Dear Roger:Priorities

I am not one to just sit back and let things happen. The minute my ex said I could have my sons back, I started working on the,"How" of getting them up here. I may be a, "Micro-managing bitch" as he has called me, but I do not like to leave anything to happenstance. I am also not good at asking for help. If not for my friends, I would not be trying to get people to help me, and I would be selling everything I own in order to raise the money to get there. I still have a contingency plan to do that. I asked my ex to photograph my Keen Cutter advertising print and even though I love it, I will sell it to raise the money.

My sis tells me my parents were only interested in getting my things from my house before my ex loses it. That is not happening. I will have my things put into storage and shipped to me slowly before I allow them to be taken back to Texas to be peed on by animals or thrown in a garage and forgotten, or given to my mothers,'adopted" daughter in Arizona. That just made me angry, and I wish my sis hadn't told them anything. My friends will help me get my things, and they will make sure they get where they need to be. My children are the primary concern.

I finally overloaded on stress a bit yesterday and took a bit of an unexpected nap in the floor for a few hours. I just remember feeling really weary and dizzy and the next thing I know I was looking at my boss who was asking me if it was okay if she wrote that I was an ex-cop in the complex newsletter. Son tells me I laid in the floor, deeply asleep for around 3 hours. He said he wasn't worried because I was breathing and occasionally muttering in my sleep. Its good to know the boy doesn't freak out about his mother laying unconscious in the floor! I think it was just because I hadn't eaten properly for a couple of days, I was worn out, stressed out and I just needed to shut down for a bit. I felt like I had a hangover afterwards, and I ended up going to bed early last night.

My daughter is really excited that her brothers are going to be here. She has been buzzing around, talking about tea parties and going to the park and all kinds of fun that she can have with them. She has missed her brother Conner the most. Because of the Downs Syndrome, he is closest to her in size and he is always willing to play with her without being unhappy about getting dressed up or being told hes now a monkey or a puppy or something. The often had very cute and creative games that they played. Getting Conner here sooner than later will put my mind at ease, I know he will need a good medical check up and probably a lot of dental work. His father has been supposed to take him for weeks and hasn't had the time, so I will get that done. He will have to have a 1:1 aide for school and the bus, both boys are going to have to have clothes and shoes and school supplies because he told me yesterday that they have nothing. Im going to be broke financially forever, but for the first time in over a year, I am going to be the richest woman alive, my boys are coming HOME.

Dear Roger: At Long Last, Hope...Coupled With Stress, Of Course

He finally agreed! After more than a year of me begging and pleading and trying to convince him it was the right thing to do, my ex finally agreed last night to let me have my sons!! Now all I have to do it figure out how to get down to Flagstaff to get them and then back to Portland. I dont have a car. I don't have any spare money, and I have no idea how the hell I am going to do it, but I have to. My ex got a foreclosure notice and he is losing the house by the first part of October, he has absolutely no money, in fact they cannot even buy gas to get to town, which is probably a good thing considering my ex most likely has a suspended drivers license. He is selling off things to raise money to buy things like tolite paper and dog food. He doesn't want to send the boys to school when it starts on Thursday down there because they don't have decent shoes. I have to go get them. I was up most of last night trying to figure out how to to it. I have looked at Amtrak tickets, car rentals, and I have been emailing friends. Today is going to be spent trying to get ahold of my Domestic Violence case manager to see if he has any resources he can tap to help me out to go get them. I have estimated I can do it for around $1000. Thats if I rent a car and drive, sleeping in the car,and packing my own snacks and keeping it conservative. The train would run about the same amount, though it would take longer due to just how damn slow Amtrak is. I haven't even considered flying because flying into Flagstaff would be insanely expensive. Last time I looked into the bus, that was almost as high as flying, which was just crazy. Im contacting friends, rattling cages all over in the hopes that I can get this to happen. This is the first hope I have had in so damn long. He has given up and he wants them out of there so he can concentrate on packing up his stuff and getting it out before the house is taken away.

There are things there that I want to get as well, but my boys are my priority. Things can mostly be replaced, other than my uncles painting, but I dont even know how the hell I am going to get that back home.

I need to get them before school starts up here on the 7th of Sept, that way I can get them to the doctor, get them some stability and somehow get them what they need. I am going to have to work 4 jobs and have less than 2 lives, but at least my sons will be home!

Dear Roger: Beating My Head Against The Wall Isnt Enough

Its been a busy week again. I managed to crush my right hand between the bottom of the worlds heaviest couch and my friends Durango, and though x-rays revealed that no bones were broken and that it was in fact only severely bruised with crushed tendons and what not, it still hurts like hell and it has made getting things done a real pain in the ass. I have a splint I am supposed to wear, but considering the damn thing goes to my elbow and makes my arm sweat, it spends more time laying on the couch next to me than it does on my arm. As long as nobody bumps it and I remember to not pick anything up with that hand, I am okay, though it makes typing a real pain in the ass and slow.

I was an extra for a tv show this week! It was pretty damn fun and it involved a little bit of acting, and even making some noise and talking, so I guess I wasn't just window dressing. I had a blast and though I got paid, I would have done it for free. I got to hang out with a bunch of adults, talk about fun things that I am interested in, watch a comedian I find really funny do his thing and just hang out. It was like being on a playground with the cool kids and I was one of the cool kids for the day. Another casting director wanted my information for some shows she casts, and if it leads into other opportunities that will be awesome, but if that was it for my foray into acting, so be it. I had fun, but it would be hard for me to enforce my,"College and then a REAL job" policy for my kids if their own mom is running around doing play acting.

Son and I have been butting heads pretty hard lately. He has been a full on jerk at times and I have reached the point where I just take things away and tell him to walk away from me. The day I went and got the couch and furniture, he had been so damn hateful to me, I took the hotspot with me so he didnt have internet access except on his phone, but he used that to post hateful comments about me on Facebook. My ex husband called me to tell me I was being trashed online and to ask me what the hell I had done this time. In spite of all of his faults, he is good about giving me a heads up when son is on a rampage like that. It eventually blew over, but I am weary of it. He is so damn spoiled and I know I have only myself to blame. He suffers from 1st Texas son syndrome. I am a Texan. He is my 1st born son. It was just me and him for a long time and I turned him into a little prince. He has always been over-indulged in that way. I love my other children just as much, but he had me to himself for a long time, and he was spoiled and it has carried on. I know quite a few Texas sons, and those that are onlys or eldests, tend to be the worst spoiled, but its just something us Texas mothers tend to do and its hard to undo.With school starting back soon and his brothers coming up here soon,(hopefully), we will have some time apart and less time to focus on each others annoying habits and maybe the bickering with ease up. I can only hope.

My friend from out of state that was going to go to the 100 Monkeys concert with me is not going to be able to make it, so I am going to end up taking a friend of sons, another teen boy. I would pretty much rather take a boot to the head that deal with Beavis and Butthead at the concert, but I hate the thought of wasting the tickets and son insists he "Really wants to go". I rue the day he realized that there are lots of girls at the concerts, though I still tease him mercilessly about his lil crush on Jackson Rathbone due to the Criminal Minds episode. I thought about printing off a picture from the episode and taping it to his door, but I do value my computer and I fear it would suffer violence at his hands, either that, or he would keep the picture and frame it, just to traumatize me and his sister. He is such a contrary lately that there is no telling.

This next Sunday is the concert and I am both excited and apprehensive. Daughter was a little disturbed to find that it was on a Sunday and that she was going to miss church in because we were going to be wandering around town and going to the Best Buy thing. She is very much a church girl, but coordinating meeting up with the folks she rides to church with and our transportation to the concert would be a huge hassle, so I just told her no church. She was not happy, but when I gave her the choice of church or concert, she chose concert. She has been super excited and wound up this week Her monkeys have been drug all over and she has informed me that she is taking Jackson with her again. Her father made a comment last night that he wanted to see the end of that,"Little obsession" and that comment pissed me off.

She is 7 years old. She has been through the wringer in her young life and has done nothing but succeed and overcome all of it. She witnessed much of the abuse, she has been separated from her brothers and her pets and she lost Fergus too. She is growing up without the normal things most little girls have and she hasn't complained. So what is she loves a funky little rock star and so what if she carries around a ratty little monkey she named after him? Its her comfort and the one stable thing in her life. She no longer asks to take it to school or church, and I can convince her to leave him at home on occasion, but if my ex thinks he is going to come up here and try and usurp everything we have established and destroy her happiness in some half-assed bid to try and become a semi-decent father figure, he has another thing coming. He let her down time and time again. She has replaced him and she is happy.

He says he is coming up here. He got a foreclosure notice on the house and he has until October to get it figured out. He is selling off things, including my things, to raise money and he is talking about coming to Portland to at least get my boys to me. All I can hope for is that I can get my boys and get them in a stable setting and let them know that its only going to get better now that we are together. I just have to hope that once I have my boys, he will find someplace else to be.

Dear Roger: Surreality-The Weirdness That Is My Life

What a week! We finally have a couch though it nearly cost me a broken hand. Its a monster of a couch, 7ft long and all steel and wood and black houndstooth material, its very, very cool and probably the heaviest couch I have ever owned. When we were loading it into the back of my friends Durango, I managed to get my hand caught between it and the back end of the truck and ended up with,"Severely crushed tendons and a deep bone bruise" on my right hand of all things! It never fails that some damn disaster befalls me when I am at my busiest.

Work has been going good. I enjoy it and I am meeting people and starting to get out and try to actually socialize some.

I am making my first foray into acting today. I have been called to be in a funky show on the IFC channel. I am pretty excited about it and its just pretty much being window dressing, but wow! I like the show and I watched it regularly when I had cable, so I am pretty jazzed to be on it. If this is fun, I will see about trying to be in others, more often.

My writing is going along okay. I am considering taking the story into a little more twisted angle, but I have to get over being squeamish about writing the more explicit sex scenes first I guess. I just have read sooo many bad ones, I dont want to repeat the mistakes I have seen. I like to write erotic without smacking people in the face with all the,"Pulsing and throbbing" what have yous.

The kids are driving me nuts. School doesn't start back until September 9th and I am sure I will be insane by then. If I have to put up with sons smart assed snarky attitude much longer, I will lose my mind. Daughter is turning into an insomniac. Last night she realized that it was 10 days til the 100Monkeys concert. At 1130 at night I had a 7 year old in freak out mode. I was in my bed, at that stage of sleep where you are all relaxed and almost dead to the world, when I felt something touch my cheek. I jumped and opened my eyes to find her standing over me with her damn beady eyed monkeys. "Its almost less than 10 days til they are back!!!" she gushed at me.

I sat up and told her that if she didn't get her narrow ass out of my room and into bed, I was gonna whop her, her monkeys and him when I saw him, just for all the damn aggravation! My heart about jumped out of my chest she startled me so damn bad! It was dark in my room and to have someone standing over me! Hell, all she needed was to be singing,"Keep Awake" and the scene would have been perfect. I heard her brother laughing out in the living room, so I know he put her up to it. It took me a good hour to go back to sleep.

I have decided to go to my 25th High School reunion in April. I am probably going to take the Amtrak back there, but either way, I am going because there are some friends I want to see, and I want to see my sis. Its time to go home for a bit to just say,"Hello" and be the scandal to give folks something to ponder for a bit.

Dear Roger; Virtual Pasture Parties

I think I have decided to actually try and go to my 25th high school reunion. It will coincide with me turning 43 and a decent time of year in Texas, so going back home for a bit might actually be a good thing. If I have a car by then, I will drive, if I dont, I will fly into Dallas and then drive on home and maybe visit some folks in the outlying areas. I have close to a year to prepare myself for it, so I will figure it out by then. I do actually miss some folks back there. Some are kinda surprising, a gal I hardly ever spoke to in school because she was one to the 'Preps" has turned out to be someone I kinda enjoy chatting with, and there are people I played baseball with as well as just hung out with that I have discovered I do kinda miss. I also want to go pay respects to those who have passed and I want to see my sis.

My hometown folk have started a Facebook page and people get on there and just talk about all kinds of things. Some nights its like sitting around the tailgate of a pickup truck talking. All that is missing is the sound of whip o wills and tepid beer. I love reading the postings and catching up with people. Some of it is heartbreaking though, as I have found that some people I knew have passed on, in fact way more than I expected.

I do miss Texas and many of the folks back there. Its been hotter than hell back there though, and I wouldn't like that, but its going to be in April so I guess it will be tolerable.

Going back to see them will be fun. No pretense on my part, I am who I am. Yeah, I am,'Deeply and creatively weird", my private life looks like a train wreck and I am constantly broke, but I am a minorly published author, I am breaking into acting and you know what? I am a survivor and I am happy and comfortable with myself. I have no one I care about impressing. That is such a cool feeling. I dont care what anyone thinks about me. I lived most of my life with my own parents thinking I was gay or on drugs or just a huge disappointment to them, and in February, when I decided that I was done with them, I felt free. I am just me now. I write fic, I have some silver in my hair and wrinkles and I can burp like a truck driver. I perv after younger men but couldn't get laid if I fell out of a chickens ass, but I am happy. That is the way to be. I will be taking that with me when I go back and I think I will be a better person to know.

Writing is going pretty good. The hits on my stories are insane and I guess I should keep at it. Its a good feeling.

Dear Roger: Getting Priorities Straight?

Well, I did it. I finally nutted up and took the kids to see the final Harry Potter movie. I had put it off and stalled, using excuses such as bad timing, no money and not feeling well, but the truth was that I wasn't sure I was capable of handling it. I find it really unfair that people who will freely admit to crying over the death of a cartoon deer,(Bambies mom) or a movie dog when,(Old Yeller), make fun of people or say people like me ,"Need help" because we are bereft at the death of fictional characters that we have loved and followed for TEN YEARS.

I cried reading the book. Seeing the things I had read, acted out by actors I like and respect, was powerful and moving. Realizing that not only have the children who started those movies aged, but so have many of the others and that is soul clenching.

I cried during parts of the movie. It would have been much much worse had I not been prepared by my friend, but thanks to her I was at least prepared and able to maintain some dignity. The toughest scene for me to take was the scene in the forest where Harry sees and speaks with his lost loved ones. That scene just ...I shook with the power of my sobs and that was when my son actually patted my back. He understood.

My son was most affected by Lupin and Snapes deaths. He had heard what was going to happen, but seeing it got to him. We all walked out of there much more subdued than we went in, and there wasn't much talking on the way home other than an argument that I think was more a stress response than anything else.

Its been warm up here this week. I have actually enjoyed the heat and not being cold for once. I am probably the only one, but its nice to not need a hoodie in the middle of summer for once.

I have started slowly getting school clothes for the kids. Its not easy, daughter has grown like a weed and none of her jeans and almost none of her dresses fit so she needs EVERYTHING! Its all expensive and even though she isnt as picky as her brother, I like her to look good. My son is the problem child. He is a teen and at that age where what he wears is as important as how it fits. I have tired to step back and allow him to chose his own clothes and such, but my Lord the boy dresses like a twink. I finally told him flat out the other day that if he insisted on wearing skin tight skinny jeans with tight fitted tees, huge clunky shoes and a douchey small fedora, that if he got hit on by men, he better not get pissed off and rude, he should just politely inform them he just had poor fashion sense. He was not amused. I am not amused either, the boy stole a pair of MY Levis and has been wearing them. The are forever ruined and he had the audacity to complain that they,"Bind his bits", well DUH! They are made for a woman! I dont know how he thinks they look good. He is bigger than me, and taller so they are too short for him and waay too tight, but he wears them half off his ass so it looks like his knees are backwards. I have been tempted to pants him again just to prove my point,(once again),that wearing jeans hanging off your ass that low, is a bad idea.

He has other jeans. In fact he has several pairs of Old Navy jeans, but he wont wear them. He bitches about his t-shirts claiming I shrink them, but what he fails to realize is that he is growing! He cant wear a mans small anymore. He is in a medium headed to a large. He is too broad in the chest and hes getting to long bodied, but he doesn't realize that. He has outgrown his coats, his drawers, and pretty damn much everything. Its just like a financial apocalypse of the teenager kind.

I found myself a couple of pairs of jeans yesterday. I am lucky im not picky. I found them at a secondhand store for 4.00 a pair. Both were Old Navy, one still had the tags on them and the other pair looks brand new. Its hard for me to find a size 4 in black up here, so I got lucky and I grabbed them. Im not too proud. Im clearing out my western cut jeans. I am going to donate them to a woman's shelter so that someone might get some use out of them, after all, I haven't worn them but maybe once or twice in the past year and I have to keep moving

forward.

My writing is going pretty good. I am still shocked at all the hits my stories are getting. I have already hit over 1000 for this month and after hitting 7000 hits last month, I am on track to hit that again this month. Its an amazing feeling! I am even working on another chapter of my most popular story about back home. I may even take the advice of several of my friends and un-fic it and see about submitting it for publishing to see if anyone is interested, though I would leave the fic version for all the readers who have loved it.

The countdown to the concert has begun. Daughter is already in freakout mode on a fairly constant basis and she did something soo strange yesterday that I am still sitting here wondering if maybe I should limit her tv viewing even more or if I should just accept that she has become a child of Portlandia? You know she loves her monkey,"Jackson" with all her little heart? She carries it almost everywhere and sleeps with it, talks to it, plays with it. The goofy thing is her best friend. She also collects other monkeys, but they are secondary to Jackson and rarely rate her attention very long. Well, yesterday I found her another monkey for her collection. It was a cute one, blonde colored and a nice quality beanie baby.When Sus and I went by to pick up her and her brother to take them to a surprise lunch, she was forced to leave Jackson at home by her brother. She got into the car and I handed her the new monkey. She squealed and hugged it and decided his name was,"Fredrick", and she took out her "cell phone" and called Jackson.

The conversation was soo weird! She said, "He is soo excited to meet you too!" She chattered on and then said,"Love you too, bye!" and hung up. She then informed all the shocked passengers in the car that,'Fredrick" is gay. I have to say, that is a first for me. There was silence in the car for a bit and I just said, "Okaaaay." So, now what? I know I have raised my kids to be open minded and to believe in,'Live and let love", but amongst stuffies? What about Jackson? How much of what she said does she understand? I know she has clued in on a lot of things and she knows that our neighbors are a couple and she is starting to develop some,"gaydar", but her father would lose his ever loving, homophobic mind, not that there's anything wrong with that.

Dear Roger: Monkey Surgery and Writing Jags

Im writing again. Yeah, I know I write to you pretty much weekly, but I started writing another story. Its actually a sequel to one of my more popular stories, and yeah I am being a total candy assed wuss by sticking with the fic genre and not trying to just develop my novel and take it out of the realm of characters that have a developed fan base, but I was getting a lot of requests for a sequel for that story and it really fit best in that world. Excuses, excuses! I know, but hey! At least im back at it. I've been pretty shocked and humbled to see all the hits the story has gotten. In one month, all my stories got over 7000 hits! I couldn't believe it. I was soo freaked out I actually ran into the living room where son was asleep on one of his mattresses on the floor in front of the tv, and I may have jumped up and down on the foot of his bed yelling and whooping and about getting all those hits to my stories. Son was a bit unhappy with me at first, but he got over it pretty quickly and congratulated me. I'm steadily working on more chapters to load every other week or so, and I have other stories that I have been working on that I might finally finish fleshing out and do something constructive with, or I might just work on the type that is the most popular and end up cleaning it up, un-ficcing it as has been strongly suggested by some friends, and submitting it as a series of short stories to some publishers. I dont know if I will ever develop the juevos that will allow me to do that, especially without you around to nudge me into it, but I like to think that I would have back when I was younger and more able to withstand having my pitiful efforts ripped to pieces.

I worked some pretty awesome mom-fu the other day, I managed to repair daughters,"Jackson". His sewn on smile had come unstitched and she came unglued, crying and upset that he was falling apart. honestly, the poor thing has been all over hell and half of Portland. Drug in and out of bags, pockets, from around necks, its made trips through her brothers underwear when she has made him angry and he tortures her by stuffing the monkey down his pants to horrify her,(poor monkey has a permanently startled expression for a reason),the cat has molested it in ways that really just boggle the mind and will likely horrify her further when she is old enough to understand what was going on during those,"Wrestling" sessions. Anyhoo, I consulted with people in the know as to what should be done, and they recommended snipping off the pulled thread from the smile, and then restitching over with new thread.I have no problem snipping any monkey that is going to be around my daughter, but I had to wait until she left for church to keep the freakout on her end of things down, so once she was gone, I got that done, but then...I couldn't see the end of the damn needled to thread the mismatched thread I was going to have to use because I was out of black thread. Luckily, I had a black sharpie! Jacksons smile is now back to its normal, maniacal, self and she was none the wiser.

The new job is going well and I am liking it so far. The boss tells me I am popular with people,(so far), and I guess I am doing okay at it.