Recently in Relationships Category

Here is a situation:

A father and his university-aged son have a very rocky relationship. It's to the point where they no longer speak. The father is faced with a choice: try to rebuild the relationship with his son, or do whatever he can to ensure his son's future, including happiness. This might include working longer hours and away from the family for extended periods of time, or offering views that might not be popular, but that he believes must be heard for his son's survival, if only he would accept the words. Is that a true test of his love for his son? To sacrifice his relationship with him to ensure that he has a better life? Is it similar to dying for your son's freedom, but just less dramatic?

How about a man doing something similar for his woman? Is it different? Is it appropriate to say that he loves her so much that he is willing to lose her as long as she recovers from her illness, financial situation, family situation or whatever it is that is making her "sick", or threatening her survival, be it physical, spiritual, mental or financial?

Have you ever loved someone enough that you would be willing to sacrifice your relationship to that person? Is that even love?

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son...

I suppose that this could be a true Thanksgiving. I SHOULD have done this a few weeks ago, but then, I suppose I didn't feel that thankful.

• I had an interview yesterday for something in small-scale project management with a placement agency. I mentioned it in the last entry. The girl that was interviewing me was rather young, and I think that I was able to convince her that I was actually a project coordinator in other jobs rather than a phone monkey in sales, so she is passing my CV and the results of our conversation on to the actual company. I should know tomorrow if the people there want to meet with me, and I expect that the interview would be later this week.
• Quantum called me about another sales opportunity (I get a lot of calls for sales opportunities; perhaps I should remove the word "sales" from my CV and replace it with "project"). I explained what I was actually looking for and after digging a little bit, it seems that there is an opportunity as a media relations coordinator that was put on hold because there was a death in the family of the one hiring. It sounds interesting; I get to travel locally and coordinate small media projects. Neither opportunity pays much, but at least with my age I can get to the top of their pay grade immediately.
• A former coworker, Gnocchi Linguine, just got married and I was invited to his marriage party. I was told a number of times that it would be great if I could go back there to work, although they agree that sales was not really my bag when I was there. As luck would have it, there was a project management position that opened up that same day. I later found out that Rick, my former boss there, thinks that I would be a great fit for the position, and certainly better than the girl that left it. (Clients actually LIKE me, for starters.) What I have to do now is to make contact with Posey Headlights, the woman responsible for that area of the business. Unfortunately, she is one person I avoided like the plague when I was working there. More on her some other time if this story develops.
• Rose. For three years of tolerating my willfulness and stubbornness, and for never giving up on herself.

There are other things, but I haven't thought of them yet. I will keep you posted.

Today is Rose's birthday. I can't tell you how old she is, but she is a perfect age. (If you know me and my passion for numbers, you can figure that out. 5 points to the first person that leaves a comment with the right age!)

Rose, despite the fact that I am not particularly financially well off right now, I truly want this day to be a special one. I mean that in the most sincere way. Happy birthday, love!

One of my best friends, Saab, who I met while studying math at McGill, got married yesterday in Wisconsin. It was rather sudden in the sense that although I knew last fall that they wanted to get married at some point, they didn't want to actually do it until next July. Why did they do it yesterday? She's not pregnant, if that's what you might have been thinking.

Two years ago, he left Montreal to go to Egypt to teach math to bratty rich Egyptians. (What do you call a person from Cairo? Caironian?) His contract was for two years. He was amazed at the lack of interesting women he saw there until the end of his first year. I was shocked when I learned last summer that he was twitterpated, and that after a few months he was ready to pop the question. I put my institutional doubts aside, knowing that he is an eternal believer, and congratulated him.

Last Sunday, Rose moved in.

I hate moving more than cancer, not that I would actually know what cancer is like. But I like to say that if I could choose between manually moving stuff from one place to another or a day of chemotherapy (without the lasting effects), I might pick the chemo. At least once. Moving is just so damn tedious I can't stand it. It doesn't matter how much stuff there is to move, either. Rose doesn't have much stuff, but I do. And now we have duplicates of many things. And space is very tight now.

Rose's brother and father drove in with her daughter's bed in tow. This was important for Rose in that her daughter would finally be able to sleep in a bed of her own in a room of her own whenever they were together. Very important. After the crisis of the spring before last, the girl lost much of what she had, and now she can have some of it back.

Eventually we loaded everything up into the rickety wagon and drove here. My asthma and bronchitis kicked in, naturally, but in the end we were able to get everything up. Only one trip from her place to mine. The couch was an adventure, though. The couch where the bed was to go in an enormous beast of a thing, and Rose's father had to take off two doors to get it out of my apartment. It's so huge that the Salvation Army wouldn't pick it up. It is still sitting on my back balcony.

Rose's parents, particularly her father, do not really like buying new things. When they buy something, it should last forever. Thirty years isn't forever, which means that they haven't got their money's worth. Her parent's bed is older than she is. It sags in odd places. It even looks awful. It's so bad that her mom hasn't had a good night's sleep in more than fifteen years, but yet they would not replace the bed. Since Rose was suddenly about to have an extra queen-size bed, she decided to give it to her parents. But then, the ingrates weren't sure if they were going to use the damn thing, and they weren't even grateful that they received a new bed for free from their daughter who could use some extra cash and could have sold the thing! Weirdos. They don't know how good they have it sometimes, having her as a daughter. Rose put her foot down and said that there would be hell to pay if the bed weren't set up the next time she was visiting.

As for me, life hasn't really changed much, which is how I like it. She was here all the time anyway, so now we can save some cash. Things still aren't properly put away and we have duplicates of things. But we are only living here temporarily until we find a bigger and better place to live in the spring. Wish us luck.

Taken recently. I include this because she looks great, but I look like a bum. I have had my moments, though. :)

Rose + JonasParker ↔ One year together!

The final question:

What is your position on same-sex marriage? Do you think its legalization is inevitable? Do you think same-sex couples jeopardize the "sanctity" of the institution?

The fourth question:

Today, almost a third of all children are born out of wedlock. In the last forty years, there has been an 850 percent increase in the number of cohabitating couples who have children. Do you think this trend will continue? And is a two-parent household necessary to a child's well-being?

The third question:

Do you think the grounds for divorce are changing? Are they becoming more lax (i.e.: it's not worth ending a five-year marriage because of a spouse's infidelity) or more stringent (i.e.: you cheat, I leave and take the dog, no questions asked)?

UPDATE: Sorry, I had the link wrong before. It is now fixed.