Dear Roger: Monkey Team Switch?

So my little monkey girl is now 9, only shes not so little anymore and im not so sure she is still a monkey girl. Her party had an odd mixed theme of a,"Glittery Unicorn pooping a rainbow" cake,accompanied by,"My Lil Pony" plates and settings, and then we had karaoke and sushi. She really didn't ask for any presents, in fact she mainly just wanted time with her friends and family and to get out of the house to have some fun. She sang a few Katy Perry songs, a Kesha song and on a dare she sang the CeLo Green song,"F-You". That one was oddly enthusiastic and considering she had to be really careful to not actually cuss, I was surprised she belted out as confidently as she did. All the songs she sang were about either being left, breaking up or the end of something and I hope its not her saying,"Goodbye" to being the sweet little girl she has always been.
Shes a tough kid now and she flips her brothers the business, is scornful of most men and she has a temper. She also hates making mistakes. Some of her most dramatic shows of temper have come when she has been challenged by her tutor to do something that is far above her academic level, and she either doesn't get it exactly perfect or he points out some way it could have been better instead of telling her it was absolutely perfect, but he has her doing college level work that is designed to challenge her to the point of failure so she will learn how to overcome it. She is excited about going to Gifted Camp this summer and plans on doing everything she can to show them that she should be looked at for additional scholarships and programs to challenge her. She is getting frustrated with her school and we she saw me bring home some information about apartments downtown near better schools, she got excited and hopeful. I hate that the fact we live in a suburb and don't have a car limits her ability to get a quality education.
Friends tried to get her favorite boy to tweet her, but he didn't and honestly, I didn't figure he would and she didn't even notice. She was too busy with her tutor and her friends and I'm pretty sure she has started to see him as just another man. Her one comment that even referenced him was when she thanked everyone for coming to her party and she said,"Thanks for coming and helping make up for the total suckage of last year, at least no one ruined it this year for me by killing my favorite band!" We all laughed and went about enjoying our sushi, but I was shocked. She has never been snarky like that before. She almost left her jackson hanging on the back of the chair at the sushi restaurant, and while she still hangs onto him, she worries more about Graupner and is still hopeful I will figure out someway to take her to SBL in June so she can give him a hug.
I dont know what is bringing about the change in her, maybe its that shes finally realized the boy she adored has wandered off on down some path she cannot follow and until he finds his way back its best she just move on along her on that leads ever upwards.

Dear Roger: Excuse Me While I Talk With The Voices In My Head

Being a writer is a bit of a mental illness. When I have a plot or a story line I am chasing, I often wrestle it around for days, sometimes talking it out. The characters can be difficult to get into, with their motivations and lives changing with the stroke of a pen and it can be frustrating to figure out what direction my muse is trying to push me. My kids are used to me talking out loud or muttering and scribbling on odd bits of paper, looking frustrated and sometimes typing so hard on my computer that my son makes noises of distress and says,"Are you beating someone up again or mad at another character? You are punishing your computer!" He has learned that computers do not last long with me, often having keys bare of their letters with worn spots where the wrist rest is, odd coffee stains on the screen and a search history full of topics that he has learned to never click on if he values his sanity as a hetero male.
When I have writers block its not fun to be around me. I get morose and grumpy, struggling to figure out what has happened to stop the flow of words. I've had writers block for most of the last 9 months and its been so bad I haven't even dared to touch one of my stories that was finished and only in need of its final editing for fear of launching into a hissy fit driven melee of destruction along the lines of the,"Great Artistic Bonfire of '91" that took out most of my photography and artwork. I have another story that I had been sharing online with some friends that I left with the characters lingering in a very tenuous position, and my inclination has been to have them end it all in a passionate, rage driven murder/suicide. Yet when I mention what my potential end is for them, my faithful readers do not react well and honestly, it would break my heart to end them, but every time I open the the files that is what I see happening so I have left it alone.
I started writing another story a while back about a young musician who turned to street hustling to survive, and its actually flowing pretty well on occasion. There has been a young man who wanders   past the office on occasion that fuels ideas for his mis-adventures, so I may actually be able to do something with this one, but between work and kids and doctors appointments its hard to keep the focus.
I have written 3 songs and a friend of mine who saw them was impressed, but I don't know what to do with them. Ill probably just give them to my son or daughter or maybe enter them in some contest in the next year if I find the time, but its weird how they come to me. I used to write and sometimes perform Cowboy Poetry,(a looong time ago), and the songwriting comes to me much like the poetry from back then did. I still have many of those poems I wrote and maybe someday my kids will do something with them. My son seems pretty intrigued by them and hes got the musical bone as does my little girl.
Had another doctors appointment the other day to try and figure out where the hell the bruises and the exhaustion might be coming from. They drew SIX damn tubes of blood off of me after telling me that even with all the cooking and eating ive been doing that I've neither lost nor gained any weight. At least Im holding steady, so I will see that as a positive, though summer is coming and I tend to shed weight in summer pretty badly. The doctor had them test me for liver function, platelets, cbc, thyroid, and then she asked if she could test me for a couple of diseases I haven't been tested for in a few years. I told her that even though its been a long dry spell she might as well as its better to be safe than sorry and with 11 years in public safety spent mucking around in the mud,blood beer and various body fluids on accident scenes and dead body calls its probably a good idea.
My little girl has her party on the 9th and she is really excited. The only kids that are going are her siblings and while that might be odd for most kids, for her its really not.She hasn't asked for anything other than the party and that is just one of the things I love about her so damn much. With her its not about things, its about time spent with loved ones. I know she really would like a new computer,(hell, we all would!) but she doesn't ask and when she does finally snap and have a bratty moment, she always apologizes and hugs the person she snapped at,(usually her tutor), and often cries because she is upset at herself. She is growing up so fast and even with the changes over this last year she is still my sweet monkey girl.

Dear Roger: The Last Monkey Birthday?

She is growing up. Oh God, she is growing up. She is still the sweet, kind, loving little girl she has always been, but she has a snarky edge to her that she didn't have last year. She has slammed doors, thrown pencils in frustration and she sassed back at her tutor more than a few times and she adores him. She is leaving her Jackson home more and more and gradually accepting that the little band of men she loved have totally abandoned her. She is getting tougher and she has endured bullying at school like the tough monkey girl she is and no longer does she come home in tears, retreating to her room to cuddle her monkey under her blankets, now she rants and stomps and tells me about how she restrained herself from,"Stomping a mudhole" in the bully's butt, (I may have rubbed off on her a little bit), and she is holding her head up higher, though she still has days when she just wants to cuddle Benny and mope for a bit.
She got a scholarship to go to a camp for Gifted children this summer and for some reason the school district has been doing more testing on her and they have reaffirmed she is "Intellectually and Creatively Gifted", though I don't know why they feel the need to keep testing her for it. She reads constantly, draws and sings,(quite often very inappropriate songs), and her tutor works with her on college level vocabulary words and concepts just to provide a challenge to her. She is very used to always getting 100% and being told how brilliant she is so actually being provided a challenge where she sometimes fails is good for her, though its not good for door frames or pencils. My child has an ego and it does not accept failure very well and we are teaching her how to fail and come back from it, though the process is heart rending for all of us.
She has cut her hair this past year, gotten her ears pierced, traveled to Seattle, made new friends, stood up to her brothers, suffered heartbreak and realized that heroes are just human beings who sometimes forget that they are heroes to little girls and go back to being human beings. She has decided she wants to grow up to be a hero herself and she is a fierce defender of those she sees as needing her protection, including her tutor and even her long lost hero's for some odd reason.
I don't know what the future is going to hold for her in this next year, but I do know it is going to be full of amazing things. We are celebrating her birthday on Saturday with Karaoke, a cake in the shape of a,"Glittery Unicorn Pooping a Rainbow" , followed by a dinner of Sushi with friends at her favorite Japanese restaurant. She hasn't asked for any presents, just fun with friends because she said she has everything she wants and needs. If you arent busy on Saturday, join us on Twitter, send her a Happy Birthday, she will appreciate it. @calamityjen1

Dear Roger: Cant Tell Me Nothing About Kids

Twenty years ago I would have considered myself an absolute failure as a mother. I read all the articles and advice columns that were supposed to provide me with sage advice on how to raise my baby and none of them fit my situation. I was a young, new college student struggling to deal with being the first in my family to have a child out of wedlock,(HUGE shame on my very Southern, very Texan family), dealing with pressure from the father who wanted me to either give up the child to him so he could send her to his family overseas,(she is bi-cultural, Domi-Iranian), and my parents who wanted her and my health that was still in horrible condition after dealing with toxemia and then post-partum depression that was never ending. I was poor, struggling to find daycare so I could attend classes, and alone in Dallas...no "Momblog" or column covered these issues in 1991, in fact they are barely addressed today. The issues resolved themselves and my daughter is now a smart, successful, 21 year old woman for whom the most pressing decision is trying to decide if she wants to use her full-ride scholarship to attend Texas A&M or UT-Austin or if she wants to go to University of Arizona and give us all heart attacks. She is well adjusted, beautiful, spooky smart,(think Sheldon from Big Bang Theory smart), and shes learned from my mistakes. She is in no hurry to date,and she is not the only one of my kids to have that idea.
Being a mother was never my goal in life, I just kind of fell into it. My now 17 year old son came of terrible circumstances from a terrible man, and before he was born our lives were filled with terror and things like packing up and relocating in the middle of the night, leaving all my friends behind, changing vehicles and always looking over my shoulder, avoiding my own family's homes, all for his safety. His birth was a quiet, unannounced event. No baby announcements grace his baby book because when you are being stalked by a madman who has vowed to kill your child, you tend to not send them out. We lived below the radar for years, but that issue was actually sort of covered in things like movies,"Sleeping With The Enemy", though we never had a really nice house, we moved from one apartment to another. Still most journalists don't bother to cover the issues that come with that kind of situation, like "How to Exist Without Child Support", "Jobs That Will Hire Single Moms In The Real World", "Meals You Can Make Out of Ramen and Canned Veggis", because that was our reality. I worked 3 jobs at a time and we still struggled until I got back into college. I am pretty pleased with how he has turned out, hes also gifted, with technology and music being his blessing, and hes been with the same girl for 3 years and they are a cute, sweet couple that will probably end up getting married. Somehow along the way he ended up religious and  they both believe in waiting til marriage,(can I get a Hallelujah!), so he also learned from my life.
Now that im older and I have my last 3 kids I look at some of the,"Parenting Experts" with their one or two toddlers and I laugh. They live in fancy houses in L.A., New York, or Boston or in some safe, gated community with their husbands and their 2.5 dogs and their aupair to handle the crappy diapers, and they have Gymboree and ballet and whine about being out of wine or how hard it is to get to the park past the people eating their lunch and they write on their Macbooks about,"The Over Scheduled Toddler". I was showing some of these to my boss the other day and we were laughing about their trials and travails, (between us we have 17 children), and we have handled things like bad men, children with disabilities, serious illness, death, abject poverty, and  thinking of our kids first, last and always. We both look like the moms we are, neither of us have a bit of make-up on, when people ask us if we have had spa-days or make overs or things like that we both laugh. Though the days of poop in the heater vents, Legos down the commode, booger walls and toast in dvd player are hopefully behind us, I now have to deal with things like 3 boys in full on puberty and a daughter that is just a the edge of it. Door slamming, hissy fits, epic brawls, battles, emotional outbursts that devolve into semi-homicidal rages against stuffies, hour long showers that leave the bathroom in a dubious state, socks in weird places in weird condition that I pick up with tongs and just discard, a boy who is very proud of his new body hair and junk and wants to show it off to EVERYONE, a girl who knows the words to very inappropriate songs and sings them under her breath and crushes on gay men and tells me I should,"Marry him, he would be a good daddy," not understanding he is just not into that AT ALL!
Yeah, somehow all the bloggers and journalists miss those issues. Maybe I should write about them, but sadly I am not sure we meet the dress code to get popular, after all, my boys mainly are clad in Old Navy, though my daughter is the lucky one to have a closet stuffed with Gymboree and Gap, as well as Harjuku Mini thanks to the kindness of some friends. Ill think on it,between the dishes and laundry and work and refereeing, and ....

Dear Roger: Soft In My Old Age

I'm turning into a wuss. Right now I should be getting dressed to take Benny over to the vet for his neutering and I cannot do it. Its not because I am against him getting neutered, that is an inevitable thing that I will do because its the responsible thing to do as a pet parent, but knowing it will cause him pain, and knowing he will be scared because he will be away from me is what is putting the brakes on me being able to do it. He is currently cuddled up against me with one of his paws draped over me, snoring as I type.
Yesterday my little girl got her ears pierced. Our friends went along as moral support and her tutor held her hand while she clutched her Jackson in the other while I took pictures of the event. I cried, though not as bad as I did when she cut her hair for the very first time. It was acknowledging she is finally growing up. She was fine with the whole ordeal, no tears from her and just some giddy excitement about getting some earrings with monkeys on them.
Yesterday for the first time we had my eldest sons girlfriend over to dinner. I am finally working on developing a peaceful relationship with her. I guess after nearly 3 years its about time to admit shes actually not a bad person. Shes really not, shes a very sweet girl, who has been very sheltered. My main complaint the whole time that they had dated was that as a very sheltered church girl, she would be just like the people in the church who were so judgmental and hypocritical towards us, but she is not. She actually got along well with my boys,(who teased her pretty hard), and she joined in as best she could due to no voice. We cooked dinner together and she seems to be actually really good for my son. I guess I am mellowing because to add to the weirdness of last night, the meal we cooked was totally Vegan.
My life has been strange since I got here in Portland, but yesterday was pretty high up on the strange stuff o meter for me. But, being Im probably one of the few mothers in the the world who had objected to her son dating a vegan, sheltered, always chaperoned, church girl, I guess weird is the norm? I will admit I have totally reconsidered my objections after considering the alternatives and I am thrilled with his girlfriend. She has a scholarship to college, she has goals for the future, and she is a good cook and polite, classy and she held her own with my crew. I look forward to getting to know her.
Ill have to reschedule Benny for a time when either Chance can take him or I can bribe my boys into taking him, but for now im going to cuddle him and just look the other way when he humps the hell out of Finn the Valhund.

Dear Roger:Never Pee Alone

When you become a parent for the first time and you are all in, dedicated to the little life that is dependent upon you, one of the first bits of privacy you lose is your time alone in the bathroom. I remember as a young single mom, exhausted and stressed about every little thing I thought I was doing wrong, being worried that if my baby boy was out of my sight for even the length of time it took to take a pee, that either he would somehow choke to death on air, smother under his Tigger doll, magically rise up and then fall out of his crib then breaking his neck, or that the apartment would catch on fire and I wouldn't be there to save him, so I carried him everywhere with me, including into the bathroom. Its a proven fact that babies hate the thought of their parents taking a shower that lasts longer than 5 minutes, and he trained me to become the worlds fastest at washing, shaving the high points, drying enough to get clothes back on and then back to serving his needs before he reached full scream.
When my child became a toddler, I didn't dare leave him alone or loose in the house without supervision even if I thought he was occupied by something. I learned the hard way that a child seemingly occupied by the Wiggles one moment is the next moment often found, naked, armed with a butcher knife that was on top of the fridge, and running down a busy sidewalk screaming that he is a "NINJA!!". When I had 3 children under the age of 5 I reached the point I could go most of the day without a bathroom break and that showers at 3 a.m really aren't that bad even when interrupted by a sleepwalking toddler who casually takes a pee in the bathroom commode, leaving the door open, letting in the giant dog who then sticks his head in the shower and stands there the rest of the time staring at you while you try to finish shaving legs that haven't seen the attention of a razor for the better part of a month.
When we lived in a 1 bathroom apartment after we first moved to Portland, it was nothing short of hell. I had 5 people, 3 of them boys trying to share a bathroom, and 2 of them are consummate lock pickers. My daughter has no fear,(except of peeing her pants), and she got tired of her teen brother taking multiple half hour long showers where he would lock everyone out of the bathroom and then pretend to be deaf to our pleas. She finally just began picking the lock, going in, taking care of her business and quite often flushing a couple times for good measure just to hear him shriek. She does the same to me now that we share a bathroom, quite often wanting to carry on a conversation about whatever is going on in her life. I find it a bit distressing. The kids wander in and out with each other in the bathrooms now that we have two, and you would think that I would have some privacy, finally, but it doesn't work out that way. When I am getting ready for work in the mornings I have Benny my Boston Terrier who insists on following into the bathroom and on a couple of occasions almost into the shower as I get ready, if I lock him out, he sits outside and scratches at the door and howls until my daughter gets up and lets him in. My eldest son, when he wakes up around the same time as me is often peppering me with questions about money, my younger kids are at the door asking for help with clothes or news of what is going to be for dinner or what we are doing when they get home, its often a hunt to find who took my shaving gel, where the shampoo has gone off to, and the investigation into why my towel is wet, most of the time I dont want to know and I just end up hoping for my allotted 5 minutes , try to convince Benny that I need to shower alone, and hope that I answered all questions and phone calls before the water hits the right temperature.

Dear Roger: Nerdy As Hell, Loyal To The Bone or Stuck In A Rut?

My job requires me to judge people. I talk to them, take their applications for a home, listen to their stories if their history is less than stellar and I make a decision if I want to let them be my neighbor. I have laws I have to obey, and once I follow those laws, then I am allowed to rely on my gut instinct to make my decisions and some of the people I have chosen to be my neighbors were not people most would expect. I've chosen a woman who came from very similar circumstances as my own, and she had been rejected time and time again and she was at the end of her rope when she walked through my door. I could have rejected her as well, but my gut told me to give her a chance, because I looked at her and saw myself nearly 3 years ago. She is a great resident almost 6 months later. There are plenty of other cases where I have gone with my gut and rented to people, or advocated for them, and they have proven me right time and time again in spite of where they came from or what they looked like. I am a person who puts great stock in the impression I get from meeting a person, talking to them, looking them in the eyes, seeing how they behave around children and others. There are people who have walked in and screened fine but I did not want to rent to them because my gut told me they were going to be trouble, and to the person they have been. If the laws allowed me more power to depend on my gut, I would have a lot less drama and hassle in my life. I interviewed, then gave a tour to and ultimately rented an apartment to, a stripper the other day. My gut tells me she is going to be a great neighbor and when she was embarrassed about telling me her job, I was quick to tell her there was no shame in working for a living.

When I have met a person, shook their hand, spoken to them, observed them up close and watched the body language and micro-gestures they use in their communication with the people around them, seen the subtle cues that give me indications of their personality quirks, whether or not they use drugs or have health issues, or even obsessive tics, I get a feel for that person that remains with me and I decide right then and there where that person ranks in my realm of importance or if they are even worthy of me remembering their name for more than a day or two. I do not change that opinion lightly and once I decide that person is worthy of consideration, they are included in my little pack of those I tend to stay loyal to and hold up for consideration. 

Im loyal to a few things. I've worn the same style of clothing for most of my life, I used Works for my writing until I had to change to a computer last year and could no longer get it. I had a qwerty slide out keyboard phone until a little over a year ago when it unfortunately went swimming in a bad, bad place. I still love the same little band of broken and frayed and largely missing; musicians. I have loved the same damn man for over 15 years to no avail. I don't know so much if I am a creature of habit or just stuck in a rut, but I do tend to be understanding of people for the most part and when one of my friends was angrily,(and rightfully so), complaining, that she felt unappreciated as a fangirl who had put forth a huge amount of effort to garner support for some of our favorite fellas, I found myself being an apologist for them. I don't know what the hell is going on with them either, but I tend to be forgiving. I've had very fucked up things going on in my life from time to time when I just chose to withdraw from the world and not talk to anyone,(no matter what damage it did), and yes, my book sales have suffered for it, but when you just don't have it in you to give, you don't and cant and yes, sometimes even a tweet is a lot. Depression, anger, family heartbreak, all kinds of things just can crash in or sometimes life just changes and you find another path and wander it for awhile. I've been doing that and my latest novel has sat on my desktop for the last 3 months, completed, ready to go and im not ready to send it because I have lost the voice for the time being. I've been writing something else and until it figures itself out, im going to wander. I hope my friend gets over her upset at them, its been a long, crazy trip and our band of miscreants has shrunk far to much by those who obviously never shook those hands and said,"Hello", face to face.