Dear Mom

Dear Mom,

Thank you... for teaching me how to change a tire. Those two hours spent on the side of I-10 in July have been more important than I ever could have realized.

Thank you... for reading my stories, even when they're half blacked out because I still won't let you read the sex scenes.

Thank you... for not laughing at the blacked out sex scenes, except that one time when it was more than 3/4ths of the story.

Thank you... for teaching me to draw, and putting up with my endless variations on "horse head, facing left" for so long.

Thank you... for teaching me to ride, to fall, and to get straight back on before the pain has a chance to catch up.

Thank you... for trying to teach me to cook. You may have failed, but at least I have less of a chance of giving myself food poisoning.

Thank you... for teaching me how to make people wash their own damned laundry by making me wash my own.

Thank you... for not rolling your eyes too much when "no one understand me" became a mantra around age 13.

Thank you... for answering the questions Dad was always too embarrassed to discuss.

Thank you... for teaching me that people are all beautiful, even if Dad did disapprove of the "porn books" (figure sketching).

Thank you... for teaching me to shoot whiskey, and not letting me spit it out. (The burning, oh gods the burning!)

Thank you... for teaching me to be as independent and self-sufficient as anyone can be these days.

Thank you... for always being there, even when I (stupidly) wish you weren't.

Love, Me.