Dear Roger: Temper, Temper

My son says I have a temper.I don't think its so much of a temper as a lack of willingness to suffer fools and poor behavior. Case in point, I have been a customer of Sprint since May. I own 4 lines of service for which I pay a SUBSTANTIAL amount of money each month. My bill is paid up, I have been an excellent customer and I have rarely complained though I have had some ongoing issues with my phones. I have the LG Optimus S phone which as my research has found, has some gremlins. Its does fun stuff like freezes and shuts off for no reason and with no warning, so I have been walking around part of a day, thinking that my phone was on, while my daughters school was trying to get ahold of me because she was sick, when actually it had shut itself off in a weird fit. The media player stops in the middle of songs and the whole phone wont do anything until you shut it totally off and restart it. All kinds of cute stuff that I could go on and on about. My sons phone does the same thing and more. I had called SPrint and they had walked us through a hard reset which wiped all our stuff and supposedly fixed the problem, but all it did was cause us to have to go back through and reset up all our things. I called them back, they said,"We will replace the phones since they are under warranty and you have the insurance as well, just take this ticket number to the nearest store and they will take care of you." Sooo, I went out in the rain, ticket and screwy phones with, and went to the store I loathe because they always treat me like I am some goofy old woman, and they looked at me like I was a crackhead thief and said,"We aren't replacing your phones. We dont care what the people at corporate said, we are a sales store, we wont do it." Things deteriorated from there. I spent over 2hours on the phone being transferred around, hung up on ,condescended to, lied to and just treated like they had me by the short hairs. I finally got cut off again so I called AT&T. They have IPhones with more features, a better service plan,and its almost $100 cheaper a month. In less time than I spent on hold with Sprint, I had new service ordered from AT&T. I would rather pay the early termination fee than be treated like a punk by a company that doesn't appreciate me.

I was angry though. There have been companies that have pissed me off and I have never done business with them again. Restaurants, stores, what have yous, if I get treated with disrespect, I will walk past them and pay more to go someplace else. I am the same with people. Maybe I hold a grudge too long, maybe not, but being treated with respect is a huge thing with me. If I am giving you my money, I damn well expect to at least get common courtesy. When I am met with respect, and even someone who goes a little beyond and acknowledges that I am a person? Hell, I am loyal to the bone, but treat me with disdain and with disrespect? I employ a scorched earth policy. I pay waay to damn much for clothes for my son at the local Zumiez store, but you want to know why? Because every damn time I walk in there, the manager looks up, says, "Hey Jen! Hows it going? And he remembers what I have bought in the past, he actually offers decent suggestions for what my knuckleheaded son could use and he thanks me for giving him my hard earned money. That is why I shop there when I could buy him cheaper clothes elsewhere. Its the same with bands and music. When I went to see Flogging Molly, it was a huge ordeal. I had to save up to buy the $38 ticket. I got it months in advance and I felt guilty for buying it because at the time that was a lot of money for my little family. The trip down there and back on the Max took the last $2 I had. I didn't even have money for a t-shirt or anything, but I had the time of my life and I left that show feeling appreciated because Dave King stood on that stage and he acknowledged that he KNEW that many of us in that audience had spent money we couldn't afford to come see him, and he thanked us for it and he meant it. That someone acknowledged they knew the the true cost of devotion and love of music to some of us, was amazing and it cemented in my heart the love of that band. It ensured that when times got better that more Flogging Molly album and t-shirts joined my old ones.

Everyone already knows the reason for the whole Monkey loyalty thing. The ex has given up trying to dissuade her and when he finally sat down and listened to the whole story,he realized that playing second fiddle to a rangy little rock star was better that not being allowed around at all. He was looking around her room the other day and he commented that there were no pictures of him on the walls. She said,"There isn't any room. I have my art and my Jackson pictures and my Harry Potter pictures, so I don't have room for you." He didn't take that very well, but he knows he fucked up and for the majority of her life he hasn't been a positive thing for her, and the man who has been, takes up much of the important space. Shes not holding a grudge, but hes going to have to work hard to make up for all the bad karma that hes so worried about because sometimes one temper loss in the wrong way can cost you more than you think. I work on keeping my under control and contructivly managed, he needs to learn how to do that before he goes trying to usurp a monkey.

Dear Roger: That Old, Familiar Feeling

My ex arrived up here last night. The one thing I had hoped to avoid more than anything else has finally come to fruition. Like an albatross around the mariners neck, he is mine, signifying my doom. I will never be shed of him. It was as if all the joy and light had gone out of the world and the hand had once again clamped around my throat, slowly tightening.

He brought the dog I told him he couldn't bring, and the boys were thrilled to see it. I told him the dog couldn't stay and he said,"Well kids, your mother says I have to get rid of him so I guess I should just let him run out into the road and make it quick." He laid it all at my feet, finding a home for the animal, or taking it to one of the overfull shelters, none of which are accepting animals. Luckily for me, my son had heard of a rescue for the particular breed and when I called them they said they would take him, but it would be a couple of days before he could be picked up. Of course he has had no vet care in the past year or shots, so I will need to get those done. Yet the boys still see him as the hero and me as the monster. They want me to get rid of my dog, Spencer, because he is newer. I dont understand. I just dont get how he has managed to fuck up my sons so badly in such a short amount of time. My eldest son got frustrated with how he was speaking to me the minute he walked through the door, so he walked up to him to say hello and to let him see that he now looks him in the eye and is just as broad shouldered as him, hes no longer the scared and small 12 year old he beat in the front yard like a misbehaving dog.

My daughter has hovered around the periphery of the situation. She is eager to show him things and talk to him, but nervous as well. She doesnt really know or trust him anymore. She has seen the dark side of him once too often and she worries. He has already told her to "Be quiet" twice, and that rankles me to no end. My daughter is the youngest and the only girl in a house full of savage boys, she is vying for attention and to be told to be quiet is cruel. I saw her shrink physically when he said that, and it pissed me off. I had come from her parent teacher conference thrilled that her teacher told me that my daughter is a born director, leader and a force of nature who has a goal in mind and the ability to reach it. She is driven and vivacious and outgoing and a happy child. I like to think that I did that by getting her out when I did. She has had over half her life away from him and his influence, never being told to shut up or go away or that she was stupid. She has been supported and loved and encouraged and allowed to love who she wants and follow her dreams, he was already making snarky comments about Jackson last night, and if he keeps on I will send him down the road. He threw away my eldest sons stuffie that he had from the time he was a baby. A battered and chewed but much loved stuffed bulldog named,"Churchill". My son had gotten it in Yuma and had carried it with him for over a decade. It had been stitched up, re-stuffed and was retired to a shelf in my sons room. When we left, somehow , Church got left behind. I asked the ex to please put him in storage with a few other things and I would gladly pay the fees, he said,"oh that old ratty thing is long gone, I threw all that shit away." He threw out all my eldest sons things, most of my stuff, and a good amount of my daughters things too. I dont know what possessed him to do that, but it was evil and I fear he would attempt the same with Jackson if given half the chance. He knows his position has been usurped in her heart and he hates that, and I worry that he would try to force her to love him because he is her father.

I hate this. I hate he is here. My stress level is through the roof, the boys are behaving as typical kids of divorce, not wanting to listen to me and playing us off one another, and he keeps claiming he doesn't want to cause problems while he continues to make passive aggressive comments and little digs at me about everything. I wish I could just run away for good.

Dear Roger: Dont Neuter The Monkey!

I have finally surrendered my room.Son got given a very nice full sized platform bed so he gave his twin bed to daughter since she has vastly outgrown her toddler bed mattress on the floor, so she now has an Ikea platform bed in my room in twin size. These rooms were not made for this level of occupation. I am lucky to have the space that my queen sized bed occupies to call my own. My decor of the tin wings and the fugly mirror and other odds and ends, is rapidly being overwhelmed by monkeys, though I was a little distressed when I came to bed last night and discovered that the monkey daughter had designated as,'Mine" to care for and what not was missing from my bed. I have no idea where Fredrick the gay monkey may have wandered off to, and I spent a good 10 minutes at midnight last night searching for him, afraid that if I didn't find him, my daughter would judge me a failure in monkey care. I can only hope he was sleeping over with one of the boys. But anyway, my life has been usurped by monkeys. They are everywhere in my room and in my life. I even had to pull one out of my boots yesterday before I could get dressed. Daughter has them arranged all around the room and she tucks them into her bed when she goes to sleep at night, her special one, Jackson, snuggled right up against her, his beady little eyes peering out at me as I try to settle in for the night.

The decor on her side of the room is an homage to her favorite boy and his band. His smirking mug is everywhere, and while its not unpleasant to look at by any means, she gives me the stink eye if she catches me looking too long. That is kind of difficult to avoid, especially since she hung a picture of him right over my bedside table!

Her brothers delight in tormenting her. They steal her monkeys, especially Jackson, and do all kinds of crude and cruel things, just to hear her shriek in horror. I warn them that she is one of those people who believes in revenge and they best let her be, but they never learn and then they are shocked when she puts the smackdown on them or she does something to thier guitars. I know she loosened all the strings on sons guitars last night after he came walking out into the living room carrying Jackson in his mouth. That grossed me out more than a little and I happily reminded him that not only had that monkey been tossed into the middle of Portland city streets, he had also been wrapped in a soaking wet with sweat, headband from young Mr.Rathbone that had left the monkey soggy as well. He had been jammed down countless boy pants, and had been dropped on gnarly Portland city sidewalks.( The monkey needs a bath, and badly but daughter would end me if I even tried it. Apparently the sweat has made him sacred, I think its made him stinky and more than a little unsanitary, but I like sleeping.)The look on sons face as he realized all the implications of what I was telling him was priceless, and he quickly spat the monkey out and went and washed his mouth out with half a bottle of my mouthwash, but then he came back and simulated neutering the monkey while daughter howled in anguish. He said,"And that's what will happen to the real thing if he ever comes around my sister." as he dropped the monkey to the floor and stomped away like a mighty hunter, the little boys trailing after him, preening like cavemen after a successful kill. Daughter was disconsolately laying on the floor, the monkey clutched to her like some character out of a Shakespearean tragedy.

Its never dull around here.

I managed to perk her up by showing her pictures of her favorite boy at his movie premier last night. She saw how he was dressed and her eyebrows disappeared into her scalp. "Is he wearing makeup?" I told her,"Yep." She sat and looked at all the pictures, smiling, though her eyebrows hardly left her scalpline. Her brothers came out to see what was going on and the comment was made that her favorite boy was as pretty as she was. She stuck her tongue out at her brothers and said, "I dont care if he does like boys, I still love him!" and she flounced from the room with her monkey in tow. I think I have raised her right.

Dear Roger: Cave Dwelling For A Reason

I dont like most people. You know that. People who I have let into my rather insular existence know that, and the world around me picks up on it rather quickly. I have my reasons. When you have been either shit on or brutalized by a large chunk of the world, it tends to color your opinion of things. I prefer to just tend my own knitting, stay in my hidey hole and write, communicating with the world around me via social media or in vary limited social engagements like concerts. I pretty much trust no one, including family. The ones I trusted implicitly are all dead and everyone else seems to have an angle or something they want. I have cut off most of my family and only communicate with my sister, and that is maybe twice a month. Its not the healthiest of lives, but I really prefer it. It allows me time to focus on my writing and my art and it just keeps me from getting fucked over time and time again and from seeing things happen that enrage me, like my grandparents things being sold or given away, or my pleas for pictures of my grandparents or you being ignored repeatedly. I'm not a nice person, but then again I am the product of my experiences.

Its been a shit week around here that has made me want to retreat even further into my social isolation, but I am trying to resist the urge. I have been focusing on my writing and I managed to finish up a story that I had been working on for close to a year. I also successfully merged it with 2 of my other stories and now have managed to create an almost novel length story with characters that people got really emotionally invested in. I am finishing up the final part of it this month and I have already started posting a new story that I had put on the back burner while I had worked on how to merge the three I had been struggling with. I woke up this morning to an email box that was overflowing with positive reviews and author alerts and favorites. It was a great way to start the day. I've been sick the past few days with some hideous stomach bug that left me barfing and so damn weak I could hardly get up off the couch, but of course with 3 kids to myself after the eldest bailed on me. I'm still pretty shaky, but I am determined to clean house today and emerge from isolation just a little bit. If I keep allowing myself to stay in, I will just continue to do so and it will become a nasty circle of enabling behavior. I'm already hyper vigilant again and just trying to ramp that back down has been a challenge. Checking windows, doors, kids, watching people, making sure Major Jack is handy, its all just signs that I need a vacation maybe a concert so I can go and get my ya ya's out.

Dear Roger: Cock Blockery And Writing Jags, Does One Equal The Other?

So, like the other pale imitation of men up here in the drippy Northwest, this last one either turned gay or came to his senses and scurried off to less scary challenges. It was not unexpected, after all, we didnt have much in common and he was not within my requirements, but I did kinda like him and I was planning on taking him to a very nice dinner tonight of all nights and then hitting that like a ton of bricks. Perhaps it was the fear of the pending unleashing of the long caged beast that sent him fleeing for his very life? Who knows? I must give off some vibe of,'I am going to eat you up' like an errant Wild Thing that just scares the living daylights out of men. I swear I would not have hurt him in a bad way, but I guess we will never know. My son found it amusing. He thinks he needs to set me up with someone, but then he doesnt know anyone that would even remotely qualify. He gets skeeved out at the fact I find younger men to be more interesting, and I know that when I was in line with my daughter to meet those adorable young men in the band, my son was standing right behind me the entire time whispering ,"Mom, behave yourself!" As if he was worried I was going to drag the little one off into same dark lair and have my wicked way with him! Actually, it was the tall boy that got my attention, but I did behave myself and I simply smiled, got a bit wobbly in the knees, and went about my business.

All the sexual frustration has been good for one thing though, I have been writing like a fiend. Before the end of last month rolled around, I posted close to 20k words. Its just been pouring out of me and ideas are coming almost daily. I have had to start carrying my moleskin again so I can write things down so I dont forget them and I have been annoying the kids with all the time I have been spending just typing. My computer has keys that are unreadable due to all the typing I have done on them. My stats are fantastic and my hits are through the roof. I got over 12k hits on my stories last month and for some reason my profile posted 88 hits in one day. I have no idea why so many people would be interested in reading about me, but then again, if it generates interest in my writing, so be it. I have missed hanging out with my friends, with all the work I have been doing and with the crappy weather and the sick kids and all the general craziness that has been going on around here, but my writing has been my solace. I have gone back over it and read it and I have to say I am proud of what I have accomplished. I have stories that would stand alone as pretty damn good short stories, and I have even written a couple of smoking sex scenes, and considering its been a long damn while, I thought that was a major accomplishment.

The ex is staying in Ventura! He vacillates about it from time to time, but I can tell he loves it down there. He misses his kids, but he loves the freedom of not having to do the day to day care of them. Its hard damn work without end. He laughed at me when he found out my dating thing failed, in fact he said that my problem was that I was a,"Gay man in a woman's body." I didn't argue, I just asked him what that said about him? I try to involve him in the kids lives via phone, but he is always busy or short tempered, (not unusual), so I have decided I am just going to leave the ball in his court. If he wants to talk to them, he will have to call them. He grumbled about their Halloween costumes, but then he sent 50 dollars to outfit all three kids. I dont know how many of you have tried to outfit 3 kids for Halloween, but 50 wont cut it. We bought face paint and went with my idea and they had a blast. I sent him a picture to his phone and figure that I will deal with the bitching later. I am just glad he has decided to stay down there. Its going to make all of our lives better.

Dear Roger:Relationship Advice? Are You Kidding Me?

My eldest son and his girlfriend of over a year broke up yesterday. The resultant drama had the whole house in disarray and of course he was upset and sad. He says it was a mutual thing, but who the hell knows? He asked me why people seem to make no damn sense some times and I just had to grin at him. He realized that I was 5 days post date from my last date with no phone calls or texts or even a Facebook poke, so I was once again...thhhhpppt! 'Aww, mom! Its like you always say, F'em and feed em fish heads." Exactly, he seemed to get it at that point. People kinda suck and once you realize that, life is a lot easier. You dont expect anything different from anyone, and that way you aren't disappointed when they turn out to be an asshat. I finally got him laughing by telling him tales of my dating experiences, and all the losers I had gone out with when I was younger and my theories on why I dont have any success now. I didn't mention my tumblr full of images of men tied up and vaguely dominatrix themed art or the gay erotica I write, but he told me that I just intimidate the hell out of men. "You gotta quit looking like you want to eat them or kick their asses mom! You need to get your teeth fixed,(another bad wisdom tooth has struck), and you need to try and be girly." I have tried. I dressed nice, I tried to tone it down a bit, but I am me. I am the queen of socially awkward and weird and as my favorite button says, I am, "Deeply and creatively weird" and pretty proud of it. I dont know what to do about it. I guess just saying,"Fuck it! Drive on." is the way to be, If I am destined to ever meet a man brave enough to take a tumble with me, then it will happen, but if not, well then I will be the crazy cat lady with Duracell as company.

Son seems to be coping pretty well. He has girls hitting on him all the time and he could have gone to Homecoming with a ballerina from his school, so I guess he will land on his feet. his mohawk got him in trouble with his girly entourage. They were not happy that he had cut his hair and apparently I nearly got ugly phone calls about it from some teeny fans of my son. The boy is 15, but has already got fans and an entourage due to his guitar playing and his singing. This is not good. I guess I should count my lucky stars that I gave him the talk about protection so soon? If hes going to be a rockstar, then he will need it.

The ex is staying in Ventura. I cant say I am disappointed, in fact I am thrilled to death. He had promised to send money to help with the boys Halloween, but we all know what the end result of that was. I dont count on anyone, especially a man, so I am putting together their costumes as best I can on my own.

I've been on a writing jag on my story,"Long Distance" that I had put on hiatus over 6 months ago! I am thrilled that the characters started talking to me again, but the writing jag comes at a really inconvenient time, I am busy at work and its hard to take time to jot down noted and ideas when you are cleaning Labrador out of some scrotes fridge.

Dear Roger: Conventional Wisdom for the Unconventional?

My son tells me I am not like other moms. I dont know if that is a good or a bad thing. I tend to be strict about manners and curfew and discipline, but I also support my kids in their pursuits to be themselves. I let them know from an early age that I loved them no matter who they loved, and that we are a live and let love family. We may tease eldest son about his alleged boy crush on Jackson Rathbone, but if that was the real case, we would support him. My kids dont make the,"Eww thats gross!' face one of my friends makes when she sees a gay couple. They just treat them as any other couple. We had to clean up a lot of hate speech out of Stubby and Sticky when they first got up here, but once it was made clear that we dont allow that kind of talk because it hurts feelings, they stopped. Sticky knows words can do damage, he has heard the word.'Retard" so often that he sometimes throws it back at people when they do something he doesn't like. Nothing brings a stop to all activity in a room like a kid with Downs Syndrome asking someone,'What the hell is wrong with you, are you retarded?" He has developed quite the smartassed attitude since he has been up here and he is getting very independent. I encourage that and though its been hard for me, I have been letting him pick his clothes out and even have a say in whats for dinner.

Letting my kids be themselves is important to me. Communicating with them is even more so. My teen son has been dating the same girl for over a year now, and while they are pretty tightly chaperoned and not alone long enough to ever get up to anything, I know what its like to be a teenager and I worry. We have had a very open dialogue about things since he started maturing and though he would rather crawl under a rock and die than talk to me about it, I have sat him down and had an abbreviated version of the talk with him a couple of times,(once due the a very concerning reaction to a Criminal Minds episode), and once when he started dating. I decided that since we had a little bit of time by ourselves on Friday to go to a store where protection was sold, I would give him a lecture with visual aids.

He got that,"deer in the headlights" look as we approached the condom section, but I stopped him and I said,"We need to have a talk and since no one is around and we have a few minutes, im going to explain a few things to you." I then pointed out the things to use, the things that were crap, the reasons for some things, why some things should be replaced regularly, why some things should be avoided, and just general things boys should know. I gave him the talk that a father or a big brother should have given him, but since he has neither he got it from me. He was dying for a few minutes but then to my shock, he started asking questions! We must have stood there for a good 15 minutes discussing things and he even thanked me for clearing up some wrong information he had gotten from his buddies. I told him that my job as a mom was to make sure he was a healthy and happy young man and if explaining things to him that made both of us uncomfortable was part of it, then so be it, its part of the job.

We spent yesterday doing hair cuts. I let the boys choose what kind of hair cuts they wanted and that meant I spent the afternoon cutting mohawks on my sons. They teased my daughter about getting a mohawk and when she proclaimed that,'Girls dont get mohawks!" my son went hunting for the picture of me with mine. Poor daughter is quite the odd child out when it comes to this family. She is a girly girl and dances, sings, has long, pretty blonde hair, aspires to be an actress, ballerina, artist that marries her favorite young man and then takes him to, "France for 6 months and then Japan", while the rest of us are rough around the edges and barely civilized.

Dating...thhpt. I think I am terrible at it. I am not quite sure what I want. I swear and be damned I dont want a man around, but then when there isnt one around I mope. I find myself hungering for human contact and small doses of it just make me want more, like a junkie that just gets a small taste and then cant afford to pay the dealer for a bigger hit. I think I want romance, but then I dont know how to get it or if I even deserve it at this point in the game. All the time I have spent alone made me a harder person, but it made me a hungrier person in many ways. I throw myself into my work and my family to keep myself distracted, perhaps that is the best way to go about things. Who the hell knows?