Divorce

My parents are divorced, and have been so for nearly 9 years and I'm still annoyed by it. They divorced when I was an adult, out of college, out of grad school and out of grad school again, so there is no childhood trauma, just adult pain. This come up everyodd instance, sometimes when I'm talking with another person whose parents are also divorced. Of course I'm lucky in one instance, my family never made a big deal of holidays, like today, so there is no need to split time between people. I'm skipping out on Turkey Day completely because 1/2 the DC metro family has gone down to NC bc mean grandma is in the hospital. This leaves just me and Auntie J, and Auntie J didn't want to be bothered either. I do feel badly for people who have to split their annual leave between their mom and her husband's family and their dad and his new family.
When my parents were together I talked to my dad more. Our conversations were less than 20 seconds. He would answer the phone say something silly, and then acknowledge that I was calling for mom, and then get her on the phone. This would be weekly or every other week. Now, post-divorce, I call mom weekly and check in and for dad, I have to come up with enough talking material to justify the phone call so I call him 2x a year. Seriously. He and my sister are not phone people. This is a concept that people, particularly those who can happily hold a one sided conversation, don't get. My sister has the added problem of not paying her phone bill that makes it a challenge. I see my sister and my dad when I'm down in Florida and let's say the non-verbal cues get used up.
The silver lining of my parents' divorce? Mom's health improved and Dad found Jesus.

HIV

I was listening to a NPR podcast that just made me wince.
I think it was a Religion and Ethics piece, not sure. But the story was about an evangelical Christian woman living with HIV, who describes how she got HIV when dating another Christian. She didn't say it outright and that was thing that annoyed me. What made me wince was she described how the Lord brought love into her life (guy who gave her HIV). Okay, I'm not going to get into the sex outside of marriage thing, that's my judgementalism. My annoyance, is with her was not clearly stating that unprotected sex risks your health. She didn't own up to it.
I was hanging out once with a gay man whose profession is AIDS education. His preferred group to educate was other gay men, because he really didn't get straight people and our sex issues. Unfortunately, professionally, all the good AIDS work is in Africa, educating straight people. The other problem is you have to live in Africa, which wasn't something he wanted to be bothered with either. I asked about the issues of straight sex and what to do about when a couple wants children. That was one of those straight people things.
Back to the Christian woman with HIV. I feel badly for her as she is going to have to deal with the cocktail of drugs to keep her alive and relatively healthy. However I think she does a disservice in her education mission if she doesn't talk about prevention as she educates and supports women with HIV. I also was annoyed by some bits evangelical wishy theology, that I've heard before from other evangelical non-denomination members. Of course, I'm getting more annoyed with some protestant groups daily.