Dear Roger: Dont Hump The Monkey!

So maybe getting Spencer a monkey chew toy wasn't the brightest of ideas. I thought it was cute. He liked it and he drug it around all over the house by the leg or the head, chewing on it and yes, off and on, humping it. He is a male puppy. Boys are weird, we have established that al long time ago. Daughter kept picking the monkey up and setting it out of his reach, and occasionally when he was working it over, she would make distressed noises and try to hand him his other chew toy which he doesn't much care for. When we were eating dinner the other night and Spencer was assaulting it in inappropriate ways, she asked,"What is he doing to that poor monkey?" I said that he was just wrestling with it, (after all, she is 7), but my ever helpful, watched too damn much Animal Planet, son, Stubby had to go and say, "No mom, hes trying to mate with it!" The look on her face was priceless, and everyone laughed, but she was not happy. She yelled,"Spencer! that's not appropriate at dinner time!" and then she marched over and took the monkey away from him and put it in her room. I knew things were about to get ugly last night when Stubby kept teasing her about Spencer getting bigger and ripping apart the monkey like Ferg used to rip apart his play toys, and then Stub made the fatal mistake, he said,"Im going to give him Jackson!"

No blood was drawn, and I managed to get them separated enough to prevent any serious injuries, but it was a close thing. She will do something vile to her brothers in their sleep one of these days for all the teasing and harassment they put her through, and honestly...I would have to testify on her behalf. They have been unrelenting lately and him threatening Jackson was the last straw. He got sent to bed early, and I spent a good hour talking her out of doing horrible things to him and calming her down.

Shes been in a rough spot lately. As the only girl in the house,(besides me and I dont count), she gets all the teasing and harassment. They gang up on her teasing her about her favorite fella, hiding her monkey, messing up her drawings, interrupting her skits and singing, and just attempting to make her crazy. She was like the only child for over and year, and now she is competeting with her brothers for time and attention and space as well as having to put up with all the crap they do to her. I am amazed she hasn't snapped more than she has.Some people tell me that growing up with 3 older brothers will make her tougher, I guess they have that right, but it will also make her meaner and a hell of a lot more likely to kick ass first and ask questions later, especially when a monkey is involved.

Dear Roger: Back to Over-Achieving

As if I didn't have enough to do, I have adopted a dog and I am working on training it as a therapy dog. Hes already been a much needed salve for my wounded soul, and just by having him and his goofy puppy self around, I feel happier and less stressed out for some reason. I dont know if its that new pup smell, or if if the fact that cuddling something that just listens and loves to cuddle without demanding anything is what I needed. Hes going to be a moose. Hes half Bull Mastiff, half Bloodhound and his paws are huge. Hes an odd color for that combination, (black with white markings), but I can see the underlying brown around his nose and eyes and hes got the mastiff muzzle and eyes with the hound ears and tail. Hes cute as hell and seems to be pretty damn smart. Hes already learned to lead and potty training is going well. The only accident has been on sons watch when he put him down on the rug before taking him out. Lucky it was a cheap rug from Ikea and it will wash.

He was flea ridden when I got him so before I even brought him in the house I went and bought a flea treatment and put it on him. He needs his shots and worming and a myriad of things that all pups need, and I have that scheduled for the first week of the month. I have decided to wait on the neutering until hes around 6months old, in order to give him some time to mature, the only drawback to that is that he has already spent a great deal of time humping his monkey chew toy, much to my eldest sons amusement and daughters horror.

Crate training is going well. He likes to have the space away from all the commotion and it gives me a place to put him where I know hes not eating sons guitar. I was never a fan of crating until I moved into an apartment, but I think its a great idea.

The kids have been over the moon with him. There was quite a debate over his name, and daughter got shouted down pretty quickly when she tried to suggest,"Jackson", so she was annoyed at us for a while, but my oldest son suggested Spencer, and daughter quickly supported it, and I really couldn't find anything wrong with the idea, so the new guy is named 'Spencer".

Stubby spends a lot of time in the floor, laying down next to him, talking to him, and that is what I was hoping for. Stub needs that. Sticky and the pup play all over the house and the pup seems to be really gentle with him, which is wonderful. My daughter has already asked me to build a saddle for him so her monkey,"Jackson" can ride him around. The humor is never ending around here now.

Work has kept me very busy this last week. I worked as an extra one day for a new show that is coming out this fall. It wasn't as much fun as working on Portlandia. I doubt I would do it again.

Daughter is still finishing her weeks worth of homework in less than a 1/2 hour and finding her spelling words and math to be a joke. She took a timed math test where she was supposed to complete as many as possible in 2 minutes. She took time to argue with her brother and throw a pencil, and still finished them all in 1.45 seconds. I talked to the principal about advancing her a grade or two in order to keep her from getting bored, or at least putting her in advanced English and Math classes and maybe leaving her in her class for everything else, though her art and such is also advanced for her class, he is supposed to be setting something up. Hopefully they will figure something out quick, the child has a temper and is already showing signs of frustration and boredom. If shes like this at 7, by the time she is a teen, she will be on the road to dropping out in frustration, just like I was.

My sis is still struggling with the suicide of her friend.I have tried to explain to her, that its not what she did or didn't do that would have made a difference, when the pain is that deep, its hard to pull back from that edge, you have to have some pretty deep and well set anchors and if you dont, then its easy to just take that final step off the edge. I have stood on that edge, one foot out into the space over the abyss, ready to drop and what pulled me back was a voice that said,"Mommy?" Without him I would have fallen and even then I have walked the razors edge. Self-loathing, depression, weariness of the soul, are hard things to fight. If you are alone or surrounded by friends, those things just seep into your soul and pull your down until you feel like you have nothing left. My sis is hopefully starting to understand, but suicide destroys those around it just as much as it does the person who commits it.

Dear Roger:Explaining The Seemingly Unexplainable

My sisters best friend shot and killed herself a few days ago. It was a huge shock to everyone because she seemed to have it all, a fantastic career, a good husband, and a happy life, and she was a tough chick who everyone saw as the ,'Strong one". But for some reason she saw fit to very coldly and calculatingly, lay out all her work materials so they could be returned, write letters to her husband and family, and then post a note on her front door telling her husband not to come into the house, to call the sheriffs department, and then once it was all laid out, she shot herself.

I grew up with this woman. We had fought when we were younger, made our peace as we got older and she was my sisters best friend, God mother to my nieces and nephews. I respected her as someone who really had her shit together and I counted on her to keep an eye on my sister.

When my sister called to tell me, she was understandably devastated and confused as to why her friend would do this horrible thing, but then she started telling me about what all had been going on in her life and I started to understand. The chick had always been, "The strong one, the tough one" and the person everyone looked to that would keep forging ahead when things got bad.She was the one everyone counted on to fight back the monsters and clean up the mess. She was battle weary.

Im not excusing her. But I understand her. Its scary to me though, because she had so many more reasons to keep going on and to keep fighting. Yeah, her family was just as fucked up as mine, but she had a great husband. She had a great career that she had just gotten promoted in and she never had to worry about money. I am constantly struggling and cant even afford a car. She had friends that she lunched with and went places with and regular human contact with a live man. I have a couple of friends I talk to a few times a week, and though its slowly getting better, I sometimes have gone for days on end without talking to another adult. As for contact from a man? Its been years. Pressure to perform...she was in a high stress job with demands on her time that involved peoples lives. If she didn't do what she was supposed to do and do it well, people could suffer and die. She traveled a lot and was under a lot of pressure caring for a sick family member as well. Believe it or not, that eats you more than anything else. That daily push to keep bringing in the resources to keep your world afloat, to keep everyone fed and clothed and alive, and to care for people who depend on you absolutely for everything...sometimes it leaves you nothing of yourself. The loneliness just builds and it becomes harder and harder to snap back from each loss or each stress. You begin to see yourself as a failure and as weak for not being better at what you do and you start to dwell on all the sins and mistakes of your past and you wonder about all the,"what ifs", you begin to dread the start of yet another day and another battle. Its not that you hate the people around you, its just that you hate yourself more for failing them.

It could be parents that made you feel like nothing you ever did was good enough, or peers that always seemed to be after your job and trying to stab you in the back, or that brass ring that was always just out of reach, something was missing. She had lost loved ones close to her and that takes a huge bite out of you. Not having close family connections and then losing the few that you are close to, can leave you feeling like you are adrift in the ocean with sharks underneath and nothing to cling to. Friends or family cant save you. You have to save yourself and finding a reason every morning to get up and keep breathing is sometimes the hardest thing to do. Laying in bed, thinking about how lonely it is, how much stress you have to deal with, all the demands on your day with no resolution to the problems unless you come up with them, is sometimes a horrible feeling. You dont want to face it. Even if you do have someone next to you, you can feel alone and lost, and if you are alone, its all the more difficult. Some people just have it in them to keep getting up and putting on their boots and facing the daily battle because they know its the right thing to do for the ones depending on them. She, I think, had reached a point where she believed the ones she was getting up for were okay on their own, and she was weary of facing it.

I am sad she quit. It scares me because if someone like her, who had her shit together and had it all, quits so early in the fight, then where does that leave the fuck-ups like me?

Dear Roger:Arguing for Arguings Sake and Souless Gingers?

Sometimes I have to wonder if my eldest son doesnt have a bit of a daredevil, Jackass, self-destructive streak in him? Last night was a prime example of why I have to wonder these things. He knows how his sister feels about young Jackson Rathbone, he knows that his little brother will take the other side of any argument and stubbornely and pugilistically defend it, to the point of partially destroying the house. So when he casually remarked at the dinner table after church that,'Gingers dont have souls, and Oh By the way Sis, Jackson is a ginger." I KNEW it was about to get interesting when Stubby jumped up and squawked,"You are wrong! Everyone has a soul!" Little girl fell out of her chair onto the floor clutching her monkey while her big brother grinned at me and went on eating his pizza.

I had to ask him."Why?" It had been a relatively peaceful evening. Eveyone had enjoyed church. I had enjoyed my peace and quiet at home, and I was looking forwad to sending them all to bed shortly and then going to sleep myself, but with dropping that bomb in the middle of the table, I knew it was going to be heated.

We do often engage in a family hobby of,'Defend your side." Its yet another one of the games I came up it and its a take on my days on the mock trial team from college where a topic is basically put on trial and one of the kids is the defence, another is the prosecution and I am, of course the judge. We hold a trial to see if the topic or sometimes even if the child is guilty of the offence and what the punishment should be. Its how we decided to ban video games, most tv programs, and quite a few other things. it gets the kids thinking. Daughter is really good at it and she will argue a stone to tears. Stubby is not so good at it. He tends to get angry and stomp off and throw a baby fit.

Son started presenting evidence about why he believed the aforementioned were gingers and thus souless, and I quickly disarmed daughter of the ballbat and reminded her that while wanting to defend the boy she adores and prays for daily is an honorable thing, using violence to do it is probably not the best way. I got her to start thinking up her arguements in his defense while Stubby just started getting louder and angrier. He is like a terrier. He gets wound up and angry and then wont let go of something until its dead or ripped apart, so I knew unless we got him settled or distracted quickly, it was all going to end badly. Daughter started presenting her arguments,(and subtle threats to my eldest son) and I had to say I was impressed. She will make a hell of a lawyer, (or assassin) when she is older. Son She glared at Stubby for interrupting her arguments and told him that if he didnt sit down and be quiet was going to,"Put a hurting on him" because,'Souls were at stake" and since she had been going to church longer she felt like more of an authority to handle it. At that point, Stubby stomped off to pout for a bit, and my eldest son listened to her arguments a bit longer and then tried to annoy her more by just picking on something else about her favorite boy, but she said,"You are just jealous, so I am done talking to you." and she took her monkey and left. I say she won that one. Stubby needs to work on his technique. He has always been more emotionally fragile than my other children and I try to get his older brother to see that, but its hard to know what to do. I mean do you continue to baby him and tell people to not pick on him because he will stomp off and cry, or do you work to help him become stronger and less likely to do that? Ive been struggling with that one since I got him back. Sticky tends to stay out of these, he knows they can get loud, and often boisterous, and often he is the one who contributes the topic for the trials.

Last night we also held one to ban all inappropriate tv for ALL kids in the house. My eldst son had a bad habit of watching objectionable shows when the little kids were around and even allowing them to watch. I dont allow the little kids to watch,"South Park,(though I like it)family Guy,Cleveland,American Dad, Bobs Burgers" or any of those garbage reality shows like,"Jersey Shore" and I tend to look down on people who do. So when Sticky came into the kitchen last night chanting,'DICK!" I was like,'What the HELL is going on?" Stubby dimed him off and said that they were watching,"SouthPark" with their brother and one of the characters had been saying that. Oh. Hell. NO. Big brother got in trouble,little boys got in trouble, and the edict was passed that if any small children were caught watching any of the aforementioned shows, that ALL television would be shut off for an entire MONTH.

Stubby promptly announced that it was not gingers that were souless, it was me.

Dear Roger: The Strange Parade

Soo...Batman went strolling by my front porch yesterday. It was late afternoon, he was wearing his full cape and mask and utility belt, but it looked like he had gone to seed a bit because he had a rather sizable pot gut. I dont know who he was after and I didn't ask.I just watched him walk on up the sidewalk, headed towards the center of town.

Its a constant parade of strangeness around here. A few days ago it was a short but cute guy in a ball cap and dark glasses with cowboy boots that went wandering by. He caught my attention because you rarely see anyone other than myself or Werewolf boy wearing cowboy boots around here. It mostly chucks or skater shoes. I was intrigued, so I watched him for a bit as he stood at the crosswalk and then meandered on his merry way. We have our usual guy who looks like Santa Clause on the horse,(heroin for those who dont know the parlance), he does his jittery, nervous, animated shuffle up the sidewalk, dressed for winter every day, headed to the church that hands out the free meals and showers in the mornings, and then back the opposite direction in the afternoon.

The really unusual ones make me wish I still had my Pentax camera with the telephoto lenses. The day the large, large, girl in the skin tight spandex dress with the Domme straps and boots with the wolf tail with the mohawk walked up the sidewalk leading the tall skinny boy in the shorts with the monkey head hat on...I would have like to have captured a picture of that. I dont know if they were headed to a munch or what, but props to them for being very OUT. The lady who rides the beach cruiser bicycle with the basket on it that carries the two small dogs wearing dresses while she herself wears a long flowing gown, also gets my attention because I have to wonder how the hell she rides a bike in that dress?

Its never dull on the sidewalk in front of my house. Most of the time its wandering street bums and people on their way home from work or school or the occasional lost tourist, but every now and then it looks like a scene from Portlandia.

Im sure my family just ads to the entertainment. Yesterday daughter was out front attempting to turn cartwheels and then performing her version of Tai chi, until one of her brothers came out in his boxers and started harassing her and they ended up in a brawl on the front lawn. I quickly broke it up and ushered them into the house, but that wasn't an unusual occurrence. My eldest son sits out on the porch and plays his guitar for hours on end, and the other kids either blow bubbles or perform skits that daughter has written.

I am hoping what was going on last night was a skit. She came walking through the living room leading Sticky on a leash telling him he had been a,'Bad Boy" and calling him,"Mr Snuffles". I just went back to writing and let it go because some days you just cant fight the weird.

Dear Roger: This Is The Song That Never Ends

Its been busy around here. I swear I feel like I have passed myself a few times on my way to do other things. I have worked, done all the laundry and dishes for 5 people, grocery shopped and then put away over $300 worth of groceries only to pull out some of it and cook dinner later that evening, helped with homework, done extra work at my job, picked up endless messes at the house, cleaned to cat box, cuddled upset children, talked to friends, scrubbed bathrooms,sinks, and floors, helped to turn a couple of empty apartments and walked a few miles to places I had to be for meetings and such as well as herded my brood to a park that was a good distance away. No wonder I passed out on the couch the other night and didn't hear my eldest son come in from being out at a football game with friends. He said I was on my back with my arms crossed on my chest like some,'Creepy vampire". I asked him why he didn't wake me up and send me to be and he told me he tried, but I didn't respond. I was that far gone. I guess my days of being a light sleeper are over with.

Being a referee will wear you the hell out. I think I spend more time trying to keep the mayhem under control than I do anything else. The oldest boy has the least patience with the little ones. He is soo tightly wound that its hard for him to just embrace the silliness of it all or to ignore it.I worry about him sometimes. He never seems to cut loose and just act silly and relax, and I try to remind him that things could be soo much worse. Life is stressful if you let it be, but if you just laugh, it will eventually work out somehow. We aren't that bad off. We are all fairly healthy, we are all together, and we are all reasonably sane. He tends to dwell on the things we don't have or the things he thinks we need. Yeah, a car would be nice. But we don't have one and I don't have the money to buy one and nobody is going to give us one, he needs to understand that and just move on. I have and I just work on figuring out how to function and get around without one. He never dances with the kids in the living room when we are having one of our silly dance parties, even though his baby sister begs him to, and that's sad. He says he wants to be an actor or a rock star, but I tell him that he better pull the stick out of his ass and learn to lighten up and cut loose or he will never make it. The little kids have it all figured out, most of all my little girl and Sticky. They never seem to dwell on what we don't have, and they make due. The only time I have seen Sticky stress even a little was last night when his glasses got broken. He was up past bed time, giving my eldest son a hard time, and they got into a grappling match over something and Sticky's glasses somehow got into the fray. The earpiece got snapped off right at where they connect to the eye piece. It was devastating. Everyone froze in shock and Sticky dropped to the floor in tears. "My glasses! Im blind without my glasses!" My eldest son felt terrible, I was sick and just in shock. I called the ex to see if he had or could find the spare pair I had bought last year, but he was more interested in yelling about my eldest son breaking the main pair.Lucky for us, our guardian angel saw my tweets about the catastrophe and not only sent me a link to an agency that could help us maybe get him a new pair, she also brought us by a tube of super glue at after 10:00 at night that fixed them right up! If not for her, my poor son would be going to school blind today, as it is , hes sitting here right now wearing his glasses smiling and happy to be harassing the cat before he gets dressed for school. Like I told my eldest, it all works out in the end, you just have to have hope.

Its meeting after meeting today. I have to go to an IEP for Sticky this morning and then meet with a Developmental Disabilities case manager this afternoon to see what services the state of Oregon wont be able to offer him. I hope they can at least provide some kind of decent services that will help him get prepared for an independent life, but with budget cuts and so on, I figure I am his best bet and I just continue to do what I cant to teach him. Walking anywhere with him is such an ordeal. He is like Ferdinand the bull in that he likes to stop and smell the posies, pick up sticks, sit around and look at everything, and if you annoy him he will just sit down and put the brakes on, refusing to move. He weighs over 75lbs now and its hard for me to pick him up and baby carry him when he does that, so coaxing him along is my only option. He has terribly flat feet too, so he ambles along due to that as well, making progress slow. I am dreading the rainy season and I am considering looking for a good used jog stroller, though my eldest son was horrified with the idea of his 11 year old brother riding in a stroller..I had considered a wagon, but that would be even more conspicuous. I am just going to have to find a 3rd job and work harder about getting a car.

My ex had the yard sale yesterday. He gleefully called me early in the morning to tell me that he had made over $300 selling the rest of my barn wood furniture, and my Texas star tables as well as some of my art and decor. I asked him if he was selling any of his jewelry making stuff that he rarely if ever uses and he said,"No". It was only my stuff that he sold. He made over $500 during the day and when he called me last night I asked him if he was going to help us out any. He grudgingly agreed to contribute $200, but hes planning on keeping the rest to help himself. How nice...my things being sold to help him. I just keep telling myself,"They are only things, I have my kids." I win.

Dear Roger: Off To Battle...Again

I should be getting ready to go be an extra for Portlandia today, but im not. Not because I got rejected or anything, in fact I got my email last night about when and where to report, but because I had to email them back that I couldn't work for them today due to the fact I have to deal with kid issues. Its not the kids fault, its the world at larges fault.

When I became the parent of a special needs kid, I realized just how much the world actually mistreated them. People that wouldn't dare drop the "N"bomb or call a gay person the "F" word, have no problem using the word "Retard" like its no big deal. I hear different variations on it in conversations on a pretty much daily basis, from all levels of society. I have even heard it in college classrooms. I tend to drop people that use it regularly and who know I have a kid with Downs because I think they are just attempting to start a fight with me in some passive aggressive manner.

My own family rejected my son when he was born and it was what really lead me to realize that my parents are not very nice people. I can still see my mothers face as she glared at the doctor who had saved my life and the life of my son, after I introduced her to him the one time she came to the hospital to visit when Sticky was in the NICU, and I can still hear her say,"He should have told you something was wrong so you could have done something." Done something?? Like what? It wouldn't have made a difference if I had known he had Downs, other that I would have been better educated from the get go about how fucked up the world is.

He got rejected by private preschools in Flagstaff because they,"Didn't have time or resources to deal with issues like him and because they are private they don't have to." A nice attitude for a Christian school. He is forever getting left out of things like church and such because he needs a little more supervision so he doesn't wander off, and he gets left out of play groups because he is slower and not as athletic as kids his age.

His schooling in Flagstaff was excellent for the most part. We got lucky when he was in Cromer because he had people there who loved him and who wanted what was best for him. The were friends and neighbors and his one on one aide was like the granma he has never had. She worked with him constantly and taught him skills he needed to get by in school and she prepared him to go on to the next grades.Because of her and the aides like her, he can read and do basic math and many other skills at about the 2nd grade level, which is outstanding for a kid with his disability.

He is a tiny little guy. His sister is a 2nd grader and she is taller than him even though she is 7 and he just turned 11. I had him retained in the third grade one year back in Flagstaff to give him time to catch up, and that seemed to really help, but I was shocked to find out that up here in Oregon, they have decided that he is ready to be in the 6th grade!

I was expecting him to be in the 4th grade along with his brother, his current IEP respected and honored as is the law, and for things to roll along as normal, but NOOO. The Sped people have decided to try and turf him off to a middle school self-contained program because there are no kids his age in the special class. In all my life, I never expected Oregon to be more ass backwards and repressive of the special needs student than Arizona. I mean, this state looks liberal and progressive on the outside, but then they promote warehousing of the mentally handicapped in isolated classrooms, based on age and not academic ability. My son is reading and doing basic math, but he needs almost constant supervision and direction to keep him on task with work he doesn't want to do and they tell me that he will get that in a program with the bigger kids where the ratio is 15-1 and he is most likely the smallest kid in the school?

They were feeding me this line of bullshit this last week, telling me that all the other kids at the elementary school are developmentally much younger than him and that he would be bored, but they don't know my son. Hes not a big, macho guy. Hes quiet and shy and though he loves Irish punk rock and the 100 Monkeys and he sings inappropriate songs at times and enjoys announcing his farts, hes just a little guy who also enjoys playing with his younger sister and watching cartoons. The guy who was in charge of feeding me this line of bull had a posh British accent, and I don't know if I was channeling my Scot/Irish ancestors or what, but the more he spoke in his condescending, 'We know what is best for your child" tone, the more I got angry and ready to inflict mayhem. I managed to keep it to breaking my pen, but they could see the tension and anger rolling off of me.

I am going to go over to this middle school program today and I am going to check it out and observe how they operate. If I am not satisfied they have his interests at heart, I am going to have to get an advocate and then start filing complaints with the school district and the under IDEA and get a legal advocate involved and all that fun stuff, but I wish they would just do their jobs, after all, this district spends millions of dollars teaching English to children who are not here legally, and they even but them to special programs, why should my son get any less treatment?

I would rather be working today. But instead I will be dealing with this today. Of course his father jumped right in the middle of me for it, claiming that he should have stayed in Arizona where they had a good program for him, but then I asked, "And live where, in the van?"

The schools around here are not perfect. My daughters,'Gifted" programming is pretty much her helping teach the slower kids in her class. She will probably get bored in a few years and I will be struggling to keep her from dropping out from sheer frustration. She already commented that she didn't see the point of going to school, because they "couldn't teach her anything".

It doesn't pay to be special at either end of the spectrum. The slow kids get warehoused and the gifted kids get ignored until they start getting in trouble. I am starting to look for a charter program for her or a private school that offers scholarships to gifted kids. I will keep battling for my son so he gets the tools he needs to be able to survive in the world and I will battle for my daughter so she will get the things she needs to help her fly.