and all kinds of crap thinking they can make it better or,"Fix" it and then get upset with YOU when you don't understand the method to the madness of the laptop screen with the cardboard jammed in it.
If you have more than one boy in your house,(as do I), you might have the blend of the guy archetypes. I have the "Shy, sensitive, deep thinker that slow boils to explosions", the "Cocky jock who thinks he is the man of the house and reminds you enough of Eddie Haskell at times you want to scream"  as well as the "Practical joker who finds every fart worth sharing with everyone at all times, especially in public as he blames it on you."  I have all 3 types as well as my poor, long suffering daughter who is a blend of all three in one seemingly innocuous package,(dont believe it, not for one minute!), but there will be more on that another day. I do my best to cope, but I have learned to laugh at those who find out they are having a boy and actually seem relieved. I enlighten them with a few tales of some of the things my boys have done, as well as share some tales of adventures of some of my friends sons.
To be fair, most of the boys besides my sons are Texans, and that kinda skews the dynamic because growing up Texan and boy does up the ante for pure fuckery and insanity, but truck surfing, and nearly becoming road kill while running from the game warden can happen anywhere as well as riding a dirt bike off the side of an overpass, or through a barbed wire fence or blowing up a battery and nearly blinding oneself, jousting with Roman Candles,playing with Ronsol and Axe and setting their damn jeans on fire to the point they had to come home in their chones, ending up a hood ornament on a Prius due to a downhill run on a longboard that went a little wrong,as well as any number of things that have left parents I know as well as myself with enough grey hairs to keep Lady Clariol in business for the next century.
Little boys can be sweet and cute and all kinds of fun to raise, but if you think that first time they peed in your face was an accident, I say,"Woe unto you, that is yet a sign of things yet to come."
I tell you these things now while I still can as I spend a few hours trying to figure out just how my eldest son managed to make himself administrator of our home computer network and set it up so that he can shut off my damn computer and lock me and my Iphone out of all internet access. I used to think it was pretty cool he was such a genius at all things computers and self taught at all of it, kinda like his music habit where he taught himself how to play guitar and write music and all kinds of things. I have a feeling there will be a lot of ante upping over the next few days as we engage in our power struggle to establish the Alpha in this house. He may be a teen, but he knows very little about the true cost of war and living with a person who will go nuclear with the first strike.

Dear Roger: Wake Me When September Ends? No, Try November

I've sat here for days with a half-assed, morose bit of poetry rolling around in my skull that I just cant seem to put together, and perhaps its due to the changing weather or the inevitable end of summer that I cant put my thoughts together, but I really have nothing against September, though I do really like that song and appreciate its sentiment. Its November that I wish would end, and soon. Its been like a long, protracted, suffering that has gone on much longer than it should and as sleep comes less and less easy, my temper becomes more and more short, I feel the slow build to the end and I know I am powerless to do anything other than stand back and watch what I know is bound to happen, happen. It will be my final answer, the end of everything and I will accept it and move forward, but I will mourn for the,"What might have beens" and what I wish could have happened in another lifetime.
It is a blessing and a curse, the cancer that will be going into its final remission though its unfortunate to think of it like that, in many ways its been a cancer that has been eating me from the inside for a long time, much like all good heartaches do to a person.  When its over, I will have a drink and a smoke, put my boots on and walk out the door into a new day and a new mindset with it all behind me, knowing that the door is forever closed, and that may be the true sign of healing...if I can actually do it.

Dear Roger: Love, Little Boxes, Breaking Molds, AIDS, and Finding Somebody to Love

The season of "Giving" is approaching and im finally getting back into my charity work. Its something I had really missed, and thanks to some friends of mine, I got out and did the Portland AidsWalk. The walk not only met its goal, it exceeded it by over 45k! It was quite an experience to be involved in it and I enjoyed myself. The scene was as Portlandia as Portland gets and I don't think I have felt so welcomed since I have been here. The boys who were part of my team are friends of mine and we made a day of it, just walking along talking about our experiences growing up and dealing with a society the expects everyone to fall into a particular mold. There were people of every size, shape and description walking in that fundraiser, they were walking for friends, family, loved ones, themselves or just because they know that Aids is a terrible disease we should have defeated over a decade ago. I walked in memory of my cousin and for all the people who live in the shadows and in fear. That was a huge topic of discussion that day, the stigma.
I remember seeing on the news the misery and torture that Ryan White went through when he was diagnosed with Aids and how horrible people treated a child who had an illness he had no control over and that was going to kill him. It was just the tip of the iceberg of how gay people were and are treated.
I've never gotten it. I know I was raised with a certain attitude in my home as a child because when my said to her friend that she suspected I was more than just a,"Tomboy", it freaked me the hell out. I was already getting harassed by some of the prominent members of the football team at school and called things like,"Dyke"  because of how I dressed and acted and my sports playing as well as being ostracized by people who had been friends and neighbors previously, so when my own mother made comments about my room decor  (Hollywood stars of the 40's of both sexes), It horrified me and probably had a lot to do with why I became a bit of a sexually aggressive young adult that had kids early.
I've grown a lot since then and reached a point in my life where I don't care what other people think about me, and I am just accepting of where I am in life. I am at peace with my place in life and accepting of difference and I wish more people were the same way. I see people that I know are living in pain, living in the shadows and hiding who they are and who they love for the sake of their careers or family or community and I see the heartache and the pain it causes and it hurts my heart for them because I know how much it hurts. It was refreshing to admit to myself and the friends I walked with that day that love is love is love and being open to accepting it no matter if its not in the form you or anyone else expected is an amazing and freeing way to be.
It was hard for me as a parent of 5 kids to reach that point. I was fast on the way to falling into lockstep with my family and I wanted my children to be,"NORMAL", with my sons being tough and strong men who would go on to the Corp of Cadets at Texas A&M and marry good girls with all the traditional trappings of Texas to follow. I wanted my daughters to be good girls who would marry respectable men who would be their equals and respectable members of the community. I wanted my daughters to go on to either Texas A&M or UT and get their Doctorates and become powerful women who would lead their communities before they gave me a few grand kids to spoil rotten. The thing is with my kids it that they are individuals, and as individuals they have very distinct paths and hopes for the future. My eldest has already made her own distinct path and TAMU is not on the radar and she has not shown any interest in dating.  My eldest son wants to go to college in Oregon and he talks of never marrying quite frequently. My other two boys are a puzzle. My youngest daughter has had her sights set on one particular fella for a long time and she tends to talk of TAMU as being the only school that is worth even considering, but I have stopped pushing that, and when we talk of the future and what my dreams of for my kids, I simply say, "I want to look in your faces and only see joy and peace, never pain or unhappiness, if I see that, then I know I did my job as a parent. Ill love you no matter who you love, what you become, where you are or what you are doing. If YOU are happy and being a good person who does no harm to others, then I am at peace with that."
I've always been a person who when told to zig, I zagged. I resented being forced into molds and little boxes. I always worked non-traditional jobs, dated or even married the type of guy who was so far removed from the family norm that I am sure my parents wished I had been gay at times. It wasn't because I was trying to to purposely offend anyone, it was just at the time, the person who walked into my life and shook up my world with love happened to be a Lebanese Semi-pro soccer player, or an Iranian gypsy violin playing/singing, blind, research scientist,(still do carry a bit of a torch for him), or a former Hell's Angel Prospect with issues of his own who ive now reached a peace with and share most of my kids with. Love doesn't always fit a perfect mold and being accepting of the form it takes is part of being a grown human and I think I have finally grown up.

Dear Roger: The Monkey Found Its Balls

I am a generally good natured person. I like to believe that people are who they try to portray themselves to be, but I am also a bit of a protectionist person who suspects everyone's motivations and I try to just handle my business on my own and not owe anyone a damn thing because when you let someone do you a favor, they think they own a piece of you and no one owns me. I have worked very damn hard to get to where I am, I am raising my kids on my own, housing and feeding, and clothing them, with no social life or any of that because I dont have time for it. I work and I am always looking for a way to better our circumstances but NOT at the detriment of others. I fiercely defend my loved ones, but I prefer to just move on and leave the problems behind me. Other people, I have found, do not operate by the same code, but I have managed to navigate around them so far even if they have had me angry enough to spend a few hours reviewing Libel law and what constitutes a good slander case after. I let my Buddhist learning take over and I just decided that karma will out.
I have gotten tougher and much, much braver lately about actually dealing with people and NOT returning to my den and flipping the monkey upside down. Currently the monkey is right side up, erect and flipping the bird in aggravation, but that is the pose my son put him in, and while I understand his sentiment, I try not to take it down the stairs with me. I have been focusing on the positive things in my life. I wildly upgraded my phone from the basic Iphone 4 to an Iphone 4s 16g which now means I have a better camera and more storage and even better, SIRI and all kinds of fun tools to play with. I did the same for my son and mayhem has ensued. He wanted the 5 but I didn't want to wait that long for a phone, and I couldn't justify that kind of expense. This was the result of a bad business decision on my part that I had to extricate myself out of due to my job, and while it was a very costly lesson to me, it actually taught my son a lot more and he is now a much more wary and untrusting person, especially of women. He sort of jokingly claimed he was going to become gay just so he no longer had to deal with women and their manipulations.
I actually wrote and mailed a letter that I had been dared to write a long time ago. I still cant believe I did it, and after I put it in the mailbox, I stood there in panic wanting to get it back but unable to fit my hand through the mail slot. I had no I.D. with me and the mail lady wouldn't give it back to me, so its off and gone. My first ever letter of that nature. F.M.L.
My writing is coming in fits and starts, and once its more reliable and smoothed out again, Ill post something on my tumblr about it, but for now I want to keep working on making sure the characters are true to themselves and that the story flows well. I've been working on Secrets, but Long Distance is almost done with the editing, and the re-vamp of Drifts should be done any day now. Its just a matter of finding the time to sit down at my computer to put them all together and then out there for the world to peruse.
Im not walking with my head down as much and that is a good thing. I can walk with my head up, knowing that I am doing this on my own, earning my keep working an honest job using my brain and my honest effort with no man paying anything for me, though the ex did finally find a job back in Arizona, he still struggles to just keep himself fed. My kids are happy and busy and we are soon to have a car so we wont be spending this winter walking in the rain or trapped in the house. '
Progress has been made and balls have been found.

Dear Roger: Trusting Your Gut and What Its Worth

I got news last night that shook me. As my snarky teen son sat next to me on the couch and tried to convince me I was tired and needed to go to bed, while I was busy reading a blog by a young woman that I have come to care about as a distant friend, another friend who is from my past in law enforcement sent me a chat message on Facebook. He just asked if I had heard about an officer that we used to work with. It took a minute or two for the memory to come to surface, but once it did, the mans face was clear as a bell, he had been my eldest sons fathers best friend.
Whenever my sons father was on duty at the ambulance, this officer was around. They went shooting together, went to training's together for weeks, and they were as close as brothers. My sons father would even drive the nearly 300 miles from his home in Tucson on his days off, just to hang out with this officer and go places with him. I thought it odd at the time, but the relationship I had with my sons father was so turbulent and scary, that I dared not say a word about it. When I finally managed to get away from my sons father and he quit the department and was told not to return, the officer was not happy with me, but he left me alone. I remember him being a bit arrogant and odd, but not an overtly horrible person. We ate meals together, worked scenes together, saved lives together. He wore a badge and was part of my family in that way. If I hadn't been able to hide from my sons father due to his violence and threats of violence, and if he had gotten parental rights, the officer most likely would have been my sons Godfather and most assuredly would have been in my sons life quite a bit and I would have had no say in it, but I did what I knew I had to do as a mother and i protected my son and I fought to keep a monster out of my sons life for over 16 years.
I found out last night that trusting my gut and going without many of the things that so many women take for granted such as a man to help support and guide a son, child support or any kind of financial assistance, the security of knowing that no one is going to hurt your child because they love them,(in fact, he promised he would kill him if given the chance), knowing the medical and family history of the paternal side of my sons family, and my career, which I gave up and changed to stay below the radar for many years, was the right decision.
The officer who was my sons fathers best friend was accused by his eldest daughter of continually molesting her when she was a young girl. The investigation is just beginning, but he will never be arrested or serve any time for it because he took his own life shortly after being questioned about it.
Do I think my sons father would have been capable of being involved in such things? I will never know, but I am damn sure glad I will never have to find out.
Its a smaller world than we realize and we are all connected along our journey. I firmly believe that, even though we have vastly different lives and struggles and paths that we follow, we share things with each other and reading the young woman's blog posting last night reminded me of that because just the other day I was cleaning out my old certifications and getting rid of things that I no longer hold as essential to where I am in life now, and one of the first things I came across was my certification as a,"Tobacco Cessation Counselor" that I received when I was an Americorp Member. As part of my tour of duty and as a former smoker, I got certified and I taught classes on how to quit smoking,(a sort of AA styled thing), and one of the ways to quit that they had been pushing was a drug...a drug that I had recently heard about via a tragedy. I had done more research after hearing about this event, and how unpredictable it was and due to the population I was working with, (largely Native, Impoverished and poly-substance abusers), I refused to even introduce it as a possibility. I encouraged natural methods, along with diet, exercise, the patch and distraction. I had a 95% success rate. It was the first time I had ever heard that name, that name that would a short time later circle around and mean much more to us and my daughter than I could ever explain, but it is an odd synchronicity that has reverberated  through many lives now and I will not discount it.
Trust yourself, you are stronger than you know, and there are forces in the world that make us all accountable to and for each other.
Blessings and strength to you all.

Dear Roger: The Monkey Is Running Amuck

School is back is session! I say that with the joy of a parent who is now free to walk around their house with THEIR music playing at an obnoxiously loud level while they scratch inappropriate places on their naked body eating goodies that they had stashed away, waiting for a moment when the ravening hordes of children weren't around to give them the sad puppy dog eyes and say,"Can I have a bite?" HAH! No! I'm going to go to McRaes today and have a plate of french fries with gravy and lots of katsup and I'm going to mix the two, like I like them. Its been over a year since I've had time to myself, and I'm a bit on the twitchy side if you cannot tell. I love my kids, in fact I live for my kids, but after not having a break from them I'm about ready to run off screaming down Burnside.
I think the kids were ready to go back as well, I know my daughter was even though the principal seemingly ignored our previous discussion about just letting her be a typical 3rd grader and he has stuck her in an advanced class as an 4th grader, at least she wont get bored and she really seems to like her teacher who is a young, blonde, cheerleader type. My daughter...Buffy in training.
She only took Jackson to the first day of school. I was pretty proud of her for that. Of course the minute she was in the door of home she was right into her room to grab him and hug him to tell him all about her day, but she let him stay home because she didn't want him stuck in her desk,"Alone and bored all day." Maybe she will let him skip picture day this year though in a way that would make me kinda sad.
The boys were not pleased to be back in school. Stubby just is not pleased about school no matter what. He would rather just stay home and read because hes anti-social and not a happy camper, but he knows its not an option.
Sticky was sort of happy to be back, he likes seeing his friends and hes very popular at his school, so its like going to a bit of a party for him everyday except for the part where they make him actually do some schoolwork.
My eldest was piled on with Physics, Economics, Algebra 2, Psychology, and Lit homework his first day. He was up late getting it all done and whining about the misery of being in Advanced Placement classes, while he is working but I had little to no sympathy for him. I do have to wonder about the intelligence of a school district that has the high school kids starting at 0730 and the elementary kids starting at 0830, if you ask me, I think it should be the other way around.
Im hoping to get back to writing more now that the kids are going back to school, my muse took a runner on me a couple of months ago and said,"Screw this mess!" and between work, kids, moving and all the other mess I haven't even promoted the books I have out other than to occasionally sell the paper copies I have on hand. I have a few story ideas cooking, and I need to get them put down, and I need to track down where in the hell the copyright office sent my copyright papers on one of my novels, so I need to get serious about my own life again.
I love Fall for many, many reasons, its a good time of year. I've got friends planning on coming over to watch a concert with us on our new big screen tv on the 18th, so I am actively socializing and making new friends and introducing them to the music and things I love while checking out the things they love and I'm going places and meeting new people and making plans for a future I never expected to have and I think that is a good thing.

Dear Roger: Teens, Tweens and Other Deal Breakers Nobody Told Me About

Babies are cute and easy to love. Toddlers have a certain charm and when they are being difficult parents can soothe themselves with little things like dressing them in all the dorky, mini-hipster outfits to be found or even foisting them off on some long suffering day care provider if worse comes to worse, but there is another stage in the process of child-rearing where that is no longer an option, where you really no longer get to pick out their cute lil outfits without WW3 breaking out, and even when you do, they manage to do THINGS to them, and if you can get a baby sitter to watch them, you have to worry about things like hazard pay or if your house will still be standing when you return. I am talking about the stage of development called the,"Tween" stage.
My boys seem to be navigating it with their typically strange aplomb, alternating from sweet little men who cannot give me enough hugs one moment and who are sweet, young gentlemen in training to the next moment when they are brawling, half-naked,(or fully naked) savages who take great pride in their pee helicopters, going as long as possible without showering until their older brother bodily picks them up and throws them in the tub, clothes and all. They can be kind and sweet or snarky and mean, sometimes within the same sentence, but they tend to keep it among themselves and the brawls are mainly over their goofy video games and who drank the last of what or ate the last of what. My daughter? She is a WHOLE nuther story.
My little girl is 8 and she is a bit of an artsy, temperamental, and to be honest, she is a bit of an odd child at times. She has always had a sweet nature to her, compassionate and gentle, concerned for others and worried about those she perceives who might be hurting, but that does not mean she will not put the smack down on someone, especially when they mess with her monkeys, or tease her about her favorite boys or just generally piss her off, and lately, there seems to be much in the way that pisses her off or upsets her!
She has gotten to that age where she slams doors, where she answers back and where she will tell off her father when she is annoyed at him,(have to admit that one makes me proud), she stands up to him now and that is a good thing.
Tweens are difficult to figure out. One minute she is singing along with Bruno Mars and arguing with her brothers about who drank the last of the milk, and the next she is teaching,"Monkey church" about the 10 Commandments.
She is starting to care about things like how to style her hair and her clothes more and more,(though she has always had a very distinctive style), and instead of looking up to her favorite guys, she has referred to them as,"Cute" or even worse, "Whoa! when did Ben G. get so handsome?" after the last concert we watched together online. I just said to her, "Hes the same, I have no idea what you are talking about, you are 8, no rock star is handsome when you are 8! Shh!Stop it!"
She just smiled at me and flounced away singing Shy Water until her big brother harassed her about picking up her socks and then she threw her boot at him because he stole her monkey until she came out of her room and got them. It was mayhem for about an hour that ended when she stole his Iphone and threatened to drop it in the commode.
She gets grumpy and stomps off to her room at the drop of a hat now, she cries if you look at her wrong and she slams doors hard enough to rattle windows and she gets upset over the oddest things. The other day I was sitting on the couch trying to do some editing and she came and sat next to me just in tears as if her best friend had died. I asked her what was wrong and she climbed into my lap with her goofy monkey and she said," I cant remember what they sound like! I cant remember Jacksons voice! Im forgetting! You said I wouldn't, that they would always be with me, but Im forgetting just like they forgot me and Im SAAAAD!" She was absolutely bereft. I asked her if she wanted to watch the video or anything, she said that she did, so I put it on for her and I told her that if if made her feel better, that maybe she should send them a,"Hello" or something but to bear in mind that they are big, busy people with families and jobs and lives and life moves on for everyone, even little girls. She watched her video and sent her little messages and maybe somehow, someway the powers that be got the message because her favorite boy broke his silence with a beautiful picture of him and his baby that made her just melt, and one of the others told her hello on FB which made her entire week.
Crisis averted for at least an hour.

Dear Roger:The Monkey Is Loved

The summer is winding down and the school year is approaching. While I am looking forward to it with some joy because I think we all need a bit of a break from each other, I am also looking at it with a bit of trepidation. I am worried about my little girl going back to school because her last experience wasn't the greatest and in all honesty, she hasnt changed that much from the kid that she was when she was there the last time.
Her teacher is an unknown quantity because the teacher she went and met and was thrilled with, just sent us a letter letting us know she got transferred and we will be getting a new teacher who has only taught lower grades and said nothing in her introduction letter about having any experience dealing with artsy, gifted, high tone, kids like my daughter. The other teacher is not an option at all because frankly she is just a hateful heifer that I have yet to hear a single positive thing about.She just about succeeded in making Stubby hate school altogether, and there is no way in hell I am letting her get my daughter.
Stevie really wants to go back to school, she has missed her friends and she has missed music and art and the opportunity to participate in talent shows and plays and things like that. She has already laid out her first day of school wardrobe and its colorful to say the least with her high boots, multi-colored, mis-matched socks, her black punk rocker pants with the plaid skirt attachment, her new 100 Monkeys t-shirt, her technicolor scarf, and her red beret. I drew the line at her drawing tattoos on herself and she has mentioned more and more piercing her ears though she usually chickens out before we get there, she has drawn tattoos on herself on more than a few occasions and her jewelry selections are a very interesting array to say the least. The one part of her array that I had hoped would have changed, the one thing that is sure to make her stand out and get negative attention from any potential bullies, is something she wont budge on either.
I gently suggested she leave Jackson at home with me this year and you would have thought that I told her she could no longer like the real thing. Her face fell, and her entire demeanor changed. "Mom, he needs me! He will be scared and lonely and what if some mean monkeys came by the house while I was gone? Who is going to protect him? You will be at work and not able to take care of him, so he has to go with me, im his protector, I promised to keep him safe!"
I got the message. She still needs him. Maybe after she gets settled into the routine and we see how this year is going to go, maybe she will let him stay home, but if not, then we will just handle it. Hes been her constant companion for over two years, he still goes with her everywhere and is her partner in crime, so I guess I will just prepare to write my "Permission slips" for Jackson and Stevie to be together and hope that the bullies leave her alone and her friends who were so glad to see her when we visited at the end of this last year, will rally around her and let her know that things will be okay enough for him to stay home.
Lots of things have been going good here. My job is going great and I am staying busy. Its been a long and kind of dull summer otherwise, and we have mourned the loss of the bright spot that used to see us through, but our friends we made at those wonderful concerts have stayed in touch and reunions are planned and who knows? maybe 5, 10 and 20 years down the road there will be 100 Monkeys fan gatherings were those who are still alive and kicking can get together and share a toast to gratitude and remember that once there was a band...
Still no car here, I chickened out on buying one because its just soo dang much money and I really don't want to get that invested in some material object that will end up making me its slave. I might if I find a great deal with a low, low payment, but I refuse to sink myself into something that is going to make me dread life. I tried to soothe Chance by getting him a flatscreen tv, we will see how long that lasts.
My big frustration this month has been dealing with the cable company. It seems like they are just trying to thwart me and piss me off and I really don't know why I haven't given up on them and just ordered satellite internet, but I hate to give up on something I already have and everyone I talk to have been so damn nice its hard to quit them. Maybe ill get lucky and get a jerk the next time I call and then I will have a good excuse to just tell them to pound sand, instead of getting a nice sounding man who offers me a free dedicated Ethernet port and credits for a couple months of higher speed internet,(he might as well have offered me dinner out and fantastic sex, it had the same effect), my mind went to mush and I said,"Okay, thank you!" We will see if he delivers, being it was a man who offered it,(much like when a man promises great sex), I am skeptical.

Dear Roger: Parenting Once Upon a Time

I make my eldest son nervous. Its not because I tend to be a bit temperamental and grumpy in the heat, its because he knows that the one chink in my armor, the one thing that moves me to be protective beyond all reason and that turns even my hard heart to mush, is kids, especially babies. I don't know how he knows that other than the fact I have 5 of them and I worked in education and was a cop and I have given up everything time and time again to keep my kids safe, and that pretty much any little kid,(or even a bigger kid in need), can motivate me to try to move mountains. Having my baby girl almost killed us both and my health has never really rebounded from it, and while I claim to not want anymore because I am actually looking forward to the day when I can go off duty and relax a little, he has caught me more than a couple times perusing the Foster Care website and even the Special Needs Adoption websites and he has had to almost drag me away from cute babies when we are out in public. I adored my little nephew Rowdy, and I miss him quite a bit, in fact, besides leaving my sis, leaving him was the heartbreaking part of leaving Texas.
I have always tried hard to be a good parent and while I don't know and wont know for years if I have succeeded, I do know that I have have been fully invested in it , physically, mentally, emotionally , financially, spiritually; in every way you can think to be invested in it. I've made mistakes along the way and some of them my kids have called me on pretty quickly, but I never made some of the cardinal ones. I never drank or smoked when I was pregnant and I never smoked around my kids at all or allowed anyone to smoke around them. Some of the worst fights I had with my ex were because of his smoking around the kids.
He is my big regret. I wish I had left sooner. I wish I had been stronger and I worry daily about my sons growing up to think that its acceptable to abuse the women in their lives or my daughter thinking that its okay for a man to hurt her or talk down to her. I like to think she wont because she has little tolerance for her father as it is and he complained to me over the phone the other day that she was,"Abrupt, snippy and rude" to him and even hung up on him when he told her he wasn't sending any support because he was broke. She reportedly said, " Oh, that's a shock!"  and went on to say,"Whatever, fine!" and then told him she,"Had plans with Jackson",(her stuffed monkey), and hung up the phone. So I am hoping with balls that size she will be strong and never fall into a situation where she puts up with it.
I talk to my sons constantly about their behavior and how to treat people, and its my eldest son who will be the litmus test for the entire situation as he was the one who lived through the worst of it, endured most of it along with me and though he is a giant prude and very reserved and serious, he is also very strict on his sister, prone to snark and even being snide to the point of driving both me and her to the point of wanting to either cry or lose our minds. I am hoping that most of his rudeness is due to his age, but I do call him on it and tell him when he is echoing the worst aspects of his step-fathers behavior.
Babies do get me feeling all mushy and I enjoyed my babies especially my eldest son. He was cute and sweet and seeing Stevie's favorite boy with his new baby reminded me of when my son was a tiny lil thing and how much I relished that new baby bonding time. My boyfriend at the time loved my son and he was very invested in him, and we were, initially a perfect little family. Those first few months were probably the perfect time in my and my sons life, when I spent time just listening to him breathe as he slept and all those soft little baby sounds he made, and his cute little smiles and how he looked so angelic and the way his little foot would fit against my cheek and he would gurgle at me until Bear would grab him up in one hand and cuddle him to his chest and we would lay on the couch together watching movies or just being together, and how he blew little bubbles in his sleep or would hold onto our fingers and the way his hair was  pink in the sunlight.
That lasted until he was about nine to ten months old and started getting his teeth. Then he began screaming for HOURS on end, he would develop diaper rash for seemingly NO reason, weird rashes and he began saying things that Bear taught him including little phrases like,"Bye bye asshole" and he developed a fondness for streaking. He would strip off all his clothes and take off out the front door of my apartment as fast as he could either toddle or cruise and he would usually be shrieking,"NO!!!" at the top of his lungs and painted in poo. It was at that age I had started wondering if maybe I should consider sending him back.
By the time he was two, and the near kidnapping incident at the store had occurred, I had sometimes debated if maybe I should have let those fools get a taste of just what they were messing with, especially since they had seemingly missed the screaming, stripping incident a few moments prior to their attempt. He was an adorable toddler though, all big eyes and long eye lashes with wavy ginger hair and cheekbones to die for and peaches and cream skin. Yeah, he looked like and angel but his cat and I both knew he could be a Hells Angel. I loved him unconditionally though and I got my revenge for his screaming nudist tantrums and poo flinging by dressing him like a small,gay fashion victim until he was close to 14. Parental payback is like that.
I was telling my son, who is now a hulking teenager, these stories and he was even laughing at some of them, patting me on the shoulder a couple times as I got choked up talking about how cute he was and how I regretted he had never really had a daddy to look at him like that young man looks at his son, but he said,"Well, I had you and you did enough, and when I become a dad, I will make damn sure I do it right so there will never be someone feeling this way years down the road. You did the best you could, mom, I know you did."
As much as we butt heads and tease and harass each other, we both know we are all in as a family and while he may never have had a daddy, he has drawn a line in the sand and decided to make sure it doesn't happen again and that is one lesson I have successfully passed onto him.
We sat on the couch talking for quite a while and he asked me if I regretted not being able to have any more kids and I admitted that sometimes I did regret it, but I didn't want to leave the rest of them orphans. He said, "Well, at least I know you will be an awesome grandma when it comes that time, though I have a feeling you will be one of those diving out of airplanes and bringing the kids musical instruments and other crazy crap, but I also know you will be the fun kind of grandma that actually wants them around to spoil and show off and thats pretty cool." Yeah...just give me a decade or so before we go talking the "G-word" okay?

Dear Roger: The Monkey Is Erect

Its been a hectic, crazy, exhausting couple of weeks, but now it is starting to settle down just a little bit and I finally have my desk back where its sort of in order again and I can every now and then steal a moment to write a thing or two.
I love my new apartment, I like having the high ground and the feeling of being able to see trouble coming. Yeah, I may be a paranoid nut job, but whatever, it also has a killer view of some mountains and the zombie apocalypse will have to make do with my neighbors first.
My job is keeping me busy and my boss is insisting I do things like write the newsletter and actually interact with people. Its a bit of a weird thing for me that occasionally takes me way beyond my comfort zone, but I guess that is a good thing? Im actually taking them a bit beyond their comfort zone in that I am getting them involved in using social media for marketing and trying out new things to promote the company. We will see how it all goes.
The kids are finally starting to get close to going back to school! I am soo damn happy about that! I love my kids, don't get me wrong, but I LOVE the start of school and some time to myself.
Me and my crazy assed dog have seemed to have finally reached an understanding about things. I wasn't really sure if I was ever going to bond with him, and this last month was especially hard on me, being that it was the 1 year anniversary of losing Fergus and the month Spencer turned 1. Hes the size of a small horse now, standing past my hip, with paws as big as my hand and a tail that seems to unerringly knock off everything I want to stay upright. It always felt like I was the one dealing with the less pleasant parts of his care while my eldest son, the one who was supposed to help me with his care, pretty much ignored him for the most part. I had reached the point of frustration with the entire situation  that I had even begun seeking a better home for Spencer where he would actually have a chance of getting more attention and perhaps an owner who could spend time with him and not be injured,(hes dislocated my shoulder twice and pulled my knee out of place being rambunctious), so it was hard for me to feel anything but ire for him when I had to try and walk him. The closer it came to the anniversary of Fergs death, the more painful it became for me to deal with Spencer, and one evening I was sitting on the couch looking at pictures of of Ferg, back when I first got him, and I was crying when I realized that he, in a lot of ways resembled Spencer at that time in his life. He was big and goofy, all angles and paws and unsure of where all his parts were going at the same time and he knocked me off the porch at home a few times and knocked me over a few times before we reached our understanding, and he had a fondness for eating my favorite books when he was mad at me for leaving him home. He used to track mud inside when I had just mopped and if he got nervous about the fighting he would sometimes pee in fear before he would try to protect me. I try to give Spencer the benefit of the doubt about a lot of things and he genuinely seems to be a good and smart dog that wants to please us, but I had just not connected to him at all until some really weird things started happening.
After we got moved, it was almost as if my eldest son just quit caring about Spencer altogether, he wouldn't walk him, feed him water him or even spend a moment talking to him. I kept finding the dog laying at my feet at night as I sat on the couch or at my desk, in fact I almost tripped over him a few times. He followed me from room to room like a silent black shadow and when I would get out of the shower in the morning he would be sitting by the door, just like Fergus used to do. He started sitting at staring at me when he needed out, in fact he stopped ringing the bells at the door and just started walking up and staring at me or nudging my computer or my hand until I would get up and take him out. He started not jerking me around when we went out walking, heeling like we had been working together all along and things have been going smooth, but today was the icing on the weird cake.
Fergus used to freak out when I would sit on the ground or lay on the floor. He couldn't stand it. He would do his high pitched,"I don't like that!!" bark and he would bound around me like he was a crazy assed spring bok, trying to protect his young until I got up and proved I was okay. When I took Spencer out this afternoon and let him run around in the grass for a bit, I got tired and I decided to sit in the cool grass for a bit. I was like Fergs spirit took him over because the minute my butt hit that grass, Spence was in my face doing THAT bark. He was bounding around me freaking out until I got up but once I got up, he stopped and just flopped down with his tongue hanging out staring at me and my daughter after I yelled at him,"Spencer Jackson! Cool your Jets!!" Thats another thing, he wont respond to his shortened name, my damn kids have him trained to only respond to his FULL name for the full dorky effect, so just in time for me to finally bond with the damn dog, I realize I will forever lose my cool cred anytime I walk him anywhere. I had a good cry and petted him as I walked him up the stairs home, and hes laying at my feet right now being a good boy, and I guess I have finally decided to give him a chance to be the dog he can be, and not the dog I miss so much, though I have more than a passing feeling that the dog I miss so much is not very far away from us.

Dear Roger: The Monkey is Sideways

The move is finally over! We are in the new apartment and its vastly different than the old apartment. Even though its on the second floor and you would think it would be hotter, its actually cooler, and its damn sure quieter. The only down side is the neighbors below us are smokers, and even though they are only supposed to smoke outside, its pretty obvious by the smell in the master bedroom that they smoke in their house. Im hoping that gets handled pretty quick because with all the new carpet, paint, fixtures and such that we have, their nasty cigarette smoke will make it stink in no time at all.
The move was what I expected. The only help we had was #6 son, everybody else either strangely didn't get texts or just didn't show up, so we had no truck, and the only dolly available had a flat tire, so it was trudging back and forth across the parking lot and up a flight of 20 stairs in the two hottest days we have had all summer with our stuff. I did fine until the last day when I went to pick up one of the last things we were moving and I missed the bottom step at the old apartment and dislocated my bad knee.
I've dislocated that knee a few times, it always sucks, it always makes me cuss in unique and colorful ways and it usually freaks out Chance when it happens. There is no point in going to a doctor about it, I know how to fix it myself just like I know how to fix my own shoulders, hips and fingers when they pop out. I got it back in and then hobbled to the new apartment found my knee brace, wrapped it up so it wouldn't slip right back out, and went back to doing what needed to be done.
The kids handled the move pretty well. Sticky turned 12 in the middle of it and I got him an X-Box 360 with the Kinect thingy, so we set it up with his games and they played that and stayed out of the way through most of it. My eldest son is still irritated that he didn't get the Master bedroom and the private bathroom, but I told him its my and Stevie's turn to have the bigger room.
The dog does not seem to like the second floor experience much, he gets pretty excited and runs amuck like hes lost his mind when hes loose and I think that is a sign he needs exercise as much as anything else, but hopefully he will adjust soon.
We are getting all the redecorating done as quickly as possible and settled in so that when school starts back in a month, everyone will be ready to go and comfortable. I need to get back to writing in the worst way. I have had a story idea cooking for quite a while, but with everything in disarray, its hard to get my mojo working on it. I haven't hardly done any promotion on any of my other books while the move has been going on, and dealing with all the transition but now that we are done, I have to get back on it and get things rolling again.
I've decided I need some new art for the living room, so I'm going to be looking for just the right piece until I find it. Its not really something I can just walk over to a store and buy, it has to be something that strikes me, so I guess Ill have to spend some time out and about looking for just the right thing to set off our new place.
The move was an adventure and I hope to not have to do it again anytime soon because somehow our 7 bags has become a whole bunch more and its all HEAVY!

Dear Roger: The Monkey Is Upside Down

The move into the new apartment has been held up due to maintenance taking a little longer than expected. All the upgrades required a lot of man power that would have been available if there hadn't been about 100 other things going on in the complex at the same time, so instead of moving this weekend, I have been sitting in my old apartment, among the stacked boxes of my things, my artwork and my decor trying not to lose my shit.
I am a neat freak. I admit it and I am kind of proud of it. Yes, I have 4 kids. But, my 4 kids know that mom expects them to clean up after themselves. In my house there is a place for everything and I really like everything to be in its place, but right now? Right now there is crap everywhere. There are stray monkeys staring at me from the coffee table, odd socks laying on my book shelf, art work stacked all over the dog crate, dishes in boxes on chairs and fans running full blast blowing tepid air all over everything.
Yeah, its hot. Its hot and muggy and miserable and we are all grumpy. I've had a story in my head for almost a week and no place to write it. The table was put out for donation because we aren't moving it to the new apartment. We are rearranging and redecorating and changing some things around I just want my life back in order so I can write the damn story and get things back to rights before Sticky turns 12 on Wednesday, that is going to be a big deal. My Stickyman is going to be 12...amazing. Im still in awe of him every day.
When he was born I was a wreck for a while, and seeing him in the NICU was tough on me. I felt like every needle in him, every tube every time he slid backwards was a failure on my part as a mother. Even though I had done everything right, I felt judged because he was born with Downs. Those first few years were soo hard and so scary, but he had come so far and most of the funny stories I have to tell are because of him.
The poop in the heater vent, the peeing off the front porch in his snow boots and boxers, how he is able to tame rampaging hounds with just a click of his tongue and a look, his singing of Reaper and Moves Like Jagger, his God awful sense of humor and flirting with every woman he encounters, showing me his butt pimples, moonings, and his sense of style. He has made my life soo much better and brighter that I wouldn't trade a moment of it.
I managed to get him the one thing he has been begging for since I got him back, an X-Box 360, and though I am rabidly anti-video game, they are actually good for him since they help him develop his hand eye coordination and small muscle control and with most of the stuff I insist on getting being educational, his speech and reading. He is going to lose his mind on Wednesday when he gets to unwrap it and the Kinect that goes with it and I cant wait to see it. He came to me last night before he went to bed and he said, "Dont forget mom, 3 days! August 8! I turn 12! I want an X-box 360 with Lego Batman 2 and Oh, yeah! Cupcakes and Chicken!" Moms got it handled Stickyman, even if everything else is upside down and sideways.

Dear Roger: Pride, In The Name Of Love

I am ridiculously proud of my eldest son and youngest daughter. With all the hoorah over the whole chicken restaurant stupidity, we have had quite a few conversations about faith, compassion, humanity and walking your talk lately. In face we have had quite a few conversations about many deep subjects lately, including bio-ethics, the state of mental health care in this country, and the criminal justice system.
My son is very attuned to things that are going on around him, which to me is surprising considering he is a teenager, a guy and he likes to play his guitar and his video games a bit more than I think practical, but yesterday he really surprised me. He came home from spending the day working with the maintenance crew, following them around learning how to do all kinds of things that he had always wanted to learn how to do, and that are practical skills for someone to have, like light installation, sink installation, lock installation and just general home fixer up stuff. He went in, took a shower and then tells me that for the first time in weeks he is going to church.
I was a bit shocked because he had quit going in disgust over some of the things he was hearing and just some of the doctrine he didn't agree with so I asked him why he was going. He told me, "I think that someone needs to go there and tell them that they are ignoring the real message of Christ. What they are doing and saying is disgusting and I think they need to know that and maybe I can educate some of them about how wrong and hypocritical they are being."
That is exactly what he did. He went to his youth group meeting and he lead a discussion about how the church has lost the true meaning of Jesus's message and that they are losing people because they have lost themselves. My little girl did the same. She was a little less diplomatic, and I have a feeling words like,"Stupid heads" were probably used, but both my kids vented their disgust at the behavior of the so-called Christians who were using fast food as a way to show their hate of a group of people that they are supposed to love if they are truly following the message of the bible,(this is according to my son), I really don't know, I have decided I am Buddhist. My son said he figured as much, but that I have to get the whole desire to stomp a mud hole in wrong-doers asses under control, but that it actually seems to fit me and my philosophy the best.
I asked him if he was going to change churches now that he had seen plain and clear that they seem to really endorse hate and he said,'No, it is my job as a good Christian to change them. Jesus called upon us to help the sinners and that is what I am going to do, I am going to help those sinners, I am going to continue to tell them how wrong they are and Ill be there to quote them the scriptures that they are forgetting when they go talking hate."
He is 16. He was an abused child who has pretty much lived in poverty his entire life. I am not religious at all. I simply taught him that compassion, kindness, love and hope are the things we all need to get through this life because material things don't matter and what people will remember are the deeds you did in your life. He has had to grow up fast, in fact hes working and trying hard to contribute to the family in any way possible, and he has stepped into the father role with his siblings even though he didn't want to, but he has tried hard to be a good example to them.
My little girl came home and was angry that some of her friends were bragging about eating at that place and,"Showing the homosexuals they were bad." She was telling me she told them that people should be free to love who they want as long as they are adults and that hate is wrong. She went on an unfriending spree and told me that if they continued to be,"Ugly" she was going to be Buddhist like me because she just couldn't be part of any faith that had hate in it. She was really upset and distressed over it and concerned because she truly does not understand why there is hate over such things, she has read the Bible and has taken to heart the passage that said,"Love thy neighbor as you love thyself." Mean people also distress her, she cringes down and runs to hide when people get loud or she senses too much tension in the room, its a throwback to the days when there was constant horror in the house, and she wont watch the news when there is yelling and fighting on it, so what had been a sanctuary for her,(church), has become a source of stress because she has been hearing messages of hate about people she knows and loves.
My kids make me proud, all of them. Sticky and Stubby have stayed out of this whole argument other than to say that they didn't know what the fuss was about since we hadn't eaten there in over two years, but they didn't mind if we never ate there again because my chicken was much better anyway.

Dear Roger: Love Me, Love My Dog

I am a grown up. I like to think I am a person who does their best to get along with most people and see the basic good and humanity in all until given a reason not to. I tend to try to remember that people were once babies that were hopefully loved by someone, somewhere and that they are often the sons, brothers, fathers, and what not of others and cared for in some way. I don't really wish anyone harm who hasn't harmed me. I know what the 7 deadlies are and I try to avoid them, even when I have been done wrong because I know we are all humans and we all make mistakes. Being forgiving is, I guess, a character flaw of mine. I am especially forgiving, and protective of those who have been important to me in my past and along my journey, and I tend to be very forgiving and protective of the young. I do not think that there is any particular thing that a young man can do or say short of harming one of my children that would make me wish him harm, so when I hear someone else say unkind things or say that they to not care if a young person harms themselves, that goes against everything that I stand for as a human being, and I simply cannot stand for it.
When I was a police officer, I took an oath to protect and serve and as a Southerner and a Texan, I still cling to the old ideologies of honor and compassion and looking after those you care about as best you can with no expectation of anything.
When I was in grade school, there were kids who had cliques and little social groups who had strict social policies and they were often,"If you play with or talk to that person, you cant be our friend and we will be hateful to you." Plain and simple it was bullying and ostracizing people, and guess what? I was one of those who was pretty much the odd kid out.I got so I didn't mind being on my own, I had a few pretty close friends who didn't play that game because they were odd kids out as well and we just enjoyed hanging together.
I have seen that kind of behavior again lately and its affected me pretty badly, in fact its stressed me the hell out. I have odd hobbies and likes and I do things that other people don't really understand or care for, but they are things I am very passionate about and occasionally I run across another person who shares my passion and we become friends in our oddness and we have private little rave sessions. Im a fan of things like,"Firefly" and I know what it means to be a Browncoat and to "Stay Shiny", I also am into Steampunk and Stephen King as well as Cowboy Poetry and exploring old abandoned buildings and I tend to like odd Indie music and I have stayed loyal to the little band that I have been a fan of for the past few years.
They are broken and scattered and in odd bits and pieces, and often its difficult to keep straight who is doing what, but I have done my best to keep up with them and quietly support them. I say quietly because for some reason it is still a very contentious thing to do. Wounds have still not healed in many places and while there are many of us who refuse to support the new band at all due to the management, there are more than a few of us who support the boys and pray for the day they find the magic again and for the darkness to leave. We have worked in quiet and subtle ways in order to keep the peace, but I finally snapped last night and said,"ENOUGH LIVING IN THE CLOSET!" This is not middle school. This is what I like, hes not a bad kid. Hes got a voice that moves my heart and I have missed hearing it and seeing him smile, so I am going to work to make that smile  be seen again, and I don't give a rats ass who knows it, or if he even gives a rats dragging nether regions himself. Im doing it for selfish reasons, I like his voice and his smile makes me smile and feel all warm inside, like puppies and kittens. Im waiting for the others to get their butts in gear and show me what they are doing and ill support the hell out of them too, but til them Im not going to hide what or who I like anymore and if that costs me followers or whatnot, then so be it. Im not in grade school and nobody controls me anymore.
I posted an article today about how the mountain in front of my old house is starting to heal, its been two years for both of us and we are both in the same state, a bit ragged and maybe a little rough still, but on the road to recovery.

Dear Roger:Who Is The Boss?

It has been a very hectic couple of weeks for me around here. With trying to get the website up, trying to keep the book sales up and promote my 3rd book,(not really doing very good at that one), keeping my kids entertained and the house clean, dealing with my dog, getting ready to move to a bigger apartment where Stevie and I will finally have our own bathroom, deal with a 16 year old son that seems to have suddenly decided that he is in control of things, and still work a job, pay all the bills and find some time to maybe keep my sanity and occasionally write, the stress has been about to eat me alive.
I have had a couple of days where I had brief overload meltdowns and had to retreat to behind my closed doors and windows and try to hide from everyone and everything, but its been difficult at time to do that when I know I need to keep pushing forward to promote and sell my books.
My son and I have had some pretty epic battles. He has taken the basic tools I gave him in computers and he has run with it. I am the one who taught him his basic skills such as navigating the internet and using some common programs, but as he was supposed to do, he has gone well beyond my abilities now and he is knowledgeable in things like writing code and basic programming, so I had hired him to set up my website for me.
What my son does not seem to understand, is that when you are hired for a job, you are supposed to do what the employer hires you to do, not what YOU want to do. I had to deal with him over-riding my decisions about what text, pictures and formatting to use, he was snarky, condescending, rude, and he made threats to take down my entire website on a regular basis when I didn't do what he wanted.He was acting like a complete and total jerk, and when I went in and changed some things I didn't like, and even put up a page I had asked him to put up, he came in yelled at me like he was the character,"Nick Burns- Your companies Computer Guy" which is what we all call him around here now, and he went in and changed things, including the size of one of the icons because he said that the way I had it set up looked,"Stupid"  and he also said that I had screwed up the entire site.
He stomped off out the door and didn't work on the site for over a day even though he knew I needed to get it online for a big advertising campaign I am doing for my books that ties in with my Facebook page. I couldn't figure out how to go back in and put things back to the way I had set them up, so I just left them and started teaching myself how to set up my own page. I fully intend to be prepared that if he pulls that crap again, I will know how to fix stuff myself, but what was great was when he came home, there was a little comment he needed to see, a little comment that was a game changer in a lot of ways.
My son has very few men he looks up to or even respects because they always seem to be fuck-ups, liars, or they just fail him or worse, like his step father, abuse him, so he keeps most of them at a distance and just takes a page from a playbook or two and holds a few guys to be,"Not class A-jackasses."
Well, one of those guys he takes a page from had contributed an icon for a page and I had put the icon on the page of the website exactly as I had received it, because honestly I had no idea how to change the size, but when Chance came in and accused me of screwing things up, he had gone in and manipulated the icon and changed the shape and set it the way HE thought it should look. The comment was nothing harsh, just that the image was ,"skewed slightly" but it was the equivalent of smacking my growling puppy on the end of the nose with a rolled up newspaper.
I got an apology last night. He apologized for being an ass to me all week long and he admitted he might not always be right. The look on his face was priceless and I wish I could have captured it, but he needed to be called to heel and reminded that he is not always right, that he is a 16 year old who has been hired and paid very well to follow instructions to do what I want done, not what he thinks should be done. He muttered and mumbled and grumbled for awhile and then went and licked his wounds by playing his guitar for a few hours, but the bright side is, my website is up and running fine, he is being less of a jerk for now and I had the best,"TOLD YA SO" moment of MONTHS last night, so now maybe he will listen to me a little better.
Stevie made it back from camp and she seemed to have had a great time other than she got a huge bruise on her thigh from falling on some balance beam. She has been enjoying having her hair French braided by our friend Jen, and running around with her. Jen has been great for the kids and remarkably tolerant of my personality quirks and inability to deal with people on an extended basis without getting her feelings hurt too badly. I am trying to be a better friend, but honestly, I really suck at it and there is a real reason I dont have lots of close friends, but my kids have enjoyed socializing and Stevie has enjoyed me having a friend that actually knows how to do hair and all kinds of girly stuff, so hopefully my stress will ease a little in the next weeks after I complete my first big sale to the local coffee shop, and I will feel more like hanging out again.

Dear Roger: Running Uphill

Oh my gosh! It has been an amazing few days, and now that my baby girl is back home from her adventures at church camp and I am sort of back to being myself, I am sure they are only going to get more amazing. I have been trying to get word out about my books and my website as much as possible, but its slow going and I have found that most people seem to really like the paper books that I sign and send out to them, or sell to them personally, so what I have been doing is ordering them in, taking orders from people and then shipping them out and selling them. Mostly everyone has been really good about getting me paid and its been a good way of doing business, so I decided to  see if I could expand upon on that by contacting local businesses to see if they would be interested in carrying my book. I had hoped for maybe a consignment thing with a coffee shop, but after a brief meeting, I left with an order for 10 copies of each of my books and they are going to pay me for them in advance, as in BEFORE they sell them! They want ME to "Commit" to a book signing and they will promote me, and I will be be linking my website to them as an early,"Supporter". As I was on my way home, I stopped off at another store and talked to the owner and they wanted to order 13 sets of my books! It may not seem like a huge deal to the big dog authors out there, but considering I was on foot and I had just sold myself completely out of all of my stock and then some, its a pretty damn huge deal! I have no idea how I am going to manage to buy in the stock I need to meet all the orders, but I am hoping that between working some extra hours at my day job and cutting back in a few other ways, I may just be able to swing it.
My son is forcing me to try a Kickstarter campaign, and we have bickered back and forth about it pretty fiercely. I hate asking folks for any money when I know times are hard and people are strapped to pay for food, but he pointed out that the two I had donated to both belonged to people who were not missing meals like I had, they were simply funding artistic projects, and I will go without to fund my attempt to provide a brighter future for my family by getting my books out to people. We set up the beginning of it last night and he is going to film some kind of video for it in the next day or two that explains what we are looking for. I made him limit the time and amount to the bare minimum and if it works, it means we will be able to hit the ground running with enough stock and publicity materials to really get things going.
The website is mostly up and running and as I can corral him to work on it, he is adding in the pages I want. We got the "Inspirations" page up yesterday and Spencer Bell was the first he put up with a link back to the SBL website after the wonderful Bill Bell granted us permission. Today we added in the 100 Monkeys and its sad that there is nothing to link to anymore, but I wrote a little piece about what they were and are to people.
The next page to go up will be the,"Sponsors and Affiliates" page and it is there that I will put the logos and links to those who have supported and helped and who have inspired me and helped other Indie artists along the way. I hope to build a networking place where the links can lead people to connect with the services they need to help get themselves the things they need, like maybe logos or maybe screenwriting or editing or promotions that way we can guide each other along and support each other.
My son is a already working on the music for  book trailer for my "Paying the Piper", he didn't even ask me what music I had listened to when I wrote it, he knows, but he doesn't care. He will write me a new song, he will play it, record it and we will have our own. I have friends shooting the pictures, and we will use them, credit them and it is slowly going from a singular effort that I did quietly and almost ashamedly, to an effort that is a team united by a common goal of paying things forward and seeing all succeed.
I spent several hours this last couple weeks talking to people about following their dreams and writing as well as publishing, and I told them my crazy story about following a band of monkeys to the sunshine. They may have initially looked at me like I was crazy, but I got hugged twice and one little old lady got tears in her eyes, so I guess its a story that makes a point that every has to find their reason and once they do, they are going to want to make sure they pull others along as well.
I cant bring the band that started it all though God knows I would give just about any vital body part to be able to do that, but I can ensure that the legacy continues in my little way. If you are an Indie Artist and want to work with me and network, shoot me a line and lets start connecting things and people brought together by the 100th Monkey effect to ensure that it never stops. JenniferDScroggins.com hit the guestbook and say "Hello!"

Dear Roger: Keep Moving Forward While Looking Back With A Smile

This past week was pretty damn amazing! The stress and tension that had been building over the small part of the universe we dwell in seemed to melt away and there was joy, laughter and smiles to be found and those who tried to bring anything but that, were castigated, outed for what they are, and quickly shunted off to the oblivion they so richly deserve.
There are unexpected heroes moving quietly to keep things interesting and I have hopes that they will keep things alive and positive in ways that those of us who understand will appreciate. My gut is rarely wrong about things...just sayin.
I am now a dot.com! I bought a couple of domains, including my own name,"JenniferDScroggins.com" and another one called,"MonkeyAfire.com". Its slow going when your I.T. guy is your 16 y/o son that has the social life of a young rock star, so I have to deal with working around his gigs, his dates, his church things, his beach vacations, his skate boarding adventures, and his need to eat all the food in the house and sleep for 12-15 hours at a stretch. I have found he is motivated by cold, hard cash and having his Iphone repossessed, so we finally got the primary site online last night with more to follow hopefully tomorrow, and this should make me easier to find but I learned all kinds of ways to curse Html thanks to his efforts yesterday.
Hes also working on writing songs for my next Book Trailers for "Paying the Piper" and "Drifts", so I guess I cant criticize him too much, but dealing with his work schedule is a lot of stress for a Type A person like me who likes to get stuff done as with as little procrastination as possible and he is all about procrastinating. We will get through it though, hopefully with all our sanity intact and with my books getting some attention and sales.
My daughter is working on drawing and designing some table hangars for my book signing that will hopefully be taking place this coming Saturday, (once my shipment of books arrives), and I am excited to finally be getting things out there and promoted on the local level as well. Its slow going and often stressful and frustrating, and sometimes hurtful and heartbreaking, but its worth it, and I hope that I will leave a legacy for my kids that will provide them with proof that persevering and following your dreams is the right thing to do, even when you have been told you are,"Stupid, crazy and a waste of time".
Keeping my kids involved has motivated them to learn things like more advanced coding for building my websites, design for my advertising, and my son Sticky has even gotten involved with helping to promote my books by talking to people and showing them my books, and when we go to ship out books to people who have ordered signed copies, he helps with the packaging and addressing, so he is learning things that will hopefully help him later in life. Stubby has been quietly promoting my books on his Facebook page, not even telling me he was doing it. He carry's the books to the post office for me, and he handles telling the clerk what we need, so this whole endevour is giving them skills to use in the future, and my daughter, Stevie, is wanting to see about eventually publish her own book in the next year!
Im proud of how far we have come, as we start our 3rd year up here, we have made a lot of progress and we will hopefully see even more in this next year with hopes of getting that car and maybe even going to Texas to see my sister and some friends. The ex is going back to Arizona, he found California to be too hard and child support enforcement sent him a letter letting him know they had found him, oh well, I wont miss what I never got, and we will keep on keeping on and rejoice that now California is a safe zone too!

Dear Roger: Two Years Sees A Lot Of Changes

Yesterday was quite a day in our little corner of the universe, the long awaited event finally occurred and my daughters favorite boy finally became a father. I think I will never again hear in the higher registers. I have to wonder, why do little girls find it necessary to shriek when they are happy? I think my poor neighbors probably had small heart attacks when I saw the Facebook status of his sister post and I looked up and said to my daughter,"Hey, guess what? Jackson's finally a daddy." and she let out a shriek of joy that was probably heard by the boy himself wherever he was.
Poor Spencer jumped, the cat ran and hid and my friend Jen, came close to dropping her Iphone on the tile floor as we watched my daughter race around the apartment yelling and laughing and cheering, stopping only to do the math and smile to herself as she said,"I'm either 8 years older or 19 years younger, either way, its okay!" I promptly sprouted gray hairs in places that had been hold outs as I Google searched the phone number for lock down style all girls schools.
It was a happy day, and a busy day. I bought my domains for the internet so I can hopefully get my books out there with a little more visibility and maybe start making some money on them instead of bleeding cash, and I spent a good hour on the phone walking another person though getting their writing self-published. One of the domains I bought is specifically for that kind of thing, "MonkeyAfire" is going to be a networking site for all of us brought together by the 100th Monkey effect, all of us who want to keep that spirit alive and moving forward, and I hope to get people networking and bringing forward those who are working on building their own dreams.
Summer is finally trying to arrive here in Portland and I am glad to see it. The cold has worn on me and with no concerts to look forward to this summer, I had despaired having anything to look forward to, but things are improving, I am starting to write again when I can fit it in between trying to promote my books and make a little money to support my writing habit, and I am still hoping against hope to get that one shout out or bump that makes all the difference for me, but so far knocking on doors, tweeting, messaging and sending my books out into the great unknown has just netted a trickle of interest, but I wont quit, I have my little girl sitting next to me most of the time, encouraging me and patting my back, reminding me why I do what I do, and telling me her plans for when we are finally able to afford, "Good used car and a full months groceries."

Dear Roger: This Month, We Think Of Gratitude

Summer is a time of reflection for me. I woke up this morning on my nice new leather couch in my comfortable living room without anyone yelling at me,(other than Spencer, my dog), and I realized that I have been in Portland for almost 2 years, at first with just two of my kids and then a year and a month later, with all of my kids. Its been two amazing years of changes. I still have my issues, some days are better than others, but I have been steadily employed for almost a year, I am a published author x's THREE and I have FRIENDS that I actually hang out with on a regular basis. I still stay in the house more than I go out, and I still struggle with hyper-vigilance, my stammer, headaches and my temper, but I go more days wanting to be here than not.
I am enjoying my life more. I'm not ducking and dodging and worrying about appeasing anyone so they didn't hurt me or my kids.I struggle and scrounge to keep my kids clothed and fed, and we don't have extra anything, but we are HAPPY. My eldest son is now learning how to drive thanks to my new friend, and I got to go see a movie in the theater with another adult and we acted silly and hooted and hollered and OBJECTIFIED the hell out the men on the screen and I walked out of the first movie I had seen in almost a year, laughing.
I've gotten tougher I think. I stood my ex down and told him to leave when he showed up here in Portland thinking he was going to bully me into supporting him and putting up with his crap again. I went "Keep Awake" on him and I managed to get just the right amount of "scary psycho chick" look in my eye and he scurried away to go mooch off someone else, leaving us with debt we didn't need, depleted cupboards, a cat with worms and fleas, and junk in storage I just managed to get hauled off yesterday. He kept the damn van, deciding he needed it more than me and the four kids.
Its taken us a bit to recover from his,"Visit" and even his paltry contributions of 100 here or there when the mood strikes him haven't done too much to ease the stress of it all, but knowing he wont be back would be more help. I've finally filed for child support, because after his last call where he told the kids he had spent the last two weeks sitting on the beach reading while we were scrambling trying to find money for milk and bread, I knew something had to give. I decided that nothing motivates a man to get busy like threats of going to jail or losing their drivers license. I don't do this lightly, but when it has been years and years of nothing but excuse after excuse for not supporting his kids, for failing them, and being a lazy slob, then something has to be done. Hes not disabled, hes just lazy and its time he gets some proper motivation. My eldest son wants me to go after his father too, and while that scares the hell out of me, he says its time he finally does the right thing as well.
Its going to be an even busier year this next one I have a feeling and hopefully just as upwardly mobile. My kids are happy and safe, I feel mostly happy and safe and I am proud of the progress I have made these past two years. I have grown a lot as a person and I am alive. He has not won, and in spite of his attempts to continually pick at my insecurities and bring me down, he is the one who is essentially homeless and who has done nothing for himself or his kids. I have clothed, fed and sheltered them on my own and I have managed to hold down and job and publish THREE books while all he has done is criticize me for following my dream, but the voice that use to roar right in my face with the straight razor at my throat is now just a whisper at my heels.
My little girl is creating an event on Facebook and inviting people to our "Two Year Celebration of Life" on July 28th. She is stone cold serious. If you can, come join us, it wont be fancy, but it will be happy.

Dear Roger: A Cure For Insomnia?

For the first time in months, I slept good last night. I really shouldn't have, I have about a million things to worry about, including covering all the bills at the first of the month, the ex not helping out and hinting that he might be heading this direction, my 3rd novel is getting bunged up in its opening week out because the e-version's page is not totally ready so no one can preview it and that is a huge pain in the ass, and well, I have had chest pains off and on over the past couple of weeks again, but after a busy as hell day of building my authors page on Amazon and getting things set up for all the international markets and doing all kinds of other work related stuff I needed to do, I took some time and I wrote  a letter to someone very important to me and I put to rest some business that I needed to put to rest, and I think that is why I slept better.
I tend to not be a good follower or joiner of anything. I have always been an outlier and skeptical of the whole herd mentality that many seem content to fall into when it comes to things. I have tried over the years to be a part of things, and I have failed miserably when my need to ask,"Why?" or "Says who?"  comes into play as well as my gut instinct.
When I started off in the military, that was a huge problem and if I hadn't destroyed my knee at Ft. Sill, I probably would have ended up in the stockade for insubordination more than I would have actually served because keeping my opinion to myself has never been my strong point when I have encountered injustice.
As a cop, it caused me problems as well because I have to respect the people giving me commands, and when the person who is supposedly commanding me, makes fun of me for using,"Big words" or "Talking like a lawyer", well then I'm afraid the contempt is going to show in my expression pretty damn fast.
As I have gotten older and the years have taken a toll on me, I've gone less from worrying about belonging to anything to more about protecting those I care about or who need it, and my kids are my primary focus and then there are a few who figure in pretty close right there after my kids. I am pretty diligent about watching out for them and I don't have an agenda and I don't want or expect anything other than people to be safe and happy, because like I have said in the past, time is short and I often feel like a clock that is winding down. When you are in that situation, things have no meaning to you, but making sure you are right with the people you care about and Karma, has a whole lot of meaning.
I am working hard to make sure my kids know about doing the right things and about being skeptical of people with a bill of goods to sell. I used to take most people at face value and give them a chance to lie to me, but now I am more likely to go in expecting to be lied to and hope that the person will prove themselves to be genuine and honest with the same kinds of values that I have and that I have tried to work hard to instill in my children. Dont know if its just a Southern thing, a cop thing, or what it is, but I have gone back to going with my own gut instinct on things and when I do get backed on my feelings by someone I hold in regard, its good to know there are other people out there who have a lick of sense and a moral code similar to mine because it gives me hope that maybe my kids will have friends when they grow up and venture out and they wont be held to be such weirdos.
All I know is I slept a lot better last night and a load is off my mind.

A Modern Calamity: Dear Roger: The Things You Do For Love

A Modern Calamity: Dear Roger: The Things You Do For Love: Today was an amazing day. My teenage son spent most of his day helping me put together the book trailer for my book,"Face In The Rear V...

Dear Roger: The Things You Do For Love

Today was an amazing day. My teenage son spent most of his day helping me put together the book trailer for my book,"Face In The Rear View Mirror." This was not something he did lightly, hes a teenager who was planning on spending the morning playing football with his buddies and then the afternoon with his guitar or napping, but the rain started in and that killed his plans and he watched me struggle along with Windows Movie maker, cursing and squinting through my inadequate glasses, getting more and more frustrated til finally with his trademark," Nick Burns-Your Companies Computer Guy" snarl he said,"MOVE!" and he took over.
He got all the pictures in place, found a picture to fill a gap we knew we couldn't fill otherwise and he then captioned and set up all the animations and fancy stuff that was making me crazy because half of it I cannot see properly and the other half I get frustrated with trying to get match what I have in my mind. He got all the pictures and text in place and it was beautiful, exactly what I wanted and then we hit our first major argument of the day; the music.
He knew what I listened to when I wrote that story, he was sitting next to me on the couch most of the time as I sat there with my ear buds in,alternately either smiling at memories or crying over them and he listened to my stories and some of the music with me, and he knew the one song that inspired me along with the one voice that was in my ears most of the time. When I got up to go referee a fight between my daughter and Stubby over who was farting in the bedroom the worst, he loaded the song and when I came back he had it perfectly synced up and playing along with the pictures.
My reaction was visceral and he didn't know how to handle a mom in tears over a simple song, but he stopped it and asked me why I wouldn't allow him to leave it. I explained that it was most likely tangled up in legal issues that would take years to sort out,and that I was not going to step into the middle of with my paltry little video. I wanted him to record HIS music and he finally agreed after much negotiation and explaining that no matter how special a song may be, sometimes a song from someone close to you is even more special.
He sat and tuned and re-tuned his guitar for at least an hour, driving me up the wall, and he strummed and picked and wool-gathered like musicians do, and he played the one song he had written over a week ago and decided he didn't like it for the video, so he came up with something new.
We recorded it at my kitchen table when we caught a lull in the barking and scratching of the dog, the bickering of the other kids and the noise of the road outside. You can hear a bit of the creak of our chairs and some of the tap of his toes on the tile, but I think it adds to the simple charm of the melody.
He did that for me. He gave up his whole day, working on my video and helping me out when I know he wanted to be off hanging out with his friends, and he wrote a song for me. We may battle like most parents and teens do, but today I feel loved more than a little.

A Modern Calamity: Dear Roger: Comfort Zone

A Modern Calamity: Dear Roger: Comfort Zone: When I am working on something, such as my writing, I can be very single minded and focused. I often forget to eat sometimes even to drink...

Dear Roger: Comfort Zone

When I am working on something, such as my writing, I can be very single minded and focused. I often forget to eat sometimes even to drink or even get up and move around. If im on a writing jag, I will focus on what I am writing about to the exclusion of almost everything else, except my kids, they tend to be very persistent about getting my attention away from anything. 

This single-mindedness sometimes bites me in the ass and I forget to do other things, oh say like, refill my prescriptions for my seizure medications or eat, or even get enough sleep. I have raging insomnia and often get by on less than 4 hours of sleep a night, sitting up working on my writing or reading, lurking in unseemly areas of the interwebz or just woolgathering in the wee hours when I wish I had someone to talk to other than myself. I have been working on trying to become more social and develop better ways of communicating and actually talking about my books in ways other than just blushing and stammering or lapsing into full on stuttering, but its been difficult though today was a little better.

My boss, a woman a little older than me, hit me up for copies of my books the other day, and while I am fairly okay with sending them off to people who are hundreds of miles away from me and who I don’t really have to deal with on a regular basis, I was a bit freaked out about my BOSS actually reading my stuff, but I handed them over and promptly considered moving.

Today, she stopped me as I was out wandering about doing my regular stuff and she wanted to TALK ABOUT MY BOOK,”DRIFTS”. There were other people around and I thought that might give me a way of escape, but, OH NOO! She was adamant! She LOVED IT. She wanted to know about my inspirations and where I got the ideas and then she told me how she related to the character and that it really struck a nerve in her and she imagines that the reason its popular is because it strikes that same nerve in a lot of people.

I had really been wondering. I really hadn’t understood why it was doing so well, but it keeps selling and people keep asking me for copies of it and its the one people ask me about the most. I also get asked if there will be a sequel, and the answer is; I don’t know. I have to get the characters to talk to me again and right now they are kinda quiet. I hope they talk to me again because while it was a pretty dark story when it was first written, it was fun to write. Just like the next story im about to publish. It was a lot of fun to write and it had different inspirations. 

I have been pretty busy getting stuff ready to go and haven’t written too much lately other than my blogs but I have the start of a very dark and twisted tale on my desktop, and while its got a lot of research and observation behind it, its a hard tale to write on ones psyche because its about a side of “Love” and obsession that most are very lucky to escape, and I cant delve to deeply into working on it without my PTSD pinging off the charts, and the research has had me up nights pacing the floor. I’ve gotten one chapter done and 5 outlined, and all the characters developed, even done a quick and dirty outline of it one night on FB with some friends to give them an idea of where I was heading with the tale and they are well aware of how disturbing it is, and what is even worse, is most of  the research has been conducted by observing real people in the small fandom I am a part of. Ill leave that for another day, because I prefer to write the happier stuff, but I am at the mercy of my muse and when he is in one of his moods, it often works for me best to let him lead. He led me along on Drifts and it seems to really speak to people. 

My books and stories are all over the map when it comes to content and inspiration and I never really know when I am going to have an idea strike me just write where I spend days and days in a focused writing jag, even muttering ideas for progression in the plot as I grab a shower or scrawling them on my hand or bedside table in the wee hours of the morning. 

The book that is about to come out was one of those that progressed in such a manner and it was written after my son made an offhand comment about how he respected a man who would man up and be a father to a kid, even when it was inconvenient when his father who was supposedly a macho tough guy, did all he could to hide from a little baby and a woman. It was just the one comment and that was all it took, like so many things.

Trying to learn to talk about my writing is a work in progress with me. I can talk about a great many things, and I think I am getting better talking about my work, and my writing, and I have my temper mostly under control and Lord knows that insults just roll off of me, especially those from women and strangers because they don’t know me or where I have been. I had some heifer try it with me on FB the other day, she tried to insult me by commenting that my picture wasn’t particularly feminine. Uh, no duh? Im 43 years old with 4 kids at home, I have no social life or anything like that and I have lived a bit of a rough life, so I told her to go ahead and say all the things she needed to say to make herself feel better about herself. If calling me less than ladylike made her feel better about herself, well then,”Bless her heart” ,(oh yeah, I did use that), I told her to go ahead and have at it. I’ve been told worse by better.  I took the high road, didn’t use a swear word or a threat or anything like that, I just broke out the Texan/Southern manners and I broke it off in her and left her looking like what she was and funny thing was, she wasted no time in pulling down her comments. Bully’s and mean girls don’t scare or bother me, I see your pissy little teen angst and I raise you a Hells Angel prospect with a straight razor to your throat in a room where your kids are. I have walked through the valley of that shadow and I was the one who made it out the other side. So I guess I will figure out the whole talking about my stuff pretty soon too.