Dear Roger: Feeding Strays

My homeless boy was back in his spot yesterday, huddled on the sidewalk looking exhausted and starved. I asked him how he was doing as people walked by and looked at me like I was crazy for talking to a homeless kid while I had two of my kids with me. He grinned up at me and said,"hey! Its the 100 Monkeys lady! Its good to see you again. Thank you again for those donuts, they were great." I asked him if he was hungry again, and he said,"Yes, ma'am." looking ashamed. I nodded at him and told him I would be back. He smiled and put his head back down and huddled back up.
My eldest son, who was with me, was shocked that I knew the kid. He was even more shocked that I had obviously fed him and communicated with him beyond a simple nod. I told him that the boy was someones baby, hes young, hes not asking for money or anything and he looked like he needed help. When I was walking along that day with my ear buds in listening to my music, the Mechanical Peoples "Faith in the Will" and such, it just reminded me that I had been down before and hundreds of thousands of people had walked past my bruises and never truly asked if I was okay. They had never taken a moment to see what they could do and then acted, until one person did and it changed everything. It was that first rung on the ladder. When I had asked him if he was okay, he didn't sound convincing with his ,"Yes" that was why I asked if he was hungry. If I had had extra cash, I would have taken him to a restaurant and bough him a hot meal.
Yesterday my son loaded up a hand basket with bread, peanut butter, jelly in a squeeze bottle, chips, cookies, and some fruit in a snack pack. He looked at me like he expected me to object, and I just added another box of donuts. We walked back to where he was and I thought the boy was going to cry. His eyes lit up and he must have thanked me a dozen times and then he stood up. Hes very, very tall, and heartrendingly thin. He asked, "May I hug you?" I told him I dont typically hug people, but I made and exception and I hugged the boy.
Yeah, call me a sucker. I don't care. Hes a kid, hes on the streets and hes skinny and pretty and alone and this is a bad place to be those things. Meeting him upset my son quite a bit and I think he realized a few things, including how damn lucky he is. We walked down to another store and my son bought him a coke and asked me to take it back to him. I said I would but I told my son, "You do realize he is probably a drug addict?" My son said, "I don't care. Hes not that much older than me! His situation is not that different than mine!" And there we had it, my son realized that,'There but for the grace of God go I" moment. I've had a few of them. My son took my daughter and went home and I went back to take the boy his coke. He was gone from his spot but a store clerk was there. I asked her about him and she told me he was legitimately homeless, often very hungry, and didn't go to the shelters too much because he was scared of them because of a bad experience. That crunched my heart. I saw him walking back up the sidewalk and he sat down on a bench a little further down, so I walked up to him and handed him the coke. He said,"Ma'am, this is too much. You don't have to keep doing this." I asked him, "Did you have something to drink with your food?" he said, "No ma'am" so I said, "Well then." He thanked me again and I told him not to worry about it.
I told him that I wasn't going to pry into in business because that is not my business, but I wanted to know if he was safe and if he needed anything else.
He told me his name finally and that he had been on the streets over a year after leaving Spokane due to abuse and problems at home, he had come here to live with his grandmother, things had been good with her until she died, then the house had been sold and he was told he couldn't come home.
I don't know if its true or not. I know hes very young, Most of the homeless around this area are hardcore older drunks and heroin addicts, and most are mentally ill. He seems sane and able to carry on a polite conversation and he has impeccable manners. He knows im not rich. He fussed at me for spending my limited resources feeding him, but he is a kid and hes hungry, how could I not? He told me that hundreds of people had walked past him for days and days and never spoken to him, and he wondered why I had? I told him that I had been reminded that paying it forward is what keeps the love going.
We don't have a lot, but ill be watching out for my stray while hes around and making sure he got some food in his belly. He was open to hearing about some resources to help him get off the street, and maybe that will work, maybe not. To him Im "Jen, the 100 Monkeys lady" and hes my Lost Boy.
Id like to find his parents and find out,'Why? What is so bad about what he is to make you subject him to huddling on the sidewalk in a strange city so far way?'

Dear Roger: Its All About Sex

Today was grocery shopping day, so I got the younger boys headed off to school, went and did my job a for a bit and then I came home, gathered up my eldest son and youngest daughter and we began walking to the grocery store. Its a good 2 mile walk, but considering it was a rare sunshiney day, we didn't mind, in fact we really enjoyed being out in the sun and fresh air for the first time in months and months.
We took a quick break and stopped at McRaes for french fries with gravy and lots of katsup as well as some iced tea, and while we were there my son noticed I was looking at a cute guy that was sitting in the corner of the restaurant. We had actually been making fairly regular eye contact and occasionally smiling at each other, and it really seemed to disturb my son. He got irritated at me for not paying attention to his talk about the lack of adequate sports teams in Portland and the constant rain, in order to stare at the cute man.
"Mom! Pay attention! I swear to God all you think about is sex anymore!" He was referring to the fact he had caught me writing a sex scene last night for one my stories. I don't usually write very graphic scenes, but it was very R  almost NC-17 rated and its actually pretty hard to write that kind of stuff with kids wandering around talking to you.
He started complaining that everything seemed to be wrapped up in sex. I explained to him that next to money, it was the most powerful driving force in the world. People make life changing decisions over sex, destroy friendships, business partnerships, lives and marriages, even themselves for it. A few moments ecstasy can cost a lifetime of misery or it can be a "For the Win" gain, it all depends on how you play the game. My daughter was not paying attention to our conversation, as she was jogging ahead and talking to her monkey  after we left the restaurant, so we weren't scarring her ears with our topic of discussion, but it is something she is well aware of, as it is all around her. Sex is everywhere in our culture, even aimed at young kids, and she is remarkably adept at picking up on the subtle cues and even the double entendres that I thought went over her head. She has even commented a few times about certain songs or singers that she knows they are for,"Adults" and that she has to cover her ears and leave the room when she hears the opening chords of certain songs because she knows what is coming is not approved for her to hear.
I do try to shield my kids from some of it, but I am also very much into making sure they understand the reality of what its all about. My eldest son has had the,'Safe Sex" talk in both the straight and gay version and maybe that is why he says he is waiting for marriage or that he may never? I talk to my daughter about the fact that she doesn't need a man to be a strong and powerful woman. She has seen that a man can be more of a burden than an asset, and she knows in spades that men can be unreliable, untrustworthy and will forget you in a heartbeat, so she is learning to do the same. Maybe its harsh, but I don't want her to have to count on anyone, so I brutally honest with her about everything and I am preparing her to be a leader. She is already worked more than two weeks ahead in her schoolwork, is pushing to get her French lessons going faster and is writing her own story and she is teaching herself,"Smoke on The Water" on the piano by ear. She is fierce and brave and tough and she is also learning to watch other women so she knows how to walk and act like a lady. At this point, she sees boys as pretty useless and helpless and I dont mind if she continues to have that attitude for the rest of her life if it makes her powerful.
Her brother is not thrilled with that but he has not been the best at proving to her any different, especially when he does things like abandon the family all day on a holiday to be with his girlfriend. Its okay, I understand, but his little sister doesn't and to her it was just another example of a man who is unreliable and only following his pecker.
My son and I talked about a lot of things on our walk, including why some women make the decisions they do to date the men they do, and that on really drove him crazy. I told him about how when I was in college I had dated a really nice guy, a Dallas, rich boy, prep school kid who was headed into the family business and who was steady, reliable, sane, (as a rich kid could be), and he had a lot to offer me. We had a great time together and we dated for over a year, and I really liked him and he really liked me, my parents really liked him too. I dumped him.  I dumped him for a mercurial, temperamental, good-looking, jock who barely had two dimes to rub together and who my parents couldn't stand. It was a horrible break-up and I wasn't even nice about it, I broke his heart and it one of my biggest regrets. My son was shocked because he knows I always do my best to not hurt anyone, but as I told him the rest of the story I explained I was 19, stupid and shallow and not even thinking of what life would be like in the future. Now I am one who believes that no one should make life altering decisions until they are 30, but then hindsight is 20/20 and I hope that by giving him a view of what I had done in the past, I can help his future and prepare him for the insanity that is dealing with young adult women.

Dear Roger :Battle Weary

Yesterday was a stressful day around here. I realized that I have been the last line of defense between a small child and an angry man for the last 10 years and it has had a dramatic effect on me. I don't know how to deal with normal sibling rivalry, and I am afraid my kids don't even know how to have it. All 3 of my boys are older than my daughter, and all three of them are jealous of her. She is the baby, she does get a lot of attention because she is very outgoing and vivacious most of the time now, and she is friendly. She is also smart and cute. My boys are also smart and cute, but they tend to be reserved and more withdrawn. Its not their faults, they had to be that way to stay out of trouble at home before we escaped. My eldest son learned to be a ghost so we didn't get in trouble because if he disturbed the ex, then he would evoke his wrath, and I would jump in to protect him and then I would face the brunt of the anger for whatever transgression had taken place, such as awakening him from his nap in the middle of the living room or disturbing whatever tv program he had blaring. We learned to be quiet and out of sight and not,"Silly or ridiculous." 

My two other boys are the same way, they were raised in it their whole lives so that is all they know is being reserved and quiet, though I have been working very hard to bring them out of it with all kinds of random silliness and things like,"random dancing" and singing for no reason, but their older brother rarely joins in and cuts loose and its sad. 

My daughter is the rare exception to all of this, she was somewhat lucky in that I got her out in time. She was just a little thing of 4 when I got him sent to prison and while she remembers the straight razor and all that, she has been recovering and her natural exuberance has survived, especially with her love of her little band and all that accompanying silliness. 

She has made a lot of friends in the virtual world and she tries to reach out and make friends everywhere, because she knows the danger of being isolated and what that can lead to, but her brothers are not as eager to make new friends or reach out and often they resent her for her friendships and the attention she gets.

Her oldest brother sometimes seems to feel like he has to compete with her for attention and that she should be less outgoing and friendly and more like everyone else in the family, reclusive and reserved, but she resists that and it makes him angry. 

Yesterday he became upset with her and it was like my ex husband was standing in my living room, yelling at my daughter. He said things that my ex had said. His posture and attitude were the same and it was like a switch was thrown in my brain. I love my son with all my heart, but I will not see this cycle continued. My daughter will not grow up to be me. I stepped between them and sent her to her room to play with her brothers and I sat him down on the couch and we had a talk unlike any talk we have ever had. It went on for a couple of hours and I used every tool at my disposal, including guilt. 

I told him that like it or not, he is her male role model since everyone else has abandoned her. He is her example of how men act and how they treat women. He is it, a formerly abused child himself who has never had a male role model that didn't denigrate him or abuse him, is her only example of how a man is supposed to act. He was horrified and terrified. I asked him if he wanted her to grow up thinking that its acceptable for men to call her a,"Stupid Bitch" and shove her around or worse. I asked him if he wanted her to have low self esteem so that she would end up either thinking she deserved to be used and abused or that she should abuse her body with drugs and alcohol. I told him stories from my own past, and I made him cry. Maybe it was the wrong thing to do, but by the time I was done talking, my ex was gone from his eyes and I didn't hear him in is voice anymore. 

I told him that I had been the last line of defense between a small child and an angry ogre for over 10 years and it was time I got to stand down and have some peace in my life. We are finally together and free. The pain and anger and horror that was our lives is gone and it needs to stay that way. 

I think he finally grasped it, I hope so. Its been a long war and its taken a toll on me, Im weary of the battle.

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.