Dear Roger: Pretty,Pretty Shiny Shiny, All Are Welcome,Alll Are Welcome

Things have been pretty calm around here. There is a spirit of cooperation that seems to be working out well for all of us. Maybe its the holiday spirit, maybe its just the realization that its root hog or die, or maybe its the realization that we have to work together for the common good, but everyone has been doing okay, even with all the typical strangeness going on.

The ex has finally accepted that he plays second fiddle to a monkey and he even got into the spirit of helping to find monkey related Christmas presents for her. I was floored. Most of the time he seems pretty confused as to how to deal with her. She seems to amuse and terrify him at the same time, but finding her things he knows will make her happy are his one sure fire way of communicating with her.He brought her some tattoo magazine the other day that had her fella in it and that got him a hug from her that about strangled him before she vanished into her room to read it to her Jackson. I had to ask,"Are you on drugs again or something? I didn't even know you remembered that boys last name." He said, "Well, I figured I better learn it, she has been pretty damn loyal to him for the past few years so it doesn't look like hes going away any times soon." He kinda growled that last part and I saw the irritated biker father for a minute,and it cracked me up. He has been buffaloed by a tiny blonde and a monkey...oh how the mighty have fallen.

She still calls him by his name, but at least she does talk to him now and she doesn't vanish the minute he shows up. She showed him her art work, including the birthday card she drew for her favorite fella and when he asked how old he was going to be, she said,"Lets just not talk about that." So her smart assed brother ,"Stubby" (though no longer called that to his face), said, "Hes going to be 27, that's TWENTY YEARS OLDER than you! ANCIENT!" He made several other snarky comments until her other brother, my oldest son said, "Why you hating on Jackson? What the heck did he do to you? Do you KNOW him? Have you met him? What is causing this problem with you? Are you jealous?" Just prior to this dissertation, he had been sitting in his chair obsessively playing with his new Iphone 4's guitar tuner app and ignoring all of us, I didn't even know if he was in the same world as us, but then BOOM! He calls Stub to task. All of us stop and stare at him, and he never even looks up from his phone, just keeps messing with the app, until his baby sister flies into his arms and hugs his neck so hard she about strangles him. The ex goes and puts an arm around Stub and says to him,"Son, we are out numbered just drink the koolaid and smile, its safer that way."

Christmas shopping has been a little better this year. Im still not rich by any means, but I have been able to pick up a few things for the kids and its going to be a lot better than it was last year for them. There wont be any fancy tv's or game systems because we just aren't into that kind of stuff, but there will be things they need and musical instruments as well as music and we will all be together. That is the most important thing. I missed my kids all being together last year and it was a very sad Christmas, this year? We are thinking about going out and actually having a Chinese dinner and enjoying ourselves, even though the ex thinks we are all crazy.

Its difficult shopping for the boys because they want gaming systems, and the ex has finally gotten on the same page with me about that in that he has realized that gaming systems just make the kids fat, lazy and irritable. So its no Guitar Hero, its real guitars. No Tony Hawk Skate games, its real skateboards. He was floored to realize his little girl has quite the attitude and is learning to skate faster than her older brothers. Her attitude and style had him muttering the other day and he looked and me and said,"If my daughter grows up to be a Suicide Girl I am going to blame YOU!" I didn't know what to say, he was the one who was a biker, not me! I may have been into punk and edgier things, and maybe I had shown her a world that most little kids in polite society didn't see, but HE was the biker. I pointed THAT out to him, and then he reminded me that while he may have been a biker, he was not the one with tattoos on his wrists and arms and a hobby of telling people where to go and what to do once they got there, and as my small daughter trotted past us after her brother for some slight, with her monkey hanging out of her back pocket, a stick-on tattoo peeking out from under the sleeve of her t-shirt, as she yelled,"Im going to kick your butt you ass hat!" He pointedly looked at me.

Dear Roger:Texas Nicknames for Short Men or Why My Son is Developing A Complex?

Nicknames. I have had one pretty much my entire life. When I was a kid I was,"J.D." as if I wasn't enough of a tomboy, that appellation incited me to even more orneriness and contrariness than just about anything else, including the chopped off hair and the lack of a shirt until I was 12. It was shouted from the baseball bleachers by cheering parents when I would zing a pitch a little close in on an opposing player, or from the soccer sidelines when I would charge down field against much larger opponents. It shaped who I became as a teenager and young adult when I was called,'Speed" for reasons I wont get into in great depth due to the fact I know my family and friends tend to peruse this blog, other than to say it started with my reputation for being a daredevil and having a lead foot and willingness to push the envelope, and it grew from there. That lasted for a few years while I was in the wonderful, wild world of the greater Metroplex and then it ended when I realized that there were some scarier and crazier motherfuckers in the world and I relocated to Arizona in the wee hours of Dallas morning when a NRH friend of mine told me he was leaving town and it was a good idea if I did the same before we both ended up finding out what was in the bottom of Ray Hubbard. Somehow, in the midst of all that, I ended up without a nickname for a while, but then I went back to my daredevil ways, but it was for good this time.

It was after being chased up the side of the Nogales mountains by a 30ft flame front and losing parts of the backs of my ears, some of the hide on the back of my neck and giving my fire chief the scare of his life,(considering I was only supposed to be delivering water to firefighters already on the defensive line), that he looked at me and my partner in crime, and said,"God Damn, Calamity!" I got 6 weeks on dispatch duty and the nickname that has stuck for nearly 20 years.

To be honest, I think it kinda fits.

I have given all my kids nicknames and they have all fit the kids rather well I thought, though my eldest sons original nickname was given to him by his granny. He was originally called,'Pecker", it was just a West Texas thing that most people really wouldn't understand and I couldn't explain. Now that hes a teen, he is,'Werewolf Boy" though rarely to his face. I call him that not only because of the whole hair issue, but because he is moody, unpredictable, and likely to want to rip the throats out of everything and everyone around him with little thought or provocation. My next oldest is called,"Sticky" because he just always is, sticky. My baby girl for the longest time was the,"Stinky Princess" when she was a tiny baby. That name was given to her by her brothers. I just called her princess, but the boys just called her,'Stinky". Last, but not least, is the main subject of today's blog,"Stubby". My short man. He is my shortest son and its driving him crazy. Hes in the 5th percentile for height, shorter than all the kids in his grade except for 2 Asian girls. He blames me. I have tried to point out all the short guys that are doing great, but he doesn't care. He knows that his 7 year old sister is within an inch of being taller than him. She tried to be helpful and tell him that her favorite boy is a petite fella, and that just pissed Stubby off even more. I told him that he would probably have a growth spurt in the next few months and that didn't help. He is just wrapped up in being pissed off about being ripped off in the height department and much like I was at his age when I realized I was the smallest in my grade and people were patting me on top of the head and telling me,"Dynamite comes in small packages." He is ready to start kneecapping people, so I really should not have been shocked when he snapped at me this morning and said,"QUIT CALLING ME STUBBY!" I still was though. I wasn't ready to have to put his baby name to rest. He is still finding his way, trying to find where he fits in and what his niche is. His sister is,"Monkey Girl" and she is the Artist,singer and entertainer of the family. His big brother is the musician and the athlete. Sticky is the one who everyone just loves no matter what because he is just charming and sweet. Stubby...he is smart and and sweet and funny, but he doesn't know how to showcase himself like the others do. Hes still struggling to make friends and find his way. He prefers to read and be by himself, though he often find himself being the straight man to his sisters comedy routines. He wants to show that he noticeable in his own right and capable of casting his own, equally tall shadow. Its not going to be easy, and I warned him I would probably slip and call him Stubby more than once, but it wasn't that I didn't recognize that he was growing up, it was just me not being ready for it and being able to handle it.

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.