Dear Roger: Explain Yourself, Weirdo!

I'm homeschooling two of my kids. What the hell was I thinking? The youngest one was a fairly easy decision, shes gifted out the wazoo and the school systems idea of Gifted curriculum was to have her help teach the slower kids. She was getting held back, stifled and slowed down and because she is a bit of an dramatic and odd child, she was beginning to get bullied, and shes not one to take it passively, she was fighting back. I saw the writing on the wall when her monkey,"Jackson", got knocked out of her hands and into a puddle by an older kid, and she went for blood. I didn't need her getting suspended or arrested, so I did what was best for her and found an online program that would help support us and now she does her work at home where she doesn't have to deal with anyone doing foul things to her monkey other than her brothers, and if she does things to them...oh well, its all part of the education process.She already been jumped up two grade levels and she taking things that she never would have gotten in the public schools.
My other home schooler is my oldest son and that is the one that is the biggest trial to my sanity. He over-thinks everything, procrastinates, and questions every damn thing there is to question. He screwed around until he was almost 100 lessons behind and now he has been racing though them to catch up with everything. Hes doing good on stuff, when he actually works on it, but he tends to distract himself from the task at hand with a myriad of things like his guitar or his computer.
The one thing he is really battling with lately is having to write. I don't get that, just like I don't get how math comes soo easily for him. I love to write, it flows out of me at times and if I cant write, I get anxious and my skin feels tight. He likens it to torture for himself. He also is not too fond of reading, though he will. I don't understand that one, I read to him all the time when he was a baby, and he was surrounded by books growing up. My youngest daughter and youngest son Stubby, are prolific readers, to the point that both of them are reading waay above grade level and devouring books at speeds that some adults only dream of. Stub has special permission from his school to check out more books than most kids his age because he reads so much and so fast, and daughter is wading through the Harry Potter series like there is no tomorrow. I give my eldest books to read that I think will make a mark on him, teach him things about our culture and society, and he looks at them, sets them aside and forgets about them until he finds the movie or what not. I've tried to explain to him that quite often the movies do not do the books justice and even change things about them, citing the Clive Barker,"Dread" incident which still irritates me to no end. Not just for the fact I don't like seeing a pretty boy die,(though he did  it quite convincingly), its just that Clive Barker is one of my favorite authors and taking poetic license with one of his stories is akin to taking a crayon to the Mona Lisa.
Explaining this to him was as effective as him falling asleep with his head on the book. He watches me write each and every day and it seems to irritate him at times. In fact he makes fun of my typing style because he says I seem to be enraged at the keyboard, too harsh and aggressive. I do wear keyboards out pretty quickly, often wearing the letters off the keys within a year and I have odd places on my hands and wrists where the rest on the computer, but it is my one thing...my hobby, my passion and my solace. I write everything and anything just about and that seems to bug him as well. He needed an example of a descriptive narrative, I read him one of mine and asked him if he could picture the person and the place and he said that it was like he was standing there with them. He needed an example of humor, I had it, tragedy, I had it. I write everything. My grammar and mechanics may not be perfect and I need an editor so badly for some of my stories that the thought of the butchery and laughter alone is what keeps me from handing them over for an attempt at publishing, but I get it out of me, and I don't understand how he finds it to be such a struggle .
Last night I was writing a chapter of my latest story and the banter between two of the characters was of a sexual nature. Its a little difficult at times to go from writing the joking conversation of two 20 something year old men who are talking about sex, to answering questions from my teen son about MLA style, but I was doing my best. I caught him looking over at my computer screen and he asked me, "What the hell are you writing?!" So I gave him an abridged version of the story. I was struggling with what the two men would consider a reasonable wager over a contest and he surprised me by saying, "Well, if the younger guy likes the other guy, then he would  want something to do with sex, don't you think? They are young, healthy dudes, its obvious they kinda like each other and if it was a dude and a chick, that would be what was up."  I told him I thought it was too soon in the relationship and he looked at me like I was old. "Mom, get with the program. These are modern times. I'm a weird guy because I believe in waiting for marriage. Most of my friends hook up with a couple dates." Point taken, and for future reference, I think I aged 20 years during that conversation.
He still hassles me about my writing a little, but its not because I do it, now its because I wont try to publish it yet. Hes pushing me, especially over one of my stories I wrote that he read and loved. Its a fictionalized account of  growing up in East Texas. Ive been editing it and correcting some things and mulling it over, so maybe...just maybe.

Dear Roger: Monkey On My Back

I have an addictive personality. I've known it my whole life and I have really worked hard to steer myself away from the more truly destructive passions, but there are a few things that I have allowed myself because they are, for the most part, harmless. The longest addiction I have had is to coffee. My West Texas granny gave me my first cup of it at her table when I was 8 years old and I drank it from then on. Its the one constant in my life. I tried to quit it once and those around me suffered as if I was a heroin addict trying to go cold turkey. I was irritable, mean, sick to my stomach, and outright hostile until I finally gave in and began drinking it again. When I was a cop I averaged 6-8 cups a day, and not the weak, Folgers dessicated stuff, I bought the expresso beans and ground my own and made it strong enough to stand a horse shoe up in.
This morning I was out of coffee. We tend to run out of groceries from time to time due to transportation issues or too damn much rain, and with me being sick with whatever crud it was that I had this past week, I hadn't been anywhere and consequently, we had run out pretty much everything, including my coffee. I am at the tail end of a horrible cold that had left me feeling like hell, weak as a cat and barely fit to be around by human or dog, and then you add in no coffee and I was not fit company for man nor beast. I tried re-running the grounds that were left, but that was less than pleasant, though I did drink a cup or two to try and soothe the caffeine beast that was rearing its ugly head. It didn't work and my irritation with with the world at large soon was evident.
My eldest son was soon shoving me out the door and telling me to go find a coffee shop and my civility. It took awhile. I ended up going to work and listening to music, and then walking over to a small coffee and donut shop and buying my morning fix.
As I was walking back home with my bag of coffee beans and a couple boxes of donuts as peace offering for the kids to make up for my crappy attitude, I came upon a young man huddled on the sidewalk. He looked up at me and smiled and said,"Hey, I like your hoodie. My little brother liked the 100 Monkeys." He was obviously homeless, dirty, thin and they type of drawn up that speaks of having saddled the horse, but he had a beautiful smile and I stopped and talked to him a moment. I asked if he was hungry, and he said he was. I gave him one of the boxes of donuts and talked to him about good music and hopes for good weather. He thanked me and because it was all I could do, I asked if he needed any other help, and he said he was okay, so I told him to take care and I went on towards my home.
I have never had much patience for drug addicts. Maybe because I was able to resist them and I have a holier than thou attitude? I don't know. I know that they junkies do a fuckton of damage to all those around them and I hate to even have passing contact with them , but it hurt my heart to walk off and leave him sitting there huddled on the sidewalk. Thats not how I am cut. I was a cop and an Emt for a reason, not to hard ass people, but to help and because I was an adrenaline junkie. I still am an adrenalin junkie. I crave that rush of the sudden burst of it racing though my veins, making me feel ten foot tall and bullet proof, either because I was facing down a psycho with a knife, racing code three to an unknown scene balls to the wall, or standing in front of over 300 people about to give a speech or perform one of my poems from back in the day. The rush was amazing and I often miss it, so I get the desire to keep the feeling going, but I never could grasp the weakness that drove people to fall into taking drugs to find it. I did enough drinking in my day, in fact I could out drink more than a few of my male friends in my heyday, but all it got me was alcohol poisoning  that left me with the tolerance of a one beer drunk and the regret of knowing that I wasted a lot of potential good times by being blitzed out of my mind, and I also took a hell of a lot of risks that I was lucky to not end up regretting.
April is looking like the beginning of a good month for me. I got another of my damn wisdom teeth pulled, and it was like immediate relief! It was in such a bad place, the dentist who worked on me was amazed I had lived with it for over a year, impacted and infected, impinging into the hinge of my jaw! She commented it should be a surgical extraction, but times being what they are;hard, she just shot me up with extra numbing stuff, which was quite the experience in itself, because apparently there was an abscess that got punctured by the needle and it drained, not only tasting but smelling horrible. The relief once it was pulled was immediate and I think I smiled the entire walk home I was so happy and relieved.
I turn 43 this month and I've got a lot going on. Im rather philosophical about it and hopeful that it will be the start of an amazing year, its starting off with a bang as is my style.

Dear Roger: Plague Monkeys

Ugh...I want to be celebrating, in fact, I want to be hooting and hollering and raising a fuss all over the place, but I simply do not have the energy and if I tried it, my head would explode from all the coughing. Yeah, the monkeys have struck again and I have kiddie-borne crud in the form of a cold. The kids always seem to snap out of it within 24 hours or so, hardly even knocked off their desire to eat all the food in the house, but me? Feh! Like most adults, I am drug to deaths door and left laying there like a half eaten mouse the cat played with and didn't want. I feel like the half of the mouse that got sicked up on the rug beside the bed and then stepped on.
But I am still happy, though a bit freaked out, because I did something soo completely irresponsible and crazy that I still cant believe I did it. The little band we love so much is starting up a bit of a tour, and its coming in fits and bursts, with seeming no real rhyme or reason. A good friend of mine sent me a message telling me that she saw they were going to be in Las Vegas shortly after my birthday and I said out loud to myself that I really wished I could go and see them because God only  knew if they were going to make it to Portland.
My eldest son was sitting next to me on the couch and he said,"Go, you should go because you cant go to your High school reunion, you haven't gotten anything for your birthday in forever, and you haven't had a vacation in well, ever, soo...GO" I gave him all the mom, responsible reasons why I shouldn't, and he responded by grabbing my computer and threatening to book the trip himself. He managed to convince me it was a good idea, and after crunching numbers, robbing of Peter and telling Paul to go starve, I booked it and I am going! My first trip for purely fun in forever. Seriously. I am freaking out just a little. I never do anything like this anymore. My wanderlust had been leashed by responsibility and doing the right thing by my kids because I couldn't count on my ex to ever do his part, and it has aged me soo damn much. I look in the mirror some days and I don't recognize myself, Im gaunt and hollow-eyed, and my son is right, I do look tired all the way down to my soul, so maybe this will be just what I need to help me find that spark I used to have.
I have done a few things lately to try and rekindle my spark, including the haircut and color, and when I said I was going to cut the ties that bound me to the one thing that had been a constant source of passion and pain for so long, I did actually do it. Its been hard as hell to not undo it. Yahoo even sent me an email inviting me to undo it, told me I could have it all back, like it never happened, and I sat here staring at that link for a long time.
I miss him so much.
Just learning to check my email without anticipating seeing one from him is hard. I always hold out hope that I would have been the choice, even though I knew in my heart I never would be. I was not the thing that glittered the brightest. I get up each morning telling myself I made the right choice and I drink my coffee, put my boots on, go out the door to work, putting my earbuds in my ears to listen to music that almost sounds like something I should have written, and it reminds me that I made the right choice.
There is another concert in a month or so and Im kinda thinking about trying for it, if I can get over being infected by the kids and their germs, and the feeling that I dont deserve a moment of happiness.

Dear Roger: Step Into The Bold

So I went and got a haircut yesterday. It was a hotly debated prospect before I left the house, with my eldest son staunchly against me making any dramatic changes he even tried to reason with me using the,"You will send off the wrong message", argument, but considering that having long,blonde hair that hung to the middle of my back still got me hit on by women more than men, I do not think hair was the issue.
I had let it grow for the last almost two years without doing anything to it, and honestly, I felt it was time to mark the change. Lots of transitions have gone on this month, some of them good, some of them hard to take, but transitions they are and they have had an impact on me and my family, so I felt the need to mark it. When I lose someone I love, usually in death, I shave my head. Its my tradition. I think that is what had my son worried, but nobody had died, they had mearly gone away from me by my choice, so I didn't feel the need to mark his loss as a death, it was just a relocation. I had half my hair cut off. Then, I had purplish streaks put through it. It was the first time I have ever had dye professionally applied to my hair and it was pretty interesting. I wasn't sure how I felt about the change as I left the shop, and since it was raining, I put my hood up for the walk home, but the streaks of color in the front plainly showed and that made me happy. I guess my pleasure and the change showed in my general demeanor because I got smiled at by a man as I walked past him on the sidewalk. That was a different feeling as well! I usually pass by people, unobserved and unacknowledged, maybe my generally misanthropic attitude reflecting out at people and warning them away, but its more difficult to maintain that when you have taken a bold step into the new and different.
It was freeing and I found myself smiling and singing along a little more than usual as I was walking home. I do tend to sing along with my music, even when I am not cognizant of it. My kids tell me that if I am listening to it when I am writing with my earbuds in, I am quite often singing along, especially to some of the sadder songs, and I got busted by one of the residents where I live singing along with a rather bawdy song that was off a video I have in my phone. I enjoy that video more than a little and it tends to warm up cold, dreary days when I am out dealing with the less than pleasant aspects of my job, so I guess I know it a little better than I should. I don't get to listen to it at home because, the SBL 2010 version of 'Strangers" that Ben Grauper sang is for sure not child friendly, though it is dirty old woman friendly, so I was walking along, in the rain and the muck, doing my job, trying not to freeze, singing along and feeling the music a little when I got a tap on my shoulder.
People who know me, know not to approach me from behind and tap on my shoulder, they know that is dangerous, especially if I have a tool in my hand or I am distracted. So I knew right away this person did not know me at all.
I did not hurt them. I dont think I even really scared them, because they were smiling when I finally managed to get my ear buds out and get my burning in embarrassment face to look them in the eyes and pay attention to what they were saying.
He was asking me about how my investigation into something involving complex goings on was proceeding, and while I toed the dirt with my boot and tried to pretend he didn't just hear me singing,"Lets get fucked up and fuck each other" I told him that I had a likely suspect and that I had relayed the information on to my boss. He grinned at me and patted my shoulder, (again, I did not hurt him), and told me he had full faith and confidence I would get it handled. Every time he sees me now he smiles at me and waves, and well...I wave back and smile, though I make sure that song only comes up to play where no one can sneak up on me.
Spring is trying to come out up here, and I really hope it succeeds pretty soon. Spencer seems to sense it. He has been really rambunctious lately and the other day he rammed into me and knocked me flat on my ass. It was not a good thing because he is a big dog and I am a small person. Hes up to 80lbs and im down to 103, and when 80lbs hits me full on in the gut, the 80lbs won. It jacked up my back pretty good, leaving me in the worst pain I have been in since I left Arizona. I spent the rest of the evening laying flat on my back on the living room floor watching movies on my computer with a heat compress on my back hoping that Aleve would be enough.
I finally watched a movie that, while I had supported it with my donation and trying to get people to go see it and what not with tweeting and Facebook and sending its trailer to people I knew who ran Downs support groups and such, I had never had the nerve to watch it on my own due to the fact I had been warned it had some pretty realistic domestic violence in it and as the mom of a kid with Downs...well...I just had never seen a person with Downs treated as a human being before by any kind of movie. I was lucky enough to be able to see the "Girlfriend Movie" finally and that changed. I was floored. I watched the entire movie with only one brief breather due to a scene getting to be too much for me,(young Mr. Rathbone played the abusive bastard a little too convincingly for comfort and it left me very conflicted because he has actually been a source of comfort in my own dark times), but after a pause and collection of nerve, I resumed watching it and was just amazed that every single person involved with that film has not had their name held up and the benchmark for what it takes to make a quality movie. In an era of cookie cutter remakes and schlock that I would not spend a dollar to go see, I feel bad that I only paid the wonderful young man less than $5.00 for the privilege to see this film, I would have paid much more and I will be buying the DVD for myself.
I will be doing as much as I can to support them in the future, because while I am past the point of being able to chase my long dead dreams, it makes me happy to see that there are people who are persevering and succeeding and making it and they deserve all the help they can get, especially when they make gems like "Girlfriend Movie".
My writing muse has been working me pretty hard lately and my latest story has really met with some acclaim! My son nags at me to actually "Do something" with my writing, like a screenplay or send it to a publisher, but I need an editor who doesn't piss me right the hell off, and considering how temperamental I am, that is probably going to be impossible to find. My young gay neighbor and I have a great rapport, but he blushes so much when we are talking that I am afraid trying to edit the sex scenes or anything like that would turn into a giggle fest, which is sad because I actually work better with men and I know he writes some of the same stuff. Maybe I will just ask him next time his dog jumps into my arms.

Dear Roger: The Monkey Life

Two years ago I was sitting in Arizona waiting to die. My ex was getting released from prison, and I was fully expecting him to finish what he had started before a friend of mine had him swooped up by the cops before it could really get ugly on the ole home front, and I found the nerve and the anger to testify against him and put him in prison for almost 2 years and gave him a good reason to want to kill me.
The time after all that fracas had gone down was filled with a grim struggle for survival where I ended up getting sick with things like H1N1, facing record snowfall, and nearly starving to death as I managed to keep my kids housed and fed up to that point as I sat there on the night of March 25th writing my blog.
I remember I wasn't really scared, I was angry. I had made it. We had survived on our own and I had held onto the house, but it had come at at steep cost. I was ragged and worn and weary as hell and past the point of being able to resist him. He was going to win and be able to wear me back down because I was weak.
If we had stayed in Flagstaff, one or both of us would be dead by now.
Things happen for a reason, and daughter wanting to see that concert seems like a trite reason to pack up and haul ass nearly a 1000 miles away, but that was just the symbolic reason for us going. It was our salvation and that concert was the beginning of so damn many wonderful things for us, but its been hard as hell.
Two years without a vehicle. Our first few weeks in this apartment we went hungry. Seriously, we didn't have money for food or anything. I skipped meals so my kids would have enough and we still went hungry. We all got thin before I finally found a job that helped us to catch up a little.
We had nothing but what had fit in those 7 bags we brought with us, so we slept on the floor until we managed to find furniture at yard sales. Nothing in our house is brand new to this day, and I kind of take pride in that because while it may be used, its still nice and I am the ultimate recycler, teaching my kids the value of things.
Its been lonely for me. I left the one man in Arizona that I loved and hoped to someday have something with, but just a short while ago, I finally realized that I had lived so many years as a secret, never able to share my feelings for him with the rest of the world, never able to be honest about things, that it was eating me up. So I listened to a lot of sad music, heard some of the same hurt in others,(ironically from the same band), and realized that I wasn't alone, and once again I found the strength to make the right move and I moved forward by letting go. It hasn't been easy but every step forward every breath in and out is progress.
I have second guessed myself a lot, and often considered that maybe I should have kept trying to fix things in Arizona, but then my ex showed up here in Portland. It was bad. Financially, we are still recovering and he had no shame about the damage he did. He likes to call from down in L.A. and gloat about how nice the weather is down there and how cool his life is as a single person down there, because he went there to mooch off his aunt when he decided Portland was,"Too hard". He knows that before I had kids, it had been my dream to live out there as a writer, but now I cant even afford to go down there to attend a concert. I figure karma will get him in the end. I have my pride. I support my kids and make sure they have what they need and they know it. I dont keep the secrets from them anymore. They figured it out pretty quick when they realized he wasn't working and I had to go get the other two boys from Arizona. They don't believe his stories about how he is going to have it all together pretty soon. They know his version of "pretty soon" hasn't happened in over 10 years.
Its been a couple of years of big changes and realizations, some good, some sad. The boys that brought us to the sunshine are on the outs and that makes me more than a little sad for them because so much good came from those beautiful days in the sun, and I can only hope that eventually they find the peace and happiness that they so richly deserve.
I dont know what this next year will bring for me and my family, but we are still alive and still moving forward, and all I know is that if not for a bunch of monkeys, I dont know if that would be able to be said, so you dont get a much stranger reason for life than that.

Dear Roger: Every Time I See Your Face

I have you back. Now, every day when I log on to my computer, or walk into my living room, I can see you and it has done wonders for me. I had never expected to have that again. I had begged for pictures of you many times from my parents. Even offering to pay for copies to be made of a particular painting that had been done of you by one of your many girlfriends, the "Coca-Cola Cowboy" painting that is lost to us forever in some gallery or private collection, but the one photograph of it that my grandmother had is in my mothers possession and she has it in a box,'Somewhere" and my repeated requests for a copy went ignored, so I had despaired ever even seeing your face again.
Many of my personal pictures were lost when my ex took over the house, and when Stevie drowned my laptop a few years ago. I have tried to replace them, but when family holds the originals and wont share, it becomes impossible, but the other night, I was sitting on the couch, trying to write and in a particularly morose mood, as it had been a stressful week, fraught with more financial difficulty, and me finally reaching the decision to move on from a relationship that was going to do nothing that hurt me. I was feeling particularly lost and alone, with no one to talk to, when I got a text alert on my Iphone.
Hardly anyone ever texts me. Ever. I don't have that many friend contacts due to my misanthropy, and my social life is pretty limited, so I figured it was just an alert to tell me that my son was about to go over on data or that I was late on some bill, but when I reached over and hit the unlock screen, you were there.
I cant really describe the feeling that went through me, but it took my breath away and brought instant tears of joy. I guess it must be like what people who are reunited with a lost loved on feel. The pictures just kept coming from the daughter of your heart, and the niece of mine. She sent me half a dozen or so of you from when you met her mother to just shortly before you left us and by they time they stopped I was a sobbing mess.
Chance came out to see what was going on and he saved them all for me and printed them so that I could put them up on the wall, the first pictures I have had of family in years on my wall. He was stunned at how much we look alike, and then surprised at how much the pictures impacted me. Imagine years and years of not seeing your family, of thinking that the people who meant the world to you were lost forever and that you would never see their faces again? That is what I have lived with, the frustration of knowing that my parents have these pictures and just didn't care enough for me to share them, even though I begged over and over, and then knowing that they were lost to me, possibly forever. I'm a visual person, a writer who while capable of describing things and feelings and events, needs to see and be reminded of those who gave me the ability.
My children now know your face, and they ask questions and have heard more stories that seem to have been sparked,as they often are with me, by seeing an image that was slowly slipping from my memory even though I struggled mightily to keep it there. They know you now. They will hopefully be able to share you with their children and through them, you will live on, that is how you never truly die.
Someday I hope to get pictures of grandpa and grandma back, maybe she has some or maybe my sister will be able to smuggle some out to me like she always says she plans to do,I hope, but having you back...its like peace has found part of my heart, the peace you were always able to bring to the turmoil that was me.

Dear Roger:The Secrets That You Keep

Living a secret eats you slowly like a parasite.Tiny,agonizing bites that devour who you are and what you might have been, and what you might have been capable of, bit by bit, day by day. Especially secrets that involve love, those are the worst and most virulent of the secrets to keep because they are the most consuming of the spirit.
When you are in love with someone, you want to shout it from the rooftops and roll in it like its the greenest grass, wearing it on your skin for everyone to see. You feel ten foot tall and bullet-proof, all powerful and enraptured in the person you have found that sets you alight, but...if there is a reason you cant share the fact you love this person, then life becomes a nightmare because the secret takes hold.
No matter what the reason; family, career, wrong place, wrong time, ethnic differences, age differences, there are a myriad of reasons that people find themselves strangling that part of themselves that should be allowed to flourish and grow and shine like the sun and after a while, it begins to hurt. That what was once bright and flourishing and beautiful, becomes painful and begins to question why it has to be kept in the dark and hidden, especially when it seems that its not really that big of a secret to the rest of the world around it, and love can turn to anger and hurt and in the struggle to break free from the darkness of the prison that is the secret, words and things can be said and done that hurt and cause harm and create pain where once there was only love.
But true love wont allow that to win. True love does the right thing, even when its painful and it ages it beyond its years and darkens what was a bright an beautiful thing. True love protects the one it loves and calls back all the pain and hurt and anger and it reels it in, dampens it down and it would never allow the darkness to harm that which it really, truly loves.
Decades may be spent in quiet contemplation of what might have been, waiting for the,"good thing to come in time", only to get a devastating phone call or letter, telling you that your time will never be because they could not take that risk, that bold step into the world and put aside money or career or family and be who they are and could be, and it hurts, its devastating beyond all reason because its a death of sorts. A death of hopes and dreams and of what might have been. But you take in a breath, and another, and then you pick yourself up and move forward and you learn to walk again, and eventually you learn to feel again, though it might never be the same. The colors not as bright, the music not as clear, the touch not as satisfying, but you just do because you owe it to yourself to never give up.
Recovery is a slow process, like healing from an addiction to the worst kind of drug, and often the best method is cold turkey, but when the one you love is wound around your heart and inn your life so intimately, for such a long time it can take years to unwind the strings that bind them to you, and cutting each one causes bleeding that you feel like you will never recover from.
Yesterday I deleted and wiped the archives of an email account I've had for 13 years, I don't think the bleeding will ever stop.