My Extremely Poor Judgement in Men

Married Douglas E. Leinen in 1966 - we met when I was a senior in high school in Cheyenne, Wyoming and he was 19 out of school and working for a company that sold window furnishings - drapes, blinds, etc.  His mother hated me... a perusal of pictures of the both of us at that time might point at a reason for that because I was never anything but polite and modest around her. My own mother did not like the relationship because of my age so she shipped me back to Seattle before the end of my senior year. In any event that put an end to the relationship until several years later after he had joined the navy and I had married, had a child, and divorced.  He drove his car to Seattle and we got back together when my first-born was about two years old.  We got married shortly thereafter and nine months later, almost to the day, my first set of twins was born.  Life went on until one day when I asked him if he would adopt Eddie so he could have the same last name as the twins. He said no - his reason to me:  Because if we ever got divorced he would have to pay child support for a kid that wasn't his and in any event he could never feel about Ed the way he felt about his own... that was probably the moment I started hating Doug.  I have never been able to understand that attitude but have since learned it is prevalent among men as apparently anything that doesn't come out their own sperm isn't worthy.   On New Years Eve when the twins were about six months old we went to a party and both were feeling no pain by the time we got home.  He got lusty and guess he felt it was ok to rape me as I tried to sleep.  That resulted in another pregnancy since he hadn't bothered to use any birth control or wake me enough so I could use some...within two weeks I knew I was pregnant and I even knew I was having another set of twins... intuition.  When I told him he said I had to get an abortion. Well, while I support any woman's right to do so, I would never have an abortion.  He berated me brutally for eight months to get an abortion, threatened to divorce me if I didn't (not possible legally).... I gained a lot of weight, was sick, miserable and developed toxemia of pregnancy which killed one of the babies three days before he was born.  Carrying a dead baby in your womb is an experience that is indescribable.  Life after that was hell. Doug spent most of his time away, did not help with the children at any time, told a counselor "she wanted to have them, let her take care of them."  And, oh yeah he was shacked up with a clerk at the used car lot where he worked.  I caught them together.  We got divorced a short time later.  As far as the child support he was so worried about paying... in eighteen years as the father of three children he paid a sum total of $62.50, one time, full stop,  ONE TIME  -  this is after a judge told him to pay through the court... the amount he was supposed to pay was $210 a month. In a short time the house was repossessed as I could not make house payments and support four children on my own.  And to boot, a few years later his mother Emilyn Milstead put lies into the minds of my boys about their mother.   So am I bitter, you are damn right.  I understand child support rules have changed a lot since that time.... back then a man could and did get away with not paying.  Oh, but the icing on the cake, when Doug died he left his SONS several tens of thousands of dollars.  Nothing to his daughter because she had used drugs in high school - the hypocrisy of that is stunning.. the boys did share with her which is an indication that they did not inherit the perfidy of their father.... and nothing to me after screwing me out of over $45,000 in child support.  Quite a trick eh Doug? I hope you're rotting in hell right along with dear old mom.

"Normalizing" in a Nutshell

Occasionally I'm surprised to find many do not fully understand the term "normalizing" 

Yes, it does mean to make things normal but it's more than that. It means to make things SEEM normal that never have been until someone with money and power decided to make it so.

I'll use TV as one example.  This is what TV used to mean:

You would purchase this object for around $200, bring it home, plug it in and immediately have access to every television channel available in your area. Free access to every one of them.  No more.

Now you go out, pay many hundreds, or even thousands more for a flat piece of technology that you hang on your wall.  You're not done.

In order to get programming you must subscribe to one or more "services" depending on what kind of programming you want and in many cases you'll have to pay more to not include a flood of ads along with that programming.  You'll need to pay upwards of $70 a month to many hundreds a month for the privilege of streaming something to that flat screen that just a few years ago would have been free, paid for by advertising ... now you get the streaming AND the advertising.

To millennials and all future generations, this will seem "normal." It is and it isn't. It's normal now because they've trained people to accept it as the price you must pay to watch ordinary programming with the cost rising as you decide maybe you want to watch sports or science or programming for kids, any of a variety of choices.

The geniuses who bring you all this "entertainment" sold this packaging to us so long ago it is now considered "normal."

Just another chapter in the ongoing saga of "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer."

I got rid of my TV several years ago when they started demanding we pay for a tiny bit of programming and hours and hours of ads. Even streaming programming through my computer will cost extra if I want to add anything other than very basic shows that are either invariably very old, or tripe.

Another good example of normalizing - cell phones. Not that long ago you would acquire a telephone, bring it home, plug it in and have a basic monthly fee that was only extreme if you made a lot of long distance calls. Sure, it usually had a cord and you couldn't take it with you.  So what?  Because they have "normalized" the idea that you must have a phone with you every second of every day. What has it added?  Nothing but people driving distracted, mothers shopping while paying zero attention to what their kids are doing, people walking with their eyes glued to that tiny screen because my God, be un-tethered, what a thought.  Everyone must know exactly what you're doing, where you are, what random thoughts are in your mind every single moment.

Be aware, your phone is also making a map, accessible to anyone  with a computer, showing where you are every second, how long you were there, and to whom you talked.  Leave your phone home. We did it for generations and guess what, no one ever died because they didn't have a phone. Sometimes "convenience" is a trap.

I'm not saying technology is bad, I'm just saying it's being overdone, overdone to the detriment of ordinary people and the enrichment of those who make us feel incomplete, unimportant, "not with it," or out of touch if we do not possess the latest gadgets.

Take some time to find out exactly what this convenience, all this instant gratification is costing, not just in terms applicable to you, but what is it costing the planet? What is it costing the environment, our health, loss of societal norms in terms of being aware of what is truly important? We are moving away from each other, not listening, not hearing, not seeing - there is nothing before us but a tiny screen which claims our attention even in the presence of that which is truly vital.