About Me

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Portland, Oregon, United States
Middle aged crazy, a little on the broken side,been to hell and back and still make side trips into Purgatory to indulge the masochistic side of my personality. I'm Texan,Southern,Over-educated,arrogant, temperamental,oversexed but under-indulged.Chasing after younger men and the happiness that has eluded me for most of my life.Music and literature are my passions.Finally living the dream in my idea of Heaven.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Dear Roger; Hippy Tea, Control,Cooking Texas Style in The Land Of Bland

Well Rog, its been a accomplish not a damn thing kinda week. I had a nasty run of Suicide migraines early in the week and that took the wind right outta my sails and left me sitting on the couch wondering if my eyeballs were gonna crawl totally out of my skull this time or just simply implode.The tinnitus was insane, but I have gotten through it and I am coping. It was weird but my doctor called me the day after the worst attack of them and told me that they had scheduled me an appointment with a neurologist,I was left sitting here wondering just how the hell she knew that the timing couldnt have been better? WEIRD.
Ive really cut down on my coffee habit and that is another weird thing. I am actually drinking more and more of that stuff I call "Hippy tea" or "Chai", its kinda a strange flavored blend of God knows what, hot tea and its actually not too bad. Its supposed to be better for me, but hell! at this point in the game its not like that really matters. Im still struggling to keep an ass in my pants. I gain a few pounds and then it falls right back off, but when you dont have an appetite, its hard to gain weight. I have been cooking more often and I even made breakfast the other day with grits and gravy, so its not like im not trying. Im cooking a pork tenderloin today to pull apart and make into green chili for burritos. When I told Chance what I was making, I swear the boy got the biggest smile I had seen on his face in months. He eats like food is free, and we all know its not, because there have been a few times we ran out and things got a little on the scary side, but its getting better now because I got a job. The downside is that it doesn't start for a couple of weeks, and its not a lot of money, and the hours may be hard to coordinate with daughters schedule.I figure it wont be too difficult because its only 4-12 hours a week, and I am damn sure not gonna get rich off of that, but at least it will give us some emergency funds. We are all so damn tired of not having two dimes to rub together by the end of the month, that we could just scream.
The ex is still making me crazy.I am torn between wanting to talk to my boys all the time and then not wanting to talk to him. His sister loaned him the money to save the house, so he was able to catch things up, so that means I wont be getting the boys sooner.Though I was stressing trying to support 4 kids on my own, I was so happy at the thought of having my babies all back with me. It tears my heart out to hear Sticky cry when I call and talk to him, and I just want to go get him.I cant go back to AZ,because when I call I can hear in my ex's voice that he revels in the fact that he thinks he won. He seems to enjoy telling me about all the changes he has made to the house and all of my things he is using. Some days he is okay,but then he just seems to revel in being cruel, so its status quo with him.
Chance got a concussion at football practice on Monday.I cannot express how badly that scared the ever loving hell outta me. They let him walk home alone and when he got here I should have known he was hurt bad because he was more irritable than usual, he was sweaty, nauseous and dizzy. I thought maybe he was just dehydrated so I got him a drink and then sent him to take a shower. He was still pale when he got out and grumpy and we bickered quite a bit, so he went to lay down. I made him get up after a couple of hours and take some tylenol and eat dinner, but he still was not himself. He told my friend Sus that he had gotten hit really hard in practice and nearly knocked out! Why the hell wasn't he taken to the hospital by the school? I want him to quit football because I know the problems that repeated blunt force impacts to the skull can create, and he is just too smart and talented to have to deal with that. I dont want my son to have to live with tinnitus and migraines and seizures, he has such a bright future, but he doesn't want to be seen as a quitter. Im trying to figure out a way to compel him to stop playing without being obvious about it,because frankly I am terrified he is going to get hurt worse.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Dear Roger:You Know Its A Good Week When You Get Told You Are Going To Hell More Than Once

Hehehe, Ive done it again Rog! Managed to upset sensibilities and offend those narrow minds and leave people wondering just what side of the sexual bread I butter things on. You would think that after giving birth to 5 damn kids,whining pretty much daily about what a drought of pecker I have been going though, that people would finally grasp the concept that I am straight! Weird,a bit into the S&M side of things, but STRAIGHT! Jeebus! But I am also a staunch defender of other folks rights,(as long as they are consenting adults) to love pretty much as they see fit. I responded to a comment about a Lesbian nurse being kicked out of the military that was posted on the Facebook page of a friend of mine from back home.No one else had said anything to the positive or the negative, so I took a stand and I said I was glad she had been reinstated to the military and I was glad she had gotten her benefits back, she EARNED them and they were hers. I stated my case,and I spoke my heart on the matter in a very public forum and I waited. I knew I wouldn't have to wait long, and I was surprised to see that I had gotten 4 people right off the bat that liked my comment,and then BOOM! I started getting the emails from the others."What are you gonna do when God comes", 'You are a sinner" (well duh, I never disputed that one)and the ever popular,"Dyke, you are going to hell". Okay, thats kinda offensive and it irked me, but I blew it off because those folks dont know me, but it really bothers me that people are still so damn narrow minded. I dont want to know about anybodies sexual habits.I dont wanna see it,(well, thats kinda a lie,because there are a couple of really hot young fellas that unh ...just do such wrong things to me mentally and seeing them naked,but NOT TOGETHER! NO!! would be wonderful) but to me, sex is private. I dont even like to see people kissing heavy in front of me(again, those guys,again not together) and my odd little predilections and desires would probably make most people feel really nervous, but to each THEIR OWN. So while I believe that homosexuals are in fact different, almost like a 3rd kinda blend of things,I dont wanna see it., just like I dont wanna see most anybody else bumping uglies. I do have a bit of a complaint with gay men though...why in the hell do so many of them have to be so damn good looking? Its just not fair.I have lost count since I have been up here in Portland of all the times I have seen a drop dead handsome,make me fall over my own feet,good looking man,only to see his equally devastatingly handsome partner with him! Its enough to make you just a little crazy. A friend of mine said she is a gay man in a womans body, and after seeing all the guys, I can see why!
I am considering getting pierced! hehehe I cant even say it without both giggling and wincing at the same time, but this is MY midlife crisis right? Soo, to go along with my hunt for a much younger boyfriend, I need some interesting bling and I thought what is a better conversation starter than the outline of a couple of rings where there shouldn't be? I talked to my sis about it because after all, she was the first to get anything other than an ear pierced in the family, and she told me she was gonna tattle on me, but I am a grown assed woman and its not like my momma or daddy can do a damn thing about it. I am also adding another tattoo on the back of my neck before I get the big one done, so I might as well have more fun. That will take me up to 7 tattoos up top, with most family only knowing about 3 of them(oops!)and if I get the two piercings on my chest, I may also have my tragus re pierced at the same time for the hell of it. Sis says it hurts like hell, but im not worried about that, not much of an issue with me. Im working on getting things in fighting shape and hopefully once things cool off for the winter, my skin will get back to normal and stop thinking we are going back through puberty! I am broken out so bad all over my body I look like I am actually going backwards and I really wouldnt want anyone to see me naked because its scary for me to see. My doctor was just like,"Oh well, you lived in Arizona for so long your skin is going to need time to adjust and it will take time." Til then, I just keep my clothes on and hope like hell I catch a break pretty soon.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Dear Roger; Tank Girl,Selective Hearing and Sabotage

Well its trying to make up its mind if its going to be cold up here, and man is it messing with me pretty hard! I have managed to get my first ear infection of the season and as I am writing this, I am waiting for my right eardrum to just go ahead and burst again. Im used to the pain,hell, we all know pain doesn't bother me, but the thought of losing even more hearing is really getting to me.As it is,I am pretty close to deaf in my right ear and people notice now that I cock my head funny when I am listening to them. Chance complains that my music is often too loud,thats right, my teen age son complains about my music being too loud, an often he tells me that he has to speak several times to get my attention if he says anything to me from my right side. Its pretty depressing. I would rather be anything other than deaf, and not that I think its a horrible thing in general, but that as a person who finds music as vital to life as breathing, I just cannot imagine my life without being able to hear it. Blindness would be scary, but after living with Amir and experiencing with him how he handled the world, I know its doable. But music...music is everything. Books can be in braille,or on tape if you lose your sight, and you can feel music though the beat, but its not the same. When my tinnitus gets really bad and it knocks out pretty much everything else, it just takes me to a dark place. Today all I have is a sharp buzzing in my right ear and the pain is pretty bad, which tells me that the pressure is pretty intense. Ive already taken Tylenol and Motrin to reduce the swelling and put heat on it, but even if I got in to see my doctor and got a shot of rocephin, its too late, by the time it takes effect, it will have burst again.So CRAP! I guess I will just be in a funk as I am headed to my job interview. Which is the actual bit of good news I have to report, I have a job interview today and another interview tomorrow! They are mcjobs, meaning the types of jobs that would drive you nuts for me even considering them, but they are survival jobs that will pay some bills until I can get back into school and writing and they wont require me to think. I like that, I can just shut my brain off at the door, do a numb nuts job and then come home and relax, its not like being a cop or a medic, where I brought it home all the time and wrestled with it in the wee hours. The downside is, both are working with the general public, but maybe that will be good for me, I do need to work on trying to not tell people to go fuck themselves quite soo much. I might actually find a boyfriend if I could learn to keep myself leashed up just a wee bit.
Kids are getting excited about Halloween, and this year I am dressing up as well. Sis wants to go as Rosalie from Twilight,(Holy hell what a fitting character choice!!) and I am going as" Tank Girl" my favorite comic book/movie character. I already have the clothes and stuff, so I wont have to buy anything for me, and Sis will just need a little help, but she has most of her stuff already too. Chance is going as a rock star...big surprise! Not. The boy has taken to wearing ratty jeans, ratty shirts, more bling than a rapper and he convinced me to buy him another hair color kit, so now his hair isn't an odd orangey gold color anymore, its more a weird brownish blackish purple color. Hes just a strange boy. I replaced his "I love Boobies" bracelet and then Trina asked if I could get a couple for her and my niece. Considering all the crap she has been through with her breast cancer issues, I had no problem picking her up a couple and I even bought myself one. She is still on that every 90 day mammogram protocol and I know it has to be stressful for her. I worry about her all the time. My niece is a cool kid, and shes the one that got me started on the whole Twilight fiasco, soo, I guess I should send her a goodie or two more often. I wish she could come up here this summer, we would have a blast, because she is every bit the mess my sis was when she was younger.
I sabotaged the gnarly t-shirt of Chances. It had pit stains,coffee stains,(he doesn't even drink coffee so that was weird), and other just grossness on it. I had stain treated it several times and tried to get them out, but it wasn't working, so I put oxyclean on it in copious amounts, straight, and left it sitting...for 3 days. What is left of it will make a nice cleaning rag.He tried to retaliate by taking my 100 Monkeys t-shirt with evil intentions, but I trumped that by threatening to repossess his computer or to post less than flattering updates on all his social networking pages, along with pictures, he called me ,"Evil, sadistic,diabolical, psychotic and cruel" and I have to say, the boy knows me too well. But I love my t-shirt and it only has one little hole and a less than noticeable coffee stain on it, but I actually drink coffee!

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Dear Roger; Lost On Wild Thing Island? Nah, Thats My Home

Soo, its been a few weeks and I gotta say Im sorry, but its been crazy with the start of school and just the general bull shit of the whole seasonal switch that fucks with my head pretty hard and I had a wicked bad run of insomnia that left me all jangled and messed up for a while. I haven't written much of anything, but I did build a couple of little webpages to help promote the doings of that little fella that I like a bit, and that kinda pulled me out of my funk.
Its getting into that fucked up time of year for me. You know what im talking about, the time of year when it seems like everyone I cared about decided to die. G died 28 years ago this October, and there are soo many others that died in and around there that I am not going to list them all, but losing you and him messed me up the most. I lost weeks when you died, did you know that? Weeks. I just kinda checked out.I guess I kept functioning, my mom tells me that I booked her flight,fought with her and dad and was very clinical and monotone and just didn't say anything beyond what was absolutely necessary, (Gee, you think they would have noticed there was a problem?) but I dont remember that time. I guess thats always been my way of coping.
Being that im in a new place, around new folks and trying to live a new life, im trying to not dwell too much in the past, but sometimes the loss and the feeling of just not quite fitting in anywhere still creeps in. I haven't written anything much lately, but I did put some of my stuff up here on my blog and I signed up to participate in a writing contest in the hopes that it will give me the kick in the ass that I need to get me motivated. Still haven't found a job, but I am looking pretty much daily, and I am doing things online to keep my brain active, such as participating in online discussions that force me to interact with people and make comments about things that I am interested in.
The rainy season has started up here an I am loving it! Never been a stranger to the rain, both real and allegorical, so I sometimes just go stand out in it and think about things. My ex has said he will send my guitar and my gig bag and such. Im pretty happy about that,especially since I cannot afford to buy a replacement and it just hurts to not have a creative outlet. Soo many times I have wanted to pick out some notes for the song I have written and I have had no way to do it. If I find a job pretty soon,one of the first splurges I am going to do is I am going to buy that Dobro I have been lusting over and the other music related items that my little family needs, such as a new ipod for the boy and most likely a better set of speakers for the house.
Daughter an I have gotten back to our traditional evening recitation/acting out of,'Where The Wild Things Are".She wanted to start back to doing it after we watched the movie together again the other day and once again cried when Max left the island. When I told her I stayed on the island, she asked me if I would ever consider leaving now that I was,'all grown up and old". I told her that just because a persons body gets older and they grow up on the outside, that doesn't mean that their heart and their spirit ages along with it, and though a lot of things have happened to me that make me have to be "grown up" and responsible, I am still very much a 'Wild Thing" in my heart and being lost and on 'Wild Thing Island" is the best place for me, because there never was dinner waiting in my room for me, unless I cooked it myself. I told her that I stay because I know that there are other lost 'Wild Things" that need me, and sometimes we find each other, and one day, maybe not in this lifetime, we will all have a warm dinner together.
It was a deep conversation for a six year old to have with me, but she got it and she said,"So that is why you are alone here except for us,(her and her brothers)?" and I told her that yeah, "Wild Things" dont do well with those who aren't other "Wild Things", we Eat Them UP! and that made her laugh.
My writing that I posted on here is still in the very rough, unedited, stage, and friends have asked me if I was worried about it getting stolen, but the truth of the matter is, its soo much based on my life and my history that is well documented, that if anybody did, I could prove it and then embarrass the hell out of them, but then I would have to wonder, why would anybody want to take something so dark and depressing? I read it and it just takes me back to places that rip and tear at me to the point that I end up crouched out under the tree off the back deck, smoking a cigarette and sobbing over memories of him into the we hours, so no...Im not worried, karma has a way of winning in the end.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Drudge...A Work in Progress, but my computer is freaking out

She sighed deeply, the breath leaving her body making a sound that even she found to be depressing and petulant, and worse, the sigh didn’t even being to express the depth of the misery she was feeling at the particular moment. The dream lingered in the back of her mind, and it was so damn vivid that she felt that she had seen him walking out of the room as she opened her eyes, yet it wasn’t the him she had last seen, it was an older version, the man he should have, could have been, and realizing it was only another damn dream just made the whole damn day start off in a funk.
Yet another fucking day wasted she thought to herself, sitting back in her bedroom with the lights off and the curtains drawn while the kids ran roughshod through the rest of the house, she knew she looked like the textbook example of a depressed person, and in truth, she was depressed, but she was also deeply angry, not just at her son of a bitch ex-husband who had once again dropped the ball and left her carrying the penis, or her financial situation that threatened swallow her and her kids, but at herself for allowing herself to wallow in misery and self-pity. because she had never been a wallower, she had always been a hard charger and a fighter that tilted at windmills and fought giants and refused to take No as an answer, but she had recently realized something, and upon realizing that something, all her fight had fled and she had retreated for the first time in her life and she was in danger of becoming something she had long loathed; she was becoming weak because she had realized she was getting old, and she had spent a large part of her life chasing a phantom, and she was tired.
The morning she realized it was like any other morning, the typical routine of rising at five to the obnoxious blat of the alarm clock next to her head, the kicking of the damn cat off her feet while she tried to unwrap from her pillows and blankets that seemed to wind themselves around her in 5o different directions during the wee hours of the night, the trudging down the hallway scattered with toys and children’s clothes and perhaps the occasional dog, to the kitchen to start the coffee and let out her large dog with the small bladder on the mornings he didn’t need out before the alarm clock went off. Then back down the hallway to bump up the heater so she could stand to take a piss and later shower and shave her legs without freezing into solid goose bumps and removing the tops of them with her cheap razor in the small bathroom that always seemed to be 20 degrees colder than the rest of the house. She would sit on the edge of her bed for a few minutes blearily staring at the random hotties homemade screensaver on her laptop as she waited for her coffee to brew in the kitchen, and she would smile at the little green eyed fella that appeared in random places in the mix, thinking how she wished she was younger because she would love to see just what was framed by that lovely v-shape at the bottom of his six pack, and then she would wander back down the hallway to her kitchen to get a cup of coffee and back to the bedroom to activate her computer so she could read the days news. The routine seldom changed, unless her dog needed out earlier or a child got sick, she was a creature of habit and it made her feel comfortable, like a ritual, harkening back to the days when she was a deputy and putting on her uniform was her highly ritualized routine that she was so comfortable with, she could do it with her eyes closed, but those days were long gone and with them her friends and connections and much of who she was as a person, and even though she had tried to develop new rituals and routines, they were not nearly as satisfying as the old ones, and she often felt she was losing who she was as a being.
The first sip of her strong enough to stand a horseshoe up in it coffee, often erased any lingering cobwebs in her brain and she would turn on the tv in her room to whatever music video station that was actually playing music videos that morning as a way of psyching herself up to waking up the kids that were still in bed. Often the oldest boy was already up and perched like a demented gargoyle at the foot of her bed, peering at her though his smeared glasses and inquiring if he had enough time to play some video games before getting dressed for school, to which the same standard response was always given,” Dressed first, then you can play”, to which he would reply, ‘kiss my ass mom”,(so much a child of his father), and then the standard, “No games, get dressed and sit on your bed” would be given and he would run out of the room crying and slamming doors, thus awakening the other two kids who would then come in and ask either what was for breakfast or in the case of the younger boy, if they could skip school for the day. This was the routine that had ruled her life for the last 3 years, and while it was better than the chaos and violence and brutality that had existed before, it was every bit as destructive as miserable to her. The routine of the days seldom changed, and the weekends were little better, except the ex would sometimes come by to criticize and make passive aggressive comments about the state of the house or her appearance, especially how lank and thin she had become, or the state of her hair, which constantly seemed to be in a state of disarray due to her nervous habit of running her hands through it or pulling at the sides of it absentmindedly. She would skip showers on the weekends, preferring to just lurk about in her bedroom while the ex dominated the living room and kitchen area with the children. She found that he still made her angry, and if she allowed herself to be around him very long, she became irritated to the point that her Tourretts emerged and the fist clenching and head jerks started, and he would begin mocking her until she either fled the room in anger and disgust or punched a wall so the flash of pain from bruised and injured knuckles would allow her to gain control over her faculties again.
Her ex truly was a bastard, and she hated having any contact with him at all, but the children were still young enough that they were unaware of most of his faults and they worshiped the ground he walked is non-child support paying ass upon.
She longed for a break from the monotony of the days, and had even attempted dating from time to time, but most of the men she encountered found her to be a terrifying challenge either due to the history of domestic violence from the ex in her past, the amount of children, or the fact that she really didn’t NEED a man around. She came across with a “Don’t fuck with me” attitude and she was often very blunt in conversations with men, laying out the history of her marriage and children and the resultant issues she had dealt with, and it scared the shit out of what passed for men in Flagstaff, to the point where she couldn’t even get a pity fuck. She wasn’t ugly by any stretch of the imagination, she was tiny, only 5’tall and 103lbs, and she was blonde with very expressive blue eyes, eyes the told her story all too well, and often hinted that she knew a secret and that she was just busting to share it. She had a rocking body that even though she had borne 4 kids, was in athletic shape and looked like a cross between a female Marine and biker chick with how she dressed. She often got looks, from all shapes and sizes of men and women, but no one ever seemed to get off the blocks, due to the fact she just seemed so damn intimidating, even when she tried to dial it down and play the helpless blonde, it just came across as a trap and freaked men out, so by the end of the third year with no end in sight to the loneliness, she was a disheartened mess and had given up. She wasn’t looking for her,” One”, in all actuality, she believed her ,’One” was dead, and that he had died 27 years ago on the side of an East Texas highway, murdered by a drunk driver who sat on the side of the road and watched him burn to death pinned in the cab of his truck. She had never gotten over the loss of her young, first love, never mourned properly, never healed and never loved as deeply as she had loved him. She had developed relationships with other men, large in part to satisfy family obligations and to shut up the fucking rumors from her mom that she was gay.
The gay rumors had traumatized the hell out of her when she was younger, and they had caused her to resent the hell out of her family for many years, and she decided to put an end to them once and for all by getting caught fucking a boy on the living room couch right before she left for college. the poor boy was lucky to make it out the back door and into the woods before her irate father emptied the contents of his .357 into the trees behind him, and her mother promptly added to the scars and lumps on her skull in a fit of temper, all the while proclaiming that “she did not need to randomly screw some trailer park boy to try and prove she wasn’t a lesbian because they were fine with her being one.” It was at that point she decided it was just easier to play along and let them believe their delusions. She really thought her mom wanted a gay kid just for the, attention and pity that she would get from the rest of her narrow minded friends.
Her career choices along the way did nothing to dissuade her parents from believing her to be gay, she was a gifted photo-journalist and after a stint in the Marines as a combat photographer during the Gulf War, she spent a few years wandering about the world free lancing for various news agencies in hot zones, and occasionally even celebrity events. She indulged in a few torrid affairs with unremarkable men, drank a lot, and never really connected to anyone, and even got shot during one of her forays into a war zone in the Middle East, but she lived for the adrenalin and it was a heady and adventurous time and she loved every death-defying moment of it.
All good things come to and end, and it seemed that at her wildest and most reckless that she had to found her grounding. The romance with the Iranian expat was a bad idea from the beginning, it was tumultuous and dangerous, and he was exotic and exciting and handsome and their temperaments lead to many nights of passionate fights and sex under the Paris skies after too much wine, and when she found she was pregnant he offered to either pay for an abortion or to send the child to his family in Iran. She fled to the states and to family.
She thought that the delivery of a beautifully exotic baby girl would for once put to rest the rumors about her sexuality, but, alas, her mom would not let it die. She was not cut out to be a parent at that point in her life, and her mother was over the moon with the idea of raising such an exotic little being, so in order to save both of them a lot of suffering, she contacted the father and had him sign away his rights and she signed away hers and fell into a bottle for the next 2 years.
Drunken debauchery in Dallas…it sounds like a cheap porno, and in a lot of ways it was, midnight ramblings around Deep Ellum with the artsy crowd, slam dancing to questionable Indie bands in back alley bars, sleeping off the booze in the back of cars or on the floor of some artists flop in the Mitchell building, wearing one of her dog tags in her boot and another around her neck so if she ended up with her throat slit in an alley, she would at least end up back where she belonged. She started running with a rough crowd, the rich older sons of the Turtle Creek set, as well as a loose knit gang of upper middle class Gen x’ers that were disaffected and angry at the whole, ’greed is good” line that was being thrown about, she wandered about the Metroplex, party to party, couch to couch, wounded and angry, not sure where she was going to end up and at loose ends. She spent her evenings at clubs and racing through the Metroplex in her truck, until she managed to cross someone who was bigger and badder and angrier than her and she realized that unless she wanted to die in a really horrible way, she had to leave town quickly, she had to get gone and fast, she made a call to the person who had never judged her, and who had always offered a soft place to fall, and a couple of hours later a wire transfer of funds came in at Western Union and she had enough cash to get her to Arizona and on the road to the next chapter of her life and once again away from the place where the phantom was always too far away to bring her peace, yet so close he burned her with the agony of a thousand flames.
Living in Arizona was like moving from a tropic jungle, rich in moisture and life and everything she had ever known, to the devils sauna. Living with her Uncle was also an adventure, though as the black and grey sheep of the family they had an understanding and kinship that made the transition a little easier. Her arrival at his home was in the wee hours of o’dark thirty that cold February, so rather than wake him she decided to polish off a bottle of Patron she had bought to deal with insomnia, and just sleep in her truck with her .45 until morning rolled around. Her hat pulled down over her eyes and her boots on the dash of the darkly tinted truck, she was not visible from the outside, but it did not stop her Bear of an uncle from beating on the side glass hard enough to make her jump hard enough to drop her pistol and what was left of the Patron. Her uncle had jerked the truck door open and grabbed her by the collar of her jacket, dragging her out into a bone-crushing bear hug, calling her, “Futz face” and telling her how much he had missed her and that she reeked. That was as far that the comments about the booze went, he didn’t judge, didn’t linger on it, he reached over into the back of her truck and grabbed the duffle that held all her worldly goods and started walking back to the door of his house as she gasped to collect her breath and the rest of her stuff and follow.
They spent months wandering around art galleries of Arizona in her truck or his ratty old Galaxy, eating Asian food and talking about all that was afoot in the world of art and photography. But she had decided that it was time to make a change, and as usual he was supportive of her and becoming a paramedic was something that he could get behind, after all he had already died once due to his bad heart, and it was the quick action of EMS crews that had saved him, and he knew she lived for the adrenaline and missed the action from being in war zones, so she decided to go back to school and get her paramedic at the local college down in Tucson and work part-time teaching to help pay for groceries and odds and ends, since there was no rent or mortgage to worry about. Her photography wasn’t discussed much, as an artist himself he understood that when a muse leaves it’s a painful topic of conversation, and he knew that part of her pain was that her muse had left her when she had the child, in fact she had not taken a photo in over 3 years and had even sold her main camera and burned most of her art prints in a fit of pique. He was more disturbed to find that she was not writing, after all, she had been a gifted writer long before she ever picked up a camera, and her poetry and short stories had won awards and even been published while she was in grade school. Sitting out in the back garden in the evenings he had tried to ask about the writing, but she took a drag on her cigarette and just told him that the writing muse had packed up and gone to stay with Galen, and knowing what that meant, he let it drop other than to ask about where her journals were, to which she answered that her mother had taken them for their own safety when they emptied out her place in Texas when she left in a hurry.
Paramedic school and clinicals went by quickly, and she found a department in a rural area nearby that allowed her to pick up a few shifts a month and meet the requirements for certification, and in seemingly no time, she was fully certified and moving up the ranks within a moderately sized department, and achieving pretty much every certification that she could along the way including firefighter and Incident Commander. The hours were long, and she often came home with injuries or with a haunted look, and on occasion a bottle of Patron accompanied her out to the back yard and she would sit out by the fire pit into the wee hours staring into the flames and beyond them, tears streaming down her face, and he knew she was watching him burn all over again. When she did come back into the house to go to bed, those were the nights he heard her cry out his name, “Galen!”, and he knew that she was still trying to save him, and he couldn’t help her.
Being a paramedic and a firefighter had its rewards, and when she saved a life it made the pain a little less, but there were times when the pain came screaming in to her life and she fought back a rage that threatened to engulf her and it took everything in her power to keep from acting on her deepest desires, and it was on those calls when she encountered drunk drivers, and dealing with them drove her harder and she knew she could not stop until she was able to put a stop to them before the created the pain and suffering she was dealing with, and it was then that she decided to apply to become a deputy sheriff.
Surprisingly, in spite of all of the fuckery she had engaged in out in Dallas in other areas, she had remained unscathed by legal entanglements, and only had 2 rather extravagant speeding tickets, including one that was earned when her drivers license was still paper, and she was stopped by a Texas state trooper for doing over 98 in a 55 with the added issue of drag racing. The irate trooper claimed that she was going much faster,(she in fact was doing 132 when she pulled around the Chevy), but he was so shocked to see a 15 year old 4 ft tall girl behind the wheel of the souped up muscle car, he was momentarily stunned into mercy and decided to allow her father to handle the worst of the punishment and cite her for a non-jail able offence, but he did tell her father the actual speed and she lost her car to being up on blocks for 3 months and forever earned the rep and the family speed demon. With the absence of legal entanglements, and the fact that she was in peak physical condition as a firefighter, she was quickly accepted into the academy as a reserve recruit for a rural sheriffs department that she had worked with in the past, and she moved through the academy much as she had moved through being a Marine, like she was born to it. She had a sense of purpose and she was driven and she was up before dawn each day, running and preparing her uniform and gear for training, and when graduation day came, she was in the top three graduates, and her pride at receiving her badge was evident to all in attendance at the ceremony.
As a female in a rural department, she was much in demand for undercover details, and she was quickly aligned with the narcotics unit and moved into working biker bars and special details that worked to abate the movement of drugs through the state, but she most came alive on the nights that the department ,’wolfpacked” the highways looking for drunk drivers. She volunteered for every single holiday where there was likely to be drunks on the road, and her arrest stats were unbeatable when it came to drunks. Some of the other officers tried to give her grief about being such a hard ass on people who made “just one little mistake”, and she would just take off her Smokey and remove a cracked and faded picture and hand it to them, and they would look at it and see the name and the two dates on the back and most often they would hand it back with an apology and go about their business, after all, more than a few were on a mission in memory of someone.
Life was good, work consumed her and she had been even giving consideration to finally moving out of her uncles house, after all, she was sure that he was ready for some peace and quiet, and living with a misanthropic, night-crawling cop/paramedic/firefighter had to be a bit of a drag for a 60 year old boho artist, but as it turned out, she need not have worried. She knew he had not been well for a long time, he had fucking died once already when he was 40 and a massive heart attack wiped out over 90% of his heart, and he had even been on the transplant list for a couple of years before he took himself off and became a lab rat for some pharma company in some hippy do gooder effort to help others, and she knew he had been sleeping more and more and resting more than normal, and even his paintings had taken a darker tone, but she was trying not to see it, she didn’t want to see it, but fate has a way of bitch-slapping people when they least expect it, and it so happened that she got slapped when she was in the middle of actually going on a damn date for the first time in close to 5 years.
She liked the guy, he wasn’t a brilliant conversationalist, but he was damn good looking and he was tall and built like a tank at 6’6 and biceps as big around as her thighs, so she thought he might be fun in other ways, so even though they had to keep things on the down low because he was a ranking officer in the department she worked at, when he invited her over to “clean her pistol’, she excitedly got all cleaned up and jumped in her truck and went, but weirdly enough, when he said, “clean pistols” that is what he meant and she was getting both frustrated and non-plussed at the same time trying to figure the guy out when her cell phone went off with a call from her uncles house. He knew she was on a date, and if he was calling it had to be important, so she grabbed it right away and was stunned to hear a strange voice telling her that she needed to get to the hospital as soon as safely possible, but little did she know, it was already too late.
The next 20 minutes went by in a blur, when she arrived at the hospital, she was met by a doctor who tried to gently pry more next of kin information from her, and it was a good thing he got the information he needed first, because she had been holding out hope, just not ready to accept that the one person in her life that had always gotten her and never judged her had finally decided to check out and leave her. When the doctor started his, “We did everything we could…” speech she simply screamed and hit the floor and the next two weeks vanished into a haze and have never reappeared.
His will left everything to her, but he had counted on her keeping her wits about her, and when she simply folded into herself in the back room with a bottle of Patron and refused to eat or sleep, it was simple for her parents to swoop in and have her declared incompetent and in need of hospitalization. By the time she was released, and vanished into the heat of the day they had already had themselves declared executors of his estate and were in the process of selling off everything of value, but oddly she was not angry, merely resigned and when she broke in on her way out of town, she only took his brief case with some pictures, a painting of his and her clothes that still remained, and his art supplies, and her pistol but she left all her certifications and uniforms, taking only the tattered and faded picture of the long dead boy as she drove off into the night still chasing the phantom and the end to the pain that lingered in her heart.
She had headed North, longing to get to someplace where there were trees and grass and where it rained once and while again, she wanted to get out of Arizona and while she had considered spending the night in Flagstaff, actually staying longer than overnight was not even an consideration, but as the snow started coming thicker and faster around the windshield of her trusty old 2-wheel drive truck, she knew she was seriously screwed because not only did she not have any chains, she had never driven on snow, not once in her entire life and while she didn’t really worry about herself, she was terrified of anything happening to her truck.
As it got darker and the snow got heavier, she became determined to find a place to pile in for the night, and determined that pretty much once you passed Munds Park, you were committed to trudging all the way to Flagstaff unless you wanted to risk freezing to death on some exit ramp to nowhere Ville or getting your ass run over by a over caffeinated speed freak trucker. Her speed had fallen to 25 mph and she was staying in the right lane, trying to stay the hell out of the rest of the screaming psychopaths ways and shaking her head as she saw the headlights from yet another vehicle coming up on her too fast for road conditions. Fuck! went through her mind as the tan Jeep pick up started to go around her and then began fishtailing and sliding towards her beloved trucks front left fender, as she made the rookie mistake of all rookie mistakes in snow driving and jerked the wheel towards the right and the 40ft embankment that sent her and her truck tumbling down the into the rocks below.
Hey! You got to wake up! If you don’t wake up you are going to freeze down here dammit! Girl! Wake the hell up! She had known that voice, she heard it in her dreams from time to time and she had heard it that night in her truck, commanding her to action to save her sorry ass from yet another scrape, just as it had commanded her when she had been shot in that shit hole of a 3rd world death trap, and all those times she had danced of the edge of the abyss with booze and bad men. It was the phantom she had never stopped chasing for close to 20 years, her heaven and her hell, the reason her life was one constant train wreck of pain and suffering. She had sworn at him in the truck, telling him to leave her the fuck alone, she wanted to die, she was tired of him always being out of reach, and that maybe if she died here, she could finally be with him again, but that was when he dropped the mother of all bombs on her, he had told her that it wasn’t allowed! She was not allowed to die before her time and this wasn’t her time?! What the hell? How could this not be the time? Couldn’t it meet all the requirements, after all, car accident, exposure, she was obviously injured. “Don’t be a pussy, Jen, you have been hurt way worse than this and beaten the hell out of bigger men and then danced until dawn.” He had allowed her to see him then and she had been shocked to see that he looked older, in fact he looked her age! “How the hell is a dead guy aging?” she had grumbled at him, twisting around so that she was sitting on the roof of her now upside down truck. Oh, got your interest now do I? its one of the perks of the job, I can pretty much assume any age up to the age you are at, you want, whatever it takes to motivate your sorry ass into saving your own damn skin. “So this is what you would have looked like at 30 she asked?” Fraid so he replied, and she had promptly burst into tears. He had been so handsome, with his tousled curls falling over his forehead and his blue eyes peering at her. His cheekbones were high and his jaw was covered with scruff and he had a slight mustache that nicely set off his deep dimples. He still had maintained that ethereal, otherworldly look that had drawn her to him as a young girl when she first fell in love with him, and the memory that he had been so destroyed by the accident that they had been forced to have a closed casket funeral came crashing back into her and she promptly burst into tears.
WHAT?! am I ugly, here I can look like the me you remember, and the next thing she knew she was staring at the teenage him, down to dirty football uniform he was wearing when he had gotten into the truck to drive home, and that only made her sob harder. OH JESUS WOMAN! you have got to stop crying, help is nearly here and I am going to have to leave, but you cannot just quit, and you cannot die a violent death, isn’t going to happen, you have a special path and I’m here to kind of keep you on it, so please don’t make things harder, ok? You always were a firecracker, and you damn sure haven’t changed as you have gotten older. I cant show myself very often, but know that I’m around, though not like , watching you in the bathroom or anything because that would be kind of gross and weird, but when you need me I’m around.”

Writing sample....

Three Bags And One Carry On, The Sum Of My Life

Three mismatched duffels, one red, one camouflage that used to carry my parents camping equipment, and one blue that was actually supposed to be a laundry bag. My carry on is a Makita tool bag that I rescued from the back of the closet because it was sturdy and fairly clean and would hopefully keep my meager electronics safe and useable. They were nothing remarkable, much like what they contained, the sum contents of my 41 years of life on this earth, my clothes, my boots, some documents proving achievement of a college degree at a second rate college, pictures of my children and family, memorabilia of my glory days, and a few books and my electronic lifeline and leashes. The rest of what most people consider their identity, had been signed over to my ex-husband just a few hours earlier as part of a deal we had hashed out that was to allow me and my eldest son and youngest daughter to escape the hell that had been life in Flagstaff over the last 10 years.
The arguments had been epic, loud and close to bloody and ashamedly, I tried to incite him to violence because I needed to prove to myself that the monster I knew lurked in him was either dead or hiding in fear of going back to prison. Much to my surprise he hadn’t risen to the bait, though I had seen the familiar signs of his desire to inflict on me the lessons in pain that he had previously taught me for such disobediences. Prison and time had worn him down, and my jibes and challenges to his abilities to manage the demands of running a household, went unanswered. He claims he could do it, and hopefully he can, but doubts remain, he has never, “manned up” in the past, and the thought of my younger sons being left to their own devices while he either naps of stares at personal ads on Craigslist, leaves me sick with fear, but I have to go, and he has, “Rights”.
My oldest son is weary of the entire situation. He has been shuffled between grandparents, aunt, home and now we are moving to Portland in the hope of establishing a foothold in a new land and building a new life while he is still young enough to enjoy it, but all he wants is some stability, a room to himself, some good acne medication, reliable internet and driving lessons, for me to finally get over the anger and the rage. He is a very easy going kid for a former punching bag. He has forgiven him, and hell, he even jokes with him and shares music and jokes with him about girls, but that’s something I cannot do. That day is forever imprinted in my mind and when I look at him, I see that day when he was being beaten and punched in front of me and I did nothing. Though no, “Long Term” physical damage was done, and my ex was arrested and supposedly , “did his time”, there is time still being served, right here, in my mind, and until my sentence is up, and my son has the life he deserves, the sentence will continue to run.
The decision to leave was made a long time ago, but the ability to enact the plan always met one snag or another; lack of funds, no place to go, lack of understanding of the rights that were afforded by the child custody decree, fear of inciting him to violence beyond what he had been capable of before when he realized that it was being considered. As a former law enforcement officer and with a degree in Criminal Justice, I knew the statistics and the risks that came with making the final break, so when the time came, it had to be decisive and sudden, so that he would not have time to contemplate all the implications, there would be no going back, no changing of the mind, no hesitation, it had to be something that was done with finality and with no room for negotiation, but as we all know, the best laid plans of mice and men often fall to ruin.
The fire that started up in the Schultz Pass just before Fathers Day was not something that I was too worried about, after all, there had been no less than five other fires in the previous week and they had all been extinguished pretty quickly with no loss of life or property and the entire region was on alert, so you couldn’t so much as light a cigarette without the Forest Service wanting to know what your intentions were with the butt,(or so we thought), but then we did not take into account the morons that camped and left fires going in mountain passes that get wind gusts of over sixty miles an hour.
By 11:00 on Fathers Day the smoke was covering the entire front of the mountain, and it had rapidly grown out of control and they were calling for evacuations. My ex had come out to see his kids and I was doing my normal lurk in the back bedroom, waiting for him to leave, when he came back and knocked on the door. “You aren’t going to like what I have to say.” he told me looking like he knew an argument was coming, “But before you get upset with me, you need to come out to the front porch and look at the mountain.” The strong sense of foreboding that gripped me got only stronger as I followed him down the hall to the front entryway, due to the realization that though it was only 3pm, it was almost dark outside and the wind was gusting in its typically strong Flagstaff way. He opened the door in front of me and I stepped out into what looked like the anteroom of hell.
The fire had fed on decades of scrub pine and undergrowth that had built up as a result of constant lawsuits and hassles that prevented the thinning of all the trees killed by the bark beetles, and with the explosively dry tinder to fuel its maw, it had raced out of the pass and up the face of the mountain and extended to the top, raging well beyond the control of the crews that were available to fight it on the ground. The wind was still whipping, creating tornados of smoke and ash, and it looked like a scene from every horror movie about fire I had ever seen in my life. The sound was a dull roar that reminded me of the lions we used to hear off in the distance that were kept as pets at a neighbors ranch, a dull roaring that made my stomach roll with dread and a primal fear of what was approaching.
The first words I could think to say was , “They have lost it. it’s a complete and total clusterfuck.” My ex looked at me like I had made the most obvious statement in the world, and he asked me what I wanted to do. I quickly turned back into the house and told the kids to go and get dressed, pick out a few of their most precious, cant live without toys, and bring them to the living room and put them in a pile by the door. I asked my ex to find a lock, and clear out the back of the van, because he needed to take a few valuables down to the safe storage out of the range of the fire line, and he needed to do it quickly, while I gathered up the rest of the papers and small things. For once, realizing the gravity of the situation, and the fact that since I had been both a cop and a firefighter, he let me lead, and he did what I asked without arguing or giving me a hard time, and he moved quickly. Within 20 minutes we had all the art and antiques and valuables loaded and he was headed to a storage unit, closer into town while I kept preparing the kids and the animals in case we had to evacuate, even though the stress of the whole situation was finally starting to get to me and my Tourretts was making its presence known in fine forms with a wonderful array of twitches and grunts when I couldn’t other wise redirect the urge. I went into what my ex always referred to as,’ “cop mode” as I saw the fire line drop down to behind my neighbors houses, and I realized that it was less than an 1/8 of a mile from my front door, a door that was on a 35 year old trailer house that had lapsed insurance. When I saw the sheriffs department officer rolling towards us in the suv, I knew the evacuation order was coming, but I also knew he was powerless to force me to leave, but I listened to him, got information on the options, and told him that I was planning on sending my ex and children out and that I was sitting tight with my dogs until there was no other option. With the warning that once the order was given, I was not going to receive any other chances, I thanked him and sent him on his way, and turned around to find an angry and livid ex standing right behind me. “What the fuck do you mean you are sitting tight with the dogs? Are you out of your fucking mind? Is this how you plan on killing yourself? What the fuck is wrong with you?” I stepped up to him, toe to toe and I said in a very calm and low voice, ‘ You need to bring it down a notch, you are not my keeper, you are not my husband, and you are not my boss, and you do not tell me what to do. I am an adult that has survived the last 2 years making her own Goddamned decisions while you were in prison, and I have enough defensible space around here that I will have plenty of time to get out if I need to, but you need to take my kids and get them to safety in the shelter, and you need to quit raising your voice to me, I am not your bitch anymore, Ed.”
He stepped back and looked at me and humphed!, “ You are just as crazy as you ever were. Fine!, if you wanna die, die. You would be doing me a favor. Its all a win, I get the kids and the house and I don’t have to put up with you anymore, so I will take the kids and the stuff and we are leaving, but once we are gone, you are stuck, because Im going to have to take the van to get all the stuff in it.” That’s fine, I didn’t expect your friend to come back out here to get you with all this going on anyway, just don’t scare my kids anymore than you already have, they are stressed out enough.” He glared at me for a minute, and I knew he wanted to say more in an attempt to get the upper hand, but there wasn’t time. I told him to get loaded up, take snacks and toothbrushes and to make sure he registered with the Red Cross and just go to the shelter and keep my kids safe while I battened down the hatches and waited out what promised to be a life altering event, one way or another.



Dear Roger: Meandering Along, The Song Is Still The Same

The kids are finally back in school! I may or may not have done a naked happy dance around the apartment to loud and inappropriate music shortly after they both left, but neither me nor the cat are gonna tell that. I have been trying to keep busy and my doings have mainly been walking all over hell and gone as the weather has allowed, applying for every job online that I am even remotely qualified for, and reading, as well as rearranging and and obsessively cleaning the apartment, so as you can tell, I am just a little stir crazy and bored. It doest help that we are hella broke again and pretty much financially cut off from any kind of fun, but we do out best to keep things light and happy. I had to get the kids some school clothes, and due to me being able to cash in some rewards from my old bank account, I was able to get Chance his football cleats as well as his jock and his mouth guard, so he is all set. He got his physical and met his new doctor who is a really cute young chick! After he got over the initial mortification of a young chick seeing him in his boxers, he actually opened up to her and talked to her a little and she was able to get him to discuss some things I have never gotten him to talk about. He will start actually hitting the hard practices on Monday, and I would be a liar if I said I wasn't worried, because truthfully I am terrified, but I cant keep him wrapped in bubble wrap. He has mentioned soccer a few more times and the coach has been nudging him pretty hard,(the guy must know a ringer when he sees him), so I still have hope. He is looking forward to really getting into the singing and he is also possibly getting put into the drama class as of yet! Hes a man much in demand, and though some of the culture of the school kinda freaks him out, he is adapting. He has told me he gets stared at by both girls and boys, and thats a little odd for him, and one girl came up and shoved him off a bench and said,"You are too pretty and your eyes are freaking gorgeous and its freaking me OUT!" he told me he wasn't sure if he was being hit on or if he was fixing to get hit.
His little sister has already made quite the impression in her class and is making friends fast and furiously. She plays with all kinds of kids from all different ethnic groups, and she has commented that a couple of them,"sound different" and that kinda makes me laugh because I do not know why but getting used to hearing the Russian accent up here is the toughest on me for not giggling and I blame damn cartoons. Every time I hear someone speaking with a Russian accent I immediately flash to Rocky and Bullwinkle and its just all I can do not to giggle and say ,"Moose and Squirrel!"Its stupid and immature, but its just and immediate reaction, kinda like some British accents take me right away to certain Monty Python skits and then I am just done for when it comes to talking to or listening to that person. Its funny how certain things and characteristics about people just either creep me out, tickle my funny bone or inspire other more ...interesting reactions from me. I have an absolute weakness for a man with curly hair and dimples. It just makes me stupid, kinda like too much liquor. I end up looking at them like a pup looks a something new and interesting and I just get charmed. They could be a serial killer for all I care and I would just think,'Awww, look at em! Aint he darlin? I just wanna pinch em!" siiiigh. Its truly my kryptonite.
Nothing much else has gone on lately. Im still hopelessly single, not even a prospect of a date. I did get flirted with by a cop, but he didnt follow though and though I smiled and waved back, he just stood there smiling at me like he was frozen in place. I am hoping at on one of my daily walks I might run across someone, but up here in the white-bread suburbs, I kinda doubt I am going to find anyone interesting.