Dear Roger: Keep Moving Forward While Looking Back With A Smile

This past week was pretty damn amazing! The stress and tension that had been building over the small part of the universe we dwell in seemed to melt away and there was joy, laughter and smiles to be found and those who tried to bring anything but that, were castigated, outed for what they are, and quickly shunted off to the oblivion they so richly deserve.
There are unexpected heroes moving quietly to keep things interesting and I have hopes that they will keep things alive and positive in ways that those of us who understand will appreciate. My gut is rarely wrong about things...just sayin.
I am now a dot.com! I bought a couple of domains, including my own name,"JenniferDScroggins.com" and another one called,"MonkeyAfire.com". Its slow going when your I.T. guy is your 16 y/o son that has the social life of a young rock star, so I have to deal with working around his gigs, his dates, his church things, his beach vacations, his skate boarding adventures, and his need to eat all the food in the house and sleep for 12-15 hours at a stretch. I have found he is motivated by cold, hard cash and having his Iphone repossessed, so we finally got the primary site online last night with more to follow hopefully tomorrow, and this should make me easier to find but I learned all kinds of ways to curse Html thanks to his efforts yesterday.
Hes also working on writing songs for my next Book Trailers for "Paying the Piper" and "Drifts", so I guess I cant criticize him too much, but dealing with his work schedule is a lot of stress for a Type A person like me who likes to get stuff done as with as little procrastination as possible and he is all about procrastinating. We will get through it though, hopefully with all our sanity intact and with my books getting some attention and sales.
My daughter is working on drawing and designing some table hangars for my book signing that will hopefully be taking place this coming Saturday, (once my shipment of books arrives), and I am excited to finally be getting things out there and promoted on the local level as well. Its slow going and often stressful and frustrating, and sometimes hurtful and heartbreaking, but its worth it, and I hope that I will leave a legacy for my kids that will provide them with proof that persevering and following your dreams is the right thing to do, even when you have been told you are,"Stupid, crazy and a waste of time".
Keeping my kids involved has motivated them to learn things like more advanced coding for building my websites, design for my advertising, and my son Sticky has even gotten involved with helping to promote my books by talking to people and showing them my books, and when we go to ship out books to people who have ordered signed copies, he helps with the packaging and addressing, so he is learning things that will hopefully help him later in life. Stubby has been quietly promoting my books on his Facebook page, not even telling me he was doing it. He carry's the books to the post office for me, and he handles telling the clerk what we need, so this whole endevour is giving them skills to use in the future, and my daughter, Stevie, is wanting to see about eventually publish her own book in the next year!
Im proud of how far we have come, as we start our 3rd year up here, we have made a lot of progress and we will hopefully see even more in this next year with hopes of getting that car and maybe even going to Texas to see my sister and some friends. The ex is going back to Arizona, he found California to be too hard and child support enforcement sent him a letter letting him know they had found him, oh well, I wont miss what I never got, and we will keep on keeping on and rejoice that now California is a safe zone too!

Dear Roger: Two Years Sees A Lot Of Changes

Yesterday was quite a day in our little corner of the universe, the long awaited event finally occurred and my daughters favorite boy finally became a father. I think I will never again hear in the higher registers. I have to wonder, why do little girls find it necessary to shriek when they are happy? I think my poor neighbors probably had small heart attacks when I saw the Facebook status of his sister post and I looked up and said to my daughter,"Hey, guess what? Jackson's finally a daddy." and she let out a shriek of joy that was probably heard by the boy himself wherever he was.
Poor Spencer jumped, the cat ran and hid and my friend Jen, came close to dropping her Iphone on the tile floor as we watched my daughter race around the apartment yelling and laughing and cheering, stopping only to do the math and smile to herself as she said,"I'm either 8 years older or 19 years younger, either way, its okay!" I promptly sprouted gray hairs in places that had been hold outs as I Google searched the phone number for lock down style all girls schools.
It was a happy day, and a busy day. I bought my domains for the internet so I can hopefully get my books out there with a little more visibility and maybe start making some money on them instead of bleeding cash, and I spent a good hour on the phone walking another person though getting their writing self-published. One of the domains I bought is specifically for that kind of thing, "MonkeyAfire" is going to be a networking site for all of us brought together by the 100th Monkey effect, all of us who want to keep that spirit alive and moving forward, and I hope to get people networking and bringing forward those who are working on building their own dreams.
Summer is finally trying to arrive here in Portland and I am glad to see it. The cold has worn on me and with no concerts to look forward to this summer, I had despaired having anything to look forward to, but things are improving, I am starting to write again when I can fit it in between trying to promote my books and make a little money to support my writing habit, and I am still hoping against hope to get that one shout out or bump that makes all the difference for me, but so far knocking on doors, tweeting, messaging and sending my books out into the great unknown has just netted a trickle of interest, but I wont quit, I have my little girl sitting next to me most of the time, encouraging me and patting my back, reminding me why I do what I do, and telling me her plans for when we are finally able to afford, "Good used car and a full months groceries."

Dear Roger: This Month, We Think Of Gratitude

Summer is a time of reflection for me. I woke up this morning on my nice new leather couch in my comfortable living room without anyone yelling at me,(other than Spencer, my dog), and I realized that I have been in Portland for almost 2 years, at first with just two of my kids and then a year and a month later, with all of my kids. Its been two amazing years of changes. I still have my issues, some days are better than others, but I have been steadily employed for almost a year, I am a published author x's THREE and I have FRIENDS that I actually hang out with on a regular basis. I still stay in the house more than I go out, and I still struggle with hyper-vigilance, my stammer, headaches and my temper, but I go more days wanting to be here than not.
I am enjoying my life more. I'm not ducking and dodging and worrying about appeasing anyone so they didn't hurt me or my kids.I struggle and scrounge to keep my kids clothed and fed, and we don't have extra anything, but we are HAPPY. My eldest son is now learning how to drive thanks to my new friend, and I got to go see a movie in the theater with another adult and we acted silly and hooted and hollered and OBJECTIFIED the hell out the men on the screen and I walked out of the first movie I had seen in almost a year, laughing.
I've gotten tougher I think. I stood my ex down and told him to leave when he showed up here in Portland thinking he was going to bully me into supporting him and putting up with his crap again. I went "Keep Awake" on him and I managed to get just the right amount of "scary psycho chick" look in my eye and he scurried away to go mooch off someone else, leaving us with debt we didn't need, depleted cupboards, a cat with worms and fleas, and junk in storage I just managed to get hauled off yesterday. He kept the damn van, deciding he needed it more than me and the four kids.
Its taken us a bit to recover from his,"Visit" and even his paltry contributions of 100 here or there when the mood strikes him haven't done too much to ease the stress of it all, but knowing he wont be back would be more help. I've finally filed for child support, because after his last call where he told the kids he had spent the last two weeks sitting on the beach reading while we were scrambling trying to find money for milk and bread, I knew something had to give. I decided that nothing motivates a man to get busy like threats of going to jail or losing their drivers license. I don't do this lightly, but when it has been years and years of nothing but excuse after excuse for not supporting his kids, for failing them, and being a lazy slob, then something has to be done. Hes not disabled, hes just lazy and its time he gets some proper motivation. My eldest son wants me to go after his father too, and while that scares the hell out of me, he says its time he finally does the right thing as well.
Its going to be an even busier year this next one I have a feeling and hopefully just as upwardly mobile. My kids are happy and safe, I feel mostly happy and safe and I am proud of the progress I have made these past two years. I have grown a lot as a person and I am alive. He has not won, and in spite of his attempts to continually pick at my insecurities and bring me down, he is the one who is essentially homeless and who has done nothing for himself or his kids. I have clothed, fed and sheltered them on my own and I have managed to hold down and job and publish THREE books while all he has done is criticize me for following my dream, but the voice that use to roar right in my face with the straight razor at my throat is now just a whisper at my heels.
My little girl is creating an event on Facebook and inviting people to our "Two Year Celebration of Life" on July 28th. She is stone cold serious. If you can, come join us, it wont be fancy, but it will be happy.

Dear Roger: A Cure For Insomnia?

For the first time in months, I slept good last night. I really shouldn't have, I have about a million things to worry about, including covering all the bills at the first of the month, the ex not helping out and hinting that he might be heading this direction, my 3rd novel is getting bunged up in its opening week out because the e-version's page is not totally ready so no one can preview it and that is a huge pain in the ass, and well, I have had chest pains off and on over the past couple of weeks again, but after a busy as hell day of building my authors page on Amazon and getting things set up for all the international markets and doing all kinds of other work related stuff I needed to do, I took some time and I wrote  a letter to someone very important to me and I put to rest some business that I needed to put to rest, and I think that is why I slept better.
I tend to not be a good follower or joiner of anything. I have always been an outlier and skeptical of the whole herd mentality that many seem content to fall into when it comes to things. I have tried over the years to be a part of things, and I have failed miserably when my need to ask,"Why?" or "Says who?"  comes into play as well as my gut instinct.
When I started off in the military, that was a huge problem and if I hadn't destroyed my knee at Ft. Sill, I probably would have ended up in the stockade for insubordination more than I would have actually served because keeping my opinion to myself has never been my strong point when I have encountered injustice.
As a cop, it caused me problems as well because I have to respect the people giving me commands, and when the person who is supposedly commanding me, makes fun of me for using,"Big words" or "Talking like a lawyer", well then I'm afraid the contempt is going to show in my expression pretty damn fast.
As I have gotten older and the years have taken a toll on me, I've gone less from worrying about belonging to anything to more about protecting those I care about or who need it, and my kids are my primary focus and then there are a few who figure in pretty close right there after my kids. I am pretty diligent about watching out for them and I don't have an agenda and I don't want or expect anything other than people to be safe and happy, because like I have said in the past, time is short and I often feel like a clock that is winding down. When you are in that situation, things have no meaning to you, but making sure you are right with the people you care about and Karma, has a whole lot of meaning.
I am working hard to make sure my kids know about doing the right things and about being skeptical of people with a bill of goods to sell. I used to take most people at face value and give them a chance to lie to me, but now I am more likely to go in expecting to be lied to and hope that the person will prove themselves to be genuine and honest with the same kinds of values that I have and that I have tried to work hard to instill in my children. Dont know if its just a Southern thing, a cop thing, or what it is, but I have gone back to going with my own gut instinct on things and when I do get backed on my feelings by someone I hold in regard, its good to know there are other people out there who have a lick of sense and a moral code similar to mine because it gives me hope that maybe my kids will have friends when they grow up and venture out and they wont be held to be such weirdos.
All I know is I slept a lot better last night and a load is off my mind.

A Modern Calamity: Dear Roger: The Things You Do For Love

A Modern Calamity: Dear Roger: The Things You Do For Love: Today was an amazing day. My teenage son spent most of his day helping me put together the book trailer for my book,"Face In The Rear V...

Dear Roger: The Things You Do For Love

Today was an amazing day. My teenage son spent most of his day helping me put together the book trailer for my book,"Face In The Rear View Mirror." This was not something he did lightly, hes a teenager who was planning on spending the morning playing football with his buddies and then the afternoon with his guitar or napping, but the rain started in and that killed his plans and he watched me struggle along with Windows Movie maker, cursing and squinting through my inadequate glasses, getting more and more frustrated til finally with his trademark," Nick Burns-Your Companies Computer Guy" snarl he said,"MOVE!" and he took over.
He got all the pictures in place, found a picture to fill a gap we knew we couldn't fill otherwise and he then captioned and set up all the animations and fancy stuff that was making me crazy because half of it I cannot see properly and the other half I get frustrated with trying to get match what I have in my mind. He got all the pictures and text in place and it was beautiful, exactly what I wanted and then we hit our first major argument of the day; the music.
He knew what I listened to when I wrote that story, he was sitting next to me on the couch most of the time as I sat there with my ear buds in,alternately either smiling at memories or crying over them and he listened to my stories and some of the music with me, and he knew the one song that inspired me along with the one voice that was in my ears most of the time. When I got up to go referee a fight between my daughter and Stubby over who was farting in the bedroom the worst, he loaded the song and when I came back he had it perfectly synced up and playing along with the pictures.
My reaction was visceral and he didn't know how to handle a mom in tears over a simple song, but he stopped it and asked me why I wouldn't allow him to leave it. I explained that it was most likely tangled up in legal issues that would take years to sort out,and that I was not going to step into the middle of with my paltry little video. I wanted him to record HIS music and he finally agreed after much negotiation and explaining that no matter how special a song may be, sometimes a song from someone close to you is even more special.
He sat and tuned and re-tuned his guitar for at least an hour, driving me up the wall, and he strummed and picked and wool-gathered like musicians do, and he played the one song he had written over a week ago and decided he didn't like it for the video, so he came up with something new.
We recorded it at my kitchen table when we caught a lull in the barking and scratching of the dog, the bickering of the other kids and the noise of the road outside. You can hear a bit of the creak of our chairs and some of the tap of his toes on the tile, but I think it adds to the simple charm of the melody.
He did that for me. He gave up his whole day, working on my video and helping me out when I know he wanted to be off hanging out with his friends, and he wrote a song for me. We may battle like most parents and teens do, but today I feel loved more than a little.

A Modern Calamity: Dear Roger: Comfort Zone

A Modern Calamity: Dear Roger: Comfort Zone: When I am working on something, such as my writing, I can be very single minded and focused. I often forget to eat sometimes even to drink...