Dear Roger, The Boot is on the Other Foot and its a Bit Disturbing

Okay, we have established that I like younger men, as in the 25-35 year old age group,correct? They are more entertaining,more likely to enjoy the same kinds of music,movies,hobbies and just general insanity that I enjoy, and I even lust after some of the lil Hollyweird fellas that are a few years younger than 25 just because they are soo damn good to look at, but 25 is a hard limit for me, and if a guy looks younger than that I wont even go there because thats just kinda creepy, but apparently some women/men around here do not have that same problem! My son has been getting eye molested quite a bit up here and its starting to freak me out. I know he is a good looking kid, and he looks older than 14, and hes a big boy for 14 years old, and hes a cocky,showoffy, arrogant, Texas smartass, but that does not give women,(and the occasional MAN!) the right to pretty much eye fuck my kid in the mall or parking lots, and they damn sure should not be approaching him!

He has had women ask his name and compliment his eyes and just random articles of his clothing or even his athletic ability when he goes vaulting over those security blockade poles that are 4 ft high like he is some kinda skinny jean wearing jack rabbit. His strumming a guitar in some off the beaten path music shop rapidly attracted an audience, and if he had started singing, I am afraid we would have had a problem in short order.He already has more new phone numbers in his phone than he left Texas with, and he has been offered more.

The guy in the animal shelter parking lot that tripped over his own car staring at my sons ass came close to getting his butt kicked by me, not because he was a guy, but because he was freaking OLD and he was waay obvious and creeper about it and if my son had seen him he would have been freaked out and made uncomfortable. I didnt say anything because I didnt want to make a scene at the time, but if looks coulda killed the guy woulda had more than bruises from his car to deal with.

My son is pretty casual about all the attention he attracts and I know he enjoys it, and I am also aware that he is still innocent,(so far), because he had had me drill into his skull since he was old enough to know that he was a boy that if he made one mistake with the wrong girl he could end up a wage slave paying support for a child that he might not even get to see. I have been open and honest and direct with him about sex and all the repercussions that it could have for him, both if he were straight or gay, though with the amount of girls in his call list and the amount of dates he has had, I am pretty sure he is straight. With my nephew now facing being a father at the age of 18 without a high school diploma, without a job and without a clue, my son knows he doesnt want to face that kind of life, but he also has been honest about how girls try to push him into things that he isnt really ready for, and if girls his age are pushing for sex, I could only imagine what the older women would try to do to him! He seems more mature because he has had a crappy home life and lived in the battleground of domestic violence where he lived in an explosive pressure cooker that most people can only imagine in their worst nightmares. He saw his step-father put a gun to his and my head and he heard him say that he should just kill all of us, he was in the house when he took the straight razor to me and he was beaten in the front yard like a dog and then had to endure the resulting fall out when the police finally intervened and investigated and he was examined like a rape victim and interviewed, but then sent back home to wait and worry with me about his step father getting out until I sent him to Texas for his own sanity so he would finally go off duty and be a kid again. Its still taking time for him to remember that he is a kid, and he tries to be the,"man of the house", but he is a kid, a goofy, smelly, awkward, trying to find his way, KID, and I hope people remember that.

Dear Roger, How in the Hell Do Teen Boys Survive to Adulthood?

Words cannot really describe the sound that I made as I was starting typing this entry other than it was a combination of a groan,deep sigh, growl, whine and exasperated whine. I spent the day with Chance and his best buddy, my best friends son, running around Portland looking at apartments and trying to get stuff done, with TRY being the operative word. It took them until noon to drag their sorry asses out of bed, and then they both spent forever in the bathroom trying to get their hair and whatever just right. I would have had them up and out of the house sooner, but we had a bit of trauma when I walked into the boys room without knocking first thing in the morning thinking that I would just just rouse them out and we would hit the road early. The trauma will hopefully fade with therapy for me and for my son, and I will knock from now on, but he wore dark sunglasses most of the day and refused to look me in the eye or even talk directly to me for the big part of it. It just kinda cemented my belief that boys are icky and kinda weird.

When we finally left the house I told them that we were taking Stevie to see,'The Last Airbender" as I had promised her before we left Flagstaff, and both the guys groaned and asked if they could go see a movie that men would like, and I told them that when I found a man I would have to ask him what that would be, but until then they were coming with us, so then they started teasing Stevie about her adoration of all things Rathbone, and arousing her ire to the point that she ended up wrapped up around her brothers head punching and biting his ear until he yelled for help and I threatened to make everyone go back to the house and sit on their bed if they didnt stop with the shenanigans. The boys started yelling, "Free Penis" out the window of the car at random people as we drove through Portland and I ended up putting up Chances head in the back window in an attempt to get him to stop. When we got to the theater they settled down a bit, and then it was Stevies turn to get a bit out of hand as she Squeed! and hopped up everytime his royal Rathboniness popped up on the screen, and her brother just about had to sit on her to keep her quiet. When the moon princess died and he was sad, Stevie started crying,"Hes sad mommy!,I dont like him to be sad!" and I had to console her until she calmed down as people were looking at me like I was some kinda bad mom for having such a tiny fangirl. The boys grunted and groaned and pissed and moaned about the movie not following the cartoon and generally bitched and moaned about not liking the movie based on the "Pattinson principal" but now they have changed it to the 'Twilight principal" based on that any movie that has a guy from the Twilight series has to suck, just because. But then Chance surprised the hell out of me and said, "Well, I gotta change that because I like 'Remember me", that was a damn good movie." I about wrecked the freaking car and we all turned and looked at him and his buddy punched him and said,'Dude, your just gay for that dude cuz hes hot". The whole car when to hell at that point and I had to park because one dude calling another "Hot" had occurred and accusations of deviance and all kinda things that went against the 14 y/o male bro code had happened so I pulled Stevie up front and let them hash it out in the back for a few.

After masculinity and jock status had been reaffirmed, we decided to go for Chinese for lunch and we went down to the Gorge which is really a cool viewing area for the river and they have a nice Chinese place on the corner. We sat and the lady came up and promptly dumped a full glass of iced water in Chances lap on accident. Hilarity ensued and we all laughed ourselves silly. We let the poor lady know that it wasn't a problem, and after we stuffed ourselves with awesome lo mein, I even tipped her extra for the comic relief.

We shopped a little bit, drove around listening to music alot,(if I hear Katy Perrys California Girls one more time I may voluntarily rupture my ear drums), and I even managed to embarrass my son by dancing. I figure I have the right to be as embarrassing as possible, especially since he seems to enjoy doing things like trying on bras and booty shorts in stores, grabbing up giant Kiwis and tossing them to me and yelling, "hey mom, didn't you want to get your hands on some Monkey Balls?" or farting and letting me walk into it, so the least I could do was dance badly for him and his friend in a very public place, and be THAT kinda mom as best I could be.

Dear Roger, Flying Sock Monkeys and Stinky P's Rules for Brother

I awoke this morning to a sock monkey smacking me upside the head. Sharing a bed with a 6 year old is always an adventure, and considering she sleeps like a starfish, getting whacked by 'Josh" was one of the milder things that could have happened. We have had a busy few days and getting out and looking for a place to live and jobs has made the time fly past us like nobodies business!

We are all enjoying being here and I broke down and bought Chance a new skateboard yesterday so that he could get out and have some fun with his friend. I am amazed at the wide range of stuff that can be found around here! I can actually buy cute clothes right off the rack and that makes me soo damn happy! When you have had to buy bras in the,"Freakishly large, must be older woman" section of Victoria Secrets, for years, with your choices limited to black,white, tan, or ewww leopard print, finding bras by Joe Boxer in your size(36D) with all the cool designs, just tends to make your day,week,month and even year!I now have a tartan plaid one with smiley faces on both boobs and one with skulls and crossbones and little metal studs. I also found undies in small and extra small with cool designs and jeans in size 1 and 3, right on the rack! I know that I am in heaven now!

The weather was interesting yesterday and it is pretty weird to be wearing a hoodie and douche hat in the middle of July, but it was chilly in the morning and the moisture up here has sent my hair into absolute seizures! It sticks up all over and looks like a demented rooster has taken up residence on my head. I am not alone in my suffering, Chances hair is totally out of control and his curls poof out all over the place no matter what he puts on them, and he just sighs deeply and waffles between wanting to shave his head or grow it all out and let it be shaggy, but mostly he wears his weird little hat all over the place.He has finally given up the super skinny legging type of skinny jeans,(THANK GOD!) and is wearing more normal fitting jeans though still pretty tight, and he is showing this cocky side of his personality that I thought Ed had beaten out of him.I am glad to see it survived, because that cocky little Texan personality is what has defined our family for generations and I am glad to see he carries it on. He flirts shamelessly with girls and shows off his athleticism pretty much any time he gets the chance, and then he shows off his tender side by doting on his little sister. I saw that in action at the mall when he was walking around holding her hand and she spotted a display for Eclipse and went running over. There were a bunch of tweeny girls there and they thought she was soo cute because she was making over 'Edward" and "Jasper" and she knows waaay too much for a 6 year old about the movies, and he came walking up, and she turned to him and told the girls,"This is my big brother Chance, and he saw the movie with my mom, but hes cooler than either of these guys.", and the girls just said,'AWWW!" how cute as Chance gave them his best ,"Aww shucks ma'am" and turned on the Texan so thick that I think my granny spun in her grave a little. He left that little scene with 3 new phone numbers in his phone and a new appreciation for his baby sister.

Trying to find a place to live in a good school district is a little trickier around here, I dont want him to end up in a giant school with problems, and I am even considering putting him in a private Lutheran High School that his friend goes to , the only problem with that is that its in a part of town that I wont live in, and until I either buy another car or get the train line figured out, we are kinda limited. I am looking to live on either Burnside, or Powell or even Eastlake, but not too far out so that I am near to the colleges and the city centers for jobs and just things to do. My friend Susan has other ideas because the thought of living in the city and near all the weirdness kinda freaks her out, but I actually get stresses about the thought of living away from all the action. Its an interesting balancing act and hopefully we will get it sorted soon, I have 5 potential places picked out, I just have to figure out the school situations for the kids.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Roger,I am Cougar,Hear me Roar!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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