I spent too much time looking into the glow of my computer screen and it burnt my eyes. Man they hurt, all bloodshot and waterery. But I am better now. I got some good sleep and spent only a small amount of time on here, just keeping up to date on things a little, and not posting to my own blog. I can't help it, I have been computer starved for so long. It's kinda like going without sex for several years, when you did get it, you can't get enough of it. I have learned my lesson, I will take more breaks, I promise. My son turned me on to this game; Rise of Nations. You build cities and markets, libraries, citizens and military stuff and then you go out and try to conquer the other cities. I can't decide whether my son is another Bush or Hitler. He is scarey. He concentrates all his energies and money on his military and then he goes out and takes over all the other cities real fast. In a matter of min.s he has won the game. No one stands a chance. I told him he plays that game the way he used to play those racing games a long time ago. He would wreck all the other cars in the game and therefore win the game by default. Yep, take out the competetion! That's his motto! He's cutting up cheese for crackers right now for me and himself. OK now he is torturing me with it, give me some you little shit! mmmmm good cheese. He don't like to admit it but he is a good kid!

I read another blog that had a list of things they liked and I thought it was a good thing to do, so I thought I would try it too. So here goes,

1. My dogs, cats, goldfish,( Sami, a rather large beautiful white fish with an orange spot on his head and long flowing fins, Beaver, a fat little orange fish with big bulging eyes, Midnight, a cute little black fish with gold flecks on his sides, and the fourth fish isn't a goldfish, he is an algee eater, named Ozzie, after Ozzie Osbourne)

2. my kids, all of them, the ones I gave birth to and all the others too.

3. My fiance, Brian

4. going to music festivals and hanging out with old and new friends

5. blogging of course, both writing and reading them, there's some interestin' shit out there!

6. 420 sessions wid me buds, mon

7. Seafood, shell fish, blueberries, chocolate, Dr. Pepper, Vanilla flavored rum, Chinese food, cheese wontons, yogurt, eatin' pizza with my kid

8. parties in my back yard with a big bonfire.

9. my laptop, took me awhile to get it but I knew I would love it when I got it.

I'm sorry to have gone on and on about my oldest son, Aaron. It's just that sometimes he and his life seems more like a dream that never happened and I just don't want to forget him. I want to remember that he was a living breathing person with a personality, with likes and dislikes, good parts and bad parts. People say you have to let the dead go but how can I ever let Aaron go? I just wish I didn't have to let him go. It wasn't supposed to be this way. The last time I talked to him, we had a bad fight. He had been disrepectful to his Grandparents and had scared them alittle, they didn't want him to come around like that. I tryed to talk to him, to tell him that he needed to be more in control of himself when talking to his Grandparents, but he wouldn't listen. I told him that adults are not always right about everything and sometimes we fail to listen but he still needed to stay calm. He was so upset and so full of anger. He just got madder at me and I wasn't at home to know the whole story and there was nothing I could do from where I was. I was also sick and this was all I could take. So I got off the phone and for the next month or so, I wouldn't talk to him. I just didn't want to argue with him any more. All the screaming and cussing and all would not solve anything. A couple of weeks before he died, he called to tell me about a couple of people who had called the house looking for us. All the anger was gone from his voice, but I was still a little upset with him and I didn't say much to him. God, I wish I had told him I loved him. I can't get that back. He is gone, like my dreams in the morning. But I have to be strong, I can't just break down and freak out like I feel like doing. At least I still have Shawn and my fiance, Brian to help me stay strong. Sometimes it is so hard, I just wish I was where Aaron is, but I can't go there yet. I have to stay here to take care of Shawn.
Aaron was my gutter punk kid. He taught me many things. He was small but he had a large personality. He told me he acted kinda crazy so people would leave him alone. He got picked on alot in school just like I did. I admire him for finding a way to deal with all that. After a while, most of the kids would stay away from him and some of them even became his friends. Once they got to know him, they found out he was a pretty cool kid. He was very intelligent and very loyal to his friends. He loved to help the underdog in the situation. He was definatley a fighter. He knew how it felt to be picked on so when he saw someone getting picked on, well, he would have to get up in the middle of it. He hated people who hate others just for the color of their skin or their sexual orientation. He truely helped me learn more about not judging a book by it's cover. I thought I had lived my life learning about this but little did I know I had much more to learn and Aaron was my teacher. I didn't think people would treat Aaron the way they treated me. He had big blue eyes and pretty curly blonde hair, he wasn't fat or anything, he was perfect as far as the way he looked. The only thing really wrong with him was in his brain. He was severely dyslexic. It was so hard to deal with this, I didn't know anything about dyslexia and I had no idea what to do or how to help him. He was in a public school and they said they could help him but as the years went by it was apparent that they didn't know how to help him either. Aaron wasn't easy to live with. He was hard headed. He was a mess and lived in that mess. I will never understand it, but he refused to clean up anything and he didn't seem to care about it at all. He was also a bed wetter. I tried all kinds of things, but nothing seemed to work. All I could hope for was when he grew up he would grow out of it. I think he got better about it but I think sometimes he still had accidents from time to time. He broke almost every toy he ever had, even the unbreakable ones. I used to tell him he should get a job as a toy tester. No toy on the market today could withstand him. They would have to change everything, if he were the tester. He and Shawn used to fight with one another all the time. I couldn't understand it. I was an only child, so having brothers and sisters was something I had never experenced. Watching my two boys going at it all the time was so puzzling to me. I do know that if someone else threatened one or the other, the other one would step up and take up for his brother. I think that Aaron would have taken a bullet for me and for Shawn. I am pretty sure Shawn would do the same too and I know I would take one for either of my boys. I didn't even think I ever wanted to have any kids. I was scared, and didn't want to be in pain, but it was worth it.

My computer wanted to do some updates or something right in the middle of that last post and it wanted to shut down and then restart itself so I had to submit my current work to keep from losing it. I didn't work on that one off-line. I was kinda shooting from the hips as it were. Any way that's why I didn't finish the last line. Maybe, you might want to read the post before this one, "Schools" and then come back to this post. It's up to you. Things may make more sense to you if do read that one first.

Any way as I was saying, when I try to bolster Shawn's self-esteem, he says he doesn't believe me or that I am just saying that and I am wrong, but I know deep down in he does listen and it does help. Because he knows I am right. I think he will be just fine as he grows up. He has been through so much stuff in his life time.

I love this blogging site. It is a good thing. I decided to start one because I thought it might be a good way for me to get some things off my chest. Then I thought I want to talk about my son, Aaron. I just want you to understand. That's what he wanted. He really didn't think that the world would understand him but he oh so much wanted me to understand him. And I tried so hard to understand him.
Now that he is gone, I have met many young people that have helped me to understand him at least a little. This generation of young adults has it's own stresses and concerns. But they really are not that different from our generation. We had stress, and we had issues to fight for or against too.
We protested war and burned our bras, we burned flags and tried to get pot legalized. We wore clothes to school that our Parents hated. We snuk out the bedroom windows or back doors to go hang out with our friends and try to ack like we were already grown ups. What ever our Parent's said not to do, we did it, what ever they told us to do, we refused to do. Parents hated our music and some Parents forbid their children to listen to it. Yes, we were bad kids. Our Parents rarely understood us and we felt they didn't even try to understand us or even try to come to a compromise on things.
Now days, we hear lots about how bad kids and schools have become. And it's true, they are pretty bad. I was watching TV last night, the Headline News channel. They showed this teenage boy getting tazered in a high school cafeteria and I was shocked. He didn't look like he was in anyway threatening but of course I couldn't hear what all they were saying. The boy's body language said he was upset about something but he didn't appear to be acting violently. When I saw that, I just looked at my son, Shawn and I said I'm glad you aren't in school any more. I told him how I hated having to send him to public school all his life. They gave both of my sons bad self-esteem and never encouraged them to do anything with their lives. Poor Aaron was told he couldn't learn and he tried to not buy it but as he grew older, he did buy it. Aaron was very intelligent, he just couldn't learn to read well enough to be of any help to him. I didn't know how to help him myself and at that time I had no where to go to get good help. In high school he had one teacher that would send Aaron to the office and have the principal call me to come and get Aaron because they said he was stinking. I would go get him and I don't know but I didn't smell anything other than teenager on him. I even took him to a shrink for a couple of years and she said she didn't smell anything either. I was so mad. I told the principal that he was the rudest man I think I had ever met and furthermore, he stinks too, everyone stinks...humans stink! Get over it man. I told him it was his job when he has my son in his care to do his best to encourage my son to want to learn and to be a better person and to think better of himself and others. And frankly, I said you are not doing your job. I told him I was going to speak to a Lawyer.
I ended up having to take him out of that school and put in another, where he did much better, but it was kinda too late for him. He dropped out to take care of his girlfriend who had come down with menegitis and was very sick. I didn't go to see a lawyer.
When Shawn got to high school that same principle was there. He wasn't as hard on Shawn as he was on Aaron, but he did mess with Shawn some. Shawn is very quiet and very good at kinda disapearing into the background. The last time I was supposed to have a meeting with the principal, I found out that he had been fired. I was very relieved to hear that. They found his liquor stash and caught him drinking on the job. Ha, I knew he would get what he deserved.
Unfortunately the damage is done to my children and now I have to find a way to fix it. But I don't know how. I went through some of the same sort of crap myself and I still have issues I have to deal with. Things are better but it took til I was 42 years old for things to get better for me. I didn't want my kids to have to wait that long for a little bit of respect, love, and happiness to come into their lives. I just try everyday to be encouraging to Shawn, to tell him how proud I am of him and how smart he is. Even though h