Divorce Diary Part 1.1

Things I have learned so far:
1) you are only half responsible for the collapse of a marriage - usually.
2) Success or failure is equal parts effort and pure chance
3) BITE-YOUR-TONGUE always
4) Maintaining a professional tone will always help you keep your temper, after all this is now essentially a contract being dissolved albeit a marriage contract. View it as objectively as you would a business matter and it will go a long way to keeping an even temper.
5) As a huge fan of Audrey Hepburn, I think WWAD? She too got a divorce and did so with the utmost grace. I strive to be as she was.
6) You can only count on yourself, which is not a bad thing. Don't count on your friends being there for you or being able to understand what you are going through. Expect mutual friends to distance themselves completely. Everyone has their own lives and your drama is way too much for a third party to handle - unless you are paying them.
7) Keeping a schedule of good sleeping and eating habits will help you cope better.
8) Boxing is by far the best thing to do to let out your frustration. If it helps, paste an 8 x 10 photo of ex-spouse to a speed bag. Not very Zen but who gives a shit? (haven't needed to do this one yet)

Sadly this will not be the last of the divorce diary posts. It is just the beginning. Stay tuned.

Heart on Your Bumper

I have a confession to make - I like making observational rants about things no one really cares about and, in the long run, doesn't make a difference one way or the other. A guilty pleasure of mine, much like vodka -er, coffee in the morning.
I spend a lot of time driving, A LOT, my morning commute can range anywhere from 45 minutes to 4 hours (no exaggeration, it happened) and then I repeat it at the end of the day. I'm not sure if I'm more pissed off in the morning anticipating my day to come or at the end of it when I've endured my day and I have to do it again tomorrow. Needless to say when I'm commuting I'm not very perky. I also commit a terrible sin against the environment, I drive, I hate public transit for two reasons - 1) it's unreliable where I live not to mention extremely expensive and 2) I don't want to listen to other people's crap whether on their cellphones talking at rock concert volumes or trying to talk to me about their gastrointestinal issues. I like my solitude. I spend all day everyday talking and listening to people so my commute is me time. Just me and my crap. But wait! There are bumper stickers. Since the drive can't physically talk my ear off, he or she decides to heap their opinions and views on me with a bumper stick which I will spend the better part of my traffic jam staring at.
Just take a look a few of these examples: "I love my Husband" - good for you
"I love my Wife" - aw thats sweet; "My Boss is a Jewish Carpenter" - I thought Jesus' step-father was the carpenter?; "1 Cross + 3 Nails = 4 given" - that's clever. The religious ones just make me roll my eyes, that's nice you have faith, good for you. But these ones get my blood boiling: "Aren't you glad your mom was Pro-Life?" - yeah very glad, she got stupid drunk and kicked my ass down the stairs when I was 10, so much better than the abortion part (my mum never did that but some do); "Abortion: Big people killing little people" - ok so should we pull over and debate whether or not a fetus is a person or...?; "Save Social Security - Stop Aborting Future Contributors!" - uh, what guarantee do we have that the kids will get a job versus be still living with you at 40?; Or my all time favorite "It took two to conceive... where's the man's "choice"?" Uh, well does he want to carry it?; And finally this was on the back of a tempo with, I swear 4 kids in the back and one up front "Abortion kills children" - clearly not yours!
It actually gets me upset. I don't have a single bumper sticker on my car for two reasons 1) its tacky and 2) why do you care what I think anyway? I'll bet if I put a sticker on my car that said "my dog is cuter and smarter than your kid" it would offend people, but that's what I think about a lot of people's kids, but it doesn't mean I have to put it on my car.
I guess what I'm really getting at is why not keep your car clean and let everyone enjoy their coffee in peace without turning the highway into a podium for your views. Also have you considered that while people are occupied trying to read what the sticker says they may get distracted? Yep should be illegal.

Pro-Choice Part II

So here I am again pontificating on the pro-life movement that seems to be gaining more ground and more advertising space. The current U.S Supreme court has several right wing members (particularly Scalia and Thomas) that would over turn Roe v. Wade whole hog in a heartbeat if permitted. Luckily they do have their left wing counterparts who are pro-choice (Stevens and Ginsburg). The right-wing is currently trying a "what about how the mother feels after an abortion?" tack. They claim that abortion is so traumatic for the woman that other alternatives should be explored.
Well, gentlemen (and the pro-life movement is predominantly men in Senate, ladies!) here's an alternate for you: The woman in question is 22, new grad, decent job. She's so busy that she had been so tired she fell asleep before taking her birth control at night a couple nights in a row. She sleeps with her boyfriend of two years. She becomes pregnant. He flips and bails saying his life can't go down like that (this is the option of all men, bail and they don't have to deal with it. Now have an opinion gentlemen). She doesn't want a baby period at this stage in her life never mind as a single mum but she decides to have the baby. She takes another job after the baby is born because $15/hour isn't cutting it. The kid grows up virtually without a mother since she works all the time. While her mother is at her night job, now 15 year old kid is hanging with friends, no one to check up on her. Drugs, sex, violence ensue. The kid has abandonment issues and a whole lot of insecurity that she tries to comfort in the arms of boys and mind altering substances. The story, as you can imagine does not continue well. But the mother took on her responsibilities, didn't abort a collection of cells and cause herself trauma. Instead the above scenario happened and now she has a traumatized 15 year old human, she herself is traumatized and anyone mixed up in the fall out. See my point? To spare a possible lifetime of hurt to a thinking, breathing and active human, doesn't the expulsion of a few cells and a few months of counselling seem to be the lesser of two evils? I'm not saying this happens to all single mothers and their children but the possibilities are much higher than the "conventional" way of having children.
I have seen a lot of parents who shouldn't be and their 'effed up kids. These kids become adults and take a whole lifetime of bad baggage with them. I have seen children born to parents who didn't want them develop diseases that are unheard of in the 21st century developed world through neglect and ignorance.
So my long winded point is, before casting a vote on what is traumatic to the mother and society as a whole, turn the situation over and examine every angle. Not ever child is blessed with fuzzy onesies and a good life and the life long damage that a less than loving upbringing can reap is no less than catastrophic.

Pipe it in

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It's Not Rape Exactly...

I am really shocked at myself for having taken this long to write about the "Marital rape law" or "Shia Family Law" as it is formally known, (I laughed too) that has been in the press lately. The law states “is bound to preen for her husband as and when he desires”. Another passage sanctions marital rape. “As long as the husband is not travelling he has the right to have sexual intercourse with his wife every fourth night . . . Unless the wife is ill or has any kind of illness that intercourse could aggravate, the wife is bound to give a positive response to the sexual desires of her husband.” Mmmm, just makes a woman want to throw off her burka and make sweet love to her husband doesn't it? I know nothing melts my butter like a militant government order to get screwed - literally- by my husband. But wait! That's not all folks, here we have Article 133 that states “A wife cannot leave the house without the permission of the husband” unless in a medical or other emergency." Well, what's a girl to do?

After International pressure was applied to the Afghan Government, they clarified themselves, I am paraphrasing here but the explanation went something like, a wife can refuse sex and if she does her husband doesn't have to feed her. Oh well, when you put it that way! If they had said 'no sex, no Visa card' that's a choice, hey I can live without shoes for a while but no sex, no food? Umm, not really a choice there boys!

This 'law' clearly has its supporters, not surprising mostly comprised of men, and is likely a campaign boosting attempt to gain votes before the upcoming election for which the already unpopular president is campaigning to be re-elected. The law, however, only applies to the Shiite Muslims, 15% of the Afghan population! These people hate the West (I'm making a blanket statement I realize, but stay with me...), they think we are on our high horse so to speak, that we feel superior to other cultures. This is not untrue. We do, and this is both warranted and unwarranted depending on the context, but what we can hold our heads up and say is that while Germaine Greer's dream of total gender equality in its utopian presentation has yet to be realized (if ever), we still treat our women as humans. The Afghanis would say this is why we have a demoralized, areligious, and promiscuous society. Yep sure do, but I don't see the men holding their hands up and saying no. They are as much a part of women's promiscuity, women have the freedom to choose what they do and with whom. I feel our society, with its flaws, has flourished with the inclusion of women in active society. Imagine the workforce without women. Most of healthcare would be absent, for example. I work in healthcare and certainly the XX chromosome group far outweighs the XY.

One has to wonder, even with a cursory knowledge of the Qu'ran, when and why this abhorrent treatment of women became not only accepted and practiced, but also legislated? I am proud to see that the women fought back against this law in the face of treats of bodily harm and mobs of angry men. Imagine, dear sisters, what panic and widespread horror would be brought on your men if you enacted a Lysistrada-like protest on your men? They would be brought to their knees, which is the perfect height to step on their...rights.

Welcome to Canada

You left your home country and came to Canada to provide a better life for your family. The country you left, for any number of reasons, wasn't providing you with the opportunities that you needed and felt that Canada was a better bet. In some ways it is. You have children here, they go to school here and come of age here. You maintain your cultural values and traditions which is what makes Canada such a diverse place to live. Then your son or daughter brings home a white person or a person with differing traditions to your own. This makes you upset, scared and disappointed. There are two things to do; 1) deal with it 2) pitch a fit, tear apart the family and make everyone miserable in the quest to preserve tradition and conformity.
I have seen this first hand so many times that I wonder if we truly are as diverse and accepting as we think. So many marriages are entered into solely because each party is from the same part of the old country, the parents have applied so much pressure that to do otherwise would cause unbelievable hardship. So the kids conceed to a marriage of convenience.

Just a thought - why go to a country with such a diverse landscape of races and cultures and expect children raised within this diversity to ultimately marry only those with the same origins? Isn't love difficult enough to come by without the unnecessary criteria? Something to think about.

And God Said...

Marriage, ah the final enpoint to feminine completeness! Oh what woman does not dream of her wedding day, to glide down the aisle toward her prince charming, smiling back at her awaiting her to become his wife. This, the very pinnacle of many dreams both for ladies and the commercial wedding machine alike, is an ancient safeguard bastardized into its current romantic incarnation. Any species primary goal is to survive, to eat, sleep and procreate to ensure its progeny survives to procreate yet another generation thus securing the species as a whole. Well that was supposed to be the whole goal of the game of life in its original design. Enter stage right birth control and the sexual revolution and that got all cocked up didn't it? But marriage, through it all has more or less survived such assaults on human evolution. But why?

Eons ago, when men finally realized the link between copulation and human regeneration, they got it - 'if I am to live on in a diluted form I must procreate with a female'. But hold the phone there padre, how do you ensure that it is infact your seed that has created the next generation to succeed yourself and carry your good name forth? Hmm, that's a pickle of a dilemma! 'Well,' man said, 'I simply must stake my claim on this vessel and make her swear fealty to me and me alone and protect (control) her so that I may be sure that the child is mine!' What a plan! Thus, dear ladies marriage was born.

I'm severely oversimplifying here but I'm sure my point is not lost. Once this dynamic was identified a fear crept into mankind as to the penultimate power of women as deceptive, manipulative creatures who held the very continuance of individual male geneaology in their panties or loin cloths - whatever. In order to control someone, as any successful dictator will tell you, you must make the object of your control feel inferior and weak. You must create a dependence in said person. Failing that, create abject fear, shit-your-pants, horrific fear! Enter Genesis 3:16 "...Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." Shit! They thought of everything in that granddaddy of a toilet reader didn't they?

Since men had the backing of the creator of heaven and earth women had very little choice but to obey. Would you step up to a being who created the earth just by thinking about it? Yeah I wouldn't either.



So here we are. Throughout the centuries, marriage has been a negotiation tool in business, a salve for loneliness and and means to ensure the continuance of the human race. But hang on a minute - if it takes nine months to bake a child, and one man did that with one woman only that means she can only give a man one child per year! Not great odds pre-modern medicine when infant death rates were any where from 30-50% (guesstimates given poor documentation of the age) that's a fairly crummy average for one couple. While a man had viable sperm from puberty until death, a woman has a finite number of viable eggs. That seems like a whole lotta wasted sperm! So while a man had his wife at home pregnant with what could only be his child, he was still trying to sow his wild oats around ust in case -whether society and the church considered the child a bastard was really immaterial. It was and is a very involved and complex way of a man writing 'I was here' on the world.



Ladies, we are cunning aren't we? I mean if we weren't Victoria's Secrect wouldn't have the business they do right? We hook 'em and cook 'em! For the first little while in the courtship process they never encounter an unshaved leg, a messy bikini line or a make-upless morning. We push our breasts up to gravity defying heights and make them pant for what may lurk for them beneath our carefully crafted outfits. Glamour and Cosmo magazine fill in the rest of the blanks. I'm not ashamed to admit that, while I don't hide my true inner self, my outer self is dramatically transformed from the puffy, hairy, almost androgenous train wreck it can be on a Saturday morning to near goddess perfection (well, I'd like to think so after all that work!) by Saturday night. Yes, we are temptresses. It's all about the game people!



And so to my point. Marriage, once an arena for business ventures and basic human propagation has been tranformed into romantic love worthy of every crappy Hallmark card on offer for a mere $6.95. It's a total bait and switch tactic, start with the flowers and candles and end up with an extra 30 pounds and baby vomit down your now saggy boobs. Then, the man that sat rapt with attention for every word that spilled from your perfectly glossed pout, can barely muster enough attention when you bellow at him to take out the trash (and secretly hopes he saddles up on the curb with it). To my mind, centuries have transformed a straight forward business contract into an impossible romantic coupling. Can you imagine transforming your boss into your life partner? Eww! These days divorce is at an all time high. Why? In my not-so-humble opinion, it's because we now have this Cinderella bullshit romance to measure up to and we end up feeling like utter failures when we can't get it up for the man who we just finished scrubbing shit stains out of his underwear for! Did Cinderella do THAT!? Doubt it.



When a relationship is forced into a mold that it was never supposed to fit into in the first place, that's when fractures occur. Try it with a piece of pottery next time. You'll see.