Mess Upon Mess

There was an accident on the highway this morning. A huge semi-truck had crashed, overturning it's enormous tanker across three of four highway lanes and emptying it's payload of crushed concrete and gravel all over the road. To get around it, me and the rest of my fellow commuters, pulled into the off-ramp lane. It was a mess.

The last time my wife went to therapy with her ex, it was spelled out that if the boys need to be taken care of by somebody other than the parent they're staying with, the ONLY other choice is the other parent. My wife just realized that the boys were going to be picked up her mother on Wednesday. She emailed her ex, telling him that she was available to care for the boys after school, rather than have her mother care for the boys. He responded with, "it's more convenient for me for your mother to care for them after school." My wife responded with suggestions which would make it just as convenient for him to allow his children to spend their time with their mother. He still refused. And this is only the most recent example of how therapy is completely useless. I would like to know what the point of this therapy is, seeing as the ex refuses to adhere to what is discussed and agreed upon, just like he did with the original divorce decree, just like he's done for the past 4 years. What is the therapist doing to help the boys? What is the therapy doing to assist communication between the parties or make this a true joint custody?

A revolution has started in America. 780 peaceful protesters have been arrested in New York City so far. All they are looking for is some economic equality. They paid their hard-earned tax dollars to fund bail outs of banks who proceeded to give their CEOs millions in bonuses. Please understand, these millions weren't to aid the business at all or to strengthen the bank. These millions were dollars above and beyond what was needed to run the business, including paying an enormous salary to the top executives, and it was left over, so it was given to the CEOs. And then those businesses foreclosed on people's homes who couldn't afford to pay their mortgages because the banks had raised the interest rates to the point of choking the people who had funded them in the first place. The people who gave them the millions of dollars for bonuses.

I work for the state. I work at least 40 hours a week. For the past three months, I've been working 50 hours a week. My wife has two part-time jobs. We have three jobs between us. We are unable, most months, to afford to live without selling something we own at a pawn shop, or on eBay, or by donating plasma. And we do not have cable television. And we don't subscribe to magazines or newspapers. We do not eat out. We do not go drinking or use drugs. We don't have Pay Per View. We calculate how much it's going to cost to drive our cars, and then we don't drive more than we have to so that we can save on gas expenses. We consider ourselves "working middle class". The reality is, though, that our 4-person family, with our three jobs between two of us, we are the working poor. We are the Underemployed of America. We need more jobs to sustain our livelihoods in our country. When did "underemployed" become an acceptable way of thought? Here in our "land of plenty" we are accepting of a way of life where you have a job, yet that job doesn't sustain your basic needs. How is this acceptable? How is this America? It's not that we don't have work, it's that we don't have enough work.

The current state of American thought is that if you work hard enough, you will prosper. This has been the standard thought all my life. Which means, if you're struggling, you're not working hard enough. You're lazy. If you're poor, you're lazy. My mother needed financial help from her parents most of her life. She was a college teacher, and in the summer, she needed to get another job to support herself. She was not lazy. And she was not rich. My step-father worked for the Air Force, then a large corporation who laid him off, then for another corporation who didn't pay him as much as the first corporation. He was not lazy. And he is not rich. My wife and I have three jobs. We hardly get to see or talk to each other when our boys are with us. When they are not with us, we eat rice. Sometimes we can afford broccoli. We are not lazy. And we are not rich. But if you put all three of us up against the American mindset, the only reason my mother, my step-father and my wife and I aren't rich is because we're not working hard enough. We're lazy. I'm certain this way of thinking didn't originate from my mother, my step-father, my wife or myself. I'm guessing that it originated from the companies and corporations who profit from our labor and continue to make it necessary to work harder for them so that my wife and I can afford to buy a $2.50 bag of rice to feed us for a week. Don't think about diabetes. Don't think about illness. Never mind that my wife has a job where she NEVER gets a day off. She works 7 days a week, 365 days a year. And she does this so that we can afford to buy frivolous things like pants for our boys. And give them a little ground beef. According to America, though, they are lazy, too. 15 and 11 years old isn't too young to get a job. They should be dropping out of school to make life for themselves better and easier. What a wonderful state of mind our country has.

I wonder what has happened to our nation. My wife's ex-husband made a legal agreement to jointly parent with my wife, and then breaks that agreement over and over again, and there are no consequences. None. He continues his behavior today. The best consequences I get are statements from my mother and attorney telling me that the reason I'm upset is because I'm trying to change him and I'm creating the upset feeling. The message, essentially, is "don't care". Don't care about the agreement originally made. Don't care about his non-compliance with that agreement. Don't care that my wife continues to spend our money on therapy where he continues to be non-compliant. Don't care that the lawyers don't care. Don't care that the court doesn't care. And don't care that the boys aren't taken care of. When you don't care, it makes the pain go away. This is the message from my mother and our attorney. Our attorney, incidentally, didn't want to depose the ex-husband, which exposed many of his lies and forced him to create new ones, until my mother offered to pay her, and then she did it. Another example of how it doesn't really matter unless you have money.

I pledge allegiance to the dollar of the United States of America. And to the Corporations and Politicians and Complacent Mindsets for which it sustains. One Dollar. Under Greed. Reprehensible. With Ignorance and Slavery for All.

I'd like to make an analogy about the overturned truck. Like, our nation is completely out of control and our politicians and financial institutions have become a huge overturned mack truck on our highways and no one can get around them and they're just clogging up the works. But I'm not going to make that analogy. I'm just gonna go back to working my 10 hour day. So that I can give that money to everyone else who is benefiting from my slavery.