100 Monkeys - LDF ( Album - Grape 2009 )

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Dear Roger: Claustrophobia and My Issue With Personal Space Keeps Some People Alive

My ex knows how to push my buttons, and for the last week he has done that pretty much every damn day, to the point that he had me so angry yesterday that I wanted to go out and just beat the dog mess outta the first fool that crossed me and that looked enough like him to satisfy the itch.

Its not that I have not got my temper under control, I do. But understand, I do.not. have. any. outlets. other. than.writing. I am starting to go a little crazy. I haven't had sex in so damn long that I think my parts have forgotten how things are supposed to work, and that is really damn frustrating. Its been difficult to get out and go running or get in a good workout due to scheduling hassles and having kids making it difficult to sneak out for a run in the wee hours of the morning without worrying about them waking up and freaking out that im not home,(its happened before) so I have been a slack ass, lazy bum lately and the tension is killing me. Not having a guitar around to plink on,even badly, is also a drag. I was working on re-learning how to play, and even though the damage to my hands makes it difficult, I found it soothing to at least try, and I know that Chance felt the same way. The one bright spot has been the goofy little cat we got. He is a royal pain in the ass, and he yells at me and right now he is biting the shit outta my ear, but he is so funny and its kinda soothing to have him just lay up around the back of my neck on the couch and purr in my ear,(right before he bites the crap outta me and then shoots off into the kitchen to yell for something to eat), and he harasses Chance when he tries to sleep on the floor. Seeing him follow Stevie around and grab onto her monkeys and attack them,cracks me up! She tries to make him behave and he just rolls up in her skinny monkey and starts kicking it and biting and making little growling sounds until she shakes him loose by picking it up and running off with it, and then he just sits there looking after her like,'Hey! bring him back, hes got a purty mouth." hes already litter trained and he damn sure lets us know when hes hungry by yelling at us, so I next week we are scheduling him to get fixed and a good check up so he will be set for awhile and then I am going to get him on a food that hopefully will take care of his gas problem, because for a tiny little cat, he can just about clear a damn room, and considering he likes to hang out around peoples heads and neck areas, thats a bit of a problem. The cat has been a good thing for all of us, and a welcome distraction from the bullshit of the ex calling and stressing me pretty much every damn day, but even with little Jasper,(yes, the fecking name has stuck and I still flip Chance crap over it), I still fume every time my phone goes off with my ex's ring tone. Used to be, I would be happy to hear from my boys, but I rarely get to talk to my boys much, instead it is him, either yelling at me or just bitching and complaining about something that he thinks I am to blame for . I did not make him a lazy,shiftless bastard. I did not make him an abuser that found it necessary to brutalize me and my eldest son. My ex does not realize how lucky he is to be alive I think. He hates me for sending him to prison, but the alternative was killing him and I was going to do it, because I am a person very capable of wrath and hate and when he beat my 12 year old son in front of me like a bad dog, I burned with a hate that has not abated. Yes, the courts system dealt with him. Yes, I got him the maximum sentence for the charges the piece of shit county attorney felt capable of pursuing, but, my son did not get justice. My son was called names like,'bastard', "stupid", and other things that no child should hear, he witnessed things that no child should see, and he is scarred as a result of it. All my kids have to live with my anger and damage, and though I am working on it, the end result is, I am still not the mom I should be, and when he calls and verbally abuses me over the phone, and tells me that he isn't providing for my boys that he kept, in the way that they should be provided for, I get angry all over again. I cannot just refuse to take his calls, because he has my two youngest sons, and if I dont take his calls, he wont let me know how they are doing and I wont be able to talk to them. I miss my boys soo badly, and I worry about them every day, and if the courts in Arizona had been in any way accessible to me, I would have taken them and run, but the judge that granted him 50/50 custody of them and refused to put them on the restraining order,AFTER HE TOOK THE STRAIGHT RAZOR TO ME, was still the judge in charge of our custody case, and until he retires in December, I am stuck, but once that bastard is gone, I am filing for a change and I am getting my kids, unless of course he manages to lose the house before then, and if that happens, I will get my boys sooner, but either way, its most likely a damn good thing there is a good amount of distance between us, because something in me shifts when one of my loved ones gets hurt, and my son is still hurting and God help my bastard ex if he hurts one of my other babies, because no one else will be able to.

I was evaluating my tattoos the other day. I have had tattoos for the last 15 or so years and I designed them all myself, and while the original designs had special meaning, one the application, some of them were not done properly and I have to get that fixed. My best tattoo is the one on my left arm, its my feather and I have had it the longest out of all of my tatts. I got it when I lost you, and after I did a lot of research on our family heritage and the meanings of the various feathers. Being that the native blood runs so strong on both sides, I thought the feather was the best choice, and then I went with Lakotah symbolism for great grandma. The feather is split at the bottom to symbolize the loss from a loved one,(since you are gone I am the only one in the family left that cuts my hair to mourn our losses as well), the end is red to symbolize wounded in battle, and the blue beads at the top symbolize my two children that I had at the time, and the bear claw on the leather thong hanging to the side,symbolizes our family clan and you.The rest of the feather is battered and damaged, but pure white that symbolizes that even though many hurts have occurred, I have remained pure at heart. I didnt go into this one lightly and it has always been my favorite and I had a brilliant artist in Yuma do it.The one on my chest is of a grizzly standing in a forest fire, and it has a lot of personal meaning that I dont share, but its meaning has morphed and changed over the years, even though the tatt has stayed the same. The one on my right arm is a shining example of what can happen when someone else controls your life. Its the state of Texas that was being done to cover a poorly done bear paw, and the artist stopped at what he felt was a prudent place to cease because I had a very large area of skin that was raw, bleeding and open to infection if not allowed to heal, so I went home with the plan of going back in 2 weeks and getting it finished. That evening, my ex was pissed at me for being gone for a few hours. It was a stressful scene at the house, and I had taken my bandage off to show him what I had been doing,(he always hated my bear paw and wanted it gone), and while it was uncovered, Stevie, who was 10 months old), grabbed my tattoo with her grubby, poopy hand. By the next morning I had the tell-tale lines of blood poisoning already down to below my elbow and I had a fever of 103. I ended up having to have an iv of antibiotics and the tat had to be scrubbed and debrided like a burn. I was not allowed to go back to get it finished and the scarring is a reminder that sometimes fuck ups cannot be fixed easily, though I am planning on seeing what it will take to get it the rest of the way filled in, now that I am now in control of things. My motto is on my back. I wrote it and I designed it, and the fact that it is in Latin is significant because I love Latin, and my High School guidance counselor told me I was not smart enough to take Latin in high school, so I took it in college, and that is where I wrote my own motto, as a testament to my family heritage and my love of my children. Its ," Ex Animos Venio, Propter Amore Audeo" or "From Courage I Come, For Love I Dare" and it honors the tough as nails, refuse to give up and die, Scot/Irish/Native ancestors who always seemed to end up in the thick of battle with none of the glory, but are the ones that made this country strong.

My other tattoo is a screwed up mess that was started but not finished on my back, of bear paws working their way up my spine, and is a testament to the ability of my ex to raise my blood pressure to points that scare people. Its also one on my "fix" list. But my next, new tattoo is going to be the most light hearted and fun one, and though all my tats are on my upper body, the kids are advocating for me to either put this one on my lower back just above my butt, or on my leg, though I was thinking of putting it on my left forearm or even my right chest.I have to find an artist I can trust though, I didnt have very good luck in Flagstaff because the last guy seemed incapable of grasping what I really wanted, and tattoos are not something that I go into with the thought that they could get removed, I go into mine for life and they are not flash, they are keepers for life that are a part of me that I control and they cover up and incorporat the marks that others have left, in more ways than one.

Dear Roger: Kinks, Perversions and Things That Make You Go Hmmm?

Well this is interesting...a new video with my favorite little musician/actor came out yesterday,(If you wanna see it click on the title to the blog, im too techtarded to link it properly),and being the pervy woman that I am, of course I went on youtube and watched it right away. Yes, I am a member of the musical groups website. Yes, I also pay attention to the fan site. Yes, I am a little pathetic, but damn that boy just has all kinds of devilment behind those eyes and it makes me smile and twitch in all kinds of ways that I thought were impossible after being pretty much numb inside for the last chunk of my life, but anyhow... I went to the video site and I was watching it, and it was actually a promo for a new magazine. It was a kinda behind the scenes of the photo shoot that he did and he was just kinda goofing around while the girls with the magazine set up the shoot, but in one of the scenes, they put some chains and pretended to lead him by a collar and I about fell outta my damn chair! That just did all kinda of wrong things to me and I found it to be the most interesting part of the whole video. What the hell?

I have always been fascinated by the darker side of life, and the edgier side of things. The vanilla lifestyle has never been my cup of tea, and being forced to live it has aged me and made me an unhappy person, but the complications of my life have made any other alternative pretty much impossible, so I have just lived a solitary existence rather than try and indulge in any habits that might fulfill any needs I have had. The one time I shared my desires with my ex,I was called a,"freak" and told that I needed to just get over it, so I guess in a way I did.

Sex has always been a taboo subject around my family and considering where I grew up, thats not surprising. I mean, there was a lot of sex going on, and ,'parking" was a common weekend activity out on the oil leases and back roads of East Texas, but sex education was pretty much,"Dont do it, if you do you are going to hell." and the ever present,"Queers go to hell" ,(hell was the major theme back there) but nobody seemed to really discuss the fact that a whole lot of sex was going on and it took all forms in all kinds of places. My own parents did not talk to me or my sister about sex. I knew absolutely nothing that I didn't learn out of a book and let me tell you, I read some books. But they weren't your typical Judy Blume books that most 12-14 year olds read, hell, I had read those when I was 8-9, nooo...I found and read the Marquise De Sade books like "Justine" and I found them to be fascinating, which was pretty distressing for a kid in the middle of nowhere East Texas. Once I left for college and moved to the Dallas area, my life expanded in ways that I had only imagined, and I had a wonderful few years living with freedom and happiness and a Bohemian sense of recklessness that only should exist in your early 20's. I went to places in parts of Dallas that I never dreamed existed and I met people from all over the world that I took me to elegant parties in mansions and out to dinner in places where the appetizers cost more than most of my meals cost in a week nowadays. I traveled to Houston and attended events that were black tie and I rode in limousines and I lived in elegance and I had a few years of just reckless abandon before the reality of needing to live in the real world caught up with me in spades and I have been stuck in it ever since.

I am at a point in my life where I am stuck. I have responsibilities to my kids because my kids cannot count on my ex for anything, in fact he called me again yesterday to cry and bitch at me because he is" broke, his job sucks, his boss yelled at him, life is hard, he cant afford anything,the boys wont listen, baby sitters are expensive..." he just griped and yelled at me about everything and blamed me for it all. I have a feeling that before too much longer I will end up having to go back to Arizona to get my two sons. I am not sad about this, I had actually been expecting my ex to fail and once he does, it will just make it easier for me to get full custody of my kids and be free of him forever, because I am leaving his ass in Arizona, even if he is living on the streets. I made it on my own with my kids while he was gone, I supported them, and I maintained the home and the family because I knew it had to be done. He is weak, he lacks the ability to endure and overcome and that has always been his failing. He thought he was strong because he was mean and sarcastic and tried to dominate through brutality, but he is not strong and by lying to himself and others, he has really done himself no favors. Being up here with all 4 kids will be difficult, and it will surely mean that I will be alone, but that is just my lot in life at this juncture and I have accepted it, but it doesn't mean that I dont dream and feel and wish that my life had been different and that I could enjoy some of the things that I see.

Ive been doing some sketching and a little bit of photography and more writing lately. My muse is still on the lamb, so mostly its just rambling bits of ideas for stories,(some of them a little perverse), and I may just expand on some of them for the hell of it, because I have found out through some friends of mine that believe it or not,sex sells! hmmm, who woulda thunk it? I am still doing most of my writing on paper, and that is both a blessing and a curse. Its a blessing because I dont have to worry about losing it on my computers hard drive, but then its a curse because I have to keep it hidden from my son because God knows I dont want him reading any of the stuff I write! He already suspects I read some really strange stuff, and I had to enable some really strong security settings on my laptop to keep him from reading anything I might have up,(my screensaver starts after 5 minutes of inactivity and that sends him shooting from the room screeching,'Akkk my eyes, my eyes!!" every time)even though in every picture the young men have their clothes on...(mostly),it never seems to cease horrifying him that I have what I see as a healthy interest in men, be they young, middle-aged, or even a little older than me. He is at that age where moms are not supposed to think about sex, or are supposed to have never had sex,and are not supposed to know anything about sex, and I guess my fairly liberal attitude about it and willingness to discuss safe sex with him in an attempt to keep him from making mistakes that could either ruin his life or kill him, is emotionally scarring him or maybe putting him off it for a while,(one could only hope) though with all the testosterone flowing around him on any given day it is hard to know.

Its going to be a long, dull, weekend around here. I am feeling a little crappy and I am just going to work on some projects that I need to complete for my school program no matter which way I decide to go with it, and I am going to register with a job hunting website to see if I can get any movement off of that resource. I am also going to develop a new physical training program for myself. I have gotten a little lazy since I have been up here, and I havent been working out like I used to and I think that is part of my whole funk. I used to be able to do well over 100 push ups and my endurance and weight lifting capabilities were well beyond what people expected for someone of my size, and I miss being in that kind of shape, so I think I need to get back into it and find my drive once again. Running is difficult with my knee problems, but sometimes pushing through the pain is what inspires me on to bigger and better things, and maybe that is where I will track down my muse again.

Sub Plans

Dear Roger;Rest Stop On the Road Trip Of Life

So this has been a bit of a lazy-assed, do nothing, kinda week. I have sat on my butt around the house and just kinda mulled things over and debated the next thing to do. I have done some writing, I have scheduled doctors appointments, I have made other appointments and I did clean house and we get out and got all the laundry done, but as for actually getting out and going wandering around and just site seeing...nope. I am fighting it, I really am, but the desire to become reclusive up here is really kinda starting to win. Not having two dimes to rub together is a big part of it, and I seem to be stuck in kind of a catch 22 situation where I cannot get out and find a job because I dont have a copy of my resume, and I dont have a copy of my resume because I dont have the money to print it off, and a couple of the jobs I have put in for, are out of reach of the public transport, so I am screwed even if I were to get those. Its a bit frustrating, especially when my wonderful ex-husband calls to bitch at me about something or another and to tell me that he has just been given a truck by a friend of his, so he now has 2 vehicles. I asked him about shipping some of my things up here, first and foremost a guitar and maybe my wok or some of my cooking stuff, and he yelled at me...thats right, he. yelled. at. me. No bit surprise there,that was his standard form of communication, but considering I had just helped him find a sitter, and get a new fridge, he could have at least been apologetic and said,"I really cant right now, perhaps in a week or two.", but no, he fucking yelled at me. There are days that I wish Sus had not made that phone call, and while my life would be either over or vastly different, I would have at least gotten the satisfaction of never getting yelled at by him again.

I dont tolerate yelling, it makes me go from mellow and calm to seeing red, in the blink of an eye and I react very strongly. I have even had to shut off movies or leave rooms when someone was yelling at another person. Its not to say that I dont raise my voice,I do, but its very rare, and what I tend to do is speak forcefully and in a way that lets the person know that I am not fucking around, or as Chance calls it,"Going into cop mode" and I used to do it when I would first walk into a High School classroom. I got that out of the way the first few minutes, let them see that I was a little bit dominant, maybe a little crazy, and that I wasn't scared, and then I would break the ice and get down to teaching. The one time I did break out the full-on, in someones face, yelling, drill Sergent, im going to end you right now, kinda presence at school was when some vato wanna be gang banger tried to front me and he made a gesture like he was pointing a gun at me, but what he did not expect was that I would get all up in his face and toe to toe with him, ready to throw down over it. The teacher in me left the building and the cop arrived code 3. I speak passable Spanish, understand waay more than I let on, and he found out that I can enunciate very clearly at a yell., but I dont like yelling. I prefer the up close and deadly sounding whisper, but in a welding shop that would have been hard to hear.

My son thinks I am an easy read when it comes to body language, and he really couldn't be more wrong. I have trained myself over the years to broadcast the opposite of what I am feeling. This brought up an interesting conversation with him the other day over,"tells" and having a ,'poker face". I took his computer away from him because he was spending way to much time in his room listening to emo music, being an all around grump and because his attitude had gone to that of an entitled shit. We both have our problems, and we have been trying to work through some of them, and with his hormones added to the mix, the computer was the distraction he didnt need to shut me out of any conversation, so I took it, changed the administrator password and told him he was restricted to using it only at the kitchen table when I said, and only for the amount of time I said. So now, I have to log him on and off each time, which he hates, and we hang out together while he is on,which he also hates. He jokingly said that he was going to hack the password, and I told him that he would never figure it out so that he might as well not even waste his time trying , which of course is exactly what he spent his first allotment of time trying to do. He thinks that when I smile or laugh, that I am lying, and what he didnt realize it that it actually was cracking me up to hear how his brain was working as he was trying to puzzle out what I would use as a password!

When I was in law enforcement, I worked in narcotics for awhile. I did undercover, narcotics investigations and I deceived people. I led people to believe that I wanted to buy drugs from them. I led people to believe I was something I was not, and I was good at it. In my classes I studied criminals and psychopaths for the last 15 years and I examined the reasoning and methodology behind their behaviors. I studied microgestures and expressions and I learned how to read people, and I got really damn good at it after the last mistake I made with my ex, and perhaps that is why I am soo cautious about approaching or getting involved with another man, but reading people is something that I work on and I practice on a daily basis, as well as carefully presenting what I want read off of me. When I am out with my kids, I present a,"Do not fuck with me" presence in places that I feel that there might be a risk, because I am protective of my kids, and when I do relax and let the more open and friendly me come out, its still really hard to not watch the reactions of the people around me for rejection and then take that to heart.Its a vicious cycle.

My son kept up his guessing game for quite awhile and got pretty frustrated with the lack of success. I told him that he had to take into account all the different combinations of letter and numbers that meant things to me, as well as word phrases and names, and even symbols, that in 41 years of living, I had acquired a vast amount of knowledge, including phrases in other languages, like Latin, and that he could guess for weeks and never even come close. 'But you smiled when I said that last one mom!"Yeah, son, I thought it kinda funny that you think I would use something a 12 y/o teeny bopper would use as a password, I might think that boy is cute, but as a security device, please, give me credit." He never did get it, never even got close, and his frustration gave way to him trying to negotiate more time with me which led to me actually being able to negotiate things outta him like a cleaned up room for the first time in weeks, so I am going to guard that password with my life.

He starts school in a couple of weeks, and I am so damn happy that he is getting back into a routine, the only thing that is stressing me is that he needs pretty damn near everything. He is growing like a weed and he is so hard on his clothes that they look like rags that even a hobo would reject, including his never pairs of jeans. though he swears that, that is the,'look'. He insists he just needs another pair of chucks and maybe a couple pairs of jeans and a rock t-shirt or two, and socks..God, that boy and socks...lets not even go there, though I still dont freaking understand just what the hell happens to his socks? Is there is sock gremlin that comes in and eats them or pisses on them or just does really foul stuff to them in the middle of the night? I find them in the weirdest places, and often in pieces and I have reached the point that I dont touch them anymore, I kinda treat them like a dog or a cat turd and I pick them up with either a paper towel or a plastic bag and I put them in the trash. He just rolls his eyes at me and claims that I am weird, but let me tell you, I am pretty sure he is the weird one around here.

Sus felt sorry for him since I banned him from using my razor. He had actually started sprouting a pretty decent beard except for two patches right on either side of his chin that looked a bit moth eaten and his distress at the fact he had more facial hair than her husband was making Sus feel bad. She asked my permission, and after receiving permission from me, and assurance that the only thing he would shave with it would be his face, she bought him his own electric razor. He washed their cars for them and did some work around their house for them to pay her back and I know he appreciated it beyond all reason. His skin is really clearing up and its so weird to see the difference between him and the boys he hangs out with at church. he is actually even younger than two of them, but he is bigger, has better muscles and way more hair and just looks more mature. Keeping the older girls away from him has become a bit of a stress, and I am afraid its just going to get worse after school starts, luckily one of the girls that has really set her sights for him lives in Vancouver, and her car is in the shop so she cant get here to try and see him, (as if I would let my son go in a car with some 18 year old girl!)and when school starts he will be too busy. I never thought I would have to worry about my sons virtue, and though there are times I wonder which side he butters his bread on, I do worry, and I dont want him getting involved in anything that he isn't prepared to deal with.

Our cat has been a welcome distraction this week. He is a cute little thing, and though he bites the hell out of my feet and whatever else he happens to be near, he makes up for it by just providing amusement and happiness. I apparently lost out on the name bid and he is no longer,"Daniel", my son and daughter now just call him,"Jasper" and I laugh at my son when I give him the raised eyebrow and he says,'Shut it,mom! thats not funny!" He carries the kitten around cuddled up to his chest or hold it in his lap when he is sitting down, and I noticed that he seems calmer and more at peace with he has it, and he is protective of the little thing, so perhaps it was just the right name for just the right calming influence for all of us.