Dear Roger,Adjusting to the Portland way of Mind

Last night was the first night spent in the new place. It was nice to be able to kick back and relax, watching "True Blood" on tv and not worrying that the really over the top weird shit that was going on was going to freak someone out, but it was also kinda sad to be away from my friends as I have kinda adopted them as our family.My friend Sus's parents are like how I wish my folks had been, doting grandparents and kind and concerned and involved and genuinely loving, and I miss having Sus to just sit and chat with in the evening.

We decided to turn the laundry area into private quarters for the Stinky Princess! Its a perfect area for her, it has shelves for her stuffed monkeys, as well as her boots and books, and there is room for a bed and desk and even a little tv/dvd combo if she so desires. Out of all of all of us, she is adjusting the best to all the upheaval in our lives. She has decided that she has adopted Sus and her family as her own and now Sus is her 'Aunt" and her parents are her new grandparents that she has never really had before. She flitted around that house like a fairy on speed, amped up on all the Twizzlers and Popsicles that they fed her and drew them pictures, danced for them and even sang the impromptu songs that she made up.I know she is going to miss the nightly performances with Sus's husband out on the back deck, singing along while he played guitar. She has quite the voice for a 6 year old and she is completely freaking fearless, so I have no doubt she is going to wow the new school she is going into this fall, and I am probably going to enroll her in piano lessons and maybe ballet if I can find a local studio, because she is a force of nature that needs an outlet. She is practically vibrating in anticipation of the 100 Monkeys concert that we are going to on the 28th, and I am just a little worried about trying to take someone that is only 3ft tall to a show that is going to be full to hormonally challenged tweens who will probably not give a damn if they run the hell over a small child. I am hoping that with Chance with me, he will be a good "Head of Security" for her and will help me keep her safe and protected from all the freaky hysteria because I would hate to go to jail in Portland for thrashing some heifers for hurting my baby.She wants to be up close, but I dont think that is going to be possible, I am going to just try to get her a spot so she can see and hear and hold her on my shoulders if I have to .

Chance and I have butted heads pretty much constantly. He seems to have developed the habit that my ex had of constantly criticizing me. He had to make snarky comments about pretty much all the furnishings I got, he didn't like the apartment because there is no pool, and it just seems that nothing I do is right or enough and I have started snapping back at him just like I did at my ex and just like my ex he has started trying to intimidate me and I called him on it. Last night he punched the wall right next to my head, and considering he is 5'9 and 170 and I am 5'0 and 105 in my socks, its just him trying to use his size to get what he wants and when I stepped towards him instead of cowering and asked,"Are you going to punch me?" he said,"Maybe you need punching." and I told him "Go ahead, punch me, I am used to it, Ive been punched alot, I can take it. Maybe it will make you a man like it did him, maybe it will make your life better, maybe if hitting me doesn't make you feel better you can punch your baby sister, shes alot smaller than you too and that should really make you feel like a man. Is that what you learned in Texas? Because none of the MEN I knew in Texas proved themselves men by hitting the women in theirs lives, but since you were in Arizona so long maybe you are more an Arizona boy than a Texas boy. Go ahead, hit me, whats one more bruise or scar or concussion?" He just looked at me and then went in his room and locked the door. I have been trying to find a physician up here for him and I am demanding that he get into counseling for all the issues that we have been through, because with all the anger he has floating around, he needs some help before he follows through and does hit me, because I have seen it in his eyes that he wants to strike out sometimes and that worries the hell out of me.

My little family has alot of issues to deal with, the least of which is learning to navigate the streets and cityscape of Portland, but we are starting to work on them and hopefully we will sort them out in time and adjust to all the new issues that seem to haunt us from our old life. Doing without all the luxuries that we had in our old house, such as our flat screen and our surround sound and my Cuisinart coffeemaker and my big ole fancy plantation style queen bed that was soo tall I had to hop up to get in it with the nice comfy memory foam topper that was 6 inches thick and all my pillows. I miss my art work and my barn wood tables and my Texas decor and Hatch green chilies and good tortillas and NOT hearing my neighbors getting what I have not gotten for such a DAMN.LONG.TIME....yes, I had forgotten that one of the joys of apartment living is that you can often hear your neighbors getting some, and apparently my neighbor needs to adjust the headboard on their bed or tighten it.

Dear Roger;Apparently I am "Freaking Know it All"

"Geek, Nerd,Annoying Pain-in-the-Ass, gamekilling Know it all", these are all names I was called before I was finally banned from all board games with friends and family. I am no longer allowed to play any form of Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble, or any game that involves knowledge of words, language, obscure facts, or even pop culture or strategy! W.T.F.? I am not even allowed to play checkers because I,"over-think" the moves and beat the snot out of everyone I play against and they all want to throw the board after a few games against me. I break out a few words in Russian or Latin or even Italian or French and then challenge the rule interpretation on a couple of games, and all of the sudden no one wants to play with me.

Chance led the movement to ban me from the games,calling me a ,"Freak" that knows way too much weird, obscure shit about too many things and he claimed that I am obsessive about making sure things are correct and that I get annoyed when people get things wrong and I would just get sullen if too many trivia facts were screwy within the game,(as they often are) and that I would waste a bunch of time proving the game info wrong. When the hell did he observe all my so called obsessions? He claims that I am a such a nerd that I am too good at too many things and that I just ruin things for,"normal people" and that I shouldn't be able to play. It really hurt my feelings and I pointed out that I am not good at math and he just rolled his eyes and huffed at me,"because you choose to have a block about equations, but you KNOW all kinds of weird mathematical shit because of Amir and you have a basic grasp of Ring Theory and thats just freaky, so dont even go there", so then I reminded him that I cant read music and that just pissed him off and he yelled at me,"yeah, because you freaking play by ear whatever you want after you hear it once or twice and you can pick out each individual instrument in a damned song and tell if its real or electronic and you can tell when someone is flat or just off and you know more than 10 different guitarists just by how they freaking sound on a couple of chords!" GIVE IT UP! Just go read something like freaking Scientific American or whatever and let us lowly mortals play our simple games and be happy!

I kept muttering at him about my failings, such as grammar and punctuation or my fashion faux pas such as wearing boots all summer long and the hideous gray wifebeater, and I was promptly told that idiosyncrasy and refusal to participate in the rules of English writing as a result of my personal revolt against the APA and MLA style Nazis does not equal humanity. Not even my perpetually screwed up hair issues got me any leverage, but then I played my trump card, my guaranteed in, proof that I am human and prone to weakness and incapable of handling one aspect of life, imperfect and fouled up beyond all repair! I.CANNOT. FIND. A. MAN!

"aww geeze, I guess we should let her play". We found most of the Scrabble pieces after the board hit the wall 20 minutes later.

Dear Roger, Texas Boys Lead Lives of Alley Cats

Well crap! Im loving life up here in the Northwest Territories and im even going to the coast this Friday for some fun on the beach, though I hear the water is cold enough to shrivel the balls right off my teenage son, and I have been slowly but surely getting stuff moved into the new apartment and getting things set up so we will be fully moved in and settled at the first of the month,so I am pretty damn happy. I did make the mistake of reading my hometown,Mt P.TX, newspaper last night online though and I saw that a fella I knew growing up had passed away, and while his death at the age of 35 was a bit shocking, it was reading his obituary that really took me to my knees and left me crying as if my heart had been ripped to pieces.

Growing up in East Texas, I got into come crazy assed stuff, it was just the nature of the beast. We all either had pick up trucks or muscle cars or some form of transportation that led us to all kinds of mischief around the oilfields and I ran with a crowd that was a mixture of stoners,cowboys,poor white trash, and oilfield trash. We would go park out by the Sulphur River Bottom and drink beer and listen to music and do all kinds of crazy stuff, including racing our vehicles, jumping off bridges, and just being wild Texas country kinds, and one of those kids was a boy I always called,"Sleepy" because he had this slow-assed, lazy nature and drawn out, almost asleep, way of talking that would just about make you crazy, and by the time Jay got done saying something, we all had pretty much forgotten what the hell his point was. He was a cute kid with dark eyes and the typical dark skinned, dark hair of an almost coon ass and my sis even dated him for a while. He was a bit of a smart ass, pretty cocky, but also sweet and easy going and funny as hell and he was always around when there was a party or something to get into. I liked him, and last time I remember seeking him he had grown up into a pretty decent looking man for someone that was a couple of years younger than me, but like most of my other running buddies from back home, I had lost track of him and I figured that he had either gone on to work at the mines or in the oilfields or maybe if he was damn lucky, he had gone onto college, but last night I found out that none of those had happened for Jay because he is dead. There was no explanation in the paper as to what had happened to him, he was just listed as a previous decedent of the fella that had passed yesterday, but I cannot imagine what the hell happened to him. We lost quite a few boys out of our class in school; car accidents,accidental shooting,suicides,a hanging,and other just plain Texas style accidents, and then later war took a couple and we have a few doing life in the Pea farm for some pretty heinous shit, but Jay was not one to really be involved in anything too terrible. He drank, smoked a little green and was a goofball, but nothing that shoulda got him killed. My sis tells me some of the stuff that my watermelon headed nephew gets up to back home and I am amazed that that boy has lived to reach the age of 18, with all the truck racing and gun foolishness and his rich-assed, shit house mouse crazy friends that he runs around with getting him into all kinds of stuff, but he seems to have inherited the family blessing that none of us ever die violently,(even when we deserve it), and he has escaped some crazy stuff. Just this past weekend some of his goofy buddies decided to run from the lake patrol in their mega-cab pick up truck down some back roads and one of the boys decided to go from the front cab of the truck to the bed to throw out some evidence of some fuckery, and in doing so his foot slipped off the running board at 75 mph and he was drug for a bit until his other foot slipped and then he tumbled off and was turned into road pizza, ending up face down in the bar ditch, unconscious and unresponsive with multiple broken bones and missing a whole bunch of skin. His brilliant buddies decided that rather than leave him for the ambulance or the cops they would scoop and run with him to the hospital in the back of the truck.He lived, though he probably wishes he didn't due to the amount of skin he is missing in painful areas, but it just makes me ask,"How the hell to any of them ever fucking survive to procreate?" The next question is,'Wonder if those pictures of me hood surfing on my '73 Mustang with a Lone Star in my hand on the old long bridge over the Sulphur will ever surface?"

Jay was a good kid, Im willing to bet he was a pretty decent man, and most of the boys back home grew up into pretty decent men even with all the craziness, or because of if. I am sorry and saddened to see that so many of them have passed, though I am thinking the next generation is going to do a pretty damn good job of filling their boots.

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.