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| Picture from HERE |
Rural people will always be at a disadvantage in political arenas. All of our experience guides us to keep our mouths shut when fertilizer is being shoveled.
Monday, February 3, 2014
Quote for the Day
Rural people will always be at a disadvantage in political arenas. All of our experience guides us to keep our mouths shut when fertilizer is being shoveled.
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Open Adoptions
Mrs ERJ and I adopted all four of our children. Every once in a while I get asked, "How did you manage to adopt four kids? I have a sister who has been trying for years to just adopt one child."
We were introduced to the Open Adoption process by a couple of fantastic Social Workers, Avelyn Marshall and Mike Hall. They had a cook-book recipe that has worked pretty well.
Foremost, keep in mind that you are helping a birth mother make a parenting decision. The birth mother is choosing parents who will raise her child in the way she wishes she was able raise him/her. It is a cruel-hard decision.
Second, throw away the stereotypes. Just as you found a mate who was the key-in-lock fit for you, your family is the perfect fit for somebody out there. A birth mother will not give up her baby to an abstract, statistically normed family...unless that is exactly what you are.
Example: One of our birth mothers was still living with her parents. We were invited over for ice cream. Our birth mother did not say much, but one thing she asked was "What is your idea of a perfect Sunday morning." We told her our perfect morning was to go to Mass at a church with great music and then eat breakfast (Huevos Rancheros) with friends at the restaurant around the corner.
Later, our birth mother's dad told us that answer is what broke us out of a three-way tie. God/Religion/Church was important to her. Her grandmother was a devout Catholic. Our birth mother wanted her child to have a solid moral grounding similar to the one she was raised with. The other two prospective parents painted verbal images of lounging around in bed, eating pop-tarts and reading the paper.
Be authentic. Be honest. Be you. In a way, you are "dating" to bring another member into the family....just like you brought your spouse into the family.
Three, hit up all your friends and families for pictures of you and your spouse doing things. Hey Sherlock, you don't have very many pictures of you and your wife on your camera.
You will use those pictures to put together a collage of what brings you joy. Think VERBS!
Get help. Ask around. You probably know somebody who scrap books who would be delighted to help you.
You will also be incredibly blind to many of the photogenic activities you do. Do you play in a brass band? Do you quilt or bake? Raise any kind of animal? Act in plays? Carve wood?
I have a fourth cousin who was trying to get a teaching job. She neglected to include the tidbit that she proficiently played 23 different musical instruments. Playing musical instruments came easily to her and she did not perceive it as anything special.
I favor fewer pictures and bigger pictures because of how these collages get used.
A typical adoption agency will have many (even hundreds) of applications on file. The social worker will make a rough match between what the birth mother says she wants and the applications on file. The applications that most closely match will be pulled and the 10 best fits will be offered to the birth mother to sort through.
They always look through the pictures first.
In my mental picture, the birth mother will sort through the 10 possibilities and separate them into A pile (3 or 4) and C pile (better luck next time) in less than a minute. That means your pictures have 6 seconds to communicate a vivid, coherent, three dimensional message to your birth mother. Twelve pictures and relatively little text can do that. Sixty pictures and paragraphs of text will not.
To any who are/were birth mothers: Thank-you! I pray that we have been able to honor the vision you had for your child.
To any who are considering adoption: We would do it again.
The magic
We were introduced to the Open Adoption process by a couple of fantastic Social Workers, Avelyn Marshall and Mike Hall. They had a cook-book recipe that has worked pretty well.
Foremost, keep in mind that you are helping a birth mother make a parenting decision. The birth mother is choosing parents who will raise her child in the way she wishes she was able raise him/her. It is a cruel-hard decision.
Second, throw away the stereotypes. Just as you found a mate who was the key-in-lock fit for you, your family is the perfect fit for somebody out there. A birth mother will not give up her baby to an abstract, statistically normed family...unless that is exactly what you are.
Example: One of our birth mothers was still living with her parents. We were invited over for ice cream. Our birth mother did not say much, but one thing she asked was "What is your idea of a perfect Sunday morning." We told her our perfect morning was to go to Mass at a church with great music and then eat breakfast (Huevos Rancheros) with friends at the restaurant around the corner.
Later, our birth mother's dad told us that answer is what broke us out of a three-way tie. God/Religion/Church was important to her. Her grandmother was a devout Catholic. Our birth mother wanted her child to have a solid moral grounding similar to the one she was raised with. The other two prospective parents painted verbal images of lounging around in bed, eating pop-tarts and reading the paper.
Be authentic. Be honest. Be you. In a way, you are "dating" to bring another member into the family....just like you brought your spouse into the family.
Three, hit up all your friends and families for pictures of you and your spouse doing things. Hey Sherlock, you don't have very many pictures of you and your wife on your camera.
You will use those pictures to put together a collage of what brings you joy. Think VERBS!
 |
| Pictures pulled off the internet from multiple sources. Try for a mix of You+Spouse together and a few separate. |
You will also be incredibly blind to many of the photogenic activities you do. Do you play in a brass band? Do you quilt or bake? Raise any kind of animal? Act in plays? Carve wood?
I have a fourth cousin who was trying to get a teaching job. She neglected to include the tidbit that she proficiently played 23 different musical instruments. Playing musical instruments came easily to her and she did not perceive it as anything special.
How the collage gets used
I favor fewer pictures and bigger pictures because of how these collages get used.
A typical adoption agency will have many (even hundreds) of applications on file. The social worker will make a rough match between what the birth mother says she wants and the applications on file. The applications that most closely match will be pulled and the 10 best fits will be offered to the birth mother to sort through.
They always look through the pictures first.
In my mental picture, the birth mother will sort through the 10 possibilities and separate them into A pile (3 or 4) and C pile (better luck next time) in less than a minute. That means your pictures have 6 seconds to communicate a vivid, coherent, three dimensional message to your birth mother. Twelve pictures and relatively little text can do that. Sixty pictures and paragraphs of text will not.
Wrap up
To any who are/were birth mothers: Thank-you! I pray that we have been able to honor the vision you had for your child.
To any who are considering adoption: We would do it again.
Helping Kubota with Romance
Kubota is at that stage where he makes a show of talking to girls.
But his audience is really the boys.
I am sure most of us worked pretty hard to forget that awkward, painful time. Us guys thought we were clever using contrived pickup "lines". The girls may have appreciated the effort but many of them had serious doubts that boys and girls were actually the same species.
Kubota thinks he is complimenting a girl when he loudly announces across the cafeteria "You are HOT!" All the other boys at the table go nuts, just like the monkeys at the zoo. The girls, in large part, are not impressed. In their minds, they hear "You are HOT!" from a 14 year old boy as, "I hope you are EASY!".
So Kubota, when you are old enough to read this blog, turn off your misogynistic (C)rap music and listen to some older, romantic music.
Love is not a spectator sport or one of the performing arts. Love is about two people finding each other, being brave enough to risking intimacy. Two people having each other's back. It is about trust, respect, care....and ecstasy.
But his audience is really the boys.
I am sure most of us worked pretty hard to forget that awkward, painful time. Us guys thought we were clever using contrived pickup "lines". The girls may have appreciated the effort but many of them had serious doubts that boys and girls were actually the same species.
Kubota thinks he is complimenting a girl when he loudly announces across the cafeteria "You are HOT!" All the other boys at the table go nuts, just like the monkeys at the zoo. The girls, in large part, are not impressed. In their minds, they hear "You are HOT!" from a 14 year old boy as, "I hope you are EASY!".
---Disclaimer---
I still don't know much about girls. But I know that girls worth having are not attracted to guys who thing they are easy. They are attracted to guys who will value and protect them. |
| Picture from HERE |
---End Disclaimer---
So Kubota, when you are old enough to read this blog, turn off your misogynistic (C)rap music and listen to some older, romantic music.
Love is not a spectator sport or one of the performing arts. Love is about two people finding each other, being brave enough to risking intimacy. Two people having each other's back. It is about trust, respect, care....and ecstasy.
Health Insurance Considerations when Retiring
"Fashion is a form of ugly so hideous that it must be changed every six months." -attributed to Oscar Wilde
The new fashion seems to be to have a very large deductible before health insurance kicks in.
The way it works is that the policy holder pays health insurance premiums even as they pay 100% of their medical bills. At some time in the year the sum of the billings passes a magical number ($3000-to-$6000 are common ranges) and then you start getting assistance with medical bills.
The theory behind the large deductibles is that insurance was originally reserved for "Acts of God" and other LARGE events that are difficult to anticipate. That is, -3 sigma events. The expectation is that the average person would handle all of their medical expenses in most years. The insurance would kick in if you were involved in a serious accident or had a health event that put you in the hospital. The health insurance would not be activated for what might be considered "normal-wear-and-tear".
The ERJ Family
We flipped from my medical insurance when I retired in June 2013 over to Mrs ERJ's. We had just passed the deductible limit and were starting to get some help.
The remainder of 2013 was pretty typical but then Mrs ERJ's employer switched to the large deductible as well. Likely we will burn through that by June 2014.
Mrs ERJ is strongly considering retiring in 2014 which would flip us to our fourth health insurance policy in two years.
The worst case scenario, which will likely happen to many, is that if a couple retires in mid-year, a year apart from each other they could find themselves stuck in 24 months of paying into deductibles and never making it to the checkered flag.
Short Duration Work
I went wandering around the web to see if there is much data on how long full time work gigs last. My reason for getting bumped policy-to-policy was retirement but I believe there is a large population of workers who may work full time but hop jobs on a frequent basis.
Sometimes the person stays put but the job hops out from beneath them. I have a cousin who has been in the same job for about 10 year. He is on his fifth employer as the work involves programming on Government contracts. He reports to the same cubicle, same computer screen but the name on the paycheck changes. Oh, and the benefits restart. Under the new rule-set, it is conceivable that he could almost never see the checkered flag....even if his family's medical expenses are twice the median.
Focus
I need to stay positive. I need to focus on the reason for insurance: Financial help for catastrophic health events. Not triggering "help" means that we are relatively healthy.
But is sure puts a huge bite in the budget when an extra $1500 flows out of our budget in January.
I wonder if the medical establishment will see sawtooth demand where demand is lighter in the early part of the year as people conserve cash and aggressively manage their healthcare spending, and then increasing demand as more families blow through the deductible and can afford more discretionary procedures and catch up on deferred care later in the year.
Fixed Cost
A very large portion of medical costs involves the debt servicing of expensive equipment. Uneven demand will cause both under-utilization (early in the year) and under-capacity (later in the year). That is the worst of both worlds.
The rational thing to do would be to stagger the starting gun for the restart of the deductible period. Two rational choices would be to use one's hire date. Another rational choice (especially for professions like education where most hire dates are July-August) would be to stagger the start by the last two digits of one's Social Security Number. That is, 00-24 starts January 1, 25-49 starts April 1, 50-74 starts July 1 and 75-99 starts October 1.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Gender Specific Parental Duties
The Boys
I took Kubota and Wild Willie to Family Shooter's Corral for some ballistic therapy. We took a Marlin 795 (semi-automatic) and a Savage Mark II (bolt action). I asked them which firearm they liked best. I was surprised when they both like the Savage Mark II best. They said it felt better in their hands, less like a toy, and they really liked the trigger.
Most of the shooting was fun shooting.
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| Hostage picture stolen from the Internet |
We did a little bit of field position work at the end. We moved a picnic table so they would not have to lie in the snow. It was the first time either of them had shot prone. It felt very weird to them but enough reps will fix that.
Then we came home, ate pizza and watched Weekend at Bernie's. A recurring meme in Bloggerville is the economy as Weekend at Bernie's. So this was a serious intellectual exercise....really.
The Girls
Homecoming and Prom are no longer enough. There is now "Winter Fest". Mrs ERJ took a raft of girls shopping for dresses and accessories.
This is what Mrs ERJ and Belladonna brought home. It is nothing that a little bit of red duct tape cannot fix.
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| Some girls were meant to be put on a pedestal. |
I am pretty sure the boys got the better end of the deal.
Repairing a Chipped Blade
The loppers have been getting a workout. I noticed a big chip out of the cutting blade yesterday.
These are bypass cutters. The bevel is all on one side, the side that is not visible. There are three issues caused by this chip.
This photo was taken from the other side after the repair. It is not my best work but it is not my worst either. I may round out the sharp corners a little more.
This steel was relatively soft...a little softer than an SAE Grade 8 bolt. This steel is more likely to bend than chip. It was a pleasant surprise to be able to be able to effectively shape it with a chainsaw and flat bastard file.
These are bypass cutters. The bevel is all on one side, the side that is not visible. There are three issues caused by this chip.
- The blade is dull where it is chipped
- The bevel goes in the wrong direction
- There are fragile corners on both pivot and tip side of the chip that will break.
This photo was taken from the other side after the repair. It is not my best work but it is not my worst either. I may round out the sharp corners a little more.
This steel was relatively soft...a little softer than an SAE Grade 8 bolt. This steel is more likely to bend than chip. It was a pleasant surprise to be able to be able to effectively shape it with a chainsaw and flat bastard file.
Kubota has a New Tool
Kubota is now the proud owner of a 30% equity stake in a Mossberg 500A.
We went out and ran 25 shells through it. He was shooting milk jugs suspended from the clothes line. It functions very smoothly.
I promised him a dollar if he could shoot the milk jug off the top of one of the posts holding the clothes line. What he did not know is that I had to cut slits in the bottom of the jug and press it down over some nails to keep the wind from blowing it off. He did not win the dollar.
The pricing absolutely baffled me. $139 for a name brand, pump shotgun. $99 for single shot shotguns. Go figure!
I saw something I never thought I would ever see. A family (Man, Woman, two preschool aged kids) came into the shop and the woman bought a Glock in 40 S&W for home protection. The woman was blind, stone-cold-blind. She had a little cardboard cutout that she put over documents so her signature was guided.
She wanted to know if she could buy 15 bullets. She intends to load the gun but does not intend to shoot the gun.
The store manager was legally compelled to sell her the gun. She qualified, based on the paperwork.
That is a recipe for disaster. She has little kids. She intends to keep it squirreled away, loaded. She does not intend to shoot it to familiarize herself with its operation and quirks. She cannot physically fulfill one of the Big Three, "Be sure of your target and what is behind it." She just wants it for "scare value".
I like guns. I like them a lot. They are useful tools. I don't think a gun is the best tool for this woman.
Pepper spray would be a more robust answer for her. Mistakes can be made and you can still say "Sorry" in the morning.
I promised him a dollar if he could shoot the milk jug off the top of one of the posts holding the clothes line. What he did not know is that I had to cut slits in the bottom of the jug and press it down over some nails to keep the wind from blowing it off. He did not win the dollar.
The pricing absolutely baffled me. $139 for a name brand, pump shotgun. $99 for single shot shotguns. Go figure!
Americans with Disabilities Act
I saw something I never thought I would ever see. A family (Man, Woman, two preschool aged kids) came into the shop and the woman bought a Glock in 40 S&W for home protection. The woman was blind, stone-cold-blind. She had a little cardboard cutout that she put over documents so her signature was guided.
She wanted to know if she could buy 15 bullets. She intends to load the gun but does not intend to shoot the gun.
The store manager was legally compelled to sell her the gun. She qualified, based on the paperwork.
That is a recipe for disaster. She has little kids. She intends to keep it squirreled away, loaded. She does not intend to shoot it to familiarize herself with its operation and quirks. She cannot physically fulfill one of the Big Three, "Be sure of your target and what is behind it." She just wants it for "scare value".
I like guns. I like them a lot. They are useful tools. I don't think a gun is the best tool for this woman.
Pepper spray would be a more robust answer for her. Mistakes can be made and you can still say "Sorry" in the morning.
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