Get In Line

Looking through the obituaries (only to see if my name is in there) I notice there is a phrase people use of ‘preceded in death by’. These are the family linage that died before the one in the obit.

It usually means a father or mother or perhaps a child who died too young, but take it a step further.

What is your ancestry? What about Nana or Pop-Pop? How about your cousins who died before you did? What about your former friends? What about former lovers? What about x-wives?

Newspapers charge by the line and should ask the question of who came first?

Then there is a phrase of ‘survived by’. These are the family members who are in the back of the line.

From the time you take a breath, you are in the line.

Some skip ahead in the line and some let others pass by, but we are all in the line.

Maybe someone will tell you to go back to the end of the line, but you are still in the line.

By the time you get to the front of the line, you don’t look back.

You have arrived.

Stars

How are your reviews?

It seems we must comment on everything. We all have opinions and now we can review everything from a movie to a book to a personal post on social media.

It doesn’t make us an expert on the topic or even a rational opinion but a few clicks of the mouse and you have scored your review.

Some might turn into top ten status or award nominations while others may wind up on Yelp! or Trip Advisor or Google along with thousands of other who may have tried the experience or just wanted to troll the site.

An author or a painter or a dancer expects to be reviewed by critics. Restaurants request reviews of their presentation to increase foot traffic. Movies and festivals want reviews to produce ticket sales.

What about you?

How many stars will you get?

What if your family could review you? What if your friends could review you? What if your significant other could review you?

How would you do?

Let us take some reviews and apply it to yourself.

“I love the convenience of hanging a bag on the front door and getting it all back three days later. Sometimes the clothes are still in there and clean.”

“He played with the instruments, walked up inside the tree house, went down the slides, and swung on the swing.”

“I’ve lived in the area for most of my life and was struggling to find a reasonably-priced tailor that produced quality work. Mom was great. The coat didn’t fit right but she tried.”

“Had a reservation for 5 for a friend’s birthday & we all had a wonderful time! Was so excited to finally get out and loved the warm, intimate party with balloons and a pony and a clown and a three-tiered cake. The stripper cost extra.”

“You have to eat here!!!! We came in for a pre-theatre cocktail and ended up canceling our reservation and coming back here for dinner! The ambiance is warm and the wine poured. I forgot what we had but the sofa was soft to sleep on.” 

“The very best cleaning in town! Arrived on time and promptly began to work hard. I was amazed at the meticulous care given to every detail of my home. They went through every drawer and under the bed and into every closet checking the pockets.”

“I have used this is place for years after it being recommended to me by a close friend. It is just the best. They have always fixed whatever problem I was facing. They even called to make sure a good review was posted with a coupon and a free dinner at the restaurant of your choice.”

“Update to my previous one star review: I was contacted immediately after posting my review, and his customer service was nothing short of amazing. He immediately apologized on the roach floating in the soup and offered another lunch. What a pal.”

“Recently mulched our beds throughout our yard and did a wonderful job. The mulch was high quality, deep, and carefully installed. Also mow our lawn weekly. Leaves were not raked.”

“Stayed here for one night and was a little nervous because of the mixed reviews. I got a room with the jetted tub and it was very clean. The entire bathroom was very clean. Bathtubs are very clean but difficult to sleep in.”

“I've been three times now and each time I would have dropped it down a star.  First time was five stars, I was in love. Next four and finally my last (and truly last) visit it’s just a three. Another star off for the rude behavior. How did the food become so bland in four months?

The only saving grace was those biscuits with the special butter. I sure will miss those. The food just lacks flavor all the way around. Nothing that makes me wanna rush out and eat there again. Sorry mom.”  

“The last time we went, I think our “server” smoked a bit too much weed before.  Wouldn’t stop talkin, and kept apologizing for everything when there wasn’t really a big problem. Some people had to walk down to the bar and get their bloody Mary after their food came cold.  I asked for my beer 15 minutes after “ordered” and said it couldn’t get because not allowed behind the bar. NO, you forgot it.  I could see the bar the whole time, the bartender never left.  Just had diarrhea of the mouth.  When asked if we needed anything else, I said ketchup, hot sauce, and another beer.  He got 2/3 back within 10 minutes. Forgot the hot sauce, but didn’t want to ask again, becomes as he told us, sorry there is a bit of drama with another table. Of course there was.”  

“The topper was when sitting at the bar at fatty smokes the next day.  The “mom” started talkin’ shit about other folks to someone who I guess was her friend at the bar.  I know everything about her private life, even how much she gets paid working. The only thing she didn’t share is when she gets her period. Maybe next week? Not a good look especially when I have to listen to it during lunch.

People, be mindful about your surroundings when being disrespectful to the family. I will never visit again.”

“I was not at all satisfied with the performance.  I had to hire a second painting crew to do over what had done, plus complete the job.  We had parted mid-job.”

Sounds rough to read what others might write about you. Didn’t even get into the personal stuff like what you sound like, your laugh, your jokes, your unforgettable stories, your smell, your eating habits, or picking your nose.

Businesses rely on public opinion; so do people.

Do our public officials get the same attention after elected?

Don’t forget to vote.

Giver of Care

Caregivers work in the home and help their clients with daily activities, such as bathing and bathroom functions, feeding, grooming, taking medication, and some housework.

Caregivers help clients make and keep appointments with doctors, provide or arrange transportation and serve as a companion for their clients.

A caregiver or informal caregiver is an unpaid and without formal training (in the related treatment) member of a person's social network who helps them with activities of daily living.

Care giving is most commonly used to address impairments related to old age, disability, a disease, or a mental disorder.

Typical duties of a caregiver might include taking care of someone who has a chronic illness or disease; managing medications or talking to doctors and nurses on someone’s behalf; helping to bathe or dress someone who is frail or disabled; or taking care of household chores, meals, or processes both formal and informal documentation related to health for someone who cannot do these things alone.

With an increasingly aging population in all developed societies, the role of caregiver has been increasingly recognized as an important one, both functionally and economically. Many organizations that provide support for persons with disabilities have developed various forms of support for caregivers as well.

Expand the definition a bit to include medical professionals, EMT personnel, fire fighters, police, National Guard, veterinarians, mental health professionals, lawyers, NPOs, religious congregations…. The list can go on and on. All these and more help care for others in their own unique way.

There are also the ‘volunteers’ who sign up to fold the blankets, set up the cots, serve coffee and doughnuts, play with the children, observe and listen to the pain without pay.

Then there are families. When all those who charge cannot be used or beyond reach, the family is held responsible to be the caregivers. Elderly members may not be of much help and younger members may not want to give the time or effort. Still society refers to the family as the caregivers.

The family plans the hospital or hospice stays. The family confers with the doctors. The family plans and executes the funerals.

It is a wonderful human condition to want to help others. Doctors without Boarders going into harms way to try and give medical care to those without health insurance. The White Helmets who dodge the bombs and bullets to pull people from under the rubble. We all should be thankful for these good souls who go above and beyond to help strangers in trouble.

It is good we have caregivers, whether they be giving basic first aid or researching chemical solutions to viruses and diseases. If we are on the list of the health plan or begging for relief, hopefully there is someone there to give assistance.

Stay Home

Think of this as some kind of vacation. There is this bogeyman outside and the doctors and lawyers and Indian chefs say everyone should stay home.

You are quarantined to your home. You are quarantined until further notice. You are quarantined or….?

Everyone has been hearing the news of a virus is sweeping the land and there is no shot or pill that will protect you from it, so the solution is to stay home.

Staying at home would seem like a holiday. All your toys are there. All your food is there. Even the toilet is in the same place. You can walk around in your undies and wake up whenever you want. You can couch surf your multitude channels of daytime television or binge watch movies. You can test some forgotten family recipes if you have all the ingredients.

How long will that last?

Remember Thanksgiving when all the family members you love gathered and after a few hours of gorging on a dead bird and watching football and slouchy down whatever alcohol your bar offers, you are ready to send them home.

But this is home. They are all here to stay. Maybe a couple of days? Maybe a week? Maybe a month? You are quarantined.

You can’t send the kids outside to play when they get cranky. The dog will have to walk itself and maybe not come back. The constant consumption of beans is fogging up the windows and the toilet paper stock is running out.

The schools will be closed. The factories will be closed. There will be no festivals. There will be no public transportation.

Without work, there is no paycheck. Working at home sounds like an alternate solution unless you work construction or service industry or law enforcement or utility maintenance.

There is no mail. There is no Amazon delivery. There is no pizza delivery.

How long will you crawl up the walls before you venture out, no matter what? Where will you go?

What if all the filling stations are closed? What if every grocery store is closed?  What if all the convenience stores and fast food stores and the corner breweries are closed?

What will you do when the television stops? What will you do when the radio stops? What will you do when the Internet stops? What will you do when the water coming out of your facet is brown? What will you do when your toilet doesn’t flush? What do you do when the lights go out?

It certainly isn’t time (yet) to panic, but what if all the great minds cannot find a solution the way they did polio or the flu or measles or the plague?

Should we release more ducks to eat the locust?

Parenting

I don’t know how you do it? Well, I know how you do it but how do you do it after you do it.

Having a child (children) is a life transformation. Changing from being single to being a couple to being a family is the expectation of becoming an adult. It is the widely accepted rite of passage.

Even if the couple (for it takes two) had not planned on having a family, society presents the pressure that everyone else is doing it.

And once you do it, conversations change from politics and music to strollers and potty talk. Singles or “non-parents” were then out of the loop with former friends. They were not part of the club.

So here are these folks who were in a romantic relationship and poof! There is another player. A little person who cannot walk or talk but can scream and poop.

This new addition to the ‘family’ has their own requirements for medical care, clothing, furniture, entertainment, transportation and food. They require constant attention (more than a pet) until they are tall enough to attend a society of gathering children and place them through years of training and baby-sitting.

As a parent you are required to become a soccer mom or a coach or attend parents teachers night or a taxi service for every event or provide enough healthy food for every member of the neighborhood for birthday parties and sleepovers.

Your parents and their parents and all the other families will evaluate your teaching of morals, public appearance, proper behavior and community involvement. If anything goes wrong, you (as a parent) will be to blame.

All the while trying to keep your kids understanding life’s fallacies and miracles and listening to everything from heartbreak to bullying trying to give a logical solution, one must keep the family unit together.

I’ve heard once the little ones have move away and started their own crew that being a ‘grand’ parent is the best. Enjoy the cuteness then hand them back and send them home.

Sounds like a lot of work to me, so I bypassed the cultural repopulation clause.

Still I missed the drug overdose, the bad boyfriend, the car wreck, expelled from school, unwanted baby, imprisonment and all the other variables children bring from that one moment of passion.

I salute you parents. You are stalwarts of the community keeping the economy going with movies, houses, cars, clothing, food, phones just to entertain the next generation.

Divorce

Divorce, also known as dissolution of marriage, is the process of terminating a marriage or marital union.

Divorce usually entails the canceling or reorganizing of the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage, thus dissolving the bonds of matrimony between a married couple under the rule of law of the particular country or state.

Divorce laws vary considerably around the world, but in most countries divorce requires the sanction of a court or other authority in a legal process, which may involve issues of distribution of property, child custody, alimony (spousal support), child visitation / access, parenting time, child support, and division of debt. In most countries, law requires monogamy so divorce allows each former partner to marry another person.

When those that are in a common-law relationship break up, it is referred to as separation, instead of a divorce.

Divorce is different from annulment, which declares the marriage null and void, with legal separation or de jure separation (a legal process by which a married couple may formalize a de facto separation while remaining legally married) or with de facto separation (a process where the spouses informally stop cohabiting). Reasons for divorce vary, from sexual incompatibility or lack of independence for one or both spouses to a personality clash.

A divorce is a legal action between married people to terminate their marriage relationship. It can be referred to as dissolution of marriage and is basically, the legal action that ends the marriage before the death of either spouse.

After all, almost 50% of first marriages, 60% of second marriages, and 73% of third marriages end in divorce. While there are countless divorce studies with conflicting statistics, the data points to two periods during a marriage when divorces are most common: years 1 – 2 and years 5 – 8.

In most states, spouses are responsible for paying their own legal fees and costs in a divorce. However, exceptions exist, especially when one spouse earns considerably more than the other.

The dissolution of a marriage is almost always an upsetting event, at the very least marked by disappointment and the loss of dreams and expectations.

In addition, there are usually many legal, financial, parental, emotional, and practical challenges that require time, energy, and changes in responsibilities. It can take people years to regain equilibrium. Nevertheless, divorce serves an important function in legally and emotionally freeing people to form a more satisfying and more stable relationship.

No child dreams of having divorced parents. Divorce usually breaks up a household and its routines. Parents who are warring are often not paying as much attention to their children as they once did. Further, they divide children's allegiances. Children feel the losses acutely and can spend considerable time silently worrying about the well-being of either parent.

Children need assurance that they are still loved by both parents and that they will not be abandoned. They also need to be spared any conversations in which one parent denigrates the other for any reason. It is not the actual divorce that harms children but seeing their parents fight and in distress.

Divorce is not a shaming process. A divorce just means marriage didn’t work out for two people. A divorce can be unpleasant or expensive or can be admirable and agreeable.

There are no divorce parties or gifts. There is no music or dancing, but there might be some drinking.

What both during a marriage purchased can be a problem in court. Who bought the refrigerator and who uses which toothbrush? Hopefully two adults can decide that before the judge has to play Solomon.

At the same time, a divorcee is a failure. Did you get distracted from the one who has coffee with your every morning? Did the reason you got married fade with time? Did the person you married not lived up to your expectations?

I’ve never been good at long-term relationships. I’ve been married. I’ve been separated. I’ve been divorced (several times when the paperwork doesn’t go through right).

Any relationship break-up is hard to do, but a divorce makes it legal. This break-up gives you a receipt.

Marriage

Marriage is the process by which two people make their relationship public, official, and permanent. It is the joining of two people in a bond that punitively lasts until death, but in practice is often cut short by separation or divorce.

Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally recognized union between people, called spouses, that establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children, and between them and their in-laws.

The definition of marriage varies around the world, not only between cultures and between religions, but also throughout the history of any given culture and religion. Over time, it has expanded and also constricted in terms of who and what is encompassed. Typically, it is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually sexual, are acknowledged or sanctioned. In some cultures, marriage is recommended or considered to be compulsory before pursuing any sexual activity. When defined broadly, marriage is considered a cultural universal. A marriage ceremony is called a wedding.

The definition of the word marriage or, more accurately, the understanding of what the institution of marriage properly consists of continues to be highly controversial.

This is not an issue to be resolved by dictionaries. Ultimately, the controversy involves cultural traditions, religious beliefs, legal rulings, and ideas about fairness and basic human rights.

The principal point of dispute has to do with marriage between two people of the same sex, often referred to as same-sex marriage or gay marriage. Same-sex marriages are now recognized by law in a growing number of countries and were legally validated throughout the U.S. by the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015.

In many other parts of the world, marriage continues to be allowed only between men and women. The definition of marriage shown here is intentionally broad enough to encompass the different types of marriage that are currently recognized in varying cultures, places, religions, and systems of law.

To have a legal marriage, you must obtain a marriage license from your county clerk and pay the amount accordingly. The license should be granted as long as you and your spouse meet the requirements, although the legal requirements vary from state to state.

Both you and your to-be must obtain a marriage license through any Virginia Circuit Court Clerk; the Virginia location of your nuptials is irrelevant to the licensing. You may also contact a Virginia Visitors Bureau to get more specific information on local sites, services and marriage commissioners.

Age Requirement 18 with certified copy of birth certificate as proof. If under 18, notarized consent from parent or legal guardian.

License Fee $30

License is Valid for 60 days

Identification Valid driver's license, military ID, state ID, passport

Officiates Ordained minister who can show proof of ordination; marriage commissioners, justices of the peace and judges.

The number of U.S. marriage ceremonies peaked in the early 1980s, when almost 2.5 million marriages were recorded each year. Since then, however, the total number of people getting married has fallen steadily. Now only about two million marriages happen a year, a drop of almost half a million from their peak.

While the national length of marriage in the United States is about 8.2 years, New Yorker's actually stick it out longer and average about 12.2 years. The rest of the state fares well, too, with most marriages lasting between 10 and 14 years.

I think everyone I know (or knew) was married. Some are still married. Some are married again. Some are now single, but we’ve all been through it.

Marriage was presented as a rite of passage. After school and your boyfriend/girlfriend (or whatever) association, there comes an age when you must get serious. Part of this is peer pressure because everyone is doing it. Part of this is parental pressure to get you two lovebirds together and out of the house. Part of this is cultural pressure of producing offspring’s.

The reasons for getting married are a varied as the reason two people are attracted to each other. The Hallmark card reason is that the two people are in ‘love’ with each other and can’t stand to be apart and want to spend the rest of their lives with each other. One of the two being pregnant help the decision rather than raise a bastard child.

Marriage can be an expensive extravaganza with flowers and music and dresses and jewelry and services and invitations and parties and gifts. A marriage can also be a quick stop by the justice of the peace, a witness, notary public and a few bucks.

There are legal implications to being married and unforeseen problems that keep the publishers busy with self-help books. Like your taste in clothing or food, things change with time. Marriage may be more about tolerance than habit?

Marriage is a lot of work. Marriage can also be expensive after the ceremony. There are as many married people at the single’s bars, as there are singles. We are constantly on the prowl (whether we admit it or not).

Marriage also takes a lot of communication. Can you be honest when the toilet is backed up and the dog needs to go out and the bacon is burning and the baby is crying? When you are dating, do you really know each other before marriage?

Some marriages are still dating after decades. Some marriages are roommates with perks. Whatever works for you.

I’m not an advocate for or against marriage. I’ve had a couple. I know how the game is played. Today I’m not looking for another marriage, but tomorrow might change.

That is the mystery of marriage.