Josiah and Lauren Part 9: Where Are They Honeymooning?

[nastyhobbitses]

Just thought of another place on my list: Sikkim in India. I've always been fascinated by Himalayan cultures and landscapes, and I love to hike. It's a schlep to get there, but it looks so beautiful. 

[SapphireSlytherin]

Regarding revisiting places, yes, there are many "must go agains" in my life, but let me tell you a little thing.

I know I'm older than most of you, so I'm looking at this from a different perspective, especially since I saw a meme on FB that said:

The problem is, you think you have time.

Hubby and I are both 51, and we do travel a LOT... as much as money and our vacation time will allow. We have a list of places that we want to go, and while it's getting shorter, the time we have left to see them all is getting shorter, faster.  I figure if we're really fortunate we probably have ~30 years left that would allow us to travel easily, and that breaks my heart. I know there are places I'll never go and things I'll never do because getting old(er) happens and it really does sneak up on you. 

Those of you with the means to travel -- don't wait. Take your kids, no matter how young they are. Yeah, sometimes it sucks to wag kids around airports and such, but putting off travel -- unless it's a kid-specific trip -- is unfair to you as an adult. If you want your kids to see the Eiffel Tower or the Grand Canyon, take them, even if they're too young to remember. It may encourage them to go back when they're adults (and paying their own way -lol).

[Thorns]

Spoiler

...that head tilt in the end... It looks like she is looking for the best way to eat him. It reminds me of something, but I can't figure out what! I think it is a movie scene? Help? (Something with a snake? A (evil) bird?)

[bird]

On 7/7/2018 at 8:44 AM, prayawaythefundie said:

Never been to Jamaica but Cape Town is awesome. You will not be disappointed.

Oh I concur!! It's a beautiful city. 

[Alice in Fundieland]

4 hours ago, SapphireSlytherin said:

The problem is, you think you have time.

This, a hundred times this. I’ve been a type I diabetic for almost 30 years. I’ve been fortunate to not have any major complications yet, but I did not take care of myself during my teens and early twenties. Hell, every day is a struggle to eat right and monitor my blood sugar. I try to do what’s best so I can live as long as possible, but realistically I know that my time on this earth might not be as long as some others. I’m trying to make every moment count and not put off anything I really want to do. I’ve tried to impress that upon my husband so he understands the urgent need I have to see and do things. 

[feministxtian]

3 hours ago, Thorns said:

  Hide contents

...that head tilt in the end... It looks like she is looking for the best way to eat him. It reminds me of something, but I can't figure out what! I think it is a movie scene? Help? (Something with a snake? A (evil) bird?)

Those simpering looks make me want to hurl. I don't think I've EVER looked at Mr. Xtian that way. 

[Thorns]

2 minutes ago, feministxtian said:

Those simpering looks make me want to hurl. I don't think I've EVER looked at Mr. Xtian that way. 

I have. To annoy/scare/freak him out. It usually works like a charm!

[feministxtian]

2 minutes ago, Thorns said:

I have. To annoy/scare/freak him out. It usually works like a charm!

Nah I just give him "the look". The one that makes grown men pee their pants. Supposedly I've raised it to an art form. 

[mydoggoskeeper]

Ugh, speaking as someone who has had similar length/texture of hair as Lauren, she looks like I would after having my hair down and traveling on the DC metro in the summer.  Her hair is naturally very pretty, but either she didn't use the correct product or the weather wasn't cooperating to get that boho look she was going for.  There are other pictures of her where she has achieved the same style with better success.  Joy had the same issues.  They probably both looked great when they stepped out of the prep room but time/weather was not kind to their hairstyle.  

Long days + summer +curled long hair = stringy looking unkept hair.

[Thorns]

3 minutes ago, feministxtian said:

Nah I just give him "the look". The one that makes grown men pee their pants. Supposedly I've raised it to an art form. 

(Oh, try the fundy stare! Imagine the confusion! It will be great!)

[feministxtian]

43 minutes ago, Thorns said:

(Oh, try the fundy stare! Imagine the confusion! It will be great!)

Nah, he'd just say "what the fuck is WRONG with you?". Ya gotta understand...we have sarcasm and slams down to an art-form. We both have this wickedly sarcastic as shit sense of humor and we're each other's favorite target. It's scary because we sorta share the same brain, some sort of weird-ass ESP thing happening. 

Yeah, we have issues...

[Boogers]

4 hours ago, Thorns said:

  Hide contents

...that head tilt in the end... It looks like she is looking for the best way to eat him. It reminds me of something, but I can't figure out what! I think it is a movie scene? Help? (Something with a snake? A (evil) bird?)

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Million Children For Jesus]

5 hours ago, Thorns said:

  Hide contents

...that head tilt in the end... It looks like she is looking for the best way to eat him. It reminds me of something, but I can't figure out what! I think it is a movie scene? Help? (Something with a snake? A (evil) bird?)

The movie Madagascar, when Marty the lion bites Alex the zebra’s butt. 

[amendgitan]

On 7/6/2018 at 3:30 AM, Rachel333 said:

I'm going by the statistics that say that fathers are more likely than women to win custody in disputed cases. Disturbingly, even abusive fathers can often get custody. This page cites a whole bunch of studies about that.

Again, that doesn't mean that individual cases can't have unfair outcomes for fathers! I'm sure it varies a lot by region too.

Anecdotally, there was an ugly custody dispute with a friend of a friend where the father won custody despite both teenage children testifying in court that they wanted to stay with their mother and the teenage daughter alleging sexual abuse by her father. The mother had been sexually abused as a child herself and it was actually used against her as she was described as being "oversensitive" to the idea of her own daughter being molested and was accused of trying to alienate the children from their father. I thought that was just a horrible isolated case, but apparently this is actually part of a wider trend. Here's a paper discussing it. From page 10:

Again, "mothers who alleged child sexual abuse lost primary custody 20% more often than mothers who did not allege abuse." That is horrifying.

The statistics vary from study to study. Some say there is a bias against women. Some say there is a bias against men. None of the studies are comprehensive enough and the studies themselves are influenced by the biases of those conducting the studies. 

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.174-1617.1996.tb00429.x

So I go off my professional, personal experience, 16 years in the business, here in CA, which has taken a lead in laws that are meant to eradicate gender bias. 

And my personal experience is that I have to fight twice as hard for my male parents as I do my female parents when it comes to obtaining joint custody. 

Children of "tender years"? (A legal term of art). It is par for the course that moms get primary custody, all else being equal. 

It also remains true, although it is changing quite a bit, that many dads do not have periods of  interrupted work to care for small children, while many moms still do. And that bears on future custody decisions as the more involved parent or the parent who is more accessible often get more time. 

Put it this way, in my experience, a mom generally has to be completely nuts or on drugs to have less than 50% custody and often dads who work will only get 50% IF she is an inadequate parent. 

But things are changing, especially with two parents working more these days. So my male clients are definitely having more success than in my early days of litigation. 

As a final note, for those who insist there is no gender bias in the law against men, (and P.S. I am a raging  feminist), look up the putative father registry states. In several states in the US, "unwed fathers" have almost no rights to their children, including almost no rights to preventing the termination of their parental rights. They have to know their mate is pregnant, and know about this elusive registry and figure out how to sign up for it in their state, before the child is born (or a set number of days before adoption), or they will lose all rights to their child. Worse, if the mother goes to a different state to have her child, which some are doing to make sure the dads don't get rights to the child, the dad would have to sign up in THAT state as well, even if he doesn't know the mother is there.

 https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/paternity-registry/396044/

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/us/unwed-fathers-fight-for-babies-placed-for-adoption-by-mothers.html

Sorry for going off topic. 

 

 

[Rachel333]

19 hours ago, MarblesMom said:

Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern helped me get Mr MM across the globe.  Food unites us! 

This was a man who had never been east of the Mississippi - and he willingly went to Europe twice and to South America once, just for the food!

If you have a partner who is reluctant on travel, tempt them through their stomachs 

Food isn't generally a big draw for me but I would love to go back to India for the food alone!

[Shadoewolf]

Kaa, the snake from the Jungle Book..

[QuiverFullofBooks]

On 7/7/2018 at 1:35 PM, Pecansforeveryone said:

It's part of the reason why I have never had an issue with snarking on the Duggar brides ages. Loretta Lynn was a child bride. In her part of the Appalachians and during that time period, it was very, very, very common.  The Duggar brides enter into a life-long contract /committment without so much worldly experience as working a part-time fast food job. That is extremely troubling and always worthy of comment. 

Loretta Lynn admitted later that her record company forced her to lie about her age because she was over 30 when she started her career. That pushed her from a young bride to a child bride.

[Sky with diamonds]

I'd love to travel to other countries, even other provinces. I know it's very unlikely. The only way I 'travel' is by reading. I love reading everyone's experiences. 

[missaudrey]

I didn't travel internationally much as a kid, we just didn't have the money. However, I've been to every county in Ireland multiple times, and visited all the major cities/towns/castles etc. So far, and I am only 22, I've been to the UK (England and Wales), France, the Netherlands and Italy. I really want to go back to the Netherlands, we stayed in Haarlem and it is just the most beautiful place. I would love to explore more of the country too. 

Future travel plans are rather difficult to pin down, as I have quite bad anxiety and struggle with being away from home/my family. I was actually due to go to London with a friend last month and had to back out on the day we were due to leave.... loads of money down the drain  London is my favourite place, so it killed me that I just couldn't do it.

When I do get better, I want to travel to every country in Europe, Egypt as I love the history, and the east coast of the US. I don't do heat, so travelling will be strictly in the cooler months for me!! 

[JoytotheWorld]

On 7/6/2018 at 6:07 PM, xlurker said:

Yay you!  My Lurkerling graduated in '13.  It was her first choice school and you couldn't have seen a happier girl than when she opened her big envelope 

 

That’s awesome! It was my first choice as well; I was a dozen years ahead of her, though.

[Cheetah]

Good timing on a travel derail... we just flew back to CA (home) from 2 weeks in New England this morning.  (Got up at 3am East Coast time, which is midnight here in CA... so we are kind of dazed and confused and wondering why it's only 3pm ;-)).  We spent a week on Cape Cod and a week in Boston with side trips to Rhode Island, Maine, and (not really but drove through it to get to Maine) New Hampshire, so the kids and I got to tick 4 more states off of our 'been there' list and hubby got 3 since he's been to Boston for work.  

Anyway... for all of you younger FJ-ers who haven't traveled much but want to.. there's time!  I didn't leave the US until I was 19, and most of our summer vacations were to the same place every summer.  But hubby is Australian (so we travel there to see his family) and we both love traveling all over so we've now been to around 25 countries (US, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, China, Japan, Canada, Mexico, England, Scotland, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, France, Czech Republic, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro.  And I went to Norway without him as well as East Germany back when that was a separate country, we drove through Bosnia for 30 minutes so that probably doesn't count, and there are a couple more 'in transit' ones like that).    As far as US states go, I'm missing Alaska, Vermont, Connecticut, and most of the deep south (SC, AB, MS, I think I must have driven through GA to get to FL and don't remember about KY) but I think I have all of the others. 

After this last trip I remember just how much I hate really hot weather and humidity (hello East Coast last week) and so my current bucket list might be skewed toward cooler places :-).  But places we've talked about wanting to see include Iceland (my sis was just there a couple of weeks ago, speaking of just how many people are going these days.  I think she said one pizza was $36 but the photos were incredible).  Also Tanzania (safari and Zanzibar Island), Istanbul, Morocco, Greece (but maybe not in summer), Barcelona, Costa Rica, Kauai, Banff, and generally more of northern Europe, especially Scandanavia.   Would also love to go to Cambodia or Vietnam but not in the summer.  

[Karma]

33 minutes ago, Cheetah said:

we drove through Bosnia for 30 minutes so that probably doesn't count, and there are a couple more 'in transit' ones like that

This is a common argument between my husband and I.  I counted, I’ve been to 25 countries, and will add another 5 on our next trip (I actually forgot our South American trip when I posted yesterday.  In my defence it was back in the 80s.)  He has been to probably nearly 50 (spends 3 months a year travelling for work).  But, he insists on counting countries he’s landed in for refueling.  He says eg landing in Egypt to refuel counts, because he walked across the tarmac and breathed Egyptian air.  I say unless you make it out of the airport it doesn’t count.  And when you actually have been to so many countries, why make spurious claims to others?

I usually give in, because it’s really not important enough to argue about.

[Rachel333]

 I also think that you have to actually leave the airport/train station/whatever for it to "count." I've ridden through several countries on a train and been through airports in countries that I don't add to my count.

[AnnEggBlandHer?]

I was going to bring this up! My family’s rule was you had to eat, sleep, or do an activity in a place for it to count. So we didn’t even count just driving across a state on the way to somewhere else! I definitely don’t think an airport counts.  I have been to 46 US States, including Alaska and Hawaii, a handful of Caribbean islands, Canada, Mexico, and Ireland, Spain, England, France, and Italy.  I feel very fortunate that my parents placed a huge emphasis on traveling during my childhood! 

[tabitha2]

On 7/7/2018 at 12:35 PM, Pecansforeveryone said:

It's part of the reason why I have never had an issue with snarking on the Duggar brides ages. Loretta Lynn was a child bride. In her part of the Appalachians and during that time period, it was very, very, very common.  The Duggar brides enter into a life-long contract /committment without so much worldly experience as working a part-time fast food job. That is extremely troubling and always worthy of comment. 

Not to nitpick but it wasn’t common at all for such young girls to marry in Appalachia when Lynn was a child. She mentions in her Autobiography  18 or 19 was the usual age.  Her parents were very much against the marriage but they decided she was going to do it whatever they said so might as well give in.