So, again, I ask why do we do it? Sure, those Baby Gap outfits are super cute, soft tummies are so fun to nibble on and there is the occasional hug that makes you want to cry from its sweetness. But lately? I feel as though I have a precious young bird sitting in my hands and I am encouraging him to fly and test his tender wings in the wind of life. Only this bird? This fucker would rather sink his talons into my palms and peck away at my flesh in an effort to devour my life force while he simultaneously shits all over my wrist. That is how I picture parent hood today. Is that bad?

Light Bondage
I have tried for a long time, but I cannot talk my wife into light bondage. She just wont have it. A long time ago a girlfriend introduced me to it and we had a blast. I am looking for a secret woman who can meet up during the day. Must be very clean. Prefer a slim woman who can keep a secret. O yes, I am a white male.

LOOKING FOR A EBONY THICK QUEEN

I AM 37 I VIST JACKTOWN ONCE A MONTH SEEKING A RELATIONSHIP AGES 24-45 SEEKING THICK COUNTRY WOMAN I WILL TREAT U RIGHT SEND PIC. I AM FROM NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

Looking for a woman about 60 years old

When I read the last one I have a scary vision of my mother replying to something like this....

The arrival of Devon in our lives changed everything. Everything. There is not a single area in our existences that is the same since he joined our odd family nearly four years ago. It goes deeper than the third child thing; beyond the fact that once he arrived there was open heart surgery, spousal tumult, financial issues and grief beyond description when we lost my father-all within 20 months of his short life. And as much as that kicked us all on our collective asses, it has become the norm. Tumult, chaos, noise -it is all in a day's gig for us. I am not complaining, just taking stock to clear up my head and make sense of it all. Because sometimes when I find myself unable to breathe and wondering what the hell is going on, I need to take a moment, plug into some music on my laptop and figure out how the hell I can pull my head out of my ass so that my kids don't suffer any the worse for it.

Summer is never a tranquil span of time in our house, as I suspect the case is in many homes. The age differences in the children ensures that most activities are not suitable for all of us to participate in at one time. Loren has friends and a busy social life, Cassidy is heading that way and Devon seems to need more quiet time at home with his toys. I often feel as though the room is spinning and I just want to curl up in a ball until it passes over. Only it doesn't, it keeps coming. Every day is a flurry of upheaval and I just want to find a constant in it all. A couple of days ago I realized there was indeed a constant, Devon and his Oddness. Usually I forget about this but recently it has reared its head in away I simply can't ignore. Aside from the fact that Devon hasn't ingested a bite of solid food in over three weeks -vanilla yogurt and milk is it, Devon is extremely particular about his clothing. Nothing fancy or flashy, mind you. Everything must be super soft, no tags and it is not unusual to find him dressed in a head to toe fleece ensemble in mid-June. But now he has added a Batman costume to it. Yepper. Boy howdy was I super bright when the other day in Target I agreed to buy him the outfit. It came in a bat shaped box and I thought it was just a mask. But when we got out of the store and opened it we found not only the mask but a cape and a full boy sized suit as well. Devon immediately whooped something incoherent as he jumped up and down and begged me to put it on him. All right. Eighty degrees out and completely covered in black nylon we proceeded on with our errands. The fellow patrons in Bed, Bath & Beyond and PetCo found him adorable and he, seeming to feel secure behind his mask, was willing to stop and grant an audience about his Batman opinions. Errands that would have taken us a mere 20 minutes ended up at nearly an hour.

The bat suit entered our lives five days ago and has yet to be abandoned. Devon sleeps in the suit part with the cape and mask lovingly hung next to his bed and waiting until morning to be donned for yet another day of crime fighting. He begs incessantly to sit at my laptop to watch the YouTube clips of the old, cheesy Batman cartoons. When he believes nobody is watching he acts out the clips and pretends to fly through the air. Totally cute and mostly harmless. However, if he collects a closet full of costumes and takes to wearing masks and tights on a daily basis I might start to worry. Just a little.

Or not. Maybe polygamy isn't all fun games. Likely not, according to nearly anything I have ever read about it. But that show does give it a bit of shine and sass. And yes, I will go to hell for equating it with a Greek system fun show.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I got outed by the Library Ladies. It is an experience that I alternately rejoice about or feel far too naked about. Not only was I shocked to learn they had actually discovered my blog, I was mortified to admit that I had a staggering library fine for a Cars movie I had had in my possession for nearly 10 months. I ran into one of The Ladies a couple of weeks ago and she told me to turn myself in, that I was not at all the worse offender. She knew of one person who had a fine exceeding $300. I thought to myself, "Wow, what kind of a loser would have that sort of fine?" And made a vow to turn myself in. So a few days ago Devon, Cass and I ventured out to the library to face The Ladies and turn in our materials. First I had to stop by the video rental store to have all the scratches removed from Cars. No, I didn't scratch it, nor did anybody in our house. But one of the reasons I held on to it for so long was that I was worried the library staff would look at my sorry record of delinquencies and assume I was the guilty party for treating their materials so badly. Yes, I know that points at all sorts of paranoid baggage on my part, but if there is a sin to admit to I feel the need to 'fess up whether or not I committed the badness.

It turns out I was not the only one turning myself in for negligent library habits that day. Earlier in the morning somebody had returned a book they had checked out in 2001. That's something like seven years! What kind of slacker does that, I ask??? And me? My fine was a measly $20. Oh yeah, baby! Twenty bucks. Turns out that by actually returning the items, or most of them since Devon had long absorbed the Cars video box into his continuum, I whacked my fine down to almost nothing. In my excited state I chatted with the Library Ladies and all was good. We left the library with an entire season of Big Love for me and a Super Friends video for Devon, I felt so normal and filled with assurance that this time I actually will get them all in on time. As we exited the doors I still felt naked, but in a super good way.

I am not typically a Chris Martin fan. I find him to be a bit too annoyingly artsy/feminine in the way that English rock stars can be. But the mention of Catholicism and saints? Yummy. I like it. A lot.

The next 31 days will be a test of wills. Some of us might not make it through. Some might get kicked off the island. Others might go AWOL. Some might get eaten for dinner. I just worry that if they opted to sacrifice one of us, it would be me. Cass and Devon wouldn't make much of a meal. Where as I am all soft and would make for some succulent snacking.

I always knew my brother was a bit of bad news. He is four years older than me and was always getting into one scrape or another. By the time I was in middle school he had either been kicked out or asked to leave nearly every high school in our valley. Too bad because he was so damn bright, but he was far more inclined to smoke a bong than write a paper. I knew he was headed for big trouble when on my Christmas break during my freshman year of college I couldn't ever get into the bathroom because he was far too busy free basing coke for most of the 24 hours out of every day. I ratted him out on Christmas Eve day to my parents, after all it was the late 80's and I had bangs to fluff and spray so I needed that bathroom something fierce, he was in rehab by New Year's Eve. It was the first of many sobriety attempts, none stuck more than a few months.

Over the years my brother has tried every mind altering substance there is. He gets away with it because my father always bailed him out, literally, and legal council has been free. My mother has, until fairly recently, been easily led by my brother's lies. My father could never quite fully deal with my brother's addictions. Instead my dad established one of the state's most successful drug courts and helped many other families mend the pain that an addict can bring. I was so proud of my father for his program and it brought him so much joy to be a part of it, but I never quite understood why he couldn't deal with my brother's addictions. I have also played a role in it all: keeping the secrets my brother asked me to, giving him money when I knew he would just go around the corner and spend it badly, cleaning up the messes.

The thing of it is that I am just so damn done with it all. My brother called Loren on his birthday, June 30th, this year and demanded to speak with him. Unfortunately, he was so wasted he couldn't even remember Loren's name, only referring to him as his "god damned, fucking nephew". When I told him he could talk with my son when he was sober, my brother began screaming at me about what a loser I was and how I was raising my kids to be trash. I hung up and turned my phone off. We happened to be in the car at the time and I looked over to find Loren crying and shaking with fury. He didn't understand why my brother always gets wasted on his birthday and calls or corners him. Last year my brother did the same thing, only he happened to be at the Manor at the time. He got wasted and talked the heads off of Loren and his friends. The whole conversation was so inappropriate that Loren was mortified. And there was Loren's 10th birthday when we were at a water park and my brother popped pills and got drunk and nearly drowned Cassidy in the wave pool. I had to pull her from his clutches as the waves washed over head. Of course my brother doesn't understand my, or Loren's, frustration over these incidences. He has no memory of any of them, he blacked them out. And there are so many others like those.

So now I am pissed. And done. I don't want to clean up any more blood or barf or broken glass. I don't want to be cornered while listening to an addict's view point on my sub par parenting abilities. I don't want my kids listening to the toxic spewing of somebody who makes a living by playing the victim, somebody who has burned all their bridges and lives a life of isolation. For so long I felt guilty for having the germ of these thoughts, thinking that I shouldn't feel that way about a family member. But it doesn't phase my brother when he steals and lies. The time he totaled my mother's truck late at night on a curvy mountain road? No guilt. He crowed about how most people would have died in such an accident. That time he house sat my town home and I returned to find shattered glass on nearly every surface and bloody hand prints all over the walls? Not a care in the world. For all the messes, the debts, the lies, the rampages he subjected the children to, for all of those reasons I am done. I am currently on his shit list for standing strong. I am the big bitch right now. The uptight, un-fun one. And for once I simply don't give a damn. It is enough energy to establish the boundaries.

While the above compilation might look like a good clean evening of mini golf fun, it was anything but. The outing was a celebration for my friend's non-profit group. She wanted to give back to all the people who help her organization be as successful as it is. I do all her graphic work and am working on her website so she asked the children and me to join her and some other folks for an evening of mini golf. The drama began many miles form the golf park and continued well on to the ninth hole where I decided to cut our losses and call the evening done. Sometimes it is just better to quit while you have a shred of dignity rather than when your children are hurling themselves into the fake waterfalls and screaming for Coke.

In a counterclockwise order: Someday Loren will look back at the over sized shades, the huge shirts and the dayglo hightops and cringe with horror. I feel much the same way about my WHAM! shirts and webbed, neon belts. I won't even go in to the hair sprayed bangs from that era. Devon appears angelic in this shot, he works that look something fierce. Cassidy is sometimes so stunning that she leaves me breathless. That hair, the skin.... There was a woman at the golfing party who simply wouldn't stop talking about Cass, there are moments when I agree. I forced the three of them into this canoe for a shot. I sometimes wonder why I bother.

I thought for a moment and wondered if perhaps she had some dark secret of mine she had uncovered, "Oh, right. What do you mean?". I asked, not really wanting to know the full answer.

"Well, it's your father." She replied.

Right. Yes, he died. Two years ago and I still really don't want to talk about it lest I burst into tears. And while two years of living with my mom has created some bonding moments, I can't revisit that grief right now. It is just a scab I can't pick at the moment. So I cautiously asked, "What do you mean?"

"His ashes are still up in his loft."

Right. Big Bomb. Ouch. My mother never went back to sleeping in the master bedroom after my father died. She migrated upstairs to his loft/office area and I have spent the last two years in the master bedroom until just a few weeks ago when Cody/Juan removed the bed and I moved to Loren's old loft. Upon his return from Missouri Loren has been sleeping in the my father's old space while my mother has moved into Cassidy's old room since she hates to sleep alone and has been sleeping in Devon's new room in his gigantic car bed. A bad case of musical beds, but it keeps everybody comfortable and in their safe zones. Unless, of course, Loren happened to discover that the books on the shelves were not just old classics but also happened to house both his grandfather's ashes and those of the dog.

Here I have to digress and mention that we are not so good about putting the dead to rest in our family. My maternal grandmother passed away in 1984 and her ashes are still in the wall of a Denver hospice. My maternal grandfather died in 1990, his ashes lie inside our old barn within a vintage firetruck just north of The Manor. My paternal grandmother's ashes were actually buried in the family plot close to our home, but although she died in 1994 we have yet to decide on a headstone for her. So the fact that my father's cremains remain just upstairs next to the dog's is not really a shocker. Maybe a hard bit of info for a 15 year old to digest, but none too shocking for the rest of us.

While we were having this exchange my mom sat at an old that desk graced my father's law office for 25 years before he left his practice and became a judge. I noticed the deep drawers and suggested that perhaps that would be as good of a place as any. She seemed comforted by the idea and went up to the loft to retrieve both my father and the dog. I did ask her if perhaps she might have a more permanent resting place for both of them. We tossed it about, even joked about the idea of creating stepping stones from all the various family members and placing them in the garden. We are a bit whacked that way.

For now my father's ashes have a new resting place and Loren won't run across them and have the sort of Teen Meltdown I try so hard to avoid. And while I don't at all equate that box of dust to the man who was my father, I do sort of wonder why my grandmother is in a wall and my grandfather is out in the firetruck. Why can't my family put it all to rest? I suspect that question will take more than two years of living back in the family homestead to answer.

I have long said that if any of the children will push me over the edge it will likely be Devon. He looks like an angel and sounds like heaven. But the truth is that he is really quite difficult. I can't even put into words all the things about him that make me nervous, but I do know that I spend a massive amount of my energies trying to make sure all is right in his world. If his world is all good then mine will be less riddled with his tantrums and fits.

This week Devon has consumed nothing more than home made pumpkin bread, granted it was from organic pumpkin I had frozen last fall, and organic yogurt and whole, organic milk. That has been his diet for the last five days, with the occasional ice cream cone thrown in here and there. Yesterday afternoon we ran out of the pumpkin bread so for the last 24 hours or so it has just been the yogurt and milk, except for last night when I took Cass and him to the rodeo and he downed an orange Fanta and a brownie in about 90 seconds flat. Needless to that by today he was awful. In fact, his behavior could easily have been labeled as bitchy. Or just bitch. This afternoon he was so awful that when he demanded a plate of meat at the lunch table I willingly went and filled his order, simply desperate at the the thought that he might actually ingest some protein. But no. When he saw the plate and realized it wasn't his "scratchy meat", meaning taco meat, he dissolved into inconsolable tears and had to be sent away from the table. From there he began to scream and beat his hands and feet on the ground in protest to my cruelty. After a few minutes my mom looked at me ans asked, "You think maybe he's tired?" I shrugged, not really caring just so long as he shut up and took Devon up to bed, gave him a sippy cup of his beloved milk and tucked him in. We were then graced with three hours of peace and quiet.

On a normal day a late afternoon nap that lasted until nearly 6 p.m. would have sent me in to a nervous fit of itching just thinking about how late Devon would stay up. But not tonight. Nope. It's Matt's weekend. He he he. I rented a dumb movie, Fool's Gold, and sat on my ass while Devon and his daddy likely played round after round after round of hide and seek.