Why Do I Care So Much?

This is another entry in which I discuss marital lovemaking. If you don't want to read about this subject, or read about it as it pertains to my marriage, consider yourself warned.

Good News From the Doctor

About six months ago, my doctor told me my cholesterol was way too high and offered me the choice of medication or trying to lower it through other means.

I told him I'd hold off on the medication.

I did some basic research on what I should and should not be eating if I wanted to lower my cholesterol level.

My wife does most of the grocery shopping in our family, so I gave her a list of things to buy that would help - I only included in the list things I would actually eat. I was honest with myself.

Well, it worked.

I recently went back to my doctor and the latest lab report shows I lowered my level by 50 points. I also dropped a few pounds without getting any more exercise. Actually, I probably got less.

The one thing I really miss is cheese. I love just about any kind of cheese... sharp cheddar, soft cheeses, goat cheese, spicy cheese... argh.... Oh well. I still have a little cheese here and there, but it isn't a regular part of my diet anymore.

It probably helped that we haven't been to my wife's parents' place in two months, not only because of the tasty dinners my MIL prepares, but the appetizer snacks my FIL always puts out while dinner is being made.

Why haven't we seen them in two months, despite living about 15 minutes away from them? That'll have to wait for another update.

How are you??? Any current health/fitness success stories to share?

Good Intentions

I have this friend I'll call Charlie who has been a friend since something like the second grade. Actually, it wasn't until sixth grade that we got to be good friends, and after we were graduated from high school we've stayed in contact more through e-mail and social networking than anything else, but every few years we've had dinner or whatever.

Recently, he sent me a message that made me think of this:


My wife had a very good idea the last time we saw Charlie in person. She wanted to set him up with a friend of hers. Charlie and this friend have compatible careers and faith. My wife's friend is attractive and has never been married. (My wife can't figure out why, I point out that my wife has never dated her friend.)

Charlie, however, isn't open to dating. He told me he really thinks he's supposed to be with a certain woman I'll call Chrissy. Many years back, Charlie, who thinks of himself as a good Christian man, "married" Chrissy and moved her and her kids into his place. I wrote "married" because Chrissy was still legally married to the father of her children, supposedly just for benefit purposes.

Wouldn't you know it? After a few years, Chrissy ended up taking her kids and reuniting with their father, who was still her legal husband. Charlie refused to move on. Mind you, Charlie had been legally married before in a marriage that didn't last long because his wife, who was about ten years older than we are, was a control freak who couldn't handle the fact that Charlie threw her a surprise birthday party. That ended that marriage.

But back to the situation with Chrissy

So Chrissy and the kids left because Charlie was tired of divided loyalties, and Chrissy later moved out on her husband again without coming back to Charlie, but that hasn't stopped Charlie from referring to her kids, who have a father, as his kids, travelling to see them, having them come for visits, etc... and for keeping his heart fixated on Chrissy (who is NOT some beautiful prize, mind you).

But wait... it gets better.

One of Chrissy's daughter had a friend I'll call Allison who a bad home life, so Chrissy took her in. When Charlie was returning one of Chrissy's kids to her, he met Allison. Since he treated Chrissy's kids like his own, he agreed to treat Allison like one of his own (he has no biological or adopted kids of his own). Allison has referred to him as dad ever since.

Allison went back to her parents, and Charlie and Allison kept in contact. Charlie went to visit and Allison and her parents. They later sent Allison to visit Charlie. Allison didn't want to go back home, but she did after she and Charlie talked about the possibilities, and Charlie sent a letter to her parents asking if he could take care of Charlie. Her parents sent her back to Charlie.

Charlie wrote to me and told me that he has "assumed custody" of Allison.

I wrote back a blunt reponse, part of which is below:

What do you think the average (not YOU, the average) social worker, police officer, prosecutor, judge, jury member, or TV news viewer would think if they heard that a single heterosexual man... “assumed custody” of an unrelated, troubled 16-year-old girl whose family lives halfway across the country?

And...

What does “assumed custody” mean? Is there a legal contract? Official sanction from state/local governments? Approval from a licensed social worker?

There's a reason people legally marry and build a nest before raising children or foster parenting. As you noted, it is hard being a single parent. (It is hard enough being a married parent.) You can’t provide Allison with enough supervision, especially given her background, and she’s at high risk to end up pregnant within the next couple of years.

Charlie has not responded, and it has been a while. The age of consent in our state is 18, by the way. I'm pretty sure Charlie was a virgin until well after high school, and he may just not have a grasp on the reality of the situation.

I do not believe his intentions are for ill, but as the saying goes, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. I would not be the least surprised if Allison has or develops a crush on Charlie, or if her parents were to screw him over. Charlie wants to stay connected to Chrissy and play the hero, and that is what he's doing here. For whatever reason, he doesn't want healthy, available women. He wants projects. The problem is, this a very risky situation and I can't think of any professional advice-giver saying this is a good idea. Dr. Laura would name which chapters in her book Ten Stupid Things Men Do to Mess Up Their Lives Charlie is doing. He has given no idication that his parents or sister, or anyone else, has told him this is a bad idea.

I pray this doesn't end up a train wreck.

It's The Middle of February

Here we are again. It's another Valentine's Day.

The Playful Walrus has an annual reminder.

Fortunately for me, my wife likes to celebrate a different day, as one of our anniversaries falls close to February 14.

It's my year to plan, but my wife made plans already for the both of us that preclude us from doing anything too big. Looks like it's going to be restricted to a nice dinner out without the kids.

What are you doing or what did you do, if anything?

Did One Fly Out of the Cuckold's Nest?

We can read about a small, perhaps even temporary victory for victims of paternity fraud, in this ABC News report from Christina Ng.

A man who discovered that the daughter he raised was not really his can sue the biological father for $190,000 -the estimated cost of raising her for 15 years - the Connecticut State Supreme Court has ruled.

Good for the court!

Eric Fischer saw the red flags. When his youngest daughter was born, his wife Pamela Tournier's close friend and business partner Richard Zollino rode home in the limo with the new parents. For the next 15 years, Zollino was omnipresent at the girl's musical recitals as well as her eighth grade graduation. And his youngest daughter did not look like his other two daughters, including one from a previous marriage.

Fischer decided to confirm what he already suspected. He "surreptitiously obtained" a hair sample from his daughter and sent it to lab with his own DNA sample and in October 2006, he received the results that "excluded the possibility that he was the younger daughter's father," according to a court document.

Fischer confronted his wife and they divorced in 2007.

The couple's separation agreement only listed the couple's elder daughter as issue of the marriage and Tournier testified that she believed the agreement was fair and that "she believed [Zollino] was the younger daughter's father and that he had provided the younger daughter with support since and would continue to do so," according to the court document.

I have to wonder how the marriage was otherwise?

Zollino submitted a DNA sample and it was confirmed that he was the girl's father.

He was the sperm donor. Her father is the man who raised her.

In 2008, Fischer filed a lawsuit against [Zollino] seeking damages on claims of nondisclosure, misrepresentation and unjust enrichment.

A lower court ruled against Fischer, saying that he "had held himself out to be the younger daughter's father, that he had caused her to rely on him to meet her financial and emotional needs, and that revealing her true parentage after she had been led to believe for her whole life that [Fisher] was her father, would be detrimental to her emotional well-being."

Well hey, that happened anyway, didn’t it? Why can’t the courts quietly and secretly award damages along with an order that the truth not be told to the child under penalty of violating the court order? He held himself out to be the girl's father because he was defrauded. A fraud victim does not lose his or her right to seek recourse just because they were duped. They have to be duped in the first place for the fraud to take place.

Cruel Taunts

Once upon a time in a land far, far away... OK, well, actually several years ago in the OC, there was an 18-year-old who at least dabbled in cocaine and she got in a fight with at least one of her parents, took their expensive sports car for a late-night high-speed drive, and got herself mangled and killed in the process. Thankfully, she did not kill anyone else.

The responding law enforcement agency documented the accident scene, including taking pictures.

Some unprofessional members of that agency leaked the pictures.

Those pictures have found no small audience online. That's bad enough.

Unfortunately, some people took to cyberbullying by sending and delivering the photos to the deceased's family.

The family has just now reached a settlement. It is too bad that taxpayers, or an insurance company hired by taxpayers, are paying for this settlement.

I've deliberately been vague about this. You really don't need to search for the pictures.

The deceased suffered for her bad choices.

Shame on those who leaked the photos.

Shame on those who have bullied the family.

Now, Bark Like a Seal

Some people who have shacked up for years and have kids plan these elaborate weddings, complete with a white dress. And have you seen any of those elaborate flash-mob-dancing wedding proposals?

Yeah, well, it is getting worse.

Teresa Watanabe reports at LATimes.com about a high school senior named Alex Hom asking a freshman by the name of Brooke Drury to the winter formal dance. This is at South Pasadena High School in California. That city is often referred to as Mayberry, yet is home to a lot of Hollywood people (some famous actors have attended that public high school, including at least one Oscar winner I can think of.) So if it can happen there, it can happen anywhere, as evidenced by the rest of the article.

So he rounded up more than 20 friends, supplied them with red roses, choreographed a dance routine and wrote out his plea on signs. Then he had a friend bring Brooke, blindfolded, to a spot on campus for the big production.

"I thought, this is my senior year and I gotta go out with a bang," Alex said.

He's not the only student elevating the art of the school dance invitation.

Students are folding the question into homemade fortune cookies, tucking it into pinatas, knitting it into scarves, spelling it out with pepperoni on pizza and orange chicken on fried rice.

There are animal-themed invitations, using live puppies and turtles as messengers.

Ugh.

Camille Santos, Van Nuys High's student body vice president, recalled one student who dressed up as a knight and got a friend to dress up as a dragon to "attack" his prospective date. Then he rode onto the scene on the back of another friend dressed as a steed, "slayed" the dragon and popped the question.

"We live in a generation where flashy is good, bigger is better," said Camille, whose boyfriend placed his invitation to prom two years ago inside a rhinestone-studded fortune cookie box after dinner at a Chinese restaurant.

"We want to be seen. We want the world to know how romantic we are."

TMW. Too much work. Especially for a high school dance. This is stuff you do for a wife. If a guy does this kind of thing and she doesn't react well, he could easily be accused of being a stalker or a sexual harasser.

I won't even get into the potential problem of a 12th grader (who can often be 18 years old) taking a 9th grader (who can often be 13 years old) on a date. That's nothing new. Way back in the Dark Ages when I was in high school there were those girls who went to all of the formal dances starting in their freshman year, asked by seniors. But a senior asking them used to be impressive enough.

There's a line between being endearing and romantic and being narcissistic or beta.

Yeah, the kids in the article had some cute ideas.

But the larger issue I see with this trend towards more showy and elaborate schemes for not just marriage proposals but now high school dates is that it is a reaction to the flip side, which is the prevalence of casual and promiscuous sex. Today, guys can get sex from many girls for little or no effort and no strings attached. So the more hoops guys are made to jump through to go the traditional route, the more guys will go the other way instead. Aside from getting to see lots of hits for their online video, how many of these guys have more fun on the evening in question than the guy who just shows up at an after party, not having spent any time or money on the event at all?

Yes, men tend to value things for which we work, but if we perceive the escalating requirements are frivolous or simply about feeding egos, we may bow out. We'll work by saving up money, dating a woman to get to know her, and buying an expensive ring, but if we have to hire some Broadway director and choreographer to ask a question, something is very, very wrong.

Why We Have the Death Penalty

I've probably heard all of the arguments against the death penalty. I understand some people have good reasons for opposing the death penalty in California.

However, I am so convinced that Manling Tsang Williams deserves to be executed that I would not hesitate to strap her down and push the buttons myself. Lethal injection is too good for her.

She has shamed the Tsang family and doesn't deserve the Williams name.

Haven't heard of her? No Lifetime Original Movie will be made about her.

From the Whittier Daily News comes this report from Brian Day. Whittier and Rowland Heights are communities east of Los Angeles, in eastern Los Angeles County.

A judge sentenced Manling Tsang Williams to death Thursday for smothering her two young children with a pillow and slashing her husband to death with a sword in the family's Rowland Heights home in 2007.

2007. She should be dead already. Neal Williams, the man to whom she had made vows, was 27. Their sons were 7 and 3.

A jury convicted Manling Williams of three counts of first-degree murder in 2010, along with the special allegations of using weapons and lying in wait. After one jury was unable to agree on whether to sentence her to death or life imprisonment, a second penalty phase jury recommended last year that she be put to death.

Please tell me that the people who were siding with the life sentence were hoping it would make it easier for another prisoner to beat her to death.

"The evidence is compelling that the defendant, for selfish reasons, murdered her own two children," [Judge] Martinez said.

Her motivation, Martinez said, was a "narcissistic, selfish and adolescent" desire to start a new life with another man, free from the hindrances of family life.

In the months before the murders, Manling Williams had reconnected through the Internet with an old friend and began a relationship with him.

The judge pointed out that Manling Williams had numerous family members who would have taken in the children, should she have decided to abandon them.

She could have left them with Neal, who worked at Disneyland, by the way. He helped bring happiness to strangers.

After smothering Devon and Ian in their bunk bed, "The defendant savagely, brutally and viciously attacked her husband with a katana sword," Martinez said.

Neal Williams was stabbed and slashed more than 97 times in the attack, investigators said.

"In the final moments of life, Neal begged the defendant for help," the judge said.

Don't try to tell me lethal injection is "cruel and unusual" punishment. It is too good for her.

Defense attorneys Tom Althaus and Haydeh Takasugi argued for their client's life to be spared.

Althaus told the court that the killings were not calculated executions, but a "sudden mistake."

This is exactly why I couldn't be a defense attorney.

"There's no basis for the prosecution's contention that these murders were planned," Althaus said, adding that Manling Williams was in a state of "extreme mental and emotional disturbance" when she killed her husband and sons.

Neal was no doubt in a state of extreme mental and emotional disturbance and physical disturbance but he didn't murder anyone. And yes, there is a basis for the contention that these murders were planned - at least the second and third ones. Unless she's a giant octupus and killed everyone simultaneously.

Mitigating factors also included a difficult upbringing and no previous history of violence, he said.

Who didn't have a difficult upbringing? So she assassinated the character of her family. Great. Let's say it is all true. She should have THANKED Neal every day for being her parenther in a BETTER life. No previous history of violence... that's a good one. How many husbands and kids did she have before?

Althaus acknowledged that his client had had an extra-marital affair, but disputed the prosecution's assertion that the affair formed a motive for the crime.

A tramp as well as a murderer.

Out of more than 700 California death row inmates, fewer than two dozen of them are women, and none has been among the 13 prisoners executed since the death penalty was restored in 1976.

This is an outrage. Those vicious murderers are sitting there with shelter, health care, meals, running water, security protection, recreation, communication with others, and so many other things. We should execute at least one a week until Death Row is vacant.

Martinez said that the evidence showed that Manling Williams had planned the killings two months in advance, and immediately began trying to conceal her guilt afterward.

She wore latex gloves as she attacked her husband, he said.

Testimony indicated it takes five to 10 minutes for a person to die by suffocation, meaning that Manling Williams had at least five minutes to contemplate her actions while killing one of her children before killing her other son in the same manner, Martinez said.

"She clearly had time to reflect on what she was doing," he said.

Following the killings, the judge said, Manling Williams typed up a note indicating that Neal Williams had killed the children and himself, she disposed of bloody clothing and returned home before screaming to neighbors that someone had killed her family.

While being interviewed by detectives after the discovery of the bodies, "For hours, she feigned grief, sadness and bewilderment," Martinez said.

It was only after being confronted by investigators with a bloody cigarette box that was found in her car that Manling Williams broke down and admitted the murders, Martinez said.

Neal married the wrong woman. That was his biggest mistake.

Being Stealthy

This is probably more than you ever wanted to know about anyone.

I have mentioned my paruresis before.

Actually, it is difficult for me to use the toilet in a public or unfamiliar restroom, and even harder for me to use a urinal. I think is part of larger OCD problems on my part. Even without OCD, I'm very much a creature of habit in many areas of my life.

After the wake-up urination session, I can often hold it the for the rest of the day, and typically do hold it for at least 14 hours.

But there are rare times when I just have to use a restroom when & where I'd rather not. That happened recently, and it occurred me that for me, a "successful" (least stressful) trip to the a restroom for me goes like this:

Nobody sees me go in.


Nobody else is in there when I am.


There no sign anyone else has been there recently except for the janitor.


Nobody comes in during my time there.


Nobody sees me leave.

The worst thing is when I'm standing at the urinal trying to start taking a leak when someone walks into the restroom. Sometimes I zip up, flush, and wash my hands as if I actually used the urinal, even though I didn't.

This doesn't stop me from living life, mind you. I've never hestitated to travel or visit anywhere because of this. I always wondered how I was going to handle potty training the kids, but it worked out, somehow.

Just wanted to share.

Advice to a Middle-Aged Woman Re-entering the Dating Pool

It's titled "Jumping Back In" but is there still water in the pool? "Bella" wrote in to Dear Margo:

After a marriage of 20-some years, I am about to dive into the middle-aged dating pool.

Oh boy, is she in for some fun.

I suspect it will be very different the second time around, but part of me thinks it may be just like picking up where I left off.

The first one is right for two reasons: 1) the rules have changed, and 2) you've spent up one of a woman's most valuable dating assets - your youth.

Friends tell me, however, that it’s a whole new ballgame and difficult.

Yup!

Dear Mago metions baggage, then ends with:

But … chins up. The men you will be seeing are just as nervous as you are, and I’m here to tell you that you will get the hang of it.

Dear Margo is either oblivious, delusional, or didn't have the heart to tell this woman the truth. Some of the people commenting did, though.

There are two big questions that the letter writer should have answered by including the information:

1) What are you looking for in general? Free dinners and entertainment? Another marriage? Steady companionship? Sex? If she's getting alimony, she may not want to get remarried if she values the steady money over marriage.

2) Are you willing to try men significantly younger or older than you?

Almost all of the successful, desirable, dating heterosexual men around near her age are divorced or on a marriage strike and dating younger women. If she wants to marry or even date a man near her age, she's probably going to have to be open to dating men who can't afford to pay for her to have nice dinners and entertainment, never mind financially support her if they marry. If she wants those things, she will almost certainly have to go with a significantly older man. If she just wants companionship and doesn't care if the guy is "of modest means", then it isn't so much of a problem.

She'll also find it isn't a problem to get sex if that is all she wants, but it will be easiest to to be on the "A" list with guys who are younger (since women their age are dating older men) or significantly older. Guys around her age will probably have her on the "B" list.

Speaking of sex... there's no short supply of younger, hotter women than her willing to have casual sex with the men she'll want to date. Most men these days expect it by the third date, if not before, and a lot of women consider themselves rejected if he doesn't try for it by then (if those women aren't taking the initiative themselves).

Those are the brutal, harsh realities.

If she wants to marry a successful man near her age who would make a good husband, her best hope is going to be to find a divorced man whose wife threw away a perfectly good husband, yet he hasn't been turned off to marriage. If he has no minor children, that will be the best scenario. He'll likely be paying alimony to his ex-wife, though. (If he was widowed, she won't have an ex to deal with it all.) To snag such a man, she's going to have to compete against those younger women I wrote about above. The does not mean she has to jump into bed with him – if he thinks sex is for marriage or only for steady, exclusive relationships, he'll appreciate it if she keeps that boundary in place. She should play up her advantages over those younger women (if she has them) – a better understanding of how to keep a man happy (did she learn from her ended marriage?), better earning ability, more experience in social graces, etc.

Enjoy!

Sheesh... after I wrote all of this I remembered having written something like this before. Previously:

A Question for the Ages

An Unmarried Woman

She Might Have to Go Older or Younger

Is It OK For Her to Ask For a Date?

Dear Abby Uses a Bad Argument

"INNOCENT TEEN IN MICHIGAN" wrote in to Dear Abby:

I have been dating "Kyle" for more than six months, but I have loved him for more than two years.

Well, we already know she's a teen, so I'm taking the idea that she's "loved him" for 18 months longer than she's been "dating" him with a grain of salt.

I always thought we had a wonderful relationship and that Kyle was a sweet, innocent guy.

Sounds great! Everything's going great then, right?

Well, he just confided to me that he has an Internet porn addiction!

There are some problems here. The first one is that he said something to you. The second is that he either 1) believes that there is such thing as an addiction to porn or 2) thinks you believe there is such a thing or he wants you to believe there is such a thing.

Anything pleasurable or exciting can become "addictive". But I'll only believe porn addiction is real in cases where someone goes through withdrawal symptoms akin to those suffered by nicotine or heroin addicts (provided he is still allowed sexual release).

He has a habit. It's probably just a phase and he'll grow out of it...

Don't Try This at Home (or Wherever There's a Road)

Angel Jennings reports at LATimes.com:

A teen in the Sacramento suburb of Natomas sustained life-threatening injuries after being run over by a car while lying in the street, authorities said.

Did he trip? Had he been assaulted and left in the street?

The 16-year-old was in the middle of the road wearing headphones about 7 p.m. Tuesday when the Chevy ran him over on Regginald Way and Taylor Street, Fox40 News in Sacramento reported.

The driver, apparently not an illegal alien with no license and no insurance, actually stopped and called the police! Yay! No charges have been filed against the driver, who is probably traumatized.

The teen was being treated at a hospital for critical injuries considered life-threatening.

As far as I can tell, there are three possibilities here:

1. The teen is a potential Darwin Award candidate who was simply being stupid.

2. The teen was intentionally trying to commit suicide.

3. The teen was assaulted and left in the street, or suffered some sort of medical issue such as seizure, and fell down in the street (though the text of the article probably would have mentioned something about that).

It's a terrible situation no matter what, but I somehow feel numbers 1 and 2 are worse, and at first glance, I was sure it was #1.

If it was 1 or 2, then you know what we need? A National Office of Not Being Human Roadkill, perhaps with a Czar or Secretary cabinet position. We can tax gasoline even more to pay for it, and then when those revenues take a dip, we can raise incomes taxes to keep such a necessary office and the people who've been retired from it for 40 years fully funded. We'll have public service announcements, printed warnings, education programs, and we'll have to teach in our schools about prominent people in history who have been hit by cars. Or maybe not.

Adoption is a Beautiful Thing

Do you know where your children are?

DEADLOCKED IN NEW JERSEY wrote in to Dear Abby:

My husband and I have been married 11 years.

So far, so good.

We went through eight years of fertility treatments before having our twins.

Hmmm.

When they were a year old, we discovered I was pregnant with our third child.

Surprise!

We have two embryos left and need to decide what to do. We either use them or destroy them.

Those embryos are human beings. Think about it this way: "We have two toddlers left. Do we raise them, or do we destroy them?" Fortunately, adoption is a more realistic option when it comes to children who are still embryos.

I think we need to give the embryos the chance they were meant to have. However, my husband is concerned only with the financial side of it as we have been living on one salary and things are tight.

Gee, better hope you don't get sick, if your husband puts money ahead of human life.

My heart aches over this.

If only there was some way people having trouble conceiving becoming parents that didn't involve creating more embryos than they were both willing to give a reasonable chance at living.

Do I do what I believe is right and stand by my religious and moral beliefs, and take the chance my husband will resent me for the rest of our marriage?

Guys, think about this. She can go ahead and have those children implanted whether he likes it (or knows about it) or not, and he can be held financially responsible for them. She can adopt them out, and he can still end up financially responsible for them. I say men should not donate sperm and should be very cautious about banking it for themselves, and that applies here as well. He needed to give his sperm (unless they used donor sperm) for this to happen. Which also brings up the point that even if they did use donated sperm (or some creep at the lab decided to secretly use his own sperm) and her husband doesn't want more children, he can still be held financially accountable by a court. All it takes is one judge.

But I digressed. What she is apparently talking about is going ahead and having them implanted over his objections. She should not do that. What she should do is donate them. I was happy to see Dear Abby give information about doing just that:

Your embryos could be donated for embryo adoption by a couple who have been unable to conceive, and who would love to raise them. For more information, you should contact an attorney who specializes in family formation, or contact the Snowflakes Frozen Embryo Adoption and Donation Program. Its phone number is 714-693-5437 and its website is www.nightlight.org.

Thank you, Dear Abby!

Unfortunately, it seems that some people in the fertility/reproductive assistance business want to increase their "success" rates, and so they will create more children than will be given a reasonable chance at life, pick the most promising embryos (discarding or experimenting on the others - killing them either way), implant multiple embryos, and selectively kill any that make it to the fetal stage that might have a medical problem or are the weakest if "too many" of them have made it to that stage. Too many parents don't need much arm twisting to go along with any of that. The result? Innocent human beings are being killed by other human beings, and even those who aren't killed are being treated like commodities.

Ladies, if you spend your twenties and early thirties partying and having sex with bad boys you wouldn't want to be the (financial) father of your children, or you spend that time getting graduate degrees and climbing the corporate ladder... rather than learning what kind of man would make a good husband and dating and then marrying such a man... so that you find yourself marrying in your mid or late thirties, expect that your're going to have trouble conceiving.

I realize it is emotionally easy for me to discourage or be cautious about fertility treatments, IVF, third-party reproduction, etc., since my wife and I conceived the children we wanted to have, without aid, in two months and in three months, and those children have survived. But that it is easy for me to write does not make what I write false or wrong. I value human life. I also appreciate that I was conceived in a loving act of passion rather than in lab equipment and stuck in a freezer. Even if a child was conceived in rape, it is better for an adoptive set of parents to give someone else's biological offspring a good life rather than killing their own biological children in an attempt to have a biological connection to the children they end up raising.

Party Like It's 2008?

Sometimes I like to say, "the more things change, the more they get back to the way they were before". That applies to talk radio in the Los Angeles market.

Today, local talk radio station KABC* AM 790 is looking more like 2008 than it has since... 2008. That is because Doug McIntyre is back on morning drive and Larry Elder is back on afternoon drive.

I was happy when I heard the new schedule. I like T-Rae, McIntyre's new co-host. I will miss her as the news anchor during John & Ken on KFI, but then I will probably be listening to Larry Elder more than J&K, so it kind of evens out.

I'm so glad Larry has been moved from the 9am-noon slot. I would listen to him when Dennis Prager was a repeat or had a guest host, which meant I didn't hear him much. Now I'll be able to listen to Limbaugh as my back-up to Prager.

While I will likely pick Elder over John & Ken, I will still want to know what J&K are talking about since I like their analysis of local and state government, and criminal defense attorneys and their clients. But if I have to, I can podcast them (not that I have much time to listen). So when Elder is on break I will check out J&K. The drawback to Elder being in the 3-6pm slot is that I'll hear less of Frank Pastore on KKLA 99.5 FM. When J&K were on break or talking about something I didn't care about, I would listen to Pastore.

Getting back to the 5am-9am show... I'm glad there will be a real alternative to that "baby-seller" Bill Handel, who has the time slot at T-Rae's previous station. I've been listening to Handel more as a default, and while there is much I enjoy about Handel's show, I often enjoy his show more when he has fill-in hosts. Usually, with the shows I listen to regularly, I don't listen to fill-in hosts. The exception is when Rush Limbaugh has Walter E. William filling in – I will choose Williams over just about anything else. But Williams guest hosts about once a year, as he just did during the holiday break.

Speaking of the holiday break, with Dr. Laura running "best of", I didn't need to listen to those podcasts, and some of the other shows to which I listen were running repeats or had guest hosts at least part of the last few weeks, so I was able to catch up somewhat on the Bible Answer Man podcasts and a more specialized podcast I won't name for the sake of my semi-anonymity.

As far as the Los Angeles area radio market weekday schedule, this is how things are looking for me...

5-9am Bill Handel on KFI and McIntyre/T-Rae on KABC

9am-Noon Dennis Prager on Townhall.com or KRLA, with Rush Limbaugh on KFI as a backup.

Noon-3pm Michael Medved on Townhall.com or KRLA, with Sean Hannity on KABC as a backup.

3pm-7pm Larry Elder on KABC (until 6), John&Ken on KFI as a backup, and Frank Pastore 4pm-7pm as a backup.

If Tom Leykis comes back to terrestrial radio in April or later, I'll be interested to see where and when, and how I'll end up actually reacting with my listening habits.


*Don't let the call letters "KABC" fool you. KABC used to be an ABC radio station, and still carries ABC Network news, but after Disney bought ABC, eventually Disney spun off some of their radio ownings to Citadel, which then went bankrupt, and now the Citadel stuff ended up with Cumulus. But I'm guessing the call lettes "KCUM" are either taken or not allowed by the FCC, for reasons any 13-year-old boy can tell you if you don't find it readily apparent. Anyway, KABC AM is not to be confused with local ABC owned-and-operated KABC-TV Channel 7.

Revisiting Hank Hanegraaff and the Bible Answer Man

This entry may be of no interest to my readers who aren't "evangelical" Christians. Sorry.

Stop That Clock

I don’t like to see people divorce. That's just one reason I don’t like to see people get married when they aren't prepared to be spouses or aren't right for each other. For followers of Christ, divorce is allowed (certainly not commanded) for unfaithfulness, which can translate into the "A"s – adultery, abandonment, abuse, and addiction. I would also include fraud in that. Abuse isn't a husband telling a wife she has enough shoes or that she should probably skip that extra scoop of ice cream. Abuse involves physical force, terrorizing, etc. Addiction doesn't mean that your husband likes to play video games or masturbate to nude pictures of adult women when he's sexually rejected. Addiction means drinking himself into a stupor repeatedly, spending the savings on crack, etc.

While divorce is never the ideal (the ideal would be not marrying the wrong person in the first place), if divorce is justified and almost certain, the laws of your state may behoove you to avoid delay. In states like the one I'm in, two more days of marriage mean one more day of alimony, and ten years of marriage means lifetime alimony.

With that in mind, check out the plight of "Broken Heart in Michigan" writing in to Dear Margo:

I am a 24-year-old male who’s been going through a pretty tough time for quite a while. I’m a former serviceman who got married during my military tour. While I was still in, I had to be away for a period of two weeks, unable to leave my command. I was able to call my wife every day when my daily shifts were over, and everything seemed to be OK. However, when I was finally able to return home, the house was cleaned out, except for my uniforms and very few other objects.

At least she didn't mess with his head while he was at his command. I'll give her that.

A letter was on the counter stating she had left for her home state to be with another man. Six months later, I was discharged and returned to my own home state. All of this happened three years ago.

When he was 21. That was young to marry.

Since then, we have been in limited contact via email, and every time the topic of divorce comes up, she gets dodgy and disappears for weeks if not months. At one point, she sent me a package of divorce papers from the state we were married in,

I wonder which state that is? It matters.

and I filled them out on my end and sent them back to the state’s court system. However, nothing happened with the proceedings. I again filed for divorce through my home state and had her “served.” She blatantly refused to answer them, and the courts will do nothing until she does. What can I do? I need to move on.

I don't know how things work in Michigan*, and neither does Dear Margo. She tells him to get a lawyer, and that's good advice. The marriage can't be anywhere near the ten year mark, but it is possible that she's trying to extend his alimony requirement. She could also be lowering his credit rating. This is a case of abandonment and there's no good reason to delay. He obviously made a mistake marrying her.

*When the Muslims take over the state, he may be able to marry four women and get them beheaded if they get out of line.

Merry Christmas!!!

Here we are again.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Thanks for reading this blog and for all of your feedback.

I pray that you are having a great and meaningful Christmas.

Don't spend too much time online, especially if you could be spending that time with framily and friends during this special time of year.

Can't Have a Wedding Without a Groom

Well, a few US states and a few countries say you can. But I'm talking about real marriage, not activist-invented piggy-backing.

"ROB IN TOMAKOMAI" wrote in to Dear Abby:

I am beyond tired of the number of women I read about in your column who refer to their wedding day as "my special day." News flash, ladies: You should be using the term "our special day"!

I agree, but most of these women writing in have been shacking up with the guy for years, and in many of those cases, he’s already had everything he wanted, and he’s agreed to get married and have more than just a bare-minimum wedding ceremony because she’s been nagging him for it, or his family or others around them want it, even if just to have a party. In those cases, it really is her special day, and he would rather it not even happen. Most of those guys will not actually say that, for fear of upsetting her. After all, the reason they are going along with it is because they didn't want to have her move out.

If you're so focused on your dress and hair and any faux pas -- real or imagined -- your guests may commit that you lose focus on the life you and your husband are beginning, perhaps you should buy a pet rather than get married.

One of the problems is when the "wedding machine" gets cranking after the engagement, and life for her is all about planning the wedding. She isn't devoting her attention to make sure she isn't making a mistake marrying this guy, and she has an incentive to ignore any red flags she does see – to avoid the hassle and embarrassment of calling off the wedding.

Any person who has stayed married for more than a few years knows the marriage ceremony is the easy part. The self-absorption that permeates today's wedding scene ranges from embarrassing to sickening.

Well said, Rob! A wedding is an important event, and it is understandable why a bride would fret about the details. But the reason a wedding is important is that it is the legal, social, spiritual, and often religious uniting of the couple; it is supposed to change many things about their lives. When that is forgotten in the planning of what becomes a theatrical event, a party, and a vacation, marriage is trivialized.

Dear Abby responded:

Weddings (and funerals) can bring out the worst in people because they are times when emotion sometimes trumps common sense.

And they are events that can bring together people who may share blood or (past) legal ties, but don't like each other.

The majority of American brides are gracious, polite, loving and hardworking. They are also prepared for the realities that come after the fairy tale wedding.

Eh... the statistics say otherwise. Actually, most people (regardless of sex) who are getting married for the first time don't truly know what they are getting themselves into, no matter how much they've read, talked, and thought about it. It is like becoming a parent. You can know on an intellectual level, but you don't really know until you're in the middle of it.

Please don't judge all American brides by the ones you read about in my column. The weddings that go smoothly I don't hear about.

Good point!

My MIL actually tells the story of walking down the aisle as a bride and noticing how nice it was to have all of her friends and family there, and was struck with the thought of, "Oh, he's here, too" when she saw her husband-to-be waiting for her at the altar.

Kobe Bryant: Another Poster Boy For the Marriage Strike

None of us really know what was going on in the marriage of Kobe and Vanessa Bryant. Let's get that out of the way up front. However, we can make some educated guesses and note some realities that we're sure about:

1. They got married young.

2. NBA basketball players, especially superstars, have women constantly offering them sex; that is only part of the hero worship and butt-kissing they get. They are on the road a lot of their careers.

3. Kobe Bryant admitted to infidelity; at least one woman accused him of assault/rape.

4. Everyone knew Kobe Bryant was going to make hundreds of millions of dollars between his pay for the NBA and endorsements.

5. There was no prenup. In California, generally... ten years of marriage or more generally means lifetime alimony and everything acquired during the marriage is "community property" and split 50/50.

6. They have kids, and I expect Kobe will have to pay "child support" on top of everything else he will be paying. I put child support in quotes because it will be many times the amount it takes to actually support a child.

7. Kobe Bryant fulfilled the "traditional" role of bring home income... very, very well.

8. Vanessa Bryant probably didn't have to do much cooking, cleaning, laundry, or many of the other things homemakers have traditionally done. Did they children ever not have a nanny around?

An elite few men will ever make anything like the money Kobe does, or be the best in their field. But as extreme of an example as it is, this situation is still an example of why some guys do, or should, avoid marriage, or at least have a prenup.

This is what Janis Carr and Sean Emery reported in the Orange County Register...

According to Orange County Superior Court records, a petition to dissolve the couple’s marriage was filed by Vanessa Bryant and response was filed by Kobe Bryant on the same day.

As is the case with the majority of divorce, she's the one who filed.

A report on TMZ.com said the Lakers guard, who was accused of sexually assaulting a Colorado woman in 2003, was unfaithful again.

It is a rare man who can resist the temptation thrown at an NBA superstar.

The Bryants have been married for 10 1/2 years, having wed April 18, 2001 in a small ceremony in Corona del Mar. They have two daughters, Natalia Diamante, 8, and Gianna Maria, 5.

The couple reportedly does not have a prenuptial agreement, which means Vanessa could be entitled to half of Bryant’s net worth, estimated at $360 million. He signed a three-year contract extension in last year worth nearly $90 million that will keep him with the Lakers through the 2013-14 season and he has endorsements with Nike, Turkish Airlines, Nubeo watches and Vitamin Water brand of drinks.

Call me cynical, but I'm highly suspicious of the timing. Why not a year ago? Could it be because if they split after nine and a half years, she would have stopped getting alimony less than five years down the line?

Whatever you think of professional basketball, it involves a lot of hard work and is high-pressure. This isn't a matter of a couple of people looking at a middle-class life in which the wife could have had a career that paid as much or more as the husband's, and they jointly agree that she would take care of the kids and he would take care of her. Vanessa not only wasn't out there sprinting back and forth all night, jumping, throwing, etc... and appearing in ads... but she couldn't possibly have done it. And yet she's going to get half... more than half, really... of what he was paid.

And before anyone comes back with "but he cheated - he deserves to pay"... How do we know she didn't cheat? How do we know what kind of wife she was? She may or may not have broken other vows. But none of it matters because California is a no-fault divorce state. It doesn't matter if Kobe was cheating with Shaq, or if he had been the perfect husband. His mistake was either getting married or not getting a prenup. Because if she truly is leaving him over infidelity, rather than the lure of autonomy over hundreds of millions of dollars, the odds were overwhelming that he was going to cheat. He should not have married, or he should have married someone who didn't expect monogamy.

Hopefully, for the kids, they will reconcile. If not, may they both focus on raising those kids instead of being tabloid fodder running around with different lovers. Kobe: stay away from the Kardashians.

Most people should get prenups, because even if you marry someone who is loyal, dedicated, and against divorce, everything can change with a brain injury (accident, tumor, some disease) that changes their personality. The laws of the state and the judges sitting in the courtrooms already have a prenup for all of us. Why let strangers decide?

Blogging, E-mail, Pony Express?

It wasn't all that long ago that blogs started as a communication form. And it wasn't all that long ago before that that e-mail started as a communication form.

Both have been partially replaced by Facebook, Twitter, and text messages.

If someone wants to broadcast their thoughts they can do so on Twitter or Facebook, and on Facebook it is easy to control who sees it and who doesn't on an update/note per update/note basis. With blogs such as this one on Blogger, it is either "subscribers only" or "everyone can see".

I get a much fewer legit e-mails these days. I used to check each of my "important" e-mail accounts about three times a day. Now days go by and I realize I haven't checked some of them. So much more of the communication that used to take place that was is done on Facebook. I also notice that updates on our family blog have grown less and less frequent.

I don't want to see blogs or e-mail go away. I love the formats and other particulars of both.

I do enjoy Twitter and Facebook. Maybe I need to set up a Twitter account associated with this blog? I have deliberately kept this blog isolated from most of my online presence for personal and professional reasons. Twitter would be good mostly for calling attention to articles I think are helpful or interesting when I know I will not have time to pick through them in detail on this blog, and to comment on an a concurrent event or television show.

It's not that I think everyone should read what I have to say. I'm just one man with one man's life experiences and opinions. I like having the outlet. I like being able to get things off my chest. It's therapuetic for me and helps me think.

It just occurred to me that it has been many years since I wrote a journal entry in a hardcover paper sketchbook. Wow. I used to always carry one around with me.

Do you think techology is moving too fast for people to adapt?