Dear Roger; Pay Close Attention, Sometimes Its What They Dont Say That Is Scary

Chance gets home from camp today, and after he relaxes a bit and unpacks and I assess his injury to make sure he doesn't need to go see a doctor,(he managed to hurt some ribs in a game of chicken with a few other campers), he and I are going to sit down and have a talk about some things he has said over the past few weeks, things that I have come to believe are a cry for help that I have sadly missed hearing up until just recently.

I know my son has issues related to the abuse we went through back in Arizona, and I know that the time in Texas helped with that somewhat, but it didn't fix everything and as he has gotten older and his teen issues have started hitting, the damage to his psyche has become more evident and I really think its time to put my foot down as a parent and say,"This I will bear no more!" and even if it means negotiation and perhaps agreeing to give up my coping tools of smoking to deal with my stress, I am going to insist that he get into counseling for his PTSD.

I know you have read that alot in this blog, and whether you understand it or not, its a bitch to live with and it can destroy you as a person and make live with you, a living hell. At my worst,I would not leave the house, I kept the curtains drawn and the front gates locked, and when I went out for things like groceries, I wouldn't hardly make eye contact with men and I carried a gun...everywhere.Older men who approached me were in danger of getting hurt because they were a threat and I reacted to them as such. My temper was hair trigger because I was ALWAYS on alert, I slept 2-3 hours a night, if I slept at all, I had skull crushing migraines, I didn't eat, in fact I got down to 97 lbs at one point and I wanted to die. I started smoking and drinking and all kinds of self-destructive behaviors to try and cope with the pain, and I avoided people. Its been a damn long road back, and I have lost friends along the way, and made a few as well, and its a constant struggle, but there have been major successes. Finally getting away from Flagstaff and the cause of my worst stress has been huge, and after I did that I had some of my greatest breakthroughs. I no longer carry a weapon at all times, I have gone off,'Alert" status and I have been able to do things like ride public transportation and be in crowds, and even talk to strangers and cut loose a little and have fun and I laugh and smile and I sleep, but I have noticed warning signs in my son, signs that I lived and I am going to to try and get him help before he gets much further down that long dark road.

He commented to me a week or so ago that he related to the song and video,"Love the way you lie" by Eminem, and I didn't really pay attention because I consider that singer a misogynistic punk, but last night I was watching MTV for some odd reason and the video came on and my blood ran cold. I had no idea and I found myself in tears by the end of it as I relived things I never wanted to live again. If you can, imagine that video, only picture a little boy and other children, standing there,watching, and put a gun or a razor in the mans hand. He never threatened to burn me alive.No, he threatened to,"Cut your throat,give you a Columbian necktie,take a picture of it,send it to all your friends and then dump your Goddamned body down a well on the Rez". This was after the time he put a gun to first his and then my head telling me that there was nothing if I left. My son witnessed this, amongst other things, and this is my sin,my burden and my shame that I have to atone for and that I have to fix.

My other children have been in counseling and seem to be coping well, and since they were all very young, they do not remember too much and they didn't understand what all was going on, but since he was much older, and not my ex's biologically, Chance caught the brunt of the overflow and the beating in the front yard was the cumulation of that.

Such a happy, talented child that loved music and art and who had such big dreams, has turned into such an intense and quiet young man who more often than not listens to dark and sad things, and I have to pull him back from the edge.He used to be a talented piper who won awards as one of the youngest bagpipe players in Northern AZ, but now he absolutely refuses to touch them, and hes very negative, even saying that he doesn't want to play sports and he hasn't been skateboarding in weeks, so I have to change that, because we made a deal to leave the darkness behind and I am going to help him do that, even if at first he doesn't want my help.

Made more progress this week. Got a new bank account started and that will enhance the separation from the ex, and give me much more control and autonomy and I finally got a change of address filed as well as my voter registration and library card taken care of,next will be my drivers license even though I do not have a car. I am looking for work and up dating my resume is a bit of a pain in that ass because I am the worlds worst at keeping track of dates and contact information. I am also trying to get all my stuff into NAU so they will finally get the English dept to either give me a yeah or nay response about if I am attending for Fall or if I am starting in Winter, if they screw me around too long I will just get all the stuff on over to Reed and do what I would really life to do and apply there and go back to being a site based student so I am work on my whole,"being around people" issue. Reed is a much more expensive school, but it also seems to be a much better school, so I am not to stressed either way. I just love being back in school, so something has to happen soon either way.

Dear Roger: Stevie Rae-Music, Monkeys and Sunshine, or How I let my 6 y/o Design My Next Tattoo

My small daughter is a force of nature. The fact that she is alive and kicking after what she was born into, is a testimony to her will. She was born 6 weeks premature,sick to a sick mom during an emergency c-section. We both spent 10 days in the hospital with just each other for company while I recovered from heart problems and she recovered from an infection and other issues. She was a tiny little thing, but fierce and demanding, and from the get go she had me wrapped around her little finger,much like anyone else she happens to meet. She was named for a hell of a Texas Blues guitar man and a Hells Angel and there are days when I believe she channels both of them. She is brave and fearless and tough, but with a delicate femininity that I really dont know how to deal with sometimes. She has butt-length blonde curly hair that is a challenge for me to take care of, but she gets really pissed off when someone mentions cutting it, " I am a GIRL, not a boy, I am supposed to have long hair!" She insists on wearing dresses or skirts most days and picks out her own outfits that are often wildly exotic combinations that oddly enough work. She wears boots most of the time,(like her hero,Jackson Rathbone), and she coordinates them with her choice of stuffie for the day. She GOES hard all day long, and has never been one to take naps, she dances and pirouettes all the damn time and just trying to keep up with her is an exhausting feat.

Her passions are as varied as her moods, though a few have remained consistent over the last few years. She loves to draw,dance,sing, and she LOVES the 100 Monkeys and Jackson Rathbone. She knew the music before the knew of the guy and the first song she ever really started singing was,'Keep Awake", unfortunately she decided to sing it in her kindergarten class and that is how the principal and I got to be on a first name basis. She cut me quite a bit of slack because she knew that I was doing the best I could as a parent, considering I was on my own with my kids, dealing with PTSD due to years of Domestic Violence, and then not one but 2 cancer scares that hit me, the loss of 3 close friends within 6 months, a winter where we got 12 feet of snow, my oldest son being in Texas, and just a huge shit storm of horrors that made life misery, and the 100 Monkeys were our sunshine, that is what Stevie called them,"Our Sunshine" because in the dark, sad, hard, days when we didnt have enough money for food, and I was soo damn sick I couldn't move, we had their goofy music to cheer us up and make us smile and to keep us moving forward. Soo, we had a family meeting the other day and we were discussing just random wants, needs, and hopes for the next few months and I mentioned that after I get financially a little better off, I am going to get another tattoo, and while I had a design in mind, it was decided that we are not going to keep reliving the dark and the past, we are here and happy and moving forward and our days are now filled with music and even though its known for being overcast and rainy up here, we have sunshine and light for the first time in over a decade, and in fact my son telling me that he has never seen me smile so much in his whole life, has really affected me, and I am trying to make sure I focus on things that are positive and happy every day, so my new tattoo that is going on my left forearm to cover up some scars is not going to be,"Memento Mori" with a bunch of other symbolic stuff, Oh Nooooo, its going to be what my enamored and artistic daughter suggested; a band of sock monkeys, all with distinct characteristics, and backed by a bright orange sun. I started sketching it out last night, based off some pictures from the concert we attended.Stevie has her own take on the idea, but it wont fit on my arm and my back is already tatted up with dark stuff and the scars on my neck are going to remain as a reminder that even in the sunshine sometimes the shade creeps in.

Dear Roger;A Few Small Repairs

I think we have found a cure for what ailed me. Though I am not foolish enough to believe that all my problems have been magically fixed, I do know that I am doing a hell of a lot better up here than I was doing back in Arizona. Its been almost a month and I have not had a migraine. No familiar smell and taste of blood, no loss of vision in my right eye, no shooting pain in the side of my head that comes in flashes over and over and makes me feel as is I am being repeatedly shot in the side of the head with a shotgun loaded with rocksalt until I puke my guts out. I am sleeping better, in fact, I am willing to bet I am averaging around 5-7 hours a night! That is about a Gosh damned record for me for the last 10 years! I have been able to be in crowds and even approach an speak to men I dont know! Yeah, he was about as threatening as a puppy, but still it was a crowd situation, he was a stranger to me, and I had my child with me, all situations that would have left me a stuttering,twitching mess a few weeks ago, but I didn't to any of those things! I was able to be polite and speak clearly and normally and not fall apart!Chance commented on that after we got home that instead of being tense and stressed that a strange guy had touched my arm, I was actually happy, and that I had a grin on my face for almost the entire day. He even said he could not remember me smiling so much...ever. That is really sad, my son doesn't remember me smiling much, but I am working on changing that and its a lot easier up here. I am still a little wary at times, and I have had some twitchy episodes, but that is usually after I have had to either deal with something ex related or Chance and I have been bickering or just some extreme amount of stress has descended upon me. Counseling for my PTSD needs to be restarted and I need to find some kind of structured physical outlet for myself so I can build an appetite, because my weight loss is worrisome and I cannot afford to buy clothes to accommodate my shrinking frame if I get much smaller. I got down to 101 again and I know I have not been eating properly since we got up here, but getting distracted up here is really easy and I forget to eat and when I lose track of time its really easy to miss meals. The kids seem to be doing good and Stevie is the happiest out of the bunch, though she is pretty spoiled at times, and I take full blame for that one. My guilt over her living in such a dysfunctional and destructive environment for her whole life is not fair to such a sweet girl, and she has the explosive temper of someone who has seen too much. She got made at me yesterday because she wanted to go to another 100 Monkeys concert,"Right NOW!" I told her that they weren't in Portland and she wanted to know where they were and I said that I really didn't have any idea, that I wasn't their keeper and they were big boys that had lives to lead, so they could be anywhere. She said, "When will they be back,I want to see them again!" Soo, I got online and I looked around until I got a list of tour dates and ball-parking it I told her they might be back in around 6 months or so and that they were in California. "We need to go to California then, I want to see them again." I told her that it was 11 o'clock at night, it was past her bed time, she was too young to be a band following groupie and I was too old and that if she was a good girl and stayed out of trouble in school and quit biting her brother, when they came back we would get tickets and go see them again,without Chance. "I WANNA GO NOW!!!" I remained patient with her because I knew she was past tired, and I broke out a map and I showed her where they were vs where we are and then I told her that I would put her cd and that I would get her a t-shirt, but that she needed to go to bed, and then we got to the gist of the issue,"Mom, I miss Conner and Cole and Fergus, I wish they could have gone with us to the concert." Yeah, honey...me too, though I think Fergus might not have enjoyed it as much as we did. I finally got her to go to bed and she settled down and was out in a few minutes, but I realized that she has said a few times that she misses her brothers and our dog, but never her father and that when he calls she always quickly asks to speak with her brothers or the Fergus. Nobody wants to talk to him, he is such a hateful ass and our lives up here are so much happier without him. I think I may end up gaining an inch or two in height because I dont slouch or cringe near as much as I used to, I do know that my smile has returned and hopefully it will stick around.

Dear Roger;So I Name Inanimate Objects, That Doesnt Make Me Weird, Thats Just Texan

Chance and I had a bit of a discussion last night over the fact that he is of the opinion I am a bit ,"Odd". Now I may be, and thats fine, I own my oddness or weirdness and thats always been something I am proud of, but he tries to claim that I am embarrassing him and ruining his,'Game". I tend to remind him that he is 14 years old and as such, she should not even have a ,"Game" yet, as he cant drive and isn't allowed to date yet, so there is no,"Game" to be worried about, but he still finds me embarrassing, and I guess that some of my behaviors might be a bit off-putting to teens, but it could be worse. I am not getting arrested and ending up on COPS, I dont run around with my boobs hanging out or wearing booty shorts and hitting on his friends, I am not a drunk, out at the bars every night of the week, staggering home with a different flavor of the week boyfriend. Nope, I just do things like wear the wrong clothes, do my hair the wrong way, get a little wound up on occasion and twitch or stutter when I am angry or nervous,listen to the wrong music, and I tend to give inanimate objects names.

I have had the nickname,"Calamity" for many, many, years, and I dont have a problem with it. I write under that name on a few websites, and its a long running source of humor with people who know me and the life that I have led, so it is more of a compliment to me than a source of shame, and when I am playing a 1:1combat game I use it because its fun to go in and kick some guys tail, take all his goodies and then let him find out that a middle aged chick is running that name. My favorite truck was named,'Wild Bill", and it was an awesome truck that survived rolling down the side of the I-40, 4 times in a blizzard into a ravine, without killing me, and I even drove it for a few months after that until a dumb ass roommate wrecked it on the way back to Yuma. My favorite pistol was named,"Duke" and that was a truly wonderful .45 that I still miss. Now my home security consists of a Louisville slugger that is named ," Major Jack" and when Chance asked me why I call it that I told him that if I ever had to his anyone with it they were going to get majorly jacked up, and he just groaned and shook his head. I actually had a hell of a swing with the expandable baton when I was a deputy and it was my favorite go to weapon. My favorite boots are,'the guys" and what is funny is that my other kids know what I am talking about when I ask them to go get,"the guys" for me. My BOB had a name, but im not gonna go into that, it was really private and since he is no longer with us due to the unfortunate accidental abandonment and then discovery by my ex, I will just mourn him quietly and smoke a cigarette in his memory while I shop online for a replacement.

Oddness,weirdness, and strangeness has been a part of me my whole life. I have always been ,'Different" and strange and weird and I kinda like it that way, and when kinds used to try and use that as a way to hurt me when I was in school, I just got weirder and pushed their boundaries a little further. I was a pretty tough fighter for being a bit of a runt, because I tend to lose my mind when pushed too far or when someone hits me first, but most of the time I was able to just dazzle them with the fact I could out think them and talk my way out of any problems. My son thinking I am weird is normal, hes a boy and I actually think hes pretty weird, but then that is the nature of the beast. He does a lot of things I find disturbing and distressing and just plain gross and strange, but that other parents of teen, adolescent and even 20something y/o boys tell me that is perfectly normal, but YECH! Some things I just didn't want to know or observe first hand or find in the laundry.

Dear Roger;Blind and Clueless? Even My Sis? What The Hell Happened?

Well, I dont know what has happened, but apparently I am the only adult left in my family that even attempts to try and keep up with what the kids are interested in and involved in or listening to anymore. I just dont get it. When you were around, you knew what I was into, HELL! You took me for my first mohawk! and you encouraged me to listen to all types of music and try all kinds of new stuff and check stuff out.You didn't discourage me from my photography and even looking beyond the common stuff like Ansel Adams, though when mom found out that I was more into the really off the wall images like Mapplethorpe and stuff she wanted to shoot you for a little while, but she never really got the whole appeal that I found in the body studies in the black in white images, so she was just squicked out by me seeing naked guys I think, but then again she never understood why I always gravitated towards the odder stuff when I grew up in a small Texas town where that stuff wasn't talked about, and it was because I wasn't held back in the summers I was around you and grandma and grandpa and it did me a huge service! I still have a love of the new and the different and the fun and the adventure of life and all that is to be seen out there in the big wide world, and I love all types of music and art and literature and going and seeing and doing, and I am trying to imbue my kids with that same idea, that there is a whole wide world out there and they should get out and try a little of many different cultures and ideas so they dont have such a narrow view of the world that they stop seeing.

I will admit that there are some things that I do tend to be a bit narrow minded about, and usually its things that might come back to hurt my kids, or that could potentially be detrimental to their well being, but I really do try hard to get past any learned or developed prejudices that I have gained over the years, and as a former cop from a border state, yes, I did develop some prejudices and issues due to experiences that I had on a personal level, and it has been very, very hard to get past them and see some people as individuals and not as the same group that I handled for drug dealing or robbing or murdering or assaulting innocent people, and someone throwing a child at you so they could escape with drugs tends to leave a scar on your psyche, but I am working hard to get past that image in my head so I do not pass it on to my kids.

The rest of my family has not been so open-minded though and that kinda bugs me. I have Pookie who I still think of as my Aunt even though she is all the way back home in Thailand now, and her two daughters are my adopted family members, and even though they aren't my blood kin, they are my family and I consider them just as important. Ali is half Iranian, and her father is never far from my mind though I know we will never be together again, I miss the times we had together and he was an important part of my life. I have had a wide variety of friends and acquaintances and even dated men from exotic locations,(much to my parents dismay), and even men much,much younger than me,(much to my kids dismay), and I think all the variety has made me a well rounded person who is more willing to consider the struggles that others may be going through, and that perhaps im just a little bit more forgiving.My attitude towards many things has changed over the years, and I have become more liberal as I have gotten older, and I think that just comes with realization that its just not worth ruining some kids life over a damn joint, or if they want to be just as miserable as straight people with all the hassles of divorce and that crap, then hell, let em. I could never go back to being a cop because I simply could not rack some kid up over a little weed, though when it comes to meth or driving drunk, I would every time. There are many things that I just dont feel are any of my damn business, like what celebrity is sleeping with who, and where they were seen or any of that stuff, I believe that they need to be left the hell alone when they aren't working. Chance told me about some video he saw on the news about that poor Pattinson kid getting jammed up by the photo rats and that the cops refused to help him , and I wished like hell I was those damn cops supervisor because they would been walking the graveyard shift in the ghetto for the rest of their very short careers for such piss poor public service. I dont buy magazines or watch those kinda shows or crap because it annoys me that people harass kids like that until they make them crazy. I did security for a bit, and I got to see just how nuts it gets and it could be very easy to come to hate folks in a very short while, many people have no manners and no common sense and when you mix booze and libido into it, things get out of hand real quick, oddly enough especially amongst the damn women! The worst I ever had to deal with was a drunk chick that thought she was going backstage no matter what" and no short little dyke looking cop wannabe was gonna stop her" .I really enjoyed that take down, and I swear, suit casing someone that outweighs you and is taller than you by a good 5 inches and then dragging them 20 feet to a cop car should not be as fun as that was, but hell, I was easy to please back then and the pay was great.

I sent the picture of Stevie with Jackson Rathbone, to mom and dad and sis, yesterday and I get a call from mom asking me,"How in the hell did you get Chance wrestled into a suit and smiling?" and I was confused for a bit., What are you talking about momma? Chance doesn't have a suit and last I saw him he was still scowling at me for daring to wake him up before noon. "Well the PICTURE you sent us" she says sounding all annoyed, like I had lost what few marbles I have left. "Hes got his arm around Stevie?....Whos that in the background too?" Now she sounds annoyed at me. Momma... thats NOT Chance! "What! Oh dont be silly, the picture you sent just yesterday!" Momma....can you pull up the picture again?now IM getting annoyed, "Jennifer, I think I know my own grandson!Those dimples! and Stevie is in it in some parking lot, he needs to shave by the way. Are you letting him grow a beard or something? hes really looks better without all that fuzz hes looking thin, is he eating? MOM! pull up the DAMN PICTURE! THATS NOT CHANCE! now my sister gets on the phone, " Heeeey Beyaaach, moms showin me some picture of Chance and Stevie in a parking lot, what the deal?" Sis, are you wearing your glasses? "Nah, I only need them for driving". BULLLLSHIT! go get your damn glasses. "'You dont have to yell, hang on im putting them on...ohhh who the hell is that boy?" now my moms back," Who is that kid with his arm around Stevie and where is Chance?" Chance ran off with the band, Stevie wanted to and I am now insane, dang it mom! I told you guys for over a month that we were going to a concert of the 100 Monkeys and that is Jackson Rathbone. My mom says,"Who is that? and is promptly echoed by my younger than me sister. Go ask Bailey Joe, I gotta go have a beer. "So this isnt Chance? No mom, he wont be caught dead in a suit and he doesn't smile, he prefers the brooding/sullen & skinny jean/rock t-shirt with orange clown fro look.

I may be getting older, and I may have recently realized that I need to wear my goofy looking circular framed, trifocal(Jesus wept) glasses more than I can got without them, but I do stay up on most of the current things in my kids lives, and even if I dont particularly care for their style or type of music or movie, or dress, I do at least pay attention and see if its something that they should be involved in, that is how I know that I dont allow anything like reality based crap like Jersey Shore on in my home, and that Brokencyde really annoys the snot outta me but that Chance likes them like I liked Ozzy. Black Veil Brides is not my favorite, but I will most likely be buying tickets to their show here in the next little bit because he really wants to go. The Warped Tour is another thing we are looking into and as long as he keeps an open mind and is willing to consider my favorites as well, we will keep up with the sharing, even if it means I buy the tickets and he pretends he doesnt know who I am once we get to the show, I expect him to return the favor when we go to shows that I want to act a little nuts at in the future, I behaved myself really well at this last show, and I was in "Mom" mode, but it was not easy because a raging fan was lurking under the surface just dying to escape, though never in front of my kids.

Dear Roger:Revocation of A Man Card, and As Good as I Once Was

Today started off with a groaned out,"Fuuuuuuuuucccccckkkkk." and an attempt to bury my head under the pillow until I realized I could not breathe,followed by the sound of the reason I could not breathe, the damn landscapers were back, mowing and hedging and blowing crap all over the place until my once hibernating allergies had come back to very angry and surly life. I felt much like I would have felt as a younger woman fresh from a concert and night of drunken debauchery, but there was a couple of things missing! Mainly the drunken and the debauching, there was nary a willing young man to debauch to be found and I was home and sober and behaving by no later than 9pm, so as best I can figure is,I just overdid it a bit with the move of all the furniture the other day and then hiking all over hell and half of Portland finally caught up with me. Plus I didn't eat or drink anything but 3 cups of coffee from 0900 in the morning until 9pm that night, except for a couple of slugs of Dr. Pepper and a couple of slugs of water, so I was a bit dehydrated and hungry. Carrying Stevie a couple of blocks didn't do me any favors either, because she may be a tiny little thing, but she is freaking solid and almost half my body weight!

I discovered that I need a little more padding on my scrawny ass before I go sitting on wooden beams for an extended period of time, especially if my goofy ass is going to be jamming and dancing about, because I have very interesting bruises on both lower butt cheeks and its not a lot of fun to try and sit on a hard surface.

Today was mostly spent laying around being a slug and talking to family and rubbing a very jealous nieces nose in Stevie's little moment, though not too meanly though, I did send her a copy of the picture and a few of the concert pictures, because Bailey Joe was the one that was the first fan in the family, and as tall as that girl is getting, I dont want to be on her bad side because she is as mean as a broke backed snake and if we go back to Texas for a family reunion, she might just kick my ass, she is after all,my sisters daughter and she comes by all that meanness honestly. Her question was,"Waaallll Helll Aunty Jen, Why didn't you just grab him up and toss him in the truck and bring him on round here, hes not so very big, you coulda took em." To which I replied,"One-Stevie would kicked my ass, Two-BAILEY JOE! Does your momma know you talk that way? Three- No truck" and she just busted out laughing and said,'Of Course my momma knows I talk this way, where they heck do you think I learned it?" We had a good chat back and forth for a bit and then I went and just hung out in my bedroom for big chunk of the day until Chance got home.

My son wasn't in much better shape and he complained that not having money to eat or drink all day before the concert really sucked, and I agreed with him, so my number one project this next week is to close out my old bank account and keep my ex from having any access to it at all so we dont get caught short like that ever again. I would have loved to have gotten Stevie a t-shirt at the concert, but that was impossible and I kinda resent my ex for that, as well as costing me the ability to take her to dinner, so I am fixing the problem once and for all. Hes going to have to manage to take care of his bills on his own because I have bills I have to take care of and I cannot support him. I made it on my own, supporting 4 kids and a vastly more expensive house payment, so he needs to man up.

Speaking of,'Manning up" pooor Chance, we may butt heads pretty hard, but we always seem to be able to tease and joke with each other pretty easily in the good times, and when he got back today I started right back in on him. Soo son, get your "Man Card" re-validated by hanging out with your buddies and beating on rocks and sticks? "Shut up! Mom! Jeesh, that crap wasn't funny, and I still do not believe you that you didn't know there weren't gonna be any guys there!" But son, there were guys there the fellas in the band are guys and then there were those two guys in front of us,oh wait, never mind the two guys in front of us, but the guys in the band were there, but wait a minute, I want to make sure you are clear after that whole "Criminal Minds" episode..."JESUS!!! MOM!!!! STOP!!!! OH.MY.GOD!!!! Im leaving, im going to Susan's, shes not so weird." Im just saying son, he is a cute lil thing and if your feeling confused there are... 'MOM! SHUT UP!! OMG! I have teased him off and on all day, though its been on a wide variety of topics related to the whole day. But I could not resist getting him on the whole masculinity worry one more time this afternoon when he came walking into the living room,scratching and burping and trying to act all caveman, guylike until I went to change the channel off,"Icarly"."Why are you changing the channel?" Because "Icarly" is coming on and your sis is busy reading to her stuffies and doesn't care. " Well, I wanna watch it, thats like one of my favorite shows". Say what? "I love that show, its cool." And then it dawned on him what he had just admitted, and to whom he had just admitted it to. Just hand it over. "What?" Your man card, and dont you ever bitch at me again about going to a concert I pick, because I will out you on every single social media/networking/teen place in existence as an "Icarly" fan the minute you do.

Dear Roger, Stevie Rae is in Love With A Monkey, and to Tell the Truth Im Crushing a Little Myself!

Well we made it to BOTH concerts and back home in one piece, though it was quite the adventure! Stevie did not quit singing and hopping around the house singing the praises of the guys in the band until after 11pm, when she abruptly fell asleep in a pile of her stuffed animals, still clutching the monkey t-shirt that she has advised me that I am never to wash again because Jackson Rathbone touched it when he posed for a picture with her at the Voodoo doughnuts acoustic show that they put on before the concert at Doug Fir.

We left the apartment at 1200 and headed to downtown Portland because we weren't sure exactly where the acoustic show was going to be, and I had written down directions off the internet, but being that I cant seem to find my butt with both hands in this city yet, we weren't exactly sure where we were going, so we ended up walking a few miles out of our way. Stevie Rae was a good sport about it though, she was soo excited about the possibility of meeting her hero that I probably could have told her were were marching to Arizona and she would have been up for it. I ended up calling the shop to make sure we were headed to the right place and luckily we got some good information and we ended up in the right part of town at the right time by just pure dumb luck and she ended up getting to sit in the very front row at the acoustic set, less than 10 feet away from the band. She was so excited she was squealing and almost vibrating and she was blushing and hiding her face like she was a freaking teenager! I was a bit disturbed to see just how much she freaked out over the boys, but I am hoping she was just amped up over the whole vibe that was going on in the crowd. I was pretty happy myself and I really enjoyed the music, and I am not gonna lie, there was not an ugly one in the bunch, so have a group of good looking, in fact strikingly handsome fellas to look at, made my whole week. They gave out free Cd's after the show was over and we headed out to walk back to the Doug Fir, but then I thought, "This is a once in a lifetime chance for her, she is such a huge fan and they seem like such nice guys, I will kick myself if I dont try" so I nutted up, embarrassed Chance to death and walked over and asked Jackson Rathbone if he would take a picture with her. He never faltered, he was so damn kind and nice and gracious and polite that I have to say, it sure shows that that boy has some damn good parents who did some good home training, because he was soo sweet to my baby. He posed with her with his arm around her at her level and he smiled really big and it just made her whole year! I thanked him and HE. TOUCHED.MY. SHOULDER! (end of fangirl moment)and I held it together until we left the parking lot and then I SQUEED loud enough that Chance wanted to find a hole and hide in it. 'MOM!" Hes young enough to be your SON! Thats GROSSS! siiiiiiighhhhh....such a buzz kill

Anyway, we walked back to Doug Fir and got in line for a couple of hours for the paid show, with Stevie soo buzzed up and high on Jackson vibe that she was bouncing all over the place and eager to get inside and be close again, it was like she was on some kind of weird crack or something and im pretty worn out tonight from trying to keep her from driving everyone in line crazy with her antics. She looked up at me once and said,"Mom, I kinda love him." with the most serious expression on her face, and I said,"Really? weelllll, Im sorry sis, but I have a very strict No boys until you finish college, rule that I will enforce no matter what or who, so talk to me after you graduate from Texas A&M in about 15 years." she looks at me and just says,"Oh".

Poor Chance was pretty much the only straight guy in the line to get into the concert. He was teased by some of the girls in the line and he begged me for a railpass so he could go back home without us, but I wasn't about to let him leave and ride all the way back to Gresham Station alone. After we got our Will call tickets he saw a couple of guys show up and he kinda perked up and even pointed out that he wanted to do his hair like one of them, but he quickly changed his tune and turned kinda sullen when they started making out with each other in front of him. I asked him if he still wanted to do his hair that way and he just glared at me, I guess he didn't find that amusing. He did like the band and he was really impressed with their musical ability, and it amused him to see that Rathbone had the same,"I like Boobies" wristband that he has. He pointed it out to me and said,'Great minds think alike".BOYS!

Stevie and I sat up on one of the log rails that extended from the upper deck so she wouldnt get stepped on and we could both see the show. My tailbone has a bruise on it from sitting on the hardassed thing for the entire show like a damn horse, but she was able to enjoy herself and even dance and wave to the guys and interact a bit. They smiled at her and she just giggled and came alive unlike anything I have seen since before we left Flagstaff!No sadness, no tears, no,"I miss..., just happy, we all were, even Chance,(though he would rather not admit it), it was a much needed shot in the arm of joy and fun and I thank those boys from the bottom of my heart.