Dear Roger,Middle Aged Crazy and Chasing Boys

Okay, it officially sucks being single.Summer is almost here and I want to be out running around on a motorcycle or a horse, instead I am sitting home most days reading soft-core Twilight Fan Fic porn and butlering for my dogs. The kids will be out of school in a few days, my oldest will be home from Texas, and my prospects for getting any fine monkey loving is fading as fast as my bank accounts balance.Its just not fair! My guinea pigs are getting more action than I have in the last couple of years, and they are both male! The kids are all bummed because they will miss their friends/girlfriends/boyfriends,(my baby girl has no less than 4 little suitors)and Stubby and Sticky have a few each as well. I have no male companionship, none, zip, nada! Its just not right, I work hard to stay in shape, and not to brag, but Im a freaking size ONE! my girly bits are all where they should be, and im still rocking a,"D" if you know what I mean, but all guys will do is look! I am going my best to be non-intimidating, I smile, I make small talk and I dont correct their grammar or anyhthing else, I let them think they are smarter than me or more capable than me, but even that doesnt seem to tone it down. I have tried tattoos covered, tattoos uncovered, jewelry, no jewelry, I wear tight jeans and I fix my hair and I dont look like a scrub, and I even turn down my music when I am driving, and I havent called anyone a,'Pinheaded Jackass" in a few weeks and I have only yelled at one Prius driving idiot that was doing 10mph on a road that was clearly ment for people to do 50 or better on,(okay, I do still drive like a road-raging asshole, but I cant fix everything)and my van is pretty embarassing so that just irks me and puts me in a mood.
My options for getting out are starting to narrow pretty quickly, once the kids are out of school, Im pretty well screwed because I will most likely have them 24/7 until school starts back up. I am planning on trying to get out on weekends when the ex is around, but even that gets awkward because if I did find someone, I would have to arrange meetings at my house around that complication.im frustrated, stressed, horny, and aggravated and I dont know what to do about it. Other than investing heavily in duracell,(and even that is difficult with 3 monkeys that can pick locks running loose)and nothing kills the mood like the sounds of a child either barfing or sneaking into the kitchen to steal from my chocolate stash.I need privacy, motivation, and peace, but none of that is going to happen any time soon and its starting to get to me.
Im not even allowed to comment about younger men, even cute one from the movies that are just sooo pretty, because my kids like to remind me,'Ohh, he looks like Chance"(definate mood killer), or the ever snarky,"Arent you old enough to be his mom?" and then the ever popular,'GROOOOOSSSS MOM, hes almost half your age!!", Im mean JEESH! its not like im ever going to meet any of them, but my kids cant stand me even drooling over them and its making me feel OLD, and that is not cool.
I do get looks, and even comments of a favorable nature, but guys seem to vapor lock when it comes to doing anything substantial, and its really hard to meet guys when your days consist of dropping off children, cleaning house, trying to write, and then picking up children coming home and cooking dinner.
I am seriously considering getting my EMT/Paramedic back so I can get out and do something that I love to do and perhaps meet people that I would get on well with. I had considered looking into volunteering with the local sheriffs dept, but that would just remind me that I miss being a cop, and then all kinds of crazy ideas about getting my badge back and all that start to float around in my head, so its best that I probably avoid as much of that world as possible. I just need to be busy and productive until my Masters starts back up in August, so I will just have to sit tight and try to find something that I enjoy besides sitting around and watching Mixed Martial Arts and Cage fighting, its just not a healthy thing.
Im thinking about buying a motorcycle or a horse, just so I have something as a distraction, but until then I will have to just try and make sure there is time for cold showers.

Dear Roger, Do Gigolos Have Payment Plans?

Yet another weekend where the ex has managed to skate out and Im sitting watching crappy TV while the kids play,"Pull my finger" right next to me so that they can share the pain with me.If anyone ever says that girls are capable of being nasty, welll...my sisters mini-van that we took on the trip back to Texas in 2005, and my baby daughter would have to disagree. My sis ended up selling that van because the smell never seemed to go away, and her oldest son never found it funny to fart in an enclosed vehicle around me and her ever again.Sitting up drinking beer and eating deviled eggs the night before we left on the trip gave us an excellent teaching tool for a gross boy and got her out of having to drive that mini-van forever.Her son still gets a little nervous when me and my sis get together, but then most of the men in the South get nervous when me and her team up. I really am trying to find a way to get back home, I miss my big son something terrible, I miss my sis even worse, and I want to go hunting for a cute lil,(not really) Texan to import back here to the land of few straight,unattached men.
I swear, this town is desolate when it comes to single men that are of legal age,have a job, and are straight and unmarried.I dont to the whole bar scene anymore, but I would love to have someplace to go where there is at least a chance of meeting a single, straight , employed, man. It was soo much easier to find a single man back home, and if I had my sis to go hunting with me,I am sure that this long, dry spell would come to an end. My son still gets all worked up when I tell him I am going over to the college campus to take care of business,"Leave those college boys alone you COUGAR!" He is worried that I will find a college boy that will end up messing with his Wii or guitars and he gave me this whole long speech about how it was,"Wrong and morally bankrupt for me to even consider looking at younger men." I have to wonder, who the hell raised him? I never taught him that you are supposed to love or date one type of person, and his brothers are pretty liberal with who they find intersting. Stubby loves large black women and oddly enough ,Dakotah Fanning as long as its in her Volturi guise,(he likes tough/mean women), Sticky likes blondes of all shapes,sizes and ages, and my baby girl adores cowboys,(God help her), and my big son has dated so many girls this last year, I have lost track of what he prefers, but I have never tried to push him into a mold, but he damn sure has opinons about what I should date.
The damn wind is blowing like hell this weekend, and the escape I had hoped to make, shows no sign of being possible, but there is hope on the horizon! I have friends who have offered to kid sit, and I am planning to go to the Henry Rollins show on the 16th, so I will be getting out some, and with school starting back at the university in August, and due to my status, I can go do research in the library and get out where there are other people,so I see hope on the horizon, that or I am going to just buy batteries in mass quantities and call it good.

Dear Roger, Is Being Addicted to Reading Treatable Through an Intervention?

I cannot seem to tear myself away from reading or writing for some reason! I am staying up insane hours to read,not great classic works for the most part, but pretty much anything! I have been reading magazines from the subscription to,"Details Magazine" that I got for my oldest son in the hopes of getting him to realize that there are fashion styles beyond skinny jeans and rock t-shirts and beanies, my subscription to,'Psychology Today" as well as ,'Guns and Ammo", and I have 4 books going right now, including,'Cemetary Dance" and ,"The Chronicals of Jack Primus" and a couple of others that I pick up and put down depending on my mood, and then there is my nasty,'Fan Fiction" addiction that I seem to be unable to break.I am readingor writing more than 6 hours a day and I get up at 0500 to start and often go back to bed sometime around 0200.Its insane, and often I find myself nodding off with either a book or my computer in my lap.
I am getting somethings done,I started looking into Writing Fellowships and trying to sort out just what I can do to support me and the kids over the summer,but mostly what I want to do is spend time in the library doing research for my novel,or curled up somewhere quiet so I can read. I have found that I really enjoy listening to music while I write, so i often have my Ipod going or a pop out music player from a couple of bands I like on my desktop so that I can listen to something to keep my brain from focusing on too much of the past.I finished the first chapter, but I could not write about his death.I guess I am just not to that point yet.I got to the curve in the road, and it all came flashing back and I found that I was just unable to do it.I got blistering,"Suicide" migraines for 3 days in a row, and just a feeling of melancholy and sadness, that I decided to see if I could pick up afterwards, and luckily I found a starting point for a chapter that will be in the middle of the book, and even the end has been floating around. Writing has been coming easier lately for other things and I have even been kicking around some song lyrics, and that would be the first time in close to 20 years that I have even remotely considered writing songs. My lyrics tend to be dark and kinda sad, but I think they would also speak to more than a few people, kinda like my poetry did back in the day. I am going to have to see if my mom will give me back my high school journals with the poetry in them, though after the,'Great art and photography funeral pyre" that I conducted 20 years ago where I burned almost all of my work, I am sure it will take some convincing on my behalf to get her to give the surviving stuff. I dont burn much of my work anymore, though I have been tempted, and the book containing my ,"Cowboy Poetry" made it as far as the top of the woodstove before I reconsidered due to her ire over me burning my younger poems, though why she gets so upset with me I dont understand, afterall, I have never let her read any of it.I dont let many people read or see what I have written in the way of fiction or poetry, and it even weirds me out when people I know actually read my online stuff, its kinda like being naked in front of them. I mean, I dont mind if strangers read it, because after all, Ive done my fair share of flashing a little skin when it was around people I wasnt going to ever see again, but when its people who know me, I tend to kinda skeeve out a little inside. Showing my writing or my art is like standing in front of everyone naked with my guts hanging out, you know people judge you and ive got a lot of scars and lumps.Ive never been an exhibitionist or even remotely interested in being famous,(hell, I spent enough time being infamous),and frankly I give a lot of props to those with the guts to get up in front of people and show themselves. I have given a few speeches in front of large crowds,(over 300 people)several times, and the anticipation was the absolute worst.I have told people who use me for public speaking events to not even really warn me, just call me and say,"you need to be here tomorrow and dress nice and be ready to talk to some folks" and I would be fine, but the last time I had to give a speech at a fundraiser for one of my favorite charities, they made the mistake of telling me a month in advance and they expected a copy of my speech 2 weeks before I spoke.By the time the day rolled around, I was a nervous wreck and I had discarded the original speech and I ended up just using some basic notes and speaking from the heart, which I have found always makes people more interested. I got a lot of laughs,(on purpose) and a standing ovation, so I guess it wasnt too bad, but again the sensation of being naked with everything hanging there was almost overpowering. The few times I performed my,'Cowboy Poetry' , it was a little more relaxing because I didnt know anyone,but im still really damn particular who I let read or see it.
I have kinda tinkered with the other stories I was working on, and I do not know if they are going to flesh out enough to be full-length novels, but I am thinking a compilation of my "Southern Gothic' stories might be something worth pitching.Living where I did as a kid sure gave me some stories to tell, and so many of the recollections take me back to times that sure as hell seemed a lot more simple and happy.
I always miss home and the South in the spring.I miss the green of everything and the smell of hay meadows as everyone tried to get in some quick hay cuttings before the rain gets too crazy, I miss the sound of cicadas and whip o wills, and bar b cue, and Southern men, the kinda men I grew up with that had that wonderful lazy way of speaking, and dressing. God, I dont know what it is but I am soo sick of seeing a good looking man and then seeing him wearing flip flops or sandles with socks!I miss men that wear boots and skin tight wrangler jeans that sit soo low...AW HEll! im digressing, but its been soo long that when I hear a Southern accent or a Texan accent in the store I just want to see if they are from home or if there is something we have in common so I can hear the sounds of home a little longer.I also perk up when I hear an English accent as well, because growing up across from Mick and all his craziness, I just associate that Bristol limey accent with home as well. It feels like I have lost soo much by being away, and sometimes when I talk to friends on Facebook, I see that they never left the area and they all seem to be pretty happy. I am the only one in my family that is this far from home, and sometimes I wish I hadnt wandered so far away, and perhaps this constant pull that I seem to feel is my punishment for leaving.

Dear Rog, Im 41 Going on 14, I think Its Called a Midlife Crisis.

So, im owning the fact I am little bit freaked out about being officially middle-aged, or in the case of our familys history, probably one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel! I mean WTF, you left me at 45, Granpa died at 64, Robert at 43, and Ive danced with death 4 times now and I think I scared him off but Hell, you know I LOVE to dance on the edge.
Im getting that skin-crawling, gotta go now! feeling. I want to be out seeing and doing and going, and those thoughts of just taking that step off the main highway and back out into the wilderness is gnawning at me.The endless days of playing the good little soccer mom from hell are starting to eat me, and its showing in more than a few ways. My temper has gotten shorter and I havent found an outlet for it, and that makes life hell for me and those around me. I have been writing more than usual, and listening to music until I cant take anymore, but I havent touched the guitar in weeks, and I still havent found a piano for the kids to start learning on, so I guess im just rattling around in my head too much without anything physical to ease the stress.
My oldest boy gets home in a few more weeks and I am looking forward to having him around to nag me into doing things like working on the damn van and my yard,(place looks like whats left after a tornado hits a trailer park), so I am not totally mortified when folks come by to visit, though if I keep it up with the surround sound and the music blasting with the occasional werewolf growl thrown in, I may not have too many folks coming around.I managed to clear the crowd of extraneous dogs and children away from my front gate this afternoon by turning up one of the Underworld trilogy movies, my dogs not only left for the back part of the pasture, the neighbor kids and their dog hauled ass home looking back over their shoulders like a chupacabra was on their tail, I about fell out of my chair laughing.
Did my little spiel at the Community Action Board meeting today, and it was well received, in fact, they want me to develop a Facebook page and then coach them through Twitter,(I barely understand that one myself), and then be in charge of it. I have time for that right now, but in the Fall I am going to be taking 12-15 hours o graduate level cousework and hopefully teaching a class or two, and I just dont know if I can committ the time for it. I love volunteering for them, and its nice to be around people who find me interesting and actually capable of doing something, but I have also had some epic arguments with others in that department and they dont like having legal precedent and case law and that kind of stuff thrown at them, so I may have to find a second to run things if I get my Southern up like I did when I was a paid employee.
It was another cold, windy, day up here and because I had to go to my formal meeting and present, I dressed in my finest black jeans and my black banded collar shirt and I made sure all the tattoos were covered, though I did finally break down and wear my damn glasses, so it kinda skewed the whole look into the East German touist vibe again,and that is not conducive to meeting any elgible males. The young fella that I am interested in was a work all day, and my shcedule was all messed up, so it appears that it is going to be a chronic case of the forces moving against us. I did go turn in the rest of the papers over the University to get my funding reinstated, but I am not going to go this Summer, I want the chance to travel, and if I do get the opportunity I dont want classes to hold me back.
I think I need to get more exercise.I am skinny as hell and the size 1 jeans fit me fine other than I do not get why jeans makers feel the need to cut the waist so damn low! I really dont enjoy having my backside in the wind up here, and if I have to squat down or work on something where I am hunkered down, it never fails that one of the dang kids drops something cold down the coin slot or tries to give me a wedgie! Im 41 years old, I am the wedgie inflicter, not the receiver!
Looks like its going to be a summer of taking the kids to movies just about every dang week. They were so excited to see an ad for The Last Airbender, they came running into the living room whooping and hollaring and they jumped on me and knocked my dang chair over backwards! Then they started ,'Earthbending" and "Air Bending" and staging mock battles in the lving room,(makes it really damn hard to write), and telling me that I had to take them. Stubby is all bummed that his dad shaved off his ,"Sokka Doo", I dont think he could stand the fact that I could and did, comb it into a wicked mohawk for the kid on occasion and it was adorable, but with the way Stubbys hair curls forward, it was getting to be a pain and I guess he just found it easier. Sticky really misses his, and he seems to be cussing and growling a lot more than usual, and he damn sure is fighting me over what he is going to wear every day, it took all I had to get him in clean underwear and shoes today, but I won and he was pissed and we ended up having a brawl in the back of the van on the way to school because Stevie dared to sing along with the 100 Monkeys song that Sticky has claimed as his,(Reaper), and he yelled at her to shut up and she threw a book at him and he just went for her, and the next thing you know, all three of them were rolling around in the back of the van, kicking,spitting, throwing punches and acting like a pack of wild animals. I had to pull over and threaten to seatbelt check the lot of them, so its no wonder that some mornings I get up, make my coffee, go sit on the porch and contemplate a vacation, but with the oldest coming home, I can only hope it will get better. I think he finds me to be a decent mom, I mean not too many of friends are willing to listen to the music he listens to most of the time,(emo/screamo),but I try and I show him some of my stuff and we have things to talk about, but we also have things to argue about.Considering I am pretty liberal when it comes to a grown ass persons choice of ,"Partners",I would ahve thought that my son would have developed a fairly calm attitude about me giving up on guys my age, but he is adamant that I should,"Act my age" and not even look at the younger set,but he has no problem with men dating younger women. Im sure we will have some interesting debates when he gets home, but until then I am going to try and raise myself out of this lethargy and get out and do something worthwhile.

Dear Roger, I Need a Man,a Motocycle And The Hell Out Of Flagstaff

I am beginning to wonder if Spring is ever going to really arrive here in the frozen North! I mean,FUCK! its the middle of Goddamned MAY and we are supposed to get more snow over the next couple of days! I had thought we would be done with all of this mess, I mean my traditional Spring bout of last gasp of the schoolyear, kiddie plague has seen fit to strike right as I am supposed to give a presentation in front of the C.A.B. meeting on Tuesday, but apparently I am in the early stages of Strep Throat and I have lost my voice and I feel like crap. Of course you know this would strike right as I am getting prepared to go chasing after the 23 year old, so I am now officially miserable.
I want to get back to Texas so badly for the oldest 2 kids graduation,but considering my financial situation, it doesnt look like that is going to happen. It never fails, I always have some fiscal disaster right as I really need spare cash for something important, and my last months gas bill kicked my bank accounts ass. This month is going to be a little smaller, but still close to 300 bucks, largely because Sticky has an obsession with twisting the thermostat, and some mornings I have gotten up and found it set on the far end and the dogs have decided to try and climb into the fridge to escape the sauna.
I have been writing more over the past couple of days, but I still havent killed him.I wrote up to the curve in the road and then my migraines got to the point that I thought I was going to pull my scalp off and shove my eyeballs through the back of my head. I had started making chapter notes for the progressions, and I managed to pick up after the fact and I am having a lot of success working on the story past that point, but killing him and the immediate after is really an exercise in masochism. The muse that is the older version of the character really helps to push it along, even though the story has some pretty dark themes, but because the pictures that I use is of him smiling, it helps to add some lightness to it in places where things were actually pretty crazy. Sometimes as a writer, I feel like I am speaking an entirely different language than most normal humans,but hell! When have I ever been a ,"Normal" human? Ive been working on some sketches for a sculpture design that I threw out to my ex a few years ago, and I am really wishing I had the capabilities to get it built because I have quite a few sculptures in my head that would really be fantastic installation pieces for some public place, but when you combine giant pine beams,wrought Iron and blown glass as well as running waters, you have to have bucks to bring that kind of stuff to fruition, and I may just have to content myself with my sketches, but you never can tell.
Im a little fed up with the weather, the near constant wind is drying everything out and we will be in High Alert status again in no time if it keeps up,because that damn wind just sucks the life out of everything.
My social occasions look to be few and far between for the next few months, just as I had anticipated, my ex wants to visit the kids when it offers him the least amount of inconveniance, so I am essentially functioning much as I did before he was released, he does the minimum, I am supposed to be the one in charge of every damn thing everydamn time. He has a couple of job leads in the works, but the money he has been paid so far has gone to his Parole fees and extraneous fees and expenses, and on occasion he has bought a gallon of milk or so for the kids. Its very ironic that I am giving a presentation on how Social Networking and resources like Twitter, can and the ability to access them for the poor are essential for rebuilding a sense of connection with the community and helping to give equal access to resources that in many places, only the rich can afford, Im flat assed broke, yet I will go in there tomorrow and discuss this issue with the board and try to persuade them to move away from only allowing funding for land-line phone lines, which limit the ability of the poor, to keep mobile while they are job hunting or attending school.Hell, in some places up on the Rez, they dont even have access to phone lines, and getting the funding switched to prepaid cell phones messaging so that the holder can get tweets about jobs would allow them to be out and looking in person or attending school, and the cost is comparable to a land line and monthly service and you get less services with a land line. The other board members also want me to give them a brief orientation to Twitter and the differences between it and Facebook,(honestly,some have noo clue),and if all goes well, I can start getting them to shift to a more user friendly was of disseminating the funds that we have been placed in charge of, but changing rich peoples attitudes about the poor is never easy, its simply astonishing how many of them think the only poor in this country are ghetto welfare queens and illegal immigrants, they forget that there are some that end up poor due to circumstances, and can even have Masters Degrees and may have never been an addict of any sort. I am the token bright,shiny poor person that also has the caveat of being a Domestic Violence survivor,parent of a child with Downs Syndrome and just about any other social train wreck you could imagine, but I clean up pretty good and I can string words together in a cogent manner, so I love to sneak up on some of the more arrogant privilaged and blow their assumptions out of the water. Being a social activist does have its moments, and I dont really fit the mold, after all, sanctimony really pisses me off, and I do not tell people what to eat or how to dress or anything like that,and I get really annoyed when people try to harass me about my habits, I guess that whole growing up in Texas and hanging out with you in the summers really made me a bit of an enigma.I value children over dogs, though I love my dogs very much.I wont buy a Hybrid because I dont believe in becoming a wage slave to a car company and those damn things just look stupid, and again, back to the Texan thing,my self-image is just a little wrapped up in my ride and I would rather drive a shitty old truck than a shiny new nerd wagon, but I dont drive as much as many people and I am a conserving wild woman. I put 2 tanks of gas in my crappy ride each month and it lasts me. I would prefer to get a cycle for the summer and let the ex use the van for driving the kids around.I miss having a motorcycle, and now that the kids are getting bigger, the desire for getting one is getting stronger.Now I realize that everyone freaks out over the whole,'racing the train across the crossing" thing, but that was over a decade ago and the constant weather changes up here remind me that my bones and joints are paying the price for my motorcycle issues, and I dont intend to date a biker because I.Dont. Ride.Bitch,if I am going to be on a bike, I am going to be in control of the fun.

Dear Roger,Technology, Friend? Enemy? Thing that Can Make You Swear And Throw Things.

I am damn sure not as young as I used to be.Since arriving back from my adventure in the valley of the sun, I have had to spend the past two days recovering from a an almost non-stop attack of suicide migraines, and pretty much all I have wanted to do is sleep, so I think we have ascertained that Vodka and Long Island Iced Teas are most certainly NOT in my future, though as we both know, Vodka at least figure very prominently in my past.I dont know if I would call it an all lose/lose scenario, I had a good time and I let loose a little bit and apparantly I tried to buy a waiter and told another that since I had the glass of Chianti, and we were in an Italian restaurant, I was sure I could find some fava beans, so he should just come on over and see if we could find something to do with all that.My friends were just a little horrified that I was chasing the youngsters,after all, I have had it with the guys my age and I guess that I just finally decided to quit looking quietly and act on it. I got a message the other day through my Facebook where some random guy asked me,"Whats your type of man?" and I almost sarcastically responded,"Alive,concious,functioning,employed,and capable of at least some speech", but I didnt, in fact I havent responded yet because I am really not quite sure what my type is anymore, its almost easier to describe what I wouldnt like.I dont like lazy men or men who dont care about how they look,(though the overly preened metro-sexual is also a turn off),I dont really like the businessman/stockbroker type, they just kinda bore me, though the buttoned down British guy in a suit just gives me all kinda chills because I want to take them out, muss them up and set them loose when im done.Guys like Woody Allen creep me the hell out and inspire me to violence.I kinda have a thing for Brits and Native Americans.I could care less about their financial situation, but they have to have motivation and drive and I like a man to be intelligent,articulate, or to at least aspire to achive more. I mean, hell! I have dated the Mensa member, Rocket Scientist and we had a good run and it was fun because he could not only carry on a conversation in 12 different languages, he could dance,sing, play violin concertos by ear and the man KNEW ROMANCE, but after a while, it just reached a point in the relationship where we just got tired of constantly one-upping each other. I was married to the handsome yet mercurial,international minor league soccer player who was built like a brick out house and could charm the socks off a squrriel, but we were like nitro and a bumpy road and bones were broken, so that was best left in the past, but that curly hair and green eyes and those dimples... but jocks and my temperment do not blend well, because we end up comparing scars and then adding to each others collections.My other ex was almost as bad, the broody/tortured artist that longs to be a biker yet struggles to achieve...anything was 10 years of 'artistic differences", he found it more compelling to constantly criticize me than to try and achieve anything else, and we ended up in the newspaper more than once. Artistic temperment is a difficult thing to deal with, im a perfectionist by nature, judgemental and arrogant, but I am also seemingly going in reverse when it comes to maturity. My sense of humor is more like that of a 12 year old and I love mosh pits and indie bands and I do not dress, act or(so I am told) behave my age. I am actually kinda chasing a young man that I was close to a while back, but when he lost his job, I thought he had left town and he thought I had left town,so we had lost contact with each other,it turns out,he is still here and he was just as happy to run into me as I was to run into him, and if not for an irritating deputy sheriff who felt the need to keep traffic flowing, we would have exchanged numbers and probably more,but as it was, I had to settle for yelling to him that I was still at my home and that he was in fact welcome to come by! I have liked this guy for a couple of years, and we used to flirt back and forth really hard, to the point that my eldest son told us to,'Get a room" one day, so the feelings were pretty interesting to say the least, and the only reason I did not ever really try and follow up on them is because he is only 23.Yes, thats right, 23! Almost half my age, and that used to really bother me, but lately, I have to say that it doesnt anymore. Im in good shape, I own my own house and I dont need a man to take care of me, and I would prefer a COMPANION instead of someone trying to take care of me, so hell, it might be fun, and we all know I love to create a scandal for the family, dating a guy almost half my age would be epic. Im sure my son would be just a little horrified, after all he is completely grossed out and disturbed by the fact that I have pictures of the Twilight hotties as a screensaver, but damn! I have always appreciated good looking men, even if they are just pups. So I guess I would have to say that my type is an ever evolving creature, though probably a little younger than I would have thought in the past.
Ive been enjoying playing with technology this week,through Youtube and Twitter I was introduced to some really cool new indie bands and some really funky cool music that I have loved sharing with friends. I have been Tweeting up a storm about all kinds of random things and I have found resources for my book.
My novel comes in fits and starts, I wrote over 10 pages on my trip and I reached the point in the story where the boy is about to die, and now I have vaporlocked with pain. I know it is because I am reliving his death in a way that is making it so difficult, and though I am able to let him live on in the story as the character evolves into the ,'Half", its still so God-damned painful to remember his death that I have been falling apart the further down the road his truck goes. I want to stop it and turn it around and send him off on some boyish foolishness,but he died before cell phones were around and no one can call him and tell him to come back or warn him of the drunk bastard careening towards him. Being that I am also writing it from his first-person perspective is also brutal, and that I think is the masochist in me. I have developed the relationship between him and the girl in the story a little more, and "Half" will age in the afterlife as she lives her normal span, but spilling out all the pain and brutality of his death is a gut wrenching experience. A friend from back home sent me a picture of the boy that "Half" is based on, and it struck me how clearly and accurately I had remembered his face, and that my son is now at that age. I have done little writing on it over the past couple of days, and the blog I wrote earlier in the week was lost when for some strange reason my computer decided to randomly restart, but apart from that, I hope to find a quiet place to recommit a nearly 30 year old murder and then move on with the story.

Dear Roger, Things That I Shouldnt Do Anymore

Ohhh Roger, Around 10 years ago I swore off hard liquor, and I thought it was for a good reason,mainly because I really liked to do too many things that started with an,"F" when I was drunk, foremost amongst them was fighting,and since I am a small person and many of those I tried to fight with were quite large, I decided that constantly picking fights under with influence of intoxicants was probably not a good way to continue. Also, I had suffered a rather serious encounter with acute alcohol poisining, and I had gone from someone who could handle 11 Alabama Slammers, to a 2 beer drunk, and there was just no fun in any of that, so I had written off the indulgence of slopping around with other lushes, not to mention the fact that it plays hell with someone who has Celiacs disease, being that I dont have the normal lining of my gut to handle the absorbition rate, so I get trashed almost as fast as I drink the stuff, and then you factor in the other meds I take and I am a walking visit to the E.D. waiting to happen, but I figured, Hell, I have been bound up, tied up and wallowing in misery for all this time, im going out of town where I will be away from everyone who knows me, my kids and all responsibility, lets cut loose just a little bit. I indulged, just a little, some wine, a couple of Long Island Iced Teas, and so on, and I unleashed a beast that probably had been chomping at the insides of me for a long, long time.
I wont say I didnt have fun.I loved cutting loose and acting in a bit of a shameless manner. I flirted with younger men and probably made a bit of an ass of myself, but I had a blast doing it. I killed some pain, rode around in a car way nicer than anything I can afford, stayed in a resort suite that costs more than anything I could ever afford, and I ate a $27.00 steak! Thats all a big fucking deal to me because all the last 10 years to me have been about deprivation and doing without and nobody giving a damn about me wanting to have fun.Nobody knew who the hell I was, but they knew I was pretty damn funny and I made people laugh, including myself. I slept in a fancy ass bed, and I hung out with a Hopi chic that gave me alternating Indian names depending on what the heck was going on in the day, and she thought it was funny as hell how I nailed the Hopi accent, and it was nice to be able to talk to her and hang out as just two friends who related on many levels without all the bull shit of worrying about offending each other over our differences. Her youngest son and my oldest son have the same name, and we both found that to be pretty cool, and we have the same struggles with being imperfect people trying to be perfect parents, and we became friends with plans for her to come to the Celtic Fest with me this year where I am going to see about her becoming an honorary member of my clan, and shes gonna teach me how to make Pikki bread and thats worth more than freaking gold.
The alcohol fueled foolishness was self-indulgent, and self-abusive, but it was also a good reminder of why I dont do it, because I was pretty freaking sick after I did it, but not hung over, I was just sick as in pain. I do like the flavor of Long Island Iced Teas, but they lead to some fuckery that I am not sure the breadth of at this point, but my friends called it a,'Mind fuck intervention", though considering that they are both a little on the "She-woman man hater persuasion", I am not sure that was a good thing. I was poured into my bed, my cell phone locked away in the room safe, and I was told it was "for my own good", and I really hope it was, but at this point I have a headache, a gut ache and a vague feeling of unease.