Dear Roger, Monkey Balls and Finding Home,or Another Day in Paradise

We have finally found our home.Not so much our new address, but our new home.We arrived in Portland on Sunday to bright and sunny skies and beautiful scenery and my friends were at the train station to pick us and our 7 bags of up. The train ride was an adventure with lots of interesting things to see and people to hang out with, and on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the most horrible experience ever, I would only give it a 2. I have bruises on both of my hips from trying to sleep in the seats, and I had to wear the same boots and jeans for 3 days, as well as go without a shower, but I have experienced worse. The kids seem to do really well, and being able to see most of California without having to drive through it was pretty nice, though I would have liked to have stopped and played in the Ocean for awhile at Point Conception.

Being around my friend Susan again has been great for me. Chance and I had a fit of giggles on the train when we both realized that she is my own personal "Alice", the character from Twilight. She is a very girly girl, into dressing up and always trying to get me to dress more girly and she lives to shop! I wanted to see the weird side of Portland, so she takes me to Hawthorne street and shopping, and then to the mall and shopping, and we have been to pretty much every store in the area. She is fantastic with the Stinky Princess and fixes her hair and her clothes and does girly stuff with her, and hopefully she will work on her and let me and my grungy fashion sense be.

She got me to try some different things up here including a type of drink called,'Bubble Tea", a concoction where the put tapioca balls into some blend of tea and fruit juices. I got one of those things in my mouth as I took a sip and I about spit all over the mall! It was disgusting and slimy and all kinds of weird, and of course the 'balls in the mouth"jokes started right away,(kinda hard to avoid with two 14 year old boys hanging around with you), and it was like a race to see who could come up with the more inappropriate jokes and make us laugh the hardest, it got to the point that the boys faces were so red that they looked like they were gonna explode, I was laughing so hard people were staring and Susan had tears running down her face as the Stinky Princess looked up at Chance and said,"Dont you like balls in your mouth?" We decided to leave the mall at that point because security was coming to see what the commotion was all about. We also found that using a straw you can shoot the balls a good 20-30 feet at whatever you found as a target.

During our wanderings we found some toys for Stinky, including a couple of stuffed animals. She wants a sock monkey, but we found a soft kitty and a really cool looking little monkey with a tail that is kinda small and just the right size to carry around and annoy people with, so it became out mascot for the day and everyone took turns doing weird stuff with this goofy stuffed animal! Susan was about ready to kill me as we where headed up Burnside and I kept slowly moving the monkey into her line of vision saying,"Do you want to spank the monkey?" SPANK IT!!! and making the boys just die with laughter. It was totally stupid, but we were high on just having a good time and we looked at apartments and schools and all kinds of things and just enjoyed being around each other . Chance is acting like a new kid, now that he is around is best friend again, and he is going the first part of August for a week to the coast for church camp and I am glad he is going to get out and become part of something again.

The concert we are going to is coming up soon and we are getting excited! I would love to take my friend, but I dont know if she would really enjoy all the craziness that goes along with that kind of crowd. The Avett bros. are going to be here next week and I know she would love them, but the tickets are waay expensive, so we are going to have to miss them this time around, but maybe next year.

My boys and ex are doing okay. It was hard to leave them but they are happy and I know that they will be doing good once school gets started and the routine is back up and running, I just hope that the ex can keep it together, after all, I set it all up for him to succeed all he has to do it try hard and put in some earnest effort.

I havent had any nightmares lately and I am sleeping better. In fact I am planning on stepping down the dosage on my seizure meds pretty soon as well as my Topamax, to see if the change in altitude allows me to go off of them altogether. Because its not a bright up here and my eyes dont get blasted as much, I have already had fewer headaches and I feel GREAT! Except for my left knee, and that just needs to be rebuilt or replaced, there are no two ways about it.

I miss Fergus. I know he is a great help with the boys and they love him too, but my big drool baby whined for me the first night I was gone, and the ex says he has looked for me, that broke my heart. I miss him soo much and strangely that has been the one thing to bring me to tears over this whole move. I am looking for an apartment that will allow me to have him, and as my companion animal/therapy dog for PTSD, I figure that most will have to, but then going back and getting him is going to be a logistical nightmare, but I just cant see me coping too long without him.

We are going out today to look at more places and to just be tourists for a bit. Portland is wonderful and the people are interesting and I am finally feeling at home and mostly at peace.

Dear Roger, Grannys Wooden Spoon or The Crazy Eye Comes Naturally

My Granny has been on my mind a lot lately, and I dont really know why, other than my dad and I have finally reached an understanding about a lot of things and while neither one of us may approve of the others decisions, we both have realized that we are flawed individuals that have survived a lot of foul shit, mainly because one woman imbued us with the pure cussedness and will to fight on and survive no matter what life may throw at us; mainly his mother;Dorothy Mae Wallace.

My granny was the oldest daughter of 13 kids, her father was a Scotsman and her mother was a mostly Comanche woman from out in the middle of nowhere West Texas. She was essentially handed off to my papas family when she was 13 because they were starving and couldn't afford another daughter and my papa and her were already fond of each other. Pa was 16 when she came to his family and they were married soon after, and then they waited until she was 19 before she had her first kid, but in the mean time she was a ranch hand, helping my papa break ranch horses, work stock and manage the ranch. She was fierce and tough and there were stories about her shooting wildcats and coyotes from horseback, standing up to cattle thieves, and being virtually unseatable from any type of bronc that the ranch could find for her to try. My favorite picture of my granny is of her in front of the little ranch foremans house that she and my papa had out on the ranch they ran for some rich oil man, and my aunt is in the picture so my granny is probably 21 or 22, and she has what my sis always refers to as 'Chinese eyes" because due to the native blood her features are kinda Asian looking, but she is just looking larger than life and tough and carefree and my pa is standing there next to her, looking all cool and tough in his authentic cowboy gear, but he looks smaller and not quite as tough as my granny, and really, she ran the show. My granny raised 2 kids, and a husband out in the middle of the brutal West Texas middle of nowhere, and she made it look easy always cooking meals that cousins would break out in fist fights over,all while rocking the typical West Texas hair and immaculate nails. They lived in Monahans, Midland,Odessa, Abilene, and finally Bryson.My granny kept papa going as his 6 brothers passed, she never wanted for anything and never doubted pas devotion to her because I think he was just a little scared she would end him in his sleep if he ever even looked at another woman, but truth be told he doted on her, buying her a new car every year and jewelry that kept the diamond mines working 24/7.

They were never amongst the super rich, that was papas brother Charlie and his horse racing "trash" wife as my granny called them, but they were comfortable and never wanted for anything except more time with each other and their family.

My granny was the toughest damn woman I ever knew, she was plain spoken and often could leave a mark with her tongue that either made you try harder or made you just want to curl up and cry, though she wasnt cruel, she just wasnt one to blow smoke up your ass and she could not stand laziness or whinyness or weakness, even in herself, and that is why she fought so damn hard against her body when it started failing her. Cancer cuts a deadly swath through that part of my kin along with diabetes and heart disease, and she managed to get the deadly triad, but even with all three chewing at her, she still kept the house clean, took care of papa and tried to tell people to mind their own damn business when they tried to tell her to take it easy. God knew he had to sneak up on her and get her when she wasnt looking, and sure enough, he took her with a sudden, massive heart attack one morning.

Her funeral was the last time my whole family ever got together and I found out there that she had known all along that my cousin Robert,(my favorite cousin and the one I was always closest to) was gay, and though we had been scared she would be less than understanding, it turns out that she had been paying for his Aids medications for years. I dont know what made me cry harder, finding out she knew all along or finding out that Rob had AIDS, but either way, I lost him less than 6 months later when he went to bed with a bottle of Patron silver and his partner of 20 years and never woke up down in Cabo on vacation. I like to think that he went out happy and snuck up on like granny did. I havent been back to Texas since I lost them, and my family kinda went to shit after they passed. My other cousins just bickered and fought over the estate and lost sight of what family was about, and from the sounds of things, no one had even tended the graves other than Robs partner, so I figure there is no great loss to be shed of them, but I would like to know what became of my grannys relatives and her siblings and the ties to the Comanche tribe. Granny never spoke much about them and papas documents got scattered to the four winds, so tracing any kind of family tree may be next to impossible, but everytime I see those slanty eyes and that cockeyed glare that makes me want to start ducking and dodging the dreaded wooden spoon that I currently have custody of, I have to wonder, cuz?

My sis gets the spoon now, I no longer own a home or a vehicle! I sold the van to the ex today and I hand him the deed tomorrow after a week of epic knock-down drag out battles that made me want to hurt someone or something. I got him to agree to let me take my baby girl with me, and I am leaving him my two sons for the school year until I am settled in with a house. I bought 3 tickets on Amtrak leaving here Friday night and we arrive in LA Saturday morning for a couple of hours and then onto Portland by Sunday afternoon with hopefully enough money left to get a good start. Its scary as hell, but also freeing. I have wanted to run for years and now I am doing it, I dont know if granny would approve, but I know she is the one that gave me the courage to try and start over after everything that I have put up with over the last decade, though my granny probably woulda made the bastard bleed a little first.

Dear Roger,I am Cougar,Hear me Roar!

Being the parent of an adolescent boy is like navigating a minefield,drunk, blindfolded, in a hurry while someone blasts really bad screamo music at you. I swear, my son alternates between an Emo,ambi-sextrous, basketcase and a Texas redneck that is both confused and a little irritated by me, his middle-aged crazy,raring to go out and recapture her youth by running full-tilt into my mid-life crisis, mom.

We engage in ongoing prank wars with each other, he hacks my twitter account and posts cryptic messages,I threaten to post his naked baby pictures, or create havoc with his hair dye job after he hides my favorite pair of cowboy boots and the Gorilla glue in a failed attempt to glue them to the ceiling of my bedroom. We swap clothes back and forth because we are weirdly enough the same size right now, except for his bizarrely large feet and hands,(im really glad he cant wear my boots because the boy is hell on shoes),we talk music and movies and about all kinds of other things, and he even seems to like hanging out with me on occasion.He admitted that he had fun at the Eclipse premier and he has even been throwing out random quotes at times just to crack me up.We share hair care product, skin care tips and even the occasional semi-dirty joke, but when it comes to me even alluding to the fact that I would someday, somehow, like to date again,he gets really upset with me, not because I want to date, but because of what I want to date. I only date younger men. By younger I mean aged 23-33 max,No older, no younger, and that horrifies him for some weird reason. I dated a 25 year old guy for a while and it was FUN! He was vibrant, energetic, he had a sense of humor and he had STAMINA, all the things that make life fun and that were missing out of the last ten years of my life.

My ex was all about cruelty, sarcasm, being a stick in the mud, humiliating and making fun of me, and less than satisfactory aspects of other things...(You get what I mean?) after all he was often asleep in his damn chair before the evening news and I was just here to take care of the house and the kids and bring in a paycheck, so I have had it with older men. I am looking for the goofy, funny, silly, not afraid to dance, not afraid to get lost in the moment, laugh or just run around in the rain or roll in the grass, tell a dirty joke, jump in the mosh pit, get a tattoo, be spontaneous and foolish and fun, kinda guy that still is tight and firm in all the right places.He doesn't have to be a keeper, im not looking for the love of my life, after all, I am pretty sure he died a long, long time ago on the side of that road in Texas, but a cute lil fella to spoil and have fun with, and to go DANCING with,(GOD! its been over TEN years since Ive been dancing!)and im not particular about year, make or model,as long as it falls between the parameters. But Chance seems to think that only men should be able to date younger women! He has taken to calling me "Cougar" pretty much constantly, and he even changed my phones ringtone to a cougar roar, which kinda backfired on him because I really like it and it annoys the snot out of him when he forgets about it and I have it set on high and it goes off and scares the snot outta him or prompts the dogs to attack him if he has jacked it and stuck it in his pocket or underwear to keep me from taking it back from him.

My son has girlfriends, a disturbing amount of them to be sure, and he spends way to much time texting, calling, im'ing, or all three at the same time, to multiple girls and they send him messages telling him how ,'Hot" and such that he is and all kinds of other wrong things about my lil monkey boy(one of his more politically correct, non-Texas,freak out all the liberal hippy, baby names) the other was "Pecker" that was given to him by his West Texas great-granny and was banned by my ex when my son started the hippy school here in Flagstaff and people from California didn't know that many Texas children grow up with very strange baby names bestowed on them by granny's and do not become ax murderers or have abusers as parents, but if I call him Pecker nowadays, he just rolls his eyes at me and tells me that if I am going to call him his baby name, we have to move to Texas so at least he wont have to kick peoples asses over it.

He accuses me of having a dirty mind and deliberately saying,"dirty" things on a regular basis supposedly just to embarrass him, and even when the words are not the least bit dirty, he says that my ,"look" or my raised eyebrow or leer or just the way I say things or even the context of how I say them, is all 'wrong". So according to him, I can no longer say,"bone,ball, weiner, steak and taters in the same sentence or when I am looking at any picture of any Twi-guy online at any time,meat, hard(any form thereof),do,pork; the list just goes on and on! I swear the kid is such a prude! He looks over my shoulder once and sees me watching a video of a young man jogging in sweat pants and a black wife-beater,ONCE! and he thinks im some kind of perv! He hasn't caught me the rest of the times Ive watched it, I swear!

Dear Roger, Tending the Dead, Texas Traditions,and Other Things I Think About When Insomnia Has Me

Well its another night that I am not having any luck in catching some zz's, so I have been watching John Wayne movies, eating cold pizza and drinking cheap soda. I am not supposed to eat pizza or drink soda and I will probably be dog assed sick tomorrow, but I figure I am not going any damn place so I might as well indulge in a little masochistic self abuse.

Its getting close to time to pack up and go and I am a full on stress case! I worked on packing my shit today and sorting out more of what is going and what is staying and what is getting sold, and its just soo damn hard to make those decisions. My ex and I are sort of on speaking terms, and as I expected, he didn't bank any money back to pay me for the van, so Im fucked for that one. I knew I couldn't count on him and I dont know why I even thought I could, and though he tells me he will pay me off for it and a,"week or two", I dont see that happening, and I know that I could sell the damn van at the yard sale on Saturday for over 800 and that would set me and Chance up mighty fine in Portland, but once again my albatross strikes. Its disheartening.

I was raised on John Wayne movies, and around men who were the John Wayne ideal. My granpa who flew more than 57 missions out of England during WW2, my dad who did 3 tours of Viet Nam, you and your time at the DMZ as a "courier" for the CIA and your adventures with Air America,(I would have loved to have heard those stories), Sammy in all his true Texas cowboy glory, Uncle Charlie and his West Texas ranch and all the race horses, and Papa and his stories of Wildcatting with his brothers in the Texas oil boom era and building and losing a fortune from nothing,I grew up around MEN! Men who would never in a million years visibly fail. Men who knew how to be a hero and how to make things right. What the hell happened? Where did the real men go? I am so sick and tired of excuses and failure and settling . Im tired of ,"carrying the penis". I haven't been around a man that could outman me in over a decade and I dont understand it. I loved romance, I enjoyed a man that would open a door for me or pay for dinner or lead when we were dancing. I never bitched any man out for those things, hell! I thanked them! Ive had to be tough and mean and a fighter and a scrapper because I have seemed to end up with pussies as companions or husbands and if I didnt get hard, they would just let the family fall into poverty worse than it already has. It cost me, because men that often wont fight the world outside for survival, will damn sure take their anger out on the one that makes them look bad, and I have the scars and PTSD to prove that being small and a bitch often leads to problems with your physical well being. It doesnt matter at this point in the game, but I am sick and tired of seeing this going on and I have told Chance that being the kind of man he has seen around is not acceptable, and the one thing I can hope from his time in Texas is that he learned what it means to be a man and the one who is supposed to at least shoulder 1/2 the burden.

Dear Roger, Movie Premiers Or Why I Dont Teach Tweens

Well, last night was finally the night! I did something I have never done and I actually went to opening night of a major, guaranteed to be freaking insane, and chock a block full of annoying tweens and dodgy others, movie. I managed to put aside all my hating crowds issues, my not liking other peoples tweens issues, as well as my general dislike of all things media hyped and insane and I took Chance to see the premier of Eclipse. We went with my friend Elisha and we saw the film along with the other two previous films, which was kinda cool because I realized while I was watching them, that I had never seen any of the actors in any of the movies in the theater ever before, I mean, sure, I had seen other movies of theirs, but always on dvd or cable, never on the big screen, so it was pretty interesting, and I realized that WOW! some of those guys are even better looking, BIG! but hell, when isn't big,better??

The theater was slammed to hell and gone and I was very glad I had gotten out tickets over a month ago, because even arriving an hour early with advance tickets, we still had to sit down pretty close to the front. They had over 900 people turn out here in the ghetto in the meadow to see this, and there were more who wanted to, but it sold out so damn fast that they had to turn people away. People had camped out, and the line went around the building which really shocked me considering we are such a podunk city that doesn't stand a snowballs chance in hell of a celebrity showing up for any kind of events, and in fact there really weren't any events to speak of, just long lines at the womens restrooms and concessions.

The crowd was good natured and really diverse with a large contingent of Native kids, Twi-moms and the ever present vaguely psychotic, tweens that screamed for not apparent reason and seemed to have bladder issues, or at least the ones on our row did. It finally reached the point during the second film that much to Chances dismay, Elisha and I finally got a little hostile, because if you have an issue that means you cannot sit through a 2 hour movie without having to get up and wade across 12 people more than 8 times with your 4 little girlfriends, then you need to be either sitting on the outer row or your momma needs to take your ass home instead of trying to mad dog those finally get sick and tired of getting their boots stepped on and say something.

There was lots of cheering as the favorites came on and lots of hooting and hollering during any kinda romance or smexyness and I only embarrassed Chance a little by whooping it up when Jasper showed up in his back-story wearing a Confederate uniform, riding a horse, but DAMN! there is only soo much a grown assed woman should be expected to take and keep silent, and in my defense, I was not the only person that got a little vocal, there were more than a few grown assed women, and (men) that let it be known that Team Jasper was in the house. I know I had a big ole grin, and I probably embarrassed the hell out of Chance, but he was good natured about it and I only herd a muttered,"Cougar" once or twice, but then I think he realized he was outnumbered by,"Cougars" so it was probably safest to be quiet.

On the way home at 0300, I asked Chance if it was totally horrible? and he said,"Noo, it didnt totally suck, there were lots of hot babes wandering around, the fight scenes were pretty wicked". When I pressed him to pick a favorite character, he went with Jasper,"Gotta go with the Texan, DUH!" Thats my boy!

It was good, I will buy the dvd.

Dear Roger,I Got A Pair Of Boots Older Than My Last Friend With Benefits

Well, the time is getting short and im really having to get stuff ready to go, and I have spent most of the past few days looking for places to live, sorting out things that can go to storage for a while, things that have to go with us right away and things that are just gonna get gone. The worry about the unknown is the biggest thing bugging me now and oddly enough my boots are my biggest issue. I have more than 8 pairs of cowboy boots, in fact they are pretty much all I freaking wear and have worn for most of the last decade or so. I have walked the soles off of several pair of Ropers, worn down the sides on a pair of combat boots, and I have some Tony Llama Rough outs that are older than my last "friend with benefits", in fact they are actually 36 years old and in better shape than he was in and much tougher. I own boots that have waded thorough mud, blood, beer, cow pastures, crime scenes, and dance floors. I have worn them for horse back riding, running, fighting, motorcycle riding, one really interesting night with a fella that found my boots and Vickies to be quite the turn on, and the spurs to be quite the icing on the cake,(actually my PaPa's spurs)but there is no accounting for the oddness of some folks.I value my boots up there with my books and my music and I have worn and carried them with me pretty much everyplace I have lived. I do not own a pair of heels, and I only bought a couple pair of tenny shoes after my ortho guy had ten different fits about me working out in boots on their mats after my back injections were done the last time. I used to wear Doc Martens quite a bit as my tenny shoes, but then they got adopted as the unofficial footwear of those who bat for the other team, and considering I have enough trouble tracking down a fella willing to put out, I sadly had to let them go, so that I would not shut down any interest based on first impressions.

When we get up there we will not have any furnishings! Im going to have to buy beds, a table, a tv, and all kinds of stuff, but it will all be a clean start and as long as my boots are on the ground and my I can see where the starting point is, its all good.

Dear Roger,Cooking Up A MId-Life Crisis On The Road to Hell

Well hell, the fire is finally mostly out though we are STILL getting smoke, the God damned ex is still here and has decided to raise his fucking voice to me from time to time and I have come real damned close to telling him to take his fucking attitude back down the road to his crappy apartment, because until I hand over the paper and its recorded, the place is NOT his and I can still tell him to fuck the hell off and get out, and I can walk away from the house, or sell it and then move the kids to wherever and he can try to take me to court to stop it. Im really trying to be overly nice and im getting sick of him not realizing that. Im stressed out and he really pushed it today and considering he didn't pay me any damned rent or child support or any other damned help, and I have let him use my car, and I could let a much younger and nicer and better looking guy move in here that would pay rent and probably clear my sinuses with a good thorough trouncing several times a day. I have 8 days left to put up with him wandering in and out and trying to get the kids on some kind of schedule and sorting out my stuff that I am planning on taking to Portland from the stuff that I am leaving here for the kids to have for their comfort and the stuff that I am selling. I have 40 years worth of crap to sort out and its not easy, and his attitude making my PTSD fire off like a bottle rocket on the 4th and im back to not sleeping and stalking around like a stressed out ally cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

Chance is being a big help, he has been distracting me with movies like Harold and Kumar, and endless games of Wii Rockband where I actually scored 100% on "Give it Away " by the Red Hot Chili Peppers while singing bare footed with my shorts falling off my ass while I did the funny dance to the music and made him laugh his ass off and freaked out Fergus, nearly resulting in getting my butt bitten again. He also keeps acting like a living countdown, reminding me that we have very few days left here to put up with the shit attitude and the stress and soon we will be in the land of green and rain and trees and where everything doesn't smell like smoke.

Im not sure what all is going to happen once we get there, and I worry about things, but im doing my best to keep my kids fed and clean and sort of happy. I have been cooking more than normal, and I have busted out some of my old favorite recipes,even if I cant eat them I at least get to enjoy cooking them for my big son who really enjoys eating them.

When I was in college at University of Texas, I was in the International Student Union and I had friends from all over the world, and we got together and had communal meals every single day. We kinda functioned as a large, weird, dysfunctional family, with kids from all over, Iran, Iraq, Vietnam, Palestine, Israel, France, Germany, England,Ireland and me, the token Texan who loved to cook and hang out and play soccer with them. I gained the Momma Bear nurturing bone from my grandma I kinda started looking after some of them that seemed to need it, and we ate meals together often several times ag day, and I learned to cook large, recipes that were a blend of Asian, Texan and even African and Mexican, and I still love to cook that way, and I have even considered opening a restaurant at times like the bar b cue joint near where I grew up, where even if you could only afford the smallest, sandwich, the old woman who ran the place always made sure you had a bowl of cowboy beans and cornbread and sweet tea to go with so you never left hungry. I love cooking, and I love seeing folks appreciate my work. When I was a firefighter/EMT, I used to cook large meals in the fire station kitchen and feed all the duty officers in the area all kinds of Tex/Mex goodies, and I miss the camaraderie, and perhaps I could someday own a combination bookstore, coffeehouse restaurant that allows me the ability to make sure young uns are fed and taken care of, as well as allows me the time and place to write and relax in my kind of place. Who knows, maybe I can finally track down my muse and get back to writing again.