Divorce in a Timid New World

Okay. I said this blog would generally avoid politics or partisanship. I lied. Or maybe I didn't lie and have since realized the political winds are blowing a storm this way, prompting a different perspective on "recovery". Not just any storm really. A category 6 hurricane. A tsunami with 100 ft. waves. Something we've never seen before.

It appears that in short order The U.S. will vote Barack Obama into the Presidency. No one knows him. He has no accomplishments. His associations are deeply troubling. Americans have looked up from Dancing with the Stars and Survivor just long enough to blindly and carelessly choose what is behind door#2 before they lapse back into their prozac and Busch beer comas.

How many Americans do you suppose know about Black Liberation Theology? Would one out of a hundred be right? Probably not. How about one out of a thousand? I'd say that's a stretch. One out of ten thousand? A million? I shudder to think what it really is.

Who is this guy? After all, he only spent 200 days in the U.S. Senate before he announced his candidacy. Does it trouble anyone that Obama will have raised nearly $800 million for his run, and from those we can't identify? How much is from people, groups or countries that don't like traditional America but are looking to buy a philosophically different White House? Which special interest groups now own Obama?

What's with this ACORN flap? Few disagree that there has been voter fraud, but how does it relate to Obama and the Democratic party? The public seems to not want to hear about ACORN, or the Bill Ayres issue at this point in the race. Why is that? What if you discovered that an ally of Osama bin Laden was running for President? We know Obama is not that, but what's with all this interaction with those in his past consistently extreme left liberals?

It appears that there's no stopping this freight train to Socialism. It also appears that ACORN will avoid meaningful investigation and become the Brown-shirt strong-arm of Obama's Presidency. Getting a pass on voter fraud, you can be sure they will be on every street corner in America by the next Presidential election. Fidel Castro enjoyed a 99% voter plurality over his lifetime. Everyone loved him so. With few Republicans remaining, my guess would be Obama will achieve the same.

You owe it to yourself to research who this guy Obama is. He is not benign. He does not simply represent a different philosophy. He has a secret agenda. Socialism. One political party. No stock market. The State will provide for you. If you don't educate yourself before Nov. 4th, you'll only have yourself to blame. Click on link#1 or link#2 or link#3 or any of Bob's rants. Not convinced? View this ten-minute YouTube video. If this stuff doesn't get you angry, you're..well, dead. Bob is exactly right on. Can you hear the clarion call of the trumpet? Can you hear the faint voice echoing in the German Reichstag?

Your grandchildren will ask you where you were at the beginning of the Obama "presidency". You will tell them you were one of the enlightened ones, or you tell them you did nothing to stop them.

For me, above the shrill clarion call I can hear the faint sounds of jackboots in the distance, growing progressively louder. If Obama & Co. are not stopped you will be able to identify the Sheeple by their Obama '08 bumper stickers.

R.I.P. America 1776-2008

One of the more cooler social networking sites-StumbleUpon.com

Have you stumbled upon StumbleUpon.com yet? No doubt you've been through the many layers of Facebook, MySpace and those other sites that hit you with dozens and dozens of applications to opt into, out of and dance around. StumbleUpon is in practical terms more user-friendly in that there's far fewer applications to manage and mess with, allows you the ability to store literally thousands of your favorite web sites, provides you with your own blog to customize, and has as it's core a unique method of finding or stumbling upon great sites on the internet.

Have you ever wished you could do a search on Google, Yahoo, MSN or any of the other search engines in such a way that it would yield results (websites) that you only have an interest in? While the search engines are working on something like that as we speak, StumbleUpon allows you to choose categories of interest, and with the click of a button, be served up an endless stream of websites in areas of interest that you have chosen. You get to, with a single click, "vote" in a thumbs up or thumbs down fashion for each site or simply skip over a site to get to the next site served up to you.

This author has sat here clicking on the StumbleUpon button for over and hour and seen some amazing sites I NEVER would have found otherwise. This site and blog has a blog of sorts there on StumbleUpon. Would you stop by, download the very cool StumbleUpon toolbar, find the Divorce Recovery Suite site, and vote a thumbs up for us?

Log into StumbleUpon and begin finding sites that until now remained invisible. You'll be glad you did :-)

Save money when buying gasoline because divorce ain't cheap

Buying gasoline is somewhat off the beaten divorce path, but since prices has gone sky high lately, we figured you might like some suggestions on how to save a few bucks and get more for your money. Keep track of your mileage and watch your "mpg" go up. Read on...

Have you ever wondered whether the gas pump meter is accurate? It makes sense to us that there must be some error in those meters somewhere, and even *gasp* some of the inaccurate gasoline meters may be intentional.

Here's the deal.

1. Gas up your car during the morning hours, when it is coolest. Gas station storage tanks are kept underground, and the colder the temperature gasoline is, the denser the liquid. As gasoline gets subjected to higher temperatures, it expands. If you are filling your tank during the afternoon or evening, you simply won't get a full gallon. Ask someone in the petroleum business and they will tell you there are specific gravity and temperatures of fuels (gasoline, diesel, jet-fuel, ethanol, etc.). They would tell you that every truckload of fuel is temperature compensated so that the gallonage is actually consistent with the metered amount. That's lovely for the station owner, you say? A mere degree or two elevation in temperature of the gas in the ground can make a significant difference when gasoline gets pumped out, but gas stations are not equipped with temperature compensation at their pumps. Gas up in the afternoon or evening and you'll get less gas for your dollar.
2. If you see a tanker truck delivering fuel to your favorite gas station or convenience store, do not buy any gas for at least 6 hours. There is a high likelihood of dirt and sludge in the underground tank having been stirred up as the gasoline is pumped into the tanks, and if you get gas while this is happening, you can transfer the crap in those tanks into the gas tank of your car.
3. Put gasoline into your vehicle when your gas gauge reads half-full, because the more gas you have in the tank, the less air you have in there, and gasoline evaporates rapidly when its warm outside. You'll be interested to note that gasoline storage tanks have an internal floating "roof" membrane that acts as a barrier between the gas and the atmosphere, thereby minimizing evaporation.
   
4. You may have noticed on the pump nozzle that there are usually several "settings" like slow, medium and fast. Most of us try to speed up the process and let the gasoline rip at high speed. That would be wrong, Tonto. Fill your tank using the slow speed. Most nozzles allow you to "set" the nozzle on one speed without holding it. Set it on slow and go wash the windshield. Check your oil. Do a vehicle walk-around and check tire pressure. What about windshield wiper fluid? Ever get caught without it? It's ugly. Setting the nozzle on slow minimizes vapors created while you are pumping (your dollars vaporizing). Hoses at the pump are corrugated, designed to act as a return path for vapor recovery from gas that has already been metered (gas you've paid for). When you set the nozzle on the high setting, the agitated gas contains more vapor, which is being sucked backed into the underground tank, obviously causing you to get less gasoline for your money.
   

Now why wouldn't gas stations tell you this? :-) We hope this helps. Safe and happy motoring.

Issues commonly found in the divorce process

What are the issues involved in divorce? Here is a list of the most common:

1. child support (YouTube1, YouTube2)
   
2. settlement (divorce settlement or property settlement)
3. family law (laws or statutes on the books of your state)
4. child custody (legal, sole, joint)
5. separation (legal, marital, temporary, trial)
6. child visitation (a.k.a co-parenting, supervised)
7. adultery (personal and legal impact)
8. marriage counseling (divorce counseling, mediation)
9. common law (legally binding in some jurisdictions but has no meaning in others)
10. marital annulment (process, degree of difficulty, laws of each state, grounds)
11. alimony (a.k.a. spousal support, maintenance, qualifying for alimony)
12. community property (states, division of marital assets)

Holistic Healing from divorce

If you're like many people you've had the prospect of divorce thrust upon you. Often there is an element or surprise or shock. It is as if you were knocked semi-conscious. So what do you do?

Your first realization should be that this isn't a death sentence although it may feel that way. Secondly, like any trauma, you need to attend to its affects on you physically and emotionally. Thirdly, you need to develop a plan or strategy for recovery.

Let's use major surgery as an analogy. There is a medical need for surgery, there is distress and trauma to the body, and together with the surgeon you decide a course of action. The healing from surgery is sometimes as uncomfortable as what ailed you in the first place. Following surgery there is a period of intense recuperation followed by a less intense period of recovery and an easing back into normal activities. How would you feel if, during recuperation, you weren't allowed to ask any questions about the recovery? You would wonder..will I be two weeks away from my job, or six months? What signs do I need to watch for that indicate that I am healing, or NOT healing? If you don't have any expectations on the recovery process, the uncertainty would drive you nuts, wouldn't it? It might even make the recovery more difficult and may extend the healing time.

Divorce is no different. Your anxiety is caused by the uncertainty. So many of us get stuck straddling the present unable to get centered, our thoughts and one foot in the past, and our worries and one foot in the future. We remember what was, and worry about the uncertainty of what will be.

Divorce Recovery Suite can make one promise to you! We can guarantee one outcome of your divorce. That guarantee is that if you educate yourself about divorce, about grief and loss, about recovering from trauma, about rediscovering yourself, about how you communicate with others and the interaction of others to you, that your healing will be more complete, the process of recovery more rapid, and the feeling of being whole earlier than you would have otherwise.

How do you do that? READ. Read everything you can get your hands on. You need to understand grief and its stages. Discover why you pick the partners you pick. Why do men and women seemingly speak different languages? Do you understand how much your childhood plays a role in your choices of partners? How to make better choices? How you can adjust self-esteem. How can you avoid choosing the same kind of person as a partner again?

We have partnered with Amazon.com to provide you with a large selection of books on divorce, healing and recovery. Would you invest $50 or $100 if you knew it would dramatically improve your divorce recovery? You will feel whole and happy one day. When that day arrives depends on how much work you put into your recovery. Books on divorce are often around $10. Buy a handful. READ. LEARN. And relax. You'll be okay. In fact you'll be just fine. We promise :-)

Child custody

The typical divorce includes parents that cannot agree on either who will be the primary custodian or on a parenting schedule (sometimes called visitation). The standard parenting schedule features for a non-custodial and his/her children involves alternate weekend visitation (3-day weekends included), mid-week visitation, sharing of the children during periods of school recess -winter, spring and summer, New Year's Eve, Easter, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Thanksgiving, and Christmas with one parent or the other in alternate years, Father's Day with Father, Mother's Day with Mother, alternate years on the children's birthdays, and open communication by phone and computer.

What experience have you had with child custody? Who received physical custody? Is it called legal custody? Is joint custody awarded? Sole custody? Are you sharing custody 50/50 so that no money changes hands?

Child Support

Is there anything that stirs divorcing parents' emotions more than child support issues? Each of the 50 states and District of Columbia have chosen their own formula for calculating child support. Which calculation method does your state employ? There are 3 formulas the states use: 1.) Income Shares- 37 states have adopted this method. The sum of the two parents income becomes 100% and each parents percentage contribution to that 100% becomes the percentage basis for their required participation. 2.) Percentage of Obligor Income (a.k.a. Wisconsin Model)- 10 states use this method. Child support calculation is based on a percentage of each parent's income. The Wisconsin standard is designed to replicate an income tax. 3.) Delaware-Melson- 3 states (DE, HI, MT) use this formula. It is based on the net income of both parents, from which a self-support reserve is subtracted. Income Shares calculates from gross income while the Wisconsin model and Delaware-Melson calculate support based on net income.

Massachusetts stands alone, using a hybrid of each method above. It uses gross income.

How do you assess your child support situation? Do you fall into that majority of respondents where the receiver of child support claims amounts are too small, and the payor claims he (95% of payors are men) aren't able to survive because they must pay too much?

To review your state's child support details, click here.