I love the passing of time

We’re going!!!!

Jim traded Sat night off for Sun night, though - so, we won’t get to stay up late on Sat. But, we will on Sun! Maybe I’ll use another vacation day on Mon, too.

Wahoo!

Now… I need to find a babysitter

I really, really want to go see this show on Sunday night, if it’s at all possible for Jim to go into work late, or get the night off…

:fingerscrossed:

Back in the late 80’s, my sisters, my friends & I would go to see this local band, The Bad Examples, whenever they were playing at any bars near us.

One night, after a show, we were sitting and drunkenly talking to the band. We talked them into saying they’d meet us at this dance club, since the bar was closing up for the night.

On the way to the dance club, I got my first and only DUI. We never got to the dance club, so I have no idea if the band actually went there or not.

The singer from that band has gone on to do children’s music (although, I think the ‘grown-up’ band is still performing, too). The other night, I took the kids to Border’s to watch him perform some of the stuff from his new children’s CD.

I’m not sure which of his audiences was more intelligent & coherent… Our drunken group from 1988 - or - the mass of 3,4,5 & 6 year olds from earlier this week.

I like to think about the possibility of god, heaven, an afterlife, reincarnation much the same way I like to think about what I would do if I won the lottery.

It’s possible & it sounds great! But, I’m not counting on it.

Is this for real??

It’s funny, anyway

Societies worse off ‘when they have God on their side’

RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.

According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.

The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society.

It compares the social peformance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution. Many conservative evangelicals in the US consider Darwinism to be a social evil, believing that it inspires atheism and amorality.

Many liberal Christians and believers of other faiths hold that religious belief is socially beneficial, believing that it helps to lower rates of violent crime, murder, suicide, sexual promiscuity and abortion. The benefits of religious belief to a society have been described as its “spiritual capital”. But the study claims that the devotion of many in the US may actually contribute to its ills.

The paper, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, a US academic journal, reports: “Many Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly sceptical world.

“In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”

Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist, used data from the International Social Survey Programme, Gallup and other research bodies to reach his conclusions.

He compared social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy.

The study concluded that the US was the world’s only prosperous democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional. Mr Paul said that rates of gonorrhoea in adolescents in the US were up to 300 times higher than in less devout democratic countries. The US also suffered from “ uniquely high” adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, and adolescent abortion rates, the study suggested.

Mr Paul said: “The study shows that England, despite the social ills it has, is actually performing a good deal better than the USA in most indicators, even though it is now a much less religious nation than America.”

He said that the disparity was even greater when the US was compared with other countries, including France, Japan and the Scandinavian countries. These nations had been the most successful in reducing murder rates, early mortality, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion, he added.

Mr Paul delayed releasing the study until now because of Hurricane Katrina. He said that the evidence accumulated by a number of different studies suggested that religion might actually contribute to social ills. “I suspect that Europeans are increasingly repelled by the poor societal performance of the Christian states,” he added.

He said that most Western nations would become more religious only if the theory of evolution could be overturned and the existence of God scientifically proven. Likewise, the theory of evolution would not enjoy majority support in the US unless there was a marked decline in religious belief, Mr Paul said.

“The non-religious, proevolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator.

“The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted.”

Related links:

Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies Check out the graphs about halfway down, showing the number of US citizens who accept human evolution. Can that possibly be right??? I’m thrown off by they agnostics & atheists not accepting human evolution…

Study says belief in God may contribute to society’s dysfunctions

Looks like the nowthatsfuckedup story is going to be in the New York Times later today.

http://beta.news.com.com/iraq/2100-1028_3-5884584.html?

:(

War Pornography
US soldiers trade grisly photos of dead and mutilated Iraqis for access to amateur porn. The press is strangely silent.

Here’s a google news search for any stories that include the search term: nowthatsfuckedup

Hmmm… why are no major US news outlets reporting this?

Good god, we’re messed up people in this country.

Steps for Stepmothers

I post on a few stepparenting boards - have been on & off a variety of them for over 7 years, now I stumbled across this one the other day and, although the format is a bit hard to get used to -and- it’s hard (for me) to keep track of everyone’s situations - I do see that a lot of these women could use the kind of advice that a lot of my stepmom friends could give to them.

So… Calling all stepmoms! Let’s get in there & tell them what they need to know!

Jim has set himself a goal of listening to every single episode of ‘This American Life’ that is available on their website

It’s a wonderful pursuit, which I am enjoying very much.

2 years ago, today, she stopped being here.

But, she’s still here in everything we do, everything we say, every decision we make, every life we touch.

I think I’m addicted to reading UU sermons on-line

Had a song running through my head, due to this post on this blog, so I googled it.

Found this sermon, which has me smiling.

I love the part where they explain the spelling of the word bare/bear in the song -and- how married couples (and anyone in a commited relationship with another person or with a community, really) need to both ‘bear’ their pain -and- ‘bare’ their pain.

:hug:

Just Saturday, I noticed that one of my rosebushes, out in the yard, had a bud on it, waiting to bloom.

I’ve neglected my yard pretty well this summer. Although, I did get out & chop all the thorny things back a month or so ago. Wonder if that’s what brought this blossom on?

Anyway - it bloomed today & it’s a beautiful sight to see. One lovely pink rose, among the greenery.

but, it must be lived forward. - Kierkegaard

Enigma - “Return to Innocence” Video (choose your connection speed!)

I’d like to thank each and every shy guy in my past. You know the ones I mean. The ones who stumbled over their words or blushed whenever they spoke to you. The ones who you knew were too shy to speak to you at all.

You know that they are probably like that with everyone. But, it still makes you feel like a confident, beautiful, intelligent, sexy woman when someone feels so awkward around you.

I hope I was nice to them all. I hope that they all ended up happy, with wonderful understanding women who took the time to find the amazing person underneath the shyness. I dated some of them, myself. And, married one :hug:

Artist: The Flaming Lips Lyrics
Song: Do You Realize? Lyrics
Do You Realize - that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize - we’re floating in space -
Do You Realize - that happiness makes you cry
Do You Realize - that everyone you know someday will die

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes - let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It’s hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn’t go down
It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

Do You Realize - Oh - Oh - Oh
Do You Realize - that everyone you know
Someday will die -

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes - let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It’s hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn’t go down
It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

Do You Realize - that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize

And, the video (You have to click on ‘videos’, then on the song)

Lately, in an effort to get Annie to think about being more polite, I’ve started stopping her when she makes a demand without taking the time to be polite (i.e. ‘Get me some juice’ instead of ‘Mom, could you get me some juice, please?’) After she makes a demand, I have her say it again, but before she does she has to say ‘I’m the queen of bossiness. Get me some juice’

:-D

I’ve always loved that t-shirt/cartoon that shows a guy in a crowd & he’s thinking something like ‘OMG? What if I’m not the main character?’

I always took it to mean that he realized he was not the main character in the other people’s lives. You know - cautioning you to stop being self-centered - to realize that everyone else’s worlds did not revolve around you.

But, last night, I realized that we need to realize that we’re not the main characters in *our own* lives, either. I think that may be one of the keys to real happiness. Once you accept that *everyone else* are the main characters in *your* life, you can start to relax & really enjoy it all. When you give them the attention that they are due, stop concentrating on *you* & start concentrating on how you interact with everyone else, how you help them, how you help their stories along, then your life becomes more meaningful.

Not sure if this is making much sense today

ABC13.com

Pretty amazing watching the preparations. The traffic shots are unbelievable.

Imagine you are a child, with your mother and father in your life every day.

Imagine how nice that feels, knowing they both love you. Trusting them to care for you. Sharing a special relationship with each of them. Learning from them both in their own way. Feeling a safe and secure foundation in their love from which you can learn and grow. You depend on them to be there every day. If they can’t be, you trust them to explain it to you and you trust the other parent to help you through the absence of the one who’s gone that day.

Now, imagine that, one day, mom or dad is simply gone. Imagine how frightening that is. Imagine how sad this makes you feel. Imagine how it crushes your spirit. Imagine how it shakes the very foundations of your life that you’ve grown to depend on every day. Imagine how you wonder what you did wrong to make that happen. Imagine how you wonder if that other parent never loved you. Imagine how you wonder if the parent who’s still here loves you.

Now, imagine that the only reason that other parent doesn’t see you is because the parent who you live with won’t let the other parent see you. No one tells you this, of course. They either don’t tell you anything, leaving you to believe your worst fears. Or, they tell you lies that only confirm your worst fears.

Now, imagine that you’re the residential parent who’s keeping the other parent away from their child, causing this soul-crushing sadness and fear, only to create an ally, soothe your own ego or artificially boost your own feelings of self-worth.

Fuck you.

Let me tell you how I feel about parents who try to alienate their children from their other parent.

I think that they should be tried for perjury if they lie to a court. And, I think that they should be supervised with their children until they can prove that they’ve learned how detrimental that can be to their child and prove that they care enough about their child to stop doing it.

During their divorce, my husband’s ex filed for a restraining order, saying she feared he would harm her. The judge threw it out of court. There were no grounds for that. She had no evidence. He had no prior history of violence against her or anyone. Why wasn’t she at least reprimanded for wasting the court’s time? Why didn’t the courts see that she was willing to lie to get her way & disbelieve her every word from that point on? And, she still claims at every turn that he’s stalking them, even now, over 10 years later, with no proof at all. She says it to their daughter, who knows very well, now, that her father is not following her. She accuses him of it directly at least once a year.

After my stepdaughter was in school, my husband did the regular parent things. He went to back-to-school night. He met her teachers. He signed up as a classroom volunteer. You know. Regular parent stuff. His ex-wife, by the way, has never been at any parent/school event during my stepdaughter’s entire school career, so far, except for 8th grade graduation. When his ex-wife found out that he was volunteering in the school, she started keeping her daughter out of school on the days that her father was going to be there. She claimed that the thought of her father being at school made my stepdaughter so frightened and embarrassed that she became ill. :rolleyes: You see, my husband is a man and his ex-wife didn’t think that father’s were a regular sight at elementary schools. And, perhaps they aren’t in her neighborhood. Additionally, my husband is a white man and his daughter is multi-racial. His ex-wife stated that their daughter was embarrassed to have a white father.

Well, my husband knew that, if his daughter *was* having these kind of problems dealing with the reality of her racial identity, then she would have to learn how to deal with them. He suggested that their daughter attend counseling (and offered to pay for it). His ex-wife refused, but still kept their daughter out of school on the days that my husband volunteered, still claiming that she was too ill to attend. He stopped volunteering, so that his daughter wouldn’t miss any more school. But, he petitioned the court to add mandatory counseling to their parenting agreement.

During the many months waiting for the court case to come before a judge, my husband was, one day, required to pick his daughter up at school (something that her mother always refused to allow him to do) in order to bring her to an appointment with the Guardian Ad Litem. The GAL insisted that he get her directly from school. When my husband approached his daughter on the playground, as she stood amongst her schoolmates, the ones that she was so embarrassed to let know that she had a white man for a father, so embarrassed that she became physically ill, she ran up to him, held his hand & introduced him to her friends as her Dad.

:rolleyes:

I guess it is possible that she became physically ill at the thought of her father coming to her school. But, not because of her father. Rather, because she knew she’d have to face her mother, listen to her spit out her hatred of her father, be forced to agree with her as she knew she had to continue to live there. That’s really, really sad.

The courts did mandate counseling, but my husband’s ex demanded that the counseling not start until after my husband’s summer parenting time, as she didn’t want him to be able to influence the counselor against her. And, she insisted that she be the one to choose the doctor and to take my stepdaughter to her appointments. She never did. We never pushed it. We knew she didn’t have an issue with her race or with her father. She just has one with her mother. And, we try to do everything we can to give her the strength, confidence and unconditional love she needs to deal with it all.

Her mother still makes unilateral decisions regarding what school my stepdaughter attends. And, she doesn’t tell my husband about them until well after my stepdaughter has started at the new school, or until she’s already made the change, anyway. But, all she does now is complain about him being involved in his daughter’s education. She doesn’t try to hide her from him anymore.

I know so many divorced parents who do crap like this to their kids. Some are more subtle. Some are much more extreme. There are the parents who take any hesitation from their child and encourage it until the child realizes s/he can please his mother/father by saying bad things about their other parent. There are the parents who tell their children adult things about their adult relationship. There are parents who lie to their children about what happened in their adult relationship. There are parents who see their children feeling sad because they miss their other parent and turn it into ’s/he was so mean to leave us/you - he hates us/you’. There are parents who lie about sexual abuse and manipulate their children to lie along with them. Even worse, there are parents who lie about abuse and *convince* their children that abuse happened, when it didn’t.

Imagine being inside that child’s mind & living in it for the rest of your life.

All of these alienation attempts just scream out
“How dare s/he do that to me? I’ll show him/her. I’ll make my child hate him/her.”
Or, “I’m feeling sad & lonely now without him/her. I need to know that my child shares my misery, too.”
Or, “It hurts my feelings if my child loves someone that I hate”
Or, “How dare you leave me? If you leave me, I’ll hurt the child!”
Or…

And, no matter what they’re emotional issue is that’s making them fuck with their child’s psyche in order to feel better about themselves, that’s just not mature, responsible, loving parenting.

It isn’t.

My friend posted about parallel parenting on her blog & I started to type a comment/reply, but it got way out of hand So, I decided to just post it here as an entry, instead…

Personally, I’m coming to believe that all custody cases where both parents are willing and able to be active participants in their child’s life should start out as ‘parallel custody’. I see it as distinctly different from ‘joint custody’ and as a more reasonable way to start.

In Joint Custody, which seems to be the default these days when neither parent is certifiable or imprisoned, the parents are expected to work together for the benefit of the child. In Parallel Custody, as I see it, both parents are expected to work independently, completely ignoring each other as much as possible, for the benefit of the child. I’m thinking this is better for everyone involved.

Of course, true, cooperative joint parenting is the most loving goal for a child. Sadly, unless both parents respect the other’s role in their child’s life, this isn’t possible. I think that’s pretty sad for a kid when one or both of their parents can’t get past their own personal issues & truly be compassionate & respectful to their child, but it is the reality for so many children of divorce that I know - including my own stepdaughter.

So, instead, as long as the courts don’t find either parent overtly harmful to the child (and, so many of them are so good at hiding the harm they do to their child - especially when that harm is deliberately undermining their child’s relationship with their other parent or making the child feel frightened to love their other parent), they usually go with Joint Custody, with stipulations for the parents to communicate & cooperate regarding their child. What a ridiculous notion, really.

In my husband’s case, his ex-wife signed off the joint custody order, then, simply, ignored all of it except for the parts that were easy for my husband to have enforced by the police without going to court. That is, she, for the most part, brought my stepdaughter to him for his parenting time. That’s it. That’s the only part of the parenting agreement that she chose to follow. Even then, she found that she could claim ‘illness’ on my stepdaughter’s part, in order to avoid bringing her, if she had other plans or if she wanted to punish my husband for asking her to cooperate on any other parts of my stepdaughter’s life.

So, my husband had regular parenting time. Once my stepdaughter was in school, with his every-other-weekends, every-other-Wednesday & school breaks, my stepdaughter’s waking time was split pretty evenly between her mother, her father and her teacher. And, from what we understood, much of her mother’s time was actually spent with her grandmother, acting as babysitter when her mother worked second shift.

But, whenever my husband would try to communicate with his ex-wife regarding their daughter, his ex-wife would yell at him, hang up on him, tell him to stop ’stalking’ them, and even resort to violence (all in front of their daughter, of course). And, whenever his ex-wife heard that my husband had visited his daughter’s school or communicated with her teachers, she would pull her daughter out of the school and move her to another. She never shared information regarding medical treatment. He has taken her to court a couple times for ‘contempt’ of their Joint Parenting Agreement, but it always costs a lot of money, creates a lot of stress in my stepdaughter’s life and never really amounts to much more than a slap on the wrist for his ex-wife.

He would offer to enroll his daughter in extracurricular activities in his ex-wife’s neighborhood, so that his daughter would be able to attend no matter who’s weekend it was. But, his ex-wife would refuse to take her - letting her child miss out on these things rather than cooperate with her ex-husband.

He would bring my stepdaughter to dental exams (as her mother, apparently, never did), where the dentist suggested braces or extended care. Her mother would refuse to allow that. In fact, after regular dental visits, he would bring her notes regarding the visit (as their Joint Parenting Agreement requires) and she would, on more than one occasion, laugh at him as he gave it to her. On one especially insane occasion, she actually tore the note up into little pieces and threw them in the air (all in the parking lot of McDonald’s).

His ex-wife refuses to allow him phone contact and has resorted to not even providing us with a home contact telephone number at all. Our only ways of reaching my stepdaughter’s mother, now, are by calling her at work or mailing her a letter. Forget about my husband just calling up his daughter & saying ‘Hi’.

I could go on & on. Sigh. Poor kid. She really deserves parents who work together for her benefit. But, that didn’t happen.

And, slowly, over the years, we’ve figured out what works best for us in this situation. We discovered that you cannot cooperate with a parent who just wants you to go away. It’s not possible.

But, what we can do, is parent the best we can in the time that we have with her. And, we can parent the way that we know is right, despite her mother’s behavior and attitude. We don’t need her approval to be good parents to my stepdaughter.

We cannot control what her mother does or says. We kind of treat her mother like an uncontrollable force - like the weather, for example. We deal with what she does and we work around the time that my stepdaughter can’t be with us.

When she’s not with us, we don’t assume her mother is doing anything more for her besides feeding her, clothing her & getting her to school often enough that she doesn’t get in trouble. We have to assume that we have to give her and teach her everything else that she needs in life -and- we have to do it in half the time that ‘normal’ parents have to do it in.

Perhaps her mother is giving her regular dental care. Perhaps her mother is giving her music lessons. Perhaps her mother is teaching her social skills, giving her moral lessons, boosting her confidence. We don’t know.

My stepdaughter was, actually, partially, a leader in our dealing with her life this way. Her mother’s vitriol regarding her father caused horrible stress in this child’s life. I still remember the sheer panic I could feel flowing off of her whenever we’d be driving her to drop her off at her mom’s. I still feel it now, sometimes, when I mention her mother at all, although, it’s getting better over the years. My stepdaughter is developing her own self, a strong self, that knows both of her parents are capable people who want good things for her - it’s just that she knows that her mother is not capable of quelling her hatred of her father enough to behave maturely about his presence in her life.

And, I know that she loves us all the more that we did not let her mother’s hatred get in the way of our love & responsibility towards her -and- that we didn’t ever try to tell her, even once, that her mother was wrong or to get her to say that her mother was wrong or even to try to make her believe that her mother was wrong. Every single thing that my husband or I have said to her about her mother was supportive, concerned or filled with praise. What else are you going to say to a child who you love about someone that they
love & who you have entrusted with her care when you can’t be with her?

Anyway, I’ve really drifted off course from the ‘Parallel Parenting’ thing, now, haven’t I?

My feeling is that more divorced parents have at least one person in the couple whose hatred for their former partner trumps their love & responsibility towards their child. One person whose need to be the ‘winner ‘ is more important than their need to be a good parent. One person whose self-esteem is so wounded by the breakup that they don’t have anything left to give their child. One person who never really intended to co-parent even when they were married, so they can’t be expected to do it now. One person who never understood the responsibilities and selflessness that comes with marriage and parenting to begin with & hasn’t yet learned. One person who thinks it’s all a game, instead of an amazing journey.

These people cannot be expected to cooperatively parent with their ex. And, I think they are in the majority.

The courts just don’t have the time to really get to know the parties involved. They see only what’s presented to them in court. They see everyone on their best behavior. They see rehearsed kids who are afraid to let down their residential parent or hurt the feelings of their non-residential parents. Or, they see parents on their worst, craziest behavior & don’t know if that’s an ongoing thing or if it’s just a nervous reaction to the seriousness of the situation.

So, my feeling is that we should have some kind of revolution in custody - one where the judges really work for the best interests of the children. They should not be trying to force people who don’t get along to co-parent, just to make things ‘fair’ for the adults. They should see that the parents can’t get along and will never be able to co-parent on their own, and, instead, give them very specific parenting boundaries and guidelines.

Each parent should be given equal time with the child. That time should not be left up to the parents to decide, they should not be told to be ‘flexible’ with each other to meet their child’s needs.

Responsibilities should also be divvied up in a very specific way. Mom is in charge of regular medical checkups. Dad is in charge of regular dental. Mom chooses the schools. Dad chooses the church. Whatever. But, it’s decided. No one is left thinking that they need to work on having a good co-parenting relationship, for years on end, trying to make it work, when the other parent is trying to make it not work. No time in the child’s life is wasted while the parents negotiate & jockey for position. Everyone knows their role & knows the other parent’s role.

And, communication guidelines are set forth, too. Each is required to send an e-mail or write a note about every school change, every medical visit, every dental. Just informational – date, time, procedure. Each is allowed and expected to make their own connection with schools, dentists, doctors, too, so that they can minimize discussion with each other as much as possible.

Then, if the parents find themselves able to work together, be civil, be respectful to each other, then that’s a great benefit for the child. They can decide on their own to put aside the strictures of the parallel parenting agreement & work together beyond the agreement. Also, if one of the parents ends up not fulfilling their end of the agreement and the child’s needs aren’t being met, then the other parent is involved enough on all counts to pick up the slack. And, if the other parent is slacking enough, the involved parent can go back to the courts with real evidence and ask for a change.

That’s how things have kind of ended up for my husband, anyway. It would have been great if it had been in writing from the beginning, so that he didn’t have to spend years & years trying to figure out how he was going to co-parent with someone who wouldn’t even speak civilly to him. It would have been so much better if my stepdaughter hadn’t been subjected to years and years of stress as they worked out their positions in her life. We all would have saved time & money. The courts would have saved time & money, too.

As it is, now, we make our own connections with my stepdaughter’s schools. We’re still afraid that her mom’s going to move her to another school at any moment. We still take my stepdaughter to regular dental visits, but have given up on getting her mom to agree about braces. We’ve told my stepdaughter that we’ll help her to get them when she’s an adult, if she still wants them then. We assume she’s getting regular medical checkups as needed for school & hope that there are no major medical problems. My husband has provided his ex-wife with medical insurance cards for their daughter, but she refuses to use them for some reason.

We just act as parents as best we can when she’s here & hope that all is well when she isn’t. Not much more we can do. I think that I’ve finally accepted that. Finally stopped trying to understand her mother, or try to find a way to make joint parenting work. My stepdaughter has a full life with her family here, despite the missing spaces when she’s not here.