Dear Rogers:Bubbling To The Surface

I would have to say that yesterday was a pretty rough day for me. I tend to not get to far off into the the state that I was into by the dinner hour, but there is one thing that can send me into a full on, gut-wrenching, heart-sick panic faster than anything...one of my children being missing or in harms way.

Though I consider myself to be a failure as a mother, it is a vocation that I take very seriously and to heart and it is my mission to achieve the raising of my sons with these goals achieved: 1. They will be go from point A. to point B. with as little physical or emotional damage as possible. That means that NO ONE HURTS MY BABIES. Even if I have to threaten to throw down against a truck load of idiots in the middle of Burnside and Powell, on my own because some jackass shouted "Faggot" at my son, I will stomp a mudhole in someones ass to achieve it. 2. None of my children will ever be A. Arrested or go to jail for any reason. I have so far managed to achieve that by knowing my kids friends, knowing what they are up to , maintaining rules and discipline, and instilling respect in my kids and fear of just what the hell would happen to them if they ever were arrested, in them. 3. They will all graduate from high school and then college. Even my special needs child, even if that means I am sitting there right beside him in class. I dont care if its art school but they are not going to be without means.

I may be a little strict, but I have seen what becomes of kids who have overly indulgent parents or parents who dont pay attention or who just dont have the knowledge to ask the right questions. I may be nearly 42 years old, but I damn well remember being 15 years old and I remember all the fuckery I got up to running wild in East Texas, and I will be damned if my son is going to end up as much of a screw up as I am, so yesterday when he was over 2 hours late, and he didn't call or text or otherwise check in to let me know WHY? I could only assume that something bad had happened to him.

We live in a big city. A big city where we dont really know anybody. He is a very pretty boy. Yes, he is as big as a moose and fast as hell, but he is a pretty boy and not the most streetwise and hes a bit cocky. The closer to dark it got, the more times I was getting up and looking out the window, checking the door, checking my phone, looking out the window, picking up the phone to call his coach. I sat here with that sense of dread building in my gut, remembering all the times I had gone as a cop to tell parents that their sons had been in accidents or had done something stupid and had been hurt. I listened to each person going up and down the stairs outside my apartment for the familiar sound of his shoes, waiting...and just as I was telling his sister to get her coat and I was pulling my boots back on with my heart already racing and my gut twisting in fear, I heard a knock a the door. He was there, soaked to the bone wondering why I was grabbing him and yelling at him and hugging him and crying for forgetting his key.

He accused me of,"Freaking out" and yeah, I was. He is a teen boy, they live lives of alley cats. More likely to die by violence than by any other means. He is infuriating and stress making and smelly and messy, but like I explained to him,(repeatedly), he is MY BABY. He may do stupid stuff like set his pants on fire, and he may have questionable fashion choices, but it is my mission to achieve my objectives and I am a very objective driven person. He will survive to grow up, stay out of handcuffs,(at least wielded by law enforcement, and the other I dont want to know about and it better be when he is an adult)graduate hopefully with honors from both high school and college, and he will hopefully go out into the world and find someone to love who will drive him crazy.

He was afraid he was going to get grounded or punished in some way, but I told him he had the choice that I used to give quite a few of the people I stopped when I was a cop, "Citation or Lecture?" When I was a cop I missed teaching, so those that chose lecture got the 5 minute educational version of why they were a fuck up and why they shouldn't have been doing what they were doing and sent on their way, or they could simply get a ticket that took me the same amount of time to write and they had to pay a fine on top of it. Weirdly, mostly California folks took the ticket. Southerners often took the lecture, I think because we just liked to talk.He took the lecture, and it was during the lecture, it dawned on the boy that I had been scared. When he realized it he said,"Mom, you were scared?" Duh! That is the one thing that scares me. I dont care what happens to me. Its the thought that what could happen to those that I love and care about that scares me. I jumped in the middle of my psycho ex-brother in law one night in the parking lot of the Orange Blossom Ballroom because I thought he was going to hurt my sis. He was more than twice my size and 10 times the crazy and he was armed, but I didn't care, he was going to hurt my sister. To this day he still wonders if I really woulda chewed his throat out if that bouncer hadn't caught me in a bear hug and held me with my boots off the ground until he could get away, or if my daddy hadn't punched me out when I went to the house and got the pistol so I could go hunt him down and shoot him after they set me loose. I would probably still be in the pen in Texas, but my sis wouldn't have gotten hurt that night. Some folks may say that they would end someone who hurt their loved ones, I follow through. My ex knows this. he knows he was lucky to live to go to prison. He knows that my rage and my standing up in court and facing him to ensure he got the maximum was my way to put an end to him and that the only reason he exists, is because I did not want my children ending up in the system if I went to prison.

My son knows I live for them, heart and soul. There is nothing else for me, no other reason. I would be lost without them. He tried to tell me that when he was in Texas that my parents didn't care if he wandered in whenever, and I told him," I am not now, nor have I ever been, MY parents. I give a damn. I care. I love you. If you ever do that to me again, Your sister and I will be at your school, waiting on you each and every day. I will walk you to school each and every day. I will call your coach next time when you are an hour late instead of sitting here worrying. It is COURTESY to let your family and loved ones know when you are going to be late."

He is allowed freedom to a great extent, and he is indulged, but I will not have him running the streets like no one gives a damn, and I will not have him getting into all kinds of stupidity that I know boys get into when they are allowed to roam freely. He curses the day I was ever a cop, but its nothing to do with me being a cop, its everything to do with me growing up around a bunch of guys who got into all kinds of crazy shit when they were 15-19, and with me attending 6 funerals from 1984-1987,all of young guys I called my friends, and with watching a half dozen more of them end up in the State pen in Texas for everything from Oilfield theft to drug dealing and possession to attempted murder, not to mention all of the assault and minor consumption charges. How the hell I managed to avoid ever getting cuffed up still baffles the hell out of me, because I pulled a scrawny, buck toothed boy out of the back of a Trans Am one night up on a parking lot by his ears and beat the hell out of him for calling me a bitch. I then stuffed his ass back in the back of the car and proceeded to kick the quarter panels until his buddies hauled ass back to Dallas, convinced that us small town crazies just weren't worth messing with.That was observed by local cops. I think that maybe they were just too stunned to react at the time, but I do remember that later, one of the officers that was the father of a friend of mine pulled me aside and had a heart to heart talk with me about how my anger was eating me and that if I let it keep eating me, pretty soon, all that was going to be left was the anger and that they were going to have to deal with. He suggested that I leave town for a while and go see my grandma and find some peace and quiet, to see if I could lose some of the anger and maybe find what was left of me. He was right, there wasn't too much left of me, but the threads of that conversation helped me to hang on until I was able to get gone for good. Tommy was a good guy and his son was a good friend as well.

My son may not have father that gave him anything beyond genetic code, but he has me and I am to blame for everything that is wrong or right with him. I try really hard to lead him properly and if nothing else to be a good cautionary tale. I dont expect him to act totally sane, after all he is young and male and hes musically inclined and dramatic and artistic and scary freaking intelligent, but I expect him to be a good man,and so far, from what I have been hearing, I may have succeeded there. I hear stories about him from people who I bump into around town or when I call the school and they tell me things," He is such a well-mannered and kind young man", "He is so polite and sweet and good-hearted".Hearing these things makes me feel that I may have succeeded. My neighbors and my apartment manager have stopped me to compliment me on my son, because he has done things like stopped and offered to help them when they needed it, or he is unfailingly polite and says,"Ma'am and Sir". I cant help but to feel smug when people compliment me on that, that snooty prep school principal told my kids in front of me,"You dont have to say,"Ma'am and Sir here, this isn't the South." I said, "I told them they have to say it because its the mark of good home training and good manners and I say they have to say it." We may not be rich, but honor, integrity, dignity and pride, cost nothing to instill and I think I may be succeeding.

As for his lack of courtesy yesterday, the crushing guilt that he felt and the amount of apologizing he did, left me no doubt that he got the point I was making. It was a learning moment for both of us. We sat up pretty late last night talking about things, and Rog, we even talked about you for quite a while. He saw the raw pain I feel from missing you, and no boy likes to see their momma cry like that. I told him, that is how I feel over losing my uncle, who was like my father, imagine what losing my child would do to me? He got it.

Dear Roger: Spots, Scars and Conversations With My 7 Year Old

So this was a typical Spring Break for us. My ex has my bank account so fouled up that it will probably still be a disaster around the first of the month, even though he keeps promising that he will right it by Monday. I am less than hopeful. At least my son go to get the hell out of Dodge. He was invited to go to Long Beach with some friends for the entire week, so he packed up my gym bag, the guitar and what money he could scrounge, and he bailed on us. I dont blame him and I am glad he was able to go, because a week of him moping around the apartment because we have no money and no car, would have been hell on all of us.

My daughter was a little easier to deal with. We walked down to Kmart one day and went wandering around. Its not my favorite store. Its a bit grimy inside and the typical clientel is not of the most upstanding of people,but we bought some Red Vines and some Sour Patch kids, and walked back home. That was the height of our Spring Break excitement. It has rained quite a bit, but at least it starting to warm up a little. Daughter enjoyed seeing the rainbows that formed outside our windows and watching her try to draw them before they vanished, while her cat attacked her was pretty entertaining.

She asked me over a million questions this week. I swear, a million questions. I had to look up facts about the Eiffel Tower, and French translations for a bunch of phrases like, "Sit down, be quiet, where is the money?" and so on. I asked her why she needed to know all of those phrases, and with her best,"Oh my gosh you are soo old and dumb" exasperated eye roll and sigh, she told me that when she marries Jackson they are going to France for 6 months and since he is a boy and a rock star, she really doesn't think that he knows how to speak French, so she is going to be prepared. I keep telling folks that the lil chick is scary. I just hope that boy realizes he has about a 10-12 year head start on finding a place to hide. I have her convinced for now, that she has to have a Masters degree because his career choice isn't that stable, and she has to be the responsible one. Shes ball parking that to take her 10-12 years, and let me tell you, I dont doubt her.

She was contemplating her hair after a shower the other day and debating having it cut,(it now reached the top of her jeans)and as she was combing it out she noticed the mole on her scalp. "What the hell is this! Why do I have a huge brown mark on my head! Have the monkeys been coloring on my head? Do I have a tick? Just what is this!?" She was really offended that there was a mark on her head and when I explained to her that it was just a large freckle, she then started looking for more freckles and demanding to know what could be done about them and who was to blame for them in her background. I had to laugh because that is all her fathers fault, much like the curly hair. She really doesn't have that many freckles, her brother Sticky(nickname) has waaay more and he has his fathers olive skin tone to match, but daughter and my son Stubby,(also nickname) both have my skin tone of cave-dwelling vampire white, with a few freckles here and there.

She was eye-balling me pretty closely and she started pointing out little skin flaws and asking questions that I tend to dodge most of the time, but I figured what the heck, she is getting to the age where she is more careful about her appearance , maybe I can get her to be more careful about taking care of her body than I was. A few words from her wonder boy already have her brushing her teeth,(the few that she hasn't pulled for the tooth fairy) 3 times a day like it is a religious rite. So when she asked about the scar on my throat I said,"Got that from walking into a power drill when I was your age." Seeing her speechless for the first time in a week was pretty impressive, but it didn't last. I explained to her that when I was 6 or 7 years old, I actually lived in a very nice neighborhood in a small town in East Texas. My friends were the kids of surgeons and bankers and minor politicians and I went swimming at the Country Club and was well on my way to becoming a upper-middle class snobby kid. My folks decided to have a huge chain link fence installed around our property in this neighborhood because they decided that they wanted to have horses. The guys from the fence company were hanging the gates which meant drilling through the large brick entry ways, and being a nosy kid, I wanted to see what was going on. I was playing around and I guess I came running up behind the guy doing the drilling just as he pulled the drill out of the column. He didn't see me standing beside him and as he flipped the drill out to the side, it went in the base of my throat. Having a thoracic surgeon as a neighbor was in my favor. That poor guy who was doing the drilling screamed like a girl, I remember that. I didn't go to the emergency room, in fact, many of my scars and injuries never saw the inside of an emergency room, and I dont know why. My parents didn't stay in that property for very long. They found out that horses weren't allowed in that area so instead of leasing land out in the country or stabling them, they decided to move us out into the middle of nowhere and I went from Country Club brat to Poor White trash reject in one short summer. Back then it was that easy, you were judged by your neighborhood.

I pointed out the scars that run across that one from being slid under barbed wire fence after getting sling shotted while sledding behind a 3 wheeler, the other scars that she saw on my neck I didn't tell her about came from her father, but she doesn't need to know about those right now.

She noticed I have a few freckles, and I explained that you dont live a life in the sun without getting a few of them. I spent all told 20 years in the Arizona sun working outside in a variety of capacities including as a cop in Western Arizona where I got sunburned so bad that the tops of my ears turned purple, though that might be an after effect of them being burned when I was a firefighter in Southern Arizona and flame front caught me at the peak of a ridge in the Nogales Mountains. I showed her the neatly aligned scars on my back where I have had 5 sets of facet injections to control the pain in my back, the scar on my shoulder from where I had surgery to rebuild it, the scar on my knee from the botched surgery to fix it, the scar on my head from my mother, the scars on my hands from my temper when I was younger, the scars on my arms that just are. I explained that scars, marks and freckles all tell a story about who we are and where we come from.The tattoos I have are my attempt to tell my story in my way, and they work in a small way to give me some control over my story. She seemed to grasp that concept, and that turned into a conversation about why she cant get a tattoo until she is older because she doesn't have enough of a story to warrant one. It was quite a long an involved conversation to have with a 7 year old, but conversations with her are never typical. We had a debate the other night about Harry Potter that had even my son looking at her like she was some kind of mutant child. She has watched the movies with me and we have talked about them quite a bit, and she wants to read the books, and as my son and I were sitting there talking, she piped up and said,"Harry is like Jesus, he was willing to sacrifice himself to save everyone even though being evil would have been easier." Son and I just looked at each other with our mouths hanging open, nodding at her as she hopped up, grabbed her monkey and skipped into my room so she could watch cartoons. He looked me and said,"You know, shes kinda annoying at times. Its bad enough I have I have an older sister that is a freaking genius that I have to try to measure up to, but now I have a little sister that is kicking my ass all over the place as well? What the hell mom?" I have to wonder.

Dear Roger: Sex- Its On My Mind...ALOT

I guess its because its Spring, or maybe its because all the fic I have been reading lately is just chock a block full of all kinds of sex, (some that is just...whoa), but I'll tell you, I really need to figure something out. My last venture into getting lucky was not so enjoyable. In fact, I have to wonder, just when did guys begin to believe that speed equals quality? I am not into the whole 'Jackrabbity" kinda thing, I tend to prefer the more slow and deep and make the most of what you got kinda thing. And really, I am not a cuddler. I dont like to talk or what not. But jeesh. Its really difficult to find a guy who fills the bill nowadays.

I tried the whole online dating thing. I met a couple of "interesting" guys and I went on a couple of dates, but I am just not into the whole game playing thing. Guys my age have issues like I have. Kids, ex's, weird schedules and hobbies and health issues and preferences. I swear, you tell one guy that if you were interested in some one with, "fantastic oral skills" you would go lesbian, that really puts them off their game and kinda freaks them out, but seriously?! Why have a guy around with all their irksome issues if that was what I was after? I want a decent pecker with a tolerable man attached to it! A man that has a sense of humor and that isn't out of shape or fugly.

Im not too wrapped up in the whole racial issue, but I know myself and there are just some cultural issues that wouldn't jive with me. Guys my age tend to bore me, and they often have issues that make them difficult to deal with, or they are in their second childhood and driving the substa-penis and chasing 20'somethings and popping viagra and trash talking women my age. Its cool. I understand it. I like the younger meat too. I went to a concert a while back and all I could think about was all the dirty things I would like to do to the pretty young man being such a tease on stage. I got over it, but damn! Being 40 is hard. You go though this weird like second puberty where you are horny all the time. Its distracting, especially when its hard to get out and meet guys and when your body is doing all kinds of funky things like adult onset acne and weird hairs and migraines. Never mind the fact your period decides to drop in for a visit at odd times, and you have mood swings that make Charlie Manson look normal. My poor kids dont know what to do. My son is in the throes of puberty and he is moody as well and he tries to stay out of my way, but there are days that we butt heads like a couple of mountain goats and the tension is epic. We both know its because hormones are out of whack and because my bastard of an ex is constantly fucking up the bank account and screwing us over financially, but I swear there are days I feel lucky that he hasnt killed me in my sleep, because I know I have deserved it.

The constant rain is a real pain in the ass for all of us. I dont mind the wet, but the cold really sucks. I get out occasionally and I enjoy that, but being cold really sucks and kinda ruins the fun. Went out with a friend last week and I was hoping I might meet a guy, but fuck. my. life...she met a guy. A really cute guy. Dammit, dammit, dammit. Good for her, but why not me? What the hell is it that scares guys off? I was dressed nice, I smiled, and thhpt...

I have considered a new B.O.B., but the bad thing about that is finding a place to stash it and the time and privacy to use it. I never seem to have 10 minutes to myself without someone in the middle of my business, but I am beginning to wonder if lack of good quality sex can lead to insanity?

Dear Roger; Being A Good Bad Example May be Paying Off

I have had some time to observe my kids that I have up here with me, and I have come to an interesting conclusion about the pair of them. The main conclusion is that they have paid close attention to what has gone on in my life and they have learned from it.

My son left a love letter he wrote his girlfriend laying on his desk the other day, and being the nosy mom I am, you know I read it. Yeah, yeah, yeah,...I KNOW! Its an invasion of his privacy, but I was WORRIED! I cannot afford to be a grand mother right now and he is very wrapped up in this girl he has been dating, but what I read really surprised me, my son is quite the old fashioned romantic! There was not one crude word or sexual innuendo, it was all about how he wanted to be a good man for her and how she inspired him to try to rise above his circumstances and try harder, because he wanted to give her the world. He compared her to the beauty of the stars and it just went on from there. I have never had anyone write me a letter like that! He called her,"Princess" told her she was perfect and that they should,'Take things slow so that they didn't make mistakes." I had to sit the hell down. The boy wants to wait, he honestly meant what he told me! Hell YEAH! Score one for the mom getting through to him!!

We had a long talk the other night about condoms and safe sex and all the risks, and how having a kid changes everything. He actually knew quite a bit and we had a very calm and engaging talk. He has plans for college and his, "Rockstar/actor" career, but he also has a back up plan for college and a trade that will pay for college. He wants to be and apprentice machinist and learn how to make things out of metal because he knows that is a reliable trade that requires a brain and that will pay the bills in the lean times. He is even planning on going union so he will have health insurance! Holy hell...he has paid attention to things.

Sometimes he does worry me because he does pay attention to some of the lesser desirable male role models, and he mimics their behavior, such as Gerard Butlers characters from his movies, or even NPH's character of Barney that my son considers to be a,"genius". I know he emulates young Rathbone quite a bit though, and that is interesting. At least he is dressing better, working harder on keeping his direction and keeping up his grooming and being more respectful, those I consider all pluses, but the backlash of all of this positive male influence is that girls are really noticing him now and its getting insane for him at times. He is getting notes shoves in his backpack, girls coming up to him and wanting his number and then getting angry when he says hes ,"Involved", he s been groped and accused of being gay,and generally stalked by a group of girls. I told him to stop wearing the nice clothes and go back to being a slouch for a bit, but he tells me that he,"has an image to uphold". Lock up your daughters, mothers, wives, sisters, brothers, whatever because Houston, we may have a problem.

Lil sis is really kinda funny. She has interesting taste in fellas to say the least. When I was her age, I idolized John Wayne. He was my hero and I had a picture of him on my wall. I watched all his movies and I knew everything about him. I loved him heart and soul. He was a rough and tough manly man that kicked ass and took names and influenced my entire life. Outside of you and Granpa, he was the major male influence in my life. Lil sis feels this way about young Mr. Rathbone, very much so. She also tends to like Chris Cofer and NPH. I noticed a trend in the fellas she tends to be really fond of, in fact her best buddy at school is a little boy that hangs out with the girls and likes pink as his favorite color and is just a delicate kinda kid. My lil girl tends to prefer the fellas that are..."Non-threatening?" I think that is a good thing. She was born into a house that had the type of , "Alpha Male/Biker Badass" man and all she ever saw was meanness and terrorism. Those boys dont scare her and that is a good thing. I dont blame her. She is a tough little critter on her own, and I see her as the type to be like me and to be telling some fool when she is older, "Hold my holster" like I did , as she goes out to take care of business.

Its Spring Break around here, and thanks to the ex being a bonehead as usual, my account is so far screwed up and overdrawn it will take most of next months income to fix it. I wish I could kick him off the account, but chase doesn't make it easy and as long as he has my boys, I have to leave him a way to get to some funds.I can only hope he gets it fixed in the next few weeks,though knowing him it will be weeks and weeks.

Dear Roger: Passive Aggressive

Still not writing much, though I have been working on some editing of a few things. Its frustrating, but I have been getting some runs of cluster migraines and with my left eye twitching almost non-stop for the last 2 weeks, I figure its not surprising that I haven't been able to write very much. I did get out and go running around with a friend of mine yesterday. We went down to the Hawthorne District here in Portland and went wandering in and out of some of the funky vintage resale shops and some of the music shops that they have down there.

I could spend days just wandering around down there, and probably thousands of dollars if I had them to spend. I found all kinds of cool old furniture that would look great in my house and that would go with the whole 30's Blues club theme I was trying to go for, and there were so many old guitars and other musical instruments, I thought I was in a museum in one store. If I hadn't had to come back and get daughter off the bus, I would probably still be down there wandering around in either a book store or this really cool acoustic instrument store that I found.

I wish my hands weren't so messed up. I have tried playing guitar again, but with all the damage over the years to my hands from broken fingers and such, the arthritis has made it really difficult, plus whatever weird neuro thing I have going on, makes my left hand really uncooperative when it comes to translating what my brain is telling it into action, so the more difficult chords and transitions, just do not happen, but I enjoy watching someone who knows what they are doing, play, and I plunk around when there is nobody to make fun of my clumsy attempts.

One shop we went in was really interesting. It had a 70's theme going on and the guy running it was fully embracing that whole vibe because the odor of weed hit us the minute we walked through the door. Its soo strange to me to be in a city where you can get a buzz while shopping, but it was funny and I got the giggles. It was a really cool shop and in there I found my perfect hat. Its a vintage Italian wool hat that beyond cool. I knew the minute I saw it that I had to have it, and I did something that I rarely do; I asked the guy if he would barter with me, and he did! I swapped my old wedding ring for it. I was so happy to get it, I even wore it out of the store and home. I got a compliment on it from a random stranger and it just fit me and my whole personality.

When I got a call from the ex later in the day, I told him about the hat and of course his comment was," So you are just embracing that whole dyke lifestyle now, aren't you?" He is such a charming bastard. I wasn't surprised he made such a nice comment. He was always like that. I actually hate talking to him, but I have to and I have to be nice about it for my boys. Its called appeasement. Playing nice so that I get to talk to my sons on a regular basis. Its miserable, but if I vented on him and let him know whats really in my heart and mind, then I would lose my tenuous connection to my sons and I would have to try and fight him in court to get them and I just cannot afford that financially. I would probably win, but then what? I have no car with which to go get them. So I play nice with a man who constantly makes hateful little remarks about me and my sexuality and looks and whatever else, who has for the last 10 years, cut me down both physically, mentally and emotionally, its just the price and the penance I pay.

My parents sent birthday cards to my daughter and my son. The one to my son was a month late, but they sent it. I dont know why, I haven't spoken to them since before Valentines day. I just cant. My issues with them run deep and twisty Rog, and I wish you were here to help me sort through them. I have a lot of anger at my father and at my mother and my insecurity about who I am stems from things that went on as I grew up. My father making fun of me and my physical appearance and what I ate, my mother discussing with her friend whether or not I was gay because I had pictures of a few female movie stars on my walls when I was 12. There are so many things that fucked me up when I was a kid that I dont even want to get into all of it, but my counselor is insisting that getting it out and talking about it, will help me deal with it. I think it just pisses me off further. Its hard to be a parent. We all make mistakes and I have not been a perfect parent by a long shot, but I have done my level best to never play favorites, and never let my kids doubt for one minute that I love them. I dont know if im fixable, but I know that I am trying hard to be a good parent and I damn sure intend to be a better grandparent for any grand kids I may have than my parents have been. My kids think that my folks hate kids. They dont even know their other grandmother, so they essentially have no relatives outside of me and their half-assed father and their crazy aunt. I wish that they could have had grandparents like I had. It seems so unfair that they dont have a loving grandfather and grandmother that teach them things and never make them feel unwanted or unloved or that yell at them. I remember the spanking that grandpa gave me for disobeying that one time outside of Chicago, but I also remember it was deserved and I remember that he really didn't want to do it and I remember that he hugged me later and that he still loved me. All my kids know of their grandfather is that he yells a lot and doesn't like kids. I dont know how to change that.

Dear Roger: What to say?

Rog, my heart hurts. I know if you were here you would be in agony right now. The country that you spent 7 years of your life exploring and loving, the culture that welcomed you and that you immersed yourself in, is bleeding. I have watched horrified as Japan has been torn apart by first the horror of the earthquake and then a tsunami of Hiroshiga proportions and I wondered about your friends and the women that were at your memorial service. I dont remember any of their names, and I am sure my mother doesn't have any of them, but I pray they are safe, after all, they cared for you and that makes them precious to me. The pain and suffering that has gone on all over the world has been hideous to behold, but Japan...that was close to home, not only because of you, but because my eldest daughter had planned to go study over there before she allowed a couple of albatrosses to weigh her down. I had hoped she would break free and go after all, but now, now I am glad she is safe. I hope your friends are safe. I wish I had gotten to meet some of them. I heard it was quite an interesting event, your memorial service. There were women from all over the world, but Japan was quite well represented for some reason. I guess the time you spent there was happy for you, and I know you loved that country as much as you loved this one. I still am quite adept at eating with chop sticks, and the tea ceremony, and I have actually attempted to pass that knowledge on to my own kids, but I lack your teaching ability, and they are more interested in the possibility of using things as weapons over eating, though all my kids love Asian food and they all know at least greetings in multiple languages, that is because of you and your influence.

My kids have been praying hard for the people in Japan, that is their way of coping and trying to help. I wish I could do more, and maybe by getting back into EMS, I will be able to get into international rescue. I hope the worst is over and that thing will begin to heal, and soon.

I reconnected with a friend from my past today. Another one of the old command staff from my days as a deputy passed away, and nobody bothered to notify me. That is low. Even if things are on the outs between me and the guy that I loved, he always sent me death notifications of my friends, but this time there was nothing. I hadn't heard from the young boyfriend that I had dated for a few years and that had always been a friend, so I got pissed off and I texted him and chewed him out for abandoning me as well. he texted me back and we talked for a couple of hours and all is well. Hes good for an ass kicking and for getting me back into my cop mindset and helping me get back into my routines when I am being a slouch. He used to be a pretty good friend and its nice to know that hes still around. I can count on him to make sure the right music is played at my wake and stuff like that, things that my parents would screw up or just not bother with at all.

I wrote a little this week, not as much as I would like, but then there has been a lot of heavy crap going on around me and that tends to slow the flow down quite a bit. I managed to put up chapters of both of my stories, but I let folks know I was probably going to put the longer one on hiatus for a bit, just until I find the voices again. I got a lot of really good reviews that were written by folks that seem to be more adult than the typical reviewer and that is interesting, but I still need a break from it. I want to write some lighter and funnier stuff, but I have to find it.

I enjoyed teasing my friend today by leading him to believe that I was considering switching teams because I was having such rotten luck with men. He was still pretty freaked out when I quit texting him. LOL!

Dear Roger; A Sense Of Displacement

Waking in the wee hours before everyone else with a feeling of being awoken for a reason, but not being able to find out why? is always a disconcerting sensation, but awakening like that, and then having a massive dizzy spell that takes you to your knees, is a less than pleasant way to start the day.

I managed to find the perfect birthday cake for my baby girl today! After hunting all over hell and half of Portland, I found a monkey cupcake cake, and not some lame "Curious George" cake either, NOO, this thing is like the perfect monkey cupcake cake, as if it was made with my little girl in mind. I got really lucky too, because I got the very last pattern kit they had too and even though its only got one, "googly eye", I know she wont mind, she will be thrilled that it is a monkey and that it has a banana mic! My friend is going to let me borrow her car so I can drive over an pick it up in the morning and deliver it to her school in time for her class to have as an after lunch treat. I got a some stuff to make a cake for at home as well, but I have no real skills for making super fancy cakes, or the pans for doing it, in fact I dont even have a full sized cake pan because we just dont eat the stuff around here, but her and her little friends in class will be happy and all sugared up for the end of the day and the trip home and she will have her monkey stuff.

I try hard to pull off small miracles for my kids. I wont be able to deliver her hero, but I am going to deliver the next best thing as soon as I can. I am trying to figure out a monkey mayhem based explanation for her main present being late once again. She is going to be getting a t-shirt and eventually their new album, and once I can find one, a poster of her favorite boy, and I am damn sure holding her fathers feet to the fire to provide the promised copy of the "Last Airbender", of course that means I will have to buy a dvd player, but he promised it, so its the least he could do. Grandparents of course have forgotten her totally once again, but she is used to that and would be shocked if she got anything, including acknowledgement, from them.

Her big brother has been doing his level best to alternately drive her crazy and entertain her lately. He has been trying to act as if he is her parent/boss lately, and considering she is very intelligent and a little on the independent side, she is not taking to his bossy side very well at all and the fights have been enough to make me a bit on the crazy side. When he is entertaining her, he shows that he is capable of being a wonderful and doting brother, in fact, he imitates her hero to amuse her. Today he was doing his "411" days and even I was giggling just a bit. He played his guitar for her, and they sang together for a bit, and then...then he pissed her off. She snuck off to go swipe one of my twizzlers and he took it away from her and ate it and then the war was on. She threatened his guitar, he hung her upside down and said he was going to tie knots in her hair or hide her Jackson, and then she tried to kick him in the nards. I had to intervene when she ended up accidentally getting getting hit in the nose and then started crying. He felt terrible and she got mad, so I had to stop it and make them both sit in time out until time to leave for church. She is a tough little chick, and she loves her brother, but he does drive her crazy at times.

I haven't been writing as much lately. I think I have Spring fever or something going on. I get ideas as usual, in the shower. It never fails that when I am least prepared to write something down, I get these brilliant flashes of entire paragraphs or stanzas or even whole songs, but when I dont have a way to write them down I tend to lose them, or I lose the flow. I know it will come back, I have just been in a bit of a funk, and it hasn't gone totally away, its just not burning like it was, its more just kinda creeping like slowly cooling lava. Perhaps the looming prospect of my 42nd birthday in April is what is causing the problem, or yet another failed attempt to find some form of male companionship, I really dont know, but I do know that I am going to get a tattoo for my birthday, and maybe an evening out with some friends.

Life is not bad, its not horrible, Spring is right around the corner and with it, pretty boys in t-shirts and the concert season and the hope that maybe my baby girls favorite boy will wander back this direction and I will be able to give her a late birthday present that will make both of us happy,(because we all know I like looking at him too), I aint gonna lie about it.

Dear Roger: Shes Amazing

My baby girl is the most amazing child. I do love her so. I love all my kids, but she hardly seems to be a child that would be MY kid. She is the most girly-girl I have ever met, with her long, naturally, curly, waist-length blonde hair that is a BEAR to wash and dry and comb out, but she insists that I do it and that I at least attempt to braid it for her a couple of times a month. She talks about make up and dresses and all kinds of stuff that I know nothing about like ballet. She dances and sings her own operas, and she is the most tender-hearted person I know. She hurts when she thinks someone she loves has been wronged.

When that rag tag lil rock star she loves so much looked tired and weary and then got an insulting,"award" the other day, she cried for him. I found her curled up in my bed snuggled up her stuffed monkey,"Jackson" with tears rolling down her cheeks, patting is little head saying, "Its okay, it will be okay." It broke my damn heart. The child spent two hours drawing that boy a birthday card and never heard nothing back, but her love never wavered, because that is how she is. She gives and gives and gives and loves honest and true, no matter what. She prays for the boys in that band, every, single night, just like she does for her family and friends.

I dont have to threaten to punish her for not feeding her cat, she feels so guilty for him going hungry that I often feel bad for not just handling it myself. She says,"Hello" to people or waves, trying to make peoples day better, even if they just walk on by and ignore her. She offers to share her stuff and she cares about people, even when they dont deserve it.

I dont know why she is the way she is. She was raised in horrible circumstances. She was in the room when her father took the straight razor to me. She witnessed so much violence and trauma and all the ugliness that goes along with growing up in a household with domestic violence. She has no grandparents that give a damn about her. Her father fails her over and over again. He sent her nothing for Christmas, not even a card for the last couple of years and though he said he was going to send her a nice birthday present, already he is making excuses and I know that means that her trips to the mailbox with me will just result in disappointment. The men in her life fail her,with the one exception, and he is just a distant hero that is idealized and someone she sees on tv from time to time. I worry about what that means for her in the future, but knowing her, she will persevere and become an amazing person with just his influence from afar.

She is a brilliant child, and I do not say that lightly. She is smarter than I was at her age. She is reading so far above grade level that they aren't quite sure what to do with her, so they put her helping to teach the slower kids. Her teacher has declared her a,"natural teacher", and that is all well and good, but I want her be what ever she wants to be, and she loves art and music and dancing.

I wish I could afford the music and dance lessons she begs for on a daily basis, I have a feeling she is a prodigy, but she is anchored by her circumstances.

Her test results for the gifted program should be in soon, and I hope then that someone will her her small voice in the wilderness and pull her up out of the quagmire that is our lives, she is an angel and she deserves to fly.

She turns 7 this week, and even though it will be a small and quiet celebration, it will be enormous in my heart. I do my best for her, she makes me try harder and want to stick around.

Dear Roger:Motivations and Reasons

I had a meeting yesterday with my vocational rehabilitation counselor to get my program started so I can possibly get back into Public Safety. Not being a cop, though I wish, but working back on an ambulance or even a rescue helicopter, going to accidents and trauma scenes and saving lives like I used to back in my glory days. The problem is though, the meeting turned out to be a bit more invasive than I had thought it was going to be. I guess I have been putting off some pretty significant warning signs lately and I dont know what to say about it other than I have just reached a point where I am kinda at a crossroads and I am stuck waiting for the devil to come collect his due. I have lost my motivation, my reason, and I really dont have anything connecting me here other than my kids and even they seem to fare better without me. I am numb inside and out and I dont know how to find that spark again.

I have cut off almost all my connections with my friends and family. I haven't spoken to my parents in about a month, my sister briefly a few days ago, and I hadn't spoken to my friend Sus for a couple of weeks before yesterday when she pretty much forced me to talk to her. I lost my best friend due to my own stupidity and I cut myself off from the one online community that I used to love to hang out at because I couldn't deal with the bitchiness, but its not like anyone even noticed I was gone. I post on my Facebook page and no one ever talks to me, I feel invisible and as my invisibility grows, so does my sense of disconnection with the world. More people I love are dead than alive and that is a horrible place to be.

My son and I had a horrible fight last night and I dont know what to do about it. He needs a man to talk to about these things and I failed him in that and sometimes the guilt is overwhelming. The counselor picked up on many of these things as I was talking to her, and she prodded me about my past and my selection of men and my poor choices. Its the self-destructive bent that I have always had that led to so many of my problems and has brought me to the point I am at now. My lack of closeness with my parents, my anger at them for how they treated my grandparents, and how they suck as grandparents themselves. There is just so much wrong that I dont even know where to start looking for the right. I dont have a job, and the counselor is concerned that my PTSD and other issues could make going back into Public Safety problematic, but I am not the type to work in an office or sit at a desk. I just dont function well in that world. I am supposed to go see my doctor and get referred to a counselor for more work on my PTSD because I guess I am still having some problems, but I am so tired of dealing with it. Talking about it just makes it worse, I get angry and stressed and then I stop sleeping again and its just a vicious cycle. There is no one I can really talk to or relate to, and even though I have tried to reach out before to people in the online community I belonged to for awhile, its hard to make connections with people who have no idea what its like to have a straight razor at their throat in front of their children, or a gun to their head while they try to talk the man who supposedly loved them down. No one knows what it feels like to walk away from everything, including two of your children, the shame that I live with every day, and the self doubt. What it feels like to have to constantly tell my small daughter no, we cant afford it when she asks for some small trinket. What it feels like to not be able to get a decent job because I dont even have a fucking car! I am an adult and for the first time in my life I dont have a car. When my son got hurt at school I couldn't even go pick him up and take him to the hospital because I didn't have a vehicle or the money for a cab. I had to call around to try and find a friend to drive me and finally Sus called a friend of hers who drove me, it was humiliating.

I cant find my joy, Rog. I feel like I am buried and cant dig my way out of it. Daughters birthday is next week and all she wants is a monkey shaped cake and to invite her favorite monkey man to her party, yet I cant even pull my head out of my ass enough to even try to formulate a plan to fake a good reason why he wont be there.

Dear Roger: Boundaries! Dammit!

None of MY stuff is just MY stuff anymore. I dont really know when it happened that I lost control of all my stuff, but all of the sudden it seems, I started living in some kinda weird hippy commune where my kids feel free to use and borrow and just plain take MY stuff! My son is the worst about it, he helps himself to clothes,(yes, MY CLOTHES!)including my jeans and shirts, and my socks and jewelry. He outright swiped my Spencer Bell memorial necklace, claiming that "His music is for guys, and I just feel a connection to him, so im claiming this." He wears it constantly, so I guess he was serious. All of my Affliction t-shirts, and he tried to swipe my Dolce jeans, but when I commented you could see more than he wanted seen, he quickly gave them back. He takes my pens, head phones, dvd's, cd's, hats, and pretty much anything that strikes his fancy, but today I finally put my foot down and I meant it. He tried to take my towel.

I have a thing about people messing with my bath towels. I have a couple that I claimed as mine when we first moved and I keep them in my bathroom and no one is supposed to mess with them, but this morning he decided to grab my favorite towel out of the dryer and he used it! I dont even like people drying their hands on it, (yes, I may have an issue or two), so when he used it on his werewolfy body I was horrified and disgusted. The fact he left it laying in the floor of his bathroom only added insult to injury and I was ready to inflict serious trauma on his psyche for that. When he tried to grab it out of the dryer after I washed it today, and use it for his after track shower, I jumped up and chased him into the bathroom and grabbed it back. We had a bit of a tug of war over it and he claimed he was going to stuff it in his shorts, until I told him that if he did, I would do something crude to something of his and he would just have to figure it out. He let go of my towel after that, but I realized at that point that I have had enough. They broke my favorite coffee cup, used up all my pens so that I have had to write story ideas and take messages in crayon,(when I can find them), the tops of my socks are stretched out and weird things have been done to my socks that I dont even want to contemplate. They drink all my soda,(when I actually buy any), and they have no problem swiping and eating any chocolate I might have stashed. The only thing I manage to keep even remotely safe from them are extreme sour warheads and my tea and that is because they find them disgusting.

Its not like they lack for their own stuff, in fact I just spent $200 yesterday outfitting son for track. That was quite the experience in hell for both of us. He is soo damn picky about things and hes so uptight that its really hard to get through any shopping excursion without us ending up in some kind of bickering, rolling dog fight in the middle of a circus. We had to shop for something called,"Sliders" which as far as I could tell, are just overpriced spandex chones. He wanted Under Armour brand, which is probably my fault. I wore Under Armour t-shirts and stuff when I was a cop and I was happy with them and the quality, so I had bought him some other things in that brand. Well, first off I upset him when we had to ask some lil chicky clerk where the sliders were and she didn't know what they were, so I very helpfully described them as,"Spandex britches for runners that keep their bits from bouncing about." My son was not amused, in fact he was pretty ticked off that I said anything about bits in from of a girl that he thought was cute, so he pouted about that for a little bit. Then the UA sliders were $45 a pair! I may have said that I didn't know any men that had bits worth $45 and that upset him. I convinced him that Nikes were just as good, and if we saved on the sliders I could spend more on his shoes. Shoe shopping for him is a special kind of hell. He has huge feet, he hates white shoes, and he is a label whore. I managed to get him to actually find a good pair of shoes that he liked that cost less than half the amount of our budget, so I manged to also get him some Nike track pants, and a few t-shirts. He likes track quite a bit and hes good at it, so maybe that will provide him with a positive direction.

I gripe about him taking my stuff and being a pain in the butt at times,but he really makes me proud most of the time. He told me he wants to go to college and study Psychiatry and Music Theory/Performing Arts because while he wants to be a rock star/actor, he knows the likely hood of a poor unknown kid from the middle of nowhere making it, as either of those things is not highly likely, and he wants to have a good back up plan and he thinks being a psychiatrist is a good back up plan.

School is going good for him. He is pretty popular, especially with girls, and that seems to distress him quite a bit for some reason. I think the fact that girls seem more aggressive now days than they used to be, and he has been groped and flat out propositioned, and has had girls and even a couple of boys try to follow him home. He claims he doesn't like the attention, and he even claimed he wasn't going to wear all black any more because girls,"Just seemed to lose their damn minds" around him and think they can grope him, but I notice he wore black all week, so I think he likes the attention. He is a good kid and he has a good heart, but I think sometimes he forgets that he is just a kid and I am the Alpha around here. He came home yesterday and grabbed the tv remote and was about to change channels. I told him to wait, because his sister was waiting to see her favorite lil rockstar on Mtv. He rolled his eyes and acted like he was annoyed, stomping off into the kitchen, until said young rock star actually appeared on the program, then I looked up to see him standing in the dining room watching just as rapt as my small daughter was on what was being said. I told him,"You can admit to liking him you know, its okay. I wont judge." He sneered at me and muttered,"Shut it , mom!" This from the boy who was walking around the house last week singing the ,"I like your hair" song in "Dobby" voice just to harass me. For all his macho jock posturing, he tends to blur the lines just as well as the young rock star, and I think he likes messing with my mind.

My daughter is an unusual child. She was pacing around the living room last night with her Barbie phone, waving her hand about, speaking in a raised and forceful voice saying things like,"Tim! You need to listen to me! I am your lawyer and you have to trust my judgment and what I am doing, its what you pay me for." She then tells "Tim" to hold on because she had another call, and she clicked over to talk to someone named,'Aubrey" about what an "Idiot Tim was being and how she was ready to quit being his lawyer". I was sitting on the couch next to son and we were both looking at each other in amazement as this was going on in front of us, her pacing about like a tiny lawyer, very animated and looking ever the frustrated counselor. She came marching over to stand in front of me and she told Aubrey to hold on a minute and she even covered the mouthpiece of the phone,while she asked me,"Whats a good career for me that pays lots of money and has less stress than a lawyer?" Son and I both said, "Actress!" She smiled and got back on the phone with Aubrey and said,"You want to take over the case? I am done with him, im going to be an actress!" She then hung up the phone on Aubrey, called Tim, told him," Tim, I cannot work with someone who doesn't trust me, I quit and I am going to go be an actress!"

After she got off the phone with Tim, she called up Disney Studios and said,"Im Stevie, Im going to be the next big thing, so you can put me in movies now, im done being a lawyer." Son and I both aren't quite sure where all that came from, but we were both kind of glad to know there is a budding lawyer in the family, even if she does decide to be an actress for a little while.

Dear Roger: There is Just No Winning.

Well I think the cold and the rain and the general stress of the seemingly never-ending winter is starting to grind on all of us. Son has been grumpier and bitchier than he typically is, and I cant seem to do anything to please him. Yesterday I got on his bad side because he has a lot of body hair. Yup, Rog...the boy blames me because he is hairier than a werewolf. I guess he has to be upset at somebody, but I fail to see how its just my fault? This led to a conversation about his biological father, (the hairy one, by the way), and possible solutions to his problem as well as just a conversation about his father. I dont give him all the details, because he just doesn't need to know all of them, but as he has gotten older I have revealed more about him, and sometimes I know he doesn't like hearing some of the things I have told him, but I tried to keep it largely positive yesterday, even though he is a difficult topic for me to discuss without my anger at him coloring my opinion.

He was wanting to understand why he is so much bigger than the rest of the family and why he has dark, curly hair with blue eyes and dimples when so much of the family is short, blonde or has reddish hair. My side can take full blame for the blue eyes, though its kinda weird that his father had hazel eyes, one of my parents has green eyes. I always thought that brown or hazel eyes would be dominant, but his eyes are not just blue, they are BLUE. The dimples come from my family and they are pretty common amongst my kin. As for the dark, curly hair? I am a blonde, my sis is blonde, my father has blonde hair, but my mother has dark, curly hair and his father had dark, wavy hair, and from what I remember of his brothers, both of them had the dark wavy hair.

The size thing is something he should be happy about, but as is typical with him, he has to have something to complain about. His father was over 6'2, his biological uncles were both well over 6'4. I am the runt in the equation and honestly that runs in the Texas side of the family pretty consistently. I am lucky to get to 5'2 in my boots,(a big reason why I started wearing boots a long time ago), my sis is 5'4, my dad is 5'7 in his boots and my mom is maybe 5'3. I know my mothers side of the family was taller, and that a Gpa, was 6'1, you were 6'1 or more depending on what boots you were wearing, and if the boy would take time out to think about things rather than griping at me for his being a moose with an attitude, he could thank me for the fact he has the genetic propensity to be tall, athletic and not only musically and artistically talented, but hes also smart. But no, of course not. I get the grumbling about his acne and hair and ginormous feet. Its not like he actually has to buy his own clothes or shoes, I am the one footing the bill for that and it is not cheap! He is so damn picky and so difficult to please. I know I could not have been easy to deal with, and I know its a rite of passage, but some-days I just wish I could catch a break and have him wake up in a good mood with a good attitude.

He made the choice to run track. I didn't force him into it, but the way he was belly aching this morning, you would think that I was forcing him to participate. The only thing I tend to try to force him to do is his homework and if I am lucky, maybe clean his room and take the trash out.

We hung out a bit together this weekend, and we watched a few movies together and we did have some fun conversations, so he runs hot and cold depending on the weather. I dont really blame him for being grumpy with the ongoing cold weather, and when it rains, but he knows I am stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to getting a car. I would think he would be happy to get the exercise, and I have bought him an umbrella,(though I wont use one),hats that he never seems to wear even though he insists he has to have them, he has a nice wool pea coat and all kinds of winter gear, but he wont use it. I dont know how he keeps from freezing when he is meandering his way to school in the pouring rain with just a hoodie to keep him warm, but its by his own choice, though he swears that he is deprived.

Daughter is a much more easy-going and happy kid most of the time, unless of course, her brother is picking on her. That went back and forth quite a bit this weekend and for some reason he didn't want to go to church, and because he didn't want to go, that meant she couldn't go because my friends wont take her unless he goes along. Since she couldn't go to church, she decided to conduct services for herself and her monkeys in my bedroom. She had all her monkeys lined up like they were sitting in pews and she read to them from her little bible. I dont know where she gets it from, or if its just her natural nature, but she was reading in 'Voice" and actually preaching. It was soo damn funny that I wished I had a video camera to capture it. She reads to her favorite monkey,"Jackson" every night before bedtime, but for her church service she had designated him,"Youth Pastor" and she even had him set off to the side with the smaller monkeys in an area she said was the,"Children's Church". She was pacing back and forth in front of her congregation, waving her arms around and preaching up a storm and then at the end, she says,"Okay, now we have to pray for the sinners." and that she did. I was trying really hard not to die laughing at that point, because she started off by praying for her brother, because "Hes a bit of a jerk", and then she went right into praying for her favorite lil fella and monkey namesake, saying that," God, help him to find some food and some sleep and to be safe from all the crazy people that chase him around." She then his all of her little congregation up for the tithe and announced that they were all going out for donuts. Hers was probably the most entertaining and heartfelt service I have ever attended, and I know if her Great Granpa had seen it he would have been proud.

I dont know whats up my sons tail end about not going to church lately. He isn't too fond of the minister, but he has friends that go there and I know he does get something out it, but he has mentioned more than a couple of times that he is thinking about finding another church. Our family is traditionally Episcopalian and Methodist, but I dont go to church so I have no real opinion on it other than he needs to find someplace that feels like they belong there. I personally liked lil sisters monkey church and I know I got more out of it than I have any other service I have ever attended.

Dear Roger;The Cat in The Cradle

My son. I swear there are days that he seems to go out of his way to try and see if he can make me totally insane. He is flunking English! can you believe that Rog? English! His native language! Not because he cant do the work, after all, he is in AP English and he WAS doing fantastic until the stupid prep school offered him a chance to go there and then retracted it when they discovered he would be ineligible to play sports for them until next year, but nooo! He is flunking English because he doesn't like the teacher and thus refuses to do the work! He tells me,"The guy is a jerk and he plays favorites. I dont like him and I dont have to put up with that!" I mean, who the hell says that at 15? He is doing great in French, and his other classes, and he got a recruitment letter from the track and field department pretty much begging him to come run for them, but flunking English because he,'Doesn't like the teacher?" What the hell?

I know what you are thinking Rog, that is soo not funny! Yeah, I might have had a bit of an attitude when I was in school. Yeah, I might have gotten out of running cross country by telling the Asst. Principal that I only signed up due to,'Temporary Insanity", but my son is such a hard headed kid, I swear he is waay worse than I ever was!

I dont care that my family insists that the,'Great Artistic bonfire" of '91 was very much the same kind of behavior. That was just my way of insuring that my art didn't get in the hands of people who didn't appreciate it, really! It wasn't because I was in a fit of pique over some pissing contest I had with my parents over schooling. He does things that just make no damn sense at times. My rebellions always had a purpose, and even if my father threatened me with New Mexico Military Institute more than I care to think about, I like to think that I stood up for what was important. I tried threatening my son with military school and he called my bluff. 'Please send me to boarding school! Please!! (he conveniently forgot I was talking MILITARY school), noo, he promptly started showing me all the websites for schools for the arts and such that I could never hope to afford and then he turned it into a guilt trip on me because I cant afford to send him to places like that. I was left sitting her thinking,'What the hell happened?"

I do blame myself for his negotiation and arguing skills. After all, when he was younger and got into trouble, I would hold a trial and allow him to present evidence in his defense and sometimes even allow him to broker a plea deal for a lighter sentence, so that has really come back to bite me in the ass.He will argue and negotiate and try to turn things back on me until I am literally just out of argument. Part of the blessing and the curse of having super intelligent kids like him is that you never get a moment to rest. I am always having to work to stay one step ahead of him, and watch what I say, because he picks up on things that I often wish he would just have missed, such as the "Tire iron" comment I made by accident.

We were watching some program together and he asked me what a tire iron was for. Being a bit distracted, I said,"Busting knee caps or removing lug nuts." He looked at me and said, "So how would you know they are good for busting knee caps?" And before you ask, nooo, I didn't think to say, I saw it on tv, he knows that I often make fun of fights and stuff we see on movies and on tv as what sissy boys imagine a real fight is like. He must have harassed me for an hour before he finally gave up and said he would just call my sis. This is soo not a good thing! I know my sis will dime me off about my younger and wilder days in Dallas. She considers it payback for sending her kids musical instruments for Christmas that one year.

He is quite the temperamental artist as well. He spends hours playing his guitar and working out the chords and notes for songs,and if you dare disturb him, he throws a bitchface that would do any teen girl proud. I know I was the same way when I was working on my photography and art, but often in photography, if someone disturbed you, it meant that you lost the shot! He can just go back and try the chords again on the guitar.

He harasses me about how I dress and such, but I catch him swiping my clothes all the damn time. the little bit of jewelry I have has been pretty much commandeered by him, and I often see him headed out for an afternoon out, wearing more bling than a rapper! I stopped him the other day and told him he looked 'Douchey" for wearing 4 necklaces and around 6 bracelets as well as a t-shirt that had died back when he was a baby,and one of my hats. He called me a hypocrite! We got into a big debate over whether or not it was hypocritical for me to call my son a douche when the young rock star I find soo interesting often wears as much or more bling and odd clothing. Trying to explain the difference to a kid that is standing there, looking like he had finally bested me in an argument was funny, and a bit disconcerting. I finally ended the discussion with,"I aint that boys momma, and I dont have veto power over his choices, I do over yours!" Yeah, it was a lame way to go, but Rog, I swear!

We have the ongoing arguments over his hair that just wear me the hell down. He blames me for his dark, curly hair that is so thick you cant see his scalp most of the time. That is truly not my fault. I am a blonde! He seems to forget that. I offer suggestions about letting his hair just grow out and he then chooses to get it all buzzed off. I suggest a hair cut and he of course wants to let it grow. I tried to talk him out of attempting to go blonde that one time, and he wouldn't listen to me, so when it went orange I did indeed laugh at him, a lot. But that was deserved, much like how much I got laughed at and teased when I colored my hair red. He seems to have to just find things out the hard way. Told him not to pierce his ears, and he begged and pleaded and harassed me about it until I finally gave in and let him get it done and of course he hardly ever wears earrings now. He talked about getting his tongue pierced until I threatened to explain just WHY people tend to get that done. I can still stop pretty much any argument by threating to explain the sexual implications of many of the things he wants to do.

He is soo competitive about everything. He has been looking up stats on the runners from last year for his school and and he has already started training even though the season isn't for a few more weeks. He thinks he is fat, even though he has dropped back into a size 29 waisted jeans and he has a six pack! He challenges me to run against him, which is really not fair because of my bad knee, but I guess that he just has to try and prove that he can outdo me at something. He knows I can still take him down and felony flop him, and that really freaks him out. He wants me to teach him how I do stuff like that when I only got ahold of one of his thumbs, but I swear, I need to keep my edge somehow, because the boy is driven to prove he is better at everything for some reason. He has said he intends to get famous and then hunt up his biological father and spit in his eye, even though I have tried to tell him that its not worth it. I tell him that he should get famous because he wants to, not because he thinks he has to prove something to someone that gave nothing to his life except some genes. I would rather he went to college and got an engineering degree or something practical so that he could make a steady living and be comfortable, but he his chasing something that he will probably get, because for as strange and difficult as he is, he is also determined and driven, and I like to think that maybe he got that from me and I will blame all the weirdness and difficult temperament on his father.

Dear Roger: Contemplation Of,"What Ifs"

Well, like I had figured, a bridge that is burned and allowed to turn to ashes, tends to stay burned. I have not heard from him. Not an email telling me to go to hell, not a phone call, not a text, nothing. I really fucked it up this time. Much like the tattoo of Texas on my right arm that is screwed up and scarred and a grim reminder of so many things in my past, "Not all fuck ups are easily fixed." I will follow through on what I had said I was going to do, and the first of March I will close that old email account and lock the last door on that part of my life. It wont be easy, I have already gone against my vow to not check that email a dozen times a day, hoping for some word from him that he had forgiven me. its a bit pathetic, but when you are facing the realization that the man who you have loved beyond all reason as not only a lover, but as your best friend, is really and truly gone from your life, you tend to resort to clinging to desperate bits of hope. Its my own damn fault for being such a misanthrope that I dont have more friends.I am not an easy person to get close to, in fact I tend to push people away. That is why he was so special, he was always willing to fight his way past my bullshit and force me to want to be around people.

Writing about the one close friend I had as a child has brought back soo many memories of such a poignant time in my life.I wish I knew where he was. My son wants to find him, to see if he remembers as much as me, and if I matter to him, what became of his life. I want to leave it alone. His name is so common that it would be virtually impossible to find him, and like I have tried to express to my son, its better that way. We wont disappoint each other.

My son is enjoying the stories I write,(not the 'Adult" ones), he likes the ones I write about Texas and some of the other ones I write that he recognizes some of the characters in. Hes trying to talk me into "un-ficcing" and making them real stories that could be submitted professionally, and a few other friends have suggested the same thing, but I dont know if I want to do that. I write for my own pleasure and to just unload my mind from time to time.

Its been an okay week, took the kids to see the Harry Potter movie and it was actually a good evening out, though we were all apprehensive about what was going to be in the movie. Son and I are not ready for the series to end. He has grown up with it, I watched those kids grow up, and we are going to miss them horribly. Its like being cut off from your favorite world and told your friends aren't going to talk to you anymore. Something I am much too familiar with lately.

Dear Roger: Proof That Sometimes "I'm Sorry" Isnt Enough

Writing has not been coming as easily lately, I have been a little bit distracted by memories of things and people in the past, and by current stress. The job search has not been going well, and to tell you the truth, I am in a bit of a rut. I have my ups and downs. You know how that is with us artistic temperament types. I get in a blue funk when things aren't flowing well and then its just a downward spiral until another flow of inspiration catches me and then I am off and running again. I firmly believe all great artists/writers performers have some degree of bi-polar disorder. We thrive on the highs and the lows often eat us. Its reflected in the songs and the writing and the looks of so many of them.

I have been grappling with my long running problem with my love life, or lack there of. I just do not play well with others. I am socially awkward, arrogant, a perfectionist, and I am less than truly motivated about getting out into the dating world. Its like shopping for a vehicle on a very restricted budget. I am a lower income, middle-aged, disabled, mom with a misanthropic nature, sarcastic bent, and I lust after younger men. That is like trying to shop for Porches with a used Kia budget. I keep getting shown broke down 40 year old Fords and Chevys that need ring jobs and that leak exhaust and often have hefty payment plans. I dont want to buy anything, I just want to take one of the really shiny, fancy ones for a test drive, maybe squall the tires and blast the stereo, but im not even allowed on the car lots of the models I want to take for a spin.

It was facing yet another Valentines day with a less than satisfactory ending, that led me to try and rebuild a bridge that I burned in a pretty damn spectacular manner almost a year ago.

I have missed my Cowboy. I have tried to forget about him and tried to put him out of my mind, and I have failed miserably. I miss him horribly. I threw away not only a lover like no other, but my best friend and voice of reason and sanity when I was at my worst.

I spent this last few days reading through all the old emails that survived the purge, reliving our moments and all the support and kindness he gave to me, and I thought about what a damn fool I had been. Yes, it wasn't perfect. Yes, it was pretty dysfunctional at times, but then what isn't?

He was everything I wanted, everything I needed, and nothing I could have. I loved him and I still love him. Perhaps because its that way that cowboys have of getting under your skin and living in your heart, but I realized I needed to try and salvage something with him, even if its just a casual email every now and then, so I drafted a "fall on my sword, I was an ass, please forgive me, I was a drunken idiot, I didn't mean it,(except the part where I said I loved you), apology" email. That was not easy for me to do, because I do not tend to apologize for things like that easily. I thought I was doing the right thing at the time, but like a junkie craving a fix, I kept getting just enough of a taste to keep that dependency.

Friends sent me word of him,he showed up in news reports, I would log onto an old chat account and even though I had deleted him, it would show that he was on. It was so damn painful I couldn't cope and I knew I wasn't over him. So I wrote and sent the email the day before Valentines day, apologizing for my behavior and for all my failings. In a perfect world, he would be the same ole forgiving Cowboy that always forgave me my failings, he would be cautiously forgiving and we would begin rebuilding our friendship, and maybe this Summer plan on seeing each other for old times sake. In a less perfect world, he would have replied that too much damage had been done and that he just couldn't forgive me, and while that would hurt, and I would beat myself up over it emotionally for the rest of my life, I would at least know, but in my world? In my world? There has been nothing. The silence is deafening.

I talked to my son about what I did. He knows most of the story, after all, he lived through it. He watched my heart slowly break to pieces over the years, and he watched me fall apart after I made the phone call and the ramifications of what I had done sank in along with the shame that didn't allow me to respond to the emails wondering what the hell was going on. He knew I had felt crushing guilt for everything, and while he didn't agree with me apologizing, he has been supportive of me trying to fix the mess I made of the one thing I had that often brought me daily happiness in the form of emails or texts.

Its been a long week. I try to tell myself that I am not going to check that email a dozen times a day, that there is no email coming. I fucked up. I have lost him. The one friendship that I had managed to keep over a decade long and I blew it. I am going to close that email account at the first of the month, and that will be the end of things. Another step along my path that will lead away from things in my past to hopefully something or maybe someone in my future. Some days its hard to keep walking, but even when my boots are wanting to turn back, I guess I have to keep moving forward.

Dear Robert: Queer Life?

Robert was my favorite cousin. Rogers on vacation this week.

Cuz, you have been in my mind a whole bunch lately. I dont know why, perhaps its because there are so many pictures of that young fella that resembles you that tend to flow across my Tumblr dash, or maybe its all the changes in the world that have come about since you left it, but damn…I wish you were here to see things now.

I keep replaying the last time we were together. Grannys funeral in Midland, such a sad and tense affair. Nobody was expecting you or me to put in an appearance, and I wouldnt have, but sis pretty much kidnapped me and promised me she would run interference with the rest of the clan.

I was so damn happy to see you when I stepped out of the truck into that blast furnace of Texas heat. You looked like you hadnt aged a day from the last time I saw you, and I knew you would be the one with the whiskey that would be necessary to get through dealing with family.

Finding that plant in the waiting area that had leaves that looked like marijuana leaves? Hell! How could they not expect the two of us to get the giggles? Granny would have appreciated the humor of the situation.

I couldnt believe you didnt think I would want to drink after you outta your flask! What the hell? The only worry I even had about drinking with you was that you were going to drink the last of it before I got to it.

Sitting on the steps of the funeral home with you after the service, I can remember how good you smelled. It was nice to share a smoke and your flask, and every time I have a drink of whiskey and a smoke now I remember you.

Watching you walk away to your truck that day, if I had known it was going to be the last time I ever saw you, I would have told you that I loved how we were the black sheep of the family together. That I forgave you for that time you talked me into head butting that mean-assed goat of grannys and then laughing at me when she knocked my ass out cold. That I was brave enough to venture out on my own from Texas because you had done it first. You were the first person I ever knew who was gay, and I know you went through hell growing up in West Texas, but you always kept that dry sense of humor that hid the pain.You made me a braver person, and a more empathetic and compassionate person. You also made me the kind of person that will go after anyone with blood in my eye when I hear them yell the word,”Faggot” at someone just trying to live their life.

I never knew until recently that my own father was cruel to you, but I cant really say I am surprised. I was told that you knew I adored you and that brought me a lot of comfort, because I wasn’t told you were gone until after you were buried. That was my father at work. We have issues that wont be solved in this lifetime I am afraid.

You wondered why I was crying that day as we were drinking? I knew what it meant when you said your t-cells had dropped. Time was short, I just didnt know how short.

I have done my best to raise my kids to know about you. My oldest son has heard all the stories about the trouble me and you used to get into when we were around each other, and how you tried to talk me into running off to Houston with you instead of getting married the first go round. I really should have gone with you, it would have been a hell of an adventure.

My youngest daughter has been hearing stories about you lately, and I know you would have loved her. She adores the lil fella I mentioned earlier,he is a bit on the ambiguous side of things many in the entertainment industry seem so adept at working. She has seen him all done up as a girl a couple of times and instead of being all upset and disgusted or not liking him anymore, her only comment on it was,”Oh Jackson, PINK is not the best color!” She never even batted an eye beyond that. All my kids are open minded like that, even my jock of a teen son who spent time living with my father still managed to maintain his open minded, live and let love attitude.

Been working on repairing all the damage my father did to the relationship with that part of the family, and if all goes as planned, I am going to try and come see you this Summer and maybe we can share a flask again, talk about old times and maybe this lost black sheep can take some comfort that you live on in lots of good ways.I aint bringing you any flowers though, I did save a extra leaf from that plant from the funeral home.If I stick it to your headstone, do you think you will rank as the top black sheep again?

Dear Roger:I Hate Valentines Day Because Nobody is Him

Well I am having one of those ,"Emo", pity party, feel sorry for myself kinda weeks. I am more than sure Valentines day has a lot to do with it, that and just the general financial stress and shark week and all the other crap that is regularly going on in my life, but to add to the fun, the greatest heartbreak in my life,(outside of the boy who died), made an appearance on TV this week and for some damn reason some jackass thought it a good idea to sent the link to the video feed to me via my personal Facebook.

Call me a masochist, but even though I had been pretty damn meticulous about erasing all forms of contact and evidence I even knew him,(not just for my protection, but for his as well), I for some reason clicked that God damned link and I watched him. I couldn't tell you for the life of me what he was talking about, but I could tell you that his voice sound the same as it did the last time I heard it, his hands looked the same, all weatherbeaten and calloused and tanned. His face with its carefully groomed cowboy style mustache and hazel eyes still captivated me and I was lost.

I miss him Rog. I wish I could take that phone call back. I dont care what my friends and family say about how bad he was or is for me. I MISS HIM. He was the one constant in my life. An email or a phone call at least every other day for YEARS! I dont even get that from family and I damn sure dont get that from people who call themselves my friends these days. He was advice and companionship and the promise of a "maybe, someday" that kept me plodding along the road to nowhere.

The one, perfect, most romantic, Valentines day I ever had in my whole entire life was spent in his arms. There was roses and candlelight and he carried me to bed and it was something that will have me smiling when I am on my deathbed, because it was just that good.

He inspired me. He made me laugh, made me happy and yes, he broke my heart in ways that can never be explained or forgiven, but I am a masochist for him.

I was sitting in a coffee shop last week, waiting on a friend to show up and I was looking at all the men wandering around and as I looked up, there stood a man that could have been his gay twin brother. The shock about caused me to fall out of my chair. Same imposing height,(around 6'6), reddish brown hair with a mustache and that ruddy skin color that looks like hes been outside too long, jeans and boots, but this guy had both ears pierced and was wearing a t-shirt that was about 2 sizes 2 small that showed off the same physique as him, but he would have never done that. I know I was staring, but the tears in my eyes probably made the guy think I was a bit insane so he stayed away.

I tried to send a text to a friend of mine back home to tell him what I had seen, to see if he had seen him lately, and to find out how he was, but inadvertently I sent the text to the wrong number...I sent it to him.

All he replied back was,"You are texting the wrong person". I dont even if he knew it was me because my number has changed so many times, but my heart broke a little more.

Rog, I wish you were here. I am nearly 42 years old and I am so damn alone. I managed to make it less than a week and 1 kiss with a guy before I told him to fuck off because he just wasn't"Right", and the problem is, I dont know what is 'Right" though I have a strong feeling I am a big part of what is wrong.

Dear Roger:Sadistic Dentists? Hell, In A Pinch Ill Take What I Can Get!

Its been a rough few days! I dont know if I had mentioned it, but for the past couple of months I had been living with some pretty significant pain. My wisdom teeth had decided to surface and not only were they badly impacted, to add to the fun, they were also infected and broken due to damage that had been done to my jaw. You dont take hits to the jaw and not do some damage, and I had even done some damage when I wrecked a motorcycle a decade or so ago.

So anyway, the pain had reached the point where it was unrelenting. I felt like hell, I had a constant infection in my jaw and I was on antibiotics and they weren't helping. I ran a fever constantly, I was taking Vicodin and over the counter pain meds like they were pez and nothing was helping. I was to the point of desperation and misery that I didn't know what I was going to do. I hadn't been able to find a dentist to take my insurance, I didn't have the cash to pay the ridiculous amounts some were asking just to see me, and I was losing hope.

I called the university dental school and they were booked several months out. The woman I spoke to there told me to call the a number for a low cost dental clinic, and at the end of my rope, I did. I went through their application process, qualified, and they agreed to see me this past Friday.

It wasn't fancy, and in the waiting room I was the only one speaking English, but at that point I didn't give a damn. I paid the entry fee, they took me back and did the x-rays and let me tell you people were freaking impressed!

Turns out, the one wisdom tooth was putting so much pressure on things, it was displacing things in my head! It had broken the tooth in front of it, and was causing other teeth to cross from the pressure, but it was also pushing on the bones in my skull! The nurse was impressed! She asked how the hell had I been walking around like that? I told her that I had reached the point where I wasn't eating, wasn't sleeping, and was ready to step in front of a train if I didn't get help, so I wasn't coping too well . But she was impressed I had made it a few months like that.

Good damn thing I have a pretty high tolerance for pain. The dentist came in, jammed a pick up into the the tooth and I about came unglued. Blood started pouring out if my mouth along with infection,(he had opened the abscess) and it hurt like hell. He said that he needed to pull the wisdom tooth and the one in front so he was going to numb me up and pull them. It happened that damn fast! He jammed that thing in, I bleeding and pissed, and hes pulling out a needle and then without numbing the skin, giving me an assload of shots to numb up the area.

He must have jammed that needled halfway to my eye, because that is where I felt it.

He gave me the shots while the nurse was trying to keep all the blood and gak sucked up, and then after about 5 minutes he started working on getting the wisdom tooth out.

It would have been nice if he had waited until I was totally numb. I guess he figured that since I had handled the pain for so long that I must be pretty tough, and I guess I am, but when you can hear things cracking in your skull over the music you have blasting to try and distract you.

I closed my eyes when I saw the blade he used to cut around the tooth. We all know my issues with knives, but at that point I was so exhausted by the pain I just couldn't find it in myself to care. He started cranking on the tooth again and it took him a good 10 minutes of twisting and cranking and fighting it to finally break it apart enough to get it out. Then he started on the one in front. All in all, it took about 15-20 minutes, I grunted a couple of times because I was feeling it. Blood was everywhere. I was pretty stressed out when he was finally done, and the fact he dropped part of the tooth down my throat and then had to fish for it, didn't help, but I was glad it was over with. It took a bit to get my face cleaned up, and the bleeding did not want to stop, so I had to sit in their waiting room for a half hour with my face packed with cotton until they were sure I wasn't going to pass out. I paid the rest of my bill and headed home before it started raining too hard and I tried to not scare people too bad by opening my mouth or anything, because if I did, blood fell out. I still got funny looks and when I got home I saw why, My face is bruised up pretty bad. I had the beginnings of a black eye and I looked like I had lost a fight.

Once I got home I just laid down on the couch and went to sleep. I woke up much later feeling like a human being for the first time in months!

I have an appetite again, I am not in pain and it doesn't hurt too bad to smile. Its still bleeding just a little, but thats just part of my wonky genetic issues, but I feel so much better!

Son commented I dont smell or look "Sick" anymore and that I seem much happier. Well, duh! I am not in pain. I dont need Vicodin to function and hopefully the worst of it is over with. It would have been nice if it hadn't been so rough and if I wasn't so bruised, but we all know I can take it, I have been through worse, and in the grand scheme of things, its a minor bump in the road.

I got up the next day and took daughter to her testing to determine what kind of gifted she is, I cleaned house and I did my normal stuff. I didn't even take a Tylenol after lunch time.

In the words of someone I miss, I have "driven on".

Dear Roger: Dammit Doug Fir or How I Got Bit In The Ass By 100 Monkeys

So I went to another concert last night at the Doug Fir. Never mind it was a school night, or that it was colder than penguin balls outside. I had bought the ticket over a month ago and I decided I might oughta go because I had told a couple of friends of mine I was going and I thought I deserved a night out. I did not expect it to drop to sub-arctic before hand, but hey? who the hell needs to feel their feet at a rock concert,right?

I wore my 20x Wranglers and a heavy coat, my hat, some gloves and I thought I was bundled up enough, but then we ended up spending a half-hour standing out by Pioneer square watching the temperature gauge on the Chase bank register lower and lower, while we waited for the next bus to come and get our frozen asses to take us on up to the Doug Fir,(have I mentioned that when my ears and nose get cold, my happy thoughts and general pleasant demeanor tend to leave the country?), well anyway, we get there and I had pretty much already decided that if they were gonna try and make us stand outside in the cold, somebody was gonna get told a thing or two. Lucky for us and them they were letting folks in where it was marginally warmer. But one thing they did before they let us in was stamp our wrists...WITH A MONKEY STAMP. The exact same monkey stamp they used at the 100 Monkeys concert. Fuck my life.

Daughter is not a stupid child. She is aware that her favorite person in the whole world,(and yes, as I am writing this, HE her favorite person)is going to be in this neck of the woods in the next little bit. She assumes that they will of course be doing concerts in this area. She looked up Vancouver BC on a map when I tired to explain that he was still quite a distance away,"Its closer than Texas and Arizona, so I am not seeing the problem?" She wants that I should just drop everything and take her, yesterday. So we have had our issues with making why that is not going to happen, understood.

So last night, she knew I was going to a concert. I had told her the name of the guy before, but she had never heard of him so she didnt retain it. She just knew she was staying home with her brother and that I was going to the Doug Fir,(she was already suspicious), and I would be in late.

I may have indulged a bit in a few too many whiskey sours. I meant to scrub that damn monkey stamp off my arm before I got home and fell asleep, but see...the thing is, my fella...Jack, met me at the bar after the show, and being a good Southie fella from Boston, he elevates drinking to a whole nuther level.We hung out at the bar and apparently, well, I got a bit snockered.

I got home around 1ish, still drunkish and I fell asleep in most of my clothes.I had ditched my coat and sweater at the front door along with one boot and my hat. But when I ditched the coat? I left my shirt sleeve pushed up and what did I awaken to this morning? "I KNEW IT!! YOU SAW HIM!! YOU LIIIIIIIEEDDD" Now I am still a little buzzed at this point, queasy and wondering just what the hell I am being accused of by my small daughter? Why does she sound like she is accusing me of stealing her man or something? Then I see it...that damn monkey stamp! Its as much a sign of guilt in her eyes as lipstick on a collar and she is MAD! Why they had to use the EXACT same stamp they used for the 100 Monkeys show I think was just God screwing with me pretty damn hard.

I start trying to explain, "Noo baby, I didnt see them! I saw some British guy" she is snot sobbing at this point and looking at me like I killed her puppy. "I dont believe you! You just wanted to go without me! Chance said so!" (deciding at this point that her brothers guitar is getting taken hostage),my head is pounding and I am trying not to barf on her and she is getting louder. She gives me the puppy dog eyes. The look that I wish I could bottle up and send to THEM, the look that tends to make anyone with a soul and a heart, squirm in real or imagined guilt for putting it there. "Please mommy, PLEASE promise me you didnt go without me? You wouldn't do that to me would you? I love them soo much, it would break my heart if I didnt get to go! Its all I want for my birthday!(oh and that is a damn dirty lie if I ever heard one), but I groaned in pain,(very real at this point), and dragged my whiskey addled ass out of bed and I wandered into the kitchen looking for my ticket stub, which by some small grace of GOD I had stuffed into my pocket. I handed it to her and she looked at it. "Who is Bobby Long and Guest?" Well daughter, I said, hes no Jackson Rathbone and 100 Monkeys, so will you forgive me?

She looked at me,"Promise me." At this point I was ready to promise to deliver the men themselves if she would only let me go lay back down. "Promise me you wont go without me to see them." So then stupid me has to negotiate with her,"But what if its an adults only show?" She wrinkled up her nose and looked a bit disgusted, "Why would they do that?" Ahh...to be 6 again.

She still is looking at me like she doesnt really believe me, and I know I heard her humming,"Keep Awake" when I went to lay back down, so I decided it was just a wee bit more prudent to do just that, keep awake and write than to risk sleeping off the rest of my misbehavior at least until she calms down and stops sounding like someones wife I have done wrong.