Dear Roger: No Meltdowns Allowed In Front Of The Teenager

Okay, I will admit it, I get lonely, damn lonely. The kind of lonely where you wish just anyone would call, come by, tweet, text or somehow aknowledge they know you exist. Yes, I know I have kids who do that for me on a daily basis, and that is great, I love my kids, we all know that they are what I live for, but as much as I tend to eschew them, a Goddamned hug from a another human being sure would be nice from time to time. The touch of a man would be even better. Yeah, its Valentines Day and between that and all the typical B/S and stress in my life, that has me all out of whack and Im having a huge ole pity party of epic proportions.
Chance made the mistake of asking me what was wrong yesterday when I came in from work,and sat down at the table looking, I guess to him, more disconsolate that usual. I had just observed one of our more unpleasant residents, a rather large woman of dubious personal hygiene and less than pleasant personality,telling her new boyfriend goodbye. I dont get it.She doent work, she smokes and drinks and looks like she crawled out of a rag bag in her pajamas and flip flops on a daily basis, yet she has a man? Am I doing it wrong? Should I quit showering regularly? Stop shaving my legs and other areas and just wear my house clothes constantly? Im one of the few parents dressed in street clothes at the bus stop in the morning, maybe that should change. I should start sleeping in til the last minute and then stand there with a cigarrett and yell into my cell phone, ignoring my kids while we wait, maybe that is what passes for attractive up here? Anyway, I had witnessed that and It was just another shot to me, another bit of reality that I am alone when it seems all those around me have some one.
My relationships have never been perfect. I've had a few decent ones, a few fun ones and a few nightmares, and sadly, the nightmares have left the most lasting marks, physically, but the decent one that left the deepest mark on my emotionally, is probably the crux of the problem. When you love someone who holds your heart with the hint of ,"In Time", its hard to walk away. I hated being in love. Its a very lonely feeling and I have worked hard to not be, but just seeing that person or hearing his voice or even getting a,'Hey, how are you?" email, can overwhelm all my defenses and leave me helplessly devastated for days. No one will ever be him, and when I hold all men to that standard, they fail. I thought that maybe being alone was my best option, but when you find yourself starved for some form of physical affection, or human contact, that you feel like you are going to go insane or that you are starving to death emotionally from the lack of the one nutrient that no one wants to provide someone so damaged and hard to love, its a horrible feeling. I try to soldier on through, but I find myself having a harder and harder time lately. I never thought I would be so alone at this point in my life, and while much of it is of my own design, I just wish for once there was a reason to believe in happy endings or white knights.

Dear Roger: You Dont Know What You've Got Til Its Gone

So the entertainment world lost yet another one to the grinding self-abuse machine that is the cult of celebrity yesterday. I am not going to sugar-coat my opinion of what happened to her because she had been very open about her struggles with substance abuse. Its horrible and sad because she has a child, but what is worse is the entire double standard that allows people who have money and fame to escape entanglements that would call them to task for their fuckery and perhaps save their lives. I dont mean to say that the legal system is a great source of rehabilitation for someone with substance abuse issues, but its better than nothing, better than it being brushed under the rug or some high priced rep covering for them until the worst happens.
The regular news carries the celebrity nonsense now, so I see and hear about who gets yet another slap on the wrist for getting caught with yet more cocaine or crank, or busted for drunken driving and then spending maybe 80 minutes in some holding cell at lock up with their expensive bottled water and snacks while the pap rats bay for them outside.They walk out to their waiting 60k Suv's while poor kids are fed into the meat grinder of the legal system for the same charge and left to languish for weeks because they dont have the name or the hook of fame. I wonder how many of those kids watched those celebs get off time and time again and thought they would get the same deal? I remember being a campus cop in Northern AZ and being told not to stop certain cars or people because they were friends of the college president or visiting celebrities, and if they were drunk or behaving badly, we were supposed to just escort them home and maintain radio silence. You get the justice you can afford and sometimes that is a bad thing in both directions.
Artsy personalities are difficult folk, you and I both know that one in spades. Watching friends destroy their lives with drugs when I was younger is perhaps all that saved me from it. When I was in Dallas I ran with some rich and powerful people and I did some really fucked up things. It was a different life and a different time. I had access to things that I had never had access to before and let me tell you, I indulged and it was often pretty damn fun and entertaining.I do know that its possible to go over 120mph on Beltline at 3 in the morning with a car full of people. I know all kinds of places in North Richland Hills to hide from cops or where if you are in the right kind of vehicle, they just look the other way. I lived to grow up with minimal scars, some of my friends didn't.
I guess I really saw the cost of drugs in the mid-90's when I watched a boy I was friends with, a very talented guitarist, get hooked on heroin. Will lived in the small Arizona town I worked in as an Emt and he hated every minute of living there. He was biding his time until he had enough money saved to get out and then he was headed to L.A., but the problem was, he developed a habit. I dont know when it started, but the change that came over him was dramatic. He never had been a big guy and he was always pale, but when he saddled that horse, he got even more so. He stopped eating which was horrible for a diabetic and I ended up having to run on him as an EMT, that is how I found out about his habit. Drugs dont take long to eat someone who already has health problems and it only took about 6 months before we lost Will. A combination of too much heroin and too little insulin left him in a coma that he never came out of and he never left Arizona.
I've lost more than a few people to stupidity, killed either by their own hand or through the drunken/drugged insanity of others and it has left scars that will never heal. I've watched others struggle with it, and I know the signs well enough that I often watch for names on the news with trepidation. I was a huge Stevie Ray Vaughn fan, my baby girls name is evidence enough of that, she is named for him and my ex's best friend who was a Hells Angel so she we often say she was named for a Hells Angel and a helluva Texas Bluesman). I am not someone who names my kids after someone lightly, but he meant so much to me growing up. I can hear the first notes of anything he played and it takes me to memories that keep me going. I know he struggled mightily, and I was so proud to see him win and persevere and finally pull his life together. I was looking forward to seeing him in concert and then one day, I was sitting on my couch watching the news and he was just...gone.I admit it, I cried hard. I still cant listen to songs like,"Life By The Drop " without choking up some.
We lost so many so young, Freddie Mercury was another tragedy that broke my heart in many ways and still does as does Michael Hutchence and Kurt Cobain. Not all substance abuse, but struggles with a life that gets beyond control and overindulged. Sometimes too much of a good thing is too much and folks need a big ole adult time out to remind them that they belong in the real world and have real rules to live by, it just might save their lives. Kindness and compassion and understanding are important, not constantly demanding to know every little thing and maybe, just maybe , being grateful that when you see their name in the news its for life and not death.

Dear Roger: How To Make Your Parents Heads Explode

The conversations around here have been pretty interesting lately. My son and I have had more in depth conversations about things in the past few days than we have had in months, and I guess that is a good thing. Last night a friend sent me a picture that made me laugh pretty damn hard and my son looked at it and said,"What the hell is that?" I told him that it seemed to be just one of those things that while being part of personality, is also something that is designed to make parents heads explode. I then asked him when he got older and on his own and decided that I had totally fucked up his life and deprived him of so much, how was he going to show me and the world that he was pissed at me? He thought for a while and he said, "Its pretty damn impossible to shock you, you are tatted up like a biker chick, so those are out.You really wouldn't be pissed or upset if I gauged my ears, you would just make fun of me for having,"Ear Vagina's,or Cat Assholes", you would have a mohawk again if I didn't bitch at you constantly about not cutting your hair so I don't even have that.If I brought home a punk girlfriend you would probably like that because my nice, conservative, Christian, girlfriend annoys the hell out of you. I guess I would have to become a preacher." I just stared at him. I guess hes right. And even the preacher thing wouldn't weird me out too badly. Im very difficult to shock and I guess I have set the bar pretty damn high for rebellion and being an asshole kid.
I am tatted up pretty heavily and planning on getting more as soon as I can afford it. I have always dressed to annoy with objectionable t-shirts and either torn jeans or jeans that are too tight. I really went over the top with my social life with my first husband. I still remember peoples reaction to him in the small town I lived in, some would actually edge away from us in the grocery store line and almost no one would talk to us. If we had tried to live there very long, the poor guy would have lost his mind, luckily we went back to Dallas so we could go back to college pretty quickly and he was just another of the herd there, but talk about family scandal.Then, I really did it, I had a kid out of wedlock. Mohawks, tattoos, drinking, weird clothes, bad men, and getting caught drag racing all paled in comparison to that.
I married a guy who was prospecting for the Hells Angels, actually gave birth to a child with Downs Syndrome and then had more kids. That...that right there, wow...you would think that was the biggest of the big deals. Sticky man. The first kid born in the family with a disability. A very visible disability. The kind of disability that freaks people out for some reason because there is no rhyme or reason to it. We had no warning it was coming. All the tests were normal, nothing showed up anywhere. I knew the minute I saw him though, right before I had my first seizure and tried to bleed out and die; I knew he had it by the reaction of the nurse and how his face looked. The reaction of my family later was what was what really sucked though. Sticky spent 10 days in the NICU fighting for his life, he struggled to breathe and to learn to eat and all kinds of things, and I remember my mom coming to see him once and she met the doc who SAVED MY LIFE! the doc whose fingerprints I still had on my stomach from where he had pressed down trying to stop the bleeding, and instead of being nice and kind to him, she was rude. I asked her,"Why?!" and she looked and me and said,"If he was a good doctor he would have told you there was something wrong with him so you could have done something." Those words have echoed in my head for almost 12 years now. Every time I cuddle my now strappingly handsome and extremely popular young man, I hear them. Even if I had known, it wouldn't have made a difference, not that I have a strong opinion on abortion other than its none of my damn business what a woman decides to do with her body, but that I go by the thought that everyday my kids go out into the world, something could happen that could leave them altered. He could have been born perfect and suffered an injury on the way home and been brain damaged, would I have gotten rid of him then? You don't get rid of a kid just because they aren't exactly what you bargained for. All of my kids can be real pains in the ass at times, but I love each of them fiercely and they are my soul reason for life. I look at each of them and see them as human beings that will someday go out into that world and make a mark that I hope they can be proud of, and I know that they haven't had the best of starts and maybe they will bear me some ill will for that. My daughter has spent half her life without a father and the one she has didn't want her and acts like shes an after thhought when hes around, and that worries me because little girls need a daddy. My boys have had more time around him and they didn't do well because of it, with anger and bullying coming out against their sister so strongly that I had to intervene and get them in counseling. My eldest? Hes never had a father. Never had a consistent male role model around to lead him to the right way, but yet, hes my gentleman. His behavior around his girlfriend is old school, courtly. He opens doors for her, serves her first, he reads to her and sings to her and he wont cuss in front of any woman or girl except for me. He is the epitome of a Southern gentleman and I don't know how the hell that was managed. I know I worked hard when he was young to instill those values in him, I just didn't realize they stuck. I am finding out that they did. I hear from my kids teachers and people around them, that my other kids behave the same way. My daughter is unfailingly polite and even curtseys when introduced to a crowd. She is a a bit of a throwback to another time though and I swear she channels my granny with her requirements that her hair and clothes be,'Done" before she goes out, and her love of fancy dresses with hats and gloves. I hope to God her rebellion against me will be to become a debutant and marry some Baylor grad lawyer or something like that, though with her personality and joi de vie, I have a feeling it will be anything but. Speaking of, she just woke up and informed me its "Pajama Reading day at school and she cannot find Jackson's special blanket." I assume this means this is an emergency for me and I have to go.

Dear Roger: You Wont See Me Picking Up Any Stones

Well, Well, Well! Its just been a busy little week around here now hasn't it? I swear if one more person asks me how my little girl took the news I am going to just issue a press release for her. She was ecstatic. In fact she bounced, a lot. I don't think I have ever heard the word ,"Cute" stretched out soo far. Shes not quite 8. Shes not going to be heartbroken, she loves that boy more like a father figure than anything else. The only thing that got her upset was seeing some of the ugly things people were saying. That made her cry. She doesn't understand why people get upset at things they have no damn business getting upset or involved in. Only people have any business saying anything would be parents, not random fangirls. I finally blocked a few people and kept her off the net for a bit. I managed to distract her by allowing her to start playing with filming things, and unfortunately she likes interviewing and questioning me. She begged and cajoled me into allowing her to film me for a few minutes and her and her older brother uploaded it to my YouTube account. I gave in and posted it to Facebook so my family could see. Its the first they have seen or heard of me in over a year. I'm still the family black sheep so im not sure how it will be received.
My son gave me the raised eyebrow over this whole bit of drama that transpired over the past few days and he finally said,"Well, im waiting for the lecture about how you would cut them off and wear them for earrings if I ever did anything like that." I just smiled at him and said,"My work is done." But then we really did have a talk about things and how really, I am not one to judge. I brought home a Lebanese Shiite Muslim for my 1st husband and it lasted for 5 years before we divorced and then I had a kid with and Iranian rocket scientist who I didn't marry.I was a train wreck through the 90's with one failed relationship after another and alcohol was my best friend. I have lived my life reveling in being the black sheep, the weirdo and the tattooed, pierced, difficult child of dubious sexual proclivities. I was lucky to not end up at the bottom of Lake Ray Hubbard, I ran with a man who met 13 of Hares 21 characteristics of a serial killer in the mid 90's and I ended up with a son out of it and in hiding for 14 years. I was a cop who could out drink Marines and who partied with Hells Angels and I had a death wish that came damn close to getting granted a few times. I have known very nice, wonderful, classy people that I feel honored to have called my friends and I have known stone cold killers that still leave me wondering why they left me breathing. I drank, screwed and fought my way though most of my life, but I never, ever, did drugs and that was my one saving grace. I have spent the years since my kids came along, atoning for my past fuckery and trying to be a better person. I don't have much faith in God because God has always seemed to enjoy taking away those I love and need the most, when I most need them, so I tend to have a hate/hate relationship with him, but I don't share that with my kids. I send my kids to church and my daughter seems to have landed on his good side.She prays a lot, mainly for that boy, and often for me, but never for anything for herself. She is truly a decent kid. My son tells me that because I have always been very open and honest with him about what I was like as a kid and the mistakes I made, that he actually has learned and from it and he doesn't want to make those mistakes. I'm a good, bad example and I am good with that.I tell him not to judge, people have lives that they keep quiet and don't share with the world for a reason. Lots of people don't understand why I do the job I do, but i am not my job, its just a means to an end. Its not who I am. My kids are who I am and what I am all about.
My son tells me that hes glad hes able to talk to me about things and that his friends know they have a safe haven here. Things are coming to a head with one of his friends and I am going to end up caught in the middle and its going to be terrible, but I wont see a kid on the street because hes gay. The parents are very conservative religious to the point they have blocks on the tv and internet, blocks on what he has been allowed to read and talk about. His whole life has been strictly indoctrinated to believe that what he is is an abomination and hes at the age where he knows that hes been told wrong.He talks to me quite a bit about things and I know he is stressed and frustrated and deeply angry at his parents. They sent him to a private school thinking it would cut off all contact with the social media and world around him, and instead, it expanded it. He wants more. I've seen him with another boy and he actually looked happy for the first time in years. His father would lose his mind.Hes been hinting at it for years, but I was the first one to pick up on it and when I asked, he didn't deny.I made sure he knew he had support, no matter what. My son seems to be accepting of it, though he has made really sure his friend isn't attracted to him, unlike the other boy who is attracted to my son.Its a huge damn mess and I worry about all of them, but I keep an eye on them and I make sure that they eat and have a warm place to get in out of the cold and that they aren't drinking or doing drugs. I also let them know I am always willing to listen or talk if they need. I keep the booze out of the house, as well as the cigarrets.
It feels sometimes like I have turned into a good two shoes in my old age, I don't drink, and reading the comments and tweets from moms who are home with kids and constantly talking about all the drinking they are doing, kinda freaks me out. I mean, I could not imagine trying to deal with my brood drunk, they would thrash the world. I remind them to stay healthy and to make good choices, much like I try to do myself. Being a parent is a life changing and deeply personal event. It can evoke a change at a fundamental level in a person and it either makes or break you. Mine didn't really occur until my daughter was born and we both nearly died. She was unwanted by her father, I was facing a war at home, and I changed inside. I found my reason, everybody eventually does, and no one has the right to say what form a persons reason will take and when they will find it. Mine saved me from myself and from a doomed life and for that I am grateful every day I share the sunshine with her and the rest of my kids.

Dear Roger: Who Picked Out The Color Scheme? Monkeys? Funny You Should Ask...

My decor has issues. Right now my 7ft long, black,(but oh how I wish it was brown bomber leather with wood framing, couch, has two furry bodies on it. One, a teen boy who knows how much I hate it when he sleeps on my couch in his shorts and wife beater and sweats into the cloth, and the other? The long-haired, shedding,grey and dilute tabby(most certainly NOT BLACK),cat that the ex abandoned with us. Spencer is at least asleep on the floor for now, though once there is room, he will quickly try to gain a spot on the couch. I have crimson accent pillows on the couch. The son wanted purple.I cant say I am a fan of purple. I like red and since I was buying them, red won. I have a nice, dark wood coffee table that I got at a garage sale from a Russian lady who also cut me a smoking deal on an old battered trunk and ceramic sculpture that I liked.
I have what may or may not be a Stickley chair that the kids refer to as,"The ugly--assed, butt killing, hobbit seat" and another antique steamer trunk in the living room that our tv sits on. We have hats and metal wings and a cross and mirrors and concert posters all over the place, and monkeys...there are fucking monkeys EVERYWHERE.
They are not really noticeable at first, but once you hang out for a bit, you start to notice them. My Texas star in the dining room has a small plastic monkey climbing up it, and my daughter has managed to stick monkey stickers,(courtesy of a friend of mine), on most any surface you could think of. There are sock monkeys hanging out in odd places like my boots, and then there are pictures and concert posters for the band the 100 Monkeys all over the place. Even the boys room is not unscathed.
I used to be very organized with my color schemes in my dwellings, I like burgandys and earth tones and woods and the like and even leather and just natural looking colors and materials that almost seem as if I was trying to lure in a man with a man cave style trap. Maybe I was, maybe I wasn't, but I liked it. Now though? My home is an explosion of noise and a riot of colors. There is a monkey shower curtain! My black shower curtain was taken down and hidden and there are monkeys climbing palm trees over a PURPLE rug in my bathroom. A purple rug? Yeah...my towels dont even match anymore. I was told that was,"Boring". I have blues in all shades and a khaki, and a green and then it deteriorates from there into PINKS and TURQUOISE! and the hand towels are blood red with black wash clothes. I miss my black towels.
I have to share a room with my daughter. I have a red comforter from Ikea and some plaid sheets, occasionally some black or red ones slip into the mix, but her? She mixes and matches and she has some she calls,"Monkey fur", they are brown and they are polar fleece, they dont match her Paul Frank monkey face comforter that is an absolute riot of colors. She has pictures of that boy,(Jackson Rathbone) all over the room, and her monkeys and her art supplies are everywhere. I had to toss paint brushes and her monkey out of my bed the other night so I could go to sleep, she was not pleased to find him not tucked in properly,(I feared for my safety), so I made sure to apologize...to the gnarly stuffed monkey. There are bandannas and boots and drawings and now, worst of all? GLITTER! GLITTER ON MY STUFF! She is making him a Valentine. Its huge. Its currently all over my damn desk, displacing my wireless printer and my books. She has an easel, but its not good enough. Glitter...Did I mention I am glitter phobic? She got it on her older brother the other day. I didn't tell him. I enjoyed a private laugh all day long.
The boys room has dragons and super heroes and monkeys and Spencer Bell posters in it, along with bright orange sheets and purple blankets.
I guess I shouldn't complain, when the ex was here, he hated all the,"Weird crap" we had all over the place and the monkeys and the mirrors and clocks annoyed him. That was wonderful. He wouldn't let me paint the house when we were together. When he went away, I walked through the house painting every room and even sometimes every wall a different color.My world was spent so long seeing nothing but the dull grays and tans that he forced upon me, and now that my life is a riot of colors and craziness,(and yes, monkeys), I guess I will just roll with it, though I still am glitterphobic and probably always will be.

Dear Roger: Situation Normal, Back To The Weird

Hes gone! No, I didn't act out,"Keep Awake". I only threatened it, obviously very, very, convincingly. He got tired of living in his van down by the Willamette river and freezing his ass off and he decided to go back to Ventura where he could live with his aunt and whine about what an evil person I am to people who will be sympathetic to him.He worked hard to get Stubby all upset and emotional before he left so I would have a mess to deal with, and it almost worked, but I countered by giving Stubby a computer. Check and mate. Stub didn't even really notice he was gone. He called today to gloat about how warm and nice it is in Ventura,and all I could say was,"Thats nice, enjoy it. Its cold here, so make sure you don't come back." We celebrated after he left. Seriously. Actually put music on and danced our asses around. It was like the clouds left. It was an expensive lesson to me. All my bills are higher now and he wasn't shy about helping himself to food and whatever else he thought he needed. He tried to take my copy of Blazing Saddles on dvd and it about got really ugly. He did take my Gangs of New York(BASTARD!!), but I will replace it some day. He took the video camera too saying that it wasn't fair for Stevie to have it when the boys didn't have something similar to play with. Whatever. She has my Iphone to use and with him gone, shes actually excited about getting back into making videos.
Work has been weird. The new manager and I have reached an agreement and we have sort of bonded over our mutual dislike of a few of the residents. Misery loves company kind of situation as it is. I'm not working a lot, and that's fine with me, it gives me time for my writing and for my kids and my goofy dog.
I wont be able to go to my 25th High School reunion while I work on getting our economic situation back to rights, but I kinda knew once he showed up, everything was going to go to hell. I count it lucky that we didn't lose our apartment and that things didn't end up worse than they did. My eldest made sure to search the back porch and storage shed to make sure he hadn't forgotten any paraphernalia for the kids or anyone else to find and we threw away the any junk he left behind, which wasn't much, because anything he can sell he makes damn sure to take with him for just that purpose. His parting gift to me was to break the large ceramic pot I had on the back porch. I asked him if that was really necessary and he yelled at me,"Oh, like I ruined your fucking life by doing that?!" I just had my eldest haul it to the trash and counted it as yet another casualty. He left his cat with us. I don't know how long we will be able to keep her, but shes a decent cat who doesn't tolerate much of Spencers B/S before she smacks him on the end of the nose with on really sharp clawed paw. Speaking of Spencer, he is getting huge and he really is getting better with his manners other than he likes to sit on people, and at nearly 70 lbs at 6 1/2 months, hes no light weight.Hes no Fergus, and I still mourn him constantly, but he really tries to please and hes fun to watch and he likes the kids quite a bit. Hes pretty intelligent but, good Lord does he ever have the bloodhound stubbornness. He does things sometimes that remind me of Ferg and I have to walk away from him because the kids don't like to see me cry,and that's exactly what happens, for example, if I sit and stare at my computer too long without moving, (like a partial/complex), he will come and start trying to climb into my lap or he will just butt me with his big ole head just like Ferg would do. I don't know if they think that kick starts my brain again or what, but most of the time its just annoying me when I'm trying to think of how I want the next part of the story to progress, but its nice to be noticed by someone I guess.

Dear Roger: Its Always A Matter Of Who Blinks FIrst

Yesterday was quite a day. Work, frankly, sucked.I said yesterday in my letter that my job is menial and beneath me, and its true, but mostly I enjoy the mindless nature of it. I have a few things I require to do it, and yesterday when I went into the office to get them, they were gone. The whole office had been rearranged with all the furniture packed into the back storage area like it was being prepared for a battle instead of greeting potential clients. I looked for my tools but nada...poof! They were gone. I went ahead and started my work anyway, talking to residents I ran into along the way, doing my thing as usual. Got done and went back to the office to ask where my tools were and the new boss said,"Dont know!" she said it in a very sarcastic and abrasive manner as if she was challenging me to have a problem with it. I told her I wouldn't be able to finish the other job I need to do without my tools and she said,"Ok!"
It was all very odd and off putting. The she said she didn't want me storing my tools anywhere in the office or the maintenance sheds, that I should leave them outside by the door. I told her that they would get stolen, that they have gotten stolen before and had to be replaced and she said,"I dont care, then that is what I will do. I will replace them." That pissed me off. I pay pretty God Damned high rent living in this complex and its attitudes like that, where,"Money is no object lets not be careful with the tools or other items we have and let the crackheads steal them we will just replace them." thusly adding it to the bottom line, pissed me off.I kinda snapped. I didn't leave my tools by the door outside. I went and locked them in the laundry area and I called her boss and I said,"Look, I dont know what her problem is, other than she doesn't like me. I am doing my job as best I can and all I asked for is a few reasonable accommodations for health and safety. She has removed my tools, either hidden or thrown away some of them and she is refusing to let me put my other tools in a safe place so they dont get stolen. If you are going to fire me, some one needs to pull the trigger and do it, but the hostile work environment needs to cease and I need to be able to do my job without being harassed if you dont intend to fire me. I wont quit. So we need to come to some kind of terms." Yeah...fun phone conversation. I was pissed. The big bosses are coming over here this morning to meet with me. I am already working on my resume. Glad I dont have to work.
In other news, the ex leaves for Ventura tomorrow!!! Yeah! He said,"Its too fucking hard to live in Portland! I dont see how you do it!" Yeah...especially with 4 kids and no child support? Its called a wing and a prayer and no luxuries. I know at least 20 recipes for chicken and rice or beans and rice and we can all walk distances that would kill him.He wonders why all of us have shoes or boots that the soles are worn off of? We walk and walk and walk.
Im glad hes going. I think my stress level will drop precipitously, even if I am unemployed in a couple of hours.