Snoskred – Life in the Country

One of the biggest challenges in my life was a nasty custody battle that the Other Half and I went through. I’ve written a little about it here on the blog. I can’t go into details for obvious reasons. I don’t want her googling things specific to the case and ending up here.

Custody battles by their very definition set people against each other. It is a “battle” – and the only people who profit are the lawyers. I think there’s been enough of that in this world. If you are engaged to be married, consider making a “parenting pre-nup” – people do that for money but not for any kids who might arrive? I think that’s very unfair to the kids.

If you have children and you are currently happily married, here is what you should do. Sit down now, while you are still together, and make a plan that puts the children’s needs ahead of yours. Kids need access to both parents. Kids need to be put first. Kids need as little disruption to their life as possible. Consider making the Childrens Bill Of Rights your guide to how both parents should act if the worst happens and you end up seeking a divorce.

If you get divorced – that is between you and your partner. The kids are often damaged beyond repair because their parents are angry, just furious with each other. They cannot see past their rage. There is parental alienation, there is asking the kids to choose sides, there are things said in the presence of the children which can never be unsaid.

NOBODY HAS THE RIGHT TO DO THESE ABUSIVE THINGS TO INNOCENT CHILDREN.

No matter how mad you might be, no matter how terribly the other person might act, no matter what one party does to the other party. Yes, it is abusive – emotionally. It can scar a child for life. It can change how they relate in their own relationships. It can create fears and make it impossible for them to have a marriage of their own that works.

In a situation like divorce, you have to choose to take the high road, 100% of the time. If both parents did that, things would be simple and easy. But there is often one party who refuses to behave in an acceptable manner. Sometimes one party believes their needs trump everyone else’s needs. To those people I say – Karma is going to get you eventually. Trust me on that. I’ve seen it happen.

I screwed up myself. I was young. I was idealistic. I saw how that woman treated the child I adored and it made me so angry. I made mistakes because of it. I did not like how she treated me or the other half, either. I allowed my anger to dictate my actions. I eventually learnt there was another way to deal with things, a better way. By then the damage was done.

My karma for my anger fueled actions was to have to watch the same thing happen to my much loved Nephews – and watch my much loved sister turn into a virtual carbon copy of The Other Half’s ex-wife. It has been a painful situation to watch and has ruined my once-excellent relationship with my sister. I have not spoken to her in almost a year.

I’d do things very differently now but when you’re in the moment, and this woman is calling you after she’s sat down and interrogated the child for two hours about everything that happened over the weekend and she’s on the phone to bitch about something insignificant that happened on the weekend, it is hard to keep your cool.

An example – she called to admonish us because we “exposed” her child to the wrong brand of soap. He’s a delicate child and can only use a certain brand, according to her. She has no proof of this, the child does not have a rash of any kind, but she wants to make sure that in future you adhere to her soap standards, or else. I wanted to throw the phone. I kid you not. But I was pleasant and polite, and I agreed to do what she wanted, to keep the peace.

But the demands kept coming. It was only a matter of time before the word No was said in response to a ridiculous demand. I can’t even remember now which one it was. There was so many of them. Saying no to her was the worst thing we ever did because it enraged her – we should have just kept saying yes and then doing what we wanted anyway.

So what if you are taking the high road and the other party is not? It is difficult. Sometimes it seems impossible. Sometimes taking the high road is no fun at all. You still have to do it. Write “Sometimes taking the high road is no fun at all” down. Put it on your fridge. I have it written on a piece of paper in front of my computer. It has kept me going through struggles I cannot write about here on the blog.

If you’re a Dr Phil watcher like I am, you may be aware of the case of Sam and Lindsey Porter, two children who were picked up by their father for visitation and then never seen again. Ya’all in the States need to know we in Australia tend to get shows a lot later than you do, and also a lot of shows are repeated over and over on Cable.

A lot of people are anti Dr Phil and anti Oprah. I like Dr Phil and his approach to things. I don’t always agree with him but that’s not the point. I like Oprah’s lipstick lately, it is sparkly, and she always wears great shoes. Both Dr Phil and Oprah inspire people. We need more inspirational people in this world..

More importantly, I believe you can learn a lot about yourself from watching other people and both these shows give all of us an opportunity to do that.

When I first saw the show where Dr Phil was talking to Tina Porter I went to the Sam and Lindsey website mentioned on the show to see if there was any news about the kids, and there was not. I honestly hoped that the father had taken them and left them with someone else. The father was being held in jail because he would not say where the kids were.

The other night my parents were here for dinner (both of them are huge Dr Phil fans lately) and they mentioned that the kids had been found – and they were not alive as I’d hoped they would be. As soon as they left I got online to find out more. This article seems to have the most info – Porter children’s bodies identified. They were found on September the 9th.

How does something like this happen? It is simple. One parent puts their needs ahead of the needs of their children. One parent puts their anger, hurt, and other emotions ahead of the needs of their children. One parent puts their need to win ahead of the needs of their children.

Mr Porter was very selfish. It seems to me from what I have read -

- He wanted to stop paying child support.
- He wanted to win.
- He was angry at his ex-wife.
- He wanted to take those children away from his ex-wife – if he couldn’t have them all the time, then she couldn’t either.
- I firmly believe he intended to kill Tina Porter as well. She is extremely lucky to be alive. She was within moments of being murdered.

You hear people give parents who kill their kids labels – like monster,for example. He is not a monster. He is a pathetic, stupid, horrible, crappy person. That’s all there is to it. I see people also try to blame this on the “drugs”. The “drugs” had nothing to do with it. I don’t believe what people will say to remove responsibility from the people who do these things.

If he was mentally ill, I might be willing to have a little compassion. I saw an Oprah show where this guy who was depressed killed both his kids.

He was having thoughts which he never told anyone about because he thought his kids would be taken away. Because he never told anyone, he couldn’t get help with it. He was in therapy and could easily have got help. They would not have taken his kids away, they would have just made certain he wasn’t left alone with them. But his wife left him with the kids while she went to get her hair done, and when she came back they were both dead.

As much as I wanted to judge him and say how horrible what he did was – and it is a horrible thing – etc, I was remembering the irrational thoughts I had when I was depressed – all of them towards hurting myself, thankfully, and not someone else.

However this Porter father? I hope he never gets out of jail. He tortured Tina for years refusing to say where the kids were. He *enjoyed* doing that. That’s before we even get into the murders of two innocent children who more than likely, loved their father.

In fact I wish we could create a special kind of hell for him, where Mothers get to torture him back. Each Mother would approach the tied up man, and choose from a long list of painful yet not life threatening options – everything from slapping him hard across the face to pricking him with sharp needles to hot wax torture, *and* each Mother gets to kick him hard in the nuts. All day long, every day. The Death Penalty is too quick and easy for him. He deserves to be in pain. He has caused everyone who loved those kids such pain.

Please, if you are a parent, don’t ever do these harmful things to your kids. Take the high road – and ask your partner to commit to doing the same long before you consider a divorce.

Are you looking for the Hump Day Hmmm’s? This week they are at Emily’s blog so head on over to check it out.

So, you’ve moved to the beach? You’re going to need an Oracle. What is an Oracle, I hear you ask? It is the God of the Ocean. It is the one thing you must consult before heading off to the beach. It is vital and important, not just for beach walkers but for boaters and for fishermen.. I do not believe in any One God, but I do believe in the Oracle. And now I am going to show you the Oracle. Are you sitting down? Paying full attention? This is *important*!!! My Oracle is a simple piece of paper with important things printed on it. Some people have an Oracle that comes in book form. Some people who are highly advanced creatures consult the Online Oracle. As always, I hear your thoughts. Why is an Oracle necessary? Why is this important to someone who wants to walk on the beach? You see the above photo. That is a local creek. There is no bridge over this creek, and at certain times of the day where I am standing to take this photo I would be about neck deep in water. So the Oracle can help me work out when is the best time to take my beach walk and be able to cross this creek. What the Oracle cannot tell me is what I will see when I get to the beach, if there will be any dolphins there, if the weather will be ok, and a multitude of other things. It simply tells me when the tides will be high or low. Someone tells me this has something to do with the Moon, but I am not sure about this.

As you see there are a couple of creeks on my beach walk paths. If the Oracle has not lied to me, I am able to walk a very long way on the beach. If I go when the Oracle has said “Don’t Go” I cannot walk very far at all. All beach photos in this post were taken by me earlier today – I saw two different pods of Dolphins today. I walked a long way but managed to lose my pedometer sometime after 4,256 steps. and I still had a long way to walk when I last checked the meter! I walked for over an hour and a half on top of my 20 minute short walk this morning when I foolishly did not listen to The Oracle and could not cross either of the creeks. This post has been a Hump Day Hmmm. Feel free to write your own Hump Day Hmmm, it is simple and easy to join in! The topic this week was –

Take a topic, any topic, something that is weighing on you, bothering you, troubling you…and find the humor in it. Write about it from a humorous angle. It can be general or personal, just take a troubling topic and bring out the humor. FWIW, sarcasm counts. Letter style, onion style, Shakespeare style, prose, any style you want.

I suppose The Oracle is not a troubling topic for everyone, but it has become a new troubling topic for me this week. I am now joined at the hip to a piece of paper because someone could not simply say – High tide is at midday and midnight, and low tide is at 6am and 6pm! No, they have to make it *complicated* and *ever changing* just to confuse poor little me. As much as I love the moon, I believe Juliet was right when she said –

O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circled orb, lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

Each of us get to choose our own values, ethics and morals. Where problems tend to arise is when some among us try to force their values onto us. Sometimes this happens because laws are created. There are some very odd laws around the world and today I want to mention a few of them, but first I want to talk about Senator Larry Craig.

This was brought to my attention first by Tornwordo at Sticky Crows and then by Julie Pippert at The Raven Picture Maven. I don’t know this senator from a bar of soap. This is the first time I’d ever heard of him. I read the police reports on TheSmokingGun, I even listened to the audio police interview before writing this post this morning.

I have watched plenty of episodes of COPS. I have seen men who have been arrested for soliciting a prostitute deny, deny, deny – even when they are told the woman they spoke to was a police officer, even when they are told the woman they were speaking to was wearing a microphone and sometimes a hidden camera.

I have seen drug dealers deny, deny, deny, they were selling drugs – even when they are told the car they got into had video cameras, when the officers they sold the drugs to were wearing microphones.

I have seen shoplifters deny, deny, deny – even when it is very clear from the video footage that they stole things, even when that footage is played back to them and everyone watching can see with their own eyes those shoplifters putting goods into their handbags and then walking out of the store. “Oh, I meant to pay for it, I just forgot”. Yeah right.

Do these people really think they can dispute actual video footage of them doing something illegal?

As far as Senator Craig is concerned, I truly don’t care if he was doing what they say he was doing. Three things only disturb me.

1. That he *might* be lying to his wife about something of quite a serious nature.

2. That he admitted to (and I heard it clearly on the audio interview) “peeping” – interference with privacy, which he did when he looked into the stall the officer was in. That was what he was charged with, as well as disorderly conduct.

3. That this occurred in a public toilet at an airport – which children could have been using. He could have been peeping on someone’s kids.

When you use a public toilet, you are aware that sometimes there are small gaps into which people could look. You expect that people are not going to look. In the state the airport was in, it is actually ILLEGAL to look. Specifically – from 609.746, Minnesota Statutes 2006 INTERFERENCE WITH PRIVACY -

(c) A person is guilty of a gross misdemeanor who:
(1) surreptitiously gazes, stares, or peeps in the window or other aperture of a sleeping room in a hotel, as defined in section 327.70, subdivision 3, a tanning booth, or other place where a reasonable person would have an expectation of privacy and has exposed or is likely to expose their intimate parts, as defined in section 609.341, subdivision 5, or the clothing covering the immediate area of the intimate parts;

It’s entirely possible that people who live in Minnesota are not aware of this law. In fact most of us are not truly aware of the laws which apply where we live. We know the biggies – speed limits, some road law, murder, rape, theft, that type of thing.

According to the Dumb Laws website, I can break the law here just by changing a light globe – Only licensed electricians may change a light bulb.

One law that I am well aware of is the Fog Light law. That is because it is displayed on big signs along a road that we drive along. However other motorists may not be aware of it – they *must* not be, or else they would not be driving with their fog lights on. Unlawful use of fog lamp will cost you a $79 fine here. A burnout – spinning your wheels to make them smoke – will cost you a $477 fine, and there are situations in which they will take your vehicle as well.

You can also be breaking a law by NOT doing something. In the road laws where I live, if you are not carrying your license and you are driving, you have broken the law.

Do I agree with speed limits? Sometimes. Do they fit my values? No. Am I required to follow them? Yes.

Do I agree with the “Peeping” law? Absolutely. Don’t you dare look into a stall in a bathroom!

Do I agree with the undercover operation that police were running there? Sort of. I believe there should have been more done to make certain that the person being charged was actually intending on performing some kind of sexual act within a public bathroom.

Do I agree that people who are innocent should EVER plead guilty? No way. If you did not do something, you should not be pleading guilty and you should always be seeking legal advice before you speak to the police.

That was Senator Craig’s major mistake. He was in a hurry to catch a flight, and so he spoke to the police and then decided to plead guilty. Part of the paperwork he signed states clearly -

I now make no claim that I am innocent of the charge to which I am entering a plea of Guilty

Unfortunately the Senator has chosen to make the claim that he is innocent – NOW. I think the horse has bolted out of the stall (no pun intended) on that one.

Weird Laws Around The Place –

According to the Dumb Laws website (I haven’t gone to check the actual laws myself, I don’t have the time today, sorry!) here are some of the dumber laws.

Florida may have the most odd laws and here’s a few of them -

- You are not allowed to break more than three dishes per day, or chip the edges of more than four cups and/or saucers.

- Having sexual relations with a porcupine is illegal.

- Men may not be seen publicly in any kind of strapless gown.

- A special law prohibits unmarried women from parachuting on Sunday or she shall risk arrest, fine, and/or jailing.

- Women may be fined for falling asleep under a hair dryer, as can the salon owner.

California –

- Women may not drive in a house coat.

- It is a misdemeanor to shoot at any kind of game from a moving vehicle, unless the target is a whale.

New York –

- It is illegal for a woman to be on the street wearing “body hugging clothing.

- Women may go topless in public, providing it is not being used as a business.

(so just strip off that body hugging clothing and you’ll be fine!)

Texas –

- Up to a felony charge can be levied for promoting the use of, or owning more than six dildos.

- It is illegal to milk another person’s cow.

- It is illegal to sell one’s eye.

Massachusetts –

- At a wake, mourners may eat no more than three sandwiches.

- Taxi drivers are prohibited from making love in the front seat of their taxi during their shifts.

- No gorilla is allowed in the back seat of any car.

There are a lot more – check out what dumb laws apply where you live at the Dumb Laws website..

As for my personal values, that’s a long post for another time. In this post I wanted to make you start thinking about how other peoples values are imposed upon you by various laws.

Jill Twiss wrote a great post about the senator in the bathroom, gay sex, airport bathrooms, hand motions.. Jill I thought I’d help you get those great Google searches by smart keyword links there..

This post is a part of the Hump Day Hmmm – why not join in? All are welcome to participate.

Overweight people know what it feels like to be looked at and judged – but maybe EVERYONE knows that? Maybe we all judge each other based on appearance all the time? I know I do it. Do you? Take a look at this photo. What are the first three words that pop into your head to describe this guy? If you’re game, write that down and put it in my comments section.

When you are walking down the street, you are constantly looking at people and making quick assessments. Will this person hurt me. Will this person try to mug me. Am I safe here? Is there anyone around not making me feel safe? Logically these are assessments we need to make in order to stay safe. The trouble is, we’re all making wrong assessments. We’re making assessments based on our own history, our past experiences, what we’ve read, what others have told us.

It is no different to you driving past a car accident. How many of you think “He must have been going too fast” “That car must have run into that other car” “He lost control going around the corner”. We want to try and learn from the mistake that driver made. Anywhere you have seen an accident, you will find it difficult to drive past that spot without remembering what you saw. Perhaps not consciously, but your subconscious will do it for you. There’s a whole science to accident investigation. Our assumptions are probably way off. We still make them anyway.

If when you were a kid, Santa scared you, you might subconsciously be scared of men with beards, right? You might have thought, when you saw that above image – that man has a huge beard, I find that scary, I would keep away from him. If you have had bad experiences with people of color, people of a certain sex, people who dress a certain way, teenagers, homeless people, bikers.. you will subconsciously steer well clear – maybe even consciously. People who have had good experiences with those people might give them a smile, approach them and say hi, feel more comfortable in their presence.

A book I highly recommend to change your thinking on many topics is Gavin De Becker’s The Gift Of Fear – here is a quote from it –

Our intuition fails when it is loaded with inaccurate information. Since we are the editors of what gets in and what is invested with credibility, it is important to evaluate our sources of information. I explained this during a presentation for hundreds of government threat assessors at the Central Intelligence Agency, making my point by drawing on a very rare safety hazard: kangaroo attacks. I told the audience that about twenty people a year are killed by the normally friendly animals, and that kangaroos always display a specific set of indicators before they attack:

1) They will give what appears to be a wide and genial smile (they are actually showing their teeth).
2) They will check their pouches compulsively several times to be sure they have no young with them (they never attack while carrying young).
3) They will look behind them (since they always retreat immediately after they kill).

After these signals, they will lunge, brutally pummel an enemy, and gallop off.

I asked two audience members to stand up and repeat the three warning signs, and both flawlessly described the smile, the checking of the pouch for young, and the looking back for an escape route. In fact everyone in that room (and now you) will remember these warning signs for life. If you are ever face-to-face with a kangaroo, be it tomorrow or decades from now, those three pre-incident indicators will be in your head.

The problem, I told the audience at the CIA, is that I made up those signals. I did it to demonstrate the risks of inaccurate information. I actually know nothing about kangaroo behaviour (so forget the three signals if you can — or stay away from hostile kangaroos).

In our lives, we are constantly bombarded with kangaroo signals masquerading as knowledge, and our intuition relies on us to decide what we will give credence to.

Australians are going to have a particularly difficult time forgetting those kangaroo signals, because we see kangaroos reasonably often. Right Aussies? And I can tell you, every time I see one, the above passage is remembered within my skull.

So you may be reading this post wondering – where is she going to talk about fat being the new black? I’ve written before about being one of only two fat people in a room of over 500 high school students to hear a lecture titled “Fat People Are Dirty People”. That was over 15 years ago. Our situation has not improved, people.

Fat people are looked at, judged. People who are overweight can feel the looks of disapproval wherever you go, and they even come from people who aren’t exactly stick thin themselves. If you eat in public, expect disapproving glances. You can almost feel the people thinking “They shouldn’t be eating that”. Fat people are called names, have jokes told about them – and they are expected to laugh! – are taunted, teased.. they find it harder to get a job, they find it harder to be promoted, they find it difficult to travel – seats too small, people don’t want to be stuck next to the fat person.. this list can go on for pages, my friends.

Can you take that previous paragraph and say the same thing about a race, a color? Not these days. It is illegal to discriminate based on race. It is considered inappropriate to shoot disapproving looks at people of color or race. People of color or race are not judged on what they are eating – unless they are also overweight!

It is not illegal to discriminate based on weight. An excellent article you should read is Do We Really Need A Law To Protect Fat Workers? – a couple of quotes from the article but I hope you will go and read the entire thing.

“Hiring, firing, discipline, training, wages, we’ve got more than 40 studies now in both the lab and the workplace,” says Mark Roehling, a management professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing. “People in all of them tell you they discriminate on the basis of weight. I had one guy tell me there was one kind of person he absolutely wasn’t going to hire – a fat girl. And the punch line is, this guy was overweight himself.”

Consider Roehling’s survey participant, the one who told him “there was one kind of person he absolutely wasn’t going to hire – a fat girl.” Now replace “fat” with “black.” It’s the textbook definition of discrimination. And because it would be so unfair, so wrong, so illegal to follow through with it, it’s hard to imagine that anyone in today’s society would dare.

Another very good example of what I am talking about appears to have reared its ugly head on Facebook. According to mo pie from Big Fat Deal in the blog post Face! (Book) which I have put a couple of quotes from but again, I encourage you to read the full article –

Although Facebook does crack down on religious and racial hate groups, fat hate groups are flourishing. I’m not suggesting that these groups should be shut down; I think the worst ones (like “let’s kill all fat people”) have been, and I’m more inclined to let people say their piece than be censored, where possible. Even so, I did a couple of searches and poked around and found hundreds of groups dedicated to fat hate.

Here are some more Facebook groups: “Dammit, I Hate Fat Chicks!” “DISLIKES- FAT GIRLS WHO WEAR SKIRTS AND TIGHT CLOTHING” “Fat Chicks – Exercise or die!” “Fat people should go on starvation diets” “God d@mm!t I hate fat people!!!” and “If you’re fat…we aren’t friends.” A group simply called “I Hate Fat People” has 529 members.

Replace fat with black, hispanic, asian, any race, any culture – would it be accepted? No way! Facebook cracks down on religious and racial hate groups because LEGALLY THEY ARE REQUIRED TO DO SO. They are not required to do so when it comes to weight.

The sooner “weight” is added to the civil rights act in the US the better. The law says (in part, you can read the whole thing here) –

to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin;

And maybe a couple of other things should be added there – ie sexual preference and possibly others – what would you add?

Until then, it is accepted that you can say whatever you like about fat people, refuse to employ them, refuse to promote them, treat them with disgust, treat them without respect – and there is no way those people can do anything about it, other than to lose weight. I wouldn’t bother, personally. Losing weight does not always solve the problem, because once you’ve been a fat person you will always appear that way in people’s minds. I’ve experienced that myself as I wrote in my previously mentioned post..

So in the meantime, we overweight people have to accept ourselves as we are, and refuse to hear those who want to treat us badly. As Martin Luther King said –

Don’t ever let anyone pull you so low as to hate them. We must use the weapon of love. We must have the compassion and understanding for those who hate us. We must realize so many people are taught to hate us that they are not totally responsible for their hate. But we stand in life at midnight; we are always on the threshold of a new dawn.

Thanks for reading my article, if you liked it, stumble it so the word can get out to more people. If you have a spare moment, please leave your thoughts in the comments.

This post is a part of a two week special on Race, Society and The Internet in conjunction with the Hump Day Hmmm and Blogrhet.